Critique of "The Intuitionist Ethics"
R Lawrence
1) If intuitionism is true, then if your moral intuitions tell you it is
right to kill yourself in a suicide bombing against a daycare center full
of innocent babies, including your own children and the children of your
closest friends, you should do it.
2) It is not the case that if your moral intuitions tell you it is right to
kill yourself in a suicide bombing against a daycare center full of
innocent babies, including your own children and the children of your
closest friends, you should do it.
3) Therefore, intuitionism is not true.
Discuss the logic of this argument at your leisure.
--
Richard Lawrence <RL0...@yahoo.com>
Visit the Objectivism Reference Center: http://www.objectivism.addr.com/
Anthanson1
>Subject: Critique of "The Intuitionist Ethics"
>From: R Lawrence RL0...@yahoo.com
>Date: 3/30/01 6:15 PM Pacific Standard Time
>Message-id: <Q4bx6.136298$GV2.34...@typhoon.san.rr.com>
>
>The argument is very simple:
>
>1) If intuitionism is true, then if your moral intuitions tell you it is
>right to kill yourself in a suicide bombing against a daycare center full
>of innocent babies, including your own children and the children of your
>closest friends, you should do it.
This is obviously the false premise. You check your intuitions in the same way
that you would check your perceptions (eyesight, say). If I tell everyone that
I see a pink elephant in the room, and nobody else sees it, well that is a very
good reason for questioning my perception. Similarly, if everyone tells me that
doing what you describe is horribly wrong, then since the stakes are so high, I
wouldn't do it on the chance that I am wrong. The fact that I have to check my
intuitions with others does not show that I don't have intuitions or that my
intuitions are not useful, any more than checking my sense perceptions with
others proves that I don't have perceptions or that they are not useful.
I would also remember all the things I have read in moral philosophy, theories
which universally condemn
such an action. This, would in turn convince me that my
intuition in this case is probably a bad one. I would then probably commit
myself (if I were rational enough to do so).
Wrathbone
R Lawrence
not accurately represent intuitionism, because at least some intuitionists
would "check" their intuitions with others before acting. Unlike some
people who present this type of argument, I take such criticisms seriously.
Therefore, I am making a modified version of the argument available for
those who hold the same views as the critic:
The argument is very simple:
1) If intuitionism is true, then if your moral intuitions tell you it is
right to kill yourself in a suicide bombing against a daycare center full
of innocent babies, including your own children and the children of your
closest friends -- and you find that your intuitions are confirmed when you
check with others -- you should do it.
2) It is not the case that if your moral intuitions tell you it is right to
kill yourself in a suicide bombing against a daycare center full of
innocent babies, including your own children and the children of your
closest friends -- and you find that your intuitions are confirmed when you
check with others -- you should do it.
3) Therefore, intuitionism is not true.
Please note, BTW, that I can substitute *any* conditional into the
argument, and it will remain equally (in)valid. Therefore, it would be
superfluous for me to respond individually to every variation. I have done
so in this case in order to make exactly that point.
Interested parties may wish to develop their own versions using other
ethical theories and/or specific actions to be evaluated. For example, we
might contemplate utilitarians slaughtering old people and puppies to
maximze utility, or dentologists with a duty to make the sun go nova.
Chris Cathcart
is rather unfortunate, since Richard more likely has useful or interesting
things to say than various others whom Owl likely has in his kf.
My thinking on this is very sympathetic to Richard's, if not in straightforward
agreement with it. Richard is attempting to point to a feature of Owl's
argument such that it can be used to disprove virtually any moral theory yo
u can
think of.
The argument, in generlized form, runs as follows:
1. The [X ethic] says that the criteria for right action is [X].
2. If it is ever the case that fulfilling the criterion of [X] leads to [some
genuine moral atrocity], then [X ethic] (still) says that you should do [X].
3. You shouldn't commit [the genuine moral atrocity] just because it fulfills
the criterion for [X].
4. Therefore, the [X ethics] is a flawed moral theory.
You can fill in anything for [X] and you get a "refutation" of any moral th
eory.
It all rests on the device employed in premise (2).
Hence, Richard fills in [X] with "Moral Intuitionism." If it is ever the case
that MI says that fulfilling the criterion of rightness of MI leads to a ge
nuine
moral atrocity, then MI says that you (nevertheless) ought to do it. But since
you shouldn't commit the genuine moral atrocity, MI is wrong.
I don't see how it helps the advocate of MI (given this argumentative method,
that is) if that advocate says, "But it's never in accordance with your
intuitions that doing [something that leads to an atrocity] is the right th
ing."
But this is just the point that Richard is making when he's defending egois
m, as
he understands it, against this sort of argumentative device. The "if" clause
isn't fulfilled, just as Owl would insist that the "if" clause is never
fulfilled when the argument is used against MI. It isn't, though, as if Ri
chard
didn't produce a fairly plausible example of what someone's intuitions might
tell them to do in what such a person would consider a just cause. If bombing
the World Trade Center is what someone's (supposed) intuitions tell him is
something done in the cause justice, and if one should do as one's intuitions
tells one to do, then one should bomb the WTC.
But Owl would make a perfectly justified response, in that it isn't ever in
anyone's reflectively considered intuitions to do that kind of thing, so this
isn't remotely a definitive refutation of MI. But, likewise, the advocate of
Randian egoism say just that about what our reflectively considered interests
are. It never is in the rationally considered interests of someone to commit
the kind of moral atrocity that he's talking about. And saying that the tr
ivial
gain in terms of "one's interests" ("a dime's worth of interests") looks
dangerously close to being circular as regards to whats in one's interests, if
not outright so, and looks like it can be employed right back on the advoca
te of
MI ("a dime's worth of reflectively considered intuitive equilibrium," or
whatever). I hold that you can't characterize the rationally considered
interests of any of the heroes of Rand's novels and come up with the notion
that
an improvement in their interests is obtained by committing moral atrocities --
not if, for instance, acting on certain principles is integral to one's
rationally-considered interests.
The "if" clause is akin to characterizing an ethical theory in such a way that
any and all action could conceivably be an improvement by the criterion of that
theory. Let's say that I have a theory of ethics called "honesty-ism," which
has the criterion of rightness that you might expect. Now, does it make any
sense at all to say that, if "Honesty-ism" says that a dime's worth of
improvement in honesty can be had by engaging in dishonesty, then one should
engage in dishonesty? Hardly. (This is what I mean by "dangerously circular"
above.) And so it is in the case of egoism or MI.
So, as I see it, Owl's argument amounts virtually to a "necessary proof" of the
falsehood of egoism, which definitely makes a proof of egoism's wrongness very,
very easy -- but at the cost of making an proof of the necessary falsehood of
any ethical theory all that easy. (Sort of like defining God as a necessarily
existing being, no? Really easy "proof" there.) I'm sorry, but I'm not
impressed by it, nor do I think we should be reasonably expected to be impr
essed
by it. It's an apodictic, deductive proof with all premises taken to be true,
when premise (2) contains in it way too much problems to be regarded as a clean
"if-then" implication.
And so, Wrathbone's answer below can be answered by saying that this is
precisely how a Randian egoist responds to the scenario: no one's rationally
considered interests on her theory (just as no one's rationally considered and
examined intuitions per Wrathbone's response) would lead the Randian moral
agent
to engage in that kind of action.
In article <20010331054135...@ng-ck1.aol.com>, Anthanson1 says...
--
Chris Cathcart
Ph.D., Prolific Iconoclasm
Ken Gardner
On 31-Mar-2001, R Lawrence <RL0...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> The argument is very simple:
> 1) If intuitionism is true, then if your moral intuitions tell you it is
> right to kill yourself in a suicide > bombing against a daycare center
> full of innocent babies, including your own children and the > children of
> your closest friends -- and you find that your intuitions are confirmed
> when you check > with others -- you should do it.
And this isn't all that farfetched if you replace bombing daycare center
with, say, blowing up a bus full of Israelis, or blowing up a building full
of government employees.
> 2) It is not the case that if your moral intuitions tell you it is right
> to kill yourself in a suicide > bombing against a daycare center full of
> innocent babies, including your own children and the > children of your
> closest friends -- and you find that your intuitions are confirmed when
> you check > with others -- you should do it.
I agree, but a moral intuitionist would have to reject this premise because
it proceeds from a moral code that would not be based on intuitionism, i.e.
a moral code that holds that an objective basis exists for making moral
judgments. I guess that's your whole point, right? :)
[...]
Ken
Bert Clanton
<Chris_...@newsranger.com> wrote:
[snip]
> ... Richard is attempting to point to a feature of Owl's
> argument such that it can be used to disprove virtually any moral theory yo
> u can
> think of.
>
> The argument, in generlized form, runs as follows:
>
> 1. The [X ethic] says that the criteria for right action is [X].
>
> 2. If it is ever the case that fulfilling the criterion of [X] leads to
> [some
> genuine moral atrocity], then [X ethic] (still) says that you should do [X].
>
> 3. You shouldn't commit [the genuine moral atrocity] just because it ful
> fills
> the criterion for [X].
>
> 4. Therefore, the [X ethics] is a flawed moral theory.
>
> You can fill in anything for [X] and you get a "refutation" of any moral th
> eory.
> It all rests on the device employed in premise (2).
>
Is it impossible to rationally disagree about whether some particular
act constitutes a genuine moral atrocity? If you and I sincerely
disagree about whether act X constitutes a genuine moral atrocity, how
do we find out who's correct?
If I understand Owl's position, it is that our moral intuition (MI)
will tell us whether X is a genuine moral atrocity. This doesn't seem
right to me. If I seek to consult my moral intuition about the practice
of abortion, what I think it tells me is that the practice of abortion
is not a moral atrocity. But I'm personally acquainted with folks who
seem to get the answer that the practice of abortion *is* a moral
atrocity. Given that both they and I are genuinely and open-mindedly
interested in finding out which of us is correct, how do we go about
it?
Best wishes,
Bert
Anthanson1
>right to kill yourself in a suicide bombing against a daycare center full
>of innocent babies, including your own children and the children of your
>closest friends -- and you find that your intuitions are confirmed when you
>check with others -- you should do it.
But obviously this intuition would not be confirmed by others. You might
associate with some other nuts that have the same intuitions as yours, just as
you might be a member of a club of people who are far-sighted who all look at
'=' and see '--'. But some instances of confirmation don't mean that you should
do what you describe, nor that '=' is '--'. That is why a good moral reasoner
needs to have a broad experience of life and look beyond the little group or
tribe that he might be immersed in and realize that he might be unduly
influenced by it; (sound familiar?), and be open to the possibility that he may
be wrong - all of these characteristics that cultists lack.
Now you might ask, what if the world was such that
people would pretty universally confirm your intuition?
Would it then be acceptable? But, of course, I could not imagine a world like
this to begin with. It couldn't get off the ground, so to speak. Kant would say
that universalizing the principle of such an action would involve a
contradiction. I think he is right in the sense that a principle that would
allow doing what you describe would undermine the possibility of any real human
world.
>
>
>2
Chris Cathcart
[...]
>> You can fill in anything for [X] and you get a "refutation" of any moral th
>> eory.
>> It all rests on the device employed in premise (2).
>>
>Is it impossible to rationally disagree about whether some particular
>act constitutes a genuine moral atrocity? If you and I sincerely
>disagree about whether act X constitutes a genuine moral atrocity, how
>do we find out who's correct?
A perfectly legitimate concern, though I think rather aside from the point
of my
posting (and a subject that would tax my time even more than the excessive
amounts I've consumed so far lately :-). In any case, answers along this line
shouldn't be question-begging in favor or against any of the competing ethical
theories.
Chris Cathcart
ys...
>On 31-Mar-2001, R Lawrence <RL0...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> The argument is very simple:
>
>> 1) If intuitionism is true, then if your moral intuitions tell you it is
>> right to kill yourself in a suicide > bombing against a daycare center
>> full of innocent babies, including your own children and the > children of
>> your closest friends -- and you find that your intuitions are confirmed
>> when you check > with others -- you should do it.
>
>And this isn't all that farfetched if you replace bombing daycare center
>with, say, blowing up a bus full of Israelis, or blowing up a building full
>of government employees.
Or nuking Iran within 48 hours.
:-)
>> 2) It is not the case that if your moral intuitions tell you it is right
>> to kill yourself in a suicide > bombing against a daycare center full of
>> innocent babies, including your own children and the > children of your
>> closest friends -- and you find that your intuitions are confirmed when
>> you check > with others -- you should do it.
>
>I agree, but a moral intuitionist would have to reject this premise because
>it proceeds from a moral code that would not be based on intuitionism, i.e.
>a moral code that holds that an objective basis exists for making moral
>judgments. I guess that's your whole point, right? :)
From what I gather, Yep.
b
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R Lawrence
>>1) If intuitionism is true, then if your moral intuitions tell you it is
>>right to kill yourself in a suicide bombing against a daycare center full
>>of innocent babies, including your own children and the children of your
>>closest friends -- and you find that your intuitions are confirmed when you
>>check with others -- you should do it.
>
>But obviously this intuition would not be confirmed by others
As anyone who accepts this general form of argument should understand, the
fact that the hypothetical scenario is (or may be) counterfactual does not
mean that the premise which contains it is false.
As an aside, I'm strongly considering putting all of the intuitionist baby
killers into my killfile, so as to spare me the annoyance of reading their
pathetic attempts to answer my irrefutable arguments.
Fred Weiss
"Anthanson1" <antha...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20010331142254...@ng-mh1.aol.com...
>But some instances of confirmation don't mean that you should
> do what you describe,....
What stops you?
>That is why a good moral reasoner....
When did reasoning get smuggled into this?
> ....needs to have a broad experience of life and look beyond the little
group or
> tribe that he might be immersed in and realize that he might be unduly
> influenced by it;...
What faculty/capacity enables us to question conventional wisdom?
>... (sound familiar?), and be open to the possibility that he may
> be wrong - ...
To be determined how?
> Now you might ask, what if the world was such that
> people would pretty universally confirm your intuition?
> Would it then be acceptable? But, of course, I could not imagine a world
like
> this to begin with.
A little history might help you - or just recalling the 20th Cent. Some
reminders: Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, to name a few.
> It couldn't get off the ground, so to speak.
It did. Many times.
Fred Weiss
R Lawrence
>I am under the impression that Owl has Richard Lawrence in his killfile, which
>is rather unfortunate, since Richard more likely has useful or interesting
>things to say than various others whom Owl likely has in his kf.
Well, whether he sees it or not, here is a quick rundown of some of the
flaws in Huemer's argument, with convenient headers to make them easier to
follow. Each header is preceeded by two asterisks (**).
** First, The Argument
The argument under consideration is one presented by Michael Huemer (aka
"Owl") in an essay called "Critique of 'The Objectivist Ethics.'" It is one
small part of a much longer essay. The argument as he presents it is as
follows:
>3. General arguments against ethical egoism
>
>Rand endorsed a version of 'ethical egoism': the view that a person should
>always do whatever best serves his own interests. I have discussed the
>following objections to this doctrine in my "Why I Am Not an Objectivist",
>so I will be brief here. Here is one general argument against egoism:
>
>1. If ethical egoism is true, then if you could obtain a (net) benefit
>equal to a dime by torturing and killing 500 people, you should do it.
>
>2. It is not the case that, if you could obtain a (net) benefit equal to a
>dime by torturing and killing 500 people, you should do it.
>
>3. Therefore, egoism is not true.
>
>This argument is very simple, but that should not fool us into thinking it
>is therefore illegitimate. It is true that an egoist could simply deny 2,
>proclaiming that in that situation, the mass torture and killing would be
>morally virtuous. Any person can maintain any belief, provided he is
>willing to accept enough absurd consequences of it.
That's the entire argument as offered by Huemer in this particular essay.
As he notes, he had previously presented similar arguments in "Why I Am Not
an Objectivist," another online essay. Both essays are accessible from his
web site at http://home.sprynet.com/~owl1/other.htm . My own rather lengthy
response to portions of his earlier essay can be found online at
http://www.objectivism.addr.com/personal/essays/huemer.html .
There are a legion of potential and actual flaws in Huemer's argument.
Several of them have already been pointed out by myself and others in
recent days. This post is intended to briefly catalog some of the possible
objections to Huemer's argument. I do not intend for it to be
comprehensive, nor do I discuss each objection at length. Some of the
objections could be considered mutually exclusive, and I do not necessarily
endorse all of them. I simply want to make it clear how shaky Huemer's
position on this subject is.
** Egoism and Moral Calculation
Huemer's example talks of killing people "for a net benefit equal to a
dime." The implication of this phrasing is that for an egoist, moral
choices are based on specific calculations. That is, when making the choice
of whether or not to kill 500 people, the egoist would evaluate the
benefits and the detriments of taking that particular action at that
particular time, and then take the action or not based on the results of
the calculation.
While this is clearly the implication of Huemer's example, it is far less
clear that this method is one actually followed by egoists, much less that
it is one endorsed by Rand's ethical theories. Rand always spoke of basing
one's moral choices on ethical principles, not situational calculations of
benefits. If Rand's egoism does not imply the type of choice he projects,
then this argument fails as a rebuttal of Rand.
** The Precision of Moral Calculation
Even if one accepted the assumption that an egoist does (must?) make his
choices based on calculations of the type discussed above, one might marvel
at the fine level detail suggested by Huemer's example. His imagined egoist
is able to make a calculation that compares the detriments of killing 500
people with the benefits (whatever those would be) and finds a difference
equal to one dime. That is quite a fine level of granularity, considering
the variety of factors that would have to be considered. Many people would
find it difficult to determine whether two hair dryers were worth a 10 cent
difference, but the hypothetical egoist is supposed to discern such a
difference with 500 lives in the balance.
Such a scenario is implausible. In fact, it may be impossible to make such
a calculation with that degree of precision. In that case, the scenario he
projects could not be followed by any egoist, and hence could not be
prescribed by any rational form of egoism. (One tenant of any rational
ethics, egoistic or not, is that which is morally required of human beings
must at least by humanly possible.) Given Rand's specific dictum that the
moral is the practical, Huemer's argument would fail as a refutation of
Rand.
** A Dime's Worth of Difference
One of the interesting aspect's of Huemer's argument is how easily it is
misinterpreted. It is clear that many people read the argument as if Huemer
was suggesting an egoist would kill 500 people for a dime. But what he
actually says is that the egoist should (according to his interpretation of
egoism) kill 500 people for a *net* benefit of a dime. This is something
quite different. Hidden in the notion of "net benefit" is the idea that
there would be benefits to the killing that would balance out all the
detriments, and then still leave an extra dime's worth of benefit. In other
words, Huemer is assuming a lot more benefit to the killings than just a
dime.
How much more benefit is left unsaid, and frankly most people who read the
argument probably didn't even think much about it. Which is exactly the
point of leaving it unsaid, since making explicit how much benefit would be
required to outweigh the detriments of killing 500 people might make even
non-egoists rethink the issue. For example, suppose Huemer postulated that
the total (not net) benefit was the equivalent of $100,000,000,000.10
(offset, of course, by a presumed detriment of $100,000,000,000.00). Would
you kill 500 people for a hundred billion dollars? Undoubtedly many people
(including egoists) would still say no, but the supposedly obvious
rightness of Huemer's premise (2) is considerably weakened as the supposed
benefits get bigger. Remember that denying this premise is supposed to be
"absurd."
** From Morals to Dollars
Huemer assumes that moral calculations can not only be made, but that the
results can be readily translated into monetary terms. Hence the notion of
receiving a "(net) benefit equal to a dime." This is important, because
being able to make such translations makes it possible to perform
"cost/benefit" analyses that compare completely different benefits and
detriments of a proposed action, since it allows the one to balance the
other on the same scale. While Huemer is not alone in making this
assumption (many economists regularly do so), it is hardly a proven fact of
moral discourse. One could easily question whether it even makes sense to
try to weigh the detriments of killing 500 people against an unspecified
set of benefits -- much less that the two will cleanly offset one another
until one is left with a dime of benefit. Rand never endorsed this type of
analysis, but the argument assumes that a Randian egoist would use this
method.
The short version of this objection is: Do egoists believe everything has a
monetary price? If the answer is no, then Huemer's argument doesn't even
make sense, much less does it serve to refute Rand.
** Egoism and Rights
Many supporters of Rand's views would simply reject Huemer's claim that
premise (1) represents Rand's egoism, because it fails to acknowledge the
rights of the 500 people. Huemer has claimed elsewhere that rights and
egoism are inconsistent. That claim notwithstanding, if respect for rights
is sufficient grounds for an Randian egoist not to pursue the course of
action Huemer claims follow from egoism, then Huemer's attempt to refute
egoism on the grounds that it might justify the wanton murder of innocents
is irrelevant to Rand's specific views.
Time and real life preclude me from continuing the catalog beyond this
point, but there are other objections that could be raised.
Chris Cathcart
[...]
>** A Dime's Worth of Difference
>
[...]
>** From Morals to Dollars
>
>Huemer assumes that moral calculations can not only be made, but that the
>results can be readily translated into monetary terms. Hence the notion of
>receiving a "(net) benefit equal to a dime."
Well, you note before that it's a "dime's *worth*." The basic idea, partic
ulars
of measuring stick used aside, is that an egoist will always pursue (net)
trivial gains in terms of his "interests."
Yeah -- just like a eudaemonist might dispense with virtue to obtain net tr
ivial
gains in terms of his "eudaemonia."
That's how badly I think some of these criticisms misunderstand Rand's actual
position about what interests are. They might be criticisms of some varieties
of ethical egoism, but not of anything Rand ever even said, even if we grant
that her justificational argument is sloppy, which is what the criticism from
those like David Friedman seems to come down to.
Anthanson1
>Subject: Re: Critique of "The Intuitionist Ethics"
>From: R Lawrence RL0...@yahoo.com
>Date: 3/31/01 11:49 AM Pacific Standard Time
>Message-id: <wxqx6.136938$GV2.34...@typhoon.san.rr.com>
>
>Anthanson1 <antha...@aol.com> wrote:
>
>>>1) If intuitionism is true, then if your moral intuitions tell you it is
>>>right to kill yourself in a suicide bombing against a daycare center full
>>>of innocent babies, including your own children and the children of your
>>>closest friends -- and you find that your intuitions are confirmed when you
>
>>>check with others -- you should do it.
>>
>>But obviously this intuition would not be confirmed by others
>
>As anyone who accepts this general form of argument should understand, the
>fact that the hypothetical scenario is (or may be) counterfactual does not
>mean that the premise which contains it is false.
You are assuming that it is possible the intuition could be generally
confirmed. But if you had read the rest of my reply, you would have noticed
that I don't think that it is possible, or if it were, it would be impossible
to say what I would do since such a world would be too bizarre to make any
accurate claims about. Your scenario is analogous to saying, "imagine a world
in which there are square circles, or in which the strong and weak forces in
physics, as well as electromagnetism and gravity don't exist. What would you do
in situation x?"
Well, I wouldn't even exist in a world in which there are square circles, since
such a world is logically impossible. If it were logically possible to have a
world
in which there is no strong or weak force or electomagnetism or gravity, I
wouldn't know what claims would be true about it, or what I would do in such a
world (if I could exist) in a particular situation. In the same way, I don't
think that a world in which all our moral rules were reversed could exist, or
even the one rule you reverse. Kant has some thought provoking things to say
about this in his _Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals_. Have you read it,
or is he too evil for you to read? :-)
>
>As an aside, I'm strongly considering putting all of the intuitionist baby
>killers into my killfile, so as to spare me the annoyance of reading their
>pathetic attempts to answer my irrefutable arguments.
Hardly irrefutable. These arguments are common ones against intuitionism in
philosophical debate, and not very good ones. What is interesting, though, is
that
an Objectivist would find the suicide bombing mission
morally acceptable (if he believes it can be okay to commit suicide). Since he
ends up killing himself, then killing the others isn't wrong since killing them
can't harm him (he is dead). If an Objectivist does not believe that suicide is
morally acceptable, then killing the others along with himself is no worse than
killing himself alone (since, again, killing the others does not harm them
anymore than killing himself.
Isn't that ironic? :-)
Wrathbone
Anthanson1
Correction to the last sentence of my previous post. It read:
"(since, again, killing the others does not harm them anymore than killing
himself.)"
It should, of course, read:
"(since, again, killing the others does not harm him anymore than killing
himself.)"
Wrathbone
Owl
news:sEox6.2592$bY4....@www.newsranger.com...
> The argument, in generlized form, runs as follows:
>
> 1. The [X ethic] says that the criteria for right action is [X].
> 2. If it is ever the case that fulfilling the criterion of [X] leads to
[some
> genuine moral atrocity], then [X ethic] (still) says that you should do
[X].
I'm not sure what you're supposed to fill in for "[some moral atrocity]". If
you are supposed to instantiate (2) as follows--
(2a) If serving your interests ever leads to committing a moral atrocity,
then egoism still says you should serve your interests.
--then it is unclear how to interpret that. Ethical egoism says that serving
your interests is automatically right, so it couldn't be "a moral atrocity."
Perhaps, however, you meant to fill in "[some moral atrocity]" with a
specific type of action that, according to normal people, is in fact a moral
atrocity, thus:
(2b) If serving your interests ever leads to killing 500 people, then egoism
still says you should serve your interests.
In that case, (2b) is correct.
> 3. You shouldn't commit [the genuine moral atrocity] just because it
fulfills
> the criterion for [X].
> 4. Therefore, the [X ethics] is a flawed moral theory.
>
> You can fill in anything for [X] and you get a "refutation" of any moral
th
> eory.
First, you should see that your last claim certainly cannot be correct,
unless all moral theories are wrong. For, assuming there is some correct
theory of rightness, you could fill in the correct theory for [X]. But by
definition, you can't refute the correct theory, so something would have to
be wrong with the argument when you fill in the correct theory.
Let the alleged moral atrocity be act Y. Y is either (a) something that is
genuinely wrong in all circumstances, or (b) something that is wrong in some
circumstances but not others.
In case (a), theory X would say you should never perform that action under
any circumstances, so (2) would be false or nonsensical; that is, criterion
X would already include "don't do Y," so writing: "The X-theory says that if
condition X were satisfied, you should do Y" would mean: "The X-theory says
that if you could refrain from doing Y, you should still do Y," which
doesn't make any sense.
In case (b), theory X would say that you should perform Y under certain
circumstances and not others. Premise (3) would then be false because (3)
would be referring to one of the circumstances under which doing Y is
actually right.
I have stated this point very abstractly because of the abstract and general
nature of your claim. But it would be easier to see the point in concrete
cases. For instance: killing people is generally wrong. Suppose I have a
theory which says that the criteria for right action include, among other
things: "you shouldn't kill people, except in self-defense." Then to apply
your above argument-schema to this theory, we would write:
1. The X ethic says that the criteria for right action is [... don't kill
people, except in self-defense ...].
2. If it is ever the case that fulfilling the criterion of [... not killing
people except in self-defense...] leads to killing people, then the X-ethic
says that you should kill people.
3. You shouldn't kill people just because it is in self-defense.
4. Therefore, the X-ethic is a flawed moral theory.
This argument would be perfectly correct, if (3) were true. But,
intuitively, (3) is false. So this fails to show anything. Alternately, your
argument-schema might be filled in as follows:
1. The X ethic says that the criteria for right action is [... don't kill
people, except in self-defense ...].
2. If it is ever the case that fulfilling the criterion of [... not killing
people except in self-defense...] leads to [killing people not in
self-defense], then the X-ethic says that you should [kill people not in
self-defense].
3. You shouldn't (kill people not in self-defense) just because it is (not
killing people except in self-defense).
4. Therefore, the X-ethic is a flawed moral theory.
The above is an even worse argument; it is hard to make any sense of what
(2) and (3) are saying.
Now, a word about the method of reductio ad absurdum and about how to
criticize arguments:
Attempting a 'reductio ad absurdum'--arguing that "if that was right, then
we'd have to accept this other argument"--almost never either educates or
convinces anyone. If there's really something wrong with my argument, you
should be able to say what it is. There are only two premises. So tell me:
do you claim that it is logically invalid? If not, which premise do you
claim is false?
> It all rests on the device employed in premise (2).
What, precisely, is wrong with premise 2?
> Hence, Richard fills in [X] with "Moral Intuitionism."
This doesn't make sense, however. "Moral intuitionism" isn't a criterion for
right action, so when you do that you get a premise that just doesn't make
sense.
> If it is ever the case
> that MI says that fulfilling the criterion of rightness of MI leads to a
ge
> nuine
> moral atrocity, then MI says that you (nevertheless) ought to do it. But
since
> you shouldn't commit the genuine moral atrocity, MI is wrong.
You'll have to be more specific to help me see what sort of situation you
have in mind. To clarify, however: note that moral intuitionism is not a
subjectivist theory. It does not say that your having an intuition that x is
right makes x right. The theory is fully objectivist -- just as we don't
think perceiving an object makes the object exist, having a moral intuition
doesn't make anything morally right. Furthermore, most intuitionists believe
the fundamental moral principles (as opposed to some derivative ones) are
necessary truths, so true in all possible worlds.
With that understood, I don't see how you plan to construct the argument
against intuitionism.
> fulfilled when the argument is used against MI. It isn't, though, as if
Ri
> chard
> didn't produce a fairly plausible example of what someone's intuitions
might
> tell them to do in what such a person would consider a just cause.
The intuitionist--and here, I think I can speak with confidence for all
ethical intuitionists--thinks that if you believe, whether as a result of
your intuition or not, that it is morally correct to bomb the World Trade
Center, then you are wrong.
Contrast this with the ethical egoist, who thinks that if it would serve
your interests to bomb the WTC, then you are correct to do so.
The difference is that premise (2) of your argument is *true* when applied
to ethical egoism (using "serves your interests" for X), but *false* when
applied to intuitionism (using "is in accordance with your intutions" for
X). Again, this is because the intuitionist does not say that having
intuitions makes things right.
> So, as I see it, Owl's argument amounts virtually to a "necessary proof"
of the
> falsehood of egoism, which definitely makes a proof of egoism's wrongness
very,
> very easy -- but at the cost of making an proof of the necessary falsehood
of
> any ethical theory all that easy.
In fact, ethical intuitionism is the only ethical theory that cannot in
principle be refuted by appeal to thought-experiments (hypothetical cases).
The reason is that a moral theory is so refuted only when your intuitive
judgement in the hypothetical cases strongly diverges from the claims of the
theory. By definition, this never happens if you're an intuitionist;
intuitionism never endorses counter-intuitive results (well, unless there
are strong ulterior arguments for them--but then in that case the results
would not be taken as refuting a theory that endorsed them).
R Lawrence
>>R Lawrence wrote:
>>As anyone who accepts this general form of argument should understand, the
>>fact that the hypothetical scenario is (or may be) counterfactual does not
>>mean that the premise which contains it is false.
>
>You are assuming that it is possible the intuition could be generally
>confirmed. But if you had read the rest of my reply, you would have noticed
>that I don't think that it is possible, or if it were, it would be impossible
>to say what I would do since such a world would be too bizarre to make any
>accurate claims about.
Hmm, a very thought-provoking response. Perhaps your comments will catch
the attention of the person who first propounded this method of argument on
HPO.
>>As an aside, I'm strongly considering putting all of the intuitionist baby
>>killers into my killfile, so as to spare me the annoyance of reading their
>>pathetic attempts to answer my irrefutable arguments.
>
>Hardly irrefutable. These arguments are common ones against intuitionism in
>philosophical debate, and not very good ones.
You know, I'm not sure at this point if you have a strange sense of irony,
or if you really don't realize what my intention was in proposing this
particular argument in the first place.
Jddescript
>Message-id: <wxqx6.136938$GV2.34...@typhoon.san.rr.com>
>
---------------excerpted, see original-----------
>As anyone who accepts this general form of argument should understand, the
>fact that the hypothetical scenario is (or may be) counterfactual does not
>mean that the premise which contains it is false.
>
>As an aside, I'm strongly considering putting all of the intuitionist baby
>killers into my killfile, so as to spare me the annoyance of reading their
>pathetic attempts to answer my irrefutable arguments.
>
>--
>Richard Lawrence <RL0...@yahoo.com>
>Visit the Objectivism Reference Center: http://www.objectivism.addr.com/
>
]
]
]
]
]
Don't Objectivists DO THE BEST POSSIBLE like a doctor and the-love-of-life
oath? Doesn't this mean that if they can't delay or avoid or finesse a
descision that has no understood rational causality they will do what their
intuition [uncataloged sense experience] tells them is best?
Good seeing. JD
]
]
]
]
]
----------------------------------------------------------
Jddescript
>Date: 3/31/01 12:56 PM Mountain Daylight Time
>Message-id: <310320011055226337%eubio...@home.com>
>
>In article <sEox6.2592$bY4....@www.newsranger.com>, Chris Cathcart
><Chris_...@newsranger.com> wrote:
>
>[snip]
>Is it impossible to rationally disagree about whether some particular
>act constitutes a genuine moral atrocity? If you and I sincerely
>disagree about whether act X constitutes a genuine moral atrocity, how
>do we find out who's correct?
>
>If I understand Owl's position, it is that our moral intuition (MI)
>will tell us whether X is a genuine moral atrocity. This doesn't seem
>right to me. If I seek to consult my moral intuition about the practice
>of abortion, what I think it tells me is that the practice of abortion
>is not a moral atrocity. But I'm personally acquainted with folks who
>seem to get the answer that the practice of abortion *is* a moral
>atrocity. Given that both they and I are genuinely and open-mindedly
>interested in finding out which of us is correct, how do we go about
>it?
>
>Best wishes,
>Bert
>
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
Why can't you be happy doing the best possible in the given situation with the
knowledges that you have? Do you want your decisions to all be guartanteed and
risk free of possible failure? Isn't this the old desire to be a GOD that we
have learned is impossible? As with the doctor and the love-of-life oath in
reality we can only do the most rational things possible and adjust our
learning rates and methods to be as ready as possible. WE don't compare our
reality to GOD/KING perfect but to reasonable rational accomplishment.
Remember good old procrastinate?
Good seeing. JD
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
-----------------------------------------------------
Ernest Brown
A good question to ask along these lines would be whether or not Rand
thinks that prostitution is morally justifiable.
Wisdom's Children: A Virtual Journal of Philosophy & Literature
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/billramey/wisdom.htm
Submissions welcomed.
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Anthanson1
>Date: 3/31/01 7:48 PM Pacific Daylight Time
>Message-id: <YFwx6.137471$GV2.34...@typhoon.san.rr.com>
You could have any number of intentions or points to make by proposing your
argument against intuitionism here. But, I am not really interested in those. I
was interested in showing the argument against intuitionism to be a bad one.
Whatever point you are making (or think you are making :-) with someone else,
is your business.
Wrathbone
Owl
news:310320011055226337%eubio...@home.com...
> Is it impossible to rationally disagree about whether some particular
> act constitutes a genuine moral atrocity?
No, people can rationally disagree about almost anything, although
irrational disagreements are more common.
> If you and I sincerely
> disagree about whether act X constitutes a genuine moral atrocity, how
> do we find out who's correct?
You come to a newsgroup and have a discussion about it.
> right to me. If I seek to consult my moral intuition about the practice
> of abortion, what I think it tells me is that the practice of abortion
> is not a moral atrocity. But I'm personally acquainted with folks who
> seem to get the answer that the practice of abortion *is* a moral
> atrocity. Given that both they and I are genuinely and open-mindedly
> interested in finding out which of us is correct, how do we go about
> it?
You should start by reading the philosophical literature on the topic. I
would recommend the famous papers by Thompson, Tooley, and Marquis to start.
Bert Clanton
> "Bert Clanton" <eubio...@home.com> wrote in message
> news:310320011055226337%eubio...@home.com...
> > Is it impossible to rationally disagree about whether some particular
> > act constitutes a genuine moral atrocity?
>
> No, people can rationally disagree about almost anything, although
> irrational disagreements are more common.
>
> > If you and I sincerely
> > disagree about whether act X constitutes a genuine moral atrocity, how
> > do we find out who's correct?
>
> You come to a newsgroup and have a discussion about it.
>
Good grief, Charlie Brown!
> > right to me. If I seek to consult my moral intuition about the practice
> > of abortion, what I think it tells me is that the practice of abortion
> > is not a moral atrocity. But I'm personally acquainted with folks who
> > seem to get the answer that the practice of abortion *is* a moral
> > atrocity. Given that both they and I are genuinely and open-mindedly
> > interested in finding out which of us is correct, how do we go about
> > it?
>
> You should start by reading the philosophical literature on the topic. I
> would recommend the famous papers by Thompson, Tooley, and Marquis to start.
Lemme see, now. It would seem to me that I can't trust my own moral
intuition to inform me about whether a particular act X constitutes a
moral atrocity. But you're telling me that instead I should consult
some guys who can tell me how (presumably) to correct my own moral
intuitions by following their reasoning? Is their moral reasoning
founded upon *their* moral intuition, or upon something else?
If on their own moral intuition: since I don't find that my own moral
intuitions are agreed to by everyone, why should I accept the notion
that moral intuition in general--and theirs in particular-- is a
reliable foundation for morality?
If not on their own moral intuition, then why should I accept moral
intuition as a foundation for morality when supposedly *they* don't?
Best wishes,
Bert
Arnold Broese-van-Groenou
irony,
> >or if you really don't realize what my intention was in proposing this
> >particular argument in the first place.
>
>
> You could have any number of intentions or points to make by proposing
your
> argument against intuitionism here. But, I am not really interested in
those. I
> was interested in showing the argument against intuitionism to be a bad
one.
> Whatever point you are making (or think you are making :-) with someone
else,
> is your business.
I believe you have used those arguments against rational egoism, so I trust
that is the end of them.
--
Arnold
a
Owl
> > You should start by reading the philosophical literature on the topic. I
> > would recommend the famous papers by Thompson, Tooley, and Marquis to
start.
> intuitions by following their reasoning? Is their moral reasoning
> founded upon *their* moral intuition, or upon something else?
>
> If on their own moral intuition: since I don't find that my own moral
> intuitions are agreed to by everyone, why should I accept the notion
> that moral intuition in general--and theirs in particular-- is a
> reliable foundation for morality?
Bert,
I was serious about that recommendation. You really should go read those
papers. If you do, you will then know, from example, how one goes about
trying to answer a difficult moral question, and you won't just have to
guess. Here's the citations:
Judith Jarvis Thomson, "A Defense of Abortion," Philosophy & Public Affairs
1 (1971).
Don Marquis, "Why Abortion is Immoral," Journal of Philosophy 86 (1989):
183-202.
Michael Tooley, "In Defense of Abortion and Infanticide" (sorry, don't have
the full citation on this one).
You seem to think that reliance on moral intuitions means saying, "Abortion
is wrong. Period. Next subject." or "Abortion is permissible. End of
discussion. Next question." I don't know where you got this idea, but
looking at some papers in moral philosophy should disabuse you of it.
Anthanson1
>Subject: Re: Critique of "The Intuitionist Ethics"
>From: Bert Clanton eubio...@home.com
>
>Lemme see, now. It would seem to me that I can't trust my own moral
>intuition to inform me about whether a particular act X constitutes a
>moral atrocity. But you're telling me that instead I should consult
>some guys who can tell me how (presumably) to correct my own moral
>intuitions by following their reasoning? Is their moral reasoning
>founded upon *their* moral intuition, or upon something else?
>
>If on their own moral intuition: since I don't find that my own moral
>intuitions are agreed to by everyone, why should I accept the notion
>that moral intuition in general--and theirs in particular-- is a
>reliable foundation for morality?
>
>If not on their own moral intuition, then why should I accept moral
>intuition as a foundation for morality when supposedly *they* don't?
If I may interject a (rhetorical) question here:
Why can't intuitions of basic moral truths provide a foundation of morality
even though they can't guide you _alone_ to resolve all particular moral
dilemmas (like abortion)?
In Ross's intuitionism, for example, though the basic rules of morality are
self-evident, they often come into conflict in particular circumstances.
Intuition alone cannot resolve
these dilemmas or hard cases. One must marshal all the mental resources one has
-creativity, experience, reason, factual details of the case -, etc. in order
to make the best decision one can. So, reasoning is an important part of moral
decision-making for an intuitionist, - something that most of its critics don't
understand. I suppose that is why Owl says it helps to argue on newsgroups and
read various authors.
Mark Young
> Why can't intuitions of basic moral truths provide a foundation of morality
> even though they can't guide you _alone_ to resolve all particular moral
> dilemmas (like abortion)? In Ross's intuitionism, for example, though th
> e basic
> rules of morality are self-evident, they often come into conflict in part
> icular
> circumstances.
So are these "self-evident" basic rules of morality true or not? If they a
re true,
then the upshot of Ross's intuitionism would seem to be that contradictions
*can*
exist (at least, moral ones can). If they are not true, then they are not
"intuitions of basic moral truths", are they?
....mark young
Owl
> to make the best decision one can. So, reasoning is an important part of
moral
> decision-making for an intuitionist, - something that most of its critics
don't
> understand. I suppose that is why Owl says it helps to argue on newsgroups
and
> read various authors.
To expand on that point, ethical intuitionism doesn't say that all moral
knowledge is intuitive, still less that humans have infallible, moral
omniscience. It only entails that some moral knowledge is intuitive.
Owl
news:3AC93C26...@accesswave.ca...
> So are these "self-evident" basic rules of morality true or not? If they
a
> re true,
> then the upshot of Ross's intuitionism would seem to be that
contradictions
> *can*
> exist (at least, moral ones can). If they are not true, then they are not
> "intuitions of basic moral truths", are they?
No, Ross has a system of "prima facie" duties (or ceteris paribus duties).
So what is true is that you have a prima facie duty to do x, and that you
have a prima facie duty to do y, although x and y sometimes conflict.
Gordon G. Sollars
...
> So are these "self-evident" basic rules of morality true or not? If they a
> re true,
> then the upshot of Ross's intuitionism would seem to be that contradictions
> *can*
> exist (at least, moral ones can).
It is not a "contradiction" to say that you can have conflicting duties
or obligations; rather, it is an unfortunate fact. As I understand it,
Ross did not think that there was any sort of general algorithm for
resolving such conflicts, but thought that they could be resolved in
different ways in specific cases.
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Anthanson1
>Subject: Re: Critique of "The Intuitionist Ethics"
>Date: 4/2/01 9:26 PM Pacific Daylight Time
>Message-id: <MPG.15331ac13b...@mail.nji.com>
I would be very suspicious of any theory that had an algorithm. The only
algorithm I have even seen attempted in ethical theory is Bentham's primitive
Hedonic Calculus.
Kwag7693
>But obviously this intuition would not be confirmed by others. You might
>associate with some other nuts that have the same intuitions as yours,
Why aren't these two sentences contradictory?
And what would explain the differences in intuition? Different moral intuitor
organs as he posits below with his far-sighted analogy? Because if that is it,
then just as far-sighted people see perfectly for the eyes they have, he is
apparently granting that anyone who thinks mass murder is great is morally in
the right.
>That is why a good moral reasoner
>needs to have a broad experience of life
Unless this is simple social metaphysics, all a broad experience let's you know
is that some people see differently or value differently. If intuition is the
basic method of consideration, someone valuing differently can't tell you your
own valuing is somehow flawed.
> and look beyond the little group or
>tribe that he might be immersed in and realize that he might be unduly
>influenced by it
Ahh, so it is pure social metaphysics.
>and be open to the possibility that he may
>be wrong - all of these characteristics that cultists lack.
By what faculty or principle would you judge an intuition? Rational
self-interest? If intuition is not able ot be judged, Wrathbone is simply
positing a social construction of ethics.
Kevin
Gordon G. Sollars
...
> Gordon G. Sollars:
>
> > It is not a "contradiction" to say that you can have conflicting duties
> > or obligations; rather, it is an unfortunate fact.
>
> axioms of shoulds ought to be that from the fact that you should do X, an
> d the
> fact that you cannot do both X and Y, that you can infer that you should
> not do
> Y. From that and the "fact" that you should do Y, you derive a contradic
> tion.
You are assuming that "you should do X" means "all things considered you
should do X". You have promised to give a lecture next month - you are
obligated to be at the lecture hall at the appropriate time. Your
daughter is starring in the school play - as a parent, you have an
obligation (or duty) to be in attendance. As it happens, the play is the
same evening as the lecture. You have a good reason to do X and a good
reason to do Y, and you can not do both. Different ethical theories,
realist or otherwise, will resolve this conflict in different ways.
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Rob Bass
Intuitionism":
> 1) If intuitionism is true, then if your moral intuitions tell you it is
right
> to kill yourself in a suicide bombing against a daycare center full of
innocent
> babies, including your own children and the children of your closest
friends,
> you should do it.
>
> 2) It is not the case that if your moral intuitions tell you it is right to
kill
> yourself in a suicide bombing against a daycare center full of innocent
babies,
> including your own children and the children of your closest friends, you
should
> do it.
>
> 3) Therefore, intuitionism is not true.
Evidently, this was modeled on Owl's argument against egoism which went
approximately like this:
1. If egoism is true, then you should kill 500 people for a net gain of a
dime.
2. It is not the case that you should kill 500 people for a net gain of a
dime.
3. Therefore, egoism is not true.
Having presented it, Richard invited comment upon the logic of the argument.
That is what I aim to be providing here. I shall do it by focusing upon
Owl's
argument, but most of the remarks I make can be applied, _parri passu_ to
Richard's parallel as well. I will perhaps discuss the substance of the
argument(s) - whether and what kind of support they give for their
respective
conclusions - in a separate post.
The point seems to have been to claim that such an argument can be
constructed
against any ethical theory and so there must be something wrong with the
pattern of argument. Richard has elsewhere referred to Owl's argument (and
his own parallel argument) as being "invalid."
That, however, cannot be quite right, for the form of Owl's argument is:
1. If E, then K.
2. Not K.
3. Therefore, not E.
That's just a modus tollens, which is uncontroversially valid. (A refresher:
In logic, a _valid_ argument is one such that its conclusion must be true
_if_
its premises are. When an argument is valid, that does not mean either that
its premises are true or that its conclusion is; that's a different
question.)
If such an argument can indeed be constructed against any ethical theory,
then
either, (a) in the case of at least one ethical theory, there will be a
false
premise, or (b) no ethical theory is correct. Whether (a) or (b) is correct,
that does not by itself impugn the correctness of Owl's argument.
Owl's argument is plainly valid. Perhaps Richard means to be claiming that
it
is not sound rather than that it is not valid. (A _sound_ argument is a
valid
argument in which all the premises are true. Since, by the definition of
validity, a valid argument must have a true conclusion when it has true
premises, a sound argument must have a true conclusion.)
This doesn't seem to be what Richard is arguing either, however. Given that
Owl's argument is valid, the only way to show that it is not sound is to
show
that one or more of the premises is false. But Richard has not so far
claimed
that either of the premises are false. (He actually claimed he was being
misinterpreted when someone attributed to him the claim that the second
premise was false.)
So, what exactly is his concern? One possibility, suggested by some of his
remarks, is that Owl does not (so Richard would be claiming) _know_ that the
premises are true, and especially does not know that the second premise is
true.
I'm confident that Owl would claim that he does in fact know the premises to
be true, but let us suppose for the moment that he does not. What bearing
does
that have upon the argument itself? Even if he does not _know_ the premises
to
be true, they could both _be_ true (or, in Objectivese, could correspond to
the facts). And, if the premises are both true, then, since the argument is
valid, the conclusion must be true as well. That's independent of whether
Owl
knows that the premises are true. To complain that he does not know the
premises are true is a weak response.
We can put this another way. I suppose there is no serious doubt that Owl
_believes_ the two premises of his argument. Since it follows from those two
premises that egoism is false, it would be _unreasonable_ for him to accept
egoism. To accept egoism - without changing either belief expressed in the
premises - would be to endorse a contradiction.
The conclusion I have reached so far is that it would be unreasonable for
Owl,
given what else he believes, to accept egoism. If Richard (for example)
wishes
to maintain that Owl nevertheless should accept egoism - and here I mean
"rationally should," that it would be more reasonable for him - then Richard
must think (if _he_ is being reasonable) that Owl should not believe both of
the premises of his argument.
There appear to be two general routes to that conclusion. First, there might
be a direct argument that one of the premises is false. Second, there might
be
an indirect support for the claim that one of the premises is false by way
of
a direct argument for egoism. (If it is _more_ credible that egoism is true
than that sets of propositions incompatible with it are, then it is
reasonable
to give up believing that all the members of the incompatible set are true,
even if one does not know which one in particular to reject.)
Richard has not, however, presented an argument of either kind. As things
stand, Owl is fully justified in rejecting egoism on the basis of this
argument - even if he does not know the premises to be true. No one -
neither
Richard nor anyone else (Chris Cathcart has come closest) - has come fully
to
grips with the logical features of the argument.
Rob
____
Rob Bass
Tym Parsons
> > So, reasoning is an important part of moral decision-making for an
> > intuitionist, - something that most of its critics don't understand.
> > I suppose that is why Owl says it helps to argue on newsgroups and
> > read various authors.
>
> To expand on that point, ethical intuitionism doesn't say that all moral
> knowledge is intuitive, still less that humans have infallible, moral
> omniscience. It only entails that some moral knowledge is intuitive.
Makes no difference. It's still an arbitrary claim since it's based on
feelings rather than facts and logic.
Tym Parsons
Mark Young
> > So are these "self-evident" basic rules of morality true or not? If t
> > hey a
> > re true,
> > then the upshot of Ross's intuitionism would seem to be that contradictions
> > *can*
> > exist (at least, moral ones can).
Gordon G. Sollars:
> It is not a "contradiction" to say that you can have conflicting duties
> or obligations; rather, it is an unfortunate fact.
I suppose it's not a direct contradiction. But it strikes me that one of the
axioms of shoulds ought to be that from the fact that you should do X, and the
fact that you cannot do both X and Y, that you can infer that you should not do
Y. From that and the "fact" that you should do Y, you derive a contradiction.
(Oh, wait -- one more step: from <you should not do Y> infer that <it is n
ot the
case that you should do Y>.)
If you reject that axiom, then you are making the following course of action
morally acceptable: You should do X. You do not want to do X, so you do Z,
which precludes X. Now you can no longer do X. And now you can use the
should-implies-can axiom to deduce that it is not the case that you should do
X. Since Z wasn't something you shouldn't have done, you have not acted
imorally by avoiding doing X in this way.
....mark young
Rob Bass
Intuitionism":
> 1) If intuitionism is true, then if your moral intuitions tell you it is
right
> to kill yourself in a suicide bombing against a daycare center full of
innocent
> babies, including your own children and the children of your closest
friends,
> you should do it.
>
> 2) It is not the case that if your moral intuitions tell you it is right to
kill
> yourself in a suicide bombing against a daycare center full of innocent
babies,
> including your own children and the children of your closest friends, you
should
> do it.
>
> 3) Therefore, intuitionism is not true.
This was designed to parallel Owl's argument against egoism. Earlier I
commented on some logical features of that argument. Here, I'd like to point
out two related disanalogies with Owl's argument (which went, "if egoism is
true, then you should kill 500 people for a net gain of a dime, but it is
not
the case that you should kill 500 people for a net gain of a dime;
therefore,
egoism is not true").
The first has been noted here, by Owl at least. Egoism is a theory of what
makes an action right. It says (roughly) that an action is right by virtue
of
service to the agent's interests. Moral intuitionism, however, is a theory
in
moral epistemology, about how we know or come to know that some course of
action is right. The moral intuitionist, so long as he believes that
intuition
is fallible, is not committed to thinking that anything intuited to be right
ipso facto _is_ right. He can think that even under the best of conditions
it
is possible for intutition to misdirect us.
In other words, the moral intuitionist can consistently say "X is
recommended
by intuition, but it is nevertheless wrong." The egoist cannot consistently
make the parallel denial: He cannot say, "X is better for my interests, but
it
is nevertheless wrong."
The second disanalogy has to do with the respective first premises of the
two
arguments. Owl's was, "if egoism is true, then you should kill 500 people
for
a net gain of a dime." Richard's was, "If intuitionism is true, then if your
moral intuitions tell you it is right to kill yourself in a suicide bombing
against a daycare center full of innocent babies, including your own
children
and the children of your closest friends, you should do it."
Notice that, even if we waive the above point about intuitionism as a
position
in moral epistemology, the constructions of the two premises are not
parallel.
Richard's first premise contains an extra if-clause.
The form of Owl's first premise is:
P --> Q [that is, "If P, then Q"].
The form of Richard's first premise is:
P --> (Q --> R) [that is, "If P, then if Q, then R"].
Is this merely a superficial difference? I don't think so. The reason is
that
Owl can claim that he can _derive_ "you should kill 500 people for a net
gain
of a dime" from egoism. (I think he's not quite right about this, but it
makes
no difference to the current discussion. See the P.S. for more.) But even if
it had been correct to understand intuitionism as a theory about what makes
a
course of action correct, Richard could not claim to derive "it is right to
kill yourself in a suicide bombing against a daycare center full of innocent
babies, including your own children and the children of your closest
friends"
from intuitionism. For his argument to work, he needs an additional premise
about what intuition recommends.
Rob
____
Rob Bass
P.S. Owl thinks his first premise follows from egoism. This is because he
identifies egoism as a theory that holds that the agent should do what is
most
in his interests. But that rules out an interesting alternative, the
possibility of a satisficing egoism. Roughly, a satisficing egoist would not
say that you must select the option that is most in your interests but
rather
that you should have a self-interested reason for the option you select,
that
the option should do _well enough_ in terms of your interests.
This makes little difference to Owl's argument, however, for his first
premise
can be replaced by one to the effect that, according to egoism, it is not
wrong to kill 500 people for a net gain of a dime. Even a satisficing egoist
is committed to saying that if one of two options is better for an agent's
interests, then it is not wrong for the agent to pick the better option.
Then,
the second premise can be replaced by one saying that it is wrong to kill
500
people for a dime, and the conclusion that egoism is not true follows just
as
readily as from Owl's original argument. (I have discussed this kind of
argument elsewhere, especially at
http://personal.bgsu.edu/~roberth/killing.html.)
Gordon G. Sollars
...
> And if one realist theory says you should go to the play, and another re
> alist
> theory says you should go to the lecture, then those realist theories con
> tradict
> each other.
No problem there, of course; physical theories contradict each other as
well.
> And if one realist theory says both that you should go to the play and th
> at you
> should go to the lecture, then that theory contradicts itself
Mark, guys like W.D. Ross are just too clever to be caught this way. As
Owl said nearby, Ross had a theory of "prima facie" duties. A conflict
of prima facie duties does not imply a conflict "all things considered",
as I pointed out in my last post.
> -- that is, it says
> that contradictory facts hold. Not a direct contradiction (P & ~P), but an
> indirect one (the way the world should be is such that (P & ~P)).
>
> Any ethical theory that doesn't have both (should(~P) => ~should(P)) and
> (~(P & Q)
> => (should(P) => should(~Q))) is not what I would consider a realist theory
Perhaps so - where "should" is the "all things considered" should.
> A realist theory may be vague (as you have argued in the past), but it
> should not be fundamentally ambiguous.
And a particle should not be a wave. A moral theory that can always
correctly rank order obligations would be great, but don't see why the
world must be such that there can never be two mutually exclusive actions
that are equally good.
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Bert Clanton
Gordon G. Sollars:
> It is not a "contradiction" to say that you can have conflicting duties
> or obligations; rather, it is an unfortunate fact.
Mark Young:
> >
> > I suppose it's not a direct contradiction. But it strikes me that one of
> > the axioms of shoulds ought to be that from the fact that you should do
> > X, and the
> > fact that you cannot do both X and Y, that you can infer that you should
> > not do Y. From that and the "fact" that you should do Y, you derive a
> > contradiction.
> >
Gordon:
> You are assuming that "you should do X" means "all things considered you
> should do X". You have promised to give a lecture next month - you are
> obligated to be at the lecture hall at the appropriate time. Your
> daughter is starring in the school play - as a parent, you have an
> obligation (or duty) to be in attendance. As it happens, the play is the
> same evening as the lecture. You have a good reason to do X and a good
> reason to do Y, and you can not do both. Different ethical theories,
> realist or otherwise, will resolve this conflict in different ways.
Seems to me that you only *get* this problem if you admit only one
moral axiom, or if you admit more than one moral axiom but assign the
same precedence to all of them.
I think that you escape this problem if you admit *several* moral
axioms, which are logically independent of one another in the sense
that an act can satisfy any one of them whether or not it satisfies any
other; and that you order the axioms linearly by precedence, in the
sense that if an act satisfies an axiom of higher precedence, the act
is right whether or not it satisfies any axioms of lower precedence.
I'm not aware of any analogue of this notion in scientific reasoning,
but it is by no means original with me: I think that Rand herself
implied such a notion when she mentioned a "hierarchy of values".
Admittedly, it will not always be easy to rank your basic moral
assumptions by precedence. But whoever said that moral deliberation was
supposed to be easy?
Best wishes,
Bert
Anthanson1
>Date: 4/1/01 7:10 PM Pacific Daylight Time
>Message-id: <q9Rx6.1060$MM.4...@ozemail.com.au>
No. See my "Critique of Intuitionists Ethics (Cathacart/Lawrence, etc.)"
Wrathbone
x
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>--
>Arnold
>
>
>
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>
>
>
>
>a
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Gordon G. Sollars
> And since you agreed with my earlier statement, you should agree with thi
> s one.
> If one realist theory says you should both go to the play and go to the l
> ecture,
> then it contradicts itself
If it says you "should all things considered" go to the play and give the
lecture, it contradicts itself. Apparently this is the only form of
"should" that you recognize. So far as I can tell the moral world has
plenty of situations in which you should ("have good reason to") do two
incompatible things - these are called "moral dilemmas". Is your point
that there are no corresponding "physical dilemmas"? This does not mean
that you do not have a /better/ reason to do one over the other, and,
hopefully, a good theory will help see what that is.
...
> And what Owl said -- if I read him correctly -- was that W.D.Ross did not
> claim
> that the statements of those duties were true statements. That is, they
> are only
> statement with face validity -- rules of thumb, if you will.
Perhaps so; I'm sure that Owl knows more about Ross than I do.
> A "prima facie"
> duty is not necessarily a real duty -- it's a thing that *might* be a rea
> l duty.
That is one way to look at it. As a moral realist I think that it is a
real duty, but, for other reasons it may not be what you ought to do.
Perhaps you don;t like this because you admit only one form of "should".
...
> > Perhaps so - where "should" is the "all things considered" should.
>
> Where "should" is a real realist should.
As the realist, I get the benefit of the doubt as to what a "real
realist" says about "should". I say it comes in two flavors. The fact
that we recognize there can be conflicting duties and that we often have
to deliberate about what is the right thing to do clearly supports me. I
think it is useful to label these two flavors "prima facie" and "all
things considered". If this does not match exactly with what Ross
intended by his usage (I will leave that to Owl), then perhaps he was not
as much a realist as I am.
...
> If the moral theory ranks two exclusive actions as being equally good, th
> at is no
> problem for me. It's when it says you should do both of them that I get
> all hot
> and bothered -- whether it's a realist theory or not.
Let's use the (false, but serviceable) theory of classical
utilitarianism as an example. It says that you should take that action
which maximizes pleasure. That is the /only/ thing it says about what
you ought to do. You have a /duty/ to do that. Now suppose that there
are two incompatible actions that tie for producing maximum pleasure. It
seems to me that the theory is best interpreted to say that you ought to
do /either/ of them, not that you ought to do /both/ of them.
> The extra funny thing
> about that latter theory tho is that it claims that it is a *fact* that you
> should do both, in spite of it being a fact that you cannot do both
Again, only on your view that there is only one kind of "should".
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Anthanson1
Gordon, your interlocutor (I coudn't find his original post) might need an
education on Ross. Here is a brief run down of his theory (provided by Ted
Lockhart at Michigan Tech), though I don't know if it is any clearer than what
you have already explained
Wrathbone
W. D. Ross's Moral Theory
Ross's criticisms of consequentialist moral theories:
ethical egoism (the moral theory that says that an action is right if and only
if it is in the long-term interests of the person who performs it):
A "great part of duty" consists in respecting the rights and serving the
interests of others "whatever the cost to ourselves may be."
hedonistic utilitarianism:
Pleasure is not the only thing that we recognize as being intrinsically
good; we recognize other things--e.g., "the possession of a good
character," and
"an intelligent understanding of the world"--as also having intrinsic
value.
ideal utilitarianism (the moral theory that says that an action is right if and
only if the net amount of intrinsic value it brings into the world is at least
as great as that that any other possible action in the situation would bring
into the world):
"[P]roductivity of maximum good is not what makes all right actions
right. . . ."
Why does Ross think that producing maximum intrinsic goodness is not always
what makes actions right?
Common sense tells us in some situations that an action (e.g., keeping a
promise) is right, not because of its consequences, but because of what has
happened in the past (e.g., the making of the promise).
Common sense also tells us in some situations that we have more than one duty
and that one duty (e.g., relieving distress) may be "more of a duty" than
another duty (e.g., fulfilling a promise).
In a situation in which two alternative actions producing equal net amounts of
intrinsic goodness differ only in that one would fulfill a promise and the
other would not, one's moral obligation would be to perform the action that
would fulfill the promise.
What should we look for in a moral theory, according to Ross?
A moral theory should "fit the facts" (even if this means that the theory
becomes less simple).
The "facts" that a moral theory should "fit" are "the moral convictions of
thoughtful and well-educated people."
In case there are inconsistencies among "the moral convictions of thoughtful
and well-educated people," we should keep those that "stand better the test of
reflection" and discard the others.
Elements of Ross's Moral Theory:
A variety of relations among individuals are morally significant--including
potential benefactor-potential beneficiary, promiser-promisee, creditor-debtor,
wife-husband, child-parent, friend-friend, fellow countryman-fellow countryman,
and others.
Each of these relations is the foundation of what Ross calls a "prima facie
duty."
A prima facie duty (also called "conditional duty") is a "characteristic . . .
which an act has, in virtue of being of a certain kind . . . , of being an act
which would be a duty proper if it were not at the same time of another kind
which is morally significant."
A prima facie duty is fundamentally different from "a duty proper or actual
duty." (By "duty proper," Ross means what we have been referring to as "moral
obligation.")
Whenever I have to make a moral decision in a situation in which more than one
prima facie duty applies, I must "study the situation as fully as I can until I
form the considered opinion (it is never more) that in the circumstances one of
them is more incumbent than any other. . . ." The prima facie duty I judge to
be "more incumbent than any other" in the situation is probably my "duty
proper" or actual moral obligation.
There are a few general "rules of thumb" to follow in judging which prima facie
duties are "more incumbent" than others in various situations--e.g.,
nonmaleficence is generally more incumbent than beneficence. (See below.)
However, there is no ranking among the prima facie duties that applies to every
situation. Each situation must be judged separately.
We apprehend our prima facie duties in much the same way that we apprehend the
axioms of mathematics or geometry: we do so by reflecting on "the self-evident
prima facie rightness of an individual act of a particular type."
"The moral order expressed in [the principles of prima facie duties] is just as
much part of the fundamental nature of the universe . . . as is the . . .
structure expressed in the axioms of geometry or arithmetic."
Ross's (incomplete) list of prima facie duties:
Duties stemming from one's own previous actions:
1. fidelity - duty to fulfill (explicit and implicit) promises/agreements
into which one has entered
2. reparation - duty to make up for wrongful acts previously done to
others
Duties stemming from the previous actions of others:
3. gratitude - duty to repay others for past favors done for oneself
Duties stemming from the (possibility of) a mismatch between persons' pleasure
or happiness and their "merit":
4. justice - duty to prevent or correct such a mismatch
Duties stemming from the possibility of improving the conditions of others with
respect to virtue, intelligence, or pleasure:
5. beneficence - duty to improve the conditions of others in these
respects
Duties stemming from the possibility of improving one's own condition with
respect to virtue or intelligence:
6. self-improvement - duty to improve one's own condition in these
respects
Special duty to be distinguished from the duty of beneficence:
7. nonmaleficence - duty not to injure others
Possible objections to Ross's theory (considered by Ross):
1. Ross's list of prima facie duties is unsystematic and follows no logical
principle.
Ross's reply - The list is not claimed to be complete; it is claimed only to be
accurate as far as it goes.
2. Ross's moral theory provides no principle for determining what our
actual moral obligations are in particular situations.
Ross's reply - There is no reason to assume that the basic reasons why we have
the moral obligations that we have are the same in every situation.
3. Ross's moral theory assumes, without adequate justification, that the
list of prima facie duties we recognize, is accurate and is not in need
of critical examination:
Ross's reply -
a) In recognizing something as a prima facie duty, we are apprehending what
is self-evident--i.e., that to be an action of a certain kind (e.g.,
promise-keeping) is morally significant.
b) The only "data" for a moral theory that are available to us are the
moral convictions we arrive at via serious thought and reflection.
c) To overturn our basic moral convictions just because they conflicted
with some moral theory would be like people's "repudiating their actual
experience of beauty" because they conflicted with some theory of beauty.
Gordon G. Sollars
writes...
...
> Seems to me that you only *get* this problem if you admit only one
> moral axiom, or if you admit more than one moral axiom but assign the
> same precedence to all of them.
My reply to Mark was part of our ongoing discussion of the
(im)plausibility of moral realism. You seem to be a moral
constructivist.
From my perspective, a theory needs as many moral axioms as it takes to
generate all the important moral truths. (I say "important" since, for
Godellian reasons, it might be that no moral theory can generate /all/
moral truths.)
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Gordon G. Sollars
...
> Gordon G. Sollars:
>
> > If it says you "should all things considered" go to the play and give the
> > lecture, it contradicts itself. Apparently this is the only form of
> > "should" that you recognize.
>
> statement" that I mentioned:
I don't object to /either/ form of should; I use them both. I always
hope that it is clear from context which of them I am using, but I
probably fail this ideal of clarity.
...
> > So far as I can tell the moral world has
> > plenty of situations in which you should ("have good reason to")
>
> Ah. Well, I don't recognize that definition of "should", so I maybe "all
> things
> considered" *is* the only kind of should I recognize.
How do you talk about moral dilemmas? I don't see how the "all-things-
considered should" allows for them.
> But I will say now that
> that is the should that counts. I don't care if it has a category of "prima
> facie shoulds" that must be considered in order to come up with an ultimate
> should -- what I care about is whether it says that ultimately you must d
> o both
> of these contradictory things.
So far as I know, no moral theory, realist or otherwise, says that you
should, all things considered, do two contrary things.
...
> Is "ought" the same as "should" or different? Must be different, since y
> ou say
> that the best interpretation is not that you ought to do both of them, ev
> en tho
> you have no problem saying that you *should* do both of them.
The terms "ought" and "should" are roughly interchangeable, but the "all-
things-considered ought" ought never be confused with the "prima-facie
should". Nor should the "prima-facie ought" be confused with the
"all-things-considered should". ;-)
Is it unclear which flavors of "ought" and "should" I am using (as
opposed to mentioning) in the above?
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Gordon G. Sollars
writes...
...
> That's how badly I think some of these criticisms misunderstand Rand's actual
> position about what interests are. They might be criticisms of some vari
> eties
> of ethical egoism, but not of anything Rand ever even said, even if we grant
> that her justificational argument is sloppy, which is what the criticism from
> those like David Friedman seems to come down to.
This fixes the problem of David's (or other) criticism by claiming that
Rand simply meant something else by egoism than what the criticism
assumes she meant. OK. David (and others), it seems to me, are using a
garden-variety meaning of "egoism". This meaning has some definite
content, and so can be used to show that an argument using the term
succeeds or fails.
Now, /what/ did Rand mean by "egoism" and "interests"?
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Gordon G. Sollars
...
> I made two parallel comments -- shoulds contradicting between theories,
> and should contradicting within a theory -- and you interpreted the
> first as "all things considered" and the second as "prima facie". It's
> the fact that you switched interpretations on me *in the middle* that
> annoys me so.
Sorry, Mark. I make a lot of my posts late at night, after a hard day,
etc.
...
> A moral dilemma is a situation where you don't know what you should do.
Why is it a "dilemma"? To me, that implies more than not knowing what
you should do. In the Prisoner's /Dilemma/, for example, it is argued
that a player /does/ know what to do.
> The problem is not that you should do two incompatible things, but that
> you can't tell which of the two incompatible things you should do.
But it is not the case that you simply do not know whether to attend the
play or give the lecture. Whichever you choose, you will have failed to
meet an obligation. Or do you want to say that it only /seemed/ that you
had an obligation, e.g., to give the lecture"?
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Mark Young
>> A moral dilemma is a situation where you don't know what you should do.
>> The problem is not that you should do two incompatible things, but that
>> you can't tell which of the two incompatible things you should do.
Gordon G. Sollars:
> But it is not the case that you simply do not know whether to attend the
> play or give the lecture. Whichever you choose, you will have failed to
> meet an obligation. Or do you want to say that it only /seemed/ that you
> had an obligation, e.g., to give the lecture"?
I take obligations to be social facts -- that is, whether you have an
obligation to do such-and-such is on the same order as whether it is polite
to do so-and-so. So you may have conflicting obligations. But I do not take
shoulds to follow from obligations; shoulds come from the individual, not
from the society.
I was a bit hasty in writing what a dilemma is. A dilemma is a situation in
which you seem to have equally good reasons for doing two incompatible
things, and so you don't know which to do. In the prisoner's dilemma, the
argument for choosing to defect is the dominance strategy, while the argument
for choosing to cooperate is the categorical imperative. Now you may think
that DS defeats CI in that situation, but others do not (and I, as you know,
believe that it's a matter of personal preference). It's only a dilemma for
those who can't tell what they should do. User 1DE7 knows what he should do,
and Kwag (was it Kwag that had the long debate with User over this very
issue?) knows what he should do -- it's not a dilemma for either of them,
even tho they take opposite paths.
As for the play/lecture situation -- I say there is no fact of the matter as
to what you should do. You have work obligations and family obligations, and
*you* must choose. The choice you make is a public fact about you, and will
become part of the basis by which others judge you. That's reality. There's
no reality to any "should" statement that I ever could comprehend -- tho many
have universalized their personal morality and pronounced shoulds to report
facts.
....mark young
Gordon G. Sollars
...
> I take obligations to be social facts -- that is, whether you have an
> obligation to do such-and-such is on the same order as whether it is polite
> to do so-and-so. So you may have conflicting obligations. But I do not take
> shoulds to follow from obligations; shoulds come from the individual, not
> from the society.
I take society to be a set of individuals, so things that "come from" a
society /are/ coming from individuals. Since you seem to mean "all-
things-considered" whenever you use should, then obviously you can't have
conflicting shoulds, and still could (as you do) recognize conflicting
obligations. But to say that shoulds do not follow from obligations
seems strange. If a person believes that he is obligated, all things
considered, to do X, surely he would agree that he should do X.
(Of course, he still might not be motivated to do X.) Perhaps you mean
that shoulds follow from things besides obligations, as well?
> I was a bit hasty in writing what a dilemma is. A dilemma is a situation in
> which you seem to have equally good reasons for doing two incompatible
> things, and so you don't know which to do.
And, by extension I would say, if it is somewhat difficult to determine
which reasons are better, you face a dilemma until you can make a
determination. Afterwards, of course, you might say, "I only thought I
faced a dilemma, but on reflection it was clear that...". But I think
you faced a real dilemma because you did not, at first, know what to do.
> In the prisoner's dilemma, the
> argument for choosing to defect is the dominance strategy, while the argument
> for choosing to cooperate is the categorical imperative. Now you may think
> that DS defeats CI in that situation, but others do not (and I, as you know,
> believe that it's a matter of personal preference). It's only a dilemma for
> those who can't tell what they should do.
I don't think so. Expert game theorists who talk about the Prisoner's
Dilemma know what they will do. But they nevertheless see that when each
player follows the dominant strategy the Pareto optimal result can not be
achieved - hence it is a dilemma. So there is something about some
dilemmas that your specification does not capture. They can have an
interpersonal component that does not rely on only what a person knows to
do.
...
> As for the play/lecture situation -- I say there is no fact of the matter as
> to what you should do. You have work obligations and family obligations, and
> *you* must choose.
I don't see that this last statement is incompatible with there being a
fact of the matter. Moral realists and moral contructivists can both see
that there are obligations to give the lecture and to attend the play,
and ponder what is the best thing to do.
> There's
> no reality to any "should" statement that I ever could comprehend -- tho many
> have universalized their personal morality and pronounced shoulds to report
> facts.
Don't forget the non-personal aspects of their morality.
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Gordon G. Sollars
...
> OK. But obligations come from *other* individuals (as well as yourself), and
> shoulds come from yourself.
I don't understand this. I might have obligations /to/ other
individuals; how do you have in mind that they come /from/ others? What
I (and each of us) get from others is a (more or less) shared conceptual
scheme into which the notion of obligation is fitted. Nor I am sure what
you mean by shoulds coming from myself. If /I/ make a commitment, then
perhaps I should do something - the should comes from /my/ commitment.
Is that what you have in mind?
> (BTW -- a society is more than a set of individuals -- the set of individ
> uals who
> are 1.75m tall is not a society.)
You are correct, sir! (Well, such a set /could/ be a society.)
...
> Gak. Now obligations have "prima facie"/"all things considered" distinction?
I know it's tough, but I didn't do it. Really. As a promise maker,
there is /some/ obligation to give the lecture; as a parent, there is
/some/ obligation to attend the play. But the lecture and the play are
incompatible. So we need a way to talk about what (you think) is the
strongest or "trumping" obligation - that is your obligation "all things
considered".
> If the person believes themself to be obligated to do something, then the
> y will
> likely feel that they should do it.
I am not concerned at this point with how they feel - as I said, a person
might not have the motivation to do what he thinks he should do.
> But since I take an obligation to be a social
> fact (something the individual has no more say over than they do over the
> price of
> bread), the *fact* of an obligation does not force a fact of feeling they
> should
> respect it.
Of course not. What feelings they have about what they should do are a
matter of their motivational psychology.
>
> I'm perfectly willing to modify my terminology a bit to accomodate your p
> references
The stop using anything as ugly as "themself". ;-)
> -- but you'll have to make them clear first, and not too burdoned with te
> rms that
> require circumlocutions to disambiguate them each time they're used.
I'll do what I can. I will say you are "obligated" to do X when you have
satisfied some of the requirements for being morally bound to do X. A
special case is when you have satisfied /all/ of the requirements binding
to X and there are /no/ moral reasons not to do X. In the special case
you are "obligated all things considered" to do X. I may fail to use the
full name of the special case and simply say "obligated" if I think it is
clear from context which one I mean. Is that OK?
> Shoulds follow from different things for different people.
Yes - as well as from the same things for different people, and different
things for the same people, and...
...
> > Expert game theorists who talk about the Prisoner's
> > Dilemma know what they will do. But they nevertheless see that when each
> > player follows the dominant strategy the Pareto optimal result can not be
> > achieved - hence it is a dilemma. [...]
>
> If the game theorists use "dilemma" as a jargon word, then so be it.
Sure, sure, but /why/ did they pick "dilemma" as their jargon word?
These were folks with large vocabularies. Might it not be that they
thought it /was/ a dilemma, so that "Prisoner's Dilemma" helped to
communicate?
> But *why* do they say that this situation of a preferred strategy leading
> to a
> less-preferred outcome is a dilemma? Couldn't it be because they doubt t
> hat they
> *should* ("all things considered"!) take the course that leads to the
> less-preferred outcome?
Well perhaps. But "experts" ought to have thought through this. I was
careful not to say that all experts think a player should follow the
dominant strategy; I only said that they know what they would do. It is
true that there are not many game theory experts who think a player ought
to cooperate, so the sample is small, but I haven't heard of any who have
changed their minds about what strategy ought to be followed. Again, I
think it is (rightly) called a dilemma not because either player is
unsure of what to do, but because of an objective feature of the game:
rational behaviour on the part of both leads to an outcome that both
prefer less than another outcome.
...
> > Don't forget the non-personal aspects of their morality.
>
> Errr. I think I have.
I was afraid of that. Let's try an analogy. Do you think that any
interest /of yours/ is a "personal interest"? Or that any interest /of/
a self is a "selfish interest"?
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Kwag7693
>Richard has not, however, presented an argument of either kind. As things
>stand, Owl is fully justified in rejecting egoism on the basis of this
>argument - even if he does not know the premises to be true. No one -
>neither
>Richard nor anyone else (Chris Cathcart has come closest) - has come fully
>to
>grips with the logical features of the argument.
The logical features of the argument are that Owl is claiming to discredit
egoism by direct intuition. That is not a particularly logical argument. That
is simply asserting his conclusion. Who cares if he is justified in the
conclusion from his premises if his justification for his premises is
arbitrary?
I see no reason why killing 500 people to gain a dime is anything that might
occur, which makes that situation of questionable value when trying to
determine if egoism's entailing a different conclusion than Owl wants means it
is false. The situation doesn't occur, so Owl's intuitions about it are
questionable and any conclusions deriving therefrom are questionable. I
haven't the slightest idea how I would react to such a situation and I don't
think I have to worry about it, because it isn't going to happen.
Kevin
Kwag7693
>generate all the important moral truths. (I say "important" since, for
>Godellian reasons, it might be that no moral theory can generate /all/
>moral truths.)
Since you are constructing an ethical theory, how do you know in advance what
the important ethical truths happen to be?
Kevin
Kwag7693
>
>Ross's criticisms of consequentialist moral theories:
>ethical egoism (the moral theory that says that an action is right if and
>only
>if it is in the long-term interests of the person who performs it):
> A "great part of duty" consists in respecting the rights and serving
>the
> interests of others "whatever the cost to ourselves may be."
That certainly is what Ross asserted.
>hedonistic utilitarianism:
> Pleasure is not the only thing that we recognize as being intrinsically
>good; we recognize other things--e.g., "the possession of a good
>character," and
> "an intelligent understanding of the world"--as also having intrinsic
>value.
If by "we" Ross meant himself and anyone who happened to agree with him, he is
right on the money.
>Common sense tells us in some situations that an action (e.g., keeping a
>promise) is right, not because of its consequences, but because of what has
>happened in the past (e.g., the making of the promise).
Common sense? It is amazing how willing people are to criticize any given
systematic attempts at formalizing ethics, when their own method is apparently
bereft of justification.
>Common sense also tells us in some situations that we have more than one duty
>and that one duty (e.g., relieving distress) may be "more of a duty" than
>another duty (e.g., fulfilling a promise).
Again a nice begging of the question, and an appeal to intuition as the proper
standard of meta-ethical justification.
The whole of Ross' theory is more of the same. He makes his own ethical
guesses into moral absolutes, without the slightest attempt at justifying them,
but all the while putting them forth as an ethics binding upon all humans.
>We apprehend our prima facie duties in much the same way that we apprehend
>the
>axioms of mathematics or geometry: we do so by reflecting on "the
>self-evident
>prima facie rightness of an individual act of a particular type."
What a guy.
Kevin
Gordon G. Sollars
writes...
> Since you are constructing an ethical theory, how do you know in advance what
> the important ethical truths happen to be?
If you do not test your ethical theory against some ethical truths, how
do you know that your theory is any good?
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
A is A Exterminators
says...
>>
>> Errr. I think I have.
>
>I was afraid of that. Let's try an analogy. Do you think that any
>interest /of yours/ is a "personal interest"?
Sounds right.
>Or that any interest /of/
>a self is a "selfish interest"?
As a friend was observed to have asked: "Is brushing one's teeth a selfish
thing
to do?" It does strain the widely used wording to say that it is....
--
A is A Exterminators
Here to check your premises
A is A Exterminators
>>W. D. Ross's Moral Theory
>>
>>Ross's criticisms of consequentialist moral theories:
>>ethical egoism (the moral theory that says that an action is right if and
>>only
>>if it is in the long-term interests of the person who performs it):
Hasn't the claim that Rand's ethics can be grouped into the 'consequentialist'
camp been contested here already? Or that her morality is 'consequentialis
t' in
name only, and that some other term (e.g. 'virtue theorist') would be best and
more accurate to apply to it?
As far as I can see, the defining feature of 'consequentialism' is that it aims
toward a maximizing conception of rationality by the criterion of the system --
but that it's not anything like, say, maximizing the performance of duty or
maximizing the actions recommended by intuition or common sense. Only on
certain kinds of readings -- probably not the correct ones -- is Rand a
maximizing theorist. One reading is that the maximand is life-span. While
this
is clear-cut as far as having some maximand, it's way off the mark as an
identification of Rand's criterion for right action.
Is there anything in Rand's corpus that readily lends to the 'maximizing'
interpretation? Simply saying that she called her ethics an egoism won't cut
it.
>> A "great part of duty" consists in respecting the rights and serving
>>the
>> interests of others "whatever the cost to ourselves may be."
Without getting caught up on words like 'duty,' Rand's ethics does indeed argue
that there are rights, and that rational people will respect them (not 'just
because they serve my interests' by the seemingly widespread consequentialist
characterization of 'interests').
>>hedonistic utilitarianism:
>> Pleasure is not the only thing that we recognize as being intrinsically
>>good; we recognize other things--e.g., "the possession of a good
>>character," and
>> "an intelligent understanding of the world"--as also having intrinsic
>>value.
Is valuing something for its own sake (and 'end in itself') that same thing as
pursuing and 'intrinsic' value? Do we need to resort to intrinsicism of some
type, or can we just say that integral to good living are certain things like
good character, intelligence, pleasure, etc.? They aren't 'goods in and of
themselves,' but goods that promote the kind of life that is genuinely good for
us, from which is derived the observation that they are valued for their own
sake.
>>Common sense tells us in some situations that an action (e.g., keeping a
>>promise) is right, not because of its consequences, but because of what has
>>happened in the past (e.g., the making of the promise).
Yes, a good person will keep his promises (absent the overriding stuff about
conflicting obligations, &c.) It's even correct to say that common sense
recommends this.
>Common sense? It is amazing how willing people are to criticize any given
>systematic attempts at formalizing ethics, when their own method is apparently
>bereft of justification.
While 'common sense' may not be justification for right action (actually I had
thought that justification was just the thing we did to find out why common
sense tells us certain things), it is, as Rand said somewhere, 'a good thing to
have'. :) Appeals to common sense are not infallible as indicators that we
have
been on the right path, though. Didn't 'common sense' tell a lot of people at
some points in time that slavery was acceptable? While Aristotle could be
credited with being more down-to-earth in his methodology, it doesn't guarantee
that he would avoid certain blunders.
But the problem isn't with appeals to common sense, per se. It's with ~how~ it
is appealed to and used that can give us problems.
Gordon G. Sollars
> And a shared conceptual scheme of what makes one obligated/what obligations
> one can have. William tricked Harold into swearing an oath on a holy relic.
> Harold was thus obligated to do his utmost to fulfill that oath. In our
> society
> today he would not have been obligated. Mine is an anti-realist notion of
> obligation.
Of course. I would be much more surprised by your being inconsistent
than by your being wrong. ;-) As to William and Harold, many beliefs
have changed since then, and the "holy relic" theory of obligation, like
the medical doctrine of humours, has been given up.
...
> I am a human being, and I decide what I should or should not do. You,
> likewise, decide what you should or should not do. I respect your moral
> sovereignty, but I will decide how I will react to your action based on m
> y own
> moral sense. Radical responsibility/moral sovereignty. Judge, and be pr
> epared to
> be judged.
OK. I don't see anything here incompatible with moral realism. Now,
have you ever found that you had a reason to change the reaction dictated
by your moral sense?
...
> > As a promise maker,
> > there is /some/ obligation to give the lecture; as a parent, there is
> > /some/ obligation to attend the play. But the lecture and the play are
> > incompatible. So we need a way to talk about what (you think) is the
> > strongest or "trumping" obligation - that is your obligation "all things
> > considered".
>
> Muddy every term, and you end up with just mud.
I don't see your point. All terms are muddied in the above? "Promise"?
"Lecture"? "Attend"?
> > > If the person believes themself to be obligated to do something, then the
> > > y will
> > > likely feel that they should do it.
> >
> > I am not concerned at this point with how they feel [...]
>
> I am. I don't think there's anything more to "should" than that.
OK. How do you describe situations of weakness of will?
...
> > I'll do what I can. I will say you are "obligated" to do X when you have
> > satisfied some of the requirements for being morally bound to do X.
>
> Two of the requirements for being morally bound to do X are that you be a
> human
> being, and that you be of sound mind. You satisfy those requirements, so
> you are
> obligated to do X. Let X = send me $10,000 in the mail. So far, I'm lik
> ing it!
I take it that this is a satiric objection to my not also defining
"morally bound" in the process of defining "obligation"? But I was not
trying to define "morally bound". I am sure that you are well aware that
we define words in terms of other words, so what's your point? That you
have no idea what "morally bound" could mean? Surely you could start by
consulting your "moral sense". Does it tell you that I am morally bound
to send you $10,000?
...
> So you are supposing that there is some set M of "moral reasons" that can be
> applied to generate actions that you "prima facie should (not)" undertake.
Yes!
> If you
> take every moral reason that's applicable to your situation, and come up
> with an
> action A that's got reasons for it, but no reasons against it (implicatio
> n: no
> reasons to do anything that's impossible to do if you also do A), then yo
> u are "all
> things considered obligated" to do A?
Just so!
> And every one of these terms -- should,
> obligated, morally bound -- come in "prima facie" and "all things considered"
> versions that you will specify only if you think it might not be clear wh
> ich of
> them you have in mind?
You seem to suggest I am being unreasonable. But I am just trying to
account for how I see "obligation" being used.
> Why not pick one of them for "prima facie" cases, another one for "all things
> considered", and use the third for the generic? It'd make communication
> so much
> easier, I'd think.
I am inspired to make a contribution to clarity! Henceforth, there shall
be no "prima-facie" morally bound - "morally bound" is always "all things
considered". I hope that helps.
...
> > Again, I
> > think it is (rightly) called a dilemma not because either player is
> > unsure of what to do, but because of an objective feature of the game:
> > rational behaviour on the part of both leads to an outcome that both
> > prefer less than another outcome.
>
> And why is that a "dilemma"?
Because the objective feature assures that you face a choice between bad
alternatives. Isn't that the common notion of what a dilemma is? BTW,
do you know what happened when Emma fell into the pickle barrel?
...
> > > > Don't forget the non-personal aspects of their morality.
> > >
> > > Errr. I think I have.
> >
> > I was afraid of that. Let's try an analogy. Do you think that any
> > interest /of yours/ is a "personal interest"?
>
> Yes.
>
> > Or that any interest /of/ a self is a "selfish interest"?
>
> No.
>
> Afraid I'm still in the dark.
Well, if an interest /of/ a self need not be a "selfish interest", why
must an interest of a person be a "personal interest"? If an interest
can transcend the self that holds the interest, why can't an aspect of a
self's morality transcend the self, i.e., be non-personal?
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Tom Robertson
>In article <3ACF1C5F...@accesswave.ca>, Mark Young writes...
<snip>
>> As for the play/lecture situation -- I say there is no fact of the matter as
>> to what you should do. You have work obligations and family obligations, and
>> *you* must choose.
>
>I don't see that this last statement is incompatible with there being a
>fact of the matter. Moral realists and moral contructivists can both see
>that there are obligations to give the lecture and to attend the play,
>and ponder what is the best thing to do.
If there is no fact as to what the best choice is, then all choices
are arbitrary and based on an error.
<snip>
f
t
b
A is A Exterminators
ys...
>In article <3AD0BB5D...@accesswave.ca>, Mark Young writes...
>> > I was afraid of that. Let's try an analogy. Do you think that any
>> > interest /of yours/ is a "personal interest"?
>>
>> Yes.
>>
>> > Or that any interest /of/ a self is a "selfish interest"?
>>
>> No.
>>
>> Afraid I'm still in the dark.
>
>Well, if an interest /of/ a self need not be a "selfish interest", why
>must an interest of a person be a "personal interest"? If an interest
>can transcend the self that holds the interest, why can't an aspect of a
>self's morality transcend the self, i.e., be non-personal?
Looks like some clarity of terminology is needed. All interests of a perso
n are
personal interests, in the sense the interests belong to that person. That
doesn't mean that one's personal interests couldn't consist in being
other-interested. It also doesn't mean that all personal interests
(agent-relative values) entail there being only personal reasons (agent-rel
ative
reasons). So saying that all interests are personal interests doesn't entail
that you can't have some non-personal (agent-neutral?) morality (or compone
nt to
morality).
As far as interests ~of~ the self are concerned, I think you mean to say
self-interest, not selfish interest. Brushing one's teeth is unambiguously
self-interested, but not (in widespread usage) 'selfish.'
Gordon G. Sollars
writes...
> All interests of a perso
> n are
> personal interests, in the sense the interests belong to that person.
A trivial and uninteresting sense. Interests that belong to a person are
"his interests"; "personal interests", as I was pointing out, implies
more.
> That
> doesn't mean that one's personal interests couldn't consist in being
> other-interested.
Quite true.
> It also doesn't mean that all personal interests
> (agent-relative values) entail there being only personal reasons (agent-rel
> ative
> reasons).
Verily it is so!
...
> As far as interests ~of~ the self are concerned, I think you mean to say
> self-interest, not selfish interest. Brushing one's teeth is unambiguously
> self-interested, but not (in widespread usage) 'selfish.'
Remember that /The Virtue of Selfishness/ is canonical around here.
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
A is A Exterminators
ys...
>In article <d_5A6.283$FY5....@www.newsranger.com>, A is A Exterminators
>writes...
>> All interests of a person are
>> personal interests, in the sense the interests belong to that person.
>
>A trivial and uninteresting sense. Interests that belong to a person are
>"his interests"; "personal interests", as I was pointing out, implies
>more.
Maybe I came in too late. What do you mean by 'personal interests'?
Arnold Broese-van-Groenou
Gordon G. Sollars <sol...@nji.com> wrote in message
news:MPG.153a72ebf9...@mail.nji.com...
> In article <20010408131443...@ng-mg1.aol.com>, Kwag7693
> writes...
>
> > Since you are constructing an ethical theory, how do you know in advance
what
> > the important ethical truths happen to be?
>
> If you do not test your ethical theory against some ethical truths, how
> do you know that your theory is any good?
1)You ask if or why a code of behaviour is necessary in the first place.
2) If it is, then you tailor it to that end.
3) Finally, you don't test it against ethical truths (whatever that may be)
but reality itself to see if it meets the requirements of 1.
--
Arnold
Gordon G. Sollars
writes...
> Maybe I came in too late. What do you mean by 'personal interests'?
No, you came too early. I was asking Mark to say what he meant, and he
hasn't replied yet.
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Gordon G. Sollars
writes......
> > If you do not test your ethical theory against some ethical truths, how
> > do you know that your theory is any good?
>
> 1)You ask if or why a code of behaviour is necessary in the first place.
> 2) If it is, then you tailor it to that end.
This is rather metaphorical. Surely the facts of reality (which are
described by true statements) do not allow just any sort of "tailoring"
to fit the end. And what is "tailoring", except deciding what
(true) statements are in the theory?
> 3) Finally, you don't test it against ethical truths (whatever that may be)
True statements with ethical content.
> but reality itself to see if it meets the requirements of 1.
This makes no sense. True statements are what we use to describe reality
- what tests against reality are not tests to see if some given
statements are true?
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Mark Young
> >> As a promise maker,
> >> there is /some/ obligation to give the lecture; as a parent, there is
> >> /some/ obligation to attend the play. But the lecture and the play are
> >> incompatible. So we need a way to talk about what (you think) is the
> >> strongest or "trumping" obligation - that is your obligation "all things
> >> considered".
Mark Young:
> > Muddy every term, and you end up with just mud.
Gordon G. Sollars:
> I don't see your point. All terms are muddied in the above? "Promise"?
> "Lecture"? "Attend"?
"Obligation".
> >> I am not concerned at this point with how they feel [...]
> >
> > I am. I don't think there's anything more to "should" than that.
>
> OK. How do you describe situations of weakness of will?
It's where someone does something that they feel they shouldn't, because of
*other*
feelings they have. I didn't say should was all there was to feeling....
> ...
> >> I'll do what I can. I will say you are "obligated" to do X when you have
> >> satisfied some of the requirements for being morally bound to do X.
>
> > Two of the requirements for being morally bound to do X are that you be a
> > human
> > being, and that you be of sound mind. You satisfy those requirements, so
> > you are
> > obligated to do X. Let X = send me $10,000 in the mail. So far, I'm lik
> > ing it!
>
> I take it that this is a satiric objection to my not also defining
> "morally bound" in the process of defining "obligation"? [...]
No, it's not. Sorry I offended you. It was a satiric objection to the too
vague
"satisfied some of the requirements".
> > So you are supposing that there is some set M of "moral reasons" that c
> > an be
> > applied to generate actions that you "prima facie should (not)" undertake.
>
> Yes!
>
> > If you
> > take every moral reason that's applicable to your situation, and come up
> > with an
> > action A that's got reasons for it, but no reasons against it (implicatio
> > n: no
> > reasons to do anything that's impossible to do if you also do A), then yo
> > u are "all
> > things considered obligated" to do A?
>
> Just so!
>
> > And every one of these terms -- should,
> > obligated, morally bound -- come in "prima facie" and "all things consi
> > dered"
> > versions that you will specify only if you think it might not be clear wh
> > ich of
> > them you have in mind?
>
> You seem to suggest I am being unreasonable. But I am just trying to
> account for how I see "obligation" being used.
My apologies. It's a reasonable enough exercise.
> > Why not pick one of them for "prima facie" cases, another one for "all
> > things
> > considered", and use the third for the generic? It'd make communication
> > so much
> > easier, I'd think.
>
> I am inspired to make a contribution to clarity! Henceforth, there shall
> be no "prima-facie" morally bound - "morally bound" is always "all things
> considered". I hope that helps.
Yeah! I will try not to read "should" as meaning "morally bound", then.
> >> Again, I
> >> think it is (rightly) called a dilemma not because either player is
> >> unsure of what to do, but because of an objective feature of the game:
> >> rational behaviour on the part of both leads to an outcome that both
> >> prefer less than another outcome.
> >
> > And why is that a "dilemma"?
>
> Because the objective feature assures that you face a choice between bad
> alternatives. Isn't that the common notion of what a dilemma is?
I don't think so. Choosing between being late for a meeting and deliberately
running over several school children should not be a dilemma, even tho both
alternatives are bad. The badnesses have to be pretty much balanced -- so
balanced
that it is *difficult* to choose between them. In that case, a situation c
ould be
a dilemma even for someone who has made a decision. Like that?
> BTW,
> do you know what happened when Emma fell into the pickle barrel?
Please don't tell me.
> >>>> Don't forget the non-personal aspects of their morality.
>
> >>> Errr. I think I have.
>
> >> I was afraid of that. Let's try an analogy. Do you think that any
> >> interest /of yours/ is a "personal interest"?
>
> > Yes.
>
> >> Or that any interest /of/ a self is a "selfish interest"?
>
> > No.
>
> > Afraid I'm still in the dark.
>
> Well, if an interest /of/ a self need not be a "selfish interest", why
> must an interest of a person be a "personal interest"?
"Personal" means "of the person", but "selfish" doesn't mean "of the self".
I'm thinking I was supposed to answer "no" to both questions. Sorry.
Is a "non-personal aspect of their morality" a (non-moral) fact relevent to
their
moral reasoning? Is it an aspect of their morality that they share with the
greater part of their compatriots? Is it a (supposed) fact of morality (like
"torturing children is immoral")? I'm dying to know, even tho I've already
forgotten why it was brought up in the first place. If deja news were stil
l around
I'd go back and refresh my memory -- but I haven't got the hang of google yet.
> If an interest
> can transcend the self that holds the interest, why can't an aspect of a
> self's morality transcend the self, i.e., be non-personal?
I don't understand the question. "Transcend" how?
....mark young
Mark Young
>>> As for the play/lecture situation -- I say there is no fact of the matt
>>> er as
>>> to what you should do. You have work obligations and family obligations
>>> , and
>>> *you* must choose.
Gordon G. Sollars:
>> I don't see that this last statement is incompatible with there being a
>> fact of the matter. Moral realists and moral contructivists can both see
>> that there are obligations to give the lecture and to attend the play,
>> and ponder what is the best thing to do.
Tom Robertson:
> If there is no fact as to what the best choice is, then all choices
> are arbitrary and based on an error.
My choice of chocolate over vanilla is neither arbitrary nor based on an er
ror, and
yet it is not a fact that <chocolate is the best choice>. Perhaps you woul
d say
that it is a fact that <chocolate is the best choice for me>? But then, wo
uld you
hold that morality is as subjective as choice of flavour?
....mark young
(chocolate for the bot)
(vanilla for the bot)
(please pick one and return the other to cold storage. thankyou)
Mark Young
> > All interests of a person are
> > personal interests, in the sense the interests belong to that person.
Gordon G. Sollars:
> A trivial and uninteresting sense. Interests that belong to a person are
> "his interests"; "personal interests", as I was pointing out, implies
> more. [...]
After reading your response to A is A, I'm still in the dark as to what more is
implied.
> Remember that /The Virtue of Selfishness/ is canonical around here.
I hope you're not assuming *I* use the term that way.
....mark young
Arnold Broese-van-Groenou
> In article <jl8A6.119$s34....@ozemail.com.au>, Arnold Broese-van-Groenou
> writes...
> >
> > Gordon G. Sollars <sol...@nji.com> wrote in message
> ...
> > > If you do not test your ethical theory against some ethical truths,
how
> > > do you know that your theory is any good?
> >
> > 1)You ask if or why a code of behaviour is necessary in the first place.
> > 2) If it is, then you tailor it to that end.
>
> This is rather metaphorical. Surely the facts of reality (which are
> described by true statements) do not allow just any sort of "tailoring"
> to fit the end. And what is "tailoring", except deciding what
> (true) statements are in the theory?
Look again at point 1). It is the requirements dictated by existence that
determines a need for a code of conduct. For example, to look after ones
health by following certain behaviours.
Determining those behaviours requires thought, and that is what I mean by
tailoring.
> > 3) Finally, you don't test it against ethical truths (whatever that may
be)
>
> True statements with ethical content.
This begs the question of what ethics is. I say it is a code of conduct
required for living well.
> > but reality itself to see if it meets the requirements of 1.
>
> This makes no sense. True statements are what we use to describe reality
> - what tests against reality are not tests to see if some given
> statements are true?
Because you regard your reference as the ethical truths, rather than
reality.
You simply assume your intuited "truths" are justified by reality, but by
definition, they cannot be.
--
Arnold
Gordon G. Sollars
writes...
...
> Look again at point 1). It is the requirements dictated by existence that
> determines a need for a code of conduct. For example, to look after ones
> health by following certain behaviours.
> Determining those behaviours requires thought, and that is what I mean by
> tailoring.
And what is "determining those behaviors" other than finding out which
statements about their health effects are true? It is the facts that do
the tailoring, and true statements are description of facts.
> > > 3) Finally, you don't test it against ethical truths (whatever that may
> be)
> >
> > True statements with ethical content.
>
> This begs the question of what ethics is. I say it is a code of conduct
> required for living well.
No, Arnold, it doesn't "beg the question"; it simply does not try to
specify what the statements are all at once. Do you have a code of
conduct for living well that does /not/ contain true statements with
ethical content? How can the nature of reality be consistent with such a
thing?
> > > but reality itself to see if it meets the requirements of 1.
> >
> > This makes no sense. True statements are what we use to describe reality
> > - what tests against reality are not tests to see if some given
> > statements are true?
>
> Because you regard your reference as the ethical truths, rather than
> reality.
True statements describe the facts of reality. There is no "rather" to
it.
> You simply assume your intuited "truths" are justified by reality, but by
> definition, they cannot be.
I can't make any sense of this. Doesn't everyone "assume" the statements
he accepts as true are true unless and until it can be shown otherwise.
You don't? Show a little confidence! Of course, it can be a useful
methodology to occasionally assume something you think is true is
actually false. As to your "by definition", do you mean that no truths
can be justified by reality? That is a rather strange position for an
Objectivist to hold.
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Gordon G. Sollars
all Greek to me.
In article <iHdA6.36122$Xt.314566@e420r-chi2>, Eudaimonus writes...
>
> Gordon G. Sollars <sol...@nji.com> wrote in message
...
> > If you do not test your ethical theory against some ethical truths, how
> > do you know that your theory is any good?
>
> That depends on if you consider the purpose of ethical theories to be
> inductive or deductive - which will depend on if you consider the question
> of what is good in particular situations to be allready a settled one.
For instance, by "settled" do you mean what is known or what is in fact
the case? I think that the facts of reality have already "settled" what
is good, but we do not always know what that is.
> If the purpose of moral philosophy is purely inductive,
I think the purpose of moral philosophy is to criticize moral theories.
> then by all means,
> the proper way to test the truth of a theory is to test it against the moral
> facts that you, by this method, must be assuming yourself to allready
> possess.
What method, Eudaimonus? The method of induction? But that is commonly
taken as a method of moving from a set of facts to a generalization, not
itself a way of acquiring a fact. Please say more of what you mean.
> But this would have the sad result that moral philosophy as such
> can not give anyone cause to question what they take to be moral truths -
> for to do so would be to call into question the validity of using induction
> to form a theory in the first place.
The logical consequences of (what we take to be) truths of which we are
more certain can cause us to question "truths" of which we are less
certain. But there is no method that guarantees that we will call into
question just those accepted truths which are in fact false. Or do you,
wise Eudaimonus, have such a procedure?
> So - if you only test your ethical theory against pre-existing (which means
> pre-supposed) ethical truths,
What else will you test it against, Eudaimonus? Pre-existing and pre-
supposed ethical falsehoods? That works, too, as long as we remember
that the theory must /not/ agree with any of these. Or do you, wise
Eudaimonus, simply know when a moral theory is correct?
> how do you know that your theory (which, being
> purely inductive, is purely descriptive), is a description of reality?
Again, your words are hard to fathom, Eudaimonus. I do not think "my"
theory is "purely inductive", but if a theory is descriptive, I do take
it that it is reality that it is trying to describe. It might fail, of
course. Do you, O wise Eudaimonus, have a procedure for telling us which
theories are true? If so, please apply it and tell us which theories now
highly regarded will be shown to be false. Or all are current theories
true?
> In
> any event, it can be no more valid than the worst of the particular
> judgements which must be made pre-theory and ex hypothesi.
I should think we would be better to test a theory against the best of
our particular judgements, rather than the worst.
> But this simply begs the whole question of ethical intuitionism - the
> presupposition that moral theories must be tested against moral truths begs
> the question as to if moral truths are know first in the particular or in
> the abstract.
Possibly there is much of value hidden in these remarks, Eudaimonus.
Perhaps you will provide the effort needed to extract it for me?
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Gordon G. Sollars
> Gordon G. Sollars:
>
> > I don't see your point. All terms are muddied in the above? "Promise"?
> > "Lecture"? "Attend"?
>
> "Obligation".
OK, so you meant "muddy /one/ term /every/ time and you end up with just
mud". ;-)
...
> > OK. How do you describe situations of weakness of will?
>
> It's where someone does something that they feel they shouldn't, because of
> *other*
> feelings they have. I didn't say should was all there was to feeling....
Then what is wrong with weakness of will? Why do people complain of it?
They end up doing what they have the stronger feeling to do, which is
what they /should/ do, right? Or does a weaker motivation somehow manage
to trump a stronger one? Of course, I would say that with weakness of
will we find we are motivated to do something we /judge/ we have good
reason not to do (should not do).
...
> > > And why is that a "dilemma"?
> >
> > Because the objective feature assures that you face a choice between bad
> > alternatives. Isn't that the common notion of what a dilemma is?
>
> I don't think so. Choosing between being late for a meeting and deliberately
> running over several school children should not be a dilemma, even tho both
> alternatives are bad. The badnesses have to be pretty much balanced -- so
> balanced
> that it is *difficult* to choose between them.
I resorted to a dictionary. The first meaning given is that the
alternatives be equally balanced, but the second says only that the
alternatives be unpleasant. The second probably follows on from the
first, with the idea that while there needn't be absolute parity, the
outcomes need to be much closer than in your example.
> In that case, a situation c
> ould be
> a dilemma even for someone who has made a decision. Like that?
Right. And, of course, once named, the jargon component can take over.
If the "sucker" pay-off were $10,000,000, most people would be happy to
face such a "dilemma".
> > BTW,
> > do you know what happened when Emma fell into the pickle barrel?
>
> Please don't tell me.
Sorry, but you know full well the result was a dilEmma.
...
> "Personal" means "of the person", but "selfish" doesn't mean "of the self".
>
> I'm thinking I was supposed to answer "no" to both questions. Sorry.
This is not a test. If that's all you mean by "personal", then fine.
> Is a "non-personal aspect of their morality" a (non-moral) fact relevent to
> their
> moral reasoning? Is it an aspect of their morality that they share with the
> greater part of their compatriots? Is it a (supposed) fact of morality (like
> "torturing children is immoral")?
It is an aspect of their morality that relates to how persons in general,
not simply themselves, ought to act. As such, it could fit either of the
last two questions.
> I'm dying to know,
Oh, I'll bet that is an exaggeration.
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Tym Parsons
> Hasn't the claim that Rand's ethics can be grouped into the 'consequentia
> list'
> camp been contested here already?
Of course.
> Or that her morality is 'consequentialist' in name only, and that some ot
> her term (e.g. 'virtue theorist')
> would be best and more accurate to apply to it?
The term that best applies to it is "teleological". Teleologism is the
antidote to the false dichotomy of deontologism vs. consequentialism.
For details see Tara Smith's _Moral Rights and Political Freedom_.
> As far as I can see, the defining feature of 'consequentialism' is that i
> t aims
> toward a maximizing conception of rationality by the criterion of the sys
> tem --
> but that it's not anything like, say, maximizing the performance of duty or
> maximizing the actions recommended by intuition or common sense.
Rather opaque, needlessly complicated academese. What does it mean to
have "a maximizing conception of rationality by the criterion of the
system"? %o
> Only on certain kinds of readings -- probably not the correct ones -- is
> Rand a
> maximizing theorist. One reading is that the maximand is life-span. While
> this is clear-cut as far as having some maximand, it's way off the mark as an
> identification of Rand's criterion for right action.
The "maximand" for Rand is a FLOURISHING lifespan.
> Is there anything in Rand's corpus that readily lends to the 'maximizing'
> interpretation? Simply saying that she called her ethics an egoism won't cut
> it.
Only a hairsplitting academic would find it problematic that Rand
characterises her ethics as egoistic. The rest of us know exactly what
she means!
<snip>
> Is valuing something for its own sake (and 'end in itself') that same thi
> ng as
> pursuing and 'intrinsic' value? Do we need to resort to intrinsicism of some
> type, or can we just say that integral to good living are certain things like
> good character, intelligence, pleasure, etc.? They aren't 'goods in and of
> themselves,' but goods that promote the kind of life that is genuinely go
> od for
> us, from which is derived the observation that they are valued for their own
> sake.
A better way of putting it would be that life is the only thing that can
be observed to be an end in itself, for the organism that has it. Life
= flourishing existence. The various activities that are constitutive
of a flourishing existence are of necessity therefore ends in themselves
as well. Sex and art are ends in themselves; golfing (for someone who
finds that a supreme value) is an end in itself.
Tym Parsons
Mark Young
> > > I don't see your point. All terms are muddied in the above? "Promise"?
> > > "Lecture"? "Attend"?
Mark Young:
> > "Obligation".
Gordon G. Sollars:
> OK, so you meant "muddy /one/ term /every/ time and you end up with just
> mud". ;-)
No, I didn't.
> > > OK. How do you describe situations of weakness of will?
> > It's where someone does something that they feel they shouldn't, because of
> > *other*
> > feelings they have. I didn't say should was all there was to feeling....
> Then what is wrong with weakness of will? Why do people complain of it?
Because they regret what they did. Plus, it's expected of them.
> They end up doing what they have the stronger feeling to do, which is
> what they /should/ do, right?
Wrong. Apples and oranges are both fruit. Doesn't mean that a big enough
apple is
an orange.
> Or does a weaker motivation somehow manage
> to trump a stronger one?
Nope. Different classes of motivation -- different kinds of feelings. The
stronger one always wins -- that's what stronger means in that context.
> Of course, I would say that with weakness of
> will we find we are motivated to do something we /judge/ we have good
> reason not to do (should not do).
So would I, if I weren't talking to someone who things that judgement is a
kind of
magic that can make fantasies real.
[...nothing to add regarding "dilemma"...]
> > Is a "non-personal aspect of their morality" a (non-moral) fact relevent to
> > their
> > moral reasoning? Is it an aspect of their morality that they share wit
> > h the
> > greater part of their compatriots? Is it a (supposed) fact of morality
> > (like
> > "torturing children is immoral")?
> It is an aspect of their morality that relates to how persons in general,
> not simply themselves, ought to act.
Do you mean simply that it is a part of their morality that they apply to e
veryone,
rather than only to themself?
....mark young
Gordon G. Sollars
> Gordon G. Sollars:
...
> > Then what is wrong with weakness of will? Why do people complain of it?
>
> Because they regret what they did. Plus, it's expected of them.
Why regret doing what you feel you should do? It it might only be
expected by the person in question.
> > They end up doing what they have the stronger feeling to do, which is
> > what they /should/ do, right?
>
> Wrong. Apples and oranges are both fruit. Doesn't mean that a big enough
> apple is
> an orange.
"A big feeling and a small feeling are both feelings. Doesn't mean that
a big feeling is a small feeling." True, but that was not what I was
arguing. You say that shoulds are feelings. Apparently you do not want
to say that we should always follow the stronger feeling (and how is
/that/ a feeling?). How then should we decide which feeling to follow?
I think that all things considered I should be grading papers now - I
have good reasons to so so, and none to the contrary. But I am not
motivated to do it. I do not /feel/ that I should be grading papers now;
I feel like replying to your post. How is it that you would express this
state of affairs?
...
> > Of course, I would say that with weakness of
> > will we find we are motivated to do something we /judge/ we have good
> > reason not to do (should not do).
>
> So would I, if I weren't talking to someone who things that judgement is a
> kind of
> magic that can make fantasies real.
Not me! For instance, I do not think that your judgment that moral
realism is wrong makes it wrong (or that my judgment makes it right, of
course). Still, one might have a fantasy and /discover/ that, against
all odds, it was real.
...
> Do you mean simply that it is a part of their morality that they apply to e
> veryone,
> rather than only to themself?
As I said initially, the "non-personal" aspects. These face constraints
due to interactions that personal aspects do not.
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Arnold Broese-van-Groenou
> > You simply assume your intuited "truths" are justified by reality, but
by
> > definition, they cannot be.
>
> I can't make any sense of this. Doesn't everyone "assume" the statements
> he accepts as true are true unless and until it can be shown otherwise.
Most people wouldn't assume without reason. Intuitions are not reasons.
> You don't? Show a little confidence! Of course, it can be a useful
> methodology to occasionally assume something you think is true is
> actually false. As to your "by definition", do you mean that no truths
> can be justified by reality? That is a rather strange position for an
> Objectivist to hold.
By definition an intuited "truth" has no reasoned basis.
How can intuitions be identified as facts, when they only propose them?
Why would you need to intuit a truth, if it was able to be rationally
appraised?
If your morality isn't reason based, how do you test it?
Just what do you mean when you speak of morality?
You assume we need one, and base it on certain "truths" which are intuited
rather than reasoned.
You propose your morality without stating
it's purpose (at least that I'm aware of) or necessity.
Perhaps if you tell me where you disagree with my definition of morality,
and why you think we need one, we can create some common ground
on which to debate this.
--
Arnold
Kwag7693
> If you do not test your ethical theory against some ethical truths, how
> do you know that your theory is any good?
I guess it depends on the theory you are trying to construct. If you simply
want to describe how people act, your method is fine. If not, you'd need some
meta-ethical justification for calling some act ethical in the first place.
Prescriptive ethics is unlike descriptive ethics for that reason. If we knew
in advance what ethical truths were important, we wouldn't need a prescriptive
theory of ethics. I don't need a theory of red, I experience it. If I was
sure of some ethical truism, why would I need a theory to back me up?
Kevin
Tom Robertson
>Mark Young:
>>>> As for the play/lecture situation -- I say there is no fact of the matt
>>>> er as
>>>> to what you should do. You have work obligations and family obligations
>>>> , and
>>>> *you* must choose.
>
>Gordon G. Sollars:
>>> I don't see that this last statement is incompatible with there being a
>>> fact of the matter. Moral realists and moral contructivists can both see
>>> that there are obligations to give the lecture and to attend the play,
>>> and ponder what is the best thing to do.
>
>Tom Robertson:
>> If there is no fact as to what the best choice is, then all choices
>> are arbitrary and based on an error.
>My choice of chocolate over vanilla is neither arbitrary nor based on an e
>rror, and
>yet it is not a fact that <chocolate is the best choice>.
Then what is the fact? Is vanilla the best choice? Then you've made
a mistake by choosing chocolate. If there is no such thing as the
best choice, then your decision is arbitrary and there's no such thing
as a mistake. If all choices are of equal value, why not drink Drano
instead of eat chocolate ice cream?
>Perhaps you would say
>that it is a fact that <chocolate is the best choice for me>? But then, w
>ould you
>hold that morality is as subjective as choice of flavour?
That you choose chocolate doesn't mean that chocolate is the best
choice for you. You might have made a mistake. I wouldn't use the
word "subjective," but yes, ultimately, morality must be intuitively
perceived. Whatever deductions can be made about morality have to
start with premises which were established by the intuition.
R Lawrence
real substance when one is gone for a week and the threads build up. So I
may have to drop the topic after this round.
Rob Bass <log...@MailAndNews.com> wrote:
<snip background on Mr. Huemer's argument against egoism and my parallel
argument against intuitionism>
>The point seems to have been to claim that such an argument can be
>constructed against any ethical theory and so there must be something
>wrong with the pattern of argument. Richard has elsewhere referred to
>Owl's argument (and his own parallel argument) as being "invalid."
I don't know where this "elsewhere" is, and a search of Google does not
turn up any posts with me describing Mr. Huemer's argument as "invalid."
Can you refresh my memory? I do recall (and my own posting records show)
that I have referred to the argument as "unsound." I also indicated that
both my argument and Mr. Huemer's (and any other variations) would be
equally valid or invalid.
<snip explanation of how modus tollens is valid and what is the difference
between 'valid' and 'sound' -- thanks, but I studied philosophy, logic
included, as one of my majors in college, and will assume that you included
this bit of explanation for the benefit of other, less educated readers>
>Owl's argument is plainly valid. Perhaps Richard means to be claiming that
>it is not sound rather than that it is not valid. <snip>
>This doesn't seem to be what Richard is arguing either, however. Given that
>Owl's argument is valid, the only way to show that it is not sound is to
>show that one or more of the premises is false. But Richard has not so far
>claimed that either of the premises are false. (He actually claimed he
>was being misinterpreted when someone attributed to him the claim that the
>second premise was false.)
On March 31, I submitted a post containing several relevant criticisms,
most of which imply the falsity of premise (1), at least if Huemer's
reference to "egoism" is interpreted as a reference to Ayn Rand's ethical
theories. I thought the nature of this criticism was relatively clear, but
if it was not then I apologize for my obscurity.
Unfortunately, one of the difficulties in trying to criticize this argument
is the ambiguous nature of premise (1). Although Huemer places this
argument in an essay ostensibly about Rand's ethics, he uses the term
'egoism' generically and when it is suggested that he is misrepresenting
Rand, he replies with statements such as, "even if what I criticized wasn't
Rand's position, I think it is still worthwhile to criticize that position,
because there really are people who hold it." I hope you can understand how
not knowing what position "egoism" is supposed to mean in premise (1) makes
it difficult to precisely criticize that premise.
>So, what exactly is his concern? One possibility, suggested by some of his
>remarks, is that Owl does not (so Richard would be claiming) _know_ that
>the premises are true, and especially does not know that the second
>premise is true.
I have expressed criticisms of premise (2) as well. My criticism is not
exactly what you present above, but I can see how you might interpret some
of my comments that way. I explain my specific concerns in more detail
below. In any case, I assume you recognize that criticism of one premise
does not preclude criticism of the other. They could both be flawed.
>I'm confident that Owl would claim that he does in fact know the premises to
>be true, but let us suppose for the moment that he does not. What bearing
>does that have upon the argument itself? <snip>
>We can put this another way. I suppose there is no serious doubt that Owl
>_believes_ the two premises of his argument. Since it follows from those two
>premises that egoism is false, it would be _unreasonable_ for him to accept
>egoism. To accept egoism - without changing either belief expressed in the
>premises - would be to endorse a contradiction.
If the only issue at hand is whether Mr. Huemer believes egoism to be
false, or believes that he has justification for rejecting it, then there
is little to argue about. However, Mr. Huemer is presenting his argument to
convince *others* that egoism is false, so what he personally believes is
hardly the issue. The question is what can he justify to others. In that
context, the absence of any attempt to justify either premise is a glaring
defect in the argument. Anyone can put forth two related premises and
thereby reach a conclusion, but simply doing so does not make for a
substantive argument against egoism or any other moral theory -- which is
exactly what my parallel version was intended to show. Presenting this type
of simplistic argument only proves that the arguer is able to construct a
syllogism.
Last I checked, Mr. Huemer was backing up premise (2) with appeals to
popular sentiment, the argument from intimidation, and repeated strenuous
assertion. None of these constitute good grounds for others to believe it
to be true. Instead, the (rhetorical, not logical) success of the whole
argument hinges on the visceral emotional reaction readers are supposed to
have to the idea of torturing and killing 500 people.
>The conclusion I have reached so far is that it would be unreasonable for
>Owl, given what else he believes, to accept egoism. If Richard (for
>example) wishes to maintain that Owl nevertheless should accept egoism -
>and here I mean "rationally should," that it would be more reasonable for
>him - then Richard must think (if _he_ is being reasonable) that Owl
>should not believe both of the premises of his argument.
Nice attempt on your part to turn the situation around, but I actually
don't care very much what Mr. Huemer believes. He is the one offering
"critiques" to tell egoists and others interested in egoistic positions
what they should (or should not) believe. So far, this particular critique
of his has been completely without merit. It contains flawed premises,
which he supports with even more flawed methods of argument. You can
attempt to convince me that I haven't convinced him that he hasn't
convinced me ... but, really, that just doesn't appear to be relevant to
whether his argument is any good in the first place.
>There appear to be two general routes to that conclusion. First, there might
>be a direct argument that one of the premises is false. Second, there might
>be an indirect support for the claim that one of the premises is false by
>way of a direct argument for egoism. <snip>
>Richard has not, however, presented an argument of either kind.
As indicated above, I have presented arguments of the first type. Arguments
of the second type are exactly what Mr. Huemer is supposedly attempting to
refute, so clearly they have been offered, even if not by me personally. To
forget that important bit of context leads us down the path Mr. Huemer took
in his old "Why I Am Not an Objectivist" essay, wherein he posited that
egoists might claim egoism to be "self-evident" -- something Rand never
did, and thus irrelevant to any attempt to criticize her actual positions.
> As things
>stand, Owl is fully justified in rejecting egoism on the basis of this
>argument - even if he does not know the premises to be true. No one -
>neither Richard nor anyone else (Chris Cathcart has come closest) - has
>come fully to grips with the logical features of the argument.
The major logical feature of the argument is its triviality, which is
obscured by the use of emotional appeals. I think I have "gripped" that as
tightly as I can. The major substantive features of the argument are the
falsity of premise (1) and the arbitrariness of premise (2). I have
addressed both of those as well. Since Mr. Huemer is not willing even to
read my arguments, much less respond to them, I don't see how I can do much
more.
--
Richard Lawrence <RL0...@yahoo.com>
Visit the Objectivism Reference Center: http://www.objectivism.addr.com/
Mark Young
>>> Then what is wrong with weakness of will? Why do people complain of it?
Mark Young:
>> Because they regret what they did. Plus, it's expected of them.
Gordon G. Sollars:
> Why regret doing what you feel you should do?
Late again, was it?
> It it might only be expected by the person in question.
Maybe. Most likely not, tho.
>>> They end up doing what they have the stronger feeling to do, which is
>>> what they /should/ do, right?
>> Wrong. Apples and oranges are both fruit. Doesn't mean that a big enough
>> apple is an orange.
> "A big feeling and a small feeling are both feelings. Doesn't mean that
> a big feeling is a small feeling." True, but that was not what I was
> arguing.
You're not firing on all cylinders, Gordon.
A "should" feeling and a "wanna" feeling are both feelings, but a "wanna" f
eeling
is not a "should" feeling. Sometimes they are congruent, tho....
> You say that shoulds are feelings. Apparently you do not want
> to say that we should always follow the stronger feeling (and how is
> /that/ a feeling?). How then should we decide which feeling to follow?
Your last question shows that you haven't grasped the position, yet.
> I think that all things considered I should be grading papers now -
I agree. You're not fully engaged in this conversation, anyway.
> I have good reasons to so so, and none to the contrary. But I am not
> motivated to do it.
Motivation doesn't come in "prima facie" and "all things considered" versions?
Motivation is not an all-or-nothing thing. I should be preparing an exam n
ow --
or sleeping so I will be awake enough tomorrow to prepare it. I feel I oug
ht to
go (I am motivated to go), but I want to stay (I am motivated to stay). The
motivation to stay is stronger right now. Maybe I'll finish this up quickl
y and
still get to bed early enough to be rested in the morning. Maybe.
Oh, Hell. Goodnight. I'll have more to say tomorrow.
....mark young
Gordon G. Sollars
...
> You're not firing on all cylinders, Gordon.
I think all the cylinders are firing. The problem is that you haven't
given me good enough directions to get the car to your house.
> A "should" feeling and a "wanna" feeling are both feelings, but a "wanna" f
> eeling
> is not a "should" feeling. Sometimes they are congruent, tho....
>
> > You say that shoulds are feelings. Apparently you do not want
> > to say that we should always follow the stronger feeling (and how is
> > /that/ a feeling?). How then should we decide which feeling to follow?
>
> Your last question shows that you haven't grasped the position, yet.
Indeed I have not; that's why I have been asking you questions. I think
I know what feelings are. Love is a feeling. Hate is a feeling. (How'm
I doin'?) The notion that a "should" is a feeling I find as puzzling as
you find moral realism.
...
> Motivation doesn't come in "prima facie" and "all things considered" vers
> ions?
No.
> Motivation is not an all-or-nothing thing.
OK, but I don't think that is the same as the "prima facie/all things
considered" distinction. Am I wrong?
> I should be preparing an exam n
> ow --
> or sleeping so I will be awake enough tomorrow to prepare it. I feel I oug
> ht to
> go (I am motivated to go),
So an "ought" (or a "should") is a motivation. (?)
> but I want to stay (I am motivated to stay). The
> motivation to stay is stronger right now.
Here is the problem, Mark. I didn't feel /any/ motivation to grade the
papers (that I ought to have graded). Just from what you have said here,
since I thought I ought to do it, I must have had /some/ motivation,
however weak, however easily overridden by another. Here are the
possibilities I see:
(1) I was wrong. Either I really didn't think I ought to grade the
papers, or I really did feel some motivation but didn't notice it;
(2) Oughts and shoulds are not motivations, and your view is mistaken;
(3) There are further resources, features, and subtleties in your view of
which I am, as yet, unaware.
--
Gordon "Are we there yet?" Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Gordon G. Sollars
Groenou writes......
> > I can't make any sense of this. Doesn't everyone "assume" the statements
> > he accepts as true are true unless and until it can be shown otherwise.
>
> Most people wouldn't assume without reason. Intuitions are not reasons.
I would say people regularly make assumptions without being aware of the
reasons, and so are "without reason" in that sense. If it was a correct
assumption, however, they will often be able to give a good reason for
it.
...
> By definition an intuited "truth" has no reasoned basis.
> How can intuitions be identified as facts, when they only propose them?
I have not brought "intuitions" into this, you have; perhaps you have me
confused with Owl? I would prefer to avoid the term, since it carries
rather different connotations for different people.
However, if I had the "intuition" that "My car is missing from my garage"
(I can't see it from here), that would indeed be identified as a fact, if
and only if my car was missing from the garage. Being correct is not the
same as having good reasons for being correct.
> Why would you need to intuit a truth, if it was able to be rationally
> appraised?
What do you mean by "rationally appraised"? How is such an appraisal
conducted?
> If your morality isn't reason based, how do you test it?
Well, I like to think that my morality /is/ "reason based", in the sense
that it is reasonable for me to hold it. But perhaps you mean something
else.
> Just what do you mean when you speak of morality?
Something that tells us how we should adjudicate disputes, what is good
and bad, what a virtuous person does, etc.
> You assume we need one, and base it on certain "truths" which are intuited
> rather than reasoned.
When did I say that? I asked how we were to test a moral theory without
reference to any moral truths (true statements with moral content).
> Perhaps if you tell me where you disagree with my definition of morality,
> and why you think we need one, we can create some common ground
> on which to debate this.
I'm happy to start with yours, I think. Is your definition ("a code of
conduct required for living well") incompatible with any of the things I
listed above? What I have been doing is asking you why you are so sure
you disagree with me. You say that there are "requirements dictated by
existence" and I agree with that; you say that I "refer to ethical
truths" /rather/ than reality, but true statements are descriptions of
reality.
So, I'm sure you're sure you disagree with me, but I'm not sure about
what.
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Gordon G. Sollars
writes...
> Gordon G. Sollars writes:
>
> > If you do not test your ethical theory against some ethical truths, how
> > do you know that your theory is any good?
>
> I guess it depends on the theory you are trying to construct. If you simply
> want to describe how people act, your method is fine. If not, you'd need
> some
> meta-ethical justification for calling some act ethical in the first place.
Then what such justification do you use or recommend?
> Prescriptive ethics is unlike descriptive ethics for that reason. If we knew
> in advance what ethical truths were important, we wouldn't need a prescri
> ptive
> theory of ethics.
I don't think that is right. A theory can be very useful in difficult or
puzzling cases.
I assume that you have some prescriptive moral theory, at least in
outline, that you accept. Now, are you telling me that, before you had
that theory, you had no idea at all of whether any particular ethical
truth was important? Or that it was an ethical truth at all? Are there
no basic statements or axioms in your theory?
> If I was
> sure of some ethical truism, why would I need a theory to back me up?
For /that/ particular truism, you would not. Are you certain of /every/
ethical statement you take to be true?
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Gordon G. Sollars
> From observations by a process of explanation we get theory.
Not sure about this. I would say that we always start /from/ a theory,
if you will allow that an expectation is a trivial case of a theory.
Sets of random observations don't lead anywhere (I think).
> From theory by a process of deduction we get predictions.
>
> The predictions are (dis)confirmed by further observations.
I'm much bigger on the (dis) part. Only human ingenuity limits the
number of theories that /match/ our observations; reality limits the ones
that don't. But even with "observations" we have to be careful about
error.
> If no predictions are disconfirmed, and enough predictions are confirmed, the
> theory is accepted as a suitable basis for deciding open questions (quest
> ions for
> which the appropriate observations are difficult if not impossible to get
> ). It is
> an ethical theory arrived at an inductive method.
>
> In order for this to work, we must have some initial observations, and th
> e ability
> to (dis)confirm predictions.
"Initial" observations? As I said, I don't think we start theorizing
from observations. A newborn baby has expectations (theories) built into
it from the start, by a process of variation and selection that is the
same as the process used to pick good theories. Some people think it is
"turtles all the way down"; I think it is evolution.
> What, IYO, are the initial observations; and how can we (dis)confirm pred
> ictions?
Any observation can serve to disconfirm a prediction, but "observations"
are relative to the field of study. For example, I think the "collapse
of the Soviet Union" is an observation in political philosophy. That
phrase stands for a complex set of phenomena, but, then so does, "I see a
blue dot".
Now, Rawls's theory of justice tells us (predicts) that we will have a
just society if certain conditions are met. But, ultimately, these
conditions require centralized control of the economy (of course, I could
be wrong about that - perhaps Rawls's Difference Principle is satisfied
by laissez faire - but that is a different problem). But the Soviet
observation disconfirms (it doesn't work) centralized control of the
economy. So his theory is false.
Of course, Rawls can say that there were other factors involved, so that
the observation does not really show his theory of justice to be false.
But this move can always be made with physical theories as well.
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Bert Clanton
I think that when you say "One ought to do X in circumstances C" in a
moral context, you mean either one of two things:
1) You may mean something equivalent to "Feel an inclination to do X!"
This is a *prescriptive* use of ought. It is not the kind of expression
that can be true or false, and it can't be a premise or a conclusion of
any deductive argument.
2) You may mean something equivalent to "The performance of act X is
justified under the criteria for performance-justifiability embodied in
assumed moral system M". This is a *descriptive* usage of ought. This
statement is true if act X *does* meet those criteria, and false if it
does not. So such descriptive "ought"-statements *can* validly function
as premises and conclusions of deductive arguments. But here truth and
falsity exist *only relative to some assumed moral system: some assumed
set of moral axioms together with some assumed set of rules for
deriving moral "ought"-claims from those axioms*. Furthermore, such
descriptive "ought" statements *have no prescriptive "force"*: they're
just statements of fact about the relation of some act to the axioms of
some moral system. Not everybody is going to be an adherent of that
particular moral system.
It seems to me that purely cognitivist moral philosophers want there to
be some kind of moral claim which is at once descriptive, stating some
fact about the world, and prescriptive, motivating some kind of action
in the world. IMHO, there is, and can be, no such kind of expression.
But IMHO though you can't *validly infer* prescriptive expressions from
purely descriptive premises, you can *justify* prescriptive expressions
by appeal to arguments whose premises are all descriptive, with one
additional rule of derivation:
"The prescriptive espression 'One ought to do X in circumstances C' is
justified under moral system M if and only if the performance of act X
under circumstances C is justified under moral system M."
So to make moral realism possible, IMHO, you just have to somehow
remove the relativity from your moral system: you have to give good
reasons for choosing one particular set of moral axioms rather than
another. I think that's possible.
Best wishes,
Bert
Gordon G. Sollars
writes...
> It seems to me that purely cognitivist moral philosophers want there to
> be some kind of moral claim which is at once descriptive, stating some
> fact about the world, and prescriptive, motivating some kind of action
> in the world. IMHO, there is, and can be, no such kind of expression.
If they are "purely" cognitivist, how can they be concerned with
motivations? Any reasonable cognitivist position will be concerned with
motivation to do what is right. What reasonable cognitivist would
disagree with "If X is right, then it would be good for you to be
motivated to do X". Of course, you might not be so motivated. Where a
cognitivist could get into trouble would be to claim that the reasons for
doing X /must/ be motivating in some sense. Whether a person is
motivated to do what is right is a fact about his moral psychology.
Where the non-cognitivist can go wrong is to assert that a claim that "X
is right" must refer to a feeling of some kind.
> But IMHO though you can't *validly infer* prescriptive expressions from
> purely descriptive premises, you can *justify* prescriptive expressions
> by appeal to arguments whose premises are all descriptive, with one
> additional rule of derivation:
>
> "The prescriptive espression 'One ought to do X in circumstances C' is
> justified under moral system M if and only if the performance of act X
> under circumstances C is justified under moral system M."
OK... And this additional rule is problematic because...?
> So to make moral realism possible, IMHO, you just have to somehow
> remove the relativity from your moral system: you have to give good
> reasons for choosing one particular set of moral axioms rather than
> another. I think that's possible.
So you think moral realism is possible? OK. But I think it is strange
to say "to make moral realism possible, you must..." Perhaps you meant,
"To make moral realism /justifiable/, you must..." Nothing a person does
/makes/ any kind of realism possible, right?
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Bert Clanton
Sollars <sol...@nji.com> wrote:
> In article <110420011022567681%eubio...@home.com>, Bert Clanton
> writes...
>
> > It seems to me that purely cognitivist moral philosophers want there to
> > be some kind of moral claim which is at once descriptive, stating some
> > fact about the world, and prescriptive, motivating some kind of action
> > in the world. IMHO, there is, and can be, no such kind of expression.
>
> If they are "purely" cognitivist, how can they be concerned with
> motivations?
They can be concerned, I think, in the way that I am concerned: to link
facts about the world with valuations of things in the world and with
prescriptions for action in the world. What they can't do, IMHO, is to
*deductively infer* valuations and prescriptions from facts about the
world, because valuations and prescriptions are things that can be
*justified* by the facts, but not *inferred from* the facts, since IMHO
valuations and prescriptions can't be either true of false.
> Any reasonable cognitivist position will be concerned with
> motivation to do what is right. What reasonable cognitivist would
> disagree with "If X is right, then it would be good for you to be
> motivated to do X".
No one, I'd guess. Certainly not I.
> Of course, you might not be so motivated. Where a
> cognitivist could get into trouble would be to claim that the reasons for
> doing X /must/ be motivating in some sense.
I agree.
> Whether a person is
> motivated to do what is right is a fact about his moral psychology.
> Where the non-cognitivist can go wrong is to assert that a claim that "X
> is right" must refer to a feeling of some kind.
>
IMHO, descriptive statements simply cannot be motivating. Only
prescriptive utterances can be motivating; and even they are motivating
only in the sense that their utterer *intends* to motivate their
addressee, not in that the addressee is in some way *compelled* by a
prescriptive utterance to act as the utterer wishes.
> > But IMHO though you can't *validly infer* prescriptive expressions from
> > purely descriptive premises, you can *justify* prescriptive expressions
> > by appeal to arguments whose premises are all descriptive, with one
> > additional rule of derivation:
> >
> > "The prescriptive espression 'One ought to do X in circumstances C' is
> > justified under moral system M if and only if the performance of act X
> > under circumstances C is justified under moral system M."
>
> OK... And this additional rule is problematic because...?
>
IMHO it is problematic, if at all, only in that, if nothing more is
said, it implies a position of moral relativism. But the important
phrase here, IMHO, is "if nothing more is said". IMHO, there's a lot
more to say.
> > So to make moral realism possible, IMHO, you just have to somehow
> > remove the relativity from your moral system: you have to give good
> > reasons for choosing one particular set of moral axioms rather than
> > another. I think that's possible.
>
> So you think moral realism is possible? OK. But I think it is strange
> to say "to make moral realism possible, you must..." Perhaps you meant,
> "To make moral realism /justifiable/, you must..." Nothing a person does
> /makes/ any kind of realism possible, right?
Mea culpa.
I conflated "moral realism" with "moral objectivism", and they're not
the same. I'm aware, actually, that within "moral realism", I should
distinguish among "moral subjectivism", "moral intersubjectivism", and
"moral objectivism". I'm a "moral objectivist", with a small o. Rather
than the truth-conditions for moral claims being subjective (depending
only on the attitudes of individuals) or intersubjective (depending on
attitudinal consensus among the members of some group or society), I
hold that those truth-conditions are *objective* (independent of the
desires, preferences, feelings, or thoughts of any person or group of
persons).
What I should have written is simply something like "If you are a moral
objectivist, you can't be a moral intersubjectivist; the two positions
are mutually exclusive. So to consistently hold a morally objectivist
position, like the one I hold, you have to find some way of getting
beyond the relativistic mataethics that I've propounded so far; and I
think that that's possible".
Best wishes,
Bert
Ken Gardner
> But IMHO though you can't *validly infer* prescriptive expressions from
> purely descriptive premises, you can *justify* prescriptive expressions
> by appeal to arguments whose premises are all descriptive, with one
> additional rule of derivation:
> "The prescriptive espression 'One ought to do X in circumstances C' is
> justified under moral system M if and only if the performance of act X
> under circumstances C is justified under moral system M."
>
> So to make moral realism possible, IMHO, you just have to somehow
> remove the relativity from your moral system: you have to give good
> reasons for choosing one particular set of moral axioms rather than
> another. I think that's possible.
I think you and I were discussing this issue several weeks ago. IMO,
your approach is essentially how Rand "justifies" Objectivist ethics in
her article "Causality and Duty." She says, in effect, that "if you
want to live, you must do X." She states the desire to live as a
hypothetical rather than as a categorical. Aristotle begins at the same
place, except that for him the choice to live -- which, for him, means
the choice to live well -- is categorical rather than hypothetical, and
a self-evident truth (in the Aristotelian sense) in the nature of an
axiom or "first principle" of ethics. [Note: Aristotle believed that
every branch of knowledge began with first principles.] Aristotle would
say, in effect, that "because you are alive and are a human being, you
must do X." There is no "if" about it.
On this issue, to the extent that any difference exists between Rand and
Aristotle, I agree with Aristotle.
Ken
Ken Gardner
> Of course, you might not be so motivated. Where a cognitivist could
> get into trouble would be to claim that the reasons for
> doing X /must/ be motivating in some sense. Whether a person is
> motivated to do what is right is a fact about his moral psychology.
Here is another important difference between Rand and Aristotle on which
Aristotle may be closer to the actual truth. Rand's view of emotions
is, in essence, that your emotions are the product of your premises,
meaning that if your premises (both conscious and subconscious) are
rational, the desire to act accordingly will follow more or less
automatically. Aristotle's view, as I understand it, was that our
unregulated emotions will draw us towards what is pleasurable and away
from what is painful -- neither of which always corresponds to what we
need to do in order to live well (or, in Objectivese, live MQM). That's
why, in addition to having sound premises, we must also have settled
dispositions or habits to do the right thing even in situations in which
doing the right thing in the right amount is less pleasurable or more
painful than an excess or defect (e.g. eating and sleeping in
moderation, as opposed to overeating or undereating; acting with
courage, rather than with rashness or fear; planning and acting long-
range rather than short-range, etc.).
As good as Objectivists ethics is, it misses the boat on the crucial
role of habit formation --or, more precisely, the formation of _good_
habits of choice and action -- in living well and developing our moral
character. Not that Objectivism would disagree with Aristotle on this
point, just that the Objectivist literature is virtually silent on this
point.
> Where the non-cognitivist can go wrong is to assert that a claim that "X
> is right" must refer to a feeling of some kind.
Exactly. The confusion is that emotions do play a role, but -- as Rand
says -- emotions are neither tools of cognition nor guides to action.
> > "The prescriptive espression 'One ought to do X in circumstances C' is
> > justified under moral system M if and only if the performance of act X
> > under circumstances C is justified under moral system M."
> OK... And this additional rule is problematic because...?
Because the rule is hypothetical rather than categorical. It doesn't
answer why we should choose moral system M rather than some other system
(or no system at all).
> > So to make moral realism possible, IMHO, you just have to somehow
> > remove the relativity from your moral system: you have to give good
> > reasons for choosing one particular set of moral axioms rather than
> > another. I think that's possible.
> So you think moral realism is possible? OK. But I think it is strange
> to say "to make moral realism possible, you must..." Perhaps you meant,
> "To make moral realism /justifiable/, you must..." Nothing a person does
> /makes/ any kind of realism possible, right?
Right.
Ken
Owl
news:4XvA6.849$s34....@ozemail.com.au...
> By definition an intuited "truth" has no reasoned basis.
Intuited truths are the basis of all reasoning.
Here is a re-post of my old message about "prove-it skepticism".
FOUNDATIONALISM & 'PROVE IT' SKEPTICISM
There's a certain objection that I have heard so often, that I have written
a generic response to it, so I can use it every time I hear it and so save
time. The objection has most often been used against my 'ethical
intuitionism', but it can be used against literally anything. Below, I'm
going to describe how the objection goes, then talk about its relation to
intuitionism.
1. THE 'PROVE IT' GAME
In the course of a philosophical discussion (or any other discussion, for
that matter, in which people make statements), it is always possible, when
one party makes a statement, for the other party to reply with "Prove it!"
Furthermore, this move is iterable: that is, no matter what the first party
says in response, the second person can simply repeat himself. This makes
debate very easy for the second person, who never has to put any thought
into it there's a simple algorithm for holding up his end of the
discussion: just say "prove it" whenever the other person makes a statement.
(You may have a little brother or sister who has discovered this.) Thus, it
goes like this:
Person A: P.
Person B: Prove that P.
A: Well, P is true because Q--
B: Prove that Q.
A: Well, Q is true because R--
B: Prove that R.
Etc.
Now, A might try to escape from this, in some instances, by showing that B's
"prove it" demand itself depends on some assumptions, and that A's original
statement follows from these assumptions. This would have an extremely
limited applicability. But moreover, B will just continue his demand:
A: Well, your demand that I prove that R actually depends on the assumption
that S--
B: Prove that it depends on the assumption that S.
And we're off again.
The point here is obvious, but it is extremely important philosophically,
so let me repeat it:
'PROVE IT' CAN BE SAID IN RESPONSE TO ANYTHING.
The "prove it" debating technique is not something that only works in
ethical debate, for instance, or in philosophical debate, or something that
only works against intuitionists. If it works against anything, it works
against everything.
2. 'PROVE-IT' SKEPTICISM
This leads into the position that I call "'prove it' skepticism". 'Prove it'
skepticism is the view that, as long as someone can say "prove it" to a
claim, the claim is not known to be true. That is, whenever you have a
belief that you haven't proven, you don't know it to be true.
Prove-it skepticism is a form of *global* skepticism. What I mean by that
is: it is a species of the view that *no one knows anything*. You can see
this from what I said in section 1: it is *never* the case that you have a
statement that someone can't say "prove it" to. It is also never the case
that you have proven everything you believe.
This last follows from another very obvious but very important
philosophical fact:
A PROOF REQUIRES PREMISES.
Since the premises are further statements, whenever you try to prove
something, you generate further things that the skeptic can say "prove it"
to. No one has an infinitely long argument for anything, so everyone must
have at least some starting beliefs which are unproven.
Or, in other words: If you're not allowed to start from anywhere, then you
can't go anywhere. The prove-it skeptic is the person who rejects any
starting point.
3. THE 'PROVE IT' OBJECTION
Now I can state the objection I referred to in the opening paragraph. The
objection is, "You haven't proven that." Of course, it doesn't have to be
expressed in exactly those words; there are many variants on the 'prove it'
objection. For instance:
"You haven't proven that."
"You just asserted that without argument."
"You didn't give any reason for that."
"How do you know that?"
"Prove it."
"You have to give me some evidence for that."
"Oh, that's just an arbitrary assumption."
Etc.
The important thing to understand is that the person making this objection
is usually (I'll talk about exceptions below) flirting with prove-it
skepticism. For if the prove-it objection is a legitimate objection to a
position, well, that's just saying the same thing as the fundamental premise
of prove-it skepticism: i.e., that you don't know P as long as someone can
say "prove it" in response to your assertion of P.
Thus, the person making this objection is *committed to global skepticism*,
whether he knows it or not. If that person does not want to endorse global
skepticism, then he should surrender his 'prove it' objection.
I'm not going to attempt a refutation of global skepticism here. I think
that's a real topic for epistemologists, but I also think it's a red
herring, because the people making the 'prove it' demands are not genuine
global skeptics; they are not people who just suspend judgement about
everything. Rather, they are people who think they have a great objection to
the *particular* statement they're responding to.
4. INTUITIONISM AND THE 'PROVE IT' OBJECTION
Ethical intuitionism is a theory in moral philosophy that holds that some
moral judgements are self-evident. For instance:
"It is unjust to punish a person for a crime they did not commit."
"One should not torture people just for the fun of it."
"Courage is a virtue."
The above might be examples of such self-evident moral propositions.
Intuitionists refer to our awareness of these facts as "moral intuitions."
The single most common objection to intuitionism and one that most
objectors seem to feel is completely devastating is "Prove it". In other
words: "You haven't given any reason for believing those statements."
From the above, you can guess what my response to that is: "Are you a
global skeptic? If not, then you need a better objection." In short:
THE 'PROVE IT' OBJECTION IS NOT AN OBJECTION TO INTUITIONISM
in particular it is just a general objection to all knowledge. If you're
not denying all knowledge, then 'prove it' cannot be your objection to
intuitionism.
So why do people invoke this objection? I think it is a rationalization:
Almost no one today wants to accept the reality of moral knowledge (or more
generally, they don't want to accept moral realism), but the *reasons* they
have for not wanting to accept this are ones that they either are not aware
of, or do not want to say (or both). (What sort of reasons? Well, for
example, social conditioning.) In fact, they have no good reasons for their
hostility to moral knowledge, and so they must, in order to rationalize it,
resort to generic skeptical arguments. The fact that this is a
rationalization is shown by the fact that the same people do not take
opportunities to apply those same arguments to rule out *other* fields of
knowledge.
5. HOW TO OBJECT TO INTUITIONISM WITHOUT BEING A GLOBAL SKEPTIC
My position is a form of 'foundationalism': foundationalism is the view that
some truths are self-evident, that we know them without needing an argument
for them; and that all other knowledge rests upon these self-evident (or
'foundational') propositions.
What I'm saying, then, is that the 'prove it' objection is a general
objection to foundationalism, and also that if you reject foundationalism,
you are committed to global skepticism.
There is one way you could object to intuitionism without being a global
skeptic. What you would have to do is to explain why *moral judgements in
particular* could not be foundational, even though *other* things are. That
is, your "prove it" objection would have to be supplemented with something
that justifies the demand, and something that would *not* apply generically
to any statement.
Or: what you have to do is to explain why some sorts of statements are
foundational, in such a way that your explanation doesn't apply to moral
statements. If, for example, you want to say that observations are
foundational, then you have to answer, "What is it about observations that
makes them different from moral statements, so that the former can be
foundational, but not the latter?" No one has ever done this.
Or: You have to explain why your 'prove it' demand isn't just the general
prove-it skeptic demand. It's possible that someone could do this after
all, not everything is foundational, and so someone might have a theory of
what is foundational, that they could oppose to my theory, and where moral
propositions don't fall into that category. But so far, no 'prove it' sayer
has ever turned out to have anything like this.
I suspect that the reason is that the 'prove it' sayers are simply
attracted by the feature of the technique I pointed out in section 1: It's a
simple algorithm that doesn't require any thought. You just say "prove it"
to everything, and you don't need to come up with anything positive. To
actually make the objection substantive in the way I'm suggesting would
require real thinking and not just the application of an algorithm.
6. QUALIFICATIONS
Lastly, I have to mention two things that are not taken account of in the
above.
First, the 'prove it' demand need not be an appeal to prove-it skepticism,
unless it is made in response to a foundational, or allegedly foundational
proposition. If a person says he thinks there is life on Mars, it makes
sense to issue the 'prove it' demand, expecting that the interlocutor would
provide the evidence that made him come to that conclusion. But if the
person you're talking to genuinely thinks that P is *self-evident*, it makes
no sense to issue a "prove it," unless you're a global skeptic.
Second, there are people called "coherentists" who deny both
foundationalism and skepticism. Roughly speaking, they think it's ok to use
certain kinds of circular arguments, and so that's why we can have knowledge
without having any foundations. I haven't given any argument against
coherentism here, because almost none of the 'prove it' sayers would be
coherentists. Almost none of them would think that their demand was
satisfied if I presented a circular argument for my moral beliefs. (But if
you do think that, then I'll be happy to construct a circular argument for
you.)
Owl
news:110420011022567681%eubio...@home.com...
> you have to give good
> reasons for choosing one particular set of moral axioms rather than
> another. I think that's possible.
That's self-contradictory. (Hint: look up "axiom.")
Gordon G. Sollars
writes...
...
> IMHO, descriptive statements simply cannot be motivating.
"Fire!"? Or, if you prefer, "There is a fire!"?
> Only
> prescriptive utterances can be motivating; and even they are motivating
> only in the sense that their utterer *intends* to motivate their
> addressee,
To be clear, are you at all suggesting that it is a necessary condition
for a prescriptive statement that the utterer intends it to motivate?
...
> I should
> distinguish among "moral subjectivism", "moral intersubjectivism", and
> "moral objectivism". I'm a "moral objectivist", with a small o. Rather
> than the truth-conditions for moral claims being subjective (depending
> only on the attitudes of individuals) or intersubjective (depending on
> attitudinal consensus among the members of some group or society), I
> hold that those truth-conditions are *objective* (independent of the
> desires, preferences, feelings, or thoughts of any person or group of
> persons).
>
> What I should have written is simply something like "If you are a moral
> objectivist, you can't be a moral intersubjectivist;
Suppose that some group or society (or even all human beings) shared some
attitudes (giving intersubjective agreement) and that these attitudes
were consistent with
the two positions
> are mutually exclusive. So to consistently hold a morally objectivist
> position, like the one I hold, you have to find some way of getting
> beyond the relativistic mataethics that I've propounded so far; and I
> think that that's possible".
>
> Best wishes,
> Bert
>
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Gordon G. Sollars
...
> But if the
> person you're talking to genuinely thinks that P is *self-evident*, it makes
> no sense to issue a "prove it," unless you're a global skeptic.
So if Smith and Jones hold two incompatible statements which each
genuinely takes to be self-evident, they are in quite a pickle. If they
each ask the other for proof, they are both general skeptics, yet they
each think they know something self evidently.
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Bert Clanton
<kesga...@home.com> wrote:
> Gordon G. Sollars says...
>
> > Of course, you might not be so motivated. Where a cognitivist could
> > get into trouble would be to claim that the reasons for
> > doing X /must/ be motivating in some sense. Whether a person is
> > motivated to do what is right is a fact about his moral psychology.
>
> Here is another important difference between Rand and Aristotle on which
> Aristotle may be closer to the actual truth. Rand's view of emotions
> is, in essence, that your emotions are the product of your premises,
> meaning that if your premises (both conscious and subconscious) are
> rational, the desire to act accordingly will follow more or less
> automatically. Aristotle's view, as I understand it, was that our
> unregulated emotions will draw us towards what is pleasurable and away
> from what is painful -- neither of which always corresponds to what we
> need to do in order to live well (or, in Objectivese, live MQM). That's
> why, in addition to having sound premises, we must also have settled
> dispositions or habits to do the right thing even in situations in which
> doing the right thing in the right amount is less pleasurable or more
> painful than an excess or defect (e.g. eating and sleeping in
> moderation, as opposed to overeating or undereating; acting with
> courage, rather than with rashness or fear; planning and acting long-
> range rather than short-range, etc.).
>
I'm totally an Aristotelian about this--but I respect Rand for what she
was trying to do,
[snip]
> > Where the non-cognitivist can go wrong is to assert that a claim that "X
> > is right" must refer to a feeling of some kind.
>
> Exactly. The confusion is that emotions do play a role, but -- as Rand
> says -- emotions are neither tools of cognition nor guides to action.
>
They aren't tools of cognition, I'd agree. They're often *employed* as
guides to action by human beings, but they're often not *very good*
guides to action: this *sometimes* leads to destructive results.
> > > "The prescriptive espression 'One ought to do X in circumstances C' is
> > > justified under moral system M if and only if the performance of act X
> > > under circumstances C is justified under moral system M."
>
> > OK... And this additional rule is problematic because...?
>
> Because the rule is hypothetical rather than categorical. It doesn't
> answer why we should choose moral system M rather than some other system
> (or no system at all).
>
But this rule is *not an axiom*, and so doesn't *have* to be
categorial. It is a rule of derivation. A moral axiom (in my
perspective) is a descriptive statement like "It is justifiable under
moral system M to approve of X", or (in more conventional language), "X
is (descriptively) good". But given such a descriptive moral axiom, one
wants to be able to derive specific (descriptive) moral judgments from
those axioms, and one also wants to be able to derive *valuative* and
*prescriptive* expressions from such axioms and judgments. For this,
rules of derivation are necessary. Such rules of derivation are in some
ways analogous to "modus ponens" in general logical derivations, but
are not analogous to axioms of a specific system. Modus ponens is
certainly hypothetical.
And every time I post anything about metaethics in HPO, *I myself point
out* that I haven't yet given reasons for choosing one moral system
rather than another. I have promised you, Ken, to discuss this
question with you by private e-mail when I can get around to it, and
will copy what I finally write to anyone who expresses interest by
e-mail to me.
Best wishes,
Bert
Bert Clanton
No way.
An axiom is just a statement in a deductive system which is not implied
by any other statement of the system, but is *assumed without argument*
to be true. When we adopt a particular set of axioms, we don't do it
arbitrarily: we do it for some reason. When we adopt the Euclidean set
of geometric axioms, we don't do it arbitrarily; we do it for the
purpose of generating a set of theorems which accord with our
understanding of certain geometric manifolds. When we adopt the
Lobachevskian set of geometric axioms, we don't do it arbitrarily; we
do it for the purpose of generating a set of theorems which accord with
our understanding of certain *other* geometric manifolds. It thus makes
perfect sense to ask, "Why are you adopting this particular set of
geometric axioms?" The same is true in deductively organized ethical
systems.
To propose that one needs reasons for adopting a certain set of axioms
is *not* self-contradictory. If that were the case, we could
arbitrarily adopt *any* set of axioms with respect to any
subject-matter..
Best wishes,
Bert
Bert Clanton
Sollars <sol...@nji.com> wrote:
> In article <110420011448588130%eubio...@home.com>, Bert Clanton
> writes...
[snip]
>
> > Only
> > prescriptive utterances can be motivating; and even they are motivating
> > only in the sense that their utterer *intends* to motivate their
> > addressee,
>
> To be clear, are you at all suggesting that it is a necessary condition
> for a prescriptive statement that the utterer intends it to motivate?
> ...
Not exactly. I am suggesting that a necessary and sufficient condition
for a prescriptive expression to be *justifiable* is that the act which
it prescribes is justifiable. This is true independently of whether
anyone actually *utters* that expression.
I am also saying that when somebody actually *utters* a prescriptive
expression, they normally utter it for the purpose of motivating
somebody to do something.
[snip]
> > What I should have written is simply something like "If you are a moral
> > objectivist, you can't be a moral intersubjectivist;
>
> Suppose that some group or society (or even all human beings) shared some
> attitudes (giving intersubjective agreement) and that these attitudes
> were consistent with
>
> the two positions
> > are mutually exclusive. So to consistently hold a morally objectivist
> > position, like the one I hold, you have to find some way of getting
> > beyond the relativistic mataethics that I've propounded so far; and I
> > think that that's possible".
> >
Did something get left out here? I don't understand what hypothesis
you're proposing here
IMHO, the truth of a moral judgment either *does* or *does not* depend
on the thoughts, feelings, attitudes, or beliefs characteristic of some
person or collectivity. A moral system in which there is *not* such a
dependency is what I mean by an objectivist moral system. A moral
system in which the truth of a moral judgment *does* depend in some way
on intersubjective agreement among evaluators and/or prescribers is
what I mean by an intersubjectivist moral system. The two possibilities
are mutually exclusive.
Best wishes,
Bert
.
Arnold Broese-van-Groenou
Owl <a@a.a> wrote in message news:9b2mk6$gav$1...@nntp9.atl.mindspring.net...
> "Arnold Broese-van-Groenou" <bro...@ozemail.com.au> wrote in message
> news:4XvA6.849$s34....@ozemail.com.au...
> > By definition an intuited "truth" has no reasoned basis.
>
> Intuited truths are the basis of all reasoning.
>
> Here is a re-post of my old message about "prove-it skepticism".
[clip to]
> 4. INTUITIONISM AND THE 'PROVE IT' OBJECTION
>
> Ethical intuitionism is a theory in moral philosophy that holds that some
> moral judgements are self-evident. For instance:
>
> "It is unjust to punish a person for a crime they did not commit."
> "One should not torture people just for the fun of it."
> "Courage is a virtue."
>
> The above might be examples of such self-evident moral propositions.
> Intuitionists refer to our awareness of these facts as "moral intuitions."
> The single most common objection to intuitionism and one that most
> objectors seem to feel is completely devastating is "Prove it". In other
> words: "You haven't given any reason for believing those statements."
> From the above, you can guess what my response to that is: "Are you a
> global skeptic? If not, then you need a better objection."
I wouldn't so much as ask you to prove it, as to supply some reason, such as
induction or deduction. For example your intuited moral jugements depend on
certain things, such as one having a life to lose, and pain to suffer.
Pain is directly experienced, and there is no need for intuition that it's
undesirable. Likewise you can observe animals seek pleasure as desirable.
The unexpressed assumptions for morality, are facts that one can
_experience_ death and pain, and that life and pleasure are preferred if
given a choice.
Without those, your intuitions are pointless.
[For someone who is permanently brain dead, imprisonment torture and valor
are meaningless. It makes not the slightest difference to their life, so has
no moral significance.]
> [clip to]
> My position is a form of 'foundationalism': foundationalism is the view
that
> some truths are self-evident, that we know them without needing an
argument
> for them; and that all other knowledge rests upon these self-evident (or
> 'foundational') propositions.
Isn't 'self evident' dependent on induction? Your first two examples can be
shown to be bad, by being on the receiving end. Valor is integrity in
action, and that is good for life in principle, even if some specific cases
fail to be.
> What I'm saying, then, is that the 'prove it' objection is a general
> objection to foundationalism, and also that if you reject foundationalism,
> you are committed to global skepticism.
[clip to]
> Or: what you have to do is to explain why some sorts of statements are
> foundational, in such a way that your explanation doesn't apply to moral
> statements. If, for example, you want to say that observations are
> foundational, then you have to answer, "What is it about observations that
> makes them different from moral statements, so that the former can be
> foundational, but not the latter?" No one has ever done this.
No? Observations can be 'shared' and experienced. You can feel (sense)
torture is bad. Moral statements such as it is good to eat your enemy (still
going on in Indonesian Borneo) are simple emotional expressions, that may or
may not be moral in the Objectivist meaning of the word.
How come whole civilizations intuited canibalism and human sacrifice as
morally good, if it is so self evident within oneself that it is not?
> Or: You have to explain why your 'prove it' demand isn't just the general
> prove-it skeptic demand. It's possible that someone could do this after
> all, not everything is foundational, and so someone might have a theory of
> what is foundational, that they could oppose to my theory, and where moral
> propositions don't fall into that category. But so far, no 'prove it'
sayer
> has ever turned out to have anything like this.
I thought that reality was the foundation for all truth, and that everything
has to trace it's justification there. Now, since I regard truth as the
correct identification of facts, moral truths must depend on facts.
[The fact you live, the fact you can experience pain and pleasure, and the
fact that you must choose your actions.]
--
Arnold
Arnold Broese-van-Groenou
Ken Gardner <kesga...@home.com> wrote in message
news:MPG.153e98edd494124a989686@news...
> Gordon G. Sollars says...
>
>
> > Where the non-cognitivist can go wrong is to assert that a claim that "X
> > is right" must refer to a feeling of some kind.
> Exactly. The confusion is that emotions do play a role, but -- as Rand
> says -- emotions are neither tools of cognition nor guides to action.
I have been thinking about this whole 'grounding of ethics' business.
Objectivists rightly justify their ethics by reasoning from certain factual
premises [One lives].
Because logical (is-ought) deductions play such a major role, opponents
wrongly infer that emotion (feeling) has no place in Objectivist ethics.
If this was so, then one would not _care_ about ethics to start with.
[Perhaps Kant believed in an ethics that depended on duty alone, if so, it
is not for humans. Humans need to feel, for motivation.]
Ironically, a rational ethics does depend on emotional rewards as it's
foundation.
The emotional reward is a happy existence. That is the sole purpose of
ethics.
Ethics isn't some sort of intrinsic set of laws that exist independent of
man (such as in the physical world). It depends on volitional behaviour. If
'truth' means correct identification, then when we identify certain facts,
we may categorise them as pertaining to ethics.
IOW, the reference for ethics is ethical facts. [Take in food or you die.]
This is clearer than saying the reference of ethics is ethical truths,
because it makes it look like the truths have an intrinsic quality, rather
than objective one.
--
Arnold
Arnold Broese-van-Groenou
>
> I'm happy to start with yours, I think. Is your definition ("a code of
> conduct required for living well") incompatible with any of the things I
> listed above? What I have been doing is asking you why you are so sure
> you disagree with me. You say that there are "requirements dictated by
> existence" and I agree with that; you say that I "refer to ethical
> truths" /rather/ than reality, but true statements are descriptions of
> reality.
I suppose it a case of Objectivese semantics [truth and fact]. I copy my
response in the 'Ought and Is' thread:
Ethics isn't some sort of intrinsic set of laws that exist independent of
man (such as in the physical world). It depends on volitional behaviour. If
'truth' means correct identification, then when we identify certain facts,
we may categorise them as pertaining to ethics.
IOW, the reference for ethics is ethical facts. [Take in food or you die.]
This is clearer than saying the reference of ethics is ethical truths,
because it makes it look like the truths have an intrinsic quality, rather
than objective one. That is, depend on identification.
>
> So, I'm sure you're sure you disagree with me, but I'm not sure about
> what.
I appear to be mistaken, but I thought that you were an Intuitionist, rather
than one who agreed with Objectivist Ethics. If so, I apologise.
--
Arnold
Dale Worthington
> As good as Objectivists ethics is, it misses the boat on the crucial
> role of habit formation --or, more precisely, the formation of _good_
> habits of choice and action -- in living well and developing our moral
> character.
Well I think that Rand steered clear of those types of things when
discussing ethics. I recall her saying several times in her essays that
there were certain questions that should be handled by the realm of
psychology. It sounds to me if the was certainly one of them.
She also said that to fully integrated her philosophy it would take
someone who was psychologically complete. I think she recognized the
limits to understanding the human mind purely from a philosophical
standpoint.
Dale Worthington
Jddescript
>From: Ken Gardner kesga...@home.com
>Date: 4/11/01 4:39 PM Mountain Daylight Time
>Message-id: <MPG.153e98edd494124a989686@news>
.
>Here is another important difference between Rand and Aristotle on which
>Aristotle may be closer to the actual truth. Rand's view of emotions
>is, in essence, that your emotions are the product of your premises,
>meaning that if your premises (both conscious and subconscious) are
>rational, the desire to act accordingly will follow more or less
>automatically. Aristotle's view, as I understand it, was that our
>unregulated emotions will draw us towards what is pleasurable and away
>from what is painful -- neither of which always corresponds to what we
>need to do in order to live well (or, in Objectivese, live MQM). That's
>why, in addition to having sound premises, we must also have settled
>dispositions or habits to do the right thing even in situations in which
>doing the right thing in the right amount is less pleasurable or more
>painful than an excess or defect (e.g. eating and sleeping in
>moderation, as opposed to overeating or undereating; acting with
>courage, rather than with rashness or fear; planning and acting long-
>range rather than short-range, etc.).
>
>As good as Objectivists ethics is, it misses the boat on the crucial
>role of habit formation --or, more precisely, the formation of _good_
>habits of choice and action -- in living well and developing our moral
>character. Not that Objectivism would disagree with Aristotle on this
>point, just that the Objectivist literature is virtually silent on this
>point.
>
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
You seem to have overlooked a part of the message of the Ayn Rand Theory[ART]
which I have always thought was possibly one reason some people oppose it.
Aside from the positive LOL [Love-Of-Life] message that you identify;{ we learn
the ART for achieving the"'package deal" of FREE->GOOD->HAPPY } there is also a
down side that Ayn Rand taught. Naturally she, of course, illustrated the idea
with her work habits and efforts. In order to love ourselves as part of our
happy we can't just exist passively at the whims of the socialist dictators but
should strive to be at the self determined pinnacle of free people
accomplishment on our chosen path on the American Way. Of course WE [Wealth
Engine] will never totally achieve our goal but WE can be justly proud of our
going process. She spoke expliciltly of the personal rewards of such pride of
self esteem. It's an earned pride and not a king's credit socialist pay auf for
pleasing the king's men such as the KMS [King's Men of Science] of helen.
Good seeing. JD
]
]
]
]
]
]
]
--------------------------------------------------------
Tom Robertson
<snip>
>If the only issue at hand is whether Mr. Huemer believes egoism to be
>false, or believes that he has justification for rejecting it, then there
>is little to argue about. However, Mr. Huemer is presenting his argument to
>convince *others* that egoism is false, so what he personally believes is
>hardly the issue.
Isn't the whole debate between egoism and intuitionism resolved by the
realization that egoism has the intuition that what is good equals
what is good for oneself as its basis?
<snip>