Metaethics is the branch of philosophy dealing with the most general questions about the nature of normative discourse and properties and our relationship to them. Though it sounds arcane, the topic comes up frequently on TL, where debates constantly arise about whether or not certain moral judgments are “merely opinions” or “subjective” or “culture bound”. (Don't believe me? See this thread.).
This thread is intended to give a primer on the most influential theories in contemporary analytic metaethics while also providing a place to discuss and debate disagreements and to voice opinions. It will also offer a framework for dividing up positions that can be used in many other debates, such as debates about whether artistic value is objective.
MORAL REALISM
There are many different ways of defining moral realism, but definitions will typically have something along the lines of the following three theses at their core:
(1) Ethical discourse is cognitive (or, fact-stating; or, truth-evaluable). That is, ethical assertions make claims about the world and are capable of being either true or false.[1]
(2) Some ethical statements are true.
(3) We know, or are capable of knowing, some ethical truths.
Moral realism further divides into naturalistic and non-naturalistic variants.[2]
According to naturalistic moral realism, ethical facts simply are (or reduce to) a type of natural fact, not fundamentally different from facts about the properties of planets and animals.[3] Utilitarianism can be viewed as an example of this, since utilitarians identify ethical facts with naturalistic facts about what creates the most pleasure minus pain. You don't have to be a utilitarian to be a naturalist, however. Important proponents include Peter Railton, Richard Boyd, and Nick Sturgeon.
The most obvious kind of non-naturalistic moral realism is a divine command theory, wherein ethical facts are simply facts about what God wills.[4] However, the most prominent defenders of non-naturalistic MR are atheists such as Derek Parfit, Thomas Scanlon, and Tom Nagel. Their view doesn't commit them to any supernatural objects, just to the claim that reasons do not reduce to natural facts. For instance, they might say that it is wrong to torture babies for fun, but that this fact does not reduce to any natural facts.[5]
The most straightforward argument for each form of realism is that they preserve the appearances of moral discourses. More often than not, people seem to make moral utterances as though they endorsed (1)-(3), so these theses represent a starting point for discussion about morality.
Naturalistic realism can claim the further advantage that this benefit comes for no ontological cost. Their moral facts are nothing over and above the natural facts we already accept, so, unlike belief in a god, believing in them costs nothing in terms of Ockham's razor. Non-naturalists will typically counter that the natural facts are not enough to preserve the common understanding of morality, so if you want to do so you have to accept their view and it's additional costs.
The main argument's against realism are the arguments for the opposing views that I will outline below.[6]
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EXPRESSIVISM
Expressivism is the contemporary version of non-cognitivism, the non-realist view you get when you deny thesis (1). That is, it claims that ethical statements are not truth-evaluable or fact stating.
The most simple version of this, emotivism, states that ethical statements are used to simply express emotions. So, 'Murder is wrong' would come out meaning the same thing as 'Boo murder!', which is not truth-evaluable. This view is associated with logical positivists such as A.J. Ayer and is widely regarded as refuted.
Expressivism brings in more complicated psychological states being expressed than simple emotions. Candidates for that psychological state include complex motivational states or commitments to complicated sets of plans. The most prominent recent expressivists have been Allen Gibbard and Simon Blackburn.
It's important to keep this view separate from the view that moral statements describe certain psychological states. On that view, 'Murder is wrong' might mean, 'I hate murder'. But notice that 'I hate murder' still has a truth value, which expressivists deny. That's why they say that your hatred is expressed, not described, by your moral utterances.
Traditionally, one of the most important arguments for non-cognitivism stems from G.E. Moore's open question argument, according to which it is impossible to define moral predicates using naturalistic properties. However, this argument is somewhat outdated since most varieties of realism do not attempt to give definitions anymore.
The other main argument for expressivism has been the supposedly essential connection between ethical attitudes/assertions and some form of endorsement or motivation. Expressivists will often claim that it is impossible to imagine someone thinking that stealing is wrong without also disapproving of stealing or being motivated in some part not to steal or to reduce the number of thefts (the details of the connection will vary with the specific account offered). It is easy to see why such a connection would exist if ethical attitudes just are states of endorsement or motivation, and ethical statements are just expressions of such states.
But such a connection between beliefs and motivation/endorsement would be hard to make sense of for a naturalistic moral realist, since it is hard to see why merely believing some fact could have motivational or endorsing effects independent of a persons contingent desires. Naturalists thus typically dispute the connection, whereas non-naturalists typically dispute that such action or endorsement guiding belief states are impossible.
Cons
One of the most important arguments against non-cognitivism in general has been the Frege-Geach problem. This is easiest to understand using emotivism, according to which 'Murder is wrong' just means 'Boo murder!'. The problem with this view is that it has a hard time making sense of a compositional semantics for moral terms. 'Murder is wrong' doesn't simply appear in straightforward assertions, but also in more complicated embedded contexts such as: 'Johnny believes murder is wrong' , 'If murder is wrong, Sally wouldn't do it', and 'What if murder is wrong?'. None of these sentences make sense if 'Murder is wrong' has no meaning beyond its expression of disapproval for murder, since that disapproval is in no way built into the more complicated sentences.
This objection is widely regarded as having refuted the most simple forms of non-cognitivism, and one of the main tasks of more recent work in the area has been trying to find ways around it. It is still a matter of debate whether any such proposal has succeeded.
Another argument against expressivism attempts to refute the claimed essential connection between endorsement/motivation and ethical beliefs. Many naturalistic realists claim that amoralists are conceivable. Amoralists are perfectly competent users of moral language and can answer most everyday questions about morality correctly, but they remain completely indifferent to moral considerations. They will happily agree with you that setting cats on fire is wrong, but ignore that factor when deciding whether they will set a cat on fire today.
ERROR THEORY
Error theory agrees with realism on thesis (1); they take moral statements and beliefs to be truth-evaluable and not mere expressions of feelings. They differ by denying thesis (2), claiming instead that all ethical claims are false.[7]
The common strand to error theorists is that they think that moral assertions are all committed to some proposition that is false. A good analogy is what atheists think about claims about God, such as 'God loves dogs'. They think such claims are systematically false because they require the God's existence to be true.
What's the false proposition that all ethical claims are committed to? Different theories give different answers, but a popular answer stemming from J.L. Mackie is that all ethical claims are committed to the existence of categorical imperatives.[8] A categorical imperative is something you have a reason to do regardless of any of your contingent desires or goals.[9]
So such an error theorists agree with non-naturalistic realists about what ethical claims require of the world. They just disagree about what is present in the world. Contrastingly, naturalistic realists and error theorists typically agree that there are no categorical imperatives, but they disagree about whether or not moral claims require them.
Mackie gave two arguments for the claim that there are no categorical imperatives. The argument from “queerness” simply states that such things would be very metaphysically odd and hence are unlikely to exist unless significant evidence can be mounted for them. How could some properties be inherently reason giving, independent of how people value such properties? The argument from disagreement states that if there were such properties then we would expect there to be more agreement about them. He focuses much less on the claim that ethical statements actually require categorical imperatives, apparently finding it obvious.
Cons
Non-naturalistic realists will want to downplay the “queerness” of categorical imperatives and the presence of disagreement. On the latter front, they may attempt to point to more general moral principles that end up giving different results in different contexts, explaining some seeming disagreement. They can also point to how widespread divergence in empirical beliefs affects what we think is right. For instance, maybe two groups agree that if God wanted the murder of non-Israelites then that would be a good thing, but disagree about whether God wants it.
Naturalistic realists will dispute the claim that ethical statements require categorical imperatives. The amoralists can once again be considered an argument against such a requirement, since an amoralist would plausibly not have reason to be ethical.
WHAT ABOUT RELATIVISM?
Relativism is a very popular view among philosophically inclined non-philosophers. However, it hasn't received nearly as much support in (recent analytic) philosophy. Short answer is that if you think you are a relativist you are probably better described as an error theorist, so you may want to put that in the poll.
On its face, relativism sounds contradictory. If something is wrong just in case a society disapproves of it and not wrong if a society doesn't disapprove of it, then the presence of disagreeing societies would seem to force us to accept 'X is wrong and X is not wrong', a contradiction.
Gilbert Harman's way around this was to introduce hidden indexicals into moral terms. An indexical is a term whose meaning varies with the context of utterance. 'I' is an indexical, since 'I am frogrubdown' has a different meaning when I say it than when you say it. Harman's claim is that there are indexicals in moral terms that pick out the speakers culture. So S's utterance of 'X is good' would mean that S's culture approves of X.
This view can be either hermeneutic or revolutionary. On the hermeneutic variant, relativism is a claim about language as we currently speak it. The revolutionary variant asks us to change our use.
The problem with the former is that it seems wildly implausible. Whether or not realism is true, people generally speak as though the moral claims meant more than just 'my culture things this'. If that were what they thought they were saying, then they would offer wholly different sorts of evidence (such as opinion polls) in moral debates than they actually do.
Of course, people aren't always right, but it's easier to be right about meanings than most facts. Linguistic intentions largely determine linguistic meanings, and you need a strong argument if you want to claim that people are systematically misunderstanding their own languages.[10]
Harman accepts this and advances a revolutionary relativism. But revolutionary relativism is basically just error theory. It's the view that we should replace present moral language because that language is horribly misguided in its attempt to describe non-existent facts. Error theory agrees with the second part and is simply silent on what we should do about the problem with moral language.
So relativism just takes error theory and adds the additional claim that a relativistic language would be a good replacement for our current one. This further claim can be disputed and has been by the likes of Paul Boghossian.
WHAT DO YOU THINK?
Poll: What's your metaethical view?
Moral Realism (Naturalist) (38)
34%
Error Theory (30)
27%
Moral Realism (Non-Naturalist) (19)
17%
Expressivism (15)
14%
Other (9)
8%
111 total votes
Your vote: What's your metaethical view?
(Vote): Moral Realism (Naturalist) (Vote): Moral Realism (Non-Naturalist) (Vote): Expressivism (Vote): Error Theory (Vote): Other
According to the largest survey of contemporary philosophers, 66% are cognitivists (i.e., anti-expressivists) and 56% are realists.
The above is a small part of just one set of debates in metaethics. Feel free to bring in whatever relevant discussions you want.
[1] I didn't state it explicitly, but you should interpret this as ruling out the assertions being speaker relative or having some hidden indexical. More on this in the relativism section.
[2] There really aren't any very good definitions of 'naturalism' and 'natural' out there. For now, let it suffice that no naturalistic theory can countenance stereotypically supernatural objects such as gods and ghosts. They are happy with quarks, guitars, solar systems and societies, though.
[3] There's an important distinction here between reductions and analyses. Most naturalists don't think you can analyze moral terms using only natural object terms. For instance, they're unlikely to find the simple definitions found in utilitarianism plausible. Their reduction is metaphysical, not conceptual.
[5] Non-naturalistic realism is also sometimes characterized as saying that moral facts are intrinsically motivating, like desires. So, if you believe that lying is wrong you will necessarily have some motivation not to do it. Many people find such a connection plausible when it comes to desires, but at least since Hume it's generally been felt that beliefs cannot have these motivating features. Naturalists do not think that they have them.
[6] I'm only discussing the anti-realist views that come from rejecting thesis (1) or (2). Rejecting only thesis (3) gets you moral skepticism, which is a less prevalent view.
[7] Astute readers will probably object, “How can both 'Murder is wrong' and 'It is not the case that murder is wrong' be false? If one is false, the other must be true?” One potential way around this objection is to limit the claims of error theory to logically atomic sentences, letting the logically complex sentences inherit their truth values in the standard way. So, 'Murder is wrong” would be false and 'It is not the case that murder is wrong' would be true.
[8] Other supposedly false supposed commitments of ethical claims could include the presence of libertarian or agent-causal free will or the existence of God. The former claim would drag you into a compatibilism debate and the latter claim would drag you into a Euthyphro debate (and an atheism debate). I wouldn't recommend it.
[9] This is extremely similar to the claim that moral beliefs are inherently motivating. But there are complicated debates in the vicinity about whether or not reasons are always (or should always be) motivating that I don't want to get into. You might want to pretend for now that having a reason to do something and having some motivation to do something are the same thing.
[10] The problems are even worse than I've indicated here. Some of them are arguably lessened by using a recent, alternative tool for dealing context sensitivity developed by John Macfarlene. Interestingly enough, this is known as relativism. The differences involve some complex formal semantics that I won't get into here, but if people have questions I can discuss it in the thread.
Finally a good thread about morals as a philosopher, I have to be happy!
I'm a moral realist. I used to be a relativist, but the problems that arise from it are way too many. I hope this topic will clear the misconceptions people have about moral relativism, because in the philosophical debate it's considered pretty much a joke (much as verificationism, which was pretty much destroyed in the 20s/30s)
I'm a relativist. I don't really understand all the error theory thing.
That it cause problem philosophically doesn't mean much to me, as I come from a sociological background. From a sociological point of view, the theorical talk doesn't mean much. What we can do on the other side, is see that 1) all mora statement are historic, which means that they are not "natural" ; 2) most individuals have value, moral, taste and judgement that are heavily linked (if not entirely determined by) with their social origin (different social class have different value to be quick).
It varies from day to day i think, recent interest:
"Lekan argues that morality is a fallible but rational practice and that it has traditionally been misconceived as based on theory or principles. Instead, he argues, theory and rules arise as tools to make practice more intelligent."
Haha, I remember making a thread about philosophy about a year ago and you promising a post on metaethics. Guess the time has come :D Excellent read.
Anyway, I don't believe there are some set of morals that are universally good. They are dependent on where, when and how you live. While this doesn't rule out natural realism, it does strain it: it is not simply defined by nature, but also by the society that emerges whether something is moral or not.
Nevertheless, I believe morals are something more than just an expression of our emotions (and other complex mumbo jumbo): for any society there is almost certainly a "right" way of doing things, a "wrong" way of doing things and a whole load of grey area where there is no real right or wrong but we like to think so anyway.
I ended up with error theory, but I don't know that I completely agree with that either. I'd very much describe myself as a pragmatist, but moral pragmatism does not exclude any of the other theories of where they come from, it just thinks it's not very important: the important aspect of morals is in how they are used in a society, rather than what, exactly, they are. It thus simply ignores the question of what morals are as a non-question, because they are entirely defined by how they are used.
Because society progresses, its norms also progress: we have learned that slavery is wrong in the same way that we have learned that the theory of phlogiston is wrong. But there is no categorical imperative, and we can never know that something is objectively right: we can just use the best set of morals that we know of, just as we use scientific theories despite knowing they might not be completely waterproof (like the standard model of physics: we know it's incomplete, but it works wonderfully). This allows us to make judgements of others: just as we can judge medieval's scientific knowledge as inadequate and wrong, we can judge their morals as inadequate or even barbaric. And we can do so "objectively".
I voted for Error Theory, though, because it is probably the nearest thing to pragmatism you have in your poll.
FRD, what is your personal take on Simon Blackburn's work in ethics? I find quasi-realism to my liking on some days, and yet others it seems too wishy-washy. Ultimately, my biggest problem with ethics philosophy is that I cannot personally make my mind up
On July 28 2013 03:13 WhiteDog wrote: I'm a relativist. I don't really understand all the error theory thing.
That it cause problem philosophically doesn't mean much to me, as I come from a sociological background. From a sociological point of view, the theorical talk doesn't mean much. What we can do on the other side, is see that 1) most ethical behavior or positions are historic, which means that they are not natural ; 2) most individuals have value, moral, taste and judgement that are heavily linked (if not entirely determined by) with their social origin (different social class have different value to be quick).
Well, apparently theoretical talk means something to you when that theory happens to be relativism :p
More seriously, every metaethical theory will have to come to terms with facts about the historical and cross-cultural differences in ethical beliefs that you discuss in (1) and (2). They will just disagree on what these facts say about metaethics. (As a sidenote, I think you're misreading my use of 'natural'. Think of 'natural' as non-supernatural. Cultures are every bit as natural as rocks on my use).
To have a more productive dialogue, I'd think I'd have to know how your relativist views play out philosophically. For instance, what do you think is the meaning and truth conditions of a sentence such 'Murder is wrong'? (Obviously you don't have to be completely precise here.)
On July 28 2013 03:22 farvacola wrote: FRD, what is your personal take on Simon Blackburn's work in ethics? I find quasi-realism to my liking on some days, and yet others it seems too wishy-washy. Ultimately, my biggest problem with ethics philosophy is that I cannot personally make my mind up
I'm not an expressivist (which has very close affinities with quasi-realism, if not being identical), but I prefer Gibbard's presentation of it to Blackburn's. I can never discern exactly what difference Blackburn is trying to make between his view and full fledged realism, and often doubt there is one. Basically, I think he loses to Dworkin in this debate.
Though it is kind of a general problem with expressivists that the more they try to fight the Frege-Geach problem and account for the ways in which moral discourse can be rational, the harder it is to see why they aren't just realists.
edit:
On July 28 2013 03:21 Acrofales wrote: Haha, I remember making a thread about philosophy about a year ago and you promising a post on metaethics. Guess the time has come :D Excellent read.
Anyway, I don't believe there are some set of morals that are universally good. They are dependent on where, when and how you live. While this doesn't rule out natural realism, it does strain it: it is not simply defined by nature, but also by the society that emerges whether something is moral or not.
Nevertheless, I believe morals are something more than just an expression of our emotions (and other complex mumbo jumbo): for any society there is almost certainly a "right" way of doing things, a "wrong" way of doing things and a whole load of grey area where there is no real right or wrong but we like to think so anyway.
I ended up with error theory, but I don't know that I completely agree with that either. I'd very much describe myself as a pragmatist, but moral pragmatism does not exclude any of the other theories of where they come from, it just thinks it's not very important: the important aspect of morals is in how they are used in a society, rather than what, exactly, they are. It thus simply ignores the question of what morals are as a non-question, because they are entirely defined by how they are used.
Because society progresses, its norms also progress: we have learned that slavery is wrong in the same way that we have learned that the theory of phlogiston is wrong. But there is no categorical imperative, and we can never know that something is objectively right: we can just use the best set of morals that we know of, just as we use scientific theories despite knowing they might not be completely waterproof (like the standard model of physics: we know it's incomplete, but it works wonderfully). This allows us to make judgements of others: just as we can judge medieval's scientific knowledge as inadequate and wrong, we can judge their morals as inadequate or even barbaric. And we can do so "objectively".
I voted for Error Theory, though, because it is probably the nearest thing to pragmatism you have in your poll.
If I had to classify your view using the above rubric, I'd put you down as a moral skeptic (someone who denies thesis (3) of moral realism). This fits well with our discussion from a year and a half ago.
On July 28 2013 03:13 WhiteDog wrote: I'm a relativist. I don't really understand all the error theory thing.
That it cause problem philosophically doesn't mean much to me, as I come from a sociological background. From a sociological point of view, the theorical talk doesn't mean much. What we can do on the other side, is see that 1) most ethical behavior or positions are historic, which means that they are not natural ; 2) most individuals have value, moral, taste and judgement that are heavily linked (if not entirely determined by) with their social origin (different social class have different value to be quick).
Well, apparently theoretical talk means something to you when that theory happens to be relativism :p
More seriously, every metaethical theory will have to come to terms with facts about the historical and cross-cultural differences in ethical beliefs that you discuss in (1) and (2). They will just disagree on what these facts say about metaethics. (As a sidenote, I think you're misreading my use of 'natural'. Think of 'natural' as non-supernatural. Cultures are every bit as natural as rocks on my use).
To have a more productive dialogue, I'd think I'd have to know how your relativist views play out philosophically. For instance, what do you think is the meaning and truth conditions of a sentence such 'Murder is wrong'? (Obviously you don't have to be completely precise here.
Because, from my point of view, relativism was historically a way to fight the ethnocentrism of the observant for anthropologues, defended by Bronislaw Manilowski. It's not entirelly a theorical talk, as it is a practice as much as a concept.
Also, when I read natural, I instantly oppose it to cultural so I might have misunderstood indeed.
As for your question "Murder is wrong", again from a sociological point of view, every assertions are always linked to a context, historical and sociological : "Murder is wrong in today's society", "Murder is not wrong in war", "It is not wrong to murder a slave when you are a noble in the medieval age in France", etc.
On July 28 2013 03:22 farvacola wrote: FRD, what is your personal take on Simon Blackburn's work in ethics? I find quasi-realism to my liking on some days, and yet others it seems too wishy-washy. Ultimately, my biggest problem with ethics philosophy is that I cannot personally make my mind up
I'm not an expressivist (which has very close affinities with quasi-realism, if not being identical), but I prefer Gibbard's presentation of it to Blackburn's. I can never discern exactly what difference Blackburn is trying to make between his view and full fledged realism, and often doubt there is one. Basically, I think he loses to Dworkin in this debate.
Though it is kind of a general problem with expressivists that the more they try to fight the Frege-Geach problem and account for the ways in which moral discourse can be rational, the harder it is to see why they aren't just realists.
Thanks for the link to that Dworkin piece, as he is pretty much my go to political philosopher and I was unaware of his direct work in ethics. I'll continue to follow the thread closely.
I hope I can pop in here occasionally to discuss, because ethics is my preferred branch of philosophy. First post is a great primer to the topic and is very informative for people new to the topic.
So, stupid question from someone who hasn't read any analytic philosophy ever, what would an error theorist said if I punched him in the face and started to laugh maniacally ?
On July 28 2013 03:13 WhiteDog wrote: I'm a relativist. I don't really understand all the error theory thing.
That it cause problem philosophically doesn't mean much to me, as I come from a sociological background. From a sociological point of view, the theorical talk doesn't mean much. What we can do on the other side, is see that 1) all mora statement are historic, which means that they are not "natural" ; 2) most individuals have value, moral, taste and judgement that are heavily linked (if not entirely determined by) with their social origin (different social class have different value to be quick).
you,re making the mistake here to think that social only comes from social (durkheim's reductionism). but lots of our behaviors are biologically designed while the way they act varies according to the social environnement.(wich is why it is true that morals are heavily link with their social origins.) I heavily think that morals will still follow a tendency or a direction that is somewhat absolute to humanity.
So if i would agree that ethical statements can be true or false given a certain base of principles , but i also also acknowledge that these principles are basically arbitrary that would put me into the "Error theory" category , right?
On July 28 2013 03:13 WhiteDog wrote: I'm a relativist. I don't really understand all the error theory thing.
That it cause problem philosophically doesn't mean much to me, as I come from a sociological background. From a sociological point of view, the theorical talk doesn't mean much. What we can do on the other side, is see that 1) most ethical behavior or positions are historic, which means that they are not natural ; 2) most individuals have value, moral, taste and judgement that are heavily linked (if not entirely determined by) with their social origin (different social class have different value to be quick).
Well, apparently theoretical talk means something to you when that theory happens to be relativism :p
More seriously, every metaethical theory will have to come to terms with facts about the historical and cross-cultural differences in ethical beliefs that you discuss in (1) and (2). They will just disagree on what these facts say about metaethics. (As a sidenote, I think you're misreading my use of 'natural'. Think of 'natural' as non-supernatural. Cultures are every bit as natural as rocks on my use).
To have a more productive dialogue, I'd think I'd have to know how your relativist views play out philosophically. For instance, what do you think is the meaning and truth conditions of a sentence such 'Murder is wrong'? (Obviously you don't have to be completely precise here.
Because, from my point of view, relativism was historically a way to fight the ethnocentrism of the observant for anthropologues, defended by Bronislaw Manilowski. It's not entirelly a theorical talk, as it is a practice as much as a concept.
I was hoping to avoid this issue for a little bit in the thread, but I guess I'll discuss it now. Yes, a doctrine given the name "relativism" has frequently been invoked as a weapon against imperialism, especially in social science departments. However, to be blunt, this has never made even the slightest amount of sense.
There is no relativist argument for tolerance.
My thoughts on this aren't original. They've been published by hundred of philosophers before and you can find them advanced in hundreds of intro philosophy classes at assorted universities. The problem is simply that if what culture you're in determines what is right, then there is no ground from which you can criticize the imperialistic practices of your own culture. It doesn't matter if what the other culture is doing is also right for them, because what's right for them has nothing to do with what's right for you according to relativism. Relativism would be the best news ever for would-be imperialists.
I'll quote Bernard Williams:
Let us at this stage of the argument about subjectivism take a brief rest and look round a special view or assemblage of views which has been built on the site of moral disagreements between societies. This is relativism, the anthropologists' heresy, possibly the most absurd view to have been advanced in moral philosophy. In its vulgar and unregenerate form (which I shall consider, since it is both the most distinctive and the most influential form) it consists of three propositions: that 'right' means (can only be coherently understood as meaning) 'right for a given society' ; that 'right for a given society' is to be understood in a functionalist sense ; and that (therefore) it is wrong for people in one society to condemn, interfere with, etc., the values of another society. A view with a long history, it was popular with some liberal colonialists, notably British administrators in places (such as West Africa) in which white men held no land. In that historical role, it may have had, like some other muddled doctrines, a beneficent influence, though modern African nationalism may well deplore its tribalist and conservative implications.
Whatever its results, the view is clearly inconsistent, since it makes a claim in its third proposition, about what is right and wrong in one's dealings with other societies, which uses a nonrelative sense of 'right' not allowed for in the first proposition. The claim that human sacrifice, for instance, was 'right for' the Ashanti comes to be taken as saying that human sacrifice was right among the Ashanti, and this in turn as saying that human sacrifice among the Ashanti was right; i.e., we have no business interfering with it. But this last is certainly not the sort of claim allowed by the theory. The most the theory can allow is the claim that it is right for (i.e., functionally valuable for) our socieity not to interfere with Ashanti society, and, first, this is certainly not all that was meant, and, second, is very dubiously true.
From the chapter "Interlude Relativism", worth reading in full.
People who call themselves relativists because of arguments like this are really absolutists. They believe in an absolute principle of non-interference in other cultures no matter what your culture thinks about interference (and the individual that disagrees with their culture's ethics are out of luck).
Also, when I read natural, I instantly oppose it to cultural so I might have misunderstood indeed.
As for your question "Murder is wrong", again from a sociological point of view, every assertions are always linked to a context, historical and sociological : "Murder is wrong in today's society", "Murder is not wrong in war", "It is not wrong to murder a slave when you are a noble in the medieval age in France", etc.
This doesn't answer my question about meaning and truth conditions as fully as I'd hoped.
On July 28 2013 03:52 radscorpion9 wrote: So I guess Sam Harris would be an example of a naturalistic moral realist? I seem to identify with both of their positions.
But my god this stuff is complex - I was just reading your links and suddenly I felt like I was reading my math paper on analytic functions
Before you get too comfortable in identifying with Sam Harris' work in ethics, have a look at this link.. At the bottom are more links to a variety of critiques of Harris. Suffice it to say, I don't find his ideas very appealing.
In his new book (the one about lying) Harris says, in effect, you should never, ever, do it — yet his pretense in The Moral Landscape to be revolutionizing moral philosophy seems to me the very height of dishonesty. What he actually does in his book is plain old secular moral reasoning — and not very well — but he claims he’s using science to decide right from wrong. That Harris could be naive enough to think he’s really bridged the famous “is/ought” chasm seems incredible, and so I submit that he’s exaggerating* to sell books. Shame on him.
*A previous version of this post had the word “lying” here, but I was told that my rhetorical flourish might be interpreted as libel. I hope “exaggerating” is sufficiently safe. Now onward to my argument:
I’ll start by saying what the “is/ought” divide is, in case you haven’t heard of this before. It’s an old idea, tracing at least to David Hume, and its gist is that there is no way to reason from facts about the way the world is, to statements about the way the world should be. You can’t derive values from data. I’ll use one example to illustrate and then move on.
Example. It’s a fact that rape occurs in nature — among chimpanzees, for instance; and there are some evolutionary arguments to explain its existence in humans and non-humans alike. But this fact tells us exactly nothing about whether it’s OK to rape people. This is because “natural” doesn’t entail “right” (just as “unnatural” doesn’t necessarily mean wrong) — indeed, the correct answer is that it’s not OK, and this is a judgement we make at the interface of moral philosophy and common sense: it’s not an output of science.
You get the idea. The domain of science is to describe nature, and then to explain its descriptions in terms of deeper patterns or laws. Science cannot tell us how to live. It cannot tell us right and wrong. If a system of thought claims to be doing those things, it cannot be science. If a scientist tells you she has some statements about how you ought to behave, they cannot be scientific statements, and the lab-coat is no longer speaking as a scientist. Questions about “How should we live?” — for better or worse — fall outside the purview of “objective” science. We have to sort them out, messily, by ourselves.
Now: if there were a way to get from “is” to “ought” it would take a work of philosophical genius to lay it out, and Harris’ book is not a work of philosophical genius. I can summarize his argument in a few lines:
1. Morality is “all about” improving the well-being of conscious creatures.
2. Facts about the well-being of conscious creatures are accessible to science.
3. Therefore science can tell us what’s objectively “moral” — that is, it can tell us whether something increases, or decreases, the well-being of conscious creatures.
Here’s the problem. Premise (1) is a philosophical premise. It’s not a fact of science, it’s not a fact of nature, it’s not derivable from science, it’s not derivable from nature: it’s a value judgment. You might think this is a good premise; you might not – and even if you think it’s basically on track, there’s a lot of philosophical work to be done to spell it out. (Exhibit A – how do you define well-being in the first place, “scientifically” or otherwise?)
On July 28 2013 03:45 corumjhaelen wrote: So, stupid question from someone who hasn't read any analytic philosophy ever, what would an error theorist said if I punched him in the face and started to laugh maniacally ?
Maybe, "Ouch."
On July 28 2013 03:58 Nyxisto wrote: So if i would agree that ethical statements can be true or false given a certain base of principles , but i also also acknowledge that these principles are basically arbitrary that would put me into the "Error theory" category , right?
If their being "arbitrary" means there is no fact of the matter about any starting principles being better than any others, then you are probably an error theorists.
edit: I should be more clear here. By being "better", I mean better with respect to truth, not any other concerns. My statement, more perspicuously, is that none of the starting principle have an advantage when it comes to truth.
On July 28 2013 03:13 WhiteDog wrote: I'm a relativist. I don't really understand all the error theory thing.
That it cause problem philosophically doesn't mean much to me, as I come from a sociological background. From a sociological point of view, the theorical talk doesn't mean much. What we can do on the other side, is see that 1) all mora statement are historic, which means that they are not "natural" ; 2) most individuals have value, moral, taste and judgement that are heavily linked (if not entirely determined by) with their social origin (different social class have different value to be quick).
you,re making the mistake here to think that social only comes from social (durkheim's reductionism). but lots of our behaviors are biologically designed while the way they act varies according to the social environnement.(wich is why it is true that morals are heavily link with their social origins.) I heavily think that morals will still follow a tendency or a direction that is somewhat absolute to humanity.
Durkheim is not reductionnist at all, more like an imperialist : he consider that there are fact (social facts) that exist outside of our bodies. And, for him, those specific facts are the object of sociology. He doesn't at all consider that everything that we consider "social" is never touched by biological determinism.
For exemple, I have a desire to live and I am (most likely ?) designed to feel this desire. But society also express a specific contraint on me to prevent me from harming myself and other human beings. That specific contraint is, from Durkheim's point of view, social, as it has a specific existence outside of our my own body (in institutions for exemple).
But I was not taking a theorical stance in this matter. There are tons of works showing how what we consider "absolute" is in fact historic : Norbert Elias work on violence and manners for exemple. As for my second point, I was merely talking about Bourdieu's work (La Distinction) on how our taste and our judgements of value are socially determined. I have a hard time considering that there are moral statements universally accepted throughout the entire history of humanity and by every humans no matter their culture, social class, gender or nationality. Not to mention, as biology influence society, society also influence biology (something that is always forgotten).
On July 28 2013 03:58 Nyxisto wrote: So if i would agree that ethical statements can be true or false given a certain base of principles , but i also also acknowledge that these principles are basically arbitrary that would put me into the "Error theory" category , right?
I don't think think that fits the Error Theory. Error Theory wouldn't allow for moral statements to be true or false based on certain principles (unless you willingly acknowledge those principles to be incorrect). They (the moral statements) are just always false because they're failed attempts at describing the true nature of morality. Assuming there is or might be a true nature of morality would probably end up being Moral Skepticism rather than Error Theory whereas denying it exists completely would end in Error Theory which seems a lot like Moral Nihilism.
I might be understanding it incorrectly though.
What's the difference between Error Theory and Moral Nihilism?
On July 28 2013 03:58 Nyxisto wrote: So if i would agree that ethical statements can be true or false given a certain base of principles , but i also also acknowledge that these principles are basically arbitrary that would put me into the "Error theory" category , right?
I don't think think that fits the Error Theory. Error Theory wouldn't allow for moral statements to be true or false based on certain principles (unless you willingly acknowledge those principles to be incorrect). They're (moral statements) just always false because they're failed attempts at describing the true nature of morality (if there even is one).
I might be understanding it incorrectly though.
What's the difference between Error Theory and Moral Nihilism?
'Nihilism' doesn't really have a fully standardized use in contemporary philosophy. You could get away with treating it as identical to Error Theory. But sometimes people also advance nihilism as though it were a prescriptive view. That it is freeing to act on your own desires and ignore the dictates of ethics. This part is not contained in error theory.
Moral nihilism and Error Theory are similar, but with a slight distinction. Nihilism is the rejection of any meaning or purpose in morals and that intrinsically there is no moral or immoral. Error Theory states that human attempts at morals are always an error because there is no overall moral truth.
So what would I be most closely categorized as if I am inclined to accept proposition (1) from the Moral Realism section as true, but take an agnostic stance regarding the truth of (2) and (3)?
Just Moral Skeptic since I'm not necessarily rejecting (2) or (3)? Or would I still be an Error Theorist since I'm not accepting them either?
On July 28 2013 03:58 Nyxisto wrote: So if i would agree that ethical statements can be true or false given a certain base of principles , but i also also acknowledge that these principles are basically arbitrary that would put me into the "Error theory" category , right?
I don't think think that fits the Error Theory. Error Theory wouldn't allow for moral statements to be true or false based on certain principles (unless you willingly acknowledge those principles to be incorrect). They (the moral statements) are just always false because they're failed attempts at describing the true nature of morality. Assuming there is or might be a true nature of morality would probably end up being Moral Skepticism rather than Error Theory whereas denying it exists completely would end in Error Theory which seems a lot like Moral Nihilism.
Basic logic allows statements to be true or false when evaluated against a base of principles.
Error Theory doesn't disagree on that either (not that it can):
Error theory agrees with realism on thesis (1); they take moral statements and beliefs to be truth-evaluable and not mere expressions of feelings.
The distinction is mostly in how the principles came about and how they should be treated, not in the process of evaluating statements against any given set of principles.
On July 28 2013 03:58 Nyxisto wrote: So if i would agree that ethical statements can be true or false given a certain base of principles , but i also also acknowledge that these principles are basically arbitrary that would put me into the "Error theory" category , right?
I don't think think that fits the Error Theory. Error Theory wouldn't allow for moral statements to be true or false based on certain principles (unless you willingly acknowledge those principles to be incorrect). They (the moral statements) are just always false because they're failed attempts at describing the true nature of morality. Assuming there is or might be a true nature of morality would probably end up being Moral Skepticism rather than Error Theory whereas denying it exists completely would end in Error Theory which seems a lot like Moral Nihilism.
Basic logic allows statements to be true or false when evaluated against a base of principles.
Error Theory doesn't disagree on that either (not that it can):
Error theory agrees with realism on thesis (1); they take moral statements and beliefs to be truth-evaluable and not mere expressions of feelings.
The distinction is mostly in how the principles came about and how they should be treated, not in the process of evaluating statements against any given set of principles.
On July 28 2013 04:30 GGTeMpLaR wrote: So what would I be most closely categorized as if I am inclined to accept proposition (1) from the Moral Realism section as true, but take an agnostic stance regarding the truth of (2) and (3)?
Just moral skeptic?
A "moral skeptic" (as I've been using the term) would flat out deny (3), not be uncertain about it. I'd call you agnostic among realism, error theory, and moral skepticism.
I'm still learning but I think true intentions keep you honest + the straightest path cause the least problems + intelligence is your effectiveness. And that's the best way to handle things as a public figure and always having a good answer I guess.
On July 28 2013 03:52 radscorpion9 wrote: So I guess Sam Harris would be an example of a naturalistic moral realist? I seem to identify with both of their positions.
But my god this stuff is complex - I was just reading your links and suddenly I felt like I was reading my math paper on analytic functions
Before you get too comfortable in identifying with Sam Harris' work in ethics, have a look at this link.. At the bottom are more links to a variety of critiques of Harris. Suffice it to say, I don't find his ideas very appealing.
In his new book (the one about lying) Harris says, in effect, you should never, ever, do it — yet his pretense in The Moral Landscape to be revolutionizing moral philosophy seems to me the very height of dishonesty. What he actually does in his book is plain old secular moral reasoning — and not very well — but he claims he’s using science to decide right from wrong. That Harris could be naive enough to think he’s really bridged the famous “is/ought” chasm seems incredible, and so I submit that he’s exaggerating* to sell books. Shame on him.
*A previous version of this post had the word “lying” here, but I was told that my rhetorical flourish might be interpreted as libel. I hope “exaggerating” is sufficiently safe. Now onward to my argument:
I’ll start by saying what the “is/ought” divide is, in case you haven’t heard of this before. It’s an old idea, tracing at least to David Hume, and its gist is that there is no way to reason from facts about the way the world is, to statements about the way the world should be. You can’t derive values from data. I’ll use one example to illustrate and then move on.
Example. It’s a fact that rape occurs in nature — among chimpanzees, for instance; and there are some evolutionary arguments to explain its existence in humans and non-humans alike. But this fact tells us exactly nothing about whether it’s OK to rape people. This is because “natural” doesn’t entail “right” (just as “unnatural” doesn’t necessarily mean wrong) — indeed, the correct answer is that it’s not OK, and this is a judgement we make at the interface of moral philosophy and common sense: it’s not an output of science.
You get the idea. The domain of science is to describe nature, and then to explain its descriptions in terms of deeper patterns or laws. Science cannot tell us how to live. It cannot tell us right and wrong. If a system of thought claims to be doing those things, it cannot be science. If a scientist tells you she has some statements about how you ought to behave, they cannot be scientific statements, and the lab-coat is no longer speaking as a scientist. Questions about “How should we live?” — for better or worse — fall outside the purview of “objective” science. We have to sort them out, messily, by ourselves.
Now: if there were a way to get from “is” to “ought” it would take a work of philosophical genius to lay it out, and Harris’ book is not a work of philosophical genius. I can summarize his argument in a few lines:
1. Morality is “all about” improving the well-being of conscious creatures.
2. Facts about the well-being of conscious creatures are accessible to science.
3. Therefore science can tell us what’s objectively “moral” — that is, it can tell us whether something increases, or decreases, the well-being of conscious creatures.
Here’s the problem. Premise (1) is a philosophical premise. It’s not a fact of science, it’s not a fact of nature, it’s not derivable from science, it’s not derivable from nature: it’s a value judgment. You might think this is a good premise; you might not – and even if you think it’s basically on track, there’s a lot of philosophical work to be done to spell it out. (Exhibit A – how do you define well-being in the first place, “scientifically” or otherwise?)
Have you read Harris' own work, or just this misrepresentation?
Harris is not addressing moral and ethics philosophically, and the is/ought-problem is a non sequitur as far as he's concerned. The Moral Landscape makes the rather trivial claim that medicine can be studied scientifically - despite health being ill defined, and that the desirability of good (whatever that might mean) health is impossible to prove. Just like these philosophical shortcomings don't prevent medicine [what sort of treatments help people recover from different conditions] from improving people's lives, Harris thinks a science of morality [what sorts of individual freedoms, government interferences and customs are conducive to people achieving personal well-being] is equally feasible.
I'm not actually sure where I fit in. I think my problem is oddly enough, I don't think the terms 'true' and 'false' are clearly enough defined when it comes to ethical statements. I'm probably just not understanding the different stances provided, and/or getting hooked up on semantics.
My stance is such:
(1) Ethical discourse is cognitive (or, fact-stating; or, truth-evaluable). That is, ethical assertions make claims about the world and are capable of being either true or false.[1]
I have no problem with that, ethical assertions make falsible claims, but you need context, you can't make falsible claims if you have nothing to confirm or disprove your assertion with.
(2) Some ethical statements are true.
Here is where I run into problems. I see ethics as a loosely defined set of social behaviours and tendencies, the definition isn't going to be the same for everyone, but our understanding of the term is generally sufficient enough that we can isolate a set of these that is generally accepted as being 'ethics'. So still no problems so far.
So for any social group, we can extract a subset of their behaviours tendencies, that mostly people will agree to be 'ethics'. Not everyone will be in perfect agreement, but we will have enough consensus on which of these behaviours/tendencies count as ethics to say that the idea of ethics is a coherent idea that people generally understand and somewhat agree on.
Once we extract the set of ethics (as fuzzy of a set as this is going to be) for that particular social group, we have a context for evaluating truth of some ethical statements.
For example we will take good ol Western society today, we are pretty familiar with alot of the ethics of that social group
So we make an ethical assertion: 'Murder is wrong'.
So here is the problem: Western society obviously exists, Western society obviously has a set of ethics, and in the context of Western society's code of ethics, 'Murder is wrong' is obviously true (or at least lets assume it is). This is also not speaker dependant, since Western society, their ethics, and this particular tenet, exists for everyone, eg any speaker can empirically observe Western society to confirm this.
Is this sufficient grounds for 'Murder is wrong' to be true? 'Murder is wrong' is certainly in agreement with the above code of ethics, eg 'in this context the assertion is true' is empirically correct. If you like, murder being ethically wrong would be an empirically observable phenomena.
But if for instance there were another social group, lets say Martians, they are perfectly fine with with murder, heck they encourage it.
So now, we know Western society's set of ethics definitely exists. We know Martian ethics definitely exist (for the sake of argument). We also know that 'Murder is wrong' is definitely true in the context of the former, and definitely not true in the context of the latter. Does that mean 'Murder is wrong' is not true because it is not universal? Is it true because in 1 context, that we definitely know is valid it is true? Is it some Schroedinger's cat of an ethical assertion that is simultaneously true and false?
(3) We know, or are capable of knowing, some ethical truths.
Obviously following from not knowing exactly what qualifies as truth, it's hard to know if we are capable of knowing one.
The crux of the matter seems to be, when you say: some ethical statements are true, what exactly does that mean?
I mean I think given any social group, it would be silly to deny ethics and ethical assertions exist. But are they also allowed to provide the framework to evaluate truth in? Because you need at least some kind of context to be evaluate truth, but inevitably in some contexts it will be true, and some contexts it won't be.
If yes, then I guess I'm a moral realist. If the ethical assertion is considered unevaluable because it depends on context then I guess I'm an expressivist. If an assertion is false unless it is universal then I guess I'm an error theorist.
All 3 theories honestly seem perfectly viable to me, if not essentially all abstractions of the very same idea. It's almost like it all boils down to the exact semantics of 'true', 'truth evaluable' and 'false'.
It seems that the only thing I can't be is a non-naturalist.
Or it may be that I'm just not philosophically inclined, and think that philosophy tends to boil down to semantic problems since so many ideas are so poorly defined.
On July 28 2013 03:52 radscorpion9 wrote: So I guess Sam Harris would be an example of a naturalistic moral realist? I seem to identify with both of their positions.
But my god this stuff is complex - I was just reading your links and suddenly I felt like I was reading my math paper on analytic functions
Before you get too comfortable in identifying with Sam Harris' work in ethics, have a look at this link.. At the bottom are more links to a variety of critiques of Harris. Suffice it to say, I don't find his ideas very appealing.
In his new book (the one about lying) Harris says, in effect, you should never, ever, do it — yet his pretense in The Moral Landscape to be revolutionizing moral philosophy seems to me the very height of dishonesty. What he actually does in his book is plain old secular moral reasoning — and not very well — but he claims he’s using science to decide right from wrong. That Harris could be naive enough to think he’s really bridged the famous “is/ought” chasm seems incredible, and so I submit that he’s exaggerating* to sell books. Shame on him.
*A previous version of this post had the word “lying” here, but I was told that my rhetorical flourish might be interpreted as libel. I hope “exaggerating” is sufficiently safe. Now onward to my argument:
I’ll start by saying what the “is/ought” divide is, in case you haven’t heard of this before. It’s an old idea, tracing at least to David Hume, and its gist is that there is no way to reason from facts about the way the world is, to statements about the way the world should be. You can’t derive values from data. I’ll use one example to illustrate and then move on.
Example. It’s a fact that rape occurs in nature — among chimpanzees, for instance; and there are some evolutionary arguments to explain its existence in humans and non-humans alike. But this fact tells us exactly nothing about whether it’s OK to rape people. This is because “natural” doesn’t entail “right” (just as “unnatural” doesn’t necessarily mean wrong) — indeed, the correct answer is that it’s not OK, and this is a judgement we make at the interface of moral philosophy and common sense: it’s not an output of science.
You get the idea. The domain of science is to describe nature, and then to explain its descriptions in terms of deeper patterns or laws. Science cannot tell us how to live. It cannot tell us right and wrong. If a system of thought claims to be doing those things, it cannot be science. If a scientist tells you she has some statements about how you ought to behave, they cannot be scientific statements, and the lab-coat is no longer speaking as a scientist. Questions about “How should we live?” — for better or worse — fall outside the purview of “objective” science. We have to sort them out, messily, by ourselves.
Now: if there were a way to get from “is” to “ought” it would take a work of philosophical genius to lay it out, and Harris’ book is not a work of philosophical genius. I can summarize his argument in a few lines:
1. Morality is “all about” improving the well-being of conscious creatures.
2. Facts about the well-being of conscious creatures are accessible to science.
3. Therefore science can tell us what’s objectively “moral” — that is, it can tell us whether something increases, or decreases, the well-being of conscious creatures.
Here’s the problem. Premise (1) is a philosophical premise. It’s not a fact of science, it’s not a fact of nature, it’s not derivable from science, it’s not derivable from nature: it’s a value judgment. You might think this is a good premise; you might not – and even if you think it’s basically on track, there’s a lot of philosophical work to be done to spell it out. (Exhibit A – how do you define well-being in the first place, “scientifically” or otherwise?)
Have you read Harris' own work, or just this misrepresentation?
Harris is not addressing moral and ethics philosophically, and the is/ought-problem is a non sequitur as far as he's concerned. The Moral Landscape makes the rather trivial claim that medicine can be studied scientifically - despite health being ill defined, and that the desirability of good (whatever that might mean) health is impossible to prove. Just like these philosophical shortcomings don't prevent medicine [what sort of treatments help people recover from different conditions] from improving people's lives, Harris thinks a science of morality [what sorts of individual freedoms, government interferences and customs are conducive to people achieving personal well-being] is equally feasible.
I've read three of Harris' works, including The Moral Landscape, so let's get that out of the way. One of the issues I take with Harris' argument is nicely illustrated by the disparity present in your medicine comparison. That medicine need not address the nebulous nature of emblematic "good health" in practice does not carry over to a "science of morality" in a coherent manner, in part due to the essential difference in how the two go about "doing" their thing. When a doctor sees a patient and diagnoses a condition, the contours of the accompanying "good/bad health" operation are very streamlined: the context of a given medical scenario tends to supply all that one needs in order to make a prescriptive judgment: i.e. this hurts and I want it to not hurt, therefore fix me. In essence, the diagnosis is the definition of terms; you either want this sickness or you don't, and nebulous value statements with "good/bad" conundrums need not ever enter the picture.
On the other hand, any sort of "science of morality" necessarily includes a certain degree of "openness" in it's prescriptive practice. You said it yourself above, and rightfully so; a description of what a "science of morality" can do must either include something that resembles "personal well-being" or capitulate entirely to the idiosyncrasy of the scenario in question and this is the crux of the issue. Harris and his supporters seem hell bent on making it clear that he is not addressing ethics in a philosophical sense, and yet, the manner with which he illustrates his "science of morality" always returns to a fundamentally philosophical question or it loses meaning entirely in subservience to contextual pragmatics.
I applaud your excellent post frogrubdown, it was very informative. I am pessimistic about you posting it as a thread though, I'm pretty sure by three pages this discussion will have devolved into three people with an axe to grind repeatedly shouting their preconceptions at each other.
I tried to write my own thoughts, but I kinda feel they ended up rambling and perhaps not very coherent, and I'm not sure I really reached the conclusion I wanted to. I'll put them up in case you want to try and understand and comment, but I'll spoiler them so they're easy to ignore as well.
Your posts are great, and since this is a topic that I think about a lot I'll post my opinion, and maybe you can tell me where I'd fit amongst the great philosophers of our time.
To begin, in my opinion any meaningful discussion of ethics must assume free will. I'd guess this is standard, but I figured I'd mention it for completeness sake. And I don't want to have to defend assuming free will later. In my opinion free will can be satisfactory established without any assumptions, because in the end it just boils down to semantics, but that's not really relevant here.
Moving to ethics. At its core every ethical statement is about choice. No one suggests that an asteroid which hits a planet can be acting unethical, as an asteroid is incapable of choice. But a spaceship captain firing on a planet would be said to be acting unethical, as a spaceship captain would be capable of choice.
To put it simply then, my position would be: ethics is the differentiation of choices, whereby they are differentiated according to the degree to which they should or should not be chosen, and simultaneously the degree to which when they are chosen, the chooser should be punished or rewarded.
Let me note that at this point, we have made no required statements about our Universe, other than that for ethics to apply it must be one which includes free choice. My argument would be that this is correct, that at its (platonic?) core the only requirement for the idea of ethics is free will.
Though I agree that some might not call this core 'ethics', as it is incapable of making any ethical statements seeing as there is literally nothing to base such statements on. Which is why a more full, realised system of ethics as most would realise requires the inclusion of a Universe within which choices are indeed made.
The questions of metaethics as discussed here would enter at this point. Best summarised as the following two questions:
1) Can we cognitively (borrowing OP's term) define a set of parameters on which to base an ethical system's differentiation of possible choices, before defining a Universe in which those choices take place?
2) If not, then define our present Universe. Is it possible now?
Imo, the problem of the first question is that it requests parameters, while having almost nothing to base such parameters on. Note that at this point we have assumed nothing except free will. Ethics as an idea can be derived from the notion of free will, in essence being inherent to the notion to a degree that its derivation does not require logic (I guess this might be the point where I lose people >_<).
The only possible parameter at this point would be 'being'. Existence is a requirement for free will, and as such part of the initial assumption. One could at this point define a parameter that states "Existence > Non-Existence", though one has yet to define whether there will ever be choices in which these two states compete. But the question then arises, though it is possible to define such a parameter, why would it be superior to "Non-Existence > Existence"? There is no basis on which to declare this, unless if one argues that "Existence > Non-Existence" is an inherent property of Existence, but I have a hard time seeing how this could be established without adding assumptions.
My current conclusion would be, that it is a choice. Ethics is about choosing, but it is also itself a choice. The choice to declare, for example, "Existence > Non-Existence".
And this continues once we define our Universe. Yes we now have countless positions on which to base various parameters, and there are now consequences to the choices made. But how can a property of our Universe make it so there is a single correct system of ethics, when ethics itself exists higher than our Universe and as I just tried to show, has no single correct variant in its core state?
I think having defined our Universe, ethics still remains a choice. Each possible system of ethics is a possible choice, and like all choices in our Universe they have consequences. In essence ethics is asking: how do you wish to live your life? and how do you wish others would live their lives?
And I think answering those questions is a communal project. People can discuss, debate, and agree upon systems of ethics to implement in their society. And the shape their society takes will be largely dependant on them.
I guess what my perhaps somewhat rambling post is trying to say is that I don't think you can find a single a priori value system that lets you define ethics in a single way that everyone will agree on or be insane. But that this does not mean ethics is meaningless. Ethics remains highly meaningful, because the choice for a system of ethics is at its core a choice to make the world a certain way.
Rereading things a bit. I guess the end result would be that I'm an Expressivist? I do not think ethics is (can be) about describing a single objective standard everyone must adhere to or be demonstrably wrong. Because I think 'value' is too nebulous a concept and I've yet to see it objectively defined. But I think ethics is a choice to value specific things, to act accordingly, and to accept the consequences of that. Both at an individual and societal level. Or in other words, a faith. Though I think there's a difference between a faith as a choice, and a faith as a belief in something you consider cognitively true. Though obviously the two are intertwined.
Wow this thread might actually raise the bar at TL. Nice work. I found the content in the OP very informatively put but I didn't get much of anything new from it. What I mean to say is, I guess I'm disappointed to learn the state of things because I expected there was a bit more going on in fundamental disagreements and not twiddling with details in order to shore up or undermine the dykes. I don't really see any kind of technical work (like footnote 10) illuminating "ought" any better.
I voted Error Theory in the poll because I am skeptical of categorical imperatives, but I'm also skeptical of other things so there may be a better label but I am lacking the education to be aware of it. The suggestion that GGTemplar should go with "agnostic" is interesting because it seems like you can make a strong case that the burden of proof is on realists, so agnosticism is some kind of hopeful mystical undecided category where you don't want to stick with skepticism and give them the benefit of the doubt. Fair, sure, but a curious reluctance of commitment when you are in doubt of any of the three theses the OP deals with.
On that point, I find it interesting that discussions of morality appeal so often to common intuition when going off in the weeds with claims that end up seeming downright silly. I think we can all envision scenarios where each thesis or its negation appeals to our intuitive and everyday exercise of ethical judgement. To me this indicates clearly we need better language, or perhaps just better definitions. The briefly explained schools in the OP have their appeal, at least in various circumstances, but it seems obvious that none of them are a sole explanation of how we commonly experience morality.
I have to cautiously side with doubleupgradeobbies that our poor progress is due to semantic difficulties. I would add to that that there is an epistemic (in the natural facts sense) component. I don't see how you can make claims about universal "oughts", their existence, or their logical wieldiness when the natural terms you're using are not well bounded. When you say "murder is wrong", do you mean killing any human, ever? What is a human? Is a cyborg a human? Is abortion murder? When you say it is wrong, does that mean it ought never to happen? Or just mostly? Are there ever circumstances where it is right to murder, say, a hitler type? Does murder extend beyond humans? Must we be vegetarians then? And you can go on and on with more questions about the boundaries of what is meant by terms, finding gaps where our knowledge of natural facts is just insufficient, to say nothing of the terms which can't even be suitably clarified and bounded.
This is why I must also with a little more confidence side with acrofales in that a pragmatic approach is the only tenable and, for me, conceivable position.
[edit] And yet, farva captures my overall feelings about any moral argument:
On July 28 2013 03:52 radscorpion9 wrote: So I guess Sam Harris would be an example of a naturalistic moral realist? I seem to identify with both of their positions.
But my god this stuff is complex - I was just reading your links and suddenly I felt like I was reading my math paper on analytic functions
Before you get too comfortable in identifying with Sam Harris' work in ethics, have a look at this link.. At the bottom are more links to a variety of critiques of Harris. Suffice it to say, I don't find his ideas very appealing.
In his new book (the one about lying) Harris says, in effect, you should never, ever, do it — yet his pretense in The Moral Landscape to be revolutionizing moral philosophy seems to me the very height of dishonesty. What he actually does in his book is plain old secular moral reasoning — and not very well — but he claims he’s using science to decide right from wrong. That Harris could be naive enough to think he’s really bridged the famous “is/ought” chasm seems incredible, and so I submit that he’s exaggerating* to sell books. Shame on him.
*A previous version of this post had the word “lying” here, but I was told that my rhetorical flourish might be interpreted as libel. I hope “exaggerating” is sufficiently safe. Now onward to my argument:
I’ll start by saying what the “is/ought” divide is, in case you haven’t heard of this before. It’s an old idea, tracing at least to David Hume, and its gist is that there is no way to reason from facts about the way the world is, to statements about the way the world should be. You can’t derive values from data. I’ll use one example to illustrate and then move on.
Example. It’s a fact that rape occurs in nature — among chimpanzees, for instance; and there are some evolutionary arguments to explain its existence in humans and non-humans alike. But this fact tells us exactly nothing about whether it’s OK to rape people. This is because “natural” doesn’t entail “right” (just as “unnatural” doesn’t necessarily mean wrong) — indeed, the correct answer is that it’s not OK, and this is a judgement we make at the interface of moral philosophy and common sense: it’s not an output of science.
You get the idea. The domain of science is to describe nature, and then to explain its descriptions in terms of deeper patterns or laws. Science cannot tell us how to live. It cannot tell us right and wrong. If a system of thought claims to be doing those things, it cannot be science. If a scientist tells you she has some statements about how you ought to behave, they cannot be scientific statements, and the lab-coat is no longer speaking as a scientist. Questions about “How should we live?” — for better or worse — fall outside the purview of “objective” science. We have to sort them out, messily, by ourselves.
Now: if there were a way to get from “is” to “ought” it would take a work of philosophical genius to lay it out, and Harris’ book is not a work of philosophical genius. I can summarize his argument in a few lines:
1. Morality is “all about” improving the well-being of conscious creatures.
2. Facts about the well-being of conscious creatures are accessible to science.
3. Therefore science can tell us what’s objectively “moral” — that is, it can tell us whether something increases, or decreases, the well-being of conscious creatures.
Here’s the problem. Premise (1) is a philosophical premise. It’s not a fact of science, it’s not a fact of nature, it’s not derivable from science, it’s not derivable from nature: it’s a value judgment. You might think this is a good premise; you might not – and even if you think it’s basically on track, there’s a lot of philosophical work to be done to spell it out. (Exhibit A – how do you define well-being in the first place, “scientifically” or otherwise?)
Have you read Harris' own work, or just this misrepresentation?
Harris is not addressing moral and ethics philosophically, and the is/ought-problem is a non sequitur as far as he's concerned. The Moral Landscape makes the rather trivial claim that medicine can be studied scientifically - despite health being ill defined, and that the desirability of good (whatever that might mean) health is impossible to prove. Just like these philosophical shortcomings don't prevent medicine [what sort of treatments help people recover from different conditions] from improving people's lives, Harris thinks a science of morality [what sorts of individual freedoms, government interferences and customs are conducive to people achieving personal well-being] is equally feasible.
I've read three of Harris' works, including The Moral Landscape, so let's get that out of the way. One of the issues I take with Harris' argument is nicely illustrated by the disparity present in your medicine comparison. That medicine need not address the nebulous nature of emblematic "good health" in practice does not carry over to a "science of morality" in a coherent manner, in part due to the essential difference in how the two go about "doing" their thing. When a doctor sees a patient and diagnoses a condition, the contours of the accompanying "good/bad health" operation are very streamlined: the context of a given medical scenario tends to supply all that one needs in order to make a prescriptive judgment: i.e. this hurts and I want it to not hurt, therefore fix me. In essence, the diagnosis is the definition of terms; you either want this sickness or you don't, and nebulous value statements with "good/bad" conundrums need not ever enter the picture.
On the other hand, any sort of "science of morality" necessarily includes a certain degree of "openness" in it's prescriptive practice. You said it yourself above, and rightfully so; a description of what a "science of morality" can do must either include something that resembles "personal well-being" or capitulate entirely to the idiosyncrasy of the scenario in question and this is the crux of the issue. Harris and his supporters seem hell bent on making it clear that he is not addressing ethics in a philosophical sense, and yet, the manner with which he illustrates his "science of morality" always returns to a fundamentally philosophical question or it loses meaning entirely in subservience to contextual pragmatics.
[edit 2] And I would echo nadafanboy above, adding that an ethical system, as a set of goals and procedures for sculpting the universe, necessarily asks for natural knowledge. However, you must also ask, of course: if ethics is borne of choices, but seeks to prescribe (obviate choice), where does that leave you?
sorry but definitions without context are useless ... and once you define the context you realize you've just validated your (1), (2) or (3)s. i can change the context of any 1, 2, 3s and make from a moral relativist an expressivist
nadafanboy42 Netherlands. July 28 2013 06:24. Posts 188
Nice post, specially the part where you describe ethics as making choises and i think i have a somewhat similar opinnion. Voted for expressivism in the poll though the later mentioned moral nihilism would probably fit me better. I dont think there are objectivly "good" and "bad" things you can do. We not only can not know them, objectivly good and bad things dont exist at all and for me it is all subjective. The only universal moral i can think of is to do that what raises the entropy the least. High entropy is bad, low entropy is a little bit less bad. (by my personal choise)
Dont have much more to add,though i would like one of the moral realists to provide at least one ethical truth. They claim that they exist and that it is possible for humans to know at least some of them, and i am realy curious wich ones they have found so far.
On July 28 2013 03:52 radscorpion9 wrote: So I guess Sam Harris would be an example of a naturalistic moral realist? I seem to identify with both of their positions.
But my god this stuff is complex - I was just reading your links and suddenly I felt like I was reading my math paper on analytic functions
Before you get too comfortable in identifying with Sam Harris' work in ethics, have a look at this link.. At the bottom are more links to a variety of critiques of Harris. Suffice it to say, I don't find his ideas very appealing.
In his new book (the one about lying) Harris says, in effect, you should never, ever, do it — yet his pretense in The Moral Landscape to be revolutionizing moral philosophy seems to me the very height of dishonesty. What he actually does in his book is plain old secular moral reasoning — and not very well — but he claims he’s using science to decide right from wrong. That Harris could be naive enough to think he’s really bridged the famous “is/ought” chasm seems incredible, and so I submit that he’s exaggerating* to sell books. Shame on him.
*A previous version of this post had the word “lying” here, but I was told that my rhetorical flourish might be interpreted as libel. I hope “exaggerating” is sufficiently safe. Now onward to my argument:
I’ll start by saying what the “is/ought” divide is, in case you haven’t heard of this before. It’s an old idea, tracing at least to David Hume, and its gist is that there is no way to reason from facts about the way the world is, to statements about the way the world should be. You can’t derive values from data. I’ll use one example to illustrate and then move on.
Example. It’s a fact that rape occurs in nature — among chimpanzees, for instance; and there are some evolutionary arguments to explain its existence in humans and non-humans alike. But this fact tells us exactly nothing about whether it’s OK to rape people. This is because “natural” doesn’t entail “right” (just as “unnatural” doesn’t necessarily mean wrong) — indeed, the correct answer is that it’s not OK, and this is a judgement we make at the interface of moral philosophy and common sense: it’s not an output of science.
You get the idea. The domain of science is to describe nature, and then to explain its descriptions in terms of deeper patterns or laws. Science cannot tell us how to live. It cannot tell us right and wrong. If a system of thought claims to be doing those things, it cannot be science. If a scientist tells you she has some statements about how you ought to behave, they cannot be scientific statements, and the lab-coat is no longer speaking as a scientist. Questions about “How should we live?” — for better or worse — fall outside the purview of “objective” science. We have to sort them out, messily, by ourselves.
Now: if there were a way to get from “is” to “ought” it would take a work of philosophical genius to lay it out, and Harris’ book is not a work of philosophical genius. I can summarize his argument in a few lines:
1. Morality is “all about” improving the well-being of conscious creatures.
2. Facts about the well-being of conscious creatures are accessible to science.
3. Therefore science can tell us what’s objectively “moral” — that is, it can tell us whether something increases, or decreases, the well-being of conscious creatures.
Here’s the problem. Premise (1) is a philosophical premise. It’s not a fact of science, it’s not a fact of nature, it’s not derivable from science, it’s not derivable from nature: it’s a value judgment. You might think this is a good premise; you might not – and even if you think it’s basically on track, there’s a lot of philosophical work to be done to spell it out. (Exhibit A – how do you define well-being in the first place, “scientifically” or otherwise?)
Have you read Harris' own work, or just this misrepresentation?
Harris is not addressing moral and ethics philosophically, and the is/ought-problem is a non sequitur as far as he's concerned. The Moral Landscape makes the rather trivial claim that medicine can be studied scientifically - despite health being ill defined, and that the desirability of good (whatever that might mean) health is impossible to prove. Just like these philosophical shortcomings don't prevent medicine [what sort of treatments help people recover from different conditions] from improving people's lives, Harris thinks a science of morality [what sorts of individual freedoms, government interferences and customs are conducive to people achieving personal well-being] is equally feasible.
I've read three of Harris' works, including The Moral Landscape, so let's get that out of the way. One of the issues I take with Harris' argument is nicely illustrated by the disparity present in your medicine comparison. That medicine need not address the nebulous nature of emblematic "good health" in practice does not carry over to a "science of morality" in a coherent manner, in part due to the essential difference in how the two go about "doing" their thing. When a doctor sees a patient and diagnoses a condition, the contours of the accompanying "good/bad health" operation are very streamlined: the context of a given medical scenario tends to supply all that one needs in order to make a prescriptive judgment: i.e. this hurts and I want it to not hurt, therefore fix me. In essence, the diagnosis is the definition of terms; you either want this sickness or you don't, and nebulous value statements with "good/bad" conundrums need not ever enter the picture.
On the other hand, any sort of "science of morality" necessarily includes a certain degree of "openness" in it's prescriptive practice. You said it yourself above, and rightfully so; a description of what a "science of morality" can do must either include something that resembles "personal well-being" or capitulate entirely to the idiosyncrasy of the scenario in question and this is the crux of the issue. Harris and his supporters seem hell bent on making it clear that he is not addressing ethics in a philosophical sense, and yet, the manner with which he illustrates his "science of morality" always returns to a fundamentally philosophical question or it loses meaning entirely in subservience to contextual pragmatics.
Medicine is not that straightforward at all. It involves a lot of difficult cases - does bodily health matter when the brain has flatlined? Is a small risk of serious side effects enough to justify, say vaccinating children? How do we weigh the benefits of longer expected life span against the immediate loss of vision when performing a bilateral enucleation? The context of many medical scenarios falls way short of supplying all that one needs in order to make a prescriptive judgement - say, what are the relative values of keeping your breasts and a lower risk of cancer ten years in the future? You could just as naively reduce questions of moral to I feel unfulfilled and I don't want to feel unfilfilled.
Harris argues that most people mostly agree on what good health entails - even if, for instance, people will disagree on the exact importance of having C-cup breasts, being able to reproduce, running a four-minute mile or living to see your hundredth birthday. Unless you want to get rid of modern medicine, it seems that this is a sufficient basis for an important science.
Similarly, Harris claims that the lack of consensus on what well-being might be and its importance does not prevent the science of morals from pulling its weight. In the first place, practitioners of arranged marriage do not, to my knowledge, argue that suffering is good, but that the practice ultimately pays off by making people's lives better. And at this point, if you can find any way of gauging well-being, not necessarily perfectly, but about as well as we can differentiate between good and bad health, you have opened the door for scientific inquiry.
On July 28 2013 03:52 radscorpion9 wrote: So I guess Sam Harris would be an example of a naturalistic moral realist? I seem to identify with both of their positions.
But my god this stuff is complex - I was just reading your links and suddenly I felt like I was reading my math paper on analytic functions
Before you get too comfortable in identifying with Sam Harris' work in ethics, have a look at this link.. At the bottom are more links to a variety of critiques of Harris. Suffice it to say, I don't find his ideas very appealing.
In his new book (the one about lying) Harris says, in effect, you should never, ever, do it — yet his pretense in The Moral Landscape to be revolutionizing moral philosophy seems to me the very height of dishonesty. What he actually does in his book is plain old secular moral reasoning — and not very well — but he claims he’s using science to decide right from wrong. That Harris could be naive enough to think he’s really bridged the famous “is/ought” chasm seems incredible, and so I submit that he’s exaggerating* to sell books. Shame on him.
*A previous version of this post had the word “lying” here, but I was told that my rhetorical flourish might be interpreted as libel. I hope “exaggerating” is sufficiently safe. Now onward to my argument:
I’ll start by saying what the “is/ought” divide is, in case you haven’t heard of this before. It’s an old idea, tracing at least to David Hume, and its gist is that there is no way to reason from facts about the way the world is, to statements about the way the world should be. You can’t derive values from data. I’ll use one example to illustrate and then move on.
Example. It’s a fact that rape occurs in nature — among chimpanzees, for instance; and there are some evolutionary arguments to explain its existence in humans and non-humans alike. But this fact tells us exactly nothing about whether it’s OK to rape people. This is because “natural” doesn’t entail “right” (just as “unnatural” doesn’t necessarily mean wrong) — indeed, the correct answer is that it’s not OK, and this is a judgement we make at the interface of moral philosophy and common sense: it’s not an output of science.
You get the idea. The domain of science is to describe nature, and then to explain its descriptions in terms of deeper patterns or laws. Science cannot tell us how to live. It cannot tell us right and wrong. If a system of thought claims to be doing those things, it cannot be science. If a scientist tells you she has some statements about how you ought to behave, they cannot be scientific statements, and the lab-coat is no longer speaking as a scientist. Questions about “How should we live?” — for better or worse — fall outside the purview of “objective” science. We have to sort them out, messily, by ourselves.
Now: if there were a way to get from “is” to “ought” it would take a work of philosophical genius to lay it out, and Harris’ book is not a work of philosophical genius. I can summarize his argument in a few lines:
1. Morality is “all about” improving the well-being of conscious creatures.
2. Facts about the well-being of conscious creatures are accessible to science.
3. Therefore science can tell us what’s objectively “moral” — that is, it can tell us whether something increases, or decreases, the well-being of conscious creatures.
Here’s the problem. Premise (1) is a philosophical premise. It’s not a fact of science, it’s not a fact of nature, it’s not derivable from science, it’s not derivable from nature: it’s a value judgment. You might think this is a good premise; you might not – and even if you think it’s basically on track, there’s a lot of philosophical work to be done to spell it out. (Exhibit A – how do you define well-being in the first place, “scientifically” or otherwise?)
Have you read Harris' own work, or just this misrepresentation?
Harris is not addressing moral and ethics philosophically, and the is/ought-problem is a non sequitur as far as he's concerned. The Moral Landscape makes the rather trivial claim that medicine can be studied scientifically - despite health being ill defined, and that the desirability of good (whatever that might mean) health is impossible to prove. Just like these philosophical shortcomings don't prevent medicine [what sort of treatments help people recover from different conditions] from improving people's lives, Harris thinks a science of morality [what sorts of individual freedoms, government interferences and customs are conducive to people achieving personal well-being] is equally feasible.
Thanks, that clarifies it quite a lot. What he quoted seemed simplistic (and even empty) even without knowing what Harris actually meant.
Harris thinks a science of morality [what sorts of individual freedoms, government interferences and customs are conducive to people achieving personal well-being] is equally feasible.
Bolded the part where it starts being a philosophical claim. While Harris can balk at the is-ought distinction all he wants, none of his empirical arguments say anything at all about what makes "well-being" (defined or otherwise) the sole metric against which actions should be judged with respect to morality. Until he comes up with a good grounding for his system, he's going to be reduced to doing what he's actually been doing this whole time: making the point that utilitarianism is easier if you employ scientific techniques to map the pleasure function. Well, yes, that's not exactly a controversial claim, but it doesn't really say much about whether one should be a utilitarian.
I don't think anyone has ever contested that science can be used to evaluate whether a particular event causes or inhibits somebody's sense of well-being. It's not as if this is a difficult judgment to make. Most of the time, we can just ask people what would make them feel better, or ask their psychiatrists. We don't need to brain scan every person in the world to figure out that most people probably don't want to be tortured.
On July 28 2013 06:47 Rassy wrote: nadafanboy42 Netherlands. July 28 2013 06:24. Posts 188
Nice post, specially the part where you describe ethics as making choises and i think i have a somewhat similar opinnion. Voted for expressivism in the poll though the later mentioned moral nihilism would probably fit me better. I dont think there are objectivly "good" and "bad" things you can do. We not only can not know them, objectivly good and bad things dont exist at all and for me it is all subjective. The only universal moral i can think of is to do that what raises the entropy the least. High entropy is bad, low entropy is a little bit less bad. (by my personal choise)
Dont have much more to add,though i would like one of the moral realists to provide at least one ethical truth. They claim that they exist and that it is possible for humans to know at least some of them, and i am realy curious wich ones they have found so far.
(bold) This is my starting point for any conceivable moral code I might endorse, but it has so many problems itself. How can know the effects of one's actions specifically for this rubric. What calculus do you use to know whether you should kill X stars to stop the fires but keep N-X alive to fuel humanity to continue the work of managing and forestalling the universe's heat death. Is this even really a good or fulfilling plan anyway? In the event of inescapable heat death, wouldn't a better aim be to produce as much variety as possible in an envelope of thermodynamic possibilities? Not to mention, how much certainty is required to enact this sort of plan? What if heat death is not the ultimate fate, due to net energy flux? (What is dark energy?)
Nevertheless this line of thought it still the most (the only?) ascertainable moral pursuit for me that escapes petty subjectivity.
I suppose this standpoint is a sort of declaration that emotional needs should not be confused with moral issues. Which is an amusing crabwise denial of expressivism.
On July 28 2013 03:52 radscorpion9 wrote: So I guess Sam Harris would be an example of a naturalistic moral realist? I seem to identify with both of their positions.
But my god this stuff is complex - I was just reading your links and suddenly I felt like I was reading my math paper on analytic functions
Before you get too comfortable in identifying with Sam Harris' work in ethics, have a look at this link.. At the bottom are more links to a variety of critiques of Harris. Suffice it to say, I don't find his ideas very appealing.
In his new book (the one about lying) Harris says, in effect, you should never, ever, do it — yet his pretense in The Moral Landscape to be revolutionizing moral philosophy seems to me the very height of dishonesty. What he actually does in his book is plain old secular moral reasoning — and not very well — but he claims he’s using science to decide right from wrong. That Harris could be naive enough to think he’s really bridged the famous “is/ought” chasm seems incredible, and so I submit that he’s exaggerating* to sell books. Shame on him.
*A previous version of this post had the word “lying” here, but I was told that my rhetorical flourish might be interpreted as libel. I hope “exaggerating” is sufficiently safe. Now onward to my argument:
I’ll start by saying what the “is/ought” divide is, in case you haven’t heard of this before. It’s an old idea, tracing at least to David Hume, and its gist is that there is no way to reason from facts about the way the world is, to statements about the way the world should be. You can’t derive values from data. I’ll use one example to illustrate and then move on.
Example. It’s a fact that rape occurs in nature — among chimpanzees, for instance; and there are some evolutionary arguments to explain its existence in humans and non-humans alike. But this fact tells us exactly nothing about whether it’s OK to rape people. This is because “natural” doesn’t entail “right” (just as “unnatural” doesn’t necessarily mean wrong) — indeed, the correct answer is that it’s not OK, and this is a judgement we make at the interface of moral philosophy and common sense: it’s not an output of science.
You get the idea. The domain of science is to describe nature, and then to explain its descriptions in terms of deeper patterns or laws. Science cannot tell us how to live. It cannot tell us right and wrong. If a system of thought claims to be doing those things, it cannot be science. If a scientist tells you she has some statements about how you ought to behave, they cannot be scientific statements, and the lab-coat is no longer speaking as a scientist. Questions about “How should we live?” — for better or worse — fall outside the purview of “objective” science. We have to sort them out, messily, by ourselves.
Now: if there were a way to get from “is” to “ought” it would take a work of philosophical genius to lay it out, and Harris’ book is not a work of philosophical genius. I can summarize his argument in a few lines:
1. Morality is “all about” improving the well-being of conscious creatures.
2. Facts about the well-being of conscious creatures are accessible to science.
3. Therefore science can tell us what’s objectively “moral” — that is, it can tell us whether something increases, or decreases, the well-being of conscious creatures.
Here’s the problem. Premise (1) is a philosophical premise. It’s not a fact of science, it’s not a fact of nature, it’s not derivable from science, it’s not derivable from nature: it’s a value judgment. You might think this is a good premise; you might not – and even if you think it’s basically on track, there’s a lot of philosophical work to be done to spell it out. (Exhibit A – how do you define well-being in the first place, “scientifically” or otherwise?)
Have you read Harris' own work, or just this misrepresentation?
Harris is not addressing moral and ethics philosophically, and the is/ought-problem is a non sequitur as far as he's concerned. The Moral Landscape makes the rather trivial claim that medicine can be studied scientifically - despite health being ill defined, and that the desirability of good (whatever that might mean) health is impossible to prove. Just like these philosophical shortcomings don't prevent medicine [what sort of treatments help people recover from different conditions] from improving people's lives, Harris thinks a science of morality [what sorts of individual freedoms, government interferences and customs are conducive to people achieving personal well-being] is equally feasible.
I've read three of Harris' works, including The Moral Landscape, so let's get that out of the way. One of the issues I take with Harris' argument is nicely illustrated by the disparity present in your medicine comparison. That medicine need not address the nebulous nature of emblematic "good health" in practice does not carry over to a "science of morality" in a coherent manner, in part due to the essential difference in how the two go about "doing" their thing. When a doctor sees a patient and diagnoses a condition, the contours of the accompanying "good/bad health" operation are very streamlined: the context of a given medical scenario tends to supply all that one needs in order to make a prescriptive judgment: i.e. this hurts and I want it to not hurt, therefore fix me. In essence, the diagnosis is the definition of terms; you either want this sickness or you don't, and nebulous value statements with "good/bad" conundrums need not ever enter the picture.
On the other hand, any sort of "science of morality" necessarily includes a certain degree of "openness" in it's prescriptive practice. You said it yourself above, and rightfully so; a description of what a "science of morality" can do must either include something that resembles "personal well-being" or capitulate entirely to the idiosyncrasy of the scenario in question and this is the crux of the issue. Harris and his supporters seem hell bent on making it clear that he is not addressing ethics in a philosophical sense, and yet, the manner with which he illustrates his "science of morality" always returns to a fundamentally philosophical question or it loses meaning entirely in subservience to contextual pragmatics.
Medicine is not that straightforward at all. It involves a lot of difficult cases - does bodily health matter when the brain has flatlined? Is a small risk of serious side effects enough to justify, say vaccinating children? How do we weigh the benefits of longer expected life span against the immediate loss of vision when performing a bilateral enucleation? The context of many medical scenarios falls way short of supplying all that one needs in order to make a prescriptive judgement - say, what are the relative values of keeping your breasts and a lower risk of cancer ten years in the future? You could just as naively reduce questions of moral to I feel unfulfilled and I don't want to feel unfilfilled.
Harris argues that most people mostly agree on what good health entails - even if, for instance, people will disagree on the exact importance of having C-cup breasts, being able to reproduce, running a four-minute mile or living to see your hundredth birthday. Unless you want to get rid of modern medicine, it seems that this is a sufficient basis for an important science.
Similarly, Harris claims that the lack of consensus on what well-being might be and its importance does not prevent the science of morals from pulling its weight. In the first place, practitioners of arranged marriage do not, to my knowledge, argue that suffering is good, but that the practice ultimately pays off by making people's lives better. And at this point, if you can find any way of gauging well-being, not necessarily perfectly, but about as well as we can differentiate between good and bad health, you have opened the door for scientific inquiry.
Shiori pretty much took the words off my fingertips. The problem arises when it comes to validating "well-being" as the sole means of determining moral value; how are we to go about describing this without resorting to philosophy? Keep in mind that saying "defining well-being with rigor is not important" is in itself a philosophical statement that requires more than cursory comparisons with very different phenomena.
Edit: I realize I'm being rather circumspect, so I'll have revise some once I'm out of work
On July 28 2013 03:52 radscorpion9 wrote: So I guess Sam Harris would be an example of a naturalistic moral realist? I seem to identify with both of their positions.
But my god this stuff is complex - I was just reading your links and suddenly I felt like I was reading my math paper on analytic functions
Before you get too comfortable in identifying with Sam Harris' work in ethics, have a look at this link.. At the bottom are more links to a variety of critiques of Harris. Suffice it to say, I don't find his ideas very appealing.
In his new book (the one about lying) Harris says, in effect, you should never, ever, do it — yet his pretense in The Moral Landscape to be revolutionizing moral philosophy seems to me the very height of dishonesty. What he actually does in his book is plain old secular moral reasoning — and not very well — but he claims he’s using science to decide right from wrong. That Harris could be naive enough to think he’s really bridged the famous “is/ought” chasm seems incredible, and so I submit that he’s exaggerating* to sell books. Shame on him.
*A previous version of this post had the word “lying” here, but I was told that my rhetorical flourish might be interpreted as libel. I hope “exaggerating” is sufficiently safe. Now onward to my argument:
I’ll start by saying what the “is/ought” divide is, in case you haven’t heard of this before. It’s an old idea, tracing at least to David Hume, and its gist is that there is no way to reason from facts about the way the world is, to statements about the way the world should be. You can’t derive values from data. I’ll use one example to illustrate and then move on.
Example. It’s a fact that rape occurs in nature — among chimpanzees, for instance; and there are some evolutionary arguments to explain its existence in humans and non-humans alike. But this fact tells us exactly nothing about whether it’s OK to rape people. This is because “natural” doesn’t entail “right” (just as “unnatural” doesn’t necessarily mean wrong) — indeed, the correct answer is that it’s not OK, and this is a judgement we make at the interface of moral philosophy and common sense: it’s not an output of science.
You get the idea. The domain of science is to describe nature, and then to explain its descriptions in terms of deeper patterns or laws. Science cannot tell us how to live. It cannot tell us right and wrong. If a system of thought claims to be doing those things, it cannot be science. If a scientist tells you she has some statements about how you ought to behave, they cannot be scientific statements, and the lab-coat is no longer speaking as a scientist. Questions about “How should we live?” — for better or worse — fall outside the purview of “objective” science. We have to sort them out, messily, by ourselves.
Now: if there were a way to get from “is” to “ought” it would take a work of philosophical genius to lay it out, and Harris’ book is not a work of philosophical genius. I can summarize his argument in a few lines:
1. Morality is “all about” improving the well-being of conscious creatures.
2. Facts about the well-being of conscious creatures are accessible to science.
3. Therefore science can tell us what’s objectively “moral” — that is, it can tell us whether something increases, or decreases, the well-being of conscious creatures.
Here’s the problem. Premise (1) is a philosophical premise. It’s not a fact of science, it’s not a fact of nature, it’s not derivable from science, it’s not derivable from nature: it’s a value judgment. You might think this is a good premise; you might not – and even if you think it’s basically on track, there’s a lot of philosophical work to be done to spell it out. (Exhibit A – how do you define well-being in the first place, “scientifically” or otherwise?)
Have you read Harris' own work, or just this misrepresentation?
Harris is not addressing moral and ethics philosophically, and the is/ought-problem is a non sequitur as far as he's concerned. The Moral Landscape makes the rather trivial claim that medicine can be studied scientifically - despite health being ill defined, and that the desirability of good (whatever that might mean) health is impossible to prove. Just like these philosophical shortcomings don't prevent medicine [what sort of treatments help people recover from different conditions] from improving people's lives, Harris thinks a science of morality [what sorts of individual freedoms, government interferences and customs are conducive to people achieving personal well-being] is equally feasible.
I've read three of Harris' works, including The Moral Landscape, so let's get that out of the way. One of the issues I take with Harris' argument is nicely illustrated by the disparity present in your medicine comparison. That medicine need not address the nebulous nature of emblematic "good health" in practice does not carry over to a "science of morality" in a coherent manner, in part due to the essential difference in how the two go about "doing" their thing. When a doctor sees a patient and diagnoses a condition, the contours of the accompanying "good/bad health" operation are very streamlined: the context of a given medical scenario tends to supply all that one needs in order to make a prescriptive judgment: i.e. this hurts and I want it to not hurt, therefore fix me. In essence, the diagnosis is the definition of terms; you either want this sickness or you don't, and nebulous value statements with "good/bad" conundrums need not ever enter the picture.
On the other hand, any sort of "science of morality" necessarily includes a certain degree of "openness" in it's prescriptive practice. You said it yourself above, and rightfully so; a description of what a "science of morality" can do must either include something that resembles "personal well-being" or capitulate entirely to the idiosyncrasy of the scenario in question and this is the crux of the issue. Harris and his supporters seem hell bent on making it clear that he is not addressing ethics in a philosophical sense, and yet, the manner with which he illustrates his "science of morality" always returns to a fundamentally philosophical question or it loses meaning entirely in subservience to contextual pragmatics.
Medicine is not that straightforward at all. It involves a lot of difficult cases - does bodily health matter when the brain has flatlined? Is a small risk of serious side effects enough to justify, say vaccinating children? How do we weigh the benefits of longer expected life span against the immediate loss of vision when performing a bilateral enucleation? The context of many medical scenarios falls way short of supplying all that one needs in order to make a prescriptive judgement - say, what are the relative values of keeping your breasts and a lower risk of cancer ten years in the future? You could just as naively reduce questions of moral to I feel unfulfilled and I don't want to feel unfilfilled.
Harris argues that most people mostly agree on what good health entails - even if, for instance, people will disagree on the exact importance of having C-cup breasts, being able to reproduce, running a four-minute mile or living to see your hundredth birthday. Unless you want to get rid of modern medicine, it seems that this is a sufficient basis for an important science.
Similarly, Harris claims that the lack of consensus on what well-being might be and its importance does not prevent the science of morals from pulling its weight. In the first place, practitioners of arranged marriage do not, to my knowledge, argue that suffering is good, but that the practice ultimately pays off by making people's lives better. And at this point, if you can find any way of gauging well-being, not necessarily perfectly, but about as well as we can differentiate between good and bad health, you have opened the door for scientific inquiry.
Shiori pretty much took the words off my fingertips. The problem arises when it comes to validating "well-being" as the sole means of determining moral value; how are we to go about describing this without resorting to philosophy?
Why is it good to build bridges which don't fall down? Why is it good to cure people who's got syphilis? Why does a science of morals need an entirely different kind of philosophical validation than medicine? Harris is trying to make the world a better place, not to get a PhD in Philosophy.
On July 28 2013 03:52 radscorpion9 wrote: So I guess Sam Harris would be an example of a naturalistic moral realist? I seem to identify with both of their positions.
But my god this stuff is complex - I was just reading your links and suddenly I felt like I was reading my math paper on analytic functions
Before you get too comfortable in identifying with Sam Harris' work in ethics, have a look at this link.. At the bottom are more links to a variety of critiques of Harris. Suffice it to say, I don't find his ideas very appealing.
In his new book (the one about lying) Harris says, in effect, you should never, ever, do it — yet his pretense in The Moral Landscape to be revolutionizing moral philosophy seems to me the very height of dishonesty. What he actually does in his book is plain old secular moral reasoning — and not very well — but he claims he’s using science to decide right from wrong. That Harris could be naive enough to think he’s really bridged the famous “is/ought” chasm seems incredible, and so I submit that he’s exaggerating* to sell books. Shame on him.
*A previous version of this post had the word “lying” here, but I was told that my rhetorical flourish might be interpreted as libel. I hope “exaggerating” is sufficiently safe. Now onward to my argument:
I’ll start by saying what the “is/ought” divide is, in case you haven’t heard of this before. It’s an old idea, tracing at least to David Hume, and its gist is that there is no way to reason from facts about the way the world is, to statements about the way the world should be. You can’t derive values from data. I’ll use one example to illustrate and then move on.
Example. It’s a fact that rape occurs in nature — among chimpanzees, for instance; and there are some evolutionary arguments to explain its existence in humans and non-humans alike. But this fact tells us exactly nothing about whether it’s OK to rape people. This is because “natural” doesn’t entail “right” (just as “unnatural” doesn’t necessarily mean wrong) — indeed, the correct answer is that it’s not OK, and this is a judgement we make at the interface of moral philosophy and common sense: it’s not an output of science.
You get the idea. The domain of science is to describe nature, and then to explain its descriptions in terms of deeper patterns or laws. Science cannot tell us how to live. It cannot tell us right and wrong. If a system of thought claims to be doing those things, it cannot be science. If a scientist tells you she has some statements about how you ought to behave, they cannot be scientific statements, and the lab-coat is no longer speaking as a scientist. Questions about “How should we live?” — for better or worse — fall outside the purview of “objective” science. We have to sort them out, messily, by ourselves.
Now: if there were a way to get from “is” to “ought” it would take a work of philosophical genius to lay it out, and Harris’ book is not a work of philosophical genius. I can summarize his argument in a few lines:
1. Morality is “all about” improving the well-being of conscious creatures.
2. Facts about the well-being of conscious creatures are accessible to science.
3. Therefore science can tell us what’s objectively “moral” — that is, it can tell us whether something increases, or decreases, the well-being of conscious creatures.
Here’s the problem. Premise (1) is a philosophical premise. It’s not a fact of science, it’s not a fact of nature, it’s not derivable from science, it’s not derivable from nature: it’s a value judgment. You might think this is a good premise; you might not – and even if you think it’s basically on track, there’s a lot of philosophical work to be done to spell it out. (Exhibit A – how do you define well-being in the first place, “scientifically” or otherwise?)
Have you read Harris' own work, or just this misrepresentation?
Harris is not addressing moral and ethics philosophically, and the is/ought-problem is a non sequitur as far as he's concerned. The Moral Landscape makes the rather trivial claim that medicine can be studied scientifically - despite health being ill defined, and that the desirability of good (whatever that might mean) health is impossible to prove. Just like these philosophical shortcomings don't prevent medicine [what sort of treatments help people recover from different conditions] from improving people's lives, Harris thinks a science of morality [what sorts of individual freedoms, government interferences and customs are conducive to people achieving personal well-being] is equally feasible.
I've read three of Harris' works, including The Moral Landscape, so let's get that out of the way. One of the issues I take with Harris' argument is nicely illustrated by the disparity present in your medicine comparison. That medicine need not address the nebulous nature of emblematic "good health" in practice does not carry over to a "science of morality" in a coherent manner, in part due to the essential difference in how the two go about "doing" their thing. When a doctor sees a patient and diagnoses a condition, the contours of the accompanying "good/bad health" operation are very streamlined: the context of a given medical scenario tends to supply all that one needs in order to make a prescriptive judgment: i.e. this hurts and I want it to not hurt, therefore fix me. In essence, the diagnosis is the definition of terms; you either want this sickness or you don't, and nebulous value statements with "good/bad" conundrums need not ever enter the picture.
On the other hand, any sort of "science of morality" necessarily includes a certain degree of "openness" in it's prescriptive practice. You said it yourself above, and rightfully so; a description of what a "science of morality" can do must either include something that resembles "personal well-being" or capitulate entirely to the idiosyncrasy of the scenario in question and this is the crux of the issue. Harris and his supporters seem hell bent on making it clear that he is not addressing ethics in a philosophical sense, and yet, the manner with which he illustrates his "science of morality" always returns to a fundamentally philosophical question or it loses meaning entirely in subservience to contextual pragmatics.
It seems you are missing the point and simplifying medicine to a point that it is something completely different from the actual thing.
Medicine is today (and always has been even if to lesser degree) far from the simplistic view you paint. Parts of medicine deal with very vaguely ("open" as you call it) scenarios. Mental illness alone easily destroy your whole argument. There is no "this hurt and I want to fix it" as many of the patients have no idea that there is something wrong and fight people that want to help them. Then you go into areas of medicine that deal with public health issues and again you run into all those things. There are plenty areas in medicine where the concept of "condition" is as vague as concept of well-being.
That is because medicine is deeply merged with ethics. They are not separate. Their relationship is different. We use ethics to find goals and medicine to satisfy those goals. But philosophical ethics is not necessary for that process to work well and medicine actually provides also feedback to the ethics area. It is not a one way street. In the same vein Harris' "science of morality" is supposed to provide solutions to goals that ethics provides us. And again that ethics does not have to be philosophical ethics for this to work. And also in this case it is not a one way street and this "science of morality" provides feedback to the ethical goal-creating area. The analogy between medicine and this is actually very good.
Harris thinks a science of morality [what sorts of individual freedoms, government interferences and customs are conducive to people achieving personal well-being] is equally feasible.
Bolded the part where it starts being a philosophical claim. While Harris can balk at the is-ought distinction all he wants, none of his empirical arguments say anything at all about what makes "well-being" (defined or otherwise) the sole metric against which actions should be judged with respect to morality. Until he comes up with a good grounding for his system, he's going to be reduced to doing what he's actually been doing this whole time: making the point that utilitarianism is easier if you employ scientific techniques to map the pleasure function. Well, yes, that's not exactly a controversial claim, but it doesn't really say much about whether one should be a utilitarian.
I don't think anyone has ever contested that science can be used to evaluate whether a particular event causes or inhibits somebody's sense of well-being. It's not as if this is a difficult judgment to make. Most of the time, we can just ask people what would make them feel better, or ask their psychiatrists. We don't need to brain scan every person in the world to figure out that most people probably don't want to be tortured.
The argument is that we are in actual practice all utilitarian anyway and the discussion is pointless Not really, we are not utilitarian exactly, just close enough.
Basically the grounding is biology, because what else could it be. There is no other possible grounding for ethics that does not involve endless question begging. Fortunately due to mechanics of evolution we are all pretty similar and thus can agree on rather extensive basis of what "ought to be". Anyone who attempts anything grander in terms of trying to create ethical system, will fail. By grander I mean something that follows from "pure" reason and requires no assumptions. If you disagree please point any system that actually accomplishes more
On July 28 2013 03:52 radscorpion9 wrote: So I guess Sam Harris would be an example of a naturalistic moral realist? I seem to identify with both of their positions.
But my god this stuff is complex - I was just reading your links and suddenly I felt like I was reading my math paper on analytic functions
Before you get too comfortable in identifying with Sam Harris' work in ethics, have a look at this link.. At the bottom are more links to a variety of critiques of Harris. Suffice it to say, I don't find his ideas very appealing.
In his new book (the one about lying) Harris says, in effect, you should never, ever, do it — yet his pretense in The Moral Landscape to be revolutionizing moral philosophy seems to me the very height of dishonesty. What he actually does in his book is plain old secular moral reasoning — and not very well — but he claims he’s using science to decide right from wrong. That Harris could be naive enough to think he’s really bridged the famous “is/ought” chasm seems incredible, and so I submit that he’s exaggerating* to sell books. Shame on him.
*A previous version of this post had the word “lying” here, but I was told that my rhetorical flourish might be interpreted as libel. I hope “exaggerating” is sufficiently safe. Now onward to my argument:
I’ll start by saying what the “is/ought” divide is, in case you haven’t heard of this before. It’s an old idea, tracing at least to David Hume, and its gist is that there is no way to reason from facts about the way the world is, to statements about the way the world should be. You can’t derive values from data. I’ll use one example to illustrate and then move on.
Example. It’s a fact that rape occurs in nature — among chimpanzees, for instance; and there are some evolutionary arguments to explain its existence in humans and non-humans alike. But this fact tells us exactly nothing about whether it’s OK to rape people. This is because “natural” doesn’t entail “right” (just as “unnatural” doesn’t necessarily mean wrong) — indeed, the correct answer is that it’s not OK, and this is a judgement we make at the interface of moral philosophy and common sense: it’s not an output of science.
You get the idea. The domain of science is to describe nature, and then to explain its descriptions in terms of deeper patterns or laws. Science cannot tell us how to live. It cannot tell us right and wrong. If a system of thought claims to be doing those things, it cannot be science. If a scientist tells you she has some statements about how you ought to behave, they cannot be scientific statements, and the lab-coat is no longer speaking as a scientist. Questions about “How should we live?” — for better or worse — fall outside the purview of “objective” science. We have to sort them out, messily, by ourselves.
Now: if there were a way to get from “is” to “ought” it would take a work of philosophical genius to lay it out, and Harris’ book is not a work of philosophical genius. I can summarize his argument in a few lines:
1. Morality is “all about” improving the well-being of conscious creatures.
2. Facts about the well-being of conscious creatures are accessible to science.
3. Therefore science can tell us what’s objectively “moral” — that is, it can tell us whether something increases, or decreases, the well-being of conscious creatures.
Here’s the problem. Premise (1) is a philosophical premise. It’s not a fact of science, it’s not a fact of nature, it’s not derivable from science, it’s not derivable from nature: it’s a value judgment. You might think this is a good premise; you might not – and even if you think it’s basically on track, there’s a lot of philosophical work to be done to spell it out. (Exhibit A – how do you define well-being in the first place, “scientifically” or otherwise?)
Have you read Harris' own work, or just this misrepresentation?
Harris is not addressing moral and ethics philosophically, and the is/ought-problem is a non sequitur as far as he's concerned. The Moral Landscape makes the rather trivial claim that medicine can be studied scientifically - despite health being ill defined, and that the desirability of good (whatever that might mean) health is impossible to prove. Just like these philosophical shortcomings don't prevent medicine [what sort of treatments help people recover from different conditions] from improving people's lives, Harris thinks a science of morality [what sorts of individual freedoms, government interferences and customs are conducive to people achieving personal well-being] is equally feasible.
I've read three of Harris' works, including The Moral Landscape, so let's get that out of the way. One of the issues I take with Harris' argument is nicely illustrated by the disparity present in your medicine comparison. That medicine need not address the nebulous nature of emblematic "good health" in practice does not carry over to a "science of morality" in a coherent manner, in part due to the essential difference in how the two go about "doing" their thing. When a doctor sees a patient and diagnoses a condition, the contours of the accompanying "good/bad health" operation are very streamlined: the context of a given medical scenario tends to supply all that one needs in order to make a prescriptive judgment: i.e. this hurts and I want it to not hurt, therefore fix me. In essence, the diagnosis is the definition of terms; you either want this sickness or you don't, and nebulous value statements with "good/bad" conundrums need not ever enter the picture.
On the other hand, any sort of "science of morality" necessarily includes a certain degree of "openness" in it's prescriptive practice. You said it yourself above, and rightfully so; a description of what a "science of morality" can do must either include something that resembles "personal well-being" or capitulate entirely to the idiosyncrasy of the scenario in question and this is the crux of the issue. Harris and his supporters seem hell bent on making it clear that he is not addressing ethics in a philosophical sense, and yet, the manner with which he illustrates his "science of morality" always returns to a fundamentally philosophical question or it loses meaning entirely in subservience to contextual pragmatics.
It seems you are missing the point and simplifying medicine to a point that it is something completely different from the actual thing.
Medicine is today (and always has been even if to lesser degree) far from the simplistic view you paint. Parts of medicine deal with very vaguely ("open" as you call it) scenarios. Mental illness alone easily destroy your whole argument. There is no "this hurt and I want to fix it" as many of the patients have no idea that there is something wrong and fight people that want to help them. Then you go into areas of medicine that deal with public health issues and again you run into all those things. There are plenty areas in medicine where the concept of "condition" is as vague as concept of well-being.
That is because medicine is deeply merged with ethics. They are not separate. Their relationship is different. We use ethics to find goals and medicine to satisfy those goals. But philosophical ethics is not necessary for that process to work well and medicine actually provides also feedback to the ethics area. It is not a one way street. In the same vein Harris' "science of morality" is supposed to provide solutions to goals that ethics provides us. And again that ethics does not have to be philosophical ethics for this to work. And also in this case it is not a one way street and this "science of morality" provides feedback to the ethical goal-creating area. The analogy between medicine and this is actually very good.
But, as you've just described, the areas of medicine that are most likely to fall into dispute are also the places medicine is most willing to ask philosophy/politics/ethics for help, an operation Harris suggests his "science of morality" need never undertake, which is precisely the problem. For example, the DSM revision process is oftentimes little more than an exercise in linguistic philosophy. Similarly, medicine falls short in solving the abortion debate on its own terms, and in turn it resorts to alternative "schools" in pursuit of a solution. In fact, the very issues in medicine you've described are some of the places any supposed "science of morality" most obviously falls short.
Why is it good to build bridges which don't fall down?
It isn't. It's good to build bridges competently when tasked to build a bridge for the purposes of ferrying people across it safely. The first people who built bridges weren't being immoral just because they didn't have 21st century engineering know-how. Does that make their bridge-building less moral? No. It makes their bridge-building worse in the sense the word "worse" is used in the vernacular i.e. as not preferred with respect to something else.
Building bridges that "don't fall down" isn't a good action in itself. I could build tonnes of totally useless bridges in my backyard, which, even if mechanically stable, wouldn't be created from some moral impulse.
Why is it good to cure people who's got syphilis?
Probably because we know how to cure syphilis, because people want their syphilis to be cured, because we have the means to cure it on a global level, and because there's absolutely no conceivable reason not to cure syphilis. That doesn't mean all of our doctors are moral paragons compared to the rather primitive Hippocrates, though. It's not the properties of actions themselves that are moral/immoral, but the actions and the reasoning for the actions.
I mean, Harris thinks that there is an objective moral difference between world A and world B, such that:
A= our world.
B= a world in which everyone is always suffering all the time, no matter what.
He thinks that this difference (i.e. of our world being a better one) is a moral difference, rather than a value judgment or semantic distinction. But how could it be a moral difference? How can hypothetical worlds be moral agents? They're worlds. We wouldn't say rocks are moral or immoral. They're just rocks.
Why is it good to build bridges which don't fall down?
It isn't. It's good to build bridges competently when tasked to build a bridge for the purposes of ferrying people across it safely. The first people who built bridges weren't being immoral just because they didn't have 21st century engineering know-how. Does that make their bridge-building less moral? No. It makes their bridge-building worse in the sense the word "worse" is used in the vernacular i.e. as not preferred with respect to something else.
Building bridges that "don't fall down" isn't a good action in itself. I could build tonnes of totally useless bridges in my backyard, which, even if mechanically stable, wouldn't be created from some moral impulse.
Probably because we know how to cure syphilis, because people want their syphilis to be cured, because we have the means to cure it on a global level, and because there's absolutely no conceivable reason not to cure syphilis. That doesn't mean all of our doctors are moral paragons compared to the rather primitive Hippocrates, though. It's not the properties of actions themselves that are moral/immoral, but the actions and the reasoning for the actions.
I mean, Harris thinks that there is an objective moral difference between world A and world B, such that:
A= our world.
B= a world in which everyone is always suffering all the time, no matter what.
He thinks that this difference (i.e. of our world being a better one) is a moral difference, rather than a value judgment or semantic distinction. But how could it be a moral difference? How can hypothetical worlds be moral agents? They're worlds. We wouldn't say rocks are moral or immoral. They're just rocks.
Did you just say that curing syphilis is good, but you can't make up your mind on whether our world is better than everyone always suffering?
On July 28 2013 03:52 radscorpion9 wrote: So I guess Sam Harris would be an example of a naturalistic moral realist? I seem to identify with both of their positions.
But my god this stuff is complex - I was just reading your links and suddenly I felt like I was reading my math paper on analytic functions
Before you get too comfortable in identifying with Sam Harris' work in ethics, have a look at this link.. At the bottom are more links to a variety of critiques of Harris. Suffice it to say, I don't find his ideas very appealing.
In his new book (the one about lying) Harris says, in effect, you should never, ever, do it — yet his pretense in The Moral Landscape to be revolutionizing moral philosophy seems to me the very height of dishonesty. What he actually does in his book is plain old secular moral reasoning — and not very well — but he claims he’s using science to decide right from wrong. That Harris could be naive enough to think he’s really bridged the famous “is/ought” chasm seems incredible, and so I submit that he’s exaggerating* to sell books. Shame on him.
*A previous version of this post had the word “lying” here, but I was told that my rhetorical flourish might be interpreted as libel. I hope “exaggerating” is sufficiently safe. Now onward to my argument:
I’ll start by saying what the “is/ought” divide is, in case you haven’t heard of this before. It’s an old idea, tracing at least to David Hume, and its gist is that there is no way to reason from facts about the way the world is, to statements about the way the world should be. You can’t derive values from data. I’ll use one example to illustrate and then move on.
Example. It’s a fact that rape occurs in nature — among chimpanzees, for instance; and there are some evolutionary arguments to explain its existence in humans and non-humans alike. But this fact tells us exactly nothing about whether it’s OK to rape people. This is because “natural” doesn’t entail “right” (just as “unnatural” doesn’t necessarily mean wrong) — indeed, the correct answer is that it’s not OK, and this is a judgement we make at the interface of moral philosophy and common sense: it’s not an output of science.
You get the idea. The domain of science is to describe nature, and then to explain its descriptions in terms of deeper patterns or laws. Science cannot tell us how to live. It cannot tell us right and wrong. If a system of thought claims to be doing those things, it cannot be science. If a scientist tells you she has some statements about how you ought to behave, they cannot be scientific statements, and the lab-coat is no longer speaking as a scientist. Questions about “How should we live?” — for better or worse — fall outside the purview of “objective” science. We have to sort them out, messily, by ourselves.
Now: if there were a way to get from “is” to “ought” it would take a work of philosophical genius to lay it out, and Harris’ book is not a work of philosophical genius. I can summarize his argument in a few lines:
1. Morality is “all about” improving the well-being of conscious creatures.
2. Facts about the well-being of conscious creatures are accessible to science.
3. Therefore science can tell us what’s objectively “moral” — that is, it can tell us whether something increases, or decreases, the well-being of conscious creatures.
Here’s the problem. Premise (1) is a philosophical premise. It’s not a fact of science, it’s not a fact of nature, it’s not derivable from science, it’s not derivable from nature: it’s a value judgment. You might think this is a good premise; you might not – and even if you think it’s basically on track, there’s a lot of philosophical work to be done to spell it out. (Exhibit A – how do you define well-being in the first place, “scientifically” or otherwise?)
Have you read Harris' own work, or just this misrepresentation?
Harris is not addressing moral and ethics philosophically, and the is/ought-problem is a non sequitur as far as he's concerned. The Moral Landscape makes the rather trivial claim that medicine can be studied scientifically - despite health being ill defined, and that the desirability of good (whatever that might mean) health is impossible to prove. Just like these philosophical shortcomings don't prevent medicine [what sort of treatments help people recover from different conditions] from improving people's lives, Harris thinks a science of morality [what sorts of individual freedoms, government interferences and customs are conducive to people achieving personal well-being] is equally feasible.
I've read three of Harris' works, including The Moral Landscape, so let's get that out of the way. One of the issues I take with Harris' argument is nicely illustrated by the disparity present in your medicine comparison. That medicine need not address the nebulous nature of emblematic "good health" in practice does not carry over to a "science of morality" in a coherent manner, in part due to the essential difference in how the two go about "doing" their thing. When a doctor sees a patient and diagnoses a condition, the contours of the accompanying "good/bad health" operation are very streamlined: the context of a given medical scenario tends to supply all that one needs in order to make a prescriptive judgment: i.e. this hurts and I want it to not hurt, therefore fix me. In essence, the diagnosis is the definition of terms; you either want this sickness or you don't, and nebulous value statements with "good/bad" conundrums need not ever enter the picture.
On the other hand, any sort of "science of morality" necessarily includes a certain degree of "openness" in it's prescriptive practice. You said it yourself above, and rightfully so; a description of what a "science of morality" can do must either include something that resembles "personal well-being" or capitulate entirely to the idiosyncrasy of the scenario in question and this is the crux of the issue. Harris and his supporters seem hell bent on making it clear that he is not addressing ethics in a philosophical sense, and yet, the manner with which he illustrates his "science of morality" always returns to a fundamentally philosophical question or it loses meaning entirely in subservience to contextual pragmatics.
Medicine is not that straightforward at all. It involves a lot of difficult cases - does bodily health matter when the brain has flatlined? Is a small risk of serious side effects enough to justify, say vaccinating children? How do we weigh the benefits of longer expected life span against the immediate loss of vision when performing a bilateral enucleation? The context of many medical scenarios falls way short of supplying all that one needs in order to make a prescriptive judgement - say, what are the relative values of keeping your breasts and a lower risk of cancer ten years in the future? You could just as naively reduce questions of moral to I feel unfulfilled and I don't want to feel unfilfilled.
Harris argues that most people mostly agree on what good health entails - even if, for instance, people will disagree on the exact importance of having C-cup breasts, being able to reproduce, running a four-minute mile or living to see your hundredth birthday. Unless you want to get rid of modern medicine, it seems that this is a sufficient basis for an important science.
Similarly, Harris claims that the lack of consensus on what well-being might be and its importance does not prevent the science of morals from pulling its weight. In the first place, practitioners of arranged marriage do not, to my knowledge, argue that suffering is good, but that the practice ultimately pays off by making people's lives better. And at this point, if you can find any way of gauging well-being, not necessarily perfectly, but about as well as we can differentiate between good and bad health, you have opened the door for scientific inquiry.
Shiori pretty much took the words off my fingertips. The problem arises when it comes to validating "well-being" as the sole means of determining moral value; how are we to go about describing this without resorting to philosophy? Keep in mind that saying "defining well-being with rigor is not important" is in itself a philosophical statement that requires more than cursory comparisons with very different phenomena.
Edit: I realize I'm being rather circumspect, so I'll have revise some once I'm out of work
That problem immediately disappears when you realize that morality is not actually "ought-to" system. Morality is just an emergent property of human groups and it evolves and changes based on historical events and biological constraints. Ethical systems are just attempts to formalize this complex phenomenon. And well-being seems to be one of the things that allows us the closest approximation of the phenomenon. So defining well-being is not necessary to be able to say moral judgments. Moral judgments are like scientific statements in a sense. "Murder is wrong" , because it is. In the same way as Earth radius is X km, because it is. Moral judgments are observations, not truths. Of course the difference is in the fact that moral judgments are only semi-objective and change in time, whereas scientific ones are objective.
General discussions are really ok. But I feel like these mumbo jumbo philisophy shit have really no place in a gaming site. I mean I get when we want to discuss circumcision and euthanasia, but this? Metaethics? Are there no philosophy forum where you could discuss this more properly?
On July 28 2013 03:52 radscorpion9 wrote: So I guess Sam Harris would be an example of a naturalistic moral realist? I seem to identify with both of their positions.
But my god this stuff is complex - I was just reading your links and suddenly I felt like I was reading my math paper on analytic functions
Before you get too comfortable in identifying with Sam Harris' work in ethics, have a look at this link.. At the bottom are more links to a variety of critiques of Harris. Suffice it to say, I don't find his ideas very appealing.
In his new book (the one about lying) Harris says, in effect, you should never, ever, do it — yet his pretense in The Moral Landscape to be revolutionizing moral philosophy seems to me the very height of dishonesty. What he actually does in his book is plain old secular moral reasoning — and not very well — but he claims he’s using science to decide right from wrong. That Harris could be naive enough to think he’s really bridged the famous “is/ought” chasm seems incredible, and so I submit that he’s exaggerating* to sell books. Shame on him.
*A previous version of this post had the word “lying” here, but I was told that my rhetorical flourish might be interpreted as libel. I hope “exaggerating” is sufficiently safe. Now onward to my argument:
I’ll start by saying what the “is/ought” divide is, in case you haven’t heard of this before. It’s an old idea, tracing at least to David Hume, and its gist is that there is no way to reason from facts about the way the world is, to statements about the way the world should be. You can’t derive values from data. I’ll use one example to illustrate and then move on.
Example. It’s a fact that rape occurs in nature — among chimpanzees, for instance; and there are some evolutionary arguments to explain its existence in humans and non-humans alike. But this fact tells us exactly nothing about whether it’s OK to rape people. This is because “natural” doesn’t entail “right” (just as “unnatural” doesn’t necessarily mean wrong) — indeed, the correct answer is that it’s not OK, and this is a judgement we make at the interface of moral philosophy and common sense: it’s not an output of science.
You get the idea. The domain of science is to describe nature, and then to explain its descriptions in terms of deeper patterns or laws. Science cannot tell us how to live. It cannot tell us right and wrong. If a system of thought claims to be doing those things, it cannot be science. If a scientist tells you she has some statements about how you ought to behave, they cannot be scientific statements, and the lab-coat is no longer speaking as a scientist. Questions about “How should we live?” — for better or worse — fall outside the purview of “objective” science. We have to sort them out, messily, by ourselves.
Now: if there were a way to get from “is” to “ought” it would take a work of philosophical genius to lay it out, and Harris’ book is not a work of philosophical genius. I can summarize his argument in a few lines:
1. Morality is “all about” improving the well-being of conscious creatures.
2. Facts about the well-being of conscious creatures are accessible to science.
3. Therefore science can tell us what’s objectively “moral” — that is, it can tell us whether something increases, or decreases, the well-being of conscious creatures.
Here’s the problem. Premise (1) is a philosophical premise. It’s not a fact of science, it’s not a fact of nature, it’s not derivable from science, it’s not derivable from nature: it’s a value judgment. You might think this is a good premise; you might not – and even if you think it’s basically on track, there’s a lot of philosophical work to be done to spell it out. (Exhibit A – how do you define well-being in the first place, “scientifically” or otherwise?)
Have you read Harris' own work, or just this misrepresentation?
Harris is not addressing moral and ethics philosophically, and the is/ought-problem is a non sequitur as far as he's concerned. The Moral Landscape makes the rather trivial claim that medicine can be studied scientifically - despite health being ill defined, and that the desirability of good (whatever that might mean) health is impossible to prove. Just like these philosophical shortcomings don't prevent medicine [what sort of treatments help people recover from different conditions] from improving people's lives, Harris thinks a science of morality [what sorts of individual freedoms, government interferences and customs are conducive to people achieving personal well-being] is equally feasible.
I've read three of Harris' works, including The Moral Landscape, so let's get that out of the way. One of the issues I take with Harris' argument is nicely illustrated by the disparity present in your medicine comparison. That medicine need not address the nebulous nature of emblematic "good health" in practice does not carry over to a "science of morality" in a coherent manner, in part due to the essential difference in how the two go about "doing" their thing. When a doctor sees a patient and diagnoses a condition, the contours of the accompanying "good/bad health" operation are very streamlined: the context of a given medical scenario tends to supply all that one needs in order to make a prescriptive judgment: i.e. this hurts and I want it to not hurt, therefore fix me. In essence, the diagnosis is the definition of terms; you either want this sickness or you don't, and nebulous value statements with "good/bad" conundrums need not ever enter the picture.
On the other hand, any sort of "science of morality" necessarily includes a certain degree of "openness" in it's prescriptive practice. You said it yourself above, and rightfully so; a description of what a "science of morality" can do must either include something that resembles "personal well-being" or capitulate entirely to the idiosyncrasy of the scenario in question and this is the crux of the issue. Harris and his supporters seem hell bent on making it clear that he is not addressing ethics in a philosophical sense, and yet, the manner with which he illustrates his "science of morality" always returns to a fundamentally philosophical question or it loses meaning entirely in subservience to contextual pragmatics.
It seems you are missing the point and simplifying medicine to a point that it is something completely different from the actual thing.
Medicine is today (and always has been even if to lesser degree) far from the simplistic view you paint. Parts of medicine deal with very vaguely ("open" as you call it) scenarios. Mental illness alone easily destroy your whole argument. There is no "this hurt and I want to fix it" as many of the patients have no idea that there is something wrong and fight people that want to help them. Then you go into areas of medicine that deal with public health issues and again you run into all those things. There are plenty areas in medicine where the concept of "condition" is as vague as concept of well-being.
That is because medicine is deeply merged with ethics. They are not separate. Their relationship is different. We use ethics to find goals and medicine to satisfy those goals. But philosophical ethics is not necessary for that process to work well and medicine actually provides also feedback to the ethics area. It is not a one way street. In the same vein Harris' "science of morality" is supposed to provide solutions to goals that ethics provides us. And again that ethics does not have to be philosophical ethics for this to work. And also in this case it is not a one way street and this "science of morality" provides feedback to the ethical goal-creating area. The analogy between medicine and this is actually very good.
But, as you've just described, the areas of medicine that are most likely to fall into dispute are also the places medicine is most willing to ask philosophy/politics/ethics for help, an operation Harris suggests his "science of morality" need never undertake, which is precisely the problem. For example, the DSM revision process is oftentimes little more than an exercise in linguistic philosophy. Similarly, medicine falls short in solving the abortion debate on its own terms, and in turn it resorts to alternative "schools" in pursuit of a solution. In fact, the very issues in medicine you've described are some of the places any supposed "science of morality" most obviously falls short.
Medicine does not ask for help with the process, it solves issues that ethics provides, but it does not need ethics for its work. This "science of morality" also can work easily without ethics. It can produce statements like, "if you want to cause cause psychological anguish to your wife, the best way is ....", "if you want society to X do Y" ,... . Of course some of those statements are useless if we want to create nice society, but that is beside the point. We need ethics only to decide which of those prescriptions to use. And for that you do not need philosophical ethics, instinctual ones suffice. That is not to say the philosophical ethics are completely useless, they are just not necessary.
On July 28 2013 07:45 i_bE_free wrote: General discussions are really ok. But I feel like these mumbo jumbo philisophy shit have really no place in a gaming site. I mean I get when we want to discuss circumcision and euthanasia, but this? Metaethics? Are there no philosophy forum where you could discuss this more properly?
I think it´s more like people had a course about 1-2 semesters philosophy want to discuss with people that are just talking with their free "uneducated" mind while those first group is repeating the conclusions their profs made while trying to looking like a baws. That´s mostly true for all "*edit* -general" topics in TL.
On July 28 2013 07:45 i_bE_free wrote: General discussions are really ok. But I feel like these mumbo jumbo philisophy shit have really no place in a gaming site. I mean I get when we want to discuss circumcision and euthanasia, but this? Metaethics? Are there no philosophy forum where you could discuss this more properly?
If you feel this way, PM a mod, don't post in the thread.
Why is it good to build bridges which don't fall down?
It isn't. It's good to build bridges competently when tasked to build a bridge for the purposes of ferrying people across it safely. The first people who built bridges weren't being immoral just because they didn't have 21st century engineering know-how. Does that make their bridge-building less moral? No. It makes their bridge-building worse in the sense the word "worse" is used in the vernacular i.e. as not preferred with respect to something else.
Building bridges that "don't fall down" isn't a good action in itself. I could build tonnes of totally useless bridges in my backyard, which, even if mechanically stable, wouldn't be created from some moral impulse.
Probably because we know how to cure syphilis, because people want their syphilis to be cured, because we have the means to cure it on a global level, and because there's absolutely no conceivable reason not to cure syphilis. That doesn't mean all of our doctors are moral paragons compared to the rather primitive Hippocrates, though. It's not the properties of actions themselves that are moral/immoral, but the actions and the reasoning for the actions.
I mean, Harris thinks that there is an objective moral difference between world A and world B, such that:
A= our world.
B= a world in which everyone is always suffering all the time, no matter what.
He thinks that this difference (i.e. of our world being a better one) is a moral difference, rather than a value judgment or semantic distinction. But how could it be a moral difference? How can hypothetical worlds be moral agents? They're worlds. We wouldn't say rocks are moral or immoral. They're just rocks.
No, the moral difference is between two actions. We have world A (ours) and are at a decision point we can either reach world B where people suffer more or world C where people suffer less. The decision leading to B is moral and the one to C immoral.
EDIT: Just to make it clear. Medieval world was not more immoral, just more people did immoral actions than our current one (relative to population). So if I say medieval world is more immoral, it is just shortcut for the latter statement.
On July 28 2013 07:45 i_bE_free wrote: General discussions are really ok. But I feel like these mumbo jumbo philisophy shit have really no place in a gaming site. I mean I get when we want to discuss circumcision and euthanasia, but this? Metaethics? Are there no philosophy forum where you could discuss this more properly?
I think it´s more like people had a course about 1-2 semesters philosophy want to discuss with people that are just talking with their free "uneducated" mind while those first group is repeating the conclusions their profs made while trying to looking like a baws. That´s mostly true for all "*edit* -general" topics in TL.
Lol, that's so fucking true haha :D
I'd like to have some credentials requirement when one wants to make a thread like this one. More than "I took a master level 1-semester course on that shit" or "I read a bunch of wikipedia pages". At least a lot more references than 2-3 links and names of authors thrown in there.
Obviously, it's not that I don't trust you, but I have no way of knowing if it's actually worth reading this wall of text if I want to inform myself.
On July 28 2013 07:45 i_bE_free wrote: General discussions are really ok. But I feel like these mumbo jumbo philisophy shit have really no place in a gaming site. I mean I get when we want to discuss circumcision and euthanasia, but this? Metaethics? Are there no philosophy forum where you could discuss this more properly?
I think it´s more like people had a course about 1-2 semesters philosophy want to discuss with people that are just talking with their free "uneducated" mind while those first group is repeating the conclusions their profs made while trying to looking like a baws. That´s mostly true for all "*edit* -general" topics in TL.
Lol, that's so fucking true haha :D
I'd like to have some credentials requirement when one wants to make a thread like this one. More than "I took a master level 1-semester course on that shit" or "I read a bunch of wikipedia pages". At least a lot more references than 2-3 links and names of authors thrown in there.
Obviously, it's not that I don't trust you, but I have no way of knowing if it's actually worth reading this wall of text if I want to inform myself.
You understand that he is not writing an article, but starting a discussion on the internet. Plus this is philosophical discussion, what credentials are there ?
On July 28 2013 07:45 i_bE_free wrote: General discussions are really ok. But I feel like these mumbo jumbo philisophy shit have really no place in a gaming site. I mean I get when we want to discuss circumcision and euthanasia, but this? Metaethics? Are there no philosophy forum where you could discuss this more properly?
I think it´s more like people had a course about 1-2 semesters philosophy want to discuss with people that are just talking with their free "uneducated" mind while those first group is repeating the conclusions their profs made while trying to looking like a baws. That´s mostly true for all "*edit* -general" topics in TL.
Lol, that's so fucking true haha :D
I'd like to have some credentials requirement when one wants to make a thread like this one. More than "I took a master level 1-semester course on that shit" or "I read a bunch of wikipedia pages". At least a lot more references than 2-3 links and names of authors thrown in there.
Obviously, it's not that I don't trust you, but I have no way of knowing if it's actually worth reading this wall of text if I want to inform myself.
You understand that he is not writing an article, but starting a discussion on the internet. Plus this is philosophical discussion, what credentials are there ?
That's why I said to cite at least some more references (which is actually the common practice on TL for good General threads, I believe). There are some, so I'll just deal with it And you can have credentials about philosophy. I would more easily trust the overview of a PhD student in philosophy than that of a high schooler. But giving credentials is not the common practice on TL, and I won't be the one to change that, obviously.
Why is it good to build bridges which don't fall down?
It isn't. It's good to build bridges competently when tasked to build a bridge for the purposes of ferrying people across it safely. The first people who built bridges weren't being immoral just because they didn't have 21st century engineering know-how. Does that make their bridge-building less moral? No. It makes their bridge-building worse in the sense the word "worse" is used in the vernacular i.e. as not preferred with respect to something else.
Building bridges that "don't fall down" isn't a good action in itself. I could build tonnes of totally useless bridges in my backyard, which, even if mechanically stable, wouldn't be created from some moral impulse.
Why is it good to cure people who's got syphilis?
Probably because we know how to cure syphilis, because people want their syphilis to be cured, because we have the means to cure it on a global level, and because there's absolutely no conceivable reason not to cure syphilis. That doesn't mean all of our doctors are moral paragons compared to the rather primitive Hippocrates, though. It's not the properties of actions themselves that are moral/immoral, but the actions and the reasoning for the actions.
I mean, Harris thinks that there is an objective moral difference between world A and world B, such that:
A= our world.
B= a world in which everyone is always suffering all the time, no matter what.
He thinks that this difference (i.e. of our world being a better one) is a moral difference, rather than a value judgment or semantic distinction. But how could it be a moral difference? How can hypothetical worlds be moral agents? They're worlds. We wouldn't say rocks are moral or immoral. They're just rocks.
Did you just say that curing syphilis is good, but you can't make up your mind on whether our world is better than everyone always suffering?
"Curing syphilis" isn't good in itself; doctors doing their best to apply their medical knowledge to people who need/want it is good. Curing syphilis is just a fact about our level of scientific knowledge. It has no moral character whatsoever.
Our world is certainly something I'd prefer to one in which everyone is suffering, but nevertheless, that says relatively little about the moral character of anything, and it doesn't establish whether well-being is a suitable qualifier for morality.
On July 28 2013 07:45 i_bE_free wrote: General discussions are really ok. But I feel like these mumbo jumbo philisophy shit have really no place in a gaming site. I mean I get when we want to discuss circumcision and euthanasia, but this? Metaethics? Are there no philosophy forum where you could discuss this more properly?
I think it´s more like people had a course about 1-2 semesters philosophy want to discuss with people that are just talking with their free "uneducated" mind while those first group is repeating the conclusions their profs made while trying to looking like a baws. That´s mostly true for all "*edit* -general" topics in TL.
Lol, that's so fucking true haha :D
I'd like to have some credentials requirement when one wants to make a thread like this one. More than "I took a master level 1-semester course on that shit" or "I read a bunch of wikipedia pages". At least a lot more references than 2-3 links and names of authors thrown in there.
Obviously, it's not that I don't trust you, but I have no way of knowing if it's actually worth reading this wall of text if I want to inform myself.
You understand that he is not writing an article, but starting a discussion on the internet. Plus this is philosophical discussion, what credentials are there ?
That's why I said to cite at least some more references (which is actually the common practice on TL for good General threads, I believe). There are some, so I'll just deal with it And you can have credentials about philosophy. I would more easily trust the overview of a PhD student in philosophy than that of a high schooler. But giving credentials is not the common practice on TL, and I won't be the one to change that, obviously.
Are you complaining for your own sake in avoiding misinformation, are you complaining on the behalf of TL denizens too stupid to judge for themselves that a post is (probably with no malicious intent) deluding them?
On July 28 2013 07:45 i_bE_free wrote: General discussions are really ok. But I feel like these mumbo jumbo philisophy shit have really no place in a gaming site. I mean I get when we want to discuss circumcision and euthanasia, but this? Metaethics? Are there no philosophy forum where you could discuss this more properly?
I think it´s more like people had a course about 1-2 semesters philosophy want to discuss with people that are just talking with their free "uneducated" mind while those first group is repeating the conclusions their profs made while trying to looking like a baws. That´s mostly true for all "*edit* -general" topics in TL.
Lol, that's so fucking true haha :D
I'd like to have some credentials requirement when one wants to make a thread like this one. More than "I took a master level 1-semester course on that shit" or "I read a bunch of wikipedia pages". At least a lot more references than 2-3 links and names of authors thrown in there.
Obviously, it's not that I don't trust you, but I have no way of knowing if it's actually worth reading this wall of text if I want to inform myself.
You understand that he is not writing an article, but starting a discussion on the internet. Plus this is philosophical discussion, what credentials are there ?
That's why I said to cite at least some more references (which is actually the common practice on TL for good General threads, I believe). There are some, so I'll just deal with it And you can have credentials about philosophy. I would more easily trust the overview of a PhD student in philosophy than that of a high schooler. But giving credentials is not the common practice on TL, and I won't be the one to change that, obviously.
There are good TLers who open threads with good bit of information and argue properly. Other just circlejerk and muddle the issue with their freshman level philosophy.
On July 28 2013 06:47 Rassy wrote: nadafanboy42 Netherlands. July 28 2013 06:24. Posts 188
Nice post, specially the part where you describe ethics as making choises and i think i have a somewhat similar opinnion. Voted for expressivism in the poll though the later mentioned moral nihilism would probably fit me better. I dont think there are objectivly "good" and "bad" things you can do. We not only can not know them, objectivly good and bad things dont exist at all and for me it is all subjective. The only universal moral i can think of is to do that what raises the entropy the least. High entropy is bad, low entropy is a little bit less bad. (by my personal choise)
Dont have much more to add,though i would like one of the moral realists to provide at least one ethical truth. They claim that they exist and that it is possible for humans to know at least some of them, and i am realy curious wich ones they have found so far.
(bold) This is my starting point for any conceivable moral code I might endorse, but it has so many problems itself. How can know the effects of one's actions specifically for this rubric. What calculus do you use to know whether you should kill X stars to stop the fires but keep N-X alive to fuel humanity to continue the work of managing and forestalling the universe's heat death. Is this even really a good or fulfilling plan anyway? In the event of inescapable heat death, wouldn't a better aim be to produce as much variety as possible in an envelope of thermodynamic possibilities? Not to mention, how much certainty is required to enact this sort of plan? What if heat death is not the ultimate fate, due to net energy flux? (What is dark energy?)
Nevertheless this line of thought it still the most (the only?) ascertainable moral pursuit for me that escapes petty subjectivity.
I suppose this standpoint is a sort of declaration that emotional needs should not be confused with moral issues. Which is an amusing crabwise denial of expressivism.
I'm not going to say you two are wrong to have your position, but I just want to say that as far as my position, the crux is that I completely reject the description of "petty subjectivity". The key problem with that in my opinion is that it's people starting from a position of believing in objectivity, then after studying the concept deciding that it does not exist, and then keeping their exact same world view based upon objectivity existing, but just adding the lack of objectivity and thus conclude that existence is meaningless. When the proper response in my opinion is to go back to the first assumption, correct it, and then rebuild a new world view from the ground up accounting for the lack of objectivity.
Subjectivity is the centre of our existence, it is the beginning and end point of all knowledge. When I say morality is a choice, that does not mean it is a meaningless choice, in fact when I say so morality becomes even more important and meaningful than if it was objective. To say "Murder is wrong" and "Murder isn't wrong" is not a choice between two equal positions of equal worth. It is a choice between two radically different positions with radically different consequences. It is a choice that is incredibly important to the person making it, and the people around them. My point was that if someone says "I think murder isn't wrong" I don't think you can say "no that is objectively false and I can prove it", but if you continue that understanding you realise that the only response is: "fine, if that is your choice I can't stop you from choosing. But I've decided that murder is wrong and if you try to commit one I will stop you".
On July 28 2013 07:45 i_bE_free wrote: General discussions are really ok. But I feel like these mumbo jumbo philisophy shit have really no place in a gaming site. I mean I get when we want to discuss circumcision and euthanasia, but this? Metaethics? Are there no philosophy forum where you could discuss this more properly?
I think it´s more like people had a course about 1-2 semesters philosophy want to discuss with people that are just talking with their free "uneducated" mind while those first group is repeating the conclusions their profs made while trying to looking like a baws. That´s mostly true for all "*edit* -general" topics in TL.
Lol, that's so fucking true haha :D
I'd like to have some credentials requirement when one wants to make a thread like this one. More than "I took a master level 1-semester course on that shit" or "I read a bunch of wikipedia pages". At least a lot more references than 2-3 links and names of authors thrown in there.
Obviously, it's not that I don't trust you, but I have no way of knowing if it's actually worth reading this wall of text if I want to inform myself.
You understand that he is not writing an article, but starting a discussion on the internet. Plus this is philosophical discussion, what credentials are there ?
That's why I said to cite at least some more references (which is actually the common practice on TL for good General threads, I believe). There are some, so I'll just deal with it And you can have credentials about philosophy. I would more easily trust the overview of a PhD student in philosophy than that of a high schooler. But giving credentials is not the common practice on TL, and I won't be the one to change that, obviously.
Now I see the difference in our viewpoint, I did not take OP as some overview. If you see it like that (which it might have been meant to) then I agree.
On July 28 2013 03:13 WhiteDog wrote: I'm a relativist. I don't really understand all the error theory thing.
That it cause problem philosophically doesn't mean much to me, as I come from a sociological background. From a sociological point of view, the theorical talk doesn't mean much. What we can do on the other side, is see that 1) most ethical behavior or positions are historic, which means that they are not natural ; 2) most individuals have value, moral, taste and judgement that are heavily linked (if not entirely determined by) with their social origin (different social class have different value to be quick).
Well, apparently theoretical talk means something to you when that theory happens to be relativism :p
More seriously, every metaethical theory will have to come to terms with facts about the historical and cross-cultural differences in ethical beliefs that you discuss in (1) and (2). They will just disagree on what these facts say about metaethics. (As a sidenote, I think you're misreading my use of 'natural'. Think of 'natural' as non-supernatural. Cultures are every bit as natural as rocks on my use).
To have a more productive dialogue, I'd think I'd have to know how your relativist views play out philosophically. For instance, what do you think is the meaning and truth conditions of a sentence such 'Murder is wrong'? (Obviously you don't have to be completely precise here.
Because, from my point of view, relativism was historically a way to fight the ethnocentrism of the observant for anthropologues, defended by Bronislaw Manilowski. It's not entirelly a theorical talk, as it is a practice as much as a concept.
I was hoping to avoid this issue for a little bit in the thread, but I guess I'll discuss it now. Yes, a doctrine given the name "relativism" has frequently been invoked as a weapon against imperialism, especially in social science departments. However, to be blunt, this has never made even the slightest amount of sense.
There is no relativist argument for tolerance.
My thoughts on this aren't original. They've been published by hundred of philosophers before and you can find them advanced in hundreds of intro philosophy classes at assorted universities. The problem is simply that if what culture you're in determines what is right, then there is no ground from which you can criticize the imperialistic practices of your own culture. It doesn't matter if what the other culture is doing is also right for them, because what's right for them has nothing to do with what's right for you according to relativism. Relativism would be the best news ever for would-be imperialists.
Let us at this stage of the argument about subjectivism take a brief rest and look round a special view or assemblage of views which has been built on the site of moral disagreements between societies. This is relativism, the anthropologists' heresy, possibly the most absurd view to have been advanced in moral philosophy. In its vulgar and unregenerate form (which I shall consider, since it is both the most distinctive and the most influential form) it consists of three propositions: that 'right' means (can only be coherently understood as meaning) 'right for a given society' ; that 'right for a given society' is to be understood in a functionalist sense ; and that (therefore) it is wrong for people in one society to condemn, interfere with, etc., the values of another society. A view with a long history, it was popular with some liberal colonialists, notably British administrators in places (such as West Africa) in which white men held no land. In that historical role, it may have had, like some other muddled doctrines, a beneficent influence, though modern African nationalism may well deplore its tribalist and conservative implications.
Whatever its results, the view is clearly inconsistent, since it makes a claim in its third proposition, about what is right and wrong in one's dealings with other societies, which uses a nonrelative sense of 'right' not allowed for in the first proposition. The claim that human sacrifice, for instance, was 'right for' the Ashanti comes to be taken as saying that human sacrifice was right among the Ashanti, and this in turn as saying that human sacrifice among the Ashanti was right; i.e., we have no business interfering with it. But this last is certainly not the sort of claim allowed by the theory. The most the theory can allow is the claim that it is right for (i.e., functionally valuable for) our socieity not to interfere with Ashanti society, and, first, this is certainly not all that was meant, and, second, is very dubiously true.
From the chapter "Interlude Relativism", worth reading in full.
People who call themselves relativists because of arguments like this are really absolutists. They believe in an absolute principle of non-interference in other cultures no matter what your culture thinks about interference (and the individual that disagrees with their culture's ethics are out of luck).
Also, when I read natural, I instantly oppose it to cultural so I might have misunderstood indeed.
As for your question "Murder is wrong", again from a sociological point of view, every assertions are always linked to a context, historical and sociological : "Murder is wrong in today's society", "Murder is not wrong in war", "It is not wrong to murder a slave when you are a noble in the medieval age in France", etc.
This doesn't answer my question about meaning and truth conditions as fully as I'd hoped.
As I said, it was a question of practice and not a question of right or wrong. Back when Anthropology arise, most anthropologues were evolutionnists. But, what is important, is not that those anthropologues thought that each societies followed the same rail, it is more that they thought that they could understand a society using their own history or culture.
For exemple, they had, in their own society, a certain view of "what is a woman", and considered the society they were studying through the same logic, which is obviously wrong because "woman" does not mean the same in every society (as someone like Margaret Mead showed). Malinowski used "relativism" not to give an explanation on what is right or wrong, but as a way for anthropologue to see a society : they had to accept everything, not take any moral judgement on what they were seeing, and try to actually study the reality that they were facing building their own concept. As I said, it's practical.
that 'right' means (can only be coherently understood as meaning) 'right for a given society' (1); that 'right for a given society' is to be understood in a functionalist sense (2); and that (therefore) it is wrong for people in one society to condemn, interfere with, etc., the values of another society (3)
1 is true from a relativist point of view. 2 is completly false. Social science have gone away from functionalism since 60 years (T. Parsons). Nobody consider that what is "right" for a given society has a function within this society, but that it is right because it is right, and there are cultural, historical and social reason that can explain why this is considered as right and not that. Hence 3 is also false. We can critic, and progress, in moral as in science, but from a relativist point of view, we have to consider that defining what is right or wrong is a choice - political, in practice, etc. - that crystalize itself throughout history, in institutions, culture, etc., and not something that is given by the "above" (whether that be god, our gene, or our "human condition").
A view with a long history, it was popular with some liberal colonialists, notably British administrators in places (such as West Africa) in which white men held no land. In that historical role, it may have had, like some other muddled doctrines, a beneficent influence, though modern African nationalism may well deplore its tribalist and conservative implications.
Interesting use of history. Completly true, but if you look at the other type of colonialism (mainly France) that had a more activ way of colonizating countries (on the idea that France represented what is "right"), the result is not really better (in fact, it was worse). I'm not sure where the author wants to go there. It seems like, from the quote you made, the author seems to refute "relativism" on moral grounds rather than logic.
On July 28 2013 07:45 i_bE_free wrote: General discussions are really ok. But I feel like these mumbo jumbo philisophy shit have really no place in a gaming site. I mean I get when we want to discuss circumcision and euthanasia, but this? Metaethics? Are there no philosophy forum where you could discuss this more properly?
I think it´s more like people had a course about 1-2 semesters philosophy want to discuss with people that are just talking with their free "uneducated" mind while those first group is repeating the conclusions their profs made while trying to looking like a baws. That´s mostly true for all "*edit* -general" topics in TL.
Lol, that's so fucking true haha :D
I'd like to have some credentials requirement when one wants to make a thread like this one. More than "I took a master level 1-semester course on that shit" or "I read a bunch of wikipedia pages". At least a lot more references than 2-3 links and names of authors thrown in there.
Obviously, it's not that I don't trust you, but I have no way of knowing if it's actually worth reading this wall of text if I want to inform myself.
You understand that he is not writing an article, but starting a discussion on the internet. Plus this is philosophical discussion, what credentials are there ?
That's why I said to cite at least some more references (which is actually the common practice on TL for good General threads, I believe). There are some, so I'll just deal with it And you can have credentials about philosophy. I would more easily trust the overview of a PhD student in philosophy than that of a high schooler. But giving credentials is not the common practice on TL, and I won't be the one to change that, obviously.
Now I see the difference in our viewpoint, I did not take OP as some overview. If you see it like that (which it might have been meant to) then I agree.
This thread is intended to give a primer on the most influential theories in contemporary analytic metaethics while also providing a place to discuss and debate disagreements and to voice opinions.
Quite the ambitious statement, to be frank. I know nothing about metaethics (which I don't think I should be ashamed of), but if I wanted to start somewhere, I'd like what I read to come from a reliable source or cite reliable sources, even if it's just an introduction. Obviously as others said, there are "good TLers" who just want to make good threads and are knowledgeable enough, so I'm kinda complaining in the air, but it's not that obvious that I can read this OP (we do read OPs, right? :D) and take it at face value.
Okay, sorry about that, I'll stop derailing this thread and let you talk about metaethics to your heart's content, guys :D There are a lot of threads that just give infos without citing sources, and I don't complain usually, but for once this thread seemed really interesting to me, that's why I made the remark that there could be more sources :D
On July 28 2013 07:45 i_bE_free wrote: General discussions are really ok. But I feel like these mumbo jumbo philisophy shit have really no place in a gaming site. I mean I get when we want to discuss circumcision and euthanasia, but this? Metaethics? Are there no philosophy forum where you could discuss this more properly?
I think it´s more like people had a course about 1-2 semesters philosophy want to discuss with people that are just talking with their free "uneducated" mind while those first group is repeating the conclusions their profs made while trying to looking like a baws. That´s mostly true for all "*edit* -general" topics in TL.
Lol, that's so fucking true haha :D
I'd like to have some credentials requirement when one wants to make a thread like this one. More than "I took a master level 1-semester course on that shit" or "I read a bunch of wikipedia pages". At least a lot more references than 2-3 links and names of authors thrown in there.
Obviously, it's not that I don't trust you, but I have no way of knowing if it's actually worth reading this wall of text if I want to inform myself.
You understand that he is not writing an article, but starting a discussion on the internet. Plus this is philosophical discussion, what credentials are there ?
That's why I said to cite at least some more references (which is actually the common practice on TL for good General threads, I believe). There are some, so I'll just deal with it And you can have credentials about philosophy. I would more easily trust the overview of a PhD student in philosophy than that of a high schooler. But giving credentials is not the common practice on TL, and I won't be the one to change that, obviously.
Now I see the difference in our viewpoint, I did not take OP as some overview. If you see it like that (which it might have been meant to) then I agree.
This thread is intended to give a primer on the most influential theories in contemporary analytic metaethics while also providing a place to discuss and debate disagreements and to voice opinions.
Quite the ambitious statement, to be frank. I know nothing about metaethics (which I don't think I should be ashamed of), but if I wanted to start somewhere, I'd like what I read to come from a reliable source or cite reliable sources, even if it's just an introduction. Obviously as others said, there are "good TLers" who just want to make good threads and are knowledgeable enough, so I'm kinda complaining in the air, but it's not that obvious that I can read this OP (we do read OPs, right? :D) and take it at face value.
Okay, sorry about that, I'll stop derailing this thread and let you talk about metaethics to your heart's content, guys :D There are a lot of threads that just give infos without citing sources, and I don't complain usually, but for once this thread seemed really interesting to me, that's why I made the remark that there could be more sources :D
The OP is going into the third year of his philosophy PhD.
I know he put a lot of work into this post, and it would have taken even longer to cite papers/books for every area. I think it would be better for people to ask for recommended readings if there is a particular area they are interested in reading more about. And if frog's feeling up to it maybe he can add some of those sources to the OP as the discussion in the thread moves along. Other people have been posting articles throughout the thread, too.
If you're looking for a primer with a bibliography, here's one in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. There are also links at the bottom to related entries or you can search the site for topics or philosophers you want to read more about.
realist (naturalist) but i think the difference with expressivism is not so much one of fact with respect to moral statements, but a performative/attitude thing wtih the moral agent
On July 28 2013 06:47 Rassy wrote: nadafanboy42 Netherlands. July 28 2013 06:24. Posts 188
Nice post, specially the part where you describe ethics as making choises and i think i have a somewhat similar opinnion. Voted for expressivism in the poll though the later mentioned moral nihilism would probably fit me better. I dont think there are objectivly "good" and "bad" things you can do. We not only can not know them, objectivly good and bad things dont exist at all and for me it is all subjective. The only universal moral i can think of is to do that what raises the entropy the least. High entropy is bad, low entropy is a little bit less bad. (by my personal choise)
Dont have much more to add,though i would like one of the moral realists to provide at least one ethical truth. They claim that they exist and that it is possible for humans to know at least some of them, and i am realy curious wich ones they have found so far.
(bold) This is my starting point for any conceivable moral code I might endorse, but it has so many problems itself. How can know the effects of one's actions specifically for this rubric. What calculus do you use to know whether you should kill X stars to stop the fires but keep N-X alive to fuel humanity to continue the work of managing and forestalling the universe's heat death. Is this even really a good or fulfilling plan anyway? In the event of inescapable heat death, wouldn't a better aim be to produce as much variety as possible in an envelope of thermodynamic possibilities? Not to mention, how much certainty is required to enact this sort of plan? What if heat death is not the ultimate fate, due to net energy flux? (What is dark energy?)
Nevertheless this line of thought it still the most (the only?) ascertainable moral pursuit for me that escapes petty subjectivity.
I suppose this standpoint is a sort of declaration that emotional needs should not be confused with moral issues. Which is an amusing crabwise denial of expressivism.
I'm not going to say you two are wrong to have your position, but I just want to say that as far as my position, the crux is that I completely reject the description of "petty subjectivity". The key problem with that in my opinion is that it's people starting from a position of believing in objectivity, then after studying the concept deciding that it does not exist, and then keeping their exact same world view based upon objectivity existing, but just adding the lack of objectivity and thus conclude that existence is meaningless. When the proper response in my opinion is to go back to the first assumption, correct it, and then rebuild a new world view from the ground up accounting for the lack of objectivity.
Subjectivity is the centre of our existence, it is the beginning and end point of all knowledge. When I say morality is a choice, that does not mean it is a meaningless choice, in fact when I say so morality becomes even more important and meaningful than if it was objective. To say "Murder is wrong" and "Murder isn't wrong" is not a choice between two equal positions of equal worth. It is a choice between two radically different positions with radically different consequences. It is a choice that is incredibly important to the person making it, and the people around them. My point was that if someone says "I think murder isn't wrong" I don't think you can say "no that is objectively false and I can prove it", but if you continue that understanding you realise that the only response is: "fine, if that is your choice I can't stop you from choosing. But I've decided that murder is wrong and if you try to commit one I will stop you".
I think I was in my way trying to respect the place of subjectivity by making a distinction for the "petty" kind that excuses individual differences indefinitely. But that wasn't very clear at all.
On July 28 2013 03:13 WhiteDog wrote: I'm a relativist. I don't really understand all the error theory thing.
That it cause problem philosophically doesn't mean much to me, as I come from a sociological background. From a sociological point of view, the theorical talk doesn't mean much. What we can do on the other side, is see that 1) most ethical behavior or positions are historic, which means that they are not natural ; 2) most individuals have value, moral, taste and judgement that are heavily linked (if not entirely determined by) with their social origin (different social class have different value to be quick).
Well, apparently theoretical talk means something to you when that theory happens to be relativism :p
More seriously, every metaethical theory will have to come to terms with facts about the historical and cross-cultural differences in ethical beliefs that you discuss in (1) and (2). They will just disagree on what these facts say about metaethics. (As a sidenote, I think you're misreading my use of 'natural'. Think of 'natural' as non-supernatural. Cultures are every bit as natural as rocks on my use).
To have a more productive dialogue, I'd think I'd have to know how your relativist views play out philosophically. For instance, what do you think is the meaning and truth conditions of a sentence such 'Murder is wrong'? (Obviously you don't have to be completely precise here.
Because, from my point of view, relativism was historically a way to fight the ethnocentrism of the observant for anthropologues, defended by Bronislaw Manilowski. It's not entirelly a theorical talk, as it is a practice as much as a concept.
I was hoping to avoid this issue for a little bit in the thread, but I guess I'll discuss it now. Yes, a doctrine given the name "relativism" has frequently been invoked as a weapon against imperialism, especially in social science departments. However, to be blunt, this has never made even the slightest amount of sense.
There is no relativist argument for tolerance.
My thoughts on this aren't original. They've been published by hundred of philosophers before and you can find them advanced in hundreds of intro philosophy classes at assorted universities. The problem is simply that if what culture you're in determines what is right, then there is no ground from which you can criticize the imperialistic practices of your own culture. It doesn't matter if what the other culture is doing is also right for them, because what's right for them has nothing to do with what's right for you according to relativism. Relativism would be the best news ever for would-be imperialists.
I'll quote Bernard Williams:
Let us at this stage of the argument about subjectivism take a brief rest and look round a special view or assemblage of views which has been built on the site of moral disagreements between societies. This is relativism, the anthropologists' heresy, possibly the most absurd view to have been advanced in moral philosophy. In its vulgar and unregenerate form (which I shall consider, since it is both the most distinctive and the most influential form) it consists of three propositions: that 'right' means (can only be coherently understood as meaning) 'right for a given society' ; that 'right for a given society' is to be understood in a functionalist sense ; and that (therefore) it is wrong for people in one society to condemn, interfere with, etc., the values of another society. A view with a long history, it was popular with some liberal colonialists, notably British administrators in places (such as West Africa) in which white men held no land. In that historical role, it may have had, like some other muddled doctrines, a beneficent influence, though modern African nationalism may well deplore its tribalist and conservative implications.
Whatever its results, the view is clearly inconsistent, since it makes a claim in its third proposition, about what is right and wrong in one's dealings with other societies, which uses a nonrelative sense of 'right' not allowed for in the first proposition. The claim that human sacrifice, for instance, was 'right for' the Ashanti comes to be taken as saying that human sacrifice was right among the Ashanti, and this in turn as saying that human sacrifice among the Ashanti was right; i.e., we have no business interfering with it. But this last is certainly not the sort of claim allowed by the theory. The most the theory can allow is the claim that it is right for (i.e., functionally valuable for) our socieity not to interfere with Ashanti society, and, first, this is certainly not all that was meant, and, second, is very dubiously true.
From the chapter "Interlude Relativism", worth reading in full.
People who call themselves relativists because of arguments like this are really absolutists. They believe in an absolute principle of non-interference in other cultures no matter what your culture thinks about interference (and the individual that disagrees with their culture's ethics are out of luck).
Also, when I read natural, I instantly oppose it to cultural so I might have misunderstood indeed.
As for your question "Murder is wrong", again from a sociological point of view, every assertions are always linked to a context, historical and sociological : "Murder is wrong in today's society", "Murder is not wrong in war", "It is not wrong to murder a slave when you are a noble in the medieval age in France", etc.
This doesn't answer my question about meaning and truth conditions as fully as I'd hoped.
As I said, it was a question of practice and not a question of right or wrong. Back when Anthropology arise, most anthropologues were evolutionnists. But, what is important, is not that those anthropologues thought that each societies followed the same rail, it is more that they thought that they could understand a society using their own history or culture.
For exemple, they had, in their own society, a certain view of "what is a woman", and considered the society they were studying through the same logic, which is obviously wrong because "woman" does not mean the same in every society (as someone like Margaret Mead showed). Malinowski used "relativism" not to give an explanation on what is right or wrong, but as a way for anthropologue to see a society : they had to accept everything, not take any moral judgement on what they were seeing, and try to actually study the reality that they were facing building their own concept. As I said, it's practical.
that 'right' means (can only be coherently understood as meaning) 'right for a given society' (1); that 'right for a given society' is to be understood in a functionalist sense (2); and that (therefore) it is wrong for people in one society to condemn, interfere with, etc., the values of another society (3)
1 is true from a relativist point of view. 2 is completly false. Social science have gone away from functionalism since 60 years (T. Parsons). Nobody consider that what is "right" for a given society has a function within this society, but that it is right because it is right, and there are cultural, historical and social reason that can explain why this is considered as right and not that. Hence 3 is also false. We can critic, and progress, in moral as in science, but from a relativist point of view, we have to consider that defining what is right or wrong is a choice - political, in practice, etc. - that crystalize itself throughout history, in institutions, culture, etc., and not something that is given by the "above" (whether that be god, our gene, or our "human condition").
A view with a long history, it was popular with some liberal colonialists, notably British administrators in places (such as West Africa) in which white men held no land. In that historical role, it may have had, like some other muddled doctrines, a beneficent influence, though modern African nationalism may well deplore its tribalist and conservative implications.
Interesting use of history. Completly true, but if you look at the other type of colonialism (mainly France) that had a more activ way of colonizating countries (on the idea that France represented what is "right"), the result is not really better (in fact, it was worse). I'm not sure where the author wants to go there. It seems like, from the quote you made, the author seems to refute "relativism" on moral grounds rather than logic.
We still seem to be talking at cross purposes here. You're citing a number of things that I for the most part accept about the varieties and sources of ethical beliefs. You also discuss (as does Williams) the role that a set of views described as "relativism" has had in rhetoric concerning our treatment of other people. I have no problem with that stuff, but it doesn't really speak to what I was saying.
My point, and Williams' point, is just that whether or not we should tolerate other practices or engage in imperialism or ethnocentrism has very little to do with relativism. There isn't any plausible argument on the basis of relativism (as a philosophical thesis about what determines goodness) to any conclusions about how we should treat others with different ethical beliefs. If anything, forms of absolutism can come out more tolerant than relativism on these issues, since they can include culture-independent principles of non-interference or judgment.
I understand that you find these philosophical points less interesting than the historical/sociological points you discuss, but I think it's very important to keep the differences in mind when discussing relativism.
There have been a number of long, appreciated posts that are sort of halfway between general statements about the poster's viewpoint and statements directed at me (and also some less appreciated posts confusingly insulting my character and the existence of this thread). I won't be able to respond to all of these but I hope I end up addressing the most specific questions people have for me.
On July 28 2013 06:27 EatThePath wrote: Wow this thread might actually raise the bar at TL. Nice work. I found the content in the OP very informatively put but I didn't get much of anything new from it. What I mean to say is, I guess I'm disappointed to learn the state of things because I expected there was a bit more going on in fundamental disagreements and not twiddling with details in order to shore up or undermine the dykes. I don't really see any kind of technical work (like footnote 10) illuminating "ought" any better.
I can sort of see what you're saying here. To be fair, the dispute between the non-naturalists and everyone else is pretty clearly a fundamental one, but if you reject their position out of hand then it's easy to see the remaining views as fiddling about details. If you are committed to a broadly naturalistic picture (and, yes, this is super vague), then I don't think you're going to find disputes about ethics at a much deeper or sexier level than the types of disputes you find here. But I'm all ears if you have suggestions to the contrary.
I voted Error Theory in the poll because I am skeptical of categorical imperatives, but I'm also skeptical of other things so there may be a better label but I am lacking the education to be aware of it. The suggestion that GGTemplar should go with "agnostic" is interesting because it seems like you can make a strong case that the burden of proof is on realists, so agnosticism is some kind of hopeful mystical undecided category where you don't want to stick with skepticism and give them the benefit of the doubt. Fair, sure, but a curious reluctance of commitment when you are in doubt of any of the three theses the OP deals with.
I'm inclined to disagree on the burden issue. Sure, theists for instance have the burden of proof in theological debates because they are advancing a view which posits the existence of a unique unobserved object. But, at least for the naturalistic realists, this is not the case. They do not posit any new objects or properties, just the same old ones you already believe in but organized in a complicated way at a higher level (much like countries are just complicated organizations of natural objects you already believe in). So, to get the burden onto the anti-realists, I don't think they need very much more than the fact that people talk as though realism were true.
Briefly, what I'm saying is based on a charity assumption in semantics combined with the thesis that there are possible referents for moral terms that would make much of the discourse true if those possible referents turned out to be the actual ones.
edit: @nadafanboy, sorry but I'm sort of at a loss for insightful things to respond with or labelings of your view that I feel confident with.
What an interesting OP. I liked hearing the modern terms for stances that most people here can easily reject or accept, in whole or in part. I'm still getting around to reading more moral philosophers to get a grasp of the evidence, arguments, and historical origins of the field. My interests lean towards the political philosophers and legal philosophers because I argue for big changes in governance.
However, it's just so fascinating to see FGM in the context of a moral realism (and I'd be accurately described as a non-naturalistic moral realist). Can certain traditions be moderately or extremely painful, but not ethically wrong? When does culture do a moral disservice to children (indoctrination), and when is it just teaching of a non-scientific kind? Is that even a knowable ethical truth? I enjoy thinking and writing about those questions.
I watched a video on moral tradition and group selection (prior biologist and philosopher) arguing that he cannot rationally discuss the merits of some traditions (The Why), but admit the results are greatly beneficial for a society (As a discipline on our instincts). He proposed the only truth in tradition is experimentation (laying aside the ethical truths we can know, and focusing on those we don't or perhaps can't know): those groups having some moral philosophies un-evaluatable are an experiment, and within that allowing some to experiment with particular items. One can watch the success of some groups (or subgroups) gained from making that moral change. In essence, deciding by selection where no "rational" decision can really be made. Of course, that success can itself be evaluated and takes us farther and farther away i.e. widespread poverty, disease, lawlessness, and lack of opportunity.
Edit: Video was from an agnostic that questioned his views on religious traditions, but not on religion itself.
huh. To me, not understanding too much of the OP, the most interesting part of this thread is the langauge people are using. Like, people needlessly use overly roundabout sentence structures that they wouldn't normally use. Not to pick on anyone in particular but
sorry but I'm sort of at a loss for insightful things to respond with or labelings of your view that I feel confident with.
Wouldn't this sentence be better as
I'm not sure what i'd label you. sorry can't help.
I realize this is a philosophy thread, but I feel like many things that people are saying here can be expressed in much simpler ways without losing any value. This is just an observation that i thought was interesting. My main point is:
I think the OP doesn't do a very good job of giving "a primer on the most influential theories in contemporary analytic metaethics" - the definitions used and the way he presents them are very meta, and not easily accessible to an outside audience. They might be perfectly serviceable to anyone that already knows all the jargon, but convoluted and obtuse for their intended audience.
I'm fine with the thread being exclusive, but it seems to be set up to be inclusive and could do with many improvements on that front. Even some wikipedia links would be useful.
I'm inclined to disagree on the burden issue. Sure, theists for instance have the burden of proof in theological debates because they are advancing a view which posits the existence of a unique unobserved object. But, at least for the naturalistic realists, this is not the case. They do not posit any new objects or properties, just the same old ones you already believe in but organized in a complicated way at a higher level (much like countries are just complicated organizations of natural objects you already believe in). So, to get the burden onto the anti-realists, I don't think they need very much more than the fact that people talk as though realism were true.
In the bold part, are you alluding to shenanigans involving the transposition of set theory to morals and ethics? If so any reference for that?
As a layman thanks for the op. Made me want to watch Babylon 5 again Aren't you leaving out constructivism out of your list though? Relativism seems to fit better with constructivism, since contrary to error theory, it does not believe there is an universal, atemporal, objective, self consistent, albeit unknowable frame of reference. The way the frame is constructed is subjective and depends on circumstances, but is not purely expressivist either.
Another layman observation. For moral realists, what would be the truth value of "killing is wrong"? Would it be false, because it is not always true? Or would it be a nonsensical proposition? With "murder is wrong", the term is value-laden so saying that it is true is trivial. If it is nonsensical, is there any relevant question of interest to society that can be treated in a formal general way, without endless circumstantial clarifications?
On July 28 2013 15:33 harlock78 wrote: Another layman observation. For moral realists, what would be the truth value of "killing is wrong"? Would it be false, because it is not always true? Or would it be a nonsensical proposition? With "murder is wrong", the term is value-laden so saying that it is true is trivial. If it is nonsensical, is there any relevant question of interest to society that can be treated in a formal general way, without endless circumstantial clarifications?
The OP doesn't cover moral realism in any great detail because it is a gigantic area of enquiry. There are forms of moral realism which differ radically in terms of what makes a particular moral proposition true or false. For example, certain moral realists, called 'deontologists', would argue that 'murder is wrong' is true on any interpretation in virtue of some categorical imperative (in other words a moral law that must always be adhered to). Other moral realists argue that 'murder is wrong' is true only on particular interpretations. For instance, they might claim that the assassination of a totalitarian dictator demonstrates the falsity of the proposition 'murder is wrong'. This might be because the assassination of the totalitarian dictator brings about greater well-being for the population that is being dictated.
There seems to be quite some confusion because questions that are quite similar to those lined out in the OP can be raised in sociological and historical approaches to ethic and morals. This schools of thought have contributed enormously to our modern understanding of metaethics, and there is no argument here that the historical and social conditions are irrelevant to any ethical standpoint - quite the contrary, actually. However, to put it bluntly, the algorithms run by the computer you're reading this on don't become erroneous just because Alan Turing was gay.
We mustn't confuse an explanation of when and how a proposition was spoken (or written) with a disconfirmation of said proposition. It's a common fallacy: Nietzsche and Freud did it with their rebuttals of Christian morals, Marx did it when he rejected the 'ruling ethos' as 'ideas of the ruling classes'. However, there is no direct connection between the historical and sociological conditions of its upbringing and the logical and scientific validity of a statement. "Though shalt not kill." doesn't magically become bullshit when you realize that the Biblical history of creation reflects contemporary myths. "Human dignity" isn't an empty term because of our knowledge about the labor conditions of the 18th Century educational elite. Conversely, if there are good ethical reasons to reject slavery because it violates human dignity, then slavery is ethically wrong - and always has been, even if the realization of this truth may not have occured before the new-age.
In short, it does not make sense to evaluate the truth value of a proposition under specific timely conditions because logical evaluation does not depend on time. 1 and 1 is 2, not 1 and 1 becomes 2.
As the OP has explained, there are meaningful reasons to reject the notion of ethical statements having truth values; but none of these are historical or sociological. In other words, while history and sociology can contribute to our understanding of ethics - and even raise suspicion against certain ideas -, the impression that something is right or wrong just because of its history or social embeddedness is not a viable philosophical standpoint but rather a genetic fallacy.
I have a general question about moral realism, though I know it's too general, covering too wide an area, to get a full answer, but I've wanted to ask it for a while.
Upon re-reading I'm finding I'm asking many different questions but I think it can be summarised under "What definition of 'fact' (or 'truth') are moral realists using, and what are the implications of it?", and due to my choice of example, what I'm asking here affect naturalistic realism in particular. And of course, at the end of the day, these question may simply serve to be a critique of said theories and these questions are debatable as to their ability to be answered
Suppose we took Utilitarianism to be true. We now know that happiness is the ultimate intrinsic good, and should be maximised while pain is minimised. What does it mean to call this a 'fact' though? What does it mean to say this is the truth? Was it true before (and will it continue to be true after) there were things capable of being happy (and does it matter if these beings are intelligent enough formulate the concept of morality?). Or did it become a moral truth as beings with the capacity for happiness began concerning themselves with morality?
If it were always a moral truth of the world that happiness should be maximised, I don't see a way of getting out of the idea that some kind of God made it be so. I mean, perhaps if we were to take the multi-verse theory, the version where each universe has it's own 'laws of physics' etc, perhaps we could say that each universe has it's own moral facts that are arbitrarily and seemingly randomly formed. But what reason do we have for following or adhering to this moral fact? The laws of physics are always ruling over me and I cannot escape them, I can't 'ignore' gravity and just float off into space under normal conditions, but I can quite easily defy this moral fact of happiness maximisation, and so, basically, what's the point of it? If there were a God to 'enforce' it, the 'point' of it may be known, thus my earlier point.
On the other hand, if it only became a moral truth once beings capable of happiness became concerned with morality, I don't see how we can get out of something akin to relativism but on a species, or worldly scale. e.g what is moral truth on this world is 'true' because and only because beings capable of happiness that are concerned with morality exist here. However, in this other galaxy on this other world, where beings capable of 'zooplar' that are concerned with 'gammafornia' exist, the moral truth is to 'devartinate' the 'kinkinque'. This scenario basically falls under Mill's 'proof' of utilitarianism (only evidence x is visible is that x is seen, desired, desirable, etc) which I just don't agree with. We like to be happy and so we try to maximise happiness, sure, cool, but whether that is moral or a moral fact can be derived from it is another issue.
I'll cut it short there because that's probably already too many individual questions in one post.
Maybe I have completely the wrong concept of what truth is, and I hope to be enlightened, but I actually just don't understand what it would mean for there to be a moral truth, let alone how that truth would be found. I understand, of course, that truth can be contingent, it didn't have to be true that I made this post, much in that way that it wouldn't have had to be true that Utilitarianism were true in my hypothetical world, but I seem to have this unshakable thought in my head that if we claim something to be 'moral fact' it is something apart, above, other facts, in a different realm to the fact 'I am sitting in a chair', which is simply unobtainable to us.
On July 28 2013 03:13 WhiteDog wrote: I'm a relativist. I don't really understand all the error theory thing.
That it cause problem philosophically doesn't mean much to me, as I come from a sociological background. From a sociological point of view, the theorical talk doesn't mean much. What we can do on the other side, is see that 1) most ethical behavior or positions are historic, which means that they are not natural ; 2) most individuals have value, moral, taste and judgement that are heavily linked (if not entirely determined by) with their social origin (different social class have different value to be quick).
Well, apparently theoretical talk means something to you when that theory happens to be relativism :p
More seriously, every metaethical theory will have to come to terms with facts about the historical and cross-cultural differences in ethical beliefs that you discuss in (1) and (2). They will just disagree on what these facts say about metaethics. (As a sidenote, I think you're misreading my use of 'natural'. Think of 'natural' as non-supernatural. Cultures are every bit as natural as rocks on my use).
To have a more productive dialogue, I'd think I'd have to know how your relativist views play out philosophically. For instance, what do you think is the meaning and truth conditions of a sentence such 'Murder is wrong'? (Obviously you don't have to be completely precise here.
Because, from my point of view, relativism was historically a way to fight the ethnocentrism of the observant for anthropologues, defended by Bronislaw Manilowski. It's not entirelly a theorical talk, as it is a practice as much as a concept.
I was hoping to avoid this issue for a little bit in the thread, but I guess I'll discuss it now. Yes, a doctrine given the name "relativism" has frequently been invoked as a weapon against imperialism, especially in social science departments. However, to be blunt, this has never made even the slightest amount of sense.
There is no relativist argument for tolerance.
My thoughts on this aren't original. They've been published by hundred of philosophers before and you can find them advanced in hundreds of intro philosophy classes at assorted universities. The problem is simply that if what culture you're in determines what is right, then there is no ground from which you can criticize the imperialistic practices of your own culture. It doesn't matter if what the other culture is doing is also right for them, because what's right for them has nothing to do with what's right for you according to relativism. Relativism would be the best news ever for would-be imperialists.
I'll quote Bernard Williams:
Let us at this stage of the argument about subjectivism take a brief rest and look round a special view or assemblage of views which has been built on the site of moral disagreements between societies. This is relativism, the anthropologists' heresy, possibly the most absurd view to have been advanced in moral philosophy. In its vulgar and unregenerate form (which I shall consider, since it is both the most distinctive and the most influential form) it consists of three propositions: that 'right' means (can only be coherently understood as meaning) 'right for a given society' ; that 'right for a given society' is to be understood in a functionalist sense ; and that (therefore) it is wrong for people in one society to condemn, interfere with, etc., the values of another society. A view with a long history, it was popular with some liberal colonialists, notably British administrators in places (such as West Africa) in which white men held no land. In that historical role, it may have had, like some other muddled doctrines, a beneficent influence, though modern African nationalism may well deplore its tribalist and conservative implications.
Whatever its results, the view is clearly inconsistent, since it makes a claim in its third proposition, about what is right and wrong in one's dealings with other societies, which uses a nonrelative sense of 'right' not allowed for in the first proposition. The claim that human sacrifice, for instance, was 'right for' the Ashanti comes to be taken as saying that human sacrifice was right among the Ashanti, and this in turn as saying that human sacrifice among the Ashanti was right; i.e., we have no business interfering with it. But this last is certainly not the sort of claim allowed by the theory. The most the theory can allow is the claim that it is right for (i.e., functionally valuable for) our socieity not to interfere with Ashanti society, and, first, this is certainly not all that was meant, and, second, is very dubiously true.
From the chapter "Interlude Relativism", worth reading in full.
People who call themselves relativists because of arguments like this are really absolutists. They believe in an absolute principle of non-interference in other cultures no matter what your culture thinks about interference (and the individual that disagrees with their culture's ethics are out of luck).
Also, when I read natural, I instantly oppose it to cultural so I might have misunderstood indeed.
As for your question "Murder is wrong", again from a sociological point of view, every assertions are always linked to a context, historical and sociological : "Murder is wrong in today's society", "Murder is not wrong in war", "It is not wrong to murder a slave when you are a noble in the medieval age in France", etc.
This doesn't answer my question about meaning and truth conditions as fully as I'd hoped.
As I said, it was a question of practice and not a question of right or wrong. Back when Anthropology arise, most anthropologues were evolutionnists. But, what is important, is not that those anthropologues thought that each societies followed the same rail, it is more that they thought that they could understand a society using their own history or culture.
For exemple, they had, in their own society, a certain view of "what is a woman", and considered the society they were studying through the same logic, which is obviously wrong because "woman" does not mean the same in every society (as someone like Margaret Mead showed). Malinowski used "relativism" not to give an explanation on what is right or wrong, but as a way for anthropologue to see a society : they had to accept everything, not take any moral judgement on what they were seeing, and try to actually study the reality that they were facing building their own concept. As I said, it's practical.
that 'right' means (can only be coherently understood as meaning) 'right for a given society' (1); that 'right for a given society' is to be understood in a functionalist sense (2); and that (therefore) it is wrong for people in one society to condemn, interfere with, etc., the values of another society (3)
1 is true from a relativist point of view. 2 is completly false. Social science have gone away from functionalism since 60 years (T. Parsons). Nobody consider that what is "right" for a given society has a function within this society, but that it is right because it is right, and there are cultural, historical and social reason that can explain why this is considered as right and not that. Hence 3 is also false. We can critic, and progress, in moral as in science, but from a relativist point of view, we have to consider that defining what is right or wrong is a choice - political, in practice, etc. - that crystalize itself throughout history, in institutions, culture, etc., and not something that is given by the "above" (whether that be god, our gene, or our "human condition").
A view with a long history, it was popular with some liberal colonialists, notably British administrators in places (such as West Africa) in which white men held no land. In that historical role, it may have had, like some other muddled doctrines, a beneficent influence, though modern African nationalism may well deplore its tribalist and conservative implications.
Interesting use of history. Completly true, but if you look at the other type of colonialism (mainly France) that had a more activ way of colonizating countries (on the idea that France represented what is "right"), the result is not really better (in fact, it was worse). I'm not sure where the author wants to go there. It seems like, from the quote you made, the author seems to refute "relativism" on moral grounds rather than logic.
We still seem to be talking at cross purposes here. You're citing a number of things that I for the most part accept about the varieties and sources of ethical beliefs. You also discuss (as does Williams) the role that a set of views described as "relativism" has had in rhetoric concerning our treatment of other people. I have no problem with that stuff, but it doesn't really speak to what I was saying.
My point, and Williams' point, is just that whether or not we should tolerate other practices or engage in imperialism or ethnocentrism has very little to do with relativism. There isn't any plausible argument on the basis of relativism (as a philosophical thesis about what determines goodness) to any conclusions about how we should treat others with different ethical beliefs. If anything, forms of absolutism can come out more tolerant than relativism on these issues, since they can include culture-independent principles of non-interference or judgment.
I understand that you find these philosophical points less interesting than the historical/sociological points you discuss, but I think it's very important to keep the differences in mind when discussing relativism.
I don't think it's pointless. Philosophy is the basis of all science, but I don't understand why you are all bent on trying to figure an apodictic definition of morals while it is clear that in practice there are morals, that morals evolve through societies and history, and that - even if it we can and we have the right to judge it as wrong - it seems pretty obvious that at some point, in the past present or future, in another society of our own, some group of people judge some thing as right while some other don't. But maybe it all comes from my own incapacity to understand all your posts. If I say that I don't think that moral exist outside of human's practice and institutions, does that make me a nihilist ?
On July 28 2013 17:41 Poffel wrote: There seems to be quite some confusion because questions that are quite similar to those lined out in the OP can be raised in sociological and historical approaches to ethic and morals. This schools of thought have contributed enormously to our modern understanding of metaethics, and there is no argument here that the historical and social conditions are irrelevant to any ethical standpoint - quite the contrary, actually. However, to put it bluntly, the algorithms run by the computer you're reading this on don't become erroneous just because Alan Turing was gay.
We mustn't confuse an explanation of when and how a proposition was spoken (or written) with a disconfirmation of said proposition. It's a common fallacy: Nietzsche and Freud did it with their rebuttals of Christian morals, Marx did it when he rejected the 'ruling ethos' as 'ideas of the ruling classes'. However, there is no direct connection between the historical and sociological conditions of its upbringing and the logical and scientific validity of a statement. "Though shalt not kill." doesn't magically become bullshit when you realize that the Biblical history of creation reflects contemporary myths. "Human dignity" isn't an empty term because of our knowledge about the labor conditions of the 18th Century educational elite. Conversely, if there are good ethical reasons to reject slavery because it violates human dignity, then slavery is ethically wrong - and always has been, even if the realization of this truth may not have occured before the new-age.
In short, it does not make sense to evaluate the truth value of a proposition under specific timely conditions because logical evaluation does not depend on time. 1 and 1 is 2, not 1 and 1 becomes 2.
As the OP has explained, there are meaningful reasons to reject the notion of ethical statements having truth values; but none of these are historical or sociological. In other words, while history and sociology can contribute to our understanding of ethics - and even raise suspicion against certain ideas -, the impression that something is right or wrong just because of its history or social embeddedness is not a viable philosophical standpoint but rather a genetic fallacy.
"Science" is not the same here and there. Social science aren't refutable, what some sociologues call a non-popperian space. It is true that it is a genetic fallacy to consider that the historical and sociological frame that has seen the birth of some laws in physics or mathematics is completly relevant to consider the "truth value" or the said law. It is completly different for anything that is socially determined, because if it always linked to its context (social and historical) it is always "true" in the said context, and not elsewhere.
Slavery is ethically true because you use concept of "human dignity" that is considered as true today, but that might not be in the future, and that was completly false in our long history. You don't have to go that far, go back to Nazi's Germany and tell them that you should give some dignity to those men working in concentration camp and that killing them is a bad thing.
I have a general question about moral realism, though I know it's too general, covering too wide an area, to get a full answer, but I've wanted to ask it for a while.
Upon re-reading I'm finding I'm asking many different questions but I think it can be summarised under "What definition of 'fact' (or 'truth') are moral realists using, and what are the implications of it?", and due to my choice of example, what I'm asking here affect naturalistic realism in particular. And of course, at the end of the day, these question may simply serve to be a critique of said theories and these questions are debatable as to their ability to be answered
Suppose we took Utilitarianism to be true. We now know that happiness is the ultimate intrinsic good, and should be maximised while pain is minimised. What does it mean to call this a 'fact' though? What does it mean to say this is the truth? Was it true before (and will it continue to be true after) there were things capable of being happy (and does it matter if these beings are intelligent enough formulate the concept of morality?). Or did it become a moral truth as beings with the capacity for happiness began concerning themselves with morality?
If it were always a moral truth of the world that happiness should be maximised, I don't see a way of getting out of the idea that some kind of God made it be so. I mean, perhaps if we were to take the multi-verse theory, the version where each universe has it's own 'laws of physics' etc, perhaps we could say that each universe has it's own moral facts that are arbitrarily and seemingly randomly formed. But what reason do we have for following or adhering to this moral fact? The laws of physics are always ruling over me and I cannot escape them, I can't 'ignore' gravity and just float off into space under normal conditions, but I can quite easily defy this moral fact of happiness maximisation, and so, basically, what's the point of it? If there were a God to 'enforce' it, the 'point' of it may be known, thus my earlier point.
On the other hand, if it only became a moral truth once beings capable of happiness became concerned with morality, I don't see how we can get out of something akin to relativism but on a species, or worldly scale. e.g what is moral truth on this world is 'true' because and only because beings capable of happiness that are concerned with morality exist here. However, in this other galaxy on this other world, where beings capable of 'zooplar' that are concerned with 'gammafornia' exist, the moral truth is to 'devartinate' the 'kinkinque'. This scenario basically falls under Mill's 'proof' of utilitarianism (only evidence x is visible is that x is seen, desired, desirable, etc) which I just don't agree with. We like to be happy and so we try to maximise happiness, sure, cool, but whether that is moral or a moral fact can be derived from it is another issue.
I'll cut it short there because that's probably already too many individual questions in one post.
Maybe I have completely the wrong concept of what truth is, and I hope to be enlightened, but I actually just don't understand what it would mean for there to be a moral truth, let alone how that truth would be found. I understand, of course, that truth can be contingent, it didn't have to be true that I made this post, much in that way that it wouldn't have had to be true that Utilitarianism were true in my hypothetical world, but I seem to have this unshakable thought in my head that if we claim something to be 'moral fact' it is something apart, above, other facts, in a different realm to the fact 'I am sitting in a chair', which is simply unobtainable to us.
While I certainly cannot speak for other moral realists I can give you a short account my own view on that. First let me point out that my claim to moral realism is in a sense weaker, than the one stated in the op, since I do not have a full fledged theory of truth. My stance is rather that moral reasoning is a subcategory of rational reasoning and that moral statements are not (significantly) more problematic with regard to truth-aptness and epistemology than other statements that are generally held to be truth-apt. In other words I hold that if you are a realist about "anything" (with few exceptions) then you also should be a moral realist.
Now compare the statement "if you are standing in the rain, you are going to get wet" with "if you are murdering somebody, you are committing a morally wrong act". Some semantic and syntactic differences aside I believe that both sentences are truth-apt in some important sense and that both can be known to be true to a certain extent.
Let's assume you would agree to the first sentence being true, maybe because you see a direct causal chain between the physical phenomenon of drops of water falling from the sky onto some subject/object and the following physical and chemical reactions which would lead you to label the object as 'wet'. Would you then be tempted to ask whether the statement was also true before atmospheres or planets even existed or before sentient beings were around to distinguish 'wet' from 'dry'? Well, if you don't then I do not see the problem for the moral statement and if you do, I would suggest that whatever satisfactory answer you come up with might also satisfactorily answer your questions with regard to moral statements.
To me, the moral statement is true because I see a causal chain from the physical phenomenon of one moral agent murdering another sentient agent and the following physical and chemical reactions that lead to suffering. And it is this consequence of suffering that leads me to label the action as morally wrong, since to my understanding, that is exactly what 'morally wrong' means. Just like being 'covered with water' is what being 'wet' means. I am not convinced that any extra 'swoosh' is required here.
On July 28 2013 17:41 Poffel wrote: There seems to be quite some confusion because questions that are quite similar to those lined out in the OP can be raised in sociological and historical approaches to ethic and morals. This schools of thought have contributed enormously to our modern understanding of metaethics, and there is no argument here that the historical and social conditions are irrelevant to any ethical standpoint - quite the contrary, actually. However, to put it bluntly, the algorithms run by the computer you're reading this on don't become erroneous just because Alan Turing was gay.
We mustn't confuse an explanation of when and how a proposition was spoken (or written) with a disconfirmation of said proposition. It's a common fallacy: Nietzsche and Freud did it with their rebuttals of Christian morals, Marx did it when he rejected the 'ruling ethos' as 'ideas of the ruling classes'. However, there is no direct connection between the historical and sociological conditions of its upbringing and the logical and scientific validity of a statement. "Though shalt not kill." doesn't magically become bullshit when you realize that the Biblical history of creation reflects contemporary myths. "Human dignity" isn't an empty term because of our knowledge about the labor conditions of the 18th Century educational elite. Conversely, if there are good ethical reasons to reject slavery because it violates human dignity, then slavery is ethically wrong - and always has been, even if the realization of this truth may not have occured before the new-age.
In short, it does not make sense to evaluate the truth value of a proposition under specific timely conditions because logical evaluation does not depend on time. 1 and 1 is 2, not 1 and 1 becomes 2.
As the OP has explained, there are meaningful reasons to reject the notion of ethical statements having truth values; but none of these are historical or sociological. In other words, while history and sociology can contribute to our understanding of ethics - and even raise suspicion against certain ideas -, the impression that something is right or wrong just because of its history or social embeddedness is not a viable philosophical standpoint but rather a genetic fallacy.
i think this argument is bad because it only works in hindsight and it's limited to "humans only" (limited by a specific context). would you object to having alien slaves?; or you'd need another 23423 historical and social realizations before you get to a truth value?. also, experimentation has meaning/value else your 2 would've never existed. this part of your genetic fallacy definition "...unless its past in some way affects its present value" is always present.
i do like Rassy idea of (trying to) linking morals with universal laws . could it get more objective then that? (non-mathematically speaking).
On July 28 2013 06:47 Rassy wrote: nadafanboy42 Netherlands. July 28 2013 06:24. Posts 188
Nice post, specially the part where you describe ethics as making choises and i think i have a somewhat similar opinnion. Voted for expressivism in the poll though the later mentioned moral nihilism would probably fit me better. I dont think there are objectivly "good" and "bad" things you can do. We not only can not know them, objectivly good and bad things dont exist at all and for me it is all subjective. The only universal moral i can think of is to do that what raises the entropy the least. High entropy is bad, low entropy is a little bit less bad. (by my personal choise)
Dont have much more to add,though i would like one of the moral realists to provide at least one ethical truth. They claim that they exist and that it is possible for humans to know at least some of them, and i am realy curious wich ones they have found so far.
(bold) This is my starting point for any conceivable moral code I might endorse, but it has so many problems itself. How can know the effects of one's actions specifically for this rubric. What calculus do you use to know whether you should kill X stars to stop the fires but keep N-X alive to fuel humanity to continue the work of managing and forestalling the universe's heat death. Is this even really a good or fulfilling plan anyway? In the event of inescapable heat death, wouldn't a better aim be to produce as much variety as possible in an envelope of thermodynamic possibilities? Not to mention, how much certainty is required to enact this sort of plan? What if heat death is not the ultimate fate, due to net energy flux? (What is dark energy?)
Nevertheless this line of thought it still the most (the only?) ascertainable moral pursuit for me that escapes petty subjectivity.
I suppose this standpoint is a sort of declaration that emotional needs should not be confused with moral issues. Which is an amusing crabwise denial of expressivism.
I'm not going to say you two are wrong to have your position, but I just want to say that as far as my position, the crux is that I completely reject the description of "petty subjectivity". The key problem with that in my opinion is that it's people starting from a position of believing in objectivity, then after studying the concept deciding that it does not exist, and then keeping their exact same world view based upon objectivity existing, but just adding the lack of objectivity and thus conclude that existence is meaningless. When the proper response in my opinion is to go back to the first assumption, correct it, and then rebuild a new world view from the ground up accounting for the lack of objectivity.
Subjectivity is the centre of our existence, it is the beginning and end point of all knowledge. When I say morality is a choice, that does not mean it is a meaningless choice, in fact when I say so morality becomes even more important and meaningful than if it was objective. To say "Murder is wrong" and "Murder isn't wrong" is not a choice between two equal positions of equal worth. It is a choice between two radically different positions with radically different consequences. It is a choice that is incredibly important to the person making it, and the people around them. My point was that if someone says "I think murder isn't wrong" I don't think you can say "no that is objectively false and I can prove it", but if you continue that understanding you realise that the only response is: "fine, if that is your choice I can't stop you from choosing. But I've decided that murder is wrong and if you try to commit one I will stop you".
No i understand you perfectly. I never said it was a meaningless choise, i dont know where you get the idea that i think the choise has no meaning.
Annyway its kinda funny; Humanity, wich can not forsee even 0.00000001% of the effects of anny action, still trying to determine if an action is "wrong" or "right" by analysing the 0.00000001% that they can forsee. I guess short term thinking is essential for all moral phylosophy.
Whats phylosophys take on doing something with bad intentions but having a good result, or the other way around? (i realy dont know this and am curious)
Why is it good to build bridges which don't fall down?
It isn't. It's good to build bridges competently when tasked to build a bridge for the purposes of ferrying people across it safely. The first people who built bridges weren't being immoral just because they didn't have 21st century engineering know-how. Does that make their bridge-building less moral? No. It makes their bridge-building worse in the sense the word "worse" is used in the vernacular i.e. as not preferred with respect to something else.
Building bridges that "don't fall down" isn't a good action in itself. I could build tonnes of totally useless bridges in my backyard, which, even if mechanically stable, wouldn't be created from some moral impulse.
Why is it good to cure people who's got syphilis?
Probably because we know how to cure syphilis, because people want their syphilis to be cured, because we have the means to cure it on a global level, and because there's absolutely no conceivable reason not to cure syphilis. That doesn't mean all of our doctors are moral paragons compared to the rather primitive Hippocrates, though. It's not the properties of actions themselves that are moral/immoral, but the actions and the reasoning for the actions.
I mean, Harris thinks that there is an objective moral difference between world A and world B, such that:
A= our world.
B= a world in which everyone is always suffering all the time, no matter what.
He thinks that this difference (i.e. of our world being a better one) is a moral difference, rather than a value judgment or semantic distinction. But how could it be a moral difference? How can hypothetical worlds be moral agents? They're worlds. We wouldn't say rocks are moral or immoral. They're just rocks.
Did you just say that curing syphilis is good, but you can't make up your mind on whether our world is better than everyone always suffering?
"Curing syphilis" isn't good in itself; doctors doing their best to apply their medical knowledge to people who need/want it is good. Curing syphilis is just a fact about our level of scientific knowledge. It has no moral character whatsoever.
Our world is certainly something I'd prefer to one in which everyone is suffering, but nevertheless, that says relatively little about the moral character of anything, and it doesn't establish whether well-being is a suitable qualifier for morality.
I was talking about treating individual cases of syphilis, not inventing a cure.
Furthermore, you are still misrepresenting Harris to point out a mistake you have put in yourself. Harris talks about the moral difference between choosing A over B and vice versa - which is, in the hypothetical, an action. This is fairly standard consequentialism, which philosophically is neither obviously true or obviously false.
Harris thinks that it is a medical, objective fact that people don't like having syphilis and that measures should be taken to cure it and limit its spread - in the sense that no amount of relativism or philosophical smoke screens changes the near unanimous agreement to cure syphilis. He similarly thinks it is a moral, objective fact that people don't enjoy infinite, eternal suffering and that measures should be taken to improve well-being. He claims that neither of these can be proved with logical rigor, but that in neither case does this prevent a science of morals from serving its purpose.
You keep seeking refuge in philosophical ignorance, and you keep failing to explain why this is a problem for a science of morals and not for a science of medicine. In both cases, he prefers pragmatism to philosophy.
The right thing...what is it?...I wonder...Does the right thing...make everybody happy? Your true face...what is it?...I wonder...Is your true face...the face under the mask? Your friends...what sort of people are they?...I wonder...Do these people think of you as a friend? You...What makes you happy? I wonder...what makes you happy...does it make other people happy, too?
On July 28 2013 03:13 WhiteDog wrote: I'm a relativist. I don't really understand all the error theory thing.
That it cause problem philosophically doesn't mean much to me, as I come from a sociological background. From a sociological point of view, the theorical talk doesn't mean much. What we can do on the other side, is see that 1) most ethical behavior or positions are historic, which means that they are not natural ; 2) most individuals have value, moral, taste and judgement that are heavily linked (if not entirely determined by) with their social origin (different social class have different value to be quick).
Well, apparently theoretical talk means something to you when that theory happens to be relativism :p
More seriously, every metaethical theory will have to come to terms with facts about the historical and cross-cultural differences in ethical beliefs that you discuss in (1) and (2). They will just disagree on what these facts say about metaethics. (As a sidenote, I think you're misreading my use of 'natural'. Think of 'natural' as non-supernatural. Cultures are every bit as natural as rocks on my use).
To have a more productive dialogue, I'd think I'd have to know how your relativist views play out philosophically. For instance, what do you think is the meaning and truth conditions of a sentence such 'Murder is wrong'? (Obviously you don't have to be completely precise here.
Because, from my point of view, relativism was historically a way to fight the ethnocentrism of the observant for anthropologues, defended by Bronislaw Manilowski. It's not entirelly a theorical talk, as it is a practice as much as a concept.
I was hoping to avoid this issue for a little bit in the thread, but I guess I'll discuss it now. Yes, a doctrine given the name "relativism" has frequently been invoked as a weapon against imperialism, especially in social science departments. However, to be blunt, this has never made even the slightest amount of sense.
There is no relativist argument for tolerance.
My thoughts on this aren't original. They've been published by hundred of philosophers before and you can find them advanced in hundreds of intro philosophy classes at assorted universities. The problem is simply that if what culture you're in determines what is right, then there is no ground from which you can criticize the imperialistic practices of your own culture. It doesn't matter if what the other culture is doing is also right for them, because what's right for them has nothing to do with what's right for you according to relativism. Relativism would be the best news ever for would-be imperialists.
I'll quote Bernard Williams:
Let us at this stage of the argument about subjectivism take a brief rest and look round a special view or assemblage of views which has been built on the site of moral disagreements between societies. This is relativism, the anthropologists' heresy, possibly the most absurd view to have been advanced in moral philosophy. In its vulgar and unregenerate form (which I shall consider, since it is both the most distinctive and the most influential form) it consists of three propositions: that 'right' means (can only be coherently understood as meaning) 'right for a given society' ; that 'right for a given society' is to be understood in a functionalist sense ; and that (therefore) it is wrong for people in one society to condemn, interfere with, etc., the values of another society. A view with a long history, it was popular with some liberal colonialists, notably British administrators in places (such as West Africa) in which white men held no land. In that historical role, it may have had, like some other muddled doctrines, a beneficent influence, though modern African nationalism may well deplore its tribalist and conservative implications.
Whatever its results, the view is clearly inconsistent, since it makes a claim in its third proposition, about what is right and wrong in one's dealings with other societies, which uses a nonrelative sense of 'right' not allowed for in the first proposition. The claim that human sacrifice, for instance, was 'right for' the Ashanti comes to be taken as saying that human sacrifice was right among the Ashanti, and this in turn as saying that human sacrifice among the Ashanti was right; i.e., we have no business interfering with it. But this last is certainly not the sort of claim allowed by the theory. The most the theory can allow is the claim that it is right for (i.e., functionally valuable for) our socieity not to interfere with Ashanti society, and, first, this is certainly not all that was meant, and, second, is very dubiously true.
From the chapter "Interlude Relativism", worth reading in full.
People who call themselves relativists because of arguments like this are really absolutists. They believe in an absolute principle of non-interference in other cultures no matter what your culture thinks about interference (and the individual that disagrees with their culture's ethics are out of luck).
Also, when I read natural, I instantly oppose it to cultural so I might have misunderstood indeed.
As for your question "Murder is wrong", again from a sociological point of view, every assertions are always linked to a context, historical and sociological : "Murder is wrong in today's society", "Murder is not wrong in war", "It is not wrong to murder a slave when you are a noble in the medieval age in France", etc.
This doesn't answer my question about meaning and truth conditions as fully as I'd hoped.
As I said, it was a question of practice and not a question of right or wrong. Back when Anthropology arise, most anthropologues were evolutionnists. But, what is important, is not that those anthropologues thought that each societies followed the same rail, it is more that they thought that they could understand a society using their own history or culture.
For exemple, they had, in their own society, a certain view of "what is a woman", and considered the society they were studying through the same logic, which is obviously wrong because "woman" does not mean the same in every society (as someone like Margaret Mead showed). Malinowski used "relativism" not to give an explanation on what is right or wrong, but as a way for anthropologue to see a society : they had to accept everything, not take any moral judgement on what they were seeing, and try to actually study the reality that they were facing building their own concept. As I said, it's practical.
that 'right' means (can only be coherently understood as meaning) 'right for a given society' (1); that 'right for a given society' is to be understood in a functionalist sense (2); and that (therefore) it is wrong for people in one society to condemn, interfere with, etc., the values of another society (3)
1 is true from a relativist point of view. 2 is completly false. Social science have gone away from functionalism since 60 years (T. Parsons). Nobody consider that what is "right" for a given society has a function within this society, but that it is right because it is right, and there are cultural, historical and social reason that can explain why this is considered as right and not that. Hence 3 is also false. We can critic, and progress, in moral as in science, but from a relativist point of view, we have to consider that defining what is right or wrong is a choice - political, in practice, etc. - that crystalize itself throughout history, in institutions, culture, etc., and not something that is given by the "above" (whether that be god, our gene, or our "human condition").
A view with a long history, it was popular with some liberal colonialists, notably British administrators in places (such as West Africa) in which white men held no land. In that historical role, it may have had, like some other muddled doctrines, a beneficent influence, though modern African nationalism may well deplore its tribalist and conservative implications.
Interesting use of history. Completly true, but if you look at the other type of colonialism (mainly France) that had a more activ way of colonizating countries (on the idea that France represented what is "right"), the result is not really better (in fact, it was worse). I'm not sure where the author wants to go there. It seems like, from the quote you made, the author seems to refute "relativism" on moral grounds rather than logic.
We still seem to be talking at cross purposes here. You're citing a number of things that I for the most part accept about the varieties and sources of ethical beliefs. You also discuss (as does Williams) the role that a set of views described as "relativism" has had in rhetoric concerning our treatment of other people. I have no problem with that stuff, but it doesn't really speak to what I was saying.
My point, and Williams' point, is just that whether or not we should tolerate other practices or engage in imperialism or ethnocentrism has very little to do with relativism. There isn't any plausible argument on the basis of relativism (as a philosophical thesis about what determines goodness) to any conclusions about how we should treat others with different ethical beliefs. If anything, forms of absolutism can come out more tolerant than relativism on these issues, since they can include culture-independent principles of non-interference or judgment.
I understand that you find these philosophical points less interesting than the historical/sociological points you discuss, but I think it's very important to keep the differences in mind when discussing relativism.
I don't think it's pointless. Philosophy is the basis of all science, but I don't understand why you are all bent on trying to figure an apodictic definition of morals while it is clear that in practice there are morals, that morals evolve through societies and history, and that - even if it we can and we have the right to judge it as wrong - it seems pretty obvious that at some point, in the past present or future, in another society of our own, some group of people judge some thing as right while some other don't. But maybe it all comes from my own incapacity to understand all your posts. If I say that I don't think that moral exist outside of human's practice and institutions, does that make me a nihilist ?
On July 28 2013 17:41 Poffel wrote: There seems to be quite some confusion because questions that are quite similar to those lined out in the OP can be raised in sociological and historical approaches to ethic and morals. This schools of thought have contributed enormously to our modern understanding of metaethics, and there is no argument here that the historical and social conditions are irrelevant to any ethical standpoint - quite the contrary, actually. However, to put it bluntly, the algorithms run by the computer you're reading this on don't become erroneous just because Alan Turing was gay.
We mustn't confuse an explanation of when and how a proposition was spoken (or written) with a disconfirmation of said proposition. It's a common fallacy: Nietzsche and Freud did it with their rebuttals of Christian morals, Marx did it when he rejected the 'ruling ethos' as 'ideas of the ruling classes'. However, there is no direct connection between the historical and sociological conditions of its upbringing and the logical and scientific validity of a statement. "Though shalt not kill." doesn't magically become bullshit when you realize that the Biblical history of creation reflects contemporary myths. "Human dignity" isn't an empty term because of our knowledge about the labor conditions of the 18th Century educational elite. Conversely, if there are good ethical reasons to reject slavery because it violates human dignity, then slavery is ethically wrong - and always has been, even if the realization of this truth may not have occured before the new-age.
In short, it does not make sense to evaluate the truth value of a proposition under specific timely conditions because logical evaluation does not depend on time. 1 and 1 is 2, not 1 and 1 becomes 2.
As the OP has explained, there are meaningful reasons to reject the notion of ethical statements having truth values; but none of these are historical or sociological. In other words, while history and sociology can contribute to our understanding of ethics - and even raise suspicion against certain ideas -, the impression that something is right or wrong just because of its history or social embeddedness is not a viable philosophical standpoint but rather a genetic fallacy.
"Science" is not the same here and there. Social science aren't refutable, what some sociologues call a non-popperian space. It is true that it is a genetic fallacy to consider that the historical and sociological frame that has seen the birth of some laws in physics or mathematics is completly relevant to consider the "truth value" or the said law. It is completly different for anything that is socially determined, because if it always linked to its context (social and historical) it is always "true" in the said context, and not elsewhere.
Slavery is ethically true because you use concept of "human dignity" that is considered as true today, but that might not be in the future, and that was completly false in our long history. You don't have to go that far, go back to Nazi's Germany and tell them that you should give some dignity to those men working in concentration camp and that killing them is a bad thing.
This doesn't seem right. It implies that the same statement can be right and wrong at the same time. For example, the day slavery was abolished, does that mean slavery was right in the morning and wrong in the evening?
It implies you should never oppose "ethics" laws (like abortion, guns, bull fighting...) of you own country because they are always "true" in the current "context" (whatever that means?)
On July 28 2013 03:13 WhiteDog wrote: I'm a relativist. I don't really understand all the error theory thing.
That it cause problem philosophically doesn't mean much to me, as I come from a sociological background. From a sociological point of view, the theorical talk doesn't mean much. What we can do on the other side, is see that 1) most ethical behavior or positions are historic, which means that they are not natural ; 2) most individuals have value, moral, taste and judgement that are heavily linked (if not entirely determined by) with their social origin (different social class have different value to be quick).
Well, apparently theoretical talk means something to you when that theory happens to be relativism :p
More seriously, every metaethical theory will have to come to terms with facts about the historical and cross-cultural differences in ethical beliefs that you discuss in (1) and (2). They will just disagree on what these facts say about metaethics. (As a sidenote, I think you're misreading my use of 'natural'. Think of 'natural' as non-supernatural. Cultures are every bit as natural as rocks on my use).
To have a more productive dialogue, I'd think I'd have to know how your relativist views play out philosophically. For instance, what do you think is the meaning and truth conditions of a sentence such 'Murder is wrong'? (Obviously you don't have to be completely precise here.
Because, from my point of view, relativism was historically a way to fight the ethnocentrism of the observant for anthropologues, defended by Bronislaw Manilowski. It's not entirelly a theorical talk, as it is a practice as much as a concept.
I was hoping to avoid this issue for a little bit in the thread, but I guess I'll discuss it now. Yes, a doctrine given the name "relativism" has frequently been invoked as a weapon against imperialism, especially in social science departments. However, to be blunt, this has never made even the slightest amount of sense.
There is no relativist argument for tolerance.
My thoughts on this aren't original. They've been published by hundred of philosophers before and you can find them advanced in hundreds of intro philosophy classes at assorted universities. The problem is simply that if what culture you're in determines what is right, then there is no ground from which you can criticize the imperialistic practices of your own culture. It doesn't matter if what the other culture is doing is also right for them, because what's right for them has nothing to do with what's right for you according to relativism. Relativism would be the best news ever for would-be imperialists.
I'll quote Bernard Williams:
Let us at this stage of the argument about subjectivism take a brief rest and look round a special view or assemblage of views which has been built on the site of moral disagreements between societies. This is relativism, the anthropologists' heresy, possibly the most absurd view to have been advanced in moral philosophy. In its vulgar and unregenerate form (which I shall consider, since it is both the most distinctive and the most influential form) it consists of three propositions: that 'right' means (can only be coherently understood as meaning) 'right for a given society' ; that 'right for a given society' is to be understood in a functionalist sense ; and that (therefore) it is wrong for people in one society to condemn, interfere with, etc., the values of another society. A view with a long history, it was popular with some liberal colonialists, notably British administrators in places (such as West Africa) in which white men held no land. In that historical role, it may have had, like some other muddled doctrines, a beneficent influence, though modern African nationalism may well deplore its tribalist and conservative implications.
Whatever its results, the view is clearly inconsistent, since it makes a claim in its third proposition, about what is right and wrong in one's dealings with other societies, which uses a nonrelative sense of 'right' not allowed for in the first proposition. The claim that human sacrifice, for instance, was 'right for' the Ashanti comes to be taken as saying that human sacrifice was right among the Ashanti, and this in turn as saying that human sacrifice among the Ashanti was right; i.e., we have no business interfering with it. But this last is certainly not the sort of claim allowed by the theory. The most the theory can allow is the claim that it is right for (i.e., functionally valuable for) our socieity not to interfere with Ashanti society, and, first, this is certainly not all that was meant, and, second, is very dubiously true.
From the chapter "Interlude Relativism", worth reading in full.
People who call themselves relativists because of arguments like this are really absolutists. They believe in an absolute principle of non-interference in other cultures no matter what your culture thinks about interference (and the individual that disagrees with their culture's ethics are out of luck).
Also, when I read natural, I instantly oppose it to cultural so I might have misunderstood indeed.
As for your question "Murder is wrong", again from a sociological point of view, every assertions are always linked to a context, historical and sociological : "Murder is wrong in today's society", "Murder is not wrong in war", "It is not wrong to murder a slave when you are a noble in the medieval age in France", etc.
This doesn't answer my question about meaning and truth conditions as fully as I'd hoped.
As I said, it was a question of practice and not a question of right or wrong. Back when Anthropology arise, most anthropologues were evolutionnists. But, what is important, is not that those anthropologues thought that each societies followed the same rail, it is more that they thought that they could understand a society using their own history or culture.
For exemple, they had, in their own society, a certain view of "what is a woman", and considered the society they were studying through the same logic, which is obviously wrong because "woman" does not mean the same in every society (as someone like Margaret Mead showed). Malinowski used "relativism" not to give an explanation on what is right or wrong, but as a way for anthropologue to see a society : they had to accept everything, not take any moral judgement on what they were seeing, and try to actually study the reality that they were facing building their own concept. As I said, it's practical.
that 'right' means (can only be coherently understood as meaning) 'right for a given society' (1); that 'right for a given society' is to be understood in a functionalist sense (2); and that (therefore) it is wrong for people in one society to condemn, interfere with, etc., the values of another society (3)
1 is true from a relativist point of view. 2 is completly false. Social science have gone away from functionalism since 60 years (T. Parsons). Nobody consider that what is "right" for a given society has a function within this society, but that it is right because it is right, and there are cultural, historical and social reason that can explain why this is considered as right and not that. Hence 3 is also false. We can critic, and progress, in moral as in science, but from a relativist point of view, we have to consider that defining what is right or wrong is a choice - political, in practice, etc. - that crystalize itself throughout history, in institutions, culture, etc., and not something that is given by the "above" (whether that be god, our gene, or our "human condition").
A view with a long history, it was popular with some liberal colonialists, notably British administrators in places (such as West Africa) in which white men held no land. In that historical role, it may have had, like some other muddled doctrines, a beneficent influence, though modern African nationalism may well deplore its tribalist and conservative implications.
Interesting use of history. Completly true, but if you look at the other type of colonialism (mainly France) that had a more activ way of colonizating countries (on the idea that France represented what is "right"), the result is not really better (in fact, it was worse). I'm not sure where the author wants to go there. It seems like, from the quote you made, the author seems to refute "relativism" on moral grounds rather than logic.
We still seem to be talking at cross purposes here. You're citing a number of things that I for the most part accept about the varieties and sources of ethical beliefs. You also discuss (as does Williams) the role that a set of views described as "relativism" has had in rhetoric concerning our treatment of other people. I have no problem with that stuff, but it doesn't really speak to what I was saying.
My point, and Williams' point, is just that whether or not we should tolerate other practices or engage in imperialism or ethnocentrism has very little to do with relativism. There isn't any plausible argument on the basis of relativism (as a philosophical thesis about what determines goodness) to any conclusions about how we should treat others with different ethical beliefs. If anything, forms of absolutism can come out more tolerant than relativism on these issues, since they can include culture-independent principles of non-interference or judgment.
I understand that you find these philosophical points less interesting than the historical/sociological points you discuss, but I think it's very important to keep the differences in mind when discussing relativism.
I don't think it's pointless. Philosophy is the basis of all science, but I don't understand why you are all bent on trying to figure an apodictic definition of morals while it is clear that in practice there are morals, that morals evolve through societies and history, and that - even if it we can and we have the right to judge it as wrong - it seems pretty obvious that at some point, in the past present or future, in another society of our own, some group of people judge some thing as right while some other don't. But maybe it all comes from my own incapacity to understand all your posts. If I say that I don't think that moral exist outside of human's practice and institutions, does that make me a nihilist ?
On July 28 2013 17:41 Poffel wrote: There seems to be quite some confusion because questions that are quite similar to those lined out in the OP can be raised in sociological and historical approaches to ethic and morals. This schools of thought have contributed enormously to our modern understanding of metaethics, and there is no argument here that the historical and social conditions are irrelevant to any ethical standpoint - quite the contrary, actually. However, to put it bluntly, the algorithms run by the computer you're reading this on don't become erroneous just because Alan Turing was gay.
We mustn't confuse an explanation of when and how a proposition was spoken (or written) with a disconfirmation of said proposition. It's a common fallacy: Nietzsche and Freud did it with their rebuttals of Christian morals, Marx did it when he rejected the 'ruling ethos' as 'ideas of the ruling classes'. However, there is no direct connection between the historical and sociological conditions of its upbringing and the logical and scientific validity of a statement. "Though shalt not kill." doesn't magically become bullshit when you realize that the Biblical history of creation reflects contemporary myths. "Human dignity" isn't an empty term because of our knowledge about the labor conditions of the 18th Century educational elite. Conversely, if there are good ethical reasons to reject slavery because it violates human dignity, then slavery is ethically wrong - and always has been, even if the realization of this truth may not have occured before the new-age.
In short, it does not make sense to evaluate the truth value of a proposition under specific timely conditions because logical evaluation does not depend on time. 1 and 1 is 2, not 1 and 1 becomes 2.
As the OP has explained, there are meaningful reasons to reject the notion of ethical statements having truth values; but none of these are historical or sociological. In other words, while history and sociology can contribute to our understanding of ethics - and even raise suspicion against certain ideas -, the impression that something is right or wrong just because of its history or social embeddedness is not a viable philosophical standpoint but rather a genetic fallacy.
"Science" is not the same here and there. Social science aren't refutable, what some sociologues call a non-popperian space. It is true that it is a genetic fallacy to consider that the historical and sociological frame that has seen the birth of some laws in physics or mathematics is completly relevant to consider the "truth value" or the said law. It is completly different for anything that is socially determined, because if it always linked to its context (social and historical) it is always "true" in the said context, and not elsewhere.
Slavery is ethically true because you use concept of "human dignity" that is considered as true today, but that might not be in the future, and that was completly false in our long history. You don't have to go that far, go back to Nazi's Germany and tell them that you should give some dignity to those men working in concentration camp and that killing them is a bad thing.
This doesn't seem right. It implies that the same statement can be right and wrong at the same time. For example, the day slavery was abolished, does that mean slavery was right in the morning and wrong in the evening?
It implies you should never oppose "ethics" laws (like abortion, guns, bull fighting...) of you own country because they are always "true" in the current "context" (whatever that means?)
It seems really counterintuitive to me.
More like slavery was right for a specific group and wrong for another group in the same society. Those two "fought" (through various ways) each other over the definition of what is right and wrong, and eventually the dominant group came to control the institutions that permitted them to crystalize their own view through out history and culture. The main problem we have is that you have a refutable definition of what is "true" : it is ALWAYS true for every one at every moment, while I don't believe such apodictic "truth" exist in human societies.
It is true that it is morally acceptable for a citizen of the US to carry a gun in public, while it is not true for an european. I can still defend the idea that it is not moral to carry a gun in the US, and through my own actions, I will possibly be able to make others accept my own moral view on guns, so that all the US, through its institutions, culture and education, comes to the conclusion that it is morally wrong to carry a gun in a public. It is a political statement, a choice, to decide what is moral or immoral, and not something that is given by the above, the beyond, the after - the "meta". I don't accept the idea that "something" exist that can tell me that everything and everywhere it is right or wrong to carry a gun in public.
On July 28 2013 18:36 WhiteDog wrote: "Science" is not the same here and there. Social science aren't refutable, what some sociologues call a non-popperian space. It is true that it is a genetic fallacy to consider that the historical and sociological frame that has seen the birth of some laws in physics or mathematics is completly relevant to consider the "truth value" or the said law. It is completly different for anything that is socially determined, because if it always linked to its context (social and historical) it is always "true" in the said context, and not elsewhere.
Slavery is ethically true because you use concept of "human dignity" that is considered as true today, but that might not be in the future, and that was completly false in our long history. You don't have to go that far, go back to Nazi's Germany and tell them that you should give some dignity to those men working in concentration camp and that killing them is a bad thing.
Assuming that you're talking about the concepts put forward by Bourdieu and Passeron, these are about the difference between realism and constructivism, which is an important discussion for the consideration of relations (and contradictions) between different theoretical approaches in sociology, but they do not alleviate the burden of proof in regard to the empirical adequacy of sociological models (unless you think that sociological knowledge corresponds to social reality purely by coincidence). It doesn't make sociology irrefutable, it just means that constructivist models have to assess their theoretical laden differently than realist models.
On your illustration: Let's say I don't go back as far but only to the Nuremberg trials where Nazis were convicted for their crimes during the Third Reich... In your opinion, this must mean that our society has come to the agreement that our ethical values apply to the Third Reich as well. Are you not part of our society? I mean, apparently you doubt the legitimacy of the claim that the imperative "don't commit genocide" can be applied retroactively as a rule for Nazi Germany, even though society in general seems to think that that's ok?
On July 28 2013 19:47 xM(Z wrote: i think this argument is bad because it only works in hindsight and it's limited to "humans only" (limited by a specific context). would you object to having alien slaves?; or you'd need another 23423 historical and social realizations before you get to a truth value?. also, experimentation has meaning/value else your 2 would've never existed. this part of your genetic fallacy definition "...unless its past in some way affects its present value" is always present.
i do like Rassy idea of (trying to) linking morals with universal laws . could it get more objective then that? (non-mathematically speaking).
I'm sorry but I don't get your objection. The idea of an alien dignity is purely speculative at this point, and that there might be such a thing does not negate the truth value of human dignity at all. I'm sure your argument is more profound than that historical knowledge only works in hindsight, but I just don't see what you're getting at...
On July 28 2013 03:13 WhiteDog wrote: I'm a relativist. I don't really understand all the error theory thing.
That it cause problem philosophically doesn't mean much to me, as I come from a sociological background. From a sociological point of view, the theorical talk doesn't mean much. What we can do on the other side, is see that 1) most ethical behavior or positions are historic, which means that they are not natural ; 2) most individuals have value, moral, taste and judgement that are heavily linked (if not entirely determined by) with their social origin (different social class have different value to be quick).
Well, apparently theoretical talk means something to you when that theory happens to be relativism :p
More seriously, every metaethical theory will have to come to terms with facts about the historical and cross-cultural differences in ethical beliefs that you discuss in (1) and (2). They will just disagree on what these facts say about metaethics. (As a sidenote, I think you're misreading my use of 'natural'. Think of 'natural' as non-supernatural. Cultures are every bit as natural as rocks on my use).
To have a more productive dialogue, I'd think I'd have to know how your relativist views play out philosophically. For instance, what do you think is the meaning and truth conditions of a sentence such 'Murder is wrong'? (Obviously you don't have to be completely precise here.
Because, from my point of view, relativism was historically a way to fight the ethnocentrism of the observant for anthropologues, defended by Bronislaw Manilowski. It's not entirelly a theorical talk, as it is a practice as much as a concept.
I was hoping to avoid this issue for a little bit in the thread, but I guess I'll discuss it now. Yes, a doctrine given the name "relativism" has frequently been invoked as a weapon against imperialism, especially in social science departments. However, to be blunt, this has never made even the slightest amount of sense.
There is no relativist argument for tolerance.
My thoughts on this aren't original. They've been published by hundred of philosophers before and you can find them advanced in hundreds of intro philosophy classes at assorted universities. The problem is simply that if what culture you're in determines what is right, then there is no ground from which you can criticize the imperialistic practices of your own culture. It doesn't matter if what the other culture is doing is also right for them, because what's right for them has nothing to do with what's right for you according to relativism. Relativism would be the best news ever for would-be imperialists.
I'll quote Bernard Williams:
Let us at this stage of the argument about subjectivism take a brief rest and look round a special view or assemblage of views which has been built on the site of moral disagreements between societies. This is relativism, the anthropologists' heresy, possibly the most absurd view to have been advanced in moral philosophy. In its vulgar and unregenerate form (which I shall consider, since it is both the most distinctive and the most influential form) it consists of three propositions: that 'right' means (can only be coherently understood as meaning) 'right for a given society' ; that 'right for a given society' is to be understood in a functionalist sense ; and that (therefore) it is wrong for people in one society to condemn, interfere with, etc., the values of another society. A view with a long history, it was popular with some liberal colonialists, notably British administrators in places (such as West Africa) in which white men held no land. In that historical role, it may have had, like some other muddled doctrines, a beneficent influence, though modern African nationalism may well deplore its tribalist and conservative implications.
Whatever its results, the view is clearly inconsistent, since it makes a claim in its third proposition, about what is right and wrong in one's dealings with other societies, which uses a nonrelative sense of 'right' not allowed for in the first proposition. The claim that human sacrifice, for instance, was 'right for' the Ashanti comes to be taken as saying that human sacrifice was right among the Ashanti, and this in turn as saying that human sacrifice among the Ashanti was right; i.e., we have no business interfering with it. But this last is certainly not the sort of claim allowed by the theory. The most the theory can allow is the claim that it is right for (i.e., functionally valuable for) our socieity not to interfere with Ashanti society, and, first, this is certainly not all that was meant, and, second, is very dubiously true.
From the chapter "Interlude Relativism", worth reading in full.
People who call themselves relativists because of arguments like this are really absolutists. They believe in an absolute principle of non-interference in other cultures no matter what your culture thinks about interference (and the individual that disagrees with their culture's ethics are out of luck).
Also, when I read natural, I instantly oppose it to cultural so I might have misunderstood indeed.
As for your question "Murder is wrong", again from a sociological point of view, every assertions are always linked to a context, historical and sociological : "Murder is wrong in today's society", "Murder is not wrong in war", "It is not wrong to murder a slave when you are a noble in the medieval age in France", etc.
This doesn't answer my question about meaning and truth conditions as fully as I'd hoped.
As I said, it was a question of practice and not a question of right or wrong. Back when Anthropology arise, most anthropologues were evolutionnists. But, what is important, is not that those anthropologues thought that each societies followed the same rail, it is more that they thought that they could understand a society using their own history or culture.
For exemple, they had, in their own society, a certain view of "what is a woman", and considered the society they were studying through the same logic, which is obviously wrong because "woman" does not mean the same in every society (as someone like Margaret Mead showed). Malinowski used "relativism" not to give an explanation on what is right or wrong, but as a way for anthropologue to see a society : they had to accept everything, not take any moral judgement on what they were seeing, and try to actually study the reality that they were facing building their own concept. As I said, it's practical.
that 'right' means (can only be coherently understood as meaning) 'right for a given society' (1); that 'right for a given society' is to be understood in a functionalist sense (2); and that (therefore) it is wrong for people in one society to condemn, interfere with, etc., the values of another society (3)
1 is true from a relativist point of view. 2 is completly false. Social science have gone away from functionalism since 60 years (T. Parsons). Nobody consider that what is "right" for a given society has a function within this society, but that it is right because it is right, and there are cultural, historical and social reason that can explain why this is considered as right and not that. Hence 3 is also false. We can critic, and progress, in moral as in science, but from a relativist point of view, we have to consider that defining what is right or wrong is a choice - political, in practice, etc. - that crystalize itself throughout history, in institutions, culture, etc., and not something that is given by the "above" (whether that be god, our gene, or our "human condition").
A view with a long history, it was popular with some liberal colonialists, notably British administrators in places (such as West Africa) in which white men held no land. In that historical role, it may have had, like some other muddled doctrines, a beneficent influence, though modern African nationalism may well deplore its tribalist and conservative implications.
Interesting use of history. Completly true, but if you look at the other type of colonialism (mainly France) that had a more activ way of colonizating countries (on the idea that France represented what is "right"), the result is not really better (in fact, it was worse). I'm not sure where the author wants to go there. It seems like, from the quote you made, the author seems to refute "relativism" on moral grounds rather than logic.
We still seem to be talking at cross purposes here. You're citing a number of things that I for the most part accept about the varieties and sources of ethical beliefs. You also discuss (as does Williams) the role that a set of views described as "relativism" has had in rhetoric concerning our treatment of other people. I have no problem with that stuff, but it doesn't really speak to what I was saying.
My point, and Williams' point, is just that whether or not we should tolerate other practices or engage in imperialism or ethnocentrism has very little to do with relativism. There isn't any plausible argument on the basis of relativism (as a philosophical thesis about what determines goodness) to any conclusions about how we should treat others with different ethical beliefs. If anything, forms of absolutism can come out more tolerant than relativism on these issues, since they can include culture-independent principles of non-interference or judgment.
I understand that you find these philosophical points less interesting than the historical/sociological points you discuss, but I think it's very important to keep the differences in mind when discussing relativism.
I don't think it's pointless. Philosophy is the basis of all science, but I don't understand why you are all bent on trying to figure an apodictic definition of morals while it is clear that in practice there are morals, that morals evolve through societies and history, and that - even if it we can and we have the right to judge it as wrong - it seems pretty obvious that at some point, in the past present or future, in another society of our own, some group of people judge some thing as right while some other don't. But maybe it all comes from my own incapacity to understand all your posts. If I say that I don't think that moral exist outside of human's practice and institutions, does that make me a nihilist ?
On July 28 2013 17:41 Poffel wrote: There seems to be quite some confusion because questions that are quite similar to those lined out in the OP can be raised in sociological and historical approaches to ethic and morals. This schools of thought have contributed enormously to our modern understanding of metaethics, and there is no argument here that the historical and social conditions are irrelevant to any ethical standpoint - quite the contrary, actually. However, to put it bluntly, the algorithms run by the computer you're reading this on don't become erroneous just because Alan Turing was gay.
We mustn't confuse an explanation of when and how a proposition was spoken (or written) with a disconfirmation of said proposition. It's a common fallacy: Nietzsche and Freud did it with their rebuttals of Christian morals, Marx did it when he rejected the 'ruling ethos' as 'ideas of the ruling classes'. However, there is no direct connection between the historical and sociological conditions of its upbringing and the logical and scientific validity of a statement. "Though shalt not kill." doesn't magically become bullshit when you realize that the Biblical history of creation reflects contemporary myths. "Human dignity" isn't an empty term because of our knowledge about the labor conditions of the 18th Century educational elite. Conversely, if there are good ethical reasons to reject slavery because it violates human dignity, then slavery is ethically wrong - and always has been, even if the realization of this truth may not have occured before the new-age.
In short, it does not make sense to evaluate the truth value of a proposition under specific timely conditions because logical evaluation does not depend on time. 1 and 1 is 2, not 1 and 1 becomes 2.
As the OP has explained, there are meaningful reasons to reject the notion of ethical statements having truth values; but none of these are historical or sociological. In other words, while history and sociology can contribute to our understanding of ethics - and even raise suspicion against certain ideas -, the impression that something is right or wrong just because of its history or social embeddedness is not a viable philosophical standpoint but rather a genetic fallacy.
"Science" is not the same here and there. Social science aren't refutable, what some sociologues call a non-popperian space. It is true that it is a genetic fallacy to consider that the historical and sociological frame that has seen the birth of some laws in physics or mathematics is completly relevant to consider the "truth value" or the said law. It is completly different for anything that is socially determined, because if it always linked to its context (social and historical) it is always "true" in the said context, and not elsewhere.
Slavery is ethically true because you use concept of "human dignity" that is considered as true today, but that might not be in the future, and that was completly false in our long history. You don't have to go that far, go back to Nazi's Germany and tell them that you should give some dignity to those men working in concentration camp and that killing them is a bad thing.
This doesn't seem right. It implies that the same statement can be right and wrong at the same time. For example, the day slavery was abolished, does that mean slavery was right in the morning and wrong in the evening?
It implies you should never oppose "ethics" laws (like abortion, guns, bull fighting...) of you own country because they are always "true" in the current "context" (whatever that means?)
It seems really counterintuitive to me.
More like slavery was right for a specific group and wrong for another group in the same society. Those two "fought" (through various ways) each other over the definition of what is right and wrong, and eventually the dominant group came to control the institutions that permitted them to crystalize their own view through out history and culture. The main problem we have is that you have a refutable definition of what is "true" : it is ALWAYS true for every one at every moment, while I don't believe such apodictic "truth" exist in human societies.
It is true that it is morally acceptable for a citizen of the US to carry a gun in public, while it is not true for an european. I can still defend the idea that it is not moral to carry a gun in the US, and through my own actions, I will possibly be able to make others accept my own moral view on guns, so that all the US, through its institutions, culture and education, comes to the conclusion that it is morally wrong to carry a gun in a public. It is a political statement, a choice, to decide what is moral or immoral, and not something that is given by the above, the beyond, the after - the "meta". I don't accept the idea that "something" exist that can tell me that everything and everywhere it is right or wrong to carry a gun in public.
That sounds closer to expressivism, if I understand the OP. You are basically saying ethical statements are non cognitive, if it's up to each individual to make his own choice.
On July 28 2013 18:36 WhiteDog wrote: "Science" is not the same here and there. Social science aren't refutable, what some sociologues call a non-popperian space. It is true that it is a genetic fallacy to consider that the historical and sociological frame that has seen the birth of some laws in physics or mathematics is completly relevant to consider the "truth value" or the said law. It is completly different for anything that is socially determined, because if it always linked to its context (social and historical) it is always "true" in the said context, and not elsewhere.
Slavery is ethically true because you use concept of "human dignity" that is considered as true today, but that might not be in the future, and that was completly false in our long history. You don't have to go that far, go back to Nazi's Germany and tell them that you should give some dignity to those men working in concentration camp and that killing them is a bad thing.
Assuming that you're talking about the concepts put forward by Bourdieu and Passeron, these are about the difference between realism and constructivism, which is an important discussion for the consideration of relations (and contradictions) between different theoretical approaches in sociology, but they do not alleviate the burden of proof in regard to the empirical adequacy of sociological models (unless you think that sociological knowledge corresponds to social reality purely by coincidence). It doesn't make sociology irrefutable, it just means that constructivist models have to assess their theoretical laden differently than realist models.
On your illustration: Let's say I don't go back as far but only to the Nuremberg trials where Nazis were convicted for their crimes during the Third Reich... In your opinion, this must mean that our society has come to the agreement that our ethical values apply to the Third Reich as well. Are you not part of our society? I mean, apparently you doubt the legitimacy of the claim that the imperative "don't commit genocide" can be applied retroactively as a rule for Nazi Germany, even though society in general seems to think that that's ok ?
Passeron especially consider that sociology is not refutable as Popper means it. The famous exemple is the exemple of the black swan. If I state that all swans are white, and that I see a black swan, then my first assertion is wrong. For Passeron, in social science, the idea that all swans are white is wrong by itself : swans are white in this very lake the first of July. If I see a black swan in another lake or in the same lake at a different time, that doesn't make my first statement wrong. It does not indeed alleviate the burden of proof - it just states limit to what we can prove or disprove.
To be more precise I'll quote a translated quote of Passeron's book (p. 134 of the french edition, translated more or less by me, so might be badly worded):
None of the logical conditions of the "falsification" of a theory or a general proposition is fulfilled strictly speaking in the case of the logical structure of sociological theories (or "historical synthesis") as soon as one takes seriously the constraints of historical observation. Since no historical statement can completely dispose co-occurences, that the statement consider as related in the explanation or interpretation, from its space-time coordinates (context more or less expanded by typology), the universality of general propositions in sociology or history is about "digital universality" and never about the universality in the strict sense. In other words, the general sociological propositions can always be generated by the logical "conjunction" of singular statements that it resume.
I don't doubt "the legitimacy of the claim that the imperative "don't commit genocide" can be applied retroactively as a rule for Nazi Germany" (I'm quoting you because my weak english makes it hard for me to state it as good as you did), I doubt that us considering that genocide is wrong and judging them according to that moral instantly makes it wrong for the nazi society in their time. I don't consider that something exist that can definitly says that "genocide is wrong always and everywhere". I consider that "genocide is wrong" is the produce of a struggle over what is right or wrong in our societies.
On July 28 2013 03:13 WhiteDog wrote: I'm a relativist. I don't really understand all the error theory thing.
That it cause problem philosophically doesn't mean much to me, as I come from a sociological background. From a sociological point of view, the theorical talk doesn't mean much. What we can do on the other side, is see that 1) most ethical behavior or positions are historic, which means that they are not natural ; 2) most individuals have value, moral, taste and judgement that are heavily linked (if not entirely determined by) with their social origin (different social class have different value to be quick).
Well, apparently theoretical talk means something to you when that theory happens to be relativism :p
More seriously, every metaethical theory will have to come to terms with facts about the historical and cross-cultural differences in ethical beliefs that you discuss in (1) and (2). They will just disagree on what these facts say about metaethics. (As a sidenote, I think you're misreading my use of 'natural'. Think of 'natural' as non-supernatural. Cultures are every bit as natural as rocks on my use).
To have a more productive dialogue, I'd think I'd have to know how your relativist views play out philosophically. For instance, what do you think is the meaning and truth conditions of a sentence such 'Murder is wrong'? (Obviously you don't have to be completely precise here.
Because, from my point of view, relativism was historically a way to fight the ethnocentrism of the observant for anthropologues, defended by Bronislaw Manilowski. It's not entirelly a theorical talk, as it is a practice as much as a concept.
I was hoping to avoid this issue for a little bit in the thread, but I guess I'll discuss it now. Yes, a doctrine given the name "relativism" has frequently been invoked as a weapon against imperialism, especially in social science departments. However, to be blunt, this has never made even the slightest amount of sense.
There is no relativist argument for tolerance.
My thoughts on this aren't original. They've been published by hundred of philosophers before and you can find them advanced in hundreds of intro philosophy classes at assorted universities. The problem is simply that if what culture you're in determines what is right, then there is no ground from which you can criticize the imperialistic practices of your own culture. It doesn't matter if what the other culture is doing is also right for them, because what's right for them has nothing to do with what's right for you according to relativism. Relativism would be the best news ever for would-be imperialists.
I'll quote Bernard Williams:
Let us at this stage of the argument about subjectivism take a brief rest and look round a special view or assemblage of views which has been built on the site of moral disagreements between societies. This is relativism, the anthropologists' heresy, possibly the most absurd view to have been advanced in moral philosophy. In its vulgar and unregenerate form (which I shall consider, since it is both the most distinctive and the most influential form) it consists of three propositions: that 'right' means (can only be coherently understood as meaning) 'right for a given society' ; that 'right for a given society' is to be understood in a functionalist sense ; and that (therefore) it is wrong for people in one society to condemn, interfere with, etc., the values of another society. A view with a long history, it was popular with some liberal colonialists, notably British administrators in places (such as West Africa) in which white men held no land. In that historical role, it may have had, like some other muddled doctrines, a beneficent influence, though modern African nationalism may well deplore its tribalist and conservative implications.
Whatever its results, the view is clearly inconsistent, since it makes a claim in its third proposition, about what is right and wrong in one's dealings with other societies, which uses a nonrelative sense of 'right' not allowed for in the first proposition. The claim that human sacrifice, for instance, was 'right for' the Ashanti comes to be taken as saying that human sacrifice was right among the Ashanti, and this in turn as saying that human sacrifice among the Ashanti was right; i.e., we have no business interfering with it. But this last is certainly not the sort of claim allowed by the theory. The most the theory can allow is the claim that it is right for (i.e., functionally valuable for) our socieity not to interfere with Ashanti society, and, first, this is certainly not all that was meant, and, second, is very dubiously true.
From the chapter "Interlude Relativism", worth reading in full.
People who call themselves relativists because of arguments like this are really absolutists. They believe in an absolute principle of non-interference in other cultures no matter what your culture thinks about interference (and the individual that disagrees with their culture's ethics are out of luck).
Also, when I read natural, I instantly oppose it to cultural so I might have misunderstood indeed.
As for your question "Murder is wrong", again from a sociological point of view, every assertions are always linked to a context, historical and sociological : "Murder is wrong in today's society", "Murder is not wrong in war", "It is not wrong to murder a slave when you are a noble in the medieval age in France", etc.
This doesn't answer my question about meaning and truth conditions as fully as I'd hoped.
As I said, it was a question of practice and not a question of right or wrong. Back when Anthropology arise, most anthropologues were evolutionnists. But, what is important, is not that those anthropologues thought that each societies followed the same rail, it is more that they thought that they could understand a society using their own history or culture.
For exemple, they had, in their own society, a certain view of "what is a woman", and considered the society they were studying through the same logic, which is obviously wrong because "woman" does not mean the same in every society (as someone like Margaret Mead showed). Malinowski used "relativism" not to give an explanation on what is right or wrong, but as a way for anthropologue to see a society : they had to accept everything, not take any moral judgement on what they were seeing, and try to actually study the reality that they were facing building their own concept. As I said, it's practical.
that 'right' means (can only be coherently understood as meaning) 'right for a given society' (1); that 'right for a given society' is to be understood in a functionalist sense (2); and that (therefore) it is wrong for people in one society to condemn, interfere with, etc., the values of another society (3)
1 is true from a relativist point of view. 2 is completly false. Social science have gone away from functionalism since 60 years (T. Parsons). Nobody consider that what is "right" for a given society has a function within this society, but that it is right because it is right, and there are cultural, historical and social reason that can explain why this is considered as right and not that. Hence 3 is also false. We can critic, and progress, in moral as in science, but from a relativist point of view, we have to consider that defining what is right or wrong is a choice - political, in practice, etc. - that crystalize itself throughout history, in institutions, culture, etc., and not something that is given by the "above" (whether that be god, our gene, or our "human condition").
A view with a long history, it was popular with some liberal colonialists, notably British administrators in places (such as West Africa) in which white men held no land. In that historical role, it may have had, like some other muddled doctrines, a beneficent influence, though modern African nationalism may well deplore its tribalist and conservative implications.
Interesting use of history. Completly true, but if you look at the other type of colonialism (mainly France) that had a more activ way of colonizating countries (on the idea that France represented what is "right"), the result is not really better (in fact, it was worse). I'm not sure where the author wants to go there. It seems like, from the quote you made, the author seems to refute "relativism" on moral grounds rather than logic.
We still seem to be talking at cross purposes here. You're citing a number of things that I for the most part accept about the varieties and sources of ethical beliefs. You also discuss (as does Williams) the role that a set of views described as "relativism" has had in rhetoric concerning our treatment of other people. I have no problem with that stuff, but it doesn't really speak to what I was saying.
My point, and Williams' point, is just that whether or not we should tolerate other practices or engage in imperialism or ethnocentrism has very little to do with relativism. There isn't any plausible argument on the basis of relativism (as a philosophical thesis about what determines goodness) to any conclusions about how we should treat others with different ethical beliefs. If anything, forms of absolutism can come out more tolerant than relativism on these issues, since they can include culture-independent principles of non-interference or judgment.
I understand that you find these philosophical points less interesting than the historical/sociological points you discuss, but I think it's very important to keep the differences in mind when discussing relativism.
I don't think it's pointless. Philosophy is the basis of all science, but I don't understand why you are all bent on trying to figure an apodictic definition of morals while it is clear that in practice there are morals, that morals evolve through societies and history, and that - even if it we can and we have the right to judge it as wrong - it seems pretty obvious that at some point, in the past present or future, in another society of our own, some group of people judge some thing as right while some other don't. But maybe it all comes from my own incapacity to understand all your posts. If I say that I don't think that moral exist outside of human's practice and institutions, does that make me a nihilist ?
On July 28 2013 17:41 Poffel wrote: There seems to be quite some confusion because questions that are quite similar to those lined out in the OP can be raised in sociological and historical approaches to ethic and morals. This schools of thought have contributed enormously to our modern understanding of metaethics, and there is no argument here that the historical and social conditions are irrelevant to any ethical standpoint - quite the contrary, actually. However, to put it bluntly, the algorithms run by the computer you're reading this on don't become erroneous just because Alan Turing was gay.
We mustn't confuse an explanation of when and how a proposition was spoken (or written) with a disconfirmation of said proposition. It's a common fallacy: Nietzsche and Freud did it with their rebuttals of Christian morals, Marx did it when he rejected the 'ruling ethos' as 'ideas of the ruling classes'. However, there is no direct connection between the historical and sociological conditions of its upbringing and the logical and scientific validity of a statement. "Though shalt not kill." doesn't magically become bullshit when you realize that the Biblical history of creation reflects contemporary myths. "Human dignity" isn't an empty term because of our knowledge about the labor conditions of the 18th Century educational elite. Conversely, if there are good ethical reasons to reject slavery because it violates human dignity, then slavery is ethically wrong - and always has been, even if the realization of this truth may not have occured before the new-age.
In short, it does not make sense to evaluate the truth value of a proposition under specific timely conditions because logical evaluation does not depend on time. 1 and 1 is 2, not 1 and 1 becomes 2.
As the OP has explained, there are meaningful reasons to reject the notion of ethical statements having truth values; but none of these are historical or sociological. In other words, while history and sociology can contribute to our understanding of ethics - and even raise suspicion against certain ideas -, the impression that something is right or wrong just because of its history or social embeddedness is not a viable philosophical standpoint but rather a genetic fallacy.
"Science" is not the same here and there. Social science aren't refutable, what some sociologues call a non-popperian space. It is true that it is a genetic fallacy to consider that the historical and sociological frame that has seen the birth of some laws in physics or mathematics is completly relevant to consider the "truth value" or the said law. It is completly different for anything that is socially determined, because if it always linked to its context (social and historical) it is always "true" in the said context, and not elsewhere.
Slavery is ethically true because you use concept of "human dignity" that is considered as true today, but that might not be in the future, and that was completly false in our long history. You don't have to go that far, go back to Nazi's Germany and tell them that you should give some dignity to those men working in concentration camp and that killing them is a bad thing.
This doesn't seem right. It implies that the same statement can be right and wrong at the same time. For example, the day slavery was abolished, does that mean slavery was right in the morning and wrong in the evening?
It implies you should never oppose "ethics" laws (like abortion, guns, bull fighting...) of you own country because they are always "true" in the current "context" (whatever that means?)
It seems really counterintuitive to me.
More like slavery was right for a specific group and wrong for another group in the same society. Those two "fought" (through various ways) each other over the definition of what is right and wrong, and eventually the dominant group came to control the institutions that permitted them to crystalize their own view through out history and culture. The main problem we have is that you have a refutable definition of what is "true" : it is ALWAYS true for every one at every moment, while I don't believe such apodictic "truth" exist in human societies.
It is true that it is morally acceptable for a citizen of the US to carry a gun in public, while it is not true for an european. I can still defend the idea that it is not moral to carry a gun in the US, and through my own actions, I will possibly be able to make others accept my own moral view on guns, so that all the US, through its institutions, culture and education, comes to the conclusion that it is morally wrong to carry a gun in a public. It is a political statement, a choice, to decide what is moral or immoral, and not something that is given by the above, the beyond, the after - the "meta". I don't accept the idea that "something" exist that can tell me that everything and everywhere it is right or wrong to carry a gun in public.
That sounds closer to expressivism, if I understand the OP. You are basically saying ethical statements are non cognitive, if it's up to each individual to make his own choice.
Yes ! Aside from the emotion part, because it somehow means that some kind of biological imperative exist and that it define what is right or wrong. I also consider that it is not something that is individually made, but socially (even if "I" come to defend the idea that having gun in public is wrong in the US, my very stance have been determined by my own biography, the people I've met and the institution I've passed through. The "I" mean more than me in this case, but also the social context that produced me).
On July 28 2013 05:51 sVnteen wrote: this thread is too much for me at this point gonna try to see what people say in this thread to maybe understand it a bit better...
Same here. I'm interested, but I don't feel like I've grasped the topic well enough to make any meaningful comment.
Nice, another philosophical thread :D (not sarcastic btw!), it's always nice to see people having the courage to come to the fore with their arguments on such complex topics and have the willingness to discuss them.
It seems so far, like nadafans pointed out in his assumptions, that few here doubt the possibility of ethics or free will (I think only one mentioned man as determined by chaos theory?), which surprised me in a secular age dominated by science and perhaps not so much by the tradition of philosophy. To me the question of the possibility of morality itself is already a big one which the answer also has further consequences to the possibility of certain views on morality.
On July 28 2013 19:47 xM(Z wrote: i think this argument is bad because it only works in hindsight and it's limited to "humans only" (limited by a specific context). would you object to having alien slaves?; or you'd need another 23423 historical and social realizations before you get to a truth value?. also, experimentation has meaning/value else your 2 would've never existed. this part of your genetic fallacy definition "...unless its past in some way affects its present value" is always present.
i do like Rassy idea of (trying to) linking morals with universal laws . could it get more objective then that? (non-mathematically speaking).
I'm sorry but I don't get your objection. The idea of an alien dignity is purely speculative at this point, and that there might be such a thing does not negate the truth value of human dignity at all. I'm sure your argument is more profound than that historical knowledge only works in hindsight, but I just don't see what you're getting at...
i was just trying to change the context just so you'd see yourself committing a genetic fallacy. it had to be speculative since it didn't (couldn't have) happened yet.
"Human dignity" isn't an empty term because of our knowledge about the labor conditions of the 18th Century educational elite. Conversely, if there are good ethical reasons to reject slavery because it violates human dignity, then slavery is ethically wrong - and always has been, even if the realization of this truth may not have occured before the new-age.
that statement doesn't exclude a future in which slavery will be ethically right and based on your genetic fallacy definition + Show Spoiler +
It is fallacious to either endorse or condemn an idea based on its past—rather than on its present—merits or demerits,
, their present will make it ethically right. your argument is based on an arrow of time narrative, a one-way direction under which things progress. i do not agree with that.
i can envision instances in which humanity restarts all over again and in doing so, it'll pass through the same merits and demerits of (roughly) the same ideas all over again just because concepts like genetic fallacy are believed in.
On July 28 2013 18:36 WhiteDog wrote: "Science" is not the same here and there. Social science aren't refutable, what some sociologues call a non-popperian space. It is true that it is a genetic fallacy to consider that the historical and sociological frame that has seen the birth of some laws in physics or mathematics is completly relevant to consider the "truth value" or the said law. It is completly different for anything that is socially determined, because if it always linked to its context (social and historical) it is always "true" in the said context, and not elsewhere.
Slavery is ethically true because you use concept of "human dignity" that is considered as true today, but that might not be in the future, and that was completly false in our long history. You don't have to go that far, go back to Nazi's Germany and tell them that you should give some dignity to those men working in concentration camp and that killing them is a bad thing.
Assuming that you're talking about the concepts put forward by Bourdieu and Passeron, these are about the difference between realism and constructivism, which is an important discussion for the consideration of relations (and contradictions) between different theoretical approaches in sociology, but they do not alleviate the burden of proof in regard to the empirical adequacy of sociological models (unless you think that sociological knowledge corresponds to social reality purely by coincidence). It doesn't make sociology irrefutable, it just means that constructivist models have to assess their theoretical laden differently than realist models.
On your illustration: Let's say I don't go back as far but only to the Nuremberg trials where Nazis were convicted for their crimes during the Third Reich... In your opinion, this must mean that our society has come to the agreement that our ethical values apply to the Third Reich as well. Are you not part of our society? I mean, apparently you doubt the legitimacy of the claim that the imperative "don't commit genocide" can be applied retroactively as a rule for Nazi Germany, even though society in general seems to think that that's ok ?
Passeron especially consider that sociology is not refutable as Popper means it. The famous exemple is the exemple of the black swan. If I state that all swans are white, and that I see a black swan, then my first assertion is wrong. For Passeron, in social science, the idea that all swans are white is wrong by itself : swans are white in this very lake the first of July. If I see a black swan in another lake or in the same lake at a different time, that doesn't make my first statement wrong. It does not indeed alleviate the burden of proof - it just states limit to what we can prove or disprove.
To be more precise I'll quote a translated quote of Passeron's book (p. 134 of the french edition, translated more or less by me, so might be badly worded):
None of the logical conditions of the "falsification" of a theory or a general proposition is fulfilled strictly speaking in the case of the logical structure of sociological theories (or "historical synthesis") as soon as one takes seriously the constraints of historical observation. Since no historical statement can completely dispose co-occurences, that the statement consider as related in the explanation or interpretation, from its space-time coordinates (context more or less expanded by typology), the universality of general propositions in sociology or history is about "digital universality" and never about the universality in the strict sense. In other words, the general sociological propositions can always be generated by the logical "conjunction" of singular statements that it resume.
I don't doubt "the legitimacy of the claim that the imperative "don't commit genocide" can be applied retroactively as a rule for Nazi Germany" (I'm quoting you because my weak english makes it hard for me to state it as good as you did), I doubt that us considering that genocide is wrong and judging them according to that moral instantly makes it wrong for the nazi society in their time. I don't consider that something exist that can definitly says that "genocide is wrong always and everywhere". I consider that "genocide is wrong" is the produce of a struggle over what is right or wrong in our societies.
What you've quoted from Passeron certainly makes sense as a safeguard against the temptation of a 'grand unified theory of mankind', and that's why I deem it especially important in regard to theory comparison (where 'middle range theories' (Merten) indeed seem to be the success model in sociology). I still think that it's peripheral for the discussion at hand because it regards universalistic certainty rather than universalistic truth: It is one thing to deem sociological methodology (or even generally scientific reasoning) unfit to bridge the gap between case study and the principles guiding the interactions of the observed phenomena (with sufficient certainty); it is a different thing to argue that such guiding principles do not exist (which is a matter of truth, not certainty - even a blind guess can be true, albeit neither certain nor scientific).
The important part is that you're not committing the fallacy I was talking about:
I don't consider that something exist that can definitly says that "genocide is wrong always and everywhere". I consider that "genocide is wrong" is the produce of a struggle over what is right or wrong in our societies.
That's basically all that my initial complaint was about - there is a tendency to mix up these two perspectives (which you correctly keep separated). The fact that our precept "genocide is wrong" is the product of struggles over right and wrong doesn't devalue the ethical correctness of the precept.
On July 28 2013 22:43 xM(Z wrote: your argument is based on an arrow of time narrative, a one-way direction under which things progress. i do not agree with that.
Neither do I. Now I understand your complaint, and I'm sorry for the confusion caused by the poor wording of the page I linked. However, since I don't think that my post was similarly ambiguous, we don't really seem to have a disagreement here:
On July 28 2013 17:41 Poffel wrote: In short, it does not make sense to evaluate the truth value of a proposition under specific timely conditions because logical evaluation does not depend on time.
On July 28 2013 18:36 WhiteDog wrote: "Science" is not the same here and there. Social science aren't refutable, what some sociologues call a non-popperian space. It is true that it is a genetic fallacy to consider that the historical and sociological frame that has seen the birth of some laws in physics or mathematics is completly relevant to consider the "truth value" or the said law. It is completly different for anything that is socially determined, because if it always linked to its context (social and historical) it is always "true" in the said context, and not elsewhere.
Slavery is ethically true because you use concept of "human dignity" that is considered as true today, but that might not be in the future, and that was completly false in our long history. You don't have to go that far, go back to Nazi's Germany and tell them that you should give some dignity to those men working in concentration camp and that killing them is a bad thing.
Assuming that you're talking about the concepts put forward by Bourdieu and Passeron, these are about the difference between realism and constructivism, which is an important discussion for the consideration of relations (and contradictions) between different theoretical approaches in sociology, but they do not alleviate the burden of proof in regard to the empirical adequacy of sociological models (unless you think that sociological knowledge corresponds to social reality purely by coincidence). It doesn't make sociology irrefutable, it just means that constructivist models have to assess their theoretical laden differently than realist models.
On your illustration: Let's say I don't go back as far but only to the Nuremberg trials where Nazis were convicted for their crimes during the Third Reich... In your opinion, this must mean that our society has come to the agreement that our ethical values apply to the Third Reich as well. Are you not part of our society? I mean, apparently you doubt the legitimacy of the claim that the imperative "don't commit genocide" can be applied retroactively as a rule for Nazi Germany, even though society in general seems to think that that's ok ?
Passeron especially consider that sociology is not refutable as Popper means it. The famous exemple is the exemple of the black swan. If I state that all swans are white, and that I see a black swan, then my first assertion is wrong. For Passeron, in social science, the idea that all swans are white is wrong by itself : swans are white in this very lake the first of July. If I see a black swan in another lake or in the same lake at a different time, that doesn't make my first statement wrong. It does not indeed alleviate the burden of proof - it just states limit to what we can prove or disprove.
To be more precise I'll quote a translated quote of Passeron's book (p. 134 of the french edition, translated more or less by me, so might be badly worded):
None of the logical conditions of the "falsification" of a theory or a general proposition is fulfilled strictly speaking in the case of the logical structure of sociological theories (or "historical synthesis") as soon as one takes seriously the constraints of historical observation. Since no historical statement can completely dispose co-occurences, that the statement consider as related in the explanation or interpretation, from its space-time coordinates (context more or less expanded by typology), the universality of general propositions in sociology or history is about "digital universality" and never about the universality in the strict sense. In other words, the general sociological propositions can always be generated by the logical "conjunction" of singular statements that it resume.
I don't doubt "the legitimacy of the claim that the imperative "don't commit genocide" can be applied retroactively as a rule for Nazi Germany" (I'm quoting you because my weak english makes it hard for me to state it as good as you did), I doubt that us considering that genocide is wrong and judging them according to that moral instantly makes it wrong for the nazi society in their time. I don't consider that something exist that can definitly says that "genocide is wrong always and everywhere". I consider that "genocide is wrong" is the produce of a struggle over what is right or wrong in our societies.
What you've quoted from Passeron certainly makes sense as a safeguard against the temptation of a 'grand unified theory of mankind', and that's why I deem it especially important in regard to theory comparison (where 'middle range theories' (Merton) indeed seem to be the success model in sociology). I still think that it's peripheral for the discussion at hand because it regards universalistic certainty rather than universalistic truth: It is one thing to deem sociological methodology (or even generally scientific reasoning) unfit to bridge the gap between case study and the principles guiding the interactions of the observed phenomena (with sufficient certainty); it is a different thing to argue that such guiding principles do not exist (which is a matter of truth, not certainty - even a blind guess can be true, albeit neither certain nor scientific).
The important part is that you're not committing the fallacy I was talking about:
I don't consider that something exist that can definitly says that "genocide is wrong always and everywhere". I consider that "genocide is wrong" is the produce of a struggle over what is right or wrong in our societies.
That's basically all that my initial complaint was about - there is a tendency to mix up these two perspectives (which you correctly keep separated). The fact that our precept "genocide is wrong" is the product of struggles over right and wrong doesn't devalue the ethical correctness of the precept.
We might disagree, because when I state that "genocide is wrong" is the product of struggles over right and wrong, I mean that it could have been "genocide is right" if the winner was someone else. Since there are no universal way to define what is right or wrong (from my point of view) I can't judge what is right or wrong outside of the context in which I am making the said judgement.
From my point of view, in my society, in my culture, in this day and age, etc., genocide is wrong. And I will never be able to completly get rid of the context (my society, my culture, this day and age) to judge or assure the "co-occurence" I've made between "genocide" and "wrong". The "=" in "genocide = wrong" is always historical or sociological and thus always imply more than a simple "=". In the link you posted about the genetic fallacy, I see that "the value of many scientific ideas can be objectively evaluated by established techniques, so that the origin or history of the idea is irrelevant to its value". Since there are no "established techniques" to universally and "objectively" evaluate what is right or wrong (there is no "something"), I can't separate my moral statement from its origin or history.
Despite 5 pages of xxxxx i dont see this discussion going annywhere
1) Ethical discourse is cognitive (or, fact-stating; or, truth-evaluable). That is, ethical assertions make claims about the world and are capable of being either true or false.[1]
(2) Some ethical statements are true.
(3) We know, or are capable of knowing, some ethical truths
Moral ethics seem to be in majority here judging by the poll but despite 5 pages filled with text and quotes they have failed to proove anny of these 3 points wich are the foundation of their beliefs.
"Since there are no "established techniques" to "objectively" evaluate what is right or wrong (there is no "something"), I can't separate my moral statement from its origin or history."
You are so right here (well at least imo) and imo the discussion can end right here, unless someone succesfully manages to refute this point but noone is taking anny efforts to do so, not even the moral realists. Sry to say so and not to insult annyone but this realy has been a bad discussion so far, it is not even clear what the point of discussion is annymore, people just keep throwing quotes against eachoter.
On July 28 2013 15:33 harlock78 wrote: Another layman observation. For moral realists, what would be the truth value of "killing is wrong"? Would it be false, because it is not always true? Or would it be a nonsensical proposition? With "murder is wrong", the term is value-laden so saying that it is true is trivial. If it is nonsensical, is there any relevant question of interest to society that can be treated in a formal general way, without endless circumstantial clarifications?
The OP doesn't cover moral realism in any great detail because it is a gigantic area of enquiry. There are forms of moral realism which differ radically in terms of what makes a particular moral proposition true or false. For example, certain moral realists, called 'deontologists', would argue that 'murder is wrong' is true on any interpretation in virtue of some categorical imperative (in other words a moral law that must always be adhered to). Other moral realists argue that 'murder is wrong' is true only on particular interpretations. For instance, they might claim that the assassination of a totalitarian dictator demonstrates the falsity of the proposition 'murder is wrong'. This might be because the assassination of the totalitarian dictator brings about greater well-being for the population that is being dictated.
Yep. The good ol' deontonology vs. consequentialism stuff
In short, it does not make sense to evaluate the truth value of a proposition under specific timely conditions because logical evaluation does not depend on time. 1 and 1 is 2, not 1 and 1 becomes 2.
Mathematical object live in their own space. The operation of transforming human moral concepts to pure mathematical ones and then analyze them as boolean functions can change depending on your base principles.
For example in your example of human dignity, is there a meta system that would tell you the definition and boundaries of human dignity?
Have you seen the movie "talk to her" by Almodovar? I d be curious to see how a computer would answer the moral dilemma.
On July 28 2013 22:43 xM(Z wrote: your argument is based on an arrow of time narrative, a one-way direction under which things progress. i do not agree with that.
Neither do I. Now I understand your complaint, and I'm sorry for the confusion caused by the poor wording of the page I linked. However, since I don't think that my post was similarly ambiguous, we don't really seem to have a disagreement here:
On July 28 2013 17:41 Poffel wrote: In short, it does not make sense to evaluate the truth value of a proposition under specific timely conditions because logical evaluation does not depend on time.
i think that our views are exactly opposite since you can't keep your definition of human dignity intact under two opposite but equally right (by definition of genetic fallacy) ethics: one in which slavery is wrong and the other in which slavery is right.
Conversely, if there are good ethical reasons to reject slavery because it violates human dignity, then slavery is ethically wrong - and always has been, even if the realization of this truth may not have occured before the new-age.
i think you are trying mixing expressivism with realism (at least).
I'm inclined to disagree on the burden issue. Sure, theists for instance have the burden of proof in theological debates because they are advancing a view which posits the existence of a unique unobserved object. But, at least for the naturalistic realists, this is not the case. They do not posit any new objects or properties, just the same old ones you already believe in but organized in a complicated way at a higher level (much like countries are just complicated organizations of natural objects you already believe in). So, to get the burden onto the anti-realists, I don't think they need very much more than the fact that people talk as though realism were true.
In the bold part, are you alluding to shenanigans involving the transposition of set theory to morals and ethics? If so any reference for that?
No, well at least not actively.
The idea basically comes from taking something like particle physics to be your starting guide to what objects are natural. Particle physics is not going to mention things like countries, mountains, or good deeds in its descriptions, but these objects could still be natural if they just amounted to complex organizations of the stuff at the bottom. That's what I mean by the properties and objects of ethics being higher level organizations of the properties and objects that people already accept.
As a layman thanks for the op. Made me want to watch Babylon 5 again Aren't you leaving out constructivism out of your list though? Relativism seems to fit better with constructivism, since contrary to error theory, it does not believe there is an universal, atemporal, objective, self consistent, albeit unknowable frame of reference. The way the frame is constructed is subjective and depends on circumstances, but is not purely expressivist either.
'Constructivism' isn't used all that often in analytic philosophy, so it doesn't have a very standardized interpretation. In metaethics, it most often comes up among people calling themselves "Kantian constructivists", like Korsgaard and Rawls. But I'm not an expert on this doctrine, and get the impression that a lot of dissimilar positions end up getting lumped together under the label, much like with "pragmatism".
When I personally think of constructivism, I typically think along the lines of Ian Hacking that something's being socially constructed is primarily a matter of whether we could have easily used a different set of concepts to describe an area and whether the objects so described can be easily changed. These questions are both tangential to the rubric I put in the OP, and so don't directly place you in one area or another.
That said, it would probably be hard for a realist to claim that we could do just as well with completely different concepts in place of our ethical ones. But this introduces tough questions about what the relevant norms are for doing "just as well".
Another layman observation. For moral realists, what would be the truth value of "killing is wrong"? Would it be false, because it is not always true? Or would it be a nonsensical proposition? With "murder is wrong", the term is value-laden so saying that it is true is trivial. If it is nonsensical, is there any relevant question of interest to society that can be treated in a formal general way, without endless circumstantial clarifications?
Absentia largely covered this. The main thing to say is just that what you're talking about is more like applied or normative ethics than metaethics. Metaethics won't tell you what specific actions are right or wrong.
I wrote 'murder is wrong' to make a point about the compositional semantics of moral predicates, not to state a principle that realists must accept. You can think of the sentence as like a dummy variable if you want.
On July 28 2013 15:33 harlock78 wrote: Another layman observation. For moral realists, what would be the truth value of "killing is wrong"? Would it be false, because it is not always true? Or would it be a nonsensical proposition? With "murder is wrong", the term is value-laden so saying that it is true is trivial. If it is nonsensical, is there any relevant question of interest to society that can be treated in a formal general way, without endless circumstantial clarifications?
The OP doesn't cover moral realism in any great detail because it is a gigantic area of enquiry. There are forms of moral realism which differ radically in terms of what makes a particular moral proposition true or false. For example, certain moral realists, called 'deontologists', would argue that 'murder is wrong' is true on any interpretation in virtue of some categorical imperative (in other words a moral law that must always be adhered to). Other moral realists argue that 'murder is wrong' is true only on particular interpretations. For instance, they might claim that the assassination of a totalitarian dictator demonstrates the falsity of the proposition 'murder is wrong'. This might be because the assassination of the totalitarian dictator brings about greater well-being for the population that is being dictated.
Yep. The good ol' deontonology vs. consequentialism stuff
Deontology hwaiting!!!
I consider myself sympathetic to Kantianism, in that I'ma transcendental egoist who don't need no consequences, but I'm not sure what category that is. Obviously, it's moral realism, but I think the naturalism/non-naturalism component kinda depends?
I have a general question about moral realism, though I know it's too general, covering too wide an area, to get a full answer, but I've wanted to ask it for a while.
Upon re-reading I'm finding I'm asking many different questions but I think it can be summarised under "What definition of 'fact' (or 'truth') are moral realists using, and what are the implications of it?", and due to my choice of example, what I'm asking here affect naturalistic realism in particular. And of course, at the end of the day, these question may simply serve to be a critique of said theories and these questions are debatable as to their ability to be answered
Suppose we took Utilitarianism to be true. We now know that happiness is the ultimate intrinsic good, and should be maximised while pain is minimised. What does it mean to call this a 'fact' though? What does it mean to say this is the truth? Was it true before (and will it continue to be true after) there were things capable of being happy (and does it matter if these beings are intelligent enough formulate the concept of morality?). Or did it become a moral truth as beings with the capacity for happiness began concerning themselves with morality?
If it were always a moral truth of the world that happiness should be maximised, I don't see a way of getting out of the idea that some kind of God made it be so. I mean, perhaps if we were to take the multi-verse theory, the version where each universe has it's own 'laws of physics' etc, perhaps we could say that each universe has it's own moral facts that are arbitrarily and seemingly randomly formed. But what reason do we have for following or adhering to this moral fact? The laws of physics are always ruling over me and I cannot escape them, I can't 'ignore' gravity and just float off into space under normal conditions, but I can quite easily defy this moral fact of happiness maximisation, and so, basically, what's the point of it? If there were a God to 'enforce' it, the 'point' of it may be known, thus my earlier point.
On the other hand, if it only became a moral truth once beings capable of happiness became concerned with morality, I don't see how we can get out of something akin to relativism but on a species, or worldly scale. e.g what is moral truth on this world is 'true' because and only because beings capable of happiness that are concerned with morality exist here. However, in this other galaxy on this other world, where beings capable of 'zooplar' that are concerned with 'gammafornia' exist, the moral truth is to 'devartinate' the 'kinkinque'. This scenario basically falls under Mill's 'proof' of utilitarianism (only evidence x is visible is that x is seen, desired, desirable, etc) which I just don't agree with. We like to be happy and so we try to maximise happiness, sure, cool, but whether that is moral or a moral fact can be derived from it is another issue.
I'll cut it short there because that's probably already too many individual questions in one post.
Maybe I have completely the wrong concept of what truth is, and I hope to be enlightened, but I actually just don't understand what it would mean for there to be a moral truth, let alone how that truth would be found. I understand, of course, that truth can be contingent, it didn't have to be true that I made this post, much in that way that it wouldn't have had to be true that Utilitarianism were true in my hypothetical world, but I seem to have this unshakable thought in my head that if we claim something to be 'moral fact' it is something apart, above, other facts, in a different realm to the fact 'I am sitting in a chair', which is simply unobtainable to us.
There's a lot going on here, and I endorse parts of Miramax's response.
There is no special definition of 'truth' or 'fact' operative in the questions and the different positions' answers to them. These terms are intended to be used as they are in other areas, and they are probably both too fundamental to be given an informative definition in terms of anything clearer or more basic. But we can say some things to illuminate how notions like "truth" work.
There's a sense in which truth is timeless. A true proposition always was true and always will be true. But this says as much about propositions as it does about truth. Propositions already take into account all the context sensitive parts of an utterance. I can utter, 'I am in America' and speak truly and you can utter the same sentence now and speak falsely. But the proposition each of us expresses by that utterance doesn't change truth values depending on where or when you are. The proposition I now express by uttering 'I am in America' was true in Andromeda a billion years ago.
So a utilitarian will say that it has always been true that pleasure is good.
As for being able to ignore supposed moral facts, I don't see that that's a very strong argument against a realist view of them. Most facts aren't like the one's about gravity. You can disbelieve them or just never think about them and suffer no ill consequences. There are plenty of full blooded facts about me that you will never know or might even believe the negation of. But these, like most facts, won't punch you in the face.
When you say, "I can quite easily defy this moral fact of happiness maximisation, and so, basically, what's the point of it", you are talking not about the ability to defy the fact (if it is one) that happiness maximization is good. It doesn't make sense to defy facts at all, unless by "defy" you just mean "disbelieve".
What you actually mean is that you can act in a way that doesn't maximize pleasure without getting punched in the face. But that doesn't at all contradict utilitarianism, because utilitarianism is not the claim that everyone acts to maximize pleasure. It is the claim that it is good to do so.
On July 28 2013 06:47 Rassy wrote: nadafanboy42 Netherlands. July 28 2013 06:24. Posts 188
Nice post, specially the part where you describe ethics as making choises and i think i have a somewhat similar opinnion. Voted for expressivism in the poll though the later mentioned moral nihilism would probably fit me better. I dont think there are objectivly "good" and "bad" things you can do. We not only can not know them, objectivly good and bad things dont exist at all and for me it is all subjective. The only universal moral i can think of is to do that what raises the entropy the least. High entropy is bad, low entropy is a little bit less bad. (by my personal choise)
Dont have much more to add,though i would like one of the moral realists to provide at least one ethical truth. They claim that they exist and that it is possible for humans to know at least some of them, and i am realy curious wich ones they have found so far.
(bold) This is my starting point for any conceivable moral code I might endorse, but it has so many problems itself. How can know the effects of one's actions specifically for this rubric. What calculus do you use to know whether you should kill X stars to stop the fires but keep N-X alive to fuel humanity to continue the work of managing and forestalling the universe's heat death. Is this even really a good or fulfilling plan anyway? In the event of inescapable heat death, wouldn't a better aim be to produce as much variety as possible in an envelope of thermodynamic possibilities? Not to mention, how much certainty is required to enact this sort of plan? What if heat death is not the ultimate fate, due to net energy flux? (What is dark energy?)
Nevertheless this line of thought it still the most (the only?) ascertainable moral pursuit for me that escapes petty subjectivity.
I suppose this standpoint is a sort of declaration that emotional needs should not be confused with moral issues. Which is an amusing crabwise denial of expressivism.
I'm not going to say you two are wrong to have your position, but I just want to say that as far as my position, the crux is that I completely reject the description of "petty subjectivity". The key problem with that in my opinion is that it's people starting from a position of believing in objectivity, then after studying the concept deciding that it does not exist, and then keeping their exact same world view based upon objectivity existing, but just adding the lack of objectivity and thus conclude that existence is meaningless. When the proper response in my opinion is to go back to the first assumption, correct it, and then rebuild a new world view from the ground up accounting for the lack of objectivity.
Subjectivity is the centre of our existence, it is the beginning and end point of all knowledge. When I say morality is a choice, that does not mean it is a meaningless choice, in fact when I say so morality becomes even more important and meaningful than if it was objective. To say "Murder is wrong" and "Murder isn't wrong" is not a choice between two equal positions of equal worth. It is a choice between two radically different positions with radically different consequences. It is a choice that is incredibly important to the person making it, and the people around them. My point was that if someone says "I think murder isn't wrong" I don't think you can say "no that is objectively false and I can prove it", but if you continue that understanding you realise that the only response is: "fine, if that is your choice I can't stop you from choosing. But I've decided that murder is wrong and if you try to commit one I will stop you".
Whats phylosophys take on doing something with bad intentions but having a good result, or the other way around? (i realy dont know this and am curious)
This is also more along the lines of normative ethics than metaethics, but there is a wide range of disagreements. Deontologists will generally find intentions important (for Kant, they're just about the only thing that's important).
Consequentialists are more likely to just look at outcomes, but this might just be because the two types of theory are in part discussing different aspects of morality. Even consequentialists can recognize that the action that doesn't bring about the best outcome is not always a blameworthy one or one that you could have rationally expected to bring about the good ahead of time.
edit 1: @Whitedog, you've written a lot since I last replied, and we come at things from such different angles that I think I'll take the lazy way out and let Poffel handle that part of the discussion for now. I endorse most of his claims.
edit 2:
On July 28 2013 23:44 zf wrote: Nitpick: Blackburn is a noncognitivist, but he's not an expressivist.
If you're looking to pick nits, I can point you to a dozen or so of at least that size elsewhere in the OP . In any case, if you know enough about the subject matter to say what you just said, then you surely also know that philosophers frequently use both 'expressivism' and 'quasi-realism' as if they applied in whole to both views (even in journal articles). At a deeper level of specificity, it's useful to draw some distinctions, like the ones Joyce draws here, but even he points out that drawing these distinctions is not common place when using the terms.
edit 3:
On July 28 2013 22:41 gneGne wrote: Nice, another philosophical thread :D (not sarcastic btw!), it's always nice to see people having the courage to come to the fore with their arguments on such complex topics and have the willingness to discuss them.
It seems so far, like nadafans pointed out in his assumptions, that few here doubt the possibility of ethics or free will (I think only one mentioned man as determined by chaos theory?), which surprised me in a secular age dominated by science and perhaps not so much by the tradition of philosophy. To me the question of the possibility of morality itself is already a big one which the answer also has further consequences to the possibility of certain views on morality.
Nadafanboy said something about the free will debate maybe just being semantics, which to me seemed like a dead giveaway he was at least open to compatibilism. Since compatibilism, is, err, compatible with our "secular age dominated by science", he doesn't have to worry about free will being threatened. You'd have to ask him for something authoritative of course.
On July 28 2013 15:33 harlock78 wrote: Another layman observation. For moral realists, what would be the truth value of "killing is wrong"? Would it be false, because it is not always true? Or would it be a nonsensical proposition? With "murder is wrong", the term is value-laden so saying that it is true is trivial. If it is nonsensical, is there any relevant question of interest to society that can be treated in a formal general way, without endless circumstantial clarifications?
The OP doesn't cover moral realism in any great detail because it is a gigantic area of enquiry. There are forms of moral realism which differ radically in terms of what makes a particular moral proposition true or false. For example, certain moral realists, called 'deontologists', would argue that 'murder is wrong' is true on any interpretation in virtue of some categorical imperative (in other words a moral law that must always be adhered to). Other moral realists argue that 'murder is wrong' is true only on particular interpretations. For instance, they might claim that the assassination of a totalitarian dictator demonstrates the falsity of the proposition 'murder is wrong'. This might be because the assassination of the totalitarian dictator brings about greater well-being for the population that is being dictated.
Yep. The good ol' deontonology vs. consequentialism stuff
Deontology hwaiting!!!
I consider myself sympathetic to Kantianism, in that I'ma transcendental egoist who don't need no consequences, but I'm not sure what category that is. Obviously, it's moral realism, but I think the naturalism/non-naturalism component kinda depends?
Sitting here on the toilet with Google leads me to a term called "ethical intuitionism", which may be a good category for you, based purely on the fact that I have a degree in Googling stuff. Or I could be way off since I'm just a noob here in this sort of thread :o
Ethical Intuitionism is a variant of Ethical Non-Naturalism which was developed in an attempt to address the epistemological problem, inherent in Ethical Non-Naturalism, of how we can ever know that anything is good, how we can distinguish good from bad, and how we can justify our moral beliefs.
The doctrine claims that we sometimes have intuitive awareness of moral properties or of moral truths. It is suggested that humans have a special faculty, a faculty of moral intuition, which tells us what is good and bad, right and wrong. Moral intuition is supposed to be a mental process (although different from other, more familiar faculties like sense-perception), and that moral judgments are its outputs. The ordinary notion that approximates moral intuition is what we refer to as conscience.
On July 28 2013 18:36 WhiteDog wrote: "Science" is not the same here and there. Social science aren't refutable, what some sociologues call a non-popperian space. It is true that it is a genetic fallacy to consider that the historical and sociological frame that has seen the birth of some laws in physics or mathematics is completly relevant to consider the "truth value" or the said law. It is completly different for anything that is socially determined, because if it always linked to its context (social and historical) it is always "true" in the said context, and not elsewhere.
Slavery is ethically true because you use concept of "human dignity" that is considered as true today, but that might not be in the future, and that was completly false in our long history. You don't have to go that far, go back to Nazi's Germany and tell them that you should give some dignity to those men working in concentration camp and that killing them is a bad thing.
Assuming that you're talking about the concepts put forward by Bourdieu and Passeron, these are about the difference between realism and constructivism, which is an important discussion for the consideration of relations (and contradictions) between different theoretical approaches in sociology, but they do not alleviate the burden of proof in regard to the empirical adequacy of sociological models (unless you think that sociological knowledge corresponds to social reality purely by coincidence). It doesn't make sociology irrefutable, it just means that constructivist models have to assess their theoretical laden differently than realist models.
On your illustration: Let's say I don't go back as far but only to the Nuremberg trials where Nazis were convicted for their crimes during the Third Reich... In your opinion, this must mean that our society has come to the agreement that our ethical values apply to the Third Reich as well. Are you not part of our society? I mean, apparently you doubt the legitimacy of the claim that the imperative "don't commit genocide" can be applied retroactively as a rule for Nazi Germany, even though society in general seems to think that that's ok ?
Passeron especially consider that sociology is not refutable as Popper means it. The famous exemple is the exemple of the black swan. If I state that all swans are white, and that I see a black swan, then my first assertion is wrong. For Passeron, in social science, the idea that all swans are white is wrong by itself : swans are white in this very lake the first of July. If I see a black swan in another lake or in the same lake at a different time, that doesn't make my first statement wrong. It does not indeed alleviate the burden of proof - it just states limit to what we can prove or disprove.
To be more precise I'll quote a translated quote of Passeron's book (p. 134 of the french edition, translated more or less by me, so might be badly worded):
None of the logical conditions of the "falsification" of a theory or a general proposition is fulfilled strictly speaking in the case of the logical structure of sociological theories (or "historical synthesis") as soon as one takes seriously the constraints of historical observation. Since no historical statement can completely dispose co-occurences, that the statement consider as related in the explanation or interpretation, from its space-time coordinates (context more or less expanded by typology), the universality of general propositions in sociology or history is about "digital universality" and never about the universality in the strict sense. In other words, the general sociological propositions can always be generated by the logical "conjunction" of singular statements that it resume.
I don't doubt "the legitimacy of the claim that the imperative "don't commit genocide" can be applied retroactively as a rule for Nazi Germany" (I'm quoting you because my weak english makes it hard for me to state it as good as you did), I doubt that us considering that genocide is wrong and judging them according to that moral instantly makes it wrong for the nazi society in their time. I don't consider that something exist that can definitly says that "genocide is wrong always and everywhere". I consider that "genocide is wrong" is the produce of a struggle over what is right or wrong in our societies.
What you've quoted from Passeron certainly makes sense as a safeguard against the temptation of a 'grand unified theory of mankind', and that's why I deem it especially important in regard to theory comparison (where 'middle range theories' (Merton) indeed seem to be the success model in sociology). I still think that it's peripheral for the discussion at hand because it regards universalistic certainty rather than universalistic truth: It is one thing to deem sociological methodology (or even generally scientific reasoning) unfit to bridge the gap between case study and the principles guiding the interactions of the observed phenomena (with sufficient certainty); it is a different thing to argue that such guiding principles do not exist (which is a matter of truth, not certainty - even a blind guess can be true, albeit neither certain nor scientific).
The important part is that you're not committing the fallacy I was talking about:
I don't consider that something exist that can definitly says that "genocide is wrong always and everywhere". I consider that "genocide is wrong" is the produce of a struggle over what is right or wrong in our societies.
That's basically all that my initial complaint was about - there is a tendency to mix up these two perspectives (which you correctly keep separated). The fact that our precept "genocide is wrong" is the product of struggles over right and wrong doesn't devalue the ethical correctness of the precept.
We might disagree, because when I state that "genocide is wrong" is the product of struggles over right and wrong, I mean that it could have been "genocide is right" if the winner was someone else. Since there are no universal way to define what is right or wrong (from my point of view) I can't judge what is right or wrong outside of the context in which I am making the said judgement.
From my point of view, in my society, in my culture, in this day and age, etc., genocide is wrong. And I will never be able to completly get rid of the context (my society, my culture, this day and age) to judge or assure the "co-occurence" I've made between "genocide" and "wrong". The "=" in "genocide = wrong" is always historical or sociological and thus always imply more than a simple "=". In the link you posted about the genetic fallacy, I see that "the value of many scientific ideas can be objectively evaluated by established techniques, so that the origin or history of the idea is irrelevant to its value". Since there are no "established techniques" to "objectively" evaluate what is right or wrong (there is no "something"), I can't separate my moral statement from its origin or history.
I understand your point, but the real issue that stands out here is that you argue that "there are no established techniques to objectively evaluate what is right or wrong". That's what the differentiation in the OP is about. However, there seems to be a misunderstanding in regard to the concept of truth put forward here. The OP's first statement claims that "ethical assertions make claims about the world", i.e. that there is a correspondence between reality and concept, and that it can be evaluated in a logical manner. What you're speaking about, a "truth" that cannot be objectively assessed and is instead a matter of social convention (convention theory), is fundamentally different from the concept of "truth" in the OP (correspondence theory) and thus a rejection of (1).
That said, we most definitely disagree, though I don't think that there's much we can (or should or wanted to) do about that. I'm a very pig-headed moral realist, at least in regard to ethical truths as a 'negative touch-stone' (Kant) for moral conduct. On a somewhat lighter note, I can still recommend trying moral realism, for it offers so much opportunities for intense indignation.
On July 29 2013 00:25 Shiori wrote: I consider myself sympathetic to Kantianism, in that I'ma transcendental egoist who don't need no consequences, but I'm not sure what category that is. Obviously, it's moral realism, but I think the naturalism/non-naturalism component kinda depends?
I guess another advantage with Kant is that his transcendental philosophy is systematic and thus at the least is consistent with his theory of knowledge and theory of judgment. I guess you could say with Kant that which is real has to be apodictic/necessary.
On July 28 2013 22:43 xM(Z wrote: your argument is based on an arrow of time narrative, a one-way direction under which things progress. i do not agree with that.
Neither do I. Now I understand your complaint, and I'm sorry for the confusion caused by the poor wording of the page I linked. However, since I don't think that my post was similarly ambiguous, we don't really seem to have a disagreement here:
On July 28 2013 17:41 Poffel wrote: In short, it does not make sense to evaluate the truth value of a proposition under specific timely conditions because logical evaluation does not depend on time.
i think that our views are exactly opposite since you can't keep your definition of human dignity intact under two opposite but equally right (by definition of genetic fallacy) ethics: one in which slavery is wrong and the other in which slavery is right.
Conversely, if there are good ethical reasons to reject slavery because it violates human dignity, then slavery is ethically wrong - and always has been, even if the realization of this truth may not have occured before the new-age.
i think you are trying mixing expressivism with realism (at least).
You have it backwards. I don't "keep my definition of human dignity intact under two opposite but equally right ethics". I say that slavery is immoral because it violates human dignity.
On July 28 2013 22:43 xM(Z wrote: your argument is based on an arrow of time narrative, a one-way direction under which things progress. i do not agree with that.
Neither do I. Now I understand your complaint, and I'm sorry for the confusion caused by the poor wording of the page I linked. However, since I don't think that my post was similarly ambiguous, we don't really seem to have a disagreement here:
On July 28 2013 17:41 Poffel wrote: In short, it does not make sense to evaluate the truth value of a proposition under specific timely conditions because logical evaluation does not depend on time.
i think that our views are exactly opposite since you can't keep your definition of human dignity intact under two opposite but equally right (by definition of genetic fallacy) ethics: one in which slavery is wrong and the other in which slavery is right.
Conversely, if there are good ethical reasons to reject slavery because it violates human dignity, then slavery is ethically wrong - and always has been, even if the realization of this truth may not have occured before the new-age.
i think you are trying mixing expressivism with realism (at least).
You have it backwards. I don't "keep my definition of human dignity intact under two opposite but equally right ethics". I say that slavery is immoral because it violates human dignity.
i'm missing something then. what is wrong with the phrasing - "slavery is moral because it doesn't violate human dignity" (i see it as true, under the 'slavery is moral' ethics). for you, the expression human dignity falls under realism, for me it doesn't. (we just have different definitions for human/humanity and/or dignity).
On July 29 2013 02:06 xM(Z wrote: i'm missing something then. what is wrong with the phrasing - "slavery is moral because it doesn't violate human dignity" (i see it as true, under the 'slavery is moral' ethics). for you, the expression human dignity falls under realism, for me it doesn't. (we just have different definitions for human/humanity and/or dignity).
Well, if I may answer too, slavery is contradictory to human dignity, because it treats a person only as a means to a certain end. That is the difference between work and slavery, where work is with consent and slavery without.
I'm not sure if xM(z is arguing that morality is really just a matter of opinion here, but I've seen him argue something along those lines in other threads. Not sure if that helps.
On July 28 2013 18:36 WhiteDog wrote: "Science" is not the same here and there. Social science aren't refutable, what some sociologues call a non-popperian space. It is true that it is a genetic fallacy to consider that the historical and sociological frame that has seen the birth of some laws in physics or mathematics is completly relevant to consider the "truth value" or the said law. It is completly different for anything that is socially determined, because if it always linked to its context (social and historical) it is always "true" in the said context, and not elsewhere.
Slavery is ethically true because you use concept of "human dignity" that is considered as true today, but that might not be in the future, and that was completly false in our long history. You don't have to go that far, go back to Nazi's Germany and tell them that you should give some dignity to those men working in concentration camp and that killing them is a bad thing.
Assuming that you're talking about the concepts put forward by Bourdieu and Passeron, these are about the difference between realism and constructivism, which is an important discussion for the consideration of relations (and contradictions) between different theoretical approaches in sociology, but they do not alleviate the burden of proof in regard to the empirical adequacy of sociological models (unless you think that sociological knowledge corresponds to social reality purely by coincidence). It doesn't make sociology irrefutable, it just means that constructivist models have to assess their theoretical laden differently than realist models.
On your illustration: Let's say I don't go back as far but only to the Nuremberg trials where Nazis were convicted for their crimes during the Third Reich... In your opinion, this must mean that our society has come to the agreement that our ethical values apply to the Third Reich as well. Are you not part of our society? I mean, apparently you doubt the legitimacy of the claim that the imperative "don't commit genocide" can be applied retroactively as a rule for Nazi Germany, even though society in general seems to think that that's ok ?
Passeron especially consider that sociology is not refutable as Popper means it. The famous exemple is the exemple of the black swan. If I state that all swans are white, and that I see a black swan, then my first assertion is wrong. For Passeron, in social science, the idea that all swans are white is wrong by itself : swans are white in this very lake the first of July. If I see a black swan in another lake or in the same lake at a different time, that doesn't make my first statement wrong. It does not indeed alleviate the burden of proof - it just states limit to what we can prove or disprove.
To be more precise I'll quote a translated quote of Passeron's book (p. 134 of the french edition, translated more or less by me, so might be badly worded):
None of the logical conditions of the "falsification" of a theory or a general proposition is fulfilled strictly speaking in the case of the logical structure of sociological theories (or "historical synthesis") as soon as one takes seriously the constraints of historical observation. Since no historical statement can completely dispose co-occurences, that the statement consider as related in the explanation or interpretation, from its space-time coordinates (context more or less expanded by typology), the universality of general propositions in sociology or history is about "digital universality" and never about the universality in the strict sense. In other words, the general sociological propositions can always be generated by the logical "conjunction" of singular statements that it resume.
I don't doubt "the legitimacy of the claim that the imperative "don't commit genocide" can be applied retroactively as a rule for Nazi Germany" (I'm quoting you because my weak english makes it hard for me to state it as good as you did), I doubt that us considering that genocide is wrong and judging them according to that moral instantly makes it wrong for the nazi society in their time. I don't consider that something exist that can definitly says that "genocide is wrong always and everywhere". I consider that "genocide is wrong" is the produce of a struggle over what is right or wrong in our societies.
What you've quoted from Passeron certainly makes sense as a safeguard against the temptation of a 'grand unified theory of mankind', and that's why I deem it especially important in regard to theory comparison (where 'middle range theories' (Merton) indeed seem to be the success model in sociology). I still think that it's peripheral for the discussion at hand because it regards universalistic certainty rather than universalistic truth: It is one thing to deem sociological methodology (or even generally scientific reasoning) unfit to bridge the gap between case study and the principles guiding the interactions of the observed phenomena (with sufficient certainty); it is a different thing to argue that such guiding principles do not exist (which is a matter of truth, not certainty - even a blind guess can be true, albeit neither certain nor scientific).
The important part is that you're not committing the fallacy I was talking about:
I don't consider that something exist that can definitly says that "genocide is wrong always and everywhere". I consider that "genocide is wrong" is the produce of a struggle over what is right or wrong in our societies.
That's basically all that my initial complaint was about - there is a tendency to mix up these two perspectives (which you correctly keep separated). The fact that our precept "genocide is wrong" is the product of struggles over right and wrong doesn't devalue the ethical correctness of the precept.
We might disagree, because when I state that "genocide is wrong" is the product of struggles over right and wrong, I mean that it could have been "genocide is right" if the winner was someone else. Since there are no universal way to define what is right or wrong (from my point of view) I can't judge what is right or wrong outside of the context in which I am making the said judgement.
From my point of view, in my society, in my culture, in this day and age, etc., genocide is wrong. And I will never be able to completly get rid of the context (my society, my culture, this day and age) to judge or assure the "co-occurence" I've made between "genocide" and "wrong". The "=" in "genocide = wrong" is always historical or sociological and thus always imply more than a simple "=". In the link you posted about the genetic fallacy, I see that "the value of many scientific ideas can be objectively evaluated by established techniques, so that the origin or history of the idea is irrelevant to its value". Since there are no "established techniques" to "objectively" evaluate what is right or wrong (there is no "something"), I can't separate my moral statement from its origin or history.
I understand your point, but the real issue that stands out here is that you argue that "there are no established techniques to objectively evaluate what is right or wrong". That's what the differentiation in the OP is about. However, there seems to be a misunderstanding in regard to the concept of truth put forward here. The OP's first statement claims that "ethical assertions make claims about the world", i.e. that there is a correspondence between reality and concept, and that it can be evaluated in a logical manner. What you're speaking about, a "truth" that cannot be objectively assessed and is instead a matter of social convention (convention theory), is fundamentally different from the concept of "truth" in the OP (correspondence theory) and thus a rejection of (1).
That said, we most definitely disagree, though I don't think that there's much we can (or should or wanted to) do about that. I'm a very pig-headed moral realist, at least in regard to ethical truths as a 'negative touch-stone' (Kant) for moral conduct. On a somewhat lighter note, I can still recommend trying moral realism, for it offers so much opportunities for intense indignation.
There is no misunderstanding, it is the basis of my opposition. As I stated by quoting Passeron, there are no ground on which you can really define that a moral statement is true always and everywhere because you cannot separate it from its context - "meta-ethic" is not falsifiable "science". In the inexistence of that meta-"something" ("intuitions", "god", "emotions", "human nature", etc., all concepts that have no "existence" outside of our own subjectivity) that can define what is right or wrong outside of the context in which the right and wrong are defined, the "truth" stated by morals statements is always true in its context.
Well disagreeing is not a bad thing at all, and I completly understand the idea that moral realism offer "opportunities for intense indignation" but from my point of view it is also a defense of the status quo and the people who defined "morals" (the dominant). I prefer the idea that every moral statement are your own, and that politic is the ground on which one battle with others to change our society to (hopefully) something better - the idea of the war of gods, where politic is about chosing your god and fighting for it, with no way to say objectively wheither that god is better than the other (referring to Weber here).
As I stated by quoting Passeron, there are no ground on which you can really define that a moral statement is true always and everywhere because you cannot separate it from its context - "meta-ethic" is not falsifiable "science".
Yes, but this is true of every belief. Hell, it even applies to the laws of logic. Most moral realists start from the notion that one or two axioms are basically self-evident, and then move on from there. Your issue with moral realism seems to be rather like objecting to the scientific method on the grounds that Hume totally deconstructed our ability to prove causality rationally. It's just one of those things we kinda take for granted as being true, because it seems like it has to be for anything to ever get done.
On July 29 2013 02:06 xM(Z wrote: i'm missing something then. what is wrong with the phrasing - "slavery is moral because it doesn't violate human dignity" (i see it as true, under the 'slavery is moral' ethics). for you, the expression human dignity falls under realism, for me it doesn't. (we just have different definitions for human/humanity and/or dignity).
In your "for me" world, how do you reconcile slavery being moral with the fact that it violates the moral autonomy of the slaves?
As I stated by quoting Passeron, there are no ground on which you can really define that a moral statement is true always and everywhere because you cannot separate it from its context - "meta-ethic" is not falsifiable "science".
Yes, but this is true of every belief. Hell, it even applies to the laws of logic. Most moral realists start from the notion that one or two axioms are basically self-evident, and then move on from there. Your issue with moral realism seems to be rather like objecting to the scientific method on the grounds that Hume totally deconstructed our ability to prove causality rationally. It's just one of those things we kinda take for granted as being true, because it seems like it has to be for anything to ever get done.
Your issue with moral realism seems to be rather like objecting to the scientific method on the grounds that Hume totally deconstructed our ability to prove causality rationally.
No, the point is that moral realism or anny other way to deduct morals do not and can not follow the scientific method at all. But i guess thats why its called "meta" ethics.
Lets look at it from a practical point of vieuw. Then it is clear that the human without anny moral limitations for their actions, has an advantage over humans who have some moral limitations for their actions. Having morals and considering them to be "true" is a sort of phylosophic slavery. Maybe thats why countrys when i war , or business leaders involved in heavy competition dont care much about moralty,when fighting for survival there are no limits. All this moral thinking and phylosophy is just a way to make average people feel good about themselves and their situation,it is much like if not exactly the same as religion.
On July 28 2013 18:36 WhiteDog wrote: "Science" is not the same here and there. Social science aren't refutable, what some sociologues call a non-popperian space. It is true that it is a genetic fallacy to consider that the historical and sociological frame that has seen the birth of some laws in physics or mathematics is completly relevant to consider the "truth value" or the said law. It is completly different for anything that is socially determined, because if it always linked to its context (social and historical) it is always "true" in the said context, and not elsewhere.
Slavery is ethically true because you use concept of "human dignity" that is considered as true today, but that might not be in the future, and that was completly false in our long history. You don't have to go that far, go back to Nazi's Germany and tell them that you should give some dignity to those men working in concentration camp and that killing them is a bad thing.
Assuming that you're talking about the concepts put forward by Bourdieu and Passeron, these are about the difference between realism and constructivism, which is an important discussion for the consideration of relations (and contradictions) between different theoretical approaches in sociology, but they do not alleviate the burden of proof in regard to the empirical adequacy of sociological models (unless you think that sociological knowledge corresponds to social reality purely by coincidence). It doesn't make sociology irrefutable, it just means that constructivist models have to assess their theoretical laden differently than realist models.
On your illustration: Let's say I don't go back as far but only to the Nuremberg trials where Nazis were convicted for their crimes during the Third Reich... In your opinion, this must mean that our society has come to the agreement that our ethical values apply to the Third Reich as well. Are you not part of our society? I mean, apparently you doubt the legitimacy of the claim that the imperative "don't commit genocide" can be applied retroactively as a rule for Nazi Germany, even though society in general seems to think that that's ok ?
Passeron especially consider that sociology is not refutable as Popper means it. The famous exemple is the exemple of the black swan. If I state that all swans are white, and that I see a black swan, then my first assertion is wrong. For Passeron, in social science, the idea that all swans are white is wrong by itself : swans are white in this very lake the first of July. If I see a black swan in another lake or in the same lake at a different time, that doesn't make my first statement wrong. It does not indeed alleviate the burden of proof - it just states limit to what we can prove or disprove.
To be more precise I'll quote a translated quote of Passeron's book (p. 134 of the french edition, translated more or less by me, so might be badly worded):
None of the logical conditions of the "falsification" of a theory or a general proposition is fulfilled strictly speaking in the case of the logical structure of sociological theories (or "historical synthesis") as soon as one takes seriously the constraints of historical observation. Since no historical statement can completely dispose co-occurences, that the statement consider as related in the explanation or interpretation, from its space-time coordinates (context more or less expanded by typology), the universality of general propositions in sociology or history is about "digital universality" and never about the universality in the strict sense. In other words, the general sociological propositions can always be generated by the logical "conjunction" of singular statements that it resume.
I don't doubt "the legitimacy of the claim that the imperative "don't commit genocide" can be applied retroactively as a rule for Nazi Germany" (I'm quoting you because my weak english makes it hard for me to state it as good as you did), I doubt that us considering that genocide is wrong and judging them according to that moral instantly makes it wrong for the nazi society in their time. I don't consider that something exist that can definitly says that "genocide is wrong always and everywhere". I consider that "genocide is wrong" is the produce of a struggle over what is right or wrong in our societies.
What you've quoted from Passeron certainly makes sense as a safeguard against the temptation of a 'grand unified theory of mankind', and that's why I deem it especially important in regard to theory comparison (where 'middle range theories' (Merton) indeed seem to be the success model in sociology). I still think that it's peripheral for the discussion at hand because it regards universalistic certainty rather than universalistic truth: It is one thing to deem sociological methodology (or even generally scientific reasoning) unfit to bridge the gap between case study and the principles guiding the interactions of the observed phenomena (with sufficient certainty); it is a different thing to argue that such guiding principles do not exist (which is a matter of truth, not certainty - even a blind guess can be true, albeit neither certain nor scientific).
The important part is that you're not committing the fallacy I was talking about:
I don't consider that something exist that can definitly says that "genocide is wrong always and everywhere". I consider that "genocide is wrong" is the produce of a struggle over what is right or wrong in our societies.
That's basically all that my initial complaint was about - there is a tendency to mix up these two perspectives (which you correctly keep separated). The fact that our precept "genocide is wrong" is the product of struggles over right and wrong doesn't devalue the ethical correctness of the precept.
We might disagree, because when I state that "genocide is wrong" is the product of struggles over right and wrong, I mean that it could have been "genocide is right" if the winner was someone else. Since there are no universal way to define what is right or wrong (from my point of view) I can't judge what is right or wrong outside of the context in which I am making the said judgement.
From my point of view, in my society, in my culture, in this day and age, etc., genocide is wrong. And I will never be able to completly get rid of the context (my society, my culture, this day and age) to judge or assure the "co-occurence" I've made between "genocide" and "wrong". The "=" in "genocide = wrong" is always historical or sociological and thus always imply more than a simple "=". In the link you posted about the genetic fallacy, I see that "the value of many scientific ideas can be objectively evaluated by established techniques, so that the origin or history of the idea is irrelevant to its value". Since there are no "established techniques" to "objectively" evaluate what is right or wrong (there is no "something"), I can't separate my moral statement from its origin or history.
I understand your point, but the real issue that stands out here is that you argue that "there are no established techniques to objectively evaluate what is right or wrong". That's what the differentiation in the OP is about. However, there seems to be a misunderstanding in regard to the concept of truth put forward here. The OP's first statement claims that "ethical assertions make claims about the world", i.e. that there is a correspondence between reality and concept, and that it can be evaluated in a logical manner. What you're speaking about, a "truth" that cannot be objectively assessed and is instead a matter of social convention (convention theory), is fundamentally different from the concept of "truth" in the OP (correspondence theory) and thus a rejection of (1).
That said, we most definitely disagree, though I don't think that there's much we can (or should or wanted to) do about that. I'm a very pig-headed moral realist, at least in regard to ethical truths as a 'negative touch-stone' (Kant) for moral conduct. On a somewhat lighter note, I can still recommend trying moral realism, for it offers so much opportunities for intense indignation.
There is no misunderstanding, it is the basis of my opposition. As I stated by quoting Passeron, there are no ground on which you can really define that a moral statement is true always and everywhere because you cannot separate it from its context - "meta-ethic" is not falsifiable "science". In the inexistence of that meta-"something" ("intuitions", "god", "emotions", "human nature", etc., all concepts that have no "existence" outside of our own subjectivity) that can define what is right or wrong outside of the context in which the right and wrong are defined, the "truth" stated by morals statements is always true in its context.
Well disagreeing is not a bad thing at all, and I completly understand the idea that moral realism offer "opportunities for intense indignation" but from my point of view it is also a defense of the status quo and the people who defined "morals" (the dominant). I prefer the idea that every moral statement are your own, and that politic is the ground on which one battle with others to change our society to (hopefully) something better - the idea of the war of gods, where politic is about chosing your god and fighting for it, with no way to say objectively wheither that god is better than the other (referring to Weber here).
I think you are confusing moral realism here with the oppression of your freedom. Because there are also forms of moral realism that are all about limiting certain action in order to enable the freedom of the people (hence the necessity of a legal order and legal personhood). This ofcourse is only possible is if the limiting of actions/freedom is itself something that can necessarily be agreed on. A volonté général.
No, the point is that moral realism or anny other way to deduct morals do not and can not follow the scientific method at all. But i guess thats why its called "meta" ethics
Lots of things don't follow the scientific method. Mathematics, for instance, doesn't follow the scientific method; it follows logical argument and considers experimental verification largely superfluous.
Lets look at it from a practical point of vieuw. Then it is clear that the human without anny moral limitations for their actions, has an advantage over humans who have some moral limitations for their actions. Having morals and considering them to be "true" is a sort of phylosophic slavery.
Would you really feel free in a society without any limitations whatsoever?
It would only lead to the domination of the strongest.
No, the point is that moral realism or anny other way to deduct morals do not and can not follow the scientific method at all. But i guess thats why its called "meta" ethics
Lots of things don't follow the scientific method. Mathematics, for instance, doesn't follow the scientific method; it follows logical argument and considers experimental verification largely superfluous.
As another TLer (harlock78 two pages ago) stated "Mathematical object live in their own space". Moral on the other hand, has been defined (I should say is defined) and exist in our space, our society, and our time.
As I stated by quoting Passeron, there are no ground on which you can really define that a moral statement is true always and everywhere because you cannot separate it from its context - "meta-ethic" is not falsifiable "science".
Yes, but this is true of every belief. Hell, it even applies to the laws of logic. Most moral realists start from the notion that one or two axioms are basically self-evident, and then move on from there. Your issue with moral realism seems to be rather like objecting to the scientific method on the grounds that Hume totally deconstructed our ability to prove causality rationally. It's just one of those things we kinda take for granted as being true, because it seems like it has to be for anything to ever get done.
Seems kinda tautologic : I need to accept (or "believe") as an axiom that "something" exist beyond my own subjectivity that define and can tell objectively what is moral or not, to then see through logic that "moral statements" exists and are "true" outside of my own subjectivity.
Having morals and considering them to be "true" is a sort of phylosophic slavery.
Lets look at it from a practical point of vieuw. Then it is clear that the human without anny moral limitations for their actions, has an advantage over humans who have some moral limitations for their actions. Having morals and considering them to be "true" is a sort of phylosophic slavery.
Would you really feel free in a society without any limitations whatsoever?
It would only lead to the domination of the strongest.
Yes thats how society works, just look at america. Off course there are limitations to what one can do, but they are all pragmatic. If obama would do action A wich will result in a revolution in the usa, then he wont do that. Not because it is morally wrong, but because it is not pragmatic and wont lead to the result he wants to.
Lets look at it from a practical point of vieuw. Then it is clear that the human without anny moral limitations for their actions, has an advantage over humans who have some moral limitations for their actions. Having morals and considering them to be "true" is a sort of phylosophic slavery.
Would you really feel free in a society without any limitations whatsoever?
It would only lead to the domination of the strongest.
Yes thats how society works, just look at america. Off course there are limitations to what one can do, but they are all pragmatic. If obama would do action A wich will result in a revolution in the usa, then he wont do that. Not because it is morally wrong, but because it is not pragmatic and wont lead to the result he wants to.
No, the point is that moral realism or anny other way to deduct morals do not and can not follow the scientific method at all. But i guess thats why its called "meta" ethics
Lots of things don't follow the scientific method. Mathematics, for instance, doesn't follow the scientific method; it follows logical argument and considers experimental verification largely superfluous.
As another TLer (harlock78 two pages ago) stated "Mathematical object live in their own space". Moral on the other hand, has been defined (I should say is defined) and exist in our space, our society, and our time.
What does that mean? Where does mathematics exist? Are not moral systems abstractions of the same construction as mathematical theorems, just with different objects?
As I stated by quoting Passeron, there are no ground on which you can really define that a moral statement is true always and everywhere because you cannot separate it from its context - "meta-ethic" is not falsifiable "science".
Yes, but this is true of every belief. Hell, it even applies to the laws of logic. Most moral realists start from the notion that one or two axioms are basically self-evident, and then move on from there. Your issue with moral realism seems to be rather like objecting to the scientific method on the grounds that Hume totally deconstructed our ability to prove causality rationally. It's just one of those things we kinda take for granted as being true, because it seems like it has to be for anything to ever get done.
Seems kinda tautologic : I need to accept (or "believe") as an axiom that "something" exist beyond my own subjectivity that define and can tell objectively what is moral or not, to then see through logic that "moral statements" exists and are "true" outside of my own subjectivity.
That's because it is a tautology. And that's not a problem, at the most basic level, because all reasoning is ultimately circular or axiomatic. It doesn't matter what you choose. It could be the scientific method, or mathematics, or the New Criticism, or anything else; every single one depends on some axiom or derivation of axioms.
On July 29 2013 02:06 xM(Z wrote: i'm missing something then. what is wrong with the phrasing - "slavery is moral because it doesn't violate human dignity" (i see it as true, under the 'slavery is moral' ethics). for you, the expression human dignity falls under realism, for me it doesn't. (we just have different definitions for human/humanity and/or dignity).
In your "for me" world, how do you reconcile slavery being moral with the fact that it violates the moral autonomy of the slaves?
(my reply is aimed not only at you but at everyone replaying to my earlier posts) i figured it would be pretty obvious that my statement "we just have different definitions for human/humanity and/or dignity" would open a can of worms full of racism, eugenics, xenophobia, misogyny and whatever else you have there on your list of 'bad behaviors/ethics/morals'. i'm not condoning said behaviors but i will never agree with your list of objective goodnesses that define your moral realism. i don't understand the well-being concept. well-being for whom?, why? ... i'm an expressivist/absolutist primarily but i would totally man up, arm up and go defend one of your objective truths out of pure (immediate) pragmatism. also (as a side note), based on what i've read, i don't think my empathy is working as it should (if a standard for it would exist).
On July 29 2013 02:06 xM(Z wrote: i'm missing something then. what is wrong with the phrasing - "slavery is moral because it doesn't violate human dignity" (i see it as true, under the 'slavery is moral' ethics). for you, the expression human dignity falls under realism, for me it doesn't. (we just have different definitions for human/humanity and/or dignity).
Well, if I may answer too, slavery is contradictory to human dignity, because it treats a person only as a means to a certain end. That is the difference between work and slavery, where work is with consent and slavery without.
i see them both as varying degrees of slavery and i would argue that consent is imposed on you by certain social needs/requirements you'd have to adhere to. since consent is not given freely, you are still a slave.
On July 28 2013 03:52 radscorpion9 wrote: So I guess Sam Harris would be an example of a naturalistic moral realist? I seem to identify with both of their positions.
But my god this stuff is complex - I was just reading your links and suddenly I felt like I was reading my math paper on analytic functions
Before you get too comfortable in identifying with Sam Harris' work in ethics, have a look at this link.. At the bottom are more links to a variety of critiques of Harris. Suffice it to say, I don't find his ideas very appealing.
Wish I had responded to this earlier, but its nice to see the discussion that evolved out of this.
Thank you for the links, its nice to re-read the is-ought problem in clear terms, although I guess I'm already familiar with those arguments. But I would basically echo MCC's comments in that I can't imagine any other saner, more rational option for a moral philosophy than one in which the aim is to decrease suffering as much as possible, and if it can't be done for everyone, then to at least do it for the greatest number (utilitarianism). So if you assume that as your very reasonable starting point, then science can fill in the gaps.
Really what he's saying is quite obvious, because we do it all the time. Whether its deciding on the ideal economic system that serves the majority in the best way, the ideal prison system that will reduce recidivism by the highest degree, to how we should treat each other in relationships...all of these questions are answerable by science assuming that you agree with the initial philosophical claim that we should strive to be "happy" or "fulfilled". Perhaps those words are a bit nebulous, but practically speaking its rigorous enough that we can make enormous strides. Clearly these are not obvious questions either as your article suggests; for example economics can be very complex, and the consequences of choosing a particular system impacts millions.
But anyway, I do think that in the future science really will have something to say about morality. If we are just biological beings, than our moral feelings are really nothing more than a signal in our brains that are provoked by certain stimulus. If we can use neuroscience to analyze this, then we can clearly define what morality is in scientific terms. This will allow us to make at least a few claims concerning metaethics - for instance we can clearly show that expressivism in its simplest form "emotivism" is either true or false based on what we find in our brain. If our moral reactions do not stem directly from the emotional centers of our brain, then it is plainly false without needing to engage in any thought experiments.
So while we do not have a rigorous proof for it yet, I think its overwhelmingly likely, based on empirical evidence, that naturalistic moral realism is correct. After all what else could it be? Where else does our sense of "morality" come from except our brains? It must be based on biology and the laws of physics. So I think that science will help us explain what the "moral impulse" is in the far-flung future.
But as for what morality should be (as in the ideal moral system), assuming we find a way to alter our brains (perhaps through social conditioning or genetic engineering), I think that is entirely up for debate. But I find it seriously hard to believe that it will end up being anything other than maximizing happiness, which of course can be defined more specifically for certain people. Why "ought" we maximize happiness? Because it feels good, THAT'S WHY. lol
On July 28 2013 03:52 radscorpion9 wrote: So I guess Sam Harris would be an example of a naturalistic moral realist? I seem to identify with both of their positions.
But my god this stuff is complex - I was just reading your links and suddenly I felt like I was reading my math paper on analytic functions
Before you get too comfortable in identifying with Sam Harris' work in ethics, have a look at this link.. At the bottom are more links to a variety of critiques of Harris. Suffice it to say, I don't find his ideas very appealing.
Wish I had responded to this earlier, but its nice to see the discussion that evolved out of this.
Thank you for the links, its nice to re-read the is-ought problem in clear terms, although I guess I'm already familiar with those arguments. But I would basically echo MCC's comments in that I can't imagine any other saner, more rational option for a moral philosophy than one in which the aim is to decrease suffering as much as possible, and if it can't be done for everyone, then to at least do it for the greatest number (utilitarianism). So if you assume that as your very reasonable starting point, then science can fill in the gaps.
Really what he's saying is quite obvious, because we do it all the time. Whether its deciding on the ideal economic system that serves the majority in the best way, the ideal prison system that will reduce recidivism by the highest degree, to how we should treat each other in relationships...all of these questions are answerable by science assuming that you agree with the initial philosophical claim that we should strive to be "happy" or "fulfilled". Perhaps those words are a bit nebulous, but practically speaking its rigorous enough that we can make enormous strides. Clearly these are not obvious questions either as your article suggests; for example economics can be very complex, and the consequences of choosing a particular system impacts millions.
But anyway, I do think that in the future science really will have something to say about morality. If we are just biological beings, than our moral feelings are really nothing more than a signal in our brains that are provoked by certain stimulus. If we can use neuroscience to analyze this, then we can clearly define what morality is in scientific terms. This will allow us to make at least a few claims concerning metaethics - for instance we can clearly show that expressivism in its simplest form "emotivism" is either true or false based on what we find in our brain. If our moral reactions do not stem directly from the emotional centers of our brain, then it is plainly false without needing to engage in any thought experiments.
So while we do not have a rigorous proof for it yet, I think its overwhelmingly likely, based on empirical evidence, that naturalistic moral realism is correct. After all what else could it be? Where else does our sense of "morality" come from except our brains? It must be based on biology and the laws of physics. So I think that science will help us explain what the "moral impulse" is in the far-flung future.
But as for what morality should be (as in the ideal moral system), assuming we find a way to alter our brains (perhaps through social conditioning or genetic engineering), I think that is entirely up for debate. But I find it seriously hard to believe that it will end up being anything other than maximizing happiness, which of course can be defined more specifically for certain people. Why "ought" we maximize happiness? Because it feels good, THAT'S WHY. lol
On July 29 2013 02:06 xM(Z wrote: i'm missing something then. what is wrong with the phrasing - "slavery is moral because it doesn't violate human dignity" (i see it as true, under the 'slavery is moral' ethics). for you, the expression human dignity falls under realism, for me it doesn't. (we just have different definitions for human/humanity and/or dignity).
Well, if I may answer too, slavery is contradictory to human dignity, because it treats a person only as a means to a certain end. That is the difference between work and slavery, where work is with consent and slavery without.
i see them both as varying degrees of slavery and i would argue that consent is imposed on you by certain social needs/requirements you'd have to adhere to. since consent is not given freely, you are still a slave.
Consent is no real consent if its not self-imposed and this is what human dignity presupposes. In other words this human dignity doesn't mean much more than that I respect the other person as another person (equal). I don't see how this understanding of human dignity can work enslaving, quite the contrary actually.
And ofcourse we would have to analyse how or whether this actual self-imposed consent is possible at all within certain social regimes (aristocracy, timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, tyranny), but that perhaps is a somewhat different question or atleast for a later stage on how to realise human dignity.
No, the point is that moral realism or anny other way to deduct morals do not and can not follow the scientific method at all. But i guess thats why its called "meta" ethics
Lots of things don't follow the scientific method. Mathematics, for instance, doesn't follow the scientific method; it follows logical argument and considers experimental verification largely superfluous.
As another TLer (harlock78 two pages ago) stated "Mathematical object live in their own space". Moral on the other hand, has been defined (I should say is defined) and exist in our space, our society, and our time.
What does that mean? Where does mathematics exist? Are not moral systems abstractions of the same construction as mathematical theorems, just with different objects?
As I stated by quoting Passeron, there are no ground on which you can really define that a moral statement is true always and everywhere because you cannot separate it from its context - "meta-ethic" is not falsifiable "science".
Yes, but this is true of every belief. Hell, it even applies to the laws of logic. Most moral realists start from the notion that one or two axioms are basically self-evident, and then move on from there. Your issue with moral realism seems to be rather like objecting to the scientific method on the grounds that Hume totally deconstructed our ability to prove causality rationally. It's just one of those things we kinda take for granted as being true, because it seems like it has to be for anything to ever get done.
Seems kinda tautologic : I need to accept (or "believe") as an axiom that "something" exist beyond my own subjectivity that define and can tell objectively what is moral or not, to then see through logic that "moral statements" exists and are "true" outside of my own subjectivity.
That's because it is a tautology. And that's not a problem, at the most basic level, because all reasoning is ultimately circular or axiomatic. It doesn't matter what you choose. It could be the scientific method, or mathematics, or the New Criticism, or anything else; every single one depends on some axiom or derivation of axioms.
I'm not going to write a resume of everything that has been said since the beginning.
I am not arguing that there are no moral systems in a logical way, I'm arguing that nothing exist to know which of those moral systems is "more true" than the other. It's exactly like in mathematic if you will : there are multiple "equally true" system of logic. Now moral has not been defined as an abstraction (thus it does not exist in its own space as Mathematics) since the beginning of this thread so I don't know why you are trying to make me talk from a pure logical point of view.
(1) Ethical discourse is cognitive (or, fact-stating; or, truth-evaluable). That is, ethical assertions make claims about the world and are capable of being either true or false.[1]
Considering that, everything you've said about axiom and all reasonning being tautological doesn't make sense. Axiom in greek mean a premise that can be considered as true without creating controversy. Saying that god exist is not an "axiom" as it does create controversy.
If you start by saying "I consider that I can draw a straight line between two points" and prove me, from this axiom, that god exist, yes it is a tautology if you follow everystep of the logical reasonning, but you still proved by logic that god exist in a world where I can draw a straight line between two points. Now to prove that god exist in our day and age, you just have to falsify empirically that you can draw a straight line between two points in our day and age (and that your system of logic apply to our world but that is another matter entirely). On the other side, if you state that "god exist", and then from this statement, come to conclusion that "god exist", you just ran in circle without proving anything, and you can't after that come to me and say : I don't know why you disagree with me on the fact that god exist, because god exist is my axiom. You still have to find god and prove that "it is" to state that god exist in our day and age.
Yes god exist in a world where god exist. Now good luck proving me that this world is our world.
On July 28 2013 03:52 radscorpion9 wrote: So I guess Sam Harris would be an example of a naturalistic moral realist? I seem to identify with both of their positions.
But my god this stuff is complex - I was just reading your links and suddenly I felt like I was reading my math paper on analytic functions
Before you get too comfortable in identifying with Sam Harris' work in ethics, have a look at this link.. At the bottom are more links to a variety of critiques of Harris. Suffice it to say, I don't find his ideas very appealing.
Wish I had responded to this earlier, but its nice to see the discussion that evolved out of this.
Thank you for the links, its nice to re-read the is-ought problem in clear terms, although I guess I'm already familiar with those arguments. But I would basically echo MCC's comments in that I can't imagine any other saner, more rational option for a moral philosophy than one in which the aim is to decrease suffering as much as possible, and if it can't be done for everyone, then to at least do it for the greatest number (utilitarianism). So if you assume that as your very reasonable starting point, then science can fill in the gaps.
Really what he's saying is quite obvious, because we do it all the time. Whether its deciding on the ideal economic system that serves the majority in the best way, the ideal prison system that will reduce recidivism by the highest degree, to how we should treat each other in relationships...all of these questions are answerable by science assuming that you agree with the initial philosophical claim that we should strive to be "happy" or "fulfilled". Perhaps those words are a bit nebulous, but practically speaking its rigorous enough that we can make enormous strides. Clearly these are not obvious questions either as your article suggests; for example economics can be very complex, and the consequences of choosing a particular system impacts millions.
But anyway, I do think that in the future science really will have something to say about morality. If we are just biological beings, than our moral feelings are really nothing more than a signal in our brains that are provoked by certain stimulus. If we can use neuroscience to analyze this, then we can clearly define what morality is in scientific terms. This will allow us to make at least a few claims concerning metaethics - for instance we can clearly show that expressivism in its simplest form "emotivism" is either true or false based on what we find in our brain. If our moral reactions do not stem directly from the emotional centers of our brain, then it is plainly false without needing to engage in any thought experiments.
So while we do not have a rigorous proof for it yet, I think its overwhelmingly likely, based on empirical evidence, that naturalistic moral realism is correct. After all what else could it be? Where else does our sense of "morality" come from except our brains? It must be based on biology and the laws of physics. So I think that science will help us explain what the "moral impulse" is in the far-flung future.
But as for what morality should be (as in the ideal moral system), assuming we find a way to alter our brains (perhaps through social conditioning or genetic engineering), I think that is entirely up for debate. But I find it seriously hard to believe that it will end up being anything other than maximizing happiness, which of course can be defined more specifically for certain people. Why "ought" we maximize happiness? Because it feels good, THAT'S WHY. lol
Decreasing suffering is an appalling idea: get everyone on heroin all the time and there is no more suffering.
I should phrase that better, as it is a general critique of utilitarianism, that "utility" is incredibly hard to define. And I believe that's exactly one of the critiques against Sam Harris' stab at philosophy.
On July 28 2013 03:52 radscorpion9 wrote: So I guess Sam Harris would be an example of a naturalistic moral realist? I seem to identify with both of their positions.
But my god this stuff is complex - I was just reading your links and suddenly I felt like I was reading my math paper on analytic functions
Before you get too comfortable in identifying with Sam Harris' work in ethics, have a look at this link.. At the bottom are more links to a variety of critiques of Harris. Suffice it to say, I don't find his ideas very appealing.
Wish I had responded to this earlier, but its nice to see the discussion that evolved out of this.
Thank you for the links, its nice to re-read the is-ought problem in clear terms, although I guess I'm already familiar with those arguments. But I would basically echo MCC's comments in that I can't imagine any other saner, more rational option for a moral philosophy than one in which the aim is to decrease suffering as much as possible, and if it can't be done for everyone, then to at least do it for the greatest number (utilitarianism). So if you assume that as your very reasonable starting point, then science can fill in the gaps.
Really what he's saying is quite obvious, because we do it all the time. Whether its deciding on the ideal economic system that serves the majority in the best way, the ideal prison system that will reduce recidivism by the highest degree, to how we should treat each other in relationships...all of these questions are answerable by science assuming that you agree with the initial philosophical claim that we should strive to be "happy" or "fulfilled". Perhaps those words are a bit nebulous, but practically speaking its rigorous enough that we can make enormous strides. Clearly these are not obvious questions either as your article suggests; for example economics can be very complex, and the consequences of choosing a particular system impacts millions.
But anyway, I do think that in the future science really will have something to say about morality. If we are just biological beings, than our moral feelings are really nothing more than a signal in our brains that are provoked by certain stimulus. If we can use neuroscience to analyze this, then we can clearly define what morality is in scientific terms. This will allow us to make at least a few claims concerning metaethics - for instance we can clearly show that expressivism in its simplest form "emotivism" is either true or false based on what we find in our brain. If our moral reactions do not stem directly from the emotional centers of our brain, then it is plainly false without needing to engage in any thought experiments.
So while we do not have a rigorous proof for it yet, I think its overwhelmingly likely, based on empirical evidence, that naturalistic moral realism is correct. After all what else could it be? Where else does our sense of "morality" come from except our brains? It must be based on biology and the laws of physics. So I think that science will help us explain what the "moral impulse" is in the far-flung future.
But as for what morality should be (as in the ideal moral system), assuming we find a way to alter our brains (perhaps through social conditioning or genetic engineering), I think that is entirely up for debate. But I find it seriously hard to believe that it will end up being anything other than maximizing happiness, which of course can be defined more specifically for certain people. Why "ought" we maximize happiness? Because it feels good, THAT'S WHY. lol
We are not only biological being, we are also social being. This idea that neuroscience can and will be able to unveil the hidden truth about what we are and what we want in life is dangerous from my point of view - it's like waiting for a new god within our genes. There are many problems behind utilitarism, mainly because it is impossible to define or quantify utility (since at least Pareto). It is a flawed system of thought that still exist because it gives a moral justification behind material inequalities. There are ton of discussions behind it in economy especially, because they are always searching for a criteria through which they will be able to quantify economic efficiences.
On July 29 2013 02:06 xM(Z wrote: i'm missing something then. what is wrong with the phrasing - "slavery is moral because it doesn't violate human dignity" (i see it as true, under the 'slavery is moral' ethics). for you, the expression human dignity falls under realism, for me it doesn't. (we just have different definitions for human/humanity and/or dignity).
Well, if I may answer too, slavery is contradictory to human dignity, because it treats a person only as a means to a certain end. That is the difference between work and slavery, where work is with consent and slavery without.
i see them both as varying degrees of slavery and i would argue that consent is imposed on you by certain social needs/requirements you'd have to adhere to. since consent is not given freely, you are still a slave.
Consent is no real consent if its not self-imposed and this is what human dignity presupposes. In other words this human dignity doesn't mean much more than that I respect the other person as another person (equal). I don't see how this understanding of human dignity can work enslaving, quite the contrary actually.
And ofcourse we would have to analyse how or whether this actual self-imposed consent is possible at all within certain social regimes (aristocracy, timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, tyranny), but that perhaps is a somewhat different question or atleast for a later stage on how to realise human dignity.
you will never be able to distinguish between self-imposed and outside-imposed factors while living in a world based on an outside-imposed moral realism. the only dignity/equality you will be able to see is the equality among slaves.
or, OR!, you will always be a slave and the sam harrises of the world will teach you how to like it, how to be happy about it.
@WhiteDog: Catching up from yesterday, I strongly reject the assumption that moral realism is reactionary ("a defense of the status quo and the people who defined morals") by nature. From the realist point of view, it simply doesn't matter whether you're part of the dominant or the subordinate because the same ethical truths apply to every human being - for example, everybody should respect human dignity, no matter if they work at McDonalds or Goldman Sachs. From your angle, this obviously doesn't make much sense; yet, even if I imagine myself in a Bourdieuian social space (or even a Weberian sphere of value), i.e. as a social agent who's (ethical) dispositions correspond to his social position, I still don't see the necessity for moral realism to concur with that of the dominant - unless I find myself in a dominant social position. In other words, why should moral realism necessarily be the "taste" of dominant morals when moral realists come from completely different life styles?
@xM(Z: I concur with gneGne: Slavery violates human dignity because it treats humans only as a means to an end. That said, slavery is not the only instance of such a violation of human dignity, and the same argument certainly can be (and is) put forward against exploitative labor conditions. However, even though everybody has to respond to structural conditions beyond their personal control, these conditions are not necessarily (and certainly not to the same degree) violating the integrity of the individual just because they are socially concerted. For instance, you seem to think (for reasons I can't imagine) that moral realism itself is "outside-imposed". Frankly, even though I find that notion to be rather abstruse, if that would be the case, it would be a good example of the above reasoning... if I find myself 'coerced' into having dignity, that's an "outside-imposition" I'm willing to accept.
On July 28 2013 03:52 radscorpion9 wrote: So I guess Sam Harris would be an example of a naturalistic moral realist? I seem to identify with both of their positions.
But my god this stuff is complex - I was just reading your links and suddenly I felt like I was reading my math paper on analytic functions
Before you get too comfortable in identifying with Sam Harris' work in ethics, have a look at this link.. At the bottom are more links to a variety of critiques of Harris. Suffice it to say, I don't find his ideas very appealing.
Wish I had responded to this earlier, but its nice to see the discussion that evolved out of this.
Thank you for the links, its nice to re-read the is-ought problem in clear terms, although I guess I'm already familiar with those arguments. But I would basically echo MCC's comments in that I can't imagine any other saner, more rational option for a moral philosophy than one in which the aim is to decrease suffering as much as possible, and if it can't be done for everyone, then to at least do it for the greatest number (utilitarianism). So if you assume that as your very reasonable starting point, then science can fill in the gaps.
Really what he's saying is quite obvious, because we do it all the time. Whether its deciding on the ideal economic system that serves the majority in the best way, the ideal prison system that will reduce recidivism by the highest degree, to how we should treat each other in relationships...all of these questions are answerable by science assuming that you agree with the initial philosophical claim that we should strive to be "happy" or "fulfilled". Perhaps those words are a bit nebulous, but practically speaking its rigorous enough that we can make enormous strides. Clearly these are not obvious questions either as your article suggests; for example economics can be very complex, and the consequences of choosing a particular system impacts millions.
But anyway, I do think that in the future science really will have something to say about morality. If we are just biological beings, than our moral feelings are really nothing more than a signal in our brains that are provoked by certain stimulus. If we can use neuroscience to analyze this, then we can clearly define what morality is in scientific terms. This will allow us to make at least a few claims concerning metaethics - for instance we can clearly show that expressivism in its simplest form "emotivism" is either true or false based on what we find in our brain. If our moral reactions do not stem directly from the emotional centers of our brain, then it is plainly false without needing to engage in any thought experiments.
So while we do not have a rigorous proof for it yet, I think its overwhelmingly likely, based on empirical evidence, that naturalistic moral realism is correct. After all what else could it be? Where else does our sense of "morality" come from except our brains? It must be based on biology and the laws of physics. So I think that science will help us explain what the "moral impulse" is in the far-flung future.
But as for what morality should be (as in the ideal moral system), assuming we find a way to alter our brains (perhaps through social conditioning or genetic engineering), I think that is entirely up for debate. But I find it seriously hard to believe that it will end up being anything other than maximizing happiness, which of course can be defined more specifically for certain people. Why "ought" we maximize happiness? Because it feels good, THAT'S WHY. lol
Think morals come from the neo cortex as animals have no sense of morals at all, it has to come from the section of the brain that we have and wich animals dont have. The origin might still be a feeling btw, i will keep that option open. Then morals could be a way in wich we try to rationalise our feelings.(wich imo is futile)
Maximising happiness i find a verry bad starting point btw, and it should also be specified. Happiness in what timescale? People often do something wich makes them happy in the short run but unhappy in the long run, like drug abuse. And people also often do things wich dont make them happy in the short run but wich will make them happy in the long run, like studying and working hard to achieve a better life and more happiness in the future. Same goes on a much wider scale,like (social) revolutions wich often cause alot of pain in the short term, but wich will create more happiness for the whole society in the long run.
Determining wich timescale we should look at is for me a breaking point in the whole discussion of morals, although i dont deny that it is possible for manny situations to judge wich one is more desireable then the other, i personally find it impossible to determine wich timescale is the most important. By taking the longest timescale possible i came to the conclusion that good moralty is doing that wich increases the entropy the least, though this has nearly no practical use. How does annyone of you who believe in scientific morals decide on wich timescale is the most important?
"Would you say democracy is a façade?" In general yes, there are situations in wich democracy is not a facade but thoose are verry small scale.
On July 29 2013 02:06 xM(Z wrote: i'm missing something then. what is wrong with the phrasing - "slavery is moral because it doesn't violate human dignity" (i see it as true, under the 'slavery is moral' ethics). for you, the expression human dignity falls under realism, for me it doesn't. (we just have different definitions for human/humanity and/or dignity).
Well, if I may answer too, slavery is contradictory to human dignity, because it treats a person only as a means to a certain end. That is the difference between work and slavery, where work is with consent and slavery without.
i see them both as varying degrees of slavery and i would argue that consent is imposed on you by certain social needs/requirements you'd have to adhere to. since consent is not given freely, you are still a slave.
Consent is no real consent if its not self-imposed and this is what human dignity presupposes. In other words this human dignity doesn't mean much more than that I respect the other person as another person (equal). I don't see how this understanding of human dignity can work enslaving, quite the contrary actually.
And ofcourse we would have to analyse how or whether this actual self-imposed consent is possible at all within certain social regimes (aristocracy, timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, tyranny), but that perhaps is a somewhat different question or atleast for a later stage on how to realise human dignity.
you will never be able to distinguish between self-imposed and outside-imposed factors while living in a world based on an outside-imposed moral realism. the only dignity/equality you will be able to see is the equality among slaves.
or, OR!, you will always be a slave and the sam harrises of the world will teach you how to like it, how to be happy about it.
I would reject the impossibility of distinguishing between self-imposed and outside-imposed factors even for the slave! Because in so far the slave realises him/herself as being enslaved, there already is presupposed a certain freedom which however is yet merely internal. The conscious slave knows he is serving certain laws/commands which are not his own. This also the claim that is in your argument, because you also implicitly still made the distinction between being imposed from the self and the outside to explain the domination of the outside-imposed factors. However, I do agree that the internal freedom of the slave exists only as but a potentiality.
"Would you say democracy is a façade?" In general yes, there are situations in wich democracy is not a facade but thoose are verry small scale.
I don't quite understand what you mean that the limitations of for example Obama's power are pragmatic. I would say every limitation is never pragmatic, since it is limiting. Or do you mean that Obama's power is not absolute enough to do his job well?
So you do agree that democracy exists, but only on a small scale. And I can follow you with that, but don't you think it is an ideal worth to keep striving for, at the least on a national level? Don't you think the limitations to the power of our politicians have purpose?
"Would you say democracy is a façade?" In general yes, there are situations in wich democracy is not a facade but thoose are verry small scale.
I don't quite understand what you mean that the limitations of for example Obama's power are pragmatic. I would say every limitation is never pragmatic, since it is limiting. Or do you mean that Obama's power is not absolute enough to do his job well?
So you do agree that democracy exists, but only on a small scale. And I can follow you with that, but don't you think it is an ideal worth to keep striving for, at the least on a national level? Don't you think the limitations to the power of our politicians have purpose?
You ask so manny questions lol, how about answering one? Wich time scale should we look at when we want to minimise suffering and maximise pleasure?
"Would you say democracy is a façade?" In general yes, there are situations in wich democracy is not a facade but thoose are verry small scale.
I don't quite understand what you mean that the limitations of for example Obama's power are pragmatic. I would say every limitation is never pragmatic, since it is limiting. Or do you mean that Obama's power is not absolute enough to do his job well?
So you do agree that democracy exists, but only on a small scale. And I can follow you with that, but don't you think it is an ideal worth to keep striving for, at the least on a national level? Don't you think the limitations to the power of our politicians have purpose?
You ask so manny questions lol, how about answering one? Wich time scale should we look at when we want to minimise suffering and maximise pleasure?
Well, that is a good remark. I tend to find trying to ask the right questions intruiging and a prerequisite for finding the right answer. So its really important to me, Im sorry if it annoys you ^^.
So as to answering your question, I think that equating morality with maximizing pleasure even on whatever time scale is in principle untenable. That is why instead I think morality is about freedom and asking the question if and how it is possible to legitimize the state, thus to find a state which is compatible with freedom.
On July 29 2013 18:27 Poffel wrote: @WhiteDog: Catching up from yesterday, I strongly reject the assumption that moral realism is reactionary ("a defense of the status quo and the people who defined morals") by nature. From the realist point of view, it simply doesn't matter whether you're part of the dominant or the subordinate because the same ethical truths apply to every human being - for example, everybody should respect human dignity, no matter if they work at McDonalds or Goldman Sachs. From your angle, this obviously doesn't make much sense; yet, even if I imagine myself in a Bourdieuian social space (or even a Weberian sphere of value), i.e. as a social agent who's (ethical) dispositions correspond to his social position, I still don't see the necessity for moral realism to concur with that of the dominant - unless I find myself in a dominant social position. In other words, why should moral realism necessarily be the "taste" of dominant morals when moral realists come from completely different life styles?
If I understands well, we are talking about two different things. You consider that if a "moral realism" existed, it would not be the morality of the dominant because it would be true for every being no matter what their life style or social origin. I agree with that and I sympathise with the idea that defining a "true" moral system ceteris paribus would be a great thing if it was possible. I also feel attracted by this theorical idea.
But in practice it is not possible (as we've stated before, there is no way for you to judge of the "truthness" every thing being equals of any moral system) and in the end there is no other type of argument to justify your own moral than an argument of authority : it is better because human dignity is universal, because I judge it this way, because I "feel" it this way, because god told me, because the USA judge it this way, because Lenine wrote it this way, etc.
On July 29 2013 02:06 xM(Z wrote: i'm missing something then. what is wrong with the phrasing - "slavery is moral because it doesn't violate human dignity" (i see it as true, under the 'slavery is moral' ethics). for you, the expression human dignity falls under realism, for me it doesn't. (we just have different definitions for human/humanity and/or dignity).
Well, if I may answer too, slavery is contradictory to human dignity, because it treats a person only as a means to a certain end. That is the difference between work and slavery, where work is with consent and slavery without.
i see them both as varying degrees of slavery and i would argue that consent is imposed on you by certain social needs/requirements you'd have to adhere to. since consent is not given freely, you are still a slave.
Consent is no real consent if its not self-imposed and this is what human dignity presupposes. In other words this human dignity doesn't mean much more than that I respect the other person as another person (equal). I don't see how this understanding of human dignity can work enslaving, quite the contrary actually.
And ofcourse we would have to analyse how or whether this actual self-imposed consent is possible at all within certain social regimes (aristocracy, timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, tyranny), but that perhaps is a somewhat different question or atleast for a later stage on how to realise human dignity.
, you will never be able to distinguish between self-imposed and outside-imposed factors while living in a world based on an outside-imposed moral realism. the only dignity/equality you will be able to see is the equality among slaves.
or, OR!, you will always be a slave and the sam harrises of the world will teach you how to like it, how to be happy about it.
I would reject the impossibility of distinguishing between self-imposed and outside-imposed factors even for the slave! Because in so far the slave realises him/herself as being enslaved, there already is presupposed a certain freedom which however is yet merely internal. The conscious slave knows he is serving certain laws/commands which are not his own. This also the claim that is in your argument, because you also implicitly still made the distinction between being imposed from the self and the outside to explain the domination of the outside-imposed factors. However, I do agree that the internal freedom of the slave exists only as but a potentiality.
i stressed the S&M agenda of moral realism vs expressivism because i see moral realism as the slave agent and expressivism as the dominant agent based (but not only) on their definitions: imposed limits/graduality vs no limits/absolutes. i am a dualist. i can not see motion, change, progress, evolution that can be driven by a single thing/concept/entity (moral realism in this case).
i mostly agree with WhiteDog in
On July 29 2013 18:27 Poffel wrote: @WhiteDog: Catching up from yesterday, I strongly reject the assumption that moral realism is reactionary ("a defense of the status quo and the people who defined morals") by nature.
and about
On July 29 2013 18:27 Poffel wrote: From the realist point of view, it simply doesn't matter whether you're part of the dominant or the subordinate because the same ethical truths apply to every human being - for example, everybody should respect human dignity, no matter if they work at McDonalds or Goldman Sachs.
it's just wishful thinking or more of a plea, urging people to respect human dignity. it is in no way an imperative. who would force me to do that?, ethical truths by themselves?, i don't think so.
On July 29 2013 02:06 xM(Z wrote: i'm missing something then. what is wrong with the phrasing - "slavery is moral because it doesn't violate human dignity" (i see it as true, under the 'slavery is moral' ethics). for you, the expression human dignity falls under realism, for me it doesn't. (we just have different definitions for human/humanity and/or dignity).
Well, if I may answer too, slavery is contradictory to human dignity, because it treats a person only as a means to a certain end. That is the difference between work and slavery, where work is with consent and slavery without.
i see them both as varying degrees of slavery and i would argue that consent is imposed on you by certain social needs/requirements you'd have to adhere to. since consent is not given freely, you are still a slave.
Consent is no real consent if its not self-imposed and this is what human dignity presupposes. In other words this human dignity doesn't mean much more than that I respect the other person as another person (equal). I don't see how this understanding of human dignity can work enslaving, quite the contrary actually.
And ofcourse we would have to analyse how or whether this actual self-imposed consent is possible at all within certain social regimes (aristocracy, timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, tyranny), but that perhaps is a somewhat different question or atleast for a later stage on how to realise human dignity.
, you will never be able to distinguish between self-imposed and outside-imposed factors while living in a world based on an outside-imposed moral realism. the only dignity/equality you will be able to see is the equality among slaves.
or, OR!, you will always be a slave and the sam harrises of the world will teach you how to like it, how to be happy about it.
I would reject the impossibility of distinguishing between self-imposed and outside-imposed factors even for the slave! Because in so far the slave realises him/herself as being enslaved, there already is presupposed a certain freedom which however is yet merely internal. The conscious slave knows he is serving certain laws/commands which are not his own. This also the claim that is in your argument, because you also implicitly still made the distinction between being imposed from the self and the outside to explain the domination of the outside-imposed factors. However, I do agree that the internal freedom of the slave exists only as but a potentiality.
i stressed the S&M agenda of moral realism vs expressivism because i see moral realism as the slave agent and expressivism as the dominant agent based (but not only) on their definitions: imposed limits/graduality vs no limits/absolutes. i am a dualist. i can not see motion, change, progress, evolution that can be driven by a single thing/concept/entity (moral realism in this case).
On July 29 2013 18:27 Poffel wrote: @WhiteDog: Catching up from yesterday, I strongly reject the assumption that moral realism is reactionary ("a defense of the status quo and the people who defined morals") by nature.
On July 29 2013 18:27 Poffel wrote: From the realist point of view, it simply doesn't matter whether you're part of the dominant or the subordinate because the same ethical truths apply to every human being - for example, everybody should respect human dignity, no matter if they work at McDonalds or Goldman Sachs.
it's just wishful thinking or more of a plea, urging people to respect human dignity. it is in no way an imperative. who would force me to do that?, ethical truths by themselves?, i don't think so.
I think I sort of see where you are coming from. I think you do value freedom as well (as you brought up the S&M relation), but you think of freedom as opposed to moral realism which you see as limiting freedom, am I correct? While I see human dignity and absolute freedom as implicating each other and are what constitutes morality, therefore it is the moral imperative (as maxim/construct of reason) which presses me on and makes me knowledgeable of my freedom. I'm not sure if this makes things any clearer for you. Sort of like a mix of imposed limits/absolutes in your scheme of things.
I must add however that all this is still as a prerequisite for the freedom of man on the individual level. So then it is the task to create a society based on this model, for which I think democracy is a good start as the imposed laws brought about by all of society as self-imposed laws.
On July 29 2013 18:27 Poffel wrote: @WhiteDog: Catching up from yesterday, I strongly reject the assumption that moral realism is reactionary ("a defense of the status quo and the people who defined morals") by nature. From the realist point of view, it simply doesn't matter whether you're part of the dominant or the subordinate because the same ethical truths apply to every human being - for example, everybody should respect human dignity, no matter if they work at McDonalds or Goldman Sachs. From your angle, this obviously doesn't make much sense; yet, even if I imagine myself in a Bourdieuian social space (or even a Weberian sphere of value), i.e. as a social agent who's (ethical) dispositions correspond to his social position, I still don't see the necessity for moral realism to concur with that of the dominant - unless I find myself in a dominant social position. In other words, why should moral realism necessarily be the "taste" of dominant morals when moral realists come from completely different life styles?
If I understands well, we are talking about two different things. You consider that if a "moral realism" existed, it would not be the morality of the dominant because it would be true for every being no matter what their life style or social origin. I agree with that and I sympathise with the idea that defining a "true" moral system ceteris paribus would be a great thing if it was possible. I also feel attracted by this theorical idea.
But in practice it is not possible (as we've stated before, there is no way for you to judge of the "truthness" every thing being equals of any moral system) and in the end there is no other type of argument to justify your own moral than an argument of authority : it is better because human dignity is universal, because I judge it this way, because I "feel" it this way, because god told me, because the USA judge it this way, because Lenine wrote it this way, etc.
In the types of discussion you two are having I find it most useful to distinguish between moral semantics, moral ontology and moral obligations in order to better understand where the difference in opinion actually lies.
What do you guys think the sentence "torturing babies for fun is morally wrong" actually means? It seems to me that Whitedog thinks that all it means (or could possibly mean) is that "in society X at point in time Y the prevailing moral code forbids torturing babies for fun". Poffel (and me) think that the sentence usually means (or possibly could mean) something stronger. In my case: "Given some contingent facts about human beings and some necessary truths about rational agent interaction allowing torturing babies for fun as a general rule will not lead to a flourishing society."
Assuming that this difference in assessing semantic content is accurate, we will naturally point to different facts in order to ground our understanding. I will point to human physiology or game theory for instance, whereas Whitedog might point to laws or social codes of conduct and we will come to vastly different conclusions with regard to the universality or truth-aptness of moral statements.
That's why I would completely disagree with the notion that different practiced moral codes cannot be critiqued from the outside or even shown to be morally wrong themselves. The huge problem I have in these discussions is that it is so difficult to come to a common understanding of what it is that one is actually talking about.
On July 29 2013 02:06 xM(Z wrote: i'm missing something then. what is wrong with the phrasing - "slavery is moral because it doesn't violate human dignity" (i see it as true, under the 'slavery is moral' ethics). for you, the expression human dignity falls under realism, for me it doesn't. (we just have different definitions for human/humanity and/or dignity).
Well, if I may answer too, slavery is contradictory to human dignity, because it treats a person only as a means to a certain end. That is the difference between work and slavery, where work is with consent and slavery without.
i see them both as varying degrees of slavery and i would argue that consent is imposed on you by certain social needs/requirements you'd have to adhere to. since consent is not given freely, you are still a slave.
Consent is no real consent if its not self-imposed and this is what human dignity presupposes. In other words this human dignity doesn't mean much more than that I respect the other person as another person (equal). I don't see how this understanding of human dignity can work enslaving, quite the contrary actually.
And ofcourse we would have to analyse how or whether this actual self-imposed consent is possible at all within certain social regimes (aristocracy, timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, tyranny), but that perhaps is a somewhat different question or atleast for a later stage on how to realise human dignity.
, you will never be able to distinguish between self-imposed and outside-imposed factors while living in a world based on an outside-imposed moral realism. the only dignity/equality you will be able to see is the equality among slaves.
or, OR!, you will always be a slave and the sam harrises of the world will teach you how to like it, how to be happy about it.
I would reject the impossibility of distinguishing between self-imposed and outside-imposed factors even for the slave! Because in so far the slave realises him/herself as being enslaved, there already is presupposed a certain freedom which however is yet merely internal. The conscious slave knows he is serving certain laws/commands which are not his own. This also the claim that is in your argument, because you also implicitly still made the distinction between being imposed from the self and the outside to explain the domination of the outside-imposed factors. However, I do agree that the internal freedom of the slave exists only as but a potentiality.
i stressed the S&M agenda of moral realism vs expressivism because i see moral realism as the slave agent and expressivism as the dominant agent based (but not only) on their definitions: imposed limits/graduality vs no limits/absolutes. i am a dualist. i can not see motion, change, progress, evolution that can be driven by a single thing/concept/entity (moral realism in this case).
i mostly agree with WhiteDog in
On July 29 2013 18:27 Poffel wrote: @WhiteDog: Catching up from yesterday, I strongly reject the assumption that moral realism is reactionary ("a defense of the status quo and the people who defined morals") by nature.
and about
On July 29 2013 18:27 Poffel wrote: From the realist point of view, it simply doesn't matter whether you're part of the dominant or the subordinate because the same ethical truths apply to every human being - for example, everybody should respect human dignity, no matter if they work at McDonalds or Goldman Sachs.
it's just wishful thinking or more of a plea, urging people to respect human dignity. it is in no way an imperative. who would force me to do that?, ethical truths by themselves?, i don't think so.
I think I sort of see where you are coming from. I think you do value freedom as well (as you brought up the S&M relation), but you think of freedom as opposed to moral realism which you see as limiting freedom, am I correct? While I see human dignity and absolute freedom as implicating each other and are what constitutes morality, therefore it is the moral imperative (as maxim/construct of reason) which presses me on and makes me knowledgeable of my freedom. I'm not sure if this makes things any clearer for you. Sort of like a mix of imposed limits/absolutes in your scheme of things.
I must add however that all this is still as a prerequisite for the freedom of man on the individual level. So then it is the task to create a society based on this model, for which I think democracy is a good start as the imposed laws brought about by all of society as self-imposed laws.
i value change and the wasting of energy that comes with it. the creation of (a new) form if you like (a new form of moral realism, a new form of dignity, a new form of freedom and so on). that being said, i don't think freedom, absolute freedom could ever exist if we remain bound to any type/kind of physicalism/physical laws (even bound to selves for that matter) . but, being a nutjob i can absolutise everything. absolute freedom = death (the moment of). the death of you, the death of form, the death of the universe. now, if you believe in a cyclic model of our universe, birth followed by death and death followed by rebirth you might catch a glimpse of what 'absolute' of anything could mean: the moment of crossover, that split second before all hell breaks loose. analogy: when you flip a coin, every time it changes sides you stare at its edge for a brief moment. it's like that: of both sides but in neither of them ... and then it's all over.
On July 29 2013 18:27 Poffel wrote: @WhiteDog: Catching up from yesterday, I strongly reject the assumption that moral realism is reactionary ("a defense of the status quo and the people who defined morals") by nature. From the realist point of view, it simply doesn't matter whether you're part of the dominant or the subordinate because the same ethical truths apply to every human being - for example, everybody should respect human dignity, no matter if they work at McDonalds or Goldman Sachs. From your angle, this obviously doesn't make much sense; yet, even if I imagine myself in a Bourdieuian social space (or even a Weberian sphere of value), i.e. as a social agent who's (ethical) dispositions correspond to his social position, I still don't see the necessity for moral realism to concur with that of the dominant - unless I find myself in a dominant social position. In other words, why should moral realism necessarily be the "taste" of dominant morals when moral realists come from completely different life styles?
If I understands well, we are talking about two different things. You consider that if a "moral realism" existed, it would not be the morality of the dominant because it would be true for every being no matter what their life style or social origin. I agree with that and I sympathise with the idea that defining a "true" moral system ceteris paribus would be a great thing if it was possible. I also feel attracted by this theorical idea.
But in practice it is not possible (as we've stated before, there is no way for you to judge of the "truthness" every thing being equals of any moral system) and in the end there is no other type of argument to justify your own moral than an argument of authority : it is better because human dignity is universal, because I judge it this way, because I "feel" it this way, because god told me, because the USA judge it this way, because Lenine wrote it this way, etc.
In the types of discussion you two are having I find it most useful to distinguish between moral semantics, moral ontology and moral obligations in order to better understand where the difference in opinion actually lies.
What do you guys think the sentence "torturing babies for fun is morally wrong" actually means? It seems to me that Whitedog thinks that all it means (or could possibly mean) is that "in society X at point in time Y the prevailing moral code forbids torturing babies for fun". Poffel (and me) think that the sentence usually means (or possibly could mean) something stronger. In my case: "Given some contingent facts about human beings and some necessary truths about rational agent interaction allowing torturing babies for fun as a general rule will not lead to a flourishing society."
Assuming that this difference in assessing semantic content is accurate, we will naturally point to different facts in order to ground our understanding. I will point to human physiology or game theory for instance, whereas Whitedog might point to laws or social codes of conduct and we will come to vastly different conclusions with regard to the universality or truth-aptness of moral statements.
That's why I would completely disagree with the notion that different practiced moral codes cannot be critiqued from the outside or even shown to be morally wrong themselves. The huge problem I have in these discussions is that it is so difficult to come to a common understanding of what it is that one is actually talking about.
I'm not sure you can jump from "torturing babies for fun is morally wrong" to "Given some contingent facts about human beings and some necessary truths about rational agent interaction allowing torturing babies for fun as a general rule will not lead to a flourishing society.". The first sentence makes an ethical assertion while the second one makes a point about how society ought to be, so it sounds odd to say the first meaning to say the second.
On game theory, I know you can use it to show how in certain situations rational actors cooperate despite their (short-term) best interests, but it doesn't seem logical to derive morals from this. Game theory can attempt to show the presence of an unwritten normative code that punishes people through future non-cooperation, but to me this is much more akin to customary law than morals. How do you actually work rational agents and game theory into this whole discussion?
I'm no philosopher, so correct me if I say something silly. I do know a bit of game theory from my econ course.
On July 29 2013 18:27 Poffel wrote: @WhiteDog: Catching up from yesterday, I strongly reject the assumption that moral realism is reactionary ("a defense of the status quo and the people who defined morals") by nature. From the realist point of view, it simply doesn't matter whether you're part of the dominant or the subordinate because the same ethical truths apply to every human being - for example, everybody should respect human dignity, no matter if they work at McDonalds or Goldman Sachs. From your angle, this obviously doesn't make much sense; yet, even if I imagine myself in a Bourdieuian social space (or even a Weberian sphere of value), i.e. as a social agent who's (ethical) dispositions correspond to his social position, I still don't see the necessity for moral realism to concur with that of the dominant - unless I find myself in a dominant social position. In other words, why should moral realism necessarily be the "taste" of dominant morals when moral realists come from completely different life styles?
If I understands well, we are talking about two different things. You consider that if a "moral realism" existed, it would not be the morality of the dominant because it would be true for every being no matter what their life style or social origin. I agree with that and I sympathise with the idea that defining a "true" moral system ceteris paribus would be a great thing if it was possible. I also feel attracted by this theorical idea.
But in practice it is not possible (as we've stated before, there is no way for you to judge of the "truthness" every thing being equals of any moral system) and in the end there is no other type of argument to justify your own moral than an argument of authority : it is better because human dignity is universal, because I judge it this way, because I "feel" it this way, because god told me, because the USA judge it this way, because Lenine wrote it this way, etc.
In the types of discussion you two are having I find it most useful to distinguish between moral semantics, moral ontology and moral obligations in order to better understand where the difference in opinion actually lies.
What do you guys think the sentence "torturing babies for fun is morally wrong" actually means? It seems to me that Whitedog thinks that all it means (or could possibly mean) is that "in society X at point in time Y the prevailing moral code forbids torturing babies for fun". Poffel (and me) think that the sentence usually means (or possibly could mean) something stronger. In my case: "Given some contingent facts about human beings and some necessary truths about rational agent interaction allowing torturing babies for fun as a general rule will not lead to a flourishing society."
Assuming that this difference in assessing semantic content is accurate, we will naturally point to different facts in order to ground our understanding. I will point to human physiology or game theory for instance, whereas Whitedog might point to laws or social codes of conduct and we will come to vastly different conclusions with regard to the universality or truth-aptness of moral statements.
That's why I would completely disagree with the notion that different practiced moral codes cannot be critiqued from the outside or even shown to be morally wrong themselves. The huge problem I have in these discussions is that it is so difficult to come to a common understanding of what it is that one is actually talking about.
Moral codes can be critiqued just like any political statement or political institutions. For exemple, if you compare democracy and dictature, you will find logical arguments for each one of those, but in the end the only way for you to get out of this mess is to define what is a man and what is the criteria of "efficience" for a political system. In the end, it is something that you cannot falsify that will make you decide between democracy and dictature, a political choice - or a "moral" choice - for what you consider to be the best political system in regard to how you define "man".
The problem is that you are all searching for a definition of "man" that is not supposed to be up to controversy - so you need something to define this man. See your sentence "Given some contingent facts about human beings and some necessary truths about rational agent interaction allowing torturing babies for fun as a general rule will not lead to a flourishing society" : you considers that there are contingent "facts" about human beings (the use of contingent is obviously really problematic because you admit that you can't define man always and everywhere), you are making the assumption that men are evolving in a "rational" society and you use the idea of "flourishing society" without defining it. Why ? Because this is something that you cannot and will never be able to prove irrefutably. In this desire to "prove" that there is an inherent nature of man that will back up the idea that a moral that can be considered as true always and everywhere exist, you are somehow forced to resort to a tierce party - the "something" (hence the word "meta) - that will back up the claim that you make on man : god, the human "nature" or "dignity", the "rationality" of men, our deep "biological" nature within our genes, etc. Since all those things are not and will never be considered as valid axiom for some of us on this topic, because they obviously create controversy, your logic cannot be considered as true always and everywhere, unless you are able to falsify the existence of one of those things in our world - you are actually trying to prove that god exist. It is really interesting because deep down most of you knows that simple fact that "true" moral can only exist if "Man" (a certain idea of what we are) also exist - for exemple radscorpion9 in the last page consider that for "true" morality (what it should be) to exist, we might need to alter our brains (read : to change men into "Men") :
But as for what morality should be (as in the ideal moral system), assuming we find a way to alter our brains (perhaps through social conditioning or genetic engineering), I think that is entirely up for debate.
You are also mistaking my stance. I does not at all consider that "torturing babies for fun is morally wrong" actually means that in "society X at point in time Y the prevailing moral code forbids torturing babies for fun". I consider two things : that the society made me to think that torturing babies is morally wrong (and I will never be able to get out of that), and that "torturing babies for fun is morally wrong" is a political choice, a choice made on no grounds except my own limited point of view, biography, reasoning, feeling, etc. on what we are.. I would fight for a society that don't torture its babies for fun (well I'm not sure, I'm a pussy in real life) but I have no logical ground on which I can definitely says that "torturing babies for fun is wrong" is more true than "torturing babies for fun is right".
For exemple : "Considering what the old testament said about men, it is not right to consider men and women equally" try to prove this wrong without criticising the idea of men and women presented by the old testament.
On July 29 2013 02:06 xM(Z wrote: i'm missing something then. what is wrong with the phrasing - "slavery is moral because it doesn't violate human dignity" (i see it as true, under the 'slavery is moral' ethics). for you, the expression human dignity falls under realism, for me it doesn't. (we just have different definitions for human/humanity and/or dignity).
Well, if I may answer too, slavery is contradictory to human dignity, because it treats a person only as a means to a certain end. That is the difference between work and slavery, where work is with consent and slavery without.
i see them both as varying degrees of slavery and i would argue that consent is imposed on you by certain social needs/requirements you'd have to adhere to. since consent is not given freely, you are still a slave.
Consent is no real consent if its not self-imposed and this is what human dignity presupposes. In other words this human dignity doesn't mean much more than that I respect the other person as another person (equal). I don't see how this understanding of human dignity can work enslaving, quite the contrary actually.
And ofcourse we would have to analyse how or whether this actual self-imposed consent is possible at all within certain social regimes (aristocracy, timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, tyranny), but that perhaps is a somewhat different question or atleast for a later stage on how to realise human dignity.
, you will never be able to distinguish between self-imposed and outside-imposed factors while living in a world based on an outside-imposed moral realism. the only dignity/equality you will be able to see is the equality among slaves.
or, OR!, you will always be a slave and the sam harrises of the world will teach you how to like it, how to be happy about it.
I would reject the impossibility of distinguishing between self-imposed and outside-imposed factors even for the slave! Because in so far the slave realises him/herself as being enslaved, there already is presupposed a certain freedom which however is yet merely internal. The conscious slave knows he is serving certain laws/commands which are not his own. This also the claim that is in your argument, because you also implicitly still made the distinction between being imposed from the self and the outside to explain the domination of the outside-imposed factors. However, I do agree that the internal freedom of the slave exists only as but a potentiality.
i stressed the S&M agenda of moral realism vs expressivism because i see moral realism as the slave agent and expressivism as the dominant agent based (but not only) on their definitions: imposed limits/graduality vs no limits/absolutes. i am a dualist. i can not see motion, change, progress, evolution that can be driven by a single thing/concept/entity (moral realism in this case).
i mostly agree with WhiteDog in
On July 29 2013 18:27 Poffel wrote: @WhiteDog: Catching up from yesterday, I strongly reject the assumption that moral realism is reactionary ("a defense of the status quo and the people who defined morals") by nature.
and about
On July 29 2013 18:27 Poffel wrote: From the realist point of view, it simply doesn't matter whether you're part of the dominant or the subordinate because the same ethical truths apply to every human being - for example, everybody should respect human dignity, no matter if they work at McDonalds or Goldman Sachs.
it's just wishful thinking or more of a plea, urging people to respect human dignity. it is in no way an imperative. who would force me to do that?, ethical truths by themselves?, i don't think so.
I think I sort of see where you are coming from. I think you do value freedom as well (as you brought up the S&M relation), but you think of freedom as opposed to moral realism which you see as limiting freedom, am I correct? While I see human dignity and absolute freedom as implicating each other and are what constitutes morality, therefore it is the moral imperative (as maxim/construct of reason) which presses me on and makes me knowledgeable of my freedom. I'm not sure if this makes things any clearer for you. Sort of like a mix of imposed limits/absolutes in your scheme of things.
I must add however that all this is still as a prerequisite for the freedom of man on the individual level. So then it is the task to create a society based on this model, for which I think democracy is a good start as the imposed laws brought about by all of society as self-imposed laws.
i value change and the wasting of energy that comes with it. the creation of (a new) form if you like (a new form of moral realism, a new form of dignity, a new form of freedom and so on). that being said, i don't think freedom, absolute freedom could ever exist if we remain bound to any type/kind of physicalism/physical laws (even bound to selves for that matter) . but, being a nutjob i can absolutise everything. absolute freedom = death (the moment of). the death of you, the death of form, the death of the universe. now, if you believe in a cyclic model of our universe, birth followed by death and death followed by rebirth you might catch a glimpse of what 'absolute' of anything could mean: the moment of crossover, that split second before all hell breaks loose. analogy: when you flip a coin, every time it changes sides you stare at its edge for a brief moment. it's like that: of both sides but in neither of them ... and then it's all over.
Well, sure if we are just bound and only bound by the laws of nature then we are all slaves and freedom is impossible, and then strictly speaking so is creation (unless you might assume some God of nature as creator).
The most passionate anti-realist arguments in this thread have all been epistemic. Claims such as the following have popped up repeatedly:
(1) Our ethical beliefs are too determined by our historical/cultural context and what we hear from peers and authorities for there to be non-relative ethical truths.
(2) All ethical arguments require you to assume some principles or axioms which cannot themselves be established to be true, so there are no non-relative ethical truths.
(3) You cannot find any completely non-controversial ethical claims. The disagreement over ethics means there are no non-relative ethical truths.
The most important step to take when evaluating this style of argument is to check whether or not each principle is plausible in full generality, not just when you selectively apply it to ethics.
To my eye, every single truth in every single area fails all of these epistemic tests that are supposedly damning for ethics.
There is widespread disagreement over scientific claims. Even in the united states vast swaths of people do not believe in the theory of evolution. Yes there is agreement within the scientific community, but how (in a non-question begging way) is this different than agreements within ethical communities?
Further, it is clear that the source of this disagreement is in large part that our beliefs in just about every matter are influenced as much by where we come from and who we associate with as by anything else. If you grew up in a radically different context you wouldn't believe in evolution either.
Finally, scientific truths aren't given to us. They don't simply jump out from the world and compel our acceptance regardless of our acceptance of any other truths or principles about what procedures are reliable. We are in science, just as much as in ethics, trapped on Neurath's boat.
We are like sailors who on the open sea must reconstruct their ship but are never able to start afresh from the bottom. Where a beam is taken away a new one must at once be put there, and for this the rest of the ship is used as support. In this way, by using the old beams and driftwood the ship can be shaped entirely anew, but only by gradual reconstruction. -Quine
The general problem for these anti-realist arguments, then, is that it's hard to see how you can accept them while not taking them to undermine all truths, and in particular those of science. Realists will, quite understandably, not be moved if you cannot produce non-question begging reasons why.
You seem like a moral realist, so maybe you can answer my question wich noone has managed to do till now. When trying to minimise pain and maximise pleasure,or freedom or annything else you use to judge right from wrong , at wich time scale should we look? I realise this is a verry difficult question to answer for moral realist and people have somehow managed to avoid and ignore this question (probably because moral realism can not answer this question). But i would still like to get an answer,as it is an important question for considering moral realism as a serious option. (you can read more about this question on the previous page where i detailed it a bit more to make it more clear)
On July 30 2013 03:14 frogrubdown wrote: The most passionate anti-realist arguments in this thread have all been epistemic. Claims such as the following have popped up repeatedly:
(1) Our ethical beliefs are too determined by our historical/cultural context and what we hear from peers and authorities for there to be non-relative ethical truths.
(2) All ethical arguments require you to assume some principles or axioms which cannot themselves be established to be true, so there are no non-relative ethical truths.
(3) You cannot find any completely non-controversial ethical claims. The disagreement over ethics means there are no non-relative ethical truths.
The most important step to take when evaluating this style of argument is to check whether or not each principle is plausible in full generality, not just when you selectively apply it to ethics.
To my eye, every single truth in every single area fails all of these epistemic tests that are supposedly damning for ethics.
There is widespread disagreement over scientific claims. Even in the united states vast swaths of people do not believe in the theory of evolution. Yes there is agreement within the scientific community, but how (in a non-question begging way) is this different than agreements within ethical communities?
Further, it is clear that the source of this disagreement is in large part that our beliefs in just about every matter are influenced as much by where we come from and who we associate with as by anything else. If you grew up in a radically different context you wouldn't believe in evolution either.
Finally, scientific truths aren't given to us. They don't simply jump out from the world and compel our acceptance regardless of our acceptance of any other truths or principles about what procedures are reliable. We are in science, just as much as in ethics, trapped on Neurath's boat.
We are like sailors who on the open sea must reconstruct their ship but are never able to start afresh from the bottom. Where a beam is taken away a new one must at once be put there, and for this the rest of the ship is used as support. In this way, by using the old beams and driftwood the ship can be shaped entirely anew, but only by gradual reconstruction. -Quine
The general problem for these anti-realist arguments, then, is that it's hard to see how you can accept them while not taking them to undermine all truths, and in particular those of science. Realists will, quite understandably, not be moved if you cannot produce non-question begging reasons why.
Sciences are refutable. I have discussed this before by quoting Passeron. You are making a grave mistake in thinking that assertions on men have the same properties as biological laws or physics.
None of the logical conditions of the "falsification" of a theory or a general proposition is fulfilled strictly speaking in the case of the logical structure of sociological theories (or "historical synthesis") as soon as one takes seriously the constraints of historical observation. Since no historical statement can completely dispose co-occurences, that the statement consider as related in the explanation or interpretation, from its space-time coordinates (context more or less expanded by typology), the universality of general propositions in sociology or history is about "digital universality" and never about the universality in the strict sense. In other words, the general sociological propositions can always be generated by the logical "conjunction" of singular statements that it resume.
I can test that the theory of evolution is "right" or "wrong" all things equals because there are valid techniques to test that (and it will always work when I repeat the same process - it is therefore anhistoric) : through that refutation or falsification I can therefore make a distinction between the theory (and its "truthness") and the social context through which the theory have been made. You cannot do that for men's morality or men overall - they are always historical and social beings.
Why don't you guys begin by answering a question like what is the purpose of life? I think when you answer that ethics will become more clear. If you have to theorize the existence of ethics it is because you are lost. You're experience of reality is not a criteria for truth and likewise using it as such instrument will only lead you into threads like these.
On July 30 2013 03:14 frogrubdown wrote: The most passionate anti-realist arguments in this thread have all been epistemic. Claims such as the following have popped up repeatedly:
(1) Our ethical beliefs are too determined by our historical/cultural context and what we hear from peers and authorities for there to be non-relative ethical truths.
(2) All ethical arguments require you to assume some principles or axioms which cannot themselves be established to be true, so there are no non-relative ethical truths.
(3) You cannot find any completely non-controversial ethical claims. The disagreement over ethics means there are no non-relative ethical truths.
The most important step to take when evaluating this style of argument is to check whether or not each principle is plausible in full generality, not just when you selectively apply it to ethics.
To my eye, every single truth in every single area fails all of these epistemic tests that are supposedly damning for ethics.
There is widespread disagreement over scientific claims. Even in the united states vast swaths of people do not believe in the theory of evolution. Yes there is agreement within the scientific community, but how (in a non-question begging way) is this different than agreements within ethical communities?
Further, it is clear that the source of this disagreement is in large part that our beliefs in just about every matter are influenced as much by where we come from and who we associate with as by anything else. If you grew up in a radically different context you wouldn't believe in evolution either.
Finally, scientific truths aren't given to us. They don't simply jump out from the world and compel our acceptance regardless of our acceptance of any other truths or principles about what procedures are reliable. We are in science, just as much as in ethics, trapped on Neurath's boat.
We are like sailors who on the open sea must reconstruct their ship but are never able to start afresh from the bottom. Where a beam is taken away a new one must at once be put there, and for this the rest of the ship is used as support. In this way, by using the old beams and driftwood the ship can be shaped entirely anew, but only by gradual reconstruction. -Quine
The general problem for these anti-realist arguments, then, is that it's hard to see how you can accept them while not taking them to undermine all truths, and in particular those of science. Realists will, quite understandably, not be moved if you cannot produce non-question begging reasons why.
Sciences are refutable. I have discussed this before by quoting Passeron. You are making a grave mistake in thinking that philosophical knowledge has the same properties as biological laws or physics.
None of the logical conditions of the "falsification" of a theory or a general proposition is fulfilled strictly speaking in the case of the logical structure of sociological theories (or "historical synthesis") as soon as one takes seriously the constraints of historical observation. Since no historical statement can completely dispose co-occurences, that the statement consider as related in the explanation or interpretation, from its space-time coordinates (context more or less expanded by typology), the universality of general propositions in sociology or history is about "digital universality" and never about the universality in the strict sense. In other words, the general sociological propositions can always be generated by the logical "conjunction" of singular statements that it resume.
I can test that the theory of evolution is "right" or "wrong" all things equals because there are valid techniques to test that (and it will always work when I repeat the same process - it is therefore anhistoric) : through that refutation or falsification I can therefore make a distinction between the theory (and its "truthness") and the social context through which the theory have been made. You cannot do that for men's morality or men overall - they are always historical beings.
Refutation doesn't occur is Popperian single steps. It's a matter of being moved in degrees by solid evidence and reasoning. So refutability is a measure of whether or not you can offer solid reasons against a given theory. And you can do this in ethics too. You can refute the supposed moral law that lying is always wrong by considering the counterexample wherein you are questioned by Nazis about the Jews you're hiding in your attic. Sure, some would disagree that this counterexample suffices, such as Kant, but many "creation scientists" disagree with the exemplary refutations of their views.
The fact remains that to refute things in science you need to accept a number of principles and if you want your refutation to convince anyone else you'll have to hope they agree with you on them. And on this particular point, the differences between science and ethics aren't so clear.
Of course, things aren't identical epistemically between science and ethics. Repeatable experiments are a great thing. But science isn't the only epistemically virtuous activity. History has no repeatable experiments and yet there are numerous historical truths and we can come to know quite a few of them.
edit:
On July 30 2013 03:23 Rassy wrote: You seem like a moral realist, so maybe you can answer my question wich noone has managed to do till now. When trying to minimise pain and maximise pleasure,or freedom or annything else you use to judge right from wrong , at wich time scale should we look? I realise this is a verry difficult question to answer for moral realist and people have somehow managed to avoid and ignore this question (probably because moral realism can not answer this question). But i would still like to get an answer,as it is an important question for considering moral realism as a serious option. (you can read more about this question on the previous page where i detailed it a bit more to make it more clear)
I lean towards realism, but I probably wouldn't describe myself as accepting it. I'm not a utilitarian though, and realists don't have to be.
I think that the most consistent answer to your question, from a utilitarian perspective, is that all pleasures count equally, and this is what I take most utilitarians to have concluded. There will remain an epistemic difference between nearby pleasures and far away ones, since it will be much easier to tell what effects your actions will have on distant populations. But this won't be a difference in the importance of the pleasures, just in the reliability of bringing them about.
Despite having browsed the numerous sources provided by the OP, I still do not fully grasp why I cannot call myself a moral relativist anymore. What exactly happenend to the term?
On July 30 2013 03:44 grassHAT wrote: Why don't you guys begin by answering a question like what is the purpose of life? I think when you answer that ethics will become more clear. If you have to theorize the existence of ethics it is because you are lost. You're experience of reality is not a criteria for truth and likewise using it as such instrument will only lead you into threads like these.
there is no inherent purpose to life. You can answer to that question whatever you like, and then be happy. It comes down to compromise between people's morals/ethics in the end so that we can have the practical benefits of a flourishing society.
On July 30 2013 03:14 frogrubdown wrote: The most passionate anti-realist arguments in this thread have all been epistemic. Claims such as the following have popped up repeatedly:
(1) Our ethical beliefs are too determined by our historical/cultural context and what we hear from peers and authorities for there to be non-relative ethical truths.
(2) All ethical arguments require you to assume some principles or axioms which cannot themselves be established to be true, so there are no non-relative ethical truths.
(3) You cannot find any completely non-controversial ethical claims. The disagreement over ethics means there are no non-relative ethical truths.
The most important step to take when evaluating this style of argument is to check whether or not each principle is plausible in full generality, not just when you selectively apply it to ethics.
To my eye, every single truth in every single area fails all of these epistemic tests that are supposedly damning for ethics.
There is widespread disagreement over scientific claims. Even in the united states vast swaths of people do not believe in the theory of evolution. Yes there is agreement within the scientific community, but how (in a non-question begging way) is this different than agreements within ethical communities?
Further, it is clear that the source of this disagreement is in large part that our beliefs in just about every matter are influenced as much by where we come from and who we associate with as by anything else. If you grew up in a radically different context you wouldn't believe in evolution either.
Finally, scientific truths aren't given to us. They don't simply jump out from the world and compel our acceptance regardless of our acceptance of any other truths or principles about what procedures are reliable. We are in science, just as much as in ethics, trapped on Neurath's boat.
We are like sailors who on the open sea must reconstruct their ship but are never able to start afresh from the bottom. Where a beam is taken away a new one must at once be put there, and for this the rest of the ship is used as support. In this way, by using the old beams and driftwood the ship can be shaped entirely anew, but only by gradual reconstruction. -Quine
The general problem for these anti-realist arguments, then, is that it's hard to see how you can accept them while not taking them to undermine all truths, and in particular those of science. Realists will, quite understandably, not be moved if you cannot produce non-question begging reasons why.
Sciences are refutable. I have discussed this before by quoting Passeron. You are making a grave mistake in thinking that philosophical knowledge has the same properties as biological laws or physics.
None of the logical conditions of the "falsification" of a theory or a general proposition is fulfilled strictly speaking in the case of the logical structure of sociological theories (or "historical synthesis") as soon as one takes seriously the constraints of historical observation. Since no historical statement can completely dispose co-occurences, that the statement consider as related in the explanation or interpretation, from its space-time coordinates (context more or less expanded by typology), the universality of general propositions in sociology or history is about "digital universality" and never about the universality in the strict sense. In other words, the general sociological propositions can always be generated by the logical "conjunction" of singular statements that it resume.
I can test that the theory of evolution is "right" or "wrong" all things equals because there are valid techniques to test that (and it will always work when I repeat the same process - it is therefore anhistoric) : through that refutation or falsification I can therefore make a distinction between the theory (and its "truthness") and the social context through which the theory have been made. You cannot do that for men's morality or men overall - they are always historical beings.
Refutation doesn't occur is Popperian single steps. It's a matter of being moved in degrees by solid evidence and reasoning. So refutability is a measure of whether or not you can offer solid reasons against a given theory. And you can do this in ethics too. You can refute the moral law that lying is always wrong by considering the counterexample wherein you are questioned by Nazis about the Jews you're hiding in your attic. Sure, some would disagree that this counterexample suffices, such as Kant, but many "creation scientists" disagree with the exemplary refutations of their views.
You can do that for all moral statements. You are using an historical fact to suggest something anhistoric.
The fact remains that to refute things in science you need to accept a number of principles and if you want your refutation to convince anyone else you'll have to hope they agree with you on them. And on this particular point, the differences between science and ethics aren't so clear.
Yes, but those necessary axiom are - as the greek etymology suggest - self evident. That a true moral exist is not self evident.
Of course, things aren't identical epistemically between science and ethics. Repeatable experiments are a great thing. But science isn't the only epistemically virtuous activity. History has no repeatable experiments and yet there are numerous historical truths and we can come to know quite a few of them.
There are many historical truth... and they are all historic. There is no way to define a "law" on our society through the study of history - this was actually the basis of Popper's critic. It's the same for every sciences that study things related to man behavior (at least today since we didn't discovered god yet) - there are no "laws" in economy, sociology, etc. or the word "law" doesn't refer to the same "law" as in physics or biology (since they are not anhistoric and a-social).
There isa reason why neuroscience are the new favorite son of social sciences : people believe that they will be able to find irrefutable truth on men behaviors by searching in our brains.
On July 30 2013 03:49 Spekulatius wrote: Despite having browsed the numerous sources provided by the OP, I still do not fully grasp why I cannot call myself a moral relativist anymore. What exactly happenend to the term?
Did you read the "long story" spoiler? If you think that moral predicates have a hidden indexical element in them tied to the moral code of a person's society, then you should continue to be happy calling yourself a relativist and select "other" in the poll. But you should keep in mind that this is a linguistic claim and the types of evidence standardly marshaled for such claims seems to count against this. That said, there are a number of complications here that would require more explanation of formal semantics than I feel would be productive right now.
Alternatively, you may basically think along the lines of an error theorist that moral predicates behave as though there were a non-relative morality based on categorical imperatives even though there are in fact no categorical imperatives for them to answer to. This would make such claims systematically false. If you felt that the best response to this is a linguistic reform wherein we interpret our claims with hidden indexicals, then you could call yourself a different type of relativist. But for the purposes of the poll you would be an error theorist.
On July 30 2013 03:14 frogrubdown wrote: The most passionate anti-realist arguments in this thread have all been epistemic. Claims such as the following have popped up repeatedly:
(1) Our ethical beliefs are too determined by our historical/cultural context and what we hear from peers and authorities for there to be non-relative ethical truths.
(2) All ethical arguments require you to assume some principles or axioms which cannot themselves be established to be true, so there are no non-relative ethical truths.
(3) You cannot find any completely non-controversial ethical claims. The disagreement over ethics means there are no non-relative ethical truths.
The most important step to take when evaluating this style of argument is to check whether or not each principle is plausible in full generality, not just when you selectively apply it to ethics.
To my eye, every single truth in every single area fails all of these epistemic tests that are supposedly damning for ethics.
There is widespread disagreement over scientific claims. Even in the united states vast swaths of people do not believe in the theory of evolution. Yes there is agreement within the scientific community, but how (in a non-question begging way) is this different than agreements within ethical communities?
Further, it is clear that the source of this disagreement is in large part that our beliefs in just about every matter are influenced as much by where we come from and who we associate with as by anything else. If you grew up in a radically different context you wouldn't believe in evolution either.
Finally, scientific truths aren't given to us. They don't simply jump out from the world and compel our acceptance regardless of our acceptance of any other truths or principles about what procedures are reliable. We are in science, just as much as in ethics, trapped on Neurath's boat.
We are like sailors who on the open sea must reconstruct their ship but are never able to start afresh from the bottom. Where a beam is taken away a new one must at once be put there, and for this the rest of the ship is used as support. In this way, by using the old beams and driftwood the ship can be shaped entirely anew, but only by gradual reconstruction. -Quine
The general problem for these anti-realist arguments, then, is that it's hard to see how you can accept them while not taking them to undermine all truths, and in particular those of science. Realists will, quite understandably, not be moved if you cannot produce non-question begging reasons why.
Sciences are refutable. I have discussed this before by quoting Passeron. You are making a grave mistake in thinking that philosophical knowledge has the same properties as biological laws or physics.
None of the logical conditions of the "falsification" of a theory or a general proposition is fulfilled strictly speaking in the case of the logical structure of sociological theories (or "historical synthesis") as soon as one takes seriously the constraints of historical observation. Since no historical statement can completely dispose co-occurences, that the statement consider as related in the explanation or interpretation, from its space-time coordinates (context more or less expanded by typology), the universality of general propositions in sociology or history is about "digital universality" and never about the universality in the strict sense. In other words, the general sociological propositions can always be generated by the logical "conjunction" of singular statements that it resume.
I can test that the theory of evolution is "right" or "wrong" all things equals because there are valid techniques to test that (and it will always work when I repeat the same process - it is therefore anhistoric) : through that refutation or falsification I can therefore make a distinction between the theory (and its "truthness") and the social context through which the theory have been made. You cannot do that for men's morality or men overall - they are always historical beings.
Refutation doesn't occur is Popperian single steps. It's a matter of being moved in degrees by solid evidence and reasoning. So refutability is a measure of whether or not you can offer solid reasons against a given theory. And you can do this in ethics too. You can refute the moral law that lying is always wrong by considering the counterexample wherein you are questioned by Nazis about the Jews you're hiding in your attic. Sure, some would disagree that this counterexample suffices, such as Kant, but many "creation scientists" disagree with the exemplary refutations of their views.
You can do that for all moral statements. You are using an historical fact to suggest something anhistoric.
The fact remains that to refute things in science you need to accept a number of principles and if you want your refutation to convince anyone else you'll have to hope they agree with you on them. And on this particular point, the differences between science and ethics aren't so clear.
Yes, but those necessary axiom are - as the greek etymology suggest - self evident. That a true moral exist is not self evident.
Of course, things aren't identical epistemically between science and ethics. Repeatable experiments are a great thing. But science isn't the only epistemically virtuous activity. History has no repeatable experiments and yet there are numerous historical truths and we can come to know quite a few of them.
There are many historical truth... and they are all historic. There is no way to define a "law" on our society through the study of history - this was actually the basis of Popper's critic. It's the same for every sciences that study things related to men - there are no "laws" in economy, sociology, etc. or the word "law" doesn't refer to the same "law" as in physics or biology (since they are not anhistoric and a-social).
To assume without argument that that is simply an historical fact is just question-begging. Why is it?
And if the axioms whereby we refute scientific theories were so self-evident, how come there's so much disagreement about them. An alien reading your claim about the axioms of science would be astounded to come to earth and discover creation scientists. They'd be even more astounded if they took a poll and discovered that only a minority of people accept the overwhelming evidence for evolution. What does "self-evident" even mean if the majority of a population fails to find the self-evident things true, let alone obvious?
On July 30 2013 03:44 grassHAT wrote: Why don't you guys begin by answering a question like what is the purpose of life? I think when you answer that ethics will become more clear. If you have to theorize the existence of ethics it is because you are lost. You're experience of reality is not a criteria for truth and likewise using it as such instrument will only lead you into threads like these.
there is no inherent purpose to life. You can answer to that question whatever you like, and then be happy. It comes down to compromise between people's morals/ethics in the end so that we can have the practical benefits of a flourishing society.
Suggesting that we should compromise between peoples beliefs of morals/ethics to create a flourishing society would be contradictory to your first statement ("there is no inherent purpose to life").
On July 30 2013 03:49 Spekulatius wrote: Despite having browsed the numerous sources provided by the OP, I still do not fully grasp why I cannot call myself a moral relativist anymore. What exactly happenend to the term?
Did you read the "long story" spoiler? If you think that moral predicates have a hidden indexical element in them tied to the moral code of a person's society, then you should continue to be happy calling yourself a relativist and select "other" in the poll. But you should keep in mind that this is a linguistic claim and the types of evidence standardly marshaled for such claims seems to count against this. That said, there are a number of complications here that would require more explanation of formal semantics than I feel would be productive right now.
Alternatively, you may basically think along the lines of an error theorist that moral predicates behave as though there were a non-relative morality based on categorical imperatives even though there are in fact no categorical imperatives for them to answer to. This would make such claims systematically false. If you felt that the best response to this is a linguistic reform wherein we interpret our claims with hidden indexicals, then you could call yourself a different time of relativist. But for the purposes of the poll you would be an error theorist.
I find the semantics hard to get as a non-native speaker. Same goes for the word "indexical".
My view - that I always thought to be named "moral relativism" - simply says:
There are no true moral absolutes.
This - to me - means that a statement can only be thought to be absolutely morally true when we presuppose that the assumption that it's founded on is universal. And I'm saying such a universally true statement doesn't exist.
Let's take the statement "killing is wrong". This is morally true if and only if we presuppose the existence of another statement which leads up to the "killing is wrong" statement. This other statement would be "human life must not be infringed".
The latter statement is not universal though. Violating someone's right to life is fine under some circumstances. For some people. In some cultures.
Fundamentalists think it's ok to kill non-believers. Presidents starting a war on other countries think it's ok to kill (at least) soldiers of either side. Most people think it's ok to kill in self-defense. etc...
And in the same way no statement can be logically deduced from a universal statement as the ultimate source of a moral statement - the first step to the chain of argumentation - is always someone saying "I feel that X is right".
Thus relativism.
Now, am I right and old-fashioned in calling this relativism? Or simply wrong and it's really error theory?
On July 30 2013 03:49 Spekulatius wrote: Despite having browsed the numerous sources provided by the OP, I still do not fully grasp why I cannot call myself a moral relativist anymore. What exactly happenend to the term?
Did you read the "long story" spoiler? If you think that moral predicates have a hidden indexical element in them tied to the moral code of a person's society, then you should continue to be happy calling yourself a relativist and select "other" in the poll. But you should keep in mind that this is a linguistic claim and the types of evidence standardly marshaled for such claims seems to count against this. That said, there are a number of complications here that would require more explanation of formal semantics than I feel would be productive right now.
Alternatively, you may basically think along the lines of an error theorist that moral predicates behave as though there were a non-relative morality based on categorical imperatives even though there are in fact no categorical imperatives for them to answer to. This would make such claims systematically false. If you felt that the best response to this is a linguistic reform wherein we interpret our claims with hidden indexicals, then you could call yourself a different time of relativist. But for the purposes of the poll you would be an error theorist.
I find the semantics hard to get as a non-native speaker. Same goes for the word "indexical".
My view - that I always thought to be named "moral relativism" - simply says:
There are no true moral absolutes.
This - to me - means that a statement can only be thought to be absolutely morally true when we presuppose that the assumption that it's founded on is universal. And I'm saying such a universally true statement doesn't exist.
Let's take the statement "killing is wrong". This is morally true if and only if we presuppose the existence of another statement which leads up to the "killing is wrong" statement. This other statement would be "human life must not be infringed".
The latter statement is not universal though. Violating someone's right to life is fine under some circumstances. For some people. In some cultures.
Fundamentalists think it's ok to kill non-believers. Presidents starting a war on other countries think it's ok to kill (at least) soldiers of either side. Most people think it's ok to kill in self-defense. etc...
And in the same way no statement can be logically deduced from a universal statement as the ultimate source of a moral statement - the first step to the chain of argumentation - is always someone saying "I feel that X is right".
Thus relativism.
Now, am I right and old-fashioned in calling this relativism? Or simply wrong and it's really error theory?
Saying "there are no moral true absolutes" is a moral true absolute... It is self contradictory. That is why relativism has never worked. I think Socrates was the first to prove this...
On July 30 2013 03:49 Spekulatius wrote: Despite having browsed the numerous sources provided by the OP, I still do not fully grasp why I cannot call myself a moral relativist anymore. What exactly happenend to the term?
Did you read the "long story" spoiler? If you think that moral predicates have a hidden indexical element in them tied to the moral code of a person's society, then you should continue to be happy calling yourself a relativist and select "other" in the poll. But you should keep in mind that this is a linguistic claim and the types of evidence standardly marshaled for such claims seems to count against this. That said, there are a number of complications here that would require more explanation of formal semantics than I feel would be productive right now.
Alternatively, you may basically think along the lines of an error theorist that moral predicates behave as though there were a non-relative morality based on categorical imperatives even though there are in fact no categorical imperatives for them to answer to. This would make such claims systematically false. If you felt that the best response to this is a linguistic reform wherein we interpret our claims with hidden indexicals, then you could call yourself a different time of relativist. But for the purposes of the poll you would be an error theorist.
I find the semantics hard to get as a non-native speaker. Same goes for the word "indexical".
My view - that I always thought to be named "moral relativism" - simply says:
There are no true moral absolutes.
This - to me - means that a statement can only be thought to be absolutely morally true when we presuppose that the assumption that it's founded on is universal. And I'm saying such a universally true statement doesn't exist.
Let's take the statement "killing is wrong". This is morally true if and only if we presuppose the existence of another statement which leads up to the "killing is wrong" statement. This other statement would be "human life must not be infringed".
The latter statement is not universal though. Violating someone's right to life is fine under some circumstances. For some people. In some cultures.
Fundamentalists think it's ok to kill non-believers. Presidents starting a war on other countries think it's ok to kill (at least) soldiers of either side. Most people think it's ok to kill in self-defense. etc...
And in the same way no statement can be logically deduced from a universal statement as the ultimate source of a moral statement - the first step to the chain of argumentation - is always someone saying "I feel that X is right".
Thus relativism.
Now, am I right and old-fashioned in calling this relativism? Or simply wrong and it's really error theory?
There's a lot of views that what you say could correspond to. For instance, there's a sense in which utilitarians are non-absolutists. They'll agree with you that "killing is wrong" cannot work as general principle because sometimes killing will raise utility. This will hold for the traditional edicts we tell children about what's moral. They'll still have the absolute claim "maximize utility", though.
What's important is whether you think the universality fails because moral considerations found in different contexts or because of the different perspectives that people have about morality within the context. It sounds like you think the latter.
Suppose X lives in a society whose code dictates that killing is always wrong and Y lives in a society that dictates that killing is sometimes right. Consider the following sentences:
X: "Killing is always wrong."
Y: "Sometimes killing is not wrong."
What do you take to be the truth values of these two statements?
On July 30 2013 03:49 Spekulatius wrote: Despite having browsed the numerous sources provided by the OP, I still do not fully grasp why I cannot call myself a moral relativist anymore. What exactly happenend to the term?
Did you read the "long story" spoiler? If you think that moral predicates have a hidden indexical element in them tied to the moral code of a person's society, then you should continue to be happy calling yourself a relativist and select "other" in the poll. But you should keep in mind that this is a linguistic claim and the types of evidence standardly marshaled for such claims seems to count against this. That said, there are a number of complications here that would require more explanation of formal semantics than I feel would be productive right now.
Alternatively, you may basically think along the lines of an error theorist that moral predicates behave as though there were a non-relative morality based on categorical imperatives even though there are in fact no categorical imperatives for them to answer to. This would make such claims systematically false. If you felt that the best response to this is a linguistic reform wherein we interpret our claims with hidden indexicals, then you could call yourself a different time of relativist. But for the purposes of the poll you would be an error theorist.
I find the semantics hard to get as a non-native speaker. Same goes for the word "indexical".
My view - that I always thought to be named "moral relativism" - simply says:
There are no true moral absolutes.
This - to me - means that a statement can only be thought to be absolutely morally true when we presuppose that the assumption that it's founded on is universal. And I'm saying such a universally true statement doesn't exist.
Let's take the statement "killing is wrong". This is morally true if and only if we presuppose the existence of another statement which leads up to the "killing is wrong" statement. This other statement would be "human life must not be infringed".
The latter statement is not universal though. Violating someone's right to life is fine under some circumstances. For some people. In some cultures.
Fundamentalists think it's ok to kill non-believers. Presidents starting a war on other countries think it's ok to kill (at least) soldiers of either side. Most people think it's ok to kill in self-defense. etc...
And in the same way no statement can be logically deduced from a universal statement as the ultimate source of a moral statement - the first step to the chain of argumentation - is always someone saying "I feel that X is right".
Thus relativism.
Now, am I right and old-fashioned in calling this relativism? Or simply wrong and it's really error theory?
Saying "there are no moral true absolutes" is a moral true absolute... It is self contradictory. That is why relativism has never worked. I think Socrates was the first to prove this...
There are easy ways around this. Just do what I suggested for the error theorist in a footnote and define your view over the atomic moral claims. Since a claim quantifying over those claims (e.g., "There are no true logically atomic moral assertions"), is not itself an atomic claim, there is contradiction.
On July 30 2013 03:49 Spekulatius wrote: Despite having browsed the numerous sources provided by the OP, I still do not fully grasp why I cannot call myself a moral relativist anymore. What exactly happenend to the term?
Did you read the "long story" spoiler? If you think that moral predicates have a hidden indexical element in them tied to the moral code of a person's society, then you should continue to be happy calling yourself a relativist and select "other" in the poll. But you should keep in mind that this is a linguistic claim and the types of evidence standardly marshaled for such claims seems to count against this. That said, there are a number of complications here that would require more explanation of formal semantics than I feel would be productive right now.
Alternatively, you may basically think along the lines of an error theorist that moral predicates behave as though there were a non-relative morality based on categorical imperatives even though there are in fact no categorical imperatives for them to answer to. This would make such claims systematically false. If you felt that the best response to this is a linguistic reform wherein we interpret our claims with hidden indexicals, then you could call yourself a different time of relativist. But for the purposes of the poll you would be an error theorist.
I find the semantics hard to get as a non-native speaker. Same goes for the word "indexical".
My view - that I always thought to be named "moral relativism" - simply says:
There are no true moral absolutes.
This - to me - means that a statement can only be thought to be absolutely morally true when we presuppose that the assumption that it's founded on is universal. And I'm saying such a universally true statement doesn't exist.
Let's take the statement "killing is wrong". This is morally true if and only if we presuppose the existence of another statement which leads up to the "killing is wrong" statement. This other statement would be "human life must not be infringed".
The latter statement is not universal though. Violating someone's right to life is fine under some circumstances. For some people. In some cultures.
Fundamentalists think it's ok to kill non-believers. Presidents starting a war on other countries think it's ok to kill (at least) soldiers of either side. Most people think it's ok to kill in self-defense. etc...
And in the same way no statement can be logically deduced from a universal statement as the ultimate source of a moral statement - the first step to the chain of argumentation - is always someone saying "I feel that X is right".
Thus relativism.
Now, am I right and old-fashioned in calling this relativism? Or simply wrong and it's really error theory?
Saying "there are no moral true absolutes" is a moral true absolute... It is self contradictory. That is why relativism has never worked. I think Socrates was the first to prove this...
I'm not stating it's true though. I'm just saying I believe it.
On July 30 2013 03:49 Spekulatius wrote: Despite having browsed the numerous sources provided by the OP, I still do not fully grasp why I cannot call myself a moral relativist anymore. What exactly happenend to the term?
Did you read the "long story" spoiler? If you think that moral predicates have a hidden indexical element in them tied to the moral code of a person's society, then you should continue to be happy calling yourself a relativist and select "other" in the poll. But you should keep in mind that this is a linguistic claim and the types of evidence standardly marshaled for such claims seems to count against this. That said, there are a number of complications here that would require more explanation of formal semantics than I feel would be productive right now.
Alternatively, you may basically think along the lines of an error theorist that moral predicates behave as though there were a non-relative morality based on categorical imperatives even though there are in fact no categorical imperatives for them to answer to. This would make such claims systematically false. If you felt that the best response to this is a linguistic reform wherein we interpret our claims with hidden indexicals, then you could call yourself a different time of relativist. But for the purposes of the poll you would be an error theorist.
I find the semantics hard to get as a non-native speaker. Same goes for the word "indexical".
My view - that I always thought to be named "moral relativism" - simply says:
There are no true moral absolutes.
This - to me - means that a statement can only be thought to be absolutely morally true when we presuppose that the assumption that it's founded on is universal. And I'm saying such a universally true statement doesn't exist.
Let's take the statement "killing is wrong". This is morally true if and only if we presuppose the existence of another statement which leads up to the "killing is wrong" statement. This other statement would be "human life must not be infringed".
The latter statement is not universal though. Violating someone's right to life is fine under some circumstances. For some people. In some cultures.
Fundamentalists think it's ok to kill non-believers. Presidents starting a war on other countries think it's ok to kill (at least) soldiers of either side. Most people think it's ok to kill in self-defense. etc...
And in the same way no statement can be logically deduced from a universal statement as the ultimate source of a moral statement - the first step to the chain of argumentation - is always someone saying "I feel that X is right".
Thus relativism.
Now, am I right and old-fashioned in calling this relativism? Or simply wrong and it's really error theory?
There's a lot of views that what you say could correspond to. For instance, there's a sense in which utilitarians are non-absolutists. They'll agree with you that "killing is wrong" cannot work as general principle because sometimes killing will raise utility. This will hold for the traditional edicts we tell children about what's moral. They'll still have the absolute claim "maximize utility", though.
What's important is whether you think the universality fails because moral considerations found in different contexts or because of the different perspectives that people have about morality within the context. It sounds like you think the latter.
Suppose X lives in a society whose code dictates that killing is always wrong and Y lives in a society that dictates that killing is sometimes right. Consider the following sentences:
X: "Killing is always wrong."
Y: "Sometimes killing is not wrong."
What do you take to be the truth values of these two statements?
Yes, I disagree with utilitarians' statement that the greatest good for the greatest number is a universal moral statement.
Explain to me please why there is a difference between context and perspective.
And at last, I think the word "truth" is misguided in an area of thought like morals. Truth implies objectivity. Which there isn't, in my eyes. I would accept the term "my truth" and "your truth" though, if I must. But that's not really helpful. For X, his statement is true and Y's statement isn't. For Y, X's statement is untrue and his is. Unless they realize that it's all subjective anyway and they refuse to answer like I do.
On July 30 2013 03:49 Spekulatius wrote: Despite having browsed the numerous sources provided by the OP, I still do not fully grasp why I cannot call myself a moral relativist anymore. What exactly happenend to the term?
Did you read the "long story" spoiler? If you think that moral predicates have a hidden indexical element in them tied to the moral code of a person's society, then you should continue to be happy calling yourself a relativist and select "other" in the poll. But you should keep in mind that this is a linguistic claim and the types of evidence standardly marshaled for such claims seems to count against this. That said, there are a number of complications here that would require more explanation of formal semantics than I feel would be productive right now.
Alternatively, you may basically think along the lines of an error theorist that moral predicates behave as though there were a non-relative morality based on categorical imperatives even though there are in fact no categorical imperatives for them to answer to. This would make such claims systematically false. If you felt that the best response to this is a linguistic reform wherein we interpret our claims with hidden indexicals, then you could call yourself a different time of relativist. But for the purposes of the poll you would be an error theorist.
I find the semantics hard to get as a non-native speaker. Same goes for the word "indexical".
My view - that I always thought to be named "moral relativism" - simply says:
There are no true moral absolutes.
This - to me - means that a statement can only be thought to be absolutely morally true when we presuppose that the assumption that it's founded on is universal. And I'm saying such a universally true statement doesn't exist.
Let's take the statement "killing is wrong". This is morally true if and only if we presuppose the existence of another statement which leads up to the "killing is wrong" statement. This other statement would be "human life must not be infringed".
The latter statement is not universal though. Violating someone's right to life is fine under some circumstances. For some people. In some cultures.
Fundamentalists think it's ok to kill non-believers. Presidents starting a war on other countries think it's ok to kill (at least) soldiers of either side. Most people think it's ok to kill in self-defense. etc...
And in the same way no statement can be logically deduced from a universal statement as the ultimate source of a moral statement - the first step to the chain of argumentation - is always someone saying "I feel that X is right".
Thus relativism.
Now, am I right and old-fashioned in calling this relativism? Or simply wrong and it's really error theory?
There's a lot of views that what you say could correspond to. For instance, there's a sense in which utilitarians are non-absolutists. They'll agree with you that "killing is wrong" cannot work as general principle because sometimes killing will raise utility. This will hold for the traditional edicts we tell children about what's moral. They'll still have the absolute claim "maximize utility", though.
What's important is whether you think the universality fails because moral considerations found in different contexts or because of the different perspectives that people have about morality within the context. It sounds like you think the latter.
Suppose X lives in a society whose code dictates that killing is always wrong and Y lives in a society that dictates that killing is sometimes right. Consider the following sentences:
X: "Killing is always wrong."
Y: "Sometimes killing is not wrong."
What do you take to be the truth values of these two statements?
On July 30 2013 03:49 Spekulatius wrote: Despite having browsed the numerous sources provided by the OP, I still do not fully grasp why I cannot call myself a moral relativist anymore. What exactly happenend to the term?
Did you read the "long story" spoiler? If you think that moral predicates have a hidden indexical element in them tied to the moral code of a person's society, then you should continue to be happy calling yourself a relativist and select "other" in the poll. But you should keep in mind that this is a linguistic claim and the types of evidence standardly marshaled for such claims seems to count against this. That said, there are a number of complications here that would require more explanation of formal semantics than I feel would be productive right now.
Alternatively, you may basically think along the lines of an error theorist that moral predicates behave as though there were a non-relative morality based on categorical imperatives even though there are in fact no categorical imperatives for them to answer to. This would make such claims systematically false. If you felt that the best response to this is a linguistic reform wherein we interpret our claims with hidden indexicals, then you could call yourself a different time of relativist. But for the purposes of the poll you would be an error theorist.
I find the semantics hard to get as a non-native speaker. Same goes for the word "indexical".
My view - that I always thought to be named "moral relativism" - simply says:
There are no true moral absolutes.
This - to me - means that a statement can only be thought to be absolutely morally true when we presuppose that the assumption that it's founded on is universal. And I'm saying such a universally true statement doesn't exist.
Let's take the statement "killing is wrong". This is morally true if and only if we presuppose the existence of another statement which leads up to the "killing is wrong" statement. This other statement would be "human life must not be infringed".
The latter statement is not universal though. Violating someone's right to life is fine under some circumstances. For some people. In some cultures.
Fundamentalists think it's ok to kill non-believers. Presidents starting a war on other countries think it's ok to kill (at least) soldiers of either side. Most people think it's ok to kill in self-defense. etc...
And in the same way no statement can be logically deduced from a universal statement as the ultimate source of a moral statement - the first step to the chain of argumentation - is always someone saying "I feel that X is right".
Thus relativism.
Now, am I right and old-fashioned in calling this relativism? Or simply wrong and it's really error theory?
Saying "there are no moral true absolutes" is a moral true absolute... It is self contradictory. That is why relativism has never worked. I think Socrates was the first to prove this...
There are easy ways around this. Just do what I suggested for the error theorist in a footnote and define your view over the atomic moral claims. Since a claim quantifying over those claims (e.g., "There are no true logically atomic moral assertions"), is not itself an atomic claim, there is contradiction.
(Sarcastic Tone) Right, because human beings can make atomic moral assertions... (End sarcasm)
Like I said originally. You can only define moral ethics around your beliefs about the purpose of life. You have to first assume that you know how/why you exist in order to make moral assertions about reality.
On July 30 2013 03:49 Spekulatius wrote: Despite having browsed the numerous sources provided by the OP, I still do not fully grasp why I cannot call myself a moral relativist anymore. What exactly happenend to the term?
Did you read the "long story" spoiler? If you think that moral predicates have a hidden indexical element in them tied to the moral code of a person's society, then you should continue to be happy calling yourself a relativist and select "other" in the poll. But you should keep in mind that this is a linguistic claim and the types of evidence standardly marshaled for such claims seems to count against this. That said, there are a number of complications here that would require more explanation of formal semantics than I feel would be productive right now.
Alternatively, you may basically think along the lines of an error theorist that moral predicates behave as though there were a non-relative morality based on categorical imperatives even though there are in fact no categorical imperatives for them to answer to. This would make such claims systematically false. If you felt that the best response to this is a linguistic reform wherein we interpret our claims with hidden indexicals, then you could call yourself a different time of relativist. But for the purposes of the poll you would be an error theorist.
I find the semantics hard to get as a non-native speaker. Same goes for the word "indexical".
My view - that I always thought to be named "moral relativism" - simply says:
There are no true moral absolutes.
This - to me - means that a statement can only be thought to be absolutely morally true when we presuppose that the assumption that it's founded on is universal. And I'm saying such a universally true statement doesn't exist.
Let's take the statement "killing is wrong". This is morally true if and only if we presuppose the existence of another statement which leads up to the "killing is wrong" statement. This other statement would be "human life must not be infringed".
The latter statement is not universal though. Violating someone's right to life is fine under some circumstances. For some people. In some cultures.
Fundamentalists think it's ok to kill non-believers. Presidents starting a war on other countries think it's ok to kill (at least) soldiers of either side. Most people think it's ok to kill in self-defense. etc...
And in the same way no statement can be logically deduced from a universal statement as the ultimate source of a moral statement - the first step to the chain of argumentation - is always someone saying "I feel that X is right".
Thus relativism.
Now, am I right and old-fashioned in calling this relativism? Or simply wrong and it's really error theory?
There's a lot of views that what you say could correspond to. For instance, there's a sense in which utilitarians are non-absolutists. They'll agree with you that "killing is wrong" cannot work as general principle because sometimes killing will raise utility. This will hold for the traditional edicts we tell children about what's moral. They'll still have the absolute claim "maximize utility", though.
What's important is whether you think the universality fails because moral considerations found in different contexts or because of the different perspectives that people have about morality within the context. It sounds like you think the latter.
Suppose X lives in a society whose code dictates that killing is always wrong and Y lives in a society that dictates that killing is sometimes right. Consider the following sentences:
X: "Killing is always wrong."
Y: "Sometimes killing is not wrong."
What do you take to be the truth values of these two statements?
edit:
On July 30 2013 04:21 grassHAT wrote:
On July 30 2013 04:15 Spekulatius wrote:
On July 30 2013 03:59 frogrubdown wrote:
On July 30 2013 03:49 Spekulatius wrote: Despite having browsed the numerous sources provided by the OP, I still do not fully grasp why I cannot call myself a moral relativist anymore. What exactly happenend to the term?
Did you read the "long story" spoiler? If you think that moral predicates have a hidden indexical element in them tied to the moral code of a person's society, then you should continue to be happy calling yourself a relativist and select "other" in the poll. But you should keep in mind that this is a linguistic claim and the types of evidence standardly marshaled for such claims seems to count against this. That said, there are a number of complications here that would require more explanation of formal semantics than I feel would be productive right now.
Alternatively, you may basically think along the lines of an error theorist that moral predicates behave as though there were a non-relative morality based on categorical imperatives even though there are in fact no categorical imperatives for them to answer to. This would make such claims systematically false. If you felt that the best response to this is a linguistic reform wherein we interpret our claims with hidden indexicals, then you could call yourself a different time of relativist. But for the purposes of the poll you would be an error theorist.
I find the semantics hard to get as a non-native speaker. Same goes for the word "indexical".
My view - that I always thought to be named "moral relativism" - simply says:
There are no true moral absolutes.
This - to me - means that a statement can only be thought to be absolutely morally true when we presuppose that the assumption that it's founded on is universal. And I'm saying such a universally true statement doesn't exist.
Let's take the statement "killing is wrong". This is morally true if and only if we presuppose the existence of another statement which leads up to the "killing is wrong" statement. This other statement would be "human life must not be infringed".
The latter statement is not universal though. Violating someone's right to life is fine under some circumstances. For some people. In some cultures.
Fundamentalists think it's ok to kill non-believers. Presidents starting a war on other countries think it's ok to kill (at least) soldiers of either side. Most people think it's ok to kill in self-defense. etc...
And in the same way no statement can be logically deduced from a universal statement as the ultimate source of a moral statement - the first step to the chain of argumentation - is always someone saying "I feel that X is right".
Thus relativism.
Now, am I right and old-fashioned in calling this relativism? Or simply wrong and it's really error theory?
Saying "there are no moral true absolutes" is a moral true absolute... It is self contradictory. That is why relativism has never worked. I think Socrates was the first to prove this...
There are easy ways around this. Just do what I suggested for the error theorist in a footnote and define your view over the atomic moral claims. Since a claim quantifying over those claims (e.g., "There are no true logically atomic moral assertions"), is not itself an atomic claim, there is contradiction.
(Sarcastic Tone) Right, because human beings can make atomic moral assertions... (End sarcasm)
Like I said originally. You can only define moral ethics around your beliefs about the purpose of life. You have to first assume that you know how/why you exist in order to make moral assertions about reality.
Why? What prevents one from maintaining "irrational" ethical views that ignore a lack of metaphysical understanding?
On July 30 2013 03:49 Spekulatius wrote: Despite having browsed the numerous sources provided by the OP, I still do not fully grasp why I cannot call myself a moral relativist anymore. What exactly happenend to the term?
Did you read the "long story" spoiler? If you think that moral predicates have a hidden indexical element in them tied to the moral code of a person's society, then you should continue to be happy calling yourself a relativist and select "other" in the poll. But you should keep in mind that this is a linguistic claim and the types of evidence standardly marshaled for such claims seems to count against this. That said, there are a number of complications here that would require more explanation of formal semantics than I feel would be productive right now.
Alternatively, you may basically think along the lines of an error theorist that moral predicates behave as though there were a non-relative morality based on categorical imperatives even though there are in fact no categorical imperatives for them to answer to. This would make such claims systematically false. If you felt that the best response to this is a linguistic reform wherein we interpret our claims with hidden indexicals, then you could call yourself a different time of relativist. But for the purposes of the poll you would be an error theorist.
I find the semantics hard to get as a non-native speaker. Same goes for the word "indexical".
My view - that I always thought to be named "moral relativism" - simply says:
There are no true moral absolutes.
This - to me - means that a statement can only be thought to be absolutely morally true when we presuppose that the assumption that it's founded on is universal. And I'm saying such a universally true statement doesn't exist.
Let's take the statement "killing is wrong". This is morally true if and only if we presuppose the existence of another statement which leads up to the "killing is wrong" statement. This other statement would be "human life must not be infringed".
The latter statement is not universal though. Violating someone's right to life is fine under some circumstances. For some people. In some cultures.
Fundamentalists think it's ok to kill non-believers. Presidents starting a war on other countries think it's ok to kill (at least) soldiers of either side. Most people think it's ok to kill in self-defense. etc...
And in the same way no statement can be logically deduced from a universal statement as the ultimate source of a moral statement - the first step to the chain of argumentation - is always someone saying "I feel that X is right".
Thus relativism.
Now, am I right and old-fashioned in calling this relativism? Or simply wrong and it's really error theory?
There's a lot of views that what you say could correspond to. For instance, there's a sense in which utilitarians are non-absolutists. They'll agree with you that "killing is wrong" cannot work as general principle because sometimes killing will raise utility. This will hold for the traditional edicts we tell children about what's moral. They'll still have the absolute claim "maximize utility", though.
What's important is whether you think the universality fails because moral considerations found in different contexts or because of the different perspectives that people have about morality within the context. It sounds like you think the latter.
Suppose X lives in a society whose code dictates that killing is always wrong and Y lives in a society that dictates that killing is sometimes right. Consider the following sentences:
X: "Killing is always wrong."
Y: "Sometimes killing is not wrong."
What do you take to be the truth values of these two statements?
edit:
On July 30 2013 04:21 grassHAT wrote:
On July 30 2013 04:15 Spekulatius wrote:
On July 30 2013 03:59 frogrubdown wrote:
On July 30 2013 03:49 Spekulatius wrote: Despite having browsed the numerous sources provided by the OP, I still do not fully grasp why I cannot call myself a moral relativist anymore. What exactly happenend to the term?
Did you read the "long story" spoiler? If you think that moral predicates have a hidden indexical element in them tied to the moral code of a person's society, then you should continue to be happy calling yourself a relativist and select "other" in the poll. But you should keep in mind that this is a linguistic claim and the types of evidence standardly marshaled for such claims seems to count against this. That said, there are a number of complications here that would require more explanation of formal semantics than I feel would be productive right now.
Alternatively, you may basically think along the lines of an error theorist that moral predicates behave as though there were a non-relative morality based on categorical imperatives even though there are in fact no categorical imperatives for them to answer to. This would make such claims systematically false. If you felt that the best response to this is a linguistic reform wherein we interpret our claims with hidden indexicals, then you could call yourself a different time of relativist. But for the purposes of the poll you would be an error theorist.
I find the semantics hard to get as a non-native speaker. Same goes for the word "indexical".
My view - that I always thought to be named "moral relativism" - simply says:
There are no true moral absolutes.
This - to me - means that a statement can only be thought to be absolutely morally true when we presuppose that the assumption that it's founded on is universal. And I'm saying such a universally true statement doesn't exist.
Let's take the statement "killing is wrong". This is morally true if and only if we presuppose the existence of another statement which leads up to the "killing is wrong" statement. This other statement would be "human life must not be infringed".
The latter statement is not universal though. Violating someone's right to life is fine under some circumstances. For some people. In some cultures.
Fundamentalists think it's ok to kill non-believers. Presidents starting a war on other countries think it's ok to kill (at least) soldiers of either side. Most people think it's ok to kill in self-defense. etc...
And in the same way no statement can be logically deduced from a universal statement as the ultimate source of a moral statement - the first step to the chain of argumentation - is always someone saying "I feel that X is right".
Thus relativism.
Now, am I right and old-fashioned in calling this relativism? Or simply wrong and it's really error theory?
Saying "there are no moral true absolutes" is a moral true absolute... It is self contradictory. That is why relativism has never worked. I think Socrates was the first to prove this...
There are easy ways around this. Just do what I suggested for the error theorist in a footnote and define your view over the atomic moral claims. Since a claim quantifying over those claims (e.g., "There are no true logically atomic moral assertions"), is not itself an atomic claim, there is contradiction.
(Sarcastic Tone) Right, because human beings can make atomic moral assertions... (End sarcasm)
Like I said originally. You can only define moral ethics around your beliefs about the purpose of life. You have to first assume that you know how/why you exist in order to make moral assertions about reality.
I have no idea how the second part is supposed to relate to what I claimed. But if you have no idea what a logically atomic sentence is then I don't know why you even bothered responding, especially with that superior tone. Find someone else to pester.
On July 30 2013 03:49 Spekulatius wrote: Despite having browsed the numerous sources provided by the OP, I still do not fully grasp why I cannot call myself a moral relativist anymore. What exactly happenend to the term?
Did you read the "long story" spoiler? If you think that moral predicates have a hidden indexical element in them tied to the moral code of a person's society, then you should continue to be happy calling yourself a relativist and select "other" in the poll. But you should keep in mind that this is a linguistic claim and the types of evidence standardly marshaled for such claims seems to count against this. That said, there are a number of complications here that would require more explanation of formal semantics than I feel would be productive right now.
Alternatively, you may basically think along the lines of an error theorist that moral predicates behave as though there were a non-relative morality based on categorical imperatives even though there are in fact no categorical imperatives for them to answer to. This would make such claims systematically false. If you felt that the best response to this is a linguistic reform wherein we interpret our claims with hidden indexicals, then you could call yourself a different time of relativist. But for the purposes of the poll you would be an error theorist.
I find the semantics hard to get as a non-native speaker. Same goes for the word "indexical".
My view - that I always thought to be named "moral relativism" - simply says:
There are no true moral absolutes.
This - to me - means that a statement can only be thought to be absolutely morally true when we presuppose that the assumption that it's founded on is universal. And I'm saying such a universally true statement doesn't exist.
Let's take the statement "killing is wrong". This is morally true if and only if we presuppose the existence of another statement which leads up to the "killing is wrong" statement. This other statement would be "human life must not be infringed".
The latter statement is not universal though. Violating someone's right to life is fine under some circumstances. For some people. In some cultures.
Fundamentalists think it's ok to kill non-believers. Presidents starting a war on other countries think it's ok to kill (at least) soldiers of either side. Most people think it's ok to kill in self-defense. etc...
And in the same way no statement can be logically deduced from a universal statement as the ultimate source of a moral statement - the first step to the chain of argumentation - is always someone saying "I feel that X is right".
Thus relativism.
Now, am I right and old-fashioned in calling this relativism? Or simply wrong and it's really error theory?
Saying "there are no moral true absolutes" is a moral true absolute... It is self contradictory. That is why relativism has never worked. I think Socrates was the first to prove this...
I'm not stating it's true though. I'm just saying I believe it.
On July 30 2013 03:49 Spekulatius wrote: Despite having browsed the numerous sources provided by the OP, I still do not fully grasp why I cannot call myself a moral relativist anymore. What exactly happenend to the term?
Did you read the "long story" spoiler? If you think that moral predicates have a hidden indexical element in them tied to the moral code of a person's society, then you should continue to be happy calling yourself a relativist and select "other" in the poll. But you should keep in mind that this is a linguistic claim and the types of evidence standardly marshaled for such claims seems to count against this. That said, there are a number of complications here that would require more explanation of formal semantics than I feel would be productive right now.
Alternatively, you may basically think along the lines of an error theorist that moral predicates behave as though there were a non-relative morality based on categorical imperatives even though there are in fact no categorical imperatives for them to answer to. This would make such claims systematically false. If you felt that the best response to this is a linguistic reform wherein we interpret our claims with hidden indexicals, then you could call yourself a different time of relativist. But for the purposes of the poll you would be an error theorist.
I find the semantics hard to get as a non-native speaker. Same goes for the word "indexical".
My view - that I always thought to be named "moral relativism" - simply says:
There are no true moral absolutes.
This - to me - means that a statement can only be thought to be absolutely morally true when we presuppose that the assumption that it's founded on is universal. And I'm saying such a universally true statement doesn't exist.
Let's take the statement "killing is wrong". This is morally true if and only if we presuppose the existence of another statement which leads up to the "killing is wrong" statement. This other statement would be "human life must not be infringed".
The latter statement is not universal though. Violating someone's right to life is fine under some circumstances. For some people. In some cultures.
Fundamentalists think it's ok to kill non-believers. Presidents starting a war on other countries think it's ok to kill (at least) soldiers of either side. Most people think it's ok to kill in self-defense. etc...
And in the same way no statement can be logically deduced from a universal statement as the ultimate source of a moral statement - the first step to the chain of argumentation - is always someone saying "I feel that X is right".
Thus relativism.
Now, am I right and old-fashioned in calling this relativism? Or simply wrong and it's really error theory?
There's a lot of views that what you say could correspond to. For instance, there's a sense in which utilitarians are non-absolutists. They'll agree with you that "killing is wrong" cannot work as general principle because sometimes killing will raise utility. This will hold for the traditional edicts we tell children about what's moral. They'll still have the absolute claim "maximize utility", though.
What's important is whether you think the universality fails because moral considerations found in different contexts or because of the different perspectives that people have about morality within the context. It sounds like you think the latter.
Suppose X lives in a society whose code dictates that killing is always wrong and Y lives in a society that dictates that killing is sometimes right. Consider the following sentences:
X: "Killing is always wrong."
Y: "Sometimes killing is not wrong."
What do you take to be the truth values of these two statements?
Yes, I disagree with utilitarians' statement that the greatest good for the greatest number is a universal moral statement.
Explain to me please why there is a difference between context and perspective.
And at last, I think the word "truth" is misguided in an area of thought like morals. Truth implies objectivity. Which there isn't, in my eyes. I would accept the term "my truth" and "your truth" though, if I must. But that's not really helpful. For X, his statement is true and Y's statement isn't. For Y, X's statement is untrue and his is. Unless they realize that it's all subjective anyway and they refuse to answer like I do.
Both the different perspectives and the different moral considerations were part of different contexts. The difference is whether you're are taking the "right" action to change because people's opinions about it are changing or if you take the right action to change because in different contexts it will have different effects.[1] The former thought is a relativist one, but the latter is entirely consistent with forms of realism.
On truth and objectivity, this is a hard thing to tackle quickly. Consider the sentence, "I am frogrubdown". Is that sentence (or my use of it) universally true? There are senses in which it is and senses in which it isn't. It isn't because other people can assert it and have it be false. It is because my assertion of it is as true as true can be.
This is how indexicals (like 'I' in this case) work, and typically no one takes the presence of indexicals to threaten the possibility of uttering truths. You just have to factor in the context to determine whether or not the sentence as uttered is true. A relativist, as described in the OP, would think that moral assertions work just like this and so are every bit as capable of having truth values as the sentence above. They would just think that those truth values would vary along with the cultural context of the speaker of the sentence.
[1] If I were being perfectly correct, I'd put quote marks around every word that I'm treating as context sensitive when making claims about its changing extension. Sorry if I don't always do this.
On July 30 2013 03:49 Spekulatius wrote: Despite having browsed the numerous sources provided by the OP, I still do not fully grasp why I cannot call myself a moral relativist anymore. What exactly happenend to the term?
Did you read the "long story" spoiler? If you think that moral predicates have a hidden indexical element in them tied to the moral code of a person's society, then you should continue to be happy calling yourself a relativist and select "other" in the poll. But you should keep in mind that this is a linguistic claim and the types of evidence standardly marshaled for such claims seems to count against this. That said, there are a number of complications here that would require more explanation of formal semantics than I feel would be productive right now.
Alternatively, you may basically think along the lines of an error theorist that moral predicates behave as though there were a non-relative morality based on categorical imperatives even though there are in fact no categorical imperatives for them to answer to. This would make such claims systematically false. If you felt that the best response to this is a linguistic reform wherein we interpret our claims with hidden indexicals, then you could call yourself a different time of relativist. But for the purposes of the poll you would be an error theorist.
I find the semantics hard to get as a non-native speaker. Same goes for the word "indexical".
My view - that I always thought to be named "moral relativism" - simply says:
There are no true moral absolutes.
This - to me - means that a statement can only be thought to be absolutely morally true when we presuppose that the assumption that it's founded on is universal. And I'm saying such a universally true statement doesn't exist.
Let's take the statement "killing is wrong". This is morally true if and only if we presuppose the existence of another statement which leads up to the "killing is wrong" statement. This other statement would be "human life must not be infringed".
The latter statement is not universal though. Violating someone's right to life is fine under some circumstances. For some people. In some cultures.
Fundamentalists think it's ok to kill non-believers. Presidents starting a war on other countries think it's ok to kill (at least) soldiers of either side. Most people think it's ok to kill in self-defense. etc...
And in the same way no statement can be logically deduced from a universal statement as the ultimate source of a moral statement - the first step to the chain of argumentation - is always someone saying "I feel that X is right".
Thus relativism.
Now, am I right and old-fashioned in calling this relativism? Or simply wrong and it's really error theory?
Saying "there are no moral true absolutes" is a moral true absolute... It is self contradictory. That is why relativism has never worked. I think Socrates was the first to prove this...
I'm not stating it's true though. I'm just saying I believe it.
On July 30 2013 04:23 frogrubdown wrote:
On July 30 2013 04:15 Spekulatius wrote:
On July 30 2013 03:59 frogrubdown wrote:
On July 30 2013 03:49 Spekulatius wrote: Despite having browsed the numerous sources provided by the OP, I still do not fully grasp why I cannot call myself a moral relativist anymore. What exactly happenend to the term?
Did you read the "long story" spoiler? If you think that moral predicates have a hidden indexical element in them tied to the moral code of a person's society, then you should continue to be happy calling yourself a relativist and select "other" in the poll. But you should keep in mind that this is a linguistic claim and the types of evidence standardly marshaled for such claims seems to count against this. That said, there are a number of complications here that would require more explanation of formal semantics than I feel would be productive right now.
Alternatively, you may basically think along the lines of an error theorist that moral predicates behave as though there were a non-relative morality based on categorical imperatives even though there are in fact no categorical imperatives for them to answer to. This would make such claims systematically false. If you felt that the best response to this is a linguistic reform wherein we interpret our claims with hidden indexicals, then you could call yourself a different time of relativist. But for the purposes of the poll you would be an error theorist.
I find the semantics hard to get as a non-native speaker. Same goes for the word "indexical".
My view - that I always thought to be named "moral relativism" - simply says:
There are no true moral absolutes.
This - to me - means that a statement can only be thought to be absolutely morally true when we presuppose that the assumption that it's founded on is universal. And I'm saying such a universally true statement doesn't exist.
Let's take the statement "killing is wrong". This is morally true if and only if we presuppose the existence of another statement which leads up to the "killing is wrong" statement. This other statement would be "human life must not be infringed".
The latter statement is not universal though. Violating someone's right to life is fine under some circumstances. For some people. In some cultures.
Fundamentalists think it's ok to kill non-believers. Presidents starting a war on other countries think it's ok to kill (at least) soldiers of either side. Most people think it's ok to kill in self-defense. etc...
And in the same way no statement can be logically deduced from a universal statement as the ultimate source of a moral statement - the first step to the chain of argumentation - is always someone saying "I feel that X is right".
Thus relativism.
Now, am I right and old-fashioned in calling this relativism? Or simply wrong and it's really error theory?
There's a lot of views that what you say could correspond to. For instance, there's a sense in which utilitarians are non-absolutists. They'll agree with you that "killing is wrong" cannot work as general principle because sometimes killing will raise utility. This will hold for the traditional edicts we tell children about what's moral. They'll still have the absolute claim "maximize utility", though.
What's important is whether you think the universality fails because moral considerations found in different contexts or because of the different perspectives that people have about morality within the context. It sounds like you think the latter.
Suppose X lives in a society whose code dictates that killing is always wrong and Y lives in a society that dictates that killing is sometimes right. Consider the following sentences:
X: "Killing is always wrong."
Y: "Sometimes killing is not wrong."
What do you take to be the truth values of these two statements?
Yes, I disagree with utilitarians' statement that the greatest good for the greatest number is a universal moral statement.
Explain to me please why there is a difference between context and perspective.
And at last, I think the word "truth" is misguided in an area of thought like morals. Truth implies objectivity. Which there isn't, in my eyes. I would accept the term "my truth" and "your truth" though, if I must. But that's not really helpful. For X, his statement is true and Y's statement isn't. For Y, X's statement is untrue and his is. Unless they realize that it's all subjective anyway and they refuse to answer like I do.
Both the different perspectives and the different moral considerations were part of different contexts. The difference is whether you're are taking the "right" action to change because people's opinions about it are changing or if you take the right action to change because in different contexts it will have different affects.[1] The former thought is a relativist one, but the latter is entirely consistent with forms of realism.
On truth and objectivity, this is a hard thing to tack quickly. Consider the sentence, "I am frogrubdown". Is that sentence (or my use of it) universally true? There are senses in which it is and senses in which it isn't. It isn't because other people can assert it and have it be false. It is because my assertion of it is as true as true can be.
This is how indexicals (like 'I' in this case) work, and typically no one takes the presence of indexicals to threaten the possibility of uttering truths. You just have to factor in the context to determine whether or not the sentence as uttered is true. A relativist, as described in the OP, would think that moral assertions work just like this and so are every bit as capable of having truth values as the sentence above. They would just think that those truth values would vary along with the cultural context of the speaker of the sentence.
[1] If I were being perfectly correct, I'd put quote marks around every word that I'm treating as context sensitive when making claims about its changing extension. Sorry if I don't always do this.
1st paragraph: Not only do I consider something to be "right" to be changing depending on when I ask (your "people's opinions are changing"). I consider it to be changing depending on who I ask. So I guess I'm a sucker for relativism.
2nd paragraph: I don't think "You are frogrubdown" is universally true. You believe it to be true, I do as well. But that's just an accumulation of opinions. Not necessarily truth. This might strike you as a very fundamental skepticism towards any truth of any kind. And it is. We're all slaves to our brain's functioning. We believe to be true what it tells us. What we cannot derive from this is universal truth.
3rd paragraph: More directly: On a fundamental level, truths vary from person to person. But once we presuppose certain facts of experience to be universal (which they aren't, but we don't function if we constantly question them), then I find it to be only logical that they depend on cultural context, yes. But to me those are two questions.
On July 30 2013 03:49 Spekulatius wrote: Despite having browsed the numerous sources provided by the OP, I still do not fully grasp why I cannot call myself a moral relativist anymore. What exactly happenend to the term?
Did you read the "long story" spoiler? If you think that moral predicates have a hidden indexical element in them tied to the moral code of a person's society, then you should continue to be happy calling yourself a relativist and select "other" in the poll. But you should keep in mind that this is a linguistic claim and the types of evidence standardly marshaled for such claims seems to count against this. That said, there are a number of complications here that would require more explanation of formal semantics than I feel would be productive right now.
Alternatively, you may basically think along the lines of an error theorist that moral predicates behave as though there were a non-relative morality based on categorical imperatives even though there are in fact no categorical imperatives for them to answer to. This would make such claims systematically false. If you felt that the best response to this is a linguistic reform wherein we interpret our claims with hidden indexicals, then you could call yourself a different time of relativist. But for the purposes of the poll you would be an error theorist.
I find the semantics hard to get as a non-native speaker. Same goes for the word "indexical".
My view - that I always thought to be named "moral relativism" - simply says:
There are no true moral absolutes.
This - to me - means that a statement can only be thought to be absolutely morally true when we presuppose that the assumption that it's founded on is universal. And I'm saying such a universally true statement doesn't exist.
Let's take the statement "killing is wrong". This is morally true if and only if we presuppose the existence of another statement which leads up to the "killing is wrong" statement. This other statement would be "human life must not be infringed".
The latter statement is not universal though. Violating someone's right to life is fine under some circumstances. For some people. In some cultures.
Fundamentalists think it's ok to kill non-believers. Presidents starting a war on other countries think it's ok to kill (at least) soldiers of either side. Most people think it's ok to kill in self-defense. etc...
And in the same way no statement can be logically deduced from a universal statement as the ultimate source of a moral statement - the first step to the chain of argumentation - is always someone saying "I feel that X is right".
Thus relativism.
Now, am I right and old-fashioned in calling this relativism? Or simply wrong and it's really error theory?
Saying "there are no moral true absolutes" is a moral true absolute... It is self contradictory. That is why relativism has never worked. I think Socrates was the first to prove this...
I'm not stating it's true though. I'm just saying I believe it.
On July 30 2013 04:23 frogrubdown wrote:
On July 30 2013 04:15 Spekulatius wrote:
On July 30 2013 03:59 frogrubdown wrote:
On July 30 2013 03:49 Spekulatius wrote: Despite having browsed the numerous sources provided by the OP, I still do not fully grasp why I cannot call myself a moral relativist anymore. What exactly happenend to the term?
Did you read the "long story" spoiler? If you think that moral predicates have a hidden indexical element in them tied to the moral code of a person's society, then you should continue to be happy calling yourself a relativist and select "other" in the poll. But you should keep in mind that this is a linguistic claim and the types of evidence standardly marshaled for such claims seems to count against this. That said, there are a number of complications here that would require more explanation of formal semantics than I feel would be productive right now.
Alternatively, you may basically think along the lines of an error theorist that moral predicates behave as though there were a non-relative morality based on categorical imperatives even though there are in fact no categorical imperatives for them to answer to. This would make such claims systematically false. If you felt that the best response to this is a linguistic reform wherein we interpret our claims with hidden indexicals, then you could call yourself a different time of relativist. But for the purposes of the poll you would be an error theorist.
I find the semantics hard to get as a non-native speaker. Same goes for the word "indexical".
My view - that I always thought to be named "moral relativism" - simply says:
There are no true moral absolutes.
This - to me - means that a statement can only be thought to be absolutely morally true when we presuppose that the assumption that it's founded on is universal. And I'm saying such a universally true statement doesn't exist.
Let's take the statement "killing is wrong". This is morally true if and only if we presuppose the existence of another statement which leads up to the "killing is wrong" statement. This other statement would be "human life must not be infringed".
The latter statement is not universal though. Violating someone's right to life is fine under some circumstances. For some people. In some cultures.
Fundamentalists think it's ok to kill non-believers. Presidents starting a war on other countries think it's ok to kill (at least) soldiers of either side. Most people think it's ok to kill in self-defense. etc...
And in the same way no statement can be logically deduced from a universal statement as the ultimate source of a moral statement - the first step to the chain of argumentation - is always someone saying "I feel that X is right".
Thus relativism.
Now, am I right and old-fashioned in calling this relativism? Or simply wrong and it's really error theory?
There's a lot of views that what you say could correspond to. For instance, there's a sense in which utilitarians are non-absolutists. They'll agree with you that "killing is wrong" cannot work as general principle because sometimes killing will raise utility. This will hold for the traditional edicts we tell children about what's moral. They'll still have the absolute claim "maximize utility", though.
What's important is whether you think the universality fails because moral considerations found in different contexts or because of the different perspectives that people have about morality within the context. It sounds like you think the latter.
Suppose X lives in a society whose code dictates that killing is always wrong and Y lives in a society that dictates that killing is sometimes right. Consider the following sentences:
X: "Killing is always wrong."
Y: "Sometimes killing is not wrong."
What do you take to be the truth values of these two statements?
Yes, I disagree with utilitarians' statement that the greatest good for the greatest number is a universal moral statement.
Explain to me please why there is a difference between context and perspective.
And at last, I think the word "truth" is misguided in an area of thought like morals. Truth implies objectivity. Which there isn't, in my eyes. I would accept the term "my truth" and "your truth" though, if I must. But that's not really helpful. For X, his statement is true and Y's statement isn't. For Y, X's statement is untrue and his is. Unless they realize that it's all subjective anyway and they refuse to answer like I do.
Both the different perspectives and the different moral considerations were part of different contexts. The difference is whether you're are taking the "right" action to change because people's opinions about it are changing or if you take the right action to change because in different contexts it will have different affects.[1] The former thought is a relativist one, but the latter is entirely consistent with forms of realism.
On truth and objectivity, this is a hard thing to tack quickly. Consider the sentence, "I am frogrubdown". Is that sentence (or my use of it) universally true? There are senses in which it is and senses in which it isn't. It isn't because other people can assert it and have it be false. It is because my assertion of it is as true as true can be.
This is how indexicals (like 'I' in this case) work, and typically no one takes the presence of indexicals to threaten the possibility of uttering truths. You just have to factor in the context to determine whether or not the sentence as uttered is true. A relativist, as described in the OP, would think that moral assertions work just like this and so are every bit as capable of having truth values as the sentence above. They would just think that those truth values would vary along with the cultural context of the speaker of the sentence.
[1] If I were being perfectly correct, I'd put quote marks around every word that I'm treating as context sensitive when making claims about its changing extension. Sorry if I don't always do this.
1st paragraph: Not only do I consider something to be "right" to be changing depending on when I ask (your "people's opinions are changing"). I consider it to be changing depending on who I ask. So I guess I'm a sucker for relativism.
2nd paragraph: I don't think "You are frogrubdown" is universally true. You believe it to be true, I do as well. But that's just an accumulation of opinions. Not necessarily truth. This might strike you as a very fundamental skepticism towards any truth of any kind. And it is. We're all slaves to our brain's functioning. We believe to be true what it tells us. What we cannot derive from this is universal truth.
3rd paragraph: More directly: On a fundamental level, truths vary from person to person. But once we presuppose certain facts of experience to be universal (which they aren't, but we don't function if we constantly question them), then I find it to be only logical that they depend on cultural context, yes. But to me those are two questions.
If your opinions about morality are motivated by a general skepticism (like with Acrofales earlier in the thread), then I'd be inclined to call you a "moral skeptic" rather than a "relativist", but it doesn't much matter what label we use. But I hardly see why skepticism makes "universal truth" impossible unless by "universal" you mean "known" or "certain". Instead, I'd expect a skeptic to say that for all he or she knows there are universal truths, just ones inaccessible to us.
On July 30 2013 03:14 frogrubdown wrote: The most passionate anti-realist arguments in this thread have all been epistemic. Claims such as the following have popped up repeatedly:
(1) Our ethical beliefs are too determined by our historical/cultural context and what we hear from peers and authorities for there to be non-relative ethical truths.
(2) All ethical arguments require you to assume some principles or axioms which cannot themselves be established to be true, so there are no non-relative ethical truths.
(3) You cannot find any completely non-controversial ethical claims. The disagreement over ethics means there are no non-relative ethical truths.
The most important step to take when evaluating this style of argument is to check whether or not each principle is plausible in full generality, not just when you selectively apply it to ethics.
To my eye, every single truth in every single area fails all of these epistemic tests that are supposedly damning for ethics.
There is widespread disagreement over scientific claims. Even in the united states vast swaths of people do not believe in the theory of evolution. Yes there is agreement within the scientific community, but how (in a non-question begging way) is this different than agreements within ethical communities?
Further, it is clear that the source of this disagreement is in large part that our beliefs in just about every matter are influenced as much by where we come from and who we associate with as by anything else. If you grew up in a radically different context you wouldn't believe in evolution either.
Finally, scientific truths aren't given to us. They don't simply jump out from the world and compel our acceptance regardless of our acceptance of any other truths or principles about what procedures are reliable. We are in science, just as much as in ethics, trapped on Neurath's boat.
We are like sailors who on the open sea must reconstruct their ship but are never able to start afresh from the bottom. Where a beam is taken away a new one must at once be put there, and for this the rest of the ship is used as support. In this way, by using the old beams and driftwood the ship can be shaped entirely anew, but only by gradual reconstruction. -Quine
The general problem for these anti-realist arguments, then, is that it's hard to see how you can accept them while not taking them to undermine all truths, and in particular those of science. Realists will, quite understandably, not be moved if you cannot produce non-question begging reasons why.
Sciences are refutable. I have discussed this before by quoting Passeron. You are making a grave mistake in thinking that philosophical knowledge has the same properties as biological laws or physics.
None of the logical conditions of the "falsification" of a theory or a general proposition is fulfilled strictly speaking in the case of the logical structure of sociological theories (or "historical synthesis") as soon as one takes seriously the constraints of historical observation. Since no historical statement can completely dispose co-occurences, that the statement consider as related in the explanation or interpretation, from its space-time coordinates (context more or less expanded by typology), the universality of general propositions in sociology or history is about "digital universality" and never about the universality in the strict sense. In other words, the general sociological propositions can always be generated by the logical "conjunction" of singular statements that it resume.
I can test that the theory of evolution is "right" or "wrong" all things equals because there are valid techniques to test that (and it will always work when I repeat the same process - it is therefore anhistoric) : through that refutation or falsification I can therefore make a distinction between the theory (and its "truthness") and the social context through which the theory have been made. You cannot do that for men's morality or men overall - they are always historical beings.
Refutation doesn't occur is Popperian single steps. It's a matter of being moved in degrees by solid evidence and reasoning. So refutability is a measure of whether or not you can offer solid reasons against a given theory. And you can do this in ethics too. You can refute the moral law that lying is always wrong by considering the counterexample wherein you are questioned by Nazis about the Jews you're hiding in your attic. Sure, some would disagree that this counterexample suffices, such as Kant, but many "creation scientists" disagree with the exemplary refutations of their views.
You can do that for all moral statements. You are using an historical fact to suggest something anhistoric.
The fact remains that to refute things in science you need to accept a number of principles and if you want your refutation to convince anyone else you'll have to hope they agree with you on them. And on this particular point, the differences between science and ethics aren't so clear.
Yes, but those necessary axiom are - as the greek etymology suggest - self evident. That a true moral exist is not self evident.
Of course, things aren't identical epistemically between science and ethics. Repeatable experiments are a great thing. But science isn't the only epistemically virtuous activity. History has no repeatable experiments and yet there are numerous historical truths and we can come to know quite a few of them.
There are many historical truth... and they are all historic. There is no way to define a "law" on our society through the study of history - this was actually the basis of Popper's critic. It's the same for every sciences that study things related to men - there are no "laws" in economy, sociology, etc. or the word "law" doesn't refer to the same "law" as in physics or biology (since they are not anhistoric and a-social).
To assume without argument that that is simply an historical fact is just question-begging. Why is it?
And if the axioms whereby we refute scientific theories were so self-evident, how come there's so much disagreement about them. An alien reading your claim about the axioms of science would be astounded to come to earth and discover creation scientists. They'd be even more astounded if they took a poll and discovered that only a minority of people accept the overwhelming evidence for evolution. What does "self-evident" even mean if the majority of a population fails to find the self-evident things true, let alone obvious?
I don't really know what to respond to you.
When newton sees an apple dropping to the ground, he doesn't discuss the concept of apple, because he can repeat the same process with another object - an orange. He doesn't discuss the fact that the orange and the apple are subject to the same laws of physics, because he consider that as self evident. When two physicists discuss the properties of a metal, they agree on the fact that they both belong to the same world and that what the first prove through a scientific experimentation can be repeated by the second.
The same comments can be made systematically (if you have the knowledge) about every "scientific" knowledge that scientist consider as a "law". Can you define a moral statement that is always true, for everyone, everywhere ? If not, you are stuck with discussing the concept of moral.
The disagreement on scientific theories is another matter entirely and I don't really want to get drag into this subject. I'll just quote Spinoza "there is no intrinsic strength of the true idea".
On July 30 2013 03:49 Spekulatius wrote: Despite having browsed the numerous sources provided by the OP, I still do not fully grasp why I cannot call myself a moral relativist anymore. What exactly happenend to the term?
Did you read the "long story" spoiler? If you think that moral predicates have a hidden indexical element in them tied to the moral code of a person's society, then you should continue to be happy calling yourself a relativist and select "other" in the poll. But you should keep in mind that this is a linguistic claim and the types of evidence standardly marshaled for such claims seems to count against this. That said, there are a number of complications here that would require more explanation of formal semantics than I feel would be productive right now.
Alternatively, you may basically think along the lines of an error theorist that moral predicates behave as though there were a non-relative morality based on categorical imperatives even though there are in fact no categorical imperatives for them to answer to. This would make such claims systematically false. If you felt that the best response to this is a linguistic reform wherein we interpret our claims with hidden indexicals, then you could call yourself a different time of relativist. But for the purposes of the poll you would be an error theorist.
I find the semantics hard to get as a non-native speaker. Same goes for the word "indexical".
My view - that I always thought to be named "moral relativism" - simply says:
There are no true moral absolutes.
This - to me - means that a statement can only be thought to be absolutely morally true when we presuppose that the assumption that it's founded on is universal. And I'm saying such a universally true statement doesn't exist.
Let's take the statement "killing is wrong". This is morally true if and only if we presuppose the existence of another statement which leads up to the "killing is wrong" statement. This other statement would be "human life must not be infringed".
The latter statement is not universal though. Violating someone's right to life is fine under some circumstances. For some people. In some cultures.
Fundamentalists think it's ok to kill non-believers. Presidents starting a war on other countries think it's ok to kill (at least) soldiers of either side. Most people think it's ok to kill in self-defense. etc...
And in the same way no statement can be logically deduced from a universal statement as the ultimate source of a moral statement - the first step to the chain of argumentation - is always someone saying "I feel that X is right".
Thus relativism.
Now, am I right and old-fashioned in calling this relativism? Or simply wrong and it's really error theory?
Saying "there are no moral true absolutes" is a moral true absolute... It is self contradictory. That is why relativism has never worked. I think Socrates was the first to prove this...
I'm not stating it's true though. I'm just saying I believe it.
On July 30 2013 04:23 frogrubdown wrote:
On July 30 2013 04:15 Spekulatius wrote:
On July 30 2013 03:59 frogrubdown wrote:
On July 30 2013 03:49 Spekulatius wrote: Despite having browsed the numerous sources provided by the OP, I still do not fully grasp why I cannot call myself a moral relativist anymore. What exactly happenend to the term?
Did you read the "long story" spoiler? If you think that moral predicates have a hidden indexical element in them tied to the moral code of a person's society, then you should continue to be happy calling yourself a relativist and select "other" in the poll. But you should keep in mind that this is a linguistic claim and the types of evidence standardly marshaled for such claims seems to count against this. That said, there are a number of complications here that would require more explanation of formal semantics than I feel would be productive right now.
Alternatively, you may basically think along the lines of an error theorist that moral predicates behave as though there were a non-relative morality based on categorical imperatives even though there are in fact no categorical imperatives for them to answer to. This would make such claims systematically false. If you felt that the best response to this is a linguistic reform wherein we interpret our claims with hidden indexicals, then you could call yourself a different time of relativist. But for the purposes of the poll you would be an error theorist.
I find the semantics hard to get as a non-native speaker. Same goes for the word "indexical".
My view - that I always thought to be named "moral relativism" - simply says:
There are no true moral absolutes.
This - to me - means that a statement can only be thought to be absolutely morally true when we presuppose that the assumption that it's founded on is universal. And I'm saying such a universally true statement doesn't exist.
Let's take the statement "killing is wrong". This is morally true if and only if we presuppose the existence of another statement which leads up to the "killing is wrong" statement. This other statement would be "human life must not be infringed".
The latter statement is not universal though. Violating someone's right to life is fine under some circumstances. For some people. In some cultures.
Fundamentalists think it's ok to kill non-believers. Presidents starting a war on other countries think it's ok to kill (at least) soldiers of either side. Most people think it's ok to kill in self-defense. etc...
And in the same way no statement can be logically deduced from a universal statement as the ultimate source of a moral statement - the first step to the chain of argumentation - is always someone saying "I feel that X is right".
Thus relativism.
Now, am I right and old-fashioned in calling this relativism? Or simply wrong and it's really error theory?
There's a lot of views that what you say could correspond to. For instance, there's a sense in which utilitarians are non-absolutists. They'll agree with you that "killing is wrong" cannot work as general principle because sometimes killing will raise utility. This will hold for the traditional edicts we tell children about what's moral. They'll still have the absolute claim "maximize utility", though.
What's important is whether you think the universality fails because moral considerations found in different contexts or because of the different perspectives that people have about morality within the context. It sounds like you think the latter.
Suppose X lives in a society whose code dictates that killing is always wrong and Y lives in a society that dictates that killing is sometimes right. Consider the following sentences:
X: "Killing is always wrong."
Y: "Sometimes killing is not wrong."
What do you take to be the truth values of these two statements?
Yes, I disagree with utilitarians' statement that the greatest good for the greatest number is a universal moral statement.
Explain to me please why there is a difference between context and perspective.
And at last, I think the word "truth" is misguided in an area of thought like morals. Truth implies objectivity. Which there isn't, in my eyes. I would accept the term "my truth" and "your truth" though, if I must. But that's not really helpful. For X, his statement is true and Y's statement isn't. For Y, X's statement is untrue and his is. Unless they realize that it's all subjective anyway and they refuse to answer like I do.
Both the different perspectives and the different moral considerations were part of different contexts. The difference is whether you're are taking the "right" action to change because people's opinions about it are changing or if you take the right action to change because in different contexts it will have different affects.[1] The former thought is a relativist one, but the latter is entirely consistent with forms of realism.
On truth and objectivity, this is a hard thing to tack quickly. Consider the sentence, "I am frogrubdown". Is that sentence (or my use of it) universally true? There are senses in which it is and senses in which it isn't. It isn't because other people can assert it and have it be false. It is because my assertion of it is as true as true can be.
This is how indexicals (like 'I' in this case) work, and typically no one takes the presence of indexicals to threaten the possibility of uttering truths. You just have to factor in the context to determine whether or not the sentence as uttered is true. A relativist, as described in the OP, would think that moral assertions work just like this and so are every bit as capable of having truth values as the sentence above. They would just think that those truth values would vary along with the cultural context of the speaker of the sentence.
[1] If I were being perfectly correct, I'd put quote marks around every word that I'm treating as context sensitive when making claims about its changing extension. Sorry if I don't always do this.
1st paragraph: Not only do I consider something to be "right" to be changing depending on when I ask (your "people's opinions are changing"). I consider it to be changing depending on who I ask. So I guess I'm a sucker for relativism.
2nd paragraph: I don't think "You are frogrubdown" is universally true. You believe it to be true, I do as well. But that's just an accumulation of opinions. Not necessarily truth. This might strike you as a very fundamental skepticism towards any truth of any kind. And it is. We're all slaves to our brain's functioning. We believe to be true what it tells us. What we cannot derive from this is universal truth.
3rd paragraph: More directly: On a fundamental level, truths vary from person to person. But once we presuppose certain facts of experience to be universal (which they aren't, but we don't function if we constantly question them), then I find it to be only logical that they depend on cultural context, yes. But to me those are two questions.
If your opinions about morality are motivated by a general skepticism (like with Acrofales earlier in the thread), then I'd be inclined to call you a "moral skeptic" rather than a "relativist", but it doesn't much matter what label we use. But I hardly see why skepticism makes "universal truth" impossible unless by "universal" you mean "known" or "certain". Instead, I'd expect a skeptic to say that for all he or she knows there are universal truths, just ones inaccessible to us.
Well, it was you who digressed from moral truths to truths about the outside world.
You being frogrubown is a fact that needs to be perceived by my senses then processed by my brain. So when you ask me: are you frogrubdown, I say "possibly". But I remain sceptic of my perceptions.
For thinking that there can never be an absolute moral truth, however, I do not need to see or hear anything. I can just think. Thus, it's not a matter of certainty or uncertainty, only of logical deduction. Thus, I don't see myself as a moral sceptic.
On July 28 2013 03:52 radscorpion9 wrote: So I guess Sam Harris would be an example of a naturalistic moral realist? I seem to identify with both of their positions.
But my god this stuff is complex - I was just reading your links and suddenly I felt like I was reading my math paper on analytic functions
Before you get too comfortable in identifying with Sam Harris' work in ethics, have a look at this link.. At the bottom are more links to a variety of critiques of Harris. Suffice it to say, I don't find his ideas very appealing.
Wish I had responded to this earlier, but its nice to see the discussion that evolved out of this.
Thank you for the links, its nice to re-read the is-ought problem in clear terms, although I guess I'm already familiar with those arguments. But I would basically echo MCC's comments in that I can't imagine any other saner, more rational option for a moral philosophy than one in which the aim is to decrease suffering as much as possible, and if it can't be done for everyone, then to at least do it for the greatest number (utilitarianism). So if you assume that as your very reasonable starting point, then science can fill in the gaps.
Really what he's saying is quite obvious, because we do it all the time. Whether its deciding on the ideal economic system that serves the majority in the best way, the ideal prison system that will reduce recidivism by the highest degree, to how we should treat each other in relationships...all of these questions are answerable by science assuming that you agree with the initial philosophical claim that we should strive to be "happy" or "fulfilled". Perhaps those words are a bit nebulous, but practically speaking its rigorous enough that we can make enormous strides. Clearly these are not obvious questions either as your article suggests; for example economics can be very complex, and the consequences of choosing a particular system impacts millions.
But anyway, I do think that in the future science really will have something to say about morality. If we are just biological beings, than our moral feelings are really nothing more than a signal in our brains that are provoked by certain stimulus. If we can use neuroscience to analyze this, then we can clearly define what morality is in scientific terms. This will allow us to make at least a few claims concerning metaethics - for instance we can clearly show that expressivism in its simplest form "emotivism" is either true or false based on what we find in our brain. If our moral reactions do not stem directly from the emotional centers of our brain, then it is plainly false without needing to engage in any thought experiments.
So while we do not have a rigorous proof for it yet, I think its overwhelmingly likely, based on empirical evidence, that naturalistic moral realism is correct. After all what else could it be? Where else does our sense of "morality" come from except our brains? It must be based on biology and the laws of physics. So I think that science will help us explain what the "moral impulse" is in the far-flung future.
But as for what morality should be (as in the ideal moral system), assuming we find a way to alter our brains (perhaps through social conditioning or genetic engineering), I think that is entirely up for debate. But I find it seriously hard to believe that it will end up being anything other than maximizing happiness, which of course can be defined more specifically for certain people. Why "ought" we maximize happiness? Because it feels good, THAT'S WHY. lol
Decreasing suffering is an appalling idea: get everyone on heroin all the time and there is no more suffering.
I should phrase that better, as it is a general critique of utilitarianism, that "utility" is incredibly hard to define. And I believe that's exactly one of the critiques against Sam Harris' stab at philosophy.
Improving health is an appalling idea: kill everyone at birth and there are no more health problems.
I should phrase that better, as it is a general critique of medicine, that "health" is incredibly hard to define. And I believe that's exactly one of the critiques against modern medicine's stab at philosophy.
First paragraph is an equally absurd strawman. Second paragraph is Sam Harris' own explanation for why he doesn't think utility (or rather, well-being as he himself prefers to call it) needs to be well defined.
On July 30 2013 03:49 Spekulatius wrote: Despite having browsed the numerous sources provided by the OP, I still do not fully grasp why I cannot call myself a moral relativist anymore. What exactly happenend to the term?
Did you read the "long story" spoiler? If you think that moral predicates have a hidden indexical element in them tied to the moral code of a person's society, then you should continue to be happy calling yourself a relativist and select "other" in the poll. But you should keep in mind that this is a linguistic claim and the types of evidence standardly marshaled for such claims seems to count against this. That said, there are a number of complications here that would require more explanation of formal semantics than I feel would be productive right now.
Alternatively, you may basically think along the lines of an error theorist that moral predicates behave as though there were a non-relative morality based on categorical imperatives even though there are in fact no categorical imperatives for them to answer to. This would make such claims systematically false. If you felt that the best response to this is a linguistic reform wherein we interpret our claims with hidden indexicals, then you could call yourself a different time of relativist. But for the purposes of the poll you would be an error theorist.
I find the semantics hard to get as a non-native speaker. Same goes for the word "indexical".
My view - that I always thought to be named "moral relativism" - simply says:
There are no true moral absolutes.
This - to me - means that a statement can only be thought to be absolutely morally true when we presuppose that the assumption that it's founded on is universal. And I'm saying such a universally true statement doesn't exist.
Let's take the statement "killing is wrong". This is morally true if and only if we presuppose the existence of another statement which leads up to the "killing is wrong" statement. This other statement would be "human life must not be infringed".
The latter statement is not universal though. Violating someone's right to life is fine under some circumstances. For some people. In some cultures.
Fundamentalists think it's ok to kill non-believers. Presidents starting a war on other countries think it's ok to kill (at least) soldiers of either side. Most people think it's ok to kill in self-defense. etc...
And in the same way no statement can be logically deduced from a universal statement as the ultimate source of a moral statement - the first step to the chain of argumentation - is always someone saying "I feel that X is right".
Thus relativism.
Now, am I right and old-fashioned in calling this relativism? Or simply wrong and it's really error theory?
You seem to be conflating a sort of particularism with relativism. That there are no moral absolutes can be interpreted in two ways. For one (particularism), we might say that there are no invariant moral properties: there is no feature of a state of affairs that always makes the same moral contribution to every situation. So, for instance, "killing" does not count as an invariant property, because sometimes killing is bad (e.g. when it is done to babies for no reason), but other times it is good (e.g. when it is done to stop someone who is doing murders).
The other sort (relativism), which is what I think you're trying to go for, would say the moral significance of any state of affairs depends on certain facts about the moral beliefs of the participants (both those participating in and those judging, I would guess you think). But you have not done any work to support this view. Just because "fundamentalists think it's ok to kill non-believers" means neither 1) it is not an absolute (as in having invariant moral significance) truth that it isn't okay to kill non-believers nor 2) that it's okay for fundamentalists to kill non-believers. These latter claims (which, again, are different) need a lot more to build up to them, which your basic argument, viz. that morality is always founded upon subjective intuitions, falls quite short of.
And it's strange that you conflate particularism about morality with relativism. You suggest that both of the following statements contradict the notion that "human life must not be infringed" is a universally true statement: 1) "Fundamentalists think it's ok to kill non-believers." 2) "Most people think it's ok to kill in self-defense." But, if the distinction here is at all clear, these are two very different problems. The former looks like a mistake, or at least a disagreement with the moral code typical of modern-day Westerners, whereas the latter is a loophole in our universal. Whether the latter can be properly patched up is uncertain, but certainly the epistemic work you are requiring these universal statements to do ("This - to me - means that a statement can only be thought to be absolutely morally true when we presuppose that the assumption that it's founded on is universal.") is something that can be done with more modest kinds of grounding. For this, you might be interested in reading Jonathan Dancy's Ethics Without Principles.
The former contradiction to absolute statements is no contradiction at all. A vast number of obstacles stand in the way of this consideration disproving the notion that "human life must not be infringed." For one, people's beliefs about morality are not necessarily the ultimate ground of the moral truth (maybe you could demonstrate this?). But beyond this, the insertion of terms like "...according to modern-day Westerners" or whatever is no case against the absoluteness of any moral claim. That is to say, it doesn't require us, as modern-day Westerners, to rethink whether any given moral claim is true. It brings no evidence to bear to the contrary, it doesn't undermine our assumptions, etc.
You have a very confused stance that seems to intermingle particularism with error theory, particularism with relativism, and relativism with error theory. Even a casual acquaintance with these topics should be enough to untangle the weird mess of opinions you have now, and then you could come to more clarity about what exactly you (wrongly) believe.
On July 30 2013 03:14 frogrubdown wrote: The most passionate anti-realist arguments in this thread have all been epistemic. Claims such as the following have popped up repeatedly:
(1) Our ethical beliefs are too determined by our historical/cultural context and what we hear from peers and authorities for there to be non-relative ethical truths.
(2) All ethical arguments require you to assume some principles or axioms which cannot themselves be established to be true, so there are no non-relative ethical truths.
(3) You cannot find any completely non-controversial ethical claims. The disagreement over ethics means there are no non-relative ethical truths.
The most important step to take when evaluating this style of argument is to check whether or not each principle is plausible in full generality, not just when you selectively apply it to ethics.
To my eye, every single truth in every single area fails all of these epistemic tests that are supposedly damning for ethics.
There is widespread disagreement over scientific claims. Even in the united states vast swaths of people do not believe in the theory of evolution. Yes there is agreement within the scientific community, but how (in a non-question begging way) is this different than agreements within ethical communities?
Further, it is clear that the source of this disagreement is in large part that our beliefs in just about every matter are influenced as much by where we come from and who we associate with as by anything else. If you grew up in a radically different context you wouldn't believe in evolution either.
Finally, scientific truths aren't given to us. They don't simply jump out from the world and compel our acceptance regardless of our acceptance of any other truths or principles about what procedures are reliable. We are in science, just as much as in ethics, trapped on Neurath's boat.
We are like sailors who on the open sea must reconstruct their ship but are never able to start afresh from the bottom. Where a beam is taken away a new one must at once be put there, and for this the rest of the ship is used as support. In this way, by using the old beams and driftwood the ship can be shaped entirely anew, but only by gradual reconstruction. -Quine
The general problem for these anti-realist arguments, then, is that it's hard to see how you can accept them while not taking them to undermine all truths, and in particular those of science. Realists will, quite understandably, not be moved if you cannot produce non-question begging reasons why.
Sciences are refutable. I have discussed this before by quoting Passeron. You are making a grave mistake in thinking that philosophical knowledge has the same properties as biological laws or physics.
None of the logical conditions of the "falsification" of a theory or a general proposition is fulfilled strictly speaking in the case of the logical structure of sociological theories (or "historical synthesis") as soon as one takes seriously the constraints of historical observation. Since no historical statement can completely dispose co-occurences, that the statement consider as related in the explanation or interpretation, from its space-time coordinates (context more or less expanded by typology), the universality of general propositions in sociology or history is about "digital universality" and never about the universality in the strict sense. In other words, the general sociological propositions can always be generated by the logical "conjunction" of singular statements that it resume.
I can test that the theory of evolution is "right" or "wrong" all things equals because there are valid techniques to test that (and it will always work when I repeat the same process - it is therefore anhistoric) : through that refutation or falsification I can therefore make a distinction between the theory (and its "truthness") and the social context through which the theory have been made. You cannot do that for men's morality or men overall - they are always historical beings.
Refutation doesn't occur is Popperian single steps. It's a matter of being moved in degrees by solid evidence and reasoning. So refutability is a measure of whether or not you can offer solid reasons against a given theory. And you can do this in ethics too. You can refute the moral law that lying is always wrong by considering the counterexample wherein you are questioned by Nazis about the Jews you're hiding in your attic. Sure, some would disagree that this counterexample suffices, such as Kant, but many "creation scientists" disagree with the exemplary refutations of their views.
You can do that for all moral statements. You are using an historical fact to suggest something anhistoric.
The fact remains that to refute things in science you need to accept a number of principles and if you want your refutation to convince anyone else you'll have to hope they agree with you on them. And on this particular point, the differences between science and ethics aren't so clear.
Yes, but those necessary axiom are - as the greek etymology suggest - self evident. That a true moral exist is not self evident.
Of course, things aren't identical epistemically between science and ethics. Repeatable experiments are a great thing. But science isn't the only epistemically virtuous activity. History has no repeatable experiments and yet there are numerous historical truths and we can come to know quite a few of them.
There are many historical truth... and they are all historic. There is no way to define a "law" on our society through the study of history - this was actually the basis of Popper's critic. It's the same for every sciences that study things related to men - there are no "laws" in economy, sociology, etc. or the word "law" doesn't refer to the same "law" as in physics or biology (since they are not anhistoric and a-social).
To assume without argument that that is simply an historical fact is just question-begging. Why is it?
And if the axioms whereby we refute scientific theories were so self-evident, how come there's so much disagreement about them. An alien reading your claim about the axioms of science would be astounded to come to earth and discover creation scientists. They'd be even more astounded if they took a poll and discovered that only a minority of people accept the overwhelming evidence for evolution. What does "self-evident" even mean if the majority of a population fails to find the self-evident things true, let alone obvious?
I don't really know what to respond to you.
When newton sees an apple dropping to the ground, he doesn't discuss the concept of apple, because he can repeat the same process with another object - an orange. He doesn't discuss the fact that the orange and the apple are subject to the same laws of physics, because he consider that as self evident. When two physicists discuss the properties of a metal, they agree on the fact that they both belong to the same world and that what the first prove through a scientific experimentation can be repeated by the second.
The same comments can be made systematically (if you have the knowledge) about every "scientific" knowledge that scientist consider as a "law". Can you define a moral statement that is always true, for everyone, everywhere ? If not, you are stuck with discussing the concept of moral.
The disagreement on scientific theories is another matter entirely and I don't really want to get drag into this subject. I'll just quote Spinoza "there is no intrinsic strength of the true idea".
Well, that makes two of us at a loss for how to respond. If I give you an example of what I take to be a moral truth, you'll point to a group of people that disagree with it. Then I'll point out that the presence of disagreement is not a general indicator that there is no non-relative truth about something.
This is why disagreement about scientific theories is relevant to the discussion. I'm sure most people find the immorality of torturing babies for fun every bit as self-evident as the principle that all objects will act under the same laws of physics, if not more. I don't see that you've said anything to dislodge such a person from their convictions.
Sure, maybe someone will disagree with them and say that torturing babies for fun is the supreme good. But you know what they say, "there is no intrinsic strength of the true idea".
On July 30 2013 03:49 Spekulatius wrote: Despite having browsed the numerous sources provided by the OP, I still do not fully grasp why I cannot call myself a moral relativist anymore. What exactly happenend to the term?
Did you read the "long story" spoiler? If you think that moral predicates have a hidden indexical element in them tied to the moral code of a person's society, then you should continue to be happy calling yourself a relativist and select "other" in the poll. But you should keep in mind that this is a linguistic claim and the types of evidence standardly marshaled for such claims seems to count against this. That said, there are a number of complications here that would require more explanation of formal semantics than I feel would be productive right now.
Alternatively, you may basically think along the lines of an error theorist that moral predicates behave as though there were a non-relative morality based on categorical imperatives even though there are in fact no categorical imperatives for them to answer to. This would make such claims systematically false. If you felt that the best response to this is a linguistic reform wherein we interpret our claims with hidden indexicals, then you could call yourself a different time of relativist. But for the purposes of the poll you would be an error theorist.
I find the semantics hard to get as a non-native speaker. Same goes for the word "indexical".
My view - that I always thought to be named "moral relativism" - simply says:
There are no true moral absolutes.
This - to me - means that a statement can only be thought to be absolutely morally true when we presuppose that the assumption that it's founded on is universal. And I'm saying such a universally true statement doesn't exist.
Let's take the statement "killing is wrong". This is morally true if and only if we presuppose the existence of another statement which leads up to the "killing is wrong" statement. This other statement would be "human life must not be infringed".
The latter statement is not universal though. Violating someone's right to life is fine under some circumstances. For some people. In some cultures.
Fundamentalists think it's ok to kill non-believers. Presidents starting a war on other countries think it's ok to kill (at least) soldiers of either side. Most people think it's ok to kill in self-defense. etc...
And in the same way no statement can be logically deduced from a universal statement as the ultimate source of a moral statement - the first step to the chain of argumentation - is always someone saying "I feel that X is right".
Thus relativism.
Now, am I right and old-fashioned in calling this relativism? Or simply wrong and it's really error theory?
Saying "there are no moral true absolutes" is a moral true absolute... It is self contradictory. That is why relativism has never worked. I think Socrates was the first to prove this...
I'm not stating it's true though. I'm just saying I believe it.
On July 30 2013 04:23 frogrubdown wrote:
On July 30 2013 04:15 Spekulatius wrote:
On July 30 2013 03:59 frogrubdown wrote:
On July 30 2013 03:49 Spekulatius wrote: Despite having browsed the numerous sources provided by the OP, I still do not fully grasp why I cannot call myself a moral relativist anymore. What exactly happenend to the term?
Did you read the "long story" spoiler? If you think that moral predicates have a hidden indexical element in them tied to the moral code of a person's society, then you should continue to be happy calling yourself a relativist and select "other" in the poll. But you should keep in mind that this is a linguistic claim and the types of evidence standardly marshaled for such claims seems to count against this. That said, there are a number of complications here that would require more explanation of formal semantics than I feel would be productive right now.
Alternatively, you may basically think along the lines of an error theorist that moral predicates behave as though there were a non-relative morality based on categorical imperatives even though there are in fact no categorical imperatives for them to answer to. This would make such claims systematically false. If you felt that the best response to this is a linguistic reform wherein we interpret our claims with hidden indexicals, then you could call yourself a different time of relativist. But for the purposes of the poll you would be an error theorist.
I find the semantics hard to get as a non-native speaker. Same goes for the word "indexical".
My view - that I always thought to be named "moral relativism" - simply says:
There are no true moral absolutes.
This - to me - means that a statement can only be thought to be absolutely morally true when we presuppose that the assumption that it's founded on is universal. And I'm saying such a universally true statement doesn't exist.
Let's take the statement "killing is wrong". This is morally true if and only if we presuppose the existence of another statement which leads up to the "killing is wrong" statement. This other statement would be "human life must not be infringed".
The latter statement is not universal though. Violating someone's right to life is fine under some circumstances. For some people. In some cultures.
Fundamentalists think it's ok to kill non-believers. Presidents starting a war on other countries think it's ok to kill (at least) soldiers of either side. Most people think it's ok to kill in self-defense. etc...
And in the same way no statement can be logically deduced from a universal statement as the ultimate source of a moral statement - the first step to the chain of argumentation - is always someone saying "I feel that X is right".
Thus relativism.
Now, am I right and old-fashioned in calling this relativism? Or simply wrong and it's really error theory?
There's a lot of views that what you say could correspond to. For instance, there's a sense in which utilitarians are non-absolutists. They'll agree with you that "killing is wrong" cannot work as general principle because sometimes killing will raise utility. This will hold for the traditional edicts we tell children about what's moral. They'll still have the absolute claim "maximize utility", though.
What's important is whether you think the universality fails because moral considerations found in different contexts or because of the different perspectives that people have about morality within the context. It sounds like you think the latter.
Suppose X lives in a society whose code dictates that killing is always wrong and Y lives in a society that dictates that killing is sometimes right. Consider the following sentences:
X: "Killing is always wrong."
Y: "Sometimes killing is not wrong."
What do you take to be the truth values of these two statements?
Yes, I disagree with utilitarians' statement that the greatest good for the greatest number is a universal moral statement.
Explain to me please why there is a difference between context and perspective.
And at last, I think the word "truth" is misguided in an area of thought like morals. Truth implies objectivity. Which there isn't, in my eyes. I would accept the term "my truth" and "your truth" though, if I must. But that's not really helpful. For X, his statement is true and Y's statement isn't. For Y, X's statement is untrue and his is. Unless they realize that it's all subjective anyway and they refuse to answer like I do.
Both the different perspectives and the different moral considerations were part of different contexts. The difference is whether you're are taking the "right" action to change because people's opinions about it are changing or if you take the right action to change because in different contexts it will have different affects.[1] The former thought is a relativist one, but the latter is entirely consistent with forms of realism.
On truth and objectivity, this is a hard thing to tack quickly. Consider the sentence, "I am frogrubdown". Is that sentence (or my use of it) universally true? There are senses in which it is and senses in which it isn't. It isn't because other people can assert it and have it be false. It is because my assertion of it is as true as true can be.
This is how indexicals (like 'I' in this case) work, and typically no one takes the presence of indexicals to threaten the possibility of uttering truths. You just have to factor in the context to determine whether or not the sentence as uttered is true. A relativist, as described in the OP, would think that moral assertions work just like this and so are every bit as capable of having truth values as the sentence above. They would just think that those truth values would vary along with the cultural context of the speaker of the sentence.
[1] If I were being perfectly correct, I'd put quote marks around every word that I'm treating as context sensitive when making claims about its changing extension. Sorry if I don't always do this.
1st paragraph: Not only do I consider something to be "right" to be changing depending on when I ask (your "people's opinions are changing"). I consider it to be changing depending on who I ask. So I guess I'm a sucker for relativism.
2nd paragraph: I don't think "You are frogrubdown" is universally true. You believe it to be true, I do as well. But that's just an accumulation of opinions. Not necessarily truth. This might strike you as a very fundamental skepticism towards any truth of any kind. And it is. We're all slaves to our brain's functioning. We believe to be true what it tells us. What we cannot derive from this is universal truth.
3rd paragraph: More directly: On a fundamental level, truths vary from person to person. But once we presuppose certain facts of experience to be universal (which they aren't, but we don't function if we constantly question them), then I find it to be only logical that they depend on cultural context, yes. But to me those are two questions.
If your opinions about morality are motivated by a general skepticism (like with Acrofales earlier in the thread), then I'd be inclined to call you a "moral skeptic" rather than a "relativist", but it doesn't much matter what label we use. But I hardly see why skepticism makes "universal truth" impossible unless by "universal" you mean "known" or "certain". Instead, I'd expect a skeptic to say that for all he or she knows there are universal truths, just ones inaccessible to us.
Well, it was you who digressed from moral truths to truths about the outside world.
Digressed? You asked what an indexical was and I explained it with the simplest example I could think of.
On July 30 2013 03:49 Spekulatius wrote: Despite having browsed the numerous sources provided by the OP, I still do not fully grasp why I cannot call myself a moral relativist anymore. What exactly happenend to the term?
Because the OP spent years studying this stuff so he can do really utilitarian things for society like make posts like this on TL.
Based on my understanding of it, error theory is basically a more developed form of "moral relativism." In short, if someone asked you what you thought about morals and ethics, and you answered "relativism," and they asked you 10-15 more questions (assuming they knew the right questions to ask), you'd probably end up with something pretty close to error theory.
On July 30 2013 03:14 frogrubdown wrote: The most passionate anti-realist arguments in this thread have all been epistemic. Claims such as the following have popped up repeatedly:
(1) Our ethical beliefs are too determined by our historical/cultural context and what we hear from peers and authorities for there to be non-relative ethical truths.
(2) All ethical arguments require you to assume some principles or axioms which cannot themselves be established to be true, so there are no non-relative ethical truths.
(3) You cannot find any completely non-controversial ethical claims. The disagreement over ethics means there are no non-relative ethical truths.
The most important step to take when evaluating this style of argument is to check whether or not each principle is plausible in full generality, not just when you selectively apply it to ethics.
To my eye, every single truth in every single area fails all of these epistemic tests that are supposedly damning for ethics.
There is widespread disagreement over scientific claims. Even in the united states vast swaths of people do not believe in the theory of evolution. Yes there is agreement within the scientific community, but how (in a non-question begging way) is this different than agreements within ethical communities?
Further, it is clear that the source of this disagreement is in large part that our beliefs in just about every matter are influenced as much by where we come from and who we associate with as by anything else. If you grew up in a radically different context you wouldn't believe in evolution either.
Finally, scientific truths aren't given to us. They don't simply jump out from the world and compel our acceptance regardless of our acceptance of any other truths or principles about what procedures are reliable. We are in science, just as much as in ethics, trapped on Neurath's boat.
We are like sailors who on the open sea must reconstruct their ship but are never able to start afresh from the bottom. Where a beam is taken away a new one must at once be put there, and for this the rest of the ship is used as support. In this way, by using the old beams and driftwood the ship can be shaped entirely anew, but only by gradual reconstruction. -Quine
The general problem for these anti-realist arguments, then, is that it's hard to see how you can accept them while not taking them to undermine all truths, and in particular those of science. Realists will, quite understandably, not be moved if you cannot produce non-question begging reasons why.
Sciences are refutable. I have discussed this before by quoting Passeron. You are making a grave mistake in thinking that philosophical knowledge has the same properties as biological laws or physics.
None of the logical conditions of the "falsification" of a theory or a general proposition is fulfilled strictly speaking in the case of the logical structure of sociological theories (or "historical synthesis") as soon as one takes seriously the constraints of historical observation. Since no historical statement can completely dispose co-occurences, that the statement consider as related in the explanation or interpretation, from its space-time coordinates (context more or less expanded by typology), the universality of general propositions in sociology or history is about "digital universality" and never about the universality in the strict sense. In other words, the general sociological propositions can always be generated by the logical "conjunction" of singular statements that it resume.
I can test that the theory of evolution is "right" or "wrong" all things equals because there are valid techniques to test that (and it will always work when I repeat the same process - it is therefore anhistoric) : through that refutation or falsification I can therefore make a distinction between the theory (and its "truthness") and the social context through which the theory have been made. You cannot do that for men's morality or men overall - they are always historical beings.
Refutation doesn't occur is Popperian single steps. It's a matter of being moved in degrees by solid evidence and reasoning. So refutability is a measure of whether or not you can offer solid reasons against a given theory. And you can do this in ethics too. You can refute the moral law that lying is always wrong by considering the counterexample wherein you are questioned by Nazis about the Jews you're hiding in your attic. Sure, some would disagree that this counterexample suffices, such as Kant, but many "creation scientists" disagree with the exemplary refutations of their views.
You can do that for all moral statements. You are using an historical fact to suggest something anhistoric.
The fact remains that to refute things in science you need to accept a number of principles and if you want your refutation to convince anyone else you'll have to hope they agree with you on them. And on this particular point, the differences between science and ethics aren't so clear.
Yes, but those necessary axiom are - as the greek etymology suggest - self evident. That a true moral exist is not self evident.
Of course, things aren't identical epistemically between science and ethics. Repeatable experiments are a great thing. But science isn't the only epistemically virtuous activity. History has no repeatable experiments and yet there are numerous historical truths and we can come to know quite a few of them.
There are many historical truth... and they are all historic. There is no way to define a "law" on our society through the study of history - this was actually the basis of Popper's critic. It's the same for every sciences that study things related to men - there are no "laws" in economy, sociology, etc. or the word "law" doesn't refer to the same "law" as in physics or biology (since they are not anhistoric and a-social).
To assume without argument that that is simply an historical fact is just question-begging. Why is it?
And if the axioms whereby we refute scientific theories were so self-evident, how come there's so much disagreement about them. An alien reading your claim about the axioms of science would be astounded to come to earth and discover creation scientists. They'd be even more astounded if they took a poll and discovered that only a minority of people accept the overwhelming evidence for evolution. What does "self-evident" even mean if the majority of a population fails to find the self-evident things true, let alone obvious?
I don't really know what to respond to you.
When newton sees an apple dropping to the ground, he doesn't discuss the concept of apple, because he can repeat the same process with another object - an orange. He doesn't discuss the fact that the orange and the apple are subject to the same laws of physics, because he consider that as self evident. When two physicists discuss the properties of a metal, they agree on the fact that they both belong to the same world and that what the first prove through a scientific experimentation can be repeated by the second.
The same comments can be made systematically (if you have the knowledge) about every "scientific" knowledge that scientist consider as a "law". Can you define a moral statement that is always true, for everyone, everywhere ? If not, you are stuck with discussing the concept of moral.
The disagreement on scientific theories is another matter entirely and I don't really want to get drag into this subject. I'll just quote Spinoza "there is no intrinsic strength of the true idea".
Well, that makes two of us at a loss for how to respond. If I give you an example of what I take to be a moral truth, you'll point to a group of people that disagree with it. Then I'll point out that the presence of disagreement is not a general indicator that there is no non-relative truth about something.
This is why disagreement about scientific theories is relevant to the discussion. I'm sure most people find the immorality of torturing babies for fun every bit as self-evident as the principle that all objects will act under the same laws of physics, if not more. I don't see that you've said anything to dislodge such a person from their convictions.
Sure, maybe someone will disagree with them and say that torturing babies for fun is the supreme good. But you know what they say, "there is no intrinsic strength of the true idea".
Yes and we go back to the question : how do you evaluate the truthness of a moral statement every being equal ?
I'll quote a previous post :
"the value of many scientific ideas can be objectively evaluated by established techniques, so that the origin or history of the idea is irrelevant to its value". Since there are no "established techniques" to "objectively" evaluate what is right or wrong (there is no "something"), I can't separate my moral statement from its origin or history.
You only respond to that that moral statement behave like scientific assertions, but I can't see an epistemologist agreeing on that. The history of philosophy as I know it has actually made a clear cut between what is refutable - through experience - and what is not (this is one of the main subject in the critic of pure reason).
This is how scientist evaluate the "truthness" of a statement, by testing the assertion over and over through experimentation, and if the result is the same over and over, then the statement is judged as true, and not by some abstract discussion on the inherent logic of the said statement.
Improving health is an appalling idea: kill everyone at birth and there are no more health problems.
Exactly. Without philosophical reasoning, you cannot move from medical knowledge to "we shouldn't kill everyone at birth so that there aren't anymore health problems." I mean, can you give a medical argument as to why killing everyone at birth would be wrong?
I should phrase that better, as it is a general critique of medicine, that "health" is incredibly hard to define. And I believe that's exactly one of the critiques against modern medicine's stab at philosophy.
The problem here is that Sam Harris is relying on a semantic trick: "medicine" in one sense refers to the science of medicine (i.e. the biology/chemistry/physics/psychology research that informs it) and in another sense refers to the practice of medicine. Medicine itself is nothing more than a collection of facts about living things, from bacteria to human beings. The practice of medicine is the application of that knowledge to trying to make people die less frequently. It is impossible to conclude that one should do this without philosophy.
First paragraph is an equally absurd strawman.
Why is it absurd?
Second paragraph is Sam Harris' own explanation for why he doesn't think utility (or rather, well-being as he himself prefers to call it) needs to be well defined.
Well, it does need to be well-defined, because literally everything is going to depend on it. How are we supposed to know if it's the foundation of all moral decision making when we can't even tell what it actually is without referencing fields that are subordinate to this hypothetical utility itself. I mean, medicine wouldn't even exist if people didn't have some moral reason for wanting to cure other people.
On July 30 2013 03:49 Spekulatius wrote: Despite having browsed the numerous sources provided by the OP, I still do not fully grasp why I cannot call myself a moral relativist anymore. What exactly happenend to the term?
Did you read the "long story" spoiler? If you think that moral predicates have a hidden indexical element in them tied to the moral code of a person's society, then you should continue to be happy calling yourself a relativist and select "other" in the poll. But you should keep in mind that this is a linguistic claim and the types of evidence standardly marshaled for such claims seems to count against this. That said, there are a number of complications here that would require more explanation of formal semantics than I feel would be productive right now.
Alternatively, you may basically think along the lines of an error theorist that moral predicates behave as though there were a non-relative morality based on categorical imperatives even though there are in fact no categorical imperatives for them to answer to. This would make such claims systematically false. If you felt that the best response to this is a linguistic reform wherein we interpret our claims with hidden indexicals, then you could call yourself a different time of relativist. But for the purposes of the poll you would be an error theorist.
I find the semantics hard to get as a non-native speaker. Same goes for the word "indexical".
My view - that I always thought to be named "moral relativism" - simply says:
There are no true moral absolutes.
This - to me - means that a statement can only be thought to be absolutely morally true when we presuppose that the assumption that it's founded on is universal. And I'm saying such a universally true statement doesn't exist.
Let's take the statement "killing is wrong". This is morally true if and only if we presuppose the existence of another statement which leads up to the "killing is wrong" statement. This other statement would be "human life must not be infringed".
The latter statement is not universal though. Violating someone's right to life is fine under some circumstances. For some people. In some cultures.
Fundamentalists think it's ok to kill non-believers. Presidents starting a war on other countries think it's ok to kill (at least) soldiers of either side. Most people think it's ok to kill in self-defense. etc...
And in the same way no statement can be logically deduced from a universal statement as the ultimate source of a moral statement - the first step to the chain of argumentation - is always someone saying "I feel that X is right".
Thus relativism.
Now, am I right and old-fashioned in calling this relativism? Or simply wrong and it's really error theory?
You seem to be conflating a sort of particularism with relativism. That there are no moral absolutes can be interpreted in two ways. For one (particularism), we might say that there are no invariant moral properties: there is no feature of a state of affairs that always makes the same moral contribution to every situation. So, for instance, "killing" does not count as an invariant property, because sometimes killing is bad (e.g. when it is done to babies for no reason), but other times it is good (e.g. when it is done to stop someone who is doing murders).
The other sort (relativism), which is what I think you're trying to go for, would say the moral significance of any state of affairs depends on certain facts about the moral beliefs of the participants (both those participating in and those judging, I would guess you think). But you have not done any work to support this view. Just because "fundamentalists think it's ok to kill non-believers" means neither 1) it is not an absolute (as in having invariant moral significance) truth that it isn't okay to kill non-believers nor 2) that it's okay for fundamentalists to kill non-believers. These latter claims (which, again, are different) need a lot more to build up to them, which your basic argument, viz. that morality is always founded upon subjective intuitions, falls quite short of.
And it's strange that you conflate particularism about morality with relativism. You suggest that both of the following statements contradict the notion that "human life must not be infringed" is a universally true statement: 1) "Fundamentalists think it's ok to kill non-believers." 2) "Most people think it's ok to kill in self-defense." But, if the distinction here is at all clear, these are two very different problems. The former looks like a mistake, or at least a disagreement with the moral code typical of modern-day Westerners, whereas the latter is a loophole in our universal. Whether the latter can be properly patched up is uncertain, but certainly the epistemic work you are requiring these universal statements to do ("This - to me - means that a statement can only be thought to be absolutely morally true when we presuppose that the assumption that it's founded on is universal.") is something that can be done with more modest kinds of grounding. For this, you might be interested in reading Jonathan Dancy's Ethics Without Principles.
The former contradiction to absolute statements is no contradiction at all. A vast number of obstacles stand in the way of this consideration disproving the notion that "human life must not be infringed." For one, people's beliefs about morality are not necessarily the ultimate ground of the moral truth (maybe you could demonstrate this?). But beyond this, the insertion of terms like "...according to modern-day Westerners" or whatever is no case against the absoluteness of any moral claim. That is to say, it doesn't require us, as modern-day Westerners, to rethink whether any given moral claim is true. It brings no evidence to bear to the contrary, it doesn't undermine our assumptions, etc.
You have a very confused stance that seems to intermingle particularism with error theory, particularism with relativism, and relativism with error theory. Even a casual acquaintance with these topics should be enough to untangle the weird mess of opinions you have now, and then you could come to more clarity about what exactly you (wrongly) believe.
Firstly: well yes I am confused. I've never studied philosophy so I naturally mix up those theories that I've never heard of before. That's why I asked for clarification in the first place.
Secondly, I'm not sure why you think the burden of proof is not on you to prove any of your assumptions of which you deduce the existence of absolute moral truths. That seems like the epitomy of arrogance to me. "We're modern westerners so fuck people who think differently, may they have to prove us wrong."
Thirdly, you ask me how I come to conclude that there is no objective, absolute moral truth. I tried to explain in some of my posts that every experience and every thought is being processed by your brain. There is not a single thought or feeling or judgement that is not touched by the particularity of your own brain. Thus, a thought/judgment/feeling cannot be thought of without being influenced by your own personality. So naturally, there will never be a consensus on any moral statement. Now you will retort that the lack of consensus does not necessarily mean there is no such thing as absolute moral truths. Asking me to disprove this beyond any doubt is like asking me to disprove god. Which is, and I'm restating my second point, not my duty, but yours (i.e. proving the existence).
On July 30 2013 03:49 Spekulatius wrote: Despite having browsed the numerous sources provided by the OP, I still do not fully grasp why I cannot call myself a moral relativist anymore. What exactly happenend to the term?
Did you read the "long story" spoiler? If you think that moral predicates have a hidden indexical element in them tied to the moral code of a person's society, then you should continue to be happy calling yourself a relativist and select "other" in the poll. But you should keep in mind that this is a linguistic claim and the types of evidence standardly marshaled for such claims seems to count against this. That said, there are a number of complications here that would require more explanation of formal semantics than I feel would be productive right now.
Alternatively, you may basically think along the lines of an error theorist that moral predicates behave as though there were a non-relative morality based on categorical imperatives even though there are in fact no categorical imperatives for them to answer to. This would make such claims systematically false. If you felt that the best response to this is a linguistic reform wherein we interpret our claims with hidden indexicals, then you could call yourself a different time of relativist. But for the purposes of the poll you would be an error theorist.
I find the semantics hard to get as a non-native speaker. Same goes for the word "indexical".
My view - that I always thought to be named "moral relativism" - simply says:
There are no true moral absolutes.
This - to me - means that a statement can only be thought to be absolutely morally true when we presuppose that the assumption that it's founded on is universal. And I'm saying such a universally true statement doesn't exist.
Let's take the statement "killing is wrong". This is morally true if and only if we presuppose the existence of another statement which leads up to the "killing is wrong" statement. This other statement would be "human life must not be infringed".
The latter statement is not universal though. Violating someone's right to life is fine under some circumstances. For some people. In some cultures.
Fundamentalists think it's ok to kill non-believers. Presidents starting a war on other countries think it's ok to kill (at least) soldiers of either side. Most people think it's ok to kill in self-defense. etc...
And in the same way no statement can be logically deduced from a universal statement as the ultimate source of a moral statement - the first step to the chain of argumentation - is always someone saying "I feel that X is right".
Thus relativism.
Now, am I right and old-fashioned in calling this relativism? Or simply wrong and it's really error theory?
Saying "there are no moral true absolutes" is a moral true absolute... It is self contradictory. That is why relativism has never worked. I think Socrates was the first to prove this...
I'm not stating it's true though. I'm just saying I believe it.
On July 30 2013 04:23 frogrubdown wrote:
On July 30 2013 04:15 Spekulatius wrote:
On July 30 2013 03:59 frogrubdown wrote:
On July 30 2013 03:49 Spekulatius wrote: Despite having browsed the numerous sources provided by the OP, I still do not fully grasp why I cannot call myself a moral relativist anymore. What exactly happenend to the term?
Did you read the "long story" spoiler? If you think that moral predicates have a hidden indexical element in them tied to the moral code of a person's society, then you should continue to be happy calling yourself a relativist and select "other" in the poll. But you should keep in mind that this is a linguistic claim and the types of evidence standardly marshaled for such claims seems to count against this. That said, there are a number of complications here that would require more explanation of formal semantics than I feel would be productive right now.
Alternatively, you may basically think along the lines of an error theorist that moral predicates behave as though there were a non-relative morality based on categorical imperatives even though there are in fact no categorical imperatives for them to answer to. This would make such claims systematically false. If you felt that the best response to this is a linguistic reform wherein we interpret our claims with hidden indexicals, then you could call yourself a different time of relativist. But for the purposes of the poll you would be an error theorist.
I find the semantics hard to get as a non-native speaker. Same goes for the word "indexical".
My view - that I always thought to be named "moral relativism" - simply says:
There are no true moral absolutes.
This - to me - means that a statement can only be thought to be absolutely morally true when we presuppose that the assumption that it's founded on is universal. And I'm saying such a universally true statement doesn't exist.
Let's take the statement "killing is wrong". This is morally true if and only if we presuppose the existence of another statement which leads up to the "killing is wrong" statement. This other statement would be "human life must not be infringed".
The latter statement is not universal though. Violating someone's right to life is fine under some circumstances. For some people. In some cultures.
Fundamentalists think it's ok to kill non-believers. Presidents starting a war on other countries think it's ok to kill (at least) soldiers of either side. Most people think it's ok to kill in self-defense. etc...
And in the same way no statement can be logically deduced from a universal statement as the ultimate source of a moral statement - the first step to the chain of argumentation - is always someone saying "I feel that X is right".
Thus relativism.
Now, am I right and old-fashioned in calling this relativism? Or simply wrong and it's really error theory?
There's a lot of views that what you say could correspond to. For instance, there's a sense in which utilitarians are non-absolutists. They'll agree with you that "killing is wrong" cannot work as general principle because sometimes killing will raise utility. This will hold for the traditional edicts we tell children about what's moral. They'll still have the absolute claim "maximize utility", though.
What's important is whether you think the universality fails because moral considerations found in different contexts or because of the different perspectives that people have about morality within the context. It sounds like you think the latter.
Suppose X lives in a society whose code dictates that killing is always wrong and Y lives in a society that dictates that killing is sometimes right. Consider the following sentences:
X: "Killing is always wrong."
Y: "Sometimes killing is not wrong."
What do you take to be the truth values of these two statements?
Yes, I disagree with utilitarians' statement that the greatest good for the greatest number is a universal moral statement.
Explain to me please why there is a difference between context and perspective.
And at last, I think the word "truth" is misguided in an area of thought like morals. Truth implies objectivity. Which there isn't, in my eyes. I would accept the term "my truth" and "your truth" though, if I must. But that's not really helpful. For X, his statement is true and Y's statement isn't. For Y, X's statement is untrue and his is. Unless they realize that it's all subjective anyway and they refuse to answer like I do.
Both the different perspectives and the different moral considerations were part of different contexts. The difference is whether you're are taking the "right" action to change because people's opinions about it are changing or if you take the right action to change because in different contexts it will have different affects.[1] The former thought is a relativist one, but the latter is entirely consistent with forms of realism.
On truth and objectivity, this is a hard thing to tack quickly. Consider the sentence, "I am frogrubdown". Is that sentence (or my use of it) universally true? There are senses in which it is and senses in which it isn't. It isn't because other people can assert it and have it be false. It is because my assertion of it is as true as true can be.
This is how indexicals (like 'I' in this case) work, and typically no one takes the presence of indexicals to threaten the possibility of uttering truths. You just have to factor in the context to determine whether or not the sentence as uttered is true. A relativist, as described in the OP, would think that moral assertions work just like this and so are every bit as capable of having truth values as the sentence above. They would just think that those truth values would vary along with the cultural context of the speaker of the sentence.
[1] If I were being perfectly correct, I'd put quote marks around every word that I'm treating as context sensitive when making claims about its changing extension. Sorry if I don't always do this.
1st paragraph: Not only do I consider something to be "right" to be changing depending on when I ask (your "people's opinions are changing"). I consider it to be changing depending on who I ask. So I guess I'm a sucker for relativism.
2nd paragraph: I don't think "You are frogrubdown" is universally true. You believe it to be true, I do as well. But that's just an accumulation of opinions. Not necessarily truth. This might strike you as a very fundamental skepticism towards any truth of any kind. And it is. We're all slaves to our brain's functioning. We believe to be true what it tells us. What we cannot derive from this is universal truth.
3rd paragraph: More directly: On a fundamental level, truths vary from person to person. But once we presuppose certain facts of experience to be universal (which they aren't, but we don't function if we constantly question them), then I find it to be only logical that they depend on cultural context, yes. But to me those are two questions.
If your opinions about morality are motivated by a general skepticism (like with Acrofales earlier in the thread), then I'd be inclined to call you a "moral skeptic" rather than a "relativist", but it doesn't much matter what label we use. But I hardly see why skepticism makes "universal truth" impossible unless by "universal" you mean "known" or "certain". Instead, I'd expect a skeptic to say that for all he or she knows there are universal truths, just ones inaccessible to us.
Well, it was you who digressed from moral truths to truths about the outside world.
Digressed? You asked what an indexical was and I explained it with the simplest example I could think of.
Oh, sorry. I wasn't expecting an unannounced example of "indexical" considering that you've responded before to me. My bad.
The rest of my post still stands. Morals are human inventions. Humans are individuals. Why should there ever be a universality of opinion on what is right and wrong?
On July 30 2013 03:14 frogrubdown wrote: The most passionate anti-realist arguments in this thread have all been epistemic. Claims such as the following have popped up repeatedly:
(1) Our ethical beliefs are too determined by our historical/cultural context and what we hear from peers and authorities for there to be non-relative ethical truths.
(2) All ethical arguments require you to assume some principles or axioms which cannot themselves be established to be true, so there are no non-relative ethical truths.
(3) You cannot find any completely non-controversial ethical claims. The disagreement over ethics means there are no non-relative ethical truths.
The most important step to take when evaluating this style of argument is to check whether or not each principle is plausible in full generality, not just when you selectively apply it to ethics.
To my eye, every single truth in every single area fails all of these epistemic tests that are supposedly damning for ethics.
There is widespread disagreement over scientific claims. Even in the united states vast swaths of people do not believe in the theory of evolution. Yes there is agreement within the scientific community, but how (in a non-question begging way) is this different than agreements within ethical communities?
Further, it is clear that the source of this disagreement is in large part that our beliefs in just about every matter are influenced as much by where we come from and who we associate with as by anything else. If you grew up in a radically different context you wouldn't believe in evolution either.
Finally, scientific truths aren't given to us. They don't simply jump out from the world and compel our acceptance regardless of our acceptance of any other truths or principles about what procedures are reliable. We are in science, just as much as in ethics, trapped on Neurath's boat.
We are like sailors who on the open sea must reconstruct their ship but are never able to start afresh from the bottom. Where a beam is taken away a new one must at once be put there, and for this the rest of the ship is used as support. In this way, by using the old beams and driftwood the ship can be shaped entirely anew, but only by gradual reconstruction. -Quine
The general problem for these anti-realist arguments, then, is that it's hard to see how you can accept them while not taking them to undermine all truths, and in particular those of science. Realists will, quite understandably, not be moved if you cannot produce non-question begging reasons why.
Sciences are refutable. I have discussed this before by quoting Passeron. You are making a grave mistake in thinking that philosophical knowledge has the same properties as biological laws or physics.
None of the logical conditions of the "falsification" of a theory or a general proposition is fulfilled strictly speaking in the case of the logical structure of sociological theories (or "historical synthesis") as soon as one takes seriously the constraints of historical observation. Since no historical statement can completely dispose co-occurences, that the statement consider as related in the explanation or interpretation, from its space-time coordinates (context more or less expanded by typology), the universality of general propositions in sociology or history is about "digital universality" and never about the universality in the strict sense. In other words, the general sociological propositions can always be generated by the logical "conjunction" of singular statements that it resume.
I can test that the theory of evolution is "right" or "wrong" all things equals because there are valid techniques to test that (and it will always work when I repeat the same process - it is therefore anhistoric) : through that refutation or falsification I can therefore make a distinction between the theory (and its "truthness") and the social context through which the theory have been made. You cannot do that for men's morality or men overall - they are always historical beings.
Refutation doesn't occur is Popperian single steps. It's a matter of being moved in degrees by solid evidence and reasoning. So refutability is a measure of whether or not you can offer solid reasons against a given theory. And you can do this in ethics too. You can refute the moral law that lying is always wrong by considering the counterexample wherein you are questioned by Nazis about the Jews you're hiding in your attic. Sure, some would disagree that this counterexample suffices, such as Kant, but many "creation scientists" disagree with the exemplary refutations of their views.
You can do that for all moral statements. You are using an historical fact to suggest something anhistoric.
The fact remains that to refute things in science you need to accept a number of principles and if you want your refutation to convince anyone else you'll have to hope they agree with you on them. And on this particular point, the differences between science and ethics aren't so clear.
Yes, but those necessary axiom are - as the greek etymology suggest - self evident. That a true moral exist is not self evident.
Of course, things aren't identical epistemically between science and ethics. Repeatable experiments are a great thing. But science isn't the only epistemically virtuous activity. History has no repeatable experiments and yet there are numerous historical truths and we can come to know quite a few of them.
There are many historical truth... and they are all historic. There is no way to define a "law" on our society through the study of history - this was actually the basis of Popper's critic. It's the same for every sciences that study things related to men - there are no "laws" in economy, sociology, etc. or the word "law" doesn't refer to the same "law" as in physics or biology (since they are not anhistoric and a-social).
To assume without argument that that is simply an historical fact is just question-begging. Why is it?
And if the axioms whereby we refute scientific theories were so self-evident, how come there's so much disagreement about them. An alien reading your claim about the axioms of science would be astounded to come to earth and discover creation scientists. They'd be even more astounded if they took a poll and discovered that only a minority of people accept the overwhelming evidence for evolution. What does "self-evident" even mean if the majority of a population fails to find the self-evident things true, let alone obvious?
I don't really know what to respond to you.
When newton sees an apple dropping to the ground, he doesn't discuss the concept of apple, because he can repeat the same process with another object - an orange. He doesn't discuss the fact that the orange and the apple are subject to the same laws of physics, because he consider that as self evident. When two physicists discuss the properties of a metal, they agree on the fact that they both belong to the same world and that what the first prove through a scientific experimentation can be repeated by the second.
The same comments can be made systematically (if you have the knowledge) about every "scientific" knowledge that scientist consider as a "law". Can you define a moral statement that is always true, for everyone, everywhere ? If not, you are stuck with discussing the concept of moral.
The disagreement on scientific theories is another matter entirely and I don't really want to get drag into this subject. I'll just quote Spinoza "there is no intrinsic strength of the true idea".
Well, that makes two of us at a loss for how to respond. If I give you an example of what I take to be a moral truth, you'll point to a group of people that disagree with it. Then I'll point out that the presence of disagreement is not a general indicator that there is no non-relative truth about something.
This is why disagreement about scientific theories is relevant to the discussion. I'm sure most people find the immorality of torturing babies for fun every bit as self-evident as the principle that all objects will act under the same laws of physics, if not more. I don't see that you've said anything to dislodge such a person from their convictions.
Sure, maybe someone will disagree with them and say that torturing babies for fun is the supreme good. But you know what they say, "there is no intrinsic strength of the true idea".
Yes and we go back to the question : how do you evaluate the truthness of a moral statement every being equal ?
"the value of many scientific ideas can be objectively evaluated by established techniques, so that the origin or history of the idea is irrelevant to its value". Since there are no "established techniques" to "objectively" evaluate what is right or wrong (there is no "something"), I can't separate my moral statement from its origin or history.
You only respond to that that moral statement behave like scientific assertions, but I can't see an epistemologist agreeing on that. The history of philosophy as I know it has actually made a clear cut between what is refutable - through experience - and what is not (this is one of the main subject in the critic of pure reason, or the book "What is thinking ?" by Heiddegger).
This is how scientific evaluate the truthness of a statement, and not by some abstract discussion on the logic of the said statement : they test the assertion over and over through experimentation, and if the result is the same over and over, then the statement is judged as true.
I never claimed that moral assertions are exactly like scientific ones. I just claimed that they share with science the three features that I labeled earlier that have been used in epistemic arguments against realism. This on its own refutes those specific arguments as long as we should be realists about science.
On the question of "established techniques", we have to ask "Established by who?" Well, by scientists. They certainly aren't agreed on by everyone. And before several hundred years ago there wasn't any community that practiced them consistently.[1] Before that time, was it the case that there were no non-relative truths about the laws of nature? Did the creation of the scientific community bring them into existence?
There already are communities of people discussing ethical questions with a fairly wide amount of methodological agreement. Not everyone is a part of them, but not everyone is a part of the scientific community either. Do any of these ethical communities have a method of assessing ethical truth as good as the scientists have for their domain? On the hard questions of ethics, I'm inclined to say obviously not. But for simpler ethical truths I'm happy to endorse how people currently go about assessing them, and I'm completely open to better methods being developed in ethics just as they were in science. None of this will make ethics a science, but it could get better.
[1] For the sake of argument here I'm speaking as though the epistemic principles governing science are a whole lot more precise than they actually are. Nobody has a science algorithm.
On July 30 2013 03:49 Spekulatius wrote: Despite having browsed the numerous sources provided by the OP, I still do not fully grasp why I cannot call myself a moral relativist anymore. What exactly happenend to the term?
Did you read the "long story" spoiler? If you think that moral predicates have a hidden indexical element in them tied to the moral code of a person's society, then you should continue to be happy calling yourself a relativist and select "other" in the poll. But you should keep in mind that this is a linguistic claim and the types of evidence standardly marshaled for such claims seems to count against this. That said, there are a number of complications here that would require more explanation of formal semantics than I feel would be productive right now.
Alternatively, you may basically think along the lines of an error theorist that moral predicates behave as though there were a non-relative morality based on categorical imperatives even though there are in fact no categorical imperatives for them to answer to. This would make such claims systematically false. If you felt that the best response to this is a linguistic reform wherein we interpret our claims with hidden indexicals, then you could call yourself a different time of relativist. But for the purposes of the poll you would be an error theorist.
I find the semantics hard to get as a non-native speaker. Same goes for the word "indexical".
My view - that I always thought to be named "moral relativism" - simply says:
There are no true moral absolutes.
This - to me - means that a statement can only be thought to be absolutely morally true when we presuppose that the assumption that it's founded on is universal. And I'm saying such a universally true statement doesn't exist.
Let's take the statement "killing is wrong". This is morally true if and only if we presuppose the existence of another statement which leads up to the "killing is wrong" statement. This other statement would be "human life must not be infringed".
The latter statement is not universal though. Violating someone's right to life is fine under some circumstances. For some people. In some cultures.
Fundamentalists think it's ok to kill non-believers. Presidents starting a war on other countries think it's ok to kill (at least) soldiers of either side. Most people think it's ok to kill in self-defense. etc...
And in the same way no statement can be logically deduced from a universal statement as the ultimate source of a moral statement - the first step to the chain of argumentation - is always someone saying "I feel that X is right".
Thus relativism.
Now, am I right and old-fashioned in calling this relativism? Or simply wrong and it's really error theory?
You seem to be conflating a sort of particularism with relativism. That there are no moral absolutes can be interpreted in two ways. For one (particularism), we might say that there are no invariant moral properties: there is no feature of a state of affairs that always makes the same moral contribution to every situation. So, for instance, "killing" does not count as an invariant property, because sometimes killing is bad (e.g. when it is done to babies for no reason), but other times it is good (e.g. when it is done to stop someone who is doing murders).
The other sort (relativism), which is what I think you're trying to go for, would say the moral significance of any state of affairs depends on certain facts about the moral beliefs of the participants (both those participating in and those judging, I would guess you think). But you have not done any work to support this view. Just because "fundamentalists think it's ok to kill non-believers" means neither 1) it is not an absolute (as in having invariant moral significance) truth that it isn't okay to kill non-believers nor 2) that it's okay for fundamentalists to kill non-believers. These latter claims (which, again, are different) need a lot more to build up to them, which your basic argument, viz. that morality is always founded upon subjective intuitions, falls quite short of.
And it's strange that you conflate particularism about morality with relativism. You suggest that both of the following statements contradict the notion that "human life must not be infringed" is a universally true statement: 1) "Fundamentalists think it's ok to kill non-believers." 2) "Most people think it's ok to kill in self-defense." But, if the distinction here is at all clear, these are two very different problems. The former looks like a mistake, or at least a disagreement with the moral code typical of modern-day Westerners, whereas the latter is a loophole in our universal. Whether the latter can be properly patched up is uncertain, but certainly the epistemic work you are requiring these universal statements to do ("This - to me - means that a statement can only be thought to be absolutely morally true when we presuppose that the assumption that it's founded on is universal.") is something that can be done with more modest kinds of grounding. For this, you might be interested in reading Jonathan Dancy's Ethics Without Principles.
The former contradiction to absolute statements is no contradiction at all. A vast number of obstacles stand in the way of this consideration disproving the notion that "human life must not be infringed." For one, people's beliefs about morality are not necessarily the ultimate ground of the moral truth (maybe you could demonstrate this?). But beyond this, the insertion of terms like "...according to modern-day Westerners" or whatever is no case against the absoluteness of any moral claim. That is to say, it doesn't require us, as modern-day Westerners, to rethink whether any given moral claim is true. It brings no evidence to bear to the contrary, it doesn't undermine our assumptions, etc.
You have a very confused stance that seems to intermingle particularism with error theory, particularism with relativism, and relativism with error theory. Even a casual acquaintance with these topics should be enough to untangle the weird mess of opinions you have now, and then you could come to more clarity about what exactly you (wrongly) believe.
Firstly: well yes I am confused. I've never studied philosophy so I naturally mix up those theories that I've never heard of before. That's why I asked for clarification in the first place.
Secondly, I'm not sure why you think the burden of proof is not on you to prove any of your assumptions of which you deduce the existence of absolute moral truths. That seems like the epitomy of arrogance to me. "We're modern westerners so fuck people who think differently, may they have to prove us wrong."
Thirdly, you ask me how I come to conclude that there is no objective, absolute moral truth. I tried to explain in some of my posts that every experience and every thought is being processed by your brain. There is not a single thought or feeling or judgement that is not touched by the particularity of your own brain. Thus, a thought/judgment/feeling cannot be thought of without being influenced by your own personality. So naturally, there will never be a consensus on any moral statement. Now you will retort that the lack of consensus does not necessarily mean there is no such thing as absolute moral truths. Asking me to disprove this beyond any doubt is like asking me to disprove god. Which is, and I'm restating my second point, not my duty, but yours.
I didn't purport that there were any absolute moral truths. Being myself a particularist, I don't think there are any. In any case, I was only trying to show that you hadn't successfully argued for your own views, not that your conclusions were wrong. I could do that if you wanted.
Also, I wasn't trying to say that our (modern-day Western) views are right and universal and everyone else has to disprove us. I was saying that, given that we have a certain kind of moral framework, the fact that our moral statements would be wrong in another framework is no argument at all against the absolute nature of our moral statements. I could just have easily have used Australian aboriginals or whatever as my example. It is no problem to the absoluteness of an aboriginal's moral claim that other cultures make different moral claims that are true for them, unless we interpret "absoluteness" in a strange way. In some logics, you have the law of the excluded middle, and in others you don't. This doesn't mean that statements in a logic that has the LEM are non-absolute within that logic; it just means there are other systems where it would be false. But given that we always speak from within a system, we would be committing a kind of conceptual confusion if we thought that disagreement from other systems was a stain on the value of our own statements.
Consider a scientist's deduction that evolution is true. Within a different framework that has wildly different assumptions about reality, say 14th-century Catholicism, evolution isn't true (given the kind of extreme relativism you want to invoke, that is). But this doesn't mean that the scientist needs to take that into account. The scientist's rules for deduction do not involve "What do 14th-century Catholics think?" just as our rules for morality do not involve "What do Australian aboriginals think?" (Or, well, they might include such a premise, but it isn't a necessary fact about any moral system whatsoever)
Your argument for why there can't be consensus on moral statements is weird. Every part of it before the conclusion applies perfectly well to all facts, and I don't think that the fact that my brain has to process the fact that the sun is hot means that there can't be consensus about it. Did you mean to say that there can be no consensus about any fact ever (surely a queer view), or did you forget to put in your premise that restricts the scope of the argument to just moral statements?
I don't much like burden of proof arguments, but yours has a hole in it so I'll try to point it out in a clear way. You said this: "you ask me how I come to conclude that there is no objective, absolute moral truth" and gave me an argument that led up to "there will never be a consensus on any moral statement," and then you concluded that it was up to me to disprove the link between that latter statement and "there is no such thing as absolute moral truths." I don't see why I need to disprove that at all, especially if I was just doing a bit of psychological investigation about you: I asked what you think the link is, more or less, between the impossibility of consensus and the impossibility of absolute truth w/r/t morality. I can't provide a disproof of the link you have in mind before you state what kind of a link you have in mind. If you want me to give you a generally applicable one, I can try to do that, but I don't think I've obligated myself to do so.
Also, I don't think I ever did actually ask you how you came to conclude that. I just tried to demonstrate that your arguments for your view betrayed a high amount of conceptual confusion. If you would like me to argue against your conclusion, then sure, please do tell me how you reached it.
Did you read the "long story" spoiler? If you think that moral predicates have a hidden indexical element in them tied to the moral code of a person's society, then you should continue to be happy calling yourself a relativist and select "other" in the poll. But you should keep in mind that this is a linguistic claim and the types of evidence standardly marshaled for such claims seems to count against this. That said, there are a number of complications here that would require more explanation of formal semantics than I feel would be productive right now.
Alternatively, you may basically think along the lines of an error theorist that moral predicates behave as though there were a non-relative morality based on categorical imperatives even though there are in fact no categorical imperatives for them to answer to. This would make such claims systematically false. If you felt that the best response to this is a linguistic reform wherein we interpret our claims with hidden indexicals, then you could call yourself a different time of relativist. But for the purposes of the poll you would be an error theorist.
I find the semantics hard to get as a non-native speaker. Same goes for the word "indexical".
My view - that I always thought to be named "moral relativism" - simply says:
There are no true moral absolutes.
This - to me - means that a statement can only be thought to be absolutely morally true when we presuppose that the assumption that it's founded on is universal. And I'm saying such a universally true statement doesn't exist.
Let's take the statement "killing is wrong". This is morally true if and only if we presuppose the existence of another statement which leads up to the "killing is wrong" statement. This other statement would be "human life must not be infringed".
The latter statement is not universal though. Violating someone's right to life is fine under some circumstances. For some people. In some cultures.
Fundamentalists think it's ok to kill non-believers. Presidents starting a war on other countries think it's ok to kill (at least) soldiers of either side. Most people think it's ok to kill in self-defense. etc...
And in the same way no statement can be logically deduced from a universal statement as the ultimate source of a moral statement - the first step to the chain of argumentation - is always someone saying "I feel that X is right".
Thus relativism.
Now, am I right and old-fashioned in calling this relativism? Or simply wrong and it's really error theory?
Saying "there are no moral true absolutes" is a moral true absolute... It is self contradictory. That is why relativism has never worked. I think Socrates was the first to prove this...
I'm not stating it's true though. I'm just saying I believe it.
On July 30 2013 04:23 frogrubdown wrote:
On July 30 2013 04:15 Spekulatius wrote:
On July 30 2013 03:59 frogrubdown wrote: [quote]
Did you read the "long story" spoiler? If you think that moral predicates have a hidden indexical element in them tied to the moral code of a person's society, then you should continue to be happy calling yourself a relativist and select "other" in the poll. But you should keep in mind that this is a linguistic claim and the types of evidence standardly marshaled for such claims seems to count against this. That said, there are a number of complications here that would require more explanation of formal semantics than I feel would be productive right now.
Alternatively, you may basically think along the lines of an error theorist that moral predicates behave as though there were a non-relative morality based on categorical imperatives even though there are in fact no categorical imperatives for them to answer to. This would make such claims systematically false. If you felt that the best response to this is a linguistic reform wherein we interpret our claims with hidden indexicals, then you could call yourself a different time of relativist. But for the purposes of the poll you would be an error theorist.
I find the semantics hard to get as a non-native speaker. Same goes for the word "indexical".
My view - that I always thought to be named "moral relativism" - simply says:
There are no true moral absolutes.
This - to me - means that a statement can only be thought to be absolutely morally true when we presuppose that the assumption that it's founded on is universal. And I'm saying such a universally true statement doesn't exist.
Let's take the statement "killing is wrong". This is morally true if and only if we presuppose the existence of another statement which leads up to the "killing is wrong" statement. This other statement would be "human life must not be infringed".
The latter statement is not universal though. Violating someone's right to life is fine under some circumstances. For some people. In some cultures.
Fundamentalists think it's ok to kill non-believers. Presidents starting a war on other countries think it's ok to kill (at least) soldiers of either side. Most people think it's ok to kill in self-defense. etc...
And in the same way no statement can be logically deduced from a universal statement as the ultimate source of a moral statement - the first step to the chain of argumentation - is always someone saying "I feel that X is right".
Thus relativism.
Now, am I right and old-fashioned in calling this relativism? Or simply wrong and it's really error theory?
There's a lot of views that what you say could correspond to. For instance, there's a sense in which utilitarians are non-absolutists. They'll agree with you that "killing is wrong" cannot work as general principle because sometimes killing will raise utility. This will hold for the traditional edicts we tell children about what's moral. They'll still have the absolute claim "maximize utility", though.
What's important is whether you think the universality fails because moral considerations found in different contexts or because of the different perspectives that people have about morality within the context. It sounds like you think the latter.
Suppose X lives in a society whose code dictates that killing is always wrong and Y lives in a society that dictates that killing is sometimes right. Consider the following sentences:
X: "Killing is always wrong."
Y: "Sometimes killing is not wrong."
What do you take to be the truth values of these two statements?
Yes, I disagree with utilitarians' statement that the greatest good for the greatest number is a universal moral statement.
Explain to me please why there is a difference between context and perspective.
And at last, I think the word "truth" is misguided in an area of thought like morals. Truth implies objectivity. Which there isn't, in my eyes. I would accept the term "my truth" and "your truth" though, if I must. But that's not really helpful. For X, his statement is true and Y's statement isn't. For Y, X's statement is untrue and his is. Unless they realize that it's all subjective anyway and they refuse to answer like I do.
Both the different perspectives and the different moral considerations were part of different contexts. The difference is whether you're are taking the "right" action to change because people's opinions about it are changing or if you take the right action to change because in different contexts it will have different affects.[1] The former thought is a relativist one, but the latter is entirely consistent with forms of realism.
On truth and objectivity, this is a hard thing to tack quickly. Consider the sentence, "I am frogrubdown". Is that sentence (or my use of it) universally true? There are senses in which it is and senses in which it isn't. It isn't because other people can assert it and have it be false. It is because my assertion of it is as true as true can be.
This is how indexicals (like 'I' in this case) work, and typically no one takes the presence of indexicals to threaten the possibility of uttering truths. You just have to factor in the context to determine whether or not the sentence as uttered is true. A relativist, as described in the OP, would think that moral assertions work just like this and so are every bit as capable of having truth values as the sentence above. They would just think that those truth values would vary along with the cultural context of the speaker of the sentence.
[1] If I were being perfectly correct, I'd put quote marks around every word that I'm treating as context sensitive when making claims about its changing extension. Sorry if I don't always do this.
1st paragraph: Not only do I consider something to be "right" to be changing depending on when I ask (your "people's opinions are changing"). I consider it to be changing depending on who I ask. So I guess I'm a sucker for relativism.
2nd paragraph: I don't think "You are frogrubdown" is universally true. You believe it to be true, I do as well. But that's just an accumulation of opinions. Not necessarily truth. This might strike you as a very fundamental skepticism towards any truth of any kind. And it is. We're all slaves to our brain's functioning. We believe to be true what it tells us. What we cannot derive from this is universal truth.
3rd paragraph: More directly: On a fundamental level, truths vary from person to person. But once we presuppose certain facts of experience to be universal (which they aren't, but we don't function if we constantly question them), then I find it to be only logical that they depend on cultural context, yes. But to me those are two questions.
If your opinions about morality are motivated by a general skepticism (like with Acrofales earlier in the thread), then I'd be inclined to call you a "moral skeptic" rather than a "relativist", but it doesn't much matter what label we use. But I hardly see why skepticism makes "universal truth" impossible unless by "universal" you mean "known" or "certain". Instead, I'd expect a skeptic to say that for all he or she knows there are universal truths, just ones inaccessible to us.
Well, it was you who digressed from moral truths to truths about the outside world.
Digressed? You asked what an indexical was and I explained it with the simplest example I could think of.
Oh, sorry. I wasn't expecting an unannounced example of "indexical" considering that you've responded before to me. My bad.
The rest of my post still stands. Morals are human inventions. Humans are individuals. Why should there ever be a universality of opinion on what is right and wrong?
Well you already know I don't endorse the rest of that point, but I'm glad that we somewhat clarified the nature of our dispute.
On July 30 2013 03:14 frogrubdown wrote: The most passionate anti-realist arguments in this thread have all been epistemic. Claims such as the following have popped up repeatedly:
(1) Our ethical beliefs are too determined by our historical/cultural context and what we hear from peers and authorities for there to be non-relative ethical truths.
(2) All ethical arguments require you to assume some principles or axioms which cannot themselves be established to be true, so there are no non-relative ethical truths.
(3) You cannot find any completely non-controversial ethical claims. The disagreement over ethics means there are no non-relative ethical truths.
The most important step to take when evaluating this style of argument is to check whether or not each principle is plausible in full generality, not just when you selectively apply it to ethics.
To my eye, every single truth in every single area fails all of these epistemic tests that are supposedly damning for ethics.
There is widespread disagreement over scientific claims. Even in the united states vast swaths of people do not believe in the theory of evolution. Yes there is agreement within the scientific community, but how (in a non-question begging way) is this different than agreements within ethical communities?
Further, it is clear that the source of this disagreement is in large part that our beliefs in just about every matter are influenced as much by where we come from and who we associate with as by anything else. If you grew up in a radically different context you wouldn't believe in evolution either.
Finally, scientific truths aren't given to us. They don't simply jump out from the world and compel our acceptance regardless of our acceptance of any other truths or principles about what procedures are reliable. We are in science, just as much as in ethics, trapped on Neurath's boat.
We are like sailors who on the open sea must reconstruct their ship but are never able to start afresh from the bottom. Where a beam is taken away a new one must at once be put there, and for this the rest of the ship is used as support. In this way, by using the old beams and driftwood the ship can be shaped entirely anew, but only by gradual reconstruction. -Quine
The general problem for these anti-realist arguments, then, is that it's hard to see how you can accept them while not taking them to undermine all truths, and in particular those of science. Realists will, quite understandably, not be moved if you cannot produce non-question begging reasons why.
Sciences are refutable. I have discussed this before by quoting Passeron. You are making a grave mistake in thinking that philosophical knowledge has the same properties as biological laws or physics.
None of the logical conditions of the "falsification" of a theory or a general proposition is fulfilled strictly speaking in the case of the logical structure of sociological theories (or "historical synthesis") as soon as one takes seriously the constraints of historical observation. Since no historical statement can completely dispose co-occurences, that the statement consider as related in the explanation or interpretation, from its space-time coordinates (context more or less expanded by typology), the universality of general propositions in sociology or history is about "digital universality" and never about the universality in the strict sense. In other words, the general sociological propositions can always be generated by the logical "conjunction" of singular statements that it resume.
I can test that the theory of evolution is "right" or "wrong" all things equals because there are valid techniques to test that (and it will always work when I repeat the same process - it is therefore anhistoric) : through that refutation or falsification I can therefore make a distinction between the theory (and its "truthness") and the social context through which the theory have been made. You cannot do that for men's morality or men overall - they are always historical beings.
Refutation doesn't occur is Popperian single steps. It's a matter of being moved in degrees by solid evidence and reasoning. So refutability is a measure of whether or not you can offer solid reasons against a given theory. And you can do this in ethics too. You can refute the moral law that lying is always wrong by considering the counterexample wherein you are questioned by Nazis about the Jews you're hiding in your attic. Sure, some would disagree that this counterexample suffices, such as Kant, but many "creation scientists" disagree with the exemplary refutations of their views.
You can do that for all moral statements. You are using an historical fact to suggest something anhistoric.
The fact remains that to refute things in science you need to accept a number of principles and if you want your refutation to convince anyone else you'll have to hope they agree with you on them. And on this particular point, the differences between science and ethics aren't so clear.
Yes, but those necessary axiom are - as the greek etymology suggest - self evident. That a true moral exist is not self evident.
Of course, things aren't identical epistemically between science and ethics. Repeatable experiments are a great thing. But science isn't the only epistemically virtuous activity. History has no repeatable experiments and yet there are numerous historical truths and we can come to know quite a few of them.
There are many historical truth... and they are all historic. There is no way to define a "law" on our society through the study of history - this was actually the basis of Popper's critic. It's the same for every sciences that study things related to men - there are no "laws" in economy, sociology, etc. or the word "law" doesn't refer to the same "law" as in physics or biology (since they are not anhistoric and a-social).
To assume without argument that that is simply an historical fact is just question-begging. Why is it?
And if the axioms whereby we refute scientific theories were so self-evident, how come there's so much disagreement about them. An alien reading your claim about the axioms of science would be astounded to come to earth and discover creation scientists. They'd be even more astounded if they took a poll and discovered that only a minority of people accept the overwhelming evidence for evolution. What does "self-evident" even mean if the majority of a population fails to find the self-evident things true, let alone obvious?
I don't really know what to respond to you.
When newton sees an apple dropping to the ground, he doesn't discuss the concept of apple, because he can repeat the same process with another object - an orange. He doesn't discuss the fact that the orange and the apple are subject to the same laws of physics, because he consider that as self evident. When two physicists discuss the properties of a metal, they agree on the fact that they both belong to the same world and that what the first prove through a scientific experimentation can be repeated by the second.
The same comments can be made systematically (if you have the knowledge) about every "scientific" knowledge that scientist consider as a "law". Can you define a moral statement that is always true, for everyone, everywhere ? If not, you are stuck with discussing the concept of moral.
The disagreement on scientific theories is another matter entirely and I don't really want to get drag into this subject. I'll just quote Spinoza "there is no intrinsic strength of the true idea".
Well, that makes two of us at a loss for how to respond. If I give you an example of what I take to be a moral truth, you'll point to a group of people that disagree with it. Then I'll point out that the presence of disagreement is not a general indicator that there is no non-relative truth about something.
This is why disagreement about scientific theories is relevant to the discussion. I'm sure most people find the immorality of torturing babies for fun every bit as self-evident as the principle that all objects will act under the same laws of physics, if not more. I don't see that you've said anything to dislodge such a person from their convictions.
Sure, maybe someone will disagree with them and say that torturing babies for fun is the supreme good. But you know what they say, "there is no intrinsic strength of the true idea".
Yes and we go back to the question : how do you evaluate the truthness of a moral statement every being equal ?
I'll quote a previous post :
"the value of many scientific ideas can be objectively evaluated by established techniques, so that the origin or history of the idea is irrelevant to its value". Since there are no "established techniques" to "objectively" evaluate what is right or wrong (there is no "something"), I can't separate my moral statement from its origin or history.
You only respond to that that moral statement behave like scientific assertions, but I can't see an epistemologist agreeing on that. The history of philosophy as I know it has actually made a clear cut between what is refutable - through experience - and what is not (this is one of the main subject in the critic of pure reason, or the book "What is thinking ?" by Heiddegger).
This is how scientific evaluate the truthness of a statement, and not by some abstract discussion on the logic of the said statement : they test the assertion over and over through experimentation, and if the result is the same over and over, then the statement is judged as true.
I never claimed that moral assertions are exactly like scientific ones. I just claimed that they share with science the three features that I labeled earlier that have been used in epistemic arguments against realism. This on its own refutes those specific arguments as long as we should be realists about science.
On the question of "established techniques", we have to ask "Established by who?" Well, by scientists. They certainly aren't agreed on by everyone. And before several hundred years ago there wasn't any community that practiced them consistently.[1] Before that time, was it the case that there were no non-relative truths about the laws of nature? Did the creation of the scientific community bring them into existence?
There already are communities of people discussing ethical questions with a fairly wide amount of methodological agreement. Not everyone is a part of them, but not everyone is a part of the scientific community either. Do any of these ethical communities have a method of assessing ethical truth as good as the scientists have for their domain? On the hard questions of ethics, I'm inclined to say obviously not. But for simpler ethical truths I'm happy to endorse how people currently go about assessing them, and I'm completely open to better methods being developed in ethics just as they were in science. None of this will make ethics a science, but it could get better.
[1] For the sake of argument here I'm speaking as though the epistemic principles governing science are a whole lot more precise than they actually are. Nobody has a science algorithm.
Interesting, when I say that epistemologists would not agree with you on the fact that scientific knowledge has the same properties as philosophical assertions, you show me a survey with no clue on that. Am I supposed to see that 62% of the epistemologist are moral realists ?
In 1950, 90% of the philosophers believed in god. That doesn't mean they were right (or wrong).
In 1950, 90% of the philosophers believed in god. That doesn't mean they were right (or wrong).
I have no idea if this statistic is true, but, regardless, if 90% of philosophers believe something, it seems to suggest that there are some pretty compelling reasons to believe it.
On July 30 2013 03:14 frogrubdown wrote: The most passionate anti-realist arguments in this thread have all been epistemic. Claims such as the following have popped up repeatedly:
[quote]
The most important step to take when evaluating this style of argument is to check whether or not each principle is plausible in full generality, not just when you selectively apply it to ethics.
To my eye, every single truth in every single area fails all of these epistemic tests that are supposedly damning for ethics.
There is widespread disagreement over scientific claims. Even in the united states vast swaths of people do not believe in the theory of evolution. Yes there is agreement within the scientific community, but how (in a non-question begging way) is this different than agreements within ethical communities?
Further, it is clear that the source of this disagreement is in large part that our beliefs in just about every matter are influenced as much by where we come from and who we associate with as by anything else. If you grew up in a radically different context you wouldn't believe in evolution either.
Finally, scientific truths aren't given to us. They don't simply jump out from the world and compel our acceptance regardless of our acceptance of any other truths or principles about what procedures are reliable. We are in science, just as much as in ethics, trapped on Neurath's boat. [quote]
The general problem for these anti-realist arguments, then, is that it's hard to see how you can accept them while not taking them to undermine all truths, and in particular those of science. Realists will, quite understandably, not be moved if you cannot produce non-question begging reasons why.
Sciences are refutable. I have discussed this before by quoting Passeron. You are making a grave mistake in thinking that philosophical knowledge has the same properties as biological laws or physics.
None of the logical conditions of the "falsification" of a theory or a general proposition is fulfilled strictly speaking in the case of the logical structure of sociological theories (or "historical synthesis") as soon as one takes seriously the constraints of historical observation. Since no historical statement can completely dispose co-occurences, that the statement consider as related in the explanation or interpretation, from its space-time coordinates (context more or less expanded by typology), the universality of general propositions in sociology or history is about "digital universality" and never about the universality in the strict sense. In other words, the general sociological propositions can always be generated by the logical "conjunction" of singular statements that it resume.
I can test that the theory of evolution is "right" or "wrong" all things equals because there are valid techniques to test that (and it will always work when I repeat the same process - it is therefore anhistoric) : through that refutation or falsification I can therefore make a distinction between the theory (and its "truthness") and the social context through which the theory have been made. You cannot do that for men's morality or men overall - they are always historical beings.
Refutation doesn't occur is Popperian single steps. It's a matter of being moved in degrees by solid evidence and reasoning. So refutability is a measure of whether or not you can offer solid reasons against a given theory. And you can do this in ethics too. You can refute the moral law that lying is always wrong by considering the counterexample wherein you are questioned by Nazis about the Jews you're hiding in your attic. Sure, some would disagree that this counterexample suffices, such as Kant, but many "creation scientists" disagree with the exemplary refutations of their views.
You can do that for all moral statements. You are using an historical fact to suggest something anhistoric.
The fact remains that to refute things in science you need to accept a number of principles and if you want your refutation to convince anyone else you'll have to hope they agree with you on them. And on this particular point, the differences between science and ethics aren't so clear.
Yes, but those necessary axiom are - as the greek etymology suggest - self evident. That a true moral exist is not self evident.
Of course, things aren't identical epistemically between science and ethics. Repeatable experiments are a great thing. But science isn't the only epistemically virtuous activity. History has no repeatable experiments and yet there are numerous historical truths and we can come to know quite a few of them.
There are many historical truth... and they are all historic. There is no way to define a "law" on our society through the study of history - this was actually the basis of Popper's critic. It's the same for every sciences that study things related to men - there are no "laws" in economy, sociology, etc. or the word "law" doesn't refer to the same "law" as in physics or biology (since they are not anhistoric and a-social).
To assume without argument that that is simply an historical fact is just question-begging. Why is it?
And if the axioms whereby we refute scientific theories were so self-evident, how come there's so much disagreement about them. An alien reading your claim about the axioms of science would be astounded to come to earth and discover creation scientists. They'd be even more astounded if they took a poll and discovered that only a minority of people accept the overwhelming evidence for evolution. What does "self-evident" even mean if the majority of a population fails to find the self-evident things true, let alone obvious?
I don't really know what to respond to you.
When newton sees an apple dropping to the ground, he doesn't discuss the concept of apple, because he can repeat the same process with another object - an orange. He doesn't discuss the fact that the orange and the apple are subject to the same laws of physics, because he consider that as self evident. When two physicists discuss the properties of a metal, they agree on the fact that they both belong to the same world and that what the first prove through a scientific experimentation can be repeated by the second.
The same comments can be made systematically (if you have the knowledge) about every "scientific" knowledge that scientist consider as a "law". Can you define a moral statement that is always true, for everyone, everywhere ? If not, you are stuck with discussing the concept of moral.
The disagreement on scientific theories is another matter entirely and I don't really want to get drag into this subject. I'll just quote Spinoza "there is no intrinsic strength of the true idea".
Well, that makes two of us at a loss for how to respond. If I give you an example of what I take to be a moral truth, you'll point to a group of people that disagree with it. Then I'll point out that the presence of disagreement is not a general indicator that there is no non-relative truth about something.
This is why disagreement about scientific theories is relevant to the discussion. I'm sure most people find the immorality of torturing babies for fun every bit as self-evident as the principle that all objects will act under the same laws of physics, if not more. I don't see that you've said anything to dislodge such a person from their convictions.
Sure, maybe someone will disagree with them and say that torturing babies for fun is the supreme good. But you know what they say, "there is no intrinsic strength of the true idea".
Yes and we go back to the question : how do you evaluate the truthness of a moral statement every being equal ?
I'll quote a previous post :
"the value of many scientific ideas can be objectively evaluated by established techniques, so that the origin or history of the idea is irrelevant to its value". Since there are no "established techniques" to "objectively" evaluate what is right or wrong (there is no "something"), I can't separate my moral statement from its origin or history.
You only respond to that that moral statement behave like scientific assertions, but I can't see an epistemologist agreeing on that. The history of philosophy as I know it has actually made a clear cut between what is refutable - through experience - and what is not (this is one of the main subject in the critic of pure reason, or the book "What is thinking ?" by Heiddegger).
This is how scientific evaluate the truthness of a statement, and not by some abstract discussion on the logic of the said statement : they test the assertion over and over through experimentation, and if the result is the same over and over, then the statement is judged as true.
I never claimed that moral assertions are exactly like scientific ones. I just claimed that they share with science the three features that I labeled earlier that have been used in epistemic arguments against realism. This on its own refutes those specific arguments as long as we should be realists about science.
On the question of "established techniques", we have to ask "Established by who?" Well, by scientists. They certainly aren't agreed on by everyone. And before several hundred years ago there wasn't any community that practiced them consistently.[1] Before that time, was it the case that there were no non-relative truths about the laws of nature? Did the creation of the scientific community bring them into existence?
There already are communities of people discussing ethical questions with a fairly wide amount of methodological agreement. Not everyone is a part of them, but not everyone is a part of the scientific community either. Do any of these ethical communities have a method of assessing ethical truth as good as the scientists have for their domain? On the hard questions of ethics, I'm inclined to say obviously not. But for simpler ethical truths I'm happy to endorse how people currently go about assessing them, and I'm completely open to better methods being developed in ethics just as they were in science. None of this will make ethics a science, but it could get better.
[1] For the sake of argument here I'm speaking as though the epistemic principles governing science are a whole lot more precise than they actually are. Nobody has a science algorithm.
Interesting, when I say that epistemologists would not agree with you on the fact that scientific knowledge has the same properties as philosophical assertions, you show me a survey with no clue on that. Am I supposed to see that 62% of the epistemologist are moral realists ?
In 1950, 90% of the philosophers believed in god. That doesn't mean they were right (or wrong).
First, do you actually have data on that last claim? It would surprise me greatly (at least in an anglophone context), but I have no data of my own.
Second, how on earth are you accusing me of making an argument from authority? You introduced the notion that the experts (i.e., epistemologists) disagreed with me. I was merely rebutting that point. If anyone appealed to authority you did.
Third, as the OP indicates, realism entails that we can know ethical truths. Since I never claimed (and don't think) that ethical truths are exactly the same as scientific ones from an epistemic perspective, it would be impossible for them to agree with me that they are identical. But that answer does clearly indicate that they think the methodology for assessing ethical truths is good enough for knowledge.
On July 30 2013 03:49 Spekulatius wrote: Despite having browsed the numerous sources provided by the OP, I still do not fully grasp why I cannot call myself a moral relativist anymore. What exactly happenend to the term?
Did you read the "long story" spoiler? If you think that moral predicates have a hidden indexical element in them tied to the moral code of a person's society, then you should continue to be happy calling yourself a relativist and select "other" in the poll. But you should keep in mind that this is a linguistic claim and the types of evidence standardly marshaled for such claims seems to count against this. That said, there are a number of complications here that would require more explanation of formal semantics than I feel would be productive right now.
Alternatively, you may basically think along the lines of an error theorist that moral predicates behave as though there were a non-relative morality based on categorical imperatives even though there are in fact no categorical imperatives for them to answer to. This would make such claims systematically false. If you felt that the best response to this is a linguistic reform wherein we interpret our claims with hidden indexicals, then you could call yourself a different time of relativist. But for the purposes of the poll you would be an error theorist.
I find the semantics hard to get as a non-native speaker. Same goes for the word "indexical".
My view - that I always thought to be named "moral relativism" - simply says:
There are no true moral absolutes.
This - to me - means that a statement can only be thought to be absolutely morally true when we presuppose that the assumption that it's founded on is universal. And I'm saying such a universally true statement doesn't exist.
Let's take the statement "killing is wrong". This is morally true if and only if we presuppose the existence of another statement which leads up to the "killing is wrong" statement. This other statement would be "human life must not be infringed".
The latter statement is not universal though. Violating someone's right to life is fine under some circumstances. For some people. In some cultures.
Fundamentalists think it's ok to kill non-believers. Presidents starting a war on other countries think it's ok to kill (at least) soldiers of either side. Most people think it's ok to kill in self-defense. etc...
And in the same way no statement can be logically deduced from a universal statement as the ultimate source of a moral statement - the first step to the chain of argumentation - is always someone saying "I feel that X is right".
Thus relativism.
Now, am I right and old-fashioned in calling this relativism? Or simply wrong and it's really error theory?
You seem to be conflating a sort of particularism with relativism. That there are no moral absolutes can be interpreted in two ways. For one (particularism), we might say that there are no invariant moral properties: there is no feature of a state of affairs that always makes the same moral contribution to every situation. So, for instance, "killing" does not count as an invariant property, because sometimes killing is bad (e.g. when it is done to babies for no reason), but other times it is good (e.g. when it is done to stop someone who is doing murders).
The other sort (relativism), which is what I think you're trying to go for, would say the moral significance of any state of affairs depends on certain facts about the moral beliefs of the participants (both those participating in and those judging, I would guess you think). But you have not done any work to support this view. Just because "fundamentalists think it's ok to kill non-believers" means neither 1) it is not an absolute (as in having invariant moral significance) truth that it isn't okay to kill non-believers nor 2) that it's okay for fundamentalists to kill non-believers. These latter claims (which, again, are different) need a lot more to build up to them, which your basic argument, viz. that morality is always founded upon subjective intuitions, falls quite short of.
And it's strange that you conflate particularism about morality with relativism. You suggest that both of the following statements contradict the notion that "human life must not be infringed" is a universally true statement: 1) "Fundamentalists think it's ok to kill non-believers." 2) "Most people think it's ok to kill in self-defense." But, if the distinction here is at all clear, these are two very different problems. The former looks like a mistake, or at least a disagreement with the moral code typical of modern-day Westerners, whereas the latter is a loophole in our universal. Whether the latter can be properly patched up is uncertain, but certainly the epistemic work you are requiring these universal statements to do ("This - to me - means that a statement can only be thought to be absolutely morally true when we presuppose that the assumption that it's founded on is universal.") is something that can be done with more modest kinds of grounding. For this, you might be interested in reading Jonathan Dancy's Ethics Without Principles.
The former contradiction to absolute statements is no contradiction at all. A vast number of obstacles stand in the way of this consideration disproving the notion that "human life must not be infringed." For one, people's beliefs about morality are not necessarily the ultimate ground of the moral truth (maybe you could demonstrate this?). But beyond this, the insertion of terms like "...according to modern-day Westerners" or whatever is no case against the absoluteness of any moral claim. That is to say, it doesn't require us, as modern-day Westerners, to rethink whether any given moral claim is true. It brings no evidence to bear to the contrary, it doesn't undermine our assumptions, etc.
You have a very confused stance that seems to intermingle particularism with error theory, particularism with relativism, and relativism with error theory. Even a casual acquaintance with these topics should be enough to untangle the weird mess of opinions you have now, and then you could come to more clarity about what exactly you (wrongly) believe.
Firstly: well yes I am confused. I've never studied philosophy so I naturally mix up those theories that I've never heard of before. That's why I asked for clarification in the first place.
Secondly, I'm not sure why you think the burden of proof is not on you to prove any of your assumptions of which you deduce the existence of absolute moral truths. That seems like the epitomy of arrogance to me. "We're modern westerners so fuck people who think differently, may they have to prove us wrong."
Thirdly, you ask me how I come to conclude that there is no objective, absolute moral truth. I tried to explain in some of my posts that every experience and every thought is being processed by your brain. There is not a single thought or feeling or judgement that is not touched by the particularity of your own brain. Thus, a thought/judgment/feeling cannot be thought of without being influenced by your own personality. So naturally, there will never be a consensus on any moral statement. Now you will retort that the lack of consensus does not necessarily mean there is no such thing as absolute moral truths. Asking me to disprove this beyond any doubt is like asking me to disprove god. Which is, and I'm restating my second point, not my duty, but yours.
I didn't purport that there were any absolute moral truths. Being myself a particularist, I don't think there are any. In any case, I was only trying to show that you hadn't successfully argued for your own views, not that your conclusions were wrong. I could do that if you wanted.
Also, I wasn't trying to say that our (modern-day Western) views are right and universal and everyone else has to disprove us. I was saying that, given that we have a certain kind of moral framework, the fact that our moral statements would be wrong in another framework is no argument at all against the absolute nature of our moral statements. I could just have easily have used Australian aboriginals or whatever as my example. It is no problem to the absoluteness of an aboriginal's moral claim that other cultures make different moral claims that are true for them, unless we interpret "absoluteness" in a strange way. In some logics, you have the law of the excluded middle, and in others you don't. This doesn't mean that statements in a logic that has the LEM are non-absolute within that logic; it just means there are other systems where it would be false. But given that we always speak from within a system, we would be committing a kind of conceptual confusion if we thought that disagreement from other systems was a stain on the value of our own statements.
Consider a scientist's deduction that evolution is true. Within a different framework that has wildly different assumptions about reality, say 14th-century Catholicism, evolution isn't true (given the kind of extreme relativism you want to invoke, that is). But this doesn't mean that the scientist needs to take that into account. The scientist's rules for deduction do not involve "What do 14th-century Catholics think?" just as our rules for morality do not involve "What do Australian aboriginals think?" (Or, well, they might include such a premise, but it isn't a necessary fact about any moral system whatsoever)
Your argument for why there can't be consensus on moral statements is weird. Every part of it before the conclusion applies perfectly well to all facts, and I don't think that the fact that my brain has to process the fact that the sun is hot means that there can't be consensus about it. Did you mean to say that there can be no consensus about any fact ever (surely a queer view), or did you forget to put in your premise that restricts the scope of the argument to just moral statements?
I don't much like burden of proof arguments, but yours has a hole in it so I'll try to point it out in a clear way. You said this: "you ask me how I come to conclude that there is no objective, absolute moral truth" and gave me an argument that led up to "there will never be a consensus on any moral statement," and then you concluded that it was up to me to disprove the link between that latter statement and "there is no such thing as absolute moral truths." I don't see why I need to disprove that at all, especially if I was just doing a bit of psychological investigation about you: I asked what you think the link is, more or less, between the impossibility of consensus and the impossibility of absolute truth w/r/t morality. I can't provide a disproof of the link you have in mind before you state what kind of a link you have in mind. If you want me to give you a generally applicable one, I can try to do that, but I don't think I've obligated myself to do so.
Also, I don't think I ever did actually ask you how you came to conclude that. I just tried to demonstrate that your arguments for your view betrayed a high amount of conceptual confusion. If you would like me to argue against your conclusion, then sure, please do tell me how you reached it.
Damn you type fast.
1. Ok so we agree on the fact that simply because someone else has a diverging opinion on a subject from you this does not mean you are necessarily less right about assuming it. Good.
2. And yes, I do not mean we cannot all agree on the sun being hot. It is at least theoretically possible given we exclude blind people who doubt the existence of the sun and think it's a giant lightbulb and those people who suffer from an illness that makes them incapable of perceiving temperature. Still - and there you certainly agree with me - people agreeing on something doesn't make a statement true just as much as disagreeing on it doesn't make it untrue (see 1.). I must have expressed myself unprecisely before.
3. What I'm trying to argue is this: morality is a judgment. Judgments are passed by humans. It is thus impossible to conceive a judgment that is abstract from a human mind. Which leads me to conclude there is no non-subjective morality.
This is what it boils down to. Nobody's ever challenged me to phrase my view though. Please tell me what you think about it.
On July 30 2013 03:23 WhiteDog wrote: [quote] Sciences are refutable. I have discussed this before by quoting Passeron. You are making a grave mistake in thinking that philosophical knowledge has the same properties as biological laws or physics.
[quote] I can test that the theory of evolution is "right" or "wrong" all things equals because there are valid techniques to test that (and it will always work when I repeat the same process - it is therefore anhistoric) : through that refutation or falsification I can therefore make a distinction between the theory (and its "truthness") and the social context through which the theory have been made. You cannot do that for men's morality or men overall - they are always historical beings.
Refutation doesn't occur is Popperian single steps. It's a matter of being moved in degrees by solid evidence and reasoning. So refutability is a measure of whether or not you can offer solid reasons against a given theory. And you can do this in ethics too. You can refute the moral law that lying is always wrong by considering the counterexample wherein you are questioned by Nazis about the Jews you're hiding in your attic. Sure, some would disagree that this counterexample suffices, such as Kant, but many "creation scientists" disagree with the exemplary refutations of their views.
You can do that for all moral statements. You are using an historical fact to suggest something anhistoric.
The fact remains that to refute things in science you need to accept a number of principles and if you want your refutation to convince anyone else you'll have to hope they agree with you on them. And on this particular point, the differences between science and ethics aren't so clear.
Yes, but those necessary axiom are - as the greek etymology suggest - self evident. That a true moral exist is not self evident.
Of course, things aren't identical epistemically between science and ethics. Repeatable experiments are a great thing. But science isn't the only epistemically virtuous activity. History has no repeatable experiments and yet there are numerous historical truths and we can come to know quite a few of them.
There are many historical truth... and they are all historic. There is no way to define a "law" on our society through the study of history - this was actually the basis of Popper's critic. It's the same for every sciences that study things related to men - there are no "laws" in economy, sociology, etc. or the word "law" doesn't refer to the same "law" as in physics or biology (since they are not anhistoric and a-social).
To assume without argument that that is simply an historical fact is just question-begging. Why is it?
And if the axioms whereby we refute scientific theories were so self-evident, how come there's so much disagreement about them. An alien reading your claim about the axioms of science would be astounded to come to earth and discover creation scientists. They'd be even more astounded if they took a poll and discovered that only a minority of people accept the overwhelming evidence for evolution. What does "self-evident" even mean if the majority of a population fails to find the self-evident things true, let alone obvious?
I don't really know what to respond to you.
When newton sees an apple dropping to the ground, he doesn't discuss the concept of apple, because he can repeat the same process with another object - an orange. He doesn't discuss the fact that the orange and the apple are subject to the same laws of physics, because he consider that as self evident. When two physicists discuss the properties of a metal, they agree on the fact that they both belong to the same world and that what the first prove through a scientific experimentation can be repeated by the second.
The same comments can be made systematically (if you have the knowledge) about every "scientific" knowledge that scientist consider as a "law". Can you define a moral statement that is always true, for everyone, everywhere ? If not, you are stuck with discussing the concept of moral.
The disagreement on scientific theories is another matter entirely and I don't really want to get drag into this subject. I'll just quote Spinoza "there is no intrinsic strength of the true idea".
Well, that makes two of us at a loss for how to respond. If I give you an example of what I take to be a moral truth, you'll point to a group of people that disagree with it. Then I'll point out that the presence of disagreement is not a general indicator that there is no non-relative truth about something.
This is why disagreement about scientific theories is relevant to the discussion. I'm sure most people find the immorality of torturing babies for fun every bit as self-evident as the principle that all objects will act under the same laws of physics, if not more. I don't see that you've said anything to dislodge such a person from their convictions.
Sure, maybe someone will disagree with them and say that torturing babies for fun is the supreme good. But you know what they say, "there is no intrinsic strength of the true idea".
Yes and we go back to the question : how do you evaluate the truthness of a moral statement every being equal ?
I'll quote a previous post :
"the value of many scientific ideas can be objectively evaluated by established techniques, so that the origin or history of the idea is irrelevant to its value". Since there are no "established techniques" to "objectively" evaluate what is right or wrong (there is no "something"), I can't separate my moral statement from its origin or history.
You only respond to that that moral statement behave like scientific assertions, but I can't see an epistemologist agreeing on that. The history of philosophy as I know it has actually made a clear cut between what is refutable - through experience - and what is not (this is one of the main subject in the critic of pure reason, or the book "What is thinking ?" by Heiddegger).
This is how scientific evaluate the truthness of a statement, and not by some abstract discussion on the logic of the said statement : they test the assertion over and over through experimentation, and if the result is the same over and over, then the statement is judged as true.
I never claimed that moral assertions are exactly like scientific ones. I just claimed that they share with science the three features that I labeled earlier that have been used in epistemic arguments against realism. This on its own refutes those specific arguments as long as we should be realists about science.
On the question of "established techniques", we have to ask "Established by who?" Well, by scientists. They certainly aren't agreed on by everyone. And before several hundred years ago there wasn't any community that practiced them consistently.[1] Before that time, was it the case that there were no non-relative truths about the laws of nature? Did the creation of the scientific community bring them into existence?
There already are communities of people discussing ethical questions with a fairly wide amount of methodological agreement. Not everyone is a part of them, but not everyone is a part of the scientific community either. Do any of these ethical communities have a method of assessing ethical truth as good as the scientists have for their domain? On the hard questions of ethics, I'm inclined to say obviously not. But for simpler ethical truths I'm happy to endorse how people currently go about assessing them, and I'm completely open to better methods being developed in ethics just as they were in science. None of this will make ethics a science, but it could get better.
[1] For the sake of argument here I'm speaking as though the epistemic principles governing science are a whole lot more precise than they actually are. Nobody has a science algorithm.
Interesting, when I say that epistemologists would not agree with you on the fact that scientific knowledge has the same properties as philosophical assertions, you show me a survey with no clue on that. Am I supposed to see that 62% of the epistemologist are moral realists ?
In 1950, 90% of the philosophers believed in god. That doesn't mean they were right (or wrong).
First, do you actually have data on that last claim? It would surprise me greatly (at least in an anglophone context), but I have no data of my own.
Second, how on earth are you accusing me of making an argument from authority? You introduced the notion that the experts (i.e., epistemologists) disagreed with me. I was merely rebutting that point. If anyone appealed to authority you did.
Third, as the OP indicates, realism entails that we can know ethical truths. Since I never claimed (and don't think) that ethical truths are exactly the same as scientific ones from an epistemic perspective, it would be impossible for them to agree with me that they are identical. But that answer does clearly indicate that they think the methodology for assessing ethical truths is good enough for knowledge.
They believe that we can know ethical truth (66% of them) but I'm still waiting for the answer on how are you supposed to judge which judgement is more true than the other outside of its context. You answer me by always disgressing to another subject.
Clearly yes or no, do you think that epistemologist think you can experiment moral statement like you can experiment the law of physics ? If not, how do you refute or falsify a moral statement ? If you refute a moral statement by the intermediary of something that is not proven, not falsifiable, historic or sociologic, then mathematically, how can your moral statements be true universally ?
Refutation doesn't occur is Popperian single steps. It's a matter of being moved in degrees by solid evidence and reasoning. So refutability is a measure of whether or not you can offer solid reasons against a given theory. And you can do this in ethics too. You can refute the moral law that lying is always wrong by considering the counterexample wherein you are questioned by Nazis about the Jews you're hiding in your attic. Sure, some would disagree that this counterexample suffices, such as Kant, but many "creation scientists" disagree with the exemplary refutations of their views.
You can do that for all moral statements. You are using an historical fact to suggest something anhistoric.
The fact remains that to refute things in science you need to accept a number of principles and if you want your refutation to convince anyone else you'll have to hope they agree with you on them. And on this particular point, the differences between science and ethics aren't so clear.
Yes, but those necessary axiom are - as the greek etymology suggest - self evident. That a true moral exist is not self evident.
Of course, things aren't identical epistemically between science and ethics. Repeatable experiments are a great thing. But science isn't the only epistemically virtuous activity. History has no repeatable experiments and yet there are numerous historical truths and we can come to know quite a few of them.
There are many historical truth... and they are all historic. There is no way to define a "law" on our society through the study of history - this was actually the basis of Popper's critic. It's the same for every sciences that study things related to men - there are no "laws" in economy, sociology, etc. or the word "law" doesn't refer to the same "law" as in physics or biology (since they are not anhistoric and a-social).
To assume without argument that that is simply an historical fact is just question-begging. Why is it?
And if the axioms whereby we refute scientific theories were so self-evident, how come there's so much disagreement about them. An alien reading your claim about the axioms of science would be astounded to come to earth and discover creation scientists. They'd be even more astounded if they took a poll and discovered that only a minority of people accept the overwhelming evidence for evolution. What does "self-evident" even mean if the majority of a population fails to find the self-evident things true, let alone obvious?
I don't really know what to respond to you.
When newton sees an apple dropping to the ground, he doesn't discuss the concept of apple, because he can repeat the same process with another object - an orange. He doesn't discuss the fact that the orange and the apple are subject to the same laws of physics, because he consider that as self evident. When two physicists discuss the properties of a metal, they agree on the fact that they both belong to the same world and that what the first prove through a scientific experimentation can be repeated by the second.
The same comments can be made systematically (if you have the knowledge) about every "scientific" knowledge that scientist consider as a "law". Can you define a moral statement that is always true, for everyone, everywhere ? If not, you are stuck with discussing the concept of moral.
The disagreement on scientific theories is another matter entirely and I don't really want to get drag into this subject. I'll just quote Spinoza "there is no intrinsic strength of the true idea".
Well, that makes two of us at a loss for how to respond. If I give you an example of what I take to be a moral truth, you'll point to a group of people that disagree with it. Then I'll point out that the presence of disagreement is not a general indicator that there is no non-relative truth about something.
This is why disagreement about scientific theories is relevant to the discussion. I'm sure most people find the immorality of torturing babies for fun every bit as self-evident as the principle that all objects will act under the same laws of physics, if not more. I don't see that you've said anything to dislodge such a person from their convictions.
Sure, maybe someone will disagree with them and say that torturing babies for fun is the supreme good. But you know what they say, "there is no intrinsic strength of the true idea".
Yes and we go back to the question : how do you evaluate the truthness of a moral statement every being equal ?
I'll quote a previous post :
"the value of many scientific ideas can be objectively evaluated by established techniques, so that the origin or history of the idea is irrelevant to its value". Since there are no "established techniques" to "objectively" evaluate what is right or wrong (there is no "something"), I can't separate my moral statement from its origin or history.
You only respond to that that moral statement behave like scientific assertions, but I can't see an epistemologist agreeing on that. The history of philosophy as I know it has actually made a clear cut between what is refutable - through experience - and what is not (this is one of the main subject in the critic of pure reason, or the book "What is thinking ?" by Heiddegger).
This is how scientific evaluate the truthness of a statement, and not by some abstract discussion on the logic of the said statement : they test the assertion over and over through experimentation, and if the result is the same over and over, then the statement is judged as true.
I never claimed that moral assertions are exactly like scientific ones. I just claimed that they share with science the three features that I labeled earlier that have been used in epistemic arguments against realism. This on its own refutes those specific arguments as long as we should be realists about science.
On the question of "established techniques", we have to ask "Established by who?" Well, by scientists. They certainly aren't agreed on by everyone. And before several hundred years ago there wasn't any community that practiced them consistently.[1] Before that time, was it the case that there were no non-relative truths about the laws of nature? Did the creation of the scientific community bring them into existence?
There already are communities of people discussing ethical questions with a fairly wide amount of methodological agreement. Not everyone is a part of them, but not everyone is a part of the scientific community either. Do any of these ethical communities have a method of assessing ethical truth as good as the scientists have for their domain? On the hard questions of ethics, I'm inclined to say obviously not. But for simpler ethical truths I'm happy to endorse how people currently go about assessing them, and I'm completely open to better methods being developed in ethics just as they were in science. None of this will make ethics a science, but it could get better.
[1] For the sake of argument here I'm speaking as though the epistemic principles governing science are a whole lot more precise than they actually are. Nobody has a science algorithm.
Interesting, when I say that epistemologists would not agree with you on the fact that scientific knowledge has the same properties as philosophical assertions, you show me a survey with no clue on that. Am I supposed to see that 62% of the epistemologist are moral realists ?
In 1950, 90% of the philosophers believed in god. That doesn't mean they were right (or wrong).
First, do you actually have data on that last claim? It would surprise me greatly (at least in an anglophone context), but I have no data of my own.
Second, how on earth are you accusing me of making an argument from authority? You introduced the notion that the experts (i.e., epistemologists) disagreed with me. I was merely rebutting that point. If anyone appealed to authority you did.
Third, as the OP indicates, realism entails that we can know ethical truths. Since I never claimed (and don't think) that ethical truths are exactly the same as scientific ones from an epistemic perspective, it would be impossible for them to agree with me that they are identical. But that answer does clearly indicate that they think the methodology for assessing ethical truths is good enough for knowledge.
They believe that we can know ethical truth (66% of them) but I'm still waiting for the answer on how are you supposed to judge which judgement is more true than the other outside of its context. You answer me by always disgressing to another subject.
Clearly yes or no, do you think that epistemologist think you can experiment moral statement like you can experiment the law of physics ? If not, how do you refute or falsify a moral statement ? If you refute a moral statement by the intermediary of something that is not proven, not falsifiable, historic or sociologic, then mathematically, how can your moral statements be true universally ?
I've already stated that you can't perform an experiment like you can in natural sciences to assess ethical truths. I also already gave you a simple example of how you refute a moral claim (the nazi counterexample to the claim that lying is always wrong). You felt you could disregard this argument as historical and sociological without supporting those claims. I don't know what either of us can gain from rehearsing those steps again.
Can I take your silence on my first question to mean you made up the statistic?
On July 30 2013 03:58 WhiteDog wrote: [quote] You can do that for all moral statements. You are using an historical fact to suggest something anhistoric.
[quote] Yes, but those necessary axiom are - as the greek etymology suggest - self evident. That a true moral exist is not self evident.
[quote] There are many historical truth... and they are all historic. There is no way to define a "law" on our society through the study of history - this was actually the basis of Popper's critic. It's the same for every sciences that study things related to men - there are no "laws" in economy, sociology, etc. or the word "law" doesn't refer to the same "law" as in physics or biology (since they are not anhistoric and a-social).
To assume without argument that that is simply an historical fact is just question-begging. Why is it?
And if the axioms whereby we refute scientific theories were so self-evident, how come there's so much disagreement about them. An alien reading your claim about the axioms of science would be astounded to come to earth and discover creation scientists. They'd be even more astounded if they took a poll and discovered that only a minority of people accept the overwhelming evidence for evolution. What does "self-evident" even mean if the majority of a population fails to find the self-evident things true, let alone obvious?
I don't really know what to respond to you.
When newton sees an apple dropping to the ground, he doesn't discuss the concept of apple, because he can repeat the same process with another object - an orange. He doesn't discuss the fact that the orange and the apple are subject to the same laws of physics, because he consider that as self evident. When two physicists discuss the properties of a metal, they agree on the fact that they both belong to the same world and that what the first prove through a scientific experimentation can be repeated by the second.
The same comments can be made systematically (if you have the knowledge) about every "scientific" knowledge that scientist consider as a "law". Can you define a moral statement that is always true, for everyone, everywhere ? If not, you are stuck with discussing the concept of moral.
The disagreement on scientific theories is another matter entirely and I don't really want to get drag into this subject. I'll just quote Spinoza "there is no intrinsic strength of the true idea".
Well, that makes two of us at a loss for how to respond. If I give you an example of what I take to be a moral truth, you'll point to a group of people that disagree with it. Then I'll point out that the presence of disagreement is not a general indicator that there is no non-relative truth about something.
This is why disagreement about scientific theories is relevant to the discussion. I'm sure most people find the immorality of torturing babies for fun every bit as self-evident as the principle that all objects will act under the same laws of physics, if not more. I don't see that you've said anything to dislodge such a person from their convictions.
Sure, maybe someone will disagree with them and say that torturing babies for fun is the supreme good. But you know what they say, "there is no intrinsic strength of the true idea".
Yes and we go back to the question : how do you evaluate the truthness of a moral statement every being equal ?
I'll quote a previous post :
"the value of many scientific ideas can be objectively evaluated by established techniques, so that the origin or history of the idea is irrelevant to its value". Since there are no "established techniques" to "objectively" evaluate what is right or wrong (there is no "something"), I can't separate my moral statement from its origin or history.
You only respond to that that moral statement behave like scientific assertions, but I can't see an epistemologist agreeing on that. The history of philosophy as I know it has actually made a clear cut between what is refutable - through experience - and what is not (this is one of the main subject in the critic of pure reason, or the book "What is thinking ?" by Heiddegger).
This is how scientific evaluate the truthness of a statement, and not by some abstract discussion on the logic of the said statement : they test the assertion over and over through experimentation, and if the result is the same over and over, then the statement is judged as true.
I never claimed that moral assertions are exactly like scientific ones. I just claimed that they share with science the three features that I labeled earlier that have been used in epistemic arguments against realism. This on its own refutes those specific arguments as long as we should be realists about science.
On the question of "established techniques", we have to ask "Established by who?" Well, by scientists. They certainly aren't agreed on by everyone. And before several hundred years ago there wasn't any community that practiced them consistently.[1] Before that time, was it the case that there were no non-relative truths about the laws of nature? Did the creation of the scientific community bring them into existence?
There already are communities of people discussing ethical questions with a fairly wide amount of methodological agreement. Not everyone is a part of them, but not everyone is a part of the scientific community either. Do any of these ethical communities have a method of assessing ethical truth as good as the scientists have for their domain? On the hard questions of ethics, I'm inclined to say obviously not. But for simpler ethical truths I'm happy to endorse how people currently go about assessing them, and I'm completely open to better methods being developed in ethics just as they were in science. None of this will make ethics a science, but it could get better.
[1] For the sake of argument here I'm speaking as though the epistemic principles governing science are a whole lot more precise than they actually are. Nobody has a science algorithm.
Interesting, when I say that epistemologists would not agree with you on the fact that scientific knowledge has the same properties as philosophical assertions, you show me a survey with no clue on that. Am I supposed to see that 62% of the epistemologist are moral realists ?
In 1950, 90% of the philosophers believed in god. That doesn't mean they were right (or wrong).
First, do you actually have data on that last claim? It would surprise me greatly (at least in an anglophone context), but I have no data of my own.
Second, how on earth are you accusing me of making an argument from authority? You introduced the notion that the experts (i.e., epistemologists) disagreed with me. I was merely rebutting that point. If anyone appealed to authority you did.
Third, as the OP indicates, realism entails that we can know ethical truths. Since I never claimed (and don't think) that ethical truths are exactly the same as scientific ones from an epistemic perspective, it would be impossible for them to agree with me that they are identical. But that answer does clearly indicate that they think the methodology for assessing ethical truths is good enough for knowledge.
They believe that we can know ethical truth (66% of them) but I'm still waiting for the answer on how are you supposed to judge which judgement is more true than the other outside of its context. You answer me by always disgressing to another subject.
Clearly yes or no, do you think that epistemologist think you can experiment moral statement like you can experiment the law of physics ? If not, how do you refute or falsify a moral statement ? If you refute a moral statement by the intermediary of something that is not proven, not falsifiable, historic or sociologic, then mathematically, how can your moral statements be true universally ?
I've already stated that you can't perform an experiment like you can in natural sciences to assess ethical truths.
That was my only point, when I asked if they consider that moral statement behave like scientific laws.
I also already gave you a simple example of how you refute a moral claim (the nazi counterexample to the claim that lying is always wrong). You felt you could disregard this argument as historical and sociological without supporting those claims. I don't know what either of us can gain from rehearsing those steps again.
I said that what you did can be done with every moral statements: Let's say I have the opportunity to kill Hitler before he becomes what he is. It would be moral right ? Would that make murder morally acceptable always and everywhere ? If a man and a woman are both locked in a cage with no water and food, and the only way to live for the man is to rape the woman, would that make it morally acceptable ? On the other side, I asked you to give me a moral statement that will always be true and I'm still waiting for it.
Can I take your silence on my first question to mean you made up the statistic?
I considered as self evident that epistemologist don't consider that scientific truth doesn't exactly behave like moral statement in the way that you cannot experiment moral statements.
To assume without argument that that is simply an historical fact is just question-begging. Why is it?
And if the axioms whereby we refute scientific theories were so self-evident, how come there's so much disagreement about them. An alien reading your claim about the axioms of science would be astounded to come to earth and discover creation scientists. They'd be even more astounded if they took a poll and discovered that only a minority of people accept the overwhelming evidence for evolution. What does "self-evident" even mean if the majority of a population fails to find the self-evident things true, let alone obvious?
I don't really know what to respond to you.
When newton sees an apple dropping to the ground, he doesn't discuss the concept of apple, because he can repeat the same process with another object - an orange. He doesn't discuss the fact that the orange and the apple are subject to the same laws of physics, because he consider that as self evident. When two physicists discuss the properties of a metal, they agree on the fact that they both belong to the same world and that what the first prove through a scientific experimentation can be repeated by the second.
The same comments can be made systematically (if you have the knowledge) about every "scientific" knowledge that scientist consider as a "law". Can you define a moral statement that is always true, for everyone, everywhere ? If not, you are stuck with discussing the concept of moral.
The disagreement on scientific theories is another matter entirely and I don't really want to get drag into this subject. I'll just quote Spinoza "there is no intrinsic strength of the true idea".
Well, that makes two of us at a loss for how to respond. If I give you an example of what I take to be a moral truth, you'll point to a group of people that disagree with it. Then I'll point out that the presence of disagreement is not a general indicator that there is no non-relative truth about something.
This is why disagreement about scientific theories is relevant to the discussion. I'm sure most people find the immorality of torturing babies for fun every bit as self-evident as the principle that all objects will act under the same laws of physics, if not more. I don't see that you've said anything to dislodge such a person from their convictions.
Sure, maybe someone will disagree with them and say that torturing babies for fun is the supreme good. But you know what they say, "there is no intrinsic strength of the true idea".
Yes and we go back to the question : how do you evaluate the truthness of a moral statement every being equal ?
I'll quote a previous post :
"the value of many scientific ideas can be objectively evaluated by established techniques, so that the origin or history of the idea is irrelevant to its value". Since there are no "established techniques" to "objectively" evaluate what is right or wrong (there is no "something"), I can't separate my moral statement from its origin or history.
You only respond to that that moral statement behave like scientific assertions, but I can't see an epistemologist agreeing on that. The history of philosophy as I know it has actually made a clear cut between what is refutable - through experience - and what is not (this is one of the main subject in the critic of pure reason, or the book "What is thinking ?" by Heiddegger).
This is how scientific evaluate the truthness of a statement, and not by some abstract discussion on the logic of the said statement : they test the assertion over and over through experimentation, and if the result is the same over and over, then the statement is judged as true.
I never claimed that moral assertions are exactly like scientific ones. I just claimed that they share with science the three features that I labeled earlier that have been used in epistemic arguments against realism. This on its own refutes those specific arguments as long as we should be realists about science.
On the question of "established techniques", we have to ask "Established by who?" Well, by scientists. They certainly aren't agreed on by everyone. And before several hundred years ago there wasn't any community that practiced them consistently.[1] Before that time, was it the case that there were no non-relative truths about the laws of nature? Did the creation of the scientific community bring them into existence?
There already are communities of people discussing ethical questions with a fairly wide amount of methodological agreement. Not everyone is a part of them, but not everyone is a part of the scientific community either. Do any of these ethical communities have a method of assessing ethical truth as good as the scientists have for their domain? On the hard questions of ethics, I'm inclined to say obviously not. But for simpler ethical truths I'm happy to endorse how people currently go about assessing them, and I'm completely open to better methods being developed in ethics just as they were in science. None of this will make ethics a science, but it could get better.
[1] For the sake of argument here I'm speaking as though the epistemic principles governing science are a whole lot more precise than they actually are. Nobody has a science algorithm.
Interesting, when I say that epistemologists would not agree with you on the fact that scientific knowledge has the same properties as philosophical assertions, you show me a survey with no clue on that. Am I supposed to see that 62% of the epistemologist are moral realists ?
In 1950, 90% of the philosophers believed in god. That doesn't mean they were right (or wrong).
First, do you actually have data on that last claim? It would surprise me greatly (at least in an anglophone context), but I have no data of my own.
Second, how on earth are you accusing me of making an argument from authority? You introduced the notion that the experts (i.e., epistemologists) disagreed with me. I was merely rebutting that point. If anyone appealed to authority you did.
Third, as the OP indicates, realism entails that we can know ethical truths. Since I never claimed (and don't think) that ethical truths are exactly the same as scientific ones from an epistemic perspective, it would be impossible for them to agree with me that they are identical. But that answer does clearly indicate that they think the methodology for assessing ethical truths is good enough for knowledge.
They believe that we can know ethical truth (66% of them) but I'm still waiting for the answer on how are you supposed to judge which judgement is more true than the other outside of its context. You answer me by always disgressing to another subject.
Clearly yes or no, do you think that epistemologist think you can experiment moral statement like you can experiment the law of physics ? If not, how do you refute or falsify a moral statement ? If you refute a moral statement by the intermediary of something that is not proven, not falsifiable, historic or sociologic, then mathematically, how can your moral statements be true universally ?
I've already stated that you can't perform an experiment like you can in natural sciences to assess ethical truths.
That was my only point, when I asked if they consider that moral statement behave like scientific laws.
I also already gave you a simple example of how you refute a moral claim (the nazi counterexample to the claim that lying is always wrong). You felt you could disregard this argument as historical and sociological without supporting those claims. I don't know what either of us can gain from rehearsing those steps again.
I said that what you did can be done with every moral statements: Let's say I have the opportunity to kill Hitler before he becomes what he is. It would be moral right ? Would that make murder morally acceptable always and everywhere ? If a man and a woman are both locked in a cage with no water and food, and the only way to live for the man is to rape the woman, would that make it morally acceptable ? On the other side, I asked you to give me a moral statement that will always be true and I'm still waiting for it.
Why would that make it the case that murder is always and everywhere morally acceptable? In my example, the counterexample (of the form: Some x is an act of lying which is not morally wrong) was logically inconsistent with the claim it was a counterexample to (of the form: all x's that are acts of lying are morally wrong). It literally contradicted the ethical claim. You're example attempts to conclude "all x that are y are good" from "some x that is y is good". Not sure why that should even sound plausible.
On the rape example, I'm not entirely sure, but I'd lean towards that act being unacceptable. I've already stated that it's harder to know the answers to difficult ethical questions, which should be a truism.
More generally, I find your attempted counterexamples odd in form. Relativists think human perceptions determine what is "right". So you'd expect them to show what is "right" varying in accordance with what people perceive to be "right". But your examples aren't of that form. You're varying the causal effects of a given action to derive counterexamples. Realists already accept that the effects of an act will affect whether or not it is moral, so why are your examples supposed to threaten realists in the first place?
On that note, I don't see why you think I have to provide you with a universally quantified moral statement that I take to be true. Why can't I know about particular acts being wrong, like a specific genocide, without thinking that all genocides are wrong? There's hardly a general logical principle that forbids me from knowing about particular cases prior to knowing about general rules, and in fact such a situation appears to be the norm. Its being wrong to torture babies for fun seems like a good stab at one though.
Can I take your silence on my first question to mean you made up the statistic?
See up.
What does this mean? I thought you were pointing me to an above edit or something, but there was none.
edit:
I considered as self evident that epistemologist don't consider that scientific truth doesn't exactly behave like moral statement in the way that you cannot experiment moral statements.
I don't know how to parse this sentence, but it sounds unrelated to the question of whether or not you made up the statistic about the number of theist philosophers in 1950.
On July 30 2013 03:49 Spekulatius wrote: Despite having browsed the numerous sources provided by the OP, I still do not fully grasp why I cannot call myself a moral relativist anymore. What exactly happenend to the term?
Did you read the "long story" spoiler? If you think that moral predicates have a hidden indexical element in them tied to the moral code of a person's society, then you should continue to be happy calling yourself a relativist and select "other" in the poll. But you should keep in mind that this is a linguistic claim and the types of evidence standardly marshaled for such claims seems to count against this. That said, there are a number of complications here that would require more explanation of formal semantics than I feel would be productive right now.
Alternatively, you may basically think along the lines of an error theorist that moral predicates behave as though there were a non-relative morality based on categorical imperatives even though there are in fact no categorical imperatives for them to answer to. This would make such claims systematically false. If you felt that the best response to this is a linguistic reform wherein we interpret our claims with hidden indexicals, then you could call yourself a different time of relativist. But for the purposes of the poll you would be an error theorist.
I find the semantics hard to get as a non-native speaker. Same goes for the word "indexical".
My view - that I always thought to be named "moral relativism" - simply says:
There are no true moral absolutes.
This - to me - means that a statement can only be thought to be absolutely morally true when we presuppose that the assumption that it's founded on is universal. And I'm saying such a universally true statement doesn't exist.
Let's take the statement "killing is wrong". This is morally true if and only if we presuppose the existence of another statement which leads up to the "killing is wrong" statement. This other statement would be "human life must not be infringed".
The latter statement is not universal though. Violating someone's right to life is fine under some circumstances. For some people. In some cultures.
Fundamentalists think it's ok to kill non-believers. Presidents starting a war on other countries think it's ok to kill (at least) soldiers of either side. Most people think it's ok to kill in self-defense. etc...
And in the same way no statement can be logically deduced from a universal statement as the ultimate source of a moral statement - the first step to the chain of argumentation - is always someone saying "I feel that X is right".
Thus relativism.
Now, am I right and old-fashioned in calling this relativism? Or simply wrong and it's really error theory?
You seem to be conflating a sort of particularism with relativism. That there are no moral absolutes can be interpreted in two ways. For one (particularism), we might say that there are no invariant moral properties: there is no feature of a state of affairs that always makes the same moral contribution to every situation. So, for instance, "killing" does not count as an invariant property, because sometimes killing is bad (e.g. when it is done to babies for no reason), but other times it is good (e.g. when it is done to stop someone who is doing murders).
The other sort (relativism), which is what I think you're trying to go for, would say the moral significance of any state of affairs depends on certain facts about the moral beliefs of the participants (both those participating in and those judging, I would guess you think). But you have not done any work to support this view. Just because "fundamentalists think it's ok to kill non-believers" means neither 1) it is not an absolute (as in having invariant moral significance) truth that it isn't okay to kill non-believers nor 2) that it's okay for fundamentalists to kill non-believers. These latter claims (which, again, are different) need a lot more to build up to them, which your basic argument, viz. that morality is always founded upon subjective intuitions, falls quite short of.
And it's strange that you conflate particularism about morality with relativism. You suggest that both of the following statements contradict the notion that "human life must not be infringed" is a universally true statement: 1) "Fundamentalists think it's ok to kill non-believers." 2) "Most people think it's ok to kill in self-defense." But, if the distinction here is at all clear, these are two very different problems. The former looks like a mistake, or at least a disagreement with the moral code typical of modern-day Westerners, whereas the latter is a loophole in our universal. Whether the latter can be properly patched up is uncertain, but certainly the epistemic work you are requiring these universal statements to do ("This - to me - means that a statement can only be thought to be absolutely morally true when we presuppose that the assumption that it's founded on is universal.") is something that can be done with more modest kinds of grounding. For this, you might be interested in reading Jonathan Dancy's Ethics Without Principles.
The former contradiction to absolute statements is no contradiction at all. A vast number of obstacles stand in the way of this consideration disproving the notion that "human life must not be infringed." For one, people's beliefs about morality are not necessarily the ultimate ground of the moral truth (maybe you could demonstrate this?). But beyond this, the insertion of terms like "...according to modern-day Westerners" or whatever is no case against the absoluteness of any moral claim. That is to say, it doesn't require us, as modern-day Westerners, to rethink whether any given moral claim is true. It brings no evidence to bear to the contrary, it doesn't undermine our assumptions, etc.
You have a very confused stance that seems to intermingle particularism with error theory, particularism with relativism, and relativism with error theory. Even a casual acquaintance with these topics should be enough to untangle the weird mess of opinions you have now, and then you could come to more clarity about what exactly you (wrongly) believe.
Firstly: well yes I am confused. I've never studied philosophy so I naturally mix up those theories that I've never heard of before. That's why I asked for clarification in the first place.
Secondly, I'm not sure why you think the burden of proof is not on you to prove any of your assumptions of which you deduce the existence of absolute moral truths. That seems like the epitomy of arrogance to me. "We're modern westerners so fuck people who think differently, may they have to prove us wrong."
Thirdly, you ask me how I come to conclude that there is no objective, absolute moral truth. I tried to explain in some of my posts that every experience and every thought is being processed by your brain. There is not a single thought or feeling or judgement that is not touched by the particularity of your own brain. Thus, a thought/judgment/feeling cannot be thought of without being influenced by your own personality. So naturally, there will never be a consensus on any moral statement. Now you will retort that the lack of consensus does not necessarily mean there is no such thing as absolute moral truths. Asking me to disprove this beyond any doubt is like asking me to disprove god. Which is, and I'm restating my second point, not my duty, but yours.
I didn't purport that there were any absolute moral truths. Being myself a particularist, I don't think there are any. In any case, I was only trying to show that you hadn't successfully argued for your own views, not that your conclusions were wrong. I could do that if you wanted.
Also, I wasn't trying to say that our (modern-day Western) views are right and universal and everyone else has to disprove us. I was saying that, given that we have a certain kind of moral framework, the fact that our moral statements would be wrong in another framework is no argument at all against the absolute nature of our moral statements. I could just have easily have used Australian aboriginals or whatever as my example. It is no problem to the absoluteness of an aboriginal's moral claim that other cultures make different moral claims that are true for them, unless we interpret "absoluteness" in a strange way. In some logics, you have the law of the excluded middle, and in others you don't. This doesn't mean that statements in a logic that has the LEM are non-absolute within that logic; it just means there are other systems where it would be false. But given that we always speak from within a system, we would be committing a kind of conceptual confusion if we thought that disagreement from other systems was a stain on the value of our own statements.
Consider a scientist's deduction that evolution is true. Within a different framework that has wildly different assumptions about reality, say 14th-century Catholicism, evolution isn't true (given the kind of extreme relativism you want to invoke, that is). But this doesn't mean that the scientist needs to take that into account. The scientist's rules for deduction do not involve "What do 14th-century Catholics think?" just as our rules for morality do not involve "What do Australian aboriginals think?" (Or, well, they might include such a premise, but it isn't a necessary fact about any moral system whatsoever)
Your argument for why there can't be consensus on moral statements is weird. Every part of it before the conclusion applies perfectly well to all facts, and I don't think that the fact that my brain has to process the fact that the sun is hot means that there can't be consensus about it. Did you mean to say that there can be no consensus about any fact ever (surely a queer view), or did you forget to put in your premise that restricts the scope of the argument to just moral statements?
I don't much like burden of proof arguments, but yours has a hole in it so I'll try to point it out in a clear way. You said this: "you ask me how I come to conclude that there is no objective, absolute moral truth" and gave me an argument that led up to "there will never be a consensus on any moral statement," and then you concluded that it was up to me to disprove the link between that latter statement and "there is no such thing as absolute moral truths." I don't see why I need to disprove that at all, especially if I was just doing a bit of psychological investigation about you: I asked what you think the link is, more or less, between the impossibility of consensus and the impossibility of absolute truth w/r/t morality. I can't provide a disproof of the link you have in mind before you state what kind of a link you have in mind. If you want me to give you a generally applicable one, I can try to do that, but I don't think I've obligated myself to do so.
Also, I don't think I ever did actually ask you how you came to conclude that. I just tried to demonstrate that your arguments for your view betrayed a high amount of conceptual confusion. If you would like me to argue against your conclusion, then sure, please do tell me how you reached it.
Damn you type fast.
1. Ok so we agree on the fact that simply because someone else has a diverging opinion on a subject from you this does not mean you are necessarily less right about assuming it. Good.
2. And yes, I do not mean we cannot all agree on the sun being hot. It is at least theoretically possible given we exclude blind people who doubt the existence of the sun and think it's a giant lightbulb and those people who suffer from an illness that makes them incapable of perceiving temperature. Still - and there you certainly agree with me - people agreeing on something doesn't make a statement true just as much as disagreeing on it doesn't make it untrue (see 1.). I must have expressed myself unprecisely before.
3. What I'm trying to argue is this: morality is a judgment. Judgments are passed by humans. It is thus impossible to conceive a judgment that is abstract from a human mind. Which leads me to conclude there is no non-subjective morality.
This is what it boils down to. Nobody's ever challenged me to phrase my view though. Please tell me what you think about it.
"Subjective" does not mean "created by a human mind." The distinction between subjective and objective (albeit a poor and vague one) essentially runs: subjective things are just expressions of the opinions of a subject, but objective things are facts about some object. Anyway, I won't work with this terminology and I'll try to talk about what you actually have in mind.
It seems like you'd want to say that somehow human grasping of the objects of perception taints them, or otherwise distorts them. Would you say that's a fair characterization? So even if objects were really X, Y, and Z, we can only see them as X*, Y*, and Z*, which is what these properties turn out to be after they've gone through the distortion of the human mind. And you want to say that (I guess?) these distortions are always different for each different human, so we can't have complete agreement (in the case of morality). If this is what you mean there's a lot packed into it, so please tell me whether that's a good description of your view.
(By the way, you should remember that just because all of your arguments came from the same source (you) doesn't mean they contribute to the same conclusions. Moral particularism doesn't mean morality is subjective, moral relativism doesn't mean consensus is impossible, and so forth. I'm only going to focus on "there is no non-subjective morality")
On July 30 2013 03:49 Spekulatius wrote: Despite having browsed the numerous sources provided by the OP, I still do not fully grasp why I cannot call myself a moral relativist anymore. What exactly happenend to the term?
Did you read the "long story" spoiler? If you think that moral predicates have a hidden indexical element in them tied to the moral code of a person's society, then you should continue to be happy calling yourself a relativist and select "other" in the poll. But you should keep in mind that this is a linguistic claim and the types of evidence standardly marshaled for such claims seems to count against this. That said, there are a number of complications here that would require more explanation of formal semantics than I feel would be productive right now.
Alternatively, you may basically think along the lines of an error theorist that moral predicates behave as though there were a non-relative morality based on categorical imperatives even though there are in fact no categorical imperatives for them to answer to. This would make such claims systematically false. If you felt that the best response to this is a linguistic reform wherein we interpret our claims with hidden indexicals, then you could call yourself a different time of relativist. But for the purposes of the poll you would be an error theorist.
I find the semantics hard to get as a non-native speaker. Same goes for the word "indexical".
My view - that I always thought to be named "moral relativism" - simply says:
There are no true moral absolutes.
This - to me - means that a statement can only be thought to be absolutely morally true when we presuppose that the assumption that it's founded on is universal. And I'm saying such a universally true statement doesn't exist.
Let's take the statement "killing is wrong". This is morally true if and only if we presuppose the existence of another statement which leads up to the "killing is wrong" statement. This other statement would be "human life must not be infringed".
The latter statement is not universal though. Violating someone's right to life is fine under some circumstances. For some people. In some cultures.
Fundamentalists think it's ok to kill non-believers. Presidents starting a war on other countries think it's ok to kill (at least) soldiers of either side. Most people think it's ok to kill in self-defense. etc...
And in the same way no statement can be logically deduced from a universal statement as the ultimate source of a moral statement - the first step to the chain of argumentation - is always someone saying "I feel that X is right".
Thus relativism.
Now, am I right and old-fashioned in calling this relativism? Or simply wrong and it's really error theory?
You seem to be conflating a sort of particularism with relativism. That there are no moral absolutes can be interpreted in two ways. For one (particularism), we might say that there are no invariant moral properties: there is no feature of a state of affairs that always makes the same moral contribution to every situation. So, for instance, "killing" does not count as an invariant property, because sometimes killing is bad (e.g. when it is done to babies for no reason), but other times it is good (e.g. when it is done to stop someone who is doing murders).
The other sort (relativism), which is what I think you're trying to go for, would say the moral significance of any state of affairs depends on certain facts about the moral beliefs of the participants (both those participating in and those judging, I would guess you think). But you have not done any work to support this view. Just because "fundamentalists think it's ok to kill non-believers" means neither 1) it is not an absolute (as in having invariant moral significance) truth that it isn't okay to kill non-believers nor 2) that it's okay for fundamentalists to kill non-believers. These latter claims (which, again, are different) need a lot more to build up to them, which your basic argument, viz. that morality is always founded upon subjective intuitions, falls quite short of.
And it's strange that you conflate particularism about morality with relativism. You suggest that both of the following statements contradict the notion that "human life must not be infringed" is a universally true statement: 1) "Fundamentalists think it's ok to kill non-believers." 2) "Most people think it's ok to kill in self-defense." But, if the distinction here is at all clear, these are two very different problems. The former looks like a mistake, or at least a disagreement with the moral code typical of modern-day Westerners, whereas the latter is a loophole in our universal. Whether the latter can be properly patched up is uncertain, but certainly the epistemic work you are requiring these universal statements to do ("This - to me - means that a statement can only be thought to be absolutely morally true when we presuppose that the assumption that it's founded on is universal.") is something that can be done with more modest kinds of grounding. For this, you might be interested in reading Jonathan Dancy's Ethics Without Principles.
The former contradiction to absolute statements is no contradiction at all. A vast number of obstacles stand in the way of this consideration disproving the notion that "human life must not be infringed." For one, people's beliefs about morality are not necessarily the ultimate ground of the moral truth (maybe you could demonstrate this?). But beyond this, the insertion of terms like "...according to modern-day Westerners" or whatever is no case against the absoluteness of any moral claim. That is to say, it doesn't require us, as modern-day Westerners, to rethink whether any given moral claim is true. It brings no evidence to bear to the contrary, it doesn't undermine our assumptions, etc.
You have a very confused stance that seems to intermingle particularism with error theory, particularism with relativism, and relativism with error theory. Even a casual acquaintance with these topics should be enough to untangle the weird mess of opinions you have now, and then you could come to more clarity about what exactly you (wrongly) believe.
Firstly: well yes I am confused. I've never studied philosophy so I naturally mix up those theories that I've never heard of before. That's why I asked for clarification in the first place.
Secondly, I'm not sure why you think the burden of proof is not on you to prove any of your assumptions of which you deduce the existence of absolute moral truths. That seems like the epitomy of arrogance to me. "We're modern westerners so fuck people who think differently, may they have to prove us wrong."
Thirdly, you ask me how I come to conclude that there is no objective, absolute moral truth. I tried to explain in some of my posts that every experience and every thought is being processed by your brain. There is not a single thought or feeling or judgement that is not touched by the particularity of your own brain. Thus, a thought/judgment/feeling cannot be thought of without being influenced by your own personality. So naturally, there will never be a consensus on any moral statement. Now you will retort that the lack of consensus does not necessarily mean there is no such thing as absolute moral truths. Asking me to disprove this beyond any doubt is like asking me to disprove god. Which is, and I'm restating my second point, not my duty, but yours.
I didn't purport that there were any absolute moral truths. Being myself a particularist, I don't think there are any. In any case, I was only trying to show that you hadn't successfully argued for your own views, not that your conclusions were wrong. I could do that if you wanted.
Also, I wasn't trying to say that our (modern-day Western) views are right and universal and everyone else has to disprove us. I was saying that, given that we have a certain kind of moral framework, the fact that our moral statements would be wrong in another framework is no argument at all against the absolute nature of our moral statements. I could just have easily have used Australian aboriginals or whatever as my example. It is no problem to the absoluteness of an aboriginal's moral claim that other cultures make different moral claims that are true for them, unless we interpret "absoluteness" in a strange way. In some logics, you have the law of the excluded middle, and in others you don't. This doesn't mean that statements in a logic that has the LEM are non-absolute within that logic; it just means there are other systems where it would be false. But given that we always speak from within a system, we would be committing a kind of conceptual confusion if we thought that disagreement from other systems was a stain on the value of our own statements.
Consider a scientist's deduction that evolution is true. Within a different framework that has wildly different assumptions about reality, say 14th-century Catholicism, evolution isn't true (given the kind of extreme relativism you want to invoke, that is). But this doesn't mean that the scientist needs to take that into account. The scientist's rules for deduction do not involve "What do 14th-century Catholics think?" just as our rules for morality do not involve "What do Australian aboriginals think?" (Or, well, they might include such a premise, but it isn't a necessary fact about any moral system whatsoever)
Your argument for why there can't be consensus on moral statements is weird. Every part of it before the conclusion applies perfectly well to all facts, and I don't think that the fact that my brain has to process the fact that the sun is hot means that there can't be consensus about it. Did you mean to say that there can be no consensus about any fact ever (surely a queer view), or did you forget to put in your premise that restricts the scope of the argument to just moral statements?
I don't much like burden of proof arguments, but yours has a hole in it so I'll try to point it out in a clear way. You said this: "you ask me how I come to conclude that there is no objective, absolute moral truth" and gave me an argument that led up to "there will never be a consensus on any moral statement," and then you concluded that it was up to me to disprove the link between that latter statement and "there is no such thing as absolute moral truths." I don't see why I need to disprove that at all, especially if I was just doing a bit of psychological investigation about you: I asked what you think the link is, more or less, between the impossibility of consensus and the impossibility of absolute truth w/r/t morality. I can't provide a disproof of the link you have in mind before you state what kind of a link you have in mind. If you want me to give you a generally applicable one, I can try to do that, but I don't think I've obligated myself to do so.
Also, I don't think I ever did actually ask you how you came to conclude that. I just tried to demonstrate that your arguments for your view betrayed a high amount of conceptual confusion. If you would like me to argue against your conclusion, then sure, please do tell me how you reached it.
Damn you type fast.
1. Ok so we agree on the fact that simply because someone else has a diverging opinion on a subject from you this does not mean you are necessarily less right about assuming it. Good.
2. And yes, I do not mean we cannot all agree on the sun being hot. It is at least theoretically possible given we exclude blind people who doubt the existence of the sun and think it's a giant lightbulb and those people who suffer from an illness that makes them incapable of perceiving temperature. Still - and there you certainly agree with me - people agreeing on something doesn't make a statement true just as much as disagreeing on it doesn't make it untrue (see 1.). I must have expressed myself unprecisely before.
3. What I'm trying to argue is this: morality is a judgment. Judgments are passed by humans. It is thus impossible to conceive a judgment that is abstract from a human mind. Which leads me to conclude there is no non-subjective morality.
This is what it boils down to. Nobody's ever challenged me to phrase my view though. Please tell me what you think about it.
"Subjective" does not mean "created by a human mind." The distinction between subjective and objective (albeit a poor and vague one) essentially runs: subjective things are just expressions of the opinions of a subject, but objective things are facts about some object. Anyway, I won't work with this terminology and I'll try to talk about what you actually have in mind.
It seems like you'd want to say that somehow human grasping of the objects of perception taints them, or otherwise distorts them. Would you say that's a fair characterization? So even if objects were really X, Y, and Z, we can only see them as X*, Y*, and Z*, which is what these properties turn out to be after they've gone through the distortion of the human mind. And you want to say that (I guess?) these distortions are always different for each different human, so we can't have complete agreement (in the case of morality). If this is what you mean there's a lot packed into it, so please tell me whether that's a good description of your view.
(By the way, you should remember that just because all of your arguments came from the same source (you) doesn't mean they contribute to the same conclusions. Moral particularism doesn't mean morality is subjective, moral relativism doesn't mean consensus is impossible, and so forth. I'm only going to focus on "there is no non-subjective morality")
Almost.
My view goes even further. I say there is no X, Y and Z in the first place. I claim they're not just distorted, but they rather don't even exist in the "outside" world. Unlike scientific truths, X, Y and Z as moral absolutes are statements that are not to be found and perceived, they rather only come into existence by the functioning of the human mind. And as such, I argue it is impossible to have a judgment without someone passing it. Which in my eyes makes it ultimately subjective.
Improving health is an appalling idea: kill everyone at birth and there are no more health problems.
Exactly. Without philosophical reasoning, you cannot move from medical knowledge to "we shouldn't kill everyone at birth so that there aren't anymore health problems." I mean, can you give a medical argument as to why killing everyone at birth would be wrong?
Medicine does give an argument, in the Hippocratic Oath. Killing babies is causing them harm, and the primary obligation of someone practicing medicine is not to do harm. It isn't philosophically rigorous, and medicine doesn't care. Philosophy isn't grading its performance - people do that, and people are largely enthusiastic about medicine. Physics doesn't care much about the philosophical problems of assuming causality either - it still seems to be pulling its weight.
As this thread has shown, philosophy certainly does not provide the magical argument - the is-ought distinction rears its ugly head there. Yet, the medical community has somehow concluded that we shouldn't kill everyone at birth. Please explain how this is possible.
I should phrase that better, as it is a general critique of medicine, that "health" is incredibly hard to define. And I believe that's exactly one of the critiques against modern medicine's stab at philosophy.
The problem here is that Sam Harris is relying on a semantic trick: "medicine" in one sense refers to the science of medicine (i.e. the biology/chemistry/physics/psychology research that informs it) and in another sense refers to the practice of medicine. Medicine itself is nothing more than a collection of facts about living things, from bacteria to human beings. The practice of medicine is the application of that knowledge to trying to make people die less frequently. It is impossible to conclude that one should do this without philosophy.
He is not relying on a semantic trick - medicine is both the knowledge and its application, and a science of morals would also need both of these dimensions. You, on the other hand, are under the illusion that sciences care about being validated by philosophy. It isn't impossible to conclude that dying less is desirable without philosophy - primitive societies, children and animals, for that matter, decide that dying is generally a bad thing without philosophy. The thing that is impossible to achieve without philosophy, is philosophical rigor - which is just a nonsense cyclical argument. Physics didn't leave two thousand years of natural philosophy nonsense behind because it suddenly gained philosophic rigor - it did so, because it started to produce useful output.
Medicine makes the assumption that you care about health. Physics needs you to get on board with causality. Economy requires you to care about optimization. These are all assumptions, though sensible ones which relate well to stuff people care about - functioning bodies, successfully manipulating their environment and maximizing their returns. Sam Harris' science of morals would require you to care about people's well-being. This also seems to be a fine starting point.
The medical version is absurd because people want to be in good health so that they can lead fulfilling lives, and every sane person knows this - killing them painlessly at birth doesn't not solve this problem, it's just an intentional misinterpretation to score rhetoric points. The heroin version is absurd because it is impossible to just put everybody on heroin - you need a good infrastructure to provide food and heroin injections, and in the first place, most people don't want to be put on a constant heroin drip. The problem isn't the concept of utility, the problem is that constant heroin stupor doesn't seem like a good way to maximize it. The reason you think heroin paradise is a bad idea is because it doesn't match your intuitions of well-being - and that's the exact same reason Sam Harris does not endorse it, and why you shouldn't pretend he does unless you're going for intellectual dishonesty.
Second paragraph is Sam Harris' own explanation for why he doesn't think utility (or rather, well-being as he himself prefers to call it) needs to be well defined.
Well, it does need to be well-defined, because literally everything is going to depend on it. How are we supposed to know if it's the foundation of all moral decision making when we can't even tell what it actually is without referencing fields that are subordinate to this hypothetical utility itself. I mean, medicine wouldn't even exist if people didn't have some moral reason for wanting to cure other people.
Humans work very well with ill-defined concepts. Medicine exists because people don't like having tooth aches or permanently losing the use of their limbs - this has nothing, literally, to do with morals, and everything to do with evolution and our emotional wiring, and there is no way to show, philosophically, that not having diarrhea is good. This nonsense is on the level of claiming that people wouldn't know whether to eat fruit or sand without philosophy. As far as nutrition goes, everything hinges on the distinction between food and poison, which again is ill-defined - take alcohol, for example. All of this is a huge, philosophical smokescreen obscuring the fact that the scientific method is a great way of obtaining the results you want and might be useful in this domain where philosophy has a solid tradition of running in circles.
On July 30 2013 05:17 WhiteDog wrote: [quote] I don't really know what to respond to you.
When newton sees an apple dropping to the ground, he doesn't discuss the concept of apple, because he can repeat the same process with another object - an orange. He doesn't discuss the fact that the orange and the apple are subject to the same laws of physics, because he consider that as self evident. When two physicists discuss the properties of a metal, they agree on the fact that they both belong to the same world and that what the first prove through a scientific experimentation can be repeated by the second.
The same comments can be made systematically (if you have the knowledge) about every "scientific" knowledge that scientist consider as a "law". Can you define a moral statement that is always true, for everyone, everywhere ? If not, you are stuck with discussing the concept of moral.
The disagreement on scientific theories is another matter entirely and I don't really want to get drag into this subject. I'll just quote Spinoza "there is no intrinsic strength of the true idea".
Well, that makes two of us at a loss for how to respond. If I give you an example of what I take to be a moral truth, you'll point to a group of people that disagree with it. Then I'll point out that the presence of disagreement is not a general indicator that there is no non-relative truth about something.
This is why disagreement about scientific theories is relevant to the discussion. I'm sure most people find the immorality of torturing babies for fun every bit as self-evident as the principle that all objects will act under the same laws of physics, if not more. I don't see that you've said anything to dislodge such a person from their convictions.
Sure, maybe someone will disagree with them and say that torturing babies for fun is the supreme good. But you know what they say, "there is no intrinsic strength of the true idea".
Yes and we go back to the question : how do you evaluate the truthness of a moral statement every being equal ?
I'll quote a previous post :
"the value of many scientific ideas can be objectively evaluated by established techniques, so that the origin or history of the idea is irrelevant to its value". Since there are no "established techniques" to "objectively" evaluate what is right or wrong (there is no "something"), I can't separate my moral statement from its origin or history.
You only respond to that that moral statement behave like scientific assertions, but I can't see an epistemologist agreeing on that. The history of philosophy as I know it has actually made a clear cut between what is refutable - through experience - and what is not (this is one of the main subject in the critic of pure reason, or the book "What is thinking ?" by Heiddegger).
This is how scientific evaluate the truthness of a statement, and not by some abstract discussion on the logic of the said statement : they test the assertion over and over through experimentation, and if the result is the same over and over, then the statement is judged as true.
I never claimed that moral assertions are exactly like scientific ones. I just claimed that they share with science the three features that I labeled earlier that have been used in epistemic arguments against realism. This on its own refutes those specific arguments as long as we should be realists about science.
On the question of "established techniques", we have to ask "Established by who?" Well, by scientists. They certainly aren't agreed on by everyone. And before several hundred years ago there wasn't any community that practiced them consistently.[1] Before that time, was it the case that there were no non-relative truths about the laws of nature? Did the creation of the scientific community bring them into existence?
There already are communities of people discussing ethical questions with a fairly wide amount of methodological agreement. Not everyone is a part of them, but not everyone is a part of the scientific community either. Do any of these ethical communities have a method of assessing ethical truth as good as the scientists have for their domain? On the hard questions of ethics, I'm inclined to say obviously not. But for simpler ethical truths I'm happy to endorse how people currently go about assessing them, and I'm completely open to better methods being developed in ethics just as they were in science. None of this will make ethics a science, but it could get better.
[1] For the sake of argument here I'm speaking as though the epistemic principles governing science are a whole lot more precise than they actually are. Nobody has a science algorithm.
Interesting, when I say that epistemologists would not agree with you on the fact that scientific knowledge has the same properties as philosophical assertions, you show me a survey with no clue on that. Am I supposed to see that 62% of the epistemologist are moral realists ?
In 1950, 90% of the philosophers believed in god. That doesn't mean they were right (or wrong).
First, do you actually have data on that last claim? It would surprise me greatly (at least in an anglophone context), but I have no data of my own.
Second, how on earth are you accusing me of making an argument from authority? You introduced the notion that the experts (i.e., epistemologists) disagreed with me. I was merely rebutting that point. If anyone appealed to authority you did.
Third, as the OP indicates, realism entails that we can know ethical truths. Since I never claimed (and don't think) that ethical truths are exactly the same as scientific ones from an epistemic perspective, it would be impossible for them to agree with me that they are identical. But that answer does clearly indicate that they think the methodology for assessing ethical truths is good enough for knowledge.
They believe that we can know ethical truth (66% of them) but I'm still waiting for the answer on how are you supposed to judge which judgement is more true than the other outside of its context. You answer me by always disgressing to another subject.
Clearly yes or no, do you think that epistemologist think you can experiment moral statement like you can experiment the law of physics ? If not, how do you refute or falsify a moral statement ? If you refute a moral statement by the intermediary of something that is not proven, not falsifiable, historic or sociologic, then mathematically, how can your moral statements be true universally ?
I've already stated that you can't perform an experiment like you can in natural sciences to assess ethical truths.
That was my only point, when I asked if they consider that moral statement behave like scientific laws.
I also already gave you a simple example of how you refute a moral claim (the nazi counterexample to the claim that lying is always wrong). You felt you could disregard this argument as historical and sociological without supporting those claims. I don't know what either of us can gain from rehearsing those steps again.
I said that what you did can be done with every moral statements: Let's say I have the opportunity to kill Hitler before he becomes what he is. It would be moral right ? Would that make murder morally acceptable always and everywhere ? If a man and a woman are both locked in a cage with no water and food, and the only way to live for the man is to rape the woman, would that make it morally acceptable ? On the other side, I asked you to give me a moral statement that will always be true and I'm still waiting for it.
Why would that make it the case that murder is always and everywhere morally acceptable? In my example, the counterexample (of the form: Some x is an act of lying which is not morally wrong) was logically inconsistent with the claim it was a counterexample to (of the form: all x's that are acts of lying are morally wrong). It literally contradicted the ethical claim. You're example attempts to conclude "all x that are y are good" from "some x that is y is good". Not sure why that should even sound plausible.
On the rape example, I'm not entirely sure, but I'd lean towards that act being unacceptable. I've already stated that it's harder to know the answers to difficult ethical questions, which should be a truism.
More generally, I find your attempted counterexamples odd in form. Relativists think human perceptions determine what is "right". So you'd expect them to show what is "right" varying in accordance with what people perceive to be "right". But your examples aren't of that form. You're varying the causal effects of a given action to derive counterexamples. Realists already accept that the effects of an act will affect whether or not it is moral, so why are your examples supposed to threaten realists in the first place?
On that note, I don't see why you think I have to provide you with a universally quantified moral statement that I take to be true. Why can't I know about particular acts being wrong, like a specific genocide, without thinking that all genocides are wrong ? There's hardly a general logical principle that forbids me from knowing about particular cases prior to knowing about general rules, and in fact such a situation appears to be the norm. Its being wrong to torture babies for fun seems like a good stab at one though.
Here I don't understand at all. Relativism to me is not the belief that human perceptions determine what is "right", it is the belief that there are no absolute and transcendantal reference to beliefs and morals. I don't think that it is impossible to define, if you go deep down in the context of every actions, what is right or wrong. I consider that it is impossible to define a right or wrong everything equal. Because that absolute reference does not exist, I have no moral ground to compare the value of a moral statement to another moral statement outside of its context. I cannot "evaluate" the "truthness" of my statement "everything equal".
As I said in my previous posts : "Murder is wrong today"; "Murder is not wrong in war", etc. I can't get out of the historical and sociological context in which I make those statements.
This is why, I consider absolute moral statement to be a choice and nothing else.
I don't know how to parse this sentence, but it sounds unrelated to the question of whether or not you made up the statistic about the number of theist philosophers in 1950.
Ho yes I made that up. Didn't understood the question.
On July 30 2013 03:49 Spekulatius wrote: Despite having browsed the numerous sources provided by the OP, I still do not fully grasp why I cannot call myself a moral relativist anymore. What exactly happenend to the term?
Did you read the "long story" spoiler? If you think that moral predicates have a hidden indexical element in them tied to the moral code of a person's society, then you should continue to be happy calling yourself a relativist and select "other" in the poll. But you should keep in mind that this is a linguistic claim and the types of evidence standardly marshaled for such claims seems to count against this. That said, there are a number of complications here that would require more explanation of formal semantics than I feel would be productive right now.
Alternatively, you may basically think along the lines of an error theorist that moral predicates behave as though there were a non-relative morality based on categorical imperatives even though there are in fact no categorical imperatives for them to answer to. This would make such claims systematically false. If you felt that the best response to this is a linguistic reform wherein we interpret our claims with hidden indexicals, then you could call yourself a different time of relativist. But for the purposes of the poll you would be an error theorist.
I find the semantics hard to get as a non-native speaker. Same goes for the word "indexical".
My view - that I always thought to be named "moral relativism" - simply says:
There are no true moral absolutes.
This - to me - means that a statement can only be thought to be absolutely morally true when we presuppose that the assumption that it's founded on is universal. And I'm saying such a universally true statement doesn't exist.
Let's take the statement "killing is wrong". This is morally true if and only if we presuppose the existence of another statement which leads up to the "killing is wrong" statement. This other statement would be "human life must not be infringed".
The latter statement is not universal though. Violating someone's right to life is fine under some circumstances. For some people. In some cultures.
Fundamentalists think it's ok to kill non-believers. Presidents starting a war on other countries think it's ok to kill (at least) soldiers of either side. Most people think it's ok to kill in self-defense. etc...
And in the same way no statement can be logically deduced from a universal statement as the ultimate source of a moral statement - the first step to the chain of argumentation - is always someone saying "I feel that X is right".
Thus relativism.
Now, am I right and old-fashioned in calling this relativism? Or simply wrong and it's really error theory?
You seem to be conflating a sort of particularism with relativism. That there are no moral absolutes can be interpreted in two ways. For one (particularism), we might say that there are no invariant moral properties: there is no feature of a state of affairs that always makes the same moral contribution to every situation. So, for instance, "killing" does not count as an invariant property, because sometimes killing is bad (e.g. when it is done to babies for no reason), but other times it is good (e.g. when it is done to stop someone who is doing murders).
The other sort (relativism), which is what I think you're trying to go for, would say the moral significance of any state of affairs depends on certain facts about the moral beliefs of the participants (both those participating in and those judging, I would guess you think). But you have not done any work to support this view. Just because "fundamentalists think it's ok to kill non-believers" means neither 1) it is not an absolute (as in having invariant moral significance) truth that it isn't okay to kill non-believers nor 2) that it's okay for fundamentalists to kill non-believers. These latter claims (which, again, are different) need a lot more to build up to them, which your basic argument, viz. that morality is always founded upon subjective intuitions, falls quite short of.
And it's strange that you conflate particularism about morality with relativism. You suggest that both of the following statements contradict the notion that "human life must not be infringed" is a universally true statement: 1) "Fundamentalists think it's ok to kill non-believers." 2) "Most people think it's ok to kill in self-defense." But, if the distinction here is at all clear, these are two very different problems. The former looks like a mistake, or at least a disagreement with the moral code typical of modern-day Westerners, whereas the latter is a loophole in our universal. Whether the latter can be properly patched up is uncertain, but certainly the epistemic work you are requiring these universal statements to do ("This - to me - means that a statement can only be thought to be absolutely morally true when we presuppose that the assumption that it's founded on is universal.") is something that can be done with more modest kinds of grounding. For this, you might be interested in reading Jonathan Dancy's Ethics Without Principles.
The former contradiction to absolute statements is no contradiction at all. A vast number of obstacles stand in the way of this consideration disproving the notion that "human life must not be infringed." For one, people's beliefs about morality are not necessarily the ultimate ground of the moral truth (maybe you could demonstrate this?). But beyond this, the insertion of terms like "...according to modern-day Westerners" or whatever is no case against the absoluteness of any moral claim. That is to say, it doesn't require us, as modern-day Westerners, to rethink whether any given moral claim is true. It brings no evidence to bear to the contrary, it doesn't undermine our assumptions, etc.
You have a very confused stance that seems to intermingle particularism with error theory, particularism with relativism, and relativism with error theory. Even a casual acquaintance with these topics should be enough to untangle the weird mess of opinions you have now, and then you could come to more clarity about what exactly you (wrongly) believe.
Firstly: well yes I am confused. I've never studied philosophy so I naturally mix up those theories that I've never heard of before. That's why I asked for clarification in the first place.
Secondly, I'm not sure why you think the burden of proof is not on you to prove any of your assumptions of which you deduce the existence of absolute moral truths. That seems like the epitomy of arrogance to me. "We're modern westerners so fuck people who think differently, may they have to prove us wrong."
Thirdly, you ask me how I come to conclude that there is no objective, absolute moral truth. I tried to explain in some of my posts that every experience and every thought is being processed by your brain. There is not a single thought or feeling or judgement that is not touched by the particularity of your own brain. Thus, a thought/judgment/feeling cannot be thought of without being influenced by your own personality. So naturally, there will never be a consensus on any moral statement. Now you will retort that the lack of consensus does not necessarily mean there is no such thing as absolute moral truths. Asking me to disprove this beyond any doubt is like asking me to disprove god. Which is, and I'm restating my second point, not my duty, but yours.
I didn't purport that there were any absolute moral truths. Being myself a particularist, I don't think there are any. In any case, I was only trying to show that you hadn't successfully argued for your own views, not that your conclusions were wrong. I could do that if you wanted.
Also, I wasn't trying to say that our (modern-day Western) views are right and universal and everyone else has to disprove us. I was saying that, given that we have a certain kind of moral framework, the fact that our moral statements would be wrong in another framework is no argument at all against the absolute nature of our moral statements. I could just have easily have used Australian aboriginals or whatever as my example. It is no problem to the absoluteness of an aboriginal's moral claim that other cultures make different moral claims that are true for them, unless we interpret "absoluteness" in a strange way. In some logics, you have the law of the excluded middle, and in others you don't. This doesn't mean that statements in a logic that has the LEM are non-absolute within that logic; it just means there are other systems where it would be false. But given that we always speak from within a system, we would be committing a kind of conceptual confusion if we thought that disagreement from other systems was a stain on the value of our own statements.
Consider a scientist's deduction that evolution is true. Within a different framework that has wildly different assumptions about reality, say 14th-century Catholicism, evolution isn't true (given the kind of extreme relativism you want to invoke, that is). But this doesn't mean that the scientist needs to take that into account. The scientist's rules for deduction do not involve "What do 14th-century Catholics think?" just as our rules for morality do not involve "What do Australian aboriginals think?" (Or, well, they might include such a premise, but it isn't a necessary fact about any moral system whatsoever)
Your argument for why there can't be consensus on moral statements is weird. Every part of it before the conclusion applies perfectly well to all facts, and I don't think that the fact that my brain has to process the fact that the sun is hot means that there can't be consensus about it. Did you mean to say that there can be no consensus about any fact ever (surely a queer view), or did you forget to put in your premise that restricts the scope of the argument to just moral statements?
I don't much like burden of proof arguments, but yours has a hole in it so I'll try to point it out in a clear way. You said this: "you ask me how I come to conclude that there is no objective, absolute moral truth" and gave me an argument that led up to "there will never be a consensus on any moral statement," and then you concluded that it was up to me to disprove the link between that latter statement and "there is no such thing as absolute moral truths." I don't see why I need to disprove that at all, especially if I was just doing a bit of psychological investigation about you: I asked what you think the link is, more or less, between the impossibility of consensus and the impossibility of absolute truth w/r/t morality. I can't provide a disproof of the link you have in mind before you state what kind of a link you have in mind. If you want me to give you a generally applicable one, I can try to do that, but I don't think I've obligated myself to do so.
Also, I don't think I ever did actually ask you how you came to conclude that. I just tried to demonstrate that your arguments for your view betrayed a high amount of conceptual confusion. If you would like me to argue against your conclusion, then sure, please do tell me how you reached it.
Damn you type fast.
1. Ok so we agree on the fact that simply because someone else has a diverging opinion on a subject from you this does not mean you are necessarily less right about assuming it. Good.
2. And yes, I do not mean we cannot all agree on the sun being hot. It is at least theoretically possible given we exclude blind people who doubt the existence of the sun and think it's a giant lightbulb and those people who suffer from an illness that makes them incapable of perceiving temperature. Still - and there you certainly agree with me - people agreeing on something doesn't make a statement true just as much as disagreeing on it doesn't make it untrue (see 1.). I must have expressed myself unprecisely before.
3. What I'm trying to argue is this: morality is a judgment. Judgments are passed by humans. It is thus impossible to conceive a judgment that is abstract from a human mind. Which leads me to conclude there is no non-subjective morality.
This is what it boils down to. Nobody's ever challenged me to phrase my view though. Please tell me what you think about it.
"Subjective" does not mean "created by a human mind." The distinction between subjective and objective (albeit a poor and vague one) essentially runs: subjective things are just expressions of the opinions of a subject, but objective things are facts about some object. Anyway, I won't work with this terminology and I'll try to talk about what you actually have in mind.
It seems like you'd want to say that somehow human grasping of the objects of perception taints them, or otherwise distorts them. Would you say that's a fair characterization? So even if objects were really X, Y, and Z, we can only see them as X*, Y*, and Z*, which is what these properties turn out to be after they've gone through the distortion of the human mind. And you want to say that (I guess?) these distortions are always different for each different human, so we can't have complete agreement (in the case of morality). If this is what you mean there's a lot packed into it, so please tell me whether that's a good description of your view.
(By the way, you should remember that just because all of your arguments came from the same source (you) doesn't mean they contribute to the same conclusions. Moral particularism doesn't mean morality is subjective, moral relativism doesn't mean consensus is impossible, and so forth. I'm only going to focus on "there is no non-subjective morality")
Almost.
My view goes even further. I say there is no X, Y and Z in the first place. I claim they're not just distorted, but they rather don't even exist in the "outside" world. Unlike scientific truths, X, Y and Z as moral absolutes are statements that are not to be found and perceived, they rather only come into existence by the functioning of the human mind. And as such, I argue it is impossible to have a judgment without someone passing it. Which in my eyes makes it ultimately subjective.
How are you teasing apart scientific and moral judgments here? Why is it that with, say, the tools of physics I can get some access to things in the world (maybe distorted or not), but morality has absolutely no link with the world at all? Would you like to say that we "project" our moral feelings onto the physical world, and we have (distorted) access to the physical world, but all our projected moral judgments have no basis in the reality of the world?
Well, that makes two of us at a loss for how to respond. If I give you an example of what I take to be a moral truth, you'll point to a group of people that disagree with it. Then I'll point out that the presence of disagreement is not a general indicator that there is no non-relative truth about something.
This is why disagreement about scientific theories is relevant to the discussion. I'm sure most people find the immorality of torturing babies for fun every bit as self-evident as the principle that all objects will act under the same laws of physics, if not more. I don't see that you've said anything to dislodge such a person from their convictions.
Sure, maybe someone will disagree with them and say that torturing babies for fun is the supreme good. But you know what they say, "there is no intrinsic strength of the true idea".
Yes and we go back to the question : how do you evaluate the truthness of a moral statement every being equal ?
I'll quote a previous post :
"the value of many scientific ideas can be objectively evaluated by established techniques, so that the origin or history of the idea is irrelevant to its value". Since there are no "established techniques" to "objectively" evaluate what is right or wrong (there is no "something"), I can't separate my moral statement from its origin or history.
You only respond to that that moral statement behave like scientific assertions, but I can't see an epistemologist agreeing on that. The history of philosophy as I know it has actually made a clear cut between what is refutable - through experience - and what is not (this is one of the main subject in the critic of pure reason, or the book "What is thinking ?" by Heiddegger).
This is how scientific evaluate the truthness of a statement, and not by some abstract discussion on the logic of the said statement : they test the assertion over and over through experimentation, and if the result is the same over and over, then the statement is judged as true.
I never claimed that moral assertions are exactly like scientific ones. I just claimed that they share with science the three features that I labeled earlier that have been used in epistemic arguments against realism. This on its own refutes those specific arguments as long as we should be realists about science.
On the question of "established techniques", we have to ask "Established by who?" Well, by scientists. They certainly aren't agreed on by everyone. And before several hundred years ago there wasn't any community that practiced them consistently.[1] Before that time, was it the case that there were no non-relative truths about the laws of nature? Did the creation of the scientific community bring them into existence?
There already are communities of people discussing ethical questions with a fairly wide amount of methodological agreement. Not everyone is a part of them, but not everyone is a part of the scientific community either. Do any of these ethical communities have a method of assessing ethical truth as good as the scientists have for their domain? On the hard questions of ethics, I'm inclined to say obviously not. But for simpler ethical truths I'm happy to endorse how people currently go about assessing them, and I'm completely open to better methods being developed in ethics just as they were in science. None of this will make ethics a science, but it could get better.
[1] For the sake of argument here I'm speaking as though the epistemic principles governing science are a whole lot more precise than they actually are. Nobody has a science algorithm.
Interesting, when I say that epistemologists would not agree with you on the fact that scientific knowledge has the same properties as philosophical assertions, you show me a survey with no clue on that. Am I supposed to see that 62% of the epistemologist are moral realists ?
In 1950, 90% of the philosophers believed in god. That doesn't mean they were right (or wrong).
First, do you actually have data on that last claim? It would surprise me greatly (at least in an anglophone context), but I have no data of my own.
Second, how on earth are you accusing me of making an argument from authority? You introduced the notion that the experts (i.e., epistemologists) disagreed with me. I was merely rebutting that point. If anyone appealed to authority you did.
Third, as the OP indicates, realism entails that we can know ethical truths. Since I never claimed (and don't think) that ethical truths are exactly the same as scientific ones from an epistemic perspective, it would be impossible for them to agree with me that they are identical. But that answer does clearly indicate that they think the methodology for assessing ethical truths is good enough for knowledge.
They believe that we can know ethical truth (66% of them) but I'm still waiting for the answer on how are you supposed to judge which judgement is more true than the other outside of its context. You answer me by always disgressing to another subject.
Clearly yes or no, do you think that epistemologist think you can experiment moral statement like you can experiment the law of physics ? If not, how do you refute or falsify a moral statement ? If you refute a moral statement by the intermediary of something that is not proven, not falsifiable, historic or sociologic, then mathematically, how can your moral statements be true universally ?
I've already stated that you can't perform an experiment like you can in natural sciences to assess ethical truths.
That was my only point, when I asked if they consider that moral statement behave like scientific laws.
I also already gave you a simple example of how you refute a moral claim (the nazi counterexample to the claim that lying is always wrong). You felt you could disregard this argument as historical and sociological without supporting those claims. I don't know what either of us can gain from rehearsing those steps again.
I said that what you did can be done with every moral statements: Let's say I have the opportunity to kill Hitler before he becomes what he is. It would be moral right ? Would that make murder morally acceptable always and everywhere ? If a man and a woman are both locked in a cage with no water and food, and the only way to live for the man is to rape the woman, would that make it morally acceptable ? On the other side, I asked you to give me a moral statement that will always be true and I'm still waiting for it.
Why would that make it the case that murder is always and everywhere morally acceptable? In my example, the counterexample (of the form: Some x is an act of lying which is not morally wrong) was logically inconsistent with the claim it was a counterexample to (of the form: all x's that are acts of lying are morally wrong). It literally contradicted the ethical claim. You're example attempts to conclude "all x that are y are good" from "some x that is y is good". Not sure why that should even sound plausible.
On the rape example, I'm not entirely sure, but I'd lean towards that act being unacceptable. I've already stated that it's harder to know the answers to difficult ethical questions, which should be a truism.
More generally, I find your attempted counterexamples odd in form. Relativists think human perceptions determine what is "right". So you'd expect them to show what is "right" varying in accordance with what people perceive to be "right". But your examples aren't of that form. You're varying the causal effects of a given action to derive counterexamples. Realists already accept that the effects of an act will affect whether or not it is moral, so why are your examples supposed to threaten realists in the first place?
On that note, I don't see why you think I have to provide you with a universally quantified moral statement that I take to be true. Why can't I know about particular acts being wrong, like a specific genocide, without thinking that all genocides are wrong ? There's hardly a general logical principle that forbids me from knowing about particular cases prior to knowing about general rules, and in fact such a situation appears to be the norm. Its being wrong to torture babies for fun seems like a good stab at one though.
Here I don't understand at all. Relativism to me is not the belief that human perceptions determine what is "right", it is the belief that there are no absolute and transcendantal reference to beliefs and morals. I don't think that it is impossible to define, if you go deep down in the context of every actions, what is right or wrong. I consider that it is impossible to define a right or wrong everything equal. Because that absolute reference does not exist, I have no moral ground to compare the value of a moral statement to another moral statement outside of its context. I cannot "evaluate" the "truthness" of my statement "everything equal".
As I said in my previous posts : "Murder is wrong today"; "Murder is not wrong in war", etc. I can't get out of the historical and sociological context in which I make those statements.
This is why, I consider absolute moral statement to be a choice and nothing else.
I don't know how to parse this sentence, but it sounds unrelated to the question of whether or not you made up the statistic about the number of theist philosophers in 1950.
Ho yes I made that up. Didn't understood the question.
Well, we'd need to go through a lot more questions to be sure, but it sounds like we disagree a hell of a lot less than justifies this many posts back and forth. Realism does not require general moral laws as simple to consume as 'killing is wrong'. Just that there are some knowable moral truths, which could be about particulars. (I don't see this reducing everything to "choice" but we should probably quit while we're ahead).
This actually reminds me a lot of a something that happened to a professor in my department. She's a Foucault scholar, among other things, and she gave a talk in which she argued that Foucault is a moral realist to the shock of all the social scientists present. They thought that moral realism required adherence to simple rule systems like in utilitarianism, which Foucault did not endorse.
But that's not what philosophers mean by moral realism, and you'll see it's not entailed by any of the conditions I specify. '
On July 30 2013 03:49 Spekulatius wrote: Despite having browsed the numerous sources provided by the OP, I still do not fully grasp why I cannot call myself a moral relativist anymore. What exactly happenend to the term?
Did you read the "long story" spoiler? If you think that moral predicates have a hidden indexical element in them tied to the moral code of a person's society, then you should continue to be happy calling yourself a relativist and select "other" in the poll. But you should keep in mind that this is a linguistic claim and the types of evidence standardly marshaled for such claims seems to count against this. That said, there are a number of complications here that would require more explanation of formal semantics than I feel would be productive right now.
Alternatively, you may basically think along the lines of an error theorist that moral predicates behave as though there were a non-relative morality based on categorical imperatives even though there are in fact no categorical imperatives for them to answer to. This would make such claims systematically false. If you felt that the best response to this is a linguistic reform wherein we interpret our claims with hidden indexicals, then you could call yourself a different time of relativist. But for the purposes of the poll you would be an error theorist.
I find the semantics hard to get as a non-native speaker. Same goes for the word "indexical".
My view - that I always thought to be named "moral relativism" - simply says:
There are no true moral absolutes.
This - to me - means that a statement can only be thought to be absolutely morally true when we presuppose that the assumption that it's founded on is universal. And I'm saying such a universally true statement doesn't exist.
Let's take the statement "killing is wrong". This is morally true if and only if we presuppose the existence of another statement which leads up to the "killing is wrong" statement. This other statement would be "human life must not be infringed".
The latter statement is not universal though. Violating someone's right to life is fine under some circumstances. For some people. In some cultures.
Fundamentalists think it's ok to kill non-believers. Presidents starting a war on other countries think it's ok to kill (at least) soldiers of either side. Most people think it's ok to kill in self-defense. etc...
And in the same way no statement can be logically deduced from a universal statement as the ultimate source of a moral statement - the first step to the chain of argumentation - is always someone saying "I feel that X is right".
Thus relativism.
Now, am I right and old-fashioned in calling this relativism? Or simply wrong and it's really error theory?
You seem to be conflating a sort of particularism with relativism. That there are no moral absolutes can be interpreted in two ways. For one (particularism), we might say that there are no invariant moral properties: there is no feature of a state of affairs that always makes the same moral contribution to every situation. So, for instance, "killing" does not count as an invariant property, because sometimes killing is bad (e.g. when it is done to babies for no reason), but other times it is good (e.g. when it is done to stop someone who is doing murders).
The other sort (relativism), which is what I think you're trying to go for, would say the moral significance of any state of affairs depends on certain facts about the moral beliefs of the participants (both those participating in and those judging, I would guess you think). But you have not done any work to support this view. Just because "fundamentalists think it's ok to kill non-believers" means neither 1) it is not an absolute (as in having invariant moral significance) truth that it isn't okay to kill non-believers nor 2) that it's okay for fundamentalists to kill non-believers. These latter claims (which, again, are different) need a lot more to build up to them, which your basic argument, viz. that morality is always founded upon subjective intuitions, falls quite short of.
And it's strange that you conflate particularism about morality with relativism. You suggest that both of the following statements contradict the notion that "human life must not be infringed" is a universally true statement: 1) "Fundamentalists think it's ok to kill non-believers." 2) "Most people think it's ok to kill in self-defense." But, if the distinction here is at all clear, these are two very different problems. The former looks like a mistake, or at least a disagreement with the moral code typical of modern-day Westerners, whereas the latter is a loophole in our universal. Whether the latter can be properly patched up is uncertain, but certainly the epistemic work you are requiring these universal statements to do ("This - to me - means that a statement can only be thought to be absolutely morally true when we presuppose that the assumption that it's founded on is universal.") is something that can be done with more modest kinds of grounding. For this, you might be interested in reading Jonathan Dancy's Ethics Without Principles.
The former contradiction to absolute statements is no contradiction at all. A vast number of obstacles stand in the way of this consideration disproving the notion that "human life must not be infringed." For one, people's beliefs about morality are not necessarily the ultimate ground of the moral truth (maybe you could demonstrate this?). But beyond this, the insertion of terms like "...according to modern-day Westerners" or whatever is no case against the absoluteness of any moral claim. That is to say, it doesn't require us, as modern-day Westerners, to rethink whether any given moral claim is true. It brings no evidence to bear to the contrary, it doesn't undermine our assumptions, etc.
You have a very confused stance that seems to intermingle particularism with error theory, particularism with relativism, and relativism with error theory. Even a casual acquaintance with these topics should be enough to untangle the weird mess of opinions you have now, and then you could come to more clarity about what exactly you (wrongly) believe.
Firstly: well yes I am confused. I've never studied philosophy so I naturally mix up those theories that I've never heard of before. That's why I asked for clarification in the first place.
Secondly, I'm not sure why you think the burden of proof is not on you to prove any of your assumptions of which you deduce the existence of absolute moral truths. That seems like the epitomy of arrogance to me. "We're modern westerners so fuck people who think differently, may they have to prove us wrong."
Thirdly, you ask me how I come to conclude that there is no objective, absolute moral truth. I tried to explain in some of my posts that every experience and every thought is being processed by your brain. There is not a single thought or feeling or judgement that is not touched by the particularity of your own brain. Thus, a thought/judgment/feeling cannot be thought of without being influenced by your own personality. So naturally, there will never be a consensus on any moral statement. Now you will retort that the lack of consensus does not necessarily mean there is no such thing as absolute moral truths. Asking me to disprove this beyond any doubt is like asking me to disprove god. Which is, and I'm restating my second point, not my duty, but yours.
I didn't purport that there were any absolute moral truths. Being myself a particularist, I don't think there are any. In any case, I was only trying to show that you hadn't successfully argued for your own views, not that your conclusions were wrong. I could do that if you wanted.
Also, I wasn't trying to say that our (modern-day Western) views are right and universal and everyone else has to disprove us. I was saying that, given that we have a certain kind of moral framework, the fact that our moral statements would be wrong in another framework is no argument at all against the absolute nature of our moral statements. I could just have easily have used Australian aboriginals or whatever as my example. It is no problem to the absoluteness of an aboriginal's moral claim that other cultures make different moral claims that are true for them, unless we interpret "absoluteness" in a strange way. In some logics, you have the law of the excluded middle, and in others you don't. This doesn't mean that statements in a logic that has the LEM are non-absolute within that logic; it just means there are other systems where it would be false. But given that we always speak from within a system, we would be committing a kind of conceptual confusion if we thought that disagreement from other systems was a stain on the value of our own statements.
Consider a scientist's deduction that evolution is true. Within a different framework that has wildly different assumptions about reality, say 14th-century Catholicism, evolution isn't true (given the kind of extreme relativism you want to invoke, that is). But this doesn't mean that the scientist needs to take that into account. The scientist's rules for deduction do not involve "What do 14th-century Catholics think?" just as our rules for morality do not involve "What do Australian aboriginals think?" (Or, well, they might include such a premise, but it isn't a necessary fact about any moral system whatsoever)
Your argument for why there can't be consensus on moral statements is weird. Every part of it before the conclusion applies perfectly well to all facts, and I don't think that the fact that my brain has to process the fact that the sun is hot means that there can't be consensus about it. Did you mean to say that there can be no consensus about any fact ever (surely a queer view), or did you forget to put in your premise that restricts the scope of the argument to just moral statements?
I don't much like burden of proof arguments, but yours has a hole in it so I'll try to point it out in a clear way. You said this: "you ask me how I come to conclude that there is no objective, absolute moral truth" and gave me an argument that led up to "there will never be a consensus on any moral statement," and then you concluded that it was up to me to disprove the link between that latter statement and "there is no such thing as absolute moral truths." I don't see why I need to disprove that at all, especially if I was just doing a bit of psychological investigation about you: I asked what you think the link is, more or less, between the impossibility of consensus and the impossibility of absolute truth w/r/t morality. I can't provide a disproof of the link you have in mind before you state what kind of a link you have in mind. If you want me to give you a generally applicable one, I can try to do that, but I don't think I've obligated myself to do so.
Also, I don't think I ever did actually ask you how you came to conclude that. I just tried to demonstrate that your arguments for your view betrayed a high amount of conceptual confusion. If you would like me to argue against your conclusion, then sure, please do tell me how you reached it.
Damn you type fast.
1. Ok so we agree on the fact that simply because someone else has a diverging opinion on a subject from you this does not mean you are necessarily less right about assuming it. Good.
2. And yes, I do not mean we cannot all agree on the sun being hot. It is at least theoretically possible given we exclude blind people who doubt the existence of the sun and think it's a giant lightbulb and those people who suffer from an illness that makes them incapable of perceiving temperature. Still - and there you certainly agree with me - people agreeing on something doesn't make a statement true just as much as disagreeing on it doesn't make it untrue (see 1.). I must have expressed myself unprecisely before.
3. What I'm trying to argue is this: morality is a judgment. Judgments are passed by humans. It is thus impossible to conceive a judgment that is abstract from a human mind. Which leads me to conclude there is no non-subjective morality.
This is what it boils down to. Nobody's ever challenged me to phrase my view though. Please tell me what you think about it.
"Subjective" does not mean "created by a human mind." The distinction between subjective and objective (albeit a poor and vague one) essentially runs: subjective things are just expressions of the opinions of a subject, but objective things are facts about some object. Anyway, I won't work with this terminology and I'll try to talk about what you actually have in mind.
It seems like you'd want to say that somehow human grasping of the objects of perception taints them, or otherwise distorts them. Would you say that's a fair characterization? So even if objects were really X, Y, and Z, we can only see them as X*, Y*, and Z*, which is what these properties turn out to be after they've gone through the distortion of the human mind. And you want to say that (I guess?) these distortions are always different for each different human, so we can't have complete agreement (in the case of morality). If this is what you mean there's a lot packed into it, so please tell me whether that's a good description of your view.
(By the way, you should remember that just because all of your arguments came from the same source (you) doesn't mean they contribute to the same conclusions. Moral particularism doesn't mean morality is subjective, moral relativism doesn't mean consensus is impossible, and so forth. I'm only going to focus on "there is no non-subjective morality")
Almost.
My view goes even further. I say there is no X, Y and Z in the first place. I claim they're not just distorted, but they rather don't even exist in the "outside" world. Unlike scientific truths, X, Y and Z as moral absolutes are statements that are not to be found and perceived, they rather only come into existence by the functioning of the human mind. And as such, I argue it is impossible to have a judgment without someone passing it. Which in my eyes makes it ultimately subjective.
How are you teasing apart scientific and moral judgments here? Why is it that with, say, the tools of physics I can get some access to things in the world (maybe distorted or not), but morality has absolutely no link with the world at all? Would you like to say that we "project" our moral feelings onto the physical world, and we have (distorted) access to the physical world, but all our projected moral judgments have no basis in the reality of the world?
Ignore the tools of physics for once. It's not about accessing the outside world, it's about if there theoretically can be truth without someone who's thoughtfully approaching the issue.
The distinction I'm making is as follows: a) Newton's law being true or false is a subject that is untouched by the circumstance that a human mind is thinking about it. The question can theoretically be answered without a human pondering about it. In other words, in the equation that proves or disproves Newton's law, there is no variable for a human actor. b) On the other hand, an action or omission being morally right or wrong can never be argued without the existence of a brain which is passing judgment. A moral judgment, in the shape of an equation, necessarily has M as a factor - M being the human mind. Without a mind, there's no judgment. And without judgment, no morality.
On July 30 2013 06:09 WhiteDog wrote: [quote] Yes and we go back to the question : how do you evaluate the truthness of a moral statement every being equal ?
I'll quote a previous post : [quote] You only respond to that that moral statement behave like scientific assertions, but I can't see an epistemologist agreeing on that. The history of philosophy as I know it has actually made a clear cut between what is refutable - through experience - and what is not (this is one of the main subject in the critic of pure reason, or the book "What is thinking ?" by Heiddegger).
This is how scientific evaluate the truthness of a statement, and not by some abstract discussion on the logic of the said statement : they test the assertion over and over through experimentation, and if the result is the same over and over, then the statement is judged as true.
I never claimed that moral assertions are exactly like scientific ones. I just claimed that they share with science the three features that I labeled earlier that have been used in epistemic arguments against realism. This on its own refutes those specific arguments as long as we should be realists about science.
On the question of "established techniques", we have to ask "Established by who?" Well, by scientists. They certainly aren't agreed on by everyone. And before several hundred years ago there wasn't any community that practiced them consistently.[1] Before that time, was it the case that there were no non-relative truths about the laws of nature? Did the creation of the scientific community bring them into existence?
There already are communities of people discussing ethical questions with a fairly wide amount of methodological agreement. Not everyone is a part of them, but not everyone is a part of the scientific community either. Do any of these ethical communities have a method of assessing ethical truth as good as the scientists have for their domain? On the hard questions of ethics, I'm inclined to say obviously not. But for simpler ethical truths I'm happy to endorse how people currently go about assessing them, and I'm completely open to better methods being developed in ethics just as they were in science. None of this will make ethics a science, but it could get better.
[1] For the sake of argument here I'm speaking as though the epistemic principles governing science are a whole lot more precise than they actually are. Nobody has a science algorithm.
Interesting, when I say that epistemologists would not agree with you on the fact that scientific knowledge has the same properties as philosophical assertions, you show me a survey with no clue on that. Am I supposed to see that 62% of the epistemologist are moral realists ?
In 1950, 90% of the philosophers believed in god. That doesn't mean they were right (or wrong).
First, do you actually have data on that last claim? It would surprise me greatly (at least in an anglophone context), but I have no data of my own.
Second, how on earth are you accusing me of making an argument from authority? You introduced the notion that the experts (i.e., epistemologists) disagreed with me. I was merely rebutting that point. If anyone appealed to authority you did.
Third, as the OP indicates, realism entails that we can know ethical truths. Since I never claimed (and don't think) that ethical truths are exactly the same as scientific ones from an epistemic perspective, it would be impossible for them to agree with me that they are identical. But that answer does clearly indicate that they think the methodology for assessing ethical truths is good enough for knowledge.
They believe that we can know ethical truth (66% of them) but I'm still waiting for the answer on how are you supposed to judge which judgement is more true than the other outside of its context. You answer me by always disgressing to another subject.
Clearly yes or no, do you think that epistemologist think you can experiment moral statement like you can experiment the law of physics ? If not, how do you refute or falsify a moral statement ? If you refute a moral statement by the intermediary of something that is not proven, not falsifiable, historic or sociologic, then mathematically, how can your moral statements be true universally ?
I've already stated that you can't perform an experiment like you can in natural sciences to assess ethical truths.
That was my only point, when I asked if they consider that moral statement behave like scientific laws.
I also already gave you a simple example of how you refute a moral claim (the nazi counterexample to the claim that lying is always wrong). You felt you could disregard this argument as historical and sociological without supporting those claims. I don't know what either of us can gain from rehearsing those steps again.
I said that what you did can be done with every moral statements: Let's say I have the opportunity to kill Hitler before he becomes what he is. It would be moral right ? Would that make murder morally acceptable always and everywhere ? If a man and a woman are both locked in a cage with no water and food, and the only way to live for the man is to rape the woman, would that make it morally acceptable ? On the other side, I asked you to give me a moral statement that will always be true and I'm still waiting for it.
Why would that make it the case that murder is always and everywhere morally acceptable? In my example, the counterexample (of the form: Some x is an act of lying which is not morally wrong) was logically inconsistent with the claim it was a counterexample to (of the form: all x's that are acts of lying are morally wrong). It literally contradicted the ethical claim. You're example attempts to conclude "all x that are y are good" from "some x that is y is good". Not sure why that should even sound plausible.
On the rape example, I'm not entirely sure, but I'd lean towards that act being unacceptable. I've already stated that it's harder to know the answers to difficult ethical questions, which should be a truism.
More generally, I find your attempted counterexamples odd in form. Relativists think human perceptions determine what is "right". So you'd expect them to show what is "right" varying in accordance with what people perceive to be "right". But your examples aren't of that form. You're varying the causal effects of a given action to derive counterexamples. Realists already accept that the effects of an act will affect whether or not it is moral, so why are your examples supposed to threaten realists in the first place?
On that note, I don't see why you think I have to provide you with a universally quantified moral statement that I take to be true. Why can't I know about particular acts being wrong, like a specific genocide, without thinking that all genocides are wrong ? There's hardly a general logical principle that forbids me from knowing about particular cases prior to knowing about general rules, and in fact such a situation appears to be the norm. Its being wrong to torture babies for fun seems like a good stab at one though.
Here I don't understand at all. Relativism to me is not the belief that human perceptions determine what is "right", it is the belief that there are no absolute and transcendantal reference to beliefs and morals. I don't think that it is impossible to define, if you go deep down in the context of every actions, what is right or wrong. I consider that it is impossible to define a right or wrong everything equal. Because that absolute reference does not exist, I have no moral ground to compare the value of a moral statement to another moral statement outside of its context. I cannot "evaluate" the "truthness" of my statement "everything equal".
As I said in my previous posts : "Murder is wrong today"; "Murder is not wrong in war", etc. I can't get out of the historical and sociological context in which I make those statements.
This is why, I consider absolute moral statement to be a choice and nothing else.
I don't know how to parse this sentence, but it sounds unrelated to the question of whether or not you made up the statistic about the number of theist philosophers in 1950.
Ho yes I made that up. Didn't understood the question.
Well, we'd need to go through a lot more questions to be sure, but it sounds like we disagree a hell of a lot less than justifies this many posts back and forth. Realism does not require general moral laws as simple to consume as 'killing is wrong'. Just that there are some knowable moral truths, which could be about particulars. (I don't see this reducing everything to "choice" but we should probably quit while we're ahead).
This actually reminds me a lot of a something that happened to a professor in my department. She's a Foucault scholar, among other things, and she gave a talk in which she argued that Foucault is a moral realist to the shock of all the social scientists present. They thought that moral realism required adherence to simple rule systems like in utilitarianism, which Foucault did not endorse.
But that's not what philosophers mean by moral realism, and you'll see it's not entailed by any of the conditions I specify. '
From the way I see it, there might be some kind of cultural misunderstanding, because my definition of relativism (the belief that there are no absolute and transcendantal reference to beliefs and morals) is basically the word by word definition of relativism from the french article of the wikipedia. It is also more or less the definition that I've came to cross by through my study. In the same wikipedia article they define moral (or ethical) relativism as the position of thinking that consists of saying that it is not possible to order moral values through the use of classification criteria.
According to this, realism and relativism are not strictly opposed - they just talk about different level of argumentation.
Your exemple is really interesting too. It is true that most of the people I know would instantly be irritated at the idea that Foucault is a moral realist. The problem is that when I read "ethical discourse is cognitive (or, fact-stating; or, truth-evaluable)" and that "some ethical statements are true", I instantly think "true all things equals", or truth evaluable all things equals. I think a social scientist would make the distinction between moral practice (in the context) and moral discurve (all things equal).
Did you read the "long story" spoiler? If you think that moral predicates have a hidden indexical element in them tied to the moral code of a person's society, then you should continue to be happy calling yourself a relativist and select "other" in the poll. But you should keep in mind that this is a linguistic claim and the types of evidence standardly marshaled for such claims seems to count against this. That said, there are a number of complications here that would require more explanation of formal semantics than I feel would be productive right now.
Alternatively, you may basically think along the lines of an error theorist that moral predicates behave as though there were a non-relative morality based on categorical imperatives even though there are in fact no categorical imperatives for them to answer to. This would make such claims systematically false. If you felt that the best response to this is a linguistic reform wherein we interpret our claims with hidden indexicals, then you could call yourself a different time of relativist. But for the purposes of the poll you would be an error theorist.
I find the semantics hard to get as a non-native speaker. Same goes for the word "indexical".
My view - that I always thought to be named "moral relativism" - simply says:
There are no true moral absolutes.
This - to me - means that a statement can only be thought to be absolutely morally true when we presuppose that the assumption that it's founded on is universal. And I'm saying such a universally true statement doesn't exist.
Let's take the statement "killing is wrong". This is morally true if and only if we presuppose the existence of another statement which leads up to the "killing is wrong" statement. This other statement would be "human life must not be infringed".
The latter statement is not universal though. Violating someone's right to life is fine under some circumstances. For some people. In some cultures.
Fundamentalists think it's ok to kill non-believers. Presidents starting a war on other countries think it's ok to kill (at least) soldiers of either side. Most people think it's ok to kill in self-defense. etc...
And in the same way no statement can be logically deduced from a universal statement as the ultimate source of a moral statement - the first step to the chain of argumentation - is always someone saying "I feel that X is right".
Thus relativism.
Now, am I right and old-fashioned in calling this relativism? Or simply wrong and it's really error theory?
You seem to be conflating a sort of particularism with relativism. That there are no moral absolutes can be interpreted in two ways. For one (particularism), we might say that there are no invariant moral properties: there is no feature of a state of affairs that always makes the same moral contribution to every situation. So, for instance, "killing" does not count as an invariant property, because sometimes killing is bad (e.g. when it is done to babies for no reason), but other times it is good (e.g. when it is done to stop someone who is doing murders).
The other sort (relativism), which is what I think you're trying to go for, would say the moral significance of any state of affairs depends on certain facts about the moral beliefs of the participants (both those participating in and those judging, I would guess you think). But you have not done any work to support this view. Just because "fundamentalists think it's ok to kill non-believers" means neither 1) it is not an absolute (as in having invariant moral significance) truth that it isn't okay to kill non-believers nor 2) that it's okay for fundamentalists to kill non-believers. These latter claims (which, again, are different) need a lot more to build up to them, which your basic argument, viz. that morality is always founded upon subjective intuitions, falls quite short of.
And it's strange that you conflate particularism about morality with relativism. You suggest that both of the following statements contradict the notion that "human life must not be infringed" is a universally true statement: 1) "Fundamentalists think it's ok to kill non-believers." 2) "Most people think it's ok to kill in self-defense." But, if the distinction here is at all clear, these are two very different problems. The former looks like a mistake, or at least a disagreement with the moral code typical of modern-day Westerners, whereas the latter is a loophole in our universal. Whether the latter can be properly patched up is uncertain, but certainly the epistemic work you are requiring these universal statements to do ("This - to me - means that a statement can only be thought to be absolutely morally true when we presuppose that the assumption that it's founded on is universal.") is something that can be done with more modest kinds of grounding. For this, you might be interested in reading Jonathan Dancy's Ethics Without Principles.
The former contradiction to absolute statements is no contradiction at all. A vast number of obstacles stand in the way of this consideration disproving the notion that "human life must not be infringed." For one, people's beliefs about morality are not necessarily the ultimate ground of the moral truth (maybe you could demonstrate this?). But beyond this, the insertion of terms like "...according to modern-day Westerners" or whatever is no case against the absoluteness of any moral claim. That is to say, it doesn't require us, as modern-day Westerners, to rethink whether any given moral claim is true. It brings no evidence to bear to the contrary, it doesn't undermine our assumptions, etc.
You have a very confused stance that seems to intermingle particularism with error theory, particularism with relativism, and relativism with error theory. Even a casual acquaintance with these topics should be enough to untangle the weird mess of opinions you have now, and then you could come to more clarity about what exactly you (wrongly) believe.
Firstly: well yes I am confused. I've never studied philosophy so I naturally mix up those theories that I've never heard of before. That's why I asked for clarification in the first place.
Secondly, I'm not sure why you think the burden of proof is not on you to prove any of your assumptions of which you deduce the existence of absolute moral truths. That seems like the epitomy of arrogance to me. "We're modern westerners so fuck people who think differently, may they have to prove us wrong."
Thirdly, you ask me how I come to conclude that there is no objective, absolute moral truth. I tried to explain in some of my posts that every experience and every thought is being processed by your brain. There is not a single thought or feeling or judgement that is not touched by the particularity of your own brain. Thus, a thought/judgment/feeling cannot be thought of without being influenced by your own personality. So naturally, there will never be a consensus on any moral statement. Now you will retort that the lack of consensus does not necessarily mean there is no such thing as absolute moral truths. Asking me to disprove this beyond any doubt is like asking me to disprove god. Which is, and I'm restating my second point, not my duty, but yours.
I didn't purport that there were any absolute moral truths. Being myself a particularist, I don't think there are any. In any case, I was only trying to show that you hadn't successfully argued for your own views, not that your conclusions were wrong. I could do that if you wanted.
Also, I wasn't trying to say that our (modern-day Western) views are right and universal and everyone else has to disprove us. I was saying that, given that we have a certain kind of moral framework, the fact that our moral statements would be wrong in another framework is no argument at all against the absolute nature of our moral statements. I could just have easily have used Australian aboriginals or whatever as my example. It is no problem to the absoluteness of an aboriginal's moral claim that other cultures make different moral claims that are true for them, unless we interpret "absoluteness" in a strange way. In some logics, you have the law of the excluded middle, and in others you don't. This doesn't mean that statements in a logic that has the LEM are non-absolute within that logic; it just means there are other systems where it would be false. But given that we always speak from within a system, we would be committing a kind of conceptual confusion if we thought that disagreement from other systems was a stain on the value of our own statements.
Consider a scientist's deduction that evolution is true. Within a different framework that has wildly different assumptions about reality, say 14th-century Catholicism, evolution isn't true (given the kind of extreme relativism you want to invoke, that is). But this doesn't mean that the scientist needs to take that into account. The scientist's rules for deduction do not involve "What do 14th-century Catholics think?" just as our rules for morality do not involve "What do Australian aboriginals think?" (Or, well, they might include such a premise, but it isn't a necessary fact about any moral system whatsoever)
Your argument for why there can't be consensus on moral statements is weird. Every part of it before the conclusion applies perfectly well to all facts, and I don't think that the fact that my brain has to process the fact that the sun is hot means that there can't be consensus about it. Did you mean to say that there can be no consensus about any fact ever (surely a queer view), or did you forget to put in your premise that restricts the scope of the argument to just moral statements?
I don't much like burden of proof arguments, but yours has a hole in it so I'll try to point it out in a clear way. You said this: "you ask me how I come to conclude that there is no objective, absolute moral truth" and gave me an argument that led up to "there will never be a consensus on any moral statement," and then you concluded that it was up to me to disprove the link between that latter statement and "there is no such thing as absolute moral truths." I don't see why I need to disprove that at all, especially if I was just doing a bit of psychological investigation about you: I asked what you think the link is, more or less, between the impossibility of consensus and the impossibility of absolute truth w/r/t morality. I can't provide a disproof of the link you have in mind before you state what kind of a link you have in mind. If you want me to give you a generally applicable one, I can try to do that, but I don't think I've obligated myself to do so.
Also, I don't think I ever did actually ask you how you came to conclude that. I just tried to demonstrate that your arguments for your view betrayed a high amount of conceptual confusion. If you would like me to argue against your conclusion, then sure, please do tell me how you reached it.
Damn you type fast.
1. Ok so we agree on the fact that simply because someone else has a diverging opinion on a subject from you this does not mean you are necessarily less right about assuming it. Good.
2. And yes, I do not mean we cannot all agree on the sun being hot. It is at least theoretically possible given we exclude blind people who doubt the existence of the sun and think it's a giant lightbulb and those people who suffer from an illness that makes them incapable of perceiving temperature. Still - and there you certainly agree with me - people agreeing on something doesn't make a statement true just as much as disagreeing on it doesn't make it untrue (see 1.). I must have expressed myself unprecisely before.
3. What I'm trying to argue is this: morality is a judgment. Judgments are passed by humans. It is thus impossible to conceive a judgment that is abstract from a human mind. Which leads me to conclude there is no non-subjective morality.
This is what it boils down to. Nobody's ever challenged me to phrase my view though. Please tell me what you think about it.
"Subjective" does not mean "created by a human mind." The distinction between subjective and objective (albeit a poor and vague one) essentially runs: subjective things are just expressions of the opinions of a subject, but objective things are facts about some object. Anyway, I won't work with this terminology and I'll try to talk about what you actually have in mind.
It seems like you'd want to say that somehow human grasping of the objects of perception taints them, or otherwise distorts them. Would you say that's a fair characterization? So even if objects were really X, Y, and Z, we can only see them as X*, Y*, and Z*, which is what these properties turn out to be after they've gone through the distortion of the human mind. And you want to say that (I guess?) these distortions are always different for each different human, so we can't have complete agreement (in the case of morality). If this is what you mean there's a lot packed into it, so please tell me whether that's a good description of your view.
(By the way, you should remember that just because all of your arguments came from the same source (you) doesn't mean they contribute to the same conclusions. Moral particularism doesn't mean morality is subjective, moral relativism doesn't mean consensus is impossible, and so forth. I'm only going to focus on "there is no non-subjective morality")
Almost.
My view goes even further. I say there is no X, Y and Z in the first place. I claim they're not just distorted, but they rather don't even exist in the "outside" world. Unlike scientific truths, X, Y and Z as moral absolutes are statements that are not to be found and perceived, they rather only come into existence by the functioning of the human mind. And as such, I argue it is impossible to have a judgment without someone passing it. Which in my eyes makes it ultimately subjective.
How are you teasing apart scientific and moral judgments here? Why is it that with, say, the tools of physics I can get some access to things in the world (maybe distorted or not), but morality has absolutely no link with the world at all? Would you like to say that we "project" our moral feelings onto the physical world, and we have (distorted) access to the physical world, but all our projected moral judgments have no basis in the reality of the world?
Ignore the tools of physics for once. It's not about accessing the outside world, it's about if there theoretically can be truth without someone who's thoughtfully approaching the issue.
The distinction I'm making is as follows: a) Newton's law being true or false is a subject that is untouched by the circumstance that a human mind is thinking about it. The question can theoretically be answered without a human pondering about it. In other words, in the equation that proves or disproves Newton's law, there is no variable for a human actor. b) On the other hand, an action or omission being morally right or wrong can never be argued without the existence of a brain which is passing judgment. A moral judgment, in the shape of an equation, necessarily has M as a factor - M being the human mind. Without a mind, there's no judgment. And without judgment, no morality.
It's all in our heads.
Okay, I see the distinction you're trying to make, but I don't know why you would want to make such a distinction. Barring the naivety of a), I don't see how you can properly make moral judgments distinct in such a way that they become totally subjective. You might say "well it's just forms of interpretations we impose on physical objects" but this is something physicists do, too. The notions of force, energy, quantum spin, etc. are all interpretations we put over the physical facts; we could describe them differently. So if you said that "we can't consider the truth of a moral judgment without thinking about the actual system of morals that some human holds," you haven't actually separated moral judgment from scientific judgment.
It seems to me that morality has a kind of mind-independence very similar to that of the laws of physics. If I judge that murder is wrong and then I die, I don't think that murder stops being wrong in any way more significant than the way that Newton's laws stop being (nearly) true after I die. And just so with the other distinctions you providing: nobody can ever argue about physical laws without a brain passing judgment, and there can be no judgment without a mind.
I'm not saying your distinction is wrong, but I don't know what leads you to believe it's true. Moreover, I don't even see what you gain from believing it's true. The statement "all morality is necessarily the judgment of a mind" doesn't seem to explain the nature of morality or give you any answers to moral questions or tell you whether all moral statements are false. Surely the distinction between morality and more rigorous kinds of facts doesn't rest on the fact that morality is always the judgment of a mind, since that applies to just about every kind of fact I can think of, too.
On July 30 2013 04:15 Spekulatius wrote: [quote] I find the semantics hard to get as a non-native speaker. Same goes for the word "indexical".
My view - that I always thought to be named "moral relativism" - simply says:
There are no true moral absolutes.
This - to me - means that a statement can only be thought to be absolutely morally true when we presuppose that the assumption that it's founded on is universal. And I'm saying such a universally true statement doesn't exist.
Let's take the statement "killing is wrong". This is morally true if and only if we presuppose the existence of another statement which leads up to the "killing is wrong" statement. This other statement would be "human life must not be infringed".
The latter statement is not universal though. Violating someone's right to life is fine under some circumstances. For some people. In some cultures.
Fundamentalists think it's ok to kill non-believers. Presidents starting a war on other countries think it's ok to kill (at least) soldiers of either side. Most people think it's ok to kill in self-defense. etc...
And in the same way no statement can be logically deduced from a universal statement as the ultimate source of a moral statement - the first step to the chain of argumentation - is always someone saying "I feel that X is right".
Thus relativism.
Now, am I right and old-fashioned in calling this relativism? Or simply wrong and it's really error theory?
You seem to be conflating a sort of particularism with relativism. That there are no moral absolutes can be interpreted in two ways. For one (particularism), we might say that there are no invariant moral properties: there is no feature of a state of affairs that always makes the same moral contribution to every situation. So, for instance, "killing" does not count as an invariant property, because sometimes killing is bad (e.g. when it is done to babies for no reason), but other times it is good (e.g. when it is done to stop someone who is doing murders).
The other sort (relativism), which is what I think you're trying to go for, would say the moral significance of any state of affairs depends on certain facts about the moral beliefs of the participants (both those participating in and those judging, I would guess you think). But you have not done any work to support this view. Just because "fundamentalists think it's ok to kill non-believers" means neither 1) it is not an absolute (as in having invariant moral significance) truth that it isn't okay to kill non-believers nor 2) that it's okay for fundamentalists to kill non-believers. These latter claims (which, again, are different) need a lot more to build up to them, which your basic argument, viz. that morality is always founded upon subjective intuitions, falls quite short of.
And it's strange that you conflate particularism about morality with relativism. You suggest that both of the following statements contradict the notion that "human life must not be infringed" is a universally true statement: 1) "Fundamentalists think it's ok to kill non-believers." 2) "Most people think it's ok to kill in self-defense." But, if the distinction here is at all clear, these are two very different problems. The former looks like a mistake, or at least a disagreement with the moral code typical of modern-day Westerners, whereas the latter is a loophole in our universal. Whether the latter can be properly patched up is uncertain, but certainly the epistemic work you are requiring these universal statements to do ("This - to me - means that a statement can only be thought to be absolutely morally true when we presuppose that the assumption that it's founded on is universal.") is something that can be done with more modest kinds of grounding. For this, you might be interested in reading Jonathan Dancy's Ethics Without Principles.
The former contradiction to absolute statements is no contradiction at all. A vast number of obstacles stand in the way of this consideration disproving the notion that "human life must not be infringed." For one, people's beliefs about morality are not necessarily the ultimate ground of the moral truth (maybe you could demonstrate this?). But beyond this, the insertion of terms like "...according to modern-day Westerners" or whatever is no case against the absoluteness of any moral claim. That is to say, it doesn't require us, as modern-day Westerners, to rethink whether any given moral claim is true. It brings no evidence to bear to the contrary, it doesn't undermine our assumptions, etc.
You have a very confused stance that seems to intermingle particularism with error theory, particularism with relativism, and relativism with error theory. Even a casual acquaintance with these topics should be enough to untangle the weird mess of opinions you have now, and then you could come to more clarity about what exactly you (wrongly) believe.
Firstly: well yes I am confused. I've never studied philosophy so I naturally mix up those theories that I've never heard of before. That's why I asked for clarification in the first place.
Secondly, I'm not sure why you think the burden of proof is not on you to prove any of your assumptions of which you deduce the existence of absolute moral truths. That seems like the epitomy of arrogance to me. "We're modern westerners so fuck people who think differently, may they have to prove us wrong."
Thirdly, you ask me how I come to conclude that there is no objective, absolute moral truth. I tried to explain in some of my posts that every experience and every thought is being processed by your brain. There is not a single thought or feeling or judgement that is not touched by the particularity of your own brain. Thus, a thought/judgment/feeling cannot be thought of without being influenced by your own personality. So naturally, there will never be a consensus on any moral statement. Now you will retort that the lack of consensus does not necessarily mean there is no such thing as absolute moral truths. Asking me to disprove this beyond any doubt is like asking me to disprove god. Which is, and I'm restating my second point, not my duty, but yours.
I didn't purport that there were any absolute moral truths. Being myself a particularist, I don't think there are any. In any case, I was only trying to show that you hadn't successfully argued for your own views, not that your conclusions were wrong. I could do that if you wanted.
Also, I wasn't trying to say that our (modern-day Western) views are right and universal and everyone else has to disprove us. I was saying that, given that we have a certain kind of moral framework, the fact that our moral statements would be wrong in another framework is no argument at all against the absolute nature of our moral statements. I could just have easily have used Australian aboriginals or whatever as my example. It is no problem to the absoluteness of an aboriginal's moral claim that other cultures make different moral claims that are true for them, unless we interpret "absoluteness" in a strange way. In some logics, you have the law of the excluded middle, and in others you don't. This doesn't mean that statements in a logic that has the LEM are non-absolute within that logic; it just means there are other systems where it would be false. But given that we always speak from within a system, we would be committing a kind of conceptual confusion if we thought that disagreement from other systems was a stain on the value of our own statements.
Consider a scientist's deduction that evolution is true. Within a different framework that has wildly different assumptions about reality, say 14th-century Catholicism, evolution isn't true (given the kind of extreme relativism you want to invoke, that is). But this doesn't mean that the scientist needs to take that into account. The scientist's rules for deduction do not involve "What do 14th-century Catholics think?" just as our rules for morality do not involve "What do Australian aboriginals think?" (Or, well, they might include such a premise, but it isn't a necessary fact about any moral system whatsoever)
Your argument for why there can't be consensus on moral statements is weird. Every part of it before the conclusion applies perfectly well to all facts, and I don't think that the fact that my brain has to process the fact that the sun is hot means that there can't be consensus about it. Did you mean to say that there can be no consensus about any fact ever (surely a queer view), or did you forget to put in your premise that restricts the scope of the argument to just moral statements?
I don't much like burden of proof arguments, but yours has a hole in it so I'll try to point it out in a clear way. You said this: "you ask me how I come to conclude that there is no objective, absolute moral truth" and gave me an argument that led up to "there will never be a consensus on any moral statement," and then you concluded that it was up to me to disprove the link between that latter statement and "there is no such thing as absolute moral truths." I don't see why I need to disprove that at all, especially if I was just doing a bit of psychological investigation about you: I asked what you think the link is, more or less, between the impossibility of consensus and the impossibility of absolute truth w/r/t morality. I can't provide a disproof of the link you have in mind before you state what kind of a link you have in mind. If you want me to give you a generally applicable one, I can try to do that, but I don't think I've obligated myself to do so.
Also, I don't think I ever did actually ask you how you came to conclude that. I just tried to demonstrate that your arguments for your view betrayed a high amount of conceptual confusion. If you would like me to argue against your conclusion, then sure, please do tell me how you reached it.
Damn you type fast.
1. Ok so we agree on the fact that simply because someone else has a diverging opinion on a subject from you this does not mean you are necessarily less right about assuming it. Good.
2. And yes, I do not mean we cannot all agree on the sun being hot. It is at least theoretically possible given we exclude blind people who doubt the existence of the sun and think it's a giant lightbulb and those people who suffer from an illness that makes them incapable of perceiving temperature. Still - and there you certainly agree with me - people agreeing on something doesn't make a statement true just as much as disagreeing on it doesn't make it untrue (see 1.). I must have expressed myself unprecisely before.
3. What I'm trying to argue is this: morality is a judgment. Judgments are passed by humans. It is thus impossible to conceive a judgment that is abstract from a human mind. Which leads me to conclude there is no non-subjective morality.
This is what it boils down to. Nobody's ever challenged me to phrase my view though. Please tell me what you think about it.
"Subjective" does not mean "created by a human mind." The distinction between subjective and objective (albeit a poor and vague one) essentially runs: subjective things are just expressions of the opinions of a subject, but objective things are facts about some object. Anyway, I won't work with this terminology and I'll try to talk about what you actually have in mind.
It seems like you'd want to say that somehow human grasping of the objects of perception taints them, or otherwise distorts them. Would you say that's a fair characterization? So even if objects were really X, Y, and Z, we can only see them as X*, Y*, and Z*, which is what these properties turn out to be after they've gone through the distortion of the human mind. And you want to say that (I guess?) these distortions are always different for each different human, so we can't have complete agreement (in the case of morality). If this is what you mean there's a lot packed into it, so please tell me whether that's a good description of your view.
(By the way, you should remember that just because all of your arguments came from the same source (you) doesn't mean they contribute to the same conclusions. Moral particularism doesn't mean morality is subjective, moral relativism doesn't mean consensus is impossible, and so forth. I'm only going to focus on "there is no non-subjective morality")
Almost.
My view goes even further. I say there is no X, Y and Z in the first place. I claim they're not just distorted, but they rather don't even exist in the "outside" world. Unlike scientific truths, X, Y and Z as moral absolutes are statements that are not to be found and perceived, they rather only come into existence by the functioning of the human mind. And as such, I argue it is impossible to have a judgment without someone passing it. Which in my eyes makes it ultimately subjective.
How are you teasing apart scientific and moral judgments here? Why is it that with, say, the tools of physics I can get some access to things in the world (maybe distorted or not), but morality has absolutely no link with the world at all? Would you like to say that we "project" our moral feelings onto the physical world, and we have (distorted) access to the physical world, but all our projected moral judgments have no basis in the reality of the world?
Ignore the tools of physics for once. It's not about accessing the outside world, it's about if there theoretically can be truth without someone who's thoughtfully approaching the issue.
The distinction I'm making is as follows: a) Newton's law being true or false is a subject that is untouched by the circumstance that a human mind is thinking about it. The question can theoretically be answered without a human pondering about it. In other words, in the equation that proves or disproves Newton's law, there is no variable for a human actor. b) On the other hand, an action or omission being morally right or wrong can never be argued without the existence of a brain which is passing judgment. A moral judgment, in the shape of an equation, necessarily has M as a factor - M being the human mind. Without a mind, there's no judgment. And without judgment, no morality.
It's all in our heads.
Okay, I see the distinction you're trying to make, but I don't know why you would want to make such a distinction. Barring the naivety of a), I don't see how you can properly make moral judgments distinct in such a way that they become totally subjective. You might say "well it's just forms of interpretations we impose on physical objects" but this is something physicists do, too. The notions of force, energy, quantum spin, etc. are all interpretations we put over the physical facts; we could describe them differently. So if you said that "we can't consider the truth of a moral judgment without thinking about the actual system of morals that some human holds," you haven't actually separated moral judgment from scientific judgment.
It seems to me that morality has a kind of mind-independence very similar to that of the laws of physics. If I judge that murder is wrong and then I die, I don't think that murder stops being wrong in any way more significant than the way that Newton's laws stop being (nearly) true after I die. And just so with the other distinctions you providing: nobody can ever argue about physical laws without a brain passing judgment, and there can be no judgment without a mind.
I'm not saying your distinction is wrong, but I don't know what leads you to believe it's true. Moreover, I don't even see what you gain from believing it's true. The statement "all morality is necessarily the judgment of a mind" doesn't seem to explain the nature of morality or give you any answers to moral questions or tell you whether all moral statements are false. Surely the distinction between morality and more rigorous kinds of facts doesn't rest on the fact that morality is always the judgment of a mind, since that applies to just about every kind of fact I can think of, too.
I'm happy we finally stopped misunderstanding each other and started actually disagreeing.
Now what I'm imagining is a world without humans. Would objects with mass still attract each other? Sure, one would say. Laws of physics apply regardless of the existence of humans or animals or any other form or conscient beholder. Laws of physics can be discovered, but their existence is not contingent on human existence. (Existence of object A with mass) + (Existence of object B with mass) = attraction
Now would morality still exist without humans? What I'm arguing is: no! How should anything that only conscient beings can produce exist without their creator? How does wheat get shaped to bread without a baker? Or, probably even more similar: How is something beautiful if there is nobody looking at it? (Event A) * (The moral "attitude" of person X) = (Moral Judgment Z)
Lastly, I do not agree with you saying laws of physics being unable to be perceived without a brain passing judgment does prove me wrong. Interpreting your perception of nature does not alter the laws of nature. It just changes your understanding of it. Nature itself remains untouched. Moral judgments are different. They are inside of you, results of an inner process. Changing yourself changes your judgment. Dying removes the judgment, it becomes null and void. Why shouldn't it?
---
btw, I'm heading to bed. It's 2AM here. I'll be responding tomorrow morning.
On July 30 2013 05:47 Lixler wrote: [quote] You seem to be conflating a sort of particularism with relativism. That there are no moral absolutes can be interpreted in two ways. For one (particularism), we might say that there are no invariant moral properties: there is no feature of a state of affairs that always makes the same moral contribution to every situation. So, for instance, "killing" does not count as an invariant property, because sometimes killing is bad (e.g. when it is done to babies for no reason), but other times it is good (e.g. when it is done to stop someone who is doing murders).
The other sort (relativism), which is what I think you're trying to go for, would say the moral significance of any state of affairs depends on certain facts about the moral beliefs of the participants (both those participating in and those judging, I would guess you think). But you have not done any work to support this view. Just because "fundamentalists think it's ok to kill non-believers" means neither 1) it is not an absolute (as in having invariant moral significance) truth that it isn't okay to kill non-believers nor 2) that it's okay for fundamentalists to kill non-believers. These latter claims (which, again, are different) need a lot more to build up to them, which your basic argument, viz. that morality is always founded upon subjective intuitions, falls quite short of.
And it's strange that you conflate particularism about morality with relativism. You suggest that both of the following statements contradict the notion that "human life must not be infringed" is a universally true statement: 1) "Fundamentalists think it's ok to kill non-believers." 2) "Most people think it's ok to kill in self-defense." But, if the distinction here is at all clear, these are two very different problems. The former looks like a mistake, or at least a disagreement with the moral code typical of modern-day Westerners, whereas the latter is a loophole in our universal. Whether the latter can be properly patched up is uncertain, but certainly the epistemic work you are requiring these universal statements to do ("This - to me - means that a statement can only be thought to be absolutely morally true when we presuppose that the assumption that it's founded on is universal.") is something that can be done with more modest kinds of grounding. For this, you might be interested in reading Jonathan Dancy's Ethics Without Principles.
The former contradiction to absolute statements is no contradiction at all. A vast number of obstacles stand in the way of this consideration disproving the notion that "human life must not be infringed." For one, people's beliefs about morality are not necessarily the ultimate ground of the moral truth (maybe you could demonstrate this?). But beyond this, the insertion of terms like "...according to modern-day Westerners" or whatever is no case against the absoluteness of any moral claim. That is to say, it doesn't require us, as modern-day Westerners, to rethink whether any given moral claim is true. It brings no evidence to bear to the contrary, it doesn't undermine our assumptions, etc.
You have a very confused stance that seems to intermingle particularism with error theory, particularism with relativism, and relativism with error theory. Even a casual acquaintance with these topics should be enough to untangle the weird mess of opinions you have now, and then you could come to more clarity about what exactly you (wrongly) believe.
Firstly: well yes I am confused. I've never studied philosophy so I naturally mix up those theories that I've never heard of before. That's why I asked for clarification in the first place.
Secondly, I'm not sure why you think the burden of proof is not on you to prove any of your assumptions of which you deduce the existence of absolute moral truths. That seems like the epitomy of arrogance to me. "We're modern westerners so fuck people who think differently, may they have to prove us wrong."
Thirdly, you ask me how I come to conclude that there is no objective, absolute moral truth. I tried to explain in some of my posts that every experience and every thought is being processed by your brain. There is not a single thought or feeling or judgement that is not touched by the particularity of your own brain. Thus, a thought/judgment/feeling cannot be thought of without being influenced by your own personality. So naturally, there will never be a consensus on any moral statement. Now you will retort that the lack of consensus does not necessarily mean there is no such thing as absolute moral truths. Asking me to disprove this beyond any doubt is like asking me to disprove god. Which is, and I'm restating my second point, not my duty, but yours.
I didn't purport that there were any absolute moral truths. Being myself a particularist, I don't think there are any. In any case, I was only trying to show that you hadn't successfully argued for your own views, not that your conclusions were wrong. I could do that if you wanted.
Also, I wasn't trying to say that our (modern-day Western) views are right and universal and everyone else has to disprove us. I was saying that, given that we have a certain kind of moral framework, the fact that our moral statements would be wrong in another framework is no argument at all against the absolute nature of our moral statements. I could just have easily have used Australian aboriginals or whatever as my example. It is no problem to the absoluteness of an aboriginal's moral claim that other cultures make different moral claims that are true for them, unless we interpret "absoluteness" in a strange way. In some logics, you have the law of the excluded middle, and in others you don't. This doesn't mean that statements in a logic that has the LEM are non-absolute within that logic; it just means there are other systems where it would be false. But given that we always speak from within a system, we would be committing a kind of conceptual confusion if we thought that disagreement from other systems was a stain on the value of our own statements.
Consider a scientist's deduction that evolution is true. Within a different framework that has wildly different assumptions about reality, say 14th-century Catholicism, evolution isn't true (given the kind of extreme relativism you want to invoke, that is). But this doesn't mean that the scientist needs to take that into account. The scientist's rules for deduction do not involve "What do 14th-century Catholics think?" just as our rules for morality do not involve "What do Australian aboriginals think?" (Or, well, they might include such a premise, but it isn't a necessary fact about any moral system whatsoever)
Your argument for why there can't be consensus on moral statements is weird. Every part of it before the conclusion applies perfectly well to all facts, and I don't think that the fact that my brain has to process the fact that the sun is hot means that there can't be consensus about it. Did you mean to say that there can be no consensus about any fact ever (surely a queer view), or did you forget to put in your premise that restricts the scope of the argument to just moral statements?
I don't much like burden of proof arguments, but yours has a hole in it so I'll try to point it out in a clear way. You said this: "you ask me how I come to conclude that there is no objective, absolute moral truth" and gave me an argument that led up to "there will never be a consensus on any moral statement," and then you concluded that it was up to me to disprove the link between that latter statement and "there is no such thing as absolute moral truths." I don't see why I need to disprove that at all, especially if I was just doing a bit of psychological investigation about you: I asked what you think the link is, more or less, between the impossibility of consensus and the impossibility of absolute truth w/r/t morality. I can't provide a disproof of the link you have in mind before you state what kind of a link you have in mind. If you want me to give you a generally applicable one, I can try to do that, but I don't think I've obligated myself to do so.
Also, I don't think I ever did actually ask you how you came to conclude that. I just tried to demonstrate that your arguments for your view betrayed a high amount of conceptual confusion. If you would like me to argue against your conclusion, then sure, please do tell me how you reached it.
Damn you type fast.
1. Ok so we agree on the fact that simply because someone else has a diverging opinion on a subject from you this does not mean you are necessarily less right about assuming it. Good.
2. And yes, I do not mean we cannot all agree on the sun being hot. It is at least theoretically possible given we exclude blind people who doubt the existence of the sun and think it's a giant lightbulb and those people who suffer from an illness that makes them incapable of perceiving temperature. Still - and there you certainly agree with me - people agreeing on something doesn't make a statement true just as much as disagreeing on it doesn't make it untrue (see 1.). I must have expressed myself unprecisely before.
3. What I'm trying to argue is this: morality is a judgment. Judgments are passed by humans. It is thus impossible to conceive a judgment that is abstract from a human mind. Which leads me to conclude there is no non-subjective morality.
This is what it boils down to. Nobody's ever challenged me to phrase my view though. Please tell me what you think about it.
"Subjective" does not mean "created by a human mind." The distinction between subjective and objective (albeit a poor and vague one) essentially runs: subjective things are just expressions of the opinions of a subject, but objective things are facts about some object. Anyway, I won't work with this terminology and I'll try to talk about what you actually have in mind.
It seems like you'd want to say that somehow human grasping of the objects of perception taints them, or otherwise distorts them. Would you say that's a fair characterization? So even if objects were really X, Y, and Z, we can only see them as X*, Y*, and Z*, which is what these properties turn out to be after they've gone through the distortion of the human mind. And you want to say that (I guess?) these distortions are always different for each different human, so we can't have complete agreement (in the case of morality). If this is what you mean there's a lot packed into it, so please tell me whether that's a good description of your view.
(By the way, you should remember that just because all of your arguments came from the same source (you) doesn't mean they contribute to the same conclusions. Moral particularism doesn't mean morality is subjective, moral relativism doesn't mean consensus is impossible, and so forth. I'm only going to focus on "there is no non-subjective morality")
Almost.
My view goes even further. I say there is no X, Y and Z in the first place. I claim they're not just distorted, but they rather don't even exist in the "outside" world. Unlike scientific truths, X, Y and Z as moral absolutes are statements that are not to be found and perceived, they rather only come into existence by the functioning of the human mind. And as such, I argue it is impossible to have a judgment without someone passing it. Which in my eyes makes it ultimately subjective.
How are you teasing apart scientific and moral judgments here? Why is it that with, say, the tools of physics I can get some access to things in the world (maybe distorted or not), but morality has absolutely no link with the world at all? Would you like to say that we "project" our moral feelings onto the physical world, and we have (distorted) access to the physical world, but all our projected moral judgments have no basis in the reality of the world?
Ignore the tools of physics for once. It's not about accessing the outside world, it's about if there theoretically can be truth without someone who's thoughtfully approaching the issue.
The distinction I'm making is as follows: a) Newton's law being true or false is a subject that is untouched by the circumstance that a human mind is thinking about it. The question can theoretically be answered without a human pondering about it. In other words, in the equation that proves or disproves Newton's law, there is no variable for a human actor. b) On the other hand, an action or omission being morally right or wrong can never be argued without the existence of a brain which is passing judgment. A moral judgment, in the shape of an equation, necessarily has M as a factor - M being the human mind. Without a mind, there's no judgment. And without judgment, no morality.
It's all in our heads.
Okay, I see the distinction you're trying to make, but I don't know why you would want to make such a distinction. Barring the naivety of a), I don't see how you can properly make moral judgments distinct in such a way that they become totally subjective. You might say "well it's just forms of interpretations we impose on physical objects" but this is something physicists do, too. The notions of force, energy, quantum spin, etc. are all interpretations we put over the physical facts; we could describe them differently. So if you said that "we can't consider the truth of a moral judgment without thinking about the actual system of morals that some human holds," you haven't actually separated moral judgment from scientific judgment.
It seems to me that morality has a kind of mind-independence very similar to that of the laws of physics. If I judge that murder is wrong and then I die, I don't think that murder stops being wrong in any way more significant than the way that Newton's laws stop being (nearly) true after I die. And just so with the other distinctions you providing: nobody can ever argue about physical laws without a brain passing judgment, and there can be no judgment without a mind.
I'm not saying your distinction is wrong, but I don't know what leads you to believe it's true. Moreover, I don't even see what you gain from believing it's true. The statement "all morality is necessarily the judgment of a mind" doesn't seem to explain the nature of morality or give you any answers to moral questions or tell you whether all moral statements are false. Surely the distinction between morality and more rigorous kinds of facts doesn't rest on the fact that morality is always the judgment of a mind, since that applies to just about every kind of fact I can think of, too.
I'm happy we finally stopped misunderstanding each other and started actually disagreeing.
Now what I'm imagining is a world without humans. Would objects with mass still attract each other? Sure, one would say. Laws of physics apply regardless of the existence of humans or animals or any other form or conscient beholder. Laws of physics can be discovered, but their existence is not contingent on human existence. (Existence of object A with mass) + (Existence of object B with mass) = attraction
Now would morality still exist without humans? What I'm arguing is: no! How should anything that only conscient beings can produce exist without their creator? How does wheat get shaped to bread without a baker? Or, probably even more similar: How is something beautiful if there is nobody looking at it? (Event A) * (The moral "attitude" of person X) = (Moral Judgment Z)
Lastly, I do not agree with you saying laws of physics being unable to be perceived without a brain passing judgment does prove me wrong. Interpreting your perception of nature does not alter the laws of nature. It just changes your understanding of it. Nature itself remains untouched. Moral judgments are different. They are inside of you, results of an inner process. Changing yourself changes your judgment. Dying removes the judgment, it becomes null and void. Why shouldn't it?
---
btw, I'm heading to bed. It's 2AM here. I'll be responding tomorrow morning.
We both agree that the world would be physically the same if all humans vanished (that is, the same minus the humans). What I'm saying is that there is a trivial notion of conceptual schemes that would keep morality around after we died, in just the same way the laws of physics would stay around.
When you say that we need to include someone's moral attitude to make a moral judgment, does this mean that person needs to be alive? No, of course not. I can judge something using the moral criteria of, say, Immanuel Kant. His system for judging morals is totally separate from his brain. His brain did historically grasp it, but the system didn't die along with him. And if we use his system, we can make all kinds of moral judgments even about a world that has no humans. (Note that every single event would be a moral non-entity, but this is because of the specific way Kant's system works. A utilitarian system would yield more rich analyses).
Now you might say: well, this system is just a fiction that we created. But my point is that physics is just the same sort of thing! Surely they are very different sorts of systems, but if you are requiring "The moral "attitude" of person X" (in my terminology, the moral system of person X)" to be factored into a moral judgment, then you ought also require "The physical "attitude" of person X" (in my terminology, the physical system of person X)" to be factored into a physical judgment.
Let's say the following two descriptions of the universe are true: utilitarianism and Newton's laws (an actually false assumption, but whatever). Now let's say all rational agents in the universe die; nobody can make any judgments, physical, moral, or otherwise. Nothing prevents us, anyway, from applying both descriptions to this new post-human universe. Two planets will still attract each other with a force proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them, and actions will still be wrong to the extent that they increase suffering. What is supposed to invalidate the moral judgment here? Surely it's just one kind of moral interpretation, but so is the physical one. Nobody would be around to judge things utilitarian-wise, but neither would anyone be around to judge things Newton-wise. I do not see any difference in the mind-independence of the facts here. There are, to be sure, a ton of other differences in these two descriptions, but none w/r/t their mind-independence.
It seems to me the kind of mind-independence you want to establish would make it impossible for us to judge the moral worth of possible worlds wherein no morally judging creatures existed. But this doesn't seem right. If I take a utilitarian view again, I will be able to rank all sorts of possible worlds without humans (e.g. a world where there are only rabbits and they only have bananas to eat will be a worse world than one where there are only monkeys and they only have bananas to eat).
On July 30 2013 05:47 Lixler wrote: [quote] You seem to be conflating a sort of particularism with relativism. That there are no moral absolutes can be interpreted in two ways. For one (particularism), we might say that there are no invariant moral properties: there is no feature of a state of affairs that always makes the same moral contribution to every situation. So, for instance, "killing" does not count as an invariant property, because sometimes killing is bad (e.g. when it is done to babies for no reason), but other times it is good (e.g. when it is done to stop someone who is doing murders).
The other sort (relativism), which is what I think you're trying to go for, would say the moral significance of any state of affairs depends on certain facts about the moral beliefs of the participants (both those participating in and those judging, I would guess you think). But you have not done any work to support this view. Just because "fundamentalists think it's ok to kill non-believers" means neither 1) it is not an absolute (as in having invariant moral significance) truth that it isn't okay to kill non-believers nor 2) that it's okay for fundamentalists to kill non-believers. These latter claims (which, again, are different) need a lot more to build up to them, which your basic argument, viz. that morality is always founded upon subjective intuitions, falls quite short of.
And it's strange that you conflate particularism about morality with relativism. You suggest that both of the following statements contradict the notion that "human life must not be infringed" is a universally true statement: 1) "Fundamentalists think it's ok to kill non-believers." 2) "Most people think it's ok to kill in self-defense." But, if the distinction here is at all clear, these are two very different problems. The former looks like a mistake, or at least a disagreement with the moral code typical of modern-day Westerners, whereas the latter is a loophole in our universal. Whether the latter can be properly patched up is uncertain, but certainly the epistemic work you are requiring these universal statements to do ("This - to me - means that a statement can only be thought to be absolutely morally true when we presuppose that the assumption that it's founded on is universal.") is something that can be done with more modest kinds of grounding. For this, you might be interested in reading Jonathan Dancy's Ethics Without Principles.
The former contradiction to absolute statements is no contradiction at all. A vast number of obstacles stand in the way of this consideration disproving the notion that "human life must not be infringed." For one, people's beliefs about morality are not necessarily the ultimate ground of the moral truth (maybe you could demonstrate this?). But beyond this, the insertion of terms like "...according to modern-day Westerners" or whatever is no case against the absoluteness of any moral claim. That is to say, it doesn't require us, as modern-day Westerners, to rethink whether any given moral claim is true. It brings no evidence to bear to the contrary, it doesn't undermine our assumptions, etc.
You have a very confused stance that seems to intermingle particularism with error theory, particularism with relativism, and relativism with error theory. Even a casual acquaintance with these topics should be enough to untangle the weird mess of opinions you have now, and then you could come to more clarity about what exactly you (wrongly) believe.
Firstly: well yes I am confused. I've never studied philosophy so I naturally mix up those theories that I've never heard of before. That's why I asked for clarification in the first place.
Secondly, I'm not sure why you think the burden of proof is not on you to prove any of your assumptions of which you deduce the existence of absolute moral truths. That seems like the epitomy of arrogance to me. "We're modern westerners so fuck people who think differently, may they have to prove us wrong."
Thirdly, you ask me how I come to conclude that there is no objective, absolute moral truth. I tried to explain in some of my posts that every experience and every thought is being processed by your brain. There is not a single thought or feeling or judgement that is not touched by the particularity of your own brain. Thus, a thought/judgment/feeling cannot be thought of without being influenced by your own personality. So naturally, there will never be a consensus on any moral statement. Now you will retort that the lack of consensus does not necessarily mean there is no such thing as absolute moral truths. Asking me to disprove this beyond any doubt is like asking me to disprove god. Which is, and I'm restating my second point, not my duty, but yours.
I didn't purport that there were any absolute moral truths. Being myself a particularist, I don't think there are any. In any case, I was only trying to show that you hadn't successfully argued for your own views, not that your conclusions were wrong. I could do that if you wanted.
Also, I wasn't trying to say that our (modern-day Western) views are right and universal and everyone else has to disprove us. I was saying that, given that we have a certain kind of moral framework, the fact that our moral statements would be wrong in another framework is no argument at all against the absolute nature of our moral statements. I could just have easily have used Australian aboriginals or whatever as my example. It is no problem to the absoluteness of an aboriginal's moral claim that other cultures make different moral claims that are true for them, unless we interpret "absoluteness" in a strange way. In some logics, you have the law of the excluded middle, and in others you don't. This doesn't mean that statements in a logic that has the LEM are non-absolute within that logic; it just means there are other systems where it would be false. But given that we always speak from within a system, we would be committing a kind of conceptual confusion if we thought that disagreement from other systems was a stain on the value of our own statements.
Consider a scientist's deduction that evolution is true. Within a different framework that has wildly different assumptions about reality, say 14th-century Catholicism, evolution isn't true (given the kind of extreme relativism you want to invoke, that is). But this doesn't mean that the scientist needs to take that into account. The scientist's rules for deduction do not involve "What do 14th-century Catholics think?" just as our rules for morality do not involve "What do Australian aboriginals think?" (Or, well, they might include such a premise, but it isn't a necessary fact about any moral system whatsoever)
Your argument for why there can't be consensus on moral statements is weird. Every part of it before the conclusion applies perfectly well to all facts, and I don't think that the fact that my brain has to process the fact that the sun is hot means that there can't be consensus about it. Did you mean to say that there can be no consensus about any fact ever (surely a queer view), or did you forget to put in your premise that restricts the scope of the argument to just moral statements?
I don't much like burden of proof arguments, but yours has a hole in it so I'll try to point it out in a clear way. You said this: "you ask me how I come to conclude that there is no objective, absolute moral truth" and gave me an argument that led up to "there will never be a consensus on any moral statement," and then you concluded that it was up to me to disprove the link between that latter statement and "there is no such thing as absolute moral truths." I don't see why I need to disprove that at all, especially if I was just doing a bit of psychological investigation about you: I asked what you think the link is, more or less, between the impossibility of consensus and the impossibility of absolute truth w/r/t morality. I can't provide a disproof of the link you have in mind before you state what kind of a link you have in mind. If you want me to give you a generally applicable one, I can try to do that, but I don't think I've obligated myself to do so.
Also, I don't think I ever did actually ask you how you came to conclude that. I just tried to demonstrate that your arguments for your view betrayed a high amount of conceptual confusion. If you would like me to argue against your conclusion, then sure, please do tell me how you reached it.
Damn you type fast.
1. Ok so we agree on the fact that simply because someone else has a diverging opinion on a subject from you this does not mean you are necessarily less right about assuming it. Good.
2. And yes, I do not mean we cannot all agree on the sun being hot. It is at least theoretically possible given we exclude blind people who doubt the existence of the sun and think it's a giant lightbulb and those people who suffer from an illness that makes them incapable of perceiving temperature. Still - and there you certainly agree with me - people agreeing on something doesn't make a statement true just as much as disagreeing on it doesn't make it untrue (see 1.). I must have expressed myself unprecisely before.
3. What I'm trying to argue is this: morality is a judgment. Judgments are passed by humans. It is thus impossible to conceive a judgment that is abstract from a human mind. Which leads me to conclude there is no non-subjective morality.
This is what it boils down to. Nobody's ever challenged me to phrase my view though. Please tell me what you think about it.
"Subjective" does not mean "created by a human mind." The distinction between subjective and objective (albeit a poor and vague one) essentially runs: subjective things are just expressions of the opinions of a subject, but objective things are facts about some object. Anyway, I won't work with this terminology and I'll try to talk about what you actually have in mind.
It seems like you'd want to say that somehow human grasping of the objects of perception taints them, or otherwise distorts them. Would you say that's a fair characterization? So even if objects were really X, Y, and Z, we can only see them as X*, Y*, and Z*, which is what these properties turn out to be after they've gone through the distortion of the human mind. And you want to say that (I guess?) these distortions are always different for each different human, so we can't have complete agreement (in the case of morality). If this is what you mean there's a lot packed into it, so please tell me whether that's a good description of your view.
(By the way, you should remember that just because all of your arguments came from the same source (you) doesn't mean they contribute to the same conclusions. Moral particularism doesn't mean morality is subjective, moral relativism doesn't mean consensus is impossible, and so forth. I'm only going to focus on "there is no non-subjective morality")
Almost.
My view goes even further. I say there is no X, Y and Z in the first place. I claim they're not just distorted, but they rather don't even exist in the "outside" world. Unlike scientific truths, X, Y and Z as moral absolutes are statements that are not to be found and perceived, they rather only come into existence by the functioning of the human mind. And as such, I argue it is impossible to have a judgment without someone passing it. Which in my eyes makes it ultimately subjective.
How are you teasing apart scientific and moral judgments here? Why is it that with, say, the tools of physics I can get some access to things in the world (maybe distorted or not), but morality has absolutely no link with the world at all? Would you like to say that we "project" our moral feelings onto the physical world, and we have (distorted) access to the physical world, but all our projected moral judgments have no basis in the reality of the world?
Ignore the tools of physics for once. It's not about accessing the outside world, it's about if there theoretically can be truth without someone who's thoughtfully approaching the issue.
The distinction I'm making is as follows: a) Newton's law being true or false is a subject that is untouched by the circumstance that a human mind is thinking about it. The question can theoretically be answered without a human pondering about it. In other words, in the equation that proves or disproves Newton's law, there is no variable for a human actor. b) On the other hand, an action or omission being morally right or wrong can never be argued without the existence of a brain which is passing judgment. A moral judgment, in the shape of an equation, necessarily has M as a factor - M being the human mind. Without a mind, there's no judgment. And without judgment, no morality.
It's all in our heads.
Okay, I see the distinction you're trying to make, but I don't know why you would want to make such a distinction. Barring the naivety of a), I don't see how you can properly make moral judgments distinct in such a way that they become totally subjective. You might say "well it's just forms of interpretations we impose on physical objects" but this is something physicists do, too. The notions of force, energy, quantum spin, etc. are all interpretations we put over the physical facts; we could describe them differently. So if you said that "we can't consider the truth of a moral judgment without thinking about the actual system of morals that some human holds," you haven't actually separated moral judgment from scientific judgment.
It seems to me that morality has a kind of mind-independence very similar to that of the laws of physics. If I judge that murder is wrong and then I die, I don't think that murder stops being wrong in any way more significant than the way that Newton's laws stop being (nearly) true after I die. And just so with the other distinctions you providing: nobody can ever argue about physical laws without a brain passing judgment, and there can be no judgment without a mind.
I'm not saying your distinction is wrong, but I don't know what leads you to believe it's true. Moreover, I don't even see what you gain from believing it's true. The statement "all morality is necessarily the judgment of a mind" doesn't seem to explain the nature of morality or give you any answers to moral questions or tell you whether all moral statements are false. Surely the distinction between morality and more rigorous kinds of facts doesn't rest on the fact that morality is always the judgment of a mind, since that applies to just about every kind of fact I can think of, too.
I'm happy we finally stopped misunderstanding each other and started actually disagreeing.
Now what I'm imagining is a world without humans. Would objects with mass still attract each other? Sure, one would say. Laws of physics apply regardless of the existence of humans or animals or any other form or conscient beholder. Laws of physics can be discovered, but their existence is not contingent on human existence. (Existence of object A with mass) + (Existence of object B with mass) = attraction
Now would morality still exist without humans? What I'm arguing is: no! How should anything that only conscient beings can produce exist without their creator? How does wheat get shaped to bread without a baker? Or, probably even more similar: How is something beautiful if there is nobody looking at it? (Event A) * (The moral "attitude" of person X) = (Moral Judgment Z)
Lastly, I do not agree with you saying laws of physics being unable to be perceived without a brain passing judgment does prove me wrong. Interpreting your perception of nature does not alter the laws of nature. It just changes your understanding of it. Nature itself remains untouched. Moral judgments are different. They are inside of you, results of an inner process. Changing yourself changes your judgment. Dying removes the judgment, it becomes null and void. Why shouldn't it?
---
btw, I'm heading to bed. It's 2AM here. I'll be responding tomorrow morning.
If morals are contingent on consciousness, which I somewhat agree with, that doesn't mean they cannot be universal truths that can be discovered in the same way physical laws of matter can be. Even if we stop to exist, the universal truths of morality don't necessarily stop. They'll be there to be rediscovered by the snorblaxians. Even if morality is contingent upon humanity that doesn't mean there aren't some universal truths, even if they only hold for humans. Just as we can say things about very specific kinds of matter. For instance, if we take a very specific Helium isotope and cool it to under 2.17 degrees Kelvin, it becomes a Bose-Einstein condensate, which has all kinds of properties we can study. Most of these properties aren't shared by any other type of matter that we know about. Yet, plenty of scientific papers have been written describing the laws that govern Bose-Einstein condensates. This, while very specific, is still a scientific truth: it is "universally true" for Bose-Einstein condensates. Similarly moral truths could be "universally true" for humans.
Of course, I think this is an utterly pointless way of looking at morals, as it is irrelevant except for one important consequence: it allows us to say some code of ethics is objectively better than another, just as we can for scientific theories. Even if we cannot know that the scientific theory we are using is actually true, we know it's better than the alternatives. Thus when I condemn slavery as being wrong, I can do so without worrying that this is only a recent realization and other societies throughout history seemed to work well with slavery. Just as I can "condemn" creationism and its ilk as being wrong without worrying that the theory of evolution is only a recent realization.
On July 30 2013 01:41 Sbrubbles wrote: I'm not sure you can jump from "torturing babies for fun is morally wrong" to "Given some contingent facts about human beings and some necessary truths about rational agent interaction allowing torturing babies for fun as a general rule will not lead to a flourishing society.". The first sentence makes an ethical assertion while the second one makes a point about how society ought to be, so it sounds odd to say the first meaning to say the second.
I am not sure that I follow you completely. On the face of it, both sentences could be said to be descriptive of a certain state of affairs (note that the second sentence does not contain any ought) or a counterfactual (given that in no society anybody is actually torturing babies). Whether you agree that the semantic content of the two statements is the same/similar/comparable is a different thing altogether and I wholeheartedly admit that it provides only a crude summary of my view. I further think that -given some further philosophical reasoning - from both statements follows an ought, if they are true - that is a moral obligation not to torture babies for fun. I agree with error theorists that this is not any cosmic or categorical imperative, but more in the form of prudence, in the sense that rational agents can and should agree on the fact that not torturing babies for fun should be followed.
On July 30 2013 01:41 Sbrubbles wrote: On game theory, I know you can use it to show how in certain situations rational actors cooperate despite their (short-term) best interests, but it doesn't seem logical to derive morals from this. Game theory can attempt to show the presence of an unwritten normative code that punishes people through future non-cooperation, but to me this is much more akin to customary law than morals. How do you actually work rational agents and game theory into this whole discussion?
I simply mentioned game theory because it provides a tool to figure out how rational agents will/should behave. It can thus be a device to predict agent behavior (granted in limited scenarios) to ascertain action-reaction chains and this provide insights to propagating effects in a society with many (approximately) rational agents.
On July 30 2013 02:21 WhiteDog wrote: The problem is that you are all searching for a definition of "man" that is not supposed to be up to controversy - so you need something to define this man. See your sentence "Given some contingent facts about human beings and some necessary truths about rational agent interaction allowing torturing babies for fun as a general rule will not lead to a flourishing society" : you considers that there are contingent "facts" about human beings (the use of contingent is obviously really problematic because you admit that you can't define man always and everywhere),
I am not really sure what to make of this paragraph. I can only hope you wrote this because you are confused about the meaning of contingent, because none of your conclusions seem to follow. It is a contingent physiological fact that human beings usually have two hands and ten fingers, in the sense that it does not seem logically necessary that we have two hands and ten fingers. The natural sciences are full of contingent facts, but that does not compromise any of the conclusions physicists derive. It is further not at all necessary to be able to describe "one unchanging human nature" for moral realism. What makes you think that? Human beings are complex physical systems, so obviously there will be lots of variety in their reactions. But just as it is not necessary to derive one true nature of the "storm" or of the "cloud" for meteorology to generate true statements about the weather, it is not necessary to have "an unchanging human nature" to derive universally true statements about humans or sentient beings for that matter.
On July 30 2013 02:21 WhiteDog wrote: you are making the assumption that men are evolving in a "rational" society and you use the idea of "flourishing society" without defining it. Why ? Because this is something that you cannot and will never be able to prove irrefutably.
You are further placing an unfair burden on moral knowledge methinks. I am perfectly fine with the notion that no statement about the real world can be irrefutably proven to be true. So what? Where does this need for irrefutability come from?
Science is full of questions that can't be proven in any rigorous sense. I realize that in the ongoing discussion with frog you already covered this in parts, but also this notion that knowledge generation has to involve full scale experiments needs to be dispelled. Do you hold the statement "if the sun were to burn out right now life on earth would die as well" to be true? Mind you a full scale experiment on that cannot really be carried out, but it seems obvious given what we know about the sustainability of life without sufficient energy. Likewise I might hold that the adverse effects of torturing babies are obvious given what we know about the human nervous system and the psychological development of infants (and adult torturers) alike. If I do not define "flourishing" sufficiently for you or make simplifying assumptions about the rationality of agents, then all this might purport to show are the inherent limitations of an internet discussion about a complex topic or my particular limitations to express myself clearly.
On July 30 2013 02:21 WhiteDog wrote: Since all those things are not and will never be considered as valid axiom for some of us on this topic, because they obviously create controversy, your logic cannot be considered as true always and everywhere, unless you are able to falsify the existence of one of those things in our world - you are actually trying to prove that god exist.
That some people cannot be swayed by argument does not show anything in any other field of discourse, so it seems like special pleading to me. The god statement is just silly.
On July 30 2013 02:21 WhiteDog wrote: For exemple : "Considering what the old testament said about men, it is not right to consider men and women equally" try to prove this wrong without criticising the idea of men and women presented by the old testament.
Finally, I am completely at a loss why you think doing anything like this were necessary to defend my view. After all it is me who thinks that it is possible -within limits- to "get behind" different value systems and critique them on rational grounds from the outside to show that they make incorrect moral statements. To me, your view seems completely impotent in this regard.
On July 30 2013 06:24 Spekulatius wrote: [quote] Firstly: well yes I am confused. I've never studied philosophy so I naturally mix up those theories that I've never heard of before. That's why I asked for clarification in the first place.
Secondly, I'm not sure why you think the burden of proof is not on you to prove any of your assumptions of which you deduce the existence of absolute moral truths. That seems like the epitomy of arrogance to me. "We're modern westerners so fuck people who think differently, may they have to prove us wrong."
Thirdly, you ask me how I come to conclude that there is no objective, absolute moral truth. I tried to explain in some of my posts that every experience and every thought is being processed by your brain. There is not a single thought or feeling or judgement that is not touched by the particularity of your own brain. Thus, a thought/judgment/feeling cannot be thought of without being influenced by your own personality. So naturally, there will never be a consensus on any moral statement. Now you will retort that the lack of consensus does not necessarily mean there is no such thing as absolute moral truths. Asking me to disprove this beyond any doubt is like asking me to disprove god. Which is, and I'm restating my second point, not my duty, but yours.
I didn't purport that there were any absolute moral truths. Being myself a particularist, I don't think there are any. In any case, I was only trying to show that you hadn't successfully argued for your own views, not that your conclusions were wrong. I could do that if you wanted.
Also, I wasn't trying to say that our (modern-day Western) views are right and universal and everyone else has to disprove us. I was saying that, given that we have a certain kind of moral framework, the fact that our moral statements would be wrong in another framework is no argument at all against the absolute nature of our moral statements. I could just have easily have used Australian aboriginals or whatever as my example. It is no problem to the absoluteness of an aboriginal's moral claim that other cultures make different moral claims that are true for them, unless we interpret "absoluteness" in a strange way. In some logics, you have the law of the excluded middle, and in others you don't. This doesn't mean that statements in a logic that has the LEM are non-absolute within that logic; it just means there are other systems where it would be false. But given that we always speak from within a system, we would be committing a kind of conceptual confusion if we thought that disagreement from other systems was a stain on the value of our own statements.
Consider a scientist's deduction that evolution is true. Within a different framework that has wildly different assumptions about reality, say 14th-century Catholicism, evolution isn't true (given the kind of extreme relativism you want to invoke, that is). But this doesn't mean that the scientist needs to take that into account. The scientist's rules for deduction do not involve "What do 14th-century Catholics think?" just as our rules for morality do not involve "What do Australian aboriginals think?" (Or, well, they might include such a premise, but it isn't a necessary fact about any moral system whatsoever)
Your argument for why there can't be consensus on moral statements is weird. Every part of it before the conclusion applies perfectly well to all facts, and I don't think that the fact that my brain has to process the fact that the sun is hot means that there can't be consensus about it. Did you mean to say that there can be no consensus about any fact ever (surely a queer view), or did you forget to put in your premise that restricts the scope of the argument to just moral statements?
I don't much like burden of proof arguments, but yours has a hole in it so I'll try to point it out in a clear way. You said this: "you ask me how I come to conclude that there is no objective, absolute moral truth" and gave me an argument that led up to "there will never be a consensus on any moral statement," and then you concluded that it was up to me to disprove the link between that latter statement and "there is no such thing as absolute moral truths." I don't see why I need to disprove that at all, especially if I was just doing a bit of psychological investigation about you: I asked what you think the link is, more or less, between the impossibility of consensus and the impossibility of absolute truth w/r/t morality. I can't provide a disproof of the link you have in mind before you state what kind of a link you have in mind. If you want me to give you a generally applicable one, I can try to do that, but I don't think I've obligated myself to do so.
Also, I don't think I ever did actually ask you how you came to conclude that. I just tried to demonstrate that your arguments for your view betrayed a high amount of conceptual confusion. If you would like me to argue against your conclusion, then sure, please do tell me how you reached it.
Damn you type fast.
1. Ok so we agree on the fact that simply because someone else has a diverging opinion on a subject from you this does not mean you are necessarily less right about assuming it. Good.
2. And yes, I do not mean we cannot all agree on the sun being hot. It is at least theoretically possible given we exclude blind people who doubt the existence of the sun and think it's a giant lightbulb and those people who suffer from an illness that makes them incapable of perceiving temperature. Still - and there you certainly agree with me - people agreeing on something doesn't make a statement true just as much as disagreeing on it doesn't make it untrue (see 1.). I must have expressed myself unprecisely before.
3. What I'm trying to argue is this: morality is a judgment. Judgments are passed by humans. It is thus impossible to conceive a judgment that is abstract from a human mind. Which leads me to conclude there is no non-subjective morality.
This is what it boils down to. Nobody's ever challenged me to phrase my view though. Please tell me what you think about it.
"Subjective" does not mean "created by a human mind." The distinction between subjective and objective (albeit a poor and vague one) essentially runs: subjective things are just expressions of the opinions of a subject, but objective things are facts about some object. Anyway, I won't work with this terminology and I'll try to talk about what you actually have in mind.
It seems like you'd want to say that somehow human grasping of the objects of perception taints them, or otherwise distorts them. Would you say that's a fair characterization? So even if objects were really X, Y, and Z, we can only see them as X*, Y*, and Z*, which is what these properties turn out to be after they've gone through the distortion of the human mind. And you want to say that (I guess?) these distortions are always different for each different human, so we can't have complete agreement (in the case of morality). If this is what you mean there's a lot packed into it, so please tell me whether that's a good description of your view.
(By the way, you should remember that just because all of your arguments came from the same source (you) doesn't mean they contribute to the same conclusions. Moral particularism doesn't mean morality is subjective, moral relativism doesn't mean consensus is impossible, and so forth. I'm only going to focus on "there is no non-subjective morality")
Almost.
My view goes even further. I say there is no X, Y and Z in the first place. I claim they're not just distorted, but they rather don't even exist in the "outside" world. Unlike scientific truths, X, Y and Z as moral absolutes are statements that are not to be found and perceived, they rather only come into existence by the functioning of the human mind. And as such, I argue it is impossible to have a judgment without someone passing it. Which in my eyes makes it ultimately subjective.
How are you teasing apart scientific and moral judgments here? Why is it that with, say, the tools of physics I can get some access to things in the world (maybe distorted or not), but morality has absolutely no link with the world at all? Would you like to say that we "project" our moral feelings onto the physical world, and we have (distorted) access to the physical world, but all our projected moral judgments have no basis in the reality of the world?
Ignore the tools of physics for once. It's not about accessing the outside world, it's about if there theoretically can be truth without someone who's thoughtfully approaching the issue.
The distinction I'm making is as follows: a) Newton's law being true or false is a subject that is untouched by the circumstance that a human mind is thinking about it. The question can theoretically be answered without a human pondering about it. In other words, in the equation that proves or disproves Newton's law, there is no variable for a human actor. b) On the other hand, an action or omission being morally right or wrong can never be argued without the existence of a brain which is passing judgment. A moral judgment, in the shape of an equation, necessarily has M as a factor - M being the human mind. Without a mind, there's no judgment. And without judgment, no morality.
It's all in our heads.
Okay, I see the distinction you're trying to make, but I don't know why you would want to make such a distinction. Barring the naivety of a), I don't see how you can properly make moral judgments distinct in such a way that they become totally subjective. You might say "well it's just forms of interpretations we impose on physical objects" but this is something physicists do, too. The notions of force, energy, quantum spin, etc. are all interpretations we put over the physical facts; we could describe them differently. So if you said that "we can't consider the truth of a moral judgment without thinking about the actual system of morals that some human holds," you haven't actually separated moral judgment from scientific judgment.
It seems to me that morality has a kind of mind-independence very similar to that of the laws of physics. If I judge that murder is wrong and then I die, I don't think that murder stops being wrong in any way more significant than the way that Newton's laws stop being (nearly) true after I die. And just so with the other distinctions you providing: nobody can ever argue about physical laws without a brain passing judgment, and there can be no judgment without a mind.
I'm not saying your distinction is wrong, but I don't know what leads you to believe it's true. Moreover, I don't even see what you gain from believing it's true. The statement "all morality is necessarily the judgment of a mind" doesn't seem to explain the nature of morality or give you any answers to moral questions or tell you whether all moral statements are false. Surely the distinction between morality and more rigorous kinds of facts doesn't rest on the fact that morality is always the judgment of a mind, since that applies to just about every kind of fact I can think of, too.
I'm happy we finally stopped misunderstanding each other and started actually disagreeing.
Now what I'm imagining is a world without humans. Would objects with mass still attract each other? Sure, one would say. Laws of physics apply regardless of the existence of humans or animals or any other form or conscient beholder. Laws of physics can be discovered, but their existence is not contingent on human existence. (Existence of object A with mass) + (Existence of object B with mass) = attraction
Now would morality still exist without humans? What I'm arguing is: no! How should anything that only conscient beings can produce exist without their creator? How does wheat get shaped to bread without a baker? Or, probably even more similar: How is something beautiful if there is nobody looking at it? (Event A) * (The moral "attitude" of person X) = (Moral Judgment Z)
Lastly, I do not agree with you saying laws of physics being unable to be perceived without a brain passing judgment does prove me wrong. Interpreting your perception of nature does not alter the laws of nature. It just changes your understanding of it. Nature itself remains untouched. Moral judgments are different. They are inside of you, results of an inner process. Changing yourself changes your judgment. Dying removes the judgment, it becomes null and void. Why shouldn't it?
---
btw, I'm heading to bed. It's 2AM here. I'll be responding tomorrow morning.
We both agree that the world would be physically the same if all humans vanished (that is, the same minus the humans). What I'm saying is that there is a trivial notion of conceptual schemes that would keep morality around after we died, in just the same way the laws of physics would stay around.
When you say that we need to include someone's moral attitude to make a moral judgment, does this mean that person needs to be alive? No, of course not. I can judge something using the moral criteria of, say, Immanuel Kant. His system for judging morals is totally separate from his brain. His brain did historically grasp it, but the system didn't die along with him. And if we use his system, we can make all kinds of moral judgments even about a world that has no humans. (Note that every single event would be a moral non-entity, but this is because of the specific way Kant's system works. A utilitarian system would yield more rich analyses).
Now you might say: well, this system is just a fiction that we created. But my point is that physics is just the same sort of thing! Surely they are very different sorts of systems, but if you are requiring "The moral "attitude" of person X" (in my terminology, the moral system of person X)" to be factored into a moral judgment, then you ought also require "The physical "attitude" of person X" (in my terminology, the physical system of person X)" to be factored into a physical judgment.
Let's say the following two descriptions of the universe are true: utilitarianism and Newton's laws (an actually false assumption, but whatever). Now let's say all rational agents in the universe die; nobody can make any judgments, physical, moral, or otherwise. Nothing prevents us, anyway, from applying both descriptions to this new post-human universe. Two planets will still attract each other with a force proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them, and actions will still be wrong to the extent that they increase suffering. What is supposed to invalidate the moral judgment here? Surely it's just one kind of moral interpretation, but so is the physical one. Nobody would be around to judge things utilitarian-wise, but neither would anyone be around to judge things Newton-wise. I do not see any difference in the mind-independence of the facts here. There are, to be sure, a ton of other differences in these two descriptions, but none w/r/t their mind-independence.
It seems to me the kind of mind-independence you want to establish would make it impossible for us to judge the moral worth of possible worlds wherein no morally judging creatures existed. But this doesn't seem right. If I take a utilitarian view again, I will be able to rank all sorts of possible worlds without humans (e.g. a world where there are only rabbits and they only have bananas to eat will be a worse world than one where there are only monkeys and they only have bananas to eat).
i think you are mixing stuff here, mainly the cause and effect of physicalism and moralism. physicalism has both cause and effect while moralism has only effect (at least you are only talking about its effect; unless you go with emergence as a cause). (i'll wait Spekulatius reply tho)
edit: an alien will be able to understand the cause and effect of newtonian laws/mechanics but it might never understand human morals because their cause is not (will not be) quantifiable so in that sense, physicalism is more objective.
I think I expressed myself badly in my last post. Of course I do agree with you that dying does not remove a moral system. But this does not in any way mean a moral system is like a law of physics. You say, moral systems survive their "thinker" just as laws of physics do - I disagree. You say, a physical system of person X needs to be included in the equation the same way the moral system of person X needs to be included in its respective equation - I disagree.
I tried to compare morals to beauty as I believe they are comparable. And I very strongly believe that if you remove a critical beholder from the equation, the notion of beauty stops to make sense. What is beauty if there is nobody who is appreciating it, rating it or feeling it? Nothing. A notion without content. I very strongly believe the exact same statement holds true for moral systems. Morals are a human invention. Without humans, nobody would ever think about calling something right or wrong. It is completely implausible to me how there should be any universal statement that is not contingent on a beholder. ObviousOne phrased it much more bluntly: The universe does not care if something is right or wrong. This means a) that only caring about morality produces moral systems which means it's contingent on the human mind. And b) laws of physics are not relative to the beholder, they do not change depending on who's watching/rating/analyzing.
@ Acrofales:
No. You're not getting the fundamental point I'm trying to make.
Universal truths cannot be discovered (as you claim) because
1. there are no universal truths (see above) 2. if there were universal moral truths, they would not be discoverable because they would not be part of the world outside of your mind. Morals have no anchor in the real world. You would not be able to discover moral truths just as you would not be able to "discover" that you are feeling tired, hungry or alone. The word "discover" does not make any sense in this context.
Again, moral "truths" are fundamentally different from laws of nature. Moral systems are like feelings which are - you agree, I suppose - not universal. Moral systems are like opinions of beauty - not universal. Moral systems are like opinions on taste - check our KMD thread: not universal.
On July 30 2013 19:01 gneGne wrote: How is it that man apparently understands natures laws themselves, yet has no clue about the laws that govern its own actions.
Huh?
We are far from understanding nature completely. Questions of quantum mechanics, dark matter and all that stuff remain to be answered universally and in a satisfying way. Not to mention the questions physicians haven't even discovered yet.
The laws that govern our own actions can reasonably be explained by evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology. It's tough in the details, but not in the fundamentals.
Our level of understand in both subjects is not as far different as you might think. If anything, it's the other way around.
On July 30 2013 18:42 Spekulatius wrote: @ Lixler:
I think I expressed myself badly in my last post. Of course I do agree with you that dying does not remove a moral system. But this does not in any way mean a moral system is like a law of physics. You say, moral systems survive their "thinker" just as laws of physics do - I disagree. You say, a physical system of person X needs to be included in the equation the same way the moral system of person X needs to be included in its respective equation - I disagree.
I tried to compare morals to beauty as I believe they are comparable. And I very strongly believe that if you remove a critical beholder from the equation, the notion of beauty stops to make sense. What is beauty if there is nobody who is appreciating it, rating it or feeling it? Nothing. A notion without content. I very strongly believe the exact same statement holds true for moral systems. Morals are a human invention. Without humans, nobody would ever think about calling something right or wrong. It is completely implausible to me how there should be any universal statement that is not contingent on a beholder. ObviousOne phrased it much more bluntly: The universe does not care if something is right or wrong. This means a) that only caring about morality produces moral systems which means it's contingent on the human mind. And b) laws of physics are not relative to the beholder, they do not change depending on who's watching/rating/analyzing.
@ Acrofales:
No. You're not getting the fundamental point I'm trying to make.
Universal truths cannot be discovered (as you claim) because
1. there are no universal truths (see above) 2. if there were universal moral truths, they would not be discoverable because they would not be part of the world outside of your mind. Morals have no anchor in the real world. You would not be able to discover moral truths just as you would not be able to "discover" that you are feeling tired, hungry or alone. The word "discover" does not make any sense in this context.
Again, moral "truths" are fundamentally different from laws of nature. Moral systems are like feelings which are - you agree, I suppose - not universal. Moral systems are like opinions of beauty - not universal. Moral systems are like opinions on taste - check our KMD thread: not universal.
I feel like I'm starting to repeat myself though.
.. and if i were to say: universal laws are an invention of the universe?, your arguments would turn into a subordinate functionary of some sorts.
On July 30 2013 19:01 gneGne wrote: How is it that man apparently understands natures laws themselves, yet has no clue about the laws that govern its own actions.
Huh?
We are far from understanding nature completely. Questions of quantum mechanics, dark matter and all that stuff remain to be answered universally and in a satisfying way. Not to mention the questions physicians haven't even discovered yet.
The laws that govern our own actions can reasonably be explained by evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology. It's tough in the details, but not in the fundamentals.
Our level of understand in both subjects is not as far different as you might think. If anything, it's the other way around.
Well, if you admit that science leaves many questions unanswered, then it means we should also not be so bold to 'explain away' our own actions with said science that leaves us only with estimations on the causes and effects of certain phenomena that go with our actions.Thus we can only explain phenomena in retrospect through hypotheses, but we don't do so or think that way like 'What made me act such and so a few seconds ago?', no we make practical judgments in the moment here 'What should I do?' instead of theoretical judgments.
On July 30 2013 18:42 Spekulatius wrote: @ Lixler:
I think I expressed myself badly in my last post. Of course I do agree with you that dying does not remove a moral system. But this does not in any way mean a moral system is like a law of physics. You say, moral systems survive their "thinker" just as laws of physics do - I disagree. You say, a physical system of person X needs to be included in the equation the same way the moral system of person X needs to be included in its respective equation - I disagree.
I tried to compare morals to beauty as I believe they are comparable. And I very strongly believe that if you remove a critical beholder from the equation, the notion of beauty stops to make sense. What is beauty if there is nobody who is appreciating it, rating it or feeling it? Nothing. A notion without content. I very strongly believe the exact same statement holds true for moral systems. Morals are a human invention. Without humans, nobody would ever think about calling something right or wrong. It is completely implausible to me how there should be any universal statement that is not contingent on a beholder. ObviousOne phrased it much more bluntly: The universe does not care if something is right or wrong. This means a) that only caring about morality produces moral systems which means it's contingent on the human mind. And b) laws of physics are not relative to the beholder, they do not change depending on who's watching/rating/analyzing.
@ Acrofales:
No. You're not getting the fundamental point I'm trying to make.
Universal truths cannot be discovered (as you claim) because
1. there are no universal truths (see above) 2. if there were universal moral truths, they would not be discoverable because they would not be part of the world outside of your mind. Morals have no anchor in the real world. You would not be able to discover moral truths just as you would not be able to "discover" that you are feeling tired, hungry or alone. The word "discover" does not make any sense in this context.
Again, moral "truths" are fundamentally different from laws of nature. Moral systems are like feelings which are - you agree, I suppose - not universal. Moral systems are like opinions of beauty - not universal. Moral systems are like opinions on taste - check our KMD thread: not universal.
I feel like I'm starting to repeat myself though.
.. and if i were to say: universal laws are an invention of the universe?, your arguments would turn into a subordinate functionary of some sorts.
"The universe" is not an entity capable of inventing stuff.
On July 30 2013 19:01 gneGne wrote: How is it that man apparently understands natures laws themselves, yet has no clue about the laws that govern its own actions.
Huh?
We are far from understanding nature completely. Questions of quantum mechanics, dark matter and all that stuff remain to be answered universally and in a satisfying way. Not to mention the questions physicians haven't even discovered yet.
The laws that govern our own actions can reasonably be explained by evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology. It's tough in the details, but not in the fundamentals.
Our level of understand in both subjects is not as far different as you might think. If anything, it's the other way around.
Well, if you admit that science leaves many questions unanswered, then it means we should also not be so bold to 'explain away' our own actions with said science that leaves us only with estimations on the causes and effects of certain phenomena that go with our actions.Thus we can only explain phenomena in retrospect through hypotheses, but we don't do so or think that way like 'What made me act such and so a few seconds ago?', no we make practical judgments in the moment here instead of theoretical judgments.
I don't know what you're saying exactly or how this relates to the metaethics discussion.
And if I understand you right, then I disagree. We can explain our process of judgment to a certain extent. We can look at it in retrospect and say "well ok this is why I acted this way". Where do you get that we don't exactly do that?
On July 30 2013 18:42 Spekulatius wrote: @ Lixler:
I think I expressed myself badly in my last post. Of course I do agree with you that dying does not remove a moral system. But this does not in any way mean a moral system is like a law of physics. You say, moral systems survive their "thinker" just as laws of physics do - I disagree. You say, a physical system of person X needs to be included in the equation the same way the moral system of person X needs to be included in its respective equation - I disagree.
I tried to compare morals to beauty as I believe they are comparable. And I very strongly believe that if you remove a critical beholder from the equation, the notion of beauty stops to make sense. What is beauty if there is nobody who is appreciating it, rating it or feeling it? Nothing. A notion without content. I very strongly believe the exact same statement holds true for moral systems. Morals are a human invention. Without humans, nobody would ever think about calling something right or wrong. It is completely implausible to me how there should be any universal statement that is not contingent on a beholder. ObviousOne phrased it much more bluntly: The universe does not care if something is right or wrong. This means a) that only caring about morality produces moral systems which means it's contingent on the human mind. And b) laws of physics are not relative to the beholder, they do not change depending on who's watching/rating/analyzing.
@ Acrofales:
No. You're not getting the fundamental point I'm trying to make.
Universal truths cannot be discovered (as you claim) because
1. there are no universal truths (see above) 2. if there were universal moral truths, they would not be discoverable because they would not be part of the world outside of your mind. Morals have no anchor in the real world. You would not be able to discover moral truths just as you would not be able to "discover" that you are feeling tired, hungry or alone. The word "discover" does not make any sense in this context.
Again, moral "truths" are fundamentally different from laws of nature. Moral systems are like feelings which are - you agree, I suppose - not universal. Moral systems are like opinions of beauty - not universal. Moral systems are like opinions on taste - check our KMD thread: not universal.
I feel like I'm starting to repeat myself though.
I am sorry to interfere, but I find this line of reasoning utterly unconvincing. That moral systems require moral agents and that moral theory is only applicable if moral agents exist is a trivial truism, just like the laws of nature would not be applicable if nature would not exist or like geology would not make sense to anyone if planets had not formed. It might be an interesting exercise to investigate in what respect statements could nonetheless be said to be true if none of the objects in the statement had ever obtained existence, but I fail to see how this is in any way special for morality.
I am a realist about psychology for instance, in that I think that psychology as a science can generate true statements about the human psyche and human behavior. Would you agree? If yes, why are you not moved by the argument that without any human, no one could make any sense of psychology. If you disagree, what do you think it is that psychologists are doing?
On July 30 2013 18:42 Spekulatius wrote: @ Lixler:
I think I expressed myself badly in my last post. Of course I do agree with you that dying does not remove a moral system. But this does not in any way mean a moral system is like a law of physics. You say, moral systems survive their "thinker" just as laws of physics do - I disagree. You say, a physical system of person X needs to be included in the equation the same way the moral system of person X needs to be included in its respective equation - I disagree.
I tried to compare morals to beauty as I believe they are comparable. And I very strongly believe that if you remove a critical beholder from the equation, the notion of beauty stops to make sense. What is beauty if there is nobody who is appreciating it, rating it or feeling it? Nothing. A notion without content. I very strongly believe the exact same statement holds true for moral systems. Morals are a human invention. Without humans, nobody would ever think about calling something right or wrong. It is completely implausible to me how there should be any universal statement that is not contingent on a beholder. ObviousOne phrased it much more bluntly: The universe does not care if something is right or wrong. This means a) that only caring about morality produces moral systems which means it's contingent on the human mind. And b) laws of physics are not relative to the beholder, they do not change depending on who's watching/rating/analyzing.
@ Acrofales:
No. You're not getting the fundamental point I'm trying to make.
Universal truths cannot be discovered (as you claim) because
1. there are no universal truths (see above) 2. if there were universal moral truths, they would not be discoverable because they would not be part of the world outside of your mind. Morals have no anchor in the real world. You would not be able to discover moral truths just as you would not be able to "discover" that you are feeling tired, hungry or alone. The word "discover" does not make any sense in this context.
Again, moral "truths" are fundamentally different from laws of nature. Moral systems are like feelings which are - you agree, I suppose - not universal. Moral systems are like opinions of beauty - not universal. Moral systems are like opinions on taste - check our KMD thread: not universal.
I feel like I'm starting to repeat myself though.
.. and if i were to say: universal laws are an invention of the universe?, your arguments would turn into a subordinate functionary of some sorts.
"The universe" is not an entity capable of inventing stuff.
On July 30 2013 19:01 gneGne wrote: How is it that man apparently understands natures laws themselves, yet has no clue about the laws that govern its own actions.
Huh?
We are far from understanding nature completely. Questions of quantum mechanics, dark matter and all that stuff remain to be answered universally and in a satisfying way. Not to mention the questions physicians haven't even discovered yet.
The laws that govern our own actions can reasonably be explained by evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology. It's tough in the details, but not in the fundamentals.
Our level of understand in both subjects is not as far different as you might think. If anything, it's the other way around.
Well, if you admit that science leaves many questions unanswered, then it means we should also not be so bold to 'explain away' our own actions with said science that leaves us only with estimations on the causes and effects of certain phenomena that go with our actions.Thus we can only explain phenomena in retrospect through hypotheses, but we don't do so or think that way like 'What made me act such and so a few seconds ago?', no we make practical judgments in the moment here instead of theoretical judgments.
I don't know what you're saying exactly or how this relates to the metaethics discussion.
And if I understand you right, then I disagree. We can explain our process of judgment to a certain extent. We can look at it in retrospect and say "well ok this is why I acted this way". Where do you get that we don't exactly do that?
Ok you are right that we do indeed explain away alot of our actions, like 'I was hungry and tired and thus..' but the peculiar thing is that we don't accept these explanations or 'excuses' in certain moral situations and thus we can regret the choices/actions we've made and take responsibility for.
On July 30 2013 02:21 WhiteDog wrote: The problem is that you are all searching for a definition of "man" that is not supposed to be up to controversy - so you need something to define this man. See your sentence "Given some contingent facts about human beings and some necessary truths about rational agent interaction allowing torturing babies for fun as a general rule will not lead to a flourishing society" : you considers that there are contingent "facts" about human beings (the use of contingent is obviously really problematic because you admit that you can't define man always and everywhere),
I am not really sure what to make of this paragraph. I can only hope you wrote this because you are confused about the meaning of contingent, because none of your conclusions seem to follow. It is a contingent physiological fact that human beings usually have two hands and ten fingers, in the sense that it does not seem logically necessary that we have two hands and ten fingers. The natural sciences are full of contingent facts, but that does not compromise any of the conclusions physicists derive. It is further not at all necessary to be able to describe "one unchanging human nature" for moral realism. What makes you think that? Human beings are complex physical systems, so obviously there will be lots of variety in their reactions.
Then give me contingent facts about human nature that would make it possible for you to rationally critic a moral statement everything equal. How can you rationaly prove me that the fact that we have two hands and ten fingers means anything from a moral stand point.
But just as it is not necessary to derive one true nature of the "storm" or of the "cloud" for meteorology to generate true statements about the weather, it is not necessary to have "an unchanging human nature" to derive universally true statements about humans or sentient beings for that matter.
And why can you do that for the storm and the cloud ? Because you can test the effect of the storm on the weather all things equals and they will always be the same. Therefore, you don't have to rationally discuss the concept of "storm" or "cloud" to make statement about what happen to the weather when a storm comes by. The effect of a human action everything equal on humanity's "utility", health or morality can never be evaluated. You cannot derive a universal statement out of it, because you cannot get out of the context in which the action have been made. It doesn't mean that someone who kill babies for pleasure is morally good if he thinks it is, it means that you cannot rationally prove to me that killing babies is always morally bad.
Talking "rationally" about something doesn't mean you can jump from conclusions to conclusions. Comparaison is not reason.
Science is full of questions that can't be proven in any rigorous sense. I realize that in the ongoing discussion with frog you already covered this in parts, but also this notion that knowledge generation has to involve full scale experiments needs to be dispelled.
You are mistaking science and reasonning. The fact that every scientific knowledge is based on axiom doesn't mean that the scientific knowledge is impossible to prove. The axiom is not "part" of the scientific knowledge, it is what permit the knowledge, by defining and delimiting the realm of analysis - hence why all sciences needs philosophy. Axioms are a necessity because we cannot test them - that doesn't mean they are "always right" (unfalsifiable) but that I don't have the knowledge to falsify them. "Human nature" is unfalsifiable (I can find thousands exemples in our history that any definition of "human nature" is wrong, but it doesn't make it wrong). A scientific knowledge is a "systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe". Can you make sure predictions in economy, sociology, or any "social" science, like you do in physics or biology ? Do you think laws exists in social sciences ? Can you build laws on morality ?
On July 30 2013 18:42 Spekulatius wrote: @ Lixler:
I think I expressed myself badly in my last post. Of course I do agree with you that dying does not remove a moral system. But this does not in any way mean a moral system is like a law of physics. You say, moral systems survive their "thinker" just as laws of physics do - I disagree. You say, a physical system of person X needs to be included in the equation the same way the moral system of person X needs to be included in its respective equation - I disagree.
I tried to compare morals to beauty as I believe they are comparable. And I very strongly believe that if you remove a critical beholder from the equation, the notion of beauty stops to make sense. What is beauty if there is nobody who is appreciating it, rating it or feeling it? Nothing. A notion without content. I very strongly believe the exact same statement holds true for moral systems. Morals are a human invention. Without humans, nobody would ever think about calling something right or wrong. It is completely implausible to me how there should be any universal statement that is not contingent on a beholder. ObviousOne phrased it much more bluntly: The universe does not care if something is right or wrong. This means a) that only caring about morality produces moral systems which means it's contingent on the human mind. And b) laws of physics are not relative to the beholder, they do not change depending on who's watching/rating/analyzing.
@ Acrofales:
No. You're not getting the fundamental point I'm trying to make.
Universal truths cannot be discovered (as you claim) because
1. there are no universal truths (see above) 2. if there were universal moral truths, they would not be discoverable because they would not be part of the world outside of your mind. Morals have no anchor in the real world. You would not be able to discover moral truths just as you would not be able to "discover" that you are feeling tired, hungry or alone. The word "discover" does not make any sense in this context.
Again, moral "truths" are fundamentally different from laws of nature. Moral systems are like feelings which are - you agree, I suppose - not universal. Moral systems are like opinions of beauty - not universal. Moral systems are like opinions on taste - check our KMD thread: not universal.
I feel like I'm starting to repeat myself though.
I am sorry to interfere, but I find this line of reasoning utterly unconvincing. That moral systems require moral agents and that moral theory is only applicable if moral agents exist is a trivial truism, just like the laws of nature would not be applicable if nature would not exist or like geology would not make sense to anyone if planets had not formed. It might be an interesting exercise to investigate in what respect statements could nonetheless be said to be true if none of the objects in the statement had ever obtained existence, but I fail to see how this is in any way special for morality.
I am a realist about psychology for instance, in that I think that psychology as a science can generate true statements about the human psyche and human behavior. Would you agree? If yes, why are you not moved by the argument that without any human, no one could make any sense of psychology. If you disagree, what do you think it is that psychologists are doing?
I disagree.
Geology is still right even if planets ceased to exist. There's just nothing to talk about anymore. Psychology is still right even if all humans ceased to exist. There's just nobody to talk about anymore. Moral statements are still neither right nor wrong in the absence of humans because they don't have the capacity to be either right or wrong because they're relative statements.
Stop comparing laws of nature and moral statements. They're fundamentally different.
If you can prove that something is objectively beautiful, I will completely submit to your theory that there can be moral absolutes. Until then, no argument containing laws of nature will have anything to do with moral relativity or absolutism, I'm sorry.
On July 30 2013 18:42 Spekulatius wrote: @ Lixler:
I think I expressed myself badly in my last post. Of course I do agree with you that dying does not remove a moral system. But this does not in any way mean a moral system is like a law of physics. You say, moral systems survive their "thinker" just as laws of physics do - I disagree. You say, a physical system of person X needs to be included in the equation the same way the moral system of person X needs to be included in its respective equation - I disagree.
I tried to compare morals to beauty as I believe they are comparable. And I very strongly believe that if you remove a critical beholder from the equation, the notion of beauty stops to make sense. What is beauty if there is nobody who is appreciating it, rating it or feeling it? Nothing. A notion without content. I very strongly believe the exact same statement holds true for moral systems. Morals are a human invention. Without humans, nobody would ever think about calling something right or wrong. It is completely implausible to me how there should be any universal statement that is not contingent on a beholder. ObviousOne phrased it much more bluntly: The universe does not care if something is right or wrong. This means a) that only caring about morality produces moral systems which means it's contingent on the human mind. And b) laws of physics are not relative to the beholder, they do not change depending on who's watching/rating/analyzing.
@ Acrofales:
No. You're not getting the fundamental point I'm trying to make.
Universal truths cannot be discovered (as you claim) because
1. there are no universal truths (see above) 2. if there were universal moral truths, they would not be discoverable because they would not be part of the world outside of your mind. Morals have no anchor in the real world. You would not be able to discover moral truths just as you would not be able to "discover" that you are feeling tired, hungry or alone. The word "discover" does not make any sense in this context.
Again, moral "truths" are fundamentally different from laws of nature. Moral systems are like feelings which are - you agree, I suppose - not universal. Moral systems are like opinions of beauty - not universal. Moral systems are like opinions on taste - check our KMD thread: not universal.
I feel like I'm starting to repeat myself though.
.. and if i were to say: universal laws are an invention of the universe?, your arguments would turn into a subordinate functionary of some sorts.
"The universe" is not an entity capable of inventing stuff.
On July 30 2013 19:36 gneGne wrote:
On July 30 2013 19:14 Spekulatius wrote:
On July 30 2013 19:01 gneGne wrote: How is it that man apparently understands natures laws themselves, yet has no clue about the laws that govern its own actions.
Huh?
We are far from understanding nature completely. Questions of quantum mechanics, dark matter and all that stuff remain to be answered universally and in a satisfying way. Not to mention the questions physicians haven't even discovered yet.
The laws that govern our own actions can reasonably be explained by evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology. It's tough in the details, but not in the fundamentals.
Our level of understand in both subjects is not as far different as you might think. If anything, it's the other way around.
Well, if you admit that science leaves many questions unanswered, then it means we should also not be so bold to 'explain away' our own actions with said science that leaves us only with estimations on the causes and effects of certain phenomena that go with our actions.Thus we can only explain phenomena in retrospect through hypotheses, but we don't do so or think that way like 'What made me act such and so a few seconds ago?', no we make practical judgments in the moment here instead of theoretical judgments.
I don't know what you're saying exactly or how this relates to the metaethics discussion.
And if I understand you right, then I disagree. We can explain our process of judgment to a certain extent. We can look at it in retrospect and say "well ok this is why I acted this way". Where do you get that we don't exactly do that?
Ok you are right that we do indeed explain away alot of our actions, like 'I was hungry and tired and thus..' but the peculiar thing is that we don't accept these explanations or 'excuses' in certain moral situations and thus we can regret the choices/actions we've made and take responsibility for.
Humans don't accept a lot. It's in our nature.
This does not mean it's right or wrong.
And responsibility is a fiction that is needed for modern societies to function properly. It is in no way true or not. But that is a completely different topic.
It seems that moral realists have taken up the role of apologetics in this thread, while those inclined towards other standpoints have taken the seat of critics... which is fairly natural, given that us realists obviously make the strongest claims towards the subject. Just to be candid about it, realist claims are far from bulletproof, and I'm fairly sure that all of us arguing in favor of moral realism are quite aware of that (the last philosopher who really thought that moral realism was bulletproof has probably been tarred and feather by Plato personally).
Nevertheless, I would like to turn the tables for once and criticize the critics... since we're all into Starcraft here, I probably don't have to explain why offense is the best defense.
Much of the criticism against moral realism comes down to the observation that there are fundamental epistemic differences between propositions on "what is" and propositions on "what should be". For instance, physics can confirm applicability of its theories by experiments, while ethics have to do without because 'freedom does not follow from factum' (Jacobi). That said, these methodological differences are not entirely parallel to the theoretical difference between 'descriptive' and 'normative' theories: Mathematics and logic work remarkably well in axiom systems that don't rely on empirical evidence. Moreover, the validity and certainty of confirmations that are considered sufficient empirical proof varies remarkably among the different 'scientific' disciplines; for example, even in a best-case scenario, the experiments conducted in cosmology or social sciences are only in simulacrum.
What irks me about the discussion is that I don't really understand what kind of certainty the anti-realists expect from ethical statements. Many of the counterarguments come down to systemic doubt (rather than factual doubt) along the lines of "but it could be wrong"... a radical skepticism that can be applied to any theory (question for the first principle or Münchhausen-trilemma) including itself. Apparently, even the use of freak cases (nothing less than alien lifeforms!) is considered a legitimate argument to disproof ethics... but the same rationale is not applied to descriptive sciences.
For example, in the post above, xM(Z argues that "an alien will be able to understand the cause and effect of newtonian laws/mechanics but it might never understand human morals". I find that hard to believe (and impossible to prove, given that the premise is counterfactual). Newtonian mechanics cannot comprehend the perihelion movement of Merkur. Without theory of relativity (light being subject to gravity), we have no explanation for why it gets dark at night. Newton provides no means to explain photoelectric effects. So why would an alien be able to comprehend our erroneous physics but not our erroneous morals? Wouldn't it need intricate knowledge of the functioning and misfunctioning of the human mind for both?
To get back to the point: What kind of certainty do people expect from normative theories, and why don't they apply the same strictness to descriptive theories? If medicine runs clinical trials to test a new drug, we deem statistical certainty sufficient to put people's lifes on the line (considering a drug 'safe for use' despite the fact that we're tacitly accepting that one in a million patients will be the freak case that gets a brain aneurysm... hell, that might not even be a prescription drug with such little of a risk of an adverse effect). And the demands for certainty in this field of research still beat the certainty of theoretical constructs in economics, politology, psychology, and sociology, which we base the future of entire nations on. In short, what is so specifically unacceptable about the r-square of the Categorical imperative? Why do you deem the primum non nocere less certain than classical mechanics?
Moreover, what makes you think that the anti-realist interpretation is more believable? Over the course of human history, people from all over the world have independently come to the insight that lying is kind of a dick move. Admittedly, most people who aren't Kant would tacitly accept exceptions to this rule (the emphasis lies on 'rule' and 'exeptions'). What do we make of this 'trend'? Do we deem it circumstantial and arbitrary? Where does the regularity come from? Is it caused by millions of billions of particular similarities? Isn't that - by the law of parsimony - actually less scientific than the assumption of a universal principle - one that is intersubjectively comprehensible by human intelligence - that guides this thought? More importantly, if we give up the idea that the distinction truth/false always has one prefered and one disfavored side, don't we undermine any cognitive reasoning whatsoever?
But just as it is not necessary to derive one true nature of the "storm" or of the "cloud" for meteorology to generate true statements about the weather, it is not necessary to have "an unchanging human nature" to derive universally true statements about humans or sentient beings for that matter.
And why can you do that for the storm and the cloud ? Because you can test the effect of the storm on the weather all things equals and they will always be the same. Therefore, you don't have to rationally discuss the concept of "storm" or "cloud" to make statement about what happen to the weather when a storm comes by. The effect of a human action everything equal on humanity's "utility", health or morality can never be evaluated. You cannot derive a universal statement out of it, because you cannot get out of the context in which the action have been made. It doesn't mean that someone who kill babies for pleasure is morally good if he thinks it is, it means that you cannot rationally prove to me that killing babies is always morally bad.
Talking "rationally" about something doesn't mean you can jump from conclusions to conclusions. Comparaison is not reason.
Science is full of questions that can't be proven in any rigorous sense. I realize that in the ongoing discussion with frog you already covered this in parts, but also this notion that knowledge generation has to involve full scale experiments needs to be dispelled.
You are mistaking science and reasonning. The fact that every scientific knowledge is based on axiom doesn't mean that the scientific knowledge is impossible to prove. The axiom is not "part" of the scientific knowledge, it is what permit the knowledge, by defining and delimiting the realm of analysis - hence why all sciences needs philosophy. Axioms are a necessity because we cannot test them - that doesn't mean they are "always right". A scientific knowledge is a "systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe". Can you make sure predictions in economy, sociology, or any "social" science, like you do in physics or biology ? Do you think laws exists in social sciences ? Can you build laws on morality ?
Why do you say that we cannot evaluate morals according to some standard and decide which ones are better? I'd argue that we can, and in fact do. That utilitarianism has lots of problems doesn't mean there isn't some way of measuring how well a norm works... just that the field of experimental ethics is very immature and lacks a proper methodology.
You claim experimentation is needed, but it really isn't. Cosmologists don't experiment, they form a hypothesis and evaluate its predictions by observing the cosmos... not a controlled experiment. Yet cosmology is probably one of the fiellds that has the best claim to be working towards finding truths about the universe,
Only thing I agree with you is that we can never know for sure whether what we have found is a truth or not, but that goes for all statements and not just moral ones.
On July 30 2013 18:42 Spekulatius wrote: @ Lixler:
I think I expressed myself badly in my last post. Of course I do agree with you that dying does not remove a moral system. But this does not in any way mean a moral system is like a law of physics. You say, moral systems survive their "thinker" just as laws of physics do - I disagree. You say, a physical system of person X needs to be included in the equation the same way the moral system of person X needs to be included in its respective equation - I disagree.
I tried to compare morals to beauty as I believe they are comparable. And I very strongly believe that if you remove a critical beholder from the equation, the notion of beauty stops to make sense. What is beauty if there is nobody who is appreciating it, rating it or feeling it? Nothing. A notion without content. I very strongly believe the exact same statement holds true for moral systems. Morals are a human invention. Without humans, nobody would ever think about calling something right or wrong. It is completely implausible to me how there should be any universal statement that is not contingent on a beholder. ObviousOne phrased it much more bluntly: The universe does not care if something is right or wrong. This means a) that only caring about morality produces moral systems which means it's contingent on the human mind. And b) laws of physics are not relative to the beholder, they do not change depending on who's watching/rating/analyzing.
@ Acrofales:
No. You're not getting the fundamental point I'm trying to make.
Universal truths cannot be discovered (as you claim) because
1. there are no universal truths (see above) 2. if there were universal moral truths, they would not be discoverable because they would not be part of the world outside of your mind. Morals have no anchor in the real world. You would not be able to discover moral truths just as you would not be able to "discover" that you are feeling tired, hungry or alone. The word "discover" does not make any sense in this context.
Again, moral "truths" are fundamentally different from laws of nature. Moral systems are like feelings which are - you agree, I suppose - not universal. Moral systems are like opinions of beauty - not universal. Moral systems are like opinions on taste - check our KMD thread: not universal.
I feel like I'm starting to repeat myself though.
I am sorry to interfere, but I find this line of reasoning utterly unconvincing. That moral systems require moral agents and that moral theory is only applicable if moral agents exist is a trivial truism, just like the laws of nature would not be applicable if nature would not exist or like geology would not make sense to anyone if planets had not formed. It might be an interesting exercise to investigate in what respect statements could nonetheless be said to be true if none of the objects in the statement had ever obtained existence, but I fail to see how this is in any way special for morality.
I am a realist about psychology for instance, in that I think that psychology as a science can generate true statements about the human psyche and human behavior. Would you agree? If yes, why are you not moved by the argument that without any human, no one could make any sense of psychology. If you disagree, what do you think it is that psychologists are doing?
I disagree.
Geology is still right even if planets ceased to exist. There's just nothing to talk about anymore. Psychology is still right even if all humans ceased to exist. There's just nobody to talk about anymore. Moral statements are still neither right nor wrong in the absence of humans because they don't have the capacity to be either right or wrong because they're relative statements.
Stop comparing laws of nature and moral statements. They're fundamentally different.
If you can prove that something is objectively beautiful, I will completely submit to your theory that there can be moral absolutes. Until then, no argument containing laws of nature will have anything to do with moral relativity or absolutism, I'm sorry.
On July 30 2013 18:42 Spekulatius wrote: @ Lixler:
I think I expressed myself badly in my last post. Of course I do agree with you that dying does not remove a moral system. But this does not in any way mean a moral system is like a law of physics. You say, moral systems survive their "thinker" just as laws of physics do - I disagree. You say, a physical system of person X needs to be included in the equation the same way the moral system of person X needs to be included in its respective equation - I disagree.
I tried to compare morals to beauty as I believe they are comparable. And I very strongly believe that if you remove a critical beholder from the equation, the notion of beauty stops to make sense. What is beauty if there is nobody who is appreciating it, rating it or feeling it? Nothing. A notion without content. I very strongly believe the exact same statement holds true for moral systems. Morals are a human invention. Without humans, nobody would ever think about calling something right or wrong. It is completely implausible to me how there should be any universal statement that is not contingent on a beholder. ObviousOne phrased it much more bluntly: The universe does not care if something is right or wrong. This means a) that only caring about morality produces moral systems which means it's contingent on the human mind. And b) laws of physics are not relative to the beholder, they do not change depending on who's watching/rating/analyzing.
@ Acrofales:
No. You're not getting the fundamental point I'm trying to make.
Universal truths cannot be discovered (as you claim) because
1. there are no universal truths (see above) 2. if there were universal moral truths, they would not be discoverable because they would not be part of the world outside of your mind. Morals have no anchor in the real world. You would not be able to discover moral truths just as you would not be able to "discover" that you are feeling tired, hungry or alone. The word "discover" does not make any sense in this context.
Again, moral "truths" are fundamentally different from laws of nature. Moral systems are like feelings which are - you agree, I suppose - not universal. Moral systems are like opinions of beauty - not universal. Moral systems are like opinions on taste - check our KMD thread: not universal.
I feel like I'm starting to repeat myself though.
.. and if i were to say: universal laws are an invention of the universe?, your arguments would turn into a subordinate functionary of some sorts.
"The universe" is not an entity capable of inventing stuff.
On July 30 2013 19:36 gneGne wrote:
On July 30 2013 19:14 Spekulatius wrote:
On July 30 2013 19:01 gneGne wrote: How is it that man apparently understands natures laws themselves, yet has no clue about the laws that govern its own actions.
Huh?
We are far from understanding nature completely. Questions of quantum mechanics, dark matter and all that stuff remain to be answered universally and in a satisfying way. Not to mention the questions physicians haven't even discovered yet.
The laws that govern our own actions can reasonably be explained by evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology. It's tough in the details, but not in the fundamentals.
Our level of understand in both subjects is not as far different as you might think. If anything, it's the other way around.
Well, if you admit that science leaves many questions unanswered, then it means we should also not be so bold to 'explain away' our own actions with said science that leaves us only with estimations on the causes and effects of certain phenomena that go with our actions.Thus we can only explain phenomena in retrospect through hypotheses, but we don't do so or think that way like 'What made me act such and so a few seconds ago?', no we make practical judgments in the moment here instead of theoretical judgments.
I don't know what you're saying exactly or how this relates to the metaethics discussion.
And if I understand you right, then I disagree. We can explain our process of judgment to a certain extent. We can look at it in retrospect and say "well ok this is why I acted this way". Where do you get that we don't exactly do that?
Ok you are right that we do indeed explain away alot of our actions, like 'I was hungry and tired and thus..' but the peculiar thing is that we don't accept these explanations or 'excuses' in certain moral situations and thus we can regret the choices/actions we've made and take responsibility for.
Humans don't accept a lot. It's in our nature.
This does not mean it's right or wrong.
And responsibility is a fiction that is needed for modern societies to function properly. It is in no way true or not. But that is a completely different topic.
Yes ofcourse I would never say that that unacceptance is always by definition justified, nonetheless they imply a reflection on right and wrong and I personally believe that these reflections on what is supposed to be right and wrong are deeply rooted in how societies are shaped and formed.
For example, in the post above, xM(Z argues that "an alien will be able to understand the cause and effect of newtonian laws/mechanics but it might never understand human morals". I find that hard to believe (and impossible to prove, given that the premise is counterfactual). Newtonian mechanics cannot comprehend the perihelion movement of Merkur. Without theory of relativity (light being subject to gravity), we have no explanation for why it gets dark at night. Newton provides no means to explain photoelectric effects. So why would an alien be able to comprehend our erroneous physics but not our erroneous morals? Wouldn't it need intricate knowledge of the functioning and misfunctioning of the human mind for both?
. that was a little out of context i fear. the newtonian perspective was the assertion i had to work with given that it was previously posted. i made no claims about the objective truth of newtonian physics.
to generalize, physicalism is self explanatory, moralism needs to be explained then taken at face value.
On July 30 2013 02:21 WhiteDog wrote: The problem is that you are all searching for a definition of "man" that is not supposed to be up to controversy - so you need something to define this man. See your sentence "Given some contingent facts about human beings and some necessary truths about rational agent interaction allowing torturing babies for fun as a general rule will not lead to a flourishing society" : you considers that there are contingent "facts" about human beings (the use of contingent is obviously really problematic because you admit that you can't define man always and everywhere),
I am not really sure what to make of this paragraph. I can only hope you wrote this because you are confused about the meaning of contingent, because none of your conclusions seem to follow. It is a contingent physiological fact that human beings usually have two hands and ten fingers, in the sense that it does not seem logically necessary that we have two hands and ten fingers. The natural sciences are full of contingent facts, but that does not compromise any of the conclusions physicists derive. It is further not at all necessary to be able to describe "one unchanging human nature" for moral realism. What makes you think that? Human beings are complex physical systems, so obviously there will be lots of variety in their reactions.
Then give me contingent facts about human nature that would make it possible for you to rationally critic a moral statement everything equal. How can you rationaly prove me that the fact that we have two hands and ten fingers means anything from a moral stand point.
But just as it is not necessary to derive one true nature of the "storm" or of the "cloud" for meteorology to generate true statements about the weather, it is not necessary to have "an unchanging human nature" to derive universally true statements about humans or sentient beings for that matter.
And why can you do that for the storm and the cloud ? Because you can test the effect of the storm on the weather all things equals and they will always be the same. Therefore, you don't have to rationally discuss the concept of "storm" or "cloud" to make statement about what happen to the weather when a storm comes by. The effect of a human action everything equal on humanity's "utility", health or morality can never be evaluated. You cannot derive a universal statement out of it, because you cannot get out of the context in which the action have been made. It doesn't mean that someone who kill babies for pleasure is morally good if he thinks it is, it means that you cannot rationally prove to me that killing babies is always morally bad.
Talking "rationally" about something doesn't mean you can jump from conclusions to conclusions. Comparaison is not reason.
Science is full of questions that can't be proven in any rigorous sense. I realize that in the ongoing discussion with frog you already covered this in parts, but also this notion that knowledge generation has to involve full scale experiments needs to be dispelled.
You are mistaking science and reasonning. The fact that every scientific knowledge is based on axiom doesn't mean that the scientific knowledge is impossible to prove. The axiom is not "part" of the scientific knowledge, it is what permit the knowledge, by defining and delimiting the realm of analysis - hence why all sciences needs philosophy. Axioms are a necessity because we cannot test them - that doesn't mean they are "always right" (unfalsifiable) but that I don't have the knowledge to falsify them. "Human nature" is unfalsifiable (I can find thousands exemples in our history that any definition of "human nature" is wrong, but it doesn't make it wrong). A scientific knowledge is a "systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe". Can you make sure predictions in economy, sociology, or any "social" science, like you do in physics or biology ? Do you think laws exists in social sciences ? Can you build laws on morality ?
Your post seems so confused to me that I am afraid that we might be too far apart to communicate with each other meaningfully. I provided you with a contingent fact about human beings that relates to morals: "human beings can suffer". Do I get it right that you think this is a fact, but that it does not relate to morality?
If you really do think that the effect of an action on a human beings health cannot be evaluated, then do you also think that nobody could ever really be said to have killed somebody? Or that a meaningful defense against the accusation of killing somebody would be that one did not take the sociological or political context into account sufficiently? Because this view sure sounds rather eccentric to me.
I further do not see how I mix up reasoning and science. You were bringing in the notion of irrefutable proof. Can you provide me with a scientific statement that is proven irrefutably?
Finally, if you are an anti-realist about any of the special sciences then I am not surprised that you are an anti-realist about morality. I would be completely happy to conclude that some statements of morality are as truth-apt as some statements in psychology, economics or medicine and I am a realist about all of them.
But just as it is not necessary to derive one true nature of the "storm" or of the "cloud" for meteorology to generate true statements about the weather, it is not necessary to have "an unchanging human nature" to derive universally true statements about humans or sentient beings for that matter.
And why can you do that for the storm and the cloud ? Because you can test the effect of the storm on the weather all things equals and they will always be the same. Therefore, you don't have to rationally discuss the concept of "storm" or "cloud" to make statement about what happen to the weather when a storm comes by. The effect of a human action everything equal on humanity's "utility", health or morality can never be evaluated. You cannot derive a universal statement out of it, because you cannot get out of the context in which the action have been made. It doesn't mean that someone who kill babies for pleasure is morally good if he thinks it is, it means that you cannot rationally prove to me that killing babies is always morally bad.
Talking "rationally" about something doesn't mean you can jump from conclusions to conclusions. Comparaison is not reason.
Science is full of questions that can't be proven in any rigorous sense. I realize that in the ongoing discussion with frog you already covered this in parts, but also this notion that knowledge generation has to involve full scale experiments needs to be dispelled.
You are mistaking science and reasonning. The fact that every scientific knowledge is based on axiom doesn't mean that the scientific knowledge is impossible to prove. The axiom is not "part" of the scientific knowledge, it is what permit the knowledge, by defining and delimiting the realm of analysis - hence why all sciences needs philosophy. Axioms are a necessity because we cannot test them - that doesn't mean they are "always right". A scientific knowledge is a "systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe". Can you make sure predictions in economy, sociology, or any "social" science, like you do in physics or biology ? Do you think laws exists in social sciences ? Can you build laws on morality ?
Why do you say that we cannot evaluate morals according to some standard and decide which ones are better? I'd argue that we can, and in fact do. That utilitarianism has lots of problems doesn't mean there isn't some way of measuring how well a norm works... just that the field of experimental ethics is very immature and lacks a proper methodology.
How can you define the "some standard" ? That's my point, there are no standard that are not up to controversy.
Because that standard doesn't exist, one moral will always be better than another in a specific context. For exemple, evaluate what is more moral between "Killing is right" and "Killing is wrong". The only answers you can give for sure is : in some context, killing is right, is some others, killing is wrong. It is right to kill in war, it is wrong to kill your neighbour because he pissed in your garden, etc.
You claim experimentation is needed, but it really isn't. Cosmologists don't experiment, they form a hypothesis and evaluate its predictions by observing the cosmos... not a controlled experiment. Yet cosmology is probably one of the fiellds that has the best claim to be working towards finding truths about the universe,
When I say experimentation or "test", I don't necessarily mean controlled environment. In economy they also make experimentation (experience of randomization like in medicine) : they "test" the effect of a specific economical program on an area (say they add computer in schools in Zimbabwe) then they evaluate the effect of the change. My point is, they can't say for sure that what happened in Zimbabwe in 2013 will also exactly happen in Zimbabwe in 2014 or in China in 2013 - I can't entirely separate my conclusions from the context. In cosmology if what I've seen in 2013 does not work in 2014, you have to change your model (because it is wrong). In economy, the same happen, your model is not strictly "wrong", it is not adapted to the situation at hand.
On July 30 2013 02:21 WhiteDog wrote: The problem is that you are all searching for a definition of "man" that is not supposed to be up to controversy - so you need something to define this man. See your sentence "Given some contingent facts about human beings and some necessary truths about rational agent interaction allowing torturing babies for fun as a general rule will not lead to a flourishing society" : you considers that there are contingent "facts" about human beings (the use of contingent is obviously really problematic because you admit that you can't define man always and everywhere),
I am not really sure what to make of this paragraph. I can only hope you wrote this because you are confused about the meaning of contingent, because none of your conclusions seem to follow. It is a contingent physiological fact that human beings usually have two hands and ten fingers, in the sense that it does not seem logically necessary that we have two hands and ten fingers. The natural sciences are full of contingent facts, but that does not compromise any of the conclusions physicists derive. It is further not at all necessary to be able to describe "one unchanging human nature" for moral realism. What makes you think that? Human beings are complex physical systems, so obviously there will be lots of variety in their reactions.
Then give me contingent facts about human nature that would make it possible for you to rationally critic a moral statement everything equal. How can you rationaly prove me that the fact that we have two hands and ten fingers means anything from a moral stand point.
But just as it is not necessary to derive one true nature of the "storm" or of the "cloud" for meteorology to generate true statements about the weather, it is not necessary to have "an unchanging human nature" to derive universally true statements about humans or sentient beings for that matter.
And why can you do that for the storm and the cloud ? Because you can test the effect of the storm on the weather all things equals and they will always be the same. Therefore, you don't have to rationally discuss the concept of "storm" or "cloud" to make statement about what happen to the weather when a storm comes by. The effect of a human action everything equal on humanity's "utility", health or morality can never be evaluated. You cannot derive a universal statement out of it, because you cannot get out of the context in which the action have been made. It doesn't mean that someone who kill babies for pleasure is morally good if he thinks it is, it means that you cannot rationally prove to me that killing babies is always morally bad.
Talking "rationally" about something doesn't mean you can jump from conclusions to conclusions. Comparaison is not reason.
Science is full of questions that can't be proven in any rigorous sense. I realize that in the ongoing discussion with frog you already covered this in parts, but also this notion that knowledge generation has to involve full scale experiments needs to be dispelled.
You are mistaking science and reasonning. The fact that every scientific knowledge is based on axiom doesn't mean that the scientific knowledge is impossible to prove. The axiom is not "part" of the scientific knowledge, it is what permit the knowledge, by defining and delimiting the realm of analysis - hence why all sciences needs philosophy. Axioms are a necessity because we cannot test them - that doesn't mean they are "always right" (unfalsifiable) but that I don't have the knowledge to falsify them. "Human nature" is unfalsifiable (I can find thousands exemples in our history that any definition of "human nature" is wrong, but it doesn't make it wrong). A scientific knowledge is a "systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe". Can you make sure predictions in economy, sociology, or any "social" science, like you do in physics or biology ? Do you think laws exists in social sciences ? Can you build laws on morality ?
Your post seems so confused to me that I am afraid that we might be too far apart to communicate with each other meaningfully. I provided you with a contingent fact about human beings that relates to morals: "human beings can suffer". Do I get it right that you think this is a fact, but that it does not relate to morality?
If you really do think that the effect of an action on a human beings health cannot be evaluated, then do you also think that nobody could ever really be said to have killed somebody? Or that a meaningful defense against the accusation of killing somebody would be that one did not take the sociological or political context into account sufficiently? Because this view sure sounds rather eccentric to me.
Do you understand what everything equal means ? The effect of an action on human beings health CAN be evaluated, but NOT everything equals. I can evaluate that dying of hearth attack at the age of 40 is a bad thing. I cannot strictly, always and everywhere, says that dying is a bad thing - for exemple, is it morally right to die for others ?
Finally, if you are an anti-realist about any of the special sciences then I am not surprised that you are an anti-realist about morality. I would be completely happy to conclude that some statements of morality are as truth-apt as some statements in psychology, economics or medicine and I am a realist about all of them.
I don't consider that everything that comes out of the "special sciences" is "always" relative or defined by one's point of view. I'm just not a positivist. I know their limits, and their qualities. There is a reason why most economist could not predict the economic crisis, or that no social scientist can really predict with a 100% certainty what someone will buy if you give him 300 dollars despite the fact that we know a lot about how people consume and why they do so. There are "true statements" in science outside of laws, but I cannot applicate those true statement as laws - which is my main problem with moral realism as I understands it.
"The universe" is not an entity capable of inventing stuff.
what a narrow minded thing to say hey man!, i remember the times when you were an amoeba and couldn't figure out what shape is ...
You must be talking about my ancestors as I have always been human.
But that put aside: so what?
now use that backwards reasoning, forwards. you will be the ancestor of ... (until you get to "as i have always been the universe")?. it's fun
I still don't know what that's supposed to hint at.
I was once nonexistent. So?
you need continuity in your argument, continuity that goes to infinity and back. upward and downward theoretical (at least) continuity. assertions like
"The universe" is not an entity capable of inventing stuff
can not be proved nor disproved until (by your logic) you get to a superior stage in evolution. so you are purposely limiting yourself in actions/thoughts/decisions untill you get to that superior stage. it makes no sense to me why one would do that.
i can think of ways (instances in which) geology wouldn't even exist.
Geology is still right even if planets ceased to exist. There's just nothing to talk about anymore.
how would geology affect an AI living inside a computer?
existences, totally different then yours, can have different laws. (edit: i managed to switch 2 of my posts. aijlergbaergea)
On July 30 2013 18:42 Spekulatius wrote: @ Lixler:
I think I expressed myself badly in my last post. Of course I do agree with you that dying does not remove a moral system. But this does not in any way mean a moral system is like a law of physics. You say, moral systems survive their "thinker" just as laws of physics do - I disagree. You say, a physical system of person X needs to be included in the equation the same way the moral system of person X needs to be included in its respective equation - I disagree.
I tried to compare morals to beauty as I believe they are comparable. And I very strongly believe that if you remove a critical beholder from the equation, the notion of beauty stops to make sense. What is beauty if there is nobody who is appreciating it, rating it or feeling it? Nothing. A notion without content. I very strongly believe the exact same statement holds true for moral systems. Morals are a human invention. Without humans, nobody would ever think about calling something right or wrong. It is completely implausible to me how there should be any universal statement that is not contingent on a beholder. ObviousOne phrased it much more bluntly: The universe does not care if something is right or wrong. This means a) that only caring about morality produces moral systems which means it's contingent on the human mind. And b) laws of physics are not relative to the beholder, they do not change depending on who's watching/rating/analyzing.
@ Acrofales:
No. You're not getting the fundamental point I'm trying to make.
Universal truths cannot be discovered (as you claim) because
1. there are no universal truths (see above) 2. if there were universal moral truths, they would not be discoverable because they would not be part of the world outside of your mind. Morals have no anchor in the real world. You would not be able to discover moral truths just as you would not be able to "discover" that you are feeling tired, hungry or alone. The word "discover" does not make any sense in this context.
Again, moral "truths" are fundamentally different from laws of nature. Moral systems are like feelings which are - you agree, I suppose - not universal. Moral systems are like opinions of beauty - not universal. Moral systems are like opinions on taste - check our KMD thread: not universal.
I feel like I'm starting to repeat myself though.
I am sorry to interfere, but I find this line of reasoning utterly unconvincing. That moral systems require moral agents and that moral theory is only applicable if moral agents exist is a trivial truism, just like the laws of nature would not be applicable if nature would not exist or like geology would not make sense to anyone if planets had not formed. It might be an interesting exercise to investigate in what respect statements could nonetheless be said to be true if none of the objects in the statement had ever obtained existence, but I fail to see how this is in any way special for morality.
I am a realist about psychology for instance, in that I think that psychology as a science can generate true statements about the human psyche and human behavior. Would you agree? If yes, why are you not moved by the argument that without any human, no one could make any sense of psychology. If you disagree, what do you think it is that psychologists are doing?
I disagree.
Geology is still right even if planets ceased to exist. There's just nothing to talk about anymore. Psychology is still right even if all humans ceased to exist. There's just nobody to talk about anymore. Moral statements are still neither right nor wrong in the absence of humans because they don't have the capacity to be either right or wrong because they're relative statements.
Stop comparing laws of nature and moral statements. They're fundamentally different.
If you can prove that something is objectively beautiful, I will completely submit to your theory that there can be moral absolutes. Until then, no argument containing laws of nature will have anything to do with moral relativity or absolutism, I'm sorry.
Wow ... you just went full circle, or so it seems to me. Before you argued that moral statements cannot be true even though moral agents exist, because they would obviously not be true if moral agents did not exist. Now you say that moral statements are not true without moral agents, because they are obviously not even true when moral agents exist as they are not even capable of being true. Maybe I completely misunderstood you, but I am honestly not sure what to make of this line of reasoning.
How can the otherwise perfectly fine geological statement "Earth's continents move due to continental drift" be said to be true given that planet Earth does not exist? It seems to me that whatever definition of truth you come up with here it would work out for any other statement of similar form as well - including moral statements. That was my point.
But just as it is not necessary to derive one true nature of the "storm" or of the "cloud" for meteorology to generate true statements about the weather, it is not necessary to have "an unchanging human nature" to derive universally true statements about humans or sentient beings for that matter.
And why can you do that for the storm and the cloud ? Because you can test the effect of the storm on the weather all things equals and they will always be the same. Therefore, you don't have to rationally discuss the concept of "storm" or "cloud" to make statement about what happen to the weather when a storm comes by. The effect of a human action everything equal on humanity's "utility", health or morality can never be evaluated. You cannot derive a universal statement out of it, because you cannot get out of the context in which the action have been made. It doesn't mean that someone who kill babies for pleasure is morally good if he thinks it is, it means that you cannot rationally prove to me that killing babies is always morally bad.
Talking "rationally" about something doesn't mean you can jump from conclusions to conclusions. Comparaison is not reason.
Science is full of questions that can't be proven in any rigorous sense. I realize that in the ongoing discussion with frog you already covered this in parts, but also this notion that knowledge generation has to involve full scale experiments needs to be dispelled.
You are mistaking science and reasonning. The fact that every scientific knowledge is based on axiom doesn't mean that the scientific knowledge is impossible to prove. The axiom is not "part" of the scientific knowledge, it is what permit the knowledge, by defining and delimiting the realm of analysis - hence why all sciences needs philosophy. Axioms are a necessity because we cannot test them - that doesn't mean they are "always right". A scientific knowledge is a "systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe". Can you make sure predictions in economy, sociology, or any "social" science, like you do in physics or biology ? Do you think laws exists in social sciences ? Can you build laws on morality ?
Why do you say that we cannot evaluate morals according to some standard and decide which ones are better? I'd argue that we can, and in fact do. That utilitarianism has lots of problems doesn't mean there isn't some way of measuring how well a norm works... just that the field of experimental ethics is very immature and lacks a proper methodology.
How can you define the "some standard" ? That's my point, there are no standard that are not up to controversy.
Because that standard doesn't exist, one moral will always be better than another in a specific context. For exemple, evaluate what is more moral between "Killing is right" and "Killing is wrong". The only answers you can give for sure is : in some context, killing is right, is some others, killing is wrong. It is right to kill in war, it is wrong to kill your neighbour because he pissed in your garden, etc.
You claim experimentation is needed, but it really isn't. Cosmologists don't experiment, they form a hypothesis and evaluate its predictions by observing the cosmos... not a controlled experiment. Yet cosmology is probably one of the fiellds that has the best claim to be working towards finding truths about the universe,
When I say experimentation or "test", I don't necessarily mean controlled environment. In economy they also make experimentation (experience of randomization like in medicine) : they "test" the effect of a specific economical program on an area (say they add computer in schools in Zimbabwe) then they evaluate the effect of the change. My point is, they can't say for sure that what happened in Zimbabwe in 2013 will also exactly happen in Zimbabwe in 2014 or in China in 2013 - I can't entirely separate my conclusions from the context. In cosmology if what I've seen in 2013 does not work in 2014, you have to change your model (because it is wrong). In economy, the same happen, your model is not strictly "wrong", it is not adapted to the situation at hand.
On July 30 2013 02:21 WhiteDog wrote: The problem is that you are all searching for a definition of "man" that is not supposed to be up to controversy - so you need something to define this man. See your sentence "Given some contingent facts about human beings and some necessary truths about rational agent interaction allowing torturing babies for fun as a general rule will not lead to a flourishing society" : you considers that there are contingent "facts" about human beings (the use of contingent is obviously really problematic because you admit that you can't define man always and everywhere),
I am not really sure what to make of this paragraph. I can only hope you wrote this because you are confused about the meaning of contingent, because none of your conclusions seem to follow. It is a contingent physiological fact that human beings usually have two hands and ten fingers, in the sense that it does not seem logically necessary that we have two hands and ten fingers. The natural sciences are full of contingent facts, but that does not compromise any of the conclusions physicists derive. It is further not at all necessary to be able to describe "one unchanging human nature" for moral realism. What makes you think that? Human beings are complex physical systems, so obviously there will be lots of variety in their reactions.
Then give me contingent facts about human nature that would make it possible for you to rationally critic a moral statement everything equal. How can you rationaly prove me that the fact that we have two hands and ten fingers means anything from a moral stand point.
But just as it is not necessary to derive one true nature of the "storm" or of the "cloud" for meteorology to generate true statements about the weather, it is not necessary to have "an unchanging human nature" to derive universally true statements about humans or sentient beings for that matter.
And why can you do that for the storm and the cloud ? Because you can test the effect of the storm on the weather all things equals and they will always be the same. Therefore, you don't have to rationally discuss the concept of "storm" or "cloud" to make statement about what happen to the weather when a storm comes by. The effect of a human action everything equal on humanity's "utility", health or morality can never be evaluated. You cannot derive a universal statement out of it, because you cannot get out of the context in which the action have been made. It doesn't mean that someone who kill babies for pleasure is morally good if he thinks it is, it means that you cannot rationally prove to me that killing babies is always morally bad.
Talking "rationally" about something doesn't mean you can jump from conclusions to conclusions. Comparaison is not reason.
Science is full of questions that can't be proven in any rigorous sense. I realize that in the ongoing discussion with frog you already covered this in parts, but also this notion that knowledge generation has to involve full scale experiments needs to be dispelled.
You are mistaking science and reasonning. The fact that every scientific knowledge is based on axiom doesn't mean that the scientific knowledge is impossible to prove. The axiom is not "part" of the scientific knowledge, it is what permit the knowledge, by defining and delimiting the realm of analysis - hence why all sciences needs philosophy. Axioms are a necessity because we cannot test them - that doesn't mean they are "always right" (unfalsifiable) but that I don't have the knowledge to falsify them. "Human nature" is unfalsifiable (I can find thousands exemples in our history that any definition of "human nature" is wrong, but it doesn't make it wrong). A scientific knowledge is a "systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe". Can you make sure predictions in economy, sociology, or any "social" science, like you do in physics or biology ? Do you think laws exists in social sciences ? Can you build laws on morality ?
Your post seems so confused to me that I am afraid that we might be too far apart to communicate with each other meaningfully. I provided you with a contingent fact about human beings that relates to morals: "human beings can suffer". Do I get it right that you think this is a fact, but that it does not relate to morality?
If you really do think that the effect of an action on a human beings health cannot be evaluated, then do you also think that nobody could ever really be said to have killed somebody? Or that a meaningful defense against the accusation of killing somebody would be that one did not take the sociological or political context into account sufficiently? Because this view sure sounds rather eccentric to me.
Do you understand what everything equal means ? The effect of an action on human beings health CAN be evaluated, but NOT everything equals. I can evaluate that dying of hearth attack at the age of 40 is a bad thing. I cannot strictly, always and everywhere, says that dying is a bad thing - for exemple, is it morally right to die for others ?
Finally, if you are an anti-realist about any of the special sciences then I am not surprised that you are an anti-realist about morality. I would be completely happy to conclude that some statements of morality are as truth-apt as some statements in psychology, economics or medicine and I am a realist about all of them.
I don't consider that everything that comes out of the "special sciences" is "always" relative or defined by one's point of view. I'm just not a positivist. I know their limits, and their qualities. There is a reason why most economist could not predict the economic crisis, or that no social scientist can really predict with a 100% certainty what someone will buy if you give him 300 dollars despite the fact that we know a lot about how people consume and why they do so.
But it has been pointed out to you that neither a 100% predictability nor perfect irrefutability nor completely ignoring relevant context is a prerequisite for moral realism- or any realism. It is a complete mystery to me why you still keep referring to these arguments in light of this...
It further seems to me that you don't understand the ceteris paribus clause. In fact you have it completely backwards. It is a limiting assumption precisely to rule out change in relevant context. So if you put up the claim that ceteris paribus killing a human being is immoral, only to go on invalidating it by varying relevant context (but what if we are at war, but what if it's in self-defense...etc.) then this is simply disingenuously violating your own ceteris paribus clause. You could claim that no sufficiently specified context can ever be identified in order to make a moral assessment This could at least be discussed. But you are quite far away from that it seems to me.
But just as it is not necessary to derive one true nature of the "storm" or of the "cloud" for meteorology to generate true statements about the weather, it is not necessary to have "an unchanging human nature" to derive universally true statements about humans or sentient beings for that matter.
And why can you do that for the storm and the cloud ? Because you can test the effect of the storm on the weather all things equals and they will always be the same. Therefore, you don't have to rationally discuss the concept of "storm" or "cloud" to make statement about what happen to the weather when a storm comes by. The effect of a human action everything equal on humanity's "utility", health or morality can never be evaluated. You cannot derive a universal statement out of it, because you cannot get out of the context in which the action have been made. It doesn't mean that someone who kill babies for pleasure is morally good if he thinks it is, it means that you cannot rationally prove to me that killing babies is always morally bad.
Talking "rationally" about something doesn't mean you can jump from conclusions to conclusions. Comparaison is not reason.
Science is full of questions that can't be proven in any rigorous sense. I realize that in the ongoing discussion with frog you already covered this in parts, but also this notion that knowledge generation has to involve full scale experiments needs to be dispelled.
You are mistaking science and reasonning. The fact that every scientific knowledge is based on axiom doesn't mean that the scientific knowledge is impossible to prove. The axiom is not "part" of the scientific knowledge, it is what permit the knowledge, by defining and delimiting the realm of analysis - hence why all sciences needs philosophy. Axioms are a necessity because we cannot test them - that doesn't mean they are "always right". A scientific knowledge is a "systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe". Can you make sure predictions in economy, sociology, or any "social" science, like you do in physics or biology ? Do you think laws exists in social sciences ? Can you build laws on morality ?
Why do you say that we cannot evaluate morals according to some standard and decide which ones are better? I'd argue that we can, and in fact do. That utilitarianism has lots of problems doesn't mean there isn't some way of measuring how well a norm works... just that the field of experimental ethics is very immature and lacks a proper methodology.
How can you define the "some standard" ? That's my point, there are no standard that are not up to controversy.
Because that standard doesn't exist, one moral will always be better than another in a specific context. For exemple, evaluate what is more moral between "Killing is right" and "Killing is wrong". The only answers you can give for sure is : in some context, killing is right, is some others, killing is wrong. It is right to kill in war, it is wrong to kill your neighbour because he pissed in your garden, etc.
You claim experimentation is needed, but it really isn't. Cosmologists don't experiment, they form a hypothesis and evaluate its predictions by observing the cosmos... not a controlled experiment. Yet cosmology is probably one of the fiellds that has the best claim to be working towards finding truths about the universe,
When I say experimentation or "test", I don't necessarily mean controlled environment. In economy they also make experimentation (experience of randomization like in medicine) : they "test" the effect of a specific economical program on an area (say they add computer in schools in Zimbabwe) then they evaluate the effect of the change. My point is, they can't say for sure that what happened in Zimbabwe in 2013 will also exactly happen in Zimbabwe in 2014 or in China in 2013 - I can't entirely separate my conclusions from the context. In cosmology if what I've seen in 2013 does not work in 2014, you have to change your model (because it is wrong). In economy, the same happen, your model is not strictly "wrong", it is not adapted to the situation at hand.
On July 30 2013 20:45 MiraMax wrote:
On July 30 2013 20:09 WhiteDog wrote:
On July 30 2013 16:49 MiraMax wrote:
On July 30 2013 02:21 WhiteDog wrote: The problem is that you are all searching for a definition of "man" that is not supposed to be up to controversy - so you need something to define this man. See your sentence "Given some contingent facts about human beings and some necessary truths about rational agent interaction allowing torturing babies for fun as a general rule will not lead to a flourishing society" : you considers that there are contingent "facts" about human beings (the use of contingent is obviously really problematic because you admit that you can't define man always and everywhere),
I am not really sure what to make of this paragraph. I can only hope you wrote this because you are confused about the meaning of contingent, because none of your conclusions seem to follow. It is a contingent physiological fact that human beings usually have two hands and ten fingers, in the sense that it does not seem logically necessary that we have two hands and ten fingers. The natural sciences are full of contingent facts, but that does not compromise any of the conclusions physicists derive. It is further not at all necessary to be able to describe "one unchanging human nature" for moral realism. What makes you think that? Human beings are complex physical systems, so obviously there will be lots of variety in their reactions.
Then give me contingent facts about human nature that would make it possible for you to rationally critic a moral statement everything equal. How can you rationaly prove me that the fact that we have two hands and ten fingers means anything from a moral stand point.
But just as it is not necessary to derive one true nature of the "storm" or of the "cloud" for meteorology to generate true statements about the weather, it is not necessary to have "an unchanging human nature" to derive universally true statements about humans or sentient beings for that matter.
And why can you do that for the storm and the cloud ? Because you can test the effect of the storm on the weather all things equals and they will always be the same. Therefore, you don't have to rationally discuss the concept of "storm" or "cloud" to make statement about what happen to the weather when a storm comes by. The effect of a human action everything equal on humanity's "utility", health or morality can never be evaluated. You cannot derive a universal statement out of it, because you cannot get out of the context in which the action have been made. It doesn't mean that someone who kill babies for pleasure is morally good if he thinks it is, it means that you cannot rationally prove to me that killing babies is always morally bad.
Talking "rationally" about something doesn't mean you can jump from conclusions to conclusions. Comparaison is not reason.
Science is full of questions that can't be proven in any rigorous sense. I realize that in the ongoing discussion with frog you already covered this in parts, but also this notion that knowledge generation has to involve full scale experiments needs to be dispelled.
You are mistaking science and reasonning. The fact that every scientific knowledge is based on axiom doesn't mean that the scientific knowledge is impossible to prove. The axiom is not "part" of the scientific knowledge, it is what permit the knowledge, by defining and delimiting the realm of analysis - hence why all sciences needs philosophy. Axioms are a necessity because we cannot test them - that doesn't mean they are "always right" (unfalsifiable) but that I don't have the knowledge to falsify them. "Human nature" is unfalsifiable (I can find thousands exemples in our history that any definition of "human nature" is wrong, but it doesn't make it wrong). A scientific knowledge is a "systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe". Can you make sure predictions in economy, sociology, or any "social" science, like you do in physics or biology ? Do you think laws exists in social sciences ? Can you build laws on morality ?
Your post seems so confused to me that I am afraid that we might be too far apart to communicate with each other meaningfully. I provided you with a contingent fact about human beings that relates to morals: "human beings can suffer". Do I get it right that you think this is a fact, but that it does not relate to morality?
If you really do think that the effect of an action on a human beings health cannot be evaluated, then do you also think that nobody could ever really be said to have killed somebody? Or that a meaningful defense against the accusation of killing somebody would be that one did not take the sociological or political context into account sufficiently? Because this view sure sounds rather eccentric to me.
Do you understand what everything equal means ? The effect of an action on human beings health CAN be evaluated, but NOT everything equals. I can evaluate that dying of hearth attack at the age of 40 is a bad thing. I cannot strictly, always and everywhere, says that dying is a bad thing - for exemple, is it morally right to die for others ?
Finally, if you are an anti-realist about any of the special sciences then I am not surprised that you are an anti-realist about morality. I would be completely happy to conclude that some statements of morality are as truth-apt as some statements in psychology, economics or medicine and I am a realist about all of them.
I don't consider that everything that comes out of the "special sciences" is "always" relative or defined by one's point of view. I'm just not a positivist. I know their limits, and their qualities. There is a reason why most economist could not predict the economic crisis, or that no social scientist can really predict with a 100% certainty what someone will buy if you give him 300 dollars despite the fact that we know a lot about how people consume and why they do so.
But it has been pointed out to you that neither a 100% predictability nor perfect irrefutability nor completely ignoring relevant context is a prerequisite for moral realism- or any realism. It is a complete mystery to me why you still keep referring to these arguments in light of this...
Yes that I agree. I agree that there are moral truth, but that those truth are also relative (to their context) in the way that there are no transcendante absolute references to moral value and beliefs. This was my point since the beginning when I stated (by quoting passeron) that moral statement can be universal as in digital universalism and not logical universalism : for digital universalism, " the general propositions can always be generated by the logical "conjunction" of the singular statements that it resume."
It further seems to me that you don't understand the ceteris paribus clause. In fact you have it completely backwards. It is a limiting assumption precisely to rule out change in relevant context. So if you put up the claim that ceteris paribus killing a human being is immoral, only to go on invalidating it by varying relevant context (but what if we are at war, but what if it's in self-defense...etc.) then this is simply disingenuously violating your own ceteris paribus clause. You could claim that no sufficiently specified context can ever be identified in order to make a moral assessment This could at least be discussed. But you are quite far away from that it seems to me.
"It further seems to me that you don't understand the ceteris paribus clause". You need "something" to go from a moral statement in a context to a moral statement ouside of its context. In practice, social scientists use various statistical tools to isolate a specific fact from its context. It does not work perfectly however as the context in social science can never entirely disappear, and it push some people to consider the ceteris paribus clause as some kind of alibi (to make it seems like we are a science like physics) - "there are no camel in the north pole" as Halbwachs said. In this case, you have no something, no tools, no ground on which you can pass from the contextual to the out of context, so I can refute your arguments by using other type of contextual facts. If you had a "something" we could discuss the something, but you don't.
There is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so
Ive never understood the whole supervenience-theories of objectivism. They seem as farfetched as assuming there are other invisible facts floating around supervenient on the natural world. Neither has the naturalistic approach seemed appropriate, mainly because it seems obvious to me that more often than not we use a moral language that implies either external meaning to our moral judgmenet OR we are engaging in (often complex) emotive behaviour ie emotivism. So semantically we are rarely using a naturalistic approach to estethics much less morals. How on earth could naturalism in the light of this be true?
For example, in the post above, xM(Z argues that "an alien will be able to understand the cause and effect of newtonian laws/mechanics but it might never understand human morals". I find that hard to believe (and impossible to prove, given that the premise is counterfactual). Newtonian mechanics cannot comprehend the perihelion movement of Merkur. Without theory of relativity (light being subject to gravity), we have no explanation for why it gets dark at night. Newton provides no means to explain photoelectric effects. So why would an alien be able to comprehend our erroneous physics but not our erroneous morals? Wouldn't it need intricate knowledge of the functioning and misfunctioning of the human mind for both?
. that was a little out of context i fear. the newtonian perspective was the assertion i had to work with given that it was previously posted. i made no claims about the objective truth of newtonian physics.
to generalize, physicalism is self explanatory, moralism needs to be explained then taken at face value.
If you make no claims about the objective truth of physics (which particular physical theory we're talking about is irrelevant... name your favorite, I'll google its problems if needed), why do you hold the truth claims of physics in higher esteem than the truth claims of ethics?
Also, you might want to clarify your use of the term "physicalism". How can physicalism be "self explanatory" if what physics describes is false?
On July 30 2013 18:42 Spekulatius wrote: @ Lixler:
I think I expressed myself badly in my last post. Of course I do agree with you that dying does not remove a moral system. But this does not in any way mean a moral system is like a law of physics. You say, moral systems survive their "thinker" just as laws of physics do - I disagree. You say, a physical system of person X needs to be included in the equation the same way the moral system of person X needs to be included in its respective equation - I disagree.
I tried to compare morals to beauty as I believe they are comparable. And I very strongly believe that if you remove a critical beholder from the equation, the notion of beauty stops to make sense. What is beauty if there is nobody who is appreciating it, rating it or feeling it? Nothing. A notion without content. I very strongly believe the exact same statement holds true for moral systems. Morals are a human invention. Without humans, nobody would ever think about calling something right or wrong. It is completely implausible to me how there should be any universal statement that is not contingent on a beholder. ObviousOne phrased it much more bluntly: The universe does not care if something is right or wrong. This means a) that only caring about morality produces moral systems which means it's contingent on the human mind. And b) laws of physics are not relative to the beholder, they do not change depending on who's watching/rating/analyzing.
I don't know how to take these two statements together.
Of course I do agree with you that dying does not remove a moral system.
You say, moral systems survive their "thinker" just as laws of physics do - I disagree.
Are you trying to take "thinker" broadly here and say that they can't be unhinged totally from all thinkers? I guess that would make sense.
Let me provide some simple arguments for my views, as you've presented them. I say that a moral system survives its thinker just as laws of physics do. What I mean by this is that any given moral system has no intrinsic connection to the person who is applying it (although that person might feel really good about it, or whatever). Other people can adopt a moral system, both before and after this person's life, people can consider the moral system without believing it themselves, and so on. Surely nobody would make moral judgments if there were no rational agents around, but nobody would make physical judgments, either.
I also said that a physical system needs to be included in any physical statement, which system can be linked to a thinker to the same extent that a moral system is. This is trivially true. When I say, for instance, "the chair is under the table," I am invoking a specific set of more or less physical concepts that are accessible to all people who speak English. Another physical system might use these signs to mean something else, or might use different signs to mean the same thing. And with more precise physical statements, like f=ma or e=1/2mv^2, it is obvious that we are taking on a lot of conceptual baggage in order to make our statement. Every statement comes out of a system of concepts that define its precise meaning; this system of concepts surely needs to be applied by a human if it's going to be applied at all, but that doesn't make it a total fiction (or whatever pejoratives you want to call it).
You said that beauty loses its sense if there is no one around to behold it. How about our other classifications, like "green" and "chair" and "born on January 17th?" Does the concept "green" cease to mean anything at all if there is nobody around to see green things? It doesn't seem to me to be so; using the example I used earlier, I can imagine a possible world where everything is green but everyone is red-green colorblind, and green still makes plenty of sense here.
I am maintaining that the universe does not care about our formulations of the laws of physics, either. The universe moves on as it does, and we can describe events that take place in it with different levels of accuracy and precision, but the universe doesn't care about our formulations. You might be surprised to find out that physical events are always underdetermine physical theory: that is to say, given any amount of physical data, we can always construct more than one physical theory that explains it. This means, badly put, that there is no one objectively right and complete set of physical laws that totally describe the universe. There can be multiple systems that perfectly describe and predict all physical data.
I want this to show that our formulations of physical laws are unhinged from the universe just like moral laws are: the universe doesn't care at all that Newton was born or that we haven't found a theory of quantum gravity or whatever. We can come up with certain ways of describing physical events, but these certain ways don't matter at all to the universe. Things stand the same, in this respect, with description of moral events. The universe goes on as it does and we lay our moral interpretations over it. The difference between physical laws and moral laws does not lie in mind-dependence.
On July 30 2013 22:50 Snusmumriken wrote: There is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so
Ive never understood the whole supervenience-theories of objectivism. They seem as farfetched as assuming there are other invisible facts floating around supervenient on the natural world. Neither has the naturalistic approach seemed appropriate, mainly because it seems obvious to me that more often than not we use a moral language that implies either external meaning to our moral judgmenet OR we are engaging in (often complex) emotive behaviour ie emotivism. So semantically we are rarely using a naturalistic approach to estethics much less morals. How on earth could naturalism in the light of this be true?
There are tons of invisible facts floating around supervenient on the natural world. You just mistake them for the natural world. For instance, all descriptions of time are supervenient, and so are all descriptions of objects, and all classifications of animals, and all descriptions of movies. If we take the natural world to mean the raw physical matter, then most of our ordinary ways of talking consist of supervenient facts. If we take the natural world to mean most of our ordinary ways of talking, then it should be no wonder that some things are supervenient on the natural world (since we have defined the natural world such that it excludes these) and some are not (since we have defined the natural world to include these).
For example, in the post above, xM(Z argues that "an alien will be able to understand the cause and effect of newtonian laws/mechanics but it might never understand human morals". I find that hard to believe (and impossible to prove, given that the premise is counterfactual). Newtonian mechanics cannot comprehend the perihelion movement of Merkur. Without theory of relativity (light being subject to gravity), we have no explanation for why it gets dark at night. Newton provides no means to explain photoelectric effects. So why would an alien be able to comprehend our erroneous physics but not our erroneous morals? Wouldn't it need intricate knowledge of the functioning and misfunctioning of the human mind for both?
. that was a little out of context i fear. the newtonian perspective was the assertion i had to work with given that it was previously posted. i made no claims about the objective truth of newtonian physics.
to generalize, physicalism is self explanatory, moralism needs to be explained then taken at face value.
If you make no claims about the objective truth of physics (which particular physical theory we're talking about is irrelevant... name your favorite, I'll google its problems if needed), why do you hold the truth claims of physics in higher esteem than the truth claims of ethics?
Also, you might want to clarify your use of the term "physicalism". How can physicalism be "self explanatory" if what physics describes is false?
This view responds to the challenge of the mind-body problem by claiming that mental states are ultimately physical states,
now, it's not fair to say that i believe in it since i see almost everything in contexts that include other contexts. physicalism could be true if you see it as per its definition and both humans and aliens would live in such an universe.
why do you hold the truth claims of physics in higher esteem than the truth claims of ethics
arround, you'd need to define something like the graviton particle (which is hypothetical) that would work for morals/a moral universe (from which we would later extract our ethics). (and i could totally do that too. i could define and prove that faith exists, hypothetically).
if, in any argument i look like i'm supporting/encouraging a view, it's only because i want it clearly defined before i switch it 180degrees.
For example, in the post above, xM(Z argues that "an alien will be able to understand the cause and effect of newtonian laws/mechanics but it might never understand human morals". I find that hard to believe (and impossible to prove, given that the premise is counterfactual). Newtonian mechanics cannot comprehend the perihelion movement of Merkur. Without theory of relativity (light being subject to gravity), we have no explanation for why it gets dark at night. Newton provides no means to explain photoelectric effects. So why would an alien be able to comprehend our erroneous physics but not our erroneous morals? Wouldn't it need intricate knowledge of the functioning and misfunctioning of the human mind for both?
. that was a little out of context i fear. the newtonian perspective was the assertion i had to work with given that it was previously posted. i made no claims about the objective truth of newtonian physics.
to generalize, physicalism is self explanatory, moralism needs to be explained then taken at face value.
If you make no claims about the objective truth of physics (which particular physical theory we're talking about is irrelevant... name your favorite, I'll google its problems if needed), why do you hold the truth claims of physics in higher esteem than the truth claims of ethics?
Also, you might want to clarify your use of the term "physicalism". How can physicalism be "self explanatory" if what physics describes is false?
This view responds to the challenge of the mind-body problem by claiming that mental states are ultimately physical states,
now, it's not fair to say that i believe in it since i see almost everything in contexts that include other contexts. physicalism could be true if you see it as per its definition and both humans and aliens would live in such an universe.
why do you hold the truth claims of physics in higher esteem than the truth claims of ethics
arround, you'd need to define something like the graviton particle (which is hypothetical) that would work for morals/a moral universe (from which we would later extract our ethics). (and i could totally do that too. i could define and prove that faith exists, hypothetically).
if, in any argument i look like i'm supporting/encouraging a view, it's only because i want it clearly defined before i switch it 180degrees.
Don't take this the wrong way - I don't mean it aggressive or offensive -, but if you have nothing constructive to contribute and contradict yourself on purpose (180 degree switch), consider "if aliens..." a valid objection and disregard the possibility of objective knowledge right from the outset, I don't see that fostering the purpose of clear definitions at all. To the contrary, the language games you're playing seem to be rather about terminological confusion.
Also, the bolded sentence sounds like the lexical definition of trolling.
But just as it is not necessary to derive one true nature of the "storm" or of the "cloud" for meteorology to generate true statements about the weather, it is not necessary to have "an unchanging human nature" to derive universally true statements about humans or sentient beings for that matter.
And why can you do that for the storm and the cloud ? Because you can test the effect of the storm on the weather all things equals and they will always be the same. Therefore, you don't have to rationally discuss the concept of "storm" or "cloud" to make statement about what happen to the weather when a storm comes by. The effect of a human action everything equal on humanity's "utility", health or morality can never be evaluated. You cannot derive a universal statement out of it, because you cannot get out of the context in which the action have been made. It doesn't mean that someone who kill babies for pleasure is morally good if he thinks it is, it means that you cannot rationally prove to me that killing babies is always morally bad.
Talking "rationally" about something doesn't mean you can jump from conclusions to conclusions. Comparaison is not reason.
Science is full of questions that can't be proven in any rigorous sense. I realize that in the ongoing discussion with frog you already covered this in parts, but also this notion that knowledge generation has to involve full scale experiments needs to be dispelled.
You are mistaking science and reasonning. The fact that every scientific knowledge is based on axiom doesn't mean that the scientific knowledge is impossible to prove. The axiom is not "part" of the scientific knowledge, it is what permit the knowledge, by defining and delimiting the realm of analysis - hence why all sciences needs philosophy. Axioms are a necessity because we cannot test them - that doesn't mean they are "always right". A scientific knowledge is a "systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe". Can you make sure predictions in economy, sociology, or any "social" science, like you do in physics or biology ? Do you think laws exists in social sciences ? Can you build laws on morality ?
Why do you say that we cannot evaluate morals according to some standard and decide which ones are better? I'd argue that we can, and in fact do. That utilitarianism has lots of problems doesn't mean there isn't some way of measuring how well a norm works... just that the field of experimental ethics is very immature and lacks a proper methodology.
How can you define the "some standard" ? That's my point, there are no standard that are not up to controversy.
Because that standard doesn't exist, one moral will always be better than another in a specific context. For exemple, evaluate what is more moral between "Killing is right" and "Killing is wrong". The only answers you can give for sure is : in some context, killing is right, is some others, killing is wrong. It is right to kill in war, it is wrong to kill your neighbour because he pissed in your garden, etc.
You claim experimentation is needed, but it really isn't. Cosmologists don't experiment, they form a hypothesis and evaluate its predictions by observing the cosmos... not a controlled experiment. Yet cosmology is probably one of the fiellds that has the best claim to be working towards finding truths about the universe,
When I say experimentation or "test", I don't necessarily mean controlled environment. In economy they also make experimentation (experience of randomization like in medicine) : they "test" the effect of a specific economical program on an area (say they add computer in schools in Zimbabwe) then they evaluate the effect of the change. My point is, they can't say for sure that what happened in Zimbabwe in 2013 will also exactly happen in Zimbabwe in 2014 or in China in 2013 - I can't entirely separate my conclusions from the context. In cosmology if what I've seen in 2013 does not work in 2014, you have to change your model (because it is wrong). In economy, the same happen, your model is not strictly "wrong", it is not adapted to the situation at hand.
On July 30 2013 20:45 MiraMax wrote:
On July 30 2013 20:09 WhiteDog wrote:
On July 30 2013 16:49 MiraMax wrote:
On July 30 2013 02:21 WhiteDog wrote: The problem is that you are all searching for a definition of "man" that is not supposed to be up to controversy - so you need something to define this man. See your sentence "Given some contingent facts about human beings and some necessary truths about rational agent interaction allowing torturing babies for fun as a general rule will not lead to a flourishing society" : you considers that there are contingent "facts" about human beings (the use of contingent is obviously really problematic because you admit that you can't define man always and everywhere),
I am not really sure what to make of this paragraph. I can only hope you wrote this because you are confused about the meaning of contingent, because none of your conclusions seem to follow. It is a contingent physiological fact that human beings usually have two hands and ten fingers, in the sense that it does not seem logically necessary that we have two hands and ten fingers. The natural sciences are full of contingent facts, but that does not compromise any of the conclusions physicists derive. It is further not at all necessary to be able to describe "one unchanging human nature" for moral realism. What makes you think that? Human beings are complex physical systems, so obviously there will be lots of variety in their reactions.
Then give me contingent facts about human nature that would make it possible for you to rationally critic a moral statement everything equal. How can you rationaly prove me that the fact that we have two hands and ten fingers means anything from a moral stand point.
But just as it is not necessary to derive one true nature of the "storm" or of the "cloud" for meteorology to generate true statements about the weather, it is not necessary to have "an unchanging human nature" to derive universally true statements about humans or sentient beings for that matter.
And why can you do that for the storm and the cloud ? Because you can test the effect of the storm on the weather all things equals and they will always be the same. Therefore, you don't have to rationally discuss the concept of "storm" or "cloud" to make statement about what happen to the weather when a storm comes by. The effect of a human action everything equal on humanity's "utility", health or morality can never be evaluated. You cannot derive a universal statement out of it, because you cannot get out of the context in which the action have been made. It doesn't mean that someone who kill babies for pleasure is morally good if he thinks it is, it means that you cannot rationally prove to me that killing babies is always morally bad.
Talking "rationally" about something doesn't mean you can jump from conclusions to conclusions. Comparaison is not reason.
Science is full of questions that can't be proven in any rigorous sense. I realize that in the ongoing discussion with frog you already covered this in parts, but also this notion that knowledge generation has to involve full scale experiments needs to be dispelled.
You are mistaking science and reasonning. The fact that every scientific knowledge is based on axiom doesn't mean that the scientific knowledge is impossible to prove. The axiom is not "part" of the scientific knowledge, it is what permit the knowledge, by defining and delimiting the realm of analysis - hence why all sciences needs philosophy. Axioms are a necessity because we cannot test them - that doesn't mean they are "always right" (unfalsifiable) but that I don't have the knowledge to falsify them. "Human nature" is unfalsifiable (I can find thousands exemples in our history that any definition of "human nature" is wrong, but it doesn't make it wrong). A scientific knowledge is a "systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe". Can you make sure predictions in economy, sociology, or any "social" science, like you do in physics or biology ? Do you think laws exists in social sciences ? Can you build laws on morality ?
Your post seems so confused to me that I am afraid that we might be too far apart to communicate with each other meaningfully. I provided you with a contingent fact about human beings that relates to morals: "human beings can suffer". Do I get it right that you think this is a fact, but that it does not relate to morality?
If you really do think that the effect of an action on a human beings health cannot be evaluated, then do you also think that nobody could ever really be said to have killed somebody? Or that a meaningful defense against the accusation of killing somebody would be that one did not take the sociological or political context into account sufficiently? Because this view sure sounds rather eccentric to me.
Do you understand what everything equal means ? The effect of an action on human beings health CAN be evaluated, but NOT everything equals. I can evaluate that dying of hearth attack at the age of 40 is a bad thing. I cannot strictly, always and everywhere, says that dying is a bad thing - for exemple, is it morally right to die for others ?
Finally, if you are an anti-realist about any of the special sciences then I am not surprised that you are an anti-realist about morality. I would be completely happy to conclude that some statements of morality are as truth-apt as some statements in psychology, economics or medicine and I am a realist about all of them.
I don't consider that everything that comes out of the "special sciences" is "always" relative or defined by one's point of view. I'm just not a positivist. I know their limits, and their qualities. There is a reason why most economist could not predict the economic crisis, or that no social scientist can really predict with a 100% certainty what someone will buy if you give him 300 dollars despite the fact that we know a lot about how people consume and why they do so.
But it has been pointed out to you that neither a 100% predictability nor perfect irrefutability nor completely ignoring relevant context is a prerequisite for moral realism- or any realism. It is a complete mystery to me why you still keep referring to these arguments in light of this...
Yes that I agree. I agree that there are moral truth, but that those truth are also relative (to their context) in the way that there are no transcendante absolute references to moral value and beliefs. This was my point since the beginning when I stated (by quoting passeron) that moral statement can be universal as in digital universalism and not logical universalism : for digital universalism, " the general propositions can always be generated by the logical "conjunction" of the singular statements that it resume."
It further seems to me that you don't understand the ceteris paribus clause. In fact you have it completely backwards. It is a limiting assumption precisely to rule out change in relevant context. So if you put up the claim that ceteris paribus killing a human being is immoral, only to go on invalidating it by varying relevant context (but what if we are at war, but what if it's in self-defense...etc.) then this is simply disingenuously violating your own ceteris paribus clause. You could claim that no sufficiently specified context can ever be identified in order to make a moral assessment This could at least be discussed. But you are quite far away from that it seems to me.
"It further seems to me that you don't understand the ceteris paribus clause". You need "something" to go from a moral statement in a context to a moral statement ouside of its context. In practice, social scientists use various statistical tools to isolate a specific fact from its context. It does not work perfectly however as the context in social science can never entirely disappear, and it push some people to consider the ceteris paribus clause as some kind of alibi (to make it seems like we are a science like physics) - "there are no camel in the north pole" as Halbwachs said. In this case, you have no something, no tools, no ground on which you can pass from the contextual to the out of context, so I can refute your arguments by using other type of contextual facts. If you had a "something" we could discuss the something, but you don't.
Okay, I guess I will give it a last try and then will just leave it be and am certainly aware that I might misunderstand your whole position and that this is only due to my inability. You state that you think moral truths exist, but are "relative" to some context. I further gather that you think the situation is similar in the social sciences. Finally the way you use "context" you don't seem to mean any specific (social or political) context, but just that (many, most, all) moral truths do not transcend all contingent facts about moral agents. I do not see how any of this would undermine moral realism if it were true and am quite happy to accept it for the most part.
Then again I cannot square these statements of yours with the last paragraph in which you write that I would have no "something", no "tool", no "ground" etc. so that my position cannot even be discussed. I strongly disagree with this assessment naturally.
Sure there is a reason why most economist could not foresee the crisis, but this is not to say that there are no natural "objective" reasons for the crisis. There might after all be a reason why some economists did foresee the crisis. I can further develop a simple economics experiment where the outcome predictability rivals that of physics experiments.
Let me give first you a moral statement which I hold to be universally true: "A moral action that harms a sentient being needs to have some potential redeeming consequence that benefits a sentient being." Do you think this statement is truth-apt? If yes, do you think it is true? If not, what additional context would you need to assess its truth value?
On July 30 2013 15:55 gneGne wrote: How would ethics be any less real than physics. Hasn't any of you ever been in a situation where you had a moral choice to make?
Nope, never Thats one of the advantages of not beeing a moral realist
"A moral action that harms a sentient being needs to have some potential redeeming consequence that benefits a sentient being"
In the "science of moralty" this sentence seems to be true apt and by logically evaluating this sentence i also hold it to be true. At the same time i think it has no meaning since every possible action has this potential, how small and far into the future it might be.
On July 30 2013 01:41 Sbrubbles wrote: I'm not sure you can jump from "torturing babies for fun is morally wrong" to "Given some contingent facts about human beings and some necessary truths about rational agent interaction allowing torturing babies for fun as a general rule will not lead to a flourishing society.". The first sentence makes an ethical assertion while the second one makes a point about how society ought to be, so it sounds odd to say the first meaning to say the second.
I am not sure that I follow you completely. On the face of it, both sentences could be said to be descriptive of a certain state of affairs (note that the second sentence does not contain any ought) or a counterfactual (given that in no society anybody is actually torturing babies). Whether you agree that the semantic content of the two statements is the same/similar/comparable is a different thing altogether and I wholeheartedly admit that it provides only a crude summary of my view. I further think that -given some further philosophical reasoning - from both statements follows an ought, if they are true - that is a moral obligation not to torture babies for fun. I agree with error theorists that this is not any cosmic or categorical imperative, but more in the form of prudence, in the sense that rational agents can and should agree on the fact that not torturing babies for fun should be followed.
I think I phrased it badly. I just meant to say that the statement "torturing babies for fun is morally wrong" is a statement about morals (philosophy) while the statement "Given some contingent facts about human beings and some necessary truths about rational agent interaction allowing torturing babies for fun as a general rule will not lead to a flourishing society" is about anthropology or perhaps sociology.
I could, for example, make the two statements "being lazy is morally wrong" and "being lazy will not lead to a flourishing society". The first statement is about morals and the second about economics. If you want to reach the first statement from the second one, you need to show what bridge you're using, like: "Being lazy will not lead to a flourishing society. It is self-evident that reaching a flourishing society is the goal that determines what is morally right and wrong. Thus, being lazy is morally wrong". But even if you are a realist and make this connection naturally, it doesn't change the fact that those two statements say different things.
On July 30 2013 15:55 gneGne wrote: How would ethics be any less real than physics. Hasn't any of you ever been in a situation where you had a moral choice to make?
Nope, never Thats one of the advantages of not beeing a moral realist
"The universe" is not an entity capable of inventing stuff.
what a narrow minded thing to say hey man!, i remember the times when you were an amoeba and couldn't figure out what shape is ...
You must be talking about my ancestors as I have always been human.
But that put aside: so what?
now use that backwards reasoning, forwards. you will be the ancestor of ... (until you get to "as i have always been the universe")?. it's fun
I still don't know what that's supposed to hint at.
I was once nonexistent. So?
you need continuity in your argument, continuity that goes to infinity and back. upward and downward theoretical (at least) continuity. assertions like
"The universe" is not an entity capable of inventing stuff
can not be proved nor disproved until (by your logic) you get to a superior stage in evolution. so you are purposely limiting yourself in actions/thoughts/decisions untill you get to that superior stage. it makes no sense to me why one would do that.
i can think of ways (instances in which) geology wouldn't even exist.
On July 30 2013 18:42 Spekulatius wrote: @ Lixler:
I think I expressed myself badly in my last post. Of course I do agree with you that dying does not remove a moral system. But this does not in any way mean a moral system is like a law of physics. You say, moral systems survive their "thinker" just as laws of physics do - I disagree. You say, a physical system of person X needs to be included in the equation the same way the moral system of person X needs to be included in its respective equation - I disagree.
I tried to compare morals to beauty as I believe they are comparable. And I very strongly believe that if you remove a critical beholder from the equation, the notion of beauty stops to make sense. What is beauty if there is nobody who is appreciating it, rating it or feeling it? Nothing. A notion without content. I very strongly believe the exact same statement holds true for moral systems. Morals are a human invention. Without humans, nobody would ever think about calling something right or wrong. It is completely implausible to me how there should be any universal statement that is not contingent on a beholder. ObviousOne phrased it much more bluntly: The universe does not care if something is right or wrong. This means a) that only caring about morality produces moral systems which means it's contingent on the human mind. And b) laws of physics are not relative to the beholder, they do not change depending on who's watching/rating/analyzing.
@ Acrofales:
No. You're not getting the fundamental point I'm trying to make.
Universal truths cannot be discovered (as you claim) because
1. there are no universal truths (see above) 2. if there were universal moral truths, they would not be discoverable because they would not be part of the world outside of your mind. Morals have no anchor in the real world. You would not be able to discover moral truths just as you would not be able to "discover" that you are feeling tired, hungry or alone. The word "discover" does not make any sense in this context.
Again, moral "truths" are fundamentally different from laws of nature. Moral systems are like feelings which are - you agree, I suppose - not universal. Moral systems are like opinions of beauty - not universal. Moral systems are like opinions on taste - check our KMD thread: not universal.
I feel like I'm starting to repeat myself though.
I am sorry to interfere, but I find this line of reasoning utterly unconvincing. That moral systems require moral agents and that moral theory is only applicable if moral agents exist is a trivial truism, just like the laws of nature would not be applicable if nature would not exist or like geology would not make sense to anyone if planets had not formed. It might be an interesting exercise to investigate in what respect statements could nonetheless be said to be true if none of the objects in the statement had ever obtained existence, but I fail to see how this is in any way special for morality.
I am a realist about psychology for instance, in that I think that psychology as a science can generate true statements about the human psyche and human behavior. Would you agree? If yes, why are you not moved by the argument that without any human, no one could make any sense of psychology. If you disagree, what do you think it is that psychologists are doing?
I disagree.
Geology is still right even if planets ceased to exist. There's just nothing to talk about anymore. Psychology is still right even if all humans ceased to exist. There's just nobody to talk about anymore. Moral statements are still neither right nor wrong in the absence of humans because they don't have the capacity to be either right or wrong because they're relative statements.
Stop comparing laws of nature and moral statements. They're fundamentally different.
If you can prove that something is objectively beautiful, I will completely submit to your theory that there can be moral absolutes. Until then, no argument containing laws of nature will have anything to do with moral relativity or absolutism, I'm sorry.
Wow ... you just went full circle, or so it seems to me. Before you argued that moral statements cannot be true even though moral agents exist, because they would obviously not be true if moral agents did not exist. Now you say that moral statements are not true without moral agents, because they are obviously not even true when moral agents exist as they are not even capable of being true. Maybe I completely misunderstood you, but I am honestly not sure what to make of this line of reasoning.
How can the otherwise perfectly fine geological statement "Earth's continents move due to continental drift" be said to be true given that planet Earth does not exist? It seems to me that whatever definition of truth you come up with here it would work out for any other statement of similar form as well - including moral statements. That was my point.
1st paragraph: Maybe my view seemed to be developing through several of my posts while I was trying to specify it. But your 2nd to last sentence in the 1st paragraph states it correctly. Moral statements are not capable of being "true" in the usual way the word is used, because they are relative.
How is planet Earth comparable to a beholder passing moral judgments? You compare the beholder aka the creator of a moral statement to the object of a law of nature. It's a bad example.
On July 30 2013 18:42 Spekulatius wrote: @ Lixler:
I think I expressed myself badly in my last post. Of course I do agree with you that dying does not remove a moral system. But this does not in any way mean a moral system is like a law of physics. You say, moral systems survive their "thinker" just as laws of physics do - I disagree. You say, a physical system of person X needs to be included in the equation the same way the moral system of person X needs to be included in its respective equation - I disagree.
I tried to compare morals to beauty as I believe they are comparable. And I very strongly believe that if you remove a critical beholder from the equation, the notion of beauty stops to make sense. What is beauty if there is nobody who is appreciating it, rating it or feeling it? Nothing. A notion without content. I very strongly believe the exact same statement holds true for moral systems. Morals are a human invention. Without humans, nobody would ever think about calling something right or wrong. It is completely implausible to me how there should be any universal statement that is not contingent on a beholder. ObviousOne phrased it much more bluntly: The universe does not care if something is right or wrong. This means a) that only caring about morality produces moral systems which means it's contingent on the human mind. And b) laws of physics are not relative to the beholder, they do not change depending on who's watching/rating/analyzing.
I don't know how to take these two statements together.
You say, moral systems survive their "thinker" just as laws of physics do - I disagree.
Are you trying to take "thinker" broadly here and say that they can't be unhinged totally from all thinkers? I guess that would make sense.
yes.
Let me provide some simple arguments for my views, as you've presented them. I say that a moral system survives its thinker just as laws of physics do. What I mean by this is that any given moral system has no intrinsic connection to the person who is applying it (although that person might feel really good about it, or whatever). Other people can adopt a moral system, both before and after this person's life, people can consider the moral system without believing it themselves, and so on. Surely nobody would make moral judgments if there were no rational agents around, but nobody would make physical judgments, either.
Yes. A moral system is like a pen. It can be used by your heirs and everyone else after you die.
I dunno why you invoke physical judgments though. Trying to interpret the outside world is nothing like saying A is better than B. This is actually my main problem with what you're saying and I get critisized for disagreeing with you on it. You do the same as me though, simply stating the contrary as fact without proof that they are indeed comparable.
I also said that a physical system needs to be included in any physical statement, which system can be linked to a thinker to the same extent that a moral system is. This is trivially true. When I say, for instance, "the chair is under the table," I am invoking a specific set of more or less physical concepts that are accessible to all people who speak English. Another physical system might use these signs to mean something else, or might use different signs to mean the same thing. And with more precise physical statements, like f=ma or e=1/2mv^2, it is obvious that we are taking on a lot of conceptual baggage in order to make our statement. Every statement comes out of a system of concepts that define its precise meaning; this system of concepts surely needs to be applied by a human if it's going to be applied at all, but that doesn't make it a total fiction (or whatever pejoratives you want to call it).
So?
You said that beauty loses its sense if there is no one around to behold it. How about our other classifications, like "green" and "chair" and "born on January 17th?" Does the concept "green" cease to mean anything at all if there is nobody around to see green things? It doesn't seem to me to be so; using the example I used earlier, I can imagine a possible world where everything is green but everyone is red-green colorblind, and green still makes plenty of sense here.
Green is different. "Green" is the word we use for a certain wave length of light that is emitted from a certain object and processed by a functioning human brain and eye. There's no judgment in the word green. Chair is different, too. Chair is a level plane on pillars made for sitting. No personal value, no judgment. Born of January 17th means, someone came out of a womb on the day that is marked on january 17th on our gregorian calendar. All those words do not lose meaning when there's no human around. (Except you mean meaning in a "purpose" kind of way which I don't.)
I am maintaining that the universe does not care about our formulations of the laws of physics, either. The universe moves on as it does, and we can describe events that take place in it with different levels of accuracy and precision, but the universe doesn't care about our formulations. You might be surprised to find out that physical events are always underdetermine physical theory: that is to say, given any amount of physical data, we can always construct more than one physical theory that explains it. This means, badly put, that there is no one objectively right and complete set of physical laws that totally describe the universe. There can be multiple systems that perfectly describe and predict all physical data.
I am surprised to hear you say that with perfect knowledge of the outside world, there could still be two different interpretations that are equally true. I find that hard to believe. Source on that theory?
I want this to show that our formulations of physical laws are unhinged from the universe just like moral laws are: the universe doesn't care at all that Newton was born or that we haven't found a theory of quantum gravity or whatever. We can come up with certain ways of describing physical events, but these certain ways don't matter at all to the universe. Things stand the same, in this respect, with description of moral events. The universe goes on as it does and we lay our moral interpretations over it. The difference between physical laws and moral laws does not lie in mind-dependence.
I agree with your first part. If our interpretations of nature are right or wrong does not change nature. I said a similar thing before in this thread. You're not disproving me or anything. And I'm still weary about what your opinion actually is.
On July 30 2013 01:41 Sbrubbles wrote: I'm not sure you can jump from "torturing babies for fun is morally wrong" to "Given some contingent facts about human beings and some necessary truths about rational agent interaction allowing torturing babies for fun as a general rule will not lead to a flourishing society.". The first sentence makes an ethical assertion while the second one makes a point about how society ought to be, so it sounds odd to say the first meaning to say the second.
I am not sure that I follow you completely. On the face of it, both sentences could be said to be descriptive of a certain state of affairs (note that the second sentence does not contain any ought) or a counterfactual (given that in no society anybody is actually torturing babies). Whether you agree that the semantic content of the two statements is the same/similar/comparable is a different thing altogether and I wholeheartedly admit that it provides only a crude summary of my view. I further think that -given some further philosophical reasoning - from both statements follows an ought, if they are true - that is a moral obligation not to torture babies for fun. I agree with error theorists that this is not any cosmic or categorical imperative, but more in the form of prudence, in the sense that rational agents can and should agree on the fact that not torturing babies for fun should be followed.
I think I phrased it badly. I just meant to say that the statement "torturing babies for fun is morally wrong" is a statement about morals (philosophy) while the statement "Given some contingent facts about human beings and some necessary truths about rational agent interaction allowing torturing babies for fun as a general rule will not lead to a flourishing society" is about anthropology or perhaps sociology.
I could, for example, make the two statements "being lazy is morally wrong" and "being lazy will not lead to a flourishing society". The first statement is about morals and the second about economics. If you want to reach the first statement from the second one, you need to show what bridge you're using, like: "Being lazy will not lead to a flourishing society. It is self-evident that reaching a flourishing society is the goal that determines what is morally right and wrong. Thus, being lazy is morally wrong". But even if you are a realist and make this connection naturally, it doesn't change the fact that those two statements say different things.
Well, you surely agree that there is not and never could be any inherently true meaning of the words "morally right", but that - just like any other string of letters - these words get meaning through their use. And whenever I say something like "x is morally wrong" I in fact do mean to say something like "generally allowing X is detrimental to a flourishing society" or simply "x is detrimental to well-being" or "X causes unnecessary harm". I have no problem accepting that moral statements are semantically thick and can mean several things at once. Furthermore that's what I understand other people to mean when they use this language. That's how I can make sense of moral talk. I can realize that people talk about something real and consequential and important and that's what I understand them to mean.
If you understand something different whenever these words are used then we have first and foremost a semantic disagreement, which we could try to settle. For instance you could tell me what I might be missing according to you, or what you would understand instead. And we can look for common ground and engage in some conceptual clarification. Or otherwise if we cannot settle our semantic disagreement, we could agree that given my semantic understanding moral facts would reduce to natural facts and that given your semantic understanding there could not be any moral facts or that moral facts would be queer. Like this we might be able to explore each others view without getting entangled in semantic conflicts.
"The universe" is not an entity capable of inventing stuff.
what a narrow minded thing to say hey man!, i remember the times when you were an amoeba and couldn't figure out what shape is ...
You must be talking about my ancestors as I have always been human.
But that put aside: so what?
now use that backwards reasoning, forwards. you will be the ancestor of ... (until you get to "as i have always been the universe")?. it's fun
I still don't know what that's supposed to hint at.
I was once nonexistent. So?
you need continuity in your argument, continuity that goes to infinity and back. upward and downward theoretical (at least) continuity. assertions like
"The universe" is not an entity capable of inventing stuff
can not be proved nor disproved until (by your logic) you get to a superior stage in evolution. so you are purposely limiting yourself in actions/thoughts/decisions untill you get to that superior stage. it makes no sense to me why one would do that.
i can think of ways (instances in which) geology wouldn't even exist.
Geology is still right even if planets ceased to exist. There's just nothing to talk about anymore.
how would geology affect an AI living inside a computer?
existences, totally different then yours, can have different laws. (edit: i managed to switch 2 of my posts. aijlergbaergea)
I have absolutely no idea what you are trying to say.
On July 30 2013 18:42 Spekulatius wrote: @ Lixler:
I think I expressed myself badly in my last post. Of course I do agree with you that dying does not remove a moral system. But this does not in any way mean a moral system is like a law of physics. You say, moral systems survive their "thinker" just as laws of physics do - I disagree. You say, a physical system of person X needs to be included in the equation the same way the moral system of person X needs to be included in its respective equation - I disagree.
I tried to compare morals to beauty as I believe they are comparable. And I very strongly believe that if you remove a critical beholder from the equation, the notion of beauty stops to make sense. What is beauty if there is nobody who is appreciating it, rating it or feeling it? Nothing. A notion without content. I very strongly believe the exact same statement holds true for moral systems. Morals are a human invention. Without humans, nobody would ever think about calling something right or wrong. It is completely implausible to me how there should be any universal statement that is not contingent on a beholder. ObviousOne phrased it much more bluntly: The universe does not care if something is right or wrong. This means a) that only caring about morality produces moral systems which means it's contingent on the human mind. And b) laws of physics are not relative to the beholder, they do not change depending on who's watching/rating/analyzing.
@ Acrofales:
No. You're not getting the fundamental point I'm trying to make.
Universal truths cannot be discovered (as you claim) because
1. there are no universal truths (see above) 2. if there were universal moral truths, they would not be discoverable because they would not be part of the world outside of your mind. Morals have no anchor in the real world. You would not be able to discover moral truths just as you would not be able to "discover" that you are feeling tired, hungry or alone. The word "discover" does not make any sense in this context.
Again, moral "truths" are fundamentally different from laws of nature. Moral systems are like feelings which are - you agree, I suppose - not universal. Moral systems are like opinions of beauty - not universal. Moral systems are like opinions on taste - check our KMD thread: not universal.
I feel like I'm starting to repeat myself though.
I am sorry to interfere, but I find this line of reasoning utterly unconvincing. That moral systems require moral agents and that moral theory is only applicable if moral agents exist is a trivial truism, just like the laws of nature would not be applicable if nature would not exist or like geology would not make sense to anyone if planets had not formed. It might be an interesting exercise to investigate in what respect statements could nonetheless be said to be true if none of the objects in the statement had ever obtained existence, but I fail to see how this is in any way special for morality.
I am a realist about psychology for instance, in that I think that psychology as a science can generate true statements about the human psyche and human behavior. Would you agree? If yes, why are you not moved by the argument that without any human, no one could make any sense of psychology. If you disagree, what do you think it is that psychologists are doing?
I disagree.
Geology is still right even if planets ceased to exist. There's just nothing to talk about anymore. Psychology is still right even if all humans ceased to exist. There's just nobody to talk about anymore. Moral statements are still neither right nor wrong in the absence of humans because they don't have the capacity to be either right or wrong because they're relative statements.
Stop comparing laws of nature and moral statements. They're fundamentally different.
If you can prove that something is objectively beautiful, I will completely submit to your theory that there can be moral absolutes. Until then, no argument containing laws of nature will have anything to do with moral relativity or absolutism, I'm sorry.
Wow ... you just went full circle, or so it seems to me. Before you argued that moral statements cannot be true even though moral agents exist, because they would obviously not be true if moral agents did not exist. Now you say that moral statements are not true without moral agents, because they are obviously not even true when moral agents exist as they are not even capable of being true. Maybe I completely misunderstood you, but I am honestly not sure what to make of this line of reasoning.
How can the otherwise perfectly fine geological statement "Earth's continents move due to continental drift" be said to be true given that planet Earth does not exist? It seems to me that whatever definition of truth you come up with here it would work out for any other statement of similar form as well - including moral statements. That was my point.
1st paragraph: Maybe my view seemed to be developing through several of my posts while I was trying to specify it. But your 2nd to last sentence in the 1st paragraph states it correctly. Moral statements are not capable of being "true" in the usual way the word is used, because they are relative.
How is planet Earth comparable to a beholder passing moral judgments? You compare the beholder aka the creator of a moral statement to the object of a law of nature. It's a bad example.
I am sorry but then I misunderstood your view. You seem nonetheless to be dodging the question I asked.
How is earth comparable to a beholder passing a judgement? Well both are natural phenomena for a start. But your analogy is off. The question should better be phrased "how is making a statement describing an aspect of an event involving the natural phenomenon: 'planet' fundamentally different to making a statement about an aspect of an event involving the natural phenomenon: 'human being'?" Don't you agree? And my answer is: I don't see any.
"Green" is the word we use for a certain wave length of light that is emitted from a certain object and processed by a functioning human brain and eye.
No. The wavelength which corresponds to what a color-blind man experiences as "green" is a completely different quale than yours. (If you're unsure what qualia is--which I think you might be--you should delve further into theory of mind.) I read this response completely out of context of whatever else you said, but I for whatever reason couldn't help but add on this response.
A statement about nature has the capacity to correspond to its factual state, thus has the capability to be true. A moral statement can never correspond to a factual state of anything because there is no thing which it can correspond to.
Science has its hypotheses and tries to match them to reality. Morals don't, as there is nothing factual that they can be matched with.
If you disagree, tell me why there should be a universally correct moral statement. Why do you believe there is, and do you have any proof?
"Green" is the word we use for a certain wave length of light that is emitted from a certain object and processed by a functioning human brain and eye.
No. The wavelength which corresponds to what a color-blind man experiences as "green" is a completely different quale than yours. (If you're unsure what qualia is--which I think you might be--you should delve further into theory of mind.) I read this response completely out of context of whatever else you said, but I for whatever reason couldn't help but add on this response.
If this is the meaning of green that Lixler was referring to then I will have to change my answer to his question to: No, I do not think the word "green" has any meaning in a world of red-green colorblind people.
"Green" is the word we use for a certain wave length of light that is emitted from a certain object and processed by a functioning human brain and eye.
No. The wavelength which corresponds to what a color-blind man experiences as "green" is a completely different quale than yours. (If you're unsure what qualia is--which I think you might be--you should delve further into theory of mind.) I read this response completely out of context of whatever else you said, but I for whatever reason couldn't help but add on this response.
If this is the meaning of green that Lixler was referring to then I will have to change my answer to his question to: No, I do not think the word "green" has any meaning in a world of red-green colorblind people.
Well surely it has "some" meaning, in that a red-green colorblind person probably knows green as an experience that only others are privy to.
"Green" is the word we use for a certain wave length of light that is emitted from a certain object and processed by a functioning human brain and eye.
No. The wavelength which corresponds to what a color-blind man experiences as "green" is a completely different quale than yours. (If you're unsure what qualia is--which I think you might be--you should delve further into theory of mind.) I read this response completely out of context of whatever else you said, but I for whatever reason couldn't help but add on this response.
If this is the meaning of green that Lixler was referring to then I will have to change my answer to his question to: No, I do not think the word "green" has any meaning in a world of red-green colorblind people.
Well surely it has "some" meaning, in that a red-green colorblind person probably knows green as an experience that only others are privy to.
Yes, sure. But the question that was asked was: can it be true that something is green when some see it as pink and some see it as blue?
A moral statement can never correspond to a factual state of anything because there is no thing which it can correspond to.
Moral truths are abstract. Unless you believe in some sort of weird metaphysics which discredits the existence of abstract objects you're perfectly capable of corresponding moral statements to something that exists.
A moral statement can never correspond to a factual state of anything because there is no thing which it can correspond to.
Moral truths are abstract. Unless you believe in some sort of weird metaphysics which discredits the existence of abstract objects you're perfectly capable of corresponding moral statements to something that exists.
Re-read my posts and you might understand what I mean.
For example, in the post above, xM(Z argues that "an alien will be able to understand the cause and effect of newtonian laws/mechanics but it might never understand human morals". I find that hard to believe (and impossible to prove, given that the premise is counterfactual). Newtonian mechanics cannot comprehend the perihelion movement of Merkur. Without theory of relativity (light being subject to gravity), we have no explanation for why it gets dark at night. Newton provides no means to explain photoelectric effects. So why would an alien be able to comprehend our erroneous physics but not our erroneous morals? Wouldn't it need intricate knowledge of the functioning and misfunctioning of the human mind for both?
. that was a little out of context i fear. the newtonian perspective was the assertion i had to work with given that it was previously posted. i made no claims about the objective truth of newtonian physics.
to generalize, physicalism is self explanatory, moralism needs to be explained then taken at face value.
If you make no claims about the objective truth of physics (which particular physical theory we're talking about is irrelevant... name your favorite, I'll google its problems if needed), why do you hold the truth claims of physics in higher esteem than the truth claims of ethics?
Also, you might want to clarify your use of the term "physicalism". How can physicalism be "self explanatory" if what physics describes is false?
This view responds to the challenge of the mind-body problem by claiming that mental states are ultimately physical states,
now, it's not fair to say that i believe in it since i see almost everything in contexts that include other contexts. physicalism could be true if you see it as per its definition and both humans and aliens would live in such an universe.
why do you hold the truth claims of physics in higher esteem than the truth claims of ethics
arround, you'd need to define something like the graviton particle (which is hypothetical) that would work for morals/a moral universe (from which we would later extract our ethics). (and i could totally do that too. i could define and prove that faith exists, hypothetically).
if, in any argument i look like i'm supporting/encouraging a view, it's only because i want it clearly defined before i switch it 180degrees.
Don't take this the wrong way - I don't mean it aggressive or offensive -, but if you have nothing constructive to contribute and contradict yourself on purpose (180 degree switch), consider "if aliens..." a valid objection and disregard the possibility of objective knowledge right from the outset, I don't see that fostering the purpose of clear definitions at all. To the contrary, the language games you're playing seem to be rather about terminological confusion.
Also, the bolded sentence sounds like the lexical definition of trolling.
i agree with you but you're wrong. it goes like this: dualism -> binary opposition -> critical (social mainly) theory. i do not own concepts so i can't contradict myself. i contradict other concepts but, with a purpose (and that, i hope, is not trolling ). this whole topic is about flipping contexts around then arguing about the disappearance of morals/ethics/truths or flipping contexts, arguing about how the initial assertion doesn't hold water in the second/new context then concluding that the first context must be wrong. + Show Spoiler +
ex: slavery = ethics, humanity = context. if you define humanity as a white thing, then slavery exists; if you define humanity as a black and white thing, then slavery disappears (don't take that example ad-literam); what is green green, in a colorblind vs non-colorblind context; evaluable truths in an non-evaluative context (=infinity) and so on.
i just do them at the same time and it looks confusing. in a black vs white argument i'll just come in and say: hey look, this is gray. ;if neither of them can conceive gray, then you can just walk away knowing that those 2 will never see eye to eye.
On July 30 2013 01:41 Sbrubbles wrote: I'm not sure you can jump from "torturing babies for fun is morally wrong" to "Given some contingent facts about human beings and some necessary truths about rational agent interaction allowing torturing babies for fun as a general rule will not lead to a flourishing society.". The first sentence makes an ethical assertion while the second one makes a point about how society ought to be, so it sounds odd to say the first meaning to say the second.
I am not sure that I follow you completely. On the face of it, both sentences could be said to be descriptive of a certain state of affairs (note that the second sentence does not contain any ought) or a counterfactual (given that in no society anybody is actually torturing babies). Whether you agree that the semantic content of the two statements is the same/similar/comparable is a different thing altogether and I wholeheartedly admit that it provides only a crude summary of my view. I further think that -given some further philosophical reasoning - from both statements follows an ought, if they are true - that is a moral obligation not to torture babies for fun. I agree with error theorists that this is not any cosmic or categorical imperative, but more in the form of prudence, in the sense that rational agents can and should agree on the fact that not torturing babies for fun should be followed.
I think I phrased it badly. I just meant to say that the statement "torturing babies for fun is morally wrong" is a statement about morals (philosophy) while the statement "Given some contingent facts about human beings and some necessary truths about rational agent interaction allowing torturing babies for fun as a general rule will not lead to a flourishing society" is about anthropology or perhaps sociology.
I could, for example, make the two statements "being lazy is morally wrong" and "being lazy will not lead to a flourishing society". The first statement is about morals and the second about economics. If you want to reach the first statement from the second one, you need to show what bridge you're using, like: "Being lazy will not lead to a flourishing society. It is self-evident that reaching a flourishing society is the goal that determines what is morally right and wrong. Thus, being lazy is morally wrong". But even if you are a realist and make this connection naturally, it doesn't change the fact that those two statements say different things.
Well, you surely agree that there is not and never could be any inherently true meaning of the words "morally right", but that - just like any other string of letters - these words get meaning through their use. And whenever I say something like "x is morally wrong" I in fact do mean to say something like "generally allowing X is detrimental to a flourishing society" or simply "x is detrimental to well-being" or "X causes unnecessary harm". I have no problem accepting that moral statements are semantically thick and can mean several things at once. Furthermore that's what I understand other people to mean when they use this language. That's how I can make sense of moral talk. I can realize that people talk about something real and consequential and important and that's what I understand them to mean.
If you understand something different whenever these words are used then we have first and foremost a semantic disagreement, which we could try to settle. For instance you could tell me what I might be missing according to you, or what you would understand instead. And we can look for common ground and engage in some conceptual clarification. Or otherwise if we cannot settle our semantic disagreement, we could agree that given my semantic understanding moral facts would reduce to natural facts and that given your semantic understanding there could not be any moral facts or that moral facts would be queer. Like this we might be able to explore each others view without getting entangled in semantic conflicts.
Yes, it's a semantic disagreement, and I tried to give my explanation in my post.
As I'm saying, if you insist that "torturing babies for fun is morally wrong" can mean the same that "Given some contingent facts about human beings and some necessary truths about rational agent interaction allowing torturing babies for fun as a general rule will not lead to a flourishing society", the only thing I can tell you is that you're not being nearly clear enough on what you're trying to say. If you said "Given some contingent facts about human beings and some necessary truths about rational agent interaction allowing torturing babies for fun as a general rule will not lead to a flourishing society. A flourishing society is evidently the goal that determines what is morally right and wrong, therefore torturing babies for fun is morally wrong", then you would be making yourself clear
I'll just step in with my own slightly educated opinion.
"True" and "false" are logical statements that are meaningless outside of logical systems. All logical systems require premises in order to function. Therefore, for a moral statement to be true or false, it must be based off of a set of moral premises that are held by the system. This is fairly straightforward, and doesn't leave room for argument.
Now, what are the moral premises? Some systems have extremely simple moral premises: for example, in monotheistic religions, the moral premise is god (or the holy text being used). Non-monotheistic religions often have some other variety of holy text which provide a similar premise or set of premises. Being an agnostic atheist, I'd prefer to not to use any such premise, not least because there has not yet been any conclusive evidence as to which holy text (if any) is correct. So we are left to purely secular premises for our moral system.
Now, how do we choose our premises? There are some fairly simple guidelines as to which premises NOT to choose: don't choose any premises that preclude the creation of a logical system. That is, "hurting people is good" and "hurting people is bad" can't coexist. But where do we go from there? Even if we cross our fingers and hope that we have a finite set of premises to choose from, we still don't have a way to compare sets of premises. So we need to decide on a goal of our moral system. How do we decide upon that goal? Ultimately, we have to appeal to mob rule by seeing how we can satisfy the personal desires of as many humans as possible, as completely as possible. This gets very iffy but tends to center around the general principles of liberalism with a few safeguards to keep people from hurting one another. I won't get too far into the details of what I think the best system would be, because that's too complex for someone like me.
Now, what do you do about people who disagree? This is the most questionable issue, because we have (continuing from earlier) up to this point never given any way to distinguish between correct and incorrect. Why shouldn't their opinion be weighted equally to yours? The answer to it is rather dull: we have to compromise where possible, and quash where impossible. Unfortunately, although might may not be right, it is generally indistinguishable from it.
So to summarize: morality is based on consensus, for the most part. Long way to get to a simple answer.
Funny how 'true', 'false' and synonyms have been around for thousands of years and yet formal logical systems have only been around for less than 200 then ;p
On July 31 2013 06:19 Spekulatius wrote: So you're disagreeing with his (and my) claim that true and false are notions that do not apply when we talk about moral statements?
You already know I disagree about that, though I wasn't directly responding to anything you said. I was instead replying to the absurd notion that 'true' and 'false' only make sense within formal systems that they predate.
On July 31 2013 06:19 Spekulatius wrote: So you're disagreeing with his (and my) claim that true and false are notions that do not apply when we talk about moral statements?
You already know I disagree about that, though I wasn't directly responding to anything you said. I was instead replying to the absurd notion that 'true' and 'false' only make sense within formal systems that they predate.
I guess its widely known that the existence of a word does not exclude new understandings of it.
On July 31 2013 06:19 Spekulatius wrote: So you're disagreeing with his (and my) claim that true and false are notions that do not apply when we talk about moral statements?
You already know I disagree about that, though I wasn't directly responding to anything you said. I was instead replying to the absurd notion that 'true' and 'false' only make sense within formal systems that they predate.
I guess its widely known that the existence of a word does not exclude new understandings of it.
Do you take me to be denying this? If you claim that a term doesn't make sense outside of formal systems, then you are taking the pre formal systems use of that word (which has continued as the common use) to not make any sense. I find that implausible.
On July 31 2013 06:19 Spekulatius wrote: So you're disagreeing with his (and my) claim that true and false are notions that do not apply when we talk about moral statements?
You already know I disagree about that, though I wasn't directly responding to anything you said. I was instead replying to the absurd notion that 'true' and 'false' only make sense within formal systems that they predate.
I guess its widely known that the existence of a word does not exclude new understandings of it.
Do you take me to be denying this? If you claim that a term doesn't make sense outside of formal systems, then you are taking the pre formal systems use of that word (which has continued as the common use) to not make any sense. I find that implausible.
That's not what I meant. I meant that words can have different understandings. It requires philosophy to bring these different understandings to value though.
On July 31 2013 06:19 Spekulatius wrote: So you're disagreeing with his (and my) claim that true and false are notions that do not apply when we talk about moral statements?
You already know I disagree about that, though I wasn't directly responding to anything you said. I was instead replying to the absurd notion that 'true' and 'false' only make sense within formal systems that they predate.
I guess its widely known that the existence of a word does not exclude new understandings of it.
Do you take me to be denying this? If you claim that a term doesn't make sense outside of formal systems, then you are taking the pre formal systems use of that word (which has continued as the common use) to not make any sense. I find that implausible.
That's not what I meant. I meant that words can have different understandings. It requires philosophy to bring these different understandings to value though.
I never thought that was what you meant. I was responding to the post directly above mine which claimed just what I said it did. If you're saying that the definition of "truth" in formal languages can help shed light on its meaning in natural languages, I'd agree. But that is miles away from the claim, which was my target, that 'truth' doesn't make sense outside of formal languages.
On July 31 2013 06:49 Spekulatius wrote: What is the other, the common meaning of the word true that you presuppose to be the originary one then?
In natural languages, words do not gain their meanings by having their definitions stipulated, at least not the vast majority of times. I don't take there to be any definition that exactly captures the meaning of 'truth' in natural language. Maybe 'correspondence with reality' is extensionally equivalent, but you're not going to understand what that means if you don't already know what 'truth' means.
That said, you can get an awfully long way in understanding 'truth' once you learn that
'S' is true if and only if S
holds quite generally (for declarative sentence substitutes of 'S', of course).
"Correspondence with reality" is exactly what truth means to me. And to Acritter, I would assume.
Consequence: since there is no moral "reality" that a moral statement can correspond to, moral statements cannot be true.
I've said this half a dozen of times though. And you keep ignoring it. Your counter-"arguments" are a) calling differing opinions absurd b) calling different statements implausible and c) saying that if I don't get what you mean, it cannot be explained.
Which is rhetorical bullshit and intellectual surrender.
On July 31 2013 07:02 Spekulatius wrote: "Correspondence with reality" is exactly what truth means to me. And to Acritter, I would assume.
Maybe that's what he meant. You'd have to ask him. But that congeals very poorly with the claim that it only makes sense within logical systems because "correspondence with reality" does make sense outside of such systems and is irrelevant within them.
Consequence: since there is no moral "reality" that a moral statement can correspond to, moral statements cannot be true.
I've said this half a dozen of times though. And you keep ignoring it. Your counter-"arguments" are a) calling differing opinions absurd b) calling different statements implausible and c) saying that if I don't get what you mean, it cannot be explained.
Which is rhetorical bullshit and intellectual surrender.
You seem to be under the impression that I've been responding to you even when I'm not directly posting to you about claims you've made. I haven't been, because I currently have no interest in debating any issue with you. Sorry that you'd like me to.
The opinion I called "absurd" was one that another posted advanced, and based on this post you agree with me on it. The statement I called "implausible" was the same statement. The claim about being able to define "truth" was a purely general statement that I take to hold for every theoretically interesting term, not a swipe at you.
Not a single one of these claims I made was aimed at claims you made. You're not the center of my universe.
On July 31 2013 07:02 Spekulatius wrote: "Correspondence with reality" is exactly what truth means to me. And to Acritter, I would assume.
Maybe that's what he meant. You'd have to ask him. But that congeals very poorly with the claim that it only makes sense within logical systems because "correspondence with reality" does make sense outside of such systems and is irrelevant within them.
Consequence: since there is no moral "reality" that a moral statement can correspond to, moral statements cannot be true.
I've said this half a dozen of times though. And you keep ignoring it. Your counter-"arguments" are a) calling differing opinions absurd b) calling different statements implausible and c) saying that if I don't get what you mean, it cannot be explained.
Which is rhetorical bullshit and intellectual surrender.
You seem to be under the impression that I've been responding to you even when I'm not directly posting to you about claims you've made. I haven't been, because I currently have no interest in debating any issue with you. Sorry that you'd like me to.
The opinion I called "absurd" was one that another posted advanced, and based on this post you agree with me on it. The statement I called "implausible" was the same statement. The claim about being able to define "truth" was a purely general statement that I take to hold for every theoretically interesting term, not a swipe at you.
Not a single one of these claims I made was aimed at claims you made. You're not the center of my universe.
Very sorry if I misconstrued your criticism of a position that was fundamentally similar to mine as a criticism of my own posting. Wonder how that happened.
For example, in the post above, xM(Z argues that "an alien will be able to understand the cause and effect of newtonian laws/mechanics but it might never understand human morals". I find that hard to believe (and impossible to prove, given that the premise is counterfactual). Newtonian mechanics cannot comprehend the perihelion movement of Merkur. Without theory of relativity (light being subject to gravity), we have no explanation for why it gets dark at night. Newton provides no means to explain photoelectric effects. So why would an alien be able to comprehend our erroneous physics but not our erroneous morals? Wouldn't it need intricate knowledge of the functioning and misfunctioning of the human mind for both?
. that was a little out of context i fear. the newtonian perspective was the assertion i had to work with given that it was previously posted. i made no claims about the objective truth of newtonian physics.
to generalize, physicalism is self explanatory, moralism needs to be explained then taken at face value.
If you make no claims about the objective truth of physics (which particular physical theory we're talking about is irrelevant... name your favorite, I'll google its problems if needed), why do you hold the truth claims of physics in higher esteem than the truth claims of ethics?
Also, you might want to clarify your use of the term "physicalism". How can physicalism be "self explanatory" if what physics describes is false?
This view responds to the challenge of the mind-body problem by claiming that mental states are ultimately physical states,
now, it's not fair to say that i believe in it since i see almost everything in contexts that include other contexts. physicalism could be true if you see it as per its definition and both humans and aliens would live in such an universe.
why do you hold the truth claims of physics in higher esteem than the truth claims of ethics
arround, you'd need to define something like the graviton particle (which is hypothetical) that would work for morals/a moral universe (from which we would later extract our ethics). (and i could totally do that too. i could define and prove that faith exists, hypothetically).
if, in any argument i look like i'm supporting/encouraging a view, it's only because i want it clearly defined before i switch it 180degrees.
Don't take this the wrong way - I don't mean it aggressive or offensive -, but if you have nothing constructive to contribute and contradict yourself on purpose (180 degree switch), consider "if aliens..." a valid objection and disregard the possibility of objective knowledge right from the outset, I don't see that fostering the purpose of clear definitions at all. To the contrary, the language games you're playing seem to be rather about terminological confusion.
Also, the bolded sentence sounds like the lexical definition of trolling.
i agree with you but you're wrong. it goes like this: dualism -> binary opposition -> critical (social mainly) theory. i do not own concepts so i can't contradict myself. i contradict other concepts but, with a purpose (and that, i hope, is not trolling ). this whole topic is about flipping contexts around then arguing about the disappearance of morals/ethics/truths or flipping contexts, arguing about how the initial assertion doesn't hold water in the second/new context then concluding that the first context must be wrong. + Show Spoiler +
ex: slavery = ethics, humanity = context. if you define humanity as a white thing, then slavery exists; if you define humanity as a black and white thing, then slavery disappears (don't take that example ad-literam); what is green green, in a colorblind vs non-colorblind context; evaluable truths in an non-evaluative context (=infinity) and so on.
i just do them at the same time and it looks confusing. in a black vs white argument i'll just come in and say: hey look, this is gray. ;if neither of them can conceive gray, then you can just walk away knowing that those 2 will never see eye to eye.
In all honesty, you're making it not easy to understand what you're going for... sentences like "I agree with you but you're wrong" are hardly illuminating and rather make me go "Oh dear, who gave that guy I'm discussing with a lobotomy after his next-to-last reply?" Nevertheless, I think I got an idea of what you're aiming for, so please take it with a grain of salt when I dare to recommend a stylistic improvement:
I figure that your "dualism -> binary opposition -> critical (social mainly) theory" implies that you're trying to go beyond mere 'standpoint philosophy' insofar as you're hoping to see both (or all) sides of the rivaling theoretizations at once. That would be a laudable effort, but so far all I have taken from your posts was more or less overt skepticism that has little in common with 'critical examination' in the sense of critical theory. Alas, I see no attempts at a reconciliation of discrepancies or a sublation of antinomies, and mostly don't even see a serious attempt to evaluate an argument for what it's worth. Now, I don't mean to say that a decent dosage of skepticism isn't a good thing. However, in your scheme, I would put my expression as "systemic doubt -> factual doubt -> critical examination".
Systemic doubt is barely high school-level philosophy. "It could all be a dream." or "What if a miracle happened?" aren't relevant counterarguments. My five year old niece can shoot down all scientific explanations by asking "Why... why... why... " ad nauseam until we arrive at an unproven premise. Frankly, I don't see how this kind of doubt can serve any purpose. For example, I would consider "But aliens?" a counterfactual and irrelevant objection. What if aliens came to earth? Then the connotation of 'knowledge' might change from 'intersubjectively comprehensible' to 'intersubjectively comprehensible by human intelligence'... so what? Likewise, if you argue that physical theories hold no 'objective truth', what does this contribute to the discussion? Ok, then there is no objective truth whatsoever. I can assure you that most moral realists will be rather happy with the allegation that ethics are just as capable of truth as physics, so your objection doesn't strike me as particularly bothersome to any theory discussed in this thread (well, some physicists would probably cringe at it, but that's off topic).
Long story short, I would recommend you to stick to relevant counterarguments (i.e those based on factual doubt) and maybe even start to consider both the cons and pros of a theory. Not only is this the hallmark that makes critical theory a productive approach to (the conditions of) knowledge that is superior to mere skepticism, it probably also would help to avoid the 'eristic' vibe that at least I'm getting when I read your posts.
On July 30 2013 01:41 Sbrubbles wrote: I'm not sure you can jump from "torturing babies for fun is morally wrong" to "Given some contingent facts about human beings and some necessary truths about rational agent interaction allowing torturing babies for fun as a general rule will not lead to a flourishing society.". The first sentence makes an ethical assertion while the second one makes a point about how society ought to be, so it sounds odd to say the first meaning to say the second.
I am not sure that I follow you completely. On the face of it, both sentences could be said to be descriptive of a certain state of affairs (note that the second sentence does not contain any ought) or a counterfactual (given that in no society anybody is actually torturing babies). Whether you agree that the semantic content of the two statements is the same/similar/comparable is a different thing altogether and I wholeheartedly admit that it provides only a crude summary of my view. I further think that -given some further philosophical reasoning - from both statements follows an ought, if they are true - that is a moral obligation not to torture babies for fun. I agree with error theorists that this is not any cosmic or categorical imperative, but more in the form of prudence, in the sense that rational agents can and should agree on the fact that not torturing babies for fun should be followed.
I think I phrased it badly. I just meant to say that the statement "torturing babies for fun is morally wrong" is a statement about morals (philosophy) while the statement "Given some contingent facts about human beings and some necessary truths about rational agent interaction allowing torturing babies for fun as a general rule will not lead to a flourishing society" is about anthropology or perhaps sociology.
I could, for example, make the two statements "being lazy is morally wrong" and "being lazy will not lead to a flourishing society". The first statement is about morals and the second about economics. If you want to reach the first statement from the second one, you need to show what bridge you're using, like: "Being lazy will not lead to a flourishing society. It is self-evident that reaching a flourishing society is the goal that determines what is morally right and wrong. Thus, being lazy is morally wrong". But even if you are a realist and make this connection naturally, it doesn't change the fact that those two statements say different things.
That doesn't matter. Look at this: when you put hydrogen and oxygen together, they react in an exothermic redox reaction. This is clearly a statement about chemistry.
When you put hydrogen and oxygen together, the quantum functions of their electrons go through some kind of complicated stuff that I have no clue about, resulting in bla bla bla (sorry, I ran out of knowledge about particle physics and quantum mechanics).
This doesn't mean chemistry does not exist. It is simply an abstraction that serves to explain stuff. I agree with you that a utilitarian view of morality is probably reducable to statistical statements about society, but that doesn't mean they cannot be considered at a more abstract level too. It doesn't make moral truths any less real if, to fully understand why they are true, they have to be reduced to statistical equations describing conditional probabilities in society, just as chemical truths are no less real because to understand exactly what is happening we need physics.
Best way to deal with xmz in any thread he "graces" with his presence is to just ignore him. He always trolls. There was a time when I thought he was serious, but unable to express himself clearly. That time is long gone.
To address the general criticism on true and false: numbers existed before mathematics. Or, to go beyond analogy, logical systems existed before we formalized them. I don't think anyone here will say for a second that people from tens of thousands of years ago would disagree with most basic logical statements. And indeed, to frogrubdown's unbelievable statement that formal logical systems are only 200 years old, I say: are you unfamiliar with Classical mathematics? Mathematics is inherently logical. Humans have had logic for a long, long time.
On July 31 2013 09:57 Acritter wrote: Sorry for taking so long to finish.
To address the general criticism on true and false: numbers existed before mathematics. Or, to go beyond analogy, logical systems existed before we formalized them. I don't think anyone here will say for a second that people from tens of thousands of years ago would disagree with most basic logical statements. And indeed, to frogrubdown's unbelievable statement that formal logical systems are only 200 years old, I say: are you unfamiliar with Classical mathematics? Mathematics is inherently logical. Humans have had logic for a long, long time.
Sorry, your claim to be "slightly educated" and claims about logical systems led me to believe you were talking about definitions of truth within a model and of logical truth that have only existed for a short while. Apparently you aren't familiar with these definitions and were speaking from a more common sense perspective of what is and is not logical. I don't exactly know how to interpret your argument on this reading, but plausibly my retorts don't apply to it.
And no, my claim is not incredible. Mathematicians, even today (but hundreds of years ago, exclusively), primarily make use of informal arguments. This isn't to say their arguments aren't rigorous (they are), just that they do not typically take place within a formal language. Learn something about what formal logic actually is before pronouncing on my ignorance.
edit: That last sentence is definitely harsher than I should have put it. But if all you wanted to do was explain that you were using an informal type of logic, you could have stopped there. Instead, you went on to make a claim about my ignorance of mathematics based on a mistaken understanding of formal logic. That was my issue.
On July 31 2013 09:57 Acritter wrote: Sorry for taking so long to finish.
To address the general criticism on true and false: numbers existed before mathematics. Or, to go beyond analogy, logical systems existed before we formalized them. I don't think anyone here will say for a second that people from tens of thousands of years ago would disagree with most basic logical statements. And indeed, to frogrubdown's unbelievable statement that formal logical systems are only 200 years old, I say: are you unfamiliar with Classical mathematics? Mathematics is inherently logical. Humans have had logic for a long, long time.
Sorry, your claim to be "slightly educated" and claims about logical systems led me to believe you were talking about definitions of truth within a model and of logical truth that have only existed for a short while. Apparently you aren't familiar with these definitions and were speaking from a more common sense perspective of what is and is not logical. I don't exactly know how to interpret your argument on this reading, but plausibly my retorts don't apply to it.
And no, my claim is not incredible. Mathematicians, even today (but hundreds of years ago, exclusively), primarily make use of informal arguments. This isn't to say their arguments aren't rigorous (they are), just that they do not typically take place within a formal language. Learn something about what formal logic actually is before pronouncing on my ignorance.
Just because formal definitions of something don't exist doesn't mean the actual THING doesn't exist. People will unconsciously use Newtonian physics to throw and catch a ball, but that doesn't mean they can run through the calculations. Does that make it more clear to your highly educated brain? Or should I point out who of the two of us was the first to use the word formal? It's not considered appropriate to bring something into a discussion and pretend it was there all along.
On July 31 2013 09:57 Acritter wrote: Sorry for taking so long to finish.
To address the general criticism on true and false: numbers existed before mathematics. Or, to go beyond analogy, logical systems existed before we formalized them. I don't think anyone here will say for a second that people from tens of thousands of years ago would disagree with most basic logical statements. And indeed, to frogrubdown's unbelievable statement that formal logical systems are only 200 years old, I say: are you unfamiliar with Classical mathematics? Mathematics is inherently logical. Humans have had logic for a long, long time.
Sorry, your claim to be "slightly educated" and claims about logical systems led me to believe you were talking about definitions of truth within a model and of logical truth that have only existed for a short while. Apparently you aren't familiar with these definitions and were speaking from a more common sense perspective of what is and is not logical. I don't exactly know how to interpret your argument on this reading, but plausibly my retorts don't apply to it.
And no, my claim is not incredible. Mathematicians, even today (but hundreds of years ago, exclusively), primarily make use of informal arguments. This isn't to say their arguments aren't rigorous (they are), just that they do not typically take place within a formal language. Learn something about what formal logic actually is before pronouncing on my ignorance.
Just because formal definitions of something don't exist doesn't mean the actual THING doesn't exist. People will unconsciously use Newtonian physics to throw and catch a ball, but that doesn't mean they can run through the calculations. Does that make it more clear to your highly educated brain? Or should I point out who of the two of us was the first to use the word formal? It's not considered appropriate to bring something into a discussion and pretend it was there all along.
I already acknowledged that 'formal' wasn't there to begin with, explained why I incorrectly took you to intend it, acknowledged that that likely meant my argument didn't apply to whatever your actual claim was, and apologized. What more do you want?
The only reason I mentioned anything about what formal logic is in fact like in my post is because you made an explicit claim in the post I replied to about Mathematicians using formal logic for centuries. Look at your own post; you say "formal". Your claim was false and your accusation of my ignorance of mathematics based on it misguided.
On July 30 2013 18:42 Spekulatius wrote: @ Lixler:
I think I expressed myself badly in my last post. Of course I do agree with you that dying does not remove a moral system. But this does not in any way mean a moral system is like a law of physics. You say, moral systems survive their "thinker" just as laws of physics do - I disagree. You say, a physical system of person X needs to be included in the equation the same way the moral system of person X needs to be included in its respective equation - I disagree.
I tried to compare morals to beauty as I believe they are comparable. And I very strongly believe that if you remove a critical beholder from the equation, the notion of beauty stops to make sense. What is beauty if there is nobody who is appreciating it, rating it or feeling it? Nothing. A notion without content. I very strongly believe the exact same statement holds true for moral systems. Morals are a human invention. Without humans, nobody would ever think about calling something right or wrong. It is completely implausible to me how there should be any universal statement that is not contingent on a beholder. ObviousOne phrased it much more bluntly: The universe does not care if something is right or wrong. This means a) that only caring about morality produces moral systems which means it's contingent on the human mind. And b) laws of physics are not relative to the beholder, they do not change depending on who's watching/rating/analyzing.
I don't know how to take these two statements together.
Of course I do agree with you that dying does not remove a moral system.
You say, moral systems survive their "thinker" just as laws of physics do - I disagree.
Are you trying to take "thinker" broadly here and say that they can't be unhinged totally from all thinkers? I guess that would make sense.
Let me provide some simple arguments for my views, as you've presented them. I say that a moral system survives its thinker just as laws of physics do. What I mean by this is that any given moral system has no intrinsic connection to the person who is applying it (although that person might feel really good about it, or whatever). Other people can adopt a moral system, both before and after this person's life, people can consider the moral system without believing it themselves, and so on. Surely nobody would make moral judgments if there were no rational agents around, but nobody would make physical judgments, either.
Yes. A moral system is like a pen. It can be used by your heirs and everyone else after you die.
I dunno why you invoke physical judgments though. Trying to interpret the outside world is nothing like saying A is better than B. This is actually my main problem with what you're saying and I get critisized for disagreeing with you on it. You do the same as me though, simply stating the contrary as fact without proof that they are indeed comparable.
I also said that a physical system needs to be included in any physical statement, which system can be linked to a thinker to the same extent that a moral system is. This is trivially true. When I say, for instance, "the chair is under the table," I am invoking a specific set of more or less physical concepts that are accessible to all people who speak English. Another physical system might use these signs to mean something else, or might use different signs to mean the same thing. And with more precise physical statements, like f=ma or e=1/2mv^2, it is obvious that we are taking on a lot of conceptual baggage in order to make our statement. Every statement comes out of a system of concepts that define its precise meaning; this system of concepts surely needs to be applied by a human if it's going to be applied at all, but that doesn't make it a total fiction (or whatever pejoratives you want to call it).
You said that beauty loses its sense if there is no one around to behold it. How about our other classifications, like "green" and "chair" and "born on January 17th?" Does the concept "green" cease to mean anything at all if there is nobody around to see green things? It doesn't seem to me to be so; using the example I used earlier, I can imagine a possible world where everything is green but everyone is red-green colorblind, and green still makes plenty of sense here.
Green is different. "Green" is the word we use for a certain wave length of light that is emitted from a certain object and processed by a functioning human brain and eye. There's no judgment in the word green. Chair is different, too. Chair is a level plane on pillars made for sitting. No personal value, no judgment. Born of January 17th means, someone came out of a womb on the day that is marked on january 17th on our gregorian calendar. All those words do not lose meaning when there's no human around. (Except you mean meaning in a "purpose" kind of way which I don't.)
I am maintaining that the universe does not care about our formulations of the laws of physics, either. The universe moves on as it does, and we can describe events that take place in it with different levels of accuracy and precision, but the universe doesn't care about our formulations. You might be surprised to find out that physical events are always underdetermine physical theory: that is to say, given any amount of physical data, we can always construct more than one physical theory that explains it. This means, badly put, that there is no one objectively right and complete set of physical laws that totally describe the universe. There can be multiple systems that perfectly describe and predict all physical data.
I am surprised to hear you say that with perfect knowledge of the outside world, there could still be two different interpretations that are equally true. I find that hard to believe. Source on that theory?
I want this to show that our formulations of physical laws are unhinged from the universe just like moral laws are: the universe doesn't care at all that Newton was born or that we haven't found a theory of quantum gravity or whatever. We can come up with certain ways of describing physical events, but these certain ways don't matter at all to the universe. Things stand the same, in this respect, with description of moral events. The universe goes on as it does and we lay our moral interpretations over it. The difference between physical laws and moral laws does not lie in mind-dependence.
I agree with your first part. If our interpretations of nature are right or wrong does not change nature. I said a similar thing before in this thread. You're not disproving me or anything. And I'm still weary about what your opinion actually is.
Anyway, what I'd like to focus on is what I've bolded. It looks like you're under the impression that if we can provide a definition for what one of our terms means, those terms don't lose meaning when there are no humans around. Besides the obvious simplicity of your definitions, this idea is very strange to hold along with the opinion that moral judgments lose meaning when there are no humans around. What if we could provide a similar definition for our moral terms? Would they then retain meaning without humans? Do you think the ability to create a set of formal criteria is what makes certain words able to retain their meaning without any humans around to use them?
On July 31 2013 03:17 Spekulatius wrote: @ Miramax
As you expect, I don't agree.
A statement about nature has the capacity to correspond to its factual state, thus has the capability to be true. A moral statement can never correspond to a factual state of anything because there is no thing which it can correspond to.
Science has its hypotheses and tries to match them to reality. Morals don't, as there is nothing factual that they can be matched with.
If you disagree, tell me why there should be a universally correct moral statement. Why do you believe there is, and do you have any proof?
You could just read my other posts in this thread where I have tried to do all of what you ask. But for your convenience I will give you a short rundown. I think that moral statements relate to the (potential) consequences of actions of rational agents on sentient beings. Especially insofar as they can lead to suffering or well-being. That's what I understand moral talk to mean. Because I think that it can in some cases reasonably be ascertained whether an action leads to suffering or is conducive to well-being, I conclude that some moral statements are truth-apt and that some of these are actually true. I further think that some of these statements are universally true because of some necessary truths about sentience and rational agent behavior. For instance I hold that the statement: "A moral action that harms a sentient being needs to have some potential redeeming consequence that benefits a sentient being" is universally true, given what I understand morality to mean. Would you agree with the statement? Why or why not?And if not, would you agree with the statement given my understanding of moral semantics?
By the way, you still did not answer in what sense geological statements about earth could be considered 'true' given that earth did not exist. It can't be correspondence to reality in this case, can it?
On July 31 2013 03:17 Spekulatius wrote: @ Miramax
As you expect, I don't agree.
A statement about nature has the capacity to correspond to its factual state, thus has the capability to be true. A moral statement can never correspond to a factual state of anything because there is no thing which it can correspond to.
Science has its hypotheses and tries to match them to reality. Morals don't, as there is nothing factual that they can be matched with.
If you disagree, tell me why there should be a universally correct moral statement. Why do you believe there is, and do you have any proof?
You could just read my other posts in this thread where I have tried to do all of what you ask. But for your convenience I will give you a short rundown. I think that moral statements relate to the (potential) consequences of actions of rational agents on sentient beings. Especially insofar as they can lead to suffering or well-being. That's what I understand moral talk to mean. Because I think that it can in some cases reasonably be ascertained whether an action leads to suffering or is conducive to well-being, I conclude that some moral statements are truth-apt and that some of these are actually true. I further think that some of these statements are universally true because of some necessary truths about sentience and rational agent behavior. For instance I hold that the statement: "A moral action that harms a sentient being needs to have some potential redeeming consequence that benefits a sentient being" is universally true, given what I understand morality to mean. Would you agree with the statement? Why or why not?And if not, would you agree with the statement given my understanding of moral semantics?
By the way, you still did not answer in what sense geological statements about earth could be considered 'true' given that earth did not exist. It can't be correspondence to reality in this case, can it?
Thank you for the rundown.
To your first paragraph: Moral talk to me is the question of putting a seal of approval or disapproval on any event. I'm not sure if this event needs to have sentient beings as actors or victims to apply for moral dispute. Either way, I don't think our definitions vary too much anyway so discussing this detail can be put aside. Now, to your point: your phrase "A moral action that harms a sentient being needs to have some potential redeeming consequence that benefits a sentient being" is not true in the way I use it, nor is it universally true. What you mean to say when saying it is true is that it logically follows from an earlier assumption which is, in short, "well-being of sentient beings is the gauge of moral value" or "more well-being as a consequence makes an event more moral". The one statement logically follows the other one, and this is probably how you come to call it "true". But I argue that your basic definition of moral value "higher overall well-being -> higher moral quality" actually differs. It differs in cultural context, over the course of history, and I would argue, from every person to another. And as such, it cannot be true in the way I use the word "true". It is just an assumption, a moral principle that is in itself nothing more than a moral judgment. Where is the reason for that first statement "higher well-being -> higher moral value"? Where does it come from? How is that statement not itself just a matter of opinion?
To your second paragraph: The question is what you mean with geology. Geology can mean a) a historical documentation about how our blue planet evolved over time or b) the quest to find laws of nature that apply to a planet which has structural similarity to our own planet Earth, i.e. is comprised of rocks, sand, mud, lava and water. Neither of those answers lose meaning once the Earth ceases to exist. a) is a retrospective and doesn't lose meaning just as historical doesn't lose meaning when time passes. b) is universal in that it holds true for every planet that is so similar to ours that the rules that geology found can apply. It is timeless, so to say.
On July 30 2013 18:42 Spekulatius wrote: @ Lixler:
I think I expressed myself badly in my last post. Of course I do agree with you that dying does not remove a moral system. But this does not in any way mean a moral system is like a law of physics. You say, moral systems survive their "thinker" just as laws of physics do - I disagree. You say, a physical system of person X needs to be included in the equation the same way the moral system of person X needs to be included in its respective equation - I disagree.
I tried to compare morals to beauty as I believe they are comparable. And I very strongly believe that if you remove a critical beholder from the equation, the notion of beauty stops to make sense. What is beauty if there is nobody who is appreciating it, rating it or feeling it? Nothing. A notion without content. I very strongly believe the exact same statement holds true for moral systems. Morals are a human invention. Without humans, nobody would ever think about calling something right or wrong. It is completely implausible to me how there should be any universal statement that is not contingent on a beholder. ObviousOne phrased it much more bluntly: The universe does not care if something is right or wrong. This means a) that only caring about morality produces moral systems which means it's contingent on the human mind. And b) laws of physics are not relative to the beholder, they do not change depending on who's watching/rating/analyzing.
I don't know how to take these two statements together.
Of course I do agree with you that dying does not remove a moral system.
You say, moral systems survive their "thinker" just as laws of physics do - I disagree.
Are you trying to take "thinker" broadly here and say that they can't be unhinged totally from all thinkers? I guess that would make sense.
yes.
Let me provide some simple arguments for my views, as you've presented them. I say that a moral system survives its thinker just as laws of physics do. What I mean by this is that any given moral system has no intrinsic connection to the person who is applying it (although that person might feel really good about it, or whatever). Other people can adopt a moral system, both before and after this person's life, people can consider the moral system without believing it themselves, and so on. Surely nobody would make moral judgments if there were no rational agents around, but nobody would make physical judgments, either.
Yes. A moral system is like a pen. It can be used by your heirs and everyone else after you die.
I dunno why you invoke physical judgments though. Trying to interpret the outside world is nothing like saying A is better than B. This is actually my main problem with what you're saying and I get critisized for disagreeing with you on it. You do the same as me though, simply stating the contrary as fact without proof that they are indeed comparable.
I also said that a physical system needs to be included in any physical statement, which system can be linked to a thinker to the same extent that a moral system is. This is trivially true. When I say, for instance, "the chair is under the table," I am invoking a specific set of more or less physical concepts that are accessible to all people who speak English. Another physical system might use these signs to mean something else, or might use different signs to mean the same thing. And with more precise physical statements, like f=ma or e=1/2mv^2, it is obvious that we are taking on a lot of conceptual baggage in order to make our statement. Every statement comes out of a system of concepts that define its precise meaning; this system of concepts surely needs to be applied by a human if it's going to be applied at all, but that doesn't make it a total fiction (or whatever pejoratives you want to call it).
So?
You said that beauty loses its sense if there is no one around to behold it. How about our other classifications, like "green" and "chair" and "born on January 17th?" Does the concept "green" cease to mean anything at all if there is nobody around to see green things? It doesn't seem to me to be so; using the example I used earlier, I can imagine a possible world where everything is green but everyone is red-green colorblind, and green still makes plenty of sense here.
Green is different. "Green" is the word we use for a certain wave length of light that is emitted from a certain object and processed by a functioning human brain and eye. There's no judgment in the word green. Chair is different, too. Chair is a level plane on pillars made for sitting. No personal value, no judgment. Born of January 17th means, someone came out of a womb on the day that is marked on january 17th on our gregorian calendar. All those words do not lose meaning when there's no human around. (Except you mean meaning in a "purpose" kind of way which I don't.)
I am maintaining that the universe does not care about our formulations of the laws of physics, either. The universe moves on as it does, and we can describe events that take place in it with different levels of accuracy and precision, but the universe doesn't care about our formulations. You might be surprised to find out that physical events are always underdetermine physical theory: that is to say, given any amount of physical data, we can always construct more than one physical theory that explains it. This means, badly put, that there is no one objectively right and complete set of physical laws that totally describe the universe. There can be multiple systems that perfectly describe and predict all physical data.
I am surprised to hear you say that with perfect knowledge of the outside world, there could still be two different interpretations that are equally true. I find that hard to believe. Source on that theory?
I want this to show that our formulations of physical laws are unhinged from the universe just like moral laws are: the universe doesn't care at all that Newton was born or that we haven't found a theory of quantum gravity or whatever. We can come up with certain ways of describing physical events, but these certain ways don't matter at all to the universe. Things stand the same, in this respect, with description of moral events. The universe goes on as it does and we lay our moral interpretations over it. The difference between physical laws and moral laws does not lie in mind-dependence.
I agree with your first part. If our interpretations of nature are right or wrong does not change nature. I said a similar thing before in this thread. You're not disproving me or anything. And I'm still weary about what your opinion actually is.
Anyway, what I'd like to focus on is what I've bolded. It looks like you're under the impression that if we can provide a definition for what one of our terms means, those terms don't lose meaning when there are no humans around. Besides the obvious simplicity of your definitions, this idea is very strange to hold along with the opinion that moral judgments lose meaning when there are no humans around. What if we could provide a similar definition for our moral terms? Would they then retain meaning without humans? Do you think the ability to create a set of formal criteria is what makes certain words able to retain their meaning without any humans around to use them?
Definitions are by their nature universal. They are true no matter who is looking at them, who is applying them or who is rating them. So yes, if you can find a definition for what is good and bad that does not require an entity passing judgment, then you would have me convinced. Definitions that are not universal are called opinions. And that's what I think of morals to be, just opinions.
Thank you for the indetermination article. I'm not sure I agree but I find it interesting.
For example, in the post above, xM(Z argues that "an alien will be able to understand the cause and effect of newtonian laws/mechanics but it might never understand human morals". I find that hard to believe (and impossible to prove, given that the premise is counterfactual). Newtonian mechanics cannot comprehend the perihelion movement of Merkur. Without theory of relativity (light being subject to gravity), we have no explanation for why it gets dark at night. Newton provides no means to explain photoelectric effects. So why would an alien be able to comprehend our erroneous physics but not our erroneous morals? Wouldn't it need intricate knowledge of the functioning and misfunctioning of the human mind for both?
. that was a little out of context i fear. the newtonian perspective was the assertion i had to work with given that it was previously posted. i made no claims about the objective truth of newtonian physics.
to generalize, physicalism is self explanatory, moralism needs to be explained then taken at face value.
If you make no claims about the objective truth of physics (which particular physical theory we're talking about is irrelevant... name your favorite, I'll google its problems if needed), why do you hold the truth claims of physics in higher esteem than the truth claims of ethics?
Also, you might want to clarify your use of the term "physicalism". How can physicalism be "self explanatory" if what physics describes is false?
This view responds to the challenge of the mind-body problem by claiming that mental states are ultimately physical states,
now, it's not fair to say that i believe in it since i see almost everything in contexts that include other contexts. physicalism could be true if you see it as per its definition and both humans and aliens would live in such an universe.
why do you hold the truth claims of physics in higher esteem than the truth claims of ethics
arround, you'd need to define something like the graviton particle (which is hypothetical) that would work for morals/a moral universe (from which we would later extract our ethics). (and i could totally do that too. i could define and prove that faith exists, hypothetically).
if, in any argument i look like i'm supporting/encouraging a view, it's only because i want it clearly defined before i switch it 180degrees.
Don't take this the wrong way - I don't mean it aggressive or offensive -, but if you have nothing constructive to contribute and contradict yourself on purpose (180 degree switch), consider "if aliens..." a valid objection and disregard the possibility of objective knowledge right from the outset, I don't see that fostering the purpose of clear definitions at all. To the contrary, the language games you're playing seem to be rather about terminological confusion.
Also, the bolded sentence sounds like the lexical definition of trolling.
i agree with you but you're wrong. it goes like this: dualism -> binary opposition -> critical (social mainly) theory. i do not own concepts so i can't contradict myself. i contradict other concepts but, with a purpose (and that, i hope, is not trolling ). this whole topic is about flipping contexts around then arguing about the disappearance of morals/ethics/truths or flipping contexts, arguing about how the initial assertion doesn't hold water in the second/new context then concluding that the first context must be wrong. + Show Spoiler +
ex: slavery = ethics, humanity = context. if you define humanity as a white thing, then slavery exists; if you define humanity as a black and white thing, then slavery disappears (don't take that example ad-literam); what is green green, in a colorblind vs non-colorblind context; evaluable truths in an non-evaluative context (=infinity) and so on.
i just do them at the same time and it looks confusing. in a black vs white argument i'll just come in and say: hey look, this is gray. ;if neither of them can conceive gray, then you can just walk away knowing that those 2 will never see eye to eye.
In all honesty, you're making it not easy to understand what you're going for... sentences like "I agree with you but you're wrong" are hardly illuminating and rather make me go "Oh dear, who gave that guy I'm discussing with a lobotomy after his next-to-last reply?" Nevertheless, I think I got an idea of what you're aiming for, so please take it with a grain of salt when I dare to recommend a stylistic improvement:
I figure that your "dualism -> binary opposition -> critical (social mainly) theory" implies that you're trying to go beyond mere 'standpoint philosophy' insofar as you're hoping to see both (or all) sides of the rivaling theoretizations at once. That would be a laudable effort, but so far all I have taken from your posts was more or less overt skepticism that has little in common with 'critical examination' in the sense of critical theory. Alas, I see no attempts at a reconciliation of discrepancies or a sublation of antinomies, and mostly don't even see a serious attempt to evaluate an argument for what it's worth. Now, I don't mean to say that a decent dosage of skepticism isn't a good thing. However, in your scheme, I would put my expression as "systemic doubt -> factual doubt -> critical examination".
Systemic doubt is barely high school-level philosophy. "It could all be a dream." or "What if a miracle happened?" aren't relevant counterarguments. My five year old niece can shoot down all scientific explanations by asking "Why... why... why... " ad nauseam until we arrive at an unproven premise. Frankly, I don't see how this kind of doubt can serve any purpose. For example, I would consider "But aliens?" a counterfactual and irrelevant objection. What if aliens came to earth? Then the connotation of 'knowledge' might change from 'intersubjectively comprehensible' to 'intersubjectively comprehensible by human intelligence'... so what? Likewise, if you argue that physical theories hold no 'objective truth', what does this contribute to the discussion? Ok, then there is no objective truth whatsoever. I can assure you that most moral realists will be rather happy with the allegation that ethics are just as capable of truth as physics, so your objection doesn't strike me as particularly bothersome to any theory discussed in this thread (well, some physicists would probably cringe at it, but that's off topic).
Long story short, I would recommend you to stick to relevant counterarguments (i.e those based on factual doubt) and maybe even start to consider both the cons and pros of a theory. Not only is this the hallmark that makes critical theory a productive approach to (the conditions of) knowledge that is superior to mere skepticism, it probably also would help to avoid the 'eristic' vibe that at least I'm getting when I read your posts.
"I agree with you but you're wrong" was suppose to be just a trademark remark; it was not my intention to illuminate anything.
i don't see the argument between realists and non-realists as a who's right and who's wrong kind of thing. i put both in a thermodynamic system, then watch the energy flow and in this case, it flows from non-realists to realists. hot = non-realists, cold = realists. in doesn't matter to me how you define your coldness or how they define their hotness, the only truth here is that heat exchange happens and the arrow of time of the system exists. the imposition of order, dictates that in this case/system, realists will always change their truths/facts, while non-realists will always change their assertions until maximum entropy is reached. (i defined here assertion as an innate proprietary-nonrealist-value and truth/fact as innate proprietary-realist-value). moral realists will become more inclusive in the assertions they work with, they give truth to, while non-realists will become more inclusive of truths-evaluable/fact-stating modes of discourse, in time.
so for me, the only question remaining is: you want to do it the hard way, or the easy way?. (looking back in human history, they always chose the hard way as if the right of passage was a real thing, as if the pain is/needs to be, unavoidable/imperative).
For example, in the post above, xM(Z argues that "an alien will be able to understand the cause and effect of newtonian laws/mechanics but it might never understand human morals". I find that hard to believe (and impossible to prove, given that the premise is counterfactual). Newtonian mechanics cannot comprehend the perihelion movement of Merkur. Without theory of relativity (light being subject to gravity), we have no explanation for why it gets dark at night. Newton provides no means to explain photoelectric effects. So why would an alien be able to comprehend our erroneous physics but not our erroneous morals? Wouldn't it need intricate knowledge of the functioning and misfunctioning of the human mind for both?
. that was a little out of context i fear. the newtonian perspective was the assertion i had to work with given that it was previously posted. i made no claims about the objective truth of newtonian physics.
to generalize, physicalism is self explanatory, moralism needs to be explained then taken at face value.
If you make no claims about the objective truth of physics (which particular physical theory we're talking about is irrelevant... name your favorite, I'll google its problems if needed), why do you hold the truth claims of physics in higher esteem than the truth claims of ethics?
Also, you might want to clarify your use of the term "physicalism". How can physicalism be "self explanatory" if what physics describes is false?
This view responds to the challenge of the mind-body problem by claiming that mental states are ultimately physical states,
now, it's not fair to say that i believe in it since i see almost everything in contexts that include other contexts. physicalism could be true if you see it as per its definition and both humans and aliens would live in such an universe.
why do you hold the truth claims of physics in higher esteem than the truth claims of ethics
arround, you'd need to define something like the graviton particle (which is hypothetical) that would work for morals/a moral universe (from which we would later extract our ethics). (and i could totally do that too. i could define and prove that faith exists, hypothetically).
if, in any argument i look like i'm supporting/encouraging a view, it's only because i want it clearly defined before i switch it 180degrees.
Don't take this the wrong way - I don't mean it aggressive or offensive -, but if you have nothing constructive to contribute and contradict yourself on purpose (180 degree switch), consider "if aliens..." a valid objection and disregard the possibility of objective knowledge right from the outset, I don't see that fostering the purpose of clear definitions at all. To the contrary, the language games you're playing seem to be rather about terminological confusion.
Also, the bolded sentence sounds like the lexical definition of trolling.
i agree with you but you're wrong. it goes like this: dualism -> binary opposition -> critical (social mainly) theory. i do not own concepts so i can't contradict myself. i contradict other concepts but, with a purpose (and that, i hope, is not trolling ). this whole topic is about flipping contexts around then arguing about the disappearance of morals/ethics/truths or flipping contexts, arguing about how the initial assertion doesn't hold water in the second/new context then concluding that the first context must be wrong. + Show Spoiler +
ex: slavery = ethics, humanity = context. if you define humanity as a white thing, then slavery exists; if you define humanity as a black and white thing, then slavery disappears (don't take that example ad-literam); what is green green, in a colorblind vs non-colorblind context; evaluable truths in an non-evaluative context (=infinity) and so on.
i just do them at the same time and it looks confusing. in a black vs white argument i'll just come in and say: hey look, this is gray. ;if neither of them can conceive gray, then you can just walk away knowing that those 2 will never see eye to eye.
In all honesty, you're making it not easy to understand what you're going for... sentences like "I agree with you but you're wrong" are hardly illuminating and rather make me go "Oh dear, who gave that guy I'm discussing with a lobotomy after his next-to-last reply?" Nevertheless, I think I got an idea of what you're aiming for, so please take it with a grain of salt when I dare to recommend a stylistic improvement:
I figure that your "dualism -> binary opposition -> critical (social mainly) theory" implies that you're trying to go beyond mere 'standpoint philosophy' insofar as you're hoping to see both (or all) sides of the rivaling theoretizations at once. That would be a laudable effort, but so far all I have taken from your posts was more or less overt skepticism that has little in common with 'critical examination' in the sense of critical theory. Alas, I see no attempts at a reconciliation of discrepancies or a sublation of antinomies, and mostly don't even see a serious attempt to evaluate an argument for what it's worth. Now, I don't mean to say that a decent dosage of skepticism isn't a good thing. However, in your scheme, I would put my expression as "systemic doubt -> factual doubt -> critical examination".
Systemic doubt is barely high school-level philosophy. "It could all be a dream." or "What if a miracle happened?" aren't relevant counterarguments. My five year old niece can shoot down all scientific explanations by asking "Why... why... why... " ad nauseam until we arrive at an unproven premise. Frankly, I don't see how this kind of doubt can serve any purpose. For example, I would consider "But aliens?" a counterfactual and irrelevant objection. What if aliens came to earth? Then the connotation of 'knowledge' might change from 'intersubjectively comprehensible' to 'intersubjectively comprehensible by human intelligence'... so what? Likewise, if you argue that physical theories hold no 'objective truth', what does this contribute to the discussion? Ok, then there is no objective truth whatsoever. I can assure you that most moral realists will be rather happy with the allegation that ethics are just as capable of truth as physics, so your objection doesn't strike me as particularly bothersome to any theory discussed in this thread (well, some physicists would probably cringe at it, but that's off topic).
Long story short, I would recommend you to stick to relevant counterarguments (i.e those based on factual doubt) and maybe even start to consider both the cons and pros of a theory. Not only is this the hallmark that makes critical theory a productive approach to (the conditions of) knowledge that is superior to mere skepticism, it probably also would help to avoid the 'eristic' vibe that at least I'm getting when I read your posts.
"I agree with you but you're wrong" was suppose to be just a trademark remark; it was not my intention to illuminate anything.
i don't see the argument between realists and non-realists as a who's right and who's wrong kind of thing. i put both in a thermodynamic system, then watch the energy flow and in this case, it flows from non-realists to realists. hot = non-realists, cold = realists. in doesn't matter to me how you define your coldness or how they define their hotness, the only truth here is that heat exchange happens and the arrow of time of the system exists. the imposition of order, dictates that in this case/system, realists will always change their truths/facts, while non-realists will always change their assertions until maximum entropy is reached. (i defined here assertion as an innate proprietary-nonrealist-value and truth/fact as innate proprietary-realist-value). moral realists will become more inclusive in the assertions they work with, they give truth to, while non-realists will become more inclusive of truths-evaluable/fact-stating modes of discourse, in time.
so for me, the only question remaining is: you want to do it the hard way, or the easy way?. (looking back in human history, they always chose the hard way as if the right of passage was a real thing, as if the pain is/needs to be, unavoidable/imperative).
Frankly, all I get from your post is static noise. Maybe it's because it doesn't relate to what I wrote in any way. Maybe it's because what I wrote doesn't even necessitate a reply. In either case, I think I'll act upon Acrofales' recommendation from now on. Have fun with your aliens, thermodynamics, and whatever you think critical theory is about... I wish you a soft landing.
On July 31 2013 03:17 Spekulatius wrote: @ Miramax
As you expect, I don't agree.
A statement about nature has the capacity to correspond to its factual state, thus has the capability to be true. A moral statement can never correspond to a factual state of anything because there is no thing which it can correspond to.
Science has its hypotheses and tries to match them to reality. Morals don't, as there is nothing factual that they can be matched with.
If you disagree, tell me why there should be a universally correct moral statement. Why do you believe there is, and do you have any proof?
You could just read my other posts in this thread where I have tried to do all of what you ask. But for your convenience I will give you a short rundown. I think that moral statements relate to the (potential) consequences of actions of rational agents on sentient beings. Especially insofar as they can lead to suffering or well-being. That's what I understand moral talk to mean. Because I think that it can in some cases reasonably be ascertained whether an action leads to suffering or is conducive to well-being, I conclude that some moral statements are truth-apt and that some of these are actually true. I further think that some of these statements are universally true because of some necessary truths about sentience and rational agent behavior. For instance I hold that the statement: "A moral action that harms a sentient being needs to have some potential redeeming consequence that benefits a sentient being" is universally true, given what I understand morality to mean. Would you agree with the statement? Why or why not?And if not, would you agree with the statement given my understanding of moral semantics?
By the way, you still did not answer in what sense geological statements about earth could be considered 'true' given that earth did not exist. It can't be correspondence to reality in this case, can it?
Thank you for the rundown.
To your first paragraph: Moral talk to me is the question of putting a seal of approval or disapproval on any event. I'm not sure if this event needs to have sentient beings as actors or victims to apply for moral dispute. Either way, I don't think our definitions vary too much anyway so discussing this detail can be put aside. Now, to your point: your phrase "A moral action that harms a sentient being needs to have some potential redeeming consequence that benefits a sentient being" is not true in the way I use it, nor is it universally true. What you mean to say when saying it is true is that it logically follows from an earlier assumption which is, in short, "well-being of sentient beings is the gauge of moral value" or "more well-being as a consequence makes an event more moral". The one statement logically follows the other one, and this is probably how you come to call it "true". But I argue that your basic definition of moral value "higher overall well-being -> higher moral quality" actually differs. It differs in cultural context, over the course of history, and I would argue, from every person to another. And as such, it cannot be true in the way I use the word "true". It is just an assumption, a moral principle that is in itself nothing more than a moral judgment. Where is the reason for that first statement "higher well-being -> higher moral value"? Where does it come from? How is that statement not itself just a matter of opinion?
To your second paragraph: The question is what you mean with geology. Geology can mean a) a historical documentation about how our blue planet evolved over time or b) the quest to find laws of nature that apply to a planet which has structural similarity to our own planet Earth, i.e. is comprised of rocks, sand, mud, lava and water. Neither of those answers lose meaning once the Earth ceases to exist. a) is a retrospective and doesn't lose meaning just as historical doesn't lose meaning when time passes. b) is universal in that it holds true for every planet that is so similar to ours that the rules that geology found can apply. It is timeless, so to say.
I am not at all sure that I understand your objection well, but could you give me an example of an action that actually is considered morally right, harms a sentient being but does not even potentially benefit another or the same being?
What your objection boils down to otherwise seems to be 'disagreement'. In that people can and have disagreed about the meaning of "morally right" or that it used to mean something different. But people can disagree about what an atom is as well and the word atom actually used to mean something different in the past, but that alone would not lead me to conclude that atoms are not real.
Earth example: Fair enough, so you claim that be statement "geology is universally applicable" to be truth-apt and true. To what real, existing, objective fact does this true statement correspond?
On July 31 2013 21:13 MiraMax wrote: I am not at all sure that I understand your objection well, but could you give me an example of an action that actually is considered morally right, harms a sentient being but does not even potentially benefit another or the same being?
Considered morally right by who? On what authority?
What your objection boils down to otherwise seems to be 'disagreement'. In that people can and have disagreed about the meaning of "morally right" or that it used to mean something different. But people can disagree about what an atom is as well and the word atom actually used to mean something different in the past, but that alone would not lead me to conclude that atoms are not real.
The problem is not disagreement in itself. The problem is, disagreement happens on a non-logical basis. Science is made of a basis that is universal: the laws of logic. If a=c and b=c then a=b. There's no such thing for morals. Morals work like this: I don't like c and event b is a manifestation of c so I don't like b.
Earth example: Fair enough, so you claim that be statement "geology is universally applicable" to be truth-apt and true. To what real, existing, objective fact does this true statement correspond?
To the evolution, transformation and existence of every potential planet in our universe.
If a=c and b=c then c=c. There's no such thing for morals. Morals work like this: I don't like c and event b is a manifestation of c so I don't like b.
You mean if a=c and b=c then a=b
Oh and there is something like a logic of morals, its called the categorical imperative.
If a=c and b=c then c=c. There's no such thing for morals. Morals work like this: I don't like c and event b is a manifestation of c so I don't like b.
You mean if a=c and b=c then a=b
Oh and there is something like a logic of morals, its called the categorical imperative.
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?
If a=c and b=c then c=c. There's no such thing for morals. Morals work like this: I don't like c and event b is a manifestation of c so I don't like b.
You mean if a=c and b=c then a=b
Oh and there is something like a logic of morals, its called the categorical imperative.
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. 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.
On July 30 2013 18:42 Spekulatius wrote: @ Lixler:
I think I expressed myself badly in my last post. Of course I do agree with you that dying does not remove a moral system. But this does not in any way mean a moral system is like a law of physics. You say, moral systems survive their "thinker" just as laws of physics do - I disagree. You say, a physical system of person X needs to be included in the equation the same way the moral system of person X needs to be included in its respective equation - I disagree.
I tried to compare morals to beauty as I believe they are comparable. And I very strongly believe that if you remove a critical beholder from the equation, the notion of beauty stops to make sense. What is beauty if there is nobody who is appreciating it, rating it or feeling it? Nothing. A notion without content. I very strongly believe the exact same statement holds true for moral systems. Morals are a human invention. Without humans, nobody would ever think about calling something right or wrong. It is completely implausible to me how there should be any universal statement that is not contingent on a beholder. ObviousOne phrased it much more bluntly: The universe does not care if something is right or wrong. This means a) that only caring about morality produces moral systems which means it's contingent on the human mind. And b) laws of physics are not relative to the beholder, they do not change depending on who's watching/rating/analyzing.
I don't know how to take these two statements together.
Of course I do agree with you that dying does not remove a moral system.
You say, moral systems survive their "thinker" just as laws of physics do - I disagree.
Are you trying to take "thinker" broadly here and say that they can't be unhinged totally from all thinkers? I guess that would make sense.
yes.
Let me provide some simple arguments for my views, as you've presented them. I say that a moral system survives its thinker just as laws of physics do. What I mean by this is that any given moral system has no intrinsic connection to the person who is applying it (although that person might feel really good about it, or whatever). Other people can adopt a moral system, both before and after this person's life, people can consider the moral system without believing it themselves, and so on. Surely nobody would make moral judgments if there were no rational agents around, but nobody would make physical judgments, either.
Yes. A moral system is like a pen. It can be used by your heirs and everyone else after you die.
I dunno why you invoke physical judgments though. Trying to interpret the outside world is nothing like saying A is better than B. This is actually my main problem with what you're saying and I get critisized for disagreeing with you on it. You do the same as me though, simply stating the contrary as fact without proof that they are indeed comparable.
I also said that a physical system needs to be included in any physical statement, which system can be linked to a thinker to the same extent that a moral system is. This is trivially true. When I say, for instance, "the chair is under the table," I am invoking a specific set of more or less physical concepts that are accessible to all people who speak English. Another physical system might use these signs to mean something else, or might use different signs to mean the same thing. And with more precise physical statements, like f=ma or e=1/2mv^2, it is obvious that we are taking on a lot of conceptual baggage in order to make our statement. Every statement comes out of a system of concepts that define its precise meaning; this system of concepts surely needs to be applied by a human if it's going to be applied at all, but that doesn't make it a total fiction (or whatever pejoratives you want to call it).
So?
You said that beauty loses its sense if there is no one around to behold it. How about our other classifications, like "green" and "chair" and "born on January 17th?" Does the concept "green" cease to mean anything at all if there is nobody around to see green things? It doesn't seem to me to be so; using the example I used earlier, I can imagine a possible world where everything is green but everyone is red-green colorblind, and green still makes plenty of sense here.
Green is different. "Green" is the word we use for a certain wave length of light that is emitted from a certain object and processed by a functioning human brain and eye. There's no judgment in the word green. Chair is different, too. Chair is a level plane on pillars made for sitting. No personal value, no judgment. Born of January 17th means, someone came out of a womb on the day that is marked on january 17th on our gregorian calendar. All those words do not lose meaning when there's no human around. (Except you mean meaning in a "purpose" kind of way which I don't.)
I am maintaining that the universe does not care about our formulations of the laws of physics, either. The universe moves on as it does, and we can describe events that take place in it with different levels of accuracy and precision, but the universe doesn't care about our formulations. You might be surprised to find out that physical events are always underdetermine physical theory: that is to say, given any amount of physical data, we can always construct more than one physical theory that explains it. This means, badly put, that there is no one objectively right and complete set of physical laws that totally describe the universe. There can be multiple systems that perfectly describe and predict all physical data.
I am surprised to hear you say that with perfect knowledge of the outside world, there could still be two different interpretations that are equally true. I find that hard to believe. Source on that theory?
I want this to show that our formulations of physical laws are unhinged from the universe just like moral laws are: the universe doesn't care at all that Newton was born or that we haven't found a theory of quantum gravity or whatever. We can come up with certain ways of describing physical events, but these certain ways don't matter at all to the universe. Things stand the same, in this respect, with description of moral events. The universe goes on as it does and we lay our moral interpretations over it. The difference between physical laws and moral laws does not lie in mind-dependence.
I agree with your first part. If our interpretations of nature are right or wrong does not change nature. I said a similar thing before in this thread. You're not disproving me or anything. And I'm still weary about what your opinion actually is.
Anyway, what I'd like to focus on is what I've bolded. It looks like you're under the impression that if we can provide a definition for what one of our terms means, those terms don't lose meaning when there are no humans around. Besides the obvious simplicity of your definitions, this idea is very strange to hold along with the opinion that moral judgments lose meaning when there are no humans around. What if we could provide a similar definition for our moral terms? Would they then retain meaning without humans? Do you think the ability to create a set of formal criteria is what makes certain words able to retain their meaning without any humans around to use them?
Definitions are by their nature universal. They are true no matter who is looking at them, who is applying them or who is rating them. So yes, if you can find a definition for what is good and bad that does not require an entity passing judgment, then you would have me convinced. Definitions that are not universal are called opinions. And that's what I think of morals to be, just opinions.
Thank you for the indetermination article. I'm not sure I agree but I find it interesting.
Okay. I don't know why you would think the difference between "definition" and "moral judgment" also makes the former mind-independent and the former -dependent, but that really isn't an issue. Many philosophers have argued (and I am inclined to agree) that things like the simple definitions you provided for words will always fail to accurately describe every bit of usage, or if they do always predict things correctly, it is only an accident. I'll provide you with an argument for this below, but the point of it is just to show that I think you have a mistaken understanding of what goes into a moral judgment as opposed to a "chair judgment" or a color judgment or what-have-you. And I think if the difference you've tried to place between these falls apart, you should think that morality is either real (just like color and chairs and whatever) or that it's as real as real can be (so just as real as colors and chairs, but those too are just a sort of judgment). In either case, I don't see any grounds for continuing to disparage morality, unless you want to do the same for all human judgment.
Here are the definitions you gave
Green is different. "Green" is the word we use for a certain wave length of light that is emitted from a certain object and processed by a functioning human brain and eye. There's no judgment in the word green. Chair is different, too. Chair is a level plane on pillars made for sitting. No personal value, no judgment. Born of January 17th means, someone came out of a womb on the day that is marked on january 17th on our gregorian calendar.
You'll see immediately that your definitions fail. I don't mean for this step here to prove much, but anyway I'll go through it. "Green" doesn't refer to a wavelength, much less a processed wavelength; things can be green without an actual human brain processing the photons that came off of them. But moreover, there is no specific set of wavelengths that we'd agree make up "green," and in fact people will judge (correctly!!!) different wavelengths to be green in different contexts. People on drugs, colorblind people, etc., all describe things as green that don't fall into the "typical" span of wavelengths. And we ourselves use green to refer to things that aren't "properly" green: green tea, for example. So your definition needs refinement.
Okay, so you might say "Well my definition was just vague, if I work on it real hard I can make a good one." Well, and what of that? What good does that do you? You can maybe provide a succinct or not-so-succinct description of every correct usage of the word "green," but you haven't necessarily talked about the way we judge things to be green. When I judge something to be green, I don't need to use your perfect definition of the word. And moreover, if you want a really long and specific and loophole-filled definition like "Green is a color typically associated with wavelengths 300-400 nm (or whatever), except when referring to certain things like green tea or a green soldier, or when someone under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs is talking..." then you have to admit the possibility of a similar definition for morality. I don't see how you can make a principled distinction between definitions of color terms, or what-have-you, and morality. People will disagree for both, both will be extremely long if they're accurate, people don't need either to actually judge things, and so on.
When I judge something to be a chair, I do not use a formal set of criteria. But this does not mean that my judgment is wrong or stupid or unfounded or something; that's just how language works. It's just the same with morality. I don't think you've provided any reason to think that morality is a special kind of term, such that our normal definitions and judgment faculties (which connect up with mind-independent properties) somehow don't apply.
If a=c and b=c then c=c. There's no such thing for morals. Morals work like this: I don't like c and event b is a manifestation of c so I don't like b.
You mean if a=c and b=c then a=b
Oh and there is something like a logic of morals, its called the categorical imperative.
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.
On July 30 2013 18:42 Spekulatius wrote: @ Lixler:
I think I expressed myself badly in my last post. Of course I do agree with you that dying does not remove a moral system. But this does not in any way mean a moral system is like a law of physics. You say, moral systems survive their "thinker" just as laws of physics do - I disagree. You say, a physical system of person X needs to be included in the equation the same way the moral system of person X needs to be included in its respective equation - I disagree.
I tried to compare morals to beauty as I believe they are comparable. And I very strongly believe that if you remove a critical beholder from the equation, the notion of beauty stops to make sense. What is beauty if there is nobody who is appreciating it, rating it or feeling it? Nothing. A notion without content. I very strongly believe the exact same statement holds true for moral systems. Morals are a human invention. Without humans, nobody would ever think about calling something right or wrong. It is completely implausible to me how there should be any universal statement that is not contingent on a beholder. ObviousOne phrased it much more bluntly: The universe does not care if something is right or wrong. This means a) that only caring about morality produces moral systems which means it's contingent on the human mind. And b) laws of physics are not relative to the beholder, they do not change depending on who's watching/rating/analyzing.
I don't know how to take these two statements together.
Of course I do agree with you that dying does not remove a moral system.
You say, moral systems survive their "thinker" just as laws of physics do - I disagree.
Are you trying to take "thinker" broadly here and say that they can't be unhinged totally from all thinkers? I guess that would make sense.
yes.
Let me provide some simple arguments for my views, as you've presented them. I say that a moral system survives its thinker just as laws of physics do. What I mean by this is that any given moral system has no intrinsic connection to the person who is applying it (although that person might feel really good about it, or whatever). Other people can adopt a moral system, both before and after this person's life, people can consider the moral system without believing it themselves, and so on. Surely nobody would make moral judgments if there were no rational agents around, but nobody would make physical judgments, either.
Yes. A moral system is like a pen. It can be used by your heirs and everyone else after you die.
I dunno why you invoke physical judgments though. Trying to interpret the outside world is nothing like saying A is better than B. This is actually my main problem with what you're saying and I get critisized for disagreeing with you on it. You do the same as me though, simply stating the contrary as fact without proof that they are indeed comparable.
I also said that a physical system needs to be included in any physical statement, which system can be linked to a thinker to the same extent that a moral system is. This is trivially true. When I say, for instance, "the chair is under the table," I am invoking a specific set of more or less physical concepts that are accessible to all people who speak English. Another physical system might use these signs to mean something else, or might use different signs to mean the same thing. And with more precise physical statements, like f=ma or e=1/2mv^2, it is obvious that we are taking on a lot of conceptual baggage in order to make our statement. Every statement comes out of a system of concepts that define its precise meaning; this system of concepts surely needs to be applied by a human if it's going to be applied at all, but that doesn't make it a total fiction (or whatever pejoratives you want to call it).
So?
You said that beauty loses its sense if there is no one around to behold it. How about our other classifications, like "green" and "chair" and "born on January 17th?" Does the concept "green" cease to mean anything at all if there is nobody around to see green things? It doesn't seem to me to be so; using the example I used earlier, I can imagine a possible world where everything is green but everyone is red-green colorblind, and green still makes plenty of sense here.
Green is different. "Green" is the word we use for a certain wave length of light that is emitted from a certain object and processed by a functioning human brain and eye. There's no judgment in the word green. Chair is different, too. Chair is a level plane on pillars made for sitting. No personal value, no judgment. Born of January 17th means, someone came out of a womb on the day that is marked on january 17th on our gregorian calendar. All those words do not lose meaning when there's no human around. (Except you mean meaning in a "purpose" kind of way which I don't.)
I am maintaining that the universe does not care about our formulations of the laws of physics, either. The universe moves on as it does, and we can describe events that take place in it with different levels of accuracy and precision, but the universe doesn't care about our formulations. You might be surprised to find out that physical events are always underdetermine physical theory: that is to say, given any amount of physical data, we can always construct more than one physical theory that explains it. This means, badly put, that there is no one objectively right and complete set of physical laws that totally describe the universe. There can be multiple systems that perfectly describe and predict all physical data.
I am surprised to hear you say that with perfect knowledge of the outside world, there could still be two different interpretations that are equally true. I find that hard to believe. Source on that theory?
I want this to show that our formulations of physical laws are unhinged from the universe just like moral laws are: the universe doesn't care at all that Newton was born or that we haven't found a theory of quantum gravity or whatever. We can come up with certain ways of describing physical events, but these certain ways don't matter at all to the universe. Things stand the same, in this respect, with description of moral events. The universe goes on as it does and we lay our moral interpretations over it. The difference between physical laws and moral laws does not lie in mind-dependence.
I agree with your first part. If our interpretations of nature are right or wrong does not change nature. I said a similar thing before in this thread. You're not disproving me or anything. And I'm still weary about what your opinion actually is.
Anyway, what I'd like to focus on is what I've bolded. It looks like you're under the impression that if we can provide a definition for what one of our terms means, those terms don't lose meaning when there are no humans around. Besides the obvious simplicity of your definitions, this idea is very strange to hold along with the opinion that moral judgments lose meaning when there are no humans around. What if we could provide a similar definition for our moral terms? Would they then retain meaning without humans? Do you think the ability to create a set of formal criteria is what makes certain words able to retain their meaning without any humans around to use them?
Definitions are by their nature universal. They are true no matter who is looking at them, who is applying them or who is rating them. So yes, if you can find a definition for what is good and bad that does not require an entity passing judgment, then you would have me convinced. Definitions that are not universal are called opinions. And that's what I think of morals to be, just opinions.
Thank you for the indetermination article. I'm not sure I agree but I find it interesting.
Okay. I don't know why you would think the difference between "definition" and "moral judgment" also makes the former mind-independent and the former -dependent, but that really isn't an issue. Many philosophers have argued (and I am inclined to agree) that things like the simple definitions you provided for words will always fail to accurately describe every bit of usage, or if they do always predict things correctly, it is only an accident. I'll provide you with an argument for this below, but the point of it is just to show that I think you have a mistaken understanding of what goes into a moral judgment as opposed to a "chair judgment" or a color judgment or what-have-you. And I think if the difference you've tried to place between these falls apart, you should think that morality is either real (just like color and chairs and whatever) or that it's as real as real can be (so just as real as colors and chairs, but those too are just a sort of judgment). In either case, I don't see any grounds for continuing to disparage morality, unless you want to do the same for all human judgment.
Green is different. "Green" is the word we use for a certain wave length of light that is emitted from a certain object and processed by a functioning human brain and eye. There's no judgment in the word green. Chair is different, too. Chair is a level plane on pillars made for sitting. No personal value, no judgment. Born of January 17th means, someone came out of a womb on the day that is marked on january 17th on our gregorian calendar.
You'll see immediately that your definitions fail. I don't mean for this step here to prove much, but anyway I'll go through it. "Green" doesn't refer to a wavelength, much less a processed wavelength; things can be green without an actual human brain processing the photons that came off of them. But moreover, there is no specific set of wavelengths that we'd agree make up "green," and in fact people will judge (correctly!!!) different wavelengths to be green in different contexts. People on drugs, colorblind people, etc., all describe things as green that don't fall into the "typical" span of wavelengths. And we ourselves use green to refer to things that aren't "properly" green: green tea, for example. So your definition needs refinement.
Okay, so you might say "Well my definition was just vague, if I work on it real hard I can make a good one." Well, and what of that? What good does that do you? You can maybe provide a succinct or not-so-succinct description of every correct usage of the word "green," but you haven't necessarily talked about the way we judge things to be green. When I judge something to be green, I don't need to use your perfect definition of the word. And moreover, if you want a really long and specific and loophole-filled definition like "Green is a color typically associated with wavelengths 300-400 nm (or whatever), except when referring to certain things like green tea or a green soldier, or when someone under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs is talking..." then you have to admit the possibility of a similar definition for morality. I don't see how you can make a principled distinction between definitions of color terms, or what-have-you, and morality. People will disagree for both, both will be extremely long if they're accurate, people don't need either to actually judge things, and so on.
When I judge something to be a chair, I do not use a formal set of criteria. But this does not mean that my judgment is wrong or stupid or unfounded or something; that's just how language works. It's just the same with morality. I don't think you've provided any reason to think that morality is a special kind of term, such that our normal definitions and judgment faculties (which connect up with mind-independent properties) somehow don't apply.
It seems like whatever I say does not reach you. Either I make no sense or you don't get it.
Either way, how about we turn the question around? You presuppose universality of moral systems. You don't claim to have found it or that anyone has (yet) but you say there is the possibility of at least one universal moral statement.
How is that? Where does it come from? How does that not interfere with the fact that morals are an invention of sentient beings? Where does your conviction come from that there is such a thing?
On July 31 2013 21:13 MiraMax wrote: I am not at all sure that I understand your objection well, but could you give me an example of an action that actually is considered morally right, harms a sentient being but does not even potentially benefit another or the same being?
Considered morally right by who? On what authority?
Any example would suffice. I am genuinely curious. Go right ahead!
What your objection boils down to otherwise seems to be 'disagreement'. In that people can and have disagreed about the meaning of "morally right" or that it used to mean something different. But people can disagree about what an atom is as well and the word atom actually used to mean something different in the past, but that alone would not lead me to conclude that atoms are not real.
The problem is not disagreement in itself. The problem is, disagreement happens on a non-logical basis. Science is made of a basis that is universal: the laws of logic. If a=c and b=c then a=b. There's no such thing for morals. Morals work like this: I don't like c and event b is a manifestation of c so I don't like b.
Science is based on the laws of logic?! Do you care to elaborate because this seems completely confused.
Earth example: Fair enough, so you claim that be statement "geology is universally applicable" to be truth-apt and true. To what real, existing, objective fact does this true statement correspond?
To the evolution, transformation and existence of every potential planet in our universe.
Well, potential planets don't really exist however, do they? How can you objectively establish that the principles of geology will apply to all similar planets to come?
On July 30 2013 18:42 Spekulatius wrote: @ Lixler:
I think I expressed myself badly in my last post. Of course I do agree with you that dying does not remove a moral system. But this does not in any way mean a moral system is like a law of physics. You say, moral systems survive their "thinker" just as laws of physics do - I disagree. You say, a physical system of person X needs to be included in the equation the same way the moral system of person X needs to be included in its respective equation - I disagree.
I tried to compare morals to beauty as I believe they are comparable. And I very strongly believe that if you remove a critical beholder from the equation, the notion of beauty stops to make sense. What is beauty if there is nobody who is appreciating it, rating it or feeling it? Nothing. A notion without content. I very strongly believe the exact same statement holds true for moral systems. Morals are a human invention. Without humans, nobody would ever think about calling something right or wrong. It is completely implausible to me how there should be any universal statement that is not contingent on a beholder. ObviousOne phrased it much more bluntly: The universe does not care if something is right or wrong. This means a) that only caring about morality produces moral systems which means it's contingent on the human mind. And b) laws of physics are not relative to the beholder, they do not change depending on who's watching/rating/analyzing.
I don't know how to take these two statements together.
Of course I do agree with you that dying does not remove a moral system.
You say, moral systems survive their "thinker" just as laws of physics do - I disagree.
Are you trying to take "thinker" broadly here and say that they can't be unhinged totally from all thinkers? I guess that would make sense.
yes.
Let me provide some simple arguments for my views, as you've presented them. I say that a moral system survives its thinker just as laws of physics do. What I mean by this is that any given moral system has no intrinsic connection to the person who is applying it (although that person might feel really good about it, or whatever). Other people can adopt a moral system, both before and after this person's life, people can consider the moral system without believing it themselves, and so on. Surely nobody would make moral judgments if there were no rational agents around, but nobody would make physical judgments, either.
Yes. A moral system is like a pen. It can be used by your heirs and everyone else after you die.
I dunno why you invoke physical judgments though. Trying to interpret the outside world is nothing like saying A is better than B. This is actually my main problem with what you're saying and I get critisized for disagreeing with you on it. You do the same as me though, simply stating the contrary as fact without proof that they are indeed comparable.
I also said that a physical system needs to be included in any physical statement, which system can be linked to a thinker to the same extent that a moral system is. This is trivially true. When I say, for instance, "the chair is under the table," I am invoking a specific set of more or less physical concepts that are accessible to all people who speak English. Another physical system might use these signs to mean something else, or might use different signs to mean the same thing. And with more precise physical statements, like f=ma or e=1/2mv^2, it is obvious that we are taking on a lot of conceptual baggage in order to make our statement. Every statement comes out of a system of concepts that define its precise meaning; this system of concepts surely needs to be applied by a human if it's going to be applied at all, but that doesn't make it a total fiction (or whatever pejoratives you want to call it).
So?
You said that beauty loses its sense if there is no one around to behold it. How about our other classifications, like "green" and "chair" and "born on January 17th?" Does the concept "green" cease to mean anything at all if there is nobody around to see green things? It doesn't seem to me to be so; using the example I used earlier, I can imagine a possible world where everything is green but everyone is red-green colorblind, and green still makes plenty of sense here.
Green is different. "Green" is the word we use for a certain wave length of light that is emitted from a certain object and processed by a functioning human brain and eye. There's no judgment in the word green. Chair is different, too. Chair is a level plane on pillars made for sitting. No personal value, no judgment. Born of January 17th means, someone came out of a womb on the day that is marked on january 17th on our gregorian calendar. All those words do not lose meaning when there's no human around. (Except you mean meaning in a "purpose" kind of way which I don't.)
I am maintaining that the universe does not care about our formulations of the laws of physics, either. The universe moves on as it does, and we can describe events that take place in it with different levels of accuracy and precision, but the universe doesn't care about our formulations. You might be surprised to find out that physical events are always underdetermine physical theory: that is to say, given any amount of physical data, we can always construct more than one physical theory that explains it. This means, badly put, that there is no one objectively right and complete set of physical laws that totally describe the universe. There can be multiple systems that perfectly describe and predict all physical data.
I am surprised to hear you say that with perfect knowledge of the outside world, there could still be two different interpretations that are equally true. I find that hard to believe. Source on that theory?
I want this to show that our formulations of physical laws are unhinged from the universe just like moral laws are: the universe doesn't care at all that Newton was born or that we haven't found a theory of quantum gravity or whatever. We can come up with certain ways of describing physical events, but these certain ways don't matter at all to the universe. Things stand the same, in this respect, with description of moral events. The universe goes on as it does and we lay our moral interpretations over it. The difference between physical laws and moral laws does not lie in mind-dependence.
I agree with your first part. If our interpretations of nature are right or wrong does not change nature. I said a similar thing before in this thread. You're not disproving me or anything. And I'm still weary about what your opinion actually is.
Anyway, what I'd like to focus on is what I've bolded. It looks like you're under the impression that if we can provide a definition for what one of our terms means, those terms don't lose meaning when there are no humans around. Besides the obvious simplicity of your definitions, this idea is very strange to hold along with the opinion that moral judgments lose meaning when there are no humans around. What if we could provide a similar definition for our moral terms? Would they then retain meaning without humans? Do you think the ability to create a set of formal criteria is what makes certain words able to retain their meaning without any humans around to use them?
Definitions are by their nature universal. They are true no matter who is looking at them, who is applying them or who is rating them. So yes, if you can find a definition for what is good and bad that does not require an entity passing judgment, then you would have me convinced. Definitions that are not universal are called opinions. And that's what I think of morals to be, just opinions.
Thank you for the indetermination article. I'm not sure I agree but I find it interesting.
Okay. I don't know why you would think the difference between "definition" and "moral judgment" also makes the former mind-independent and the former -dependent, but that really isn't an issue. Many philosophers have argued (and I am inclined to agree) that things like the simple definitions you provided for words will always fail to accurately describe every bit of usage, or if they do always predict things correctly, it is only an accident. I'll provide you with an argument for this below, but the point of it is just to show that I think you have a mistaken understanding of what goes into a moral judgment as opposed to a "chair judgment" or a color judgment or what-have-you. And I think if the difference you've tried to place between these falls apart, you should think that morality is either real (just like color and chairs and whatever) or that it's as real as real can be (so just as real as colors and chairs, but those too are just a sort of judgment). In either case, I don't see any grounds for continuing to disparage morality, unless you want to do the same for all human judgment.
Here are the definitions you gave
Green is different. "Green" is the word we use for a certain wave length of light that is emitted from a certain object and processed by a functioning human brain and eye. There's no judgment in the word green. Chair is different, too. Chair is a level plane on pillars made for sitting. No personal value, no judgment. Born of January 17th means, someone came out of a womb on the day that is marked on january 17th on our gregorian calendar.
You'll see immediately that your definitions fail. I don't mean for this step here to prove much, but anyway I'll go through it. "Green" doesn't refer to a wavelength, much less a processed wavelength; things can be green without an actual human brain processing the photons that came off of them. But moreover, there is no specific set of wavelengths that we'd agree make up "green," and in fact people will judge (correctly!!!) different wavelengths to be green in different contexts. People on drugs, colorblind people, etc., all describe things as green that don't fall into the "typical" span of wavelengths. And we ourselves use green to refer to things that aren't "properly" green: green tea, for example. So your definition needs refinement.
Okay, so you might say "Well my definition was just vague, if I work on it real hard I can make a good one." Well, and what of that? What good does that do you? You can maybe provide a succinct or not-so-succinct description of every correct usage of the word "green," but you haven't necessarily talked about the way we judge things to be green. When I judge something to be green, I don't need to use your perfect definition of the word. And moreover, if you want a really long and specific and loophole-filled definition like "Green is a color typically associated with wavelengths 300-400 nm (or whatever), except when referring to certain things like green tea or a green soldier, or when someone under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs is talking..." then you have to admit the possibility of a similar definition for morality. I don't see how you can make a principled distinction between definitions of color terms, or what-have-you, and morality. People will disagree for both, both will be extremely long if they're accurate, people don't need either to actually judge things, and so on.
When I judge something to be a chair, I do not use a formal set of criteria. But this does not mean that my judgment is wrong or stupid or unfounded or something; that's just how language works. It's just the same with morality. I don't think you've provided any reason to think that morality is a special kind of term, such that our normal definitions and judgment faculties (which connect up with mind-independent properties) somehow don't apply.
It seems like whatever I say does not reach you. Either I make no sense or you don't get it.
Either way, how about we turn the question around? You presuppose universality of moral systems. You don't claim to have found it or that anyone has (yet) but you say there is the possibility of at least one universal moral statement.
How is that? Where does it come from? How does that not interfere with the fact that morals are an invention of sentient beings? Where does your conviction come from that there is such a thing?
I said before that I'm a particularist about morals, so I don't think there are any universal moral statements in the sense you mean. But here's one correct moral statement: Hitler was a bad person.
My optimism about morality comes pretty directly from my general attitude about words in general. I see no reason to think that moral propositions are, as a class, more unhinged from reality or more tied to personal opinion or vaguer than typical judgments. I also think most typical judgments, even though they don't have the rigor of science or logic, can accurately be called right or wrong. So I think that morality as a system of concepts is more or less built out of our practices and usage of moral language, just like all of our other systems for judging.
The methods for confirming the truth of a moral statement are not, in my view, scientific, but neither are the methods for confirming a wide variety of truths. For instance, if we are unsure as to whether something I'm sitting on is a chair, there is no experiment I can run or data I can analyze or anything in order to tell whether it's a chair. I just look at it and, given my general knowledge of English, I can tell that it is or is not a chair. Morality is similar. You might object that people will often disagree about moral claims, so just knowing English doesn't mean all my moral judgments are correct, but this is true for other words, and I'm not particularly skeptical about the truth of all my judgments just because some other people speak the same language as me and disagree. Moreover, there are methods for investigating truth specific to morality; while we have almost no higher-level considerations to make w/r/t chairs, there are lots of things we can bring in to consider whether some action or person or situation is morally good or bad. For instance, I can ask whether human rights are being respected, whether anyone is being harmed, and so on. And I think the truth of moral statements can't be meaningfully separated from these truth-investigating practices: it simply doesn't make any sense to say "Well sure, people think that making people happy is usually morally good, but how do you really know that?" just as it doesn't make any sense to say "Well sure, people think that those things you sit on with four legs and a back are chairs, but how do you really know that?"
So to put it succinctly: I think that moral judgments can be true and false in just the same way as many other kinds of judgments we make, and I am confident that most of our everyday judgments are true or false even though they don't have rigorous methods of investigation backing them.
If a=c and b=c then c=c. There's no such thing for morals. Morals work like this: I don't like c and event b is a manifestation of c so I don't like b.
You mean if a=c and b=c then a=b
Oh and there is something like a logic of morals, its called the categorical imperative.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
On July 30 2013 18:42 Spekulatius wrote: @ Lixler:
I think I expressed myself badly in my last post. Of course I do agree with you that dying does not remove a moral system. But this does not in any way mean a moral system is like a law of physics. You say, moral systems survive their "thinker" just as laws of physics do - I disagree. You say, a physical system of person X needs to be included in the equation the same way the moral system of person X needs to be included in its respective equation - I disagree.
I tried to compare morals to beauty as I believe they are comparable. And I very strongly believe that if you remove a critical beholder from the equation, the notion of beauty stops to make sense. What is beauty if there is nobody who is appreciating it, rating it or feeling it? Nothing. A notion without content. I very strongly believe the exact same statement holds true for moral systems. Morals are a human invention. Without humans, nobody would ever think about calling something right or wrong. It is completely implausible to me how there should be any universal statement that is not contingent on a beholder. ObviousOne phrased it much more bluntly: The universe does not care if something is right or wrong. This means a) that only caring about morality produces moral systems which means it's contingent on the human mind. And b) laws of physics are not relative to the beholder, they do not change depending on who's watching/rating/analyzing.
I don't know how to take these two statements together.
Of course I do agree with you that dying does not remove a moral system.
You say, moral systems survive their "thinker" just as laws of physics do - I disagree.
Are you trying to take "thinker" broadly here and say that they can't be unhinged totally from all thinkers? I guess that would make sense.
yes.
Let me provide some simple arguments for my views, as you've presented them. I say that a moral system survives its thinker just as laws of physics do. What I mean by this is that any given moral system has no intrinsic connection to the person who is applying it (although that person might feel really good about it, or whatever). Other people can adopt a moral system, both before and after this person's life, people can consider the moral system without believing it themselves, and so on. Surely nobody would make moral judgments if there were no rational agents around, but nobody would make physical judgments, either.
Yes. A moral system is like a pen. It can be used by your heirs and everyone else after you die.
I dunno why you invoke physical judgments though. Trying to interpret the outside world is nothing like saying A is better than B. This is actually my main problem with what you're saying and I get critisized for disagreeing with you on it. You do the same as me though, simply stating the contrary as fact without proof that they are indeed comparable.
I also said that a physical system needs to be included in any physical statement, which system can be linked to a thinker to the same extent that a moral system is. This is trivially true. When I say, for instance, "the chair is under the table," I am invoking a specific set of more or less physical concepts that are accessible to all people who speak English. Another physical system might use these signs to mean something else, or might use different signs to mean the same thing. And with more precise physical statements, like f=ma or e=1/2mv^2, it is obvious that we are taking on a lot of conceptual baggage in order to make our statement. Every statement comes out of a system of concepts that define its precise meaning; this system of concepts surely needs to be applied by a human if it's going to be applied at all, but that doesn't make it a total fiction (or whatever pejoratives you want to call it).
So?
You said that beauty loses its sense if there is no one around to behold it. How about our other classifications, like "green" and "chair" and "born on January 17th?" Does the concept "green" cease to mean anything at all if there is nobody around to see green things? It doesn't seem to me to be so; using the example I used earlier, I can imagine a possible world where everything is green but everyone is red-green colorblind, and green still makes plenty of sense here.
Green is different. "Green" is the word we use for a certain wave length of light that is emitted from a certain object and processed by a functioning human brain and eye. There's no judgment in the word green. Chair is different, too. Chair is a level plane on pillars made for sitting. No personal value, no judgment. Born of January 17th means, someone came out of a womb on the day that is marked on january 17th on our gregorian calendar. All those words do not lose meaning when there's no human around. (Except you mean meaning in a "purpose" kind of way which I don't.)
I am maintaining that the universe does not care about our formulations of the laws of physics, either. The universe moves on as it does, and we can describe events that take place in it with different levels of accuracy and precision, but the universe doesn't care about our formulations. You might be surprised to find out that physical events are always underdetermine physical theory: that is to say, given any amount of physical data, we can always construct more than one physical theory that explains it. This means, badly put, that there is no one objectively right and complete set of physical laws that totally describe the universe. There can be multiple systems that perfectly describe and predict all physical data.
I am surprised to hear you say that with perfect knowledge of the outside world, there could still be two different interpretations that are equally true. I find that hard to believe. Source on that theory?
I want this to show that our formulations of physical laws are unhinged from the universe just like moral laws are: the universe doesn't care at all that Newton was born or that we haven't found a theory of quantum gravity or whatever. We can come up with certain ways of describing physical events, but these certain ways don't matter at all to the universe. Things stand the same, in this respect, with description of moral events. The universe goes on as it does and we lay our moral interpretations over it. The difference between physical laws and moral laws does not lie in mind-dependence.
I agree with your first part. If our interpretations of nature are right or wrong does not change nature. I said a similar thing before in this thread. You're not disproving me or anything. And I'm still weary about what your opinion actually is.
Anyway, what I'd like to focus on is what I've bolded. It looks like you're under the impression that if we can provide a definition for what one of our terms means, those terms don't lose meaning when there are no humans around. Besides the obvious simplicity of your definitions, this idea is very strange to hold along with the opinion that moral judgments lose meaning when there are no humans around. What if we could provide a similar definition for our moral terms? Would they then retain meaning without humans? Do you think the ability to create a set of formal criteria is what makes certain words able to retain their meaning without any humans around to use them?
Definitions are by their nature universal. They are true no matter who is looking at them, who is applying them or who is rating them. So yes, if you can find a definition for what is good and bad that does not require an entity passing judgment, then you would have me convinced. Definitions that are not universal are called opinions. And that's what I think of morals to be, just opinions.
Thank you for the indetermination article. I'm not sure I agree but I find it interesting.
Okay. I don't know why you would think the difference between "definition" and "moral judgment" also makes the former mind-independent and the former -dependent, but that really isn't an issue. Many philosophers have argued (and I am inclined to agree) that things like the simple definitions you provided for words will always fail to accurately describe every bit of usage, or if they do always predict things correctly, it is only an accident. I'll provide you with an argument for this below, but the point of it is just to show that I think you have a mistaken understanding of what goes into a moral judgment as opposed to a "chair judgment" or a color judgment or what-have-you. And I think if the difference you've tried to place between these falls apart, you should think that morality is either real (just like color and chairs and whatever) or that it's as real as real can be (so just as real as colors and chairs, but those too are just a sort of judgment). In either case, I don't see any grounds for continuing to disparage morality, unless you want to do the same for all human judgment.
Here are the definitions you gave
Green is different. "Green" is the word we use for a certain wave length of light that is emitted from a certain object and processed by a functioning human brain and eye. There's no judgment in the word green. Chair is different, too. Chair is a level plane on pillars made for sitting. No personal value, no judgment. Born of January 17th means, someone came out of a womb on the day that is marked on january 17th on our gregorian calendar.
You'll see immediately that your definitions fail. I don't mean for this step here to prove much, but anyway I'll go through it. "Green" doesn't refer to a wavelength, much less a processed wavelength; things can be green without an actual human brain processing the photons that came off of them. But moreover, there is no specific set of wavelengths that we'd agree make up "green," and in fact people will judge (correctly!!!) different wavelengths to be green in different contexts. People on drugs, colorblind people, etc., all describe things as green that don't fall into the "typical" span of wavelengths. And we ourselves use green to refer to things that aren't "properly" green: green tea, for example. So your definition needs refinement.
Okay, so you might say "Well my definition was just vague, if I work on it real hard I can make a good one." Well, and what of that? What good does that do you? You can maybe provide a succinct or not-so-succinct description of every correct usage of the word "green," but you haven't necessarily talked about the way we judge things to be green. When I judge something to be green, I don't need to use your perfect definition of the word. And moreover, if you want a really long and specific and loophole-filled definition like "Green is a color typically associated with wavelengths 300-400 nm (or whatever), except when referring to certain things like green tea or a green soldier, or when someone under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs is talking..." then you have to admit the possibility of a similar definition for morality. I don't see how you can make a principled distinction between definitions of color terms, or what-have-you, and morality. People will disagree for both, both will be extremely long if they're accurate, people don't need either to actually judge things, and so on.
When I judge something to be a chair, I do not use a formal set of criteria. But this does not mean that my judgment is wrong or stupid or unfounded or something; that's just how language works. It's just the same with morality. I don't think you've provided any reason to think that morality is a special kind of term, such that our normal definitions and judgment faculties (which connect up with mind-independent properties) somehow don't apply.
It seems like whatever I say does not reach you. Either I make no sense or you don't get it.
Either way, how about we turn the question around? You presuppose universality of moral systems. You don't claim to have found it or that anyone has (yet) but you say there is the possibility of at least one universal moral statement.
How is that? Where does it come from? How does that not interfere with the fact that morals are an invention of sentient beings? Where does your conviction come from that there is such a thing?
I said before that I'm a particularist about morals, so I don't think there are any universal moral statements in the sense you mean. But here's one correct moral statement: Hitler was a bad person.
My optimism about morality comes pretty directly from my general attitude about words in general. I see no reason to think that moral propositions are, as a class, more unhinged from reality or more tied to personal opinion or vaguer than typical judgments. I also think most typical judgments, even though they don't have the rigor of science or logic, can accurately be called right or wrong. So I think that morality as a system of concepts is more or less built out of our practices and usage of moral language, just like all of our other systems for judging.
The methods for confirming the truth of a moral statement are not, in my view, scientific, but neither are the methods for confirming a wide variety of truths. For instance, if we are unsure as to whether something I'm sitting on is a chair, there is no experiment I can run or data I can analyze or anything in order to tell whether it's a chair. I just look at it and, given my general knowledge of English, I can tell that it is or is not a chair. Morality is similar. You might object that people will often disagree about moral claims, so just knowing English doesn't mean all my moral judgments are correct, but this is true for other words, and I'm not particularly skeptical about the truth of all my judgments just because some other people speak the same language as me and disagree. Moreover, there are methods for investigating truth specific to morality; while we have almost no higher-level considerations to make w/r/t chairs, there are lots of things we can bring in to consider whether some action or person or situation is morally good or bad. For instance, I can ask whether human rights are being respected, whether anyone is being harmed, and so on. And I think the truth of moral statements can't be meaningfully separated from these truth-investigating practices: it simply doesn't make any sense to say "Well sure, people think that making people happy is usually morally good, but how do you really know that?" just as it doesn't make any sense to say "Well sure, people think that those things you sit on with four legs and a back are chairs, but how do you really know that?"
So to put it succinctly: I think that moral judgments can be true and false in just the same way as many other kinds of judgments we make, and I am confident that most of our everyday judgments are true or false even though they don't have rigorous methods of investigation backing them.
That's exactly the problem I have with your position. You say there are moral truths, but there is no way to define them or to prove them. There is no way to know about their quality.
That does not bother you, however. You are pleased with being "confident" that something is right and something is wrong and use that as a hint - as there is no rigorous proof, so you say - that it is morally true.
I still don't think your chair analogy makes any sense. A chair is a defined object. People using the word refer to the same object. "Good" and "bad" are not defined. Everyone uses them differently because everyone means them differently. They are not universal.
Why does respect for human rights make anything good? Who says human rights are any good?
But if you really believe what you said up there and I quote "it simply doesn't make any sense to say "Well sure, people think that making people happy is usually morally good, but how do you really know that?"", despite this being the real fundamental question of this thread, then I don't know what I'm doing here.
If a=c and b=c then c=c. There's no such thing for morals. Morals work like this: I don't like c and event b is a manifestation of c so I don't like b.
You mean if a=c and b=c then a=b
Oh and there is something like a logic of morals, its called the categorical imperative.
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?
On July 30 2013 18:42 Spekulatius wrote: @ Lixler:
I think I expressed myself badly in my last post. Of course I do agree with you that dying does not remove a moral system. But this does not in any way mean a moral system is like a law of physics. You say, moral systems survive their "thinker" just as laws of physics do - I disagree. You say, a physical system of person X needs to be included in the equation the same way the moral system of person X needs to be included in its respective equation - I disagree.
I tried to compare morals to beauty as I believe they are comparable. And I very strongly believe that if you remove a critical beholder from the equation, the notion of beauty stops to make sense. What is beauty if there is nobody who is appreciating it, rating it or feeling it? Nothing. A notion without content. I very strongly believe the exact same statement holds true for moral systems. Morals are a human invention. Without humans, nobody would ever think about calling something right or wrong. It is completely implausible to me how there should be any universal statement that is not contingent on a beholder. ObviousOne phrased it much more bluntly: The universe does not care if something is right or wrong. This means a) that only caring about morality produces moral systems which means it's contingent on the human mind. And b) laws of physics are not relative to the beholder, they do not change depending on who's watching/rating/analyzing.
I don't know how to take these two statements together.
Of course I do agree with you that dying does not remove a moral system.
You say, moral systems survive their "thinker" just as laws of physics do - I disagree.
Are you trying to take "thinker" broadly here and say that they can't be unhinged totally from all thinkers? I guess that would make sense.
yes.
Let me provide some simple arguments for my views, as you've presented them. I say that a moral system survives its thinker just as laws of physics do. What I mean by this is that any given moral system has no intrinsic connection to the person who is applying it (although that person might feel really good about it, or whatever). Other people can adopt a moral system, both before and after this person's life, people can consider the moral system without believing it themselves, and so on. Surely nobody would make moral judgments if there were no rational agents around, but nobody would make physical judgments, either.
Yes. A moral system is like a pen. It can be used by your heirs and everyone else after you die.
I dunno why you invoke physical judgments though. Trying to interpret the outside world is nothing like saying A is better than B. This is actually my main problem with what you're saying and I get critisized for disagreeing with you on it. You do the same as me though, simply stating the contrary as fact without proof that they are indeed comparable.
I also said that a physical system needs to be included in any physical statement, which system can be linked to a thinker to the same extent that a moral system is. This is trivially true. When I say, for instance, "the chair is under the table," I am invoking a specific set of more or less physical concepts that are accessible to all people who speak English. Another physical system might use these signs to mean something else, or might use different signs to mean the same thing. And with more precise physical statements, like f=ma or e=1/2mv^2, it is obvious that we are taking on a lot of conceptual baggage in order to make our statement. Every statement comes out of a system of concepts that define its precise meaning; this system of concepts surely needs to be applied by a human if it's going to be applied at all, but that doesn't make it a total fiction (or whatever pejoratives you want to call it).
So?
You said that beauty loses its sense if there is no one around to behold it. How about our other classifications, like "green" and "chair" and "born on January 17th?" Does the concept "green" cease to mean anything at all if there is nobody around to see green things? It doesn't seem to me to be so; using the example I used earlier, I can imagine a possible world where everything is green but everyone is red-green colorblind, and green still makes plenty of sense here.
Green is different. "Green" is the word we use for a certain wave length of light that is emitted from a certain object and processed by a functioning human brain and eye. There's no judgment in the word green. Chair is different, too. Chair is a level plane on pillars made for sitting. No personal value, no judgment. Born of January 17th means, someone came out of a womb on the day that is marked on january 17th on our gregorian calendar. All those words do not lose meaning when there's no human around. (Except you mean meaning in a "purpose" kind of way which I don't.)
I am maintaining that the universe does not care about our formulations of the laws of physics, either. The universe moves on as it does, and we can describe events that take place in it with different levels of accuracy and precision, but the universe doesn't care about our formulations. You might be surprised to find out that physical events are always underdetermine physical theory: that is to say, given any amount of physical data, we can always construct more than one physical theory that explains it. This means, badly put, that there is no one objectively right and complete set of physical laws that totally describe the universe. There can be multiple systems that perfectly describe and predict all physical data.
I am surprised to hear you say that with perfect knowledge of the outside world, there could still be two different interpretations that are equally true. I find that hard to believe. Source on that theory?
I want this to show that our formulations of physical laws are unhinged from the universe just like moral laws are: the universe doesn't care at all that Newton was born or that we haven't found a theory of quantum gravity or whatever. We can come up with certain ways of describing physical events, but these certain ways don't matter at all to the universe. Things stand the same, in this respect, with description of moral events. The universe goes on as it does and we lay our moral interpretations over it. The difference between physical laws and moral laws does not lie in mind-dependence.
I agree with your first part. If our interpretations of nature are right or wrong does not change nature. I said a similar thing before in this thread. You're not disproving me or anything. And I'm still weary about what your opinion actually is.
Anyway, what I'd like to focus on is what I've bolded. It looks like you're under the impression that if we can provide a definition for what one of our terms means, those terms don't lose meaning when there are no humans around. Besides the obvious simplicity of your definitions, this idea is very strange to hold along with the opinion that moral judgments lose meaning when there are no humans around. What if we could provide a similar definition for our moral terms? Would they then retain meaning without humans? Do you think the ability to create a set of formal criteria is what makes certain words able to retain their meaning without any humans around to use them?
Definitions are by their nature universal. They are true no matter who is looking at them, who is applying them or who is rating them. So yes, if you can find a definition for what is good and bad that does not require an entity passing judgment, then you would have me convinced. Definitions that are not universal are called opinions. And that's what I think of morals to be, just opinions.
Thank you for the indetermination article. I'm not sure I agree but I find it interesting.
Okay. I don't know why you would think the difference between "definition" and "moral judgment" also makes the former mind-independent and the former -dependent, but that really isn't an issue. Many philosophers have argued (and I am inclined to agree) that things like the simple definitions you provided for words will always fail to accurately describe every bit of usage, or if they do always predict things correctly, it is only an accident. I'll provide you with an argument for this below, but the point of it is just to show that I think you have a mistaken understanding of what goes into a moral judgment as opposed to a "chair judgment" or a color judgment or what-have-you. And I think if the difference you've tried to place between these falls apart, you should think that morality is either real (just like color and chairs and whatever) or that it's as real as real can be (so just as real as colors and chairs, but those too are just a sort of judgment). In either case, I don't see any grounds for continuing to disparage morality, unless you want to do the same for all human judgment.
Here are the definitions you gave
Green is different. "Green" is the word we use for a certain wave length of light that is emitted from a certain object and processed by a functioning human brain and eye. There's no judgment in the word green. Chair is different, too. Chair is a level plane on pillars made for sitting. No personal value, no judgment. Born of January 17th means, someone came out of a womb on the day that is marked on january 17th on our gregorian calendar.
You'll see immediately that your definitions fail. I don't mean for this step here to prove much, but anyway I'll go through it. "Green" doesn't refer to a wavelength, much less a processed wavelength; things can be green without an actual human brain processing the photons that came off of them. But moreover, there is no specific set of wavelengths that we'd agree make up "green," and in fact people will judge (correctly!!!) different wavelengths to be green in different contexts. People on drugs, colorblind people, etc., all describe things as green that don't fall into the "typical" span of wavelengths. And we ourselves use green to refer to things that aren't "properly" green: green tea, for example. So your definition needs refinement.
Okay, so you might say "Well my definition was just vague, if I work on it real hard I can make a good one." Well, and what of that? What good does that do you? You can maybe provide a succinct or not-so-succinct description of every correct usage of the word "green," but you haven't necessarily talked about the way we judge things to be green. When I judge something to be green, I don't need to use your perfect definition of the word. And moreover, if you want a really long and specific and loophole-filled definition like "Green is a color typically associated with wavelengths 300-400 nm (or whatever), except when referring to certain things like green tea or a green soldier, or when someone under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs is talking..." then you have to admit the possibility of a similar definition for morality. I don't see how you can make a principled distinction between definitions of color terms, or what-have-you, and morality. People will disagree for both, both will be extremely long if they're accurate, people don't need either to actually judge things, and so on.
When I judge something to be a chair, I do not use a formal set of criteria. But this does not mean that my judgment is wrong or stupid or unfounded or something; that's just how language works. It's just the same with morality. I don't think you've provided any reason to think that morality is a special kind of term, such that our normal definitions and judgment faculties (which connect up with mind-independent properties) somehow don't apply.
It seems like whatever I say does not reach you. Either I make no sense or you don't get it.
Either way, how about we turn the question around? You presuppose universality of moral systems. You don't claim to have found it or that anyone has (yet) but you say there is the possibility of at least one universal moral statement.
How is that? Where does it come from? How does that not interfere with the fact that morals are an invention of sentient beings? Where does your conviction come from that there is such a thing?
I said before that I'm a particularist about morals, so I don't think there are any universal moral statements in the sense you mean. But here's one correct moral statement: Hitler was a bad person.
My optimism about morality comes pretty directly from my general attitude about words in general. I see no reason to think that moral propositions are, as a class, more unhinged from reality or more tied to personal opinion or vaguer than typical judgments. I also think most typical judgments, even though they don't have the rigor of science or logic, can accurately be called right or wrong. So I think that morality as a system of concepts is more or less built out of our practices and usage of moral language, just like all of our other systems for judging.
The methods for confirming the truth of a moral statement are not, in my view, scientific, but neither are the methods for confirming a wide variety of truths. For instance, if we are unsure as to whether something I'm sitting on is a chair, there is no experiment I can run or data I can analyze or anything in order to tell whether it's a chair. I just look at it and, given my general knowledge of English, I can tell that it is or is not a chair. Morality is similar. You might object that people will often disagree about moral claims, so just knowing English doesn't mean all my moral judgments are correct, but this is true for other words, and I'm not particularly skeptical about the truth of all my judgments just because some other people speak the same language as me and disagree. Moreover, there are methods for investigating truth specific to morality; while we have almost no higher-level considerations to make w/r/t chairs, there are lots of things we can bring in to consider whether some action or person or situation is morally good or bad. For instance, I can ask whether human rights are being respected, whether anyone is being harmed, and so on. And I think the truth of moral statements can't be meaningfully separated from these truth-investigating practices: it simply doesn't make any sense to say "Well sure, people think that making people happy is usually morally good, but how do you really know that?" just as it doesn't make any sense to say "Well sure, people think that those things you sit on with four legs and a back are chairs, but how do you really know that?"
So to put it succinctly: I think that moral judgments can be true and false in just the same way as many other kinds of judgments we make, and I am confident that most of our everyday judgments are true or false even though they don't have rigorous methods of investigation backing them.
That's exactly the problem I have with your position. You say there are moral truths, but there is no way to define them or to prove them. There is no way to know about their quality.
That does not bother you, however. You are pleased with being "confident" that something is right and something is wrong and use that as a hint - as there is no rigorous proof, so you say - that it is morally true.
I still don't think your chair analogy makes any sense. A chair is a defined object. People using the word refer to the same object. "Good" and "bad" are not defined. Everyone uses them differently because everyone means them differently. They are not universal.
Why does respect for human rights make anything good? Who says human rights are any good?
But if you really believe what you said up there and I quote "it simply doesn't make any sense to say "Well sure, people think that making people happy is usually morally good, but how do you really know that?"", despite this being the real fundamental question of this thread, then I don't know what I'm doing here.
Sure, a chair is a real object out there, but calling it a chair is just as much a description of it as calling it good or bad. What I mean is that, given a vast array of objects, some of them are chairs and others aren't. But the rules that distinguish the two are not simple, conscious, or (maybe even) explicable. Despite this, there is a truth of the matter about whether or not most things are chairs. I don't know why you think a chair being "a defined object [sic]" means that our statements about chairs are somehow secured in their validity. Why would describing something as a "defined object" be different than describing features of it (such as moral features)?
You raise a good, but hard to formulate, point when you say that everyone means moral terms differently. I already hinted at my response to this: everyone also has little idiosyncracies in their usage of the word "chair" (or if not chairs, I could come up with another example where most people are inclined to think there is a truth of the matter), but this doesn't mean that we're all talking about something totally different when we discuss chairs. And this is true of morality as well. I think there is good reason to think we don't mean different things by our distinct usage of moral terms. For instance, when someone else contradicts our moral statements, we argue with them and think they are wrong. This would be a strange thing to do if we weren't even talking about the same thing. Also, our arguments have common ground that (most) people agree to; nobody really holds that killing people for no reason is a courageous thing to do. Finally, most people treat their moral judgments in the same way. So if I judge that something is a chair, it factors into my behavior in a roughly definable way (I'll sit in it, tell other people they can sit in it, but I won't stand in it or use it to eat my food). And if I judge that something is immoral, I'll avoid doing it, tell other people not to do it, think poorly of people who do it, and so on.
The idiosyncracies do still exist, and maybe on some level people have to "agree to disagree," but again this is not a problem particular to moral judgments. Most kinds of judgments go on just fine even though people have slightly different meanings when they use the same words.
I don't think it makes sense to doubt the possible veracity of what we usually take to be good moral reasoning because doubt is a specific practice that implies the existence of reasons to doubt, ways to confirm or deny the thing we're doubting, and the existence of an actual sense of the words. I should limit what I mean by this, but I think the example I provided is just fine. I don't know how doubt here gets any traction. Is there some way I could have been fooled about that? What would it look like for the opposite to be true? What kinds of things would show that it was true or false? The notion of like "really knowing" or fundamentally, way deep down, being totally certain seems to be a void here that we can only point to. There are no actual practices we can use to make our understanding of the truth deeper. (As we could, for instance, if I was trying to say that some particular point of light in the sky was a planet. You could say "How could you really be sure of that?" and there are lots of things I could do.) I think that the kind of absolute knowledge and truth pointed to by the doubt I posited is a fiction, but in the absence of such absolutes we have no good reason to doubt our average, everyday, coarse kinds of judgment.
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 sense it makes to say that ethical judgments require the application of principles.
If a=c and b=c then c=c. There's no such thing for morals. Morals work like this: I don't like c and event b is a manifestation of c so I don't like b.
You mean if a=c and b=c then a=b
Oh and there is something like a logic of morals, its called the categorical imperative.
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.
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.
If a=c and b=c then c=c. There's no such thing for morals. Morals work like this: I don't like c and event b is a manifestation of c so I don't like b.
You mean if a=c and b=c then a=b
Oh and there is something like a logic of morals, its called the categorical imperative.
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.
On July 30 2013 18:42 Spekulatius wrote: @ Lixler:
I think I expressed myself badly in my last post. Of course I do agree with you that dying does not remove a moral system. But this does not in any way mean a moral system is like a law of physics. You say, moral systems survive their "thinker" just as laws of physics do - I disagree. You say, a physical system of person X needs to be included in the equation the same way the moral system of person X needs to be included in its respective equation - I disagree.
I tried to compare morals to beauty as I believe they are comparable. And I very strongly believe that if you remove a critical beholder from the equation, the notion of beauty stops to make sense. What is beauty if there is nobody who is appreciating it, rating it or feeling it? Nothing. A notion without content. I very strongly believe the exact same statement holds true for moral systems. Morals are a human invention. Without humans, nobody would ever think about calling something right or wrong. It is completely implausible to me how there should be any universal statement that is not contingent on a beholder. ObviousOne phrased it much more bluntly: The universe does not care if something is right or wrong. This means a) that only caring about morality produces moral systems which means it's contingent on the human mind. And b) laws of physics are not relative to the beholder, they do not change depending on who's watching/rating/analyzing.
I don't know how to take these two statements together.
Of course I do agree with you that dying does not remove a moral system.
You say, moral systems survive their "thinker" just as laws of physics do - I disagree.
Are you trying to take "thinker" broadly here and say that they can't be unhinged totally from all thinkers? I guess that would make sense.
yes.
Let me provide some simple arguments for my views, as you've presented them. I say that a moral system survives its thinker just as laws of physics do. What I mean by this is that any given moral system has no intrinsic connection to the person who is applying it (although that person might feel really good about it, or whatever). Other people can adopt a moral system, both before and after this person's life, people can consider the moral system without believing it themselves, and so on. Surely nobody would make moral judgments if there were no rational agents around, but nobody would make physical judgments, either.
Yes. A moral system is like a pen. It can be used by your heirs and everyone else after you die.
I dunno why you invoke physical judgments though. Trying to interpret the outside world is nothing like saying A is better than B. This is actually my main problem with what you're saying and I get critisized for disagreeing with you on it. You do the same as me though, simply stating the contrary as fact without proof that they are indeed comparable.
I also said that a physical system needs to be included in any physical statement, which system can be linked to a thinker to the same extent that a moral system is. This is trivially true. When I say, for instance, "the chair is under the table," I am invoking a specific set of more or less physical concepts that are accessible to all people who speak English. Another physical system might use these signs to mean something else, or might use different signs to mean the same thing. And with more precise physical statements, like f=ma or e=1/2mv^2, it is obvious that we are taking on a lot of conceptual baggage in order to make our statement. Every statement comes out of a system of concepts that define its precise meaning; this system of concepts surely needs to be applied by a human if it's going to be applied at all, but that doesn't make it a total fiction (or whatever pejoratives you want to call it).
So?
You said that beauty loses its sense if there is no one around to behold it. How about our other classifications, like "green" and "chair" and "born on January 17th?" Does the concept "green" cease to mean anything at all if there is nobody around to see green things? It doesn't seem to me to be so; using the example I used earlier, I can imagine a possible world where everything is green but everyone is red-green colorblind, and green still makes plenty of sense here.
Green is different. "Green" is the word we use for a certain wave length of light that is emitted from a certain object and processed by a functioning human brain and eye. There's no judgment in the word green. Chair is different, too. Chair is a level plane on pillars made for sitting. No personal value, no judgment. Born of January 17th means, someone came out of a womb on the day that is marked on january 17th on our gregorian calendar. All those words do not lose meaning when there's no human around. (Except you mean meaning in a "purpose" kind of way which I don't.)
I am maintaining that the universe does not care about our formulations of the laws of physics, either. The universe moves on as it does, and we can describe events that take place in it with different levels of accuracy and precision, but the universe doesn't care about our formulations. You might be surprised to find out that physical events are always underdetermine physical theory: that is to say, given any amount of physical data, we can always construct more than one physical theory that explains it. This means, badly put, that there is no one objectively right and complete set of physical laws that totally describe the universe. There can be multiple systems that perfectly describe and predict all physical data.
I am surprised to hear you say that with perfect knowledge of the outside world, there could still be two different interpretations that are equally true. I find that hard to believe. Source on that theory?
I want this to show that our formulations of physical laws are unhinged from the universe just like moral laws are: the universe doesn't care at all that Newton was born or that we haven't found a theory of quantum gravity or whatever. We can come up with certain ways of describing physical events, but these certain ways don't matter at all to the universe. Things stand the same, in this respect, with description of moral events. The universe goes on as it does and we lay our moral interpretations over it. The difference between physical laws and moral laws does not lie in mind-dependence.
I agree with your first part. If our interpretations of nature are right or wrong does not change nature. I said a similar thing before in this thread. You're not disproving me or anything. And I'm still weary about what your opinion actually is.
Anyway, what I'd like to focus on is what I've bolded. It looks like you're under the impression that if we can provide a definition for what one of our terms means, those terms don't lose meaning when there are no humans around. Besides the obvious simplicity of your definitions, this idea is very strange to hold along with the opinion that moral judgments lose meaning when there are no humans around. What if we could provide a similar definition for our moral terms? Would they then retain meaning without humans? Do you think the ability to create a set of formal criteria is what makes certain words able to retain their meaning without any humans around to use them?
Definitions are by their nature universal. They are true no matter who is looking at them, who is applying them or who is rating them. So yes, if you can find a definition for what is good and bad that does not require an entity passing judgment, then you would have me convinced. Definitions that are not universal are called opinions. And that's what I think of morals to be, just opinions.
Thank you for the indetermination article. I'm not sure I agree but I find it interesting.
Okay. I don't know why you would think the difference between "definition" and "moral judgment" also makes the former mind-independent and the former -dependent, but that really isn't an issue. Many philosophers have argued (and I am inclined to agree) that things like the simple definitions you provided for words will always fail to accurately describe every bit of usage, or if they do always predict things correctly, it is only an accident. I'll provide you with an argument for this below, but the point of it is just to show that I think you have a mistaken understanding of what goes into a moral judgment as opposed to a "chair judgment" or a color judgment or what-have-you. And I think if the difference you've tried to place between these falls apart, you should think that morality is either real (just like color and chairs and whatever) or that it's as real as real can be (so just as real as colors and chairs, but those too are just a sort of judgment). In either case, I don't see any grounds for continuing to disparage morality, unless you want to do the same for all human judgment.
Here are the definitions you gave
Green is different. "Green" is the word we use for a certain wave length of light that is emitted from a certain object and processed by a functioning human brain and eye. There's no judgment in the word green. Chair is different, too. Chair is a level plane on pillars made for sitting. No personal value, no judgment. Born of January 17th means, someone came out of a womb on the day that is marked on january 17th on our gregorian calendar.
You'll see immediately that your definitions fail. I don't mean for this step here to prove much, but anyway I'll go through it. "Green" doesn't refer to a wavelength, much less a processed wavelength; things can be green without an actual human brain processing the photons that came off of them. But moreover, there is no specific set of wavelengths that we'd agree make up "green," and in fact people will judge (correctly!!!) different wavelengths to be green in different contexts. People on drugs, colorblind people, etc., all describe things as green that don't fall into the "typical" span of wavelengths. And we ourselves use green to refer to things that aren't "properly" green: green tea, for example. So your definition needs refinement.
Okay, so you might say "Well my definition was just vague, if I work on it real hard I can make a good one." Well, and what of that? What good does that do you? You can maybe provide a succinct or not-so-succinct description of every correct usage of the word "green," but you haven't necessarily talked about the way we judge things to be green. When I judge something to be green, I don't need to use your perfect definition of the word. And moreover, if you want a really long and specific and loophole-filled definition like "Green is a color typically associated with wavelengths 300-400 nm (or whatever), except when referring to certain things like green tea or a green soldier, or when someone under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs is talking..." then you have to admit the possibility of a similar definition for morality. I don't see how you can make a principled distinction between definitions of color terms, or what-have-you, and morality. People will disagree for both, both will be extremely long if they're accurate, people don't need either to actually judge things, and so on.
When I judge something to be a chair, I do not use a formal set of criteria. But this does not mean that my judgment is wrong or stupid or unfounded or something; that's just how language works. It's just the same with morality. I don't think you've provided any reason to think that morality is a special kind of term, such that our normal definitions and judgment faculties (which connect up with mind-independent properties) somehow don't apply.
It seems like whatever I say does not reach you. Either I make no sense or you don't get it.
Either way, how about we turn the question around? You presuppose universality of moral systems. You don't claim to have found it or that anyone has (yet) but you say there is the possibility of at least one universal moral statement.
How is that? Where does it come from? How does that not interfere with the fact that morals are an invention of sentient beings? Where does your conviction come from that there is such a thing?
I said before that I'm a particularist about morals, so I don't think there are any universal moral statements in the sense you mean. But here's one correct moral statement: Hitler was a bad person.
My optimism about morality comes pretty directly from my general attitude about words in general. I see no reason to think that moral propositions are, as a class, more unhinged from reality or more tied to personal opinion or vaguer than typical judgments. I also think most typical judgments, even though they don't have the rigor of science or logic, can accurately be called right or wrong. So I think that morality as a system of concepts is more or less built out of our practices and usage of moral language, just like all of our other systems for judging.
The methods for confirming the truth of a moral statement are not, in my view, scientific, but neither are the methods for confirming a wide variety of truths. For instance, if we are unsure as to whether something I'm sitting on is a chair, there is no experiment I can run or data I can analyze or anything in order to tell whether it's a chair. I just look at it and, given my general knowledge of English, I can tell that it is or is not a chair. Morality is similar. You might object that people will often disagree about moral claims, so just knowing English doesn't mean all my moral judgments are correct, but this is true for other words, and I'm not particularly skeptical about the truth of all my judgments just because some other people speak the same language as me and disagree. Moreover, there are methods for investigating truth specific to morality; while we have almost no higher-level considerations to make w/r/t chairs, there are lots of things we can bring in to consider whether some action or person or situation is morally good or bad. For instance, I can ask whether human rights are being respected, whether anyone is being harmed, and so on. And I think the truth of moral statements can't be meaningfully separated from these truth-investigating practices: it simply doesn't make any sense to say "Well sure, people think that making people happy is usually morally good, but how do you really know that?" just as it doesn't make any sense to say "Well sure, people think that those things you sit on with four legs and a back are chairs, but how do you really know that?"
So to put it succinctly: I think that moral judgments can be true and false in just the same way as many other kinds of judgments we make, and I am confident that most of our everyday judgments are true or false even though they don't have rigorous methods of investigation backing them.
That's exactly the problem I have with your position. You say there are moral truths, but there is no way to define them or to prove them. There is no way to know about their quality.
That does not bother you, however. You are pleased with being "confident" that something is right and something is wrong and use that as a hint - as there is no rigorous proof, so you say - that it is morally true.
I still don't think your chair analogy makes any sense. A chair is a defined object. People using the word refer to the same object. "Good" and "bad" are not defined. Everyone uses them differently because everyone means them differently. They are not universal.
Why does respect for human rights make anything good? Who says human rights are any good?
But if you really believe what you said up there and I quote "it simply doesn't make any sense to say "Well sure, people think that making people happy is usually morally good, but how do you really know that?"", despite this being the real fundamental question of this thread, then I don't know what I'm doing here.
Sure, a chair is a real object out there, but calling it a chair is just as much a description of it as calling it good or bad. What I mean is that, given a vast array of objects, some of them are chairs and others aren't. But the rules that distinguish the two are not simple, conscious, or (maybe even) explicable. Despite this, there is a truth of the matter about whether or not most things are chairs. I don't know why you think a chair being "a defined object [sic]" means that our statements about chairs are somehow secured in their validity. Why would describing something as a "defined object" be different than describing features of it (such as moral features)?
You raise a good, but hard to formulate, point when you say that everyone means moral terms differently. I already hinted at my response to this: everyone also has little idiosyncracies in their usage of the word "chair" (or if not chairs, I could come up with another example where most people are inclined to think there is a truth of the matter), but this doesn't mean that we're all talking about something totally different when we discuss chairs. And this is true of morality as well. I think there is good reason to think we don't mean different things by our distinct usage of moral terms. For instance, when someone else contradicts our moral statements, we argue with them and think they are wrong. This would be a strange thing to do if we weren't even talking about the same thing. Also, our arguments have common ground that (most) people agree to; nobody really holds that killing people for no reason is a courageous thing to do. Finally, most people treat their moral judgments in the same way. So if I judge that something is a chair, it factors into my behavior in a roughly definable way (I'll sit in it, tell other people they can sit in it, but I won't stand in it or use it to eat my food). And if I judge that something is immoral, I'll avoid doing it, tell other people not to do it, think poorly of people who do it, and so on.
The idiosyncracies do still exist, and maybe on some level people have to "agree to disagree," but again this is not a problem particular to moral judgments. Most kinds of judgments go on just fine even though people have slightly different meanings when they use the same words.
I don't think it makes sense to doubt the possible veracity of what we usually take to be good moral reasoning because doubt is a specific practice that implies the existence of reasons to doubt, ways to confirm or deny the thing we're doubting, and the existence of an actual sense of the words. I should limit what I mean by this, but I think the example I provided is just fine. I don't know how doubt here gets any traction. Is there some way I could have been fooled about that? What would it look like for the opposite to be true? What kinds of things would show that it was true or false? The notion of like "really knowing" or fundamentally, way deep down, being totally certain seems to be a void here that we can only point to. There are no actual practices we can use to make our understanding of the truth deeper. (As we could, for instance, if I was trying to say that some particular point of light in the sky was a planet. You could say "How could you really be sure of that?" and there are lots of things I could do.) I think that the kind of absolute knowledge and truth pointed to by the doubt I posited is a fiction, but in the absence of such absolutes we have no good reason to doubt our average, everyday, coarse kinds of judgment.
Ok I'm not getting through. One last try:
Given omniscience, people would agree on if an object is a chair or not. Given omniscience, people would still not agree if doing something is right or wrong.
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.
On July 30 2013 23:42 Lixler wrote: [quote] I don't know how to take these two statements together.
[quote] [quote] Are you trying to take "thinker" broadly here and say that they can't be unhinged totally from all thinkers? I guess that would make sense.
yes.
Let me provide some simple arguments for my views, as you've presented them. I say that a moral system survives its thinker just as laws of physics do. What I mean by this is that any given moral system has no intrinsic connection to the person who is applying it (although that person might feel really good about it, or whatever). Other people can adopt a moral system, both before and after this person's life, people can consider the moral system without believing it themselves, and so on. Surely nobody would make moral judgments if there were no rational agents around, but nobody would make physical judgments, either.
Yes. A moral system is like a pen. It can be used by your heirs and everyone else after you die.
I dunno why you invoke physical judgments though. Trying to interpret the outside world is nothing like saying A is better than B. This is actually my main problem with what you're saying and I get critisized for disagreeing with you on it. You do the same as me though, simply stating the contrary as fact without proof that they are indeed comparable.
I also said that a physical system needs to be included in any physical statement, which system can be linked to a thinker to the same extent that a moral system is. This is trivially true. When I say, for instance, "the chair is under the table," I am invoking a specific set of more or less physical concepts that are accessible to all people who speak English. Another physical system might use these signs to mean something else, or might use different signs to mean the same thing. And with more precise physical statements, like f=ma or e=1/2mv^2, it is obvious that we are taking on a lot of conceptual baggage in order to make our statement. Every statement comes out of a system of concepts that define its precise meaning; this system of concepts surely needs to be applied by a human if it's going to be applied at all, but that doesn't make it a total fiction (or whatever pejoratives you want to call it).
So?
You said that beauty loses its sense if there is no one around to behold it. How about our other classifications, like "green" and "chair" and "born on January 17th?" Does the concept "green" cease to mean anything at all if there is nobody around to see green things? It doesn't seem to me to be so; using the example I used earlier, I can imagine a possible world where everything is green but everyone is red-green colorblind, and green still makes plenty of sense here.
Green is different. "Green" is the word we use for a certain wave length of light that is emitted from a certain object and processed by a functioning human brain and eye. There's no judgment in the word green. Chair is different, too. Chair is a level plane on pillars made for sitting. No personal value, no judgment. Born of January 17th means, someone came out of a womb on the day that is marked on january 17th on our gregorian calendar. All those words do not lose meaning when there's no human around. (Except you mean meaning in a "purpose" kind of way which I don't.)
I am maintaining that the universe does not care about our formulations of the laws of physics, either. The universe moves on as it does, and we can describe events that take place in it with different levels of accuracy and precision, but the universe doesn't care about our formulations. You might be surprised to find out that physical events are always underdetermine physical theory: that is to say, given any amount of physical data, we can always construct more than one physical theory that explains it. This means, badly put, that there is no one objectively right and complete set of physical laws that totally describe the universe. There can be multiple systems that perfectly describe and predict all physical data.
I am surprised to hear you say that with perfect knowledge of the outside world, there could still be two different interpretations that are equally true. I find that hard to believe. Source on that theory?
I want this to show that our formulations of physical laws are unhinged from the universe just like moral laws are: the universe doesn't care at all that Newton was born or that we haven't found a theory of quantum gravity or whatever. We can come up with certain ways of describing physical events, but these certain ways don't matter at all to the universe. Things stand the same, in this respect, with description of moral events. The universe goes on as it does and we lay our moral interpretations over it. The difference between physical laws and moral laws does not lie in mind-dependence.
I agree with your first part. If our interpretations of nature are right or wrong does not change nature. I said a similar thing before in this thread. You're not disproving me or anything. And I'm still weary about what your opinion actually is.
Anyway, what I'd like to focus on is what I've bolded. It looks like you're under the impression that if we can provide a definition for what one of our terms means, those terms don't lose meaning when there are no humans around. Besides the obvious simplicity of your definitions, this idea is very strange to hold along with the opinion that moral judgments lose meaning when there are no humans around. What if we could provide a similar definition for our moral terms? Would they then retain meaning without humans? Do you think the ability to create a set of formal criteria is what makes certain words able to retain their meaning without any humans around to use them?
Definitions are by their nature universal. They are true no matter who is looking at them, who is applying them or who is rating them. So yes, if you can find a definition for what is good and bad that does not require an entity passing judgment, then you would have me convinced. Definitions that are not universal are called opinions. And that's what I think of morals to be, just opinions.
Thank you for the indetermination article. I'm not sure I agree but I find it interesting.
Okay. I don't know why you would think the difference between "definition" and "moral judgment" also makes the former mind-independent and the former -dependent, but that really isn't an issue. Many philosophers have argued (and I am inclined to agree) that things like the simple definitions you provided for words will always fail to accurately describe every bit of usage, or if they do always predict things correctly, it is only an accident. I'll provide you with an argument for this below, but the point of it is just to show that I think you have a mistaken understanding of what goes into a moral judgment as opposed to a "chair judgment" or a color judgment or what-have-you. And I think if the difference you've tried to place between these falls apart, you should think that morality is either real (just like color and chairs and whatever) or that it's as real as real can be (so just as real as colors and chairs, but those too are just a sort of judgment). In either case, I don't see any grounds for continuing to disparage morality, unless you want to do the same for all human judgment.
Here are the definitions you gave
Green is different. "Green" is the word we use for a certain wave length of light that is emitted from a certain object and processed by a functioning human brain and eye. There's no judgment in the word green. Chair is different, too. Chair is a level plane on pillars made for sitting. No personal value, no judgment. Born of January 17th means, someone came out of a womb on the day that is marked on january 17th on our gregorian calendar.
You'll see immediately that your definitions fail. I don't mean for this step here to prove much, but anyway I'll go through it. "Green" doesn't refer to a wavelength, much less a processed wavelength; things can be green without an actual human brain processing the photons that came off of them. But moreover, there is no specific set of wavelengths that we'd agree make up "green," and in fact people will judge (correctly!!!) different wavelengths to be green in different contexts. People on drugs, colorblind people, etc., all describe things as green that don't fall into the "typical" span of wavelengths. And we ourselves use green to refer to things that aren't "properly" green: green tea, for example. So your definition needs refinement.
Okay, so you might say "Well my definition was just vague, if I work on it real hard I can make a good one." Well, and what of that? What good does that do you? You can maybe provide a succinct or not-so-succinct description of every correct usage of the word "green," but you haven't necessarily talked about the way we judge things to be green. When I judge something to be green, I don't need to use your perfect definition of the word. And moreover, if you want a really long and specific and loophole-filled definition like "Green is a color typically associated with wavelengths 300-400 nm (or whatever), except when referring to certain things like green tea or a green soldier, or when someone under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs is talking..." then you have to admit the possibility of a similar definition for morality. I don't see how you can make a principled distinction between definitions of color terms, or what-have-you, and morality. People will disagree for both, both will be extremely long if they're accurate, people don't need either to actually judge things, and so on.
When I judge something to be a chair, I do not use a formal set of criteria. But this does not mean that my judgment is wrong or stupid or unfounded or something; that's just how language works. It's just the same with morality. I don't think you've provided any reason to think that morality is a special kind of term, such that our normal definitions and judgment faculties (which connect up with mind-independent properties) somehow don't apply.
It seems like whatever I say does not reach you. Either I make no sense or you don't get it.
Either way, how about we turn the question around? You presuppose universality of moral systems. You don't claim to have found it or that anyone has (yet) but you say there is the possibility of at least one universal moral statement.
How is that? Where does it come from? How does that not interfere with the fact that morals are an invention of sentient beings? Where does your conviction come from that there is such a thing?
I said before that I'm a particularist about morals, so I don't think there are any universal moral statements in the sense you mean. But here's one correct moral statement: Hitler was a bad person.
My optimism about morality comes pretty directly from my general attitude about words in general. I see no reason to think that moral propositions are, as a class, more unhinged from reality or more tied to personal opinion or vaguer than typical judgments. I also think most typical judgments, even though they don't have the rigor of science or logic, can accurately be called right or wrong. So I think that morality as a system of concepts is more or less built out of our practices and usage of moral language, just like all of our other systems for judging.
The methods for confirming the truth of a moral statement are not, in my view, scientific, but neither are the methods for confirming a wide variety of truths. For instance, if we are unsure as to whether something I'm sitting on is a chair, there is no experiment I can run or data I can analyze or anything in order to tell whether it's a chair. I just look at it and, given my general knowledge of English, I can tell that it is or is not a chair. Morality is similar. You might object that people will often disagree about moral claims, so just knowing English doesn't mean all my moral judgments are correct, but this is true for other words, and I'm not particularly skeptical about the truth of all my judgments just because some other people speak the same language as me and disagree. Moreover, there are methods for investigating truth specific to morality; while we have almost no higher-level considerations to make w/r/t chairs, there are lots of things we can bring in to consider whether some action or person or situation is morally good or bad. For instance, I can ask whether human rights are being respected, whether anyone is being harmed, and so on. And I think the truth of moral statements can't be meaningfully separated from these truth-investigating practices: it simply doesn't make any sense to say "Well sure, people think that making people happy is usually morally good, but how do you really know that?" just as it doesn't make any sense to say "Well sure, people think that those things you sit on with four legs and a back are chairs, but how do you really know that?"
So to put it succinctly: I think that moral judgments can be true and false in just the same way as many other kinds of judgments we make, and I am confident that most of our everyday judgments are true or false even though they don't have rigorous methods of investigation backing them.
That's exactly the problem I have with your position. You say there are moral truths, but there is no way to define them or to prove them. There is no way to know about their quality.
That does not bother you, however. You are pleased with being "confident" that something is right and something is wrong and use that as a hint - as there is no rigorous proof, so you say - that it is morally true.
I still don't think your chair analogy makes any sense. A chair is a defined object. People using the word refer to the same object. "Good" and "bad" are not defined. Everyone uses them differently because everyone means them differently. They are not universal.
Why does respect for human rights make anything good? Who says human rights are any good?
But if you really believe what you said up there and I quote "it simply doesn't make any sense to say "Well sure, people think that making people happy is usually morally good, but how do you really know that?"", despite this being the real fundamental question of this thread, then I don't know what I'm doing here.
Sure, a chair is a real object out there, but calling it a chair is just as much a description of it as calling it good or bad. What I mean is that, given a vast array of objects, some of them are chairs and others aren't. But the rules that distinguish the two are not simple, conscious, or (maybe even) explicable. Despite this, there is a truth of the matter about whether or not most things are chairs. I don't know why you think a chair being "a defined object [sic]" means that our statements about chairs are somehow secured in their validity. Why would describing something as a "defined object" be different than describing features of it (such as moral features)?
You raise a good, but hard to formulate, point when you say that everyone means moral terms differently. I already hinted at my response to this: everyone also has little idiosyncracies in their usage of the word "chair" (or if not chairs, I could come up with another example where most people are inclined to think there is a truth of the matter), but this doesn't mean that we're all talking about something totally different when we discuss chairs. And this is true of morality as well. I think there is good reason to think we don't mean different things by our distinct usage of moral terms. For instance, when someone else contradicts our moral statements, we argue with them and think they are wrong. This would be a strange thing to do if we weren't even talking about the same thing. Also, our arguments have common ground that (most) people agree to; nobody really holds that killing people for no reason is a courageous thing to do. Finally, most people treat their moral judgments in the same way. So if I judge that something is a chair, it factors into my behavior in a roughly definable way (I'll sit in it, tell other people they can sit in it, but I won't stand in it or use it to eat my food). And if I judge that something is immoral, I'll avoid doing it, tell other people not to do it, think poorly of people who do it, and so on.
The idiosyncracies do still exist, and maybe on some level people have to "agree to disagree," but again this is not a problem particular to moral judgments. Most kinds of judgments go on just fine even though people have slightly different meanings when they use the same words.
I don't think it makes sense to doubt the possible veracity of what we usually take to be good moral reasoning because doubt is a specific practice that implies the existence of reasons to doubt, ways to confirm or deny the thing we're doubting, and the existence of an actual sense of the words. I should limit what I mean by this, but I think the example I provided is just fine. I don't know how doubt here gets any traction. Is there some way I could have been fooled about that? What would it look like for the opposite to be true? What kinds of things would show that it was true or false? The notion of like "really knowing" or fundamentally, way deep down, being totally certain seems to be a void here that we can only point to. There are no actual practices we can use to make our understanding of the truth deeper. (As we could, for instance, if I was trying to say that some particular point of light in the sky was a planet. You could say "How could you really be sure of that?" and there are lots of things I could do.) I think that the kind of absolute knowledge and truth pointed to by the doubt I posited is a fiction, but in the absence of such absolutes we have no good reason to doubt our average, everyday, coarse kinds of judgment.
Ok I'm not getting through. One last try:
Given omniscience, people would agree on if an object is a chair or not. Given omniscience, people would still not agree if doing something is right or wrong.
Would you agree?
No. Remember, I said that there are idiosyncracies in everyone's application of a word. There will, I think, always be fringe cases where people disagree. (You might be interested in the study referenced here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prototype_theory#Cognitive_representation_of_semantic_categories ) It's not as if some people just know more about chairs or something and so they make better judgments; there is just a level where people apply the word differently to objects that they know the same things about (an omniscient German wouldn't call it a chair, I don't think).
I don't know why you insist that I don't understand you but you don't state what points exactly I'm misunderstanding or even type more than a couple lines explaining yourself. I'd be really interested to find out exactly what about your view I don't understand, especially if whatever I'm misunderstanding totally saves your view from every objection I've made. 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. Most of our everyday terms can be given precise definitions, but not our moral terms. Precise definition guarantees mind-independence. 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. Moral judgment is subjective in a special way which renders disagreement intractable. There are no ultimate moral facts about things outside of an individual's interpretation. Which of these are wrong?
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).
If a=c and b=c then c=c. There's no such thing for morals. Morals work like this: I don't like c and event b is a manifestation of c so I don't like b.
You mean if a=c and b=c then a=b
Oh and there is something like a logic of morals, its called the categorical imperative.
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.
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?
If a=c and b=c then c=c. There's no such thing for morals. Morals work like this: I don't like c and event b is a manifestation of c so I don't like b.
You mean if a=c and b=c then a=b
Oh and there is something like a logic of morals, its called the categorical imperative.
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.
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?
Oh and there is something like a logic of morals, its called the categorical imperative.
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?
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?
For example, in the post above, xM(Z argues that "an alien will be able to understand the cause and effect of newtonian laws/mechanics but it might never understand human morals". I find that hard to believe (and impossible to prove, given that the premise is counterfactual). Newtonian mechanics cannot comprehend the perihelion movement of Merkur. Without theory of relativity (light being subject to gravity), we have no explanation for why it gets dark at night. Newton provides no means to explain photoelectric effects. So why would an alien be able to comprehend our erroneous physics but not our erroneous morals? Wouldn't it need intricate knowledge of the functioning and misfunctioning of the human mind for both?
. that was a little out of context i fear. the newtonian perspective was the assertion i had to work with given that it was previously posted. i made no claims about the objective truth of newtonian physics.
to generalize, physicalism is self explanatory, moralism needs to be explained then taken at face value.
If you make no claims about the objective truth of physics (which particular physical theory we're talking about is irrelevant... name your favorite, I'll google its problems if needed), why do you hold the truth claims of physics in higher esteem than the truth claims of ethics?
Also, you might want to clarify your use of the term "physicalism". How can physicalism be "self explanatory" if what physics describes is false?
This view responds to the challenge of the mind-body problem by claiming that mental states are ultimately physical states,
now, it's not fair to say that i believe in it since i see almost everything in contexts that include other contexts. physicalism could be true if you see it as per its definition and both humans and aliens would live in such an universe.
why do you hold the truth claims of physics in higher esteem than the truth claims of ethics
arround, you'd need to define something like the graviton particle (which is hypothetical) that would work for morals/a moral universe (from which we would later extract our ethics). (and i could totally do that too. i could define and prove that faith exists, hypothetically).
if, in any argument i look like i'm supporting/encouraging a view, it's only because i want it clearly defined before i switch it 180degrees.
Don't take this the wrong way - I don't mean it aggressive or offensive -, but if you have nothing constructive to contribute and contradict yourself on purpose (180 degree switch), consider "if aliens..." a valid objection and disregard the possibility of objective knowledge right from the outset, I don't see that fostering the purpose of clear definitions at all. To the contrary, the language games you're playing seem to be rather about terminological confusion.
Also, the bolded sentence sounds like the lexical definition of trolling.
i agree with you but you're wrong. it goes like this: dualism -> binary opposition -> critical (social mainly) theory. i do not own concepts so i can't contradict myself. i contradict other concepts but, with a purpose (and that, i hope, is not trolling ). this whole topic is about flipping contexts around then arguing about the disappearance of morals/ethics/truths or flipping contexts, arguing about how the initial assertion doesn't hold water in the second/new context then concluding that the first context must be wrong. + Show Spoiler +
ex: slavery = ethics, humanity = context. if you define humanity as a white thing, then slavery exists; if you define humanity as a black and white thing, then slavery disappears (don't take that example ad-literam); what is green green, in a colorblind vs non-colorblind context; evaluable truths in an non-evaluative context (=infinity) and so on.
i just do them at the same time and it looks confusing. in a black vs white argument i'll just come in and say: hey look, this is gray. ;if neither of them can conceive gray, then you can just walk away knowing that those 2 will never see eye to eye.
In all honesty, you're making it not easy to understand what you're going for... sentences like "I agree with you but you're wrong" are hardly illuminating and rather make me go "Oh dear, who gave that guy I'm discussing with a lobotomy after his next-to-last reply?" Nevertheless, I think I got an idea of what you're aiming for, so please take it with a grain of salt when I dare to recommend a stylistic improvement:
I figure that your "dualism -> binary opposition -> critical (social mainly) theory" implies that you're trying to go beyond mere 'standpoint philosophy' insofar as you're hoping to see both (or all) sides of the rivaling theoretizations at once. That would be a laudable effort, but so far all I have taken from your posts was more or less overt skepticism that has little in common with 'critical examination' in the sense of critical theory. Alas, I see no attempts at a reconciliation of discrepancies or a sublation of antinomies, and mostly don't even see a serious attempt to evaluate an argument for what it's worth. Now, I don't mean to say that a decent dosage of skepticism isn't a good thing. However, in your scheme, I would put my expression as "systemic doubt -> factual doubt -> critical examination".
Systemic doubt is barely high school-level philosophy. "It could all be a dream." or "What if a miracle happened?" aren't relevant counterarguments. My five year old niece can shoot down all scientific explanations by asking "Why... why... why... " ad nauseam until we arrive at an unproven premise. Frankly, I don't see how this kind of doubt can serve any purpose. For example, I would consider "But aliens?" a counterfactual and irrelevant objection. What if aliens came to earth? Then the connotation of 'knowledge' might change from 'intersubjectively comprehensible' to 'intersubjectively comprehensible by human intelligence'... so what? Likewise, if you argue that physical theories hold no 'objective truth', what does this contribute to the discussion? Ok, then there is no objective truth whatsoever. I can assure you that most moral realists will be rather happy with the allegation that ethics are just as capable of truth as physics, so your objection doesn't strike me as particularly bothersome to any theory discussed in this thread (well, some physicists would probably cringe at it, but that's off topic).
Long story short, I would recommend you to stick to relevant counterarguments (i.e those based on factual doubt) and maybe even start to consider both the cons and pros of a theory. Not only is this the hallmark that makes critical theory a productive approach to (the conditions of) knowledge that is superior to mere skepticism, it probably also would help to avoid the 'eristic' vibe that at least I'm getting when I read your posts.
"I agree with you but you're wrong" was suppose to be just a trademark remark; it was not my intention to illuminate anything.
i don't see the argument between realists and non-realists as a who's right and who's wrong kind of thing. i put both in a thermodynamic system, then watch the energy flow and in this case, it flows from non-realists to realists. hot = non-realists, cold = realists. in doesn't matter to me how you define your coldness or how they define their hotness, the only truth here is that heat exchange happens and the arrow of time of the system exists. the imposition of order, dictates that in this case/system, realists will always change their truths/facts, while non-realists will always change their assertions until maximum entropy is reached. (i defined here assertion as an innate proprietary-nonrealist-value and truth/fact as innate proprietary-realist-value). moral realists will become more inclusive in the assertions they work with, they give truth to, while non-realists will become more inclusive of truths-evaluable/fact-stating modes of discourse, in time.
so for me, the only question remaining is: you want to do it the hard way, or the easy way?. (looking back in human history, they always chose the hard way as if the right of passage was a real thing, as if the pain is/needs to be, unavoidable/imperative).
Frankly, all I get from your post is static noise. Maybe it's because it doesn't relate to what I wrote in any way. Maybe it's because what I wrote doesn't even necessitate a reply. In either case, I think I'll act upon Acrofales' recommendation from now on. Have fun with your aliens, thermodynamics, and whatever you think critical theory is about... I wish you a soft landing.
sure, no problem; but if determinists are right, i am talking to your unconscious mind anyway . (also, to me, an alien is just a setting i use in models) i make models out of human believes/opinions and then i run them to see/predict an outcome. models are self-evident to me.
if determinists are right + doing what i do (simulating models), one will be able to prove causation between believes and behaviors (and that's not all).
For example, in the post above, xM(Z argues that "an alien will be able to understand the cause and effect of newtonian laws/mechanics but it might never understand human morals". I find that hard to believe (and impossible to prove, given that the premise is counterfactual). Newtonian mechanics cannot comprehend the perihelion movement of Merkur. Without theory of relativity (light being subject to gravity), we have no explanation for why it gets dark at night. Newton provides no means to explain photoelectric effects. So why would an alien be able to comprehend our erroneous physics but not our erroneous morals? Wouldn't it need intricate knowledge of the functioning and misfunctioning of the human mind for both?
. that was a little out of context i fear. the newtonian perspective was the assertion i had to work with given that it was previously posted. i made no claims about the objective truth of newtonian physics.
to generalize, physicalism is self explanatory, moralism needs to be explained then taken at face value.
If you make no claims about the objective truth of physics (which particular physical theory we're talking about is irrelevant... name your favorite, I'll google its problems if needed), why do you hold the truth claims of physics in higher esteem than the truth claims of ethics?
Also, you might want to clarify your use of the term "physicalism". How can physicalism be "self explanatory" if what physics describes is false?
This view responds to the challenge of the mind-body problem by claiming that mental states are ultimately physical states,
now, it's not fair to say that i believe in it since i see almost everything in contexts that include other contexts. physicalism could be true if you see it as per its definition and both humans and aliens would live in such an universe.
why do you hold the truth claims of physics in higher esteem than the truth claims of ethics
arround, you'd need to define something like the graviton particle (which is hypothetical) that would work for morals/a moral universe (from which we would later extract our ethics). (and i could totally do that too. i could define and prove that faith exists, hypothetically).
if, in any argument i look like i'm supporting/encouraging a view, it's only because i want it clearly defined before i switch it 180degrees.
Don't take this the wrong way - I don't mean it aggressive or offensive -, but if you have nothing constructive to contribute and contradict yourself on purpose (180 degree switch), consider "if aliens..." a valid objection and disregard the possibility of objective knowledge right from the outset, I don't see that fostering the purpose of clear definitions at all. To the contrary, the language games you're playing seem to be rather about terminological confusion.
Also, the bolded sentence sounds like the lexical definition of trolling.
i agree with you but you're wrong. it goes like this: dualism -> binary opposition -> critical (social mainly) theory. i do not own concepts so i can't contradict myself. i contradict other concepts but, with a purpose (and that, i hope, is not trolling ). this whole topic is about flipping contexts around then arguing about the disappearance of morals/ethics/truths or flipping contexts, arguing about how the initial assertion doesn't hold water in the second/new context then concluding that the first context must be wrong. + Show Spoiler +
ex: slavery = ethics, humanity = context. if you define humanity as a white thing, then slavery exists; if you define humanity as a black and white thing, then slavery disappears (don't take that example ad-literam); what is green green, in a colorblind vs non-colorblind context; evaluable truths in an non-evaluative context (=infinity) and so on.
i just do them at the same time and it looks confusing. in a black vs white argument i'll just come in and say: hey look, this is gray. ;if neither of them can conceive gray, then you can just walk away knowing that those 2 will never see eye to eye.
In all honesty, you're making it not easy to understand what you're going for... sentences like "I agree with you but you're wrong" are hardly illuminating and rather make me go "Oh dear, who gave that guy I'm discussing with a lobotomy after his next-to-last reply?" Nevertheless, I think I got an idea of what you're aiming for, so please take it with a grain of salt when I dare to recommend a stylistic improvement:
I figure that your "dualism -> binary opposition -> critical (social mainly) theory" implies that you're trying to go beyond mere 'standpoint philosophy' insofar as you're hoping to see both (or all) sides of the rivaling theoretizations at once. That would be a laudable effort, but so far all I have taken from your posts was more or less overt skepticism that has little in common with 'critical examination' in the sense of critical theory. Alas, I see no attempts at a reconciliation of discrepancies or a sublation of antinomies, and mostly don't even see a serious attempt to evaluate an argument for what it's worth. Now, I don't mean to say that a decent dosage of skepticism isn't a good thing. However, in your scheme, I would put my expression as "systemic doubt -> factual doubt -> critical examination".
Systemic doubt is barely high school-level philosophy. "It could all be a dream." or "What if a miracle happened?" aren't relevant counterarguments. My five year old niece can shoot down all scientific explanations by asking "Why... why... why... " ad nauseam until we arrive at an unproven premise. Frankly, I don't see how this kind of doubt can serve any purpose. For example, I would consider "But aliens?" a counterfactual and irrelevant objection. What if aliens came to earth? Then the connotation of 'knowledge' might change from 'intersubjectively comprehensible' to 'intersubjectively comprehensible by human intelligence'... so what? Likewise, if you argue that physical theories hold no 'objective truth', what does this contribute to the discussion? Ok, then there is no objective truth whatsoever. I can assure you that most moral realists will be rather happy with the allegation that ethics are just as capable of truth as physics, so your objection doesn't strike me as particularly bothersome to any theory discussed in this thread (well, some physicists would probably cringe at it, but that's off topic).
Long story short, I would recommend you to stick to relevant counterarguments (i.e those based on factual doubt) and maybe even start to consider both the cons and pros of a theory. Not only is this the hallmark that makes critical theory a productive approach to (the conditions of) knowledge that is superior to mere skepticism, it probably also would help to avoid the 'eristic' vibe that at least I'm getting when I read your posts.
"I agree with you but you're wrong" was suppose to be just a trademark remark; it was not my intention to illuminate anything.
i don't see the argument between realists and non-realists as a who's right and who's wrong kind of thing. i put both in a thermodynamic system, then watch the energy flow and in this case, it flows from non-realists to realists. hot = non-realists, cold = realists. in doesn't matter to me how you define your coldness or how they define their hotness, the only truth here is that heat exchange happens and the arrow of time of the system exists. the imposition of order, dictates that in this case/system, realists will always change their truths/facts, while non-realists will always change their assertions until maximum entropy is reached. (i defined here assertion as an innate proprietary-nonrealist-value and truth/fact as innate proprietary-realist-value). moral realists will become more inclusive in the assertions they work with, they give truth to, while non-realists will become more inclusive of truths-evaluable/fact-stating modes of discourse, in time.
so for me, the only question remaining is: you want to do it the hard way, or the easy way?. (looking back in human history, they always chose the hard way as if the right of passage was a real thing, as if the pain is/needs to be, unavoidable/imperative).
Frankly, all I get from your post is static noise. Maybe it's because it doesn't relate to what I wrote in any way. Maybe it's because what I wrote doesn't even necessitate a reply. In either case, I think I'll act upon Acrofales' recommendation from now on. Have fun with your aliens, thermodynamics, and whatever you think critical theory is about... I wish you a soft landing.
sure, no problem; but if determinists are right, i am talking to your unconscious mind anyway . (also, to me, an alien is just a setting i use in models) i make models out of human believes/opinions and then i run them to see/predict an outcome. models are self-evident to me.
if determinists are right + doing what i do (simulating models), one will be able to prove causation between believes and behaviors (and that's not all).
xM)Z ofcourse you can make all the models you want, but they will all lack validity if you don't include yourself/the one devising the models in the models themselves. For example, many determinists think of themselves as being able to jump the shark when it comes to applying said determinism to their own thoughts. So if determinism is true we could only get to such an idea by sheer coincidence (unless you believe it had to be God's plan after all, but what is a plan when its determined?... etc.), leave be our ability to actually come to scientifically know the most fundamental original law of nature if we have no control over that.
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.
On an urelated note, isn't "stay true to your principles" itself to be considered a moral obligation?
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?
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.
On an urelated note, isn't "stay true to your principles" itself to be considered a moral obligation?
From a Bourdieusian (because I suppose the use of habitualized is linked to habitus ?) point of view, we don't have "principle" for action - we have "scheme" (practical scheme). Those scheme are made so that you can adapt them to the context. He is basically saying that the principles of morals aren't adapted to define what actions are right or wrong.
You are talking about how people considers what is right or wrong everything equal when he is criticizing the idea that those principles can be considered as valid explanations for what is right or wrong in practice. But I think you are right in saying that he may be less talking about moral philosophy than practical sociology.
I'm still reading, I would have gladly talked to you more but I have a hard knowing where I'm supposed to work this year... And I have a ton of work that can't wait ;D
To frogrubdown yeah I kinda relate to a lot of things this guy (Dancy) said in the video.
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.
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.
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
as a philosopher, I have to be happy!
Not really, we are not utilitarian exactly, just close enough. 
