Intuitionism vs. Evolutionary Psychology (To User)
Anthanson1
>>.... "And if you had a theory that could better explain morality, I would
>>reject it
>>> too. But I have never seen any such theory. So, I will accept the
>>least absurd.
>>
>>I introduced you to one before. The moral sensations of humans are
>>simply a product of their biology. We are biologicaly programmed to
>>feel a certain way about murder. Perhaps groups of people that felt
>>negatively about murder had a survical advantage over those that
>>didn't.
>
>
>you:
>>......But this argument only assumes that moral reality is equivalent to
>>moral
>>sensations. It doesn't show that it is.
>>
>
>I was simply trying to generaly outline a scenario that makes more sense than
>moral facts existing. You seemed to be asking for a "least absurd" theory. I
>presented one that was less whimsical and absurd than the existance of moral
>facts.
I don't see how your theory is less absurd. Acknowledging the existence of
moral truths seems less absurd to me than accepting the fact that Hitler, etc.
wasn't really evil - especially since there cases in other domains, viz
logical truths, which cannot be reduced to psychology, evolutionary or
otherwise.
I suggest asking Ivan Ordonez for some recommended books on
>evolutionary
>psychology or something, if you want to go really in depth into why moral
>relativity makes sense and moral realism does not.
See above.
>>Look at the lower animals. A monkey has negative sensations when one of
>>its fellow monkeys is being killed, I would bet. Elephants probably as
>>well. Are these from some realm of truths that the monkey or elephant
>>is percieving?
>>
>
>you:
>>.......They might experience empathy, but in the human realm empathy cannot
>>explain morality
>>since people should often act contrary to empathy.
>
>Right, human behavior is more complex than that of other animals, and we have
>many types of biological urges.
Sure. Then the question ultimately boils down to the basis of the most
fundamental urges of this type. If a mother lacked the urge to prevent harm to
the innocent, I would sooner believe that she is not seeing a moral truth, than
that her actions are not really wrong, just as I would sooner believe that
someone who denies A=A is lacking a rational faculty than believe that A is not
really A.
- I would like to clarify my response here, - particularly the meaning of "I
would sonner believe."
The issue here is what theory is more reasonabe to accept.
Evolutionary psychology has the advantage that it is (or at least appears to
be)
more empirical or scientific than intuitionism. The disadvantage is that it has
to accept the consequence that Hitler wasn't really evil etc. Intuitionism has
the contrary - it appears to violate Occam's razor, be unempirical, while it
has the advantage that it can allow us to say Hitler was really evil. So, when
I say "I would rather believe" above, I mean that, of the two theories,
intuitionism seems more reasonable to me as a theory, given your alternative.
Also, the fact that there seems to be non-inferential, axiomatic truth in other
domains, e. g. logic, indicates that there is a "precedent" for such kinds of
truth.
Now, motivated by empiricism and Occam's razor, you could object that
"axiomatic" logical truths are themselves merely evolutionary artifacts, and
that there is no such precedent. The problem with this, of course, is that it
would undermine your reason for thinking your theory is better than mine. If
the belief that A=A is an evolutionary artifact, and not true in an objective
sense, then it would certainly follow that the more derived and less
fundamental beliefs in empiricism and Occam's razor are also. By your theory ,
it is not really true that
the drive to be empirical, and more economical in theory building would lead
one
closer to what is really true. This drive is merely a biological inclination on
your part, selected through evolution. I happen not to possess this particular
inclination
(evolution evidently is undecided about this trait). But, objectively neither
of us can be said to be right. So, I will end with a question. Why do you think
your theory is better than mine?
Wrathbone
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User 1DE7
>From: Anthanson1 antha...@aol.com
>Date: 10/8/00 12:53 PM Central Daylight Time
>Message-id: <20001008135308...@ng-fk1.aol.com>
>
>>I was simply trying to generaly outline a scenario that makes more sense
>than
>>moral facts existing. You seemed to be asking for a "least absurd" theory. I
>>presented one that was less whimsical and absurd than the existance of moral
>>facts.
>
>
>
>I don't see how your theory is less absurd. Acknowledging the existence of
>moral truths seems less absurd to me than accepting the fact that Hitler,
>etc.
>wasn't really evil
Are you sure *absurd* is the right word here? Immagine that we go back in time
before humans have evolved. I assume you don't think morality exists at this
time. For instance, suppose that a monkey goes around killing other monkeys.
There is no objective moral wrongness occuring here, even though the other
monkeys will probably disaprove of this monkey. Now, humans begin to gradualy
evolve from monkeys. Assume that their minds become more complex, and they
develop a certain predisposition for negative feelings toward humans that kill
other humans, as monkeys likely have. However, as they are more sophisicated
and capable of thinking abstractly, they are able to move beyond simple
negative feelings toward instances of murder and have feelings against murder
in general, etc. Notice how I haven't injected any objective morality into the
situation, yet we have something capable of explaining our moral sensations.
Is this really *absurd*? Maybe you just mean it is less offensive to your wish
that morality be objective?
> especially since there cases in other domains, viz
>logical truths, which cannot be reduced to psychology, evolutionary or
>otherwise.
Yes, logical truths exist, unlike moral ones. However, our knowledge of logical
truths does not at all depend on some sort of direct perception of them. To go
back to my worm example: worms behave logicaly, do they have some direct
awareness of logical truths? Our belief in logical truths can be perfectly
explained as a simple side-effect of evolution.
(note that I am no expert on evolution, and my comments about it come from a
very high-level understanding of it)
> - I would like to clarify my response here, - particularly the meaning of "I
>would sonner believe."
>
>The issue here is what theory is more reasonabe to accept.
>
>Evolutionary psychology has the advantage that it is (or at least appears to
>be)
>more empirical or scientific than intuitionism. The disadvantage is that it
>has
>to accept the consequence that Hitler wasn't really evil etc.
And I think the primary reason you don't accept this is an emotional one. You
keep saying it is a disadvantage.. well, it might be disadvantagious to your
desire to feel justified in your feelings that what hitler did was unjust, but
how is it disadvantagious to the case for its truth?
>Intuitionism has
>the contrary - it appears to violate Occam's razor, be unempirical, while it
>has the advantage that it can allow us to say Hitler was really evil.
To call that an advantage really seems silly. To me it is like saying "Well,
theory A has the advantage that we want it to be true, so if we call it true we
can feel good"
>So, when
>I say "I would rather believe" above, I mean that, of the two theories,
>intuitionism seems more reasonable to me as a theory, given your alternative.
You say it seems more reasonable, but I have not seen anything from you to
indicate that the reason you prefer it is simply that you'd like moral facts to
be objective.
>Also, the fact that there seems to be non-inferential, axiomatic truth in
>other
>domains, e. g. logic, indicates that there is a "precedent" for such kinds of
>truth.
I don't know what you mean by calling a truth inferential or not. It seems to
me that inference is a process taking place within the organism, and is not
actualy a property of an actual descriptive fact.
If you think that we directly percieve logical truths, then your drawing the
analogy here to moral truths is exactly what I pointed out in another thread
causes intuitionalists to hold their beliefs. If you recognize that beliefs in
logcal truths are the result of evolution and not some direct link with the
realm of truth, then it will clear up a lot of the whimsical thinking in the
realm of morality.
>Now, motivated by empiricism and Occam's razor, you could object that
>"axiomatic" logical truths are themselves merely evolutionary artifacts, and
>that there is no such precedent.
I am not sure what you mean to call some logical truth axiomatic apart from
some logical system. Reality works how it works. The choice of which properties
that reality has to call an axiom or not seems to be a human one.
>The problem with this, of course, is that it
>would undermine your reason for thinking your theory is better than mine. If
>the belief that A=A is an evolutionary artifact, and not true in an objective
>sense
I think it is both. We believe logical truths because organisms that "believed"
them were selected for, and those organisms were selected for because those
beliefs were true.
>By your theory ,
>it is not really true that
>the drive to be empirical, and more economical in theory building would lead
>one
>closer to what is really true. This drive is merely a biological inclination
>on
>your part, selected through evolution.
Right, and I think it was selected for a reason, namely that it was more
conducive to truth. I am not saying that logic is false because we don't know
it directly, just that we don't know it directly.
>This drive is merely a biological inclination on
>your part, selected through evolution. I happen not to possess this
>particular
>inclination
>(evolution evidently is undecided about this trait). But, objectively neither
>of us can be said to be right.
Depends on what you mean by "objectively." Assuming reason is a correct means
of yielding truth, then I am right in that context. However, you might say that
we have no objective reason to accept that reasoning is a correct means of
yielding truth. I don't really have an argument for you in that case. I think
we need to take something as foundational, that cannot be justified in terms of
anything else.
>So, I will end with a question. Why do you think
>your theory is better than mine?
According to reason, my theory is better than yours. However, as reason is
simply a product of evolution and does not provide a direct link with truth,
this may be false. I am however unable to not believe in the correctness of
reason, and I see no other standard by which to judge our theories.
-User
Gordon G. Sollars
Friedman writes...
> These are issues that I also find of interest; there is a short piece of
> mine up on my web page that deals with some of them (a discussion of my
> view of oughts).
As do I, although I find the naturalist version of moral realism more
convincing than the intuitionism of either Wrathbone or Owl (or Sir David
Ross or G.E. Moore for that matter).
> Two points in (qualified) defense of Wrathbone's position:
>
> 1. Suppose we are uncertain whether normative proposition are really
> true/false (Wrathbone's view) or merely programmed responses of no moral
> significance (User's position, according to which nothing has moral
> significance as the rest of use think of the concept). If Wrathbone is
> correct and I act as if User is, I am likely to end up doing wicked
> things. Reverse the assumptions, and my errors are much less serious. So
> a sort of variant of Pascal's wager suggests that, if in doubt, you
> should act as if morality is real.
This seems to assume that you think you will do a better job trying to
act on "Wrathbone's" rules than on "User's" programming. Why is that?
The "Good Samaritan" experiment suggests that even persons with strong
reasons for wanting to "follow Wrathbone" in this regard often fail to do
so.
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Anthanson1
>From: "Gordon G. Sollars" sol...@nji.com
>Date: 10/8/00 5:25 PM Pacific Daylight Time
>Message-id: <MPG.144ada7832...@mail.nji.com>
Sure. But let's say the realist and relativist
are faced with the same tough moral dilemma. I am not familiar with the Good
Samaritan example, but let's say they each find a wallet with a large amount of
money in it (and the owner's driver's license and address). They might both
have the same reasons not to return it, but it seems like the relativist would
have an additional strong reason not to do so, namely that keeping the money
isn't really wrong.
Gordon G. Sollars
writes...
...
> But let's say the realist and relativist
> are faced with the same tough moral dilemma. I am not familiar with the Good
> Samaritan example,
It's one of those wonderful experiments that psychologists sometimes come
up with. Theology students are told that they are to give a talk in
another building. Some are told that they are to speak on the Good
Samaritan story; some are told that they are late and must hurry, and
some that they have plenty of time to get there. On the way to give the
talk, each subject encounters a "victim" laying on the ground. The only
variable that affected whether a student stopped to help was the time.
Only about 10% of those told to speak on the Good Samaritan story who
were afraid of being late stopped to help. The dreaded moral relativist
Gilbert Harman uses this example in one of his papers.
> but let's say they each find a wallet with a large amount of
> money in it (and the owner's driver's license and address). They might both
> have the same reasons not to return it, but it seems like the relativist
> would
> have an additional strong reason not to do so, namely that keeping the money
> isn't really wrong.
Well, as I have said, I am not a moral relativist, but I don't think that
this is fair to relativism. What is "really wrong", as opposed to just
"wrong"? I don't why the relativist could not be completely convinced
that keeping the wallet was the wrong thing to do, even as he recognizes
that others might disagree.
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Churl Beck
> Intuitionism [as opposed to evolutionary psychology]...appears to...be
> unempirical, while it has the advantage that it can allow us to say Hitler
> was really evil. So, when I say "I would rather believe" above, I mean
> that, of the two theories, intuitionism seems more reasonable to me as
> a theory, given your alternative.
Why is it an advantage? To whom and for what purpose is it advantageous?
user...@my-deja.com
gsol...@pobox.com wrote:
> In article <ddfr-5586D9.1...@nuq-read.news.verio.net>,
David
> Friedman writes...
> > These are issues that I also find of interest; there is a short
piece of
> > mine up on my web page that deals with some of them (a discussion
of my
> > view of oughts).
>
> As do I, although I find the naturalist version of moral realism more
> convincing than the intuitionism of either Wrathbone or Owl (or Sir
David
> Ross or G.E. Moore for that matter).
I notice that David Friedman posted to this thread, but his post hasn't
shown up on deja.com, or my aol newsreader, so the only evidence I have
of it is that Gordon Sollars seems to be replying to him. Could someone
possibly re-post his message(s) to this thread? Thanks.
-User
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Dave OHearn
> "Anthanson1" wrote:
>
> > Intuitionism [as opposed to evolutionary psychology]...appears to...be
> > was really evil. So, when I say "I would rather believe" above, I mean
> > that, of the two theories, intuitionism seems more reasonable to me as
> > a theory, given your alternative.
>
It's that old false alternative of consciousness "vs." existence, mind
vs. body, logic vs. experience, etc. If you believe in the false
alternative, you can take your choice between Christ and Marx. Not
altogether comforting (or rational).
--
Dave O'Hearn
Owl
news:MPG.144ada7832...@mail.nji.com...
> As do I, although I find the naturalist version of moral realism more
> convincing than the intuitionism of either Wrathbone or Owl (or Sir
David
> Ross or G.E. Moore for that matter).
What about that of H.A. Prichard? ;)
Well, there will be a paper of mine about the epistemological problems
with naturalism in a future issue of the Southern Journal of Philosophy
(I'm not sure which yet) - to which I refer you.
Owl
...
> Only about 10% of those told to speak on the Good Samaritan story who
> were afraid of being late stopped to help. The dreaded moral relativist
> Gilbert Harman uses this example in one of his papers.
That's a funny story. How many of thse who were not late stopped to help?
I wonder what point Gil used the example to illustrate?
> > money in it (and the owner's driver's license and address). They might
both
> > have the same reasons not to return it, but it seems like the
relativist
> > would
> > have an additional strong reason not to do so, namely that keeping the
money
> > isn't really wrong.
>
> Well, as I have said, I am not a moral relativist, but I don't think
that
> this is fair to relativism.
I think Wrathbone should have said rather "the moral skeptic or nihilist."
Gordon G. Sollars
> Gordon G. Sollars <sol...@nji.com> wrote in message
> news:MPG.144b9a8d2b...@mail.nji.com...
> ...
> > Only about 10% of those told to speak on the Good Samaritan story who
> > were afraid of being late stopped to help. The dreaded moral relativist
> > Gilbert Harman uses this example in one of his papers.
>
> That's a funny story. How many of thse who were not late stopped to help?
Of the ones who were told they had to speak on the Good Samaritan it was
about half, as I recall.
> I wonder what point Gil used the example to illustrate?
He is taking a shot directly at "virtue ethics", with some spill over to
other non-relativist views. I think you can find the details on his
webpage.
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
kiek...@aol.com
> > money in it (and the owner's driver's license and address). They
might both
> > have the same reasons not to return it, but it seems like the
relativist
> > would
> > have an additional strong reason not to do so, namely that keeping
the money
> > isn't really wrong.
>
that
just
> "wrong"? I don't why the relativist could not be completely
convinced
> that keeping the wallet was the wrong thing to do, even as he
recognizes
> that others might disagree.
>
> --
> Gordon Sollars
> gsol...@pobox.com
>
If what you're talking about is moral anti-realism, I agree (I wouldn't
call the above view "relativism", though). I have a couple of short
papers on this issue in my philosophy pages:
http://members.aol.com/kiekeben/phil.html
--
Franz
http://members.aol.com/kiekeben/home.html
kiek...@aol.com
> > I wonder what point Gil used the example to illustrate?
>
> He is taking a shot directly at "virtue ethics", with some spill over
to
> other non-relativist views. I think you can find the details on his
> webpage.
>
> --
> Gordon Sollars
> gsol...@pobox.com
>
Yep, it's in an article titled "Moral Philosophy Meets Social
Psychology", http://www.cogsi.princeton.edu/~ghh/Virtue.html
Mark Young
>>> Only about 10% of those told to speak on the Good Samaritan story
>>> who were afraid of being late stopped to help. The dreaded moral
>>> relativist Gilbert Harman uses this example in one of his papers.
Owl:
>> That's a funny story. How many of thse who were not late stopped to
>> help?
Gordon G. Sollars:
> Of the ones who were told they had to speak on the Good Samaritan it
> was about half, as I recall.
From his paper (at http://www.cogsci.princeton.edu/~ghh/Virtue.html):
>= The only one of these variables that made a difference was how much
>= of a hurry the subjects were in. 63% of subjects that were in no
>= hurry stopped to help, 45% of those in a moderate hurry stopped, and
>= 10% of those that were in a great hurry stopped. It made no
>= difference whether the students were assigned to talk on the Good
>= Samaritan Parable, nor did it matter what their religious outlook
>= was.
[from section 5.2]
>> I wonder what point Gil used the example to illustrate?
> He is taking a shot directly at "virtue ethics", with some spill over
> to other non-relativist views.
In particular, the example is meant to illustrate the fundamental
attribution error (FAE). The FAE is the error of explaining a person's
actions by postulating character traits where situational factors are
quite sufficient. In particular, the priest and Levite might have been
distracted or in a hurry, and the Samaritan not. Recreating the story
under controlled conditions showed that only the situational factor had
any measurable effect on behaviour. Harmon goes on to argue that this
(among other things) shows that there are "no ordinary character traits
of the sort people think there are", and further that there are "none
of the usual moral virtues and vices" [both from section 1].
Harmon overstates his case. It is true that situational factors are
*much* more important in determining behaviour than character traits;
but there are detectable character traits. He (perhaps) saves himself
by specifying "of the sort people think there are", since he does say
that character traits are meant to be "broad based" -- being honest or
fearful in only a few limited circumstances does not count as having
the character traits of honesty or cowardice. The traits that social
(and personality) psychologists find show up not as "broad *based*
dispositions" but merely as "broad dispositions". That is, honest
people are more likely to tell the truth than dishonest people, even
tho there is a wide range of circumstances under which both would
choose the same strategy (lying, truth-telling). The "Knights and
Knaves" of logic/philosophy really are caricatures of honesty and
dishonesty.
I think the only thing we can conclude from the FAE is that people are
much more prone to condemn or praise than they should be -- attributing
vices or virtues with insufficient evidence. That would help explain
why some people are seen so much differently by different people -- one
person saw him in a"hurried" situation, while another saw him in an
"unhurried" situation. Combine that with Confirmation Bias (the
tendency of people to notice things that confirm what they believe and
miss or even dismiss things that disconfirm it), and you have the basis
for "reasonable" people disagreeing vehemently about the moral
character of someone they both know.
...mark young
Jesus 1DE7
Okay, since no one has re-posted friendman's message for me I will just reply
to the cut up version that I found in a post by "gordon sollars".
>In article <ddfr-5586D9.1...@nuq-read.news.verio.net>, David
>Friedman writes...
>> These are issues that I also find of interest; there is a short piece of
>> mine up on my web page that deals with some of them (a discussion of my
>> view of oughts).
I was going to e-mail you sometime to prod you to elaborate further on the
issue. The one you refer to isn't very detailed, but there were a few things
about it that I thought did not make it terribly convincing.
If you take my position, it only requires one "world". "Moral facts" are
explained simply in terms of biology, which is part of the single world of
particles behaving according to laws of physics and such.
If you say "well, the evidence for our senses is sort of shakey, and the case
for moral truths is only a little shakier, therefore we shouldn't feel too
irrational about believing in moral truths" then you're doing more than just
accepting something slightly less credible. You are making reality far more
complex because you're stipulating some parallel world, or realm, that exists
in tandem with the physical one, and somehow interacts with the physical world
(some would say we can directly percieve this realm of moral truths by using
reason).
Another thing is that we can perfectly explain (I think) moral facts in terms
of the physical universe, but we don't have a similar means to explain our
impressions of the physical universe with. We certainly wouldn't try to explain
our senses as just a side affect of the realm of moral truths. For instance
"You only see a chair there because the wrongness of murder and the wrongness
of stealing are such that their properties cause you to visualize a chair." So
there is a lack of symmetry there.
I also think that if we accept reason as a valid means of discovering truth,
the evidence for some sort of physical reality existing is enormously stronger
than the evidence for moral reality -- not as similar as you imply. For
instance, can you give some reasons for why we should doubt that physical
reality exists? (I think focusing too much on our sense impressions is not as
relelvent. Even if our sense impressions were not accurate on a direct level
(we were brains in vats, or something), then it still would not cast much doubt
on physical reality existing, I don't think).
>> Two points in (qualified) defense of Wrathbone's position:
>>
>> 1. Suppose we are uncertain whether normative proposition are really
>> true/false (Wrathbone's view) or merely programmed responses of no moral
>> significance (User's position, according to which nothing has moral
>> significance as the rest of use think of the concept). If Wrathbone is
>> correct and I act as if User is, I am likely to end up doing wicked
>> things. Reverse the assumptions, and my errors are much less serious. So
>> a sort of variant of Pascal's wager suggests that, if in doubt, you
>> should act as if morality is real.
I don't see how this follows unless you stipulate some sort of christian hell
for people who do wicked things.
Suppose moral truths are in fact real, and you act as if they are not. Suppose
this causes you to do things that are *really* wrong. What exactly is the
downside here, from your point of view? What will happen to you? Nothing. Since
you don't believe in morality, you won't believe what you do is wrong even if
it is, so to you it will seem exactly as if morality did not exist. Therefore I
fail to see why this suggests that you should act as if morality is real.
In fact, I think the opposite is suggested. Holding false beliefs about
morality will create REAL consequences for you. Suppose you like X, but some
alleged "moral fact" says X is bad, then you are harmed by conforming to
morality (if we regard harm as frustrating your preferences) if in fact it
doesn't exist. But, as I say above, even if morality is real and you don't act
morality, *there are no real consequences.* So, a rational person ought to act
as if morality is not real, even if he thinks it very well could be.
Maybe I could even make a case for why acting as if morality is not real even
if you are 100% certain that it is is not irrational from a cost/benefit
perspective. I'd use the same reasoning.
That morality is real seems sort of like a hypothesis that has no practical
consequences, and thus cannot be tested.
Apart from that, the sheer incomprehensibleness of it also should be a big
hurdle in believing it. To me, it almost doesn't make sense at all to say
simple "You ought to do X", etc. I really cannot understand how that sentance
would have any absolute meaning. It is almost as if I were trying to immagine
that A!=A (probably not quite as bad).
Just as an example, I will assign probabilities to my beliefs in an objective
moral reality, and in some sort of objective physical reality.
That a physical reality exists: .999999999999999999999 (roughly)
That a moral reality exists: .03 (roughly, it will probably get lower as I
think about this more)
In thinking about this, you might ask yourself "would I bet my life against 1
dollar that physical reality exists?"
Then "would I bet my life against 1 dollar that morality has objective
existance?"
You should have an enormously higher aversion to taking the second bet than the
first, if you are anything like me. Hopefuly considering questions like that
will get you to alter your perception of the relative likelyhoods of physical
and moral realities existing.
If anyone thinks the relative probabilities that I assign to things are too far
apart, I encourage you to give me reasons to think otherwise.
-User
Gordon G. Sollars
...
> Gordon G. Sollars:
> > Of the ones who were told they had to speak on the Good Samaritan it
> > was about half, as I recall.
>
> From his paper (at http://www.cogsci.princeton.edu/~ghh/Virtue.html):
Thanks, I had lost track of the URL and was working from memory.
...
> Harmon overstates his case. It is true that situational factors are
> *much* more important in determining behaviour than character traits;
> but there are detectable character traits.
Based on what sort of evidence? How many runs of the Good Samaritan
experiment or such-like do we have?
> He (perhaps) saves himself
> by specifying "of the sort people think there are", since he does say
> that character traits are meant to be "broad based" -- being honest or
> fearful in only a few limited circumstances does not count as having
> the character traits of honesty or cowardice.
Well, I think he is simply following Aristotle here. The "people" he has
in mind are probably colleagues who are virtue ethicists. And, starting
with Aristotle, a few instances of honesty are not enough for virtue.
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Gordon G. Sollars
writes...
>
>
> Okay, since no one has re-posted friendman's message for me I will just reply
> to the cut up version that I found in a post by "gordon sollars".
Hey, that's what happens when you post to a newsgroup dedicated to
egoism. ;-)
BTW, the post was made by Gordon Sollars, not "gordon sollars". However,
to avoid confusion, I /have/ named my name "Gordon Sollars".
...
> If you take my position, it only requires one "world". "Moral facts" are
> explained simply in terms of biology, which is part of the single world of
> particles behaving according to laws of physics and such.
Your position, although perhaps incompatible with David's (and
Wrathbone's and Owl's) - I leave that argument up to you and them - is
not, at least in the "one world" regard, incompatible with moral realism.
The moral realist can hold that the moral world supervenes on the
physical world, in the way that chemistry depends on physics, and biology
on chemistry.
A moral realist such as Richard Boyd or Nicholas Sturgeon (or Aristotle
for that matter) is quite happy to base moral facts on biological (and
other) facts - but without putting quote marks around them. This brand
of moral realist scoffs at the naturalistic fallacy.
We moral realists are more than a match for you moral relativists - when
we are not arguing with each other, of course. ;-)
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
User 1DE7
>From: "Gordon G. Sollars" sol...@nji.com
>Message-id: <MPG.144e502ade...@mail.nji.com>
>Your position, although perhaps incompatible with David's (and
>Wrathbone's and Owl's) - I leave that argument up to you and them - is
>not, at least in the "one world" regard, incompatible with moral realism.
>The moral realist can hold that the moral world supervenes on the
>physical world, in the way that chemistry depends on physics, and biology
>on chemistry.
So for instance chemistry or biology is to physics what moral reality is to
physical reality?
Well, biology can be reduced entirely to physics (or we will assume it), so
similarly morality should be able to be reduced to physical reality.. no?
Would not that imply that we should have physical evidence for morality being
objective?
I am not familiar with your version of moral reality, maybe you could summarize
or else refer me to some place (preferably on the internet) where I could read
about it.
-User
Owl
news:8rvg9d$ae0$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
> In particular, the example is meant to illustrate the fundamental
> attribution error (FAE). The FAE is the error of explaining a person's
> actions by postulating character traits where situational factors are
> quite sufficient. In particular, the priest and Levite might have been
> distracted or in a hurry, and the Samaritan not. Recreating the story
Sounds reasonable to me.
This is certainly an interesting experiment.
> under controlled conditions showed that only the situational factor had
> any measurable effect on behaviour. Harmon goes on to argue that this
> (among other things) shows that there are "no ordinary character traits
> of the sort people think there are", and further that there are "none
> of the usual moral virtues and vices" [both from section 1].
But boy is that a hasty generalization, if I ever saw one -- unless Harman
had a whole bunch more experimental evidence to cite.
> Harmon overstates his case. It is true that situational factors are
You can say that again. This was just one example of a pretty specific
sort of situation. Maybe if the experiment were repeated for actions
involving all the character traits that people normally think exist. Plus,
wouldn't the experiment show that the 10% of people who stopped, who were
in a great hurry, did have the character trait of generosity or
good-samaritan-hood, or some such? And that the ones who didn't stop when
they were not in a hurry, had the character trait of selfishness?
Otherwise, how would Harman explain their behavior?
> I think the only thing we can conclude from the FAE is that people are
> much more prone to condemn or praise than they should be -- attributing
> vices or virtues with insufficient evidence.
Well, any veteran of hpo knows that already.
Owl
news:20001010175811...@ng-cg1.aol.com...
> If you take my position, it only requires one "world". "Moral facts" are
> explained simply in terms of biology, which is part of the single world
of
> particles behaving according to laws of physics and such.
I find this not at all convincing.
First, it's strained to call morality a 'world'. What you actually mean is
that there would be more objective facts -- not only physical facts, but
moral facts too. So what? Why can't there be moral facts too?
Second, it strikes me that your effort to maintain a pure physicalist
viewpoint is under (justified) attack from so many fronts at once, that
it's just a desperate hope that it could be true. You can't explain
consciousness, or free will, or a priori knowledge, or logic, or
universals, or morality. You wind up adopting self-defeating positions all
so you won't have to admit there's something non-physical. Why are we
taking physicalism as an axiom, to be held as such an unquestionable truth
that we're going to reject "You shouldn't murder people" in favor of
"Physicalism is true"?
> You are making reality far more
> complex because you're stipulating some parallel world, or realm, that
exists
> in tandem with the physical one, and somehow interacts with the physical
world
> (some would say we can directly percieve this realm of moral truths by
using
> reason).
Some would indeed.
I'm really not sure what all this "parallel world or realm" talk amounts
to. I say it's a fact that pain is bad. Does that fact constitute a
"parallel realm"?
> Another thing is that we can perfectly explain (I think) moral facts in
terms
> of the physical universe, but we don't have a similar means to explain
our
No, we can't. That's your whole point. You're saying we have to *reject*
moral facts, because you can't explain them in terms of the physical
universe. In other words: If you assume there are only physical facts,
then you can't say there are also moral facts. I'll buy that. It's also
true that if you assume there are only moral facts, then you can't say
there are also physical facts. But I don't see why anyone would make
either assumption.
> impressions of the physical universe with. We certainly wouldn't try to
explain
> our senses as just a side affect of the realm of moral truths. For
instance
> "You only see a chair there because the wrongness of murder and the
wrongness
> of stealing are such that their properties cause you to visualize a
chair." So
> there is a lack of symmetry there.
No, but you could explain your 'impressions' of a physical universe by
appealing to only mental facts (see Berkeley). Why don't you adopt
Berkeleyan idealism? After all, it's simpler. There are fewer facts in
Berkeley's theory. You don't have to have two separate 'realms', the
mental and the physical. You only have the mental. Is that a good argument
for idealism?
> I also think that if we accept reason as a valid means of discovering
truth,
> the evidence for some sort of physical reality existing is enormously
stronger
> than the evidence for moral reality -- not as similar as you imply. For
If we accept reason as a valid means for discovering truth, then we have
to accept moral reality, since moral truths can be known through the
exercise of reason.
> instance, can you give some reasons for why we should doubt that
physical
> reality exists? (I think focusing too much on our sense impressions is
not as
Nope; we shouldn't doubt it. Now, can you give reasons for doubting that
moral reality exists? So far, I haven't heard any -- unless you start by
assuming physicalism (which is pretty much begging the question), and you
haven't given any reason for assuming physicalism.
> relelvent. Even if our sense impressions were not accurate on a direct
level
> (we were brains in vats, or something), then it still would not cast
much doubt
> on physical reality existing, I don't think).
> Suppose moral truths are in fact real, and you act as if they are not.
Suppose
> this causes you to do things that are *really* wrong. What exactly is
the
> downside here,
That you do wrong things.
> from your point of view? What will happen to you? Nothing.
Are you assuming ethical egoism here? I didn't think you were an egoist.
There are two possibilities. Either
a) You're assuming ethical egoism, so nothing matters except what helps or
hurts YOU. In that case, however, you would NOT be doing anything really
wrong, while serving your own interests -- contrary to the supposition
above.
b) We're supposing ethical egoism is false, so other things (perhaps
including the interests of other people) matter besides YOU. And then
we're imagining that you did some selfish things that were wrong (perhaps
because they hurt other people). Then what's the downside? That you hurt
other people (or whatever). How does that hurt you, you ask? We just
stipulated that it didn't -- remember, we're supposing ethical egoism is
false, so you aren't the only thing that matters.
> Since
> you don't believe in morality, you won't believe what you do is wrong
even if
> it is, so to you it will seem exactly as if morality did not exist.
"It seems to you as if P" doesn't imply "P". And in particular, "It would
seem to you as if you didn't do anything wrong" doesn't imply "you
wouldn't have done anything wrong." So I don't see what your point is
there.
> Therefore I
> fail to see why this suggests that you should act as if morality is
real.
By definition, you should do things that you should do. If we assume that
morality is real, and so it is really true, for example, that you should
respect people's rights, then by definition you should respect people's
rights. On the other hand, if morality isn't real, then it's not the case
that you should respect people's rights, but it's also not the case that
you should violate them either. Thus, by respecting people's rights, you
can't go wrong (you may be doing what you should, and you can't be doing
what you shouldn't).
> In fact, I think the opposite is suggested. Holding false beliefs about
> morality will create REAL consequences for you.
By "real" consequences, do you mean consequences that are REALLY bad?
> Suppose you like X, but some
> alleged "moral fact" says X is bad, then you are harmed by conforming to
> morality (if we regard harm as frustrating your preferences) if in fact
it
> doesn't exist.
Yep, but since there are no moral facts, being harmed is no worse than
being helped, so there's no problem.
> But, as I say above, even if morality is real and you don't act
> morality, *there are no real consequences.*
I think you've got it backwards. If morality isn't real, then nothing
matters. If morality isn't real, and your belief that it is causes you to
die a painful death, so what? It doesn't matter, since there's no fact
that pain is bad, and there's no fact that life was good. There are, then
no 'real consequences' to anything on your theory, since it never matters
what happens, no matter what you do.
> Apart from that, the sheer incomprehensibleness of it also should be a
big
> hurdle in believing it.
I find the sheer incomprehensibility of your position a big hurdle in
believing it. And I'm not just being difficult here. I find it hard to
credit that someone would think that pleasure is no better than pain, life
no better than death, and so on for everything else. Stick your hand on a
stove. You really think there's nothing bad about that?
> That a physical reality exists: .999999999999999999999 (roughly)
That sounds roughly right -- give or take a few dozen 9's.
> That a moral reality exists: .03 (roughly, it will probably get lower as
I
I would say between .9 and .99. So yes, I agree that it is more certain
that physical objects exist than that moral facts exist.
By the way, what are you basing these numbers on? Intuition?
> In thinking about this, you might ask yourself "would I bet my life
against 1
> dollar that physical reality exists?"
>
> Then "would I bet my life against 1 dollar that morality has objective
> existance?"
You should, because if morality isn't objective, and you lose the bet,
then it doesn't matter.
Mark Young
>> In particular, the example is meant to illustrate the fundamental
>> attribution error (FAE). The FAE is the error of explaining a
>> person's actions by postulating character traits where situational
>> factors are quite sufficient. In particular, the priest and Levite
>> might have been distracted or in a hurry, and the Samaritan not.
Owl:
> Sounds reasonable to me.
Well, if it were a true story, it would be reasonable. Of course, it
was a parable Jesus made up to illustrate a point. When I was reading
Harman I got the impression that he thought Jesus was saying to go out
and be helpful to people "unless you're in a hurry or something."
> This is certainly an interesting experiment.
They did a lot of interesting experiments back in the days before
ethics committees were invented and started ruining all the fun.
>> Recreating the story under controlled conditions showed that only
>> the situational factor had any measurable effect on behaviour.
>> Harmon goes on to argue that this (among other things) shows that
>> there are "no ordinary character traits of the sort people think
>> there are", and further that there are "none of the usual moral
>> virtues and vices" [both from section 1].
> But boy is that a hasty generalization, if I ever saw one -- unless
> Harman had a whole bunch more experimental evidence to cite.
He only cited the two experiments in this paper, but there are plenty
more he *could* have cited. It is true that social psychology had a
period in which the existence of character traits was considered
doubtful -- there was just too much evidence that the situation was all
powerful that they considered the possibility that all the differences
*were* situational, but they just weren't controlling the situations
enough to squeeze out all the variability. This period has passed.
>> Harmon overstates his case. It is true that situational factors are
> You can say that again. This was just one example of a pretty specific
> sort of situation.
Similar results were produced in lots of different situations. The
view Harman takes is one that was seriously considered by researchers.
> Maybe if the experiment were repeated for actions involving all the
> character traits that people normally think exist.
Enough traits were studied to make the conjecture plausible, anyway.
> Plus, wouldn't the experiment show that the 10% of people who
> stopped, who were in a great hurry, did have the character trait of
> generosity or good-samaritan-hood, or some such?
That would be one explanation of their deviation from the norm. Of
course, it might also be some random factor in the environment that
wasn't controlled for. The given experiment couldn't be used to see if
people were consistent in their helping/non-helping behaviour, so it
could not tell whether there was a trait there or not. What the
experiment showed was that situation was more important than trait in
determining response (in general). That result has been found again
and again. Traits apply mostly "at the margin".
> And that the ones who didn't stop when they were not in a hurry, had
> the character trait of selfishness? Otherwise, how would Harman
> explain their behavior?
>> I think the only thing we can conclude from the FAE is that people
>> are much more prone to condemn or praise than they should be --
>> attributing vices or virtues with insufficient evidence.
> Well, any veteran of hpo knows that already.
It's just that they rarely notice that they themselves are as much
perpetrator as victim....
Mark Young
> I'm really not sure what all this "parallel world or realm" talk
> amounts to. I say it's a fact that pain is bad.
I'd say that pain is unpleasant -- tho some people seem to enjoy it.
I'd also say that pain serves a useful purpose -- letting us know when
we're damaged.
I'm not sure what this "bad" talk amounts to. And based on what people
say about it, it's quite unclear to me whether "pain is bad" should be
true or false. Making people aware of situations that require action
on their part would seem to be in the "good" category....
Gordon G. Sollars
...
> I'd say that pain is unpleasant -- tho some people seem to enjoy it.
> I'd also say that pain serves a useful purpose -- letting us know when
> we're damaged.
>
> I'm not sure what this "bad" talk amounts to. And based on what people
> say about it, it's quite unclear to me whether "pain is bad" should be
> true or false. Making people aware of situations that require action
> on their part would seem to be in the "good" category....
There is a wonderful scene in Wilson & Shea's /Illuminatus!/ in which
James Joyce tries to explain away his daughter's mental illness by
saying, "What she does with language is not really that different from
what I do". To this, Carl Jung replies, "But you are diving, and she is
sinking".
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Dave OHearn
> Owl:
> > I'm really not sure what all this "parallel world or realm" talk
> > amounts to. I say it's a fact that pain is bad.
>
> I'd also say that pain serves a useful purpose -- letting us know when
> we're damaged.
To say that, you already had to accept life as the primary value. Owl
doesn't do this, and as you can see, it makes a fundamental difference.
It isn't as simple as that, though. Objectivism doesn't say "Life is
good," as an axiom, but "The good is what promotes life," by definition.
It's a bit longer than that, as it defines value first, and rests on the
more fundamental issues, but that's the essense of it.
--
Dave O'Hearn
Gordon G. Sollars
writes...
...
> >Your position, although perhaps incompatible with David's (and
> >Wrathbone's and Owl's) - I leave that argument up to you and them - is
> >not, at least in the "one world" regard, incompatible with moral realism.
> >The moral realist can hold that the moral world supervenes on the
> >physical world, in the way that chemistry depends on physics, and biology
> >on chemistry.
>
> So for instance chemistry or biology is to physics what moral reality is to
> physical reality?
>
> Well, biology can be reduced entirely to physics (or we will assume it), so
> similarly morality should be able to be reduced to physical reality.. no?
Why should we assume that it can be so reduced? Do you have the
reduction in hand? Can you even reduce chemistry to physics? In any
event, /if/ such a reduction is possible, I claim that biologists will
continue to use biological language, since humans would find it
impossible in practice to proceed any other way. There will still be
"biological facts", i.e.., facts expressed in biological language. Or,
for that matter, "economic facts" and "political facts", all of which a
reductionist might assume could be reduced in principle to a massive
description of the movement of tiny particles.
...
> I am not familiar with your version of moral reality, maybe you could sum
> marize
> or else refer me to some place (preferably on the internet) where I could
> read
> about it.
That's going to have to wait for an evening where I have more time. Try
a search on "moral realism" and "naturalism".
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Mark Young
>>> I'm really not sure what all this "parallel world or realm" talk
>>> amounts to. I say it's a fact that pain is bad.
Mark Young:
>> I'd say that pain is unpleasant -- tho some people seem to enjoy it.
>> I'd also say that pain serves a useful purpose -- letting us know
>> when we're damaged.
Dave OHearn:
> To say that, you already had to accept life as the primary value.
I don't think that's quite right -- I'd only have to accept that life
is valuable. I could have, say, crokinole as my primary value; any
damage to my body might interfere with my crokinole game, and so should
be dealt with. Life then gets only an instrumental value -- it is
necessary for my purposes (they don't let dead people play in the major
crokinole tournaments).
> Owl doesn't do this, and as you can see, it makes a fundamental
> difference.
I think Owl and I both prefer life to the alternative....
Mark Young
>> I'd say that pain is unpleasant -- tho some people seem to enjoy it.
>> I'd also say that pain serves a useful purpose -- letting us know
>> when we're damaged.
>>
>> I'm not sure what this "bad" talk amounts to. And based on what
>> people say about it, it's quite unclear to me whether "pain is bad"
>> should be true or false. Making people aware of situations that
>> require action on their part would seem to be in the "good"
>> category....
> There is a wonderful scene in Wilson & Shea's /Illuminatus!/ in which
> James Joyce tries to explain away his daughter's mental illness by
> saying, "What she does with language is not really that different
> from what I do". To this, Carl Jung replies, "But you are diving,
> and she is sinking".
Good one, Carl.
I'm a bit fuzzy on your intent, tho, Gordon. It seems like you're
saying "pain is bad" is false, as is "pain is good". The masochist is
diving in pain, and the accident victim is sinking in it.
And so? Saying that some pain is good, and some pain is bad in no way
makes "good" and "bad" any clearer -- it muddies the water, in fact.
Gordon G. Sollars
...
> gsol...@pobox.com:
> > There is a wonderful scene in Wilson & Shea's /Illuminatus!/ in which
> > James Joyce tries to explain away his daughter's mental illness by
> > saying, "What she does with language is not really that different
> > from what I do". To this, Carl Jung replies, "But you are diving,
> > and she is sinking".
>
> Good one, Carl.
>
> I'm a bit fuzzy on your intent, tho, Gordon.
Why else would I quote Wilson & Shea? To be perfectly clear? ;-)
> It seems like you're
> saying "pain is bad" is false, as is "pain is good". The masochist is
> diving in pain, and the accident victim is sinking in it.
Pain, in general and in the main, is bad. There are, however, many
circumstances in which it is not. One background condition that can
alter the truth of "pain is bad", is that the "victim" is diving, not
sinking. Moral situations are often highly complex, so that we can
easily overlook facts and principles that affect the truth of statements
about the situation.
I think we have been down this road before. "Water boils at 100 Celsius"
is false - unless, of course, you make that statement the definition
of the boiling point of water by stipulation. All simple statements are
false. ;-)
> And so? Saying that some pain is good, and some pain is bad in no way
> makes "good" and "bad" any clearer -- it muddies the water, in fact.
The water /is/ muddy. A moral theory that does not reflect this is
obviously wrong.
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Mark Young
>>> There is a wonderful scene in Wilson & Shea's /Illuminatus!/ in
>>> which James Joyce tries to explain away his daughter's mental
>>> illness by saying, "What she does with language is not really that
>>> different from what I do". To this, Carl Jung replies, "But you
>>> are diving, and she is sinking".
Mark Young:
>> Good one, Carl.
>>
>> I'm a bit fuzzy on your intent, tho, Gordon.
> Why else would I quote Wilson & Shea? To be perfectly clear? ;-)
Whoosh -- right over my head.
(So -- Internet search -- hmm -- hmm -- oh. OK.)
>> It seems like you're saying "pain is bad" is false, as is "pain is
>> good". The masochist is diving in pain, and the accident victim is
>> sinking in it.
> Pain, in general and in the main, is bad. There are, however, many
> circumstances in which it is not. One background condition that can
> alter the truth of "pain is bad", is that the "victim" is diving, not
> sinking.
That it tells us something is wrong is irrelevent, then?
[...]
>> And so? Saying that some pain is good, and some pain is bad in no
>> way makes "good" and "bad" any clearer -- it muddies the water, in
>> fact.
> The water /is/ muddy. A moral theory that does not reflect this is
> obviously wrong.
So there is no clarity available on the meaning of "bad"? That would
seem, um, bad, wouldn't it?
User 1DE7
>Date: 10/11/00 8:22 PM Central Daylight Time
>Message-id: <8s33n1$idg$1...@slb3.atl.mindspring.net>
>First, it's strained to call morality a 'world'. What you actually mean is
>that there would be more objective facts -- not only physical facts, but
>moral facts too. So what? Why can't there be moral facts too?
Well, a new class of facts that are not dependant upon, or reducable to all the
other facts that we know. So, there are not just more facts, but a new type of
fact that is seperate and radicaly different from the other type.
>Second, it strikes me that your effort to maintain a pure physicalist
>viewpoint is under (justified) attack from so many fronts at once, that
>it's just a desperate hope that it could be true. You can't explain
>consciousness, or free will
I don't think anyone can explain consciousness fully. I don't find any dualist
or non-physical views of it any more convincing than describing it as a purely
physical process. In fact I find that they generaly seem to try to make humans
seem special. Almost like "no, we didn't evolve from monkeys, god made us." Or
"my behavior is a wonderful magestic thing, and reducing it to physical
explainations makes me feel bad as a person, therefore there must be some
magical realm of whimsey that makes me special"
Or "my beliefs are really important and nessesarily true, therefore we cannot
say they are simply physical."
Or "my feelings of unjustice when people are murdered are really important, and
I think that considering them to be just expressions of biological preference
is demeaning to me as a person, because I feel I am more complex and special
than that, therefore my moral intuitions are somehow real and nonphysical"
(I mention some beliefs that I think you hold here, but I am not nessesarily
attributing those justifications to you, I am simply saying that they are
strong emotional reasons why people want to believe them)
To your next point, I think hard-determinism is a solid theory and don't see
any reason why it cannot explain the freedom of the will.
>or a priori knowledge,
That is what I am trying to explain here. I think my worm-example is very good.
It shows how certain logical beliefs are selected for, explaining our natural
string predisposition toward certain logical beliefs.
Moral intuitions can be explained similarly.
The only real objection I see you having to these very general accounts of mine
is "I have logical/moral intuitions, and they seem to be direct." ...I really
don't understand how you can distinguish them being direct from being indirect.
How would you tell? What do you think your intuitions would be like if they
were indirect? Would they come to you with a little post-thought attached that
would tell you "this is indirect"?
> or logic
I can't explain logic? I have a few times in this and related threads I think.
Reality is such that it has certain properties, and I believe our logical
beliefs reflect these properties, just not indirectly. Immagine that mammals
don't exist. The rules of logic are still true. They do not need to be
percieved directly for them to be true, as seen in a scenario where no mammals
exist to percieve them directly. Due you think worms percieve logic directly?
They act logicaly. Now suppose humans slowly evolve from the non-mammals, but
they do not attain some ability to percieve truths directly. They percieve them
indirectly in the manner that worms and lizzards do, they just have far more
complex logical beliefs.
How would this differ from our current situation? I think its a pretty complete
general description of why we have logical intuitions and why they are likely
true.
>or
>universals
My views may have chanced a little since our last thread on the topic, but I am
pretty sure I could explain them adequately.
>or morality
I've explained this generaly a few times too. It should be in previous posts. I
don't know why you say I can't explain it..
>You wind up adopting self-defeating positions all
>so you won't have to admit there's something non-physical.
And you term as "self-defeating" any position that does not purport to be
simply justified in an absolute sense? Again, I don't think this criticism
makes sense since I don't think absolute justificaion makes sense.
>Why are we
>taking physicalism as an axiom, to be held as such an unquestionable truth
I'm not taking it as an axiom, I don't think. Why believe it? Well, start with
the believe that physical reality exists, which I think we all believe, and,
trying to explain things like morality and logic, etc, with our handy knowledge
of evolution and psychology and such at hand, we notice that there are good
psysical explainations for them but more importantly, that non-physical
attempts at explaining them either simply don't make sense (morality), seem
like a farfetched attempt to make people feel special (free will, direct
perception of truth..morality too, basicaly all non-physicalyist issues), and
that there is really no evidence for them other than claims by people that they
just seem to percieve things directly, etc.
Again, I fail to see how these people know their perceptions are direct vs
indirect. Maybe everyone except for me has some super-powers that allow them to
do this.
>> Another thing is that we can perfectly explain (I think) moral facts in
>terms
>> of the physical universe, but we don't have a similar means to explain
>our
>
>No, we can't. That's your whole point.
Right, I am assuming my conclusion here, but it is justified in that I am
trying to show lack of symmetry between moral and physical reality, as david
friedman seems to try to suggest some sort of weak symmetry on his page.
>You're saying we have to *reject*
>moral facts, because you can't explain them in terms of the physical
>universe. In other words: If you assume there are only physical facts,
>then you can't say there are also moral facts. I'll buy that. It's also
>true that if you assume there are only moral facts, then you can't say
>there are also physical facts. But I don't see why anyone would make
>either assumption.
I think my assumption is less "there are only physical facts" and more "there
are physical facts" followed with the observation that all the alleged evidence
for non-physical facts (people claiming to sense truth directly, with a strong
emotional motivation to do so), is quite weak and what it purports to explain
can be explained in a very strong manner in terms of evolution.
>No, but you could explain your 'impressions' of a physical universe by
>appealing to only mental facts (see Berkeley). Why don't you adopt
>Berkeleyan idealism? After all, it's simpler. There are fewer facts in
>Berkeley's theory. You don't have to have two separate 'realms', the
>mental and the physical. You only have the mental. Is that a good argument
>for idealism?
I don't know much about idealism, but the assumption that your experience is
all mental doesn't really seem to nessesarily be that different from
physicalism. It is hard for me to make sense of it cause I am not sure what
non-physical mentalism really is. Suppose we say reality is just some sort of
big mind. Well, you as the observer are in roughly the same position as with
physicalism, you can't suddenly control the big mind any more than you can
control reality now. It seems to be just a theory without consequence that
tries to postulate a cause for physical reality, whereas with physicalism,
physical reality is taken as basic and we don't try to stupilate anything about
some inner cause.
Therefore, as idealism seems to simply be physicalism with the stipulation that
what we call physical is caused by some force we have no evidence for, I would
first note that it has no consequences, and then that it seems to add a layer
of complexity that we have no evidence for.
Again, I don't really understand idealism, so maybe my comments are off.
>> Suppose moral truths are in fact real, and you act as if they are not.
>Suppose
>> this causes you to do things that are *really* wrong. What exactly is
>the
>> downside here,
>
>That you do wrong things.
I should have replaced "downside" with "consequences that have any affect on
your experience."
>> from your point of view? What will happen to you? Nothing.
>
>Are you assuming ethical egoism here? I didn't think you were an egoist.
Not strictly ethical egoism. I can ask "what will happen that will impact your
experience"? So, for instance, you could live for the sake of your grandmother,
certainly not ethical egoism, but if there are objective moral facts they will
not impact on your experience at all, and will certainly not effect your
efforts to benefit your grandmother.
>There are two possibilities. Either
>a) You're assuming ethical egoism, so nothing matters except what helps or
>hurts YOU. In that case, however, you would NOT be doing anything really
>wrong, while serving your own interests -- contrary to the supposition
>above.
>b) We're supposing ethical egoism is false, so other things (perhaps
>including the interests of other people) matter besides YOU
I think we are mixing up two concepts. Things "mattering" to you, and these
things being moral. Things still matter to me even though I don't believe in
objective morality.
>And then
>we're imagining that you did some selfish things that were wrong (perhaps
>because they hurt other people). Then what's the downside?
Suppose instead that you did some things to benefit your grandmother, since it
matterd that she was happy to you. Suppose also that by some alleged moral fact
these things were wrong. My point is not that they just dont have a downside
for you, but they have no effect on anyones experience.
>> Since
>> you don't believe in morality, you won't believe what you do is wrong
>even if
>> it is, so to you it will seem exactly as if morality did not exist.
>
>"It seems to you as if P" doesn't imply "P". And in particular, "It would
>seem to you as if you didn't do anything wrong" doesn't imply "you
>wouldn't have done anything wrong." So I don't see what your point is
>there.
Just continuing on the point that things being moral or not has no effect on
anyones experience. Maybe it is just because I cannot directly percieve these
moral truths that you claim to percieve, and if I could percieve them directly
as you do, I might somehow understand how they would effect people.
>> Therefore I
>> fail to see why this suggests that you should act as if morality is
>real.
>
>By definition, you should do things that you should do.
That just doesn't make sense to me. Just curious, where you raised in an
environment where moral realism was instilled into you at a young age? For
instance did your parents often simply explain things like:
parents: "Stealing is wrong."
you: "Why?"
parents: "It just is."
..?
>By definition, you should do things that you should do. If we assume that
>morality is real, and so it is really true, for example, that you should
>respect people's rights, then by definition you should respect people's
>rights. On the other hand, if morality isn't real, then it's not the case
>that you should respect people's rights, but it's also not the case that
>you should violate them either. Thus, by respecting people's rights, you
>can't go wrong (you may be doing what you should, and you can't be doing
>what you shouldn't).
"Can't go wrong" meaning "Can't do anything morality wrong." But, as I have
pointed out, doing moraly wrong things has no effect on anyones experience (not
stemming directly from th wrongness.. other people will lock you in jail for
instance, but that is not the issue). So, you "can't go wrong" in that sense,
but, if you talk about not letting things that have no effect on anyone
frustrate your preferences, then you "can't go wrong" by acting as if objective
morality doesn't exist.
>> In fact, I think the opposite is suggested. Holding false beliefs about
>> morality will create REAL consequences for you.
>
>By "real" consequences, do you mean consequences that are REALLY bad?
No, I mean ones that have an effect on people. For instance, there is a
discernable difference between not having pre-marital sex and having
pre-marital sex. It will objectively frustrate your prefereneces if you prefer
to have pre-marital sex but you don't because te bible says not to.
>> Suppose you like X, but some
>> alleged "moral fact" says X is bad, then you are harmed by conforming to
>> morality (if we regard harm as frustrating your preferences) if in fact
>it
>> doesn't exist.
>
>Yep, but since there are no moral facts, being harmed is no worse than
>being helped, so there's no problem.
Right, not an objective 'problem.'
>> But, as I say above, even if morality is real and you don't act
>> morality, *there are no real consequences.*
>
>I think you've got it backwards. If morality isn't real, then nothing
>matters.
People still have preferences, and things still matter to people.
>If morality isn't real, and your belief that it is causes you to
>die a painful death, so what? It doesn't matter, since there's no fact
>that pain is bad, and there's no fact that life was good.
Right, it isn't a fact that it is bad or good, but you would have strongly
perferred that you didnt die a painful death and thus it matters to you.
>There are, then
>no 'real consequences' to anything on your theory, since it never matters
>what happens, no matter what you do.
You seem to be using "matter" in an odd way. It matters to me whether or not I
get strawberry or lemon icecream next time I have icecream. Since it matters to
me, it must be a moral decision?
>> Apart from that, the sheer incomprehensibleness of it also should be a
>big
>> hurdle in believing it.
>
>I find the sheer incomprehensibility of your position a big hurdle in
>believing it. And I'm not just being difficult here. I find it hard to
>credit that someone would think that pleasure is no better than pain, life
>no better than death, and so on for everything else.
Well, if you mean "better" as in "more preferable" then I would have a hard
time beliving that as well, as people prefer life over death, generaly, etc.
We agree that people prefer life over death, I just attribute it to biological
predisposition, whereas you postulate some "moral facts," it seems.
>Stick your hand on a
>stove. You really think there's nothing bad about that?
Moraly bad? No. Unpreferable and causing negative sensations in me? Sure.
>> That a physical reality exists: .999999999999999999999 (roughly)
>
>That sounds roughly right -- give or take a few dozen 9's.
>
>> That a moral reality exists: .03 (roughly, it will probably get lower as
>I
>
>I would say between .9 and .99. So yes, I agree that it is more certain
>that physical objects exist than that moral facts exist.
>
>By the way, what are you basing these numbers on? Intuition?
The first one is almost an axiomatic belief. I guess when I was answering it, I
included all possibly BIVish scenarios, even if the realm I was in would not be
called "physical", in that there was no mass, etc. I would then say physical
reality existed as a hallucination in some other "non-physical" realm, etc.
Thus it basicaly boils down to my belief in logic, which boils down to the
strongness of my biological predisposition to accept logic.
The second number is more derivative, and based on the first being true. I can
give better reasons for it being false, as I did briefly above, with it not
even making sense, and the evidence for it mostly being soaked in emotional
desire to feel special, and the physical theory of evolution explaining it very
well.
Just curious, you would assign a probability of 1 to the rules of logic being
true?
Howabout to having direct knowledge of logic/morality?
>> Then "would I bet my life against 1 dollar that morality has objective
>> existance?"
>
>You should, because if morality isn't objective, and you lose the bet,
>then it doesn't matter.
>
It matters to me in that I would prefer not to die regardless of whether it is
objectively good or not.
-User
User 1DE7
>Message-id: <MPG.144f0b7a2f...@mail.nji.com>
>
>> Well, biology can be reduced entirely to physics (or we will assume it), so
>> similarly morality should be able to be reduced to physical reality.. no?
>
>Why should we assume that it can be so reduced?
I figured that if X is composed entirely of Y, then it implies that X is
reducable to Y. This does not mean that Y has the properties of X or anything.
> Do you have the
>reduction in hand?
Well, I could give you a general reduction of the phenominon of why people
think morality is real, and explain it in physical terms. I could not reduce
objective moral facts to physical facts, since I don't think there is anything
to reduce.
>Can you even reduce chemistry to physics?
I believe so. I would be surprised if you couldn't.
>Can you even reduce chemistry to physics? In any
>event, /if/ such a reduction is possible, I claim that biologists will
>continue to use biological language, since humans would find it
>impossible in practice to proceed any other way.
Right, but if you challenged them to prove that biological phenominon was at
its root physical, they could. I don't see any analagous situation with moral
philosophy.
>There will still be
>"biological facts", i.e.., facts expressed in biological language. Or,
>for that matter, "economic facts" and "political facts", all of which a
>reductionist might assume could be reduced in principle to a massive
>description of the movement of tiny particles.
>...
Right, and I think they theoreticaly can, and that moral facts cannot. If I
ever doubt that there are economic facts, I can say to the economist "prove to
me that economic facts describe reality" and he could start telling me about
how these particles make up globs of matter that engage in self-sustaining
action, and they behave in ways that generaly further their preferences, and
their preferences are fairly constant and predictable, etc.
>> I am not familiar with your version of moral reality, maybe you could sum
>> marize
>> or else refer me to some place (preferably on the internet) where I could
>> read
>> about it.
>
>That's going to have to wait for an evening where I have more time. Try
>a search on "moral realism" and "naturalism".
I'll have to put that off as well, though I will look in a day or two if I
don't see any links posted from you.
-User
Owl
> I'm not sure what this "bad" talk amounts to. And based on what people
> say about it, it's quite unclear to me whether "pain is bad" should be
> true or false. Making people aware of situations that require action
> on their part would seem to be in the "good" category....
You're right. It's intrinsically bad, but often instrumentally good.
Owl
news:39e53ead$1...@oit.umass.edu...
> > I'd say that pain is unpleasant -- tho some people seem to enjoy it.
> > I'd also say that pain serves a useful purpose -- letting us know when
> > we're damaged.
>
> To say that, you already had to accept life as the primary value. Owl
I don't see why. You only have to think that damage is bad.
> It isn't as simple as that, though. Objectivism doesn't say "Life is
> good," as an axiom, but "The good is what promotes life," by definition.
That's one interpretation of Objectivism, anyway. Why can't a utilitarian,
for example, just say, "Well *I* define 'the good' as what promotes
pleasure"?
Mark Young
>> I'm not sure what this "bad" talk amounts to. And based on what
>> people say about it, it's quite unclear to me whether "pain is bad"
>> should be true or false. Making people aware of situations that
>> require action on their part would seem to be in the "good"
>> category....
Owl:
> You're right. It's intrinsically bad, but often instrumentally good.
Yeah, I know what you mean. My car is intrinsically red but often
instrumentally green.
Dave OHearn
> Dave OHearn <dav...@lessing.oit.umass.edu> wrote in message
> news:39e53ead$1...@oit.umass.edu...
> > > I'd say that pain is unpleasant -- tho some people seem to enjoy it.
> > > I'd also say that pain serves a useful purpose -- letting us know when
> > > we're damaged.
> >
> > To say that, you already had to accept life as the primary value. Owl
>
> I don't see why. You only have to think that damage is bad.
I didn't see that. Even simple hedonism would think that damage is bad,
if it interfears with the ability to have pleasure.
> > It isn't as simple as that, though. Objectivism doesn't say "Life is
> > good," as an axiom, but "The good is what promotes life," by definition.
>
> That's one interpretation of Objectivism, anyway. Why can't a utilitarian,
> for example, just say, "Well *I* define 'the good' as what promotes
> pleasure"?
Rand didn't answer that. She might have thought it self-evident that
everyone living chose to life. It is, but it isn't necessary that they
chose life as the primary choice. The utilitarian could choose pleasure as
the primary choice, get life as a corollary, and live under an entirely
different morality.
Rand made the argument that choosing life as the primary choice had a
more metaphysical basis, in that it was the alternative of existence vs
non-existence. But it's impossible to say that one ought to choose life
as the primary in her ethics, because the is/ought problem isn't solved
until the primary choice is made, and ought would have no meaning.
--
Dave O'Hearn
Gordon G. Sollars
> gsol...@pobox.com:
...
> > Pain, in general and in the main, is bad. There are, however, many
> > circumstances in which it is not. One background condition that can
> > alter the truth of "pain is bad", is that the "victim" is diving, not
> > sinking.
>
> That it tells us something is wrong is irrelevent, then?
Sure, why not? It is wrong for me to lie to you. But, all things
considered, if lying to you prevents some terrible evil, it might be the
best I can do. Pain might not be bad, all things considered, if
experiencing it is part of a larger sequence of actions which is good.
...
> >> And so? Saying that some pain is good, and some pain is bad in no
> >> way makes "good" and "bad" any clearer -- it muddies the water, in
> >> fact.
>
> > The water /is/ muddy. A moral theory that does not reflect this is
> > obviously wrong.
>
> So there is no clarity available on the meaning of "bad"?
No, but some water is muddier than others. My point is that a good moral
theory well reflect the true state of affairs, e.g., that it is difficult
to make a moral statement that is very simple ("All pain is bad") and
true.
> That would
> seem, um, bad, wouldn't it?
You seem to be providing an answer to your own question. Aren't we all
pretty clear on what "bad" means? We can always ask for more clarity of
course.
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Gordon G. Sollars
writes...
> >Subject: Re: Intuitionism vs. Evolutionary Psychology (To User)
> >From: "Gordon G. Sollars" sol...@nji.com
> >Date: 10/11/00 11:43 PM Central Daylight Time
> >Message-id: <MPG.144f0b7a2f...@mail.nji.com>
> >
>
> >> Well, biology can be reduced entirely to physics (or we will assume it
> >> ), so
> >> similarly morality should be able to be reduced to physical reality.. no?
> >
> >Why should we assume that it can be so reduced?
>
> I figured that if X is composed entirely of Y, then it implies that X is
> reducable to Y. This does not mean that Y has the properties of X or anyt
> hing.
First, perhaps the biological world is not "composed entirely" of the
physical. Of course, I strongly suspect that whatever we discover about
the biological world will be interpreted as coming from the physical
world - even if that means that we change our notions of what the
physical world is. Second, as your last sentence indicates, there can be
emergent properties at the biological (and other) level(s).
> > Do you have the
> >reduction in hand?
>
> Well, I could give you a general reduction of the phenominon of why people
> think morality is real, and explain it in physical terms. I could not reduce
> objective moral facts to physical facts, since I don't think there is any
> thing
> to reduce.
Well, once you decide not to look for something, it can often be hard to
find.
> >Can you even reduce chemistry to physics?
>
> I believe so. I would be surprised if you couldn't.
Sorry to surprise you, but even when my physics and chemistry knowledge
was current, I couldn't have done it. I take it that you are able to,
say, rewrite any organic chemistry text so that it only contains terms
used by physicists?
> >Can you even reduce chemistry to physics? In any
> >event, /if/ such a reduction is possible, I claim that biologists will
> >continue to use biological language, since humans would find it
> >impossible in practice to proceed any other way.
>
> Right, but if you challenged them to prove that biological phenominon was at
> its root physical, they could.
I don't see how you know this, but see my remarks above about "physical".
...
> >There will still be
> >"biological facts", i.e.., facts expressed in biological language. Or,
> >for that matter, "economic facts" and "political facts", all of which a
> >reductionist might assume could be reduced in principle to a massive
> >description of the movement of tiny particles.
> >...
>
> Right, and I think they theoreticaly can, and that moral facts cannot.
You are indeed an optimist - as far as "science" is concerned.
> If I
> ever doubt that there are economic facts, I can say to the economist "pro
> ve to
> me that economic facts describe reality" and he could start telling me about
> how these particles make up globs of matter that engage in self-sustaining
> action, and they behave in ways that generaly further their preferences, and
> their preferences are fairly constant and predictable, etc.
This is a hand-waving description of a vastly complicated process, to say
the least. From what you have said here, you are merely willing to
accept that such reductions can be given for economics or politics, but
not for morality.
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
User 1DE7
>From: "Gordon G. Sollars" sol...@nji.com
>Message-id: <MPG.14515b6683...@mail.nji.com>
>> I figured that if X is composed entirely of Y, then it implies that X is
>> reducable to Y. This does not mean that Y has the properties of X or anyt
>> hing.
>
>First, perhaps the biological world is not "composed entirely" of the
>physical. Of course, I strongly suspect that whatever we discover about
>the biological world will be interpreted as coming from the physical
>world - even if that means that we change our notions of what the
>physical world is.
Hmm, I suppose I have been using 'the physical world' as a synonym for
'anything that exists,' which I probably should watch out for. In my mind they
refer to the same things as I don't believe in moral facts and whatnot, but I
would guess other people define 'physical' differently.
>Second, as your last sentence indicates, there can be
>emergent properties at the biological (and other) level(s).
I am not familiar with common notions about emergent and non-emergent
properties. Would you say that many square blocks aranged in a circle exhibit
some emergent property of circularity, since the whole has properties of a
circle yet the pieces don't? Or is that not emergent?
>> Well, I could give you a general reduction of the phenominon of why people
>> think morality is real, and explain it in physical terms. I could not
>reduce
>> objective moral facts to physical facts, since I don't think there is any
>> thing
>> to reduce.
>
>Well, once you decide not to look for something, it can often be hard to
>find.
I did not say I was not looking for these things, just that I don't think they
exist objectively.
>> >Can you even reduce chemistry to physics?
>>
>> I believe so. I would be surprised if you couldn't.
>
>Sorry to surprise you, but even when my physics and chemistry knowledge
>was current, I couldn't have done it.
I think we are using "you" differently here. Was your question: can I personaly
do it? No. I interpreted it as "is it theoreticaly possible?" When I said "I
would be surprised if you couldn't" I was not referring to you, but saying it
more like "I would be surprised if it were not theoreticaly possible."
But again, maybe we need to define "physical."
>> Right, but if you challenged them to prove that biological phenominon was
>at
>> its root physical, they could.
>
>I don't see how you know this, but see my remarks above about "physical".
>...
Yes, my statement was more or less obviously true if you interpret it how I
think of physical things, basicaly "if you challenged them to prove that
biological phenominon was at its root existant, they could, theoreticaly."
My fault though.
>> If I
>> ever doubt that there are economic facts, I can say to the economist "pro
>> ve to
>> me that economic facts describe reality" and he could start telling me
>about
>> how these particles make up globs of matter that engage in self-sustaining
>> action, and they behave in ways that generaly further their preferences,
>and
>> their preferences are fairly constant and predictable, etc.
>
>This is a hand-waving description of a vastly complicated process, to say
>the least. From what you have said here, you are merely willing to
>accept that such reductions can be given for economics or politics, but
>not for morality.
Right, what I just said wasn't a good argument for why my beliefs are true. Let
me try to clarify.
For things that exist like matter and light and such, we seem to have gotten
pretty deep into what they really are. We understand them by reducing them to
their fundamental levels, subatomic particles and whatnot, and the laws
governing these things. We perform experiments and such. We percieve things on
a much higher level, and there is this complex physical explaination for our
perceptions.
Now, let us look at how moral philosophers try to explain their moral
intuition. Having moral intuition seems to me to be a very abstract high-level
thing. Yet, it seems to be simply assumed that these sensations are somehow
fundamental.
It would be as if a scientist looked at the stars and then simply concluded
that there are little fixed points of light in the sky, and that is all they
are on a fundamental level. They are like little mathamatical points and that
is it, nothing more, simply because that is his impression of them.
That is how superficial the conclusion that "moral facts are objective" seems
to me. A moral philosopher, who is a very complex organism, posessing a mind
that we understand very little about, experiences some impression in his mind,
and then deduces somehow that it is objectively true. In making this deduction,
he must postulate an entirely new class of facts than what is previously known
about. There is also a theory of evolutionary psychology that explains his
feelings in terms of what we already know to exist, and what we have lots of
evidence for, yet he rejects them because he claims to just know that this
moral impression is an objective fact and not anything else.
When you ask him why he thinks such things, the moral philosopher will come
back at you with "hitler wasn't really evil?!" or something of the sort,
generaly avoiding the topic of why he feels so certain that these moral facts
are objective that he is willing to postulate a new class of facts and reject
an alternate theory that fits perfectly with what we know of evolution.
For instance, think of how wrong the early philosophers were about the nature
of reality. The stuff physicists study and whatnot. The earlier philosophical
beliefs now seem quite silly. The knowledge we have now was made possibly by
the scientific method.. experiment, mathamatical modeling, the moving away from
attributing hidden explainations to everything, etc.
I don't see anything analagous to that in moral philosophy. Moral realism seems
not really to have really advanced since the early days of philosophy, as far
as I can tell. Granted I don't know much about the history of philosophy.
So, seeing as how the first impressions of physical reality were so off base,
and we are still basicaly operating on the same sort of primitive notions of
moral philosophy as they were then, since it doesn't really benefit from
experiment and the scientific method, it at least provides a little evidence
for the belief that these moral intuitions are not some direct percpetion of
truth.
Didn't plato, or someone similar, think all of philosophy could be figured out
by pure thought, including the laws of physics? Suppose that he had a theory of
morals and a theory of physics. Didn't he think he directly percieved these
things, that he was percieving truths, like Owl says he does?
I will assume that plato was wrong about physics and such. The fact that he
claimed to be directly percieving those truths would suggest that it is quite
possible for it to seem to someone (even a fairly intellegent person) like they
are percieving some truths when they really are doing no such thing.
Anyway, I have no idea if it was plato who thought all truths could be figured
out from thought, or how off-base his physics were, so, the above may not be
accurate.
-User
Gordon G. Sollars
...
> Which part are you questioning? The former (situational factors *much* more
> important than character traits in determining behaviour) comes from the same
> sorts of studies as the Good Samaritan.
That's what I was questioning. You seem at least somewhat familiar with
these studies - how convincing do you find them? Let's take an example.
Consider various forms of "highway cheating", such as driving on the
shoulder of the road when your lane is blocked in order to get to an
exit. The studies you have in mind would, I presume, say that the
persons who stay in their lanes are almost indistinguishable (since it's
"*much* more important") from those who cheat - that a cheater one time
is almost as likely to stay in his lane next time, so long as situational
factors, such as being late, are different?
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Owl
news:20001012194126...@ng-md1.aol.com...
> Well, a new class of facts that are not dependant upon, or reducable to
all the
> other facts that we know.
Yes, but again, so what?
This is essentially just repeating part of my position and then saying,
"You see how bad that is?"
> I don't think anyone can explain consciousness fully. I don't find any
dualist
True enough. But physicalism, I think, cannot even allow the possibility
of consciousness. This is, of course, a whole nother issue, but I think
your acceptance of a series of theories, each of which I find highly
dubious (if not absurd), is all dependent on this one assumption of
physicalism. Is that assumption so obvious as to be able to support the
weight of the implausible and radically revisionary theories you have to
adopt in several different areas of philosophy? I answer that it is not
obvious at all; in fact, it is arbitrary.
I won't go into the problems with physicalism now, but a good start would
be Frank Jackson's "Epiphenomenal Qualia."
> "my behavior is a wonderful magestic thing, and reducing it to physical
> explainations makes me feel bad as a person, therefore there must be
some
> magical realm of whimsey that makes me special"
That would indeed be a fallacy. Call it the "appeal to arrogance". Now let
me tell you about another fallacy I've run into. This was at a recent
discussion of the possibility of alien intelligence on other planets.
Someone said:
"Of course I think there's intelligence on other planets in the galaxy --
it would be arrogant to think we were the only ones."
(May not be a verbatim quotation.) Call this the fallacy of "appeal to
humility".
Appeal to Humility is certainly a fallacy. "It would be arrogant to think
P; therefore, ~P" is a very bad argument. The person who gave that
argument in fact had no good reason at all for thinking there was
intelligence elsewhere in the galaxy.
The fallacy of Appeal to Humility is one that people actually commit; I
have witnessed it. I am not sure I have ever witnessed the Appeal to
Arrogance being committed (perhaps by some Christians). I would therefore
say there is at least as much reason to worry that you are committing the
Appeal to Humility as there is to worry that I am committing the Appeal to
Arrogance.
> To your next point, I think hard-determinism is a solid theory and don't
see
> any reason why it cannot explain the freedom of the will.
The fact that it denies free will is a sufficient reason for its not being
able to 'explain the freedom of the will'. On the other hand, you might
have meant soft determinism, or you might have meant "explain the lack of
freedom of the will."
> The only real objection I see you having to these very general accounts
of mine
> is "I have logical/moral intuitions, and they seem to be direct." ...I
really
> don't understand how you can distinguish them being direct from being
indirect.
> How would you tell? What do you think your intuitions would be like if
they
> were indirect?
If a belief were 'indirect', then there would be a process of inference
leading up to it.
> I can't explain logic? I have a few times in this and related threads I
think.
Well, let's just agree that you tried to do so.
> Reality is such that it has certain properties, and I believe our
logical
> beliefs reflect these properties, just not indirectly. Immagine that
mammals
> don't exist. The rules of logic are still true. They do not need to be
To clarify, I was not objecting that you held the rules of logic were
false. I also was not objecting that you held that the rules of logic were
uncertain. I was objecting that you held they were completely unjustified.
> >or morality
>
> I've explained this generaly a few times too. It should be in previous
posts. I
> don't know why you say I can't explain it..
Let's agree again that you have tried to explain it.
> And you term as "self-defeating" any position that does not purport to
be
> simply justified in an absolute sense? Again, I don't think this
criticism
> makes sense since I don't think absolute justificaion makes sense.
I don't know what you mean by "absolute justification." I term
self-defeating any position that implies that that position, itself, is
completely and entirely unjustified.
Here would be an example of some self-defeating positions: Someone asks me
what the weather is like outside, and I reply:
1) "It is raining right now, but I can't see whether it is, and I have no
reason whatsoever to think that it is."
2) "It is raining right now, but it would be irrational to think it was
raining right now."
3) "It is raining right now, but I don't know anything about the weather."
4) "It is raining right now, but it's just as likely that it isn't."
And so on.
Notice that your view of the rules of logic is not simply that they are
not "absolutely, 100% justified." Rather, your view is: "There is no
justification whatsoever for them. They are 0% justified." Isn't that
right?
So your position is like position (1) above (also 2, 3, and perhaps 4):
"The rules of logic are (almost certainly?) true, but I can't see whether
any rule of logic is true, and I have no reason whatsoever to think any of
them are."
Yes, that's self-defeating.
> I'm not taking it as an axiom, I don't think. Why believe it? Well,
start with
> the believe that physical reality exists, which I think we all believe,
and,
> trying to explain things like morality and logic, etc, with our handy
knowledge
> of evolution and psychology and such at hand, we notice that there are
good
Why do you think it's okay to just "start with the belief that physical
reality exists," but it's not okay to just start with the belief that
moral reality exists?
True, not *everyone* believes moral reality exists, but a lot of people
do, and besides, epistemological matters aren't settled by vote. (Anyway,
not everyone thinks physical reality exists -- the idealists don't. Don't
they get a vote?)
> psysical explainations for them but more importantly, that non-physical
> attempts at explaining them either simply don't make sense (morality),
seem
I don't see what doesn't make sense. Do you just mean that you don't
accept such explanations?
> like a farfetched attempt to make people feel special (free will, direct
> perception of truth..morality too, basicaly all non-physicalyist
issues), and
I also don't see anything farfetched so far.
> that there is really no evidence for them other than claims by people
that they
> just seem to percieve things directly, etc.
Now that's just an attempt to shift the burden of proof. So far, you
haven't given any *reason* why one theory is better than another.
> Again, I fail to see how these people know their perceptions are direct
vs
> indirect. Maybe everyone except for me has some super-powers that allow
them to
> do this.
I don't see the relevance of this. This seems to be a level confusion.
Level confusions are confusions between, for example, knowing X and
knowing that you know X, or believing X and knowing that you believe X,
etc. You seem to be shifting between talking about having direct
knowledge, and having direct knowledge that you have direct knowledge.
> Right, I am assuming my conclusion here, but it is justified in that I
am
> trying to show lack of symmetry between moral and physical reality, as
david
> friedman seems to try to suggest some sort of weak symmetry on his page.
So far I don't see the asymmetry. Neither physical facts nor moral facts
are capable of explaining the other.
> I think my assumption is less "there are only physical facts" and more
"there
> are physical facts" followed with the observation that all the alleged
evidence
> for non-physical facts (people claiming to sense truth directly, with a
strong
> emotional motivation to do so), is quite weak and what it purports to
explain
> can be explained in a very strong manner in terms of evolution.
So far, I still don't see any asymmetry. If you get to just assume there
are physical facts, why don't I get to just assume there are moral facts?
People claim to perceive moral truths directly. But they also claim to
perceive physical facts directly. If you refuse to accept direct
perception, why accept the physical facts?
> I don't know much about idealism, but the assumption that your
experience is
> all mental doesn't really seem to nessesarily be that different from
> physicalism.
Huh?
First of all, it is analytic that your *experience* is all mental. The
realist thinks, however, that something non-mental is *causing* your
experience. The idealist denies this.
I don't see how one could think idealism and physicalism were close to
being the same.
> Therefore, as idealism seems to simply be physicalism with the
stipulation that
> what we call physical is caused by some force we have no evidence for,
Physicalism is just idealism with the stipulation that our experiences are
caused by some force we have no evidence for. --That's what the idealist
would say.
Come on, you know you don't believe idealism. You know that you believe in
physical objects, and you don't believe it because you've got an argument
for it. (If you think you do, tell us!)
> I would
> first note that it has no consequences, and then that it seems to add a
layer
> of complexity that we have no evidence for.
No, realism adds an extra layer of complexity.
> >Are you assuming ethical egoism here? I didn't think you were an
egoist.
>
> Not strictly ethical egoism. I can ask "what will happen that will
impact your
> experience"? So, for instance, you could live for the sake of your
grandmother,
> certainly not ethical egoism, but if there are objective moral facts
they will
> not impact on your experience at all, and will certainly not effect your
> efforts to benefit your grandmother.
Yes, but "grandmotherism" is also false (the view that your grandmother is
the only thing that matters). Thus, asking, "What will happen that will
impact my grandmother?" would be equally irrelevant.
It is also false that your experience is the only thing that matters (and
btw, that's directly incompatible with grandmotherism anyway, so I don't
understand why you seem to be putting both views in the same paragraph).
> Suppose instead that you did some things to benefit your grandmother,
since it
> matterd that she was happy to you. Suppose also that by some alleged
moral fact
> these things were wrong. My point is not that they just dont have a
downside
> for you, but they have no effect on anyones experience.
Why think that these things would have no effect on anyone's experience?
Indeed, it is then obscure what kind of wrongful actions you could be
talking about. Murder? No. Theft? No. Hurting people? No. What kind of
wrongful action would it be that had no effect on *anyone's* experience?
Why would the moral realist think such an action was wrong?
> Just continuing on the point that things being moral or not has no
effect on
> anyones experience. Maybe it is just because I cannot directly percieve
these
> moral truths that you claim to percieve, and if I could percieve them
directly
> as you do, I might somehow understand how they would effect people.
I'll tell you about one of them: the non-initiation of force principle.
You see how the initiation of force affects people.
> That just doesn't make sense to me. Just curious, where you raised in an
> environment where moral realism was instilled into you at a young age?
For
No, I never heard of it until I read Moore. Were you raised in an
environment where moral relativism was instilled in you at a young age?
(Well, the whole country practically satisfies that description.)
If you don't mind my saying so, you seem to be much more worried about
other people being subject to bias than yourself. In fact, you don't seem
to be at all worried about your own potential biases.
> No, I mean ones that have an effect on people. For instance, there is a
> discernable difference between not having pre-marital sex and having
> pre-marital sex. It will objectively frustrate your prefereneces if you
prefer
> to have pre-marital sex but you don't because te bible says not to.
It sounds like you may be assuming that, if moral facts exist, then they
are facts to the effect that pleasure and happiness are morally bad, that
people should inflict suffering on themselves, and such like. True, a lot
of people have apparently subscribed to such views (self-sacrificial
morality, as Ayn Rand would say), but surely those would not be the most
plausible moral systems. One should, then, take as one's examples the most
plausible moral systems.
> >I think you've got it backwards. If morality isn't real, then nothing
> >matters.
>
> People still have preferences, and things still matter to people.
But getting their preferences satisfied is no better or worse than getting
them frustrated. And "matter to" just refers to people's false and
irrational beliefs about what's good. On your view, no one ever has the
slightest reason to prefer anything over anything else; so they just have
a bunch of irrational preferences. Why should you try to satisfy
irrational preferences?
> You seem to be using "matter" in an odd way. It matters to me whether or
not I
I think you're using "matter to me" in an odd way. If you think A is no
better than B, then I don't see why it would 'matter to you' whether A or
B happens.
> The first one is almost an axiomatic belief. I guess when I was
answering it, I
> included all possibly BIVish scenarios, even if the realm I was in would
not be
> called "physical", in that there was no mass, etc. I would then say
physical
That's copping out, though. I'm sure you think there are real physical
objects (not just computer simulations). Is *that* axiomatic?
> Just curious, you would assign a probability of 1 to the rules of logic
being
> true?
>
> Howabout to having direct knowledge of logic/morality?
I proposed something like .9 for the probability of moral realism in a
previous message. I don't know how one would go about assigning a
probability to 'the rules of logic' in general, since the idea of
assigning probabilities to things seems to presuppose that you can reason
logically. It is, by the way, an axiom of probability theory that if T is
a logical truth, then P(T) = 1.
Gordon G. Sollars
writes...
...
> Hmm, I suppose I have been using 'the physical world' as a synonym for
> 'anything that exists,' which I probably should watch out for. In my mind
> they
> refer to the same things as I don't believe in moral facts and whatnot, but I
> would guess other people define 'physical' differently.
Why not expect moral facts to be built up of the same "stuff" as other
facts? It seems to me that you have posited a dichotomy that, by your
definitions, the moral realist can not resolve. To be fair, it is quite
possible that others here arguing for moral realism have encouraged you
in this. My flavor of moral realism is, e.g., skeptical of the is/ought
distinction (and the analytic/synthetic distinction, for that matter).
...
> I am not familiar with common notions about emergent and non-emergent
> properties. Would you say that many square blocks aranged in a circle exhibit
> some emergent property of circularity, since the whole has properties of a
> circle yet the pieces don't? Or is that not emergent?
Fair enough. I would say that an emergent property is one that can only,
or, less stringently, best, be understood by explanations that do not
reference the level from which the property is said to emerge. So if we
only look at each block, block by block, we only see sharp edges.
Proceeding at this level only, it might be impossible to explain why the
blocks are arranged as they are. But, when we step back, we see the
whole set is arranged to form a circle.
Daniel Dennett uses the game of Life to illustrate this idea. There are
really complex sequences in Life that only make sense when we step back
and see what is happening on the board. It is still true that each move
in these sequences is completely specified by the simple rules for cell
creation and destruction, however.
...
> I did not say I was not looking for these things, just that I don't think
> they
> exist objectively.
Part of the issue may be what you mean here by "objective". I have used
it to mean "something we can be wrong about".
...
> >I don't see how you know this, but see my remarks above about "physical".
> >...
>
> Yes, my statement was more or less obviously true if you interpret it how I
> think of physical things, basicaly "if you challenged them to prove that
> biological phenominon was at its root existant, they could, theoreticaly."
But why, other than as an article of faith, do you believe this
"theoretical" reduction /is/ possible? Back to the game of Life example,
here we actually know that the reduction of any complex phenomena (say,
Glider Guns) to the basic rules is possible. Nevertheless, experienced
Life players still find it far more useful to conceive of what they are
doing in higher level abstractions (such as "Gliders" and "Glider Guns")
than in terms of the formative rules. This being the case, foregoing the
explanatory power of higher-level abstractions when we do /not/ see how
the reduction is to be accomplished seems even more reasonable.
...
> For things that exist like matter and light and such, we seem to have gotten
> pretty deep into what they really are.
In the last 100 years. And our theories may still be in need of radical
change. Of course, if string theory is vindicated, well, you will
presumably start believing that the extra seven dimensions are just as
real as the others.
...
> Now, let us look at how moral philosophers try to explain their moral
> intuition. Having moral intuition seems to me to be a very abstract high-
> level
> thing. Yet, it seems to be simply assumed that these sensations are somehow
> fundamental.
They are fundamental - in the sense that a Glider Gun in the game of Life
is fundamental. Like the Gilder Gun, however, they are quite complex
when viewed at the level below. So are your physical perceptions, btw.
...
> A moral philosopher, who is a very complex organism, posessing a mind
> that we understand very little about, experiences some impression in his
> mind,
> and then deduces somehow that it is objectively true. In making this dedu
> ction,
> he must postulate an entirely new class of facts than what is previously
> known
> about.
I don't follow this. Moral facts have been "known about" as far back as
we can trace.
> There is also a theory of evolutionary psychology that explains his
> feelings
"Feelings"? You are assuming your conclusion here. Why are moral facts
best described as "feelings"?
> in terms of what we already know to exist, and what we have lots of
> evidence for, yet he rejects them because he claims to just know that this
> moral impression is an objective fact and not anything else.
I would not want to reject any part of evolutionary psychology... that
was correct. Far more interesting would be to link those parts with a
good moral theory.
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Mark Young
>> Which part are you questioning? The former (situational factors
>> *much* more important than character traits in determining
>> behaviour) comes from the same sorts of studies as the Good
>> Samaritan.
Gordon Sollars:
> That's what I was questioning. You seem at least somewhat familiar
> with these studies - how convincing do you find them? Let's take an
> example. Consider various forms of "highway cheating", such as
> driving on the shoulder of the road when your lane is blocked in
> order to get to an exit. The studies you have in mind would, I
> presume, say that the persons who stay in their lanes are almost
> indistinguishable (since it's "*much* more important") from those who
> cheat - that a cheater one time is almost as likely to stay in his
> lane next time, so long as situational factors, such as being late,
> are different?
What the studies say is that you get better predictions by considering
only situational factors than you get by considering only personality
factors -- unless you fix a very narrow range of situations. The
person who skips out of the lane one day may stay in his lane the next.
If he is late one day, and early the next. If he sees a cop the next
day. If he had a fight with his wife the first day. But a person may
just have a strategy of driving on the shoulder, and that would be a
good predictor of driving-on-the-shoulder behaviour. What it would not
be a very good predictor of is *other* cheating behaviour -- that is,
it would have some predictive value, but not nearly as much as most
people expect. This person is not much more likely to cheat at cards
than others. This person is not much more likely to try to push ahead
in a line at a multi-window ticket office (a situation that is
superficially quite similar to the blocked road one).
These studies show that people modify their behaviour according to the
situation much more than we notice. A dishonest person still tells the
truth most of the time. Most honest people lie sometimes (even
"brutally honest" people) -- even moralists generally recognize that
it's sometimes proper to lie.
I find the results of social psych research very convincing -- I often
notice myself making the FAE, or having confirmation bias, or trying to
resolve dissonance in less-than-fully-honest ways, or anchoring to an
earlier value. Just now I see that I have used accessibility bias --
I can think of several occasions when I noticed these things, but it
is actually a bit misleading to say that it happens "often". When I
notice these things, I try to correct for them. I find the principles
those researchers have identified useful in interpreting other people's
actions. Most Objectivists here have a *lot* of dissonance they need
to reduce, and it comes out in what they say about the others here. I
try to avoid interacting with those people.
Mark Young
>> That it tells us something is wrong is irrelevent, then?
Gordon Sollars:
> Sure, why not? It is wrong for me to lie to you. But, all things
> considered, if lying to you prevents some terrible evil, it might be
> the best I can do. Pain might not be bad, all things considered, if
> experiencing it is part of a larger sequence of actions which is
> good....
[...]
>> So there is no clarity available on the meaning of "bad"?
> No, but some water is muddier than others. My point is that a good
> moral theory well reflect the true state of affairs, e.g., that it is
> difficult to make a moral statement that is very simple ("All pain is
> bad") and true.
>> That would seem, um, bad, wouldn't it?
> You seem to be providing an answer to your own question. Aren't we
> all pretty clear on what "bad" means?
I know what "bad" means to me. Moral realists have some weird theories
about it, and it infuses their "bad" talk, and makes them say things
like "pain is bad". I don't think pain is bad at all, and I want to
know what the heck you guys mean when you say it. I would interpret it
to mean only that pain is unpleasant, but you guys don't seem to mean
*that*. The pain I suffer in a good cause is still, after all,
unpleasant.
Gordon G. Sollars
...
> I know what "bad" means to me. Moral realists have some weird theories
> about it, and it infuses their "bad" talk, and makes them say things
> like "pain is bad".
If saying "Pain is bad" is evidence of being a moral realist, then there
are a good (!) many of us around.
> I don't think pain is bad at all, and I want to
> know what the heck you guys mean when you say it.
Well, to paraphrase one of us who is much better known in other contexts,
"There may be two moral realists somewhere who agree on everything, but I
am not one of them". ;-)
> I would interpret it
> to mean only that pain is unpleasant, but you guys don't seem to mean
> *that*. The pain I suffer in a good cause is still, after all,
> unpleasant.
Yes, but it isn't "bad". Or, pain is bad "prima facie", but not
necessarily "all things considered". Pain that is not suffered in a good
cause is bad. Just as there are background conditions that must be true
if "Water boils at 100 degrees Celsius" is to report a fact, so there are
for "Pain is bad". The world is complex enough, and humans clever
enough, so that prima facie bads can serve good ends.
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Gordon G. Sollars
writes...
...
> This being the case, foregoing the
> explanatory power of higher-level abstractions when we do /not/ see how
> the reduction is to be accomplished seems even more reasonable.
Well, that should have been "even /less/ reasonable", of course.
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Mark Young
>> I know what "bad" means to me. Moral realists have some weird
>> theories about it, and it infuses their "bad" talk, and makes them
>> say things like "pain is bad".
Gordon Sollars:
> If saying "Pain is bad" is evidence of being a moral realist, then
> there are a good (!) many of us around.
Never denied that.
>> I don't think pain is bad at all, and I want to know what the heck
>> you guys mean when you say it.
> Well, to paraphrase one of us who is much better known in other
> contexts, "There may be two moral realists somewhere who agree on
> everything, but I am not one of them". ;-)
That I noticed. But if you realist mean different things by "bad" (as
the above implies, being an answer to "What do you guys mean"), then on
what basis can you say that "bad" means the same thing whenever anyone
uses it, regardless of their intent (which is a minimal requirement of
moral language being expressive of moral facts)?
>> I would interpret it to mean only that pain is unpleasant, but you
>> guys don't seem to mean *that*. The pain I suffer in a good cause
>> is still, after all, unpleasant.
> Yes, but it isn't "bad".
That's what I said. You say pain is bad, but not under such-and-such a
circumstance (or you say pain is intrinsically bad but sometimes
instrumentally good). But pain is unpleasant, so you can't mean "pain
is unpleasant" by "pain is bad".
> Or, pain is bad "prima facie", but not necessarily "all things
> considered". Pain that is not suffered in a good cause is bad. Just
> as there are background conditions that must be true if "Water boils
> at 100 degrees Celsius" is to report a fact, so there are for "Pain
> is bad". The world is complex enough, and humans clever enough, so
> that prima facie bads can serve good ends.
All fine as it stands, but not serving to clear up the matter of what
the heck you mean when you say it is bad. The statement about water
can be clearly explained to anyone with a modicum of intelligence -- or
better yet, demonstrated. Can you do anything of the sort for "bad"?
Gordon G. Sollars
...
> Gordon Sollars:
> > Well, to paraphrase one of us who is much better known in other
> > contexts, "There may be two moral realists somewhere who agree on
> > everything, but I am not one of them". ;-)
>
> That I noticed. But if you realist mean different things by "bad" (as
> the above implies, being an answer to "What do you guys mean"),
Now, don't go jumping on statements that I append smileys to. We mean
the same thing "near enough", although our detailed explanations may
differ in the details. As could what we mean by "unpleasant".
> then on
> what basis can you say that "bad" means the same thing whenever anyone
> uses it, regardless of their intent (which is a minimal requirement of
> moral language being expressive of moral facts)?
Well, "regardless of intent" is difficult for me to understand here. If
I saw someone strike his thumb with a hammer and then shout "I like ice
cream!", I would not be very sure that he really liked ice cream. Poets
use words in new ways, and meanings of words change over time. OTOH,
given a language, it is possible to construct meaningful statements by
random means. AFAIK, the "minimal requirement" for any language
to express a fact is that a reader can, indeed, see (or come to see) that
a fact has been expressed in that language. I know that this is not very
satisfying, and perhaps you have a better theory. If so please let me
know.
...
> You say pain is bad, but not under such-and-such a
> circumstance (or you say pain is intrinsically bad but sometimes
> instrumentally good). But pain is unpleasant, so you can't mean "pain
> is unpleasant" by "pain is bad".
I said:
> > Pain that is not suffered in a good cause is bad.
I will add, in case it isn't clear, that one of the reasons pain is bad
is that it is unpleasant.
I have previously explained 'good' using Rawls's "Aristotelean" idea of
the good. You were not happy with this, IIRC, because you thought that
this was not what most people using the term 'good' meant. OTOH, I find
it quite useful in understanding what they mean.
> All fine as it stands, but not serving to clear up the matter of what
> the heck you mean when you say it is bad. The statement about water
> can be clearly explained to anyone with a modicum of intelligence -- or
> better yet, demonstrated. Can you do anything of the sort for "bad"?
Well, as I said, I did it for "X is good" once before.
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
User 1DE7
>From: "Gordon G. Sollars" sol...@nji.com
>Message-id: <MPG.1451a9378c...@mail.nji.com>
>but I
>> would guess other people define 'physical' differently.
>
>Why not expect moral facts to be built up of the same "stuff" as other
>facts? It seems to me that you have posited a dichotomy that, by your
>definitions, the moral realist can not resolve.
>To be fair, it is quite
>possible that others here arguing for moral realism have encouraged you
>in this
Probably. Most of my knowledge of moral realism comes from Owl and Wrathbone,
so their specific brand is what I tend to focus on.
I don't understand how moral facts could be made up of the same stuff as
non-moral facts. Could you elaborate a bit more? Do you have some theory of how
things that physicists study can give rise to moral facts?
>My flavor of moral realism is, e.g., skeptical of the is/ought
>distinction
The difference between the two types of statements seems quite clear and
distinct to me. What reason do you have to be skeptical of a distinction there?
Do you think there are statements where it is difficult to tell which type they
are? Examples?
>> I am not familiar with common notions about emergent and non-emergent
>> properties. Would you say that many square blocks aranged in a circle
>exhibit
>> some emergent property of circularity, since the whole has properties of a
>> circle yet the pieces don't? Or is that not emergent?
>
>Fair enough. I would say that an emergent property is one that can only,
>or, less stringently, best, be understood by explanations that do not
>reference the level from which the property is said to emerge.
I don't like this definition, as it seems to be about what humans can
understand rather than the property itsself. Suppose everyone in the world
became mildly retarded tomorrow. Then the emergent properties of things would
change, since everyones understanding ability would be moved up to a higher
level of abstraction? (if you could previously understand a simple computer
program by looking at the machine instructions, now you can only understand it
by looking at high-level code.)
>So if we
>only look at each block, block by block, we only see sharp edges.
>Proceeding at this level only, it might be impossible to explain why the
>blocks are arranged as they are.
Again this seems to be about what we can or can't explain, not any objective
emergent property.
>But, when we step back, we see the
>whole set is arranged to form a circle.
Surely there are lots of things we can't understand as a whole if we look at
them at a low level. I thought all this talk about emergent properties was more
than that, though -- that it referred to objective properties instead of simply
being defined in terms of what humans can understand.
>Daniel Dennett uses the game of Life to illustrate this idea. There are
>really complex sequences in Life that only make sense when we step back
>and see what is happening on the board. It is still true that each move
>in these sequences is completely specified by the simple rules for cell
>creation and destruction, however.
I am not familiar with that game. I do remember a board game similar to
"candyland", for children, called "life", in which you'd roll dice and move
around and draw cards and such. I don't think this is what you are talking
about though.
>> I did not say I was not looking for these things, just that I don't think
>> they
>> exist objectively.
>
>Part of the issue may be what you mean here by "objective". I have used
>it to mean "something we can be wrong about".
I am using it to mean 'in the object.' I think that also implies that you can
be wrong about it, though. So, to say some action is objectively wrong, you are
saying that the wrongness exists in the act itsself, rather than as some
impression in someones mind. To say that the color green is objective, you mean
that when looking at an object, its greenness is a property of the object,
rather than some property of your mind that makes it look green for some
reason. For instance, if there were no fundamental differences between the
colors of objects, yet my mind was such that it interpreted every 4th object
that I focused on as being green, then greenness would not be objective.
If you stealing something simply caused some impression in my mind that what
you did was wrong, but there was no property of the action itsself that could
be identified as 'wrongness', then wrongness would not be objective -- or in
the object/action.
>> >I don't see how you know this, but see my remarks above about "physical".
>> >...
>>
>> Yes, my statement was more or less obviously true if you interpret it how I
>> think of physical things, basicaly "if you challenged them to prove that
>> biological phenominon was at its root existant, they could, theoreticaly."
>
>But why, other than as an article of faith, do you believe this
>"theoretical" reduction /is/ possible?
I am just saying that everything that is, or produces any effect, exists. Why
do I believe that? It seems sort of axiomatic. It is perhaps even the
definition of "exists". Suppose you hear some noise, then someone asks you "did
that noise exist, or did it not exist?" would you have much doubt about which
way to answer?
What I was saying above was simply that I was being misleading in calling
things "physical" when I really meant "existant."
>> Now, let us look at how moral philosophers try to explain their moral
>> intuition. Having moral intuition seems to me to be a very abstract high-
>> level
>> thing. Yet, it seems to be simply assumed that these sensations are somehow
>> fundamental.
>
>They are fundamental - in the sense that a Glider Gun in the game of Life
>is fundamental.
Again I am no familiar with that game, but from what it sounds like, I would
not call them 'fundamental' but rather "assumed to be fundamental to allow
humans to think of them better."
If, when you say moral intuitions are fundamental simply because assuming them
to be reduces the complexity in thinking of them, then I guess I would agree,
but I don't see the use in this definition as far as truth is concerned
>Like the Gilder Gun, however, they are quite complex
>when viewed at the level below.
Do moral realists really think this? I have never seen a moral realist try to
explain their moral intuitions at any level below their intuitions themselves.
Unless you regard the assertation that these intuitions are direct perceptions
of truth as an explaination. Granted I only argue with a few of them.
> So are your physical perceptions, btw.
Right, and therefore I realize that my physical perceptions could be just some
side effect of deeper going-ons that I have no clue about. For instance, if I
were a BIV, then my view of reality would sort of be wrapped in another reality
(the reality of the people controling the vat), which does not need to resemble
what I percieve.
Owl doesn't seem to allow for this sort of thing with his views on a-priori
knowledge. They are allegedly nessesarily true always, in any scenario, and not
just true in his level of experience.
The point is that you have no idea what really causes your experience at its
root, or how many levels deep it goes, or anything, yet there seems to be a
stipulation by various moral realists that reality must nessesarily consist of
only one level of complexity.
This sort of brings us to what it really means for something to be true. By
true we could mean nessesarily true at all levels of reality (so what applied
to the reality that you know must also apply to the BIV scenario.) Or, we could
mean that true simply means true at the level you experience, so saying A=A is
true doesn't rule out that it is true in the context of your reality yet your
reality is a product of some larger system for which A=A is not nessesarily
true.
Anyway, sort of off on a tangent now.
>> A moral philosopher, who is a very complex organism, posessing a mind
>> that we understand very little about, experiences some impression in his
>> mind,
>> and then deduces somehow that it is objectively true. In making this dedu
>> ction,
>> he must postulate an entirely new class of facts than what is previously
>> known
>> about.
>
>I don't follow this. Moral facts have been "known about" as far back as
>we can trace.
I was more trying to consider one person's gaining of knowledge in isolation.
So, this person already having established descriptive facts is trying for the
first time to make sense of his moral intuitions, and in doing so he is
required to postulate a new class of facts.
For this point I am making this assumption:
If theory A and theory B both explain some phenominon to a similar degree, yet
A can be explained in terms of things you already know to be true, and you'd
have to stipulate some new entities for theory B, and theory A and theory B
contradict eachother, then theory A is more likely true.
>> There is also a theory of evolutionary psychology that explains his
>> feelings
>
>"Feelings"? You are assuming your conclusion here. Why are moral facts
>best described as "feelings"?
I should have been more clear. The person allegedly is weighing two theories,
and, according to one theory his "moral facts" are feeling-like, and in the
other they are not, and I am just describing a position of one theory, that
builds on already known facts.
-User
Owl
> I find the results of social psych research very convincing -- I often
> notice myself making the FAE, or having confirmation bias, or trying to
> resolve dissonance in less-than-fully-honest ways, or anchoring to an
> earlier value. Just now I see that I have used accessibility bias --
> I can think of several occasions when I noticed these things, but it
> is actually a bit misleading to say that it happens "often". When I
> notice these things, I try to correct for them. I find the principles
> those researchers have identified useful in interpreting other people's
> actions. Most Objectivists here have a *lot* of dissonance they need
> to reduce, and it comes out in what they say about the others here. I
> try to avoid interacting with those people.
About the reality of stable character traits: Your last remark suggests we
might test Harman's general thesis on this newsgroup. That is, when it
comes to this newsgroup, do you find that certain people regularly exhibit
certain behaviors? For instance, there might be a group of posters who
regularly post irrational insults against others. I suppose one might
hypothesize that these individuals simply always are in similar situations
(which the rest of us are not in); but the simpler explanation seems to be
in terms of their standing personality traits.
User 1DE7
>Date: 10/13/00 10:04 PM Central Daylight Time
>Message-id: <8s8if5$9b0$1...@slb0.atl.mindspring.net>
>User 1DE7 <user...@aol.com> wrote in message
>news:20001012194126...@ng-md1.aol.com...
>> Well, a new class of facts that are not dependant upon, or reducable to
>all the
>> other facts that we know.
>
>Yes, but again, so what?
>This is essentially just repeating part of my position and then saying,
>"You see how bad that is?"
>
I am assuming that supposing you have two theories, A and B, and these theories
contradict eachother, and one is a natural extension from already established
facts, and the other requires some postulation of a new type of fact that is
completely different from all other known about facts, that, all else being
equal, theory A is more likely true than B. Is that not reasonable?
You would probably say that all else isn't equal, and there are other reasons
why moral realism is true, but doesn't this point in isolation favor the
evolutionary perspective?
>> I don't think anyone can explain consciousness fully. I don't find any
>dualist
>
>True enough. But physicalism, I think, cannot even allow the possibility
>of consciousness. This is, of course, a whole nother issue
I don't know why you'd think that, but maybe we should not focus on this right
now, if you are willing to stipulate that it is possible that physicalism could
be true and consciousness exist at the same time, just for the sake of focusing
on other parts of your argument. Assuming what you just said is not a nessesary
part of why physicalism is false.
>but I think
>your acceptance of a series of theories, each of which I find highly
>dubious (if not absurd), is all dependent on this one assumption of
>physicalism. Is that assumption so obvious as to be able to support the
>weight of the implausible and radically revisionary theories you have to
>adopt in several different areas of philosophy? I answer that it is not
>obvious at all; in fact, it is arbitrary.
I may have been sort of misleading, thus far. It occured to me that if it were
found out that something was real, then I would automaticaly call it physical,
and that I have been using 'physical' as synonymous with 'existant', so, I'll
try to be more careful with my use of 'physical' in the future. Just curious,
could you define 'physical' for me? I gave a definition in another thread
saying that something was physical if it "existed in spacetime, was a
coordinate of spacetime, or was a property of spacetime" or something similar,
but I didn't see you either accept or reject it.
>> "my behavior is a wonderful magestic thing, and reducing it to physical
>> explainations makes me feel bad as a person, therefore there must be
>some
>> magical realm of whimsey that makes me special"
>
>That would indeed be a fallacy. Call it the "appeal to arrogance". Now let
>me tell you about another fallacy I've run into. This was at a recent
>discussion of the possibility of alien intelligence on other planets.
>Someone said:
>
>"Of course I think there's intelligence on other planets in the galaxy --
>it would be arrogant to think we were the only ones."
>
>(May not be a verbatim quotation.) Call this the fallacy of "appeal to
>humility".
>
>Appeal to Humility is certainly a fallacy. "It would be arrogant to think
>P; therefore, ~P" is a very bad argument. The person who gave that
>argument in fact had no good reason at all for thinking there was
>intelligence elsewhere in the galaxy.
>
>The fallacy of Appeal to Humility is one that people actually commit; I
>have witnessed it.
Yes, I have heard the same argument about extraterrestrial life many times.
>> To your next point, I think hard-determinism is a solid theory and don't
>see
>> any reason why it cannot explain the freedom of the will.
>
>The fact that it denies free will is a sufficient reason for its not being
>able to 'explain the freedom of the will'
I think I meant "It explains why it seems to people as if they have free will."
Do you remember my thread about how it would seem to you like you had free will
even if you did not? I think my first attempt was fallicious, but then I was
able to construct an argument that you accepted, about how you could never
think faster than yourself.
That sort of explains my position on the issue. Ones behavior can be determined
and yet they don't feel as if they aren't making choices, or if they are being
controlled by fate or something. You could think of it as, the actual
motivation for choices being determined, so its not like they want to do some
things but since they are determined they are unable to do so, and there is
some conflict there.
You could say that the will is free to do what it is determined to do.
>On the other hand, you might
>have meant soft determinism
Maybe, actualy I am not perfectly clear on the meaning of both. I choose "hard"
as I thought soft implied a theory that is sort of half-determinist and half
non-determinist.
Also, "Determinism" may be sort of misleading, in that I do not nessesarily
reject inherant randomness in the universe. I don't think that whether there is
or is not inherant randomness affects my position fundamentaly, as I simply
mean that behavior is simply the product of physical laws, be they random or
not.
>> The only real objection I see you having to these very general accounts
>of mine
>> is "I have logical/moral intuitions, and they seem to be direct." ...I
>really
>> don't understand how you can distinguish them being direct from being
>indirect.
>> How would you tell? What do you think your intuitions would be like if
>they
>> were indirect?
>
>If a belief were 'indirect', then there would be a process of inference
>leading up to it.
Hm, that is interesting, I think I've been mis-interpreting that term, then. I
have taken 'direct' to mean that your perception is not the consequence of
anything more primary, but I am not talking about more primary in terms of your
reasoning process, I mean more primary in terms of what exists. So, suppose
that you percieve datum D. You are then saying that this nessesarily implies
that D constitutes *direct* knowledge of truth?
In my interpretation, if you percieve datum D, but your perception of D was
caused by the fact that G, then D is not direct. [what I just said is wrong,
see below]
Now that I think about it, calling something simply "direct" seems muddled.
Things can be direct perceptions OF something, but just saying "direct" doesn't
seem to make sense. It depends on what the object of your perception is. So, D
is percieved directly, but then you could say G is not percieved directly, as
you only percieve a consequence of G.
So, discard what I say about about D not being direct. If you percieve X, then
your perception of X is by definition direct, but your perception of causes of
X: Y and Z, and not direct. This seems to be consistant your definition above.
So, it is said that your moral intuitions are direct perceptions *of* truth.
Then the question arises, what do you mean when you say "truth"?
I talk about this in a recent post to Gordon Sollars.
Lets go back to datum D and fact G. You percieve D. Is that a direct perception
of truth? Well, it is a direct perception of D, but is D all there is to truth,
or do you want to include G as well? And if you do include G, then it isn't a
direct perception of truth (or, it is an incomplete perception of truth)
I think in science, they do try to go as deep as possible, so that G is
considered to be part of truth, and the causes of G, and the causes of those
causes, etc, until they can't go any further.
Couldn't it be possible that there is an underlying cause to your moral
intuitions?
I percieve a chair directly, but my percpetion is caused by things that I do
not percieve directly.
Now let us look at what it means to say that you percieve moral truth directly.
Suppose you have a moral intuition M. For comparison, suppose you then have a
sense impression S. S and M are both direct perceptions, but, are they direct
perceptions of truth?
Obviously whatever caused your perception in both cases is the real effect of
reality on your faculties, so you could say it is true in that sense, but
suppose S was someone poking a stick into a glass of water, and you seeing it
bend. Call the fact that water bends light more than air does S1. Did you
percieve S1 directly? No, only S. Did you percieve truth directly? Well, S1 is
truth, and you didn't percieve it directly, so, you didn't percieve the whole
truth directly, you just percieved it on one level, that happens to be
misleading if you don't research it further.
Now, when you have sense perception S, it looks like the stick bends, but we
know there are deeper causes, S1, S2, S3, etc that cause this that you don't
directly percieve. Therefore it is not correct to say "I directly percieved S,
and S is that the stick seems to bend when it goes into water, and since I am
percieving truth directly, it means the stick is bending."
Let us look at your moral intuition now. You directly percieve M, but I think
you'll agree that M could be caused by M1, M2, M3, etc. Your knowledge of M1,
M2, M3 then is indirect. However we see from the example with S that although
your direct perceptions are "true" in that they are the result of reality on
your faculties, that this doesn't imply that you can conclude that what they
seem to imply is true.
So, in percieving M, and noting that it seems to you that morality is really
wrong, it does not nessesarily imply that morality is really wrong, any more
than S implies that sticks bend in water. To know WHY you intuited M, you need
to look to M1, M2, M3, etc, just as to know WHY you percieved S, you need to
look to S1, S2, S3, etc, which you know indirectly.
Therefore claims that you directly percieve that M is true, using true as in
the "deep-true" sought by scientists and such, seems incorrect.
All you know when you have a direct perception or direct intuition is simply "I
directly sensed/intuited X."
So, does your direct percpetion that murder is wrong imlply that murder is
wrong? You might use it as evidence, but it doesn't nessesarily imply it. It
could also imply that there are simply factors that cause you to directly
intuit that murder is wrong.
I would say that these factors are your biological programming.
>> Reality is such that it has certain properties, and I believe our
>logical
>> beliefs reflect these properties, just not indirectly. Immagine that
>mammals
>> don't exist. The rules of logic are still true. They do not need to be
>
>To clarify, I was not objecting that you held the rules of logic were
>false. I also was not objecting that you held that the rules of logic were
>uncertain. I was objecting that you held they were completely unjustified.
>
And I still object to you talking about justification as if something can be
justified in some universal context that doesn't nessesarily include logic. I
think justification is a logical concept, and that it makes no sense to call
logic itsself justified. I should note that I have been using unjustified to
mean not-justified.
>> And you term as "self-defeating" any position that does not purport to
>be
>> simply justified in an absolute sense? Again, I don't think this
>criticism
>> makes sense since I don't think absolute justificaion makes sense.
>
>I don't know what you mean by "absolute justification."
You seem to want to talk about justification that exists outside of the scope
of logic or reason.
>I term
>self-defeating any position that implies that that position, itself, is
>completely and entirely unjustified.
I think the confusion may be that you think I mean something other than
non-justified.
>Here would be an example of some self-defeating positions: Someone asks me
>what the weather is like outside, and I reply:
>
>1) "It is raining right now, but I can't see whether it is, and I have no
>reason whatsoever to think that it is."
>
>2) "It is raining right now, but it would be irrational to think it was
>raining right now."
>
>3) "It is raining right now, but I don't know anything about the weather."
>
>4) "It is raining right now, but it's just as likely that it isn't."
And these things are unjustified *according to* logic. That is the only kind of
justification that I understand.
So, for instance, in deciding if logical beliefs are justified, what will they
be justified according to? I can't think of anything, therefore I say they are
not justified by anything, or, in short, simply not justified. Can you think of
something that justifies the acceptance of logic? If you say no, then it seems
by definition that you hold that the rules of logic are not justified, and that
is all I have been saying.
>Notice that your view of the rules of logic is not simply that they are
>not "absolutely, 100% justified." Rather, your view is: "There is no
>justification whatsoever for them. They are 0% justified." Isn't that
>right?
>
Precisely.
>So your position is like position (1) above (also 2, 3, and perhaps 4):
There is a difference. Your sentances are "dis-justified" (I use that term
because I have already used unjustified to mean non-justified). They are
dis-justified by logic. Logic itsself is not dis-justified by anything. Hence a
fundamental difference.
I will reply to the rest of your post some other time, as I have lots to do. I
think my explaination of direct perception and truth is by far the most
important thing in this post, and sort of puts to rest the idea that if you
directly percieve something that it is true in any sense other than that it
represents reality acting on your faculties.
--User
Mark Young
>> Most Objectivists here have a *lot* of dissonance they need to
>> reduce, and it comes out in what they say about the others here. I
>> try to avoid interacting with those people.
Owl:
> About the reality of stable character traits: Your last remark
> suggests we might test Harman's general thesis on this newsgroup.
> That is, when it comes to this newsgroup, do you find that certain
> people regularly exhibit certain behaviors? For instance, there might
> be a group of posters who regularly post irrational insults against
> others. I suppose one might hypothesize that these individuals simply
> always are in similar situations (which the rest of us are not in);
> but the simpler explanation seems to be in terms of their standing
> personality traits.
I think the "personality traits" explanation is *easier*, but not
really *simpler* than the "similar situations" explanation. What I
gave was a "similar situations" explanation of why they post all those
irrational insults -- they are trying to reduce dissonance between
their perceptions and understanding of the world, and that dissonance
is there all the time. In short, hpo doesn't match their world view,
and so they attribute all sorts of vices to the others here in an
attempt to mitigate their bad feelings. They are doing the same thing
pretty much everyone does; they are doing it a lot more tho because
they find themselves in the situation more often.
You will notice that many of these people are quite civil to each
other. They aren't just crotchety old buggers who feel a need to spew
their bile at all comers. And when a newbie comes by, they will treat
them with respect as well, until the newbie begins questioning their
beliefs (which are so "rational" and "obvious"). Then the bile kicks
in again.
Most people we know, we know only from limited situations. We see
someone at work, or at the club, or on the newsgroup, and rarely in
other situations. This makes it easy to confuse situational responses
with personality responses. People we know better we see in several
situations, and we get better at telling what's normal for that person,
and so what's not normal. "He's a nice, friendly guy -- but get him
behind the wheel of a car, and watch out!" Who knows what those people
we love to hate are like when they deal with people in person? Not me.
Tho' I must admit I'm not all that keen to find out....
Mark Young
>>> Well, to paraphrase one of us who is much better known in other
>>> contexts, "There may be two moral realists somewhere who agree on
>>> everything, but I am not one of them". ;-)
Mark Young:
>> That I noticed. But if you realist mean different things by "bad"
>> (as the above implies, being an answer to "What do you guys mean"),
Gordon Sollars:
> Now, don't go jumping on statements that I append smileys to.
It was the only answer I had. I went with it.
> We mean the same thing "near enough", although our detailed
> explanations may differ in the details. As could what we mean by
> "unpleasant".
Not "near enough" for me.
>> then on what basis can you say that "bad" means the same thing
>> whenever anyone uses it, regardless of their intent (which is a
>> minimal requirement of moral language being expressive of moral
>> facts)?
> Well, "regardless of intent" is difficult for me to understand here.
> If I saw someone strike his thumb with a hammer and then shout "I
> like ice cream!", I would not be very sure that he really liked ice
> cream.
Nor should you be. But that *is* what he said. And that *is* what
that means. You defended the position that the parrot spoke a truth,
after all.
> [...] AFAIK, the "minimal requirement" for any language to express a
> fact is that a reader can, indeed, see (or come to see) that a fact
> has been expressed in that language. I know that this is not very
> satisfying, and perhaps you have a better theory. If so please let
> me know.
A language is useless for expressing facts if there is no mapping from
statements to facts that is both moderately stable and common to the
great majority of the users of that language. We may know that the
speaker expressed *some* fact, but unless we can tell which fact it was
based on the statement made, the *language itself* is not expressive,
only its speakers.
> ...
>> You say pain is bad, but not under such-and-such a circumstance (or
>> you say pain is intrinsically bad but sometimes instrumentally
>> good). But pain is unpleasant, so you can't mean "pain is
>> unpleasant" by "pain is bad".
> I said:
>
>>> Pain that is not suffered in a good cause is bad.
You also said:
>>>>> Pain might not be bad, all things considered, if experiencing it
>>>>> is part of a larger sequence of actions which is good. ...
*That*'s the one I was talking about. It says that pain might not be
bad in such-and-such a condition, which I take to mean that there are
some specializations of that condition that have pain that's not bad.
> I will add, in case it isn't clear, that one of the reasons pain is
> bad is that it is unpleasant.
Which simply re-iterates that "pain is bad" doesn't just mean that pain
is unpleasant.
> I have previously explained 'good' using Rawls's "Aristotelean" idea
> of the good. You were not happy with this, IIRC, because you thought
> that this was not what most people using the term 'good' meant.
> OTOH, I find it quite useful in understanding what they mean.
I noted that Rawls had a good many detractors -- indicating to me that
a lot of people don't mean what Rawls says they do. I also noted that,
at least the way you explained it, it made the goodness of objects
dependent on the purposes and attitudes of the people evaluating those
objects -- which is not the sort of morality I take moral realists to
be promoting.
Mark Young
>> All fine as it stands, but not serving to clear up the matter of
>> water can be clearly explained to anyone with a modicum of
>> intelligence -- or better yet, demonstrated. Can you do anything of
>> the sort for "bad"?
Gordon Sollars:
> Well, as I said, I did it for "X is good" once before.
Actually, all I can recall was you doing it for "This is a good X",
which is not the same thing.
User 1DE7
>Subject: Re: Intuitionism vs. Evolutionary Psychology (To User)
>From: Owl a@a.a
>Date: 10/13/00 10:04 PM Central Daylight Time
>Message-id: <8s8if5$9b0$1...@slb0.atl.mindspring.net>
>> I'm not taking it as an axiom, I don't think. Why believe it? Well,
>start with
>> the believe that physical reality exists, which I think we all believe,
>and,
>> trying to explain things like morality and logic, etc, with our handy
>knowledge
>> of evolution and psychology and such at hand, we notice that there are
>good
>
>Why do you think it's okay to just "start with the belief that physical
>reality exists," but it's not okay to just start with the belief that
>moral reality exists?
I've decided to try to minimize my use of the term 'physical reality', as I
think it is detrimental to the discussion. It would be more accurate to say
that I start with the belief that my perceptions exist. This includes
moral/logical perceptions. Note that this does not distinguish between what one
might call physical reality and a belief that everything is mental.
>True, not *everyone* believes moral reality exists, but a lot of people
>do, and besides, epistemological matters aren't settled by vote. (Anyway,
>not everyone thinks physical reality exists -- the idealists don't. Don't
>they get a vote?)
I don't really think it is meaningful to say that physical reality does not
exist, but what we call physical reality is really something else. Physical
reality gets defined to be [that thing that our senses give us perceptions of].
For instance, suppose that all of my perceptions were caused by some giant
mind, and that my experience was sort of within the realm of this giant mind, a
subset of it, and that in this realm nothing had mass. Would I then say
physical reality didn't really exist, or that mass didn't really exist? No.
Physical reality IS [that thing that our senses give us perceptions of],
regardless of what causes it -- it could be the dream of a giant purple fish,
or some big mind, or whatever. Whatever causes what we call physical reality
does not affect whether or not it exists. Physical reality could exist *as a
fish's dream*, or something, it would still be physical reality.
>
>> psysical explainations for them but more importantly, that non-physical
>> attempts at explaining them either simply don't make sense (morality),
>seem
>
>I don't see what doesn't make sense. Do you just mean that you don't
>accept such explanations?
No, when I attempt to think that there exist facts of the form "X is wrong", I
cannot get a clear idea of it in my mind. It is like I am trying to immagine
some buddihst paradox. I can only think of it on an abstract level, and sort of
describe what it is, but can't imagine it vividly or anything. It is like being
able to describe the concept of infinity, but not being able to concieve of
anything that is infinite.
>> like a farfetched attempt to make people feel special (free will, direct
>> perception of truth..morality too, basicaly all non-physicalyist
>issues), and
>
>I also don't see anything farfetched so far.
>
>> that there is really no evidence for them other than claims by people
>that they
>> just seem to percieve things directly, etc.
>
>Now that's just an attempt to shift the burden of proof. So far, you
>haven't given any *reason* why one theory is better than another.
I'll address this in another post.
>> Again, I fail to see how these people know their perceptions are direct
>vs
>> indirect. Maybe everyone except for me has some super-powers that allow
>them to
>> do this.
>
>I don't see the relevance of this. This seems to be a level confusion.
>
>Level confusions are confusions between, for example, knowing X and
>knowing that you know X, or believing X and knowing that you believe X,
>etc. You seem to be shifting between talking about having direct
>knowledge, and having direct knowledge that you have direct knowledge.
Maybe, I just posted something to this thread on the topic of direct perception
in general, which I think is a sort of breakthrough in the discussion, that
clears up some stuff about 'direct perceptions.
I will refer you to that. It might be helpful to not use the word 'knowledge'
in this discussion, as I think it is sort of loaded. Do you think using simply
'direct perception' and 'inferences from direct perception' could do the job?
(assuming that is what you think knowledge is composed of). Due to the other
post that I refer to, I think that using 'knowledge' will get sort of muddled
and imprecise, as there are all sorts of depths of perceptions and truths that
I talk about that 'knowledge' seems to gloss over.
>> Right, I am assuming my conclusion here, but it is justified in that I
>am
>> trying to show lack of symmetry between moral and physical reality, as
>david
>> friedman seems to try to suggest some sort of weak symmetry on his page.
>
>So far I don't see the asymmetry. Neither physical facts nor moral facts
>are capable of explaining the other.
Obviously you don't think so. The point was that it is far more likely that
moral facts are not objective, and are simply the result of non-moral facts
about our make-up as humans than the other way around -- that non-moral facts
do not exist, and they are simply a consequence of moral facts. I think I
remembered you saying that you were only sure with a minimum probability of .9
that moral facts are objective. Does the remaining .1 not include the
possiblity that your moral impressions are simply a result of non-moral facts?
If that scenario does occupy a large part of that remaining .1 probability,
then I don't see how you can claim no asymmetry. You seemed to be millions of
more times more sure that what you called physical facts existed than what you
called moral facts. Or did you think that if moral facts did not exist, they
still could not possibly be explained physicaly and you would then resort to a
third class of facts?
>> I think my assumption is less "there are only physical facts" and more
>"there
>> are physical facts" followed with the observation that all the alleged
>evidence
>> for non-physical facts (people claiming to sense truth directly, with a
>strong
>> emotional motivation to do so), is quite weak and what it purports to
>explain
>> can be explained in a very strong manner in terms of evolution.
>
>So far, I still don't see any asymmetry. If you get to just assume there
>are physical facts, why don't I get to just assume there are moral facts?
Revised explaination: I assume that my perceptions/intuitions exist. I percieve
things that you could call physical, logical, and moral. The things that I
percieve with my five senses are amazingly consistant with eachother (all 5
senses agree), and everyone that I encounter seems to percieve the exact same
things as clearly and vividly as I do, if we are given time for careful
analysis. My logical intuitions describe properties of what I percieve reality
to be through my 5 senses. For instance if there are three identical boxes and
a red, green, and blue ball are each inserted into a box, the boxes are closed
and mixed up, and then two are opened and a red and green ball are taken out,
and the third is about to be opened, my logical faculty can be used to make a
prediction that I will precieve a blue ball in the 3rd box. Thus, my 5 senses,
and now my logical intuition together describe some sort of coherant ordered
reality that all people agree on with almost 100% accuracy, at the sensory
level. All of these 6 things re-enforce and are consistant with one-another.
If, durring the previous experiment, the 3rd ball was not blue, then it would
sort of be a setback to the consistantcy of all of these 6 ways in which I
percieve/intuit. I would probably be able to come up with an explaination for
which all of these 6 faculties were consistant without much trouble, though,
and this 'setback' would not be severe at all. It would not cause me to doubt
that this stuff that I percieved was objective, considering all of the other
evidence that I have.
Now, every single day, everyone is constantly flooded with extremely vivid
consistant percpetions and logical intuitions that either always agree or, if
they don't seem to at first it can be worked out that you were interpreting
something wrong, or you were using logic in a sloppy manner or something. Not
only is this constant flood of confirmation basicaly 100% consistant for each
agent, but so it is exactly the same for each other person as well, it seems.
Thus all evidence seems to be that what you percieve is objective, and that the
properties of reality that you intuit are objective.
All of this stuff can be tested, predictions can be made, etc.
However, looking at moral intuitions, they do not 'check' against any of the
other things mentioned. You cannot use the fact that you intuit that murder is
wrong to support the fact that your sock is green, and you can't use the fact
that your sock is green to support your moral intuition.
So, right away we have something about moral intuition that should not make us
quite as confident in it as the other two things I mentioned: The 5 prongs of
the senses and our logical intuition all provide support for one-another, while
moral intuition stands alone, unsupported by any other sense/intuition.
How, if we simply rely on one source that gives us moral intuitions now and
then can we know that it is such an ordered, consistant, objective phenominon
as we suspect our other percpetions/intuitions to be? And in fact, when we
speak to others about morality, we don't find any more order and consistancy
than we would expect to find in just a trait of some biological species. It is
not even close to what we find when we talk to them about sense perception and
logic.
I would suggest that of those who do believe in objective morality, a majority,
if not a large majority, only believe in it because of their religious beliefs.
I've heard that over 90% of all people are religious, or believe in some higher
power or something. In light of this, the observation that most people are
moral realists is not so impressive at all. From personal experience I can tell
you that the vast majority of athiests I know do not believe in objective
morality. Not that this proves that morality isn't objective, but I often hear
moral realists citing the fact that lots of people think morality is objective.
Add to this my own personal experience. I have moral intuitions, it is not at
all clear to me that they are objective because of this. This isn't really
supposed to convince anyone else, but it is one reason why I am not a moral
realist.
I could try to go into more depth about why morality is in fact not objective,
but I will leave my point here as simply that our evidence for sense perception
and the truth of logical intuition is far better than our evidence that
morality is objective.
>People claim to perceive moral truths directly. But they also claim to
>perceive physical facts directly. If you refuse to accept direct
>perception, why accept the physical facts?
See my other post to this thread about 'direct' things.
>> I don't know much about idealism, but the assumption that your
>experience is
>> all mental doesn't really seem to nessesarily be that different from
>> physicalism.
>
>Huh?
>First of all, it is analytic that your *experience* is all mental. The
>realist thinks, however, that something non-mental is *causing* your
>experience. The idealist denies this.
What practical consequences does this have? The laws of physics still hold,
even you say they are 'mental', you are still sitting at a desk reading a
newsgroup post, even if it is a 'mental desk.' I'll think about this a little
more before I answer in-depth, as I haven't thought about it much before.
>
>I don't see how one could think idealism and physicalism were close to
>being the same.
>
>> Therefore, as idealism seems to simply be physicalism with the
>stipulation that
>> what we call physical is caused by some force we have no evidence for,
>
>Physicalism is just idealism with the stipulation that our experiences are
>caused by some force we have no evidence for. --That's what the idealist
>would say.
>
>Come on, you know you don't believe idealism. You know that you believe in
>physical objects, and you don't believe it because you've got an argument
>for it. (If you think you do, tell us!)
I'll respond to this later.
>> I would
>> first note that it has no consequences, and then that it seems to add a
>layer
>> of complexity that we have no evidence for.
>
>No, realism adds an extra layer of complexity.
Yes, I suppose it does.
>> >Are you assuming ethical egoism here? I didn't think you were an
>egoist.
>>
>> Not strictly ethical egoism. I can ask "what will happen that will
>impact your
>> experience"? So, for instance, you could live for the sake of your
>grandmother,
>> certainly not ethical egoism, but if there are objective moral facts
>they will
>> not impact on your experience at all, and will certainly not effect your
>> efforts to benefit your grandmother.
>
>Yes, but "grandmotherism" is also false (the view that your grandmother is
>the only thing that matters). Thus, asking, "What will happen that will
>impact my grandmother?" would be equally irrelevant.
>
>It is also false that your experience is the only thing that matters (and
>btw, that's directly incompatible with grandmotherism anyway, so I don't
>understand why you seem to be putting both views in the same paragraph).
I should have said 'anyones experience'
>
>> Suppose instead that you did some things to benefit your grandmother,
>since it
>> matterd that she was happy to you. Suppose also that by some alleged
>moral fact
>> these things were wrong. My point is not that they just dont have a
>downside
>> for you, but they have no effect on anyones experience.
>
>Why think that these things would have no effect on anyone's experience?
>Indeed, it is then obscure what kind of wrongful actions you could be
>talking about. Murder? No. Theft? No. Hurting people? No.
Of course the actions affect peoples experience, you are talking about physical
actions. I am saying that whether murder is wrong or not does not affect
anyones experience, as far as I can see. So, in one scenario, A1 murders B1 and
murder is objectively wrong. In another scneario, A2 murders B2, but in this
scenario morality is not objective. I don't see any difference at all other
than that you will say "the difference is that in the first case, A1 did
something wrong, and in the second case, B2 didnt!", but, I really can't
immagine what that means, as I have elaborated on earlier. Aside from the claim
that in one case something wrong was done, they situations would seem to be
identical.
What kind of
>wrongful action would it be that had no effect on *anyone's* experience?
>Why would the moral realist think such an action was wrong?
Im not saying the action doesnt affect anyone, I am saying that whether or not
it has a property of 'wrongness' doesn't affect anyone.
>> Just continuing on the point that things being moral or not has no
>effect on
>> anyones experience. Maybe it is just because I cannot directly percieve
>these
>> moral truths that you claim to percieve, and if I could percieve them
>directly
>> as you do, I might somehow understand how they would effect people.
>
>I'll tell you about one of them: the non-initiation of force principle.
>You see how the initiation of force affects people.
Yes, but not how whether it is really wrong or not affects people.
>> That just doesn't make sense to me. Just curious, where you raised in an
>> environment where moral realism was instilled into you at a young age?
>For
>
>No, I never heard of it until I read Moore. Were you raised in an
>environment where moral relativism was instilled in you at a young age?
>(Well, the whole country practically satisfies that description.)
I'm not talking about any sophisticated version of moral realism, I just mean a
general idea that morality is objective. For instance, any reference to things
being simply wrong or simply right. I think you snipped a part of my post where
I said basicaly the same thing though, so I guess your answer is "no."
>If you don't mind my saying so, you seem to be much more worried about
>other people being subject to bias than yourself. In fact, you don't seem
>to be at all worried about your own potential biases.
The thing is, I don't need to come on HPO and talk about it to examine my own
biases. I can examine them by myself: hence the reason why you don't see it on
HPO. I do however pay attention to them.
>> No, I mean ones that have an effect on people. For instance, there is a
>> discernable difference between not having pre-marital sex and having
>> pre-marital sex. It will objectively frustrate your prefereneces if you
>prefer
>> to have pre-marital sex but you don't because te bible says not to.
>
>It sounds like you may be assuming that, if moral facts exist, then they
>are facts to the effect that pleasure and happiness are morally bad, that
>people should inflict suffering on themselves, and such like.
I don't think so, that just happened to be an example I picked.
True, a lot
>of people have apparently subscribed to such views (self-sacrificial
>morality, as Ayn Rand would say),
Wouldn't you say that most people who are moral realists have self-sacraficial
views?
but surely those would not be the most
>plausible moral systems. One should, then, take as one's examples the most
>plausible moral systems.
>
>> >I think you've got it backwards. If morality isn't real, then nothing
>> >matters.
>>
>> People still have preferences, and things still matter to people.
>
>But getting their preferences satisfied is no better or worse than getting
>them frustrated.
No objectively better or worse, right. The fact is, people act to satisfy their
preferences. Call it a biological urge. Telling them that objective morality
doesn't exist won't change this.
And "matter to" just refers to people's false and
>irrational beliefs about what's good.
No, "I prefer X" does not mean "I think X is objectively good." It is simply a
preference. "X matters to me" also does not imply "I think X is objectively
good", and therefore I don't understand your charge of falsity.
On your view, no one ever has the
>slightest reason to prefer anything over anything else; so they just have
>a bunch of irrational preferences. Why should you try to satisfy
>irrational preferences?
There is no logical argument for it, it is simply how people behave. They try
to satisfy their preferences. Why should the worm dig holes in the ground? It
is just an irraitonal preference. Organisms act how they are biologicaly
predisposed or conditioned to act.
>> You seem to be using "matter" in an odd way. It matters to me whether or
>not I
>
>I think you're using "matter to me" in an odd way. If you think A is no
>better than B, then I don't see why it would 'matter to you' whether A or
>B happens.
"Better" has various meanings. Often if I prefer X over Y, just because of some
biological urge, then I will say "X is better than Y" in the manner that I
would say "chocolite icecream is better than vanilla." Do you honestly think
people are making a moral statement when they say something like that?
Again, organisms act to satifsy their preferrences, which are the result of
biology and conditioning. Thats just how they behave.
>> The first one is almost an axiomatic belief. I guess when I was
>answering it, I
>> included all possibly BIVish scenarios, even if the realm I was in would
>not be
>> called "physical", in that there was no mass, etc. I would then say
>physical
>
>That's copping out, though. I'm sure you think there are real physical
>objects (not just computer simulations). Is *that* axiomatic?
I'm not sure that there are, and I don't really know what it means to say
"real, rather than... " In both cases the objects would be real. In one they
would be caused by some computer, in another you don't specify a cause.
-User
Gordon G. Sollars
> Gordon Sollars:
...
> > We mean the same thing "near enough", although our detailed
> > explanations may differ in the details. As could what we mean by
> > "unpleasant".
>
> Not "near enough" for me.
How do you know that we mean "near enough" the same by the word
"unpleasant"? Pressing very hard on the meaning of a single word often
leads to problems. It wouldn't be fair to attribute all of them to the
theory of moral realism.
At the most basic level, the moral realists here think that moral
statements can actually be true or false. How it turns out that such
statements have truth values can quickly get into the details of our
explanations, and here we may differ. But I don't think we differ so
much that we have insurmountable problems understanding each other - or
non-realists for that matter.
> >> then on what basis can you say that "bad" means the same thing
> >> whenever anyone uses it, regardless of their intent (which is a
> >> minimal requirement of moral language being expressive of moral
> >> facts)?
>
> > Well, "regardless of intent" is difficult for me to understand here.
> > If I saw someone strike his thumb with a hammer and then shout "I
> > like ice cream!", I would not be very sure that he really liked ice
> > cream.
>
> Nor should you be. But that *is* what he said. And that *is* what
> that means. You defended the position that the parrot spoke a truth,
> after all.
And I still do. But someone could still challenge what it /meant/ to say
"It is raining", just as you have challenged us to explain what it means
to say "Pain is bad". With the parrot, I assume that the "speaker" does
not have any intentions that ought to lead me to understand "It is
raining" in some special way. Not so with persons.
As I have said before, I am quite willing to take at face value the claim
that you do not mean to express any fact when you say "X is good". A
consequence of my willingness to be so generous is that I can not satisfy
your requirement that "bad" (or "fish") means the same whenever anyone
uses it. But, I think your requirement is arbitrary. What matters,
again as I have said, is that there is some way for me to come to know
what you mean by "bad" (or "fish").
When you say "This is a good watch for me", I (now) recognize that you
mean something like "I like (get a pleasurable feeling from) this watch".
This is not a problem for moral realism, AFAIK. I can still maintain
that "This is a good watch for me" is true or false.
...
> A language is useless for expressing facts if there is no mapping from
> statements to facts that is both moderately stable and common to the
> great majority of the users of that language. We may know that the
> speaker expressed *some* fact, but unless we can tell which fact it was
> based on the statement made, the *language itself* is not expressive,
> only its speakers.
Well, how would we know the speaker had expressed a fact, except by using
some language? Look, I think that "moderately stable" and "common to the
great majority" are important criteria, but I don't see that the game is
up if they are not met. As it happens, I also think that "good" (or
"bad") meets these criteria. But even if there were communities using
"good" in various conflicting ways, I don't see how this would imply that
moral statements did not have truth values, as opposed to implying that
translations of various sorts would be needed to aid understanding.
...
> You also said:
>
> >>>>> Pain might not be bad, all things considered, if experiencing it
> >>>>> is part of a larger sequence of actions which is good. ...
>
> *That*'s the one I was talking about. It says that pain might not be
> bad in such-and-such a condition, which I take to mean that there are
> some specializations of that condition that have pain that's not bad.
Right. Isn't this straightforward? For example, physical training of
various kinds can be painful, but also beneficial. So we say that pain
is bad, because it is unpleasant, can indicate damage to the body, etc.,
but we should keep in mind that - all things considered - pain can be
part of a larger sequence that is good. Typically, we label such
sequences "good" or "bad" in total, don't we?
...
>
> > I have previously explained 'good' using Rawls's "Aristotelean" idea
> > of the good. You were not happy with this, IIRC, because you thought
> > that this was not what most people using the term 'good' meant.
> > OTOH, I find it quite useful in understanding what they mean.
>
> I noted that Rawls had a good many detractors -- indicating to me that
> a lot of people don't mean what Rawls says they do.
Rawls's critics have not focused on his theory of the good - it's his
theory of justice that gets the attention. But our real disagreement is
over what sort of problem it is that not everyone agrees with Rawls's
explication of "good". If Rawls's definition is such that it gives truth
values to statements that use "good", and these values are (more or less)
correct, what more is there? Of course, anyone who denies that such a
statement can have a truth value means something else when they use
"good". Again, I don't see why moral realism is hostage to their
intransigence. Such behavior wouldn't say anything about the correctness
of physical realism, would it?
> I also noted that,
> at least the way you explained it, it made the goodness of objects
> dependent on the purposes and attitudes of the people evaluating those
> objects -- which is not the sort of morality I take moral realists to
> be promoting.
Well, I think it would be odd for a theory that draws on Aristotle and
Ross to be antithetical to moral realism. But I doubt I said that it
depends on the persons doing the evaluation - the whole point is that
/this/ watch is a good watch for Blind Bob (or not), /regardless/ of who
is doing the evaluation. That's the objective part. Of course, features
about Blind Bob and Alice (with the small wrists) do affect what is good
for them in a watch. And, more general features about humans affect what
is a "good watch" in general.
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Joe Durnavich
>> Right, I am assuming my conclusion here, but it is justified in that I
>am
>> trying to show lack of symmetry between moral and physical reality, as
>david
>> friedman seems to try to suggest some sort of weak symmetry on his page.
>
>So far I don't see the asymmetry. Neither physical facts nor moral facts
>are capable of explaining the other.
Just so I am clear on what you guys are arguing about, what are
examples of "moral facts"? Is something like the following a moral
fact: Floss your teeth to help prevent gum disease.
>> I don't know much about idealism, but the assumption that your
>experience is
>> all mental doesn't really seem to nessesarily be that different from
>> physicalism.
>
>Huh?
>First of all, it is analytic that your *experience* is all mental. The
>realist thinks, however, that something non-mental is *causing* your
>experience. The idealist denies this.
Man, I don't seem to fit at either one of these poles. I don't think
experience is some type of distinct entity. Both views mentioned
above seem to have experience as a shadow of something else (except
the idealist says just the shadow exists).
There is just the world (which includes us). "Mental" and
"experience" are just aspects of our interaction with the world.
Drinking my coffee is an experience. I don't see a need to find a
cause for it though, except maybe I was thirsty and my caffeine
addiction was acting up. Or, maybe, the cause of the experience is me
lifting the cup to my mouth and swallowing the coffee. But that is
just a restatement of the experience itself.
--
Joe Durnavich
User 1DE7
>Date: 10/15/00 4:11 PM Central Daylight Time
>Message-id: <f27kuso8mvh050tmn...@4ax.com>
>
>>> Right, I am assuming my conclusion here, but it is justified in that I
>>am
>>> trying to show lack of symmetry between moral and physical reality, as
>>david
>>> friedman seems to try to suggest some sort of weak symmetry on his page.
>>
>>So far I don't see the asymmetry. Neither physical facts nor moral facts
>>are capable of explaining the other.
>
>Just so I am clear on what you guys are arguing about, what are
>examples of "moral facts"? Is something like the following a moral
>fact: Floss your teeth to help prevent gum disease.
No, it is not like that. I suggest reading some of Owl's papers on his page if
you want to know more about his theory of moral facts. I don't have his URL
handy, but if you search for "why i am not an objectivist" it should get you
there.
To understand what moral facts allegedly are, you need to realize that Owl
thinks that facts *exist*, in some sense, and are not just descriptions of
reality.
For instance, take the fact "the cat is on the mat." Now, suppose this is true.
By what I understand Owl's theory to be, not only does the cat exist on the
mat, which exists (this is what I think most people mean when they state a
fact), but the fact itsself actualy exists. This fact is non-physical, and has
some sort of platonic existance. So, now we're thinking that non-physical
things exist.
Not only do facts allegedly exist, but the fact that that fact exists also
exists, etc.
So we have a certain state of reality in which the cat is on the mat, and this
situation exists.
Call this situation S.
We have a fact that S is true. Call this fact F.
F supposedly exists.
We have a fact that F exists, call this F2.
F2 supposedly exists.
We have a fact that F2 exists, call this F3.
F3 supposedly exists.
etc.. going on forever.
I think this is a serious error on the part of Owl, and once it is accepted,
moral facts don't seem as implausible.
Having given you this background, you should now be able to understand what he
means by moral facts. He means that "murder is bad." exists, objectively, as
some sort of fact, sort of like how F2 and F3 and such existed.
So, if G kills someone, and K then tells G "murder is bad," then G might say
"bad for what? for whom?" and K would say "what do you mean? it is just *bad*,
it just is." G might not understand, K would continue "There exists a fact, and
this fact states that murder is bad, therefore murder is bad."
These moral facts are non-physical, and we can allegedly percieve them directly
simply by using our reason, in the same way that we can percieve logical
truths.
I don't think this view makes any sense, so maybe I am explaining it wrong, but
I think I got the general concept correct.
>>
>>Huh?
>>First of all, it is analytic that your *experience* is all mental. The
>>realist thinks, however, that something non-mental is *causing* your
>>experience. The idealist denies this.
>
>Man, I don't seem to fit at either one of these poles. I don't think
>experience is some type of distinct entity. Both views mentioned
>above seem to have experience as a shadow of something else (except
>the idealist says just the shadow exists).
>
>There is just the world (which includes us).
>"Mental" and
>"experience" are just aspects of our interaction with the world.
>Drinking my coffee is an experience. I don't see a need to find a
>cause for it though,
Thinking of it this way might help: If you were to die, while drinking your
coffee, would anything exist after your death? If you still think that the
world would go on more or less as usual, then you in fact *do* believe that
your experience is caused by some sort of objective reality. To not believe
that your experience was caused, it would make no sense to speak of things
existing after you died. So, perhaps if you were alive durring WW2, and you
wanted Hitler to stop killing people, you would simply kill yourself and, since
you'd no longer exierence hitler killing people, then he wouldn't be, anymore,
according to your belief.
Most likely you think this view is mistaken, and you think that your experience
is *caused* by the fact that Hitler really was killing people, in some sort of
'objective physical reality' that both you are Hitler inhabit.
-User
Gordon G. Sollars
writes...
...
> I don't understand how moral facts could be made up of the same stuff as
> non-moral facts.
Aren't chemical facts and biological facts made of the same stuff as
physical facts on your view?
...
> >My flavor of moral realism is, e.g., skeptical of the is/ought
> >distinction
>
> The difference between the two types of statements seems quite clear and
> distinct to me.
Why? Because "is" and "ought" are two different words?
> What reason do you have to be skeptical of a distinction there?
> Do you think there are statements where it is difficult to tell which typ
> e they
> are? Examples?
"This is a good watch", both describes a watch and is a normative
statement.
...
> >Fair enough. I would say that an emergent property is one that can only,
> >or, less stringently, best, be understood by explanations that do not
> >reference the level from which the property is said to emerge.
>
> I don't like this definition, as it seems to be about what humans can
> understand rather than the property itsself.
I would say that it is about the property and what is /understandable/,
by humans or otherwise. It is true that at present the best example of
"understanders" we have are humans, but that might not always be the
case. In any event, the ability of humans to understand is an objective
one, AFAIK.
> Suppose everyone in the world
> became mildly retarded tomorrow. Then the emergent properties of things would
> change, since everyones understanding ability would be moved up to a higher
> level of abstraction? (if you could previously understand a simple computer
> program by looking at the machine instructions, now you can only understa
> nd it
> by looking at high-level code.)
If everyone in the world were less intelligent, then all manner of
explanations would fail to make sense, whether or not they dealt with
emergent properties.
Do you similarly object to the definition of entropy in terms of
ignorance? To the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics (which
involves an observer)? Most physicists don't object to either. I
suspect you have a notion of "objective" that is not very useful.
> >So if we
> >only look at each block, block by block, we only see sharp edges.
> >Proceeding at this level only, it might be impossible to explain why the
> >blocks are arranged as they are.
>
> Again this seems to be about what we can or can't explain, not any objective
> emergent property.
Again, your notion of "objective" seems defective.
> >But, when we step back, we see the
> >whole set is arranged to form a circle.
>
> Surely there are lots of things we can't understand as a whole if we look at
> them at a low level. I thought all this talk about emergent properties wa
> s more
> than that, though -- that it referred to objective properties instead of
> simply
> being defined in terms of what humans can understand.
Are you saying that there are no emergent properties? Or just that you
don't like my definition? I suppose that a definition could be given in
terms of complexity and information processing power, but I'm not going
to go to the trouble without a good reason.
...
> I am not familiar with that game.
Try a search on "Conway game life".
...
> >Part of the issue may be what you mean here by "objective". I have used
> >it to mean "something we can be wrong about".
>
> I am using it to mean 'in the object.'
Then "having the color blue" is not objective, since blue is not "in the
object". I think you need to give some thought to your notion of
objective.
> I think that also implies that you can
> be wrong about it, though. So, to say some action is objectively wrong, y
> ou are
> saying that the wrongness exists in the act itsself, rather than as some
> impression in someones mind.
I don't find this dichotomy very useful. What is "in the act itself"?
You go on to suggest that "greenness" is objective, but it is not "in the
object itself".
> To say that the color green is objective, you mean
> that when looking at an object, its greenness is a property of the object,
> rather than some property of your mind that makes it look green for some
> reason.
But 'greenness' is "in" the mind - where else would it be? Are you
conflating the property of greenness with a certain range of wavelengths
of electromagnetic radiation? Even if you want to claim that this is
legitimate, you still have the problem that "greenness" is not in the
object itself, but is a function of the object and the background
lighting.
...
> >But why, other than as an article of faith, do you believe this
> >"theoretical" reduction /is/ possible?
>
> I am just saying that everything that is, or produces any effect, exists. Why
> do I believe that? It seems sort of axiomatic. It is perhaps even the
> definition of "exists". Suppose you hear some noise, then someone asks yo
> u "did
> that noise exist, or did it not exist?" would you have much doubt about which
> way to answer?
What does this have to do with whether a reduction of, say, biology to
physics is possible?
...
> >Like the Gilder Gun, however, they are quite complex
> >when viewed at the level below.
>
> Do moral realists really think this?
Well, at least some of them do.
...
> I was more trying to consider one person's gaining of knowledge in isolation.
> So, this person already having established descriptive facts is trying fo
> r the
> first time to make sense of his moral intuitions, and in doing so he is
> required to postulate a new class of facts.
I would say that the analogue of moral intuitions is sense perceptions or
perhaps expert "hunches" that something is true. I don't see why you
assume that we first establish "descriptive facts" and then go about
trying to "make sense" of moral intuitions.
>
> For this point I am making this assumption:
>
> If theory A and theory B both explain some phenominon to a similar degree
> , yet
> A can be explained in terms of things you already know to be true,
Can it? You haven't established that biology or chemistry can be
explained in terms of physics that we know to be true.
> and you'd
> have to stipulate some new entities for theory B, and theory A and theory B
> contradict eachother, then theory A is more likely true.
It might be a more satisfactory theory, but I don't see why it would be
"more likely" to be true. As it happens, however, I don't stipulate any
new entities. I simply say that moral statements, like others, can be
true or false. It seems that you are the one with the more complicated
theory.
...
> >"Feelings"? You are assuming your conclusion here. Why are moral facts
> >best described as "feelings"?
>
> I should have been more clear. The person allegedly is weighing two theories,
> and, according to one theory his "moral facts" are feeling-like, and in the
> other they are not, and I am just describing a position of one theory, that
> builds on already known facts.
So far as I can tell, establishing that /this/ is a good watch builds on
already known facts - or things that can be known.
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Joe Durnavich
>>From: Joe Durnavich jo...@mcs.net
>>Date: 10/15/00 4:11 PM Central Daylight Time
>
>>"Mental" and
>>"experience" are just aspects of our interaction with the world.
>>Drinking my coffee is an experience. I don't see a need to find a
>>cause for it though,
>
>Thinking of it this way might help: If you were to die, while drinking your
>coffee, would anything exist after your death? If you still think that the
>world would go on more or less as usual, then you in fact *do* believe that
>your experience is caused by some sort of objective reality.
I still think you are treating "experience" the way you say Owl
is treating a moral fact--as a discrete and separate thing or
event. We may say the cause of a window braking was the rock
hitting the window. There are two events here: the rock hitting
the window and the window breaking. The first event causes the
second.
You seem to be suggesting this model for "experience." Something
"causes" my coffee drinking experience. But my coffee drinking
experience IS me drinking the coffee--lifting the cup, tipping it,
swallowing, tasting it, feeling the warmth of the liquid, etc.
There is no need for a separate event or thing to cause this.
The only things that could be a cause is the coffee cup, my lifting
it, etc. But that IS the experience itself.
You are not going understand Objectivism until you get away
from the two-worlds model of consciousness.
>To not believe
>that your experience was caused, it would make no sense to speak of things
>existing after you died. So, perhaps if you were alive durring WW2, and you
>wanted Hitler to stop killing people, you would simply kill yourself and,
>since
>you'd no longer exierence hitler killing people, then he wouldn't be, anymore,
>according to your belief.
If I concluded that things existed after I died, it would be
because many people have died and yet life goes on.
>Most likely you think this view is mistaken, and you think that your exper
>ience
>is *caused* by the fact that Hitler really was killing people, in some sort of
>'objective physical reality' that both you are Hitler inhabit.
There wouldn't be two discrete things here--Hitler killing people
and my experience of him killing people. My experience of him killing
people is just my learning of those events. It is me placing myself
in a position to be part of these events (but not too close of a
position, in this case!). If I wanted him to stop killing people,
I would unload a couple of clips of my B.A.R. into him.
When people philosophize, there is a tendency to think that
there is a distinct and separate entity that corresponds to
each word. Questions like "Do moral facts exist?" come up
which we tend to treat in the same way as "Do apples exist?".
Then there is a hunt for the object behind the word. You saw
the mistake in looking for the object that the word "fact"
refers to. The same mistake is made in looking for a distinct
object or event behind the word "experience" (and "concept"
and "idea"!).
This doesn't mean that facts do not exist. The fact about
flossing and gum disease is constituted by gums, bacteria,
floss, etc. So, there is not a simple and distinct object,
but a large complex set of objects and processes that
constitute the existence of the fact.
--
Joe Durnavich
Mark Young
>>> We mean the same thing "near enough", although our detailed
>>> explanations may differ in the details. As could what we mean by
>>> "unpleasant".
Mark Young:
>> Not "near enough" for me.
Gordon Sollars:
> How do you know that we mean "near enough" the same by the word
> "unpleasant"?
I meant the word "bad". I think "unpleasant" is near enough.
With "bad", you've got one person insisting it means "does not serve my
life MQM", and another saying it's "leads to greater unhappiness for
greater numbers", and yet another "contrary to God's will". And then
you've got you and me saying "it's very complex", but disagreeing on
how we go about telling anyway.
With "unpleasant" you've got people saying "it prevents or takes away
pleasure" and ... I can't think of anything too different from that.
> Pressing very hard on the meaning of a single word often leads to
> problems. It wouldn't be fair to attribute all of them to the theory
> of moral realism.
I don't. It's not moral realism that's the problem -- it's the wide
variety of moral realisms and the wide variety of moral anti-realisms
that are all current in our society.
Plus all the varieties of moral realism that I've looked at suffer from
one problem or another.
> At the most basic level, the moral realists here think that moral
> statements can actually be true or false. How it turns out that such
> statements have truth values can quickly get into the details of our
> explanations, and here we may differ. But I don't think we differ so
> much that we have insurmountable problems understanding each other -
> or non-realists for that matter.
Lemme allow this -- we can generally get by without major problems by
assuming the other person means pretty much what we mean.
My problem with moral *objectivism* is with settling disputes. When
objectivism holds, there is either a wide-spread understanding of how
the claims relate to reality, or a wide-spread acceptance of some group
of experts in the field (who know how the relation goes), or some
combination thereof.
If there are no such conditions, then the claims are subjective -- they
mean different things to different people, and so there is no appeal to
reality that can settle the issue. This is the situation that rules in
morality today.
>>> Well, "regardless of intent" is difficult for me to understand
>>> here. If I saw someone strike his thumb with a hammer and then
>>> shout "I like ice cream!", I would not be very sure that he really
>>> liked ice cream.
>> Nor should you be. But that *is* what he said. And that *is* what
>> that means. You defended the position that the parrot spoke a
>> truth, after all.
> And I still do. But someone could still challenge what it /meant/ to
> say "It is raining", just as you have challenged us to explain what
> it means to say "Pain is bad". With the parrot, I assume that the
> "speaker" does not have any intentions that ought to lead me to
> understand "It is raining" in some special way. Not so with persons.
But what you are saying here is that there is no fixed mapping from
moral speech to moral claims -- it depends on what the speaker has in
mind (you "understand [it] in some special way" that depends on the
intentions of the speaker). And *given* that, and a parrot that says
"Pain is bad", how shall we judge whether what the parrot said is true?
You say that there is no "special way" for you to interpret it, so
unless you want to say that "special" means "different from me", then
there is no basis for you to say that the parrot is using your version
of bad, my version, or Hitler's.
> As I have said before, I am quite willing to take at face value the
> claim that you do not mean to express any fact when you say "X is
> good". A consequence of my willingness to be so generous is that I
> can not satisfy your requirement that "bad" (or "fish") means the
> same whenever anyone uses it.
Or, in other words, that there is no fact of the matter as to what
claim a given moral statement expresses.
To equate the state of confusion over "bad" with the state of "fish" is
ridiculous. There is not *nearly* the same amount of variation in the
use of "fish", and there is an accepted body of experts to deal with
any dispute.
> But, I think your requirement is arbitrary. What matters, again as I
> have said, is that there is some way for me to come to know what you
> mean by "bad" (or "fish").
That only gets you a translation of the other guy's moral statement --
when he says "pain is good" he means <Pain allows us to determine that
we have been damaged>, which is true, so "Pain is good" is true when he
says it, but false when you say it -- that's subjectivism.
> When you say "This is a good watch for me", I (now) recognize that
> you mean something like "I like (get a pleasurable feeling from) this
> watch".
No. That is not a moral claim, so what I said about moral language
does not apply to it.
> This is not a problem for moral realism, AFAIK. I can still maintain
> that "This is a good watch for me" is true or false.
But you just said that I don't mean the same thing by it that you do.
Hence what you believe to be true or false is not the sentence, but the
claim behind the sentence -- which depends on the intentions of the
speaker.
[...]
>> You also said:
>>
>>>>>>> Pain might not be bad, all things considered, if experiencing
>>>>>>> it is part of a larger sequence of actions which is good. ...
>> *That*'s the one I was talking about. It says that pain might not
>> be bad in such-and-such a condition, which I take to mean that there
>> are some specializations of that condition that have pain that's not
>> bad.
> Right. Isn't this straightforward? For example, physical training of
> various kinds can be painful, but also beneficial. So we say that
> pain is bad, because it is unpleasant, can indicate damage to the
> body, etc., but we should keep in mind that - all things considered -
> pain can be part of a larger sequence that is good. Typically, we
> label such sequences "good" or "bad" in total, don't we?
Yes -- the *sequences* are labeled good or bad in total. But the items
in the sequence also have their own separate labeling -- you can't say
that my arm is 172cm tall because it is part of me and I am 172cm tall.
[...]
> Rawls's critics have not focused on his theory of the good - it's his
> theory of justice that gets the attention. But our real disagreement
> is over what sort of problem it is that not everyone agrees with
> Rawls's explication of "good". If Rawls's definition is such that it
> gives truth values to statements that use "good", and these values
> are (more or less) correct, what more is there?
How do we know they are correct? If I had a theory that gave truth
values to sentences of the form "Hooray for X!", how would we show it
to be correct/incorrect?
> Of course, anyone who denies that such a statement can have a truth
> value means something else when they use "good". Again, I don't see
> why moral realism is hostage to their intransigence.
If people accepted my "Hooray" theory then "Hooray" sentences *would
mean* what my theory says they mean -- and so "Hooray" sentences would
have determinate truth values. The existence of a small group of
nay-sayers would not change the fact that the centroid of meaning is
over here among the realists. But if my theory were only accepted by
some small group around me, then we would be a bunch of crack-pots.
Moral realism is not being held hostage by a small group of crack-pots.
It is failing to provide a theory acceptable to the majority -- a
*theory*, mind you, acceptable to the majority as being the basis for
deciding disputes.
> Such behavior wouldn't say anything about the correctness of physical
> realism, would it?
If it were widespread you simply could not assume that a statement
referring to "photons" meant the photons of our current theory, and so
language involving the word "photon" would cease to have determinate
meaning in the community at large. And thus it would be perverse to
say that a given statement involving the word "photon" was true or
false *except with relation to a particular theory*. That's
relativism.
Now we can suppose that physics is just as it ever was -- and for
simplicity let's assume that what we now believe is actually true.
This would be equivalent to the situation I imagine when I imagine that
there are moral facts -- a world where there are facts there to be
found, but where the language does not pick out those facts. In this
case the physics is real, even tho the language of physics is relative.
*That* is why I started by saying that morality is not "objective". I
was saying that -- even if there are moral facts, our language does not
pinpoint them, because it is riven by so many disputes regarding
meaning. That would also be the case for the people in the world of
physics-doubters.
My reason for doubting moral realism is related, but different. If
there *is* a moral reality, why haven't we got a scientific theory of
it? Why isn't it in much the same position as physics? *Why* is our
language so riven if there are facts there that a scientist could find?
I can appreciate that the distinction is a little hard to see from any
great distance (it's sometimes a little hard to see up close, too).
But I hope that you can see now that my talk about language is not a
challenge to "moral realism" -- it is a challenge to what I call
"moral objectivism": the notion that these words have *a* meaning that
can be found to be true or false.
>> I also noted that, at least the way you explained it, it made the
>> goodness of objects dependent on the purposes and attitudes of the
>> people evaluating those objects -- which is not the sort of morality
>> I take moral realists to be promoting.
> Well, I think it would be odd for a theory that draws on Aristotle
> and Ross to be antithetical to moral realism. But I doubt I said
> that it depends on the persons doing the evaluation - the whole point
> is that /this/ watch is a good watch for Blind Bob (or not),
> /regardless/ of who is doing the evaluation. That's the objective
> part.
Right. Sorry I misrepresented you. When I think of moral realists I
think of people who make claims about the moral value of kinds of
states of affairs -- people who say things like "It is true that you
ought not to torture people for fun"; not people who say things like
"This is a good watch for Blind Bob."
> Of course, features about Blind Bob and Alice (with the small wrists)
> do affect what is good for them in a watch. And, more general
> features about humans affect what is a "good watch" in general.
But again this is all "What is a good X" type questions. What is your
understanding for sentences like "You ought not to torture people for
fun"?
User 1DE7
>> I don't understand how moral facts could be made up of the same stuff as
>> non-moral facts.
>
>Aren't chemical facts and biological facts made of the same stuff as
>physical facts on your view?
Yes. Or you could say they are just types of physical facts. However, there is
actualy physical evidence that biological and chemical facts are types of
physical facts.
For instance, you could peel off some of your skin and analyse it and notice
that it is made up of atoms. You are saying there is nothing different about
moral facts, then? Can you tell me how one would boserve a moral fact under a
microscope, for instance, or give me some experiment by which I can see some
physical effect of a moral fact, if you hold that there is no difference
between the two sorts of fact?
>> >My flavor of moral realism is, e.g., skeptical of the is/ought
>> >distinction
>>
>> The difference between the two types of statements seems quite clear and
>> distinct to me.
>
>Why? Because "is" and "ought" are two different words?
Meaning two entirely different things. What you are saying seems almost as if
you said that there was no difference between a question and a command. "Is"
and "ought" are that different, probably more so.
>> What reason do you have to be skeptical of a distinction there?
>> Do you think there are statements where it is difficult to tell which typ
>> e they
>> are? Examples?
>
>"This is a good watch", both describes a watch and is a normative
>statement.
Any difficulty with this is because of language. That is quite vauge. Define
"good."
I certainly wouldn't interpret that as a moral statement.
Confusion resolved. >Do you similarly object to the definition of entropy in
terms of
>ignorance? To the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics (which
>involves an observer)? Most physicists don't object to either. I
>suspect you have a notion of "objective" that is not very useful.
I am not familiar with those things. The notion of "emergent properties" you
give is fine and all, and is probably useful, I just thought that the term
referred to something stronger.
>> Surely there are lots of things we can't understand as a whole if we look
>at
>> them at a low level. I thought all this talk about emergent properties wa
>> s more
>> than that, though -- that it referred to objective properties instead of
>> simply
>> being defined in terms of what humans can understand.
>
>Are you saying that there are no emergent properties? Or just that you
>don't like my definition?
By your definition there are. Your definition defines something, so, I like it
if you meant to define what you did define, I was just unclear on what you were
trying to define.
>> >Part of the issue may be what you mean here by "objective". I have used
>> >it to mean "something we can be wrong about".
>>
>> I am using it to mean 'in the object.'
>
>Then "having the color blue" is not objective, since blue is not "in the
>object". I think you need to give some thought to your notion of
>objective.
It certainly is 'in the object' or 'a property of the object.'
I don't know why you'd think colors were not properties of objects rather than
something else.
You know that we see color because of the type of light that objects
reflect/absorb, right? Whether or not a rock absorbs light frequency X is not a
property of the rock?
>> I think that also implies that you can
>> be wrong about it, though. So, to say some action is objectively wrong, y
>> ou are
>> saying that the wrongness exists in the act itsself, rather than as some
>> impression in someones mind.
>
>I don't find this dichotomy very useful. What is "in the act itself"?
The moral realists I often discuss things with often says that the act of
murder has a certain property -- of wrongness. They claim it does not depend on
how anyone thinks of it, or anyones ideas about it, that the act just has that
property. I don't think it makes sense either, but that would be the analogy
similar to objects having properties like mass.
>You go on to suggest that "greenness" is objective, but it is not "in the
>object itself".
Of course it is. I am sort of surprised that you think it isn't. It seems quite
obvious. Why do you see different colors when you look at different objects?
Perhaps because they reflect different sorts of light? Do you think the type of
light that an object relfects is just some construct of your mind?
>> To say that the color green is objective, you mean
>> that when looking at an object, its greenness is a property of the object,
>> rather than some property of your mind that makes it look green for some
>> reason.
>
>But 'greenness' is "in" the mind - where else would it be?
...in the object? Sure your experience of greenness is in your mind, but that
is not the same as the greenness itsself.
>"in" the mind - where else would it be? Are you
>conflating the property of greenness with a certain range of wavelengths
>of electromagnetic radiation?
Conflating? That is what makes something green (your definition is actualy a
little off, it isn't the specific light that is called "green" but rather the
property *of the object* that causes it to reflect certain kinds of light.)
I don't know what other definition you'd use that makes any sense.
>ven if you want to claim that this is
>legitimate, you still have the problem that "greenness" is not in the
>object itself, but is a function of the object and the background
>lighting.
See above for why this is false.
>Why
>> do I believe that? It seems sort of axiomatic. It is perhaps even the
>> definition of "exists". Suppose you hear some noise, then someone asks yo
>> u "did
>> that noise exist, or did it not exist?" would you have much doubt about
>which
>> way to answer?
>
>What does this have to do with whether a reduction of, say, biology to
>physics is possible?
I was explaining what I meant by "physical" since we were talking about what we
could classify as physical , I thought it was relevent.
I'll try to reply to the rest later.
-User
Gordon G. Sollars
writes...
> "Gordon G. Sollars" sol...@nji.com
> >Aren't chemical facts and biological facts made of the same stuff as
> >physical facts on your view?
>
> Yes. Or you could say they are just types of physical facts.
You could /say/ that, and it could be very helpful to your position to
say it, but how do you know that it is true? Chemical and biological
theories have not been replaced by physics - indeed two major physical
theories, quantum mechanics and general relativity, have yet to be
reconciled with each other in a single theory.
You take the possibility of a reduction of these fields to physics as an
article of faith - or, if you prefer, a working hypothesis. I simply add
the field of morality to the list. Perhaps this is wrong, but you don't
seem to have any argument for why we ought to think that chemistry and
biology are reducible and morality is not.
...
> You are saying there is nothing different about
> moral facts, then?
No, I already said that there are emergent properties, so there can
indeed be at least "something" different about moral facts, biological
facts, economic facts, etc. and physical facts. At the same time, these
others sorts of facts are compatible with and dependent on physical
facts.
> Can you tell me how one would boserve a moral fact under a
> microscope, for instance,
Can you observe an economic or a weather fact under a microscope?
> or give me some experiment by which I can see some
> physical effect of a moral fact,
Why do you want an experiment? Is a discipline like astronomy that does
not conduct experiments not objective? Experiments or not, we can see
the physical effect of, say, the moral fact that wrong doers ought to be
punished when we see the punishment they receive. We see a physical
effect of a promise to pay $10 when Fred hands Joe a $10 bill.
...
> >> What reason do you have to be skeptical of a distinction there?
> >> Do you think there are statements where it is difficult to tell which typ
> >> e they
> >> are? Examples?
> >
> >"This is a good watch", both describes a watch and is a normative
> >statement.
>
> Any difficulty with this is because of language. That is quite vauge. Define
> "good."
A is a good X means that A has to a higher degree than average or
standard those properties which it is rational to want in an X.
> I certainly wouldn't interpret that as a moral statement.
OK, but it is a statement that is (I claim) both descriptive and
normative.
...
> The notion of "emergent properties" you
> give is fine and all, and is probably useful, I just thought that the term
> referred to something stronger.
Stronger than what?
...
> >Then "having the color blue" is not objective, since blue is not "in the
> >object". I think you need to give some thought to your notion of
> >objective.
>
> It certainly is 'in the object' or 'a property of the object.'
>
> I don't know why you'd think colors were not properties of objects rather
> than
> something else.
We seem to be at odds here. Are you saying that a "green object" always
appears green, regardless of the background lighting?
...
> The moral realists I often discuss things with often says that the act of
> murder has a certain property -- of wrongness. They claim it does not dep
> end on
> how anyone thinks of it, or anyones ideas about it, that the act just has
> that
> property.
Well, it is possible that "murder" just means a kind of wrongful death,
so it has to have the property of wrongness. I don't want to insist on
that, since I am not too keen on analytic statements, but it could appeal
to other moral realists. For me, I think that the fact that (almost?)
everyone thinks that murder is wrong is evidence that murder is wrong.
Now perhaps /someone/ can give an explanation of how murder is not wrong.
So I wouldn't want to say that "it does not depend on how anyone thinks
of it", since how /that/ person thinks of it could make a difference.
But it would not be wrong (or right) simply /because/ someone thought so.
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Owl
> I've decided to try to minimize my use of the term 'physical reality',
as I
> think it is detrimental to the discussion. It would be more accurate to
say
> that I start with the belief that my perceptions exist. This includes
> moral/logical perceptions. Note that this does not distinguish between
what one
> might call physical reality and a belief that everything is mental.
Just one brief comment on this, and I'll look at the rest later.
Although I don't have a precise definition of "physical object", I can
tell you at least this much. If the 'table' in front of me is just an idea
in my mind, it is *not*, thereby, a 'physical object'. "Physical object"
does not mean "cause of a sensory experience" (pace Russell, by the way);
if my table-hallucination is caused by an unconscious desire, that
unconscious desire is not thereby a 'physical object.' The meaning of
'physical' is, indeed, broad enough to cover blobs of undifferentiated
matter, collections of vibrating particles, and perhaps even exotic things
like configurations of fields; but no way does it cover hallucinations or
ideas. Sorry, but the concept of a physical object is too fundamental for
me to give away the word we have for expressing it.
Either you believe in physical objects, like the rest of us, or you don't.
If you do, then I will just return to my question as to why you assume
they exist, but do not assume moral values exist. If you do not, then it
would be prudent to give up arguing about moral values. After all, the man
who can't even be convinced of such a basic thing as the existence of a
physical object, is certainly not going to be convinced of moral value.
That person has much more serious problems than *moral* anti-realism; and
he needs to get rid of whatever radical epistemological theories lead him
to deny that he can know about physical objects, before we bother with
more esoteric things like values. After *that*, then we can see whether he
still has any objections left to moral realism.
David Friedman suggests, I gather, that moral beliefs are justified in a
way similar to physical-object beliefs. If so, he is correct (perhaps in
more ways than he realizes). It is therefore not surprising that if you
don't even think physical object beliefs are at all justified, you won't
think moral beliefs are justified either.
Owl
news:f27kuso8mvh050tmn...@4ax.com...
> Just so I am clear on what you guys are arguing about, what are
> examples of "moral facts"? Is something like the following a moral
> fact: Floss your teeth to help prevent gum disease.
That's not a proposition. A moral fact might be: the fact that individuals
have a right to life. Also, if ethical egoism were true, there would be
the 'moral fact' that you should floss your teeth, provided this most
advances your interests.
> >First of all, it is analytic that your *experience* is all mental. The
> >realist thinks, however, that something non-mental is *causing* your
> >experience. The idealist denies this.
>
> Man, I don't seem to fit at either one of these poles. I don't think
> experience is some type of distinct entity.
Perhaps you're a physicalist.
Owl
> For instance, take the fact "the cat is on the mat." Now, suppose this
is true.
> By what I understand Owl's theory to be, not only does the cat exist on
the
> mat, which exists (this is what I think most people mean when they state
a
> fact), but the fact itsself actualy exists. This fact is non-physical,
and has
> some sort of platonic existance. So, now we're thinking that
non-physical
> things exist.
I'm not sure I understand this view that I supposedly hold. I can't assign
any meaning to "physical fact" apart from, "fact about physical objects."
Why would I say (I don't think I ever have) that the fact that a cat is on
a mat is a 'non-physical fact'? I also wonder about the use of "not
only..." in the above. 'The cat's existing on the mat' is, as far as I can
tell, identical with the fact that the cat is on the mat. I don't know
what else the phrase "the cat's being on the mat" would refer to.
> Not only do facts allegedly exist, but the fact that that fact exists
also
> exists, etc.
Yes, if it is a fact that the cat is on the mat, then it is a fact that it
is a fact that the cat is on the mat. But so what? Who should get excited
about that?
Anthanson1
I have not had the time to read or post for a while, and below, for the sake of
brevity, I have reduced our discussion to what I think are the essential points
of disagreement. My new points have elipses in front.
>
>Evolutionary psychology has the advantage that it is (or at least appears to
>be)
>more empirical or scientific than intuitionism. The disadvantage is that it
>has
>to accept the consequence that Hitler wasn't really evil etc.
And I think the primary reason you don't accept this is an emotional one.
....It is not based upon emotions. I think that the objectivity of morality
better explains moral language and our behavior and practices. When we make
moral judgments we do not intend to
merely say, "I desire that you do or do not do x," and when we punish people
for things we think are wrong
we do not justify it by saying, "this is against my wishes." Our language and
practices assume there really is
such a thing as right and wrong. Hence, a theory that can reasonably explain
how this is so has the advantage
of justifying what appears to be a universal practice.
....Now, you might say that such moral language can be explained by what is
essentially a deceit, viz. we have invented it in order to make our wishes
more authoritative, and lend them objectivity. Your theory then would require a
wholesale revision of language and practices such that the concepts of
fairness, justice, rights etc are deconstructed into the language of baseless
desire, where nothing is really prohibited and might makes right.
....Therefore, if one has two equally reasonable theories, moral realism vs.
moral skepticism, moral realism would have the advantage of justifying current
practices. I know you think my theory is not as reasonable because it is not
empirical. But I think your theory self-
contradictory - or at least on your theory, there is no reason to think your
theory is better than mine.(See below)
I think it is both. We believe logical truths because organisms that "believed"
them were selected for, and those organisms were selected for because those
beliefs were true.
.....I don't see how this follows. All you can get from the fact that they were
selected for is that they had survival value or were pragmatic. And if that is
true, then your belief in positivism or empiricism etc. is justified only by
the fact that it has survival value or is pragmatic. So, how can you say that
your empiricism is any truer than my and many others' belief in objective moral
reality? This belief has persisted a lot longer than science has, and therefore
must be very pragmatic. In terms of evolution, religious beliefs have been very
successful, and I will predict that, in terms of longevity, they will win over
science which is only about 400 years old and has brought us pretty close to
destruction once or twice or twice already. If all beliefs are evolutionary
artifacts, then it doesn't make
sense to say any theory is truer than any other. If there is an underlying
reality that
our beliefs come to mirror through evolution, then simply pointing out that
they are a product of evolution offers nothing in exploring what that reality
is - and whether there are or are not moral facts (since many people believe
both - possess opposing artifacts).
Wrathbone
Mark Young
>>> Then "having the color blue" is not objective, since blue is not
>>> "in the object". I think you need to give some thought to your
>>> notion of objective.
User 1DE7:
>> It certainly is 'in the object' or 'a property of the object.'
>>
>> I don't know why you'd think colors were not properties of objects
>> rather than something else.
> We seem to be at odds here. Are you saying that a "green object"
> always appears green, regardless of the background lighting?
No, Gordon. He's saying a green object always *is* green, regardless
of the background lighting. It may *appear* to be some other colour
sometimes, but things are not always as they appear.
Owl
> I am assuming that supposing you have two theories, A and B, and these
theories
> contradict eachother, and one is a natural extension from already
established
> facts,
I'm not granting that one is a 'natural extension' from already
established
facts.
> and the other requires some postulation of a new type of fact that is
> completely different from all other known about facts, that, all else
being
> equal, theory A is more likely true than B. Is that not reasonable?
And the other one isn't 'postulating a new type of fact.' Rather, it is
accepting facts that we are directly aware of.
Thus, to redescribe the case:
We find ourselves immediately aware (or 'apparently' immediately aware,
you might say), of two sets of facts, A-facts and B-facts. One belief
system is that all of these facts obtain. Another belief system makes an
arbitrary division, and insists that A-facts exist but B-facts don't, and
then argues that this must be so since B-facts are different from A-facts.
> You would probably say that all else isn't equal, and there are other
reasons
> why moral realism is true, but doesn't this point in isolation favor the
> evolutionary perspective?
I don't think so. I find appeals to 'simplicity' almost never convincing
in philosophy - not even slightly. (Of course, they are always appeals in
favor of denying the existence of things that obviously exist, such as
denying the existence of the mind, or of matter, or of universals, or
qualia, or what have you.) Call me perverse, but I think you have to give
an argument that it is more a priori probable that there is 1 kind of fact
than 2. And I can't imagine how such an argument will go.
> I don't know why you'd think that, but maybe we should not focus on this
right
> now, if you are willing to stipulate that it is possible that
physicalism could
> be true and consciousness exist at the same time, just for the sake of
focusing
> on other parts of your argument. Assuming what you just said is not a
nessesary
> part of why physicalism is false.
We don't want to go into this right now, so I will just say that my own
view is that physicalism is incompatible with the existence of
consciousness, and that consciousness certainly exists. I don't have any
startlingly original arguments on this -- just the points brought forward
by
the likes of Jackson, Nagel, et al.
> I may have been sort of misleading, thus far. It occured to me that if
it were
> found out that something was real, then I would automaticaly call it
physical,
> and that I have been using 'physical' as synonymous with 'existant', so,
I'll
> try to be more careful with my use of 'physical' in the future. Just
curious,
> could you define 'physical' for me? I gave a definition in another
thread
> saying that something was physical if it "existed in spacetime, was a
> coordinate of spacetime, or was a property of spacetime" or something
similar,
> but I didn't see you either accept or reject it.
I don't remember the conclusion of that discussion. I'd have to hear more
in order to assess the definition. What about an object that is in time
but not in space? Also, does that mean that a ghost, for example, would be
'physical', even if it was intangible and had neither mass nor energy?
> >The fact that it denies free will is a sufficient reason for its not
being
> >able to 'explain the freedom of the will'
>
> I think I meant "It explains why it seems to people as if they have free
will."
I see. I think you're using "explain moral facts" analogously, i.e., to
mean "explain moral beliefs" or something like that.
This sort of thing is an easy confusion for a skeptic or
representationalist to make. They always substitute 'appearances' or
beliefs about X for X. They think you don't see tables; you only see
'appearances' of tables. You seem to think that people don't know facts;
they only know (of) the existence of appearances of facts.
> Do you remember my thread about how it would seem to you like you had
free will
> even if you did not? I think my first attempt was fallicious, but then I
was
> able to construct an argument that you accepted, about how you could
never
> think faster than yourself.
I don't remember the outcome of that discussion either, but I think you
were assuming that failure to be able to predict an action beforehand was
sufficient for seeming to have free will, which I disagreed with. But this
wasn't an argument against free will, anyway.
Re free will, see: http://home.sprynet.com/~owl1/fwill.htm
I am starting to see a trend in your thinking, involving self-defeating
and
skeptical positions. It is only a matter of time before you come out and
admit to total skepticism. :P
> Maybe, actualy I am not perfectly clear on the meaning of both. I choose
"hard"
> as I thought soft implied a theory that is sort of half-determinist and
half
> non-determinist.
Hard determinism holds that we lack free will because everything is
determined. Soft determinism holds that everything is determined, but we
have free will anyway.
> So, suppose
> that you percieve datum D. You are then saying that this nessesarily
implies
> that D constitutes *direct* knowledge of truth?
What kind of example do you mean here? Are we talking about something like
seeing a table, say? In that case, no. The table is not 'direct knowledge
of truth' (that's a category error; a table isn't an item of knowledge at
all!)
> Now that I think about it, calling something simply "direct" seems
muddled.
> Things can be direct perceptions OF something, but just saying "direct"
doesn't
> seem to make sense. It depends on what the object of your perception is.
So, D
> is percieved directly, but then you could say G is not percieved
directly, as
> you only percieve a consequence of G.
>
> So, discard what I say about about D not being direct. If you percieve
X, then
> your perception of X is by definition direct, but your perception of
causes of
> X: Y and Z, and not direct. This seems to be consistant your definition
above.
There are more than one use of "direct" in expressions such as "direct
awareness" and "directly perceive." The notion of "direct awareness" is
discussed at length in my upcoming book, which should appear next year.
For now, I will say briefly:
When you are looking at a table, under normal conditions, you see, and
thus perceive, the table. There is no other relevant object that you
perceive. You do not perceive a 'sense datum' of a table, a mental image,
the images on your retina, your brain states, or the light waves between
the table and your eye. You perceive only the table (and its surface
properties). In doing so, you are thus directly aware of the table and of
certain properties of its facing surface.
> So, it is said that your moral intuitions are direct perceptions *of*
truth.
> Then the question arises, what do you mean when you say "truth"?
In my theory of perception (which I believe is fundamental to
epistemology),
one needs to distinguish between a perceptual experience and a perceptual
belief. (A similar point will apply to all non-inferential means of
acquiring knowledge, and perhaps even to inference as well.) A perceptual
belief is normally caused by a perceptual experience, but in some cases
may not be (as in a case where the subject 'refuses to believe his eyes,'
so to speak).
The belief (not the experience) will count as 'knowledge', provided it is
true, and justified, and there are no defeaters. In the case of perceptual
beliefs, they are automatically prima facie justified, so that 2nd
condition
is redundant. I'll explain these concepts more if you want. The belief
counts
as 'true' provided it corresponds to reality.
'Correspondence', as I understand it, is a simple notion. If S
believes that P, then S's belief 'corresponds to reality' if and only if
P. Thus, the belief that the cat is on the mat is true iff the cat is on
the mat. Likewise, of course, the belief that murder is wrong is true iff
murder is wrong.
> Lets go back to datum D and fact G. You percieve D. Is that a direct
perception
> of truth? Well, it is a direct perception of D, but is D all there is to
truth,
> or do you want to include G as well? And if you do include G, then it
isn't a
> direct perception of truth (or, it is an incomplete perception of truth)
Again, I am not sure what sort of D and G you have in mind. As in my
earlier example, D might be a table, which you perceive, but I don't know
what G would be. Perhaps a brain state, which is part of the cause of your
perceiving. Or perhaps a table-factory, which is the cause of D's
existence.
You are probably assuming that you can't perceive the table, though.
I don't actually think you 'perceive truth.' Rather, you perceive (by the
senses) physical objects, and some of their properties and relations to
each other (e.g., you may perceive that physical object A is next to B).
By means of reason, you 'perceive' (of course, this is a different sense
of "perceive" from sensory perception) universals, and some of their
properties and relations. Your beliefs, immediately based on your
perceptual (or 'perceptual') experiences, are then true when they
correspond to reality. You don't perceive the property of 'truth',
however, which is not a property of the objects, but rather a property of
your belief.
This is very important. You perceive *objects* and their
properties/relations. You do not perceive mental representations or
'appearances.' (Objectivists will recognize that this point is related to
the epistemological aspect of the 'primacy of existence.')
> Couldn't it be possible that there is an underlying cause to your moral
> intuitions?
>
> I percieve a chair directly, but my percpetion is caused by things that
I do
> not percieve directly.
But that doesn't make you doubt that there's a chair there. No more, then,
should the existence of causes of moral intuitions make you doubt that
there are moral properties.
> Obviously whatever caused your perception in both cases is the real
effect of
> reality on your faculties, so you could say it is true in that sense,
but
> suppose S was someone poking a stick into a glass of water, and you
seeing it
> bend. Call the fact that water bends light more than air does S1. Did
you
> percieve S1 directly? No, only S. Did you percieve truth directly?
In fact, what you perceived was the stick, itself. More specifically, you
perceive a straight stick (that's the only stick there is!),
half-submerged in water. Now, you may want to ask, "Did you perceive its
straightness?" No (for obvious reasons). "Did you perceive its bentness?"
No, because it has no such property. "Did you perceive the light?" No.
"Did you perceive 'truth'?" No, because no one ever perceives truth as
such. What properties of it might you have perceived? You perceived the
shape and color of the facing surfaces, (i) of the top half of the stick,
and (ii) of the bottom half of the stick, but you failed to perceive (iii)
the (actual) spatial relationship between them. As a result, if you were
so naive as to be taken in by this illusion, you would have true beliefs
(and knowledge) about (i) and (ii), but a false belief (and so no
knowledge) about (iii).
The epistemology of perception is discussed at length in my forthcoming
book, where it is argued that perceptual beliefs must be presumed true,
until
proven otherwise. The opposite view, that perceptual beliefs must be
proven true, is the position taken by philosophical skeptics (and also,
futilely in my opinion, by indirect realists).
> All you know when you have a direct perception or direct intuition is
simply "I
> directly sensed/intuited X."
I don't know what X is here, but I would guess that you are taking up the
skeptic's premise. In my epistemology, X would be an object or its
properties, such as 'the table'.
> And I still object to you talking about justification as if something
can be
> justified in some universal context that doesn't nessesarily include
logic.
I think this is just a cop-out, a way of trying to avoid the fundamental
epistemological issue about what to believe, by stipulating uses of
"justified". See my message with the questions about the 'purple unicorn'
belief.
> >1) "It is raining right now, but I can't see whether it is, and I have
no
> >reason whatsoever to think that it is."
> >2) "It is raining right now, but it would be irrational to think it was
> >raining right now."
> >3) "It is raining right now, but I don't know anything about the
weather."
> >4) "It is raining right now, but it's just as likely that it isn't."
>
> And these things are unjustified *according to* logic.
I am not sure what this means. The above are statements in which the
speaker denies his own justification for making them. Thus, these
statements -- or rather, the first half of each -- are unjustified
according to the speaker's own assertion -- or rather, the second half of
the assertion. It is a consequence of this that the whole statement, in
each case, is in fact unjustifed. On the other hand, your desire to append
"according to logic" to that sentence doesn't mean anything to me. (If A
contradicts B, then A just contradicts B; it doesn't contradict B
'according to' someone, not even 'according to' logic.)
In any case, you haven't made clear how your assertion of:
(5) Modus ponens is valid, but I can't see that it is, and there is no
reason whatever to think that it is.
is supposed to be significantly different from statement (1) above, with
respect to their self-defeating character. Modus ponens either is or is
not valid, just as it either is or is not raining. There is, by the way,
an interesting argument that modus ponens is invalid, due to Vann McGee.
According to you, though, it would seem that no one could make sense of
such an argument, because then he would be 'denying logic,' and then we
wouldn't know relative to what we were supposed to assess his argument.
Or, even worse, you might claim that his argument could be assessed only
(i) relative to 'logic-without-MP', or (ii) relative to 'logic-with-MP,'
and the answer would be trivial in either case.
> not justified by anything, or, in short, simply not justified. Can you
think of
> something that justifies the acceptance of logic? If you say no, then it
seems
Remember, I say that we have intuitive awareness of logical relations and
properties. In short, you can 'see that' A entails B (or doesn't, as the
case may be). I don't care whether you use the word 'justified' for the
things one knows as a result of direct awareness or 'seeing'. In either
case, we know that your position is that you cannot see whether P, and you
have no reason at all for believing it, and yet you believe it (and it's
true). Your use of the word "justified" can't eliminate the self-refuting
nature of this contention.
> by definition that you hold that the rules of logic are not justified,
and that
> is all I have been saying.
What you have been saying is (5) above, including both clauses.
> There is a difference. Your sentances are "dis-justified" (I use that
term
> because I have already used unjustified to mean non-justified). They are
> dis-justified by logic. Logic itsself is not dis-justified by anything.
Hence a
Since (5) is formally the same as (1), I fail to see how (5) is not
'disjustified' exactly as (1) is.
> I will reply to the rest of your post some other time, as I have lots to
do. I
> think my explaination of direct perception and truth is by far the most
> important thing in this post, and sort of puts to rest the idea that if
you
> directly percieve something that it is true in any sense other than that
it
> represents reality acting on your faculties.
Yep, that's definitely the skeptic's premise (shared with the indirect
realists of course).
Again, the essential point here: One does not first perceive
'representations,' and then infer that there are objects represented. One
perceives *objects*, and then infers that there are representations, in
order to explain how one perceived the objects. That there is reality is
unquestionable; that there are appearances is (slightly more) debatable.
The inverted view is, in my view, the single most important error in
epistemology, and perhaps in all of modern philosophy.
Gordon G. Sollars
> Gordon G. Sollars:
...
> > We seem to be at odds here. Are you saying that a "green object"
> > always appears green, regardless of the background lighting?
>
> No, Gordon. He's saying a green object always *is* green, regardless
> of the background lighting. It may *appear* to be some other colour
> sometimes, but things are not always as they appear.
But, of course, I believe that a so-called "green" object which does not ap
pear
green is not green. A color, such as "green", is all about how a thing looks.
If you and User wish to /call/ an object green because it appears green under
certain conditions, fine. I disagree. Should I, following your lead,
say that there is not enough agreement among us on what "green" means for
us to have a good theory of color?
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
David Schwartz
"Gordon G. Sollars" wrote:
> But, of course, I believe that a so-called "green" object which does not ap
> pear
> green is not green. A color, such as "green", is all about how a thing l
> ooks.
You may do this, but nobody else does. I think you are either being
deliberately obtuse or are just misrepresenting how you actually use the
word "green". I don't think you'll find anyone who honestly believes
that grass is not green at night.
DS
Gordon G. Sollars
>
> "Gordon G. Sollars" wrote:
>
> > But, of course, I believe that a so-called "green" object which does not ap
> > pear
> > green is not green. A color, such as "green", is all about how a thing l
> > ooks.
>
> You may do this, but nobody else does.
Really? How do you know that?
> I think you are either being
> deliberately obtuse or are just misrepresenting how you actually use the
> word "green". I don't think you'll find anyone who honestly believes
> that grass is not green at night.
I don't, and I believe that if I carefully questioned anyone who said
that he did, he would see that he was wrong.
Note, I am not saying that I think that the nighttime grass wouldn't
appear green /if/ "ordinary" sunlight were shining on it. But it is not.
And if light shining on the grass was not ordinary sunlight, the color of
the grass would be different. You may ignore these facts if you like,
but what is /really/ going on is that you are implicitly assuming a
background condition that does not have to hold. If I were to do that
when I say "Pain is bad" or "This watch is good", the moral anti-realists
here would jump all over me. But, /somehow/, with regard to the physics
of things that we "just plain know" to be true, it's OK.
My larger point, btw, is that User's notion of "objective" is defective.
He talks about objective properties being ones that are "in" objects; he
thinks that green is an objective property; but green is not "in" the
object.
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Gordon G. Sollars
...
> Gordon Sollars:
> > How do you know that we mean "near enough" the same by the word
> > "unpleasant"?
>
> I meant the word "bad". I think "unpleasant" is near enough.
>
> With "bad", you've got one person insisting it means "does not serve my
> life MQM", and another saying it's "leads to greater unhappiness for
> greater numbers", and yet another "contrary to God's will".
And, of course, these could all come to the same thing. More likely,
they are important aspects of what it is to be "bad", which the speaker
has, for convenience, chosen to identify with the thing itself. Of these
three, I must say that I find the second easier to understand, but I
assume that with careful questioning I could get clear enough about what
the other two meant.
> And then
> you've got you and me saying "it's very complex", but disagreeing on
> how we go about telling anyway.
>
> With "unpleasant" you've got people saying "it prevents or takes away
> pleasure" and ... I can't think of anything too different from that.
I think you have an asymmetry here. Do we understand what "pleasure" (or
"pleasant") means? Or do we "just know it when we feel it"? Are we
each feeling the same thing? After all, we could say that what is bad is
what "prevents or takes away from good".
...
> Plus all the varieties of moral realism that I've looked at suffer from
> one problem or another.
Well, my view is that (almost) all theories of any kind are false, so
this doesn't bother me.
...
> Lemme allow this -- we can generally get by without major problems by
> assuming the other person means pretty much what we mean.
Yes, and this is good evidence for moral realism. We may not choose the
exact same way to explain a moral term, but we can generally get by. If
we each, in fact, hewed precisely to our own definitions and these picked
out no common core of states or actions, we would not get by as well as
we do.
> My problem with moral *objectivism* is with settling disputes. When
> objectivism holds, there is either a wide-spread understanding of how
> the claims relate to reality, or a wide-spread acceptance of some group
> of experts in the field (who know how the relation goes), or some
> combination thereof.
And I think that morality is somewhat an exception to this. The common
Joe is willing to allow bosons to be the province of boffins, but moral
matters touch each of us in a way that abstruse matters of physics do
not. In morality we have a great many more experts, and, probably as a
result, they are of lower quality.
> If there are no such conditions, then the claims are subjective -- they
> mean different things to different people, and so there is no appeal to
> reality that can settle the issue.
I don't agree. I think that David Friedman has it right: the socialist
does not really want the world that would result from what David knows
would be the result of having socialism. The "appeal to reality" that
would settle this, however, is vastly complicated. As a result, the
socialist can continue to hold that, say, "done right", socialism will be
good.
...
> > And I still do. But someone could still challenge what it /meant/ to
> > say "It is raining", just as you have challenged us to explain what
> > it means to say "Pain is bad". With the parrot, I assume that the
> > "speaker" does not have any intentions that ought to lead me to
> > understand "It is raining" in some special way. Not so with persons.
>
> But what you are saying here is that there is no fixed mapping from
> moral speech to moral claims -- it depends on what the speaker has in
> mind (you "understand [it] in some special way" that depends on the
> intentions of the speaker).
No. I am saying that I have to /allow/ for an intentional speaker to
mean something special. I think that there is a fixed (allowing for the
fact that speech changes over long periods, of course) mapping, but, to
use an analogy, I am content with a homomorphism while you insist on an
isomorphism. You are, as Aristotle and I have said before, simply
looking for more precision than is available in the subject matter.
BTW, one reason I "allow for" this is a /moral/ one: human speakers are
autonomous (I.e., self-directed - I'm not making a claim about "free
will") beings. (I'm sure you notice that in labeling this fact "moral" I
am already making a naturalist move.)
...
> > As I have said before, I am quite willing to take at face value the
> > claim that you do not mean to express any fact when you say "X is
> > good". A consequence of my willingness to be so generous is that I
> > can not satisfy your requirement that "bad" (or "fish") means the
> > same whenever anyone uses it.
>
> Or, in other words, that there is no fact of the matter as to what
> claim a given moral statement expresses.
No. My point is that your notion of "satisfy" is like the skeptic's
"prove that you are not a brain in a vat".
...
> > But, I think your requirement is arbitrary. What matters, again as I
> > have said, is that there is some way for me to come to know what you
> > mean by "bad" (or "fish").
>
> That only gets you a translation of the other guy's moral statement --
> when he says "pain is good" he means <Pain allows us to determine that
> we have been damaged>, which is true, so "Pain is good" is true when he
> says it, but false when you say it -- that's subjectivism.
I disagree. If I see that what he is saying is true, what is
"subjective" about that? It /is/ true. A critical aspect of morality is
autonomy - there is no Big Boss to force him to mean the same as I do,
and in a vastly complex world there is good reason to expect some aspects
of his speech to be idiosyncratic.
Further, a short sentence like "pain is bad" is open to many
interpretations. Information theory alone tells us that this is true of
/any/ short message - that is why we need lots of text to decode an
encrypted message. But, theory aside, consider "John loves Mary". I
assume you will say that this is a "subjective" statement, but, tell me,
does that mean you think that love does not exist?
> > When you say "This is a good watch for me", I (now) recognize that
> > you mean something like "I like (get a pleasurable feeling from) this
> > watch".
>
> No. That is not a moral claim, so what I said about moral language
> does not apply to it.
Why is that? It is still a normative statement. I used Rawls's theory
of the good to explain it. Are you saying that "good" as applied to
watches /is/ objective, but "good" as in "socialism is good" is not? Or
are you saying that you haven't taken any stand on the objectivity of
non-moral uses of good?
> > This is not a problem for moral realism, AFAIK. I can still maintain
> > that "This is a good watch for me" is true or false.
>
> But you just said that I don't mean the same thing by it that you do.
> Hence what you believe to be true or false is not the sentence, but the
> claim behind the sentence -- which depends on the intentions of the
> speaker.
I don't know what the "claim behind the sentence" is unless and until the
speaker links the first sentence to another sentence. And I won't know
"for sure" that subsequent investigation won't lead him to link these
sentences to yet other sentences. So I prefer to focus directly on
sentences, not what might be behind them. If anything important is
lurking there, the speaker will hopefully let me know.
...
> > Right. Isn't this straightforward? For example, physical training of
> > various kinds can be painful, but also beneficial. So we say that
> > pain is bad, because it is unpleasant, can indicate damage to the
> > body, etc., but we should keep in mind that - all things considered -
> > pain can be part of a larger sequence that is good. Typically, we
> > label such sequences "good" or "bad" in total, don't we?
>
> Yes -- the *sequences* are labeled good or bad in total. But the items
> in the sequence also have their own separate labeling -- you can't say
> that my arm is 172cm tall because it is part of me and I am 172cm tall.
Well, this analogy has too much work to do. There are many other
relations between part and whole, and many ways to label or measure them,
than that between the length of arms and bodies.
If most of the sequences - or particularly important ones - involving
pain are labeled "bad", I think that "pain is bad" is clear enough.
> [...]
> > Rawls's critics have not focused on his theory of the good - it's his
> > theory of justice that gets the attention. But our real disagreement
> > is over what sort of problem it is that not everyone agrees with
> > Rawls's explication of "good". If Rawls's definition is such that it
> > gives truth values to statements that use "good", and these values
> > are (more or less) correct, what more is there?
>
> How do we know they are correct? If I had a theory that gave truth
> values to sentences of the form "Hooray for X!", how would we show it
> to be correct/incorrect?
We would investigate, using what you have told us about the theory, and
see. Is there a good watch for Blind Bob that does not have to a
substantial degree those properties that it is rational for Blind Bob to
want in a watch? If there is, then we have an exception to Rawls's
theory. Get /enough/ exceptions, and the theory falls.
...
> Moral realism is not being held hostage by a small group of crack-pots.
> It is failing to provide a theory acceptable to the majority -- a
> *theory*, mind you, acceptable to the majority as being the basis for
> deciding disputes.
But I think that moral realism is acceptable to the majority. It is only
a certain kind of sophistication, like that of the BIV skeptic, that
leads one to doubt it. Now it is true that we often hear people say,
"Well, that may be right /for you/", but there are two reasons, quite
compatible with moral realism, for this. One is that by "for you", the
speaker means "any person in your situation". This is compatible with
moral realism, as we have seen with regard to the difference between a
good watch for Blind Bob versus small-wristed Alice. Another is that
respect, tolerance, etc., really are important values, and sometimes -
given time, information, or other constraints - the locution "right for
you" is the best - morally proper - thing to say, even though the
speaker's view of right is actually stronger than that.
> > Such behavior wouldn't say anything about the correctness of physical
> > realism, would it?
>
> If it were widespread you simply could not assume that a statement
> referring to "photons" meant the photons of our current theory, and so
> language involving the word "photon" would cease to have determinate
> meaning in the community at large. And thus it would be perverse to
> say that a given statement involving the word "photon" was true or
> false *except with relation to a particular theory*. That's
> relativism.
OK, but then I am not particularly bothered by relativism if that is what
it amounts to. I don't see that /any/ statement is true or false /except
with relation to a particular language/. Some of the most pointless
discussions on this forum result from one party saying "And /of course/ X
can /only/ and /must/ mean Y!" over and over and... That is not a
strategy to get at the truth, but to defend a position the party is
heavily invested in. Of course, given the importance of morality, almost
everyone is heavily invested in their moral views being correct. And, in
this group, the investment extends to meta ethics as well.
...
> *That* is why I started by saying that morality is not "objective". I
> was saying that -- even if there are moral facts, our language does not
> pinpoint them, because it is riven by so many disputes regarding
> meaning. That would also be the case for the people in the world of
> physics-doubters.
Consider the world in which the space aliens come to visit us. They use
a completely different language for physics - but obviously, their theory
works pretty well. If we want to work with them on physical questions,
we will have to find a translation between our languages. Now I think
that it is very likely that issues of autonomous behavior would not get
in the way of this project for physics, and a very close translation,
perhaps an isomorphism, would be developed. But it is easy to see how
such issues could be an impediment to such a translation of moral
language. After all, it can be tough when an autonomous being is shown
that what it /wants/ to do is wrong.
> My reason for doubting moral realism is related, but different. If
> there *is* a moral reality, why haven't we got a scientific theory of
> it? Why isn't it in much the same position as physics? *Why* is our
> language so riven if there are facts there that a scientist could find?
I think I have just offered an explanation. The nature of human beings
is such that we have a need for /some/ agreement on moral terms, but we
also find a degree of "obfuscation" to be quite useful.
> I can appreciate that the distinction is a little hard to see from any
> great distance (it's sometimes a little hard to see up close, too).
> But I hope that you can see now that my talk about language is not a
> challenge to "moral realism" -- it is a challenge to what I call
> "moral objectivism": the notion that these words have *a* meaning that
> can be found to be true or false.
Right, but I thought that you were using the challenge to "moral
objectivism" as evidence that moral realism is false.
...
> > Of course, features about Blind Bob and Alice (with the small wrists)
> > do affect what is good for them in a watch. And, more general
> > features about humans affect what is a "good watch" in general.
>
> But again this is all "What is a good X" type questions. What is your
> understanding for sentences like "You ought not to torture people for
> fun"?
That they are true. ;-)
I think that "ought" is governed by the giving of good reasons. I can
imagine someone saying that he /wanted/ to torture people, but I can't
see how he has a good reason in "having fun" to do it. Of course, he
could reply "I just stipulate that I (or, perhaps, "everyone") ought to
do whatever is fun". As I have said, I can't argue with that, anymore
than I can argue with Humpty-Dumpty. But if he actually has /reasons/
for this "stipulation", then we can begin to get somewhere.
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Mark Young
>>> But, of course, I believe that a so-called "green" object which
>>> all about how a thing looks.
David Schwartz:
>> You may do this, but nobody else does.
Gordon G. Sollars:
> Really? How do you know that?
He doesn't. He's engaging in hyperbole. But pretty much everyone
treats colour as a persistent property of an object, not as a quality
that varies from situation to situation.
>> I think you are either being deliberately obtuse or are just
>> misrepresenting how you actually use the word "green". I don't think
>> you'll find anyone who honestly believes that grass is not green at
>> night.
> I don't,
I assume you mean "don't think grass is green at night".
> and I believe that if I carefully questioned anyone who said that he
> did, he would see that he was wrong.
I think you are mistaken.
> Note, I am not saying that I think that the nighttime grass wouldn't
> appear green /if/ "ordinary" sunlight were shining on it. But it is
> not.
The sunshine is not shining on it. But if you asked anyone what colour
grass was at night, I bet they'd look at you funny.
> And if light shining on the grass was not ordinary sunlight, the
> color of the grass would be different. You may ignore these facts if
> you like,
It is not a fact that the colour of the grass changes. What changes is
the apparent colour of the grass -- just as going away from the Sun
does not reduce its magnitude, only its apparent magnitude to you.
That is what follows from the way most people speak about colour. As
far as I am concerned, the only question I have left is whether you
come from a linguistic sub-group that speaks this strange way, or if
you just misunderstand common usage.
> but what is /really/ going on is that you are implicitly assuming a
> background condition that does not have to hold. If I were to do
> that when I say "Pain is bad" or "This watch is good", the moral
> anti-realists here would jump all over me.
a) We are not assuming a background condition. We differentiate
between the colour something is and the colour it appears to be. The
background condition is only there as a condition under which the two
match.
b) Speaking for myself, I don't recall "jumping all over you" when you
said that "Pain is bad" was a generalization -- a statement that holds
only under a set of (common) background conditions. I don't recall
getting a clear answer as to what those background conditions were,
tho'. But perhaps you have some other exchange in mind....
> But, /somehow/, with regard to the physics of things that we "just
> plain know" to be true, it's OK.
>
> My larger point, btw, is that User's notion of "objective" is
> defective. He talks about objective properties being ones that are
> "in" objects; he thinks that green is an objective property; but
> green is not "in" the object.
We disagree. Perhaps I'm only showing my confirmation bias here, but I
don't recall anyone coming forward to support your position on colour
language.
Gordon G. Sollars
issues in my other reply to you. If not, I'll be happy to return here.]
In article <39ED9868...@acadiau.ca>, Mark Young writes...
...
> And the various theories of moral reality do differ in
> details, and their proponents do insist that their theories are the corre
> ct ones,
> and they (by and large) perceive the world that way -- Objectivists really do
> think government welfare programs are evil, and fundamentalist Christians
> really
> do think that teaching evolution in the schools is evil -- they are not just
> disagreeing on some non-moral facts (as Friedman suggests) and so coming to
> different conclusions, they actually perceive evil in different things.
But why do they do so? I think that David is right to claim that they
are /imputing/ evil as a result of factual assumptions that they are
making combined with their most basic moral perceptions. As such, it is
an open question whether they would give up the imputation or the basic
perception, /if it were shown to them that their factual assumptions are
wrong/. Further, the hierarchical nature of values implies that they
would give up the imputation first. Or do you deny that value
hierarchies make sense?
Of course, I view their moral perceptions as being like other "ordinary"
non-moral facts, while David seems to prefer the idea that they are a
different sort of thing.
There is a very good parallel here with the Objectivist/anarcho-
capitalism argument, of course. Is the real Objectivist an anarcho-
capitalist (much to the surprise of many) - or is it simply not possible
for an "Objectivist" to be an anarcho-capitalist based upon the nature of
what an Objectivist /is/?
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Joe Durnavich
>Joe Durnavich <jo...@mcs.net> wrote in message
>news:f27kuso8mvh050tmn...@4ax.com...
>> Just so I am clear on what you guys are arguing about, what are
>> examples of "moral facts"? Is something like the following a moral
>> fact: Floss your teeth to help prevent gum disease.
>
>That's not a proposition. A moral fact might be: the fact that individuals
>have a right to life. Also, if ethical egoism were true, there would be
>the 'moral fact' that you should floss your teeth, provided this most
>advances your interests.
So, in the context of a goal, the normal fact becomes a moral fact.
If I set a goal to keep all my teeth, then flossing my teeth will help
me achieve that goal.
Is it the case that phrases that use the word "should" (or "ought")
assume that there is some goal to achieve? If someone says, "You
should floss your teeth" then it seems reasonable to ask why I should.
>> >First of all, it is analytic that your *experience* is all mental. The
>> >realist thinks, however, that something non-mental is *causing* your
>> >experience. The idealist denies this.
>>
>> Man, I don't seem to fit at either one of these poles. I don't think
>> experience is some type of distinct entity.
>
>Perhaps you're a physicalist.
I don't think so. According to "A Dictionary of Philosophy" that
means I believe in the Identity Theory of Mind which holds that
"various conscious phenomena are identical with states or processes in
the brain or central nervous system." I don't think there are such
things as "conscious phenomena." I take the term to mean that if I am
watching a pot of water boil, two separate phenomena are occurring:
the water boiling and my conscious experience of it. I think watching
the water boil is my conscious experience. I don't know if philosophy
accounts for such a view, so I'll just call it the "common sense view"
meaning it is the view we hold when we are not doing philosophy and
thinking normally about things.
--
Joe Durnavich
Gordon G. Sollars
...
> Gordon G. Sollars:
> > Really? How do you know that?
>
> He doesn't. He's engaging in hyperbole. But pretty much everyone
> treats colour as a persistent property of an object, not as a quality
> that varies from situation to situation.
Because the background lighting is rarely different enough to make a
difference. But it could, and then pretty much everyone would not.
And the fact that lighting is not constantly varying is not a property
"in" the object.
...
> > Note, I am not saying that I think that the nighttime grass wouldn't
> > appear green /if/ "ordinary" sunlight were shining on it. But it is
> > not.
>
> The sunshine is not shining on it. But if you asked anyone what colour
> grass was at night, I bet they'd look at you funny.
Sure, and I explain this by saying, "because it has no color /at night/".
They would be very surprised if I said it would appear differently
tomorrow morning than it did today, but that is not what I am saying.
Even here, of course, it /could/ turn out that they were surprised - not
by my statement, but come morning when the grass appears yellow. If the
color property were /in/ the grass, as per User's notion of "objective",
that could not happen.
> > And if light shining on the grass was not ordinary sunlight, the
> > color of the grass would be different. You may ignore these facts if
> > you like,
>
> It is not a fact that the colour of the grass changes. What changes is
> the apparent colour of the grass -- just as going away from the Sun
> does not reduce its magnitude, only its apparent magnitude to you.
It is a fact that the color changes if color is about how things appear
to the eye.
> That is what follows from the way most people speak about colour.
Given the relative permanence and importance of background lighting from
the Sun, I doubt that that is why most people speak the way they do.
Now, why a physics knowledgeable person would speak that way is another
matter. Phenomenology is abhorrent to them.
> As
> far as I am concerned, the only question I have left is whether you
> come from a linguistic sub-group that speaks this strange way, or if
> you just misunderstand common usage.
I am happy to be in the "strange" minority, if that is what it is. My
real point is that we can go along communicating with each other about
colors and related matters despite this "extreme" difference. If it ever
becomes important, we can work out a translation. This is why your
argument about moral objectivity is not convincing.
...
> a) We are not assuming a background condition. We differentiate
> between the colour something is and the colour it appears to be. The
> background condition is only there as a condition under which the two
> match.
OK, you, David Swartz and User are not. I suspect that most people are
so implicitly assuming, but your usage turns out to work for them,
because background lighting is usually "standard". Now, if you "educate"
them about your view, they might even adopt it.
(There are deeper problems here, of course. Do you really, qua
"objectivist", think that colors exist? Sure, there would be various
wavelengths of light in a possible world without any people. But why
would you say there were "colors" in that world? Or, do you think that a
gold atom has the color "gold"? I realize that you are not wedded to
every view of User's about objective properties being "in" things, but I
am curious.)
> b) Speaking for myself, I don't recall "jumping all over you" when you
> said that "Pain is bad" was a generalization -- a statement that holds
> only under a set of (common) background conditions.
That was /my/ engaging in hyperbole. ;-)
> I don't recall
> getting a clear answer as to what those background conditions were,
> tho'.
That's because it is very hard to be clear about them; the combinatorial
expansion of chains of events in which pain figures in some way is vast,
and even small changes can make a big difference. And there is lots of
room for ambiguity with a "pain is bad". The state "being in pain" can
be bad (unless, possibly, it were part of a larger sequence that led to
improved health, etc.), but "having a pain mechanism" can be good, since
it enable you to, say, avoid serious burns. When I hear "pain is bad", I
am thinking about the state of pain, not the existence of the pain
mechanism. How do you hear it?
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
User 1DE7
>From: "Gordon G. Sollars" sol...@nji.com
>Message-id: <MPG.1457a1c48c...@mail.nji.com>
>> *That* is why I started by saying that morality is not "objective". I
>> was saying that -- even if there are moral facts, our language does not
>> pinpoint them, because it is riven by so many disputes regarding
>> meaning. That would also be the case for the people in the world of
>> physics-doubters.
>
>Consider the world in which the space aliens come to visit us. They use
>a completely different language for physics - but obviously, their theory
>works pretty well.
What is the analogous situation in morality? How can morality work vs not work?
There is no way to test morality that I can see. Suppose I have a theory it is
okay to murder your wife, and you have a theory that that is wrong. How do you
determine which theory 'works', moraly?
>> My reason for doubting moral realism is related, but different. If
>> there *is* a moral reality, why haven't we got a scientific theory of
>> it? Why isn't it in much the same position as physics? *Why* is our
>> language so riven if there are facts there that a scientist could find?
>
>I think I have just offered an explanation. The nature of human beings
>is such that we have a need for /some/ agreement on moral terms, but we
>also find a degree of "obfuscation" to be quite useful.
This might explain peoples general attitudes about morality, but it does not
explain why people who actualy make attempts at clearly and objectively
studying morality, and finding moral truths, do not succeed.
Philosophers do actualy attempt to find moral truths, many without obfuscation,
and if you look at what they have produced thus far, you don't see any sort of
progress or any evidence at all that they are studying something real. Rather
one is led to conclude from the pathetic state of philosophy in comparison to
real sciences that it consists of a bunch of people trying to develop theories
to rationalize their subjective feelings and opinions.
After thousands of years of study, it seems like the only thing moral realists
can say about morality is that "it probably exists because lots of people think
it does (nevermind that they mostly all think it does as part of their
irrational religious beliefs)" and "the kind of things that seem wrong to me
are really wrong."
You'd think that if morality were objective they could come up with something a
little more substantive.
-User
User 1DE7
>Date: 10/18/00 12:40 PM Central Daylight Time
>Message-id: <q0orus47pucmbd29d...@4ax.com>
>
> I take the term to mean that if I am
>watching a pot of water boil, two separate phenomena are occurring:
>the water boiling and my conscious experience of it. I think watching
>the water boil is my conscious experience. I don't know if philosophy
>accounts for such a view, so I'll just call it the "common sense view"
>meaning it is the view we hold when we are not doing philosophy and
>thinking normally about things.
I hate to break it too you, but most people think their experience is caused by
objective reality (or, the part of objective reality that we term their
'experience' is caused by other parts of objective reality).
I really encourage you to take a survey, ask everyone you encounter "When you
watch water boil, is your experience of the water boiling caused by the fact
that water really *is* boiling, or is your experience literaly the same thing
as the boiling water?"
The results of your survey should enlighten you on "common sense."
-User
User 1DE7
>Message-id: <MPG.1457c723b6...@mail.nji.com>
> I realize that you are not wedded to
>every view of User's about objective properties being "in" things, but I
>am curious.)
The term "in" is not as significant as you seem to think. I could just as well
have said "of."
-User
User 1DE7
>Date: 10/16/00 12:41 PM Central Daylight Time
>Message-id: <j4fmusc5en3i31cfn...@4ax.com>
>>Thinking of it this way might help: If you were to die, while drinking your
>>coffee, would anything exist after your death? If you still think that the
>>world would go on more or less as usual, then you in fact *do* believe that
>>your experience is caused by some sort of objective reality.
>
>I still think you are treating "experience" the way you say Owl
>is treating a moral fact--as a discrete and separate thing or
>event.
No, I don't think it is discrete or seperate. The experience is caused by
impressions on your senses. The only way your position makes sense is if you
deny objective reality. You, for instance, would have to claim that you don't
know if anything would exist after you die, since nothing causes your
experience.
>The only things that could be a cause is the coffee cup, my lifting
>it, etc. But that IS the experience itself.
You are saying that the coffee cup itsself is literaly your experience. This is
quite absurd. Define "experience" for me and I might be able to diagnose your
problem.
>
>>To not believe
>>that your experience was caused, it would make no sense to speak of things
>>existing after you died. So, perhaps if you were alive durring WW2, and you
>>wanted Hitler to stop killing people, you would simply kill yourself and,
>>since
>>you'd no longer exierence hitler killing people, then he wouldn't be,
>anymore,
>>according to your belief.
>
>If I concluded that things existed after I died, it would be
>because many people have died and yet life goes on.
>
This is irrelevent. Other people dying *is* simply your experience. Obviously
your life goes on because you aren't the one who died. The point is, you should
be unsure if when *you* die, anything at all will exist after that, beacuse
reality is literaly your experience and nothing more.
>There wouldn't be two discrete things here--Hitler killing people
>and my experience of him killing people.
Do you not see that if you say they are the same thing, that you could then
prevent hitler from killing people by extinguishing your experience? By putting
a bullet in your head? This follows from your theory.
-User
User 1DE7
>Date: 10/16/00 11:58 PM Central Daylight Time
>Message-id: <8sgm77$bf3$1...@nntp9.atl.mindspring.net>
>Just one brief comment on this, and I'll look at the rest later.
>
>Although I don't have a precise definition of "physical object", I can
>tell you at least this much. If the 'table' in front of me is just an idea
>in my mind, it is *not*, thereby, a 'physical object'. "Physical object"
>does not mean "cause of a sensory experience" (pace Russell, by the way);
>if my table-hallucination is caused by an unconscious desire, that
>unconscious desire is not thereby a 'physical object.' The meaning of
>'physical' is, indeed, broad enough to cover blobs of undifferentiated
>matter, collections of vibrating particles, and perhaps even exotic things
>like configurations of fields; but no way does it cover hallucinations or
>ideas. Sorry, but the concept of a physical object is too fundamental for
>me to give away the word we have for expressing it.
Well, postulating that it just exists in *your* mind sort of suggests that it
is subject to your control, though I guess it doesn't nessesarily imply it.
Anyway, you are telling me what a physical object is not, but until you can
give a good working definition of physical objects, I don't think this is going
to be too productive.
>Either you believe in physical objects, like the rest of us, or you don't.
>If you do, then I will just return to my question as to why you assume
>they exist, but do not assume moral values exist.
I give a explaination either later in this post, which you said you'd respond
to later, or in another post. I talk about how the 5 senses and our logical
intuition all support and re-enforce eachother and are quite vivid and such,
whereas moral intuition is quite different. I use this to try to show that our
senses and logical intuition are less likely to be false (see another of my
posts about what true and false even means -- about depth of truth and such) I
refer you to that post.
>If you do not, then it
>would be prudent to give up arguing about moral values. After all, the man
>who can't even be convinced of such a basic thing as the existence of a
>physical object, is certainly not going to be convinced of moral value.
Well, once I know what you mean by 'physical object' we can talk about it.
-User
User 1DE7
>Date: 10/17/00 2:36 AM Central Daylight Time
>Message-id: <20001017033548...@ng-bj1.aol.com>
>And I think the primary reason you don't accept this is an emotional one.
>
>
>....It is not based upon emotions. I think that the objectivity of morality
>better explains moral language and our behavior and practices. When we make
>moral judgments we do not intend to
>merely say, "I desire that you do or do not do x," and when we punish people
>for things we think are wrong
>we do not justify it by saying, "this is against my wishes."
My position is not that people actualy are aware, as they make moral
judgements, that it is simply a wish of theirs with no objective import. What
people actively realize and what is true are different things.
>Our language and
>practices assume there really is
>such a thing as right and wrong. Hence, a theory that can reasonably explain
>how this is so has the advantage
>of justifying what appears to be a universal practice.
And we both think our theories reasonably explain why our languages and
practices are this way. Therefore simply saying "a theory that can explain this
has an advantage" isn't too productive.
>....Now, you might say that such moral language can be explained by what is
>essentially a deceit, viz. we have invented it in order to make our wishes
>more authoritative, and lend them objectivity.
Not nessesarily. It does not have to be a conscious invention, just an aspect
of human nature -- a product of evolution. Moral language can be explained by
the fact that people evolved to have moral sensations. No one had to
intellegently plan and orchistrate a big deception. That people have moral
sensations does not imply that there is some objective moral truth outside of
them.
>Your theory then would require a
>wholesale revision of language and practices such that the concepts of
>fairness, justice, rights etc are deconstructed into the language of baseless
>desire, where nothing is really prohibited and might makes right.
I disagree. My theory doesn't "require" anything, in that you think it
objectively dictates action. Most people prefer to oppose murder and such. This
is neither rational nor irrational, but so long as people mostly agree on
basics like this, there exists a ground upon which concepts of justice and
fairness and such can rest. It just isn't objective.
>....Therefore, if one has two equally reasonable theories, moral realism vs.
>moral skepticism, moral realism would have the advantage of justifying
>current
>practices.
Justifying? Uh, this is precisely the sort of emotional motivation I was
speaking about earlier. Whether or not some theory "justifies" our practices is
not really relevent to its truth or falsity. I don't know why you would bring
it up, other than you simply want to feel justified and thus you assign some
sort of "advantage" to a theory that satisfies this emotional desire.
Can you elaborate on the exact nature of this alleged "advantage"?
>I know you think my theory is not as reasonable because it is not
>empirical. But I think your theory self-
>contradictory - or at least on your theory, there is no reason to think your
>theory is better than mine.
There is a reason to think it is more true. Wheter or not true beliefs are
"better" or "worse" than false ones is of course a subjective decision.
>I think it is both. We believe logical truths because organisms that
>"believed"
>them were selected for, and those organisms were selected for because those
>beliefs were true.
>
>.....I don't see how this follows. All you can get from the fact that they
>were
>selected for is that they had survival value or were pragmatic.
Right, and I assume that true beliefs are in general more useul than false
ones.
>And if that is
>true, then your belief in positivism or empiricism etc. is justified only by
>the fact that it has survival value or is pragmatic. So, how can you say that
>your empiricism is any truer than my and many others' belief in objective
>moral
>reality?
Usualy when people speak of truth and falsity, they use logical rules as
foundational. I have said before that I don't believe in an infinite chain of
justifications, or in some ultimate justification that needs no justification
itsself. Things are justified by other things, and generaly "justified" by
itsself is taken to mean "logicaly justified", so, am I going to try to justify
logic with itsself? No. I cannot give any justification for my belief in logic,
it is foundational, and I am strongly predisposed to believe various logical
things.
The point is that those who think moral realisism is true, they also accept
logical rules. Therefore, if you can show that their acceptance of moral
realism is illogical, then it contradicts their logical beliefs.
So, when you ask me to justify logic, what do you want me to justify it in
terms of? I know what to justify moral reality in terms of (or its falsity) --
logic.
>This belief has persisted a lot longer than science has, and therefore
>must be very pragmatic.
How long whatever you call "science" has existed is not really relevent. I am
talking about logical beliefs in general, and, from an earlier example you can
see that even worms acted logicaly, and surely logical action and beliefs have
been a part of all of human history. Maybe you mean "the maturation of science,
into the magnificent thing that it is today" is recent. Well, I agree. However
this is in fact unparalled in moral theory. Moral theory hasn't really seemed
to advance at all, seems to be just a gaggle of people rationalizing their
opinions. On the primative level that moral philosophy is at (a level that you
would expect for something without objective existance to be stuck at for quite
some time), scientific and logical thinking has, I would say, since at least
the beginning of recorded human history, and likely far before that.
If we rate the sophistication of moral philosophy vs physical science, you
might say that at about 10,000 BC or whatever, physical science is only
slightly more advanced. Then, it constantly progresses and progresses, whereas
moral philosophy stays quite near its original pathetic state, and, then when
physical science turns into this phenominon body of knowledge with which people
can do all sorts of wonderful things, etc, only THEN do you start
counting(later in the thread you say "science is only about 400 years old) its
longevity against that of moral philosophy.
It is good that you bring up history, as this is an excellent point.
>If all beliefs are evolutionary
>artifacts, then it doesn't make
>sense to say any theory is truer than any other.
It makes sense. You might simply mean "you are not absolutely justified in
saying it", but I don't believe in that sort of jutsification.
>If there is an underlying
>reality that
>our beliefs come to mirror through evolution
Some of our beliefs, some not.
>then simply pointing out that
>they are a product of evolution offers nothing in exploring what that reality
>is
It shows that because we simply have some moral sensation doesn't imply what
moral realists often claim it does.
-User
User 1DE7
>Message-id: <MPG.1457776d7c...@mail.nji.com>
>
>My larger point, btw, is that User's notion of "objective" is defective.
>He talks about objective properties being ones that are "in" objects; he
>thinks that green is an objective property; but green is not "in" the
>object.
I think you simply mean that we define "green" differently. I haven't seen you
say anything that calls into question my notion of "objective." You seem to
take green as "how an object appears to me" and I take it to mean "a property
of an object that causes it to absorb/reflect certain types of light."
I don't see how our having diffrent definitions of "green" points to any
problem with objective properties of objects. Just for the sake of argment, use
my definition of green. Now, are you saying that green is not objective, using
my definition?
-User
Owl
news:MPG.1457776d7c...@mail.nji.com...
> I don't, and I believe that if I carefully questioned anyone who said
> that he did, he would see that he was wrong.
I doubt this would happen if you questioned David Hilbert. ;)
I would be interested in what kind of questions you would ask. So let me,
for the time being, take up the position that the grass is green at night.
To avoid the color constancy phenomenon, let me even say that, in my view,
the grass is green (not black!) even when it is pitch dark. Why am I
wrong?
Owl
> Philosophers do actualy attempt to find moral truths, many without
obfuscation,
> and if you look at what they have produced thus far, you don't see any
sort of
> progress or any evidence at all that they are studying something real.
Rather
> one is led to conclude from the pathetic state of philosophy in
comparison to
> real sciences that it consists of a bunch of people trying to develop
theories
> to rationalize their subjective feelings and opinions.
Are you basing this on familiarity with the professional literature in
ethics, or on your familiarity with h.p.o.? If the latter, I can see why
you might say that.
Owl
> So, in the context of a goal, the normal fact becomes a moral fact.
> If I set a goal to keep all my teeth, then flossing my teeth will help
> me achieve that goal.
Adolf Hitler set a goal of exterminating the Jews. Putting them in gas
chambers served that goal. Does it follow that it was moral to put them in
gas chambers? I don't think so.
> I don't think so. According to "A Dictionary of Philosophy" that
> means I believe in the Identity Theory of Mind which holds that
> "various conscious phenomena are identical with states or processes in
> the brain or central nervous system."
I think you have a bad dictionary. Physicalists think only physical things
exist.
> I don't think there are such
> things as "conscious phenomena." I take the term to mean that if I am
> watching a pot of water boil, two separate phenomena are occurring:
> the water boiling and my conscious experience of it. I think watching
> the water boil is my conscious experience. I don't know if philosophy
> accounts for such a view, so I'll just call it the "common sense view"
> meaning it is the view we hold when we are not doing philosophy and
> thinking normally about things.
From this and other things you've written, it sounds as if you're a
behaviorist, or something in that vicinity.
There's a joke about behaviorists: The one behaviorist meets the other on
the street, and he says, "Hi! How am I feeling today?"
Your view is one that I don't think anyone entertained before the 20th
century. I think User's reaction to it is fairly typical of the reactions
any ordinary person would have, unless they were heavily trained in either
(physicalist) philosophy or behaviorist psychology. The first reaction, I
think, is one of incomprehension (He can't really be saying *that*, can
he?) That doesn't prove you're wrong, but it does mean that "common sense
view" is pickwickian here.
Owl
> This is irrelevent. Other people dying *is* simply your experience.
Obviously
> your life goes on because you aren't the one who died. The point is, you
should
> be unsure if when *you* die, anything at all will exist after that,
beacuse
> reality is literaly your experience and nothing more.
> Do you not see that if you say they are the same thing, that you could
then
> prevent hitler from killing people by extinguishing your experience? By
putting
User,
I did not follow your ongoing battle with Joe, but I believe you have
Joe's position exactly backwards here. Perhaps this is due to your view
that we're directly aware of our experiences, and so of course everyone
accepts that experiences exist, and then claims beyond that are more
debatable. It will do you some good philosophically to see that not
everyone accepts this.
I think Joe is some form of behaviorist, but he can correct me if this is
wrong. In any case, there have been some behaviorists, so even if Joe
isn't one, we can talk about what the position is. It is, roughly, that
when you talk about someone's 'beliefs', 'desires', 'feelings', and other
so-called 'mental phenomena', that's really just a way of talking about
their physical behavior. I.e., "S believes P", rather than ascribing a
special mental (as distinct from physical) property to S, really just says
that S exhibits a certain complex pattern of behavior.
Slightly later, the behaviorists decided that it couldn't be *actual*
behavior we were talking about, but rather *dispositions*. Thus, believing
such-and-such is just having a complex set of dispositions to behave in
certain ways. Later on, this core idea evolved into 'functionalism',
which -- believe it or not! -- is probably the most widely-held position
in philosophy of mind today.
See Gilbert Ryle, _The Concept of Mind_, for the classic statement of
behaviorism.
Where I think you're getting Joe backwards, then, is this:
You're assuming that Joe takes the existence of what you call
'experiences' as given, and therefore, in saying that experiences are not
separate from external objects, he must be denying the other things -- the
objective world.
Rather, as I understand him, Joe takes the objective world for
granted, and, in saying that experiences are not separate from external
objects, he is denying the existence of what *you* call "experiences." See
the reversal here.
Can't believe it? Well, now you know the realists feel about idealism.
anth...@hotmail.com
None of what I said above says that it does, only that your theory
implies a mass delusion where we have evolved to believe falsehoods and
mine doesn't. Hence if I had to choose between two theories that were
equally reasonable, I would choose mine. Is this choice based on emotion
or reason? I don't know. Often scientific theories and mathematical and
steps in mathematical proofs are chosen on the basis of aesthetic
considerations, and are confirmed to be the right ones after more
evidence comes along. Also, I haven't seen anything from you about why
the particular moral sensations or principles we believe evolved. One
explanation of this, of course, is that, they are true - in the same
way that the logical principles we have evolved to believe are true (on
your view.
>
> >Your theory then would require a
> >wholesale revision of language and practices such that the concepts
of
> >fairness, justice, rights etc are deconstructed into the language of
baseless
> >desire, where nothing is really prohibited and might makes right.
>
> I disagree. My theory doesn't "require" anything, in that you think it
> objectively dictates action. Most people prefer to oppose murder and
such.
Sure, and it seems the reason they prefer it is because they think it is
really wrong.
This
> is neither rational nor irrational, but so long as people mostly
agree on
> basics like this, there exists a ground upon which concepts of
justice and
> fairness and such can rest. It just isn't objective.
But let's say everyone came to believe what you think the truth is and
that killing is, from an objective point of view, morally equivalent to
eating a candy bar. Do you think if everyone were moral skeptics their
behavior wouldn't change?
>
> >....Therefore, if one has two equally reasonable theories, moral
realism vs.
> >moral skepticism, moral realism would have the advantage of
justifying
> >current
> >practices.
>
> Justifying? Uh, this is precisely the sort of emotional motivation I
was
> speaking about earlier. Whether or not some theory "justifies" our
practices is
> not really relevent to its truth or falsity.
But often two opposing theories can can equally explain some phenomenon.
In that case it seems a better, if not more rational choice, if one has
to choose, to pick the theory that is consonant with beliefs about the
world that are fairly universal.
I don't know why you would bring
> it up, other than you simply want to feel justified and thus you
assign some
> sort of "advantage" to a theory that satisfies this emotional desire.
>
> Can you elaborate on the exact nature of this alleged "advantage"?
See above.
>
> >I know you think my theory is not as reasonable because it is not
> >empirical. But I think your theory self-
> >contradictory - or at least on your theory, there is no reason to
think your
> >theory is better than mine.
>
> There is a reason to think it is more true.
I don't see how you can say any belief is more true than any other on
your theory - only that it has been selected for.
Wheter or not true beliefs are
> "better" or "worse" than false ones is of course a subjective
decision.
Well, I don't think that whether something is better or worse is a
subjective opinion, including beliefs.
>
> >I think it is both. We believe logical truths because organisms that
> >"believed"
> >them were selected for, and those organisms were selected for
because those
> >beliefs were true.
> >
> >.....I don't see how this follows. All you can get from the fact
that they
> >were
> >selected for is that they had survival value or were pragmatic.
>
> Right, and I assume that true beliefs are in general more useul than
false
> ones.
I don't see why you would assume that. Religious beliefs might be very
useful and are probably false. Without such beliefs that define an
overall purpose in life humanity would have probably died out a long
time ago.
And if you did assume that true beliefs are more useful than false
ones, then the best explanation for the usefulness of moral beliefs is
that they are true.
On your view, I guess, a belief is useful if it maximizes procreation
or species survival. In that case, aren't moral judgments objective and
not simply a matter of preference? It is objective whether a certain
practice increases species survival isn't it?
>
> >And if that is
> >true, then your belief in positivism or empiricism etc. is justified
only by
> >the fact that it has survival value or is pragmatic. So, how can you
say that
> >your empiricism is any truer than my and many others' belief in
objective
> >moral
> >reality?
>
> Usualy when people speak of truth and falsity, they use logical rules
as
> foundational. I have said before that I don't believe in an infinite
chain of
> justifications, or in some ultimate justification that needs no
justification
> itsself. Things are justified by other things, and generaly
"justified" by
> itsself is taken to mean "logicaly justified", so, am I going to try
to justify
> logic with itsself? No. I cannot give any justification for my belief
in logic,
> it is foundational, and I am strongly predisposed to believe various
logical
> things.
But you are strongly predisposed to believe various moral things, too.
Yet you assume your strong disposition to believe logical things exists
because they are true, yet you argue that your disposition to believe
moral truths is not the effect of their being true. This seems
arbitrary to me.
>
> The point is that those who think moral realisism is true, they also
accept
> logical rules. Therefore, if you can show that their acceptance of
moral
> realism is illogical, then it contradicts their logical beliefs.
Okay.
>
> So, when you ask me to justify logic, what do you want me to justify
it in
> terms of? I know what to justify moral reality in terms of (or its
falsity) --
> logic.
You have already given an argument about why you think your logical
beliefs are true - because they are useful and generally they are
useful because they are true. But, If your argument is correct then why
doesn't the same argument apply to moral beliefs?
>
> >This belief has persisted a lot longer than science has, and
therefore
> >must be very pragmatic.
>
> How long whatever you call "science" has existed is not really
relevent. I am
> talking about logical beliefs in general, and, from an earlier
example you can
> see that even worms acted logicaly, and surely logical action and
beliefs have
> been a part of all of human history.
But your argument that reduces morality to evolutionary psychology
is relying on a lot more than basic logical axioms - unless you can
somehow derive it from them :-) It relies on a number of deductive and
inductive principles and hypotheses, and observations. My point was
why do you think this whole complex of beliefs is any more true than
any other complex of beliefs that many people hold, if all beliefs are
merely the result of evolutionary processes? According to your argument
the beliefs that exist are useful and beliefs that are useful are
generally useful because they are true. So why do you get to say your
complex of beliefs are more true or rational when mine or others aren't?
Maybe you mean "the maturation of science,
> into the magnificent thing that it is today" is recent. Well, I
agree. However
> this is in fact unparalled in moral theory. Moral theory hasn't
really seemed
> to advance at all, seems to be just a gaggle of people rationalizing
their
> opinions.
Well, I disagree. I see a lot of advances in moral theory since the
Greeks, for example.
I think what I have said above addresses most of your points below, too
so I'll end here.
Wrathbone
Gordon G. Sollars
writes...
...
> What is the analogous situation in morality? How can morality work vs not
> work?
A /morality/ can help you make good decisions or not; it works if it
does. A /moral theory/ works if it accounts to a substantial degree for
our moral judgments.
Note that the aliens's physical theory (like ours) need not be the Final
Truth of physics in order to work.
> There is no way to test morality that I can see. Suppose I have a theory
> it is
> okay to murder your wife, and you have a theory that that is wrong. How d
> o you
> determine which theory 'works', moraly?
Well, there are some purely formal conditions for a good theory of any
kind. Show me your theory. Does it simply say, "It's OK to murder your
wife" or is there more to it? If we can get past the formal constraints,
then we can worry about others.
...
> This might explain peoples general attitudes about morality, but it does not
> explain why people who actualy make attempts at clearly and objectively
> studying morality, and finding moral truths, do not succeed.
Well, of course, we don't need a moral theory to find moral truths
anymore than we need a physical theory to find physical truths. But it
is true that a good theory can help you find truths.
> Philosophers do actualy attempt to find moral truths, many without obfusc
> ation,
> and if you look at what they have produced thus far, you don't see any so
> rt of
> progress or any evidence at all that they are studying something real.
What is "real"? For me, something is real if you can make true
statements about it. I think that there are true moral statements, so I
think that they are studying something real.
> Rather
> one is led to conclude from the pathetic state of philosophy in comparison to
> real sciences that it consists of a bunch of people trying to develop the
> ories
> to rationalize their subjective feelings and opinions.
Really? Which "one" is that?
>
> After thousands of years of study, it seems like the only thing moral rea
> lists
> can say about morality is that "it probably exists because lots of people
> think
> it does (nevermind that they mostly all think it does as part of their
> irrational religious beliefs)"
A true statement is true even if you believe it for an unjustified
reason.
> and "the kind of things that seem wrong to me
> are really wrong."
Go notice how many people say, "The kind of things that seem true to me
are really true".
Moral realists have said more than the phrases you award them. One of
the very first cautioned against looking for more precision that the
subject could provide. Non-moral realists have been ignoring this advice
for 2300 years. Tell me something new.
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Gordon G. Sollars
...
> I would be interested in what kind of questions you would ask. So let me,
> for the time being, take up the position that the grass is green at night.
> To avoid the color constancy phenomenon, let me even say that, in my view,
> the grass is green (not black!) even when it is pitch dark. Why am I
> wrong?
Owl, I'm short of time this week, and since you are a fellow moral
realist (albeit on the wrong side of the is/ought issue), I'm going to
save my replies for my real opponents. ;-)
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Jesus 1DE7
>Date: 10/18/00 7:59 PM Central Daylight Time
>Message-id: <8slgup$sa9$1...@slb3.atl.mindspring.net>
>> and if you look at what they have produced thus far, you don't see any
>sort of
>> progress or any evidence at all that they are studying something real.
>Rather
>> one is led to conclude from the pathetic state of philosophy in
>comparison to
>> real sciences that it consists of a bunch of people trying to develop
>theories
>> to rationalize their subjective feelings and opinions.
>
>Are you basing this on familiarity with the professional literature in
>ethics, or on your familiarity with h.p.o.? If the latter, I can see why
>you might say that.
Admittedly I have not read any of the professional literature on ethics, so it
is possible that I am way off base here, and that moral philosophy is right up
there with physics in terms of what has been shown to be true or false in the
field in an objective sense, and shown as strongly and convincingly.
I am speaking from the experience of casualy reading through an intro to
philosophy book, and glancing at philosophy books from time to time when I go
to the bookstore, but also from my experience here, as well as on a few other
philosophy newsgroups. Not nessesarily my experiences with objectivists, but
various moral realists and such. When I call the state of moral philosophy
"pathetic," I don't nessesarily mean that it could be done much better, but
rather it is what would be expected of a field of study that tried to develop
some theory of how subjective impressions are objective.
For instance, if I were to immagine a possible world in which philosophers
tried to develop on objective theory of feelings, such that feelings were
properties of certain situations, then I think this field would resemble moral
philosophy reasonably closely.
An example: One could hold that situations in which you are lied to posess an
objective property of hostility, and that when we feel hostility when we are
lied to, we are simply directly percieving this property of the situation.
A philosopher could say "Well, almost everyone feels hostile when they are lied
to, therefore this lends credibility to the fact that feelings are objective
properties of situations!"
Anyway, back to my original comments. It isn't so much that the theories aren't
complex enough, and built up on previous ones and such, but that the very
foundations still seem so weak, and disputed, and whatnot. I mean, you have
people arguing that "well, lots of other people think morality is real, so, I
find that it being real is the best explaination." Aside from this seeming to
ignore the fact that over 90% of people believe in god, and their moral beliefs
are probably just an irrational outgrowth of that, it seems weak in that at
some point it should be rooted in the fact that *someone* *knows* that moral
facts are true somehow. It is like everyone believes in moral facts because
other people do, but if you take away that justification, they can't really
find out for themselves. Also, I personaly can see the foundations of physics
to be true myself -- using my sense evidence and logical faculty to experiment
with reality and such.
You seem to think you can direcly percieve moral facts and such, so this isn't
as big of a problem with your particular brand of moral realism, but I don't
see that your flavor is too widely accepted from what I have read. Maybe it is
in professional journals. What do you think the percentage of professional
philosophers is who subscribe to your type of moral intuitionalism?
-User
Jesus 1DE7
>From: Owl a@a.a
>Message-id: <8slibi$7r8$1...@slb6.atl.mindspring.net>
I might actualy agree with this, if by "behavior" you include various complex
behavior in the brain.
>Slightly later, the behaviorists decided that it couldn't be *actual*
>behavior we were talking about, but rather *dispositions*. Thus, believing
>such-and-such is just having a complex set of dispositions to behave in
>certain ways. Later on, this core idea evolved into 'functionalism',
>which -- believe it or not! -- is probably the most widely-held position
>in philosophy of mind today.
>See Gilbert Ryle, _The Concept of Mind_, for the classic statement of
>behaviorism.
I'll look into it.
>Where I think you're getting Joe backwards, then, is this:
> You're assuming that Joe takes the existence of what you call
>'experiences' as given, and therefore, in saying that experiences are not
>separate from external objects, he must be denying the other things -- the
>objective world.
I actualy don't think Joe is attempting to deny the objective world. Rather, I
think that he holds some collection of perhaps behaviorist ideas that he is
sloppy with and applies incorrectly, and I was trying to show that his
statements implied absurdity, expecting him to realize that they are absurd,
since I think he believes in objective reality.
> Rather, as I understand him, Joe takes the objective world for
>granted, and, in saying that experiences are not separate from external
>objects, he is denying the existence of what *you* call "experiences." See
>the reversal here.
I see, and maybe I was a little off on my interpretation of him, but when
someone says "my experience *is* the coffee cup", then, I can't really
interpret that other than in the way where I "switch" Joe's position. For
instance, in your interpretation of his position, what would it mean to say "my
experience is the coffee cup?"
It would seem that he'd have to say "my experience is the coffee cup contacting
my fingers and sending electrical impulses up to my brain stem, and things
happening in my brain, and light from the cup reflecting into my eye and things
happening in my brain.." etc, for it to make sense.
In other words, for him to limit it to *only* the cup seems to exclude his
brain, completely, if you take what you are saying is Joe's position, rather
than flipping it like I do. So here we have a claim that, since the experience
is literaly the cup and nothing else, that Joe isn't even involved in what we
call his own experience, and, in fact, Joe may not even exist and since the cup
is there, and the cup is all there is to Joe's experience, then we can say
Joe's experience exists even if Joe doesn't exist.
This seems so illogical to me that I had to flip it around so that he was
denying physical reality instead, since, although that is a sort of wild
belief, it doesn't seem nearly as nonsensical.
-User
Joe Durnavich
>User,
>
>I did not follow your ongoing battle with Joe, but I believe you have
>Joe's position exactly backwards here. Perhaps this is due to your view
>that we're directly aware of our experiences, and so of course everyone
>accepts that experiences exist, and then claims beyond that are more
>debatable. It will do you some good philosophically to see that not
>everyone accepts this.
I think it is reasonable to say experiences exist but it is too
misleading to say we are directly aware of them. This suggests that
experiences are objects of awareness in the same sense that apples
are. When I eat an apple, that whole process itself is the experience
and is the awareness of the apple.
I am aiming for a simple, straightforward view here. There is just
the world and us living our life in it. When we categorize things as
experiences and awarenesses we are grouping things we have done in
various ways, or focusing on particular aspects of these doings.
User probably despises this view because extreme skepticism can't get
a foothold here. But that doesn't bother me because I think
philosophy should work to clarify and explain and not just to cast
doubt.
>I think Joe is some form of behaviorist, but he can correct me if this is
>wrong. In any case, there have been some behaviorists, so even if Joe
>isn't one, we can talk about what the position is. It is, roughly, that
>when you talk about someone's 'beliefs', 'desires', 'feelings', and other
>so-called 'mental phenomena', that's really just a way of talking about
>their physical behavior. I.e., "S believes P", rather than ascribing a
>special mental (as distinct from physical) property to S, really just says
>that S exhibits a certain complex pattern of behavior.
Wittgenstein, Ryle, and Dennett are often accused of being
behaviorists, but they all have denied it. I don't really know what
the issues are, so I don't know if I fall in that category.
I don't think any of them equate feelings with behavior in the sense
that one's hunger is constituted by the vocalization, "I am hungry."
W & Ryle do think that one can get a clearer view of mental terms by
noting the many different ways they are used. One discovers, for
example, that having an inclination to study Quantum Mechanics does
not mean that a special type of internal force occurs inside you that
propels you to study the subject. Sometimes you have feelings about
the matter and sometimes you don't. Your inclination also consists of
you spending a great deal of time reading on the subject, taking
classes, discussing it with others, etc. If an inclination consisted
of just a hidden, internal force, we would never conclude that people
have inclinations.
So, it seems to me that most philosophers want to say a mental term
refers to "just this" (while wanting to point inward) and guys like W
and Ryle say that, "no, it also includes all of this" (and wave their
hands about).
>Slightly later, the behaviorists decided that it couldn't be *actual*
>behavior we were talking about, but rather *dispositions*. Thus, believing
>such-and-such is just having a complex set of dispositions to behave in
>certain ways. Later on, this core idea evolved into 'functionalism',
>which -- believe it or not! -- is probably the most widely-held position
>in philosophy of mind today.
>
>See Gilbert Ryle, _The Concept of Mind_, for the classic statement of
>behaviorism.
Note that Ryle spends part of his last chapter attacking behaviorism.
He doesn't think human beings are machines. He thinks we are
obviously different from things like clocks and engines. He says,
"Man need not be degraded to a machine by being denied to be a ghost
in a machine. He might, after all, be a sort of animal, namely, a
higher mammal. There has yet to be ventured the hazardous leap to the
hypothesis that perhaps he is a man."
>Where I think you're getting Joe backwards, then, is this:
> You're assuming that Joe takes the existence of what you call
>'experiences' as given, and therefore, in saying that experiences are not
>separate from external objects, he must be denying the other things -- the
>objective world.
> Rather, as I understand him, Joe takes the objective world for
>granted, and, in saying that experiences are not separate from external
>objects, he is denying the existence of what *you* call "experiences." See
>the reversal here.
"Taking the objective world for granted" suggests I am in a position
to decide if there is such a world or not, and that I have just
decided to accept it. Learning Rand's Stolen Concept Fallacy showed
me that my language is rooted in the world and it is non-sensical
(aka, self-defeating) to think there is no objective world.
And saying that experiences are not separate from external objects
does not sound right. For one, the word "external" is too misleading.
Rather, I would say that examples of experiences are: eating an
apple, watching an eagle fly over the lake, driving to work, etc.
Another way to see my point is the word "perception." Many take it to
be a distinct and special type of object and then endlessly debate
whether their perceptions are real or not. Perception is a category
that includes vision, hearing, touch, etc. Examples of vision are
seeing an eagle fly over the lake, counting the money in your wallet,
etc. So, those are likewise examples of a perception.
The words "experience" and "perception" denote particular aspects of
things we do or accomplish in the world and not any sort of shadows of
these doings.
>Can't believe it? Well, now you know the realists feel about idealism.
The realist says that experience or awareness is like a painting, and
that the painting corresponds to something in the world. The idealist
agrees that awareness is like a painting, but we have no way of
knowing if the painting corresponds to anything. I say forget the
painting, it is just a metaphor. Paintings are real objects just as
things that are painted are such as apples, eagles, etc. We use these
experiences to make metaphors about what experience is like.
>There's a joke about behaviorists: The one behaviorist meets the other on
>the street, and he says, "Hi! How am I feeling today?"
The other guy might say, "You are making jokes so I am glad to see you
are feeling much better." We tend to have a pretty good grasp on how
others around us are feeling. I'm sure you yourself can tell if the
person you are debating with is angry about something you wrote. And
that is from just observing shapes on your screen.
>Your view is one that I don't think anyone entertained before the 20th
>century. I think User's reaction to it is fairly typical of the reactions
>any ordinary person would have, unless they were heavily trained in either
>(physicalist) philosophy or behaviorist psychology. The first reaction, I
>think, is one of incomprehension (He can't really be saying *that*, can
>he?) That doesn't prove you're wrong, but it does mean that "common sense
>view" is pickwickian here.
I bet you agree with me in that the moral relativist argue that there
is no real right and wrong, etc. only while they are logged onto the
newsgroup. The moment they resume their normal lives, they holler at
their kids for playing in the street, or demanding that the
electronics store repair or replace the defective CD player they
purchased, etc. In normal life there is no question that actions have
real consequences and that there is a way things should be.
The same goes for epistemology. In our normal lives, the question
"are our experiences real" never comes up and has no place. The
problem comes when we step into the culture of philosophy where one
adopts the method of dividing the world into discrete entities or
realms of mind and body, internal and external, experience and
reality, etc. Using this method, my common sense views would seem
incomprehensible. The methods of the likes Wittgenstein, Ryle, and
Rand encourage reminding ourselves of how we came to know what we know
and how our language acquired meaning. And mostly, this is just
considering how things are in normal, daily life.
--
Joe Durnavich
Joe Durnavich
>>From: Joe Durnavich jo...@mcs.net
>>Date: 10/18/00 12:40 PM Central Daylight Time
>
>> I take the term to mean that if I am
>>watching a pot of water boil, two separate phenomena are occurring:
>>the water boiling and my conscious experience of it. I think watching
>>the water boil is my conscious experience. I don't know if philosophy
>>accounts for such a view, so I'll just call it the "common sense view"
>>meaning it is the view we hold when we are not doing philosophy and
>>thinking normally about things.
>
>I hate to break it too you, but most people think their experience is caus
>ed by
>objective reality (or, the part of objective reality that we term their
>'experience' is caused by other parts of objective reality).
>
>I really encourage you to take a survey, ask everyone you encounter "When you
>watch water boil, is your experience of the water boiling caused by the fact
>that water really *is* boiling, or is your experience literaly the same thing
>as the boiling water?"
>
>The results of your survey should enlighten you on "common sense."
While I was writing my post, I kept saying to myself over and over,
"Make sure you say WATCHING the water boil is the experience otherwise
User will take it to mean the water itself is the experience." But,
damn it, it didn't do any good!
Don't look for the location where the experience is. It is not that
type of thing. Rather, list examples of experiences like eating a
spaghetti dinner, scratching a mosquito bite, cutting the grass,
changing a flat tire, skiing down a mountain, etc. My experience of
changing a flat tire IS me changing the flat tire.
--
Joe Durnavich
User 1DE7
>Date: 10/19/00 1:00 PM Central Daylight Time
>Message-id: <maduuso2h4olandk9...@4ax.com>
>>I hate to break it too you, but most people think their experience is caus
>>ed by
>>objective reality (or, the part of objective reality that we term their
>>'experience' is caused by other parts of objective reality).
>>
>>I really encourage you to take a survey, ask everyone you encounter "When
>you
>>watch water boil, is your experience of the water boiling caused by the fact
>>that water really *is* boiling, or is your experience literaly the same
>thing
>>as the boiling water?"
>>
>>The results of your survey should enlighten you on "common sense."
>
>While I was writing my post, I kept saying to myself over and over,
>"Make sure you say WATCHING the water boil is the experience otherwise
>User will take it to mean the water itself is the experience." But,
>damn it, it didn't do any good!
>
>Don't look for the location where the experience is. It is not that
>type of thing.
It is a process, it seems. And, while it does not have clearly defined
boundaries and an exact location, you do know that the process consists of, for
instance, light reflecting off of your coffee cup, entering your eye, stuff
happening in your brain and nervous system, etc.
Or, you touching your coffee cup, electrical impulses traveling up your arm
into your brain stem, stuff happening in your brain, stuff happening throughout
your nervous system, etc. That process is experience. Wittingstein(spelling?)
actualy explained it well in that article you linked me to, you should listen
to him.
>My experience of
>changing a flat tire IS me changing the flat tire.
When we are trying to give a detailed account, and you keep saying stuff like
this, it makes your position seem weaker and more absurd than I think it is.
You seem reluctant to break down your position into more fundamental things,
because you think it implies 'hiddenness' or something, so you give these
extremely simple and non-detailed statements like the above.
However, if you said "my experience of changing a flat tire is the process of
me touching the tire, stuff happening in my brain and nervous system, light
from the tire reflecting into my eyes, stuff happening in my brain and nervous
system, etc" then, I think your meaning is still there, but you've actualy
given an account that is detailed enough to fit within the discussion.
-User
User 1DE7
>Message-id: <MPG.14581b0e6...@mail.nji.com>
>> What is the analogous situation in morality? How can morality work vs not
>> work?
>
>A /morality/ can help you make good decisions or not; it works if it
>does.
Good according to what? Your intuitions? So, basicaly, for a moral theory to
"work" it simply needs to be consistant with your basic moral ideas?
>> Rather
>> one is led to conclude from the pathetic state of philosophy in comparison
>to
>> real sciences that it consists of a bunch of people trying to develop the
>> ories
>> to rationalize their subjective feelings and opinions.
>
>Really? Which "one" is that?
Anyone who studies the subject rationaly, I think. I've been sort sloppy in my
arguments lately, but later I will compose a post in which I expand upon my
views more clearly that I have up until now.
>Moral realists have said more than the phrases you award them. One of
>the very first cautioned against looking for more precision that the
>subject could provide. Non-moral realists have been ignoring this advice
>for 2300 years. Tell me something new.
If it was imprecise in a definite, consistant, clearly-percievable way, then
this may be more convincing. As it is, it seems like "our field of study isn't
real, so, lets all not look too closely or be too critical and we can go about
pretending that it is."
Btw, for some reason I lost one of your posts where we're talking about the
difference between "is" and "ought" statements. You gave an example "that is a
good watch" that you said was both, so that there wasnt really a distinction or
something. I forgot to add that, you are really making two claims there, one
evaluative and one descriptive. This is equivilant to "X property in a watch
makes it good" and "this watch has X property."
-User
Joe Durnavich
>
>Joe Durnavich <jo...@mcs.net> wrote in message
>news:q0orus47pucmbd29d...@4ax.com...
>> So, in the context of a goal, the normal fact becomes a moral fact.
>> If I set a goal to keep all my teeth, then flossing my teeth will help
>> me achieve that goal.
>
>Adolf Hitler set a goal of exterminating the Jews. Putting them in gas
>chambers served that goal. Does it follow that it was moral to put them in
>gas chambers? I don't think so.
It also doesn't follow that Hitler's actions are immoral because of
something other than goal achievment.
We are talking about moral principles that apply to everybody. (Even
those who argue there is no right and wrong assume this.) As such,
one can see where a Jewish person's goal of living a happy, productive
life is compromised by Hitler's goal of gassing him and dumping him in
a mass grave. We have a conflict of interests here that can best be
resolved by looking at the full context of each and every one of us
striving to achieve our goals and establishing a set of guidelines
that "defines and sanctions Man's freedom of action in a social
context" as Rand says. These guidelines may be communicated by a
select team of the world's most distinguished philosophers in the form
of carefully reasoned arguments, with optional carpet bombing and
Russian tank assaults clarifying any misunderstood portions of the
argument.
--
Joe Durnavich
Joe Durnavich
>>From: Joe Durnavich jo...@mcs.net
>>Date: 10/16/00 12:41 PM Central Daylight Time
>>
>>I still think you are treating "experience" the way you say Owl
>>is treating a moral fact--as a discrete and separate thing or
>>event.
>
>No, I don't think it is discrete or seperate. The experience is caused by
>impressions on your senses. The only way your position makes sense is if you
>deny objective reality. You, for instance, would have to claim that you don't
>know if anything would exist after you die, since nothing causes your
>experience.
But you could also say the experience is "caused by" the light
reflecting off the cup. There are a countless number of physical
reactions we can identify, but no single one of them is the
"experience."
And I don't see how drinking a cup of coffee leads to a denial of
objective reality!
>>The only things that could be a cause is the coffee cup, my lifting
>>it, etc. But that IS the experience itself.
>
>You are saying that the coffee cup itsself is literaly your experience.
No. But I am saying when I drank that cup of coffee, that could be
one of the things I list in my journal, "The Experiences of Joe
Durnavich."
Don't zoom in too close. Widen your view to include me in the
experience.
>This is
>quite absurd. Define "experience" for me and I might be able to
>diagnose your problem.
Experience: A direct participation in events.
My Webster's dictionary lists several definitions. That was one
of them. Some others are:
1a. The usually conscious perception or apprehension of reality
or of an external, bodily, or psychic event.
1b. Facts or events or the totality of facts or events observed.
>>If I concluded that things existed after I died, it would be
>>because many people have died and yet life goes on.
>>
>
>This is irrelevent. Other people dying *is* simply your experience. Obviously
>your life goes on because you aren't the one who died. The point is, you s
>hould
>be unsure if when *you* die, anything at all will exist after that, beacuse
>reality is literaly your experience and nothing more.
I can only draw conclusions based on what I have learned of the
world. You make it sound like this is a serious impediment to
knowledge and cannot provide me any basis to make predictions
on how things will be after I die. You reserve the priviledge
of induction for only yourself in concluding that I cannot be
sure of something. You were able to derive guidelines for
what can or can't be said about the time after we die. Why
can't I do the same?
>>There wouldn't be two discrete things here--Hitler killing people
>>and my experience of him killing people.
>
>Do you not see that if you say they are the same thing, that you could then
>prevent hitler from killing people by extinguishing your experience? By pu
>tting
>a bullet in your head? This follows from your theory.
I didn't mean to imply that just Hitler killing people is the
experience. I said putting myself in position to, and observing
him killing people is the experience. If I die, then Hitler goes
on killing people and I am no longer able to experience it.
I don't think I am saying anything absurd, startling, or controversial
here. Like a detective making a list of the evidence in a case, I ask
myself, "What do we have here." Well, there's a coffee cup, coffee,
me, my lifting the cup, taking a sip, tasting the coffee, feeling its
warmth, etc. That type of list seems it could be an exhaustive
description of the experience.
--
Joe Durnavich
User 1DE7
>Date: 10/19/00 1:37 AM Central Daylight Time
>Message-id: <8sm4qj$bg5$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>
>> Not nessesarily. It does not have to be a conscious invention, just
>an aspect
>> of human nature -- a product of evolution. Moral language can be
>explained by
>> the fact that people evolved to have moral sensations. No one had to
>> intellegently plan and orchistrate a big deception. That people have
>moral
>> sensations does not imply that there is some objective moral truth
>outside of
>> them.
>
>
>None of what I said above says that it does, only that your theory
>implies a mass delusion where we have evolved to believe falsehoods and
>mine doesn't.
I don't think this is an accurate characterization. Moral realists are always
claiming how everyone believes morality is objective, and this needs to be
explained. I don't believe it. No one I know who isn't a christian believes
that morality is objective. The only people I have ever encountered who believe
that morality is objective in a non-religious way are philosophers I find on
HPO.
>Also, I haven't seen anything from you about why
>the particular moral sensations or principles we believe evolved.
I am going to write a more detailed post on this later, but it doesn't take
that much effort to posit a plausible theory. Think of organisms who feel
compelled to act ruthlessly toward their fellow organisms in the same tribe or
whatever. See any reason why this sort of organism wouldn't be selected for as
well as organisms who acted in an opposite manner?
>> I disagree. My theory doesn't "require" anything, in that you think it
>> objectively dictates action. Most people prefer to oppose murder and
>such.
>
>
>Sure, and it seems the reason they prefer it is because they think it is
>really wrong.
I don't know any non-religious people like this, other than various
philosophers.
>But let's say everyone came to believe what you think the truth is and
>that killing is, from an objective point of view, morally equivalent to
>eating a candy bar. Do you think if everyone were moral skeptics their
>behavior wouldn't change?
Their behavior might change, but I think it would be a more positive change
than anything. Most people I know are moral skeptics, as am I, and we don't go
around killing people. However, take someone who believes in objective morality
-- like that guy in the middleeast that was on the front page of all the papers
showing off his bloody hands. I'll bet you that he thinks morality is
objective.
Or, if he didn't, I would bet that most people engaging in the fighting over
there are doing so partly because they feel they are objectively moraly right.
So, yes, I think peoples behavior would change for the better, on net.
>> Whether or not some theory "justifies" our
>practices is
>> not really relevent to its truth or falsity.
>
>
>But often two opposing theories can can equally explain some phenomenon.
>In that case it seems a better, if not more rational choice, if one has
>to choose, to pick the theory that is consonant with beliefs about the
>world that are fairly universal.
Why? Unless these people believe it for some sort of rational reason, I don't
see why it'd be a better theory. It seems to me like the only people who
believe in objective morality are religious people and philosophers. We know
the religious people's beliefs about morality are irrational, and I haven't
heard many rational reasons from philosophers.
>> >I know you think my theory is not as reasonable because it is not
>> >empirical. But I think your theory self-
>> >contradictory - or at least on your theory, there is no reason to
>think your
>> >theory is better than mine.
>>
>> There is a reason to think it is more true.
>
>
>I don't see how you can say any belief is more true than any other on
>your theory - only that it has been selected for.
I thought we were assuming the rules of logic to be true here, and talking
about your theory with respect to them, hence the fact that the rules of logic
were selected for isn't really relevent in this particular area of discussion.
I should note that, the rules of logic being true and [various mental notions
that we have compelling us to act] being true are quite different things, and
they would not be selected for in the same way at all. The rules of logic would
be selected for if they were true because they are what determine if we are
able to achieve our goals in reality. We cannot make any of our plans "work",
or really do anything if the rules of logic are not true, or aren't true enough
to work. If we feel hungry, and we know eating will fix this and those that
don't eat will die, but we can't figure out from this that if we don't want to
die the best action would be to eat, then there will be consequences resulting
in our failure to pass on our genes from this false logical belief.
Beliefs about morality that aren't true do not nessesarily result in any
failure to pass on our genes. For instance, if an orgnaism feels that it ought
to impregnate as many females as possible, then this will be selected for
regardless of whether it is true or false, objective or subjective.
Here we have an enormous difference between the trueness of belief nessesary to
select for logical vs moral beliefs.
For instance, >> Right, and I assume that true beliefs are in general more
useul than
>false
>> ones.
>
>I don't see why you would assume that. Religious beliefs might be very
>useful and are probably false. Without such beliefs that define an
>overall purpose in life humanity would have probably died out a long
>time ago.
See above.
Logic deals with the properties of physical reality. So, "a" form of logic must
be true no matter what physical reality is like, assuming physical reality has
any properties at all. Life and death are dependant on physical things. Whether
you eat, find shelter, etc. So, having true beliefs about the nature of
physical reality will probably allow you to satisfy these physical needs
better, and this is really the only thing that determines the passing on of
your genes.
>And if you did assume that true beliefs are more useful than false
>ones, then the best explanation for the usefulness of moral beliefs is
>that they are true.
>
Not at all, see above.
>On your view, I guess, a belief is useful if it maximizes procreation
>or species survival. In that case, aren't moral judgments objective and
>not simply a matter of preference?
It is objectively useful for maximizing procreation. I don't think that is what
moral realists mean when they talk about objective morality, though.
>No. I cannot give any justification for my belief
>in logic,
>> it is foundational, and I am strongly predisposed to believe various
>logical
>> things.
>
>
>But you are strongly predisposed to believe various moral things, too.
Not at all. My moral feelings are not like my logical and physical senses (not
that those too are that similar). They don't seem objective to me.. I have a
predisposition to be compelled to act in certain ways, like not killing people,
etc. It doesn't really seem to me at all like I am compelled to do such things
because I just objectively ought to. In fact that doesn't even makes sense.to
me.
>Yet you assume your strong disposition to believe logical things exists
>because they are true, yet you argue that your disposition to believe
>moral truths is not the effect of their being true. This seems
>arbitrary to me.
See above to my discussion of why logical beliefs would be selected for such
that true ones persevered, yet whether moral beliefs are true or not would be
fairly irrelevent in terms of evoulutionary selection.
The second reason, is, as I said, my disposition to act in ways that you
consider moral is not like my disposition to have logical beliefs, and doesn't
seem objective to me.
You yourself don't seem to emphasize directly intuiting moral truths as much as
Owl does. You seem to put more emphasis on explaining the moral phenominon --
why other people believe morality is real (which I dispute), instead of why you
know it is true.
Aren't your 5 senses, and logical sense pretty different? Don't you KNOW,
yourself, that your logical beliefs are true without having to appeal to the
masses?
To me, my moral feelings seem quite different from my logical intuition, and I
don't see anything arbitrary about treating them differently.
>Moral theory hasn't
>really seemed
>> to advance at all, seems to be just a gaggle of people rationalizing
>their
>> opinions.
>
>Well, I disagree. I see a lot of advances in moral theory since the
>Greeks, for example.
What sort of advancements are you talking about?
-User
User 1DE7
>Date: 10/19/00 6:49 PM Central Daylight Time
>Message-id: <e02vus0no031kbflv...@4ax.com>
>
>>know if anything would exist after you die, since nothing causes your
>>experience.
>
>But you could also say the experience is "caused by" the light
>reflecting off the cup. There are a countless number of physical
>reactions we can identify, but no single one of them is the
>"experience."
You responded to my same post earlier, and I responded to that. Most of what
you say seems to be addressed on my other reply, so I refer you to that.
>>This is irrelevent. Other people dying *is* simply your experience.
>Obviously
>>your life goes on because you aren't the one who died. The point is, you s
>>hould
>>be unsure if when *you* die, anything at all will exist after that, beacuse
>>reality is literaly your experience and nothing more.
>
>I can only draw conclusions based on what I have learned of the
>world.
From my earlier interpretation of you, your reference to "the world" would be
equivilant to "your experience." My comments assume that you think that reality
is equivilant to your experience, so any reference to reality is actualy a
reference to your experience, and vce versa. Therefore, when other people die,
it is nothing like *you* dying, since you dying would result in your experience
ending, by common understanding, and hence reality ending. My post was based on
this interpretation of what you said, so, insofar as I don't let you generlize
from other peoples deaths to your own, I am justified, since they aren't
similar to own in this view.
However, I have a feeling you don't regard reality and your experience as
equvilant, it just appeared that way in your post.
>You were able to derive guidelines for
>what can or can't be said about the time after we die. Why
>can't I do the same?
Because in my view, I am similar to other people, in the view you seemed to
espouse, you weren't, since reality didn't fail to exist when they died.
>I don't think I am saying anything absurd, startling, or controversial
>here. Like a detective making a list of the evidence in a case, I ask
>myself, "What do we have here." Well, there's a coffee cup, coffee,
>me, my lifting the cup, taking a sip, tasting the coffee, feeling its
>warmth, etc. That type of list seems it could be an exhaustive
>description of the experience.
Except before you left the "me" completely out of the equation. See my response
to your other response to my same post.
-User