Moral absolutes
Paul Filseth
> > > > (Roughly, moral absolutes can only be constructed and verified by an
> > > > absolutely "good" being with absolute knowledge of all possible
> > > > outcomes.)
> > >
> > > This doesn't say anything unless you supply a definition of "good"
> > > for it to operate on. And it seems to me any definition you try
> > > plugging in will make the resulting statement absurd. If you can think
> > > of a definition that won't, share.
> > >
> > > 'Good' requires not definition in this case because the only one who
> > > could define it absolutely......is a being of absolute goodness. see?
> >
> > I don't see. Anybody can define it. Defining things isn't hard.
>
> Define it 'Absolutely'. As in completely and utterly, leaving nothing
> out. The point is, a completely good being can. YOU cannot define it
> correctly.
Ethanol is C2H5OH. A complete utter nothing-left-out definition.
Feel free to deduce that I'm a creature composed purely of alcohol. :-)
How do you know I can't define "good" correctly? What if utilitarianism
happens to be right? Then I've _already_ defined it correctly, in my
previous post. So if you can't prove utilitarianism is wrong, then you
have no grounds for claiming I can't define it correctly. See?
Contrariwise, why should a completely good being necessarily be
able to define "good"? What if utilitarianism is correct, and it also
happens that declaring utilitarianism to be correct, by some complicated
indirect mechanism, _reduces_ total happiness? Then I would be able to
define it correctly and a completely good being wouldn't.
> > Let's take utilitarianism as an example, since it's so easy to state.
> > Something is good if it increases total happiness.
>
> So you know what increases 'total' happiness?
Nope. Why should that stop me from talking about it hypothetically?
> This is easy? Total universal 'happiness'???
I said it was easy to _state_, not to _apply_.
> Why do you assume happiness has anything to do with goodness?
I _don't_. It's an _example_. _Some_ definition of goodness has
to be correct for there to be moral absolutes. I'm saying let's suppose
for the sake of discussion that it's that one, and see where it would
lead. If you don't like it, pick a different definition and I'll make
the same point with yours.
> > (Let's just suppose for discussion that happiness can be measured. :-)
>
> And by doing so you miss the point entirely.
Get a grip. I can't miss _my own_ point. Why don't you try to be
logical, like Tony is? [There, now there are two. :-)]
> > Invent a polio vaccine, happiness increases.
>
> Hardly, if more people live in pain and die of other things.
It's a nonfatal illness.
> > "An absolute increase in total happiness can only be constructed and
> > verified by a being who absolutely always increases total happiness
> > and has absolute knowledge of all possible outcomes."
>
> Sounds about right.
Only because you aren't considering all logical possibilities.
> > Anybody can construct an absolute increase in total happiness. Take
> > something that affects people's happiness. If it increases happiness,
> > do it. If it decreases happiness, talk somebody out of doing it.
>
> And how does one know the ultimate effect of any one action.
Being able to increase happiness and being able to know that one is
increasing happiness are two different things. Anyone can increase
happiness, even if it's only by dumb luck.
> > As for verifying, just having omniscience is sufficient
>
> It would certainly be sufficient in understanding 'whatever' but this
> was not what we were discussing. We were discussing 'goodness'.
Omniscience means knowing everything. 'Whatever' covers 'goodness'.
> If that omniscient being thought pain was bad it could say that was
> 'bad'. Only an absolutely good being could make a judgment on what was
> good. Omniscience only means you 'know' every thing. 'Judging'
> everything is a separate process.
If you want to redefine words to try to get wiggle room, go for it,
but it won't help. I'll coin the word "omnijudgient" to mean a being
that correctly judges any moral question. A being that's omniscient
and omnijudgient can verify the correctness of whatever definition of
goodness is correct, and can verify that such and such an action in fact
really would increase total happiness (or really would satisfy whatever
criterion follows from the correct definition). Even if the being,
having conclusively identified what's good, then proceeds to do the
exact opposite.
> > -- even a being who hardly ever increases happiness can examine his
> > absolute knowledge of all possible outcomes and determine that
> > such-and-such would absolutely increase happiness.
>
> This assumes increasing 'happiness' is 'good'.
Are you familiar with the concept of "Assume without loss of
generality"? The idea is that one of several possibilities must be the
case. So we pick one and show how if that one's the case, then some
conclusion follows. The other possible cases are left as an exercise
for the reader. I've shown what the argument looks like for one
possible definition of "good"; a similar argument should work for other
definitions. If you can think of a counterexample, post it.
--
Paul Filseth That's a hard question. I don't answer hard questions.
To email, reverse lisl. - Justice John Paul Stevens
Paul Filseth
> > A: "What is ethical in culture X at time T"
> > B: "What is commonly considered ethical in culture X at time T"
> > C: "What I, Colleen, consider ethical in culture X at time T"
> >
> > Your first paragraph seems to be saying you believe A equals B. Your
> > second paragraph seems to mean you believe B does not equal C. It
> > would seem to follow that you believe A does not equal C. But how can
> > you believe that what you believe is different from what's the case?
> > <rejected gas-tank analogy snipped>
>
> I understand what you're confused about, and I believe a portion of my
> previous post that you have snipped here was relevant to the point - I
> don't believe in a unified, objective standard of ethics which the
> correctness of my ethical judgements or a culture's ethical judgements
> can be measured against.
Yes, I got that. It's the consistency of the overall combination
of all the various things you say you do believe that I'm having trouble
with.
> So to sum up, I think A and B are equivalent, yes. I think C can
> contradict or agree with A or B.
> <snip>
> > take current U.S. culture and pick any ethical issue you disagree with
> > the majority on, and recompute A, B and C.
>
> A: Capital Punishment is ethical
> B: Capital punishment is ethical
> C: I don't think capital punishment is ethical.
>
> To me, it's obviously considered ethical in our culture because it
> happens. Granted, the courts aren't the quickest creatures in catching up
> with public opinion, but if a clear majority of the people in this country
> thought capital punishment was unethical, it wouldn't occur.
Right. Public opinion in the U.S. is sufficiently in favor of
capital punishment for it to qualify as "commonly considered ethical".
Therefore, by your own stated criterion, by your equivalence principle,
by your definition of what it means to say something "is" ethical, by
reasoning from premises you say you accept, it follows that _capital
punishment is ethical_. And you stipulated to this in item A, above.
And yet you say in item C that you don't think it's ethical. So you
believe capital punishment both is and isn't ethical. Are you really
going in for Orwellian double-think? Or is there some simple resolution
to all this, like you're using the same words to mean different things
in A and C or something? If you just don't see the self-contradiction,
then we're at an impasse.
> > ... Certainly I believe the truth value of a normative sentence can
> > change as culture changes. Do you? Bear in mind that it's logically
> > impossible for a sentence's truth value to change unless it has one.
> > ...
>
> Hmmm . . . just thinking about it, I believe I should have posed another
> question: Can you define the "truth value" of a sentence without using
> other words? The meaning of words is entirely interdependent. That's how
> morality seems to me.
Of course all definitions use other words, and the meaning of words
is interdependent. A language is a system, and words only mean things
by functioning as parts of it. Is that supposed to mean that sentences
can't be true or false? And getting back to the reason I brought up
truth values, what does it mean to have an opinion that "X is Y", if one
simultaneously thinks that "X is Y" is neither true nor false?
Tony Griffin
> Get a grip. I can't miss _my own_ point. Why don't you try to be
>logical, like Tony is? [There, now there are two. :-)]
Why *thank* you Paul!
Never having been one to quit when he is ahead .....
As a complete aside, I have never been comfortable with "total"
utilitarianism as a moral code.
First, it seems to open the door for all sorts of coercion (sp?) in
the name of "doing good".
Another problem is that if you simply "add" happiness, you are not
considering people as individuals, but as a group. Thus it would be
correct to kill a miserable person (provided the killing did not make
others unhappy) as this would make the total happiness greater. It
could also be argued that one should concentrate on people who are the
easiest to make happy.
There is a variant called "preference utilitarianism" (that takes
peoples wishes into account), that I feel more comfortable with.
Tony
mau...@mail.com
> As a complete aside, I have never been comfortable with "total"
> utilitarianism as a moral code.
>
> First, it seems to open the door for all sorts of coercion (sp?) in
> the name of "doing good".
Sure. Name a moral theory that, when misapplied, _doesn't_ allow all
sorts of bad things.
Or do you mean that all sorts of coercion is likely to increase total
happiness? (If you had your choice, would you rather live in a society
with lots of coercion, or just a little?)
> Another problem is that if you simply "add" happiness, you are not
> considering people as individuals, but as a group. Thus it would be
> correct to kill a miserable person (provided the killing did not make
> others unhappy) as this would make the total happiness greater.
In other words you'd be increasing total happiness by making the
miserable person less unhappy. Two questions: (a) how is that not
considering the miserable person as an individual?; and (b) if he'd be
happier dead, why shouldn't we just wait for him to kill himself?
(Maybe he doesn't know he'd be happier dead, but we do?)
> It could also be argued that one should concentrate on people who
> are the easiest to make happy.
Sure it could; anything can be argued. That particular argument might
even make some sense in certain situations.
> There is a variant called "preference utilitarianism" (that takes
> peoples wishes into account), that I feel more comfortable with.
I've never heard of that. Can you describe an instance where preference
utilitarianism prescribes some action or desired result different from
the one prescribed by ordinary utilitarianism?
Maurile
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Paul Filseth
> p...@lisl.com (Paul Filseth) writes:
> > There are a lot of sorts of subjectivism, including at least (a)
> > denying there's a real world, (b) saying maybe there's a real world but
> > if there is we can't know that there is, and (c) saying there is a real
> > world and we can know that but we can't know anything specific about
> > the real world.
>
> I'm case B: I assume that there is a real world but that humans can't have
> *absolute* knowledge of it.
One gets knowledge by ruling out all possible alternatives. What
alternative to the existence of a real world do you consider possible?
> > Arguing over whether some culture embraces some standard isn't ethics;
> > it's anthropology.
>
> I'm simply very interested in the anthropological aspects of ethics.
> I think that anthropology has had a significant impact on my own view
> of ethics.
And one can do anthropology on physics and physicists too, but
some of us also have an interest in examining theories to determine if
they're correct. What I'm trying to figure out is, given that you think
correctness is not a property that attaches to ethical claims, what
alternative characteristic of ethical claims do you judge them by?
Since it appears you do prefer some over others.
> >Colleen wrote:
> >> You think there's a difference between "what is commonly considered to be
> >> ethical" and "what is ethical in a given culture" or "what is ethical at a
> >> given cultural moment". I don't think there is, and I don't think Wheat
> >> thinks there is either. That's that basic difference between our
> >> positions.
>
> CMS sums up my views better than I could have done.
>
> > Well, this is why I think arguing ethics is premature. We need to
> > work out some basic semantic and epistemological issues first.
>
> I think this is one of the fundamental differences. Feel free to
> elaborate your own take and why you believe it to be true.
My own take is that words get their meaning from usage, and nobody
outside postmodernist circles actually means the same thing by "what is
ethical" and "what is commonly considered to be ethical", and even the
PoMos are not consistent in this usage, so to say they mean the same
thing is simply to fail to understand plain English (something many
philosophers are very good at).
To say they don't _mean_ the same thing, but are instead equivalent
because they _refer_ to the same thing, implies that "what is ethical"
has an objective referent, we can determine what it is, and public
opinion turns out to be correct. That's a coherent position to take,
but I suspect it isn't yours.
> I think the simple way of clarifying it is to say that even though you can
> take a poll and see what people generally believe to be the case, there is
> always disagreement (in most any culture) over what is ethical.
But what is that they're disagreeing _about_? What's the _subject_
matter? According to the equivalence theory, they're disagreeing about
_what's commonly considered ethical_. They can settle that with your
poll! The fact that they continue to disagree after the poll proves
what? That the minority are just morons who can't count? No, what it
proves is that "what's ethical" doesn't mean the same thing that "what's
commonly considered ethical" means.
> > A: "What is ethical in culture X at time T"
> > B: "What is commonly considered ethical in culture X at time T"
>
> From my perspective, these are the same question:
> Capital punishment, USA, 1999.
>
> > C: "What I, Colleen, consider ethical in culture X at time T"
>
> Life imprisonment, USA, 1999.
So I'll ask you the same question I just asked Colleen: How the
heck can you consider capital punishment unethical when you just said
it was ethical and gave a valid argument based on premises you believe?
When I ask you if it's ethical for 1999 USA to execute people, are you
going to say yes and no out of different sides of your mouth?
> >It's like saying "I think my tank holds 10 gallons, but I think that's
> >wrong".
>
> It's more like saying "I know most people believe that dieties are
> necessary for ethics, but I don't buy that."
It's nothing whatever like that. That's just an example of B not
equal to C. A not equal to C is the gas tank case.
> My culture and I agree on how much my gas tank holds. There are
> certain things that a culture believes that you disbelieve at the
> risk of being thought crazy.
This is a simple issue of logic, and the extent of cultural
consensus is a red herring. If you disagree with your culture about how
much your gas tank holds, we won't think you're crazy, just misinformed.
What will make us think you're crazy is you insisting it both does and
doesn't hold ten gallons.
A and C are both what _you_ believe. When _you_ said (A:) what
_is_ ethical is capital punishment, that was _you_ talking, not your
culture. Why are _you_ saying capital punishment _is_ ethical when
_you_ don't consider it ethical?
> > A = "Kill blasphemers."
> > B = "Kill blasphemers."
> > C = "Don't kill blasphemers."
> >
> > If that's a correct characterization, how can you believe it "is ethical"
> > for them to kill blasphemers but not "consider ethical" their killing of
> > blasphemers? Do you see why I have a problem with this?
>
> The point of contrast is what is meant by "is" in your phrase "is
> ethical."
It depends on what the definition of "is" is? I'm not going to go
there. :-) This is why we need to resolve the semantics before we can
say anything intelligible about ethics.
> To me, perhaps to CMS, "is ethical" in that sentence would be
> "Most people in Pakistan think is ethical."
To me, I can't see why anyone would say "it is ethical" if what he
mean is "Most people in Pakistan think it's ethical", other than to
commit equivocation fallacies.
> C would be "But I don't believe it to be ethical."
"Be" is just a variation on "is". What does "be" mean in the
phrase "be ethical"? If it means the same as what you say "is" means in
the phrase "is ethical", then it follows that sentence C means "But I
don't believe most people in Pakistan think killing blasphemers is
ethical." I suspect that's not what you meant. So it appears that you
use the be/is copula to mean several different things. Can you explain
your different usages and let me know how I can tell which one you're
using in a particular case?
And secondly, what does it mean when you say you "believe"
something? When I say "I believe X is Y", I mean I agree with the
sentence "X is Y." That appears not to be what you mean, since in
your idiolect pulling "I believe" out of a sentence seems to alter the
grammatical function of "is".
There's a movement in semantics for something called E-Prime. It's
English with all forms of the verb "to be" stripped out. It's supposed
to force people to think a lot more carefully about what they mean and
how to say it. You think this discussion might benefit from that sort
of discipline?
> Note that A, B, and C are opinions.
To you everything is an opinion, so what can you deduce from their
being opinions? That it means logic can't be applied to them? What
do you even mean by "opinion"? What on earth is an opinion that the
opinion-holder doesn't think is correct?
> Depends upon what you mean by "truth" and therefore what you mean by
> "truth value." If you mean, by "truth" that about which we can be
> absolutely and eternally certain, then there is, IMHO, no such thing. If
> you mean, by "truth," that about which we believe because we have strong
> arguments which lead us to believe it, then such is certainly possible.
I don't mean either of those things. I mean it in the sense that
it's used in what you call the "correspondence" theory. Truth is what
matches reality. If I say Polaris has exactly three planets over a
thousand miles in diameter, that is the truth if it has them. Whether
I'm certain, or have good arguments, or any arguments at all, is
immaterial -- maybe I threw dice and they came up 3. If I say something
I don't and can't know, it's still the truth if what I said happens to
match what is the case.
> I'm sure astrologers at one time thought the statement "the sun revolves
> around the earth" had truth value. Today, holders of such a view would be
> in the minority (and, thus, no one believes them. They haven't any
> convincing arguments to put forth in favour of their position these days).
I'm sorry, are you unfamiliar with the phrase "truth value"? It's
a classification of what sort of information evaluating a phrase gives
you, namely, that the value is "true" or "false". Some phrases have
truth values, such as "two plus two is seven" and "squirrels live in
magma". Other phrases don't have truth values, such as "two plus two"
and "the US Congress". One has a numerical value; the other's value is
a particular set of people. Other phrases don't have values at all,
such as Chomsky's "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously". "The sun
revolves around the earth" has a truth value: "false". To say "'Capital
punishment is wrong' has a truth value" is to say that it's the sort of
sentence that's capable of being true or false.
> I'd only tweak the phrasing slightly. In both the 17th and 20th century,
> that action was "considered" (im)moral. Any statement about what "is"
> moral is actually a statement about what is considered or believed to be
> moral.
Do you just mean that when you hear someone say "X is moral",
you interpret that as "He believes X is moral"? I have no problem with
that. In this sense, when someone says "Pigs don't have wings", it's
actually a statement about what he believes to have wings.
Or do you mean you think people who say "X is moral" mean the same
thing as if they had said "X is considered moral"? They don't. When
you tweak other people's phrasing, you're likely to alter their meaning.
When I said calling someone a witch was immoral in the 17th century, I
most definitely did not mean it "was considered" immoral at that time.
It wasn't.
Richard Hanley
>
>
> > There is a variant called "preference utilitarianism" (that takes
> > peoples wishes into account), that I feel more comfortable with.
>
> I've never heard of that. Can you describe an instance where preference
> utilitarianism prescribes some action or desired result different from
> the one prescribed by ordinary utilitarianism?
>
> Maurile
Sure. The point is that classical, hedonistic utilitarianism takes only
subjective experience to be of moral value; so it's literally true that
what you are not aware of cannot harm (i.e. be disutile to) you. But
preferences can be satisfied or frustrated even if you are not aware
that this is so. For instance, if your (sincerely made) last will and
testament is subverted, a strong preference of yours has been
frustrated; but it (on the assumption that you aren't in heaven or
whatever, watching) has not made you either happy or unhappy. So it
might well be right according to classical utilitarianism to subvert
your will, yet wrong according to preference utilitarianism.
In general, preference utilitarianism does a much better job of
capturing ordinary intuitions about which acts are wrong and not wrong.
(One apparent desideratum of an adequate moral theory.)
Cheers.
Tony Griffin
> There's a movement in semantics for something called E-Prime. It's
>English with all forms of the verb "to be" stripped out. It's supposed
>to force people to think a lot more carefully about what they mean and
>how to say it. You think this discussion might benefit from that sort
>of discipline?
That interesting. I wonder how the average sentence would without
any use of the verb " ". I guess it could a good discipline to
try to work out what the meaning .
Tony
"Cogito ergo "
Paul Filseth
> > Do you mean wishing well in the sense of wanting someone to live
> > long and prosper? You can do that while having *absolutely* no clue
> > what good is.
>
> Doesn't this imply that I think living long and prospering is good?
> Thus I have some clue?
I don't think it does. Suppose you want Stalin to live long and
prosper, even though every year he lives means thousands of others
will die, because he's a fun guy to get drunk with. :-)
> > Or did you mean it in the sense of wanting what's good
> > to happen? Assuming the latter, you're right. You'd only need an
> > approximate idea of what sorts of things are good.
>
> This is about it. <snip>
>
> > You've identified a morality that exists independently of any gods;
> > it's the foggy notion of "well" you're wishing for. It's independent
> > of gods because they need to make deductions about it, rather than just
> > choosing what it shall be. You've located somebody more knowledgeable
> > about the subject than you, and you've attempted to benefit from what he
> > knows. Perfectly sensible.
>
> This is probably as far as my original intention will go. I attempted
> to suggest a reason to defer to God in the area of "goodness", and
> this is it. It depends on certain suppositions about the nature of God
> and if these are false I make a bad mistake in following his dictates,
> but at least I arrived at it by a logical process, not by blind
> obedience.
It also depends on certain suppositions about the nature of
goodness, namely that there is such a thing and it's not chosen by God.
And pure logic doesn't answer questions about the world, like whether
whatever gods you happen to meet have the characteristics that would
make someone a suitable choice as a guide. So hopefully your logical
process was informed by at least a little empirical data.
> Another example: I'm lost in a strange city and have no clue as to
> where I am. I need to get to the airport and have no idea where it is.
> If someone claims to know the city and gives me directions, am I wise
> to follow them? It seems to me that the answer is "yes".
But you do have some idea where it is. What if he tells you that
if you stop seeking the airport and sit down and meditate, you'll find
yourself there? Or if half-way through the guy's directions, you wind
up in a dark alleyway in a bad section of town?
> If I can examine his credentials in the slightest way (says he lives
> here, looks honest) I am on balance better off by following his
> directions.
Right. So does a God who takes credit for everything good and
ducks responsibility for everything bad look honest? And does a God
who is completely undetectable to the senses look like He lives here? :-)
> > So there must be some limit on what the god
> > can say is good, and still pass for a well-wisher in your mind. This
> > limit is a moral absolute that you have to discover on your own. The
> > moral absolutes this kind of god tells you about aren't absolutely good
> > because he says so, any more than your pipes are absolutely leaking
> > because your plumber says so.
>
> I don't believe in moral absolutes, but otherwise I agree.
Hmm. If the god told you you needed to cruise your city looking
for dogs to kidnap, and then boil them to death, because it was really
all for the best, would you take him as someone who probably knows right
from wrong better than you, merely on the grounds that you're totally
ignorant?
If you're sufficiently sure there are no moral absolutes that you
think you might believe him, how about if a god told you there are
moral absolutes? Would that discredit him in your eyes?
> Of course I have to be very careful about setting the limit given that
> God is also omniscient. What appears right to me may be quite wrong
> from his perspective. Of course you are now going to say "how do I
> know he is omniscient?"... :)
Not me! He's omniscient, and you know it. He's passed every test
you could think up. And he read your mind and found out what it would
take to convince you, and did it.
No, my question is, once he's passed your tests and you're trying
to get answers to moral questions from him, answers you don't know how
to check, which in his omniscience he knows you can't check, how do you
know he's going to continue telling you the truth? He can say "Drop a
quarter on the ground and much good will result, via the butterfly-wing
effect." He knows the actual consequence will be billions of deaths,
which he knows would be terribly evil, but he doesn't mind because he
knows that afterwards one of the few survivors will give him a really
awesome back-rub.
> > So if you can't come up with a moral absolute by yourself, then you
> > can't possibly have a good reason to believe God can.
>
> Here you go about absolutes again!
Well, this subthread started when somebody claimed gods could
create moral absolutes, and I took exception. If you want to deny
they're possible, that's perfectly consistent with the above conclusion.
[and shifting threads erratically...]
> Never having been one to quit when he is ahead .....
> As a complete aside, I have never been comfortable with "total"
> utilitarianism as a moral code.
Hey, now you're even further ahead. I'm not overly impressed by
it myself.
> First, it seems to open the door for all sorts of coercion (sp?) in
> the name of "doing good".
> Another problem is that if you simply "add" happiness, you are not
> considering people as individuals, but as a group.
Right.
> There is a variant called "preference utilitarianism" (that takes
> peoples wishes into account), that I feel more comfortable with.
Well, this is important, in line with the principle of not doing
to others as you'd want done to you, but as they want done to them.
But you're still adding up wishes and potentially shafting nice people
in order to please scumbags.
> Could it be that the tendency to moralize, rather than the content of
> the moral views expressed, is also evolved? After all, the need to
> follow leaders is of no use without leaders to follow.
I think it's both, rather than either/or. The tendency to
moralize is equally no use without morals to moralize about, and since
moralizing seems to be older than language (pace Pepke), I don't see
how the morals to moralize about could have arisen except by evolving.
How would baboons go about indoctrinating one other?
Tony Griffin
>tgri...@pipeline.com wrote:
>> As a complete aside, I have never been comfortable with "total"
>> utilitarianism as a moral code.
>>
>> First, it seems to open the door for all sorts of coercion (sp?) in
>> the name of "doing good".
>Sure. Name a moral theory that, when misapplied, _doesn't_ allow all
>sorts of bad things.
>Or do you mean that all sorts of coercion is likely to increase total
>happiness?
It might under some circumstances I suppose. It would depend on what
was being "coerced". I have a problem with being ordered around, but
many people seem to get some sense of security from it.
> (If you had your choice, would you rather live in a society
>with lots of coercion, or just a little?)
Not really.
My point was that utilitarianism allows coercion if the result is an
increase in happiness. Some people are sooo sure they have it right
that they will coerce away to any extent they feel is justified.
>> Another problem is that if you simply "add" happiness, you are not
>> considering people as individuals, but as a group. Thus it would be
>> correct to kill a miserable person (provided the killing did not make
>> others unhappy) as this would make the total happiness greater.
>In other words you'd be increasing total happiness by making the
>miserable person less unhappy. Two questions: (a) how is that not
>considering the miserable person as an individual?;
By considering the welfare of the group (total happiness) to be more
important than the welfare of the individual.
> and (b) if he'd be
>happier dead, why shouldn't we just wait for him to kill himself?
Who said he was going to kill himself?
>(Maybe he doesn't know he'd be happier dead, but we do?)
Right. Actually he won't be happier dead, he won't have any feelings
at all. The total happiness of the group will be increased.
>> It could also be argued that one should concentrate on people who
>> are the easiest to make happy.
>Sure it could; anything can be argued. That particular argument might
>even make some sense in certain situations.
Lets spend all our efforts giving candy to children instead of
fighting (insert social problem of your choice).
>> There is a variant called "preference utilitarianism" (that takes
>> peoples wishes into account), that I feel more comfortable with.
>I've never heard of that. Can you describe an instance where preference
>utilitarianism prescribes some action or desired result different from
>the one prescribed by ordinary utilitarianism?
"This ... version of utilitarianism judges actions, not by their
tendency to maximise pleasure or minimise pain, but by the extent to
which they accord with the preferences of any beings affected by the
action or its consequences"
(Peter Singer, Practical Ethics)
In very many cases this will be effectively the same thing as
classical utilitarianism, as most people prefer to maximise pleasure
and minimise pain. However, it shifts the judgement to the person
being "helped" which removes the possibility of "you may not want this
but *I* know its for your own good".
Examples should be obvious, but ...
A dying patient in great pain would be allowed to choose for herself
the degree of treatment used to extend (or shorten) her life. Her
decision could go either way of course, but would not be related to
others' opinions of her quality of life. Classical utilitarianism
might decide that she would be better off dead (or alive) regardless
of her opinion.
Remembering the title of this ng, forceable religious conversion to
confer eternal bliss would also be forbidden.
Tony
James Martin
> One gets knowledge by ruling out all possible alternatives. What
>alternative to the existence of a real world do you consider possible?
By that logic, you'd never get to atheism. You'd have to spend every hour
of every day ruling out new possible dieties (i.e. "all possible
alternatives"). We get knolege in several ways, but our knowledge has
never been extensive enough to rule out all possible alternatives. I
assume there is a real world. I just don't assume to have absolute
knowledge of it. But we certainly do have knowledge of it (or knowledge
that we think is of it, but why quibble).
>they're correct. What I'm trying to figure out is, given that you think
>correctness is not a property that attaches to ethical claims, what
>alternative characteristic of ethical claims do you judge them by?
>Since it appears you do prefer some over others.
You assume wrongly that correctness is not an adjective I'd attach to an
ethical claim. But if I did so, it would be my opinion and I'd have to
back it up with argument. I certainly do prefer certain ethical
principles over others, but I don't claim to have absolute knowledge
(about anything, least of all ethics).
> My own take is that words get their meaning from usage, and nobody
>outside postmodernist circles actually means the same thing by "what is
>ethical" and "what is commonly considered to be ethical"
It's realy rather simple. What you have are two statements:
1. A is ethical
2. Most people think A is ethical
Where's the confusion? Looks like plain English to me. Statement 1 says
that A is ethical. That means that it's ethicality exists in some way
that is independent of observation. Statement 2 says that a certain
majority of people *believe* A to be ethical. The belief is independent
of the actual ethicality of A. All I'm asserting is that there's no way
to know the ethicality of something in abstract. And, further, A's
ethicality isn't inherent in A.
We don't have special litmus paper for testing the ethicality of a
proposition. The only way to establish ethicality, that I know of, is by
argument of some sort. Maybe the case is different for people who feel
that they have intuition. But, for me, I have to have some way to
convince myself that I have a good reason for believing what I believe.
> So I'll ask you the same question I just asked Colleen: How the
>heck can you consider capital punishment unethical when you just said
>it was ethical and gave a valid argument based on premises you believe?
>When I ask you if it's ethical for 1999 USA to execute people, are you
>going to say yes and no out of different sides of your mouth?
I didn't say that is was ethical. I said most people in the US believe it
to be ethical. But I don't believe it to be ethical ('cept maybe for that
fuck in Jasper Texas). So what I consider ethical and what my society
believes to be ethical are at odds. There you have it: plain English. I
guess you don't have to be a postmodernist to like playing with words.
>What will make us think you're crazy is you insisting it both does and
>doesn't hold ten gallons.
Then I'd be a buddhist, not crazy. :)
> To me, I can't see why anyone would say "it is ethical" if what he
>mean is "Most people in Pakistan think it's ethical", other than to
>commit equivocation fallacies.
I've defined exactly what I mean by it, and I'm not trying to be difficult
or muddle things. But if you give up the assumption that you can have
absolute knowledge about things, you give up using "is" in the sense that
someone who believes in absolute knowledge would. I'm trying to be
consistent. I'm sorry if you find that confusing or malicious.
If a theist says "there is a god" would you consider that phrase to mean
that there really is a god? Certainly the theist believes that to be the
case. But his/her pronouncement about the absolute nature of things
strikes me as merely the assertion of a belief or opinion. How does it
strike you?
> There's a movement in semantics for something called E-Prime. It's
>English with all forms of the verb "to be" stripped out. It's supposed
>to force people to think a lot more carefully about what they mean and
>how to say it. You think this discussion might benefit from that sort
>of discipline?
I'm familiar with e-prime. I'm not sure what it's value might be. I'm
familiar with it in the context of counceling:
A: I am a drunk
B: I act like a drunk
The idea is that if you keep repeating A to yourself, you don't give
yourself a chance to change your behavior (because the behavior flows from
your drunken essence). B doesn't make an assertion about your essence, it
just describes your behavior, thus leaving a little semantic room to
change that behavior. But I'm not sure how that would apply to our
discussion.
> To you everything is an opinion, so what can you deduce from their
>being opinions?
That they are not absolutes. That's a useful first step. From there, you
could argue for one view or another (as ethical, etc.).
> Do you just mean that when you hear someone say "X is moral",
>you interpret that as "He believes X is moral"?
Yes.
>I have no problem with that.
Great.
>In this sense, when someone says "Pigs don't have wings", it's
>actually a statement about what he believes to have wings.
Right.
> Or do you mean you think people who say "X is moral" mean the same
>thing as if they had said "X is considered moral"?
No.
>They don't.
Quite right.
Wheat.
mau...@mail.com
> mau...@mail.com wrote:
> >> [Utilitarianism] seems to open the door for all sorts of coercion in
> >> the name of "doing good".
>
> >happiness?
>
> It might under some circumstances I suppose. It would depend on what
> was being "coerced".
Yes, it would. So utilitarianism really opens the door for only some
sorts of coercion -- not all sorts. Is there any sort of coercion you
disapprove of that is likely to increase total happiness?
> My point was that utilitarianism allows coercion if the result is an
> increase in happiness. Some people are sooo sure they have it right
> that they will coerce away to any extent they feel is justified.
I agree that utilitarianism allows coercion if the (intended) result is
to maximize happiness. I also agree that some people are wrong about
which sorts of coercion utilitarianism justifies. Are either of these
good reasons to reject utilitarianism?
> >> Another problem is that if you simply "add" happiness, you are not
> >> considering people as individuals, but as a group. Thus it would be
> >> correct to kill a miserable person (provided the killing did not make
> >> others unhappy) as this would make the total happiness greater.
But in your example we get the same result whether we're trying to
maximize the group's happiness or just that one person's happiness:
the miserable son of a bitch should die. To show how utilitarianism
allows the group's happiness to trump a particular individual's
happiness, you have to come up with some action that increases the
group's happiness while it decreases the individual's happiness.
That's not so hard: the punishment of rapists will do. But to come up
with such an action we generally consider immoral is much harder.
> >> It could also be argued that one should concentrate on people who
> >> are the easiest to make happy.
>
> >Sure it could; anything can be argued. That particular argument might
> >even make some sense in certain situations.
>
> Lets spend all our efforts giving candy to children instead of
> fighting (insert social problem of your choice).
For any given amount of effort, you'd have to show that spending it
giving candy to children will increase happiness better than spending
it fighting Social Problem N. We can probably show it for some amounts
of effort, but not for all amounts. So we should give _some_ candy to
children, but not to the complete exclusion of fighting Social Problem N.
> >> There is a variant called "preference utilitarianism" (that takes
> >> peoples wishes into account), that I feel more comfortable with.
>
> >I've never heard of that. Can you describe an instance where preference
> >utilitarianism prescribes some action or desired result different from
> >the one prescribed by ordinary utilitarianism?
>
> "This ... version of utilitarianism judges actions, not by their
> tendency to maximise pleasure or minimise pain, but by the extent to
> which they accord with the preferences of any beings affected by the
> action or its consequences"
>
> (Peter Singer, Practical Ethics)
I tend to define happiness as the satisfaction of one's preferences.
With that definition, preference utilitarianism is the same thing as
ordinary utilitarianism. Do you disagree? (Or do you think my
definition is wanting?)
mau...@mail.com
> mau...@mail.com wrote:
> > Tony Griffin wrote:
> > > There is a variant called "preference utilitarianism" (that takes
> > > peoples wishes into account), that I feel more comfortable with.
> >
> > I've never heard of that. Can you describe an instance where preference
> > utilitarianism prescribes some action or desired result different from
>
> Sure. The point is that classical, hedonistic utilitarianism takes only
> subjective experience to be of moral value; so it's literally true that
> what you are not aware of cannot harm (i.e. be disutile to) you.
Okay, that makes sense. Thanks for the explanation.
> But
> preferences can be satisfied or frustrated even if you are not aware
> that this is so. For instance, if your (sincerely made) last will and
> testament is subverted, a strong preference of yours has been
> frustrated; but it (on the assumption that you aren't in heaven or
> whatever, watching) has not made you either happy or unhappy. So it
> might well be right according to classical utilitarianism to subvert
> your will, yet wrong according to preference utilitarianism.
Yes, but whether there are institutions in place that can effectively
ensure the carrying out of my will affects my happiness. One of my
preferences is that some of my other preferences will be realized in
the future. And I am somewhat aware of what institutions are in place
and are likely to remain in place during the time I want my preferences
realized. So setting up a system in which wills are not subverted does
increase my happiness, even if I'm not in heaven watching.
Carin
Paul Filseth wrote in message <199903190903.BAA03141@dv53w192>...
>Tony Griffin <tgri...@pipeline.com> wrote:
<snip>
> I think it's both, rather than either/or. The tendency to
>moralize is equally no use without morals to moralize about, and since
>moralizing seems to be older than language (pace Pepke), I don't see
>how the morals to moralize about could have arisen except by evolving.
>How would baboons go about indoctrinating one other?
They could beat the crap out of the one they consider to be acting immorally
. Works for people!
Tony Griffin
>Yes, it would. So utilitarianism really opens the door for only some
>sorts of coercion -- not all sorts. Is there any sort of coercion you
>disapprove of that is likely to increase total happiness?
Yes. Pick any law that makes you protect yourself from harm when you
are the only likely (direct) victim. (Seatbelt laws, etc). Reduction
of injuries in accidents is certainly beneficial to society at large
(medical bills) and to the relatives and friends of the victim. Also
to the victim himself of course.
Note that I disapprove for reasons outside utilitarianism. I consider
the right to self-determination to be very important, but then I've
always been considered an awkward SOB.
>I agree that utilitarianism allows coercion if the (intended) result is
>to maximize happiness. I also agree that some people are wrong about
>which sorts of coercion utilitarianism justifies. Are either of these
>good reasons to reject utilitarianism?
No. But then I'm not rejecting utilitarianism entirely. I just said I
feel somewhat uncomfortable with it because of the possible coercion,
and suggested a variant that might be preferable.
>But in your example we get the same result whether we're trying to
>maximize the group's happiness or just that one person's happiness:
>the miserable son of a bitch should die.
Ok, I withdraw my example :). Yours is better.
> To show how utilitarianism
>allows the group's happiness to trump a particular individual's
>happiness, you have to come up with some action that increases the
>group's happiness while it decreases the individual's happiness.
>That's not so hard: the punishment of rapists will do. But to come up
>with such an action we generally consider immoral is much harder.
Easy. Lets say medical experimentation (involving extreme extended
pain and final death) would provide a cure for all known cancers. Only
one volunteer will be required, and the results are certain. We have
no volunteers. One people will suffer grievously, but 6 billion (and
their descendants for ever) will be free from the risk of cancer.
Shall we force someone participate? (Larger numbers of participants
would be more realistic, but I believe the same argument applies if
there is only one).
>For any given amount of effort, you'd have to show that spending it
>giving candy to children will increase happiness better than spending
>it fighting Social Problem N. We can probably show it for some amounts
>of effort, but not for all amounts. So we should give _some_ candy to
>children, but not to the complete exclusion of fighting Social Problem N.
I guess I was trying to say that happiness alone is not the best
criterion.
>> "This ... version of utilitarianism judges actions, not by their
>> tendency to maximise pleasure or minimise pain, but by the extent to
>> which they accord with the preferences of any beings affected by the
>> action or its consequences"
>>
>> (Peter Singer, Practical Ethics)
>I tend to define happiness as the satisfaction of one's preferences.
>With that definition, preference utilitarianism is the same thing as
>ordinary utilitarianism. Do you disagree? (Or do you think my
>definition is wanting?)
I said that they are close in actual application.
But...
Satisfaction of one's preferences does not always lead to happiness
("be careful what you wish for..."). However we *must* IMO be allowed
to choose our own road to heaven/hell so long as we don't harm others.
The essential difference is that considering peoples' preferences
allows them to decide what will make them happy. Considering their
happiness allows others to assume that decision. This difference is
critical IMO.
Tony
mau...@mail.com
> mau...@mail.com wrote:
> >Is there any sort of coercion you
> >disapprove of that is likely to increase total happiness?
>
> Yes. Pick any law that makes you protect yourself from harm when you
> are the only likely (direct) victim. (Seatbelt laws, etc). Reduction
> of injuries in accidents is certainly beneficial to society at large
> (medical bills) and to the relatives and friends of the victim. Also
> to the victim himself of course.
Would it surprise you to learn that utilitarianism's most famous
spokesperson opposed seatbelt laws?
[T]he only purpose for which power can be rightfully
exercised over any member of a civilized community,
against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His
own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient
warrant.
-- John Stuart Mill, _On Liberty_
It isn't clear that seatbelt laws increase society's total happiness.
For one thing, seatbelts are slightly uncomfortable. I don't always
wear mine, in fact, even though I really do have my own interests at
heart. I just don't always feel that my reduced expectation of injury
outweighs my reduced comfort. Also, seatbelts may not decrease the
number of automobile-related deaths. When people wear seatbelts,
crashing is less deadly, so people tend to drive slightly less
carefully. Which means they crash more. The increase in the number of
accidents and the decrease in the number of deaths per accident roughly
cancel each other out. (See Sam Peltzman's article from the 1970s
in the _Journal of Political Economy_.)
More generally, Mill may have gotten it right: we will probably obtain
better (i.e., happier) results letting people decide what's best for
themsleves instead of letting Dicks Armey and Gephardt decide for them.
> >To show how utilitarianism
> >allows the group's happiness to trump a particular individual's
> >happiness, you have to come up with some action that increases the
> >group's happiness while it decreases the individual's happiness.
> >That's not so hard: the punishment of rapists will do. But to come up
> >with such an action we generally consider immoral is much harder.
>
> Easy. Lets say medical experimentation (involving extreme extended
> pain and final death) would provide a cure for all known cancers. Only
> one volunteer will be required, and the results are certain. We have
> no volunteers. One people will suffer grievously, but 6 billion (and
> their descendants for ever) will be free from the risk of cancer.
> Shall we force someone participate? (Larger numbers of participants
> would be more realistic, but I believe the same argument applies if
> there is only one).
I wouldn't force anyone. If nobody volunteers today, someone probably
will tomorrow.
If there is only _one_ person who can possibly be of any use as an
experimental subject, because of her peculiar genetic makeup or
whatever, but she refuses, should we force her to participate? If
not, why not? What if, instead of "extreme extended pain and final
death," she would experience only slight discomfort? And it's not only
cancer that we'd be able to cure, but the common cold as well. And
AIDS. Should we force her then?
It's kind of hard to draw any sharp, principled, and consistent lines
in this area, isn't it? How does everyone else here go about trying
to answer these questions. Do you just go with your gut feeling, or
do you try to consciously analyze the expected consequences? If the
latter, what sorts of factors do you consider relevant? What sorts of
considerations, if any, will happiness not trump?
> Satisfaction of one's preferences does not always lead to happiness
> ("be careful what you wish for...").
So you disagree with my definition of happiness as the satisfaction
of peoples' preferences. How would you prefer we define it? Of course,
whether we think maximizing happiness is desirable will depend greatly
on what we think happiness _is_!
Paul Filseth
> > One gets knowledge by ruling out all possible alternatives. What
> > alternative to the existence of a real world do you consider possible?
>
> By that logic, you'd never get to atheism. You'd have to spend every hour
> of every day ruling out new possible dieties (i.e. "all possible
> alternatives").
Getting to atheism is a piece of cake. You seem to be assuming an
"I know there are no gods" definition of atheism. I don't use that one.
"I do not worship gods or spirits either good or evil nor do I serve
any." -- Lao Tse. (Thanks, Charles.) No time spent ruling deities out,
just a two-second inspection of my own mind to see if I've taken up
worship. :-)
> We get knowledge in several ways, but our knowledge has never been
> extensive enough to rule out all possible alternatives. I assume there
> is a real world. I just don't assume to have absolute knowledge of it.
How do you know our knowledge isn't that extensive? What
alternative hasn't been ruled out?
> But we certainly do have knowledge of it (or knowledge that we think
> is of it, but why quibble).
There's no difference, if knowledge is "justified true belief". Is
that what you mean by knowledge?
> >What I'm trying to figure out is, given that you think
> >correctness is not a property that attaches to ethical claims, what
> >alternative characteristic of ethical claims do you judge them by?
> >Since it appears you do prefer some over others.
>
> You assume wrongly that correctness is not an adjective I'd attach to an
> ethical claim.
Is this an indication that you've come to embrace moral realism?
All "Morality is objective" _means_ is that some ethical claims are
correct.
Anyway, I'm sorry if I misunderstood you, but what do you think
it sounds like when you say things like "In western culture generally,
what is ethical is what is argued for most loudly at a given point in
history."? If that's not a denial that there are any right answers to
ethical questions, can you explain what you intended it to mean?
> But if I did so, it would be my opinion and I'd have to back it up
> with argument.
Yes, of course. And if I say a mole of nitrogen is heavier than a
mole of helium, it's my opinion and I have to back it up with argument.
Nobody is saying objectivity and realism mean you have to take anybody's
word as authoritative. (Well, nobody but theists, anyway.)
> I certainly do prefer certain ethical principles over others, but I
> don't claim to have absolute knowledge (about anything, least of all
> ethics).
No problem -- I'm not claiming certain knowledge of ethics either.
The issue is whether there are facts to be known or to be ignorant of,
not whether I actually know them. Any of my ethical opinions might turn
out to be wrong. But that can only happen if there are some moral facts
for my opinions to conflict with, or if there are no moral facts and
therefore every moral claim anyone makes is incorrect.
> All I'm asserting is that there's no way to know the ethicality of
> something in abstract. And, further, A's ethicality isn't inherent in A.
What's the difference between saying A's ethicality isn't inherent
in A, and saying correctness is not a property of "A is ethical"?
> We don't have special litmus paper for testing the ethicality of a
> proposition. The only way to establish ethicality, that I know of, is by
> argument of some sort.
Agreed. This also applies to every scientific theory. The only
way to establish a link between litmus paper and pH is by an argument.
> It's really rather simple. What you have are two statements:
> 1. A is ethical
> 2. Most people think A is ethical
>
> Where's the confusion? Looks like plain English to me. Statement 1 says
> that A is ethical. That means that it's ethicality exists in some way
> that is independent of observation. Statement 2 says that a certain
> majority of people *believe* A to be ethical. The belief is independent
> of the actual ethicality of A.
I agree with the above. It surprises me that you agree with it.
It looks like a 180 degree reversal from your position as of March 9:
> > A: "What is ethical in culture X at time T"
> > B: "What is commonly considered ethical in culture X at time T"
>
> From my perspective, these are the same question:
> Capital punishment, USA, 1999.
Can you reconcile your assertions for me? To me, (A:) is a simple
instance of your statement type 1, and (B:) is a simple instance of
your statement type 2. If you regard 1 and 2 as independent of each
other, why are you equating A and B?
Were you taking the "in culture X at time T" in (A:) as a code
phrase that magically turns the "is" into "is considered by the local
people" or something? That's not what I meant by it when I wrote it.
I put it in in recognition of the fact that ethics is situational, that
the local culture is a part of the situation, and therefore that an act
that is ethical in one place and time may be unethical in another place
and time, because the different typical behavior of people there causes
the act to have different consequences. It's unethical to drive on the
right in England and not here, because doing so will get somebody killed
there and not here.
If you think interpreting my words according to normal English
usage forces equating A: with B: rather than with (1.), then I'm sorry,
we must have learned different languages as children, and this has all
been a misunderstanding. If so, it doesn't matter who's right about
usage; it's just semantics and I'll simply rephrase the idea in
different terms. But you'll have to help me out here, because I stated
it as straightforwardly as I know how to. What do I have to say to
express to you the concept of (A: "What is ethical in culture X at time
T") without having the meaning of "is" distorted? I mean the "is" as
it's used in your statement type 1: "A is ethical."
> > So I'll ask you the same question I just asked Colleen: How the
> >heck can you consider capital punishment unethical when you just said
> >it was ethical and gave a valid argument based on premises you believe?
> >When I ask you if it's ethical for 1999 USA to execute people, are you
> >going to say yes and no out of different sides of your mouth?
>
> I didn't say that it was ethical.
I'm sorry to misunderstand, then, but I was not putting words in
your mouth. As the referent of what is ethical in the USA in 1999, you
filled in "Capital punishment".
> So what I consider ethical and what my society
> believes to be ethical are at odds. There you have it: plain English. I
> guess you don't have to be a postmodernist to like playing with words.
I'm sorry you think I'm playing with words. I'm just trying to get
past our horrendous communication barrier.
> > To me, I can't see why anyone would say "it is ethical" if what he
> > means is "Most people in Pakistan think it's ethical", other than to
> > commit equivocation fallacies.
>
> I've defined exactly what I mean by it, and I'm not trying to be difficult
> or muddle things. But if you give up the assumption that you can have
> absolute knowledge about things, you give up using "is" in the sense that
> someone who believes in absolute knowledge would.
I don't see what absolute knowledge has to do with the case. How
does recognizing that you might be wrong cause you to you mean something
different by a word? But whatever -- you can give up using it if you
like. But if you keep using the word but make up a nonstandard sense to
go with your epistemology, how is anybody supposed to understand what
you're saying?
Anyway, you defined what you meant by "is" in one context, but that
definition doesn't seem to apply in other contexts you use it in. What
do you mean by "are" in the sentence "These are reasonable restrictions
on behavior, IMHO." You weren't saying you think those restrictions are
"generally considered" reasonable, were you? Do you mean that in your
opinion, the sentence "Societies can reasonably restrict behavior in
these ways." is correct? That's what I'd mean if I said it.
> I'm trying to be consistent. I'm sorry if you find that confusing or
> malicious.
I don't find it malicious, and I'm sorry if I gave that impression,
but I do find it very confusing, and it hasn't seemed consistent to me.
> If a theist says "there is a god" would you consider that phrase to mean
> that there really is a god?
Of course that's what the phrase means.
Did you mean if I hear a theist say that, would I deduce that
there's a god? I wouldn't, obviously, but that's a different question
from the one you asked. If that's what you meant, then in Frege's
terms, you're confusing sense with reference.
> Certainly the theist believes that to be the case. But his/her
> pronouncement about the absolute nature of things strikes me as merely
> the assertion of a belief or opinion. How does it strike you?
It strikes me as an error on the theist's part. The sentence is
false and the theist thinks the sentence is true. But the theist is in
this case entirely successful at saying what he means. Likewise, if
somebody says deuterium is radioactive, I won't try to make up some
strained interpretation of his words under which the sentence is true;
I won't say that what the guy really meant was a true and accurate claim
that he regards deuterium as radioactive. I just say he made a mistake.
He meant to claim something about physics, not something about his own
idiosyncratic isotope classification terminology.
> I'm familiar with e-prime. ... But I'm not sure how that would apply to
> our discussion.
I thought maybe if you rephrased statements like "what is ethical
is what is argued for most loudly" without using "is", I'd have a better
shot at understanding why you think about ethics the way you do. Just
idle speculation...
Paul Filseth
> > I don't see how the morals to moralize about could have arisen except by
> > evolving. How would baboons go about indoctrinating one other?
>
> They could beat the crap out of the one they consider to be acting
> immorally. Works for people!
Well, sure -- baboons do that. The question is, how does the one
getting beaten up know what he's getting beaten up _for_, if nobody can
tell him?
James Martin
> Getting to atheism is a piece of cake. You seem to be assuming an
>"I know there are no gods" definition of atheism. I don't use that one.
>"I do not worship gods or spirits either good or evil nor do I serve
>any." -- Lao Tse. (Thanks, Charles.) No time spent ruling deities out,
>just a two-second inspection of my own mind to see if I've taken up
>worship. :-)
Then at least we're on the same (or similar) page when it comes to
atheism. When I was younger, ten years ago, I was something of a militant
atheist (which I would gloss as atheism according to the first definition
above--"I know there are not gods"--which you rightly reject). After
that, I slid over into a very warm-fuzzy version of agnosticism in which I
tried to convince myself that gods were just as possible as the lack of
the same. It didn't take long to give up on that and embrace what I've
heard called "weak" atheism on the basis of a complete absense of
acceptable evidence or even intuitive feeling that gods are a real
posibility.
But back to what you said. I don't have the original post in front of me,
but your remark was that we get to knowledge only by rulling out all
possible alternatives. I don't think you really meant that in the sense I
took it (and perhaps I was just looking for flaws rather than trying to
understand your point). How we get knowledge would be a useful thread in
its own right. My only point, in that context, was that we don't have the
time or the ability to rule out all possible alternatives (whether the
subject is the existence of dieties or what to have for dinner). At best,
we rule out some of the possibilities that come to mind when we
contemplate a particular problem. Then we make decisions based upon that
limited set of choices. If I eat at Taco Bell tonight, it certainly
wasn't because I eliminated all possible alternatives. There are
undoubtedly better resteraunts about which I am completely unaware.
But I think we're still dealing in semantics. It's quite possible that we
both agree more than we think that we do.
>> We get knowledge in several ways, but our knowledge has never been
>> extensive enough to rule out all possible alternatives. I assume there
>> is a real world. I just don't assume to have absolute knowledge of it.
> How do you know our knowledge isn't that extensive? What
>alternative hasn't been ruled out?
Consider this same question historically. I'm sure that people in many
times and places in the past were secure in the knowledge that their view
of the world was the only possible one and that their knowledge was
extensive enought to rule out the possibility of some new knowledge which
would upset its hegemony. And what I know of history bears this point
out. So the fact that I can't think up an alternative that hasn't yet
been ruled out speaks only to my lack of creativity and says nothing to
the possiblity of there actually being something as yet undiscovered.
And, I'd say the odds are on the side that there are thinks left to be
learned.
> There's no difference, if knowledge is "justified true belief". Is
>that what you mean by knowledge?
I don't know what you mean by "justified true belief." Are you quoting
something I said? Or are you making reference to someone else or to a
phrase you hold true? Knowledge is the sum total of what we know. But,
statements like the one I just made leave open the questions 1) who does
"we" refer to, and 2) does "we" refer to everyone or just some subset of
everyone.
> Is this an indication that you've come to embrace moral realism?
I don't think that I have.
>All "Morality is objective" _means_ is that some ethical claims are
>correct.
As long as "correct" means "correct by our cultural standard" and not
"transhistorically true" then I agree that some ethical claims are
correct. But I don't agree that they are correct because they correspond
to some standard which is thought to exist outside of culture (e.g. some
god, some ahistorical moral imperative, some aspect of an ahistorical
human nature).
> Anyway, I'm sorry if I misunderstood you, but what do you think
>it sounds like when you say things like "In western culture generally,
>what is ethical is what is argued for most loudly at a given point in
>history."? If that's not a denial that there are any right answers to
>ethical questions, can you explain what you intended it to mean?
Perhaps I can best gloss that bit of rhetoric by asserting what I did
*not* mean by it. I did *not* mean that I believe everything the
culture(s) to which I belong deam ethical. I only meant to emphasize that
I don't believe in transhistorical ethical truths, or at least that I've
not yet found any. I don't believe that the right way to do things was
waiting in the soil all along for us to discover it (and that our
ancestors somehow overlooked it). Rather, they constructed what they
considered to be a right way to do things and that we have performed the
same procedure. And I quite prefer ours on many points.
> No problem -- I'm not claiming certain knowledge of ethics either.
>The issue is whether there are facts to be known or to be ignorant of,
Then perhaps you'd help focus the discussion by trotting out a few of
these ethical facts of which people can be either knowledgable or
ignorant. Then you can explain how it is that we know these facts to be
facts and not illusions. But I'm actually much more interested in the
first question. What is a moral fact? Do you mean something like a
necessity for moral deliberation? Something like: all humans feel pain?
I'd call that a biological fact, not a moral one. How about Kant's idea
that people should be treated as ends rather than as means? That's an
opinion about the nature of morals, not a moral fact.
> Agreed. This also applies to every scientific theory. The only
>way to establish a link between litmus paper and pH is by an argument.
Here we are, thankfully, in agreement again. And I quite like that you
emphasize the importance of argument in either case. Many people seem to
assume that science is a realm in which truth is simply revealed.
>> It's really rather simple. What you have are two statements:
>> 1. A is ethical
>> 2. Most people think A is ethical
> I agree with the above. It surprises me that you agree with it.
>It looks like a 180 degree reversal from your position as of March 9:
What I agree with is what both statements mean. But I don't think that
the fist sentence ("A is ethical") has any meaning apart from a cultural
context. "A is ethical" is something you can't know for certain. Though
you can certainly feel that it is true and reason that it is true and
that is all you need. There's no need to know, absolutely, whether or not
A is ethical. For there is no place outside of a culture in which A could
reside and be (transhistoricaly) ethical.
>Can you reconcile your assertions for me? To me, (A:) is a simple
>instance of your statement type 1, and (B:) is a simple instance of
>your statement type 2. If you regard 1 and 2 as independent of each
>other, why are you equating A and B?
Because I see no way to establish that they are independent, regardless of
my own beliefs on the subject. I may strongly believe that A is ethical
and that my culture simply has it wrong thinking that A is unethical. But
the context of what gets called ethical is some culture or other. There's
no way to jump outside of all cultures and view them objectivly. And
there's no standard outside of some culture or other by which to
objectivly judge them.
When people make statements about what really is ethical. I picture them
standing up in the sky with a ruler trying to measure the ethicality of
one culture against the ethicality of another by some standard which is
external to both (say, God's will or, rationality, or what have you). But
I don't see how they can entertain such a notion.
But when it comes to real world happenings, my views are more cut and
dried. I think that genocide it a terrible thing. By what I take as
ethical guideposts, it is an unethical thing. But I have no yardstick for
checking to see that my views are beyond all possible doubt. Luckily,
such is not required. All I really have to believe is that I'm probably
right. But maintaining some degree of skepticism is the only stay I know
against fanaticism. And I'll take ambiguity over the sort of certainty
which leads to genocide any day.
>I put it in in recognition of the fact that ethics is situational, that
>the local culture is a part of the situation, and therefore that an act
>that is ethical in one place and time may be unethical in another place
>and time, because the different typical behavior of people there causes
>the act to have different consequences. It's unethical to drive on the
>right in England and not here, because doing so will get somebody killed
>there and not here.
Most everything else you've said has lead me to think you beleive in
ethical standars which transcend situations. And it seems you've had
great reservations with what I've said here, when, if you beleive the
above, we actually have a similar take on ethics.
> I'm sorry to misunderstand, then, but I was not putting words in
>your mouth. As the referent of what is ethical in the USA in 1999, you
>filled in "Capital punishment".
All I have are two choices: what the culture at large thinks is ethical
and what I think is ethical. In this case, the culture at large (if we
took an opinion poll) would--at this time--support capital punnishment and
I would not (except, as I said, for that racist in Jasper, TX). But the
"is" in both options means "thinks to be true" rather than "is true beyond
all doubt for now and for ever in all possible situations."
When someone sees something moraly abhorant, he or she might say "That's
just wrong." That statement could mean either 1) that by some ahistorical
standard (god's will, some moral absolute or other) that action *is*
wrong, or 2) that the person uttering that statement strongly feels
repulsed by what is happening, and wishes to express that disgust.
Scenario: I'm walking down the street with my friend who is uptight about
same-sex sexual relationships. We duck into a bar to escape the heat. It
turns out that the bar we duck into is a gay bar. My friend, who is
uncomfortable at the thought sexual relations with someone of his own sex,
sees two men kissing and says (or thinks) "that's just wrong." Let's say
we go back outside and get into a discussion about his reaction. My first
question would be "Why is that wrong?" and he would liely urp up one in a
series of tired arguments: 1) it is against god's law, 2) it is a crime
"against nature" (i.e. against vaginal sex or against reproductivity or
both). But what I suspect my friend really means by "that's just wrong"
is "all my life I've been told that this sort of behavior is unacceptable
and I, a good moral citizen, am rightly upset when I see such flagrant
violations of what I have always been taught was a universal, absolute,
moral code."
Now, let's make it concrete, is homosexuality (in and of itself) right or
wrong? Or is that a stupid question? Or is it right some places and
wrong others, or right in some times and wrong in others. Is is
transhistorically right or wrong? And, if so, by what transhistorical
standard to we judge it to be such.
> I don't see what absolute knowledge has to do with the case. How
>does recognizing that you might be wrong cause you to you mean something
>different by a word?
Because I've had too many encounters in my life with people who do not
recognize that they might be wrong. The fundamentalists have ruined me.
They've made it hard to for me to speak with inteligent, well-meaning
people. Let me assure you, the baptists, when they declare something
morally fit or unfit do not include the possiblity of being wrong in the
formula at all. And it is that sort of fanaticism which (rightly or
wrongly--I had to say it) puts me on guard against pronouncements about
right and wrong in an absolute sense.
But I fear I have mistaken your position all along, and I'm sorry that I
did that. I don't know that our views are identical, but I think they
have more similarities than differences.
>But if you keep using the word but make up a nonstandard sense to
>go with your epistemology, how is anybody supposed to understand what
>you're saying?
Good point. Perhaps the next step would be to give up speaking.
>do you mean by "are" in the sentence "These are reasonable restrictions
>on behavior, IMHO." You weren't saying you think those restrictions are
>"generally considered" reasonable, were you?
No.
>Do you mean that in your
>opinion, the sentence "Societies can reasonably restrict behavior in
>these ways." is correct? That's what I'd mean if I said it.
Yes. That is what I meant by it.
> I don't find it malicious, and I'm sorry if I gave that impression,
>but I do find it very confusing, and it hasn't seemed consistent to me.
Well, I'm sorry if it hasn't been consistent. I'm trying to be
consistent, but I'm not surprised if I've come short of that mark. But, I
think it has been confusing. :)
> Did you mean if I hear a theist say that, would I deduce that
>there's a god? I wouldn't, obviously, but that's a different question
>from the one you asked. If that's what you meant, then in Frege's
>terms, you're confusing sense with reference.
Quite right. My example was not the best one.
> It strikes me as an error on the theist's part. The sentence is
>false and the theist thinks the sentence is true.
We, as atheists, call it an error. Theists call our lack of belief an
error. But all I can really say with any certainty is that I'm
unconvinced that there are gods out there and the theists evidenly are
convinced (I was convinced at one point myself, though I was 10 at the
time, so I cut myself some slack for not being more sophisticated).
We'd probably be better off in our discussions if we pick specific
scenarios and tried to describe our ethical response to them. These
woudln't have to be particularly original scenarios, but they might
highlight similarities in our ethical systems and whether or not we
actually hold them to be absolute or situational.
For instance, when I was growing up, the theists were fond of saying "thou
shalt not steal." And yet, even then, it was easy for me to imagine that
theft should be exchused on some cases, even if in most it should not. A
child starving to death in the street with no other recourse for
nourishment might scheem to steal food, for instance, in order to go on
living (why (s)he would want to, given such a situation, is another
question). The theists would say "no! theft is still unethical, even if
you're starving and other have enough to share and simply choose not to."
But that answer always left me wondering if it was god's will that some
should starve.
Wheat
confused and tired and overdue for some sleep
Tony Griffin
>Would it surprise you to learn that utilitarianism's most famous
>spokesperson opposed seatbelt laws?
> [T]he only purpose for which power can be rightfully
> exercised over any member of a civilized community,
> against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His
> own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient
> warrant.
> -- John Stuart Mill, _On Liberty_
Good for him. Doesn't this sound a bit (or a lot) like preference
utilitarianism?
>It isn't clear that seatbelt laws increase society's total happiness.
>For one thing, seatbelts are slightly uncomfortable. I don't always
>wear mine, in fact, even though I really do have my own interests at
>heart. I just don't always feel that my reduced expectation of injury
>outweighs my reduced comfort. Also, seatbelts may not decrease the
>number of automobile-related deaths. When people wear seatbelts,
>crashing is less deadly, so people tend to drive slightly less
>carefully. Which means they crash more. The increase in the number of
>accidents and the decrease in the number of deaths per accident roughly
>cancel each other out. (See Sam Peltzman's article from the 1970s
>in the _Journal of Political Economy_.)
This is really beside the point. Seatbelt laws are instituted because
they are considered to increase safety. That was the point of my
example.
>More generally, Mill may have gotten it right: we will probably obtain
>better (i.e., happier) results letting people decide what's best for
>themsleves instead of letting Dicks Armey and Gephardt decide for them.
Yes. Preference.
>> >To show how utilitarianism
>> >allows the group's happiness to trump a particular individual's
>> >happiness, you have to come up with some action that increases the
>> >group's happiness while it decreases the individual's happiness.
>> >That's not so hard: the punishment of rapists will do. But to come up
>> >with such an action we generally consider immoral is much harder.
>>
>> Easy. Lets say medical experimentation (involving extreme extended
>> pain and final death) would provide a cure for all known cancers. Only
>> one volunteer will be required, and the results are certain. We have
>> no volunteers. One people will suffer grievously, but 6 billion (and
>> their descendants for ever) will be free from the risk of cancer.
>> Shall we force someone participate? (Larger numbers of participants
>> would be more realistic, but I believe the same argument applies if
>> there is only one).
>I wouldn't force anyone. If nobody volunteers today, someone probably
>will tomorrow.
But would you force someone if you *knew* no-one would volunteer?
You asked for an example, and I gave one, albeit an artificial one.
If you start changing the terms of the example, of course you can make
it come out differently. The question is - is there some level of
benefit to the community at large which justifies doing something
really nasty to a single person against that person's will?
I say "no".
>If there is only _one_ person who can possibly be of any use as an
>experimental subject, because of her peculiar genetic makeup or
>whatever, but she refuses, should we force her to participate?
This is no different from my example. The answer is still "no".
> If not, why not?
Because I believe that personal autonomy is more important than any
benefit to be gained by over-riding it.
Lets assume you were the only beneficiary of the medical advance, and
it could only be attained by forcing someone to participate in
experiments against her will. The decision is yours. How do you
decide?
> What if, instead of "extreme extended pain and final
>death," she would experience only slight discomfort? And it's not only
>cancer that we'd be able to cure, but the common cold as well. And
>AIDS. Should we force her then?
Same principle, same answer.
>It's kind of hard to draw any sharp, principled, and consistent lines
>in this area, isn't it?
No. I would like to own myself absolutely. I am prepared to grant
others the same right.
> How does everyone else here go about trying
>to answer these questions. Do you just go with your gut feeling, or
>do you try to consciously analyze the expected consequences? If the
>latter, what sorts of factors do you consider relevant? What sorts of
>considerations, if any, will happiness not trump?
To me its a gut feeling first and foremost. However, I believe a
society where everyone is free from the fear of being forced to do
things against their will is likely to be a more comfortable place to
live. There is also the implied freedom to seek happiness in one's own
way. Of course no-one can guarantee that the search for happiness will
succeed. :)
>So you disagree with my definition of happiness as the satisfaction
>of peoples' preferences. How would you prefer we define it? Of course,
>whether we think maximizing happiness is desirable will depend greatly
>on what we think happiness _is_!
Yes.
The point is not the definition of happiness (which is indeed
difficult to define, but we certainly know when we have it).
I was simply stating that the satisfaction of preferences and the
attainment of happiness are not necessarily equivalent.
Tony
Tony Griffin
>jema...@comp.uark.edu (James Martin) wrote:
>> > One gets knowledge by ruling out all possible alternatives. What
>> > alternative to the existence of a real world do you consider possible?
>>
>> By that logic, you'd never get to atheism. You'd have to spend every hour
>> of every day ruling out new possible dieties (i.e. "all possible
>> alternatives").
> Getting to atheism is a piece of cake. You seem to be assuming an
>"I know there are no gods" definition of atheism. I don't use that one.
>"I do not worship gods or spirits either good or evil nor do I serve
>any." -- Lao Tse. (Thanks, Charles.) No time spent ruling deities out,
>just a two-second inspection of my own mind to see if I've taken up
>worship. :-)
By this definition, you could firmly believe in the existence of a god
and simply refuse to worship it. Funny kind of atheism.
I don't think there is any need to rule out all possible gods either,
but this is because I need *some* level of evidence or probability to
exist before I will bother to investigate an assertion.
Tony
Eric Stevenson
: "Carin" <cvrh...@your-net.com> wrote:
: > They could beat the crap out of the one they consider to be acting
: > immorally. Works for people!
: Well, sure -- baboons do that. The question is, how does the one
: getting beaten up know what he's getting beaten up _for_, if nobody can
: tell him?
Association? Cats, for example, are fairly stupid, but when they get an
immediate response to their behavior, they figure out what they are
allowed to do and not do. It is natural for a kitten to want to climb
the curtains, but it can easily be broken of the habit.
Chloe Pajerek
> Now, let's make it concrete, is homosexuality (in and of itself) right or
> wrong? Or is that a stupid question? Or is it right some places and
> wrong others, or right in some times and wrong in others. Is is
> transhistorically right or wrong? And, if so, by what transhistorical
> standard to we judge it to be such.
See Dover's "Greek Homosexuality".
A more interesting case is prostitution, which unlike homosexuality
has an undercurrent of exploitation.
> Wheat
- Chloe
Tony Griffin
> Well, sure -- baboons do that. The question is, how does the one
>getting beaten up know what he's getting beaten up _for_, if nobody can
>tell him?
1. Don't underestimate the ability of other species to communicate.
2. All communication is not in words.
I don't know about baboons (much) but I have two dogs, one adult and
one a puppy. The adult regularly beats up on the little one when (for
example) she gets too near the adult's food. The puppy performs a
ritual submission and the adult stops the beating (actually its more a
lot of growling than actual harm).
Now, is the adult dog communicating rules? (I'm dominant and you don't
touch my food), Rules certainly, but are they morals?
It seems to me that the puppy is being taught the basics of behaviour
(and survival) in the pack. Similar to what we teach our kids maybe?
Tony
Aaron-Dirk Boyden
> > wrong? Or is that a stupid question? Or is it right some places and
> > wrong others, or right in some times and wrong in others. Is is
> > transhistorically right or wrong? And, if so, by what transhistorical
> > standard to we judge it to be such.
>
>
> A more interesting case is prostitution, which unlike homosexuality
> has an undercurrent of exploitation.
Interesting you should mention the Greeks, as I'd have to say that
homosexuality in ancient Athens had considerably more of an undercurrent
of exploitation than prostitution in ancient Athens, at least given what
I know of the two institutions.
--
---
Aaron Boyden
"It is wrong always, everywhere and for anyone, to believe
anything upon insufficient evidence." W. K. Clifford
Ken Arromdee
>If you start changing the terms of the example, of course you can make
>it come out differently. The question is - is there some level of
>benefit to the community at large which justifies doing something
>really nasty to a single person against that person's will?
Is there any reason why you limit this to actions which are really nasty
(aside from the fact that if you don't, most people can think of examples
which they consider justified, such as taxes?)
--
Ken Arromdee |They said it was *daft* to build a space
arro...@inetnow.net |station in a swamp, but I showed them! It
karr...@nyx.nyx.net |sank into the swamp. So I built a second
http://www.inetnow.net/~arromdee|space station. That sank into the swamp too.
--------------------------------+My third space station sank into the swamp.
So I built a fourth one. That fell into a time warp and _then_ sank into the
swamp. But the fifth one... stayed up! --Monty Python/Babylon 5
Paul Filseth
> The question is - is there some level of benefit to the community at
> large which justifies doing something really nasty to a single person
So let's say a terrorist left an armed tactical nuclear weapon
in the middle of town, like in "Octopussy". He's going to detonate
it by radio as soon as he gets clear, and at the speed he's driving,
that's going to be in about thirty seconds. The only thing standing
in his way is you. You've got a bazooka. He's got a hostage. What
do you do?
Chloe Pajerek
> > A more interesting case is prostitution, which unlike homosexuality
> > has an undercurrent of exploitation.
>
> Interesting you should mention the Greeks, as I'd have to say that
> homosexuality in ancient Athens had considerably more of an undercurrent
> of exploitation than prostitution in ancient Athens, at least given what
> I know of the two institutions.
>
> Aaron Boyden
I was thinking of prostitution today, not then.
- Chloe
Earle Jones
<karr...@nyx.nyx.net> wrote:
> tgri...@pipeline.com wrote:
> >If you start changing the terms of the example, of course you can make
> >it come out differently. The question is - is there some level of
> >benefit to the community at large which justifies doing something
> >really nasty to a single person against that person's will?
[...]
--
Capital punishment advocates would certainly say yes.
earle
--
Tony Griffin
>tgri...@pipeline.com wrote:
>>If you start changing the terms of the example, of course you can make
>>it come out differently. The question is - is there some level of
>>benefit to the community at large which justifies doing something
>>really nasty to a single person against that person's will?
>Is there any reason why you limit this to actions which are really nasty
>(aside from the fact that if you don't, most people can think of examples
>which they consider justified, such as taxes?)
Not really. Moderately nasty or even slightly nasty will do. In fact
we should have the right to refuse something nice if we want.
Taxation is not a parallel example. A single person is not taxed for
the benefit of everyone else, receiving no benefit himself.
Tony
Paul Filseth
> p...@lisl.com (Paul Filseth) wrote:
> > jema...@comp.uark.edu (James Martin) wrote:
> >
> > Getting to atheism is a piece of cake. You seem to be assuming an
> > "I know there are no gods" definition of atheism. I don't use that one.
> > "I do not worship gods or spirits either good or evil nor do I serve
> > any." -- Lao Tse. (Thanks, Charles.) No time spent ruling deities out,
> > just a two-second inspection of my own mind to see if I've taken up
> > worship. :-)
>
> By this definition, you could firmly believe in the existence of a god
> and simply refuse to worship it.
Absolutely. Just because we spot a pattern of galaxies that spells
out "Yes, we do exist. Signed, the gods." in Norse runes, is no reason
for us to take Odin's word for all that foolishness about how people
should try to die in battle. We'd still have to judge things like that
for ourselves.
> Funny kind of atheism.
The word comes from atheos, Greek for "godless". I'm godless. Any
gods that might turn out to exist aren't mine. You can believe children
exist and still be childless.
Admittedly, that's not what the word means in English. I put this
down to the baleful influence of Christians on the language. They
define words based on categories that are important to them, regardless
of whether those categories are the most logical way to divide up the
world, and their definitions stuck because of centuries of being in the
majority.
Since we adopt qualifiers to work around other people's ways of
understanding words, you can call my attitude "etymological atheism".
> I don't think there is any need to rule out all possible gods either,
> but this is because I need *some* level of evidence or probability to
> exist before I will bother to investigate an assertion.
Etymological atheism is for people who don't go in for wuss
positions like weak and "strong" atheism. :-)
Ken Arromdee
>>>If you start changing the terms of the example, of course you can make
>>>it come out differently. The question is - is there some level of
>>>benefit to the community at large which justifies doing something
>>>really nasty to a single person against that person's will?
>>(aside from the fact that if you don't, most people can think of examples
>>which they consider justified, such as taxes?)
>Not really. Moderately nasty or even slightly nasty will do. In fact
>we should have the right to refuse something nice if we want.
>Taxation is not a parallel example. A single person is not taxed for
>the benefit of everyone else, receiving no benefit himself.
Think about it a bit. Most people aren't going to benefit _exactly_ by the
amount they lose in taxes. Some people will benefit more, and some people
will benefit less. Your argument would apply to all those people who benefit
less.
Tony Griffin
>tgri...@pipeline.com (Tony Griffin) wrote:
>> The question is - is there some level of benefit to the community at
>> large which justifies doing something really nasty to a single person
>> against that person's will? I say "no".
> So let's say a terrorist left an armed tactical nuclear weapon
>in the middle of town, like in "Octopussy". He's going to detonate
>it by radio as soon as he gets clear, and at the speed he's driving,
>that's going to be in about thirty seconds. The only thing standing
>in his way is you. You've got a bazooka. He's got a hostage. What
>do you do?
I'd step to one side and do nothing, confident in the knowledge that
James Bond would soon rescue the hostage (a beautiful woman of
course), kill the terrorist and defuse the bomb just as the timer
clicked from "1'" to "0" (there's always a backup detonation timer). I
would then watch as he made passionate love to the hostage, who would
enthusiastically co-operate, having suffered no mental ill-effects
from the experience.
Seriously though.....
Its interesting how criminals can challenge moral systems.
I guess I would blow them up. But that doesn't make it right to kill
an innocent person, no matter how beneficial the results.
Actually, I'm very much in two minds about this. I would find it very
difficult to kill the hostage, no matter what.
Earle:
Your capital punishment example is somewhat different. Life
imprisonment is nasty too, this is a very general point.
I think criminals forfeit (to varying extents) the rights that apply
to innocent people.
Tony
Tony Griffin
>tgri...@pipeline.com (Tony Griffin) wrote:
>> Funny kind of atheism.
> The word comes from atheos, Greek for "godless". I'm godless. Any
>gods that might turn out to exist aren't mine. You can believe children
>exist and still be childless.
> Admittedly, that's not what the word means in English.
Sorry, I thought we were talking English.
> Since we adopt qualifiers to work around other people's ways of
>understanding words, you can call my attitude "etymological atheism".
OK, so you have a different meaning for the word than I do. You are
definitely correct by your definition.
But don't I remember someone taking WildfireHi to task for doing that
same thing a while ago? Now who was that...??
> Etymological atheism is for people who don't go in for wuss
>positions like weak and "strong" atheism. :-)
Huh!! :)
Tony
Paul Filseth
> > You seem to be assuming an "I know there are no gods" definition of
> > atheism. I don't use that one. "I do not worship gods or spirits
> > either good or evil nor do I serve any." -- Lao Tse.
>
> tried to convince myself that gods were just as possible as the lack of
> the same. It didn't take long to give up on that and embrace what I've
> acceptable evidence or even intuitive feeling that gods are a real
I dropped weak atheism when the Euthyphro Dilemma and the emptiness
of First Cause arguments persuaded me the existence or nonexistence of
gods was a philosophical irrelevance, so why base a classification on
one's position on it?
> My only point, in that context, was that we don't have the
> time or the ability to rule out all possible alternatives (whether the
> subject is the existence of dieties or what to have for dinner).
There are degrees of knowledge, proof beyond reasonable doubt, yada
yada. Ruling out all alternatives may not be necessary, but isn't it
sufficient? As far I can tell, we _have_ ruled out all alternatives to
the existence of a real world. If the answer to "Why is there something
instead of nothing?" were, "But there's nothing.", then the question
wouldn't have come up.
> ... So the fact that I can't think up an alternative that hasn't yet
> been ruled out speaks only to my lack of creativity and says nothing to
> the possibility of there actually being something as yet undiscovered.
> And, I'd say the odds are on the side that there are thinks left to be
> learned.
Well, it seems to me the "Either there's something or there isn't"
argument exhausts the space of possibilities, but if you aren't willing
to go out on that much of a limb, suit yourself.
> I don't know what you mean by "justified true belief." Are you quoting
> something I said? Or are you making reference to someone else or to a
> phrase you hold true? Knowledge is the sum total of what we know.
It's the classic philosophers' definition of "know". It means you
believe something, and you have a rational reason for believing it, and
what you believe is in fact true. It's widely perceived to miss some
aspects of what people generally mean by "know", but seems to be a handy
first approximation.
> > Is this an indication that you've come to embrace moral realism?
>
> I don't think that I have.
>
> > All "Morality is objective" _means_ is that some ethical claims are
> > correct.
>
> As long as "correct" means "correct by our cultural standard" and not
> "transhistorically true" then I agree that some ethical claims are
> correct.
Oh well, the large print giveth and the small print taketh away.
Let's go back to my question then. What characteristic of competing
moral claims are you looking for when you choose one over another, if
not cultural-standard-independent correctness? You aren't choosing on
the basis of "correctness by our cultural standard"; if you were, you
wouldn't disagree with the majority about capital punishment.
> I only meant to emphasize that
> I don't believe in transhistorical ethical truths, or at least that I've
> not yet found any. I don't believe that the right way to do things was
> waiting in the soil all along for us to discover it (and that our
> ancestors somehow overlooked it). Rather, they constructed what they
> considered to be a right way to do things and that we have performed the
> same procedure. And I quite prefer ours on many points.
Do you prefer ours because you think what we consider the right
way really is closer to the actual right way than what our ancestors
considered the right way? If not, why do you prefer it? Because our
culture taught you to prefer it? If that's the reason, do you think
that's a good reason to prefer something?
> > No problem -- I'm not claiming certain knowledge of ethics either.
> > The issue is whether there are facts to be known or to be ignorant of,
>
> Then perhaps you'd help focus the discussion by trotting out a few of
> these ethical facts of which people can be either knowledgeable or
> ignorant.
I really wish I could get you to understand that whether I can
produce one of these is immaterial to the question at hand. I'm not
trying to prove ethical facts exist here; I'm making a point of pure
logic.
But here's one, just so you don't conclude I'm being evasive.
Those guys in Jasper ought not to have dragged their victim to death.
> Then you can explain how it is that we know these facts to be
> facts and not illusions.
How about if I just provisionally agree for the sake of discussion
that we don't know it's a fact, so we can get off this digression. I'm
trying to prove your moral theory is self-contradictory. Maybe there
aren't any moral facts, for all I know. My point is that there either
are some or there aren't. It's the Law of the Excluded Middle, and
what you've been saying isn't consistent with taking either possibility
seriously. You're trying to build your house on an acre of land
between the salt water and the sea strand.
> But I'm actually much more interested in the first question. What is
> a moral fact? Do you mean something like a necessity for moral
> deliberation? Something like: all humans feel pain? I'd call that
> a biological fact, not a moral one.
Agreed. I meant something like the "Jasper" sentence above. A
moral fact is simply a cultural-standard-independently correct normative
assertion. "In situation X, agent Y ought to do Z".
> How about Kant's idea that people should be treated as ends rather
> than as means? That's an opinion about the nature of morals, not a
> moral fact.
It's a moral fact if and only if Kant was right. He thought it was
a fact. That's what it means for it to be his opinion. Assuming you
think there are no moral facts, what is an opinion that isn't what the
opinionated person thinks the facts are?
> What I agree with is what both statements mean. But I don't think that
> the fist sentence ("A is ethical") has any meaning apart from a cultural
> context. "A is ethical" is something you can't know for certain.
This is a non-sequitur. "All chickens weigh less than eight tons"
is something you can't know for certain, but it has a perfectly
objective meaning. In fact, it doesn't make a lick of sense to even
raise the issue of certainty if there's no truth of the matter for
people to be certain or uncertain of. You might as well talk about
the probability that Sherlock Holmes was part Greek.
> >Can you reconcile your assertions for me? To me, (A:) is a simple
> >instance of your statement type 1, and (B:) is a simple instance of
> >your statement type 2. If you regard 1 and 2 as independent of each
> >other, why are you equating A and B?
>
> Because I see no way to establish that they are independent, regardless of
> my own beliefs on the subject. I may strongly believe that A is ethical
> and that my culture simply has it wrong thinking that A is unethical. But
> the context of what gets called ethical is some culture or other.
As near as I can tell, you're saying you have a belief that "A is
ethical" and "A is generally considered ethical" are independent, and
another belief that they aren't. It sounds like you have two disjoint
belief systems: an emotional system that contains beliefs like "Capital
punishment is bad and my culture is just wrong about that", and an
intellectual system that contains beliefs like "Cultures aren't wrong;
they're just different from one another."
If this works for you, go for it. But there's little point in
arguing anything in the face of a tolerated inconsistency.
> When people make statements about what really is ethical. I picture them
> standing up in the sky with a ruler trying to measure the ethicality of
> one culture against the ethicality of another by some standard which is
> external to both (say, God's will or, rationality, or what have you). But
> I don't see how they can entertain such a notion.
It's not hard to entertain: when you've eliminated the impossible,
whatever remains must be true. The alternatives to ethical realism are
nihilism and subjectivism. I'll show why nihilism is probably wrong
if there are any actual nihilists to refute it to; subjectivism is
impossible because it's self-contradictory.
If you actually take the idea that all your ethics are just memes
seriously, and believe the only reason you hold them is because somebody
else held them and taught them to you, and believe he had no better
reason than that someone taught him, and believe there's no truth at the
bottom holding the whole chain up, then you _don't really believe_ in
your ethical principles any more, for the same reason you can't really
be convinced by an argument by mathematical induction after you've
noticed that there's no proof of the N=1 case. You've become the coyote
who ran off a cliff and then looked down.
> But when it comes to real world happenings, my views are more cut and
> dried. I think that genocide it a terrible thing. By what I take as
> ethical guideposts, it is an unethical thing. But I have no yardstick for
> checking to see that my views are beyond all possible doubt. Luckily,
> such is not required. All I really have to believe is that I'm probably
> right.
What does it mean to say you believe you're "probably" right, when
you think there isn't any right answer for your ethical view to probably
agree with?
> But maintaining some degree of skepticism is the only stay I know
> against fanaticism. And I'll take ambiguity over the sort of certainty
> which leads to genocide any day.
You've said things like this before, and it's time they were
challenged. What basis do you have for thinking ethical realism leads
to genocide? What ideology has the highest body count this century, and
what was its position on the objectivity of fairness?
For that matter, what basis do you have for thinking moral realists
are more prone than subjectivists to being certain of their ethical
beliefs? I think my ethical positions are probably right, but I could
be mistaken. That's a position only ethical realists can coherently
take. A realist can be proven wrong. Subjectivists are immune.
> > I put it in in recognition of the fact that ethics is situational, ...
>
> Most everything else you've said has led me to think you believe in
> ethical standards which transcend situations. And it seems you've had
> great reservations with what I've said here, when, if you believe the
> above, we actually have a similar take on ethics.
I doubt it. You appear to be confusing transcending _situations_
with transcending _cultural ethical standards_. These are two unrelated
issues. If a thief says "Don't punish me; I was starving", that's
a situational consideration. If he says "Don't punish me; in some
cultures what I took would have been classified as mine", that's a
consideration of what standard should be applied. I'll always listen
to the former; the latter is only interesting if the thief can show why
those other cultures' viewpoint is superior.
> But the "is" in both options means "thinks to be true" rather than "is
> true beyond all doubt for now and for ever in all possible situations."
You're mushing separate issues together. The "for ever" and "all
possible situations" were explicitly ruled out when we plugged 1999 USA
into the formulas. "Beyond all doubt" is a red herring; just because
something is a fact doesn't mean anybody knows it's a fact, and even if
nobody knows something is a fact, that's no reason we aren't allowed to
reason about what the logical consequences of it being a fact would be.
If you want to futz with "is", leave it at "thinks to be true" versus
"is true".
> When someone sees something morally abhorrent, he or she might say "That's
> just wrong." That statement could mean either 1) that by some ahistorical
> standard (god's will, some moral absolute or other) that action *is*
> wrong, or 2) that the person uttering that statement strongly feels
> repulsed by what is happening, and wishes to express that disgust.
Okay, now we're getting somewhere. If you want to translate moral
statements into expressions of personal emotion, go for it. It's a
quick and effective way out of your belief inconsistency. But there
are a couple things to keep in mind here. First, you don't get to
willy-nilly do that to other people's statements without verifying that
that's what they mean. Just because when _you_ say "That's just wrong"
you mean "That repulses me", it doesn't follow that when _I_ say it, I
mean it repulses _me_. I might mean that, but you have to ask.
Second, such a comment isn't really an _opinion_. It's a direct
observation of a fact about your own emotional make-up. As such, it
doesn't conflict with anybody else's moral claim. If when you say
belly-scratching is wrong, you mean it repulses you, then that's between
you and your therapist; your calling it "wrong" doesn't give anyone else
a lot of reason to care, except maybe to not let you see them do it if
they happen to be felicitous about your feelings. It's not like you're
drawing their attention to a reason for them to oppose the activity. So
if you take this tack, you have no business debating ethical questions.
> But that answer always left me wondering if it was god's will that some
> should starve.
Well, it would certainly be in character.
Tony Griffin
>Think about it a bit. Most people aren't going to benefit _exactly_ by the
>amount they lose in taxes. Some people will benefit more, and some people
>will benefit less. Your argument would apply to all those people who benefit
>less.
Despite the grumbles, I think most people realize that taxes are
necessary and would say that they consent to being taxed.
Actually, my rule would allow those who really didn't want to be taxed
to opt out, *provided* they also forego all benefits that are provided
by taxation. I would agree to this, if there were some way to
implement it.
Tony
James Martin
> Oh well, the large print giveth and the small print taketh away.
>Let's go back to my question then. What characteristic of competing
>moral claims are you looking for when you choose one over another, if
>not cultural-standard-independent correctness?
When I encounter a moral claim, I try to sort out logically what would be
the implications of holding and acting on such a claim. And I try to see
if such a claim would lead to what I think would be a better version of
the culture that I live in. I also have certain assumptions about human
beings and what should be considered their rights (also culturaly
defined). And I tend to not favour any action which would lead to a
noxious result or infringe upon what I take to be people's rights.
Capital punnishment was our example. Capital punishment is motivated by
the desire for revenge and the mistaken assumption that it reduces crime.
A historical view shows that our country has been rather bad a putting
people to death who later proved to be innocent. So, on one hand, I'd
like to live in a society with less violent crime. On the other, I dont'
think it wise to give governments the right to kill people who may latter
prove to be innocent. I think our culture would be a better place if we
could get past revenge and start reducing crime (which means getting past
using incarseration as the only "cure" to any sort of deviance).
This doesn't hit every angle, but my connection is so slow tonight, it
will have to do. My point is that one can reason with one's culture. I
dont' have to blindly swallow what my culture thinks. Especially when
it's fairly obvious that what my culture thinks is bunk.
>You aren't choosing on
>the basis of "correctness by our cultural standard"; if you were, you
>wouldn't disagree with the majority about capital punishment.
I'm choosing in the context of my culture. That doesn't mean I (or anyone
else) believes everyting that has the culture's stamp of approval.
> Do you prefer ours because you think what we consider the right
>way really is closer to the actual right way than what our ancestors
>considered the right way? If not, why do you prefer it? Because our
>culture taught you to prefer it? If that's the reason, do you think
>that's a good reason to prefer something?
I believe quite a few things contrary to my culture's opinions. For one,
I'm an atheist. I see nothing at all wrong with homosexuality and/or
bisexuality. I also don't hate people for not being the same color as me.
I've even gotten over hating christians and the rich. These are real
issues for some people. Theism, nationalism, and homophobia still have a
strong foothold in the USA. I think racism is also far from vanishing.
But since I have the ability to reson, to imagine what our culture could
be, and enough historical knowledge to see where it has been, I can make
some opinions on the subject. I don't have to compare one culture to
another. I can compare us to what we've been and what I think we could
be.
> But here's one, just so you don't conclude I'm being evasive.
>Those guys in Jasper ought not to have dragged their victim to death.
And I agree with you.
>are some or there aren't. It's the Law of the Excluded Middle, and
>what you've been saying isn't consistent with taking either possibility
>seriously. You're trying to build your house on an acre of land
>between the salt water and the sea strand.
I think there might be a way to be somwhere between both of those
extreams. But I'm still thinking my way though these things. I'm not a
relativist. I believe that certain things are good or bad for people and
for our culture. And I also believe that certain cultures are just wrong.
But I dont' see any transhistorical yardstick by which I can prove them to
be wrong. All I have are the yardsticks we've come up with and consider,
for the time being, valid. Sorry if that strikes you as wishy-washy. It
strikes me as honest.
>assertion. "In situation X, agent Y ought to do Z".
For sake of argument, I'll accept as a moral fact that it's wrong to kill
people just beause you don't like the color of their skin. That's a
cultur-specific statement, of course. But I think it's an indespensible
rule of thumb for people who don't have enough insight and sympathy not to
want to so such things. Unfortunately, for such people moral rules of
thumb are of little use.
> It's a moral fact if and only if Kant was right. He thought it was
>a fact. That's what it means for it to be his opinion. Assuming you
Agreed.
>intellectual system that contains beliefs like "Cultures aren't wrong;
>they're just different from one another."
Maybe I'm just muddled, but I do have opinions about other cultures and
thier ethicality. I just realize that my opinions are opinions and not
transcendant truths.
> If you actually take the idea that all your ethics are just memes
>seriously,
I dont' think that peoples' ethics are purely determined. I think people
can learn to reason and come to opinions that are contrary to their
upbringing.
> What does it mean to say you believe you're "probably" right, when
>you think there isn't any right answer for your ethical view to probably
>agree with?
I think I explained this above when I discussed being able to consider the
ramifications of one view over another, historical vision, and the ability
to reason with whatever evidence is available.
> You've said things like this before, and it's time they were
>challenged. What basis do you have for thinking ethical realism leads
>to genocide?
I think that once a person is 100% convinced that his/her view is right
beyond all doubt, that person can do anything which that certainty will
allow. If I'm convinced that jewish blood is keeping the great german
culture down, then extermination seems a rational choice. But it's only a
rational choice if you accept a string of unacceptable assumptions with
complete certainty. I think doubt is a stay against the sort of certainty
which allows that kind of desstructive behavior.
And your allusion to the Soviet regime is appropriate. Do you think
Stalin had any doubt about the rightness of his cause? He did not.
Therefore, getting rid of opposition to the only right course is
completely rational.
>issues. If a thief says "Don't punish me; I was starving", that's
>a situational consideration. If he says "Don't punish me; in some
>cultures what I took would have been classified as mine", that's a
>consideration of what standard should be applied. I'll always listen
Right. The second is of no consequence in the short run. In the long
run, we might come to embrace another culture's view. But understanding
that there are other cultures doesn't mean that all our standards simply
cease to exist.
>that's what they mean. Just because when _you_ say "That's just wrong"
>you mean "That repulses me", it doesn't follow that when _I_ say it, I
>mean it repulses _me_. I might mean that, but you have to ask.
Agreed.
>if you take this tack, you have no business debating ethical questions.
I don't know that it's my last word on the subject. But I still think I
have something of value to add to ethical discussions.
Wheat
Paul Filseth
> Paul Filseth <p...@lisl.com> wrote:
> : "Carin" <cvrh...@your-net.com> wrote:
> : > They could beat the crap out of the one they consider to be acting
> : > immorally. Works for people!
> :
> : getting beaten up know what he's getting beaten up _for_, if nobody can
> : tell him?
>
It's possible. But there's a problem in child language acquisition
called poverty of stimulus that I think may apply here, where children
learn a rule after too few examples to justify the generalizations they
make, there being any number of other possible generalizations. The
baboon case I heard about involved one getting beaten up for failing to
help defend the troop against a lion. How many times could that have
been done to the other troop members, if that's how each of _them_ found
out it was against the rules?
> Cats, for example, are fairly stupid, but when they get an
> immediate response to their behavior, they figure out what they are
> allowed to do and not do. It is natural for a kitten to want to climb
> the curtains, but it can easily be broken of the habit.
I can't seem to train my cats out of anything, but maybe I just
stink at it. And of course monkeys are a lot smarter than cats.
tgri...@pipeline.com (Tony Griffin) wrote:
> 1. Don't underestimate the ability of other species to communicate.
> 2. All communication is not in words.
Also possible, but the concepts seem kind of abstract for gesturing.
> I don't know about baboons (much) but I have two dogs, one adult and
> one a puppy. The adult regularly beats up on the little one when (for
> example) she gets too near the adult's food. The puppy performs a
> ritual submission and the adult stops the beating (actually its more a
> lot of growling than actual harm).
I'm inclined to suspect this is instinctive rather than learned.
But anyway, it's empirically testable. Do different wolf packs in the
wild have different rules about acceptable behavior? Beats me.
> Now, is the adult dog communicating rules? (I'm dominant and you don't
> touch my food), Rules certainly, but are they morals?
> It seems to me that the puppy is being taught the basics of behaviour
> (and survival) in the pack. Similar to what we teach our kids maybe?
Right. Whenever the question comes up of whether what animals
are doing really counts as morality, one should ask the same question
about humans. :-)
Calvin Ostrum
p...@lisl.com (Paul Filseth) wrote:
| > When someone sees something morally abhorrent, he or she might say "That's
| > just wrong." That statement could mean either 1) that by some ahistorical
| > standard (god's will, some moral absolute or other) that action *is*
| > wrong, or 2) that the person uttering that statement strongly feels
| > repulsed by what is happening, and wishes to express that disgust.
A proper emotive analysis of ethical statements probably goes
beyond (2) toward something like "the person uttering the statement
disapproves of what is happening, and disapproves of those who do
not disapprove, and in extreme cases, even disapproves of those who
do not disapprove of those who do not disapprove".
| Second, such a comment isn't really an _opinion_. It's a direct
| observation of a fact about your own emotional make-up. As such, it
| doesn't conflict with anybody else's moral claim. If when you say
| belly-scratching is wrong, you mean it repulses you, then that's between
| you and your therapist; your calling it "wrong" doesn't give anyone else
| a lot of reason to care, except maybe to not let you see them do it if
| they happen to be felicitous about your feelings. It's not like you're
| drawing their attention to a reason for them to oppose the activity. So
| if you take this tack, you have no business debating ethical questions.
Why not? If I am repulsed by something, I'd rather it not occur, and
it makes sense for me then to attempt to get others to agree with
me, not by sharing my beliefs, but by sharing my preferences.
I might then use any strategy that works. Acting as if moral
commitments are beliefs, as opposed to preferences, might be
quite effective. At least it would, apparently, with people
like you, who allege themselves to be impressed with "moral
facts".
It seems to me that criticisms of emotivism must begin at home.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Calvin Ostrum c...@interlog.com
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Blindness is a weapon against time and space; our being is one vast
blindness, save only for that little circle which our mean intelligence --
mean in its nature as in its scope -- can illumine. The dominating
principle of the universe is blindness. It makes possible juxtapositions
which would be impossible if the objects could see each other. It
permits the truncation of time when time is unendurable.
-- Elias Canetti, "Auto Da Fe"
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jason Friesen
Well, I'm adding my $.02 a little late here so I have no real single post to
reply to. I'll just mention a few things.
I believe the vast majority of people in this world believe in an absolute
morality whether they know it or not. I think very few actually live as if there
was no absolute morality.
I know this example is such a cliche, but it still hold truth. When we are
talking about the moral order of societies, it appears we can compare. If you
asked people if they thought the society of a peaceful indian tribe or the society
of a fascist Germany was "better", most would answer the indian tribe, fewer would
answer the fascist germany, but very few would say it was not possible to compare
the two. As soon as you are comparing you are, of course, using a moral yardstick
which is synonymous with a moral absolute. I think most of us would agree with
this, the debate that is raging, is where this yardstick comes from. Is it
absolute for all cultures (culture-independent) or does it depend on the culture
you live in (culture-dependent).
I think two arguments can, in conjunction, lend strong support to
culture-independence. The first is the idea that cultures are more similar than
different. I cannot say that there have not been differences over the ages in
cultural morality, but I think it is just as true that most if not all cultures
have themes that run throughout them. While the particulars of morality have been
different, the generalities have not. Through the ages morality has allowed men
to be married to a different amount of women, but in almost all societies, it is
clear one man is not to take another man's wife away from him. The particulars of
marriage have changes, but the idea of marriage is almost universal.
The second argument is the idea of moral progress. Without a moral absolute
to use as a yardstick, the idea of moral progress makes no sense. You cannot
better yourself, or your society if there is no site to set your eyes on or ruler
to judge progress. Most people would consider moral progress a real possibility.
Together I think these ideas are strong support. I think it becomes more
obvious when you use more general terms. The easiest absolute morality to knock
down is the most specific. Capital punishment is actually quite specific when we
talk about the ideas of cruelty, marriage, bravery, honor. When you look at this
level, it becomes much more clear that society-independent ideals do exist. As a
final note, I have not argued far enough to say this absolute morality comes from
a higher power (which is my personal belief). So do not include this in any
rebuttals. I suppose it could be argued that this absolute morality is genetic.
(This idea has it's weaknesses, but is a viable option.)
--
TO REPLY TO ME REMOVE "NOSPAM" FROM MY EMAIL ADDRESS
Jason
"Religious belief is enhanced by an open-eyed investigation of the world,
and honest science demands humility when faced with the astonishing
richness of life's creation."
H(0): The age of the universe does not allow sufficient time to
develop life with the tools available to it.
JeffMo
> H(0): The age of the universe does not allow sufficient time to
>develop life with the tools available to it.
Whether life exists (or not) is known with a greater degree of
accuracy than the age of the universe.
Thus, we could cast a similar hypothesis to the one above:
"The existence of life in the universe establishes a
somewhat fuzzy lower bound on the universe's age,
given the available tools (for the evolution of life)
of which we are currently aware."
I'd be curious to hear your estimate of that age.
JeffMo
Is it better to be bored, wishing you're not,
or not to be bored, wishing that you were?
Remove dipstick for email replies.
Ken Arromdee
> When we are
>talking about the moral order of societies, it appears we can compare. If you
>asked people if they thought the society of a peaceful indian tribe or
>the society
>of a fascist Germany was "better", most would answer the indian tribe,
>fewer would
>answer the fascist germany, but very few would say it was not possible
>to compare
>the two.
That doesn't prove what you want it to prove.
You might not be able to compare two societies, because one society might be
better in some ways but worse in other ways. And it's not clear how to
compare that.
But there is an exception: if the society is better on _every point_, then you
_can_ compare it.
Some society might be better than Nazi Germany on every point. Then the
ability to compare it to Nazi Germany would not mean that you could compare
societies in general.
There is also a less extreme version of the above problem, which happens when
certain characteristics overwhelm other characteristics, and you can compare
two societies only if they differ in those ways. For instance, perhaps you
can compare a society to Nazi society because having concentration camps
automatically makes a society bad and relieves you from having to compare the
societies on other points. If comparing the societies on other points is not
possible, you might be able to compare societies to the Nazis without being
able to compare them to each other.
Paul Filseth
> > > Funny kind of atheism.
> >
> > The word comes from atheos, Greek for "godless". I'm godless.
> > Any gods that might turn out to exist aren't mine. You can believe
> > children exist and still be childless.
> > Admittedly, that's not what the word means in English.
>
> Sorry, I thought we were talking English.
No need to apologize; that's a perfectly understandable mistake
on your part. :-)
> > Since we adopt qualifiers to work around other people's ways of
> > understanding words, you can call my attitude "etymological atheism".
>
> OK, so you have a different meaning for the word than I do. You are
> definitely correct by your definition.
Languages change as a result of accumulation of usage choices by
individuals, some conscious, some unconscious; and I'm choosing to
be proactive. The word appears to have been hijacked, and I want it
back.
> But don't I remember someone taking WildfireHi to task for doing that
> same thing a while ago?
That would be a very unreasonable thing to do. People are
entitled to speak any language they like and use words to mean
whatever they please. First Amendment and all that.
> Now who was that...??
Assumes facts not in evidence; I don't recall anyone doing what
you describe. But I do remember someone correcting WildfireHi for
applying a nonstandard definition to _my_ usage of a word, and for
claiming to have refuted me based on that interpretation. That's
an equivocation fallacy. People who screw around with word meanings
need to watch out for those.
IC
<jfri...@nycap.rr.com> wrote:
>As soon as you are comparing you are, of course, using a moral yardstick
>which is synonymous with a moral absolute.
No, you are using 'your' moral yardstick that you have developed by
watching others.
>Through the ages morality has allowed men
>to be married to a different amount of women, but in almost all societies, it is
>clear one man is not to take another man's wife away from him.
Unless she is being beaten, unless he is stronger (more powerful),
unless....unless...unless.
I would say that most people despite their protestations of morality
are moral relativists. They will do what they think is right at the
time and then ....after....try and justify it.
> The second argument is the idea of moral progress. Without a moral absolute
>to use as a yardstick, the idea of moral progress makes no sense.
Sure doesn't.
> when we
>talk about the ideas of cruelty, marriage, bravery, honor. When you look at this
>level, it becomes much more clear that society-independent ideals do exist.
Mainly because everyone has a different 'idea' of what these words
mean. Once you get specific you actually see how different people are
in terms of their morality, and of course how different people are
from one moment to another.
James Martin
>talking about the moral order of societies, it appears we can compare. If you
>asked people if they thought the society of a peaceful indian tribe or the society
>of a fascist Germany was "better", most would answer the indian tribe, fewer would
>answer the fascist germany, but very few would say it was not possible to compare
>the two.
I don't recall anyone arguing that you couldn't compare the two. The
point is what standard you use to compare the two (your own cultural
standard, or some absolute, culture-independent standard). I don't belive
in Santa Clause, the Easter Bunny, or culturally independent ethical
standards. There may be culturally independent standards, but I've yet to
read a convincing argument to support their existence.
>As soon as you are comparing you are, of course, using a moral yardstick
>which is synonymous with a moral absolute.
This is, quite simply, a non-sequitur. There are culturally-specific
moral yardsticks and there might be culturally independent moral
yardsticks. But you can't just equate the two because it serves your
intersts.
> The second argument is the idea of moral progress. Without a moral absolute
>to use as a yardstick, the idea of moral progress makes no sense. You cannot
>better yourself, or your society if there is no site to set your eyes on or ruler
>to judge progress.
You can have moral progress, but that moral progress is judged within your
culture. The believe in culturally independent moral scales is what
allowed imperialist cultures to judge other cultures inferior and pave the
way to exploiting them in the name of conversion.
Wheat
John Secker
<tgri...@pipeline.com> writes
allow you to take with you a lot of your possessions, although you only
retain them by virtue of the rule of law paid for by those taxes. You
will then need to find somewhere where there are no taxes. There are
many such places, but I suspect that you might no like most of them.
What you can't do, of course, is stay where you are now, but opt out of
paying taxes and receiving services. Even if there was some way to opt
out of the protection you receive from the very structure of society
(every time the courts jail a criminal you benefit) it is very hard to
see how you can avoid benefiting from the protection which the nation
provides against external threats.
--
John Secker
John Secker
<jfri...@nycap.rr.com> writes
>
> Well, I'm adding my $.02 a little late here so I have no real single post to
>reply to. I'll just mention a few things.
>
> I believe the vast majority of people in this world believe in an absolute
>morality whether they know it or not. I think very few actually live as if
>there
>was no absolute morality.
> I know this example is such a cliche, but it still hold truth. When we are
>asked people if they thought the society of a peaceful indian tribe or the
>society
>of a fascist Germany was "better", most would answer the indian tribe, fewer
>would
>answer the fascist germany, but very few would say it was not possible to
>compare
>yardstick
>which is synonymous with a moral absolute. I think most of us would agree with
>this, the debate that is raging, is where this yardstick comes from. Is it
>absolute for all cultures (culture-independent) or does it depend on the culture
>you live in (culture-dependent).
> I think two arguments can, in conjunction, lend strong support to
>culture-independence. The first is the idea that cultures are more similar than
>different. I cannot say that there have not been differences over the ages in
>cultural morality, but I think it is just as true that most if not all cultures
>have themes that run throughout them. While the particulars of morality have
>been
>to be married to a different amount of women, but in almost all societies, it is
>of
>marriage have changes, but the idea of marriage is almost universal.
>to use as a yardstick, the idea of moral progress makes no sense. You cannot
>better yourself, or your society if there is no site to set your eyes on or
>ruler
>possibility.
> Together I think these ideas are strong support. I think it becomes more
>obvious when you use more general terms. The easiest absolute morality to knock
>talk about the ideas of cruelty, marriage, bravery, honor. When you look at
>this
>a
>final note, I have not argued far enough to say this absolute morality comes
>from
>a higher power (which is my personal belief). So do not include this in any
>rebuttals. I suppose it could be argued that this absolute morality is genetic.
>(This idea has it's weaknesses, but is a viable option.)
>
of deciding which of two cultures is 'better', and your idea of cultural
progress, can quite easily be seen as embodying cultural-specific
judgements. For example an Italian in 1935 would probably have said that
Nazi Germany was 'better'. And an ancient Greek, viewing cultural
progress through history to 1999 AD might well regard it as retrograde,
not progress at all - because we have abandoned things that he regards
as important. Yes, in both cases you can make comparisons, but that does
not imply the necessary existance of some external objective measure.
Indeed the very fact that different people asked the same question will
come up with different answers tells us that is such an objective
measure does exist, then we do not have access to it.
Your other point, about consistent elements in different moralities is
interesting. This does suggest that in some way there is a common thread
running through the different systems. But is this because they have
evolved from each other, or is it that human evolved psychology means
that certain rules tend to work well, or is there some underlying
perfect morality which all societies are groping towards? I don't think
you can judge from the evidence we have.
--
John Secker
Calvin Ostrum
jema...@comp.uark.edu (James Martin) wrote:
| You can have moral progress, but that moral progress is judged within your
| culture. The believe in culturally independent moral scales is what
| allowed imperialist cultures to judge other cultures inferior and pave the
| way to exploiting them in the name of conversion.
And is there something wrong with that?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Calvin Ostrum c...@interlog.com
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
It need hardly be mentioned that the sight of a being adorned with no
feature of a pure and good will yet enjoying uninterrupted prosperity
can never give pleasure to a rational impartial observer.
-- Kant, "Foundations of the metaphysics of morals"
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Eric Pepke
> Jason Friesen <jfri...@nycap.rr.com> wrote:
>
> > H(0): The age of the universe does not allow sufficient time to
> >develop life with the tools available to it.
>
> Whether life exists (or not) is known with a greater degree of
> accuracy than the age of the universe.
However, this was considered problematic back in the 19th century. The
solar system was estimated to be around 80,000 years old, not enough time
for evolution, let alone abiogenesis to work.
Then, of course, nuclear fission was discovered and later nuclear fusion,
and all of a sudden there was a mechanism for the energy output of the
sun beyond gravitational collapse. A solar system age of four billion
years or so does seem to be plenty for evolution to occur.
BTW, does anybody know the latest about the Snowballs from Heaven thing?
It would seem to change the history of water on this planet.
-Eric
Eric Pepke
> There is also a less extreme version of the above problem, which happens when
> certain characteristics overwhelm other characteristics, and you can compare
> two societies only if they differ in those ways. For instance, perhaps you
> can compare a society to Nazi society because having concentration camps
> automatically makes a society bad and relieves you from having to compare the
> societies on other points. If comparing the societies on other points is not
> possible, you might be able to compare societies to the Nazis without being
> able to compare them to each other.
Good point. This is the "partial ordering" problem. A partial ordering
does not imply a complete ordering.
In any event, most comparisons of societies are naive and fail to take
all of the interactions within the culture into account. Cultures
usually have tradeoffs within them.
-Eric
Jason Friesen
JeffMo wrote:
> Jason Friesen <jfri...@nycap.rr.com> wrote:
>
> > H(0): The age of the universe does not allow sufficient time to
> >develop life with the tools available to it.
>
> Whether life exists (or not) is known with a greater degree of
> accuracy than the age of the universe.
>
> Thus, we could cast a similar hypothesis to the one above:
>
> "The existence of life in the universe establishes a
> somewhat fuzzy lower bound on the universe's age,
> given the available tools (for the evolution of life)
> of which we are currently aware."
>
> I'd be curious to hear your estimate of that age.
>
> JeffMo
>
10,000 years? Haha, just kidding. The current estimation of the age of
the universe is probably 12 billion years old. The conventional wisdom
among lay people who are "in the know" is probably 15-20 billion years,
but this has been ratcheted down recently.
Your rewording of my null hypothesis is close, but it differs
significantly. While my hypothesis allows for the possibility of a
"higher being" controlling the process, your's does not. Please don't
assume that I am stating H(0) as fact, merely as a hypothesis which I
subscribe to. I can back it up with evidence, for sure, but I know the
evidence is far from an airtight case.
My question to you is, what do you estimate is the "fuzzy lower bound"
of the universe given the available tools we have discovered? And which
tools are those for abiogenesis? (If you want, I'd be happy to debate
privately if other's don't want bandwidth to be taken up on this
subject.)
--
TO REPLY TO ME REMOVE "NOSPAM" FROM MY EMAIL ADDRESS
Jason
"Religious belief is enhanced by an open-eyed investigation of the
world,
and honest science demands humility when faced with the astonishing
richness of life's creation."
H(0): The age of the universe does not allow sufficient time to
Tony Griffin
>>Actually, my rule would allow those who really didn't want to be taxed
>>to opt out, *provided* they also forego all benefits that are provided
>>by taxation. I would agree to this, if there were some way to
>>implement it.
>>
>>Tony
>>
>There is. Leave the country. If you are lucky the government may even
>allow you to take with you a lot of your possessions, although you only
>retain them by virtue of the rule of law paid for by those taxes. You
>will then need to find somewhere where there are no taxes. There are
>many such places, but I suspect that you might no like most of them.
>What you can't do, of course, is stay where you are now, but opt out of
>paying taxes and receiving services. Even if there was some way to opt
>out of the protection you receive from the very structure of society
>(every time the courts jail a criminal you benefit) it is very hard to
>see how you can avoid benefiting from the protection which the nation
>provides against external threats.
This is exactly what I meant by "if there were some way to implement
it". Thank you for explaining it so clearly.
Tony
Jason Friesen
Eric Pepke wrote:
>
> A solar system age of four billion
> years or so does seem to be plenty for evolution to occur.
I'd have to say at this point in our knowledge of science, this is a very
long limb you have climbed out on. Four billion years does seem like an
eternity to us, but if it turns out abiogenesis really only happens once
every 40 billion years, it would fall quite a bit short. Since we really
have no idea how abiogenesis was accomplished, the above statement is really
nothing more than your personal H(0).
JeffMo
>JeffMo wrote:
>> Jason Friesen <jfri...@nycap.rr.com> wrote:
>>
>> >develop life with the tools available to it.
>>
>> accuracy than the age of the universe.
>>
>> Thus, we could cast a similar hypothesis to the one above:
>>
>> "The existence of life in the universe establishes a
>> somewhat fuzzy lower bound on the universe's age,
>> given the available tools (for the evolution of life)
>> of which we are currently aware."
>>
>> I'd be curious to hear your estimate of that age.
>10,000 years? Haha, just kidding. The current estimation of the age of
>the universe is probably 12 billion years old. The conventional wisdom
>among lay people who are "in the know" is probably 15-20 billion years,
>but this has been ratcheted down recently.
> Your rewording of my null hypothesis is close, but it differs
>significantly. While my hypothesis allows for the possibility of a
>"higher being" controlling the process, your's does not.
I'd be interested to hear why you allege that mine rules out that
possibility. All I was trying to do was state it in a way that
acknowledges that life, in fact, exists. I'd say that most people
would give a value of "TRUE" to the statement "life exists," and they
are a bit more uncertain about the age of the universe.
> Please don't
>assume that I am stating H(0) as fact, merely as a hypothesis which I
>subscribe to. I can back it up with evidence, for sure, but I know the
>evidence is far from an airtight case.
Oh, I don't assume you're stating it as fact. In fact, I tend to take
it as pretty obvious that the conditions present in the universe
probably DO allow life to arise, based on the observation that life
exists in the universe, but it is certainly a hypothesis.
> My question to you is, what do you estimate is the "fuzzy lower bound"
>of the universe given the available tools we have discovered? And which
>tools are those for abiogenesis? (If you want, I'd be happy to debate
>privately if other's don't want bandwidth to be taken up on this
>subject.)
I'd say the universe's age would have to be at least on the order of
the age of the sun, since the sun would be far and away the main
source of energy (of any so far discovered) for the development of
life on earth.
JeffMo
>Eric Pepke wrote:
>> A solar system age of four billion
>> years or so does seem to be plenty for evolution to occur.
> I'd have to say at this point in our knowledge of science, this is a very
>long limb you have climbed out on. Four billion years does seem like an
>eternity to us, but if it turns out abiogenesis really only happens once
>every 40 billion years, it would fall quite a bit short. Since we really
>have no idea how abiogenesis was accomplished, the above statement is really
>nothing more than your personal H(0).
Actually, you're climbing out on a much longer limb. He said
"evolution". You said "abiogenesis".
You are correct that much less is known about possible candidate
mechanisms for abiogenesis, but we are pretty sure that there is life
on earth at the present, and we have a pretty fair idea that this was
not true at some point in the past. Interestingly, any abiogenesis
need not have happened on earth at all, in order for the scenario
implied by Eric to have occurred.
Also, if you think that "abiogenesis happening once every 40 billion
years" would preclude it having happened on earth (or somewhere else)
within the last 5 to 10 billion years, you probably need to brush up
on your probability theory a bit.
Also, there is no pressing logical reason for anyone to address the
case where abiogenesis happens (on the average) once every 40 billion
years, until such a result is actually obtained or there is evidence
suggesting it.
Jason Friesen
JeffMo wrote:
> >>
> >> Thus, we could cast a similar hypothesis to the one above:
> >>
> >> "The existence of life in the universe establishes a
> >> somewhat fuzzy lower bound on the universe's age,
> >> given the available tools (for the evolution of life)
> >> of which we are currently aware."
> >>
> I'd be interested to hear why you allege that mine rules out that
> possibility. All I was trying to do was state it in a way that
> acknowledges that life, in fact, exists. I'd say that most people
> would give a value of "TRUE" to the statement "life exists," and they
> are a bit more uncertain about the age of the universe.
I guess the reason I would conclude your hypothesis rules out a "supreme
creator" is that the hypothesis becomes very unhelpful if you include one. I
assume the hypothesis would be constructed to try to determine the "fuzzy
lower bound" of the age of the universe. If we include the possibility of a
creator, that lower bound would be one the scale of seconds. If we were were
to include all tools and options available to a "god" then we could say the
universe was created two seconds ago with a built in "history". That would
make your hypothesis not very helpful in determining the age of the
universe. However, if we exclude the possibility of a "god" then we actually
have something to sink our teeth into. Clay-based catalysis can be expected
to operate at such and such a speed, the life we are aware of is so and so
complex and thus a time limit is developed. Does this make sense?
>
>
> > Please don't
> >assume that I am stating H(0) as fact, merely as a hypothesis which I
> >subscribe to. I can back it up with evidence, for sure, but I know the
> >evidence is far from an airtight case.
>
> Oh, I don't assume you're stating it as fact. In fact, I tend to take
> it as pretty obvious that the conditions present in the universe
> probably DO allow life to arise, based on the observation that life
> exists in the universe, but it is certainly a hypothesis.
This is a common fallacious argument. Let me quote JL Mackie, an atheist, in
a reference to an argument similar to yours, "There is only one actual
universe, with a unique set of basic materials and physical constants, and it
is therefore surprising that the elements of this unique set-up are just
right for life when they might easily have been wrong. This is not made less
surprising by the fact that if it had not been so, no one would have been
here to be surprised. We can properly envisage and consider alternative
possibilities which do not include our being there to experience them."
Perhaps that doesn't quite give you the gist of the argument, if you want, I
could give you the reference for the counter-argument itself. It's in a book
by JP Moreland.
--
TO REPLY TO ME REMOVE "NOSPAM" FROM MY EMAIL ADDRESS
Jason
"Religious belief is enhanced by an open-eyed investigation of the world,
and honest science demands humility when faced with the astonishing
richness of life's creation."
H(0): The age of the universe does not allow sufficient time to
Duncan McCardle
Jason Friesen wrote:
>
> Well, I'm adding my $.02 a little late here so I have no real single post to
> reply to. I'll just mention a few things.
>
> I believe the vast majority of people in this world believe in an absolute
> morality whether they know it or not. I think very few actually live as if there
> was no absolute morality.
I agree this question would be interesting if any evidence could be
found for even a *single* moral constant that was true for all cultures
and times. Naming one 'absolute moral truth' would be a good start.
> I know this example is such a cliche, but it still hold truth. When we are
> talking about the moral order of societies, it appears we can compare. If you
> asked people if they thought the society of a peaceful indian tribe or the society
> of a fascist Germany was "better", most would answer the indian tribe, fewer would
> answer the fascist germany, but very few would say it was not possible to compare
> the two. As soon as you are comparing you are, of course, using a moral yardstick
> which is synonymous with a moral absolute. I think most of us would agree with
> this, the debate that is raging, is where this yardstick comes from. Is it
> absolute for all cultures (culture-independent) or does it depend on the culture
> you live in (culture-dependent).
Well, there were at least a few Germans who though that Fascist Germany
was fine and dandy. Just as many people in Spain and Italy thought
Fascism was not morally outrageous. If you asked the people of a warlike
tribal society whether they thought a neighbouring peaceful tribal
society was better than theirs I know what answer you would get. You
can't take *your* culturally-based moral judgements, project them onto
other cultures, and then claim an absolute 'moral yardstick' exists.
> I think two arguments can, in conjunction, lend strong support to
> culture-independence. The first is the idea that cultures are more similar than
> different. I cannot say that there have not been differences over the ages in
Hoo hah, bold claim. Please list similarities between Golden Age
Athenian culture and Mongol culture c.CE1230. How about British culture
c.CE1750 and Hindi culture of the same time?
> cultural morality, but I think it is just as true that most if not all cultures
> have themes that run throughout them. While the particulars of morality have been
> different, the generalities have not. Through the ages morality has allowed men
> to be married to a different amount of women, but in almost all societies, it is
> clear one man is not to take another man's wife away from him. The particulars of
> marriage have changes, but the idea of marriage is almost universal.
If you define 'marriage' loosely enough you might be able to make this
argument. Is a two week relationship and then moving on to new partners
a marriage? How about the arrangement where the high-status males of a
society have exclusive access to the females but have no exclusive
relationships with them? How is a family selling a woman to a man and
her becoming his property a 'marriage' and not a financial transaction?
> The second argument is the idea of moral progress. Without a moral absolute
> to use as a yardstick, the idea of moral progress makes no sense. You cannot
> better yourself, or your society if there is no site to set your eyes on or ruler
> to judge progress. Most people would consider moral progress a real possibility.
Of course, it's axiomatic to say that progress cannot be measured
without a system of measurement. But what happens when the systems of
measurement are different. Many 'ideal' moral/social systems have been
proposed, with or without reference to 'God(s)'. What if 'progress'
takes you away from one ideal towards another? *You* may like one system
more than another but how can you show that it is 'better' than another?
> Together I think these ideas are strong support. I think it becomes more
> obvious when you use more general terms. The easiest absolute morality to knock
> down is the most specific.
Fuzzy, undefined, arguments are harder to refute than concrete,
specific, arguments? I certainly agree with that.
What the point in saying that many cultures share similar ideas about
some things? Human beings have many similar needs and wants to
chimpanzees because we also have similar DNA. What is the point of an
'absolute moral truth' that is so vague that it can't be defined
clearly? That human beings tend to have speech, make tools and
congregate in groups tells us nothing about a greater external truth.
Tell me, which of the following do you hold to be absolutely moral:
It is better to expose your newborn baby than raise a weakling.
If a son disobeys his father he should be killed.
It is better to commit suicide than live with dishonour.
It is good hospitality to let your guest sleep with your wife.
Female circumcision is vital for a woman's moral wellbeing.
Eating owls makes you unclean.
Marrying your sister is mandatory.
--
Duncan McCardle | d.mcc...@mailbox.uq.edu.au
Godless Biker Scum(c) | SPAMfree address __,-o\
<advertising space to let> | no editing required (_=//(\)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Queensland Government Quality Assurance Certified Coward QS:3082.9-7904
Jason Friesen
> John Secker wrote:
>
> > Your other point, about consistent elements in different moralities is
> > interesting. This does suggest that in some way there is a common thread
> > running through the different systems. But is this because they have
> > evolved from each other, or is it that human evolved psychology means
> > that certain rules tend to work well, or is there some underlying
> > perfect morality which all societies are groping towards? I don't think
> > you can judge from the evidence we have.
>
I have another post that should pop through the moderator soon that addresses
this, but I'll do it quickly again. An interesting argument against a "genetic"
foundation for these common themes is that even though we are all aware of such
themes, we all
break them, sometimes with great regularity. This would be a unique system to
genetics. On one hand we are programmed to "come up with" or "value" certain
themes, but on the other hand we are free to break them. The genetics would
somehow govern the creation of the values by individuals without governing the
behaviour of the same individuals. I can think of no analogy in the genetic
world.
Jason Friesen
JeffMo wrote:
> Actually, you're climbing out on a much longer limb. He said
> "evolution". You said "abiogenesis".
Unfortunately, abiogenesis precedes evolution. You cannot have one without the
other unless you are a "creative evolutionist" or whatever name you want.
>
>
> You are correct that much less is known about possible candidate
> mechanisms for abiogenesis, but we are pretty sure that there is life
> on earth at the present, and we have a pretty fair idea that this was
> not true at some point in the past. Interestingly, any abiogenesis
> need not have happened on earth at all, in order for the scenario
> implied by Eric to have occurred.
Agreed. It simply needs to happen.
>
>
> Also, if you think that "abiogenesis happening once every 40 billion
> years" would preclude it having happened on earth (or somewhere else)
> within the last 5 to 10 billion years, you probably need to brush up
> on your probability theory a bit.
I think my error was not using some astronomically high number. Let's say 40
billion billion. Although there is still a chance that it will happen in 5-10
billion years, this chance is small enough that we can ignore it.
>
>
> Also, there is no pressing logical reason for anyone to address the
> case where abiogenesis happens (on the average) once every 40 billion
> years, until such a result is actually obtained or there is evidence
> suggesting it.
There is not enough evidence supporting abiogenesis to make ANY claims yet.
That would be my main point. We have an absolute dearth of hypotheses that do
not have huge holes or problems. To just assume it happened is just as large a
leap of faith at this point as to assume that "god" did it.
JeffMo
>JeffMo wrote:
>> >> Thus, we could cast a similar hypothesis to the one above:
>> >>
>> >> "The existence of life in the universe establishes a
>> >> somewhat fuzzy lower bound on the universe's age,
>> >> given the available tools (for the evolution of life)
>> >> of which we are currently aware."
>> >>
>> I'd be interested to hear why you allege that mine rules out that
>> possibility. All I was trying to do was state it in a way that
>> acknowledges that life, in fact, exists. I'd say that most people
>> would give a value of "TRUE" to the statement "life exists," and they
>> are a bit more uncertain about the age of the universe.
> I guess the reason I would conclude your hypothesis rules out a "supreme
>creator" is that the hypothesis becomes very unhelpful if you include one. I
>assume the hypothesis would be constructed to try to determine the "fuzzy
>lower bound" of the age of the universe.
Right.
> If we include the possibility of a
>creator, that lower bound would be one the scale of seconds.
Logically correct, but hardly reasonable. Since we don't really know
any of the attributes of any alleged "creator", we might just as
easily say that there is no use in attempting to determine any
physical constant whatsoever, since the omnipotent creator could just
change them all on us, whenever "she" felt like it, and "she" could
change our memories correspondingly.
Most science proceeds on the somewhat more optimistic assumption that
induction works. It might not, surely enough. But the amazing thing
is how much it DOES work, and it's not overstating the case by much to
say that science is humanity's realization that induction works.
> If we were were
>to include all tools and options available to a "god" then we could say the
>universe was created two seconds ago with a built in "history".
It's a good thing we have no reason to do so, then. In my opinion.
> That would
>make your hypothesis not very helpful in determining the age of the
>universe.
If you assume that all the "tools and options available to a 'god'"
are infinitely variable, and you assume that this "god" might have
used any and all of these tools at "her" whim, then you don't have a
chance of determining the age of the universe anyway.
If, OTOH, you assume that the universe is comprehensible (in the sense
that is operationally used is physics), then you might view the
properties of the universe as some kind of natural law, or you might
EQUATE those properties with the "tools and options" mentioned
previously.
In the latter case, you can still work on determining the age of the
universe, my hypothesis is still a reasonable way to proceed, and this
"god" business is merely semantically redundant, instead of being
ruled out.
> However, if we exclude the possibility of a "god" then we actually
>have something to sink our teeth into. Clay-based catalysis can be expected
>to operate at such and such a speed, the life we are aware of is so and so
>complex and thus a time limit is developed. Does this make sense?
Yes, as far as it goes. See above.
Clay-based catalysis (for example) might be viewed as one of the tools
available for the evolution of life, and it matters little whether you
assume that it is "nature's tool" or some "god's tool", and you can
still work on developing the time limits, etc. to which you refer.
BTW, it's kinda fun writing "god's tool." ;-)
>> > Please don't
>> >assume that I am stating H(0) as fact, merely as a hypothesis which I
>> >subscribe to. I can back it up with evidence, for sure, but I know the
>> >evidence is far from an airtight case.
>>
>> Oh, I don't assume you're stating it as fact. In fact, I tend to take
>> it as pretty obvious that the conditions present in the universe
>> probably DO allow life to arise, based on the observation that life
>> exists in the universe, but it is certainly a hypothesis.
>This is a common fallacious argument. Let me quote JL Mackie, an atheist, in
>a reference to an argument similar to yours,
I'll allow this, but of course, I'll require you to support the
similarity. I do not stipulate that mine is a common fallacious
argument, and I am of the opinion that you are mistaking it for a
different argument.
> "There is only one actual
>universe, with a unique set of basic materials and physical constants, and it
>is therefore surprising that the elements of this unique set-up are just
>right for life when they might easily have been wrong. This is not made less
>surprising by the fact that if it had not been so, no one would have been
>here to be surprised. We can properly envisage and consider alternative
>possibilities which do not include our being there to experience them."
>Perhaps that doesn't quite give you the gist of the argument, if you want, I
>could give you the reference for the counter-argument itself. It's in a book
>by JP Moreland.
I fail to see how this relates to what I said.
1. I am not assuming one universe.
2. I am not arguing that the present or past conditions in THIS
universe are UNIQUELY suited for the development of life.
3. I do allow for alternative possibilities which "permit" the
development of life that is different from the kinds of life of which
we are currently aware.
I think perhaps you are a bit stuck on the difference between
sufficient and necessary conditions.
My position (in a nutshell, oversimplified) is this:
"Conditions sufficient for the natural development of life have been
present in this universe."
I fear you may have interpreted my position as:
"Conditions NECESSARY for the natural development of life have been
present in this universe."
Your position (in a nutshell, oversimplified, my interpretation) is:
"Conditions sufficient for the natural development of life have never
been present in this universe."
Please correct me if I misunderstood you.
Eric Pepke
> Eric Pepke wrote:
>
> > A solar system age of four billion
> > years or so does seem to be plenty for evolution to occur.
>
> I'd have to say at this point in our knowledge of science, this is a very
> long limb you have climbed out on. Four billion years does seem like an
> eternity to us, but if it turns out abiogenesis really only happens once
> every 40 billion years, it would fall quite a bit short. Since we really
> have no idea how abiogenesis was accomplished, the above statement is really
> nothing more than your personal H(0).
Well, it does contain something else, which may be completely
unwarranted, which is the assumption that human beings can read.
Abiogenesis I don't know about, except that mutable, self-replicating
RNA has been produced in the lab using essentially random chemical
processes. How you get from that to DNA, especially because you need
topase for DNA, I don't know. That does seem a tricky step, but we'll
probably figure it out in a few years.
But in any event, I was talking about evolution, not abiogenesis. You
can tell the words apart because they're spelled differently.
Evolution is pretty easy to match with age; you just find out how fast
things mutate now, find out how big genomes are, estimate the number
of generations given what's known from the fossil record, and count it
up. Roughly, it seems about right. It certainly isn't off by a whole
order of magnitude.
-Eric
Eric Stevenson
: I have another post that should pop through the moderator soon that addresses
: this, but I'll do it quickly again. An interesting argument against a "genetic"
: foundation for these common themes is that even though we are all aware of such
: themes, we all
: break them, sometimes with great regularity. This would be a unique system to
: genetics. On one hand we are programmed to "come up with" or "value" certain
: themes, but on the other hand we are free to break them. The genetics would
: somehow govern the creation of the values by individuals without governing the
: behaviour of the same individuals. I can think of no analogy in the genetic
: world.
It doesn't seem all that strange to me. Animals are programmed to have
certain drives. These drives tend to govern behavior. When these drives
conflict, the resulting behavior may be inconsistent with at least one of
the drives. For example, there was a story in the news a while back about
a female cat that rescued her kittens from a fire, despite being burned
in the process. Obviously, the cat had instincts to prevent her from
subjecting herself to pain and danger, but her instinct to protect her
offspring was stronger.
Humans have quite a number of drives, some of which may be instinctive.
Human society is complex. Inevitably, an individual's drives are going to
conflict with each other, resulting in a failure to obey some of them.
Eric Stevenson
: This is a common fallacious argument. Let me quote JL Mackie, an atheist, in
: a reference to an argument similar to yours, "There is only one actual
: universe, with a unique set of basic materials and physical constants, and it
: is therefore surprising that the elements of this unique set-up are just
: right for life when they might easily have been wrong. This is not made less
: surprising by the fact that if it had not been so, no one would have been
: here to be surprised. We can properly envisage and consider alternative
: possibilities which do not include our being there to experience them."
I'm guessing that you meant that the argument you were responding to was
fallacious, but I've always found the position stated by Mackie to be
absurd. Perhaps there's something I'm missing, so I'll state my response
to it again.
Let us take it as given that life does exist in this universe. The
scientific explanations I have seen for this have always stated that life
developed in response to conditions in the universe. It seems obvious to
me that any life which arises in a universe must be suited to that
universe. Life which is not suited to that universe will not arise.
Without the ability to examine other universes, we can hardly state that
our universe is uniquely suited to life, since we have no way of knowing
what other types of life might arise in other types of universes. It
strikes me as peculiar that people say the universe is suited our type of
life when it is our type of life that must be suited to the universe. It
was here first.
JeffMo
>JeffMo wrote:
>> Actually, you're climbing out on a much longer limb. He said
>> "evolution". You said "abiogenesis".
>Unfortunately, abiogenesis precedes evolution. You cannot have one without the
>other unless you are a "creative evolutionist" or whatever name you want.
OK. We can take as given (for the sake of discussion) your statement
"abiogenesis precedes evolution." Using a little elementary logic:
1. Abiogenesis precedes evolution.
2. Equivalently, if evolution has occurred, then abiogenesis
must have previously occurred.
3. Evolution has occurred.
4. Thus, abiogenesis previously occurred.
I'm not sure why you find this unfortunate (per your paragraph above),
but I hope you have not mistaken any of my claims as denying the
possibility of abiogenesis. However, given the choice between these
two statements:
1. A solar system age of four billion years or so does seem to
be plenty for evolution to occur.
2. A solar system age of four billion years or so does seem to
be plenty for abiogenesis to occur.
the second is going out on a longer limb. (Eric wrote #1.) I was
noting that you appeared to be trying to shift the focus to the second
statement, and that is why I said you were on a longer limb. That is
fine if you want to discuss it, but it is not directly responsive to
what Eric had written.
In any case, scientific investigation of "abiogenesis" is certainly in
its infancy. I think Eric and I would both agree with that. (Correct
me if you find that wrong, Eric.) It's rather parallel to the
situation vis-a-vis "evolution" as it was about 100 years ago
(roughly). About all we know with any degree of certainty is that
somehow we went from "no life on earth" to "life on earth." The exact
mechanisms are mostly unknown.
>> You are correct that much less is known about possible candidate
>> mechanisms for abiogenesis, but we are pretty sure that there is life
>> on earth at the present, and we have a pretty fair idea that this was
>> not true at some point in the past. Interestingly, any abiogenesis
>> need not have happened on earth at all, in order for the scenario
>> implied by Eric to have occurred.
>Agreed. It simply needs to happen.
I agree. It needs to have happened, not necessarily on Earth, but
somewhere.
>> Also, if you think that "abiogenesis happening once every 40 billion
>> years" would preclude it having happened on earth (or somewhere else)
>> within the last 5 to 10 billion years, you probably need to brush up
>> on your probability theory a bit.
>I think my error was not using some astronomically high number. Let's say 40
>billion billion. Although there is still a chance that it will happen in 5-10
>billion years, this chance is small enough that we can ignore it.
Why not say once every few million years? I'm wondering where you're
getting the data to even speculate wildly about these odds...and why
you think the odds are so high, if you agree that abiogenesis needs to
have happened?
>> Also, there is no pressing logical reason for anyone to address the
>> case where abiogenesis happens (on the average) once every 40 billion
>> years, until such a result is actually obtained or there is evidence
>> suggesting it.
> There is not enough evidence supporting abiogenesis to make ANY claims yet.
>That would be my main point. We have an absolute dearth of hypotheses that do
>not have huge holes or problems. To just assume it happened is just as large a
>leap of faith at this point as to assume that "god" did it.
I disagree.
"Abiogenesis" is a label that is applied to the observed fact that
"life on earth exists", coupled with the well-supported idea that
"Earth has not existed eternally." The goal of researchers is to
flesh out the meaning of that label.
You are correct that we do not know the details of exactly how things
went from "mostly supernovae ejecta coalesced into a planetary body"
to "the existence of self-replicating molecules or aggregates suitable
for evolution to proceed." However, we know with a fair degree of
certainty that each of those states did, in fact, occur. Thus, we are
not "just assuming" that something happened in between.
Assuming the existence of "God" with no objective evidence at all is a
huge leap of faith, comparatively speaking.
Paul Filseth
> > What characteristic of competing
> > moral claims are you looking for when you choose one over another, if
> > not cultural-standard-independent correctness?
>
> When I encounter a moral claim, I try to sort out logically what would be
> the implications of holding and acting on such a claim. And I try to see
> if such a claim would lead to what I think would be a better version of
> the culture that I live in.
So you're comparing two different cultures, a real one and a
hypothetical variation on it, and judging one of them _better_. Do you
think one of them really is better by some culture-independent standard
for better or worse cultures? If not, what do you mean by calling it
"better"? Better by the standards of one or the other culture?
> > Do you prefer ours because you think what we consider the right
> > way really is closer to the actual right way than what our ancestors
> > considered the right way? If not, why do you prefer it? Because our
> > culture taught you to prefer it? If that's the reason, do you think
> > that's a good reason to prefer something?
>
> I believe quite a few things contrary to my culture's opinions. For one,
> I'm an atheist. I see nothing at all wrong with homosexuality and/or
> bisexuality.
Do you think your society is mistaken? Or is this just a matter
of taste; to each his own; you don't feel like persecuting gays but you
also see nothing wrong with those who do feel like it? If you think
homophobes are wrong, is that because they're really wrong, or is your
opinion just something your culture imprinted on you?
> My point is that one can reason with one's culture. I don't have to
> blindly swallow what my culture thinks.
Quite so. What do you appeal to when you reason with your culture?
Does your culture have inconsistent beliefs, or are there facts you can
draw to its attention? Or does the "reasoning" simply amount to telling
your culture you don't like something about it?
Or to put it in concrete terms, how would you go about reasoning
with your culture to stop persecuting gay people?
> > are some or there aren't. It's the Law of the Excluded Middle, and
> > what you've been saying isn't consistent with taking either possibility
> > seriously. You're trying to build your house on an acre of land
> > between the salt water and the sea strand.
>
> I think there might be a way to be somewhere between both of those
> extremes.
Hmm. I wouldn't have thought saying "The number of elements in a
set either is zero or else is greater than or equal to one" qualified as
extremism. Are you suggesting that "moral factness" is a real-valued
quality, and a normative statement like "It's wrong for us to punish
homosexuality" could be 35% moral fact and 65% subjective preference?
> But I'm still thinking my way though these things. I'm not a
> relativist. I believe that certain things are good or bad for people and
> for our culture. And I also believe that certain cultures are just wrong.
> But I don't see any transhistorical yardstick by which I can prove them to
> be wrong.
Being able to prove it doesn't enter the equation. I believe the
Goldbach Conjecture is really actually true, but I sure can't prove it;
I'd be famous if I could. If you consistently believe those cultures
are really wrong, and not just that your culture teaches that they're
wrong, that's all it takes to be a moral realist. Even if you believe
it on a hunch, and even if you aren't sure.
> For sake of argument, I'll accept as a moral fact that it's wrong to kill
> people just because you don't like the color of their skin.
Just for argument's sake, and not really? What argument do you
accept it for the sake of? The existence of moral facts was the
endpoint I was trying to argue to. When it's a lemma on the way
somewhere else, normally I'd go on to show why this conclusion leads
to atheism. That seems kind of superfluous here...
> > intellectual system that contains beliefs like "Cultures aren't wrong;
> > they're just different from one another."
>
> Maybe I'm just muddled, but I do have opinions about other cultures and
> their ethicality. I just realize that my opinions are opinions and not
> transcendent truths.
I don't know what "transcendent" means. Do you think your opinions
are truths? (Note that this is a very different question from "Are you
sure they're truths?".) If you think your opinions aren't truths, what
does it mean to say something is your opinion if you don't think it's
the truth?
> > What does it mean to say you believe you're "probably" right, when
> > you think there isn't any right answer for your ethical view to probably
> > agree with?
>
> I think I explained this above when I discussed being able to consider the
> ramifications of one view over another, historical vision, and the ability
> to reason with whatever evidence is available.
One reasons and considers history and ramifications in order to
estimate the probability that a given possibility is the right one.
How can there even be such a probability unless one of the many
possibilities _is_ right?
> > You've said things like this before, and it's time they were
> > challenged. What basis do you have for thinking ethical realism leads
> > to genocide?
>
> I think that once a person is 100% convinced that his/her view is right
> beyond all doubt, that person can do anything which that certainty will
> allow. If I'm convinced that jewish blood is keeping the great german
> culture down, then extermination seems a rational choice. But it's only a
> rational choice if you accept a string of unacceptable assumptions with
> complete certainty.
On what basis do you lay the genocide at the door of the certainty
rather than at the door of the unacceptable assumptions? Someone who
would make such assumptions might well think there's a 90% chance that
the Jews are bad for Germany, and he might decide that's a high enough
probability to justify killing them.
Conversely, how could being 100% certain that all people have a
natural right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness lead to
genocide? And if someone who believed that were nonetheless planning
to exterminate a community, how would thinking, "Oh, wait, maybe those
people we're planning to kill don't have any rights after all" interfere
with it?
> And your allusion to the Soviet regime is appropriate. Do you think
> Stalin had any doubt about the rightness of his cause? He did not.
Actually, he never struck me as a person who worried much about
rightness and wrongness, but rather more as a to-my-advantageness kind
of guy. Be that as it may, it appears that subscribing to an ideology
that denies objective standards of justice didn't do much to encourage
him in self-doubt.
> Therefore, getting rid of opposition to the only right course is
> completely rational.
That is not a logical inference. Do you leave me alive because I
might be right? I don't leave you alive because you might be right.
I leave you alive because you have the right not to be killed. Not to
mention the right to oppose the only right course. Freedom is for the
idea we hate.
In any event, this is all a digression. Because before we get to
whether certainty causes genocide, we need to consider whether realism
causes certainty. Can you defend remarks like this one?
Subjectivists think the world would be a better place if various
groups in the world would abandon the claim to "objectivity" which
lead to the fanatical certainty which leads to a great many
unfortunate consequences (genocide being one).
I am not certain that I'm right. I recognize that since moral truth
is what it is regardless of what anyone thinks it is, my picture of it
might be erroneous. But what reason has a subjectivist for doubt? If
there just is no right answer, then what does it even mean to think your
own answer might be wrong? And empirically, it looks to me like you are
so utterly convinced of the impossibility of objectivity in ethics that
you're prepared to put up with an inconsistency in your beliefs over it.
So I don't think you have much of a case for connecting moral realism to
fanatical certainty.
> In the long run, we might come to embrace another culture's view.
> But understanding that there are other cultures doesn't mean that all
> our standards simply cease to exist.
Why is that, do you think? I think it's because we can rationally
look at those other cultures and say to ourselves, "They're probably
wrong; we're probably right." What do subjectivists say to themselves
to justify continuing to enforce their own standards?
> > if you take this tack, you have no business debating ethical questions.
>
> I don't know that it's my last word on the subject. But I still think I
> have something of value to add to ethical discussions.
You always have had in the past. I wasn't inviting you to stop
moralizing; rather I was presenting a reductio ad absurdum argument for
not interpreting normative claims as mere descriptions of emotional
states. It's because we argue about morals and don't argue about which
ice cream flavor tastes best that it doesn't make sense to treat the
former as an instance of the latter.
Of course, I could be wrong.
Jason Friesen
Eric Pepke wrote:
>
> Abiogenesis I don't know about, except that mutable, self-replicating
> RNA has been produced in the lab using essentially random chemical
> processes. How you get from that to DNA, especially because you need
> topase for DNA, I don't know. That does seem a tricky step, but we'll
> probably figure it out in a few years.
All instances in which RNA has been produced in the lab are under excruciatingly
artificial conditions. The manufacture of pentose sugars, for example, in any
conditions that would resemble a protoplanet are currently out of our grasp.
>
>
> But in any event, I was talking about evolution, not abiogenesis. You
> can tell the words apart because they're spelled differently.
> Evolution is pretty easy to match with age; you just find out how fast
> things mutate now, find out how big genomes are, estimate the number
> of generations given what's known from the fossil record, and count it
> up. Roughly, it seems about right. It certainly isn't off by a whole
> order of magnitude.
I realize you were talking about evolution. But abiogenesis needs to come first
and may take many orders of magnitude longer to actually kick off than evolution
takes to produce us. (On a count to 10, getting from 0 to 1 may take much longer
than getting from 1 to 10) The point is, we have no idea because we have no good
theories. Sure we can guess, but they are just that, guesses.
Tony Griffin
>Tell me, which of the following do you hold to be absolutely moral:
<snip>
> Eating owls makes you unclean.
<snip>
Please, where does this one come from? I recognise the rest of the
list.
If it was inserted as a joke, consider me caught. :)
Tony
Duncan McCardle
> : break them, sometimes with great regularity. This would be a unique system to
> : genetics. On one hand we are programmed to "come up with" or "value" certain
> : themes, but on the other hand we are free to break them. The genetics would
> : somehow govern the creation of the values by individuals without governing the
> : behaviour of the same individuals. I can think of no analogy in the genetic
> : world.
[snip, example of conflicting drives]
> Humans have quite a number of drives, some of which may be instinctive.
> Human society is complex. Inevitably, an individual's drives are going to
> conflict with each other, resulting in a failure to obey some of them.
Another example would be that of suicide. I think it is fairly clear the
instinct for self-preservation is strongly in-built to most animals yet
human beings have been known to commit suicide. In fact some societies
have even mandated suicide as the appropriate response for an individual
in certain circumstances (eg: Feudal Japan, Ancient Rome.) Genetics does
*not* mean 'programmed'.
Duncan McCardle
Tony Griffin wrote:
>
> Duncan McCardle <d.mcc...@its.uq.edu.au> wrote:
>
> >Tell me, which of the following do you hold to be absolutely moral:
> <snip>
> > Eating owls makes you unclean.
> <snip>
>
> Please, where does this one come from? I recognise the rest of the
> list.
>
> If it was inserted as a joke, consider me caught. :)
>
> Tony
Hey! No way man, this is True Word Of God(tm)!
Leviticus 11:13-19 (NIV)
"These are the birds you are to detest and not eat because they are
detestable: the eagle, the vulture, the black vulture, the red kite, any
kind of black kite, any kind of raven, the horned owl, the screech owl,
the gull, any kind of hawk, the little owl, the cormorant, the great
owl, the white owl, the desert owl, the osprey, the stork, any kind of
heron, the hoopoe and the bat."
I like the inclusion of the bat as a bird, good thing the bible is
inerrant. And on that topic I guess the next verses are relevant too:
Lev 11:20-22
"All flying insects that walk on all fours are to be detestable to you.
There are, however, some winged creatures that walk on all fours that
you may eat: those that have jointed legs for hopping on the ground. Of
these you may eat any kind of locust, katydid, cricket or grasshopper."
Yup, grasshoppers walk on all fours and you can eat them. Looks like God
thinks 6=4 too, maybe that explains the value for PI that the bible
gives.
Jason Friesen
Duncan McCardle wrote:
> Another example would be that of suicide. I think it is fairly clear the
> instinct for self-preservation is strongly in-built to most animals yet
> human beings have been known to commit suicide. In fact some societies
> have even mandated suicide as the appropriate response for an individual
> in certain circumstances (eg: Feudal Japan, Ancient Rome.) Genetics does
> *not* mean 'programmed'.
>
I have to say I'm not sure which side you are arguing for. Is suicide, in your
opinion, another behavior with dubious genetic origins, or does it support a genetic
basis for culture-independent morals. I'd argue the first, but perhaps I'm biased.
jfri...@nycap.rr.com
often and don't like at all. If nobody here is making this, then at
least take this as a plea to not do it in the future. The roles will
be played by a random theist and random atheist.
The idea of special creation comes up.
The theist starts of talking about the idea that a supreme being
created life in all its richness and glory.
The atheist counters by saying a supreme being is unnecessary
because we have a perfectly good explanation, namely evolution, which
does the same thing without a god. Occam's razor, therefore, argues
against the need for god.
The theist replies that there are very few ideas about abiogenesis
and in fact it is currently just as much a black box as special
creation. So in reality, you could argue that the evolutionary
position is just as much a leap of faith as the special creation.
The atheist replies, "hold on, who was talking about abiogenesis.
Evolution is a completely separate theory and that's what I'm talking
about."
At this point the debate breaks down because the two sides are now
arguing two sides of a different coin.
My beef with this is that for a person to use evolution as an
argument against the need for a god needs to include the theory of
abiogenesis to be complete. Of course many don't want to do this
because it is currently the weak point in the whole scheme of things.
(The good forensic debator will steer away from the weak
points, but if we are all just searching for the truth, it is
counterproductive.) If you are going to use such an argument please,
PLEASE avoid making the following statements.
1) Abiogenesis is irrelevent to evolution. This is only true if
you are not using evolution as an argument against the need for a
supreme being. If you are, you have to have an accounting of how a
gene pool would arise from nothing. If you are merely arguing that
the frequency of a gene in a genetic pool changes over time, then
fine, ignore abiogenesis. But don't use it as an argument against
god.
2) Abiogenesis is less of a leap of faith than special creation.
In the future this may become true, but today it is not. In all my
study of abiogenesis, I find the harshest critics of our current
theories are those who are making them. The honest scientist will say
we really currently have no clue. So to say it happened
or didn't is currently opinion only.
Anyway, just a little venting. I'm not accusing anybody of saying
this, but I have to say the argument was heading in that direction.
My little H(0) in my .sig (which started this whole thing) is a
statement on my view of abiogenesis, not evolution. Take it in such a
context and take it merely as my opinion.
jfri...@nycap.rr.com
> OK. We can take as given (for the sake of discussion) your statement
> "abiogenesis precedes evolution." Using a little elementary logic:
>
> 1. Abiogenesis precedes evolution.
> 2. Equivalently, if evolution has occurred, then abiogenesis
> must have previously occurred.
> 3. Evolution has occurred.
> 4. Thus, abiogenesis previously occurred.
I guess my problem here would be the definition of abiogenesis. I
would assume
that it commonly would include a clause "without the aid of a supreme
being". Then,
in fact, the argument above isn't true because 2 would not necessarily
be true. (It
could just as easily be 2. If evolution occured, a supreme being had
to have
started it.)
> >I think my error was not using some astronomically high number. Let's say 40
> >billion billion. Although there is still a chance that it will happen in 5-10
> >billion years, this chance is small enough that we can ignore it.
>
> Why not say once every few million years? I'm wondering where you're
> getting the data to even speculate wildly about these odds...and why
> you think the odds are so high, if you agree that abiogenesis needs to
> have happened?
That is my point, the number I have used is complete speculation
using the little
evidence we have. Your number is exactly the same. We are both
making wild guesses
at this point because we do not have good ideas about how such things
happened.
This touches on my idea that the fact we are here does not support
abiogenesis any
more than special creation. If, a billion years from now, when we
"know it all" we
find that the only way to manufacture life without outside help takes
40 billion
billion years on average we would have strong evidence for a supreme
being. If we
find that it only takes 4 billion years, we would have strong evidence
that a
supreme being isn't needed.
>
> > There is not enough evidence supporting abiogenesis to make ANY claims yet.
> >That would be my main point. We have an absolute dearth of hypotheses that do
> >not have huge holes or problems. To just assume it happened is just as large a
> >leap of faith at this point as to assume that "god" did it.
>
> I disagree.
>
> "Abiogenesis" is a label that is applied to the observed fact that
> "life on earth exists", coupled with the well-supported idea that
> "Earth has not existed eternally." The goal of researchers is to
> flesh out the meaning of that label.
>
> You are correct that we do not know the details of exactly how things
> went from "mostly supernovae ejecta coalesced into a planetary body"
> to "the existence of self-replicating molecules or aggregates suitable
> for evolution to proceed." However, we know with a fair degree of
> certainty that each of those states did, in fact, occur. Thus, we are
> not "just assuming" that something happened in between.
>
> Assuming the existence of "God" with no objective evidence at all is a
> huge leap of faith, comparatively speaking.
Well, I guess we just disagree on this point. It probably doesn't do
much good to
argue our two opinions. I feel it is just as big a jump. You don't.
I can live
with that. I'll just know you are wrong. (I'm so kidding)
jfri...@nycap.rr.com
> OK. We can take as given (for the sake of discussion) your statement
> "abiogenesis precedes evolution." Using a little elementary logic:
>
> 1. Abiogenesis precedes evolution.
> 2. Equivalently, if evolution has occurred, then abiogenesis
> must have previously occurred.
> 3. Evolution has occurred.
> 4. Thus, abiogenesis previously occurred.
I guess my problem here would be the definition of abiogenesis. I
would assume that it commonly would include a clause "without the aid
of a supremebeing". Then, in fact, the argument above isn't true
James Martin
email) at a latter date. My schedule is too hectic right now to allow for
the continuation of this argument. I think that we might be better off
taking it to email anyway, at least until it gets back around to atheism.
But I can add here a few very brief points to your very stimulating reply:
1) The charges I made against realism can only rightly be made against a
particular subset of realism which I refer to as fanaticism (in the sense
in which one of my professors, M. Keith Booker, uses it in his works)
which can be glossed as absolute certainty that ones views are the only
possible correct view. It might be further argued that fanaticism can
occur for the subjectivist/relativist/whathaveyou just as it can for the
realist. So the common enemy is fanaticism and not realism.
2) I think that subjectivists make judgements of other cultures in a
similar was that realists do. We look at other cultures and say "I think
they're probably wrong and we're probably right" or vice versa. A fanatic
looks at another culture and says "they are wrong, we are right" and it is
that sort of belief which frightens me a good deal.
3) When it comes to issues like human rights I ascribe to the same
humanist principles you probably also ascribe to (i.e. human rights).
4) When I argue aginst culturally accepted views with which I disagre, I
use every tactic of argumentation which is at my disposal and that I think
fair to use.
james
Paul Filseth
> An interesting argument against a "genetic" foundation for these common
> them, sometimes with great regularity. This would be a unique system
> to genetics. On one hand we are programmed to "come up with" or "value"
> certain themes, but on the other hand we are free to break them. The
> genetics would somehow govern the creation of the values by individuals
> without governing the behaviour of the same individuals. I can think
> of no analogy in the genetic world.
Check out seagull sexual behavior. They're mostly monogamous, but
there's a _lot_ of adultery. And they try to keep an eye on their
partners, to stop them from sneaking off to get some on the side, or to
watch for a chance to get away with it.
Duncan McCardle
Jason Friesen wrote:
>
> Duncan McCardle wrote:
>
> > Another example would be that of suicide. I think it is fairly clear the
> > instinct for self-preservation is strongly in-built to most animals yet
> > human beings have been known to commit suicide. In fact some societies
> > have even mandated suicide as the appropriate response for an individual
> > in certain circumstances (eg: Feudal Japan, Ancient Rome.) Genetics does
> > *not* mean 'programmed'.
> >
>
> I have to say I'm not sure which side you are arguing for. Is suicide, in your
> opinion, another behavior with dubious genetic origins, or does it support a genetic
> basis for culture-independent morals. I'd argue the first, but perhaps I'm biased.
Well, from an earlier post of yours I gathered that you were arguing
that if 'certain themes' were programmed by genetics to become 'valued'
then individuals, with their behaviour governed by the same genes, would
adhere to those 'themes'. And since individuals clearly do not always
follow obey social mores the genetic explanation for moral tendencies is
wrong. Therefore god did it. QED.
Now I was providing an example of a 'rule' very definitely built-into
all individuals that has often been 'broken', ie: self-presevation. Now
if individuals can break a genetic 'rule' in this case why is it
impossible for them to break genetically induced social rules? Your
reasoning is flawed, as this example shows.
Personally I'm no supporter of the 'social structure comes from genetic
tendencies' position. I would argue that the only social tendencies a
human being can inherit genetically are along the lines of 'social
animal that can learn to talk and use tools'. Of course that implies a
whole lot of complexity right there, it's just that the basic drives are
not at the 'it's rude to chew with your mouth open' sort of level.
Hmmm, I wonder how many human social behaviour can be correlated with,
say, chimpanzee social behaviour... Quite a few I suspect.
Anyway, I'm not convinced that anything like a set of
'culture-independent morals' can be established. Name a few.
Eric Stevenson
: The idea of special creation comes up.
: The theist starts of talking about the idea that a supreme being
: created life in all its richness and glory.
: The atheist counters by saying a supreme being is unnecessary
: because we have a perfectly good explanation, namely evolution, which
: does the same thing without a god. Occam's razor, therefore, argues
: against the need for god.
<>
: argument against the need for a god needs to include the theory of
: abiogenesis to be complete. Of course many don't want to do this
: because it is currently the weak point in the whole scheme of things.
We can still use evolution to dispose of quite a bit of the religious
argument. There was no creation of life "in all its richness and glory."
There was some slime in a pool somewhere. Eventually, this led to what we
see today.
(The good forensic debator will steer away from the weak
: points, but if we are all just searching for the truth, it is
: counterproductive.)
Likewise, in our search for the truth, we should not ignore the
weaknesses of the theist position. A supreme being is not needed to
supply the first life on earth. If research demonstrates that life could
not come into existence naturally on earth (or naturally somewhere else
and arrive on earth), we still have no evidence for any kind of god. The
theist position presented above seems to be strongly biased towards
christianity. Why a "supreme" being? Why only one? If one had never heard
of any religion, would the idea of a supernatural creator of life be
advanced as a hypothesis?
: If you are going to use such an argument please,
: PLEASE avoid making the following statements.
: 1) Abiogenesis is irrelevent to evolution. This is only true if
: you are not using evolution as an argument against the need for a
: supreme being. If you are, you have to have an accounting of how a
: gene pool would arise from nothing. If you are merely arguing that
: the frequency of a gene in a genetic pool changes over time, then
: fine, ignore abiogenesis. But don't use it as an argument against
: god.
When discussing the origin of life, don't bring in god at all. When
discussing god, don't bring in the origin of life. You have not
demonstrated any reason to connect the two.
: 2) Abiogenesis is less of a leap of faith than special creation.
: In the future this may become true, but today it is not. In all my
: study of abiogenesis, I find the harshest critics of our current
: theories are those who are making them. The honest scientist will say
: we really currently have no clue. So to say it happened
: or didn't is currently opinion only.
Abiogenesis is less of a leap than special creation. It uses processes
and materials that are known to exist. It matches with what is known of
the early earth. The tests that have been applied to it have failed to
disprove it. Its "weakness" is that it has not been fully tested.
Special creation has no evidence to support it and cannot be tested.
Whatever the facts are, special creation can always be applied as an
explanation. If evolution is not considered proven, special creation is
used to explain the current life on earth. If abiogenesis is not
accepted, special creation is used to explain the origin of life on
earth. If abiogenesis is accepted, special creation is used to explain
the origin of the universe. Special creation is totally irrelevant to
scientific discussion.
If you want to discuss abiogenesis, go right ahead. Don't bother to pull
in any type of gods, though.
Duncan McCardle
>
> The idea of special creation comes up.
> The theist starts of talking about the idea that a supreme being
> created life in all its richness and glory.
'created life in all its richness and glory.' implies that the supreme
being is being invoked specifically as an explanation of the complexity
and diversity of nature. Not the origin of the universe or the origin of
Pre-Cambrian single-cell organisms.
> The atheist counters by saying a supreme being is unnecessary
> because we have a perfectly good explanation, namely evolution, which
> does the same thing without a god. Occam's razor, therefore, argues
> against the need for god.
Yes evolution is a perfectly good and demonstrable mechanism for
explaining life 'in all its richness and glory.'
> The theist replies that there are very few ideas about abiogenesis
> and in fact it is currently just as much a black box as special
> creation. So in reality, you could argue that the evolutionary
> position is just as much a leap of faith as the special creation.
> The atheist replies, "hold on, who was talking about abiogenesis.
> Evolution is a completely separate theory and that's what I'm talking
> about."
Of course, if the 'random theist' had said 'Wow, isn't it fabulous that
God created a really simple and primitive organism 3.7 billion years ago
and just let evolution take it's course!' then the evolutionist (because
atheist = evolutionist is not a one-to-one relationship you know) would
probably have little to argue about, for the moment.
Personally I have no interest in the details of abiogenesis. The fact
life appeared on Earth almost identically with the opportunity for life
to exist says to me that chance of abiogenesis occuring must be close to
1.0. Unless you consider extrastellar origin possiblities.
[snip]
> 1) Abiogenesis is irrelevent to evolution. This is only true if
> you are not using evolution as an argument against the need for a
> supreme being. If you are, you have to have an accounting of how a
If evolution was an argument against the existance of 'a supreme being'
then why are there so many non-atheists that have no problem with
supporting it? Perhaps because only bible-literalist nitwits think god
and evolution are incompatible.
Evolution has nothing to say about life's origins, it is a mechanism
that describes the rise of diversity. For me
abiogenesis is merely a minor intellectual curiosity, I have far better
reasons for considering the creationist god an absurdity.
jfri...@nycap.rr.com
I'd love to see an article on it. Sometimes though it is too easy
to anthropomorphize animal behavior. Without getting into that, the
big problem with your example is that I doubt the seagull "knows"
he/she is supposed to remain monogamous while at the same time
sneaking around for a little seagull booty. That would be a
difference I would see immediately when comparing us and them.
Tony Griffin
> 2) Abiogenesis is less of a leap of faith than special creation.
>In the future this may become true, but today it is not. In all my
>study of abiogenesis, I find the harshest critics of our current
>theories are those who are making them. The honest scientist will say
>we really currently have no clue. So to say it happened
>or didn't is currently opinion only.
If the "honest scientist" admits that he has no clue about how life
began, should the "honest theist" admit the same thing?
Tony
Tony Griffin
> If, a billion years from now, when we
>"know it all" we
>find that the only way to manufacture life without outside help takes
>40 billion
>billion years on average we would have strong evidence for a supreme
>being.
No we wouldn't. We would have strong evidence that life did not arise
without outside help. We would still need some evidence that a) a god
as you envisage it existed and b) it "helped".
>If we
>find that it only takes 4 billion years, we would have strong evidence
>that a
>supreme being isn't needed.
True, but by the same argument above, this would not prove that some
god did not do it, only that it was not *necessary*.
Without some evidence of the existence and nature of god, any such
conclusions, one way or the other are premature.
Tony
Buck Field
It appears to me abiogenesis IS less of a leap of faith than any magical
method since both theories presume to start life processes, yet one
presupposes a natural cause consistent with all available evidence, and
occult theories introduce invisible spirits unsupported by any evidence.
Deities seem to require more faith than nature in my view.
--
Unsolicited Commercial use of oper...@applink.net
constitutes agreement on the part of the sender that
recipient is entitled to $1000 pursuant to violation
of Title 47, Section 227 of the United States Code.
----------------------------------------------------
Buck Field - Database and Web Solutions
www.fieldoperative.com
Paul Filseth
> Hey! No way man, this is True Word Of God(tm)!
> Leviticus 11:13-19 (NIV)
> heron, the hoopoe and the bat."
> I like the inclusion of the bat as a bird, good thing the bible is
> inerrant. And on that topic I guess the next verses are relevant too:
> There are, however, some winged creatures that walk on all fours that
> value for PI that the bible gives.
The word translated in the above quotation as "bird" might refer
in Hebrew to a broader category of animals. And "walk on all fours" is
an idiomatic English expression. It seems unlikely, therefore, that
this is word-for-word the same as the original. I'd be interested in
knowing how the source text was phrased. Perhaps God knows 6 != 4, but
has to make do with mediocre translators. It's so hard to get decent
help nowadays. :-) Anyone here speak Hebrew?
jfri...@nycap.rr.com
>: 2) Abiogenesis is less of a leap of faith than special creation.
>: In the future this may become true, but today it is not. In all my
>: study of abiogenesis, I find the harshest critics of our current
>: theories are those who are making them. The honest scientist will say
>: we really currently have no clue. So to say it happened
>: or didn't is currently opinion only.
>
>Abiogenesis is less of a leap than special creation. It uses processes
>and materials that are known to exist. It matches with what is known of
>the early earth. The tests that have been applied to it have failed to
>disprove it. Its "weakness" is that it has not been fully tested.
>
I don't have time to reply to the rest of the post right now, but I'll
do it later. This above paragraph is complete nonsense. Name the
processes and materials that are known to exist. (I'm especially
interested in the processes.) Don't even try to bring up Miller's
"organic soup" experiments of the 60s. They have very little to do
with our primitive earth. What is known of the early earth? What is
the current theory of the primitive atmosphere? Which tests are you
talking about? I have read about and stuidied the current theories of
abiogenesis for a while and I can confidently say that your statements
are really hollow claims. I'm interested in some specifics here.
jfri...@nycap.rr.com
<d.mcc...@its.uq.edu.au> wrote:
>jfri...@nycap.rr.com wrote:
>> The atheist counters by saying a supreme being is unnecessary
>> because we have a perfectly good explanation, namely evolution, which
>> does the same thing without a god. Occam's razor, therefore, argues
>> against the need for god.
>
>Yes evolution is a perfectly good and demonstrable mechanism for
>explaining life 'in all its richness and glory.'
It's funny that two people have responded to this phrase. I really
didn't mean anything by it. I just wanted to make a short sentance
longer. :)
>
>> The theist replies that there are very few ideas about abiogenesis
>> and in fact it is currently just as much a black box as special
>> creation. So in reality, you could argue that the evolutionary
>> position is just as much a leap of faith as the special creation.
>> The atheist replies, "hold on, who was talking about abiogenesis.
>> Evolution is a completely separate theory and that's what I'm talking
>> about."
>
>Of course, if the 'random theist' had said 'Wow, isn't it fabulous that
>God created a really simple and primitive organism 3.7 billion years ago
>and just let evolution take it's course!' then the evolutionist (because
>atheist = evolutionist is not a one-to-one relationship you know) would
>probably have little to argue about, for the moment.
I agree. However, in other newsgroups or in conversations all over,
evolution is used as an argument against God. Perhaps this is the
fault of both sides. Fundamentalists falsely believe that if
evolution is proven, it is the death of God and thus attack in full
force. Many evolutionists believe the same. Neither is correct.
There will probably never be "proof" of God. There will never be
"proof" of the non-existance of God. Therefore, you can only use
"support" for and against. Evolution itself is fairly neutral.
Abiogenesis, would be support against. The lack of good abiogenetic
theories would be support for.
>
>Personally I have no interest in the details of abiogenesis. The fact
>life appeared on Earth almost identically with the opportunity for life
>to exist says to me that chance of abiogenesis occuring must be close to
>1.0. Unless you consider extrastellar origin possiblities.
This is only true if we preassume that there is no supreme being. I'm
sure that is an assumption you are making, but you do not mention it
here and therefore this argument is moot in the context you wish to
use it.
>
>[snip]
>
>> 1) Abiogenesis is irrelevent to evolution. This is only true if
>> you are not using evolution as an argument against the need for a
>> supreme being. If you are, you have to have an accounting of how a
>
>If evolution was an argument against the existance of 'a supreme being'
>then why are there so many non-atheists that have no problem with
>supporting it? Perhaps because only bible-literalist nitwits think god
>and evolution are incompatible.
See my point above. I agree.
>
>Evolution has nothing to say about life's origins, it is a mechanism
>that describes the rise of diversity. For me
>abiogenesis is merely a minor intellectual curiosity, I have far better
>reasons for considering the creationist god an absurdity.
>
I am so curious about this position. Most reasons I hear used against
the creationist god involve the fallacy of "blind faith". It appears
very much to me that you are employing the same "blind faith" to allow
for the preconditions for evolution to exist. The foundational
grounds that are required for evolution to occur hardly seem to me as
"a minor intellectual curiosity".
jfri...@nycap.rr.com
>jfri...@nycap.rr.com wrote:
>Likewise, in our search for the truth, we should not ignore the
>weaknesses of the theist position. A supreme being is not needed to
>supply the first life on earth. If research demonstrates that life could
>not come into existence naturally on earth (or naturally somewhere else
>and arrive on earth), we still have no evidence for any kind of god. The
>theist position presented above seems to be strongly biased towards
>christianity. Why a "supreme" being? Why only one? If one had never heard
>of any religion, would the idea of a supernatural creator of life be
>advanced as a hypothesis?
Some interesting questions. I do not mean to bias my creationist
theory toward christianity. I can live with a theory that substitutes
a creation event for abiogenesis. You can substitute that in the
example above if it makes you feel better.
Some of the other questions are silly. Why a "supreme" being?
Because this is the semantic usually used to represent the
causeless-cause employed by theist positions. Why only one? I guess
that is preference, the argument could still carry out with a
plurality of gods.
I think ancient creation stories answer your last question.
Apparently it would.
>: If you are going to use such an argument please,
>: PLEASE avoid making the following statements.
>
>: 1) Abiogenesis is irrelevent to evolution. This is only true if
>: you are not using evolution as an argument against the need for a
>: supreme being. If you are, you have to have an accounting of how a
>: gene pool would arise from nothing. If you are merely arguing that
>: the frequency of a gene in a genetic pool changes over time, then
>: fine, ignore abiogenesis. But don't use it as an argument against
>: god.
>
>When discussing the origin of life, don't bring in god at all. When
>discussing god, don't bring in the origin of life. You have not
>demonstrated any reason to connect the two.
This isn't quite true. If we find that it is physically impossible to
develop life randomly within the age and laws of the universe, we must
look for causes "outside" it. That would definitely be a reason to
connect the two.
>
>Special creation has no evidence to support it and cannot be tested.
>Whatever the facts are, special creation can always be applied as an
>explanation. If evolution is not considered proven, special creation is
>used to explain the current life on earth. If abiogenesis is not
>accepted, special creation is used to explain the origin of life on
>earth. If abiogenesis is accepted, special creation is used to explain
>the origin of the universe. Special creation is totally irrelevant to
>scientific discussion.
Not quite true. I fully understand your point that special creation
is a "diagnosis of exclusion". I agree. This frustrates many theists
who try to find scientific support for their ideas. The best you can
do is dismantle all other theories. Of course it is obvious that you
cannot dismantle theories that will be discovered in the future. So
until we know all there is to know in the universe we cannot make a
"diagnosis of exclusion". Because of that, I agree that special
creation will never be "proven". However, because evolution or
abiogenesis occured in the past, we will never be able to "prove" this
happened either. We can only speak of support for or against a
theory. And because the two theories are diametrically opposed,
support against one implies support for the other. Therefore,
scientific "support" for special creation can be found.
Eric Pepke
> All instances in which RNA has been produced in the lab are under excruciatingly
> artificial conditions. The manufacture of pentose sugars, for example, in any
> conditions that would resemble a protoplanet are currently out of our grasp.
So? That's what a lab is.
A hydrogen bomb is *also* an excruciatingly artificial thing. But there
have been natural hydrogen fusion events in relatively recent years under
the surface of the Earth--that's where we get most of our hydrogen.
And who cares about pentose sugars? If they turn out not to be easy to
produce, then they may also turn out not to have been neccessary at first.
Maybe the first stuff wasn't RNA; maybe it was something different that
RNA was just better than, and it all got eaten. In any event, there are
a lot of things familiar to life which drop out of a reducing sky.
> I realize you were talking about evolution. But abiogenesis needs to come first
> and may take many orders of magnitude longer to actually kick off than evolution
So, as many people have been telling you, we know FOR SURE that
abiogenesis happened once, because there's life on this planet. Whether
it was the primordial soup or the crystals or a cupful of God's urine, it
damn well happened, because if it didn't, we wouldn't be here to argue
about it.
Abiogenesis isn't a process like Natural Selection that can be examined;
it's a thing that just simply happened. There's no good theory of
abiogenesis yet, so there's nothing to argue about. We can argue about
evolution, because there's a mechanism that makes predictions that can be
tested. So, despite your protestations to the contrary, an opinion about
the time that evolution takes is not as vapid as an opinion about the
time that abiogenesis takes.
-Eric
jesse l nowells
there are 3 generation of guys: grandfather, dad & son.
dad got sick & was dying. the son o.d.ed while this was happening.
the grandfather in order to make his son's dying easier told the dying
dad that his son was called up by the reserves to go to kosovo on a
secret mission but somehow he had gotten a message back to granddad that
he was ok and he was on his way to kick milosevic's butt. the dad died
at ease because his son was making something out of himself & he had
done a good job as a dad.
& the companion variation:
dad got sick & was dying. the son was called up by the reserves to go to
iraq to go find saddam and make a kishkabob out of him. instead saddam
shipped him back both fed-ex & ups in several baggies. meanwhile dad
got worse. he feared he had been a bad dad & hoped his son had turned out
ok anyway. the grandfather had to sign the two manifests from the two
delivery guys. he knew his son was a goner & he could make things
better for him if he told him his son was ok and was getting the medal
of honor from clinton himself. instead he told this son that his son
had died horribly. the dad died a broken bitter man.
the question is: is it always wrong to tell a lie & is it always right to
tell the truth?
Shaad M. Ahmad
jfri...@nycap.rr.com wrote:
>: My beef with this is that for a person to use evolution as an
>: argument against the need for a god needs to include the theory of
>: abiogenesis to be complete. Of course many don't want to do this
>: because it is currently the weak point in the whole scheme of things.
I must confess that I find it difficult to understand why people
have such a hard time with abiogenesis -- as if it was something special;
something transcending physical laws.
One of the experiments I have often suggested to students is to
make a supersaturated solution of a salt (say, sodium chloride) and
then add a seeding crystal, a grain of the same salt to the super-
saturated solution. Crystals will start appearing immediately.
Exactly what has happened here? The ions of the salt in solution
have used the lattice structure of the ions in the crystal as a template
to arrange themselves in the same lattice structure -- effectively
used a template to make more copies of the template.
Now how exactly does this differ from life? Primarily only in
the sense that life involves making more copies of a template using
generally hydrogen and covalent bonds instead of ionic bonds like
the salt crystals. Yes life has over time evolved enzymes and other
proteins to make this replication more efficient, evolved cells,
multicellularity, differentiation, different varieties of metabolism,
etc. to make this process more efficient -- but the process remains
essentially the same: the use of a template to make more copies of
itself.
And, as our salt experiment shows, that process is not a special
or miraculous one, nor one that requires invoking "special creation"
and/or a creator.
So, once again, I have to ask: why do people have such a hard time
with abiogenesis?
Regards.
sh...@leland.stanford.edu - Shaad -
http://cmgm.stanford.edu/~ahmad/
the deviant biologist
"Religions die when they are proved to be true. Science is the record of
dead religions."
-- Oscar Wilde
Shaad M. Ahmad
<371cbbea...@news.nycap.rr.com>:
> H(0): The age of the universe does not allow sufficient time to
>develop life with the tools available to it.
Prove this or recant. Show all your premises and and arguments.
Eric Pepke
> 2) Abiogenesis is less of a leap of faith than special creation.
> In the future this may become true, but today it is not.
Bullshit.
We know something about possible mechanisms of abiogenesis which seem at
least suggestive, which is more than is known about special creation
(which would just be another mechanism for abiogenesis, nicht wahr?).
That makes it better. You are fixating on ways in which the knowledge is
not perfect and saying "Nyah Nyah! You don't know everything!"
Which true but is also not a problem for those who are emotionally well
adjusted. It's also what creationists like to do with respect to evolution.
I don't have to know every little anal-retentive detail to be able to
figure out that the Big Philosophical Hole that compels one to believe in
a god isn't there.
Furthermore, I have to point out something that should be obvious to
anybody with two brain cells to rub together--this is an atheist newsgroup.
What happens in here, whatever else it may be, IS NOT a bunch of atheists
going into a church and trying to convert them all. Anyone who comes
into this newsgroup as a theist has made a decision to act on the offensive.
It isn't our job to convince interlopers here in spite of their
obsessive compulsiveness.
As far as I am concerned, anyone who wants to believe in a god can bloody
well go ahead and do it, as long as they don't screw up my right to do
what I want. I don't give a ziploc bag of rat farts about converting
theists. But those who come in time and time again with the same
anal-retentive philosophical meanderings can expect to be judged as morons.
If they don't have any problems with being thought of as morons, that's
fine with me. It certainly doesn't bother me any.
-Eric
Eric Pepke
> The word translated in the above quotation as "bird" might refer
> in Hebrew to a broader category of animals. And "walk on all fours" is
> an idiomatic English expression.
My wife knows Hebrew and went through standard Jew-training. I'll ask her.
-Eric
JeffMo
>Let me just take a minute to talk about an argument that I hear made
>often and don't like at all. If nobody here is making this, then at
>least take this as a plea to not do it in the future. The roles will
>be played by a random theist and random atheist.
>The idea of special creation comes up.
> The theist starts of talking about the idea that a supreme being
>created life in all its richness and glory.
**
> The atheist counters by saying a supreme being is unnecessary
>because we have a perfectly good explanation, namely evolution, which
>does the same thing without a god. Occam's razor, therefore, argues
>against the need for god.
> The theist replies that there are very few ideas about abiogenesis
>and in fact it is currently just as much a black box as special
>creation. So in reality, you could argue that the evolutionary
>position is just as much a leap of faith as the special creation.
> The atheist replies, "hold on, who was talking about abiogenesis.
>Evolution is a completely separate theory and that's what I'm talking
>about."
> At this point the debate breaks down because the two sides are now
>arguing two sides of a different coin.
Actually, the debate broke down at the point marked ** above.
When people inject unproven and unevidenced assumptions into a debate,
without providing objective definitions, the proceedings have already
devolved into "arguing two sides of a different coin."
The abiogenesis/evolution dichotomy which you assert is small potatoes
compared to the dilemma engendered by those wishing to "take as given"
something that cannot be seen, heard, smelled, tasted, touched,
measured, replicably observed, etc. In other words, the "idea that a
supreme being" performed some action is hardly meaningful, barring any
presentation of a definition of the meaning of the term "supreme
being."
JeffMo
Is it better to be bored, wishing you're not,
or not to be bored, wishing that you were?
Remove dipstick for email replies.
Automort
>with abiogenesis?
It appears to bring something (order) out of nothing (disorder), though of
course it actually does not except in a particular sense.
Duncan McCardle
jesse l nowells wrote:
>
> this is a variation on a discussed story.
[snip. morality tales]
> the question is: is it always wrong to tell a lie & is it always right to
> tell the truth?
No and no.
It's funny how pragmatic most societies are on these questions, inspite
of all that Deity mandated absolute morality sloshing about. We call
them 'tact' and 'little white lies' and 'glossing over unpleasant
details' and 'creative licence' and 'euphemisms'. Show me someone who
claims to have never told a lie and I'll show you a liar.
jfri...@nycap.rr.com
Ahmad) wrote:
> One of the experiments I have often suggested to students is to
>make a supersaturated solution of a salt (say, sodium chloride) and
>then add a seeding crystal, a grain of the same salt to the super-
>saturated solution. Crystals will start appearing immediately.
>
> Exactly what has happened here? The ions of the salt in solution
>have used the lattice structure of the ions in the crystal as a template
>to arrange themselves in the same lattice structure -- effectively
>used a template to make more copies of the template.
>
> Now how exactly does this differ from life? Primarily only in
>the sense that life involves making more copies of a template using
>generally hydrogen and covalent bonds instead of ionic bonds like
>the salt crystals. Yes life has over time evolved enzymes and other
>proteins to make this replication more efficient, evolved cells,
>multicellularity, differentiation, different varieties of metabolism,
>etc. to make this process more efficient -- but the process remains
>essentially the same: the use of a template to make more copies of
>itself.
I do not deny the analogy. However, a similar analogy would be to
compare a three year old drawing the word "COW" on a piece of paper
and Shakespear writing Hamlet. Both are using a similar process
(writing on a piece of paper), but would it be logical to assume that
the three year old is capable of writing her own "MacBeth"? Salt
crystalization, although organized, is very, very simplistic. Life,
on the other hand, is far from. Now I'm not saying that we need to
have a template where we can de novo create a cell from scratch, but
even to make some of the building blocks of life (RNA, enzymatic
proteins, etc.) is very difficult.
>
> And, as our salt experiment shows, that process is not a special
>or miraculous one, nor one that requires invoking "special creation"
>and/or a creator.
I would heartily agree that making salt crystals does not require an
act of God. I can, however, make no further inferences from this.
TO REPLY TO ME REMOVE "NOSPAM" FROM MY EMAIL ADDRESS
Jason
"Religious belief is enhanced by an open-eyed investigation of the world,
and honest science demands humility when faced with the astonishing
richness of life's creation."
H(0): The age of the universe does not allow sufficient time to
Eric Stevenson
: On 20 Apr 99 15:21:39 GMT, Eric Stevenson <es...@umr.edu> wrote:
: >Likewise, in our search for the truth, we should not ignore the
: >supply the first life on earth. If research demonstrates that life could
: >not come into existence naturally on earth (or naturally somewhere else
: >and arrive on earth), we still have no evidence for any kind of god. The
: >theist position presented above seems to be strongly biased towards
: >christianity. Why a "supreme" being? Why only one? If one had never heard
: >of any religion, would the idea of a supernatural creator of life be
: >advanced as a hypothesis?
: Some interesting questions. I do not mean to bias my creationist
: theory toward christianity. I can live with a theory that substitutes
: a creation event for abiogenesis. You can substitute that in the
: example above if it makes you feel better.
: Some of the other questions are silly. Why a "supreme" being?
: Because this is the semantic usually used to represent the
: causeless-cause employed by theist positions. Why only one? I guess
: that is preference, the argument could still carry out with a
: plurality of gods.
I disagree that the other questions are silly. Let us examine the nautre
of the argument. It appears to be a simple bifurcation. Either life
originated due to processes within the universe, or it didn't. As you
stated, a "creation event" is necessary if life did not originate through
natural processes. There are a very large number of possibilities for
this event. Any discussion of a supreme being is premature. There is no
reason to think the being must be supreme, singular, or even a being.
: I think ancient creation stories answer your last question.
: Apparently it would.
Obviously, otherwise religion would not exist. Let me rephrase. If
someone with a scientific mindset were investigating the origin of life,
would the notion of an extra-natural entity occur? In reality, mystical
ideas appeared long before scientific ideas. Given an equal start, would
creator entities be taken seriously?
: This isn't quite true. If we find that it is physically impossible to
: develop life randomly within the age and laws of the universe, we must
: look for causes "outside" it. That would definitely be a reason to
: connect the two.
True. However, the search for causes will be basedon finding evidence.
Theories which can have no evidence to support them will never be
relevant to the search.
: until we know all there is to know in the universe we cannot make a
: "diagnosis of exclusion". Because of that, I agree that special
: creation will never be "proven". However, because evolution or
: abiogenesis occured in the past, we will never be able to "prove" this
: happened either. We can only speak of support for or against a
: theory. And because the two theories are diametrically opposed,
: support against one implies support for the other. Therefore,
: scientific "support" for special creation can be found.
This falls into a common problem in debate. I believe I have seen it
labeled as 'false bifurcation.' There are a very large number of possible
theories on both sides of the natural/supernatural issue. Destroying one
does not lend any significant support to another. For example, proving
that Zeus does not, in fact, live on top of Mount Olympus (on either
Earth or Mars) does not indicate that chemical abiogenesis is true.
Similarly, disproving chemical abiogenesis does not indicate that YHWH
created the universe.
As has been demonstrated in many cases, religion and science really have
nothing to do with each other. No matter how many natural explanations
for life, the universe, or atomic decay are disproved, supernatural
explanations will never become scientific theories. Likewise, whatever
scientific discoveries are made, they will never truly impact religious
ideas, which can adapt to fit any facts, or simply ignore them. Science
and religion operate by different mechanisms. They occasionally are used
to explain the same phenomena, which often causes people to believe that
they somehow are related, or are even opposites.
Eric Pepke
> Now how exactly does this differ from life? Primarily only in
> the sense that life involves making more copies of a template using
> generally hydrogen and covalent bonds instead of ionic bonds like
> the salt crystals.
Now I have heard suggestions of a mutable mineral self-replicating system
that may have been used as a template for organic self-replicating
systems, but I'm still a bit skeptical about that.
Since you're actively doing this kind of stuff (I stopped several years
ago), do you have any suggestion about how to get topases?
Personally, abiogenesis doesn't bug me, except for details like topases.
My wife has a suggestion, which I think may be quite profound, that life
is much more of a continuum than a special form of matter, stretching
into inorganic chemistry and simple physical processes. Something like a
mountain or a river, having grown from a seed and having been subject to
essentially evolutionary processes, may be said in a sense to be as much
alive as a bacterium and probably more alive than a virus.
> So, once again, I have to ask: why do people have such a hard time
> with abiogenesis?
I don't think people really do. I just think that people who would
rather argue in an anal-retentive fashion rather than think sieze upon it
as a kind of trump card.
Which is a good thing. The less brain-damaged creationists have at least
realized that they are confined to ever-narrowing circles of minutiae.
-Eric
doo...@pud.com
>Some interesting questions. I do not mean to bias my creationist
>theory toward christianity. I can live with a theory that substitutes
>a creation event for abiogenesis. You can substitute that in the
>example above if it makes you feel better.
<SNIP>
> I think ancient creation stories answer your last question.
>Apparently it would.
>
<SNIP>
>This isn't quite true. If we find that it is physically impossible to
>develop life randomly within the age and laws of the universe, we must
>look for causes "outside" it. That would definitely be a reason to
>connect the two.
>
Why not another, older universe? Or extra dimensions? There are always going
to be alternative hypotheses.
>
>Not quite true. I fully understand your point that special creation
>is a "diagnosis of exclusion". I agree. This frustrates many theists
>who try to find scientific support for their ideas. The best you can
>do is dismantle all other theories. Of course it is obvious that you
>cannot dismantle theories that will be discovered in the future. So
>until we know all there is to know in the universe we cannot make a
>"diagnosis of exclusion".
With this statement you seem to be supporting a position that nothing can be
proven.
>Because of that, I agree that special
>creation will never be "proven". However, because evolution or
>abiogenesis occured in the past, we will never be able to "prove" this
>happened either. We can only speak of support for or against a
>theory. And because the two theories are diametrically opposed,
>support against one implies support for the other.
Isn't this a false dichotomy? Or an excluded middle? Why should evidence
against one theory necessarily support another?
> Therefore,
>scientific "support" for special creation can be found.
>
Ouch. The two theories are not diametrically opposed. Just add the phrase "a
supreme being made possible the environment for abiogenesis to occur". Add
some facile evidence - there is no evidence of life on other planets. Voila,
special creation + abiogenesis. Does this satisfy you? If not, why not?
It is always possible to add a phrase like this to any physical theory. ie.
the supreme being generated the conditions to produce the ultimate effect.
There is no way of testing for the existence of a supreme being so ultimately
no one can prove that a supreme being didn't do this. If you have such a
test, other than personal revelation, please state it as such.
What is extremely difficult, is tying the supreme being of your choice to
these events versus someone else's supreme being.
<SNIP>
zippo
Buck Field
news:371d3c7a...@news.nycap.rr.com...
> >and materials that are known to exist. It matches with what is known of
> >the early earth. The tests that have been applied to it have failed to
> >disprove it. Its "weakness" is that it has not been fully tested.
> >
> I don't have time to reply to the rest of the post right now, but I'll
> do it later. This above paragraph is complete nonsense. Name the
> processes and materials that are known to exist. (I'm especially
> interested in the processes.)
> I can confidently say that your statements
> are really hollow claims. I'm interested in some specifics here.
The specifics of current research include chemical reactions of a measurable
nature. They involve physical atoms which exist in a common reality we all
share and can (always, at least in theory) be objectively observed by anyone
regardless of philosophical or political inclination, and generally by
machines. They react in reproducible ways, such as the formation of
chemical bonds or catalyzed reactions for which measurements of speed of
reaction and end-product pH are possible. They are processes that are open
to rational critique from the most learned opposition, and will be only
tentatively adopted after survival of the harshest available scrutiny,
giving them the "best current explanation" status.
Occultism is not measureable, and involves immaterial entities and ususally
intelligence(!), they depend primarily on the faith of the proposer's
parentage and appeal to personal emotion or hallucination for validity.
They are never detected (or detectable) by even our most powerful
technologies. Occult "causes" are non-reproducible, and the mood of deities
willing to initiate an action have never been (and cannot even in theory),
be gauged, despite claims associated with hundreds of sacrificial, pleading
and symbolic rituals. There is no analog to the self-correcting criticism
and logic of science. Fervent belief in the proposition, with
rationalization of compatibility with religious text is frequently judged as
acceptable justification by the faithful.
Creation by deities is therefore excluded from consideration by those
holding the pursuit of truth as their highest duty.
> "Religious belief is enhanced by an open-eyed investigation of the world,
> and honest science demands humility when faced with the astonishing
> richness of life's creation."
A tragic quote; it is disheartening to see the dazzling complexity of the
universe uncovered by science would be used to turn thinking away from
rational science and toward magical spirits. One wonders, in reading the
quote if all religious belief is enhanced, or merely certain ones. Is
adherance to Cthonian Animism and Buddhist Shintoism as enhanced by the
"investigation of the world" as are Agnostic Deists and Tasmanian
Aboriginals?
Buck Field
<jfri...@nycap.rr.com> wrote in message
news:371df6d...@news.nycap.rr.com...
> There will probably never be "proof" of God.
Especially occult God.
> There will never be
> "proof" of the non-existance of God.
You mean no disproof of the Deist God. The "Prime Mover" aka "The Uncaused
Cause" God, correct?
Thousands of categories of deities are provable as non-existent by virtue of
a definition including mutually exclusive characteristics. Simultaneous
"justice" and "mercy" is a good example. "Love" and infinite punishment for
finite transgressions is another. It is similar to the ease with which we
prove there are no circular triangles.
> Therefore, you can only use
> "support" for and against.
Therefore, your conclusion is invalid.