Carry-Over Thread
by JoyThe Religious Belief and Mental Health thread is too long to follow, yet keeps going on a lengthy tangent anyway. Obviously, the combatants aren't done yet. So this thread is for those who still want to carry on the conversation.
For my part, keiths' silly, flip-flopping assertions demonstrate that he cannot figure out what the heck is being discussed. He's portrayed the concept at issue several ways, depending on who has most recently debunked his silly, flip-flopping assertions.
For example, in my response to Raevmo on Oct. 25, I forwarded the notion that "of course there are objective morals," as these are agreed upon by a majority and codified into law (religious, cultural or political) applying to ALL subject to the enforcement provisions provided. In forwarding that notion, I further mentioned that of course there are those few who disagree (will break the law and incur punishments), and that laws change – evolve – over time as our sense of right and wrong hopefully progresses.
To which keiths responded:
The objective morality we're talking about in this thread is absolute morality "” a standard that holds regardless of an individual's personal inclinations, cultural background, or genetic makeup.
Notice the italicized qualifier "absolute." Thus did keiths try to divert the subject early on in that thread from what is objective to what is absolute. This was of course quickly dropped when the difference was pointed out and he had no reasonable rejoinder. Absolute morality simply wasn't the subject under discussion. Objective morality was.
The objectified moral standard applies to ALL subjects regardless of whether they agree or choose to violate. If they get caught violating, they get arrested, tried, fined or imprisoned, and in the case of murder, possibly executed. In order to be absolute in the sense keiths appealed to, there would be no need for objective codification because agreement and adherence to the moral standard would be universal.
Way on down the thread at 300+ comments, keiths – still strangely unwilling to admit defeat or just let the discussion slide – replies to stunney with yet another appeal to the soundly refuted appeal to 'absolute truth' that no one (including scientists) has access to in this reality:
As I've said before, if you want to establish something as objectively immoral, you need to appeal to something more than mere consensus.
For the record, since I'm starting this carry-over thread, keiths has just refuted the entire paradigm of evolutionary biology and indicted the whole 'culture war' being carried on by posers cloaking themselves in the mantle of science in order to pretend that their consensus theoretic is some kind of OBJECTIVE truth (a.k.a. per this argument 'absolute') about biological evolution.
Good job, keiths!
November 3rd, 2007 at 12:16 pm
keiths says in the other thread:
1. What is the definition of "empirical"?
2. Is the "fact" that calcium atoms contain 20 protons the result of empirical observation (ultimately subjective, objectified by consensus from there)?
3. Has anyone anywhere ever empirically observed a proton?
Fact is (actual fact) is that what we call a "proton" is just a measured property of field dynamics. The measurements are done by instruments we have engineered to measure such things we cannot empirically observe, and the definitions of varying field dynamic properties are agreed upon in consensus manner by those involved in studying the properties of field dynamics. There is nothing absolute here, nothing empirical here, and nothing objective here…
…unless keiths is willing to admit that what counts as "objective" are those principles and definitions held by consensus agreement. Until they change, usually based upon new technologies and new understandings and new agreements.
Comment by Joy — November 3, 2007 @ 12:16 pm
November 3rd, 2007 at 12:20 pm
Ah, but Joy you forget that keiths and his crowd deny the significance of their own philosophical underpinnings when it comes to interpreting empirical evidence. You can usually expect someone tethered to nothing intellectually absolute to fluctuate like a weather vane!
Your last paragraph (in the blog post) makes an excellent point. Re title this thread "Right and Wrong as a Hint to the Emptiness of the 'Law of Evolution'."
Comment by todd — November 3, 2007 @ 12:20 pm
November 3rd, 2007 at 12:28 pm
Joy wrote,
New understanding of what? Of what is real about what is being studied? So that there is disagreement about the true nature of reality, implicitly suggests a something real to disagree over?
Morality is no different. Slavery was considered moral until an appeal to a higher order overturned such a thought. Were the arguments which appealed to the immorality of slavery invalid simply because consensus was against it? If consensus were all that were needed for morality, why abandon slavery? Was slavery wrong even when legal?
That an objective moral order exists is without question. What the moral rules are is what we are discovering.
Comment by todd — November 3, 2007 @ 12:28 pm
November 3rd, 2007 at 12:35 pm
5mm asks (in the previous thread):
5mm,
I do read your comments, but to be honest, I don't always find them worth a response, since they tend to miss the point.
For example, you wrote:
This is tangential to the debate in these threads, which has been over whether objective morality exists and whether (and how) it can be accessed. Stunney, for example, has claimed over and over that it can be accessed via "reason and experience." I disagree. That is what we have been debating.
Also, I notice that you say that moral truths must be presupposed "in order to function in society." But if the criterion for whether something is moral or not is whether it helps us function in society, then you are not assuming your moral principles — you're deriving them from analysis and/or observation of what makes societies function, thus contradicting your own claim.
Comment by keiths — November 3, 2007 @ 12:35 pm
November 3rd, 2007 at 12:58 pm
todd:
The way our minds work. We 'know' we live in a relative universe. Thus we 'know' that weighing relative properties must assume absolute lynchpins even if we can never hope to empirically observe those absolutes.
IOW, we live in a world consisting of relative admixtures of opposing absolute concepts. Life and death. Dark and light. Good and evil. A regular yin-yang that facilitates existence itself and allows us to perceive and experience the admixtures. All the admixtures we perceive in this relative reality are discerned against their relative opposites. All the way to entirely conceptual absolutes.
The definition of "empirical" is that which is directly observed or perceived through our sensory equipment. Which comes out in the end through our information processing equipment *as* what we perceptually experience. This is all subjective, particular to our perceptual equipment, information processors and direct experience. If more than one of us can agree on our perceptions and experience of a given phenomenon, our conclusions become objective. Fred empirically experiences the same thing George does. Conclusion: that car really did hit a tree.
Everything we call "objective" is an agreed-upon conclusion about subjective experience.
Comment by Joy — November 3, 2007 @ 12:58 pm
November 3rd, 2007 at 1:05 pm
You might attempt to define moral truths as "that which helps you function in society" i.e. live morally or play well with others but to do so would be misleading and simplistic.
If I defined mathematical truth as that which helps you do math you might think I'm talking about pencil and paper or calculator and miss the point of what I was saying entirely.
Which is apparently what you did.
Peace
Comment by fifth monarchy man — November 3, 2007 @ 1:05 pm
November 3rd, 2007 at 1:12 pm
keiths:
Is this contention based on objective transcendental moral truth? If not why should I or anyone else care what you say?
Peace
Comment by fifth monarchy man — November 3, 2007 @ 1:12 pm
November 3rd, 2007 at 1:27 pm
Keiths:
You surprise me Keiths. You juxtapose two comments and infer some logical inconsistency on the part of the author. Look at them closely. To say that moral truths must be presupposed "in order to function in society" is to make a practical observation and does not presuppose the underlying moral plausibility of such moral precepts. Totalitarian rulers throughout history have recognized this and have cranked up propaganda machines and secret police organizations to ensure that their moral precepts will be presupposed by the populace out of fear or brainwashing if convincing arguments do not hold sway.
The functional aspect to moral precepts is not an indicator of their moral plausibility and you cannot get that out of the statements to which you refer in your comment. Functional societies are not necessarily moral ones. Nazi Germany was an efficient machine but a textbook example of a society built on erroneous moral precepts.
Comment by Bradford — November 3, 2007 @ 1:27 pm
November 3rd, 2007 at 1:56 pm
Why are they regarded as objective?
First of all one must first realize that we all start out presupposing something including what we consider to be "objective" Are you there yet?
Correct me if I am wrong but "same degree of certainty" to you means that a moral truth must be empirically verified.
Vivid
Comment by Vividbleau — November 3, 2007 @ 1:56 pm
November 3rd, 2007 at 2:15 pm
There are so many things to pick on here it is hard to know where to start. Maybe with this quote from from Joy:
Let's get this clear. You are saying there are objective morals because they are agreed upon by a majority. I cannot see any other way to interpret what you have written. Please correct me if I have it wrong.
I would be interested to know if ffm, bradford and todd agree with this assertion.
Comment by Mark Frank — November 3, 2007 @ 2:15 pm
November 3rd, 2007 at 2:18 pm
Those of you who are already aware of Joy's problems with reading comprehension and logical thinking can skip the rest of this comment. I'm just pointing out more of the same.
In the previous thread, I wrote:
Joy replied in the opening post:
As you might guess, we were talking about absolute morality, using 'objective' as a synonym for 'absolute'. Joy didn't catch on, and refused to believe it even after she was corrected, even though we're still talking about absolute morality, as you can see from todd's comment above (and of course by reading the previous thread).
She continued:
Not true. Moral laws (whether absolute or relative) can be broken, unlike the laws of physics. They are prescriptive, not descriptive.
The rest of Joy's confusion seems to stem from a belief that something becomes objective only when two or more people agree on it:
I'm driving on a deserted country road. My car hits a tree, the airbags deploy, my forehead gets bruised, steam is hissing out of my radiator, and my OnStar system announces that it is calling 911. Did the accident happen, objectively? According to Joy's criterion, no.
My response? "Earth to Joy… Come in, Joy…"
Comment by keiths — November 3, 2007 @ 2:18 pm
November 3rd, 2007 at 2:21 pm
My own view is not that majority rules in terms of the plausibility of moral precepts. Rather people have a built-in moral compass that guides their assessment of moral precepts. This is implied by both religious and evolutionary perspectives- one of those occasions when the two are in sync.
Comment by Bradford — November 3, 2007 @ 2:21 pm
November 3rd, 2007 at 2:33 pm
keiths:
No, what has been debated is a definition of what counts as "objective" for anything physical, conceptual or experiential. As mentioned in the OP on this carry-over, you at first tried to assert that "objective" means "absolute." But after having it pointed out to you several times by several people that the terms "objective" and "absolute" refer to entirely different conceptual categories, you dropped the pretense.
I maintain that the definition of "objective" includes the sets of all things physical, conceptual and experiential that people can agree upon in definitional terms. Thus our agreement that refractive wavelength X constitutes the color "red" (a discriminative label someone speaking English agreed upon and that we now teach to our children as a matter of course) makes any observation of that color objective – the fire engine is objectively red. Regardless of the specific quale you subjectively experience when you see red as compared to the specific quale I subjectively experience when I see red. Whatever qualia we experience as "red," we agree that it's objectively defined as red.
You have yet to forward a definition of objective that makes it anything other than empirical observations and experience (subjective) that we agree among ourselves *is* whatever arbitrary 'objective' label we decide to attach to it. Or that moral percepts do not fall under this definition as much as any scientific fact, hypothesis or theory derived from empirical observation and agreed to by others who work with the same type of empirical observations.
Comment by Joy — November 3, 2007 @ 2:33 pm
November 3rd, 2007 at 2:44 pm
Bradford (I think)
For the most part I agree but I would add that some of the things that we understand to be moral are difficult to explain in a evolutionary world view, altruism to strangers and animals for example. And I would be careful of materialists attempts to define morality as "that which is good for my genes."
But that line of thought is a completely different subject from what we are discussing.
what we wish to determine is does our moral compass somehow tap into objective reality? And if it does not what right do we have to live as if it does?
Peace
Comment by fifth monarchy man — November 3, 2007 @ 2:44 pm
November 3rd, 2007 at 2:45 pm
keiths,
Yes I assumed you did not. But you were asking for an observation based morality from those who do. I was curious if you have a moral stance based on (non-objective) observations. A common criticisms from folks like you is that religious people don't employ the same rigorous methods and standards as found in science for their own beliefs. I assume you have a strong moral stance. For something so important as morality can you justify your moral views with the same rigor that you demand for religious views?
Comment by Steve Petermann — November 3, 2007 @ 2:45 pm
November 3rd, 2007 at 3:13 pm
keiths:
No, KEITHS was talking about 'objective' as a synonym of 'absolute'. That doesn't make it so.
Thesaurus.com lists synonyms of "absolute" in 4 separate [adjective] uses as:
1. complete, consummate, downright, entire, flat-out, free, full, infinite, outright, plenary, pure, sheer, simple, straight out, supreme, thorough, total, unabridged, unadulterated, unconditional, unlimited, unqualified, unrestricted, utter, without limit.
2. absolutist, arbitrary, authoritarian, autocratic, autonomous, despotic, dictatorial, full, monocratic, preemptory, sovereign, supreme, totalitarian, tyrannical, tyrannous.
3. actual, categorical, conclusive, consummate, decide, decisive, definite, exact, factual, fixed, genuine, infallible, positive, precise, sure, unambiguous, undeniable, unequivocal, unmitigated, unquestionable.
4. categorical, complete, excellent, faultless, flawless, ideal, impeccable, thorough, ultimate, unblemished, unflawed, untarnished.
Does anybody see the word "objective" in there anywhere? I don't, and I've read the list twice. Just because keiths wants to re-define a word-concept as something not recognized by those whose job it is to parse languages for a living and tell us what the synonyms are, does not mean that his redefinitions are authoritative. Or mean anything at all outside keiths' own [entirely subjective] mind.
The definition (Mirriam Webster) of 'objective' per the adjective uses (plus synonyms) are:
Objective, adjective
Not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts (contrasted with subjective).
[use] 1. Impartial, unbiased, unprejudiced, nonpartisan, disinterested, neutral, uninvolved, evenhanded, equitable, fair, fair-minded, just, open-minded, dispassionate, detached. 2. Factual, actual, real, empirical, evidence-based, verifiable.
Anybody see 'absolute' in there? I don't. Here's the MW definition of 'absolute' in adjective uses (plus synonyms):
Absolute, adjective
1. Not qualified or diminished in any way; total. 2. Viewed or existing independently and not in relation to other things; not relative or comparative.
Anybody see 'objective' in there? I don't.
Give it up, keiths. Once again I am amazed at how deep you'll dig your own grave on such a sideline subject as this.
Comment by Joy — November 3, 2007 @ 3:13 pm
November 3rd, 2007 at 3:36 pm
I said:
keiths replied:
See how that works? I say an "absolute moral standard" would be unbreakable – adherence would be universal. So keiths says not so, because an "absolute moral standard" would be breakable – a contradiction in terms all by itself [ed].
ARGH!!!! He can't even agree that we've agreed, because he'd previously tried to confuse the issue by asserting that 'objective' means 'absolute' to support his claim that moral standards can't be 'objective' because they're not 'absolute'.
This is so stupid it makes my hair hurt! §;o)
Comment by Joy — November 3, 2007 @ 3:36 pm
November 3rd, 2007 at 5:33 pm
Joy,
I laughed when I saw your comment, because you've vividly demonstrated, far better than I could have hoped, exactly the point I was trying to make: your reading comprehension is atrocious.
You wrote:
I replied:
Somehow you interpreted that as meaning that I agreed with you:
You capped it off with this:
Joy, read what I wrote, word by word, slowly:
Not true. Moral laws (whether absolute or relative) can be broken, unlike the laws of physics. They are prescriptive, not descriptive.
The first sentence, minus the parenthetical phrase. Please read it slowly:
Moral laws can be broken, unlike the laws of physics.
Now ask yourself: does that sentence say that moral laws can be broken, or that they cannot be broken?
Next, look at your final sentence and read it slowly:
This is so stupid it makes my hair hurt!
Now ask yourself: where is the stupidity coming from?
And the next time you're about to accuse someone of making a boneheaded mistake, why not pause and ask yourself:
Am I about to make an idiot of myself? §;o)
P.S. No wonder you had no idea what we were talking about in the previous thread.
Comment by keiths — November 3, 2007 @ 5:33 pm
November 3rd, 2007 at 5:41 pm
This is tangential but it contains a common confusion which I think is worth pointing out. There may be people who define morality as "that which is good for my genes" but it is certainly not how I define it. Morality may be the result of what is good for our genes but that is not what statements about morality mean. Our desire to help others very probably evolved because it was good for our genes. But that doesn't mean our desire to help others is a desire to do what is good for our genes. Just as our liking for sweet things probably evolved because once upon a time eating calories was good for our genes and most sweet things are high in calories. But our liking for eating sweet things is not a liking for eating calories.
Comment by Mark Frank — November 3, 2007 @ 5:41 pm
November 3rd, 2007 at 6:00 pm
Speaking of moral standards (or the lack thereof), I see that Joy has now edited her previous comment, long after the 30-minute deadline that the rest of us are subject to.
This paragraph:
Has been altered to this:
The problem is that she forgot to edit the following paragraph, which begins like this:
…which makes absolutely no sense, since she just got through fudging the preceding paragraph to say that we didn't agree.
Joy, why not let it rest? Even I am starting to feel embarrassed for you now.
Comment by keiths — November 3, 2007 @ 6:00 pm
November 3rd, 2007 at 6:07 pm
This comment got stuck in moderation overnight, so I don't know how many even saw it let alone read it. But I wanted to highlight one small snippet, as it illustrates perfectly the fundamental confusion of the Three Amigos:
The Amigos' confusion is the like the one that thinks that if 5 billion people testify to perceiving objectively real aircraft flying in the sky (in person when they went to Mallorca last summer, or on TV, or in a film, or in photographs, or hearing them roar overheard; in technical books about aeronautics by Boeing engineers, in the recounted memories of retired Sikorsky manufacturing workers told on the porch after Sunday dinner to the grandkids, or in the war memoirs by military pilots, or in musicians singing "I'm Leaving On A Jet Plane, Don't Know When I'll Be Back Again", or in travel writing, used aircraft tickets, witness interviews to the 9-11 Commission, references to aircraft in novels and short stories, the existence of 'air traffic' control towers etc); and if one is an anti-realist about the objective reality of aircraft, then all one has to do to justify one's aircraft anti-realism and defeat the 5 billion is to label this vast witness to the objective reality of aircraft as nothing more than merely a vast witness to 'subjective aircraft', i.e., to subjective experiences of aircraft, and insist instead that aircraft don't objectively exist in reality. And so one aircraft anti-realist defeats the testimony of everyone else. Perhaps the aircraft anti-realist even has an error theory of aircraft. Oh sure, the anti-realist will readily concede, we certainly have loads of aircraft-related words and concepts. Oh sure, it certainly seems as if there really are aircraft that fly in the sky. Oh sure, he'll say, I'm not denying that vast numbers of people have experiences which lead them to believe in the objective existence of a class of physical objects, to which we appear to refer to by using words like 'helicopter' and 'fighter jet' and 'Lufthansa 747', etc. Oh certainly, he'll point out, there is a language game we play called 'morality. And so on.
Now, as I already explained several times, such anti-realism is logically indefeasible (strictu sensu), just as solipsism is. But we have no more reason for being anti-realists about morality à la the Three Amigos, J. L. Mackie, and sundry high school and college freshmen moral relativists, than we do for being anti-realists about matter à la Berkeley, or anti-realists about minds à la eliminative materialists, or anti-realists about other people à la solipsists, or anti-realists about aircraft à la someone who is off their rocker and regards aircraft not as aircraft but as some kind of weird supernatural 'latter days sign', along with UFOs, of the impending destruction of the Earth by the gods, whom we have angered by our Promethean hubris.
The bizzonkerist Amigos will never admit this atrocious and fundamental confusion of theirs, because the reality of objective morality has dire consequences for evolutionary materalism and the Amigos are blinded by their fanatical emotional attachment to that incoherent philosophy, and they too are off their rockers, and just, well, too plain stupid. But their confusion is very real and very objective all the same. As is morality. So best just to leave them to their bizzonkerist illusions. One can't reason with them.
As smarter atheists have understood, there's really no way out except via an error theory. But, error theories aren't just restricted to morality. They've been endemic in philosophy since the days of Locke , Berkeley, Hume. Thus the last named was an error theorist not just about morality, but about causation, inductive reasoning, and the self. Descartes was an error theorist about non-human animal consciousness. He thought that dogs, horses, etc experienced no pain, but were mere zombie machines, like very complex robots.
As I said, they're off their rockers.
Comment by stunney — November 3, 2007 @ 6:07 pm
November 3rd, 2007 at 6:52 pm
keiths notes my change in attribution for an erroneous qualifier, edited prior to his post about the erroneous qualifier – a point he jumps on with both feet while ignoring the actual issue of his completely erroneous re-definition of the word "absolute." In the immediately preceding post I listed the definitions of BOTH words, along with all authoritatively listed synonyms.
Why did you try to re-define "objective" as "absolute," keiths? The words mean different things, are not synonymous, and everybody knows that but you. You could learn something here if you tried, but that's not why you're still digging, is it?
My hair still hurts, keiths. Your hole is approaching China.
Comment by Joy — November 3, 2007 @ 6:52 pm
November 3rd, 2007 at 7:00 pm
Mark Frank:
I agree that this line of discussion is not really germane. But I want to point out that it sounds like you are defining morality as"¦"¦
That which is good for my genes or is the result of unintended results of DNA mutations that have not been filtered by natural selection as of yet.
I'm not sure you can make a good case for why I should care what you think about morality if this is this is what you base it on. But it's your worldview not mine. Do you define the laws of logic and mathematics the same way?
Peace
Comment by fifth monarchy man — November 3, 2007 @ 7:00 pm
November 3rd, 2007 at 9:58 pm
Stunney emits a long string of his usual content-free insults, including this:
I really don't care very much about my level of comprehension of philosophy. I am interested in comprehending reality, and it appears to me (and many others) that comprehension of reality tends to be inversely correlated with comprehension of philosophy.
The substance of your reply to me is a mixture of strawmen, jargon, and bluster. Capped off with a perfectly retarded attempt to blame "atheistic evolution" for everything from the Nazis to postmodernism to the state of the environment.
None of that helps understand morality in the slightest. Morality is clearly an important cognitive function. Everybody makes moral judgements. You can do experiments to study how people do this, and find that they are not particularly rational or consistent, although they obey various rules. You can make speculative metapsychological theories of the function of morality like Freud or Minsky. You can become an anthropologist and study other cultures and find that their moral codes might be quite different from yours (that is in fact the historical roots of moral relativism). You can look for the evolutionary roots of morality in animal behavior. All of these are very interesting ways of studying morality objectively, that is, as a natural phenomenenon with a particular structure and function. But none of it gets you to "objective moral truths", because of that annoying and persistent gap between is and ought.
Comment by mtraven — November 3, 2007 @ 9:58 pm
November 3rd, 2007 at 10:11 pm
Steve Petermann asked:
Sure. Ultimately my morals are based on my subjective intuitions about right and wrong. That should be obvious, since I've been arguing for a thread and a half that objective morality either does not exist or is inaccessible to us.
That said, rigorous thinking definitely has a place in moral reasoning. Logic helps us determine whether our moral axioms are consistent with each other and whether potential actions conform to them. It also allows us to probe the far reaches of our morality to see if our axioms lead to absurdities, or if there are important areas of behavior that our axioms do not cover.
People are often not very rational in their moral thinking. For example, Jonathan Haidt has done some interesting research into the relationship between disgust and morality. He asks his research subjects what they think about scenarios like the following:
He has found that for many people, disgusting practices like boinking the dead chicken are construed as immoral, even though nobody is harmed by them.
Fascinating stuff, and good to keep in mind when evaluating the rationality of your own morality.
Steve continues:
Being rational about things doesn't mean treating every decision like a full-blown research study. Some decisions aren't important enough to merit intense analysis. In other cases, we may have already thought things through on another occasion and decide we don't want to reinvent the wheel (though it's smart on occasion to re-examine these "settled" issues).
I don't "demand" equally rigorous justification for all religious views, just as I don't for all moral views. Some are much more important than others. In Christianity, whether Jesus was the son of God is obviously pretty important to get right. The relative ages of the disciples? Not worth a lot of worry.
Second, as I said, moral axioms are ultimately and inevitably subjective, but for important moral decisions, we can and should use our skills to reason correctly from our axiomatic starting points.
Comment by keiths — November 3, 2007 @ 10:11 pm
November 3rd, 2007 at 10:51 pm
Joy's definition of objectivity:
Joy,
I exposed the absurdity of your definition here. Despite that, and despite the other humiliations you've inflicted on yourself in this thread, you seem to want more.
Okay.
My description of objective morality:
From the Wikipedia article on moral relativism:
From the Wikipedia article on moral absolutism:
Perfectly in line with my characterization of objective morality, and perfectly out of line with yours. (Not to mention that nobody on the thread has been willing to defend your bizarre definition of objectivity).
Are you happy yet?
Comment by keiths — November 3, 2007 @ 10:51 pm
November 4th, 2007 at 2:46 am
fmm:
Not at all. You are still confusing the meaning of moral statements and the causes of moral behaviour. The definition of sweet is not "those tastes that evolved as an accidental result of our need for calories".
Analysing the meaning of moral statements like "theft is wrong" is germane to this discussion. One of the problems is that this sentence looks like "wrong" is referring to something. It has the same form as "the sky is blue" where blue does refer to a property of the sky. But this is deceptive. If you rephrase the sentence as "you ought not to steal" you can see it is more of an injunction or exhortation.
Comment by Mark Frank — November 4, 2007 @ 2:46 am
November 4th, 2007 at 9:53 am
Mark Frank:
I'm not confusing it at all I understand what you are saying really I do but it does not address at all why we should consider something as moral. The cause of a behavior is very important to the meaning.
Mtraven accidentally (I think) nailed it in probably the most profound statement I've read at TT
quote:
Just let that sink in for a while
What I need to know is what is the basis for your moral statements. what is it? and why should I care what you have to say about it.
Peace
Comment by fifth monarchy man — November 4, 2007 @ 9:53 am
November 4th, 2007 at 10:05 am
Keiths :
please compare these staments of yours:
I hope you see the comedy
Peace
Comment by fifth monarchy man — November 4, 2007 @ 10:05 am
November 4th, 2007 at 10:50 am
keiths said:
So keiths once again asserts his personal definition of "objective morality":
He still insists that "objective" and "absolute" are synonymous despite what linguists who parse the language for a living have to say about that.
keith quotes the World's Ultimate Authority [Wikipedia]:
This same suggestion has been made by others under the heading of "moral objectivism," which does equate objective with absolute. I am more of the opinion that an absolute – synonymous with words like unconditional, unqualified, fixed, unambiguous, undeniable and unquestionable – would harbor no situational exceptions or convenient justifications for violation. Everyone would act according to the law, automatically. FWIW.
On the other thread keiths asserted from his position of moral relativism that it would be "moral" to torture babies if God threatened to kill all of humanity if we didn't torture babies.
Just as with our current government's justification of torture, the justifications exist because our laws and negotiated international treaties define torture/rendition for torture as objectively immoral. The justifications are situational just like keiths' justification of baby torture, only with the government in the role of God.
Yet situational exemptions from the moral standard do not suddenly make torture moral. It merely exempts torturers from the prescribed punishments for violation of the objective moral standard. IOW, if George Bush's extension of exemption from the lawful standards to military and intelligence agencies made torture suddenly moral, it would apply to all of us and we could torture our family, friends and neighbors all we liked, having no 'ought not' in place.
Fortunately, enough of us believe strongly that torture is immoral no matter how you slice it that not only do we object to the government's convenient exceptions, we still consider the 'ought not' to be objectively imperative. And about as absolute as concepts get per human sociology, at this point in time.
If we were forced to torture, we wouldn't believe what we were doing was moral. Interestingly, military and CIA torturers don't believe it's suddenly moral either. Even if they like doing it and have been granted leave to engage in it without sanction.
Torture is still objectively immoral, we 'ought not' torture people. Doing it anyway doesn't change that. This actually agrees with keith's Wiki article per the definition of moral objectivism…
So why, I might ask myself, is keiths suddenly proving my point for me? Has he changed his mind to now accept that our codified moral standards are indeed objective?
Comment by Joy — November 4, 2007 @ 10:50 am
November 4th, 2007 at 1:51 pm
stunney, The Three Bizzceteers give me a new appreciation for the Psalmist's "fool". I've never seen such an utter lack of intellectual humility in people. Mtraven admits that philosophy is your area of expertise, and this subject is definately a philosophical issue, and yet he would rather imagine that you have made some elementary mistake in your reasoning, than to even remotely consider the possibility that he himself, just maybe, could be the one who is in over his head. It's like the dopes that come in here and accuse Joy of not knowing anything about Physics. They make a fool of themselves and then come back for more.
Comment by Brian Killian — November 4, 2007 @ 1:51 pm
November 4th, 2007 at 2:46 pm
Mmf:
I have let it sink in. It is a beautifully succinct statement of the problem. I believe you are seeking an "is" that will lead to an "ought". I am not.
I have answered this question several times "“ but I cannot remember if it was in response to you "“ so I apologise if this is repetitive.
The basis for my moral statements is my reaction to people and events. For example, I do not like creatures to suffer so I agree with the assertion "cruelty to animals is wrong" which is equivalent to "people ought not to be cruel to animals".
Why should you care? Because you too are a human being and therefore almost certainly subject to feelings of compassion. Also, probably, like most human beings you care what others think of you. If I say "you ought not to be cruel to animals" I am pointing out that you may find it upsetting to be cruel to animals and also expressing my disapproval if you are cruel. Which addresses these two aspects of human nature.
Cheers
Comment by Mark Frank — November 4, 2007 @ 2:46 pm
November 4th, 2007 at 2:55 pm
Brian, stunney is just a lowly amateur without even a PhD (=Doctor of Philosophy). In other words, absolutely no reason to believe him.
Comment by Raevmo — November 4, 2007 @ 2:55 pm
November 4th, 2007 at 3:19 pm
I really think Joy is on our side.
Joy – I do find it hard to work out what you mean – but I get the strong impression that your view of morality is virtually the same as mine, raevmo, mtraven and keiths. In the end it depends on what the majority of people consider to be right or wrong. The only difference is that what you call objective we call subjective - but that's just semantics.
Welcome
Comment by Mark Frank — November 4, 2007 @ 3:19 pm
November 4th, 2007 at 4:26 pm
Joy wrote:
Right. As if my "personal" definition of objective morality, which happens to be shared by moral philosophers everywhere, were somehow idiosyncratic, versus Joy's bizarre definition of objectivity, which I've already shown to be nonsensical, and which not a single participant in these threads has supported (apart from Joy herself).
No, I say that "objective morality" and "absolute morality" both refer to a standard that holds regardless of an individual's personal inclinations, cultural background, or genetic makeup.
Joy,
Are you claiming that the Wikipedia articles are wrong about moral objectivism? If so, let's see some evidence from the literature. If not, why the snide tone?
That almost sounded like a concession.
You should add that the "others" of whom you speak are those who think about this stuff for a living — moral philosophers.
It doesn't. If murder is absolutely wrong, it is wrong for Ellen, Wei Ming, Ahmad, Sunanda, Makena and Roderick — at home, abroad, at sea, in outer space — even if they're in a particularly bad mood.
Your mistake is in adding the following:
If murder is absolutely wrong, it doesn't mean that murder can't happen — it just means that when it does happen, it's absolutely wrong. Practically every moral absolutist believes that murder is wrong, but you won't find a single [sane] absolutist who believes that murder does not occur.
I'm quite a bit more careful than you are. Here's what I actually wrote:
Two choices. If you choose A, two babies will suffer horribly for an hour, and you will suffer horribly in witnessing their pain and knowing that you have chosen to make it happen. If you choose B, every sentient being in the universe will suffer worse agony and will die.
How you react to this scenario depends largely on where you fall on the deontology-vs.-consequentialism spectrum (see below).
That puts you in the odd position of saying that morality is sometimes good and sometimes bad, and immorality is sometimes good and sometimes bad. That morality should sometimes be rewarded, and sometimes punished, and immorality should sometimes be punished, and sometimes rewarded. No wonder you have a hard time with communication.
Most people take the more sensible approach of saying that the morality of an act is situational. For example, they would say that it's moral to kill someone who is about to kill your children, but it's not moral to kill someone because they drank the last Coke in the refrigerator when they knew that you wanted it.
What are you talking about? Even most wingnuts don't believe that something becomes moral just because the President decrees it.
Then you would presumably be more comfortable as a deontologist than a consequentialist.
Joy, do you really not understand that I can accept (and quote) the definition of moral objectivism without being a moral objectivist?
And, I should add, do you not understand that moral objectivists believe that something remains objectively moral, or immoral, whether it is codified or not? That it remains objectively moral even if it is codified as immoral, and vice-versa?
Comment by keiths — November 4, 2007 @ 4:26 pm
November 4th, 2007 at 4:26 pm
Raevmo
If you were a Muslim you might say
The basis for my moral statements is my reaction to people and events. For example, I do not like women to be exploited so I agree with the assertion "Women's hair being seen in public is wrong" which is equivalent to "women ought not to be looked on as sex objects".
Why should you care? Because you too are a human being and therefore almost certainly subject to feelings of compassion. Also, probably, like most human beings you care what others think of you. If I say "Women's hair being seen in public is wrong" I am pointing out that you may find it upsetting for women to be looked on as as sex objects and also expressing my disapproval of those who do so. Which addresses these two aspects of human nature.
How does this sort of thing address whether it is moral to require the wearing of the hijab and why I should care what a Muslim Raevmo thinks?
Peace
Comment by fifth monarchy man — November 4, 2007 @ 4:26 pm
November 4th, 2007 at 4:48 pm
fmm – you got the wrong person – but you clearly mean't me.
It makes it clear that there is no objective way in which I am right and the Muslim is wrong. Therefore, if I want my morality to prevail (and I do) I need to somehow change their preferences (similarly they might seek to change my preferences). This is not to make it trivial. I care very much about the treatment of women in Muslim countries and I believe their attitude may well arise from mistaken (possibly religious) factual beliefs. But I recognise that I cannot prove that forcing the wearing of the hijab is wrong in the way that I can prove the Sun is further away than the moon. It is very significant. It means I don't regard them as stupid, evil or deceptive for having these beliefs.
Comment by Mark Frank — November 4, 2007 @ 4:48 pm
November 4th, 2007 at 4:50 pm
5mm:
You're responding to a post by keiths (edit: Mark Frank, sorry), not by me. But I'll bite anyway: the implication that you don't seem to care what other people think when you suspect that their morals were "objectively decreed" by the "wrong" sky-tyrant is rather amazing. I shudder to think what would happen if you received a sudden "revelation" that you must kill all read-haired people.
Comment by Raevmo — November 4, 2007 @ 4:50 pm
November 4th, 2007 at 4:56 pm
Hey all,
Ive got to stop looking at the end of a post to see who wrote it
for a fun exercise try plugging in what a polygamist or a cannibal or a slave trader might say. I thing you'll find that with a little work they will all fit into Mark frank's stament. You can even make suicide bomber fit if you work at it.
It seems that your "basis" boils down to what you like. when it comes to morality I really don't care what your preferences are. I want to know what is moral.
Peace
Comment by fifth monarchy man — November 4, 2007 @ 4:56 pm
November 4th, 2007 at 5:09 pm
5mm wrote:
5mm,
What browser are you using? WordPress displays the blogname of the commenter both at the beginning and the end of each comment.
Here's how your comment appears in my browser:
Comment by keiths — November 4, 2007 @ 5:09 pm
November 4th, 2007 at 5:13 pm
The stupidity of this is exceeded only by its arrogance. So anyone without a PhD has no credibility or only those whose names are spelled s-t-u-n-n-e-y?
Comment by Bradford — November 4, 2007 @ 5:13 pm
November 4th, 2007 at 5:20 pm
Interesting. Looks like Raevmo is not just an anti-realist about morality, but about doctorates and about my professional employment of 22 years too. Whatever next? Probably anti-realism about reality. Oh wait, now that I think about it, that's not next—he started with that.:lol:
Mark Frank wrote:
So, may I take it that regardless of the scientific facts, you don't think that evolutionary science ought to be included in UK secondary school syllabi, because you do not seek any "is" that will lead to an "ought"
And do you agree that if allowing brown-skinned South Asian immigrants to settle in Britain is intensely disliked by some Essex bovver boy, he might well agree with the assertion that "It's wrong to allow all these Pakis in, inntit?" which would be equivalent to "White people ought not to allow all these Pakis into our country"; and that if he said, "We ought to kick their fackin turban 'eads in," that would be as much a moral statement as any you might make?
The bovver boy might agree to an extent: "Oh yeah, I'm all for compassion 'n' 'at. I always 'elp old ladies across the street 'n' 'at. But not for those bloody Paki baahsstards. 'Ow about some compassion for us whites for a bloody change, eh?"
So if some disapprove of homosexual activity, or abortion, or socialized medicine, or freedom of religion, or of capital punishment for adulterers, or of allowing girls to go to school and women to vote, neither those views nor their opposites are objectively morally preferable in your opinion.
Comment by stunney — November 4, 2007 @ 5:20 pm
November 4th, 2007 at 5:30 pm
I earlier wrote:
[Emphasis added]
The bolded word should have read 'aircraft talk'.
Comment by stunney — November 4, 2007 @ 5:30 pm
November 4th, 2007 at 5:48 pm
Mark Frank:
The semantics is what we're arguing, is it not? I say that what the majority of people agree to codify per what's right or wrong makes our subjective percepts objective. That doesn't make them absolute, but it does give them some power against the dark side whenever it attempts to overturn things. As it does at least once in every generation.
I do not understand why you'd be surprised (in spite of keiths' kicking and screaming) that I agree with certain percepts of right and wrong that you harbor. In fact, I think you are more surprised to find yourself in agreement with me.
Why any of you would wish to demote this shared perceptual (empirical) base to mere semantics is also beyond me. Fewer than 17% of the population supports the current administration's redefinition of torture (including those authorized to engage in torture). And 10% of those would support anything they're told to support, without a single thought.
That's simply not enough to overrule the objective moral standard. Those who enjoy doing the torturing don't enjoy it because they think it's been made moral. Quite the opposite, to tell the truth.
They have license (until we take it away from them). They do not have absolution.
Next time your stereotypes try to take control of your mind, weigh the truth about this numbers game against one of the religious folk tales your stereotypes supposedly believe in – Satan himself had a 33% approval rating even as he was booted out of heaven.
Comment by Joy — November 4, 2007 @ 5:48 pm
November 4th, 2007 at 6:00 pm
Bradford:
Sigh. Y'all shouldn't take everything so serious.
Comment by Raevmo — November 4, 2007 @ 6:00 pm
November 4th, 2007 at 6:00 pm
Stunney asks Mark Frank:
Truth itself is not normative (I make the same point to Deuce here). We teach the truth not simply because it is true, but because we also believe, subjectively but by near consensus, that we ought to teach the truth.
If we thought that truth were harmful, we wouldn't teach it. Mike seems to have been hinting at something like this when he wrote the following:
As for your extended "bovver boy" example: if he sincerely believes, as a moral axiom, that it is wrong to allow "Pakis" into the country, how would you demonstrate, objectively, that he is wrong?
You seem to be having a lot of trouble with the idea that something that we consider wrong — something that we detest, that we refuse to tolerate, that we consider evil, that we wish to eradicate from the universe, that violates our deepest feelings about the way things should be, that we can't imagine could ever be considered acceptable by a sane person — nevertheless is not thereby objectively immoral.
The invitation still stands: pick a moral principle, and show us why it is objectively true.
Objectively? No. Subjectively? Of course.
Comment by keiths — November 4, 2007 @ 6:00 pm
November 4th, 2007 at 6:20 pm
Mark Frank, to Joy:
Joy replied:
With you, yes. With others on the thread, no.
Joy pegs the needle on my irony meter whenever she begins a sentence that way.
Comment by keiths — November 4, 2007 @ 6:20 pm
November 4th, 2007 at 6:33 pm
You've said this to me a couple of times already and now to Bradford. Maybe if you don't seriously 'mean it', when you're in the middle of a debate, don't say it.
It's like mtraven's continuous comments about stunney's posts having no content. But he never really shows how stunney's posts lack content, he just says that it's the case. Despite the fact that when reading stunney's posts I am able to apprehend the point and do notice the content…. but as certain I am that I am reading actual content, I am certain that mtraven will make some off-handed comment about stunney's 'typical display of saying something without any content'.
Comment by Doug — November 4, 2007 @ 6:33 pm
November 4th, 2007 at 6:49 pm
Stunney's posts aren't contentless, but it's fair to say that their content-to-length ratio is one of the lowest on the blog.
Comment by keiths — November 4, 2007 @ 6:49 pm
November 4th, 2007 at 6:52 pm
Mark, Raevmo, mtraven —
Regarding these two threads: Doesn't it feel like we've been transported to the surface of some strange planet where, due to a local quirk in neuroanatomy, the inhabitants find the subjective/objective distinction to be as arcane as string theory is on Earth?
Comment by keiths — November 4, 2007 @ 6:52 pm
November 4th, 2007 at 6:58 pm
keiths said:
Au, contraire. You indeed DID say that "absolute" is synonymous with "objective." Your post is still there, as is mine citing the actual synonyms of both words, which do not overlap.
LOL!!! Oh, Wiki's got some fair stuff on it (when it's not being anonymously re-written by juvenile delinquents), but it's not exactly an unimpeachable authority. Considering it's anonymously written and can be edited by juvenile delinquents. I thought everybody knew that, keiths. Always get a second opinion from a real expert
Did you forget I was the one who posted the definitions and list of synonyms showing that "absolute" and "objective" are NOT the same concept and are NOT synonymous? Oh, yeah… you did forget. Otherwise you wouldn't have denied you claimed they ARE synonymous.
What in the world would make you think I believe that murder is "absolutely" wrong? I don't recall asserting such a thing. I do believe it's "objectively" wrong. But I assure you that I know I'd kill if I had to, and worry about judgment or atonement later. If it were "absolute" I wouldn't know that about myself, would I?
You quote yourself:
Torturing babies as both "moral" and "heroic" in your extreme circumstances. I call bullshit. It might be the only thing to do for survival's sake (if survival is that important to you), but it wouldn't be "moral" and it wouldn't be "heroic." It would be just as immoral as it ever was.
Honestly, such tortured self-justifications are precisely why humans get so confused so often and fall so readily into blatant bestiality. That's regress, not progress. But maybe it's just the beast in you (whom you have not yet come to terms with) talking. Must be like living with a dual personality.
Per your ridiculous scenario, I'd choose a sweet evening tea of mountain laurel (abundant outside my door) with fond embrace of the children you'd torture if you could get hold of them, whisperings of "I Love You" – more than life itself. If God will destroy us all unless we become beasts (and believe it "moral" and "heroic") I'd have no reason at all to stick around these parts or subject my children to it.
Thanks for the concession. Those who actually do believe this – and yes, there are some – also believe the President speaks for God. Go figure.
Of course I do, keiths. You're the one who would "morally" and "heroically" torture babies to save your own sorry skin. That's not just situational, it's a beast begging to be unchained.
Comment by Joy — November 4, 2007 @ 6:58 pm
November 4th, 2007 at 7:09 pm
Keiths,
I'm not sure what kind of proof you are looking for.
If you don't mind first pick one logical principle and show us why it's objectively true. That way I can understand what kind of proof you are looking for since you are not impressed with what I've come up with so far.
If you contend that logical principles are subjective please prove that contention objectively.
Thanks
Peace
Comment by fifth monarchy man — November 4, 2007 @ 7:09 pm
November 4th, 2007 at 7:09 pm
keiths, it's true that the realist idea of the objective/subjective distinction is not quite as simple as: "scientific facts are objective; everything else is subjective — especially religion and morals." But, at least it has the advantage of being consistent.
Comment by Brian Killian — November 4, 2007 @ 7:09 pm
November 4th, 2007 at 7:14 pm
keiths:
You mean a local quirk in the soul, right? Speaking of strange planets, could it be objectively moral for an alien species of far superior intellect to exterminate humanity in order to use earth as a greenhouse to cultivate magic mushrooms?
Comment by Raevmo — November 4, 2007 @ 7:14 pm
November 4th, 2007 at 7:25 pm
It is certainly a strange experience, but kind of fascinating.
Stunney. I am not getting into any more discussion of the content with you – I can't take the insults – but I am intrigued by your professional employment of 22 years. What do you do? Are you as aggressive in you professional life as you are here?
Comment by Mark Frank — November 4, 2007 @ 7:25 pm
November 4th, 2007 at 7:51 pm
Raevmo
Let me get this strait it looks like Raevmo is on our side and Joy is with the bad guys on this subject.
Talk about strange planets.
Peace
Comment by fifth monarchy man — November 4, 2007 @ 7:51 pm
November 4th, 2007 at 7:59 pm
Brian Killian wrote:
It is very funny to hear myself described as lacking intellectual humility in a context that includes stunney, who is absolutely convinced that anyone who disagrees with him is an idiot.
As for considering the possibility that I am wrong, in past debates with stunney I've explicitly acknowledged that maybe I'm just missing something unutterably profound in the philosophical issue at hand (in that case it was Kripke's proof that all horses are white or something like that) and invited stunney, as a professional philosopher and teacher, to explain the issue in terms that an ordinary intelligent person would understand, in other words to ground out the philsophical jargon in something meaningful. It hasn't happened yet. Instead I got restatements of the same argument over and over, together with insult, bluster, and the argument from prominence (Kripke must be right because he's famous and I'm a nobody).
In the case now at hand, the debate just seems stupid, a series of pointless word games, like so much philosophical discourse. Both keiths and I have pointed to work that looks at the actual structure and function of moral cognition, work which actually promises to teach us something new about how minds work and how morality works. Contrast that with this philosophical debate about whether morality is objective or not, which is like a car stuck in the mud, spinning its wheels endlessly, back and forth, getting nowhere. Instead of making progress, we regress to arguing about what "objective" means.
Hey, that's an apt metaphor, now that I think about it. Philosophy has very little traction on reality, as compared with the natural sciences. It's like a staid sedan, fine for driving on the nice paved road of everyday life but inadequate for plunging off the beaten path. The natural world is complex, it contains phenomena at scales of time and space that we can barely fathom, and has some deeply counterintuitive properties if you dive in far enough. To explore it, you need the off-road vehicle of science.
Comment by mtraven — November 4, 2007 @ 7:59 pm
November 4th, 2007 at 8:37 pm
mtraven wrote:
Yes. I hope that new research on the biology, evolutionary history, and cognitive structure of morality will energize the field of moral philosophy, just as neuroscience has awakened the philosophy of mind from its doldrums.
Comment by keiths — November 4, 2007 @ 8:37 pm
November 4th, 2007 at 8:58 pm
fifth monarchy man:
How so, fmm? [bats eyes innocently, tries to hide the half-smile with her hand]
Positively head-spinning, isn't it? §;o)
mtraven:
I don't recall you or keiths pointing to work that looks at the actual structure and function of moral cognition. Why, I don't recall ever seeing the announcement that science had quantified the actual structure and function of moral cognition in the first place! Must have been in that other thread that was too long for me to follow. This could be exciting… Could you re-post those links for me? Thanks.
Oh, I consider philosophy to be a lot like forensic debate. Which leads to law school, and we all know that lawyers have no souls. That may be true of scientists as well. What need has science for a philosophy to guide its understandings – of its own intelligently designed FAPP goals or its limitations, eh?
Some people just like to argue. That's why they invented the internet.
Comment by Joy — November 4, 2007 @ 8:58 pm
November 4th, 2007 at 10:26 pm
Doug:
Certain words and phrases can be counted on from specific individuals. mtraven has the patent on stunney's posts lacking content, PvM is dependable for mentioning vacuous at least once during a conversation about ID and materialist critics of ID are sure to throw in the word magic when critiquing their opponents' views.
Comment by Bradford — November 4, 2007 @ 10:26 pm
November 4th, 2007 at 10:29 pm
Joy wrote:
I am married to a lawyer. I can attest that indeed this is absolutely true.
Comment by angryoldfatman — November 4, 2007 @ 10:29 pm
November 4th, 2007 at 10:55 pm
Joy wrote:
Odd that you would refer to my comment without quoting it. I wonder why. Does it have something to do with the fact that the comment shows that I was talking about absolute morality and objective morality, not 'absolute' and 'objective' in isolation?
Here it is (emphasis mine):
Joy again:
I already knew what moral objectivism was, so I didn't need a second opinion. The link was for your benefit. By the way, the word you want is 'unimpeachable', not 'impeachable'.
Let me repeat the question: Are you claiming that the Wikipedia articles are wrong about moral objectivism? If so, let's see some evidence from the literature. If not, why the snide tone?
Nor did I claim that you did. I was showing you what absolute morality would entail (a universal standard) and what it would not entail (automatic perfect compliance):
Joy:
Not just your survival, but the survival of all sentient creatures. And not just their survival, but the avoidance of horrible, painful deaths for all of them.
Euthanasia isn't part of the deal. The scenario was: either you torture two babies for an hour, or every sentient being, including those two babies, gets killed in an unspeakably agonizing way. You choose: do you prefer that two babies be tortured for an hour, with you doing the torturing, or do you want them, along with every sentient being in the universe, to be killed in a horrendous, protracted and agonizing fashion?
Only you would have to do the torturing. Even if that turned you into a beast — and I don't see why it would (think of doctors who have had to operate on children without anesthesia in order to save them) — it wouldn't turn everyone else into beasts.
And in any case, who is the real beast — the person who, out of love for his fellow sentient beings, undertakes a difficult and gut-wrenching task to save them, or one who consigns them all to horrific deaths because she's afraid that if she gets her hands dirty she might become a beast?
Did you "forget" the part about saving the rest of the sentient beings in the universe? If you have to vilify your opponents like this, you must be none too confident in the strength of your arguments.
If you're so hung up on the possibility that someone would do the torturing to save themselves, with no concern for the rest of sentient life, then change the terms of the deal: Now you will die, no matter what you choose. But before you die, you must either torture two babies for an hour, or all sentient life will be extinguished in horrifying fashion. Still a choice, but you will die in either case. Better?
Since you obviously haven't thought this through, here is something more for you to ponder: Suppose that instead of torturing two babies to save all sentient life in the universe, you merely have to throw rocks through a couple of your neighbor's windows (after checking to make sure nobody's home, and cleaning up afterward). Is it worth throwing those two rocks to save the universe? Is it moral? Will it turn you into a 'beast'?
Repeat the exercise for a variety of "sins" ranging from peccadilloes to enormities. Is there a "crossover point" If so, how do you justify it?
Comment by keiths — November 4, 2007 @ 10:55 pm
November 4th, 2007 at 11:47 pm
Whoa, Nelly!
Comment by Joy — November 4, 2007 @ 11:47 pm
November 5th, 2007 at 12:12 am
Joy, the posts on moral cognition are here and here.
And here's a bonus link, to Joshua Greene's homepage, where you can read his 377-page dissertation on this stuff if you have a lot of spare time (and many shorter articles if you don't).
Comment by mtraven — November 5, 2007 @ 12:12 am
November 5th, 2007 at 1:05 am
keiths, I could come up with a rebellion for every single WoW persona you could come up with to challenge me. Why do you bother?
Comment by Joy — November 5, 2007 @ 1:05 am
November 5th, 2007 at 2:55 am
Having studied it for three years I think a better analogy may be something like a driving simulator where you can practice driving but actually never leave the garage.
I don't regret those three years. It taught me to think precisely, recognise subtle shades of meaning and suspect long abstract words. But you don't learn philosophy. You only learn what various philosophers have written and said. And for everything one of them says there is always another who disagrees. There is no body of knowledge to be acquired as there is in science or even history. You never leave the garage because you are always disputing where the door is.
Oh – and it taught me how incredibly bitchy and childish some academics can be. Wittgenstein's Poker is a fine account of this bizarre kind of antipathy. You don't learn social skills doing philosophy – which might account for some activities on this forum.
Comment by Mark Frank — November 5, 2007 @ 2:55 am
November 5th, 2007 at 4:19 am
Mark Frank wrote:
I'm not getting into any more discussion of the content with you either—-I can't take the stupidity.:smile:
I teach philosophy, old bean. In fact, I have a paid full-time teaching position in LA, where I also did my doctoral degree (on the potential of virtue ethics as a moral philosophical foundation for deriving a Rawlsian theory of liberal egalitarian justice, in case your wondering); having previously taught at Berkeley, having previously completed my first postgraduate degree at Oxford (perhaps you're familiar with the B. Phil.); having previously taken my undergrad BA in philosophy and theology (Joint Honours) at the University of London, and having previously completed my LL.B at the University of Glasgow.
Due to the ravages of MS, I will take early retirement on disability next summer, though I've been offered a position as a contributing editor of a new online journal. And you'll be positively delighted to learn that I'm also in consultations with the Vatican (my uncle is the retired head of the Vatican Archives no less, believe it or not, so I have an 'in' there) about reconstituting the Spanish Inquisition, those renowned extirpators of heretical depravity. I just, you know, love inquisiting. Mostly because nobody expects it.
"Amongst our weaponry are such diverse elements as fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency, an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope, and nice red uniforms!"
Just rolls off the tongue, so it does.:lol:
Are you as stupid in your professional life as you are here, as shown by your confirming my argument for me umpteen times that evolutionary naturalism entails moral anti-realism, and failing umpteen times to grasp that this same entailment would also justify anti-realism about reason and about other minds (neither of which are any more scientifically observable material objects nor scientifically observable physical properties than moral value is), and thus about naturalism itself? Hence eliminative materialism from the intellectually honest, and New Mysterianism from the intellectually cute. But in my professional life, no, I don't come across quite such stupidity as per the Three Amigos' brand of it too often, nor to anything like the same degree, so there's not much call for, er, aggro.
I do enjoy making fun of atheists, though. Especially very stupid atheists. Hence the attraction of TT.:mrgreen: And on your very own spellbindingly, er, pellucid account of the meaning of 'ought', I indeed ought to make fun of atheists given how much I like doing so, and I indeed ought not to, given how much you don't like me doing so.
It has been a privilege even just laughing at you, mate.
Comment by stunney — November 5, 2007 @ 4:19 am
November 7th, 2007 at 8:02 am
Because of the technical issues I thought it might be appropriate to offer a final recap of this thread.
when we last looked
Keiths and Joy are locked in a Clintonesque debate over the precise meanings of words.
Raevmo is struggling with this issue and appears to be moving toward the light despite himself.
Most of the rest of the opposition are convinced that thinking deeply about something (philosophy) is at best a complete waste of time and at worst dangerous.
Stunney believes we should reinstate the inquisition to deal with such stupidity.
All the while just like the thief when you steal his stuff and the slaveholder when you make him a slave we all have repeatedly demonstrated with our actions that we do believe that moral truths are objective and transcendental no matter what we claim with our words
I predicted this would happen in the beginning.
Does this mean I win?
I think I'll leave you with a quote from the tombstone of that famous ID creationist Immanuel Kant"¦"¦.
Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and perseveringly my thinking engages itself with them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.
Nuff said:
Peace
Comment by fifth monarchy man — November 7, 2007 @ 8:02 am
November 7th, 2007 at 12:22 pm
fifth monarchy man:
Actually, I was just giving keiths enough rope to hang himself properly. I usually don't respond directly to anything he posts, as he put himself on my S-list months and months ago. I've even been known to send comments of his in my threads straight to the hole, as they are almost always juvenile crap designed to derail the topic.
I know what the words mean, offered the 'official' definitions and all remotely applicable synonyms. Being a true-blue Postmodernist of entirely relative values on all levels, keiths believes he has the authority to re-define words at will to mean whatever he wants them to mean.
The Mosaic Books of the Law – on which much of Western civilization's objective, codified morality rests – do offer 'absolutes'. These are relativized and objectified via the "other" books of the law that Moses delivered. If the Hebrews had held themselves to the absolute, there would have been no immediate provision for priestly and civil classes of judges to adjudicate matters of dispute about the law. These matters have been argued for millennia.
The absolute "Shalt Not" is the ideal against which all the myriad relative applications are weighed. That absolute becomes objective "Ought Not" which is applied situationally. There have always been shades and meanings of law. This means, IMO that it's not "absolute" in practice. Even though our historical collection of codified law over millennia governing the generations and their relations are very much "objective," just as the judgments handed down have always been "objective."
As well as demonstrably evolvable. An absolute does not evolve. The edicts of the Torah have not changed, nor the wisdom of the Tanakh. They've been carefully and dutifully preserved as they came. The Talmud is the less-than-absolute books of law. Originally it was just the Mishnah, the Oral Torah ("instruction" in meaning and application). Then a great discussion of the Mishnah occurred in the academies of Babylonia from 200-600 c.e. – a period of 400 years – representing at least 10 generations of Rabbis and scholars. The Halakha is the legalistic material, the Aggadah is legend. These are woven into a seamless whole and gathered into the Gemara (the "completion") and made part of the Talmud [ed.]. Plus there's a large body of ongoing and collected commentaries over the centuries since.
One who simply hates the whole idea of religion or spiritual faith (but knows basically nothing about it) is completely asea with any theologian, philosopher, historian or even educated party in an argument like this. keiths tosses the most shallow and simple-minded 'What-Ifs' I've ever seen, with the singular exception of Raevmo's "Poof-Joy" argument. It can sometimes be amusing, for a little while.
I'd be happy to award you the Golden Turban for feats of prodigious prediction! I already know keiths is never going to admit his arguments are weak unto death no matter how many hundreds of posts serve to make mincemeat of them. Mark Frank already bowed to stunney's pointy verbosity, and Raevmo appears to have weighed in mostly for fun.
Comment by Joy — November 7, 2007 @ 12:22 pm
November 7th, 2007 at 9:05 pm
Studying philosophy is like studying the family tree of ideas. One learns how ideas are related to each other and how they are not related to each other. And given a specific position or idea, one gets a feel for who its ancestors were, and what its children and grandchildren are likely to look like, and who are its closest siblings. And one learns to spot genetic defects and aberrations in the generation of those ideas, and what a healthy idea looks like and what an unhealthy idea looks like. And slowly one learns to become rational and beget healthy beautiful ideas of one's own.
Comment by Brian Killian — November 7, 2007 @ 9:05 pm
November 10th, 2007 at 8:48 am
Joy wrote:
Says the woman whose rejoinders to my last comment consisted of saying "Whoa, Nelly" and boasting that she would win if we were playing World of Warcraft rather than debating.
Comment by keiths — November 10, 2007 @ 8:48 am
November 10th, 2007 at 10:29 am
Having abandoned his attempt to demonstrate the objectivity of a moral 'truth' (racism), Stunney now argues that moral anti-realism is akin to anti-realism about aircraft:
But this is just another version of the same argument that Stunney and others have made before in these two threads: That the idea of objective morality is as well justified as any objective fact, because they are both derived ultimately from subjective observations.
My reply to this argument remains the same as before:
Comment by keiths — November 10, 2007 @ 10:29 am
November 10th, 2007 at 1:29 pm
keiths said:
I was beginning to despair of you ever getting that point. Does this mean you are conceding that you were using a double standard for scientific facts and moral truths?
No.
By reason and experience?
You already answered the question when you said:
Just as hexadecimal values of color shades do not demonstrate anything without there first being a consensus about what it means to see the color grey, and consensus about what physical correlates to associate with a particular shade; so we also begin with consensus about moral truths and use reason to apply them to particular circumstances.
Comment by Brian Killian — November 10, 2007 @ 1:29 pm
November 10th, 2007 at 3:15 pm
Hey all,
This just in. Scientific proof that self deception has positive evolutionary value.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11...
According to Mark Frank this means that despite all the evidence to the contrary, telling yourself that there are no objective moral truths is in fact the "moral" thing to do.
This also explains the continuing popularity of Darwinism.
I could not resist
Peace
Comment by fifth monarchy man — November 10, 2007 @ 3:15 pm
November 10th, 2007 at 3:29 pm
I wonder how many different ways I need to explain this point to get it across (and Stunney thinks it is a sign of my stupidity that I need to repeat myself!). Our moral motives very likely evolved because they increased our fitness. It does not follow that our moral motives are motives to do anything that increases our fitness. To reiterate my example. We probably evolved a liking for sweet things because the calories were good for our fitness at the time. But our liking for sweet things is not a liking for calories.
fmm: are you clear on this point?
Comment by Mark Frank — November 10, 2007 @ 3:29 pm
November 10th, 2007 at 4:46 pm
There is always an "objective" morality and it what is right for me to do, subjectively. LOL
Is it possible to deceive oneself? I sometimes think it is nothing more than a pollyannish self-deception for me to think that positively about the human capacity or ability for "moral" behavior. (I tend to assume people are really good "inside," despite all contradictory information.) I observe, often enough, that regardless of any (presumptive) ability to do so they often "don't so." They "don't so" so often that I wonder if "norms" (however defined or derived) are even meaningful. I think that the veneer of civility and morality is so thin as to be virtually transparent, and that people do what they do largely regardless of any "moral" consequences, even though these are real consequences even to themselves.
And so I believe "morality" is a personal issue"”deciding what is right or wrong to do has consequences first to ourselves"”to whom we have a sort of moral obligation. Have you ever thought of it that way? Have you always thought that moral obligations are always outward directed? They always have to do with relations with others, and not yourself? Don't you (acutely) feel some moral obligation to yourself? Isn't that the very source of all moral obligations you feel? Is "selfishness" a moral imperative or obligation? You can easily imagine it so. Think about it? That is exactly why "self-sacrificing" or "altruistic" behavior is such a problem for a theory, evolution, grounded in amorality. Morality begins with the question about what is right for me to do for myself"”and then by extension what is right for me to do for others. This somehow gets lost in these discussions"”morality is not simply a question of my chosen behavior viz someone else. Morality is first selfish, personal. You will never eliminate that personal factor by appeal to norms, standards, laws, writs, obligations, etc. You will never be able to remit morality to society. As if any society is moral!
Scratch that paper thin veneer and there is revealed a monster. We "moralize" not by denying the existence of the monster, but by rationalizing to ourselves that it is only under extreme, exceptional conditions that the monster emerges (even while admitting the monster is always there). It's a lie. We are lying to ourselves, as it should be quite evident that the monster "spontaneously" emerges under a wide set of conditions. People are shits under just about any conditions. Even if you are not an asshole (and worse) under "any" conditions, you know you are under some conditions. I am.
Therefore "morality" can hardly be defined in terms of norms, expectations, averages, or means, and therefore altogether is beyond the purview of evolutionary theory.
Comment by Rock — November 10, 2007 @ 4:46 pm
November 10th, 2007 at 6:18 pm
From fmm's linked article:
Why do these researchers think that primates and 4-year olds aren't capable of conscious thought about subjective preferences? Looks to me like this experiment is a good example of confirmation bias. There can't be "conscious thought" involved in making choices between options because monkeys and 4-year olds can display preferences (and make consistent choices) too, even if they can't rationalize their preferences as adroitly as college students can. That monkeys and 4-year olds and adult humans can have preferences and make choices is hardly earth-shattering news.
If you ask someone 'why' they chose this over that, you'll get after-the-fact rationalizations – verbalizations of their preference in the situation of choice. That's hardly earth-shattering news either. How exactly does this research demonstrate that choices are not conscious, or that preferences are self-deception?
Comment by Joy — November 10, 2007 @ 6:18 pm
November 10th, 2007 at 6:20 pm
Rock:
Au contraire, mon ami! EVERYTHING is within the purview of evolutionary theory. All you have to do is rationalize whatever you observe with a clever (or not-so clever) Anazi Tale you make up on the spot. That's the job description of evolutionary psychology, isn't it?
According to fmm's linked NYT article, doing this job requires no conscious thought, just a well-developed ability to deceive self and others! §;o)
Comment by Joy — November 10, 2007 @ 6:20 pm
November 10th, 2007 at 10:56 pm
Hey Mark
first of all relax It was just a joke.
Yea but as the article makes clear I can't trust that yours is the true explanation for your behavior because you might be deceiving yourself because you are programed to do so by your genes after all.
Please compare the following statements.
You earlier:
And
From the article:
Don't you see the similarity
It seems to me that your supposed basis for moral activity and the basis for self deception according to psychologists are one and the same.
That's why I thought the article was funny.
For a real laugh consider the fact that Scientists claim to disprove the psychologists explanation because self deception is a positive evolutionary trait but fail to consider the possibility that they may be deceiving themselves.
It's all like a sketch on Monty Python.
Peace
Comment by fifth monarchy man — November 10, 2007 @ 10:56 pm
November 10th, 2007 at 11:26 pm
Mark Frank:
Mark, some human properties may be simply side effects of other biological qualities that enhance reproductive fitness. For example, the capacity to comprehend or construct moral codes of behavoir may simply be a by-product of a capacity for abstract reason. Intelligence clearly has implications for fitness. We may be making a mistake though by assuming that there are no qualities, tangential to actual fitness enhancing traits, which confer unique abilities.
Comment by Bradford — November 10, 2007 @ 11:26 pm
November 11th, 2007 at 1:51 am
Bradford's already said this essentially, I believe, but I think it bears seconding.
Saying that the human species and physical characteristics evolved or came about through natural processes is one thing. Aspects of human thought, however, didn't necessarily 'evolve' as well (Unless evolution now means 'anything that changes over time') – and the concept is far more controversial. Which is why evolutionary psychology is its own rather distinct "discipline", rather than simply a subset of evolutionary biology.
To me, saying that the moral, mental, and cultural aspects of humanity "evolved" over the past thousands of years makes as much sense as saying computers have been evolving. True in that extremely vague 'They're different than they were before, and that took time' sense – but otherwise having little to do with the scientific idea of 'evolution'.
Comment by nullasalus — November 11, 2007 @ 1:51 am
November 11th, 2007 at 6:27 am
Bradford:
Of course – I couldn't agree more. In fact, if you accept that there is no purpose to evolution, as I do, then there is little value in differentiating between a side effect and a main effect. A property may have appeared as a by-product of some other development initially and then later on prove to be useful in a different context – or vice versa.
It is possible. If you mean that the changes in our brains that caused us to perform abstract reasoning may also cause us to be compassionate, loyal etc – it is definitely possible. If you mean that morality inevitably follows once you have the abstract reasoning ability to work it out – well no. The brilliant psychopath is a logical possibility.
Comment by Mark Frank — November 11, 2007 @ 6:27 am
November 11th, 2007 at 6:44 am
Rock
Of course we all behave badly under some conditions. We suffer from weakness of the will. But don't be so gloomy. The world is also full of small and large acts of kindness, loyalty and justice and some of these are conducted without anyone else knowing opr any level of self-deception required. Almost anyone who saw a child drowning would want to save that child – even if they were by themselves and could walk on by without anyone knowing. People even drown trying to save dogs. Most of us want to relieve the suffering and increase the happiness of others.
What does this sentence mean? Morality is a type of behaviour which most of our species exhibits in some form. This is within the purview of evolutionary theory.
Comment by Mark Frank — November 11, 2007 @ 6:44 am
November 11th, 2007 at 10:09 am
I asked:
Brian Killian answered:
I also asked:
Brian responded:
Brian,
Can you show us how it works in actual practice? Pick a moral principle and show us how you would consensus and reason to establish its objectivity.
Comment by keiths — November 11, 2007 @ 10:09 am
November 11th, 2007 at 12:25 pm
Mark Frank to Rock:
There's a rather large difference between "want" and "do," Mark. That's why all the many who "want" but DO NOT "do" celebrate the deeds of doers as heroism. Heroism isn't an everyday small or large act of kindness, loyalty or justice. It's an unusual departure from 'norm' that is recognized and lauded as such.
True story: A man was on a ferry in the middle of a river in the tidewater of Virginia with a whole boat full of other men and women and children (and cars). He was on the upper deck enjoying the ride when a young woman leapt from the rail into the muddy, flotsam choked water in an apparent suicide attempt.
Everyone ran to the rails and there was lots of screaming and yelling, but nobody jumped in to save her. Not even the crew (who, one might suspect, could swim and passed junior lifesaving at the YMCA). Once it became obvious that no one was going to do what ought to be done, this man removed his shoes and jacket and took a flying dive off the top deck into the turgid wake as the boat geared down in preparation to reverse.
Just out of the Navy and a strong swimmer, the man saw the woman flailing some yards away, apparently having changed her mind about wanting to die. The debris in the water was thick enough to be hazardous, and when the boat reversed they'd both be in trouble. As he neared her he shouted that if she tried to fight he'd drown her himself – just relax and he'd keep her head above water. She complied.
Eventually one of the crew threw them a life-ring, and they were hauled back onto the boat. Turned out the woman had a newborn baby in her car on the ferry, was suffering psychotic ppd. They were both transported to the hospital when the ferry landed, the man put his shoes and jacket back on and went on about his business from the ferry's destination.
He was hailed as a hero because there were more than a hundred witnesses to his act of moral and physical courage – not a single one of whom had the moral and physical courage to actually DO the deed themselves. There were as many excuses and rationalizations for that as there were concerned witnesses to the deed. He was just some anonymous young man who couldn't think up a handy excuse not to do what he knew he was capable of doing.
Drowning in the attempt would have been fatally foolish. And all the people who DID NOT do the deed understood that. There would no doubt have been lots of flowers at the funeral, but instead of *being* a hero he'd have become just another good excuse people could use to self-justify not acting on their "wants" – what people know someone "ought" to do in a given situation.
Morality is not a behavior. It's a set of conceptual "oughts" derived by deduction from an idealized set of conceptual "shalts" that have no absolute standing in empirical human experience. Behavior is just behavior – what people do, not why they do what they do.
Comment by Joy — November 11, 2007 @ 12:25 pm
November 11th, 2007 at 12:33 pm
Hi Joy,
What I most appreciate about your posts is your wisdom. Thanks.
Comment by MikeGene — November 11, 2007 @ 12:33 pm
November 11th, 2007 at 12:53 pm
nullasalus:
I'm not a fan of evolutionary psychology. There is a lack of rigor that is intrinsic to it. The range of interpretive options is so broad as to render the choice of particular ones largely the result of one's subjective views.
Let me try another illustration. Virtually all humans have a capacity to bounce a basketball, pass it to someone else, learn and abide by simple rules and shoot the ball at a hoop. Obviously there is a great degree of talent differential among humans but is the capacity to play basketball a by-product of evolution or is it a by-product of a group of traits; each of which have selective value? I'd give the same answer to this as I would to the issue of morality and our capacity to understand moral issues and at least attempt to abide by particular norms. Both morality and basketball entail capabilities that are secondary aspects of more fundamental abilities.
Comment by Bradford — November 11, 2007 @ 12:53 pm
November 11th, 2007 at 1:01 pm
Joy – I have three requests:
1) Give me an example of a "conceptual shalt"
2) Explain how you know it is a conceptual shalt
3) Tell me why anyone ever does what the conceptual shalt demands – what is their motive?
Mark
Comment by Mark Frank — November 11, 2007 @ 1:01 pm
November 11th, 2007 at 1:19 pm
Mark, your last question well illustrates interpretive bias. During the Vietnam War an American soldier was walking with members of his platoon when a hand grenade was thrown in their midst. He immediately threw himself on top of the grenade which exploded and killed him. The rest of the platoon was uninjured. He was awarded the Medal of Honor. What motives did he have that can be comprehended within the context of an evolutionary paradigm? As many as human imagination allows. All appear counterintuitive to reproductive fitness guidelines. This soldier did not pass on his genes. These discussions can be fascinating but what can they tell us about an evolutionary process?
Comment by Bradford — November 11, 2007 @ 1:19 pm
November 11th, 2007 at 1:22 pm
Bradford
At this stage I am not asking for a motive within the context of an evolutionary paradigm – I just want a motive. Give me an example of what you think that soldier's motive might have been.
Mark
Comment by Mark Frank — November 11, 2007 @ 1:22 pm
November 11th, 2007 at 1:28 pm
Mark:
Since I know nothing about the soldier other than the facts of his heroic death it would be impossible to give a response that was not completely speculative with regard to the particular individual. I can say this though. The range of options I would consider is not constricted by evolutionary psychology.
Comment by Bradford — November 11, 2007 @ 1:28 pm
November 11th, 2007 at 1:48 pm
Hey Mark Frank
Morality is its own motivation. The soldier did it because it was right. This is the mystery of the moral law from a materialist world view there is something inside of us that longs for the "right " and we always fall short of this goal, always.
We all know what we should do and we all wish that we did the right thing. It's just that we don't often do it in practice. That where guilt comes from.
That is also where the self deception comes in.
Peace
Comment by fifth monarchy man — November 11, 2007 @ 1:48 pm
November 11th, 2007 at 2:13 pm
keiths, you seem to me mixing two different things in your question. The level of justification of moral conclusions and the objectivity of moral reasoning. They are not the same issues in my view. Moral reasoning can attempt to establish the level of justification of a moral statement, but it doesn't establish its objectivity. That is already assumed.
It's your principle that consensus doesn't equal objectivity. So the problem of escaping subjectivity is your problem, not mine. According to your own reasoning, you ought to be a complete skeptic about science and anything else that seems to be objective. You admitted that scientific observations are all rooted in subjective observations, so lets see how you escape from that. And the answer can't rely on consensus, as your checker board example does.
Comment by Brian Killian — November 11, 2007 @ 2:13 pm
November 11th, 2007 at 2:42 pm
Aw, thanks Mike! How "wise" the knowledge of experience is can certainly be debatable, though. Could just be an effect of living awhile in 'interesting times'.
Mark Frank:
Okay. Per my example above – Doing the heroic deed wasn't particularly wise of the young man. He acted on the universally understood "ought" in that situation out of confidence in his own capabilities and desire to do what needed to be done.
I never had a doubt that he sure has heck would have drowned that unfortunate woman if she'd panicked and dragged him down with her. Making her understand in no uncertain terms that he'd kill her wasn't "kindly" or "moral" or "heroic," it was an act of pure self-preservation in the situation as it had unfolded, between the two of them in the cold water of reality (he could have swum all the way to shore if need be, to save himself). Capabilities mean nothing if the water's too swift, the flotsam too dangerous, the victim too panicked, the pilot so dumb as to suck them into the propellers.
There was a strong element of trust in "doing the right thing" all the way down the line once the first act was performed. The rescuer calming the victim and then merely treading water to await further rescue actions (the life-ring) necessitated by the dangerous waters. The crew and pilot knowing not to swift-reverse, which would have killed them both. A doctor on board willing to accept responsibility for the victim and her baby at that point. The blankets thoughtfully retrieved from car trunks to wrap them and the crewman who jumped in to help get her aboard. A volunteer to bring her car to the hospital following the ambulance. Concerned people immediately doing what THEY knew they could do, once "someone" had done the original necessary deed.
That's quite a bit of on-the-spot conscious thought and faith in the abilities of others all around, the rescuer merely buying time for all that to happen. This has been disparaged as "self-deception" in the research article fmm cited. About throw-away preferences and simple choices, not life-and-death decisions on serious situational "oughts." Total evo-psych garbage.
I know this story because I'm married to that anonymous man. I wasn't with him at the time, but I wasn't surprised by his heroism when I saw the newspapers. In fact, I was rather vicious in my demand for answers as to how well he'd reasoned it all out to himself when he decided to risk his life. After all, we had two young children of our own at the time. I'd never have forgiven him for dying in the attempt to save a total stranger (but everyone would have understood why he tried).
The excuses and rationalizations are important. Both for the doing and the not-doing. "Morality" is not offended either way.
I have no doubt that he really would have drowned her or left her behind if he had to, nobody would have blamed him (and that violates the primary "shalt not"). The motive is usually one's reasoned-to-self capability of accomplishing the "ought." Everyone on board that ferry knew what "ought" to occur. Only one could rationalize the deed based on his self-known capabilities.
Comment by Joy — November 11, 2007 @ 2:42 pm
November 11th, 2007 at 2:46 pm
There is something inside of us that longs for the "right"" seems to me indistinguishable from it is human nature to want to help others (and, as you say, of course we have other more selfish longings which frequently override this longing). Or are you suggesting that in addition to wanting to prevent the death and injury of his comrades, the solder also detected an additional property – the "rightness" of the deed – and this is what motivated him – not the desire to prevent death and injury?
To follow up on Bradford. Why shouldn't a longing for the "right" be something that evolved? It seems at least possible.
Comment by Mark Frank — November 11, 2007 @ 2:46 pm
November 11th, 2007 at 2:53 pm
Joy – I am very impressed by your husband in all sorts of respects. But – as usual I am struggling to work out what the heck you mean. I think the sentence above is meant to be an answer to my question 3 – but I can't make head or tail of it. What's a "reasoned-to-self capability" and how can having a capability be a motive? I am capable of committing suicide but that's not a motive.
You seem to ignore questions 1 and 2.
Comment by Mark Frank — November 11, 2007 @ 2:53 pm
November 11th, 2007 at 3:29 pm
Mark:
Thou Shalt Not Kill [murder].
We know it's a conceptual "shalt" because we believe it's just plain wrong to steal life from someone else, as we know that we would not like to have someone steal our lives. I do not see why this is so difficult for you to understand.
Our civilization has formally encoded the "shalt" [not] into several levels of objective interpretations, upon which judges and juries weigh evidence of relative guilt or innocence of the charge under any of those objective headings, considering all applicable mitigating circumstances as are presented.
There's Murder I, II and III, Manslaughter I and II plus your basic homicide on the criminal level, and the myriad wrongful death torts on the civil level. More a matter of deep pockets than actual responsibility.
Nor do I see why it is difficult for you to make the conceptual transition from the absolute prohibition to the entirely situational (and relative) "oughts" that we've encoded in our criminal and civil codes.
Their motive in not committing murder is their belief that murder is wrong. If they steal a life, they have cheapened their own life and made it available for someone else to steal.
This doesn't mean people don't kill other people on purpose (premeditated). Criminally or in situations where society gives them a pass (self defense, war, police action, defense of others, even in some cases mercy). As I previously stated quite clearly, the "shalt" (including "shalt not") is absolute. The applications are entirely relative. Our codifications are based on the absolute, with 'wiggle room' for the relativities.
Your assertion that everybody would "want" to save the drowning child in no way translates into actually saving the drowning child. Nor should it, since that so often ends up with extra casualties. Even worse, how often have you heard about people being murdered in the streets just outside people's windows, where they all just close the windows and turn up the TV? They don't go to jail for ignoring the plea, because no laws say we HAVE to try and save anybody.
I have made the distinction between "shalts" and "oughts." Please don't try to re-confuse them.
"Oughts" are no more absolute than the desire and capability of individuals to act on them. Most choose not to act. I thought my example of the drowning mother was very specific to that. There would have been no legal ramifications if she had simply drowned. She jumped. No one was legally required to save her life, and morality in general would simply have been left with sorrow that she succeeded in killing herself if that had been the result.
The "want" is different from the "shalt," which is different from the act. These distinctions are pertinent.
Comment by Joy — November 11, 2007 @ 3:29 pm
November 11th, 2007 at 3:48 pm
Bradford,
I'm not a fan of evolutionary psychology either, for the reasons you mentioned. I still remember Daniel Dennett engaging in a little bit of that, showing how useful the school is for explaining things (in that case, the origin of music.) Silliest damn thing I've read in awhile.
Mark Frank,
In my view – partly because the understanding of "right" and "wrong" in many times requires access to complex information and consideration. Are you asserting that, say, a person who votes no on Imaginary Proposition 77 does so out of an evolutionary motive? That, genetically, they're wired to vote no on IP77? I'm going to go ahead and say that's not what you're saying – it's silly.
Are you saying that, after growing up, vast exposure to their own unique environment, education, reading, and consideration (Assuming this person is making a careful decision), that a variety of factors contribute to the person regarding a 'no' vote on IP77 as the right thing to do, but nevertheless that basic thought of 'no is right' is grounded primarily in evolution? That seems more reasonable.
I still see a number of problems with that view – and hey, maybe that's not the one you mean to express. But at least it shows one way to go with 'longing for the right is evolved'.
Comment by nullasalus — November 11, 2007 @ 3:48 pm
November 11th, 2007 at 4:10 pm
Mark Frank
Often we don't want to help others at all but we always long for the right.
Bingo
The desire to prevent death and injury was there alright so was the desire for self preservation we all have lots of conflicting desires. We are talking about what makes one desire moral above all the others.
I don't expect you to fully understand what I saying (the whole unregenerate thing and all) but imagine the way you feel when you see a math problem that is obviously solved incorrectly or hear a symphony that is slightly out of tune. That is what I mean by a longing for the right. Immoral acts just seem wrong ie incorrect irrational and unfair in some mysterious way.
I see no insurmountable problem with the moral compass being the product of evolution. But I see a problem with it arising in a world with out moral absolutes that are above the created order.
Comment by fifth monarchy man — November 11, 2007 @ 4:10 pm
November 11th, 2007 at 5:14 pm
Joy
So I deduce something is wrong because it follows from a conceptual shalt.
Thanks
Joy – I understand that you think it is wrong to kill. So do I. I am trying to get at the nature of that belief.
I am not sure from your answer whether you know that killing is wrong "because we believe it's just plain wrong" or because it follows from the broader rule "don't do anything to anyone you would not want done to yourself".
If it is the first, then this amounts to "we know its wrong because we believe its wrong" which seems very odd. I dare say Hitler believed it was right to massacre Jews. Did he therefore know it was right?
If it is the second, then it simply moves the question to another rule. How do you know that it is wrong to do something to someone you would not like done to yourself? And the question "how do you know about conceptual shalts?" remains unanswered.
Do you perceive it like you perceive something is blue? Did someone tell you? Is it your personal reaction similar to when you say something is disgusting or fascinating (which is very close to my position)? Or is it something else besides?
Mark
Comment by Mark Frank — November 11, 2007 @ 5:14 pm
November 11th, 2007 at 6:07 pm
Mark Frank:
Hitler believed that murder was wrong just like everyone else. He just deceived himself into believing that exterminating Jews was not murder.
In order for Hitler to rationalize his actions he first had to convince himself that Jews were less than human. He then had to convince himself that the glory of his nation/race was the most important virtue he could posses. Then he had to convince himself that the Jews were parasites and were keeping his nation/race from achieving it's rightful greatness.
I'll grant this was a complicated lie but fallen humans are good at this sort of thing.
He had lots of help deceiving himself from pseudo wise men like Friedrich Nietzsche and Darwin and got constant reinforcement from an adoring public This is yet another example of why you can't infallibly discover what is right by observing other people.
Peace
Comment by fifth monarchy man — November 11, 2007 @ 6:07 pm
November 11th, 2007 at 6:41 pm
fmm:
You are right – I don't recognise this mysterious longing. The interesting thing is that without it I still end up with very similar reactions to similar events. And I use similar justifications for moral statements and actions. But we have been there before.
Comment by Mark Frank — November 11, 2007 @ 6:41 pm
November 11th, 2007 at 7:57 pm
Mark:
Hold "red" in your hand. Tell us all what it is, Mark. Surely you can do what you demand of me for something as simple as red.
Now do it for something not so simple like "love." Hold it in your hand, weigh it and measure it and tell us what it's made of. Heck, I'd accept it if you'd just do that with "understand." I've always wanted to know what that's made of, what it looks like when it's sitting on the table.
Those are our processed conceptualizations of that which we know, empirically, by direct experience. Our fingers pointing at the love are not the love. I thought everyone knew that. You would no doubt say that the knowing belongs to this gene or that gene or the other gene. Genes being such knowing entities, after all, when they're not being terminally selfish.
Ah, but I am a synesthete. You'd be extremely hard-pressed to equate my percepts to yours, or to any others you accept as given because everyone who's anyone agrees that theirs match your own. Or would if the descriptions you embrace (fingers) were in fact the thing indicated by those pointing fingers.
Though I assure you my percepts are not like yours. In fact, you should probably be more amazed that I am able to parrot so much of the consensus (objective) descriptive material humans have invented for themselves in so many languages and so many cultures across so many millennia – something no ape can claim, btw. If you know nothing you haven't rationalized by that objective consensus for communication's sake, you have little in common with me.
What evolution gifted us with – by virtue of who survived – was the good sense not to ignore our percepts. Does the tall grass harbor a shadow? Is that sense of being preyed upon something to ignore? Wasn't that downed log lying moss-side up and against that boulder when we passed this way to the waterhole? Why are there no birds singing or flying? What's that sound the lichens are making?
We can ignore or act. We can rationalize all day either way, or at least until the tiger eats us. And occasionally, in exceptional humans in exceptional circumstances, the will to risk or even sacrifice one's self to ensure the survival of others wins out. Wise? Certainly not, by evolution's edicts. That's probably why we see such acts as so singularly heroic and honor them in writings and ballads and legends that live longer than any of those saved (temporarily) by the act.
Perhaps it's just the knowing that in and of itself most graphically represents the abyss between our positions. That you now assume the same juvenile tactics that make keiths such a hopeless delinquent is disappointing but not surprising. I did my time with 2-year olds, have little patience with the bottomless 'why' anymore, and never much liked "because I say so" as a response.
Call me back when you figure it out for yourself. Nobody can give it to you for free. Maybe we'll do lunch.
Comment by Joy — November 11, 2007 @ 7:57 pm
November 12th, 2007 at 3:17 am
Joy
I guess by "juvenile tactics" you mean pressing you to explain the origin and status of your moral beliefs? What would mature tactics be – stop asking questions and shut up?
Anyhow it appears the response across the board (Joy, fmm, nullasus) is that knowing that something is good or bad may be derived from broader principles, but in the end the correctness of those principles is just something we know, in a way that is indefinable – just as the way we know something is red is indefinable.
I think I will just have to accept that I am blind to these properties – just as someone can be blind to colours. However, it doesn't seem to affect my ability to function as a moral agent – albeit with the usual weaknesses.
Comment by Mark Frank — November 12, 2007 @ 3:17 am
November 12th, 2007 at 7:38 am
Since moral beliefs entail abstractions the origin is clear- the human mind. One can point out that a divine origin is possible too but that would also entail the need for human comprehension. Can't get around the involvement of human intellect. Why would Joy or anyone else be able to specify an origin beyond that?
How do you know the correctness of principles related to democracy, sound legal systems, good table manners and dozens of other matters? You start with a self-evident premise and, using sound logic, derive conclusions. One can question the correctness of any starting principles. So what? That's just the basics of Philosophy 101.
Comment by Bradford — November 12, 2007 @ 7:38 am
November 12th, 2007 at 8:10 am
mark Frank
Of course this is true I predicted it remember. You don't have to agree that there are objective mathematical laws in order to math either you just have to act like you do.
I have yet to see you give any justification for moral actions except you like them. This is no justification at all. Does the fact that I like steak make steak eating moral?
You owe us an explanation for the basis of morality if you expect us to care what you have to say about it. If you don't have one that is your problem to deal with not mine.
Peace
Comment by fifth monarchy man — November 12, 2007 @ 8:10 am
November 12th, 2007 at 12:39 pm
Stunney made the following point:
To this keiths, with his now legendary blinding incomprehension, replies that stunney has failed to demonstrate the objectivity of morality and abandoned the attempt. But stunney clearly admitted that moral anti-realism, in fact moral nihilism, is logically indefeasible strictu sensu since, inter alia one cannot demonstrate strictu sensu that there are conscious beings other than oneself. Stunney's argument is in the form of a dilemma facing the moral anti-realist, not a knockdown argument. He said over and over and over and over and over and over that moral anti-realists must propose an error theory of morality; indeed he stated this months ago when he first presented the dilemma. His argument is not that he can defeat an error-theoretic account of morality, but that the history of thought is abundantly filled with equally indefeasible error-theoretic accounts of common sense sorts of things naturalism wishes to retain, such as, matter, mind-independent material objects, reason, mathematics, other minds, the self, and hence the most fundamental ground of naturalism itself, namely conscious rational observership.
Mark Frank and the Three Amigos have failed completely, absolutely, and utterly to demonstrate the objectivity of matter, of mind-independent material objects, of causation, of reason, of mathematics, of other minds, of the self, and hence of the most fundamental ground of naturalism, namely conscious rational observership. And so stunney has hung them on their own foolish petards, a delicious spectacle strongly suggestive of his talent as a ruthless inquisitor. For the dilemma he presents is inescapable, and each horn of it has dire consequences for the truthiness of naturalism, which thus spawns not only weirdities like error theories of morality, but grotesque notions like eliminative materialism, multiverses, and mathematical fictionalism, which while perhaps not fully bizzonkerist, are certainly up there. One might call them bizzonkerish. This is why The Three Amigos are so desperate. For the only consistent materialism has to be anti-realist across the board, and the implications are extremely unnerving for those who value reason and science, let alone morality.
One cannot demonstrate that anti-realism about the perception of physical objects is mistaken by reference to a particular sense-perception itself. One can only appeal in a general way to experience and reason to the effect that there are other minds, and that they generally seem to perceive objects describable in physical terms. If that appeal is sufficient to ground the objectivity of physical objects, then the way is open for a parallel appeal to experience and reason to the effect that there are other minds, and that they generally seem to perceive objects describable in moral terms, objects such as obligations, the property of moral wrongness, the dictates of conscience, the property of moral goodness, the property of moral evil, virtue, etc. The inference to the best explanation is that both physical and moral entities exist objectively. That's what best matches reason and experience, in both cases.
It's no use the moral anti-realist appealing to disagreement since the history of science is filled with disagreement too. Currently some theoretical physicists are very pro string physics, others quite anti. Some like twistors instead. Einstein never accepted the Copenhagen interpretation of QM, and QM continues to be baffling and a source of serious disagreement as to how 'real' are its supposed referents, such as superpositions. Hawking has openly stated that he now thinks physics is likely to be forever incomplete because of Godelian limits on formal systems. Even in evolutionary biology there are competing theories about the origin of modern humans being unique or plural. And scientists themselves routinely describe their activity as provisional, and not aimed at describing the objective world at all, but rather as providing predictions about future or hypothetical subjective experiences, i.e., observations under controlled conditions. But even here, there are problems associated with the notion of counterfactual definiteness. And the scientific consensus on a given scientific assertion is the consensus of that tiny fraction of the human population which consists of scientists who are experts on the theory of which that assertion forms a part. The consensus on most moral statements is vast by comparison, and has shown increasing convergence on issues such as slavery, women's rights, political freedom, and so on.
The Three Amigos' stubborn refusal to get the point because of a well-grounded fear that it demolishes their position just makes them look stupid, frightened, graceless, wooden, and extremely boring.
Comment by Zoskie — November 12, 2007 @ 12:39 pm
November 12th, 2007 at 1:09 pm
Zoskie, that was an impressive and artfully written comment.
Comment by Bradford — November 12, 2007 @ 1:09 pm
November 12th, 2007 at 1:24 pm
When I say something is right or that we ought to do it I am not just saying I want it to happen. I have a particular type of motive. Your liking for steak arises from hunger and the pleasant sensations of taste, smell and texture when you eat it. Moral motivations include compassion, loyalty, and a desire to split rewards fairly.
Comment by Mark Frank — November 12, 2007 @ 1:24 pm
November 12th, 2007 at 3:08 pm
Zoskie
The main reason I have not responded to Stunney's philosophical ideas is because I find him intolerably rude and aggressive. Which is a shame because I enjoy philosophical debate and he has some interesting things to say. Your lengthy posting gives me an opportunity to respond to his ideas without having to wade through a flood of verbal abuse. I apologise for its length – I didn't have time to make it concise.
Stunney's (and your) argument is that moral objectivity is at least as well grounded as the objectivity of numerous other types of statement that we routinely accept as objective. However, the philosophical issues over the objectivity of scientific statements or statements about other minds are different from the issues over moral statements. The issues over scientific statements etc are primarily epistemological. How can we know that there are other minds when we can only observe bodies? How can we know that objects exist when we know that our perceptions may be false? I absolutely agree that whatever the philosophical debates "“ these are statements about things that we can know to be objectively true. My point about moral statements is not the lack of evidence for moral statements. My point is that they are not the kind of thing that is true or false. They do not describe something "out there" which is the moral world. This is not an error theory. It is a theory about the meaning of moral statements. It is close to the views of philosophers such as A. J. Ayer and R. M. Hare (from my day) and I believe Simon Blackburn among current philosophers.
An analogy might be statements such as "Bridge is a fascinating game". I hope you will admit that this is a subjective statement. I might justify the statement by reference to certain objective characteristics of Bridge "“ the tactics and variety for example – but the statement is logically tied to human attitudes and feelings about Bridge. It would be absurd to say "Bridge is fascinating but absolutely noone including me finds it interesting". If someone else said "I find Bridge rather boring" "“ we can argue for hours "“ but in the end we might have to agree that we found different things interesting. Statements on the lines of "X is fascinating" are not descriptions of an objective world of fascinatingness. They are not that type of statement.
As I said this is a thesis about the meaning of moral statements. I did raise this at one stage with Stunney but he insisted he was not interested in the meanings of words "“ only interested in ontological matters "“ plus the usual abuse. However, it seems to me that if there are concerns over the meaning of X you need to settle that before you debate the ontological status of X! We never took it any further.
You will notice I ask a lot of questions about how the realists among you come to know the truth of moral statements. This is not because I doubt the evidence. It is because epistemology can throw light on meaning.
I hope this clarifies my position (and probably those of the other "amigos") and that we seem less foolish as a result.
Mark
Comment by Mark Frank — November 12, 2007 @ 3:08 pm
November 12th, 2007 at 5:51 pm
Mark Frank:
Let me see if I understand you.
before you said?
Now you say that your dislike is based on a certain sort of motivation that you consider to be moral. All this does is push the question back one place.
Why would you consider things like compassion, loyalty, and a desire to split rewards fairly to be moral motivations? and why should I care?
Peace
Comment by fifth monarchy man — November 12, 2007 @ 5:51 pm
November 12th, 2007 at 5:55 pm
On A.J. Ayer From here:
No big suprise there.
Comment by Brian Killian — November 12, 2007 @ 5:55 pm
November 12th, 2007 at 10:18 pm
Mark Frank wrote:
I don't.
He manages to be interesting while also being funny, unlike others who say their interesting things in a dull way, or who have nothing interesting to say and are dull as well. I suppose I must like Scottish humor more than you, just as torturers like torture more than you. Aren't people different? Maybe I'm less starchy about such matters than the religiously or culturally Protestant or WASPs among us.
It's a good job that atheists don't write rudely, aggressively, or verbally abuse theists, otherwise we'd be drowning in a tsunami of rudeness, aggression, and verbal abuse. Just imagine if people equated religious belief with superstition or with a belief in magic or described theists as believing in a Sky Daddy or in an (by implication equally silly) alternative to belief in a Flying Spaghetti Monster.
And since you're obviously a person of principle, it's good to see you so often condemning such insulting language, whatever its provenance.
Yes it is. Moral statements appear to state moral facts and appear to be candidates for possessing a truth-value, and your claim and the claim made by moral non-cognitivists from Stevenson, to Ayer, to Hare, to Blackburn is that this appearance is systematically deceiving, or (since moral non-cognitivists exist in the small circles of the philosophically aware among us) very deceptive for the most part.
That is true. But moral statements aren't like that.
Nobody thinks that if a rapist says he finds rape enjoyable, then we can happily agree to disagree and let him go on his merry way. With bridge, one can say, "It doesn't fascinate me in the slightest." But one can't say with rape, "It's not wrong in the slightest." And the reason for the difference is that the first statement has the word me in it and the second does not, not just by happenstance, but because the underlying logic of the two statements is quite different. You, as a noncognitivist about morality think that this apparent difference in the logical structure is deceptive. This is just a species of error theory. Stunney knows his history of philosophy very well, and has even cited in previous threads the relevant online material when it comes to noncognitivist accounts of morality. But error theories are ten a penny, and as stated again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again, are not confined to morality. The apparently incorrigible nature of the confusion on your side of the fence may have something to do with stunney's penchant for mockery.
What's more, stunney even pointed out that the smarter atheist philosophers are, by their own lights, logically committed to an error theory of morality. In other words, stunney himself showed your side where the exit door lay for you, citing the well-known work of Mackie (now 30 years old). But if you take that door, it is equally justified for a philosopher to take the door that leads away from scientific realism, and quite a number do, and not just post-modernists either. Bas van Frassen's book The Scientific Image is a well-known example. And if van Frassen can take it, so can a creationist. Hence the dilemma stunney indicated.
Probably because the question is ontological. "Do moral utterances state moral facts?" is just another way of asking if there are any moral facts to be stated, any moral properties to be predicated of an act, etc. Mackie and others answer honestly, "No". They bite the bullet as stunney put it ages ago, and more recently.
He was way ahead of you.
The question was asked and answered often.
To change the example from baby-burning, how about you meet someone on vacation who would love to throw mothers from helicopters (assume the falsity of aircraft anti-realism arguendo). Let's call this person Bates, and he tells you he runs a motel. Would you wish to tell him that mommy-throwing from helicopters is wrong? And would you wish next to assure this Bates character that you don't mean to state any fact about the objective normative status of mommy-throwing helicopter thrill-rides?
Don't you think he's confused enough?
I wish that were so, but in all honesty, I must say I perceive no lessening on the follies front.
Comment by Zoskie — November 12, 2007 @ 10:18 pm
November 13th, 2007 at 12:11 am
Mark Frank wrote:
Is it really possible that anyone, other than a small annoying child who asks 'why' ad infinitum or a 'bright', can be so naive as to imagine that when it comes to knowledge of anything whatsoever, in the end we don't just rely on uninferred, axiomatic, or (to use Plantinga's term) basic beliefs—such as the belief that 'brights' aren't very good at epistemology? Hasn't anyone on the other side read Russell's classic intro text, The Problems of Philosophy, or followed the ongoing post-Wittgenstein and post-Quinean debates about foundationalism, or read a serious work dealing with the notion of scientific realism, anything by Putnam, or Rorty, or Plantinga on epistemology? Whether you're a realist and/or foundationalist or not, whether you're a neo-Wittgensteinian pragmatist or not, whether you're an unreconstructed sense-data theorist or not, whether you're a partisan of 'naturalized epistemology' or not, justification comes to a halt either by rational necessity à la Cartesian meditation, or sheer fatigue and, frankly, sheer boredom.
But at no point in this debate have subjective sensory experiences been shown to be epistemically superior to subjective moral experiences. Let's concede for one brief mad moment that sensory experiences are more universal, or reliable guides to doing things with our bodies (as if morality isn't a reliable guide for how we conduct our lives at practically every waking moment, most of us). So fucking what? At what point did it become impossible for everyone to be mistaken about the nature of space, or light, or matter, or the (previously supposed) deterministic nature of the physical world? And lately we've been told that relativity theory and quantum theory are, er, inconsistent as far as anyone so far can tell.
Realism implies we could all be wrong about the facts, in any area of thought and discourse. The multifarious varieties of anti-realism are just as rationally potent—–arguably more potent—-when it comes to the mysterious thing-in-itself known as matter than it is when it comes to moral value, which we actually know more intimately than we know matter. That's why they lock up people who sincerely disbelieve in moral value, but they don't lock up Berkeleyan idealists, sense-data theorists, Hegelian idealists, phenomenologists, etc, etc, etc.
I'm not such an idealist, as it happens. I'm also not a Kantian, but I admire him as a philosopher because, as Warnock so insightfully put it, he saw what the problems are. I don't admire the other side in this debate because the other side doesn't.
Yes indeedee, yea, and, not to put too fine a point on it, verily. It's called the moral type of motive.
Which type of motive both doesn't reduce to any non-moral type, contrary to naturalism, yet is nonetheless real, contrary to moral anti-realism. The evidence of its distinct and irreducible reality is that people act from moral motives a vast number of times. They directly experience its motivating power, what my first moral philosophy prof used to call the binding force of moral obligiation—the fact that it binds us whether we like it or not (and causes the mind to experience guilt, or good conscience, or conflict between desire and duty). And it is fundamentally distinct from other kinds of motive, as Kant noted so perspicaciously. Another philosopher, Aquinas, had previously noted the nature of the good does not coincide with desire. A statement of this view can be seen in this quote:
[Emphases added]
(See also the classic debate on altruism between Hobbes and Butler, and the rest of the Stanford article.)
The error theorists of morality in effect declare this is all a grand illusion. Well, given realism in general, it logically could be. But so could science. Descartes was the first to see the epistemological issue in its modern and general form. Even Charles Darwin saw it—the idea that we could be as ill-informed about reality in general as monkeys are rattled him.
So yeah, it is a logical possibility unless anti-realism is true, i.e., unless reality = whatever certain minds think it is. The greatness of philosophers like Putnam and Dummett is that they really wrestle with this issue in areas like mathematics and science and provide at least a rough map for lesser minds to see the thicket-strewn nature of the terrain.
The bizzonkerists, by contrast, have demonstrated a laughable degree of ignorance and lack of understanding of what philosophy since Descartes has been all about, namely the relation between Thought and Reality. I mean can they really not see what 'cogito ergo sum implies—that one can, in an important sense, coherently deny the reality of mind-independent matter, but not the reality of (at least one) mind? And then they think there's a Big Problem about morality? Huh? Have they not been paying attention? The big problem—a scandal for G. E. Moore in the 1930s—is establishing the reality of an external world. It cannot be demonstrated, and so it's best if we just take it as axiomatic. Et effing cetera.
So, Mark Frank, one can as easily replace what you wrote above with this:
it appears the response across the board (the Three Amigos, and sundry materialists) is that knowing that something is a mind-independent material object may be derived from broader principles, but in the end the correctness of those principles is just something we know, in a way that is indefinable – just as the way we know something is red is indefinable.
Even writing what you actually wrote indicates that you're not in Kant's league when it comes to seeing what the problems are. To put it mildly.
True. And immoral motivations include callousness, disloyalty, and a desire not to distribute rewards fairly.
And amazing fact though it is, many humans throughout history have acted from immoral motives such as these. Which suggests that mere facts about the motives people happen to have and act from, even if they're very common (such as selfishness), is pretty much useless for explaining the discrimination morality makes among the actual array of human motives.
Comment by stunney — November 13, 2007 @ 12:11 am
November 13th, 2007 at 12:15 am
Zoskie wrote:
Huh? I most certainly did no such thing.
I merely looked on as they were hoist by their own petards. I didn't hang them on said petards. I am a chevalier, I'll have you know; and chevaliers don't hang. They look on with utter disdain as others hoist themselves. And they thank heaven for little girls. Nor are petards that efficient a method of hanging.
Though I'll grant you, Los Tres Amigos are so confused and disoriented that hanging them or hoisting them with their own petards pretty much amount to the same thing in their case.
We studied Hamlet in great detail in my final year of high school and had to memorize the whole bloody play, so I know about these matters. As Billy Shakejavelin put it:
For 'tis the sport to have the enginer
Hoist with his own petar; and 't shall go hard
But I will delve one yard below their mines
And blow them at the moon: O, 'tis most sweet,
When in one line two crafts directly meet.
Well, okay. Maybe I did place a wee bomb under them using their own gunpowder, and only then looked on with haughty, nay, cavalier disdain at their consequent hoisting. But hanging as such didn't come into it. Though they certainly gave themselves enough rope if hanging was one's sport and purpose.
In any case, the Amigos' argument is about as dead as, er, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, which is the main thing, don't you think?
Which most happy circumstance surpriseth not, upon discovery of its suicidal aspect and, fay, self-molesting attire
Comment by stunney — November 13, 2007 @ 12:15 am
November 13th, 2007 at 12:51 am
I dont think they can. I would attribute it to cognitive dissonance besides they would then have to admit they are in the same boat we all are adrift on….so no more condescending arrogance.
Im afraid just like your other examples you have repeatedly given this too will not register…ya know its gotta be scary for them to come to grips with the fact that their empiricism is self refuting.
Vivid
Comment by Vividbleau — November 13, 2007 @ 12:51 am
November 13th, 2007 at 1:38 am
stunney:
Philosophy has a great deal to say about Thought, and very little to say about Reality. Philosophers as a class are professionally allergic to reality, leaving that messy business to the scientists.
Nobody ever answered my previous comment on this topic. But that's OK, stunney can keep up with the juvenile name calling as if that's proves anything beyond the fact that he's a clown who is self-evidently incompetent in his own field.
Comment by mtraven — November 13, 2007 @ 1:38 am
November 13th, 2007 at 6:12 am
Vividbleau wrote:
Yes I know. Self-refutation is their specialty. They're also big on positively clownish inconsistency. For instance, mtraven wrote:
[Emphases added]
Yup, they're that desperate.
Comment by stunney — November 13, 2007 @ 6:12 am
November 13th, 2007 at 7:23 am
Zoskie
Like most people I am more likely to show my disapproval when the insults are aimed at me personally "“ but I don't like aggressive, insulting language wherever it comes from. It appears witty to those who agree "“ juvenile to those who don't.
I won't waste any more time on whether this should be classified as an error theory. The point is that my grounds for regarding morality as subjective are different from the grounds that some philosophers have for regarding scientific statements as subjective.
I am glad we have established that statements of the form "X is fascinating" are subjective. Notice that it is nothing to do with the amount of agreement on whether things are fascinating. These statements would be subjective even if in practice almost everyone agreed that Bridge was fascinating and those few that did not were regarded as mentally deranged (an attitude that exists in some circles). It is to do with the meaning of the word fascinating . One way to demonstrate that "X is fascinating" is subjective is to study how we can resolve disagreement. While we may point to characteristics of X the final proof will be in the behaviour and attitudes of those who know Bridge well.
You are right that there is an important difference between moral statements and statements about fascination. I was using fascination as an analogy, but it's not a perfect analogy. They key difference between statements about fascination and moral statements is that if I believe abortion is wrong then I am not just expressing my reaction to abortion but also my strong desire for it to stop and therefore for others to stop doing it. This is clearly incompatible with someone who thinks that abortion is a good thing. Such a person, at a minimum, would allow it to continue and might encourage it. The incompatibility arises from our conflicting desires for action, not from our conflicting views of the facts about abortion. We might be completely in agreement on all the facts. If you and I disagree about the fascination of Bridge we can just continue in our separate ways "“ me playing it and you not "“ without affecting each others wishes.
What does "smarter" mean here other than philosophers that fit into Stunney's idea of what atheists have to say? I suggest we stop arguing by brandishing credentials and references and just answer each other's points. Otherwise you end up with lengthy disputes about what "so and so" really said or meant and get severely off track.
My point remains unaddressed.
Of course I think he is wrong. As I have tried to explain a number of times "“ by doing so I am expressing my overwhelming disapproval, my certainty that the vast majority of others would agree. The question of whether it is objective is unlikely to come into our conversation. It is enough that everyone else disagrees.
But to return to the main point. What is the difference in the objectivity or not of scientific statements as compared to the objectivity or not of moral statements? I think we have established that it does not lie in the proportion of people that agree. In either domain it is possible to find statements that pretty much everyone agrees with and other statements which are the subject of much debate. The key is in how disputes are resolved. The grounds for agreement.
Try this thought experiment. Suppose Bates says "I believe throwing older people out of helicopters is my duty. It is expensive and hard-work and doesn't do my career prospects any good "“ but I recognise that is what I ought to do". (If you think this is absurd remember there are people who think it their solemn duty to fly planes into buildings).
Assume also that you explore all the possible inconsistencies of his position, but he is resolute. It is a fundamental principle as far as he is concerned. Also he is fully aware of all the facts and consequences of his actions. He knows that the unfortunate subject will almost certainly die, perhaps in great pain, and that the families will be greatly distressed.
What do you conclude?
1) Assume that after this debate he still resolutely does all he can to eject grandmothers at considerable personal cost to himself, shows no sign of shame or guilt and indeed takes pride in the action. Clearly he is a bit mad. But do you conclude that he doesn't know the meaning of right and wrong? I think not. It is just that what he believes to be right is completely out of kilter with most of the rest of humanity.
2) Now make a slightly different assumption. After you have the debate with him he continues to say "throwing older people out of helicopters is our duty" but he no longer does it "“ in fact he tries to prevent others doing it. But he still insists it is right and people ought to do it. One possibility is that he is simply lying and he no longer believes it is right. But if that is not the case, then we have little option but to suppose he does not understand the meaning of right and wrong.
Now remember he is in absolute agreement about the facts of the case. i.e. he demonstrates his understanding of moral language through his attitudes and actions "“ not by his understanding of the facts of senile helicopter ejection.
Compare this to someone who believes that London and New York are less then 10 miles apart. You can try them on inconsistency. "You agree that Dublin is more than 10 miles from London "“ and New York is further." You can take them up in an aeroplane above London. You can take them on a transatlantic voyage. Suppose after all this "“ they are still adamant that the two cities are adjacent. What can you conclude? Not, I suggest, that their view on the distance between the two cities is different from the rest of humanity "“ but rather that they don't know the meaning of the words "10 miles apart". i.e. he demonstrates his understanding of the concept of distance through his understanding of the facts of the case. His resulting actions and attitudes are secondary.
Is there any chance that we can continue this in an atmosphere of mutual respect?
Comment by Mark Frank — November 13, 2007 @ 7:23 am
November 13th, 2007 at 7:42 am
The fascination analogy is not just imperfect- it is counterproductive. My fascination with the color red is a completely subjective experience that cannot be falsified by any set of facts. It is evidence free, not subject to contradiction by virtue of facts presented or logical flaws shown. I like it and that's it. It is a statement of a condition not a logical exercise that can be supported with data. Moral norms are pegged to the concept of harm. Harm to others, to self, to organizations, to one's country and even a set of beliefs. As such they can be supported or weakened by a set of facts. This is completely different than the misleading analogies you are attempting.
Comment by Bradford — November 13, 2007 @ 7:42 am
November 13th, 2007 at 8:57 am
Bradford the point of the example of fascination was to show how a statement about something (in this case Bridge) can be an expression of common attitudes to that thing. The statement "Bridge is fascinating" is not completely evidence free. You can point to the variety, the subtle tactics, the psychological nature, the bond between partners. You can also point to inconsistencies. "You say you find Whist interesting but not Bridge – but Bridge has far more subtlety and complexity". It is even possible to have a debate over whether red is fascinating. "You say red is fascinating but not blue? What is the difference?" "How can you be fascinated by something which doesn't change like a colour?"
On the other side – what set of facts are going to falsify Bates firmly held belief that it is his duty to eject Grandmothers from helicopters? You can point to the harm. But harm is not the only thing to which we have moral responses. For example, we respond to obligation, duty and fairness. Many people find homosexuality wrong because it is unnatural or against God's word – not because it does harm. So Bates may argue – yes it does harm but it is my personal God's word that I should do this and that is a higher duty. How do you falsify that?
Comment by Mark Frank — November 13, 2007 @ 8:57 am
November 13th, 2007 at 9:33 am
All of which are related to harm. The failure to perform one's duty or obligation leads to harm. It can lead to malpractice, poor childrearing, disastrous company or governmental policies, dead soldiers or any number of things. You counter Bates by pointing to an alternative- a moral system that eliminates his destructive act or at least provides consequences.
The way to counter any moral point is with a superior one. Of course there will be disagreements but reason and data can be introduced in these examples as opposed to my personal color preferences. My preference for red is a statement of a condition or fact. It is unopposable if stated accurately. Moral norms, like color preferences, involve feelings but there is much more to them.
Comment by Bradford — November 13, 2007 @ 9:33 am
November 13th, 2007 at 3:46 pm
Despite the logorrheic excess, Stunney and Zoskie's argument boils down to this:
That's it.
Amazingly, they seem to have missed the fact that my argument doesn't depend on the selective application of some sort of über-skepticism to morality. I've stated repeatedly that we can't achieve certainty about objective physical truths any more than we can about objective moral 'truths'.
For example, on October 21st, I wrote:
On October 25th, I reiterated:
And again on October 30th:
If radical skepticism doesn't favor scientific truth over objective moral 'truth', then Stunney and Zoskie would have us conclude that objective morality is on an equal footing with scientific truth. But this doesn't follow.
The fact that absolute certainty is unattainable doesn't mean that all propositions are equally valid, as I'm sure even Stunney and Zoskie would agree. I'm willing to believe that airplanes fly, but not bulldozers. And I believe these things despite the fact that absolute certainty is impossible.
I can give an explanation of why "airplanes fly" is better justified than "bulldozers fly" (and please, no pedantic remarks about bulldozers "flying" in the cargo holds of military transports — that's an equivocation).
That airplanes fly is, for all practical purposes, an objective fact. Stunney and Zoskie, I invite each of you to pick a moral 'truth' and show us how it is objective in the same way.
It's interesting that these two threads are full of people insisting that morality is objective, and yet not one of them has demonstrated this for even a single moral principle.
Comment by keiths — November 13, 2007 @ 3:46 pm
November 13th, 2007 at 4:32 pm
keiths:
Interesting for sure, but not that surprising. Stunney and his minion Zoskie et al. believe that whatever their fantasy infallible God has decreed is objective. During thousands of years of theological and philosophical twisting and turning, nobody has apparently managed to come up with a method to demonstrate (or even approximate a demonstration of) the objectiveness of a given moral claim, or we would have heard about it by now from our esteemed but misguided philosophers at this blog. Alas, no such luck. It's hard to escape the conclusion that the Three Amigos prevail once again.
Comment by Raevmo — November 13, 2007 @ 4:32 pm
November 13th, 2007 at 4:49 pm
stunney: Calling you clownish is called "descending to your opponent's level". There is nothing self-refuting or inconsistent about it. A major philosophical talent like yourself, intimately familiar with the details of petards, ought to be able to tell the difference. As for "desperate", you are projecting. You are obviously struggling to cling to your outmoded worldview, which has been inexorably eaten away by the progress of science. Must be tough.
Comment by mtraven — November 13, 2007 @ 4:49 pm
November 13th, 2007 at 5:04 pm
keiths,
I believe you are making a category error when looking for comparable proofs between physical and moral objectivity. Because one deals with rules of human behavior and the other with rules of matter, one must approach the proofs differently. You seem to be asking for a material proof of an immaterial object – which is by nature impossible.
Moral proofs are reasoned apriori. For instance, take murder. You cannot demand some empirical evidence to support the objective wrongness of murder. You need only provide an example of how murder is an acceptable way to behave! If there is no conceivable way to justify murder as 'good', then it can objectively said to be 'bad' by the reasoning above.
Once it is established that there are some objective moral truths, the door is open to seek out and understand the moral order. In doing so, some answers will be obvious and universally recognized, such as murder or theft, others will be less so, such as fornication or adultery.
I offered another moral proof previously and answered (plus here) your initial objections , but you haven't seen fit to respond.
Comment by todd — November 13, 2007 @ 5:04 pm
November 13th, 2007 at 5:46 pm
todd wrote:
False dichotomy, plus assuming your conclusion. You're assuming up front that the question "Is murder objectively moral?" has a definite yes-or-no answer. You're neglecting two possibilities: a) objective morality exists, but murder is neither objectively moral nor objectively immoral; or b) objective morality does not exist, and therefore nothing, including murder, is objectively moral or immoral.
Yes, but you need to establish the existence of objective moral truths first.
You are mistaking consensus for truth. The fact that most of us agree on something doesn't make it true. Remember the Adelson illusion.
Here's our last exchange:
I wrote:
Again, why assume that you have to own yourself in order to write something willingly? This whole argument of yours is very strange. Do I have to own a shovel to use one? Why couldn't I "use myself" to write something without necessarily "owning" myself?
You responded:
This is remarkable logic, keith. You caused you to do whatever it is you did. An outside force, so far as you know, did not. This is the point. If you are the cause of your actions, it follows you are responsible for the products of those actions. No one else can rightfully claim responsibility for something YOU did. If someone were to say "I did that" when they didn't, it wouldn't be true, correct?
Your logic seems to be:
1. I can cause myself to do things.
2. I am responsible for the things I cause myself to do.
3. Therefore, I own myself.
But your conclusion does not follow from your premises.
Consider:
1. I can steal your car and cause it to crash into somebody's new Ferrari.
2. If I do so, I am responsible for the fact that your car crashed into the Ferrari.
3. Therefore, I own your car.
If you want to send me the keys, that's fine. But I would urge you to reconsider your logic first.
Comment by keiths — November 13, 2007 @ 5:46 pm
November 13th, 2007 at 6:04 pm
Mark Frank:
I have overwhelming disapproval of disco music and am sure that most folks would agree does that mean that disco music is a moral issue?
Keiths:
I don't know about the others here but I never equated moral truth with scientific truth. on the other hand I did repeatedly equate moral truth with the logical and mathematical truth that scientific truth is based on .
Do you understand the difference between truths like "2 plus 2 always equals four " and " the rocky mountains are the result of the interaction of tectonic plates "
Unless you do I'm not sure you will understand the arguments being made here.
Mtraven
I'm not sure what comment you are referring to but if this was it:
I believe you yourself answered it best
Just let that sink in for a while. It's profound and disturbing for your side.
Peace
Comment by fifth monarchy man — November 13, 2007 @ 6:04 pm
November 13th, 2007 at 7:29 pm
Todd:
I've watched hundreds of posts on this issue and someone needs to point out something very pragmatic. Assume for the sake of argument that murder is not objectively immoral. Then What? Has anything changed? No. But why is that? Because only a fool or an evil person would argue for murder. So why the contentious debate? It's a wedge strategy. While murder is not going to be the bone of contention in the real world something else will be. Best to lay the groundwork by attempting to cut off at the knees the moral confidence of the opposition.
Comment by Bradford — November 13, 2007 @ 7:29 pm
November 13th, 2007 at 7:47 pm
Bradford:
There is wide disagreement about what constitutes justified homicide. Many people consider the death penalty murder (morally unjustified homicide), but you probably don't. What's the objective moral regarding the death penalty?
Comment by Raevmo — November 13, 2007 @ 7:47 pm
November 13th, 2007 at 8:44 pm
me:
5mm:
Um, no. Why should it be disturbing for my side? It's your side that's trying to confound moral statements with objective facts. It's an objective fact, capable of investigation by sociology, that most people thing murder is wrong. Showing that murder is in fact wrong is quite different.
I've suggested in the past that abortion be used as the example in these discussions, because that's an area where people have vastly different and irreconcilable moral judgements. So, objectivists, what is the moral truth about abortion?
Comment by mtraven — November 13, 2007 @ 8:44 pm
November 13th, 2007 at 10:12 pm
mtraven:
How is ought revealed by biological function?
Comment by Bradford — November 13, 2007 @ 10:12 pm
November 14th, 2007 at 1:44 am
bradford:
Who said it was? I'm saying more-or-less the opposite.
You can study morality as one aspect of human cognition, which has a biological basis. You can do research on people's actual moral judgments and intuitions. You might be able to predict that societies will adopt some moral codes over others, based on evolutionary arguments. You might be able to show how morality relates to well-understood evolutionary mechanisms like kin selection and reciprocal altruism, or that group selection is involved, or not. You can study the pragmatics and sociolinguistics of "ought" statements.
None of that will reveal in any objective moral truth. It won't tell you what you should do, it won't adjudicate between the two sides of the abortion debate, or the capital punishment debate, or make any other moral judgment. Science is capable of describing what people do, it doesn't tell them what they should do. Get the difference?
Now, studying all that stuff certainly can help people make more informed moral judgments, for instance by disabusing them of the childish ideas that morality is handed down on stone tablets by some cosmic authority figure. You might even be able to show that people with moral code x are happier or otherwise better off than people with moral code y. But that doesn't make moral code x right and moral code y wrong, unless you introduce other, non-scientific assumptions like utilitarian ethics.
Comment by mtraven — November 14, 2007 @ 1:44 am
November 14th, 2007 at 2:45 am
Bradford – you are right – pragmatically it makes little difference whether you think morality is objective or not. I have been pointing this out from time to time throughout the discussion.
The significance is nothing to do with any strategy. All of us "subjectivists" have repeatedly emphasised the importance of morality. The debate arose because someone (Stunney I think) argued that because morality is objective, transcendent or whatever it cannot have evolved. Therefore, evolution cannot account for all aspects of the human mind. My purpose is to show that morality is something that could have evolved – not to undermine morality.
Comment by Mark Frank — November 14, 2007 @ 2:45 am
November 14th, 2007 at 5:02 am
fmm:
This is a good question. It is hard to answer concisely. I apologise for the long reply.
For a hard-line Muslim disco music is a moral issue. It is the nature of your disapproval that makes it not moral issue "“ not the fact that it is disco music.
There are different types of disapproval. This is because some of our motives and attitudes are moral in nature and others are not. So if your disapproval of disco music is based on a sense of duty to your God or fear of the harm it will do to innocent bystanders then it is a moral matter. If it is based on aesthetic dislike of disco music then it is an aesthetic matter.
What makes some motives moral and others not? Why do we recognise compassion, obligation, sense of duty etc (Hume listed a mass of them) as moral drives? The answer to this is not necessarily a neat one. Wittgenstein pointed out that we can recognise things as belonging to a certain class without there being a single defining characteristic for that class. Famously he used the example of games. There is no single thing all games have in common – but we generally have no problem in deciding whether an activity is a game. In the same way there may not be a single thing that all moral motives have in common but we do recognise them as being moral.
Having said that, all the moral motives that I can think of are motives to do things that are not for own benefit i.e. altruistic. So a sense of duty is a motive to do something that we may find unpleasant because we feel an obligation to a community, person or God or whatever. Compassion is motive to relieve someone else's suffering. The IRA hunger-strikers (whose morality I strongly disagreed with) demonstrated that their motives were moral by undergoing the most horrific experiences and potential death to further the cause of their comrades. Your disapproval of disco music is, I assume, based on your personal dislike of the experience of listening to it, so it is your own benefit to limit disco music
Comment by Mark Frank — November 14, 2007 @ 5:02 am
November 14th, 2007 at 6:37 am
mtraven:
In response to my question about biological function you were doing fine until you got to this point and replaced a common sense depiction of the relationship between function and morality with your personal prejudice. The above statement can be reformulated into an if… then statement about moral imperatives if the existence of God is presumed. His existence would change the objective assessment completely. As to evidence for that existence a new thread would be advisable. I'll simply point out that a cosmological causal model that assumes non-existence must assume some counterintuitive notions.
Comment by Bradford — November 14, 2007 @ 6:37 am
November 14th, 2007 at 6:43 am
My question to mtraven about biological function was aimed in part at the idea that evolution can reveal how morality evolved. Assume that you have identified a pathway to cognitive biological functions and perhaps some non-cognitive ones as well that you think are relevant. How does this help with identifying the ought to which mtraven referred?
Comment by Bradford — November 14, 2007 @ 6:43 am
November 14th, 2007 at 7:44 am
Bradford – the cognitive functions are the cause of compassion etc – a set of reactions to people, actions and events. We express those reactions by statements such as "I ought to do X". But, the statement "I ought to prevent murder" does not follow logically from the statement "I have evolved an abhorrence of murder" any more than the statement "Honey is delicious" follows logically from the fact that I have evolved a taste for sweet things.
I anticipate your next move is to say that expressions of personal taste about honey are different from moral statements. Yes they are different in some respects and similar in others. I am using them as an analogy to show how our view of morality explains the gap between the "is" – the evolved features of our mental make-up – and the "ought" – the resulting moral statements.
I could propose a realist account of the gap between "honey is sweet" and "honey is delicious". This would posit that in addition to being sweet, honey has a transcendent, objective property of deliciousness which we can deduce from the fact it is sweet, just as we can deduce that 2+2=4. The principle "sweet things are delicious" is something which is just as well founded as any scientific statement and is one our basic beliefs. It also follows logically that if something is delicious that I should want to eat it.
It is kind of hard to refute the realist view of deliciousness. But you have to ask – so what? Actually I can see two implications:
1) As the transcendent property of deliciousness is clearly something that cannot have evolved we can therefore see that there are aspects of the human mind that did not evolve.
2) If there are some who think they do not like honey then either they or we are in error – because its deliciousness is objectively true or false.
Lest you think this absurd just remember how people talk about educating a palate.
Comment by Mark Frank — November 14, 2007 @ 7:44 am
November 14th, 2007 at 8:11 am
Mtraven
.
Apparently you did not let the comment sink in yet. In your world view it's universal acid.
On this forum statements like these are often made by folks like you.
"We should strive to make our theories conform to empirical evidence."
"Supernatural explanations should not be allowed in science."
"Science and not theology is the best place to look for explanations of the origin and evolution of life."
The validity of statements like these can not be ascertained by empirical evidence. They are moral statements and therefore require a moral basis. Your side has as of yet not provided such a basis and acourding to your stament you can't. Just saying that you prefer one thing or another and hope I do as well won't cut it. I need to know why I should care what you think.
Peace
Comment by fifth monarchy man — November 14, 2007 @ 8:11 am
November 14th, 2007 at 9:01 am
5mm wrote:
5mm,
We've been telling you that morality is subjective. That means we think there is no objective right or wrong (or at least none that is accessible to us). If so, then of course we can't ascertain it empirically.
Beyond that, the statements you provided aren't necessarily moral statements. It depends on the intended meaning.
They are moral statements if the speaker means the following:
However, the speaker usually means something more akin to the following:
There is a moral component to the first set of meanings, but not to the second. And as I said, the second set of meanings is more typical.
Comment by keiths — November 14, 2007 @ 9:01 am
November 14th, 2007 at 12:36 pm
Mark, I read and pondered your post. Some comments:
Biology can provide us with data related to behavoiral norms. For example, it can indicate whether or not some individuals are predisposed to conditions that have moral implications such as alcoholism. It can also indicate which treatment options give best results.
What biology cannot do is answer the ought question. Once one decides to link moral standards to our capacity to observe and measure physical phenomenon he unnecessarily constricts cognitive options to procedural results. Biology can answer what and how questions. It is not a vehicle by which we arrive at answers to the should questions.
Comment by Bradford — November 14, 2007 @ 12:36 pm
November 14th, 2007 at 1:40 pm
Bradford. I agree. Like all subjectivists, I believe that you cannot deduce an "ought" from an "is" as an "ought" is more like an order or exhortation than a description. Biology can only tell us about what is. Therefore, it cannot tell you the answer to any question about "ought". Just as it cannot tell you if honey is delicious. It can tell us what causes us to issues these orders or exhortations.
I was trying to answer a different question. Why is there a gap between ought and is? You haven't commented on my answer or given an alternative so there is little more to say at this stage.
Comment by Mark Frank — November 14, 2007 @ 1:40 pm
November 14th, 2007 at 2:03 pm
5mm:
I, and most intelligent people, had that comment sink in sometime before freshman year. So please if you have something to say, say it rather than be patronizing.
Why not? What sort of justification are you hoping for?
I'm guessing you prefer eating ice cream to being poked with a sharp stick. Do you need to know why you have those preferences before you exercise them? And you probably prefer the approval of others over their disapproval, because that's another built-in preference.
Comment by mtraven — November 14, 2007 @ 2:03 pm
November 14th, 2007 at 2:33 pm
I would put this a little differently and state that if x causes result y then y can have effects a, b, and c. Perhaps c is causally tracable to x even if one does not know of the causal relationship between x and y because, to put it in inheritance terms, both y and c have identical selective values. However, a and b are of a different nature and reveal no selective value in and of themselves; y being a broad entity able to encompass a, b, and c. Substitute intellectual capacity of some sort and you can plug in real functions for the abstract variables.
This is the type of scenario, signifying an apparent dilemna, that yields to increased knowledge. When you discover the precise cause of a delicious sensation you are in a position to discern why some find an apple delicious while others do not.
Comment by Bradford — November 14, 2007 @ 2:33 pm
November 14th, 2007 at 5:15 pm
keiths wrote:
Keith, please help me understand your reasoning here. First you say I'm assuming there is a yes or no answer regarding the objective morality of murder. You then go on to state I'm neglecting the possibilities which are and have been the central question of this thread! Those possibilities are mutually exclusive (ie, a dichotomy) – objective morality either exists or it does not. There is no third option. In fact, your (a) possibility makes little sense on its face! If objective morality does exist, then it is impossible for murder to be neither objectively moral nor objectively immoral – for moral/immoral are mutually exclusive terms.
You fail to recognize that I'm using murder to show a moral order exists. If you can rationally argue murder (that is, intentional homicide without justification) is somehow righteous ('good') behavior, you falsify the notion it is always unrighteous ('bad') behavior, therefore negating it as an example of an objective moral rule.
Murder is a moral concept – if there are no objectively true moral concepts (ie, amorality – mutually exclusive of morality) then a chain of reasoning elucidating righteous murder should exist and you should be able to articulate it. In the absence of such a falsification, one can only conclude a moral order does exist.
If you can establish murder is righteous behavior, you can support the claim above. Failure to do so leaves the mutually exclusive alternative – a moral order exists independent from our subjective points of view.
You are ignoring the logical consequence of eliminating one side of a mutually exclusive proposition. I say no one can logically defend the proposition murder is righteous. Can you? If so, please put up…
If not, the only alternative is that it is always unrighteous and therefore universally acknowledged as unrighteous. Consensus is, in this case, by default – there is no rational counter argument to the consensus view. It isn't arrived at by interested parties leaving areas of disagreement out of the final products – there are no areas of disagreement – until a well reasoned justification of the righteousness of murder is on the table, there is nothing upon which to disagree!
Finally, concerning your answer to "I own me":
Again, this is remarkably faulty reasoning. If you would answer the questions I pose to you, you'd see what I mean:
My logic is 1) ONLY I am responsible for those things ONLY I cause to happen. If you steal my car, YOU caused it to happen, not me. If you could control my will, your analogy would hold, but that is the point – my will is MINE. I own it – not in a legal sense, but in an absolute sense (see the [QUESTION] above).
Comment by todd — November 14, 2007 @ 5:15 pm
November 14th, 2007 at 5:42 pm
Mark Frank
.
I don't think you quite understand what the theists(at least me) here are arguing . We are not saying that murder has any "transcendent objective property" called wrongness. We are saying that murder is against the moral law. The transcendent thing is in the law and it's author not any quality in an act called murder.
The only way your example would be relevant to our discussion would be if you were asserting that honey taped into some cosmic immortal deliciousness that was above the honey itself.
To which I would just reply WHY? How do you know? And Why I should care what you say?
Peace
Comment by fifth monarchy man — November 14, 2007 @ 5:42 pm
November 14th, 2007 at 5:57 pm
Keiths,
Your statements have just moved moral question one place back
Why should our theories be practical? (Because practical is good)
Why are supernatural explanations considered premature? (because complete is good)
Why are nontheological explanations considered more correct? (because scientific is good)
We are back to moral statements. They are inescapable and in your world view they are only a private matter. Why should I care what you say?
Peace
Comment by fifth monarchy man — November 14, 2007 @ 5:57 pm
November 14th, 2007 at 6:36 pm
fmm:
Of course morality is not a private matter as long as the policies of large organizations and governments (including legal systems) operate in accordance with value norms.
Comment by Bradford — November 14, 2007 @ 6:36 pm
November 14th, 2007 at 7:15 pm
Bradford
And if they don't then what?
I know you are not advocating that he with the most power or money or what ever gets to set the rules. I think this sort of thing was Hitler's ethic.
As far as I see that is the only option in the end for folks like our opposition. You already see it with Dawkins.
You can see why this debate is so important.
Peace
Comment by fifth monarchy man — November 14, 2007 @ 7:15 pm
November 14th, 2007 at 7:26 pm
5mm:
Suppose I tell you this:
You should change your oil every 3,000 miles.
According to you, that's a moral statement. But what I mean when I say that is this:
To prolong your car's life, change your oil every 3,000 miles.
I'm not saying that you morally should, or must, or ought to, or have a duty to change your oil every 3,000 miles. I'm not saying that you should, or must, or ought to, or have a duty to prolong your car's life. I'm simply saying that if you want the car to last, then changing the oil will help you achieve your goal.
Suppose I knew instead that you were doing a research project to determine what happens to cars when their maintenance is neglected. Then I could say the following to you without contradiction:
You should not change your oil every 3,000 miles.
I'm not saying that you morally should, or must, or ought to, or have a duty not to change your oil every 3,000 miles. I'm not saying that you should, or must, or ought to, or have a duty to determine what happens to cars when their maintenance is neglected. I'm simply saying that if you want to find out, then you would be wise to refrain from changing the oil every 3,000 miles.
"You should change your oil every 3,000 miles" would only be a moral statement if I thought that not doing so was immoral.
As for your question:
1. We aren't back to moral statements, as I just showed.
2. Moral statements aren't only a private matter in my world view. They're subjective, but that doesn't make them private. I can communicate my beliefs about what is right and what is wrong.
3. As Mark already explained to you several times, you should care what we say because we are appealing to values that we share with you.
Suppose that you plan to detonate a large nuclear bomb in the middle of New York City because you like loud bangs, but that you are otherwise naively unaware of the consequences.
I would tell you that you shouldn't detonate the bomb. If you asked why, I would point out all the death and destruction it would cause. Notice that in doing so, I am appealing to an implicit set of shared values, including the idea that human life is worth more than the thrill of hearing a loud bang.
If you share those values, you will refrain from detonating the bomb once the consequences are pointed out to you.
None of this means that it is objectively wrong to detonate the bomb. We agree that is wrong because we both feel subjectively that it is wrong.
Comment by keiths — November 14, 2007 @ 7:26 pm
November 14th, 2007 at 7:31 pm
5mm wrote:
The rules that society operates under are not the same as objective morality. The people in power get to set the rules whether or not objective morality exists.
What we like about democracy is that the population at large retains this power to a significant degree.
Comment by keiths — November 14, 2007 @ 7:31 pm
November 14th, 2007 at 9:04 pm
keiths wrote:
Category error again, Keith. You are substituting objects for concepts to make points against the concepts. The two are not the same and cannot logically be treated as such.
5mm wrote,
Which I interpret as value judgments (because … is good) about human behavior. Understand I don't agree with 5mm's examples as explicit moral statements, but rather I see the moral aspect as implicit: "we ought to seek to know the truth about reality as we experience it" Impractical theories by definition cannot illuminate reality. Theories should be practical because impractical theories have no explanatory value.
Scientific has better explanatory power about the physical world because it is by nature limited to describing the properties of objects. It is preferred and 'good' because we constructed it to understand the mechanics of the objects we experience. To bring in explanations which invoke mechanisms we cannot quantify or detect lends no power to illuminate the true nature of the object in question. Again, it is that "we ought to seek to know the truth about reality…" The truth is righteous.
Comment by todd — November 14, 2007 @ 9:04 pm
November 14th, 2007 at 10:25 pm
Mark Frank wrote:
Put me down as a "˜witty' vote in that case.
That's not much of a point in my estimation, given that I'm not aware of anyone arguing that the grounds are not different. One may as well say that one's grounds for thinking that grass is green are different from those for thinking that Bush is warmonger.
Yes, I've noticed.
You're missing a subtle ambiguity here. If everyone agreed that X is fascinating, the meaning of the sentence "X is fascinating" might be intended and rendered as, "It's an objective fact that X fascinates". This in turn might be intended and rendered as, "It's an objective fact about X that it has a property that makes for fascination". Analogously, "X is morally wrong" may be intended and rendered as, "It's an objective fact about X that it has a property that makes for being morally wrong". In the fascination-making property case, the ambiguity arises because the relevant intended property might be that one, or it might the different one: the property of fascinating me. There is no such first-person directed property in the wrong-making property case. The word "˜wrong' used in its moral sense simply does not mean (in standard usage) wrong-for-me. When we say torture is wrong, we do not mean 'wrong-for-me'. There is no such predicate with the latter meaning used in moral contexts outside of moral philosophy debates. It's a philosopher's invention, not a meaning used in normal life.
I don't regard proof as an appropriate or helpful term here. For any statement about some X or other, all we do to establish its truth or falsehood is to employ reason and experience. If someone stubbornly denies that grass is green, one ends up appealing to basic experiences of, and basic reasoning about, the world. But pointing to the ultimately first-person character of all experiencing and reasoning is simply not remotely enough to establish that "Grass is green" fails to state an objective truth. Likewise, pointing to the ultimately first-person character of all experiencing and reasoning is simply not remotely enough to establish that "Genocide is immoral" fails to state an objective truth.
This isn't right. One can very coherently and sensibly say, "Abortion is morally wrong, but I believe it should be legal, and I don't desire to stop others doing it, nor do I desire that they don't do it if their conscientious judgement differs from mine". You make it sound as if having firm moral beliefs entails having authoritarian desires. It does not. This is a common confusion, but a confusion nonetheless.
It's not incompatible. First, someone might think murdering prostitutes is a good thing, but have no desire to murder prostitutes, and no desire that others murder prostitutes, perhaps because the person believes or hopes that there are no prostitutes. As stunney pointed out on another thread, desires and beliefs create intensional contexts and are mutually sensitive. Someone might desire Romney to be president and think that electing a Mormon as president would be a disaster for America, would be a sin crying out to God for punisment if it happened, and happily vote for Romney, all the while not knowing that Romney's a Mormon.
Second, you may be aware that people misbehave. I may believe that gossiping is immoral, love gossip, gossip constantly, elicit and encourage gossip, all without failing to believe that gossip is wrong.
That very obviously begs the question against the realist about moral facts.
If you're a Bridge addict and I'm your spouse, it may well have implications for affecting our respective wishes and behavioral interactions.
It means "˜objectively smarter at moral philosophy than the atheists at TT'.:mrgreen:
I seem to remember you specifically asked stunney for his.
It doesn't take much of anything to generate lengthy disputes or to go off track. Such is life.
No it doesn't. My answer addressed it. So did stunney. But I don't want to get into who said what.:mrgreen:
Yes, I know that's what you're asserting. I disagree that that is an adequate explanation of the predicate "˜wrong'. I may overwhelmingly disagree with anyone who thinks that the Earth is less than 20,000 years old and disapprove of them writing books asserting that it is, without thereby considering them to be doing anything immoral, provided they're being honest and are merely badly informed through no fault of their own. I believe Dawkins himself said he prefers to think of such folks as stupid rather than wicked. And Dawkins certainly doesn't fail to strongly disapprove of their beliefs and creationism-promoting activities, now, does he?
This is just a way of saying that the common testimony of reason and experience is that it would objectively morally wrong for Bates to throw Mother from the helicopter.
Mainly the fact that they're about different kinds of entity.
Reason and experience reveal them.
I conclude he's off his rocker. He's bizzonkers, as stunney put it. Just as one might conclude that about someone who claimed to have been abducted by little green men from another galaxy.
Surely you would share my conclusion? Your real name is not Bates, is it?
Clearly. That mean's it's clear he is wrong about this matter. Objectively wrong.
Whether he does or doesn't is irrelevant. He is wrong in thinking it his duty. He's mistaken. It's false that it is his duty. It's true that it is not his duty. We are very, very justified in believing those four propositions. We are as justified in believing them as we are in believing that the Earth is older than 20,000 years. I would say more justified, in fact.
No, it's not just that. It's that his belief that it's his duty has, as a matter of objective fact, no rationally intelligible basis. If that is his only bizarre belief, and he is normal in other respects, we may be bewildered. But it doesn't follow that "˜morally wrong' means 'liable to cause widespread bewilderment'. If it did, the Indian guy who "˜married' his dog the other day must be guilty of moral wrongdoing. But it's not at all clear, bestiality issues aside, that going through a wedding ritual to a pet is any more wrong than holding a funeral rite for a cat.
Donald Davidson is well known for the 'Principle of Charity' when it comes interpreting others' meaning, and it applies here. There is a logical relation between attributions of meaning and attributions of belief, but this relation is, as Quine had previously noted, one that is indeterminate at the limit. A bit like the material world is at the quantum level.
But so what if he doesn't understand the meaning of moral terms? It doesn't in the least follow that what they mean is what their practical implications are.
If that were so, there would be no such thing as a master criminal. Yes, he thinks bank heists are immoral. But he robs banks galore because that's where the money is, and he gets a kick out of doing flashy immoral stuff.
The master criminal believes bank robbery is immoral yet he pulls off spectacular bank robberies. Are you suggesting he doesn't understand the meaning of immoral? If you are, let me suggest that your argument is not so much lame as positively paraplegic.
But I find it hard to believe you are unaware that people do lots of things which they believe to be immoral, and even encourage lots of others to do them as well.
I'm afraid I don't have the time, and nothing you've said promises that it would be worth my time even if I did have it. The same goes for the feeble witterings of Three Amigos.
Comment by Zoskie — November 14, 2007 @ 10:25 pm
November 14th, 2007 at 10:44 pm
mtraven wrote:
It's also called "being inconsistent" when done in the course of a complaint about being insulted.
There is. Stunney called this one right, as in so many other instances.
For my own part, I honestly can't think of anyone less qualified to evaluate competence in philosophy than mtraven. He may be in a three-way tie, though a good case can be made for his sole occupancy of that niche.
Raevmo wrote:
Actually, it's very possibly the easiest conclusion to escape I've ever encountered.
Comment by Zoskie — November 14, 2007 @ 10:44 pm
November 14th, 2007 at 11:34 pm
Keiths wrote:
That's not it. Your legendary incomprehension strikes again.
1) Anti-realism about morality being logically indefeasible does not entail the much stronger conclusion you draw, which is that moral anti-realists can successfully argue for moral anti-realism. By that flawed reasoning, we all ought to be solipsists, idealists, and indeed hold every logically possible position that cannot be demonstrated to be false, such as the position that everyone human called "˜Keith' is a zombie. It's flawed because 'logical indefeasibility' does not = 'can be successfully argued for', and neither stunney nor I ever said or implied it does.
2) Stunney's argument is not that one must be anti-realist about morality and everything else, nor that one must be realist about morality and everything else, on pain of inconsistency. It's that anti-realism about morality is not in fact justified by any stronger reason than it's justified in relation to naturalism itself; and so a naturalist assertion of moral anti-realism is incoherent. But it would quite possible to be both an anti-realist about morality and a realist about the physical world on stunney's view if one could justify both. He just denies that the epistemic basis for anti-realism about morality is in fact any sounder, upon close examination, than the basis for anti-realism about the physical world, since no basis has been provided by the naturalist for privileging sensory experience over moral experience.
Not amazingly, you're simply mistaken in thinking that stunney's argument involves any ssumption that your argument does so depend. His argument is that your side has provided no adequate warrant for rejecting realism about morality. His argument is not at all that anti-realism about morality would be justified merely if one's anti-realism was global.
So has stunney. Realism in a given area of discourse implies the logical possibility of objective error in that area of discourse.
I can't. But your claimed ability sounds hugely exaggerated anyway.
Your inability to think of a comparable way is not an argument that there is no comparable way. It's as worthless as the notion that a creationist's inability to think of how species A could have evolved from species B is sufficient reason for denying that species A could have evolved from species B.
Your logorrheic excess has been noted.
Reason and experience. Stunney, as I recall, pointed out at the time that we directly experience moral value and don't directly experience atomic nuclei. Somehow empiricism typically gets conveniently forgotten about by your side on such occasions.
First, you're confusing radical skepticism with anti-realism. Berkeley, to take one example, was an anti-realist about matter. He was not an epistemological skeptic at all, never mind a radical one.
Congratulations.
So is the moral fact that genocide is immoral an objective one, for all practical purposes.
It's not objective in the same way. It's objective in its own way, just as the fact that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is a play by Tom Stoppard and the fact that 2+2=4 and the fact that Quito is the capital of Ecuador and the fact that genocide is immoral and the fact that some organisms experience pain, and the fact that snow is white and the fact that many people believe JFK was assassinated by a conspiracy, are all objective facts in their own way, for all practical purposes.
Demonstration is at best an ambiguous term. It's also irrelevant. You're confusing demonstrability with objectivity. How do you demonstrate that you have a slight toothache or that most organisms in the universe can't count up to 123,098,987,324,543 without making a mistake (note the modal nature of the claim—'cannot', not just do not)? Regardless, there is an objective fact of the matter as to whether you have a slight toothache or not, and there's an objective fact of the matter regarding the counting abilities of all organisms in our universe.
As for demonstrating a moral truth, one relies on reason and experience of the appropriate kind, just as one does for demonstrating the truth that most people whose name is 'Keith' are not zombies.
Comment by Zoskie — November 14, 2007 @ 11:34 pm
November 15th, 2007 at 1:53 am
zoskie wrote:
It requires no special competence in philosophy on my part to detect incompetence in stunney. The nature of his incompetence is evident not in the contents of his arguments, but in his manner. Actual philosophy is presented in the form of arguments and persuasive rhetoric, not in childish, witless, and repetitive insults and deployment of smileys. The constant descent into insult is evidence of lack of either the ability or desire to make a cogent argument, hence unprofessional, hence incompetent. One can hope that stunney reserves this behavior for pseudonymous commenting on blogs and conducts his professional life differently, but we can only judge him by what we see.
Comment by mtraven — November 15, 2007 @ 1:53 am
November 15th, 2007 at 1:54 am
Zoskie wrote:
Okay. You claim that genocide is objectively immoral. Show us exactly how you made that determination.
Comment by keiths — November 15, 2007 @ 1:54 am
November 15th, 2007 at 6:13 am
1) The three amigos for all practical purposes assert that only that which can be empirically confirmed or has the possibility of being empirically confirmed qualifies something as objective, everything else is subjective. Since what is or is not moral is beyond empirical confirmation it cannot ever be objective
2) It is agreed by all parties that the assertion put forth by the three amigos is itself something that cannot be empirically confirmed therefore the proposition contained above is itself a subjective position. In a nutshell the position of the three is what we can confirm empirically is the least subjective and thus they deem it objective.
3 The three amigos presuppose the truth of their proposition that only that which can be empirically confirmed etc, etc, qualifies something as objective everything else is subjective.
I think it was Keith that stated
"First of all one must first realize that we all start out presupposing something including what we consider to be "objective""
And I agree and in the end the same can be said regarding moral objectivism as well as what we consider to be "objective"
4) Now how did Keith arrive at this presupposition? I think it was Keith who also stated
"First, do any of these people seriously believe that all sincerely held propositions are equally justified simply because they all depend ultimately on subjective observations, perceptions, and intuitions?"
Keith is asking a great question how does one go about justifying ones presuppositions? Well I would hope that Keiths used reason and experience and in fact that is exactly how everyone goes about it. Now we have an interesting double standard going on here. Keith deems it ok for him to justify his presupposition that only that which can be empirically confirmed or has the possibility of being empirically confirmed qualifies something as objective ,everything else is subjective. But Stunney and others are not allowed to use those same intellectual and life experience tools to justify their position that certain acts are objectively immoral even if they cannot be empirically confirmed to Keiths satisfaction.
5) The question is why? The answer is that Keiths presuppositions, his worldview, his metaphysics wont allow it. Keiths metaphysical position is that only that which can be empirically confirmed or has the possibility of being empirically confirmed qualifies something as objective ,everything else is subjective.
For instance Keiths keeps asking the question to the moral objectivists to show how torturing babies for fun or genocide is objectively immoral. What Keiths means is for the moral objectivists to empirically confirm that these actions are objectively immoral. And why must it be shown empirically because that is Keiths metaphysical position justified through reason and experience. However as I said when someone else , using reason and experience, justifies their position that it is objectively immoral to torture babies for fun etc, this is verboten because his metaphysics disallows it. Fair enough.
Vivid
Comment by Vividbleau — November 15, 2007 @ 6:13 am
November 15th, 2007 at 6:32 am
fmm:
Thanks. I did genuinely misunderstand this.
Well, of course, I don't have a realist view of taste. I am simply exploring how the arguments for the realist view of morality could equally well be applied to taste. So let us now see what a realist view of taste would look in the light of your correction.
The taste realist proposes that there are transcendental laws on the lines of "all sweet things are delicious". We observe that honey is sweet. Therefore it is delicious. This exactly parallels the argument "there is a transcendental law that murder is wrong, the killing of X is a case of murder, therefore the killing of X is wrong".
Now, I assume that you don't believe there is a transcendental law "all sweet things are delicious". And your questions "how do you know" and "why should I care" are very good points. I am in exactly the same position with regard to your moral laws. I don't understand how you know they are true or what difference they make.
Introducing the concept of a transcendental law of taste is an unhelpful, unproveable complication. There is a perfectly good account of taste – "is delicious" is a kind of short hand for "most people like to eat it, you should try it". This immediately overcomes the problem of "how do I know?" "“ we observe people liking sweet things "“ "why do I care" "“ most people like these things so I probably will as well. The same thing applies to "murder is wrong" with the added factor that if people disagree they will set about murdering people which is incompatible with those of us who find it unacceptable. While if a minority happen to disagree that sweet things are delicious they will refrain from eating them, but I can carry on eating them just the same.
Comment by Mark Frank — November 15, 2007 @ 6:32 am
November 15th, 2007 at 7:56 am
Vivid,
All I'm asking for is a demonstration of the objective truth of a single moral principle. Plenty of folks on this thread have told me that objective morality exists and can be ascertained. If so, why can't they show me how it's done?
Contrary to your assertion, I'm not demanding an empirical demonstration. I'd be perfectly happy if you could show, for example, that a world without objective morality would be logically inconsistent. That would constitute a valid demonstration of the claim, in my opinion.
So far no credible demonstrations, empirical or otherwise, have surfaced. Have you got one?
Comment by keiths — November 15, 2007 @ 7:56 am
November 15th, 2007 at 8:12 am
Mark Frank
I thought you'd never ask:grin:
I know with regards to the moral law because it's author has chosen to reveal it, vaguely in our conscience clearly in the scripture and vividly in the person of Jesus. You should care because you also are subject to these laws like it or not. You see this objective morality stuff is easy if you just let it be
Exactly! I see no evidence anywhere of the author creating such laws so to claim one is just silly and the burden is on you to show otherwise
Peace
Comment by fifth monarchy man — November 15, 2007 @ 8:12 am
November 15th, 2007 at 8:25 am
Keith's
About you car care example you are just moving the moral question around in a sort of shell game. you say:
and
Your advise depends on my goal but why?( because means should correspond with desired ends.)
Why do you offer advise in the first place? (because helping others is good).
You just can't get away from the moral aspect when you deal with others with out it you are just talking to yourself.
I am quite confident that when we get right down to it I don't share any values with you at all. Remember the whole unregenerate and total depravity things. The only reason that we can function together at all in society is the restraining power of the Holy Sprit he does this mostly by applying the moral law to you conscience.
I thank God that I don't live in a democracy but a republic in which the will of the majority is tempered by the moral law as expressed in the bill of rights.
Peace
Comment by fifth monarchy man — November 15, 2007 @ 8:25 am
November 15th, 2007 at 1:06 pm
5mm:
Scripture tells us that we must stone homosexuals, witches, and those that don't keep the Sabbath. It demands that we don't wear cloth of mixed fabric and don't eat shellfish. Jesus may have modified these rules (which is strange if they objective moral laws — how can they be objective moral laws one minute and not the next?) but made other demands, such as abandoning your family to follow him.
So I doubt you, or anyone, actually uses scripture as a source of moral law. Good thing, too!
Comment by mtraven — November 15, 2007 @ 1:06 pm
November 15th, 2007 at 3:15 pm
mtraven,
Jesus didn't modify the law, he corrected it and introduced the law of grace. Do you know what Jesus said was the second greatest commandment (moral law)? If you do know, can you argue against it?
Comment by todd — November 15, 2007 @ 3:15 pm
November 15th, 2007 at 4:25 pm
How do we know someone won't come around and correct it again? If the moral law as written in the scripture keeps changing, then scripture does not fulfill the role 5mm claimed for it, namely, as a clear source of objective moral facts. We're back where we started.
Comment by mtraven — November 15, 2007 @ 4:25 pm
November 15th, 2007 at 5:00 pm
Would you agree there is a difference between the question of an objective moral order and a claim the bible is the source of this order?
Comment by todd — November 15, 2007 @ 5:00 pm
November 15th, 2007 at 5:31 pm
fmm:
I would like to take this a step further – if you can bear it (I understand if you are bored out of your mind at this stage).
The hard-line Muslim will believe its author revealed a different moral law through his (unlikely to be "her") conscience and more clearly in the Koran and vividly in the person of Mohammed. How do you know you are right and he is wrong?
When you say I am subject to these laws – what happens if I ignore them?
Comment by Mark Frank — November 15, 2007 @ 5:31 pm
November 15th, 2007 at 6:32 pm
How do you know you are right about any controversial issue?
Comment by Bradford — November 15, 2007 @ 6:32 pm
November 15th, 2007 at 7:12 pm
Mtraven:
No one not even Moses claimed that the laws you mentioned were objective moral laws they were simply the civil laws given to a particular nation in the middle east binding to Israelis before Christ perhaps not to anyone else. They were always intended to serve as a shadow pointing to the one who would fulfill all law. This is elementary theology that you should know.
Mark Frank
Are you kidding me? This is a blast I get to share the gospel with atheists on a science site. I would pay money for this
Because Muslims recognize objective reality and the laws of logic our disagreement is merely a matter of empirical evidence. Which side is better supported by the facts of history ? If this is the standard I win.
However most non Christians (Muslims included)claim to trust the evidence only until it conflicts with their particular Idol. At which point they are quick to deny our ability to know any thing with certainty or to assert that the rules of logic don't apply to them or to claim that we don't have enough evidence to make a decision. We are experts at self deception after all. If someone insists on deceiving themselves there is nothing I can do.
Peace
Comment by fifth monarchy man — November 15, 2007 @ 7:12 pm
November 15th, 2007 at 8:51 pm
Just a quick pop in and pop out.
ffm wrote:
Thank you.
A large number of these Mosaic laws that atheists like to use as arguments are applicable in a societal sense, not an individual sense.
They were designed to keep an ancient tribe of peoples healthy and happy before the technology arrived that could tell them why these laws worked.
Shellfish and pork could easily sicken and/or kill you in ancient times. The mikvahs (ritual baths) and other practices were designed to keep things relatively sanitary, approximately 2700 years before microorganisms were known to be the cause of disease and 2900 years before medicine rediscovered the need for sanitary procedures.
Many of the superficially strange temple rituals used in civil judgements were meant to be double-blind psychological tests to ferret out the truth from the participants. Example.
That this knowledge was formulated 3000 years ago and passed down is miraculous in and of itself. It saved many Jewish and Muslim people (since Mohammed borrowed many of these types of laws from Judaism) from things like the Black Plague and it's one of the reasons life insurance actuarial tables back in the late 1800s showed that Jews lived longer and healthier lives than any other religious or ethnic group.
Comment by angryoldfatman — November 15, 2007 @ 8:51 pm
November 15th, 2007 at 9:19 pm
The claim was that scripture is a source of objective moral law. If you say that some of the strictures in scripture are objective moral laws, and some are mere health regulations, then how do you tell which is which? They aren't labelled as such, so if you are capable of picking and choosing then you are back to using your own personal moral intuition rather than a written law.
The idea that the Jewish dietary laws were primarily about sanitation is naive at best, and doesn't explain why Jesus threw them out — it's not like food preparation techniques took a quantum leap upwards around the year 0. And what about the stoning of witches? And mixing of fabrics? Here's a neat quiz to test your adherence, or at least knowledge, of scriptural law.
I'm getting bored out of my mind with this topic, so won't be posting here any more unless someone actually manages to produce an objective moral law and/or a procedure for figuring one out, as keiths has been asking for over and over for hundreds and hundreds of comments.
Comment by mtraven — November 15, 2007 @ 9:19 pm
November 15th, 2007 at 9:46 pm
Their objective nature- whether the laws are temporary or fixed- is attributed to the source of the laws. Of course if you don't believe in the source you will not believe in the objectivity of the laws.
Comment by Bradford — November 15, 2007 @ 9:46 pm
November 15th, 2007 at 10:09 pm
mtraven:
And for this, the tradition is the Ten (Decalogue). Four of which are specific to the relationship with deity, so cannot count as secular law. Honor your parents (they did the best they could, even if they were weak). Don't murder. Don't screw around on your spouse. Don't steal. Don't bear false witness (lie to authorities). Don't covet your neighbor's stuff.
The societal harm caused by murder, theft and perjury have always been rather obvious, thus rather objective. Honoring parents presumes the parents deserve honor, and in this day and age of rampant evil child abuse, that one's not so objective. We've also glorified envy, since it's the primal engine of conspicuous consumerism, "keeping up with the Joneses" and going into ruinous debt to live beyond our means. Our nation's built on that, along with usury, which also had proscriptions back then.
I've already listed the relativities for murder. 3 classes of murder, 2-3 classes of manslaughter (depending on where you live), and a couple of classes of homicide that can be dismissed outright or made misdemeanor. Doesn't make the social harm of killing your neighbors any less, it just means we recognize extenuating circumstances. Jews did too. That's why they had Judges.
There's the priestly laws (Leviticus) for ritual cleanliness and purity. Then there's the social law (Deuteronomy), and some of it's well-mixed into the verses across the board. Carrying a shovel to bury your daily duty served to prevent rampant dysentery, polio and all other feces-borne plagues. Bans on pork and shellfish prevented mass infections as well, since pigs are notoriously nasty critters with parasites you can't kill even if you burn it to a crisp, and shellfish concentrate toxins and e.coli. Equitable exchange for torts like letting your bull at someone else's cow, etc. are clearly social order laws. We still have some of those today, they're classified as torts and handled via the civil court systems. So what?
I don't see why you don't recognize the nature of the scriptural laws, or refuse to recognize their social value as objectified in our current codes of law. I also previously mentioned the oral law and subsequent Talmud, which is what allowed the Hebrews to administer the laws justly even in the olden days.
No, I do see why you'd refuse to recognize the relativity of laws no matter where they originate. I just wonder why you think that's a specifically religious thing, since y'all are arguing for the non-absolute status of morality in the first place. In my personal opinion none of it's absolute. At the same time, I do consider the absolute prohibitions from which the relativities are derived to be objective.
Isn't that question what started this mess?
Comment by Joy — November 15, 2007 @ 10:09 pm
November 15th, 2007 at 11:41 pm
Mtraven
Actually The claim was that God was the source of objective moral law and that he had chosen to reveal it vaguely in the conscience clearly in the scripture and vividly in the person of Christ. The old testament like the conscience points to the objective law only as it points to Christ.
John 5:37The Father himself, who sent me, has testified about me. You have neither heard his voice at any time, nor seen his form. 5:38You don't have his word living in you; because you don't believe him whom he sent.
5:39"You search the Scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life; and these are they which testify about me.
luke 24:44He said to them, "This is what I told you, while I was still with you, that all things which are written in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms, concerning me must be fulfilled."
24:45Then he opened their minds, that they might understand the Scriptures.
It's all pretty simple and objective to those with eyes to see. If this is still unclear to you you might want to check this out
http://solochristo.com/theolog...
peace
Comment by fifth monarchy man — November 15, 2007 @ 11:41 pm
November 16th, 2007 at 12:07 am
Mtraven wrote:
Translation: mtraven is unable to best stunney in argument and this upsets him, but being made fun of is intolerable except when mtraven makes fun of theists.
Stunney has made lots of cogent arguments at TT, but even if he hadn't, the last person I would turn to for justifying the claim that he hadn't would be mtraven whose acquaintance with cogency of argumentation leaves much to be desired.
Your reasoning is as bad as ever. I doubt he is paid to post at TT. After a dry boring day of teaching students to whom he must be polite no matter how poor their work is, it probably comes as a bit of light relief to lampoon the unbright types who post at TT. As someone who has to grade weak students' papers (in wintry Pittsburgh, alas, rather than sunny LA) I know and sympathize with the temptation.
That is true. And in my judgement he's pretty darn smart and witty, and you're not.
Mark Frank wrote:
Probably because my arguments are sound and yours are very flawed, as I showed in my previous response. My name isn't new, btw.
Your fear is justified, because it is at an end.
Comment by Zoskie — November 16, 2007 @ 12:07 am
November 16th, 2007 at 12:12 am
joy:
You are confused about what the argument is about. It's not about whether scriptural laws are good laws, in the sense of having "social value". Some are and some aren't. My point was that nobody accepts the whole shebang as objective writ. Since people pick and choose which laws they are going to follow, they still have to rely on their personal subjective moral intuitions. We're back where we started.
This passage contradicts itself in so many different ways I can't even begin to make sense of it.
As for the authority of scripture, or Jesus, why don't you pretend that I'm a Hindu, Confucian, or worshipper of the Great Bear Spirit, and while I may have a slight interest in your personal religious beliefs I in no way find them to be a convincing argument for anything. If you need to convert me to Christianity in order to win me over to your moral code or metaphysical system, we might as well stop right now.
Comment by mtraven — November 16, 2007 @ 12:12 am
November 16th, 2007 at 12:42 am
keiths writes:
It seems that keiths was born at the wrong time and place, thus depriving him of the chance to fulfil his true calling, that of the lead defense attorney at the Nuremberg Trials.:mrgreen:
Is it the Three Amigo position that genocide is not objectively immoral? If so, then one can see why evolutionary materialists for the most part don't go around with big placards on which is written 'GENOCIDE IS NOT OBJECTIVELY IMMORAL'. One can understand why Richard Dawkins does not use his position to give speeches and make TV documentaries devoted to the themes of 'Why teaching children about Jesus IS child abuse AND why genocide is NOT objectively immoral', 'Why burning babies for fun and throwing disabled children and elderly ladies out of helicopters is definitely not objectively immoral', and 'Why inflicting the worst torture ever devised on all who believe in evolution is not objectively wrong'. It might be bad for PR. People might start calling them bizzonkers.
We demonstrate the immorality of genocide using reason and experience. We, for example, point out that committing genocide is a major undertaking, and that it is irrational to engage in a major undertaking without justification. If a putative justification is offered, such as the idea that the Jews control international finance, we examine if that is true. We might find that it is false. If we find it is true, we ask why Jews should not control international finance. A response might be forthcoming along the lines of the idea that non-Christians should not control international finance. We can ask why religious identity should be a relevant factor when it comes to justifying control of international finance. This form of rational interrogation may continue, and errors of fact and inferential fallacies and inconsistency may be uncovered showing that no valid argument was used in justifying the large undertaking of committing genocide. However, it is always possible to make the principle that Jews should have no control over international finance and should be exterminated axiomatic, and to carefully devise one's entire system of thoughts such that no mistake in reasoning is discoverable. The process of rational interrogation might be quite lengthy, depending on how skilful the genocidal proponent is.
So now we must examine that genocidal axiom in the light of experience. Does it conflict with any datum of experience? Yes it does, in particular the experience of perceiving moral value in human beings simply in virtue of their being human. This perception of moral value is as firmly grounded in experiential data as any type of perception, such as visual perception. Add up the blind, the color-blind, the temporarily blinded in the dark or in snowstorms, the drunk, the high-on drugs, the hallucinating, the surgically anaesthetized, the severely myopic, etc; and then add up the psychopathic population, and one ends up with a higher, or roughly similar, proportion of the human population who have no or severely impaired visual perception than one does with the proportion of the human population who have no or severely impaired perception of moral value. So one concludes that it is more reasonable to suppose that the perception of moral value is generally veridical and unreasonable to suppose that it is systematically false. (And pari passu with visual perception of course.) And it is clear that the genocidal axiom conflicts with the deliverances of normal moral perception. The best explanation for the conflict is that the axiom is defective, not that the colossal set of experiential data that conflict with the axiom is defective.
It will remain logically possible that the axiom is objectively correct. But this does not help the denier of objective morality, for the axiom itself says in effect that it's wrong for Jews to be allowed to control international finance, and indeed that it is wrong in consequence to allow Jews to remain alive. And that does nothing to show that there are no objectively correct moral truths. On the contrary. It exemplifies a couple of putative such truths. So the denier of objective morality needs to think of a different tack. In essence, he must come up with an error theory of moral discourse as such.
Now, as stunney stated again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again, such a theory is logically indefeasible strictu sensu. So, one could in principle hold such a theory and also hold no other error theories, such as error theories about causation (Hume), or about induction (Hume), or about non-human animal consciousness (Descartes), or about mathematics (Field), or about matter (Berkeley), or about other people (solipsism), or about the self (Hume), and thus about the kind of conscious rational observership that evolutionary naturalism presupposes. But, although logically possible, is such a specific restriction of error-theorizing itself justified? Is there in fact an actually successful argument for such a restriction? In a word, no.
Thus, although restricting one's error theories to just the one (the morality one) is not logically impossible, in fact it is not rationally justified, in particular because sensory perception is no more immune to error theorizing than is moral perception, and because sensory perception cannot be independently tested; its basic reliability as a guide to physical truths is presupposed by conscious rational minds, just as the basic reliability of memory, of inner sensations of pain and pleasure, of basic logical and mathematical principles, of inductive reasoning, of causal reasoning, and of normal conscious reasoning and experience generally is presupposed. And likewise with the perception of moral value. A person who truly has no such perception, or an unreasonably restricted range of such perception, is not merely abnormal, not merely bizzonkers, but has a severely mentally disturbed, malfunctioning mind. By the Amigos' reasoning, such minds are as basically sound as the rest of humanity. In fact, by their reasoning, there is nothing epistemically deficient about someone who perceives no value whatsoever in anything whatsoever, never mind no moral value in Jewish people, because by Amigo reasoning, there is no such thing as objective value. Hence, since it doesn't exist on their view, nobody can possibly perceive it. But then why not just deny that there are minds, no conscious experiences at all, other than their own, since we can't physically see any more than value is physically visible?
Madness and absurdity that way leads, of course. But madness and absurdity is the Three Amigos' stock-in-trade. For the rest of us, other minds, others' conscious experiences, objective moral value beyond our own subjective desires, are like gravity or atomic nuclei: they're theoretical entitities that form part of the best explanation or theory of reality, and so are such as to fully justify their inclusion in really real reality.
Comment by Zoskie — November 16, 2007 @ 12:42 am
November 16th, 2007 at 9:55 am
mtraven wrote:
He didn't throw them out. He illustrated what they were for, to help people like yourself who had been confused by the priesthood into thinking that rituals were just as important or more important than respecting other people and recognizing their humanity.
LOL! My earlier comment:
You posted the exact kind of thing I was referring to. Thanks.
Comment by angryoldfatman — November 16, 2007 @ 9:55 am
November 16th, 2007 at 10:53 am
fmm:
This is where it gets confusing. I asked how you knew specific events were wrong. You said it was because they conform to laws. I ask how you know the laws are right. And now you refer me back to the facts of history i.e. specific events.
What am I missing?
Comment by Mark Frank — November 16, 2007 @ 10:53 am
November 16th, 2007 at 11:00 am
mtraven:
But that's not how it works here in the real world and you know it. Here we empower representatives of our groups to offer those social strictures we agree should be objectified, and groups of those representatives agree on which of those should be objectified, and then spend countless hours writing, parsing, re-writing, re-arguing, re-parsing and re-re-writing the codes. The empowered legal authority then repeats this process from within its structured organizational hierarchy to set down means for judgment and enforcement of the objectified codes.
Not all our objective codes are about morality. Some are about mere ethics, some are about equity exchanges for torts, and some are about myriad minutia of trade and business dealings, taxation, use and maintenance of public infrastructure, etc., etc., etc. Why do you deny this? I don't get it.
No one need convert you to Christianity in order for the objectified moral strictures to apply to you. Hindus, Confucians and Great Bear worshippers all accept that murder is wrong. Each of these traditions (at least the actually existing ones) also understand the primary social commandment from which our innate moral sensibilities derive – Do unto others (or its negative exposition). Confucianism has a great deal more regulatory and ethical minutia than other religious systems, and isn't about gods. It's about governance.
But you can stop right now. This thread is getting too long to follow too. No one's mind has been changed, no one's mind will be changed.
Comment by Joy — November 16, 2007 @ 11:00 am
November 16th, 2007 at 2:10 pm
Joy:
I completely agree that morality is a social process (although you are talking more about the legislative process, which is not really the same thing). People don't decide for themselves, all on their own, what is moral or not. They do it through interaction with their parents, peers, and society at large. Moral codes are social products, not individual products. But that doesn't make them any more objective.
It is interesting that you are repeatedly using the word "objectified". That is exactly what the legislative process does — it turns our vague and ill-defined moral intuitions into hard, real-world objects. We feel that killing people is wrong, but the law sets out as precisely as possible just which circumstances constitute murder or manslaughter or justified self-defense. We pay our lawyers and legislators and judges to do this, we erect great stone buildings with greek columns to emphasize the solidity of the law that we've constructed. So, we go through a great deal of effort to create the sense that the law is an objective, external thing.
But that's a very different kind of objective existence than stunney et al have been arguing for. They want us to believe that moral facts have some sort of Platonic, eternal existence that is prior to both evolved human nature and the human cultural work of constructing legal codes.
Who says I deny this? And what does it have to do with anything?
My point is that scripture does not identify which of its regulations are serious moral strictures and which are merely good government regulations. If you can tell the difference it means you are getting that information from somewhere else.
You seem to be extremely confused about what I am saying, what you yourself are saying, and what the entire conversation is about.
Comment by mtraven — November 16, 2007 @ 2:10 pm
November 16th, 2007 at 5:35 pm
mtraven, the author of all laws governing human behavoir would have us comply with his will. It is the contravention of divine will (be that a regulation directed at the ancient Israeli theistic government or one of the Ten Commandments) that would be the indicator of immorality.
Comment by Bradford — November 16, 2007 @ 5:35 pm
November 16th, 2007 at 5:46 pm
mtraven:
This is all that I have argued across two too-long threads to this point, and you are the first nay-sayer to admit that what I've been saying all along is correct. There is nothing in the course of our lives more objective than the law that can take away our assets, freedom and very life if we decide not to honor it. The US imprisons more of its citizens than any other nation on the planet, quite often for breaking laws that haven't much of anything to do with Biblical morality or the Decalogue. This is established fact, also as objective as objective facts can get.
Well, I am not as bothered as you (and the other nay-sayers) are about what other people believe. So I haven't been arguing with stunney, et al. about their rather Platonic conceptions. Doesn't matter to me or how objective the actual "Law of the Land" is. Honestly, if I felt I had to be all upset all the time about what American citizens who aren't me are free to believe about gods/God/Flying Spaghetti Monsters, I'd have very little time and energy left to simply live my life as if it mattered to me.
A total waste of time in life. Not exactly the same thing as wrongful theft of time in life, because people do it to themselves. But it can be very nearly as harmful to those who waste their time. I view that a lot like I view the overwhelming existential angst expressed by so many rudie-boy athiests who waste their lives blaming a god they don't believe in for the fact that they have to die. Being so afraid of death that you're afraid to live is endemic in our society these days it seems. And that is a measure of the magnitude of wasted lives that would be criminal if theft were involved.
Or, as someone once said, "Souls come so cheap some people give theirs away." Very sad.
The mindset you're complaining about is quite specific to a certain view of scripture. It holds that scripture exists in isolation from its history and traditions. Not that many thinking Christians view it that way, and I've never met a Jew who fell into that mind-trap. Of course, they had benefit of the oral law from the beginning, as well as the established Judges and their tradition per application relativities. People who hold to the literal and isolationist views honestly don't know much about the history and traditions.
In truth, the average believer doesn't have to be well versed on such things, and need not answer badly worded polls to your scientific satisfaction as to when the world began (or how). If they are suffering gross misunderstandings it's the fault of the shepherds, not the sheep. Christians have never practiced the requirements of the Judaic community, where kids are compelled to learn their history and traditions related to religious/cultural identity – including what was until 1948 basically a dead language – at the same time they start kindergarten. Instead, Christians have conceived of a differential judgment on responsibility. The shepherds are held to a higher standard, must not teach error.
That never stops the Jim Joneses or the David Koresh's or (what's that crazy Mormon guy's name?) out there from doing great harm to their personal retinue of ignorant, deliberately blinded sheep. Luckily that sort of thing is not so prevalent that our society needs to rescind the right of citizens to believe as they choose. That's a version of laissez faire that I'm okay with.
Comment by Joy — November 16, 2007 @ 5:46 pm
November 16th, 2007 at 5:53 pm
Bradford:
But the will of what divinity are you talking about? Thousands of gods have been postulated, often with quite incompatible wills. Could it be you are an atheist with respect to nearly all gods?
Comment by Raevmo — November 16, 2007 @ 5:53 pm
November 16th, 2007 at 6:42 pm
Could it be that he feels that this one is more reasonable (for various reasons) than the other 'gods' that have been postulated? Yeah, that's probably it…. but no, you'd rather quibble over his negating the existence of numerous other deities, thinking it provides you some real estate to undermine the validity of the beliefs he happens to hold.
How Richard Dawkins of you.
Comment by Doug — November 16, 2007 @ 6:42 pm
November 16th, 2007 at 6:53 pm
All except one. With regard to all others we are fellow atheists.:mrgreen:
Comment by Bradford — November 16, 2007 @ 6:53 pm
November 16th, 2007 at 7:02 pm
Bradford:
Excellent. One more to go then. Just apply the same reasoning you used to reject all the other gods, and you'll see it's easy to get rid of the last one. You'll feel free, and no more of those pesky objective morals that prevent you from having a good time. Join us, and it'll be worth your while.
Comment by Raevmo — November 16, 2007 @ 7:02 pm
November 16th, 2007 at 7:11 pm
Raevmo, I've done all those things and usually to excess. That's my personality type. I've found out my good times come with good company. Good, fun people make for good times.
Comment by Bradford — November 16, 2007 @ 7:11 pm
November 16th, 2007 at 8:50 pm
Only if you substitute a bizarre caricature for that 'last one'. Sky daddy is easy to reject. The trouble is that many/most theists reject sky daddy too.
I'll do you one better: Thousands of the exact same god have been postulated with differences perceived between them. You'll notice that 'christian' comes in a wide variety of specific sects, and there's similar diversity in the other theistic major traditions too. But there's not 'thousands of Gods' in christianity, or even more than one (Unless you get into the Jack Chick view.)
I'm not an atheist with regards to any other religion's god, from hindu to theistic buddhists to otherwise. I think they perceive what I do (ultimate mind(s) behind the universe) with some minor to major differences. After all, we're both theists, so that much isn't in dispute. It's in the details, and sadly, also in the politics.
The 'we atheists and christians are alike, save but one god between us' line is like the FSM – seems insightful, until you actually bother to, uh.. think about it.
Comment by nullasalus — November 16, 2007 @ 8:50 pm
November 16th, 2007 at 9:03 pm
Mark Frank:
Nothing as far as I can tell. Christianity is a historical religion it is based in history not some mystical Zen contemplation. It is based on the fact that a poor Jew claimed to be the not only the fulfillment of the objective law but the God that originated it and proved it by rising from the dead.
It's called the incarnation and it's the center of Christianity and what separates it from every other worldview on earth.
Raevmo
The early Christians were labeled as atheists because the God they believed in was so different than the gods that were worshiped at the time. He still is completely different from them and the god you worship as well.
In the words of Bob Dillon "you got to serve someone." there are no atheists really
At last your real reason for denying objective moral law comes out. It had nothing to do with the evidence I could have predicted this as well.
Peace
PS I apologize if I sound harsh at times it's not my intent.
Comment by fifth monarchy man — November 16, 2007 @ 9:03 pm
November 17th, 2007 at 12:40 am
5mm:
Try looking into Mithraism, and the Egyptian myth of Osiris sometime. You'll find that Christianity cribbed its essential mythology from much older religions. As it says somewhere else in scripture, nothing new under the solar deity.
In the words of Bob Dylan, "something is happening here, but you don't know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?"
Comment by mtraven — November 17, 2007 @ 12:40 am
November 17th, 2007 at 1:45 am
Untrue and a good example of poor scholarship.
Comment by Bradford — November 17, 2007 @ 1:45 am
November 17th, 2007 at 10:18 am
Mtraven
Thanks for the correction as you already know I'm famous for my poor spelling and bad grammar. It comes with being an uneducated fundamentalist who has little use for book learning
I thought the name Bob "Dillon" looked incorrect so last night so before I posted I goggled him and found that there was page dedicated to him on the internet movie database. I assumed he was the same guy.
That's the same level of resemblance as you'll find between Christianity and Mithraism so you'll understand my mistake.:grin:
Peace
Comment by fifth monarchy man — November 17, 2007 @ 10:18 am
November 17th, 2007 at 12:30 pm
5mm:
That's "googled", not "goggled".
As for Christianity and Mithraism, both Justin Martyr and Tertullian were so struck by the similarities that they blamed the devil for plagiarizing Christianity and introducing Christian concepts into Mithraism.
Comment by keiths — November 17, 2007 @ 12:30 pm
November 17th, 2007 at 1:41 pm
You can't plagiarize by using something that occurred after the event constituting the alleged plagiarization. In the sequence of historic events Mithraism preceeded Christianity.:wink:
Comment by Bradford — November 17, 2007 @ 1:41 pm
November 17th, 2007 at 2:56 pm
That's right, unless you can foretell the future — which is why Justin and Tertullian accused the prescient devil, rather than mere mortals, of plagiarism. It's amazing how willing they were to twist the evidence to match their preconceived religious notions — very reminiscent of today's Christians.
Of course the sensible interpretation is that Christianity borrowed elements from Mithraism, rather than vice-versa.
Comment by keiths — November 17, 2007 @ 2:56 pm
November 17th, 2007 at 3:03 pm
Keiths, you do not know what you're talking about. There is no evidence. New Atheists are very much like Muslim Fundamentalists. Very aggressive and always in attack mode.
Comment by Bradford — November 17, 2007 @ 3:03 pm
November 17th, 2007 at 3:19 pm
I see. There is no evidence, and so Justin and Tertullian invoked the devil to explain…nothing.
Does that make sense to you, Bradford?
Comment by keiths — November 17, 2007 @ 3:19 pm
November 17th, 2007 at 3:28 pm
Keiths, Justin and Tertullian were apologists, not experts on ancient history. Do you know what the "elements" of ancient Mithraism were?
Comment by Bradford — November 17, 2007 @ 3:28 pm
November 17th, 2007 at 5:00 pm
Bradford said:
I think we are starting to stray into a whole new area as often happens when the atheist is out of ammunition on the original topic.
But I would very much like to see just what Keiths has to say about Mithraism and if he has read any resent scholarship on the issue at all. To find someone still clinging to long discredited anti Christian arguments only helps our side.
Before he does so he might want to check out this from a student of this religion
http://www.ceisiwrserith.com/m...
Peace
Comment by fifth monarchy man — November 17, 2007 @ 5:00 pm
November 18th, 2007 at 1:48 am
5mm,
What I wrote about Justin and Tertullian is true and comes directly from their own writings. Even Bradford admits it, which puts him in the awkward position of arguing that two of the most prominent church fathers didn't know what they were talking about. They were mere "apologists", not "experts on ancient history", according to Bradford.
Never mind that Mithraism was being actively practiced during the lives of Justin and Tertullian. They observed the similarities directly, and found them so disturbing that they blamed the devil for them.
Comment by keiths — November 18, 2007 @ 1:48 am
November 18th, 2007 at 8:20 am
I said they were apologists. That means defenders of the faith. They were not historians.
They were disturbed by heresy in all forms. The forms of Mithraism, that evolved from the original invented centuries earlier, were heretical distortions of Christianity. You have your causality reversed.
Comment by Bradford — November 18, 2007 @ 8:20 am
November 18th, 2007 at 10:12 am
Keiths
That's how it is with us fundamentalists we blame the devil for all false religions and we view all false religions as plagiarisms of Christianity. We also tend to look for similarities in the religions of our prospective converts in order to have a common place of dialog to share the true gospel with them.
Today missionaries will often call Christianity completed Islam and say that elements of Islam were plagiarized from the church. Does that mean that Christianity is a descendant offshoot of the religion of Mohamed?
Peace
Comment by fifth monarchy man — November 18, 2007 @ 10:12 am
November 18th, 2007 at 12:57 pm
Here's something about Mithraism.
And one more bit about Mithraism:
[Emphasis added]
Of course the most pre-eminent contemporary scholar of Christian origins is N. T. Wright, with whose magisterial studies of the relevant material the Amigos show no familiarity. Wright begins his discussion of Osiris on page 46 of The Resurrection of the Son of God. Since that book is over 700 pages long and deals not only with the alleged Osiris parallels but with many others too, here's something a bit shorter to get your teeth into: The Resurrection of Osiris. The fraud, apparently, is on the side of the likes of Till. Wright deals specifically with this stuff in the first two chapters of his book, including the Egyptian mythologies. Paul, however, was a zealous Jew and would have despised such mythologies. Possibly he even suspected the first Chrstians of being infected with them when he was persecuting them and looking on approvingly at the stoning to death of Stephen. But then he encountered the resurrected Christ.
Wright's book demonstrates exhaustively and at great length the profound conceptual differences between Paul's Christian theology and not only Egyptian mythology, but many other mythologies too. Indeed, the whole of this book is really devoted to analyzing what resurrection meant in Judaism and early Christianity and in particular to showing that this meaning was absolutely unique to Judaism/early Christianity, and that the resurrection as applied to Jesus has no Jewish and no non-Christian parallels.
For a basic-level refutation of the contrary thesis, one might try Pagan Resurrection Myths and the Resurrection of Jesus by Leon McKenzie. However one needs to address the massive and powerful scholarship found in Wright's series of books on Christian origins if one aspires to treating of that subject as a serious student.
Comment by stunney — November 18, 2007 @ 12:57 pm
November 18th, 2007 at 1:32 pm
Aw shucks, it looks like I missed something of a Demolition Derby. A cold is not a good thing to have if you have multiple sclerosis.
Zoskie wrote:
Indeed. On their view, objective moral value or obligation is like a unicorn in not objectively existing. Therefore anyone claiming to perceive either thing must be mistaken (hence their need for an error-theoretic account of morality). Which will doubtless be a huge relief to sadistic murderers everywhere if true.
However, if there are infinitely many universes and if it's logically possible that at least one of them contains objective moral value, then objective moral value exists. (Leibniz used this modal reasoning in his version of the ontological argument for the existence of God).
Well, quite. We can't physically see minds, or the conscious experience of other people, or subatomic particles, or the curvature of space, or moral value, or aesthetic value, or our own intellect and will. But no-one lives their lives as if these things weren't objectively real, with the exception of subatomic particles and the curvature of space, which for the most part are completely ignored.
Comment by stunney — November 18, 2007 @ 1:32 pm
November 18th, 2007 at 1:58 pm
stunney:
Good post stunney. Addressing massive and powerful scholarship would be a novel experience for most NAs. There is a repetitive pattern to these debunking endeavors. Popular naysayers come along periodically and expound beliefs, not based on new evidence, or even new ideas but rather because of existing receptivity to critiques of Christianity on the part of the newest generation of atheists. They in turn get pounded by genuine scholars using a wide scope of available documentation. This reminds me of those who enter creation- evolution- design forums by regurgitating information from advocate websites like TalkOrigins without ever bothering to check the original papers on which opinion givers base their case.
Comment by Bradford — November 18, 2007 @ 1:58 pm
November 18th, 2007 at 4:34 pm
I've found N. T. Wright's views on Jesus and the resurrection (from the perspective of a 1st century Jew) to be quite original and fascinating. Thanks for the link.
Comment by Guts — November 18, 2007 @ 4:34 pm
November 18th, 2007 at 5:18 pm
It's going to take more than "massive and powerful scholarship" to outweigh Justin and Tertullian's own words in describing what they thought. To them, diabolical intervention was required to explain the striking similarities between Christianity and Mithraism.
Comment by keiths — November 18, 2007 @ 5:18 pm
November 18th, 2007 at 5:20 pm
5mm wrote:
5mm,
You are aware, aren't you, that while Christianity predates Islam, it came after Mithraism?
Isn't it a bit more plausible to say that Joyce was influenced by Homer, rather than vice-versa?
Comment by keiths — November 18, 2007 @ 5:20 pm
November 18th, 2007 at 5:26 pm
Regarding Zoskie's last comment:
Paragraph #1 is a standard, gratuitous Zosko-Stunneyan smear.
Paragraph #2 asks the question, "Is it the Three Amigo position that genocide is not objectively immoral?" The answer is yes, as should be obvious to anyone who has read the thread. We think that genocide is subjectively immoral but not objectively so.
Paragraph #3 concedes that a moral system that includes a genocidal axiom need not be logically inconsistent, just as a moral system that includes an anti-genocidal axiom need not be inconsistent.
Paragraph #4 insists that the genocidal axiom itself is demonstrably wrong. Toward that end, Zoskie makes the following strange argument:
It's an interestingly muddled argument. Zoskie begins by trying to establish that moral perception is as reliable or more reliable than visual perception. At some point he seems to realize that this won't help his case. Even if moral "perception" were more reliable than visual perception, it needn't be perfect, because visual perception itself is not perfect. We therefore cannot assume that our intuition about genocide is an objectively correct "moral perception."
So he switches gears and argues that both moral perception and visual perception are reliable:
But this doesn't follow at all from the prior argument. In fact, Zoskie is reduced at this point to arguing that since most people believe that genocide is wrong, it must be objectively wrong. This conveniently ignores the lesson of the Adelson illusion, which is that agreement and even consensus cannot guarantee truth.
By the same logic, you could say:
And it is clear that the notion that squares A and B of the Adelson checkerboard are equally dark conflicts with the deliverances of normal visual perception. The best explanation for the conflict is that the notion is defective, not that the colossal set of experiential data that conflict with the notion is defective.
But squares A and B are equally dark, so the argument falls flat.
In paragraph 5, Zoskie argues that an error theory is required by the denier of objective morality. But look at some of the strange things he says on the way to that conclusion:
Well, of course it doesn't. Someone who denies that morality is objective is hardly going to argue that the genocidal axiom is objectively correct!
No, the axiom is concerned with the morality of genocide. It has nothing to do with international finance.
Paragraphs 6 and 7 argue that there is no justification for embracing an error theory about morality while declining to do the same for a variety of other things, including the physical world itself:
I have explained the difference before, in the context of the Adelson illusion. To humans, square A appears to be darker than square B. Yet we are able to determine, through multiple lines of evidence, that our visual systems are mistaken, and that squares A and B are equally dark:
1. If you cover up the drawing except for the two squares, they appear equally dark.
2. If you connect the two squares with stripes having the same shade of gray, you can see that they are equally dark.
3. If you use a photometer to measure light reflected from each of the squares, you'll get the same reading.
4. If you examine your computer's graphics memory to see what pixel values are being used to represent the colors of the two squares, you'll see that the values are equal.
For us to be wrong about the Adelson squares, all four of these observations would have to be wrong. And not just wrong, but wrong in a coordinated way.
Who, in their right mind, would argue that it's equally likely that the squares are different shades of gray?
Zoskie concedes that the moral "sense" can be fooled just as the visual system can. But I've shown how we can detect and correct for errors in the visual system.
Where, after 500+ comments in these two threads, is an explanation of how a purportedly objective moral truth can be established to the same degree of certainty as the fact that on the Adelson checkerboard, squares A and B are equally dark?
Wrong, on two counts:
First, a disbelief in objective morality does not preclude the existence of a strong subjective morality. It is perfectly consistent for me to oppose genocide vehemently while holding that genocide is not objectively immoral.
Second, healthy human perception is not perfectly accurate. A healthy person will see square A as darker than square B on Adelson's checkerboard. Correct perception would be unhealthy in this case and many others.
Because we have evidence for minds that we lack for objective morality.
Paragraph 8 begins with a smear, and ends with a tacit admission that objective morality cannot be demonstrated. Zoskie tries to soften the blow by claiming that objective morality remains part of the "best explanation" of reality:
And yet Zoskie has not supplied a single example of something that is better explained by objective morality than by subjective morality.
Comment by keiths — November 18, 2007 @ 5:26 pm
November 18th, 2007 at 6:10 pm
I'm not surprised that when faced with a choice between massive and powerful scholarship and spin that supports your own metaphysical predilections, you opt for the latter.
Diabolical influences are what enable those like you to find plausible linkage between two very different concepts. It's exploitation of the intellectually docile that concerned Justin and Tertullian. You've validated their concern.
Comment by Bradford — November 18, 2007 @ 6:10 pm
November 18th, 2007 at 6:18 pm
bradford:
Have we descended to accusing our debating opponents of being agents of …SATAN!!???!? Zoskie just got done calling us Nazis, I didn't think the level of discourse could get lower than that.
Comment by mtraven — November 18, 2007 @ 6:18 pm
November 18th, 2007 at 6:33 pm
stunney:
Glad you are feeling better…when I didn't get any response from baiting you I was starting to worry. Zoskie tried to hold up the banner of your side, but it just wasn't the same.
The stuff on Mithraism from the Catholic Encycolpedia was stunningly unconvincing. First, it's hardly a very objective source. For another, the attempts to draw a hard line of difference between Mithraism and Christianity fall flat — "Mithra saved the world by sacrificing a bull; Christ by sacrificing Himself" That is so totally different!
But the last passage was interesting:
This is what really was Christianity's key innovation — not its propositional content, which is incoherent and unoriginal, but its propagation algorithms. It was the first intolerant and imperialist theology, which when hooked up with the temporal imperialism of Rome proved to be a potent memetic complex.
Comment by mtraven — November 18, 2007 @ 6:33 pm
November 18th, 2007 at 6:37 pm
Bradford wrote:
Now I've seen everything.
Keep it up, Bradford. You're the perfect answer to Voltaire's prayer.
Comment by keiths — November 18, 2007 @ 6:37 pm
November 18th, 2007 at 6:48 pm
C'mon mtraven. You don't believe in such things. How can I insult you with non-existing entities?
Comment by Bradford — November 18, 2007 @ 6:48 pm
November 18th, 2007 at 6:58 pm
Thanks for the encouragement. Speaking of ridiculous though try this. Mithra was allegedly born when he emerged from a rock replete with knife and torch. After fighting with the sun he takes on a primeval bull which he goes on to kill. Obviously any New Atheist can see parallels of this to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John but here is the real parallel.
New Atheism is derived from Mithraism. Instead of Mithra emerging from a rock we have cells emerging from primeval soup replete with properly sequenced genomes and proteins enabling translation and other cellular functions. This primeval cell multiplies countless times and evolves into Keiths, Dawkins et al. They then take on the Son of God and slay religion. This derivative account is more plausible.:wink:
Comment by Bradford — November 18, 2007 @ 6:58 pm
November 18th, 2007 at 7:48 pm
keiths
from the link I posted :
The Roman god Mithras has an ancestor in the Persian god Mithra. The worship of this Persian deity can be traced to at least 2000 BCE, and continues today. Mithra is a god of justice, truth, and light, and a helper in the battle against evil.
Mithra and Mithras are not, however, the same deity, except in name. The exact nature of the connection between the two is still debated, but Clauss states the general attitude of Mithraic scholars quite succinctly: "We cannot account for Roman Mithras in terms borrowed from Persian Mitra" (p. 7). This is a position based on the fact that the defining characteristics of Roman Mithraism – small groups, initiations, masculine exclusivity, underground worship, the god killing a bull, astrological symbolism – aren't found in the Persian worship of Mithra. Roman Mithraism can therefore not be said to date back to 2000 BCE; it was a new religion that appears rather suddenly in the Roman empire.
When did it appear? Here is a hard truth: the earliest Mithraic artifact is dated to about 90 CE (Clauss, p. 21). Let me repeat that date: 90 CE.
This date doesn't require much comment. It shows something that may seem radical: any influence between Mithraism and Christianity would have had to have flowed from Christianity to Mithraism, rather than the other way round. Mithraism is not, in fact, a pre-Christian religion.
End quote
I don't mind discussing this stuff with you but it would be nice if you at least knew what you were talking about
Peace
Comment by fifth monarchy man — November 18, 2007 @ 7:48 pm
November 18th, 2007 at 9:40 pm
Hola los tres amigos. Han empezado leer The Design Matrix? Take a break from your religious wars and start on your homework assignment.
Comment by Bradford — November 18, 2007 @ 9:40 pm
November 18th, 2007 at 10:05 pm
keiths wrote:
It's not a smear. Your statement was one that a lead defense attorney at the Nuremberg Trials could well have asked. You sound merely embarrassed by the implications of your own position.
And so you should be.
Yes, which makes it all the stranger that you don't wear t-shirts stating your belief that it is not objectively immoral, and that genocide could easily be the subjectively morally right thing to do. Are you not a fearless upholder of the materialist faith?
Your question asked how something could be demonstrated. One might demonstrate that a proponent of genocide was guilty of irrationality. One might demonstrate that a proponent of creationism was too. But it's always possible with sufficient care to avoid any formal inconsistency in one's belief system. But since this goes for anti-evolutionism as well as for genocidal racism, your point is useless dialectically.
I'm a she.
What a muddled response. At no point did I claim or even suggest moral knowledge is infallible. But if scientific facts are objective without being infallibly known, then the mere fallibility of moral knowledge does not preclude moral facts from being objective either. It's a simple point, I know, but that shouldn't be a barrier even to your understanding it.
Who's assuming it? Its being correct is the best explanation of the data. Same as with standard visual perception. In other words, what I said.
That's because it's not a deduction. It's an abduction. It would help if you grasped the difference.
Reduced? In actual fact, I explicitly stated that it's logically possible that genocide is objectively right. I wrote:
It will remain logically possible that the [pro-genocidal] axiom is objectively correct.
Conveniently ignores? Who said consensus guarantees truth? Not me. On the contrary.
What's your day job — selling your own handcrafted strawmen to farmers, perhaps?
Not in the least. The squares being equally dark is the best explanation of all the relevant data, and genocide being objectively immoral is the best explanation of all the relevant data. The only thing falling flat is you, on your face, hard and repeatedly.
That is what I said. Why repeat my point for me, namely that we could be mistaken about genocide, but that more than that would be needed by the denier of objective morality, hence the latter being no guarantee of moral knowledge being infallible? I thought it a point worth making, and it seems I was right given that, well, let me just repeat part of the present exchanges:
See what I mean? You routinely imagine that the claim that there is an objective morality must somehow reduce to universal knowledge of and agreement about it. When I explicitly state that objective morality implies we could be mistaken even about genocide, you seize on this as if it's a point in your favor. And when I point out by way of anticipation that it is in fact not in your favor since us being wrong about genocide is perfectly consistent with moral realism, you say 'Of course!' as if you were making a point in your favor. And you wonder why people make fun of you?
Wrong again. I'll quote myself again:
However, it is always possible to make the principle that Jews should have no control over international finance and should be exterminated axiomatic
Pay close attention to the bolded words, and the fact that this was the first time I mentioned the possibility that a determined proponent of genocide could make an attempt to defend it by proposing that its basis was secured by an axiom. So, wrong.
For us to be wrong about genocide being objectively wrong would require a systematic illusion much more akin to systematically mistaking black squares for white ones.
Who in their right mind would argue that it is never objectively wrong to torture and then wipe out dark-skinned people just their skin is dark?
Well, I suppose the Amigos do, but then, hardly anyone would accuse them of being in their right minds.:lol:
As has been pointed out to you repeatedly, all such corrections assume the basic reliability of the visual system. For instance, one needs to look at equipment even to get equipment readings in the Adelson case. You're pretending there are independent modes of detection and verification. No, you actually have to look at stuff, because the equipment such as a photometer or computer graphics memory might be faulty.
Among others, in the comment you're responding to.
How does that show that your side does not think the minds of psychopaths are sound?
Of course. But that's completely irrelevant to the point I made. You have to show that people who subjectively favor grisly torture and mass extermination are not on your theory as basically mentally sound as the rest of humanity, or else concede my point that on your theory there's nothing mentally unsound in loving grisly torture and genocide.
In fact, it's worse for your side than that. Your side has to say that people who insist that they perceive no moral value at all ever in anything (since it does not exist) are epistemically superior to those who claim to perceive moral value. On your view, the psychopath is correctly detecting the complete absence of moral value in human beings, and it's the saint who is suffering from a systematic cognitive illusion to the effect that every human being objectively possesses intrinsic moral worth. Your side is like the test subject faced with the Adelson test who declares that despite appearances, all the squares contain an image of the Stars and Stripes. I believe the word stunney used was 'bizzonkers'. I used 'madness' and 'absurdity'.
You're on track for the record number of irrelevancies in a single post. At no point did I say that human perception is perfectly accurate.
Unusual yes, but what's unhealthy about it? Penrose claims to have once "˜seen' a four dimensional shape in his mind's eye (I don't doubt him), and others have other remarkable mathematical abilities. They're not all autistic you know.
I feel morally obligated not to cause gratuitous pain. I don't feel anybody else's pain. In other words, have more direct epistemic access to my conscience than I have to other people's conscious states. So I reject your assertion as unjustified, at the very least prima facie.
If thinking your position reduces to absurdity makes me guilty of smearing you, then I plead guilty. But the 'admission' is anything but tacit. I have said, as has stunney, a number of times, explicitly, that anti-realism about morality is logically indefeasible strictu sensu. One needs to have a really severe problem of comprehension not to have got that point by now.
But so what? As I've said before, if the strongest thing that can be said for anti-realism is that it's as logically indefeasible strictu sensu, then it's right up there with solipsism in the panoply of extremely unconvincing philosophical positions.
Soften the blow? This well beyond a joke now. At what point did I say that the argument for objective morality wasn't abductive?
I did. 1) Throwing mothers out of helicopters is wrong regardless of Bates' subjective wishes; 2)our not just agreeing to disagree with those who enjoy raping or committing genocide; and 3) the sheer 'call the men in the white coats' absurdity of thinking that perceiving no objective value in anything is epistemically sounder than perceiving some objective value in human beings as such, which absurdity follows from your position.
Comment by Zoskie — November 18, 2007 @ 10:05 pm
November 19th, 2007 at 1:34 am
mtraven wrote:
You're definitely a master baiter, or wanker, to use the technical expression.
Not half as unconvincing as your stunning drivel.
First, that's hardly a demonstration of its alleged stunning unconvincingness. It serves merely to underline how risibly unconvincing you are.
Well, why don't we conduct an experiment?
Phase I – mtraven sacrifices a bull like a matador.
Phase II (assuming mtraven was a success as a matador) – mtraven undergoes crucifixion.
Mtraven's Prediction – very little difference will be observed between the outcomes of the two phases.
Test procedures –
i) interview with mtraven in his resplendent matadorish gear, post bull slaying, as he sloshes back some sangria to get over the fright;
ii) interview of mtraven's crucified corpse;
iii) conduct standard medical tests for signs of life on said corpse;
iv) perform autopsy;
v) pronounce results of autopsy, showing brain death as in fact having occurred long before the commencement of either phase;
vi) declare very little difference in observed brain activity between phases I and II;
vii) confirm hypothesis.
Its propositional content was and is unique, as Wright abundantly proves in the work I cited.
I'm a proud anti-realist regarding your knowledge of the first few centuries of Christian history and about your knowledge of the last few centuries of philosophy. My error theory is straightforward and very plausible: that you're simply a cretinous, deluded sack of ignorance.
You should publish that theory in this year's Bumper Annual of Atheistic Bizzonkerism. You know, in the special section on 'How Christianity Is Wholly Syncretistic, Borrowing Stacks of Stuff From Pagan Cults, Practically Everything In Fact, And At The Very Same Time Was Fiercely Exclusivist And Sternly Sectarian Early On, Which Sounds Contradictory, Which Is Fine Because We're Atheists And Are Allowed To Spout Any Old Horseshit We Like And Because We're A Bunch of Pig-Ignorant Wallopers And Richard Dawkins Is Brilliant So There, And Stunney Shouldn't Insult Us, Not That There's Anything Objectively Wrong With Insulting Us'.
Yes, that special section.
Comment by stunney — November 19, 2007 @ 1:34 am
November 19th, 2007 at 2:24 am
Zoskie wrote:
Can you demonstrate that bizzonkerists have objectively real minds? Sure, they may have them subjectively. We may use phrases like 'in keiths' tiny mind', or 'mtraven's mental states', or 'the Three Amigos think that their arguments make good sense'. Yeah, there's a language game played which makes apparent reference to bizzonkerist minds. But this doesn't prove, demonstrate, or establish that a bizzonkerist mind exists objectively any more than a unicorn does.
There may be possible subjective states such as appearing to see a brain belonging to keiths. But how do we know that this tells us any more than that a large pile of illogical claptrap is related to a small pile of neurons? Oh, you mean, 'keiths' mind' = that relation? But even this is simply a form of eliminativism that itself relies on a consensus of subjective perceptions. Sure, we seem to see a brain, just as we seem to see that genocide is immoral. But you've made the huge leap from 'seeming to see a brain before me' to 'there's an objective brain that really exists even when I'm not looking'. In other words, you've failed to rule out Berkeleyan idealism. And since Berkeleyan idealism is logically indefeasible strictu sensu, one must conclude, by parity of reasoning with keiths' attacks on moral realism, that materialist realism has been defeated, and Psychopathic Berkeleyan Idealism vindicated by strict keithsian bullcrapology.
QED
Comment by stunney — November 19, 2007 @ 2:24 am
November 19th, 2007 at 7:58 am
mtraven:
While the bull story is bull the crucifixion of Christ by the Romans is an historic fact. You do not stage a crucifixion as part of a fraud scheme. It's a little too painful for gamesmanship.
Comment by Bradford — November 19, 2007 @ 7:58 am
November 19th, 2007 at 8:06 am
mtraven:
LOL. You mean after Nero et. al. got through using Christians as human candles or food for lions? The conversion of that Roman emperor took place rather late in the story.
Comment by Bradford — November 19, 2007 @ 8:06 am
November 19th, 2007 at 5:04 pm
If you're going to boil it down to that level, you can find parallels between Mithra's sacrifice and the death of Julius Caesar (They saved Rome by "sacrificing" Caesar!), L. Ron Hubbard, (He sacrificed himself to achieve a higher level of power – Mithra-like AND Christ-like!), and just about anything else (The Russians sacrificed the tsar and his families! Tsar Nicholas was Mithra reborn!)
Really, at that point 'Someone/something died, and something arguably good came out of it' is the point of comparison.
Comment by nullasalus — November 19, 2007 @ 5:04 pm
November 19th, 2007 at 7:02 pm
nullasalus
You're right. It is an embarassingly inadaquate causal argument.
Comment by Bradford — November 19, 2007 @ 7:02 pm
November 19th, 2007 at 7:35 pm
Bradford:
How come anyone who believes the flimsy evidence and argument from authority that there ever was a "Christ", let alone the childish fantasy that he died for our sins, can simultaneously pretend to be so skeptical about the opinion of the overwhelming majority of scientists? I'm not a psychiatrist, but such a person strikes me as quite mad. No offense of course.
Comment by Raevmo — November 19, 2007 @ 7:35 pm
November 19th, 2007 at 7:46 pm
Wow – the denial that Christ even existed (which goes against the opinion of the overwhelming majority of historians, both christian and non-christian) mixed in with a criticism of being skeptical of the opinion of the majority of experts in another discipline. And a 'I don't mean to offend you by calling you mad for allowing this mental balance' remark tacked on too!
I'd like to know what a psychiatrist would say about this too.
Comment by nullasalus — November 19, 2007 @ 7:46 pm
November 19th, 2007 at 7:53 pm
Raevmo:
I agree with the overwhelming majority of scientists with regard to about 99.99% of scientific claims. I do not agree with the consensus opinion about OOL claims or whether or not life came about devoid of any evidence of teleology or intelligent input. Then again the consensus is based on opinion rather than hard evidence. As for other issues, that are not subject empirical assessment, (most of life's issues) I am honest enough to separate my beliefs from established facts; something New Atheists have difficulty with.
You're right about your lack of qualification to pass judgement on another. New Atheists share much in common with Muslim Fundamentalists. Both are perpetually angry and intolerant.
Comment by Bradford — November 19, 2007 @ 7:53 pm
November 19th, 2007 at 8:00 pm
null:
Oh? How many non-christian historians named Steve are convinced that the Christ existed?
Comment by Raevmo — November 19, 2007 @ 8:00 pm
November 19th, 2007 at 8:14 pm
Raevmo:
All the great historians of the first century, not only thought Christ existed, but said so. You are embarassing yourself with statements based on your ignorance.
Comment by Bradford — November 19, 2007 @ 8:14 pm
November 19th, 2007 at 8:26 pm
Food for thought:
1. Over history, as far as I am aware, there have been many accounts across cultures of gods performing sacrifices/dying and then resurrecting and/or redeeming mankind. These stories all occur as obviously fantastic myths with no actual historical backing. Then, a real man at a real point in history actually dies (after pronouncing himself as being "I AM") and his followers stake their very lives on seeing and meeting with him after his death. Could it be that all of these previous cultures with their dying and resurrecting/redeeming gods all understood that something very significant was to take place in the future and then propagated an ancient prophecy/understanding (drawn from the memory of the roots of all culture) as mythical variations of an as yet to occur reality.
2. Being skeptical re: biologists' claims about the random origins and subsequent un-guided evolution of information rich systems when said biologists aren't taking modern engineering and information theoretic principles into account is a healthy skepticism.
Comment by CJYman — November 19, 2007 @ 8:26 pm
November 19th, 2007 at 8:46 pm
CJYman:
You're so close.
Plenty of modern cults with followers willingly giving up their lives. There is more testimony that Elvis rose from the dead than Jesus.
Modern biology is drenched in engineering and information theoretic principles, happily married to evolution. John Maynard Smith was an airplane engineer.
Comment by Raevmo — November 19, 2007 @ 8:46 pm
November 19th, 2007 at 8:58 pm
Bradford,
Raevmo? Embarrassed? Please. What we're seeing here is some prime psychology-in-action. The more ludicrous a claim Raevmo makes – and the more insulting the manner he delivers it – the more solidarity he's showing with the groups and beliefs he finds psychologically comforting. What seems like foot-to-mouth disease to us is a sign of commitment and faith to Raevmo's tribe. Simple tribalism – though I mean no offense, of course.
Hey, this psychology thing is fun.
Comment by nullasalus — November 19, 2007 @ 8:58 pm
November 19th, 2007 at 9:18 pm
nullasalus:
So Raevmo gets validated by the boys with some virtual pats on the back and perhaps a beer to boot?:grin:
Comment by Bradford — November 19, 2007 @ 9:18 pm
November 19th, 2007 at 9:36 pm
Hello Raevmo:
You seem to have left out the main point/question: "Could it be that all of these previous cultures with their dying and resurrecting/redeeming gods all understood that something very significant was to take place in the future and then propagated an ancient prophecy/understanding (drawn from the memory of the roots of all culture) as mythical variations of an as yet to occur reality."
What do you think about that as an alternative explanation which takes into account all of the separate cultural referential myths about man's need of rescuing and a god making a sacrifice in order to accomplish the rescuing? Why was this idea so widespread? Where did it come from? Did it have a purpose? Was it pointing to something that humanity knew was needed and was desperately longing for?
Of course, your simple answers to these questions could easily be:
1. just a wacked out idea which can be blamed on evo psych
2. evo psych hardwired this idea into man's brain through the rise of religions (of course doesn't sufficiently explain why the cultures in question ever felt they were in need of any rescuing [from wrongdoings?])
3. it came from religion, as a by-product of evolution, which caused man to begin to feel wrong about doing things and aware of a need for "redemption" of some sort (This of course, brings up a point … if evolution is not accidental, then religion may be a necessary planned result)
4. no practical purpose
5. maybe, but can't practically be fulfilled through the ultimate expression of love
And, maybe after posting said "simple answers," you could just think about it a bit.
For what first hand claim?
"Rose from the dead" or never died? How many of these people were together when said Elvis apparition revealed himself? What significance does Elvis being alive present (did he ever make any godlike claims about himself)? And just curious … where is Elvis' grave?
Yes, and when information theory and engineering is taken into account, you discover that evolution is a necessarily guided, non-random, process (NFL Theorem and COI summed up in the measurement of active information) which converges upon pre-determined endpoints ("Life's Solution," Simon Conway Morris), by converting pre-existing information within a program/evolutionary algorithm into the evolutionary results seen around us … after being necessarily and sufficiently programmed (front loaded).
Comment by CJYman — November 19, 2007 @ 9:36 pm
November 19th, 2007 at 11:29 pm
cjyman
I would say it was because the passion of Christ represented the epitome of objective morality manifested in the real physical world but I said that already remember.
The Christ event was the fulfillment of objective moral law. It showed what loving God and neighbor really and vividly look like. Therefore Christianity alone has a "basis" for the objective morality that every world view must presuppose in order to function. To paraphrase Kant "If we did not have the gospel we would be forced to invent it."
That was the point of this whole long long discussion. Now how about we get back to science.
That is unless someone would like to know how to make this historical fact personally real in their own subjective consciousness. Hint it's called union with Christ.
Peace
Comment by fifth monarchy man — November 19, 2007 @ 11:29 pm
November 20th, 2007 at 3:15 pm
Zoskie says:
The difference should be obvious to all but the most Zosko-Stunneyan among us.
Zoskie's position is that we are entitled to assume that our moral sense is correct when it tells us that genocide is objectively wrong, because this is the "best explanation of all the relevant data". But the only datum on offer is that most people think that genocide is wrong.
Why trust our moral sense on this? According to Zoskie, it is because we trust our visual sense, and our moral sense is just as consistent.
The absurdity of this position is apparent when couched in terms of the Adelson illusion:
So one concludes that it is more reasonable to suppose that the perception that square A is darker than square B is generally veridical and unreasonable to suppose that it is systematically false.
The only problem? It is systematically false.
Stare all you want at the Adelson illusion — you cannot help seeing square A as darker. It takes other lines of evidence to convince a person that the squares are really the same shade of gray.
What are the analogous "other lines of evidence" that tell us whether we are correct in seeing genocide as objectively immoral?
Comment by keiths — November 20, 2007 @ 3:15 pm
November 20th, 2007 at 5:31 pm
Last night a rather obvious point dawned on me which I think addresses the Stunney/Zoskie argument. I don't really want another stream of abuse but it seems so fundamental I can't resist it.
There is a difference between uncertainty and subjectivity. Most people are uncertain about whether there is life on Mars or where Madeline McCann is – but whatever the answer is – it is objectively true. Most people who have tried it (I haven't), think skiiing is exciting. So when someone says skiing is exciting they are pretty certain it is true. But the statement "skiiing is exciting" is subjective. The reason it is subjective is nothing to do with the quality of the evidence. It is to do with the meaning of the statement.
The way to compare the subjectivity or objectivity of moral statements with the subjectivity or objectivity of other types of statement is not to compare the amount of agreement or the certainty with which we believe them to be true. It is to analyse what moral statements mean.
Comment by Mark Frank — November 20, 2007 @ 5:31 pm
November 20th, 2007 at 6:08 pm
Mark Frank:
Mark, what moral statements mean is itself subject to ambiguous interpretations. In the end we cannot attribute a certainty to a conclusion unless we both share an agreement as to what constitutes a cause and effect reality. What appears to be subjective to you may be so because you are unable to perceive its objective existence. For example, you cite things like taste as subjective experiences. I like vanilla and you like chocolate. It seems subjective at first glance does it not? But if it is analyzed from a genetic perspective it may not be so subjective. It may be a matter of a codon difference in our respective genes.
Comment by Bradford — November 20, 2007 @ 6:08 pm
November 20th, 2007 at 6:26 pm
Bradford,
Whether there is an absolute morality is quite independent of whether we are genetically inclined to think that there is.
Comment by keiths — November 20, 2007 @ 6:26 pm
November 20th, 2007 at 6:26 pm
The reason why the statement "skiing is exciting" is subjective is because it is a statement about me. When someone says "murder is wrong" they are not intending to make a statement about themselves, they are intending to state a matter of fact belonging to "the public domain", so to speak.
Comment by Brian Killian — November 20, 2007 @ 6:26 pm
November 20th, 2007 at 6:35 pm
Keiths:
You missed my point probably because you have not followed previous exchanges between me and Mark wherein he used examples of personal experiences to argue for subjectivity. Absolute morality would not depend on my perception or inablity to perceive. It is the latter that you seem to be overlooking. Something can exist independently of our ability to perceive it. Your assessment of objectivity is itself subjective.
Comment by Bradford — November 20, 2007 @ 6:35 pm
November 20th, 2007 at 6:42 pm
Right Brian. They are referencing an abstract concept that exists independently of our liking or disliking it. Even if one commits a murder he can still hold to the objectivity of the standard itself. In fact a willingness to abide by a standard we do not personally like or acknowledge its legitimate authority to mete out punishment to us when we trangress it, illustrates the non-subjective nature of the standard.
Comment by Bradford — November 20, 2007 @ 6:42 pm
November 20th, 2007 at 7:04 pm
Bradford,
You are the one who pointed out that subjective preferences may have a basis in objective reality:
This is true, but you are confusing a fact about a person's beliefs with the content of those beliefs. It is an objective fact that I think genocide is immoral. It may even be an objective fact that my genes cause me to think this. But neither of those facts establish that genocide itself is objectively immoral.
Of course, which is why I've said that I think that either objective morality doesn't exist, or else it does exist but is inaccessible to us. My point is that for practical purposes, these are equivalent, because in either case we have no way of hewing to the objective standard.
All thought and experience is subjective at root. Something becomes objective because it is supported by a network of independent observations and inferences — like the multiple lines of evidence that tell us, objectively, that our visual systems are mistaken when they tell us that square A is darker than square B on the Adelson checkerboard.
Comment by keiths — November 20, 2007 @ 7:04 pm
November 20th, 2007 at 7:13 pm
Bradford wrote:
I think I understand what that was supposed to mean.
Plenty of people pay income tax, even though they neither like doing so nor acknowledge the government's authority to collect it.
Does this mean that paying your income tax is objectively obligatory?
Comment by keiths — November 20, 2007 @ 7:13 pm
November 20th, 2007 at 7:49 pm
Keiths:
I went to the dictionary to see how morality is defined. Based on the definitions I see no reason why, in principle, it cannot be viewed as objective.
Why do you think it is not possible for me or anyone else for that matter to support a claim to the immorality of genocide with "a network of independent observations and inferences?"
This confuses objectivity with plausible interpretations. For example, science is replete with examples of theories derived from what we like to consider objective observations producing resulting data. Theories are then subsequently revised based on new perspectives and new data. Different conclusions but all "objectively" arrived at data from start to finish. There is a standard I can present by which I would argue the obligatory nature of paying taxes. It could be supported by independent observations and data.
Comment by Bradford — November 20, 2007 @ 7:49 pm
November 20th, 2007 at 8:29 pm
Hey all
Keiths
Do you believe that my argument that objective morality is accessible to us through the Incarnation is logically coherent? If not why not ?
You may disagree that the life death and resurrection of Jesus actually happened but you must agree that these things are subject to empirical investigation just like the Adelson checkerboard. If Jesus truly was the fulfillment of objective morality as he claimed to be then objective morality is accessible to us right?
Do the atheists here at least understand what I'm saying?
Peace
Comment by fifth monarchy man — November 20, 2007 @ 8:29 pm
November 21st, 2007 at 4:04 am
Bradford
Brian
You both have moved the debate on to the meaning of moral statements. I agree. That's exactly what I think this debate should be about. My point was to address the Stunney/Zoskie argument that moral statements are at least as well supported as other types of statement – which may be true but is irrelevant to the subjective/objective issue.
As Zoskie pointed out way back – a statement such as "skiing is exciting" can be interpreted as equivalent to "I find skiing exciting" or it can be interpreted more broadly to mean something equivalent to "people would find skiing exciting if they only knew what it was really like". (Imagine it spoken in the context where you have to decide whether skiiing should be an Olympic sport or get television coverage at the expense of another sport). This second context is "in the public domain" but it is still subjective in the sense that the final proof of its truth is that people do find it exciting. I believe moral statements are very close to this second context. "Abortion is wrong" is roughly equivalent to "most people would find abortion abhorrent if they only knew what is was all about it". There is also an element of "let's all try to prevent it, other things being equal".
Bradford writes:
I am not fooling myself that I will ever convince you. But imagine a real skiing fanatic saying that "skiing is more exciting than tiddlywinks that is just a fact about skiing that exists independently of whatever we think about it".
Comment by Mark Frank — November 21, 2007 @ 4:04 am
November 21st, 2007 at 11:36 am
They are referencing an abstract concept that exists independently of our liking or disliking it. Even if one commits a murder he can still hold to the objectivity of the standard itself.
His reaction to skiing is a fact. Skiing does exist independently but has different characteristics than the fanatic's emotional feedback caused by the skiing. These are two independent entities. The object itself- in this case skiing- and the description of a reaction to an object.
Comment by Bradford — November 21, 2007 @ 11:36 am
November 21st, 2007 at 2:15 pm
Brian Killian wrote:
I had previously pointed this out to Mark Frank, as per this passage:
I guess it doesn't matter how often one points out the other side's confusions and mistakes. Another case in point being keiths. He wrote:
Why he cannot help distorting my position is not much of a mystery, of course. I told him before that I'm not assuming that our moral sense is correct. I told him before that I conclude that it's basically (but not infallibly) correct on the the basis of an abductive inference. He doesn't seem to understand the difference between comparing and evaluating competing hypotheses with respect to explaining a set of data (abductive reasoning), and just assuming that one of the proposed hypotheses is true.
That is not the only datum. I specifically mentioned the lack of adequate justification for such a large undertaking as committing genocide. I specifically mentioned inconsistency and other forms of irrationality that a rational interrogation of proponents of genocide usually and easily tends to reveal.
Keiths appears to have an extraordinarily severe problem with basic comprehension. As has been pointed out to him repeatedly, all such conclusions regarding the Adelson illusion assume the basic reliability of human vision. For instance, one needs to look at equipment even to get equipment readings in the Adelson case. Keiths is pretending there are independent modes of detection and verification in that case. No, you actually have to look at stuff, because the equipment such as a photometer or computer graphics memory might be faulty.
Stare all you want at the photometer readings. You cannot help seeing them as giving a certain reading. All other lines of evidence presuppose the basic reliability of visual perception, and are logically dependent on that presupposition.
He really does sound like a defense attorney at Nurember, doesn't he?
There are lots of other lines in the genocide, such as proponents of genocide generally being guilty of relevant errors of fact, their being guilty of fallacies of irrelevance, their being guilty of inconsistency, their being guilty of making invalid inferences, their not even bothering to provide any argument for genocide, their covering it up, their lying about it, the strong correlation between mental illness and a failure to perceive intrinsic moral value in an entire large class of human beings (or even a smaller class, such as prostitutes), billions of experiences of independent consciences widely separated in space and time that judge genocide as objectively immoral because it conflicts with the experience of human beings having intrinsic moral value despite our subjective preferences with regard to some of them, etc. Lots of reasons and lots of experiences support the claim that genocide is objectively immoral, and this is best explained by genocide actually being objectively immoral, and not best explained by it not being objectively immoral, but merely a matter of personal preference. In short, reason and experience.
This is also what we rely on to come to the conclusion that the Adelson illusion really is an illusion, and that the photometers and computer graphics aren't just faulty due to a basic systematic design flaw which we've failed to spot because our visual system is systematically unreliable when it comes to looking at artifacts because we tend to be excessively proud of and have too much emotional investement in our artifacts, evolution only having given us generally reliable perception with regard to the natural environment, say. A bit like keiths, with his excessive pride in and emotional attachment to his Adelson argument, come to think of it.:mrgreen: See also the other two Amigos, and Mark Frank. They will not admit they're wrong, just as an Adelson test subject might refuse to admit the squares are really the same shade of grey. Some people are too stubborn, some are too stupid, and some, as in the present cases, are bizzonkers.
Comment by Zoskie — November 21, 2007 @ 2:15 pm
November 21st, 2007 at 2:42 pm
Wow. So far it has been argued (endlessly) that 1. burning babies is moral if your religion says burning babies is fine, 2. torturing babies is moral – yea, even "heroic" – if a godling orders you to do it, and 3. genocide is fine if that's something that makes situational sense. Because it doesn't matter what the consensus is, it doesn't matter what the moral law is, and it doesn't matter what the laws of men are. What's "good" is whatever an individual can convince him/herself it is. It's all subjective.
Interesting that all the people arguing these ridiculous positions are the same people who insist that Neodarwinian evolution is objective, absolute fact because 1. biological practitioners' believe in the theory, 2. Charlie Darwin said so, and 3. the provisional nature of science and its theories is magically made absolute by metaphysical belief-in.
So when keiths says:
All we have to do is play the word/concept substitution game. The assertion then becomes:
It is an objective fact that I think life (thus evolution) is a random hodge-podge of ad hoc constructs with accidental functions. It may even be an objective fact that my genes cause me to think this. But neither of those facts establish that life itself (thus evolution) is a random hodge-podge of ad hoc constructs with accidental functions.
So when the bizzonkerists tell us that we must believe-in their theory of evolution, they're just being evangelistic about an entirely subjective matter. Of more concern is their defense of genocide in this context, since they believe it would be okay to kill everyone who disagrees if a godling (like Charlie Darwin or his modern prophet) told them to. Since there is unanimous agreement among them, are we to suppose they learned this anti-realist, anti-moral philosophy in a high school biology class? Or do they save the ugly philosophy behind this subjective theory for college?
Comment by Joy — November 21, 2007 @ 2:42 pm
November 21st, 2007 at 2:53 pm
Zoskie:
Bwa ha ha ha. As if we needed even more evidence that you are utterly divorced from reality. Would it help if one let a voice synthesizer speak the readings to you?
Comment by Raevmo — November 21, 2007 @ 2:53 pm
November 21st, 2007 at 3:30 pm
Zoskie wrote:
I guess Zoskie missed my response to Brian where I wrote:
The rest of Zoskie's and Keiths's argument is about which kind of statement is better substantiated. It is all about the relative strength of evidence for moral statements and statements about the physical world such as the Adelson illusion. But this misses my main point. The question is not which type of statement is better substantiated but which is subjective. There is a massive amount of agreement that genocide is wrong and quite possibly less agreement that the Adelson squares are the same shade. Each relies on its own set of overarching metaphysical assumptions. But this is totally irrelevant to the issue of which is subjective and which is objective. The point is that the Adelson square issue is resolved by repeatable observations (quite possibly with difficulty). The genocide issue is resolved by people's attitudes to genocide "“ quite possibly with great ease.
Possibly Zoskie or one of the others will want to write something like this:
So, if everyone approves of genocide it then becomes right?
This argument assumes that moral statements are descriptions of fact. If you recognise that a moral statement is more like "if everyone understood all that is involved in genocide then they would disapprove of it" then the argument dissolves. This statement is quite compatible with everyone as a matter of fact approving of genocide at the moment. But it is ultimately decided by people's attitudes.
Comment by Mark Frank — November 21, 2007 @ 3:30 pm
November 21st, 2007 at 5:29 pm
Raevmo is summarizing the theme of his side. Everyone has his own realities and Zoskie's differs from Raevmo. Therefore of course Zoskie lives in unreality given that Raevmo has such a tight grip on his version.
Comment by Bradford — November 21, 2007 @ 5:29 pm
November 21st, 2007 at 7:17 pm
Bradford:
You are missing the point. Which is that the readings of the equipment do not at all rely on human vision, contra Zoskie's bizarre claim to the contrary, independently of any reality you think I'm living in.
Comment by Raevmo — November 21, 2007 @ 7:17 pm
November 21st, 2007 at 10:21 pm
Raevmo, Zoskie was responding to an example where vision was offered as an example. Nowhere did he claim that the information can only necessarily be transferred via sight.
All subjective information that we receive is absorbed through our senses. Yet, some of this information we know is objectively illusory and other information is known to be objectively actually as perceived. It is this later information which is used to judge other information as illusory.
It seems that Zoskie is saying, in this instance, that our senses are basically reliable and our ability to use them to objectively ascertain reality depends on the presupposition of that basic reliability of our senses (sense of sight in the referenced example).
Raevmo yet again proudly misses the point and makes a false accusation without even asking for clarification, since clarification and understanding of the opposing view isn't necessary … Raevmo's subjective reality (viewpoint) must necessarily be the correct reality.
Comment by CJYman — November 21, 2007 @ 10:21 pm
November 22nd, 2007 at 6:47 am
Raevmo wrote:
How would Zoskie or anyone else know that the voice synthesizer was working properly? By listening to it?
I think you need to check to see if your connection to reality is hooked up properly, ya daft muppet ye.
Comment by stunney — November 22, 2007 @ 6:47 am
November 22nd, 2007 at 7:13 am
Joy wrote:
No. Read the thread(s).
No. Read the thread(s).
No. Read the thread(s).
Comment by keiths — November 22, 2007 @ 7:13 am
November 23rd, 2007 at 1:37 am
It's amazing to me that Zoskie and Stunney, both allegedly trained in philosophy, have given so little thought to how we actually use sensory data to establish objective truths.
[Insert usual disclaimer about the logical possibility of Cartesian demons, brains in vats, etc., here.]
Zoskie claims, erroneously, that we must "assume the basic reliability" of vision in order to reach our conclusions about the Adelson illusion:
Yet we don't assume the reliability of our vision — we establish it, and re-establish it, on an ongoing basis.
Suppose I take a nap in the afternoon and when I open my eyes, the world is pitch black. I feel my face; there is nothing covering it. I grope my way to the light switch, flip it on, and still everything is pitch black. I feel the light bulb getting hot, but everything is still absolutely black. I find my way to the window, where I can feel the warmth of the sun on my arms, but I see nothing but blackness. How long do you think it will take me under these circumstances to figure out that my vision is not reliable? Do I have to assume the reliability of my vision to make this determination?
To everyone but our two philosopher clones, the answer will be obvious. We constantly validate our senses against each other, against reason, and against our previously acquired knowledge of how the world works, without needing to assume the infallibility of any of these. In the case of the Adelson illusion, we are even able to determine that our initial visual observations are wrong, because they don't fit in with all of our other observations and our knowledge of physics.
Secondly, our knowledge about the Adelson illusion is not limited to what can be derived from vision. As Raevmo pointed out, you could encode the photometer output as an auditory signal. If the photometer were analog, you could remove the cover and feel the position of the needle. You could even encode the luminance information as a discrete sequence of smells, ferchrissakes. All of this in addition to the visual methods I already mentioned: cover up all but the two squares and observe their relative brightness; connect the two squares with stripes of a single, matching shade of gray; dump the pixel values from the display and compare them.
Now look at all the things that would have to go wrong in order for us to be mistaken in our belief that squares A and B are the same shade of gray:
1. With the rest of the drawing covered up, two nearby squares of different shades of gray would have to appear to be the same shade.
2. When the two squares were connected with stripes of the same shade of gray, they would have to appear to match the stripes even though they really didn't — and even though there is no boundary between the stripes and the squares.
3a. The design of our graphics card, or of the software that reads out the pixel values, would have to be broken. And not only broken, but broken in exactly the right way so as to give equal values for pixels from the two squares; or
3b. Our visual systems would have to misread the two numbers. And not just misread them, but misread them as being exactly the same value. So now you have a visual system that not only mistakenly sees two distinct shades of gray as being the same, it also sees two distinct numbers as being the same.
3c. The voice synthesizer would have to be broken so as to misread the numbers in exactly the same way that our visual systems were misreading them. And not just that the numbers were equal — it would have to come up with exactly the same mistaken numbers as our visual systems, or
3d. Our auditory systems would have to mishear the numbers in exactly the same way that our visual systems misread them, and
3d. Our tactile systems would have to "misfeel" the position of the needle in exactly the same way that our auditory systems misheard the numbers and our visual systems misread them.
So we have a choice: we can conclude that our initial visual observations of the Adelson checkerboard were incorrect, and that square A is not darker than square B, or we can conclude that all of the other observations listed above are wrong — and not only wrong, but wrong in a systematic, precisely coordinated way that leads to the illusion that the squares are equally dark.
The improbability of the latter leads us to choose the former.
Now think about the moral sense, and ask yourself what comparable evidence there is that "genocide is immoral" is objectively true.
Zoskie took a stab at it, but failed:
Yet Zoskie admitted earlier that a moral system that includes the morality of genocide as an axiom need not be inconsistent. And all of the above merely show that it's possible to give bad arguments in favor of genocide; none of them show that genocide is in fact objectively immoral.
Try again, philosopher clones.
Comment by keiths — November 23, 2007 @ 1:37 am
November 23rd, 2007 at 4:23 am
Keiths
I see your point but you have conceded more than you need. What Zoskie points to is not evidence that "genocide is immoral" is objectively true – it is just evidence that it is true. The question of whether something is objective or subjective is not a matter of accumulating evidence. It is a matter of what the statement means and therefore how you decide whether it is true.
I know I have said this several times in different ways but I clearly haven't got the point across so I thought I would keep on trying in for a bit.
Comment by Mark Frank — November 23, 2007 @ 4:23 am
November 23rd, 2007 at 5:09 am
Mark Frank wrote:
Hi Mark,
That's why I said of Zoskie's claims that "none of them show that genocide is in fact objectively immoral," and why I've been careful to emphasize throughout these two threads that I am talking about objective morality, not subjective morality.
This may be where we disagree. Part of showing that something is objective is demonstrating that it has an independent existence "out there" in the world — and this depends on evidence.
Earlier you wrote:
And the reason that the argument has not dissolved after 550+ comments is that Stunney, Zoskie and others really do believe that "genocide is wrong" is a fact about reality, and not just a restatement of people's attitudes.
I think they've been genuinely surprised to find that they cannot defend the idea.
Comment by keiths — November 23, 2007 @ 5:09 am
November 23rd, 2007 at 10:38 am
Keiths:
I'm not sure what you mean by the phrase "fact about reality" but morality is a concept and concepts are very real. I can have a completely different attitude than someone else about the desireability of doing x, yet both of us can agree that x falls within the purview of morally proscribed activities. The logical consistency of moral constructs are key and reality is the existence of ideas themselves.
Comment by Bradford — November 23, 2007 @ 10:38 am
November 23rd, 2007 at 12:59 pm
Bradford,
The concepts "genocide is immoral" and "genocide is moral" both exist. The question is which, if either, is stating an objective truth.
Stunney, Zoskie et al. believe that "genocide is immoral" is a true fact about reality, and that "genocide is moral" is false, in the same way that "helium nuclei have two protons" is a true fact about reality, and "helium nuclei have no protons" is false.
They have yet to justify their assertion.
Comment by keiths — November 23, 2007 @ 12:59 pm
November 23rd, 2007 at 1:08 pm
keiths said:
Those aren't our only choices. We can also conclude that our vision is correct in both cases. That is, we are correct in seeing two different shades, and we are correct in noting that they both share the same hex value. This is consistent, unlike your hilarious self-refuting and contradictory notion that sense perception can both be error prone, and at the same time, an independent corrector of those errors.
I believe your conclusion that our visual perception is in error is an erroneous conclusion, which seems to rest on an equivocation.
There are two meanings of the word "shade" going on here. The first meaning of shade refers to our sense perception, where we see two different shades. The second meaning of shade refers to the hex value or some other physical correlate associated with it. So the argument goes something like this:
1) I see one shade being darker than the other (meaning #1)
2) but I see from their hex values they are the same shade (meaning #2)
3) Therefore, they are not really the same shade (meaning #1)
The constantly shifting meaning of terms makes keiths argument invalid. It would be more reasonable to say that our chosen physical correlates are simply not sufficient for distinguishing our perceptions of color. keiths wants to conclude that our vision is in error in this case because he wants to use the Adelson board as a metaphor for how he thinks his positivism or empiricism (or whatever you would call it) establishes objective facts. But I see it more as an allegory of the absurdity of materialism.
The checkerboard represents reality. Seeing the checkerboard represents our primary qualitative conscious experience. The hex values represents our physical representations of that reality. keiths represents materialism, claiming that our primitive concrete experience of reality is suspect and error prone, which can only be corrected in light of those physical constructs (even though they rely on those primary concrete experiences).
So the materialist, mistaking secondary abstractions for solid ground, stands on a wisp of smoke trying to dissolve the only real and solid ground there is.
Comment by Brian Killian — November 23, 2007 @ 1:08 pm
November 23rd, 2007 at 1:19 pm
From the explanation of the Adelson "illusion":
[Emphasis added]
Notice, besides the questioning of the very concept of illusion as applied to sense perception, the notice that it's not the purpose of the visual system to be a physical light meter, and that it's not the physical light meter, but our visual perception that is given the privilege of perceiving the nature of the objects in view.
Comment by Brian Killian — November 23, 2007 @ 1:19 pm
November 23rd, 2007 at 1:27 pm
Mark Frank, I still don't think you'r getting it right at the level of description. There is no difference between moral statements and other truth statements in the manner in which they are proposing something not contigent, but universal. Ayer saw it, and Mackie saw it. That's why the latter argued for an error theory, while the former was tempted to it.
Comment by Brian Killian — November 23, 2007 @ 1:27 pm
November 23rd, 2007 at 4:18 pm
I don't get this at all. Some moral statements are universal (abortion is wrong), others are particular (the invasion of Iraq was wrong). Likewise some scientific statements are universal and some particular. This is not relevant to the type of evidence that is used for each.
Comment by Mark Frank — November 23, 2007 @ 4:18 pm
November 23rd, 2007 at 4:57 pm
Brian Killian wrote:
Brian,
There is no equivocation. People seeing the Adelson checkerboard for the first time believe that square A is actually physically darker, not just that it appears darker. The illusion is so compelling that many people will not accept that the squares are equally dark, physically, until this is explicitly demonstrated to them.
It's a good thing my notion is self-refuting, since you certainly haven't refuted it.
I take it that your background is not in engineering, right? Engineers use error-correcting codes all the time, in which bits, all of which are subject to error, can nevertheless be used to correct each other's errors. There's nothing magic about it.
Your statement seems to indicate either that 1) you believe our senses are not subject to errors, or 2) you acknowledge that they are, but believe that they cannot aid in correcting those errors.
A single example refutes both ideas: the classic double-take. Suppose I'm in Munich when I recognize the face of an old friend in the crowd. I do a double-take — I would never expect to run into him here. I look again and see that it is not my friend after all, but just someone who looks similar from a certain angle.
There's an error — I mistakenly recognize the man as my old friend — and a correction — I look again and realize that he is not my friend after all. What's so strange (much less "hilarious" and "self-refuting") about that?
Comment by keiths — November 23, 2007 @ 4:57 pm
November 23rd, 2007 at 9:46 pm
Keiths
I'm not an engineer where I work certain process depend on the accuracy of our thermometers. These thermometers must be compared with other thermometers periodically to insure that they are accurate. This works reasonably well unless all our thermometers are inaccurate. We would have no way of correcting our equipment if this was to happen and no way to judge if our temperature probes were incorrect if this was the case.
Therefore we must send a representative thermometer away yearly to be calibrated using a master thermometer that is certified to be correct by the government. I've often wondered to what and how often this government approved devise is compared.
I assume that scales are calibrated similarly using the official kilogram in Paris. I wonder what we will do now that we've learned that it has shrank http://www.usatoday.com/tech/s...
Peace
Comment by fifth monarchy man — November 23, 2007 @ 9:46 pm
November 24th, 2007 at 1:00 am
Keiths:
I'll reformulate the issue in a way that will avoid the term objective but will nevertheless stake out a claim to an absolute position.
Genocide is not only immoral it is intrinsically so. The anything is possible approach to morality, that some have characterized by the term moral relativism, is at odds with both human nature and a rational prescription for behavioral norms.
Comment by Bradford — November 24, 2007 @ 1:00 am
November 24th, 2007 at 2:44 am
Bradford wrote:
And your evidence for this is?
So? Why assume that absolute morality, if it exists, must harmonize with human nature? Why assume that it must be the kind of morality we would rationally choose for ourselves?
Bradford, it looks like you're carrying a bunch of unwarranted assumptions with you, and you don't even realize it.
Comment by keiths — November 24, 2007 @ 2:44 am
November 24th, 2007 at 3:00 am
Genocide is not only immoral it is intrinsically so.
The intense and needless suffering brought about as a result and the fact that this contravenes basic moral precepts of a related moral code.
The anything is possible approach to morality, that some have characterized by the term moral relativism, is at odds with both human nature and a rational prescription for behavioral norms.
I cite the need to restrict moral options as consistent with rationality and a belief that human functions exist within ranges that are not infinite. A corallary argument that there are some moral options incompatible with human nature follows.
I'm arguing in favor of a rational basis for morality.
I realize more than you assume.:grin:
Comment by Bradford — November 24, 2007 @ 3:00 am
November 24th, 2007 at 4:09 am
Keiths – that is what I thought for most of this never-ending discussion. But it recently dawned on me that this to confuse truth and objectivity. You need evidence to establish that it is true that there is water on Mars. But the statement that there is water on Mars is objective – it is objectively true or false even if there is no jot of evidence. Subjective water would be a completely different concept
Comment by Mark Frank — November 24, 2007 @ 4:09 am
November 24th, 2007 at 4:52 am
Mark Frank wrote:
Hi Mark,
You're right that the statement "there is water on Mars" is objective, whether true or false. But it is objective only because the planet Mars exists objectively, water exists objectively, and the relationship "A is on B" has an objective meaning.
Mormons believe that God lives on or near the planet Kolob. The statement "there is water on Kolob" is objective only if they are correct that Kolob has an objective existence. I say that the statement is not objective, because no Mormon has provided evidence for the objective existence of Kolob. If we ask, "Is there water on Kolob?", we are really asking whether Mormons believe there is water on Kolob — a subjective question.
So while we don't need to know whether a proposition is true or false to establish its objectivity, we do need evidence in order to do so.
So far, Stunney, Zoskie et al. have been able to demonstrate neither that "genocide is immoral" is an objective statement, nor that it is objectively true.
Comment by keiths — November 24, 2007 @ 4:52 am
November 24th, 2007 at 4:54 am
I don't really see how any of you can stand having this interminable and unproductive discussion.
Meanwhile, the research on morality that I mentioned several weeks ago has made it to Time magazine, which means it's been reduced to a level where even the mentally challenged folks who post here ought to be able to understand it. Check it out if you are interested in learning something about how morality works, instead of just engaging in fruitless arguments. An ounce of science is worth a pound of philosophy.
Comment by mtraven — November 24, 2007 @ 4:54 am
November 24th, 2007 at 5:38 am
..Mtraven says, throwing out what is basically an opinion piece by a journalist, about a subject that is extremely controversial even among scientists. (More than the article lets on. 'Apes mastered sign language' is a whole other fight on its own.)
Not to say it isn't an interesting article, but you're not exactly bringing us fire here, Prometheus.
Comment by nullasalus — November 24, 2007 @ 5:38 am
November 24th, 2007 at 8:08 am
mtraven
I keep on thinking "that's enough", but my views have become clearer as a result. So it is not entirely unproductive, at least for me. It is also an important practical issue at a time when we find ourselves in conflict with cultures which do have fundamental differences about what they believe to be right and wrong.
keiths
If Mars turns out to be an illusion propagated by astronomers down the ages then the statement "there is water on Mars" doesn't suddenly become subjective. It remains objective and is now known to be false. Assuming there is a meaningful definition of Kolob, the statement "there is water on Kolob" is objective and almost certainly false because noone has provided evidence for the existence of Kolob. If there is no meaningful definition of Kolob, then claims about it are indeed subjective and this shows up in the type of evidence that could be used to support those claims.
This is all sounds a bit academic, but if you don't hold on to the difference between subjective and uncertain then you are in danger of letting Stunney and Zoskie look plausible. Zoskie can provide evidence that genocide is wrong and make an overwhelming case based on the unhappiness it causes, its unfairness, the many premature deaths etc. It is not the amount or quality of evidence that makes the statement subjective. It is the type of evidence.
You and I don't believe there is a quality of right or wrong out there independent of us. However, I am not proposing that humanity is under an illusion that such qualities exist but humaniy is mistaken. I am proposing that statements about right and wrong not like that. You don't determine their truth by observation but by making a case to change people's attitudes.
Comment by Mark Frank — November 24, 2007 @ 8:08 am
November 24th, 2007 at 9:39 am
mtraven wrote:
Part of it is that like Mark, I almost always come to understand my ideas a little better when I have to explain them to someone.
Part of it is due diligence. A good way to test ideas is to float them in front of an audience that is highly motivated to find fault with them.
Another motivator is sheer curiosity about the thinking of those who disagree with me. I certainly could not have predicted some of the arguments that have been offered in defense of objective morality.
And let's not forget the satisfaction of witnessing the discomfiture of blowhards like Stunney and Zoskie when they realize that they cannot justify something they've taken for granted, and that philosophical name-dropping is not going to save them.
Comment by keiths — November 24, 2007 @ 9:39 am
November 24th, 2007 at 10:23 am
Mark Frank wrote:
Not much danger of that.
In any case, I'm not sure why you think I'm not maintaining the distinction between 'subjective' and 'uncertain'. Ask me if genocide is immoral, and I'll answer yes. Ask me if I'm certain, and again I'll answer yes. Ask me if my morality is objective or subjective, and I'll say subjective.
But if you think that such an argument is plausible, much less overwhelming, then you're repeating Zoskie's mistake. We may think that something is immoral if it leads to unhappiness, is unfair, and causes premature deaths, but that immorality is subjective. Where is the evidence that unhappiness, unfairness, and premature deaths are objectively wrong or evil?
Correct.
But Stunney and Zoskie do believe that right and wrong exist, out there in the world, independent of us. You and I don't believe that. If we are correct, then they are mistaken.
But Stunney and Zoskie believe that statements about right and wrong are like that, which is why I have asked them repeatedly to justify their belief.
Comment by keiths — November 24, 2007 @ 10:23 am
November 24th, 2007 at 10:46 am
I actually find myself agreeing with Keiths and Mark about something.:shock: Explaining something seems to clarify thoughts unless of course you disagree with the explanation.
Comment by Bradford — November 24, 2007 @ 10:46 am
November 24th, 2007 at 11:01 am
keiths explains his reasoning to Mark Frank:
Well, at least keiths has abandoned the objective = absolute argument. Here he refuses to grant the idea that human beings can determine what is 'right' or 'wrong' under the classification that only humans understand or care about. These classifications cannot be objective because keiths will not allow for such classification.
In which case he has utterly destroyed all anti-religious arguments appealing to 'natural evil'. Because by keiths' own reckoning, there can be no such thing. Now, I happen to agree on that, having argued many times that the sun, wind, rain, earth, carnivorous animals and gravity can't commit evil because these things have no moral agency. No choice. No responsibility.
Human beings are moral agents with choice and responsibility. That is why we can classify things as 'good' or 'evil'.
Mark Frank wrote:
to which keiths replied:
Statements about right and wrong are conceptual classifications of objective actions and/or conditions in the world that human beings are responsible for. Responsibility for actions entails responsibility for the consequences of actions. Your poor abused dog may not know or understand that your beatings are considered wrong by other human beings on moral grounds, and will not complain much as he dies by your hand. But if human beings catch you doing it, you will go to jail and have to defend yourself against charges of animal cruelty. Even though the dog never filed charges.
Conversely if your dog kills someone, the responsibility for his action is yours, not his. He'll probably be put down as a menace, but if there is criminal or civil culpability it falls onto you because YOU are a responsible moral agent. This isn't difficult to understand. If you lose your freedom or your assets, your loss – like your responsibility – is as objective as the loss of the person he killed.
Comment by Joy — November 24, 2007 @ 11:01 am
November 24th, 2007 at 5:52 pm
keiths wrote:
Discomfiture? Keiths, you're confusing the fact that you are a deluded bore with the fantasy that you've discomfited anyone. If you can't even see how off-the-wall is the idea that the Adelson illusion even remotely favors the conclusion you draw, that merely confirms that you're much too stupid to be worth explaining your erroneous reasoning to yet again. And incidentally, it's a holiday weekend.
Comment by Zoskie — November 24, 2007 @ 5:52 pm
November 25th, 2007 at 11:53 pm
Zoskie wrote:
Zoskie,
If you can't answer my argument, just admit it. Don't make excuses.
Anyone else care to step in? Stunney? Brian? Todd?
Comment by keiths — November 25, 2007 @ 11:53 pm
November 27th, 2007 at 11:57 pm
keiths has been told 50 billion times that I think that anti-realism about morality is logically indefeasible strictu sensu, as is anti-realism about matter , anti-realism about other people, anti-realism about other minds, anti-realism about the external world, anti-realism about aircraft, anti-realism about the consciousness of non-human animals, and let me add anti-realism about keiths' intellect. He then says that I have not 'demonstrated' the objectivity of genocide's immorality. But by the standard of demonstrability that he is using in the case of morality, keiths cannot demonstrate the objectivity of anything whatsoever. He is as thick as an enormous cowpie.
A more reasonable standard of demonstrability will involve the two things I relied on when arguing for the objective nature of the moral truth that genocide is immoral, namely reason and experience. But because this obviously destroys keiths' completely fanatical and utterly bizzonkerist devotion to the denial of objective morality since objective morality is, as most atheists recognize, incompatible with evolutionary materialism, and since keiths has an equally fanatical and utterly bizzonkerist devotion to evolutionary materialism, and since he will repeatedly and obtusely miss the point no matter how many times it's made, keiths being steadfastly impervious to rational argument and even to comprehension of anything that is threaty to his worldview, there is as much point to continuing to debate this subject with keiths as there is to debating with an enormous cowpie.
Comment by Zoskie — November 27, 2007 @ 11:57 pm
November 28th, 2007 at 12:19 am
Incidentally, one measure of the braindead bizzonkerism one comes here to laugh at is that in a discussion about the relative epistemic merits of visual as against moral perception, an argument is advanced by the partisans favoring the former sort of perception, an argument which, if it tends to demonstrate anything, demonstrates the potentially illusory nature of the former sort, and not at all of the latter.
Comment by Zoskie — November 28, 2007 @ 12:19 am
November 28th, 2007 at 2:46 am
I am not sure what a moral perception is – but if you equate it to conscience then I agree it is not subject to illusion. This is because it is subjective. You can only have an illusion about objective things i.e. things that exist independently of the perceiver. If the subject matter is subjective you can't have an illusion. I can't have the illusion my hand hurts or a woman is attractive (I might be under the illusion it is a woman when actually it is something else – but I can't have an illusion about her attractiveness because that is my subjective reaction).
To anticipate a response – there is a difference between an illusion and a delusion (see J. L. Austen – Sense and Sensibilia). I can be deluded that something is wrong.
Comment by Mark Frank — November 28, 2007 @ 2:46 am
November 28th, 2007 at 9:03 am
Mark Frank wrote:
On this view, if some wacko called keiths (just to pick a name at random) perceives that it is the moral duty of all white teenage girls to spend 5 years in China prior to marriage torturing small children to death so as to discourage Chinese people from having children, there would be no illusion, no error, no mis-perception, no cognitive problem involved. Hmmm. An interesting view.
When you say, "I am not sure what a moral perception is", you may have a point. In fact, that may be the under-statement of the century.
Nonsense. Lots of illusions are about things that don't exist at all, such as an oasis in a desert where there isn't one.
Tell that to the folks with phantom limb syndrome—their pain is real par excellence, but not really 'in' their missing limb.
You're also failing to take account of the fact that the illusion may involve a mistake about the concept a sensation falls under. A person may experience menstruation, but not think of it as menstruation but as orgasm, and thus be under the illusion that they are no longer a virgin. Or to take an example from the entry on illusion at wikipedia:
In psychiatry and philosophy the term illusion refers to a specific form of sensory distortion. Unlike a hallucination, which is a sensory experience in the absence of a stimulus, an illusion describes a misinterpretation of a true sensation so it is perceived in a distorted manner. For example, hearing voices regardless of the environment would be a hallucination, whereas hearing voices in the sound of running water (or other auditory source) would be an illusion.
You can have an illusion about her attractiveness—that's what make-up is for.:mrgreen:
Again, you're confusing being an attractive woman—being a woman with a set of objectively de facto attraction-causing properties (she receives upwards of 50,000 marriage proposals a week, say)—-with being an attractive woman to you. Cf. Bridge having fascination-causing properties, and it being something that happens to fascinate you. The former property isn't relative to you while the latter is. And morality is like the former property, and not like the latter, in not being relative to you.
Or you can be just be deluded that it is the moral duty of all white teenage girls to spend 5 years in China prior to marriage torturing small children to death prior to marriage so as to discourage Chinese people from having children.
You may be confusing a 19th century English novelist with a 20th century English philosopher, the latter's name being Austin. And he is best known for criticising Ayer's sense-data version of anti-realism about physical objects on the basis that Ayer misunderstands how words are actually used. Ordinary terms such as 'table', 'tree', 'horse', etc, argues Austin, really do refer to tables, trees, and horses, and not to their associated subjective sense-data. So it's a cause for bemusement as to how you could possibly have imagined that Austin's work, the leading proponent of ordinary language philosophy and a follower of G. E. Moore (probably the best known realist and anti-naturalist about ethics of the 20th century), might support your subjectivist view about morality over mine, given that he strongly advocated taking our uses of words at their face value, and given that moral terms are in fact used as if they most definitely state objective truths. "Raping children is wrong" is not used as a basis for inferring merely that an utterer of that sentence personally prefers not to rape children, but that no-one, even wannabe child rapists, should rape children.
Comment by Zoskie — November 28, 2007 @ 9:03 am
November 28th, 2007 at 11:11 am
Zoskie
I only said there would be no illusion. I did not say no error or cognitive problem.
A clarification "“ when I say objective things I mean things that exist or not objectively. Perhaps I should have written "the type of things that can exist independently of the perceiver".
But they do not have an illusion that they are in pain or that it feels like pain from where the limb was. They really do have the pain and there is no way they could be under the illusion they were in pain but were not.
But that is my whole point. It can only be an illusion because there is an objective thing "“ an orgasm "“ which they falsely believe they are perceiving.
You are right. Attractiveness is a bad example because it might a property of a woman or a property of a woman + makeup.
I am not confusing them. I meant the latter case. You are right that morality is similar to this latter case. It is not relative to me but it is relative to the reaction that most people will have to the game if they understand it. There is no additional objective property of the game "“ its fascination "“ over and above its observable features such as the rules and tactics. If a fan claims that bridge is fascinating (in the latter sense) they can recite various characteristics of the game to make their case. They may passionately believe that anyone who really gets to understand it will agree. But if someone disagrees and says that actually it is boring (in the latter sense) the definitive way to prove them wrong is not keep reciting the characteristics of bridge but to point the many people who know the game well and are fascinated.
I am a fan of both Jane Austen and J.L. Austin and (despite the spelling error) I am unlikely to confuse them. I live 27 miles from Chawton where Jane Austen lived most of her life and 8 miles from Winchester where she is buried. J.L. Austin was very fashionable when I studied philosophy and I have kept my copy of Sense and Sensibilia these 35 years but rapidly mislaid my copy of Language, Truth and Logic. I am not aware that I have said he would support my subjectivist views. However, you may be interested in these quotes from Sense and Sensibilia
Consider the expressions "˜cricket ball', "˜cricket bat', "˜cricket pavilion', "˜cricket weather'. If someone did not know about cricket and were obsessed with the use of such "˜normal' words as "˜yellow', he might gaze at the ball, the bat, the building, the weather, trying to detect the "˜common quality' which (he assumes) is attributed to these things by the use of the prefix "˜cricket'. But no such quality meets his eye; and so perhaps he concludes that "˜cricket' must designate a non-natural quality, a quality to be detected not in the ordinary way but by intuition. If this story strikes you as too absurd, remember what philosophers have said about the word "˜good';
Or later
"˜Good' is the most general of a very large and diverse list of more specific words that share with it the general function of expressing commendation
He was a good Wittgensteinian and understood that the use of words is far more subtle and complex than simply referring to things.
Comment by Mark Frank — November 28, 2007 @ 11:11 am