Comments on Owl's critique of relativism.
User 1DE7
>4.1 Value judgements as universally false
>
>This theory is really quite outrageous. It implies, among other things, that
it is not the case that people >generally ought to eat when hungry; that Hitler
was not a bad person; that happiness is not good; and so >on. I submit that
this is simply absurd. I feel much more confidence in those denied judgements,
as I think >nearly everybody does, than I can imagine feeling in any
philosophical arguments for relativism.
Likely a relativist would think something about happiness being good, eating
when hungry, hitler being bad, etc, they would simply deny that their reason
for this was rooted in objective fact. Surely there is something that makes us
come up with the concepts of good and bad, and certain situations involk moral
intuitions from us. Moral relativists are not immune to this phenominon. I just
claim that we evolved to have such a sense of morals. Perhaps primitive groups
in which many of their members had this sense flourished more than groups
without, or maybe it is just an unavoidable consequence of some other aspect of
our brain's evolution.
>At least, I
>think it would take an extremely strong argument to shake my confidence that
happiness is preferable to
>misery, or the like.
But I as a relativist would agree that happiness is preferable to misery. Here
you are just talking about preferences, unless I am misinterpreting you
somehow. This doesn't seem to be a moral claim. Humans evoled in such a way as
to prefer happiness over misery.
> And there does not seem to be any argument at all with that import. It is
hard to see
>how there could be.
>
>This discussion makes me feel like G.E. Moore, who refuted skepticism about
the existence of external >objects by making a certain gesture and observing,
"Here is one hand," and, making another gesture, "and >here is another." For
just as Moore pointed out that no premises of any philosophical argument could
>possibly strike him as more obvious and certain than the proposition that
"Here is a hand," I find it >inconceivable how any philosophical premises could
be more obvious and certain than the judgement that >happiness is desirable, or
numerous other similar value judgements I might make.
Again you are using the term "desirable." Maybe you mean moraly desirable, but
it seems easy to mix up the two meanings how you are using the term. It does
seem obvious that happiness is desirable in that people subjectively desire it.
However if you replace desirable with "good" then to me it does not seem
obvious that that is objectively true. It seems obvious that my moral sense
tells me that it is good, but it also seems quite likely that my moral sense is
no more objective than my emotonal mechanism.
A few questions. If you believed as I do that we do not have free will, would
you then think it followed that moral facts would not make much sense?
To define free will, I mean that if there was a suitibly powerful simulation of
our brains, and it was given the inputs that we would experience at some future
time, then it could not be used to predict exactly how we would act. OR, if you
believe in some inherant randomness in nature, (I am not that familiar with QM,
but I have heard that it suggests such things) that this randomness is either
[not the only thing that would keep us from being predicted], or [that it is
not really random, or governed by laws of probability, and we somehow exert
conscious control over it.]
Believing the above will constitute believing in free will. Or, if you have a
better definition you could offer it. Anyway, if you did not believe in free
will, what would your moral position be?
Another thing: as moral facts do not depend on any ability to understand them,
and are objective, then might they exist for animals as well? Are there moral
facts pertaining to relations between monkeys, but they just are not aware of
them, or cannot grasp them? Howabout dogs? Birds? Lizards? Fish? Worms?
Insects?
If you say that there are not moral facts for these animals, then did the
existance of moral facts suddenly spring into existance when humans evolved to
a certain point? Or did moral facts also evolve slowly in degrees, so that
maybe monkeys have a set of very primative moral facts that apply to their
interactions with eachother?
-User
ScheetzBrian
>them,
>and are objective, then might they exist for animals as well? Are there moral
>facts pertaining to relations between monkeys, but they just are not aware of
>them, or cannot grasp them? Howabout dogs? Birds? Lizards? Fish? Worms?
>Insects?
As you note elsewhere in your post, the issue of free will is relevant here.
Rand did not hold that morality applied to animals because she did not accept
that their actions were subject to choice or deliberation. I am not entirely
sure if this is empirically true [my anecdotal experience with them makes me
think that they do make choices - I'm just not certain if they are 'conscious'
of this in the way we are]. Under the Objectivist formula, if it turns out
that animals make choices, then the concept of morality applies to them.
Of course, the actual line-item precepts of "animal objectivist morality" would
not be the same as human morality, because the requirements of their natures
are different. If there was a fish philosopher posting to fish usenet, telling
all the other fish that it would be good for them to jump out of the water and
hang out at the beach for a few days, that philosopher fish would be evil. If
there was an intuitionalist tiger posting to tiger usenet, telling all the
other tigers that he had an intuition that it would be good if they all stopped
hunting and starting giving antelopes big hugs instead, that intuitionalist
tiger would be evil.
Owl
news:20000626171015...@ng-ch1.aol.com...
>
> >4.1 Value judgements as universally false
> >
> >This theory is really quite outrageous. It implies, among other things,
that
> it is not the case that people >generally ought to eat when hungry; that
Hitler
> Likely a relativist would think something about happiness being good,
eating
> when hungry, hitler being bad, etc, they would simply deny that their
reason
> for this was rooted in objective fact. Surely there is something that
makes
However, the form of anti-realism under discussion (as indicated in the
section heading), was the view that all value judgements are false. Thus,
it is false that Hitler was bad. I don't see how this can fail to imply
that he wasn't bad.
> But I as a relativist would agree that happiness is preferable to
misery.
See above.
> A few questions. If you believed as I do that we do not have free will,
would
> you then think it followed that moral facts would not make much sense?
Good and bad things could happen to us, but since we couldn't control what
happened, we would have no obligations. But see my paper on free will at
http://home.sprynet.com/~owl1/fwill.htm
> Another thing: as moral facts do not depend on any ability to understand
them,
> and are objective, then might they exist for animals as well? Are there
I don't know whether animals have free will. Let's say they don't. Then
my answer here would be the same as the last answer.
User 1DE7
>From: Owl a@a.a
>Date: 6/27/00 3:21 PM Central Daylight Time
>Message-id: <8jb2c3$prp$1...@slb1.atl.mindspring.net>
>> Likely a relativist would think something about happiness being good,
>eating
>> when hungry, hitler being bad, etc, they would simply deny that their
>reason
>> for this was rooted in objective fact. Surely there is something that
>makes
>
>However, the form of anti-realism under discussion (as indicated in the
>section heading), was the view that all value judgements are false. Thus,
>it is false that Hitler was bad. I don't see how this can fail to imply
>that he wasn't bad.
Ok, I should have been more clear. When I say that the relativist would have
feelings that Hitler was bad, I am still holding that he thinks "Hitler was a
bad person, or at least did bad things" is not an objective moral fact, and
would be false in any objective sense in the same way as all moral propositions
are false.
I think morals have the same objective truth/falsity value as emotions, but
this does not mean they literaly are emotions. I think our moral sense is
distinct from our emotional sense, but equaly as subjective.
So, this is consistant with all value judgements being false insofar as they
claim to be be objective fact, yet us still having a moral sense.
>> A few questions. If you believed as I do that we do not have free will,
>would
>> you then think it followed that moral facts would not make much sense?
>
>Good and bad things could happen to us, but since we couldn't control what
>happened, we would have no obligations. But see my paper on free will at
>http://home.sprynet.com/~owl1/fwill.htm
>
It seems like your first premise in your argument presupposes objective moral
facts. While this may show that we have free will to someone who believes in
objective morality, I don't think it works otherwise, as you use the concept of
"should" as if it had objective import.
>> Another thing: as moral facts do not depend on any ability to understand
>them,
>> and are objective, then might they exist for animals as well? Are there
>
>I don't know whether animals have free will. Let's say they don't. Then
>my answer here would be the same as the last answer.
Suppose we go back in time to when humans were evolving, and at that time none
of the creatures had free will, but, as happens in evolution, one of them was
born with an abnormal brain that pushed it over the free will barrier, so that
it was the only monkey-human with free will. I assume moral facts would still
not exist, because there was only one being with free will in existance, so it
would be like a man alone on a desert island?
Actualy, your definition of morality seems to be broader than just social
relations, and include all evaluative judgements, including whether something
is merely preferable to something else. So I suppose moral facts would now
exist for the lone monkey-human with free will? But, presumably there was a
point at which the money-human aquired free-will. Surely it did not have free
will as a developing fetus. So what exactly happens at the moment when it gains
free-will? Do moral facts suddenly spring into existance, or do they evolve
continuously relative to a things degree of free will?
Or, do moral facts always exist, even for non-existant organisms, and take the
form "IF a creature like this ever evolved, THEN X would be moral", so that no
new ones ever come into existance?
Maybe you dont agree that free will is gained by some evolutionary process. I
am really not sure what your dualism entails, or what exactly it is supposed to
mean. I assume you might have something to say about it in your mind/body paper
on your page, so I will look at that later.
Assume cats have free will right now, yet their minds are just so simple that
all of their decisions simply involve basic things like "go lay over there, or
play with the string." Then morality would apply to cats? What sort of thing
would it be immoral for a cat to do?
Also, do you still adhere to the position you maintained in "the objectivist
theory of free will" essentialy? That moving the free choice back from [what to
do] to [whether or not to focus] solves the problem?
-User
Owl
> Ok, I should have been more clear. When I say that the relativist would
have
> feelings that Hitler was bad, I am still holding that he thinks "Hitler
was a
> bad person, or at least did bad things" is not an objective moral fact,
and
> would be false in any objective sense in the same way as all moral
propositions
> are false.
>
> I think morals have the same objective truth/falsity value as emotions,
but
> this does not mean they literaly are emotions. I think our moral sense
is
> distinct from our emotional sense, but equaly as subjective.
>
> So, this is consistant with all value judgements being false insofar as
they
> claim to be be objective fact, yet us still having a moral sense.
Sorry to give you a hard time, but this isn't clear to me. So far, we
have:
1. There is a faculty called 'moral sense.'
2. It causes us to 'feel that' Hitler was bad, but this is not the same as
an emotion.
3. This sort of feeling is 'subjective.'
4. The sentence, "Hitler was bad," is false.
5. 'Morals' have the same truth value as emotions.
I'm having a hard time putting these together. Let's say that there is
such a faculty as moral sense, and that it produces a special sort of
feeling, different from the other emotions. This sort of feeling, it
sounds like, has propositional content? What is the relationship between
the feeling and the sentence, "Hitler was bad"? Does the sentence express
or report the feeling? Or does it have nothing to do with the feeling?
In the latter case, then what do these feelings have to do with the topic
of morality?
What is meant by a "moral" in statement 5? The feelings produced by the
moral sense? Sentences? And what truth value do emotions have?
Apparently, from 4 and 5, we could infer that emotions are false -- but I
don't think that makes sense.
> It seems like your first premise in your argument presupposes objective
moral
> facts.
I don't see how this would be the case.
> While this may show that we have free will to someone who believes in
> objective morality, I don't think it works otherwise, as you use the
concept of
> "should" as if it had objective import.
Perhaps you mean step 4. However, I argued that premise (4) is a
presupposition of thought.
> Actualy, your definition of morality seems to be broader than just
social
> relations, and include all evaluative judgements, including whether
something
> is merely preferable to something else. So I suppose moral facts would
now
> exist for the lone monkey-human with free will?
Yes.
> But, presumably there was a
> point at which the money-human aquired free-will. Surely it did not have
free
> will as a developing fetus. So what exactly happens at the moment when
it gains
> free-will? Do moral facts suddenly spring into existance, or do they
evolve
> continuously relative to a things degree of free will?
>
> Or, do moral facts always exist, even for non-existant organisms, and
take the
> form "IF a creature like this ever evolved, THEN X would be moral", so
that no
> new ones ever come into existance?
This seems like a semantic question. That's like asking whether the facts
about spleens suddenly sprang into existence when the first spleens
evolved, or whether these facts always existed but took the form, "IF a
creature ever had a spleen, THEN such-and-such would be true of it." I
don't think there's a substantive issue there, and so I have a hard time
seeing a substantive issue about morality.
> Assume cats have free will right now, yet their minds are just so simple
that
> all of their decisions simply involve basic things like "go lay over
there, or
> play with the string." Then morality would apply to cats? What sort of
thing
> would it be immoral for a cat to do?
I don't think you can have free will without having certain sorts of
reflective capacities, i.e., the capacity to reflect on and evaluate your
own motivations. A being with only instinctive motivations and incapable
of higher-order thoughts does not have free will.
> Also, do you still adhere to the position you maintained in "the
objectivist
> theory of free will" essentialy? That moving the free choice back from
[what to
> do] to [whether or not to focus] solves the problem?
No, I don't.
Your question contains one of those false presuppositions we were talking
about. I never held the position in your last sentence. I only held that
the Objectivists held that position. (Now you see how it would have been
misleading if I concluded my answer with "No, I don't".)
User 1DE7
>From: Owl a@a.a
>Message-id: <8jgfjt$fl$1...@slb6.atl.mindspring.net>
>Sorry to give you a hard time,
No problem, I prefer if you try to attack my position/defend yours with as much
vigour as possible.
>but this isn't clear to me. So far, we
>have:
>
>1. There is a faculty called 'moral sense.'
>2. It causes us to 'feel that' Hitler was bad, but this is not the same as
>an emotion.
>3. This sort of feeling is 'subjective.'
>4. The sentence, "Hitler was bad," is false.
The sentence "Hitler is bad in an objective sense" is false.
>5. 'Morals' have the same truth value as emotions.
They have the same truth/false value when someone claims that they are
objective as emotions would be if they claimed they were objective. If someone
said that there was an objective property of a situation that we percieve
making us feel anger, then it would be false in the same way as when someone
says something is objectively good or bad.
>I'm having a hard time putting these together. Let's say that there is
>such a faculty as moral sense, and that it produces a special sort of
>feeling, different from the other emotions. This sort of feeling, it
>sounds like, has propositional content?
It is often used to have that content, and I think in that case it can be
interpreted as "assuming subjective moral intuitions that are more or less
universal are true, <place moral statement here>"
>What is the relationship between
>the feeling and the sentence, "Hitler was bad"?
"Assuming certain subjective moral premiss are true, hitler was bad."
>Does the sentence express
>or report the feeling?
It assumes things that are the direct result of the feeling (the moral
premises), then asserts a proposition assuming those premises are true.
>Or does it have nothing to do with the feeling?
>In the latter case, then what do these feelings have to do with the topic
>of morality?
See above. The feelings are often just assumed to be true for the purposes of
the assertation.
>What is meant by a "moral" in statement 5? The feelings produced by the
>moral sense? Sentences?
The feelings, I would say, and hence the conclusions based on assuming they are
a property of reality.
>And what truth value do emotions have?
>Apparently, from 4 and 5, we could infer that emotions are false -- but I
>don't think that makes sense.
Claiming that they were objective would be false, in the same way that claiming
morals are objective would be.
So, in their pure form, emotions and moral sensations aren't true or false, but
when someone claims one of them are objective, their statement becomes false.
>> It seems like your first premise in your argument presupposes objective
>moral
>> facts.
>
>I don't see how this would be the case.
>
"1. Whatever should be done can be done. "
This seems to imply that something should be done, and that it should be done
is a fact. No?
>> Or, do moral facts always exist, even for non-existant organisms, and
>take the
>> form "IF a creature like this ever evolved, THEN X would be moral", so
>that no
>> new ones ever come into existance?
>
>This seems like a semantic question. That's like asking whether the facts
>about spleens suddenly sprang into existence when the first spleens
>evolved, or whether these facts always existed but took the form, "IF a
>creature ever had a spleen, THEN such-and-such would be true of it." I
>don't think there's a substantive issue there, and so I have a hard time
>seeing a substantive issue about morality.
Maybe I just have a hard time immagining moral facts. They just don't make
sense to me. Anyway, I will respond to this and the rest of your post later, as
I have to go now, and the post is divided into two main topics anyway.
-User
Mark Young
> However, the form of anti-realism under discussion (as indicated in
> the section heading), was the view that all value judgements are
> can fail to imply that he wasn't bad.
The problem as I see it is that different people intend different
things by their utterances. The position that "Evaluative propositions
are false" is an "outside" view. For instance, when I say "Hitler was
bad" I intend to express a complex attitude regarding Hitler, his
actions, and people's evaluations of those actions -- one of the
consequences being that I will have a negative evaluation of people
who evaluate Hitler positively. But when you say "Hitler is bad", you
intend to express a proposition -- something that just is true and is
supposed to have some normative consequences for me, regardless of my
feelings on the matter.
So on my view, evaluate(I, bad(Hitler)) and evaluate(you, bad(Hitler))
are both true, but bad(Hitler) is not even a proposition. To speak
about your notion, I need another predicate, bad*, such that
hold(you, means("Hitler was bad", bad*(Hitler))). It's stipulated that
bad*(Hitler) is a proposition -- something that's either true or false.
Now to tell whether it's true or false. We tell that by looking at its
logical consequences. So what consequences does bad*(Hitler) have?
Well that depends on which version of realism is under discussion --
but minimally it is supposed to have normative consequences for me --
predicates of the form should*(I, P) become true.
To me the whole edifice you're building looks like castles in the
clouds -- it has no practical consequences of any sort, only more
evaluative propositions -- so it makes no difference whether it's true
or not. Others take Occam's razor more seriously and say that if it
has no practical consequences, then there is no need to assume it, and
so it is false.
Now if you want to pin yourself down to a consequentialist moral
realism -- good(X) means that X has consequences that people prefer, or
some such -- then bad*(Hitler) may be true -- but it would then stop
being what most people intend by "Hitler was bad", I think.
I don't think moral anti-realists have to pin themselves down to any
particular one of the options you discuss -- different ones may apply
to different versions of moral realism, since the different forms give
different logical consequences for the supposed moral facts. This
makes the way you structure your argument inadequate to the task of
refuting moral anti-realism.
..mark young
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Gordon G. Sollars
...
> things by their utterances. The position that "Evaluative propositions
> are false" is an "outside" view. For instance, when I say "Hitler was
> bad" I intend to express a complex attitude regarding Hitler, his
> actions, and people's evaluations of those actions -- one of the
> consequences being that I will have a negative evaluation of people
> who evaluate Hitler positively. But when you say "Hitler is bad", you
> intend to express a proposition -- something that just is true and is
> supposed to have some normative consequences for me, regardless of my
> feelings on the matter.
First, that a proposition "just is true" does not imply that it fails to
express something complex, e.g., "There was a spark in the cloud chamber"
or "Van Buren failed to be reelected". So the moral realist need not
think that there is anything simple or direct about "Hitler was bad",
although I guess that is true of Owl's version.
Next, (1) you seem to be assuming that your feelings must be tied to
normative statements in some way, and (2) you seem to tell us that when
you say "Hitler was bad" you /only/ express an attitude regarding Hitler.
But your intentions need not exhaust the meanings of "Hitler was bad".
It could well be that you and most others only intend to express
attitudes with such statements. Now what separates you, as a thoughtful
and reflective person, is that you offer us a theory about what is going
on when you make such statements. Most folks probably just have the
feelings. That brings us back to (1).
The moral realist can account for this by saying that you and most others
have the right moral psychology, that is, you have the proper affect or
attitude towards moral statements. Given that people are motivated by
their attitudes, it is good when their attitudes provide incentive for
them to act on moral truths - and good parents, for example, try to see
to it that their children's attitudes work out this way. You and others
express the attitude that Hitler was bad, and this is because your moral
psychology lines up with the truth: Hitler was bad. So your use of "bad"
and "good" piggyback on the moral use. OTOH, a Nazi would have the wrong
moral psychology; his attitudes - and hence his usage - fail to line up
with moral truths.
Of course, this does not /settle/ the issue of which theory - yours or a
moral realist's - is the better explanation of morality. Your post went
on to imply that Occam's Razor is on your side. Even if I grant you that
(which I am not really willing to do), there are other dimensions on
which to evaluate theories. Thus when you say:
...
> To me the whole edifice you're building looks like castles in the
> clouds -- it has no practical consequences of any sort, only more
> evaluative propositions -- so it makes no difference whether it's true
> or not.
You seem to be saying that you would, say, accept Ptolemy's astronomy
were it not for Occam's razor. Or, more generally, that we should prefer
any purely instrumental theory - since it makes no difference if it is
true or not - so long as it is simpler than a realist theory. Is that
actually your view?
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
User 1DE7
I think I figured out the root of our disagreement earlier.
I think that it is impossible for something to correspond to reality yet not be
physical.
In other words, all of reality is physical.
This explains my confusion when I was asking about the moment when moral facts
sprang into existance and such. I had it in the back of my mind that all facts
had to correspond to something physical, and trying to make sense of your moral
facts from that perspective is problematic.
Do you have some argument, or maybe some clear examples, that will convince me
that there can be facts that are not physical?
-User
Owl
> I think I figured out the root of our disagreement earlier.
>
> I think that it is impossible for something to correspond to reality yet
not be
> physical.
That is indeed a fundamental point of disagreement. Moral properties are
definitely not physical on my view (though some philosophers have tried to
maintain that they are).
> Do you have some argument, or maybe some clear examples, that will
convince me
> that there can be facts that are not physical?
Without limiting ourselves to facts, we can think of many things that are
not physical:
the number 2
Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata
emotions
thoughts
truth
honesty
seven points (e.g., in football)
time
exchange rates
irrationality (palpable as it seems at times)
possibilities (or, similarly, unrealized potentials)
propositions
a sense of humor
and, of course, rights.
You can probably extend this list further yourself.
User 1DE7
>From: Owl a@a.a
>Message-id: <8jkffk$712$1...@slb0.atl.mindspring.net>
>> Do you have some argument, or maybe some clear examples, that will
>convince me
>> that there can be facts that are not physical?
>
>Without limiting ourselves to facts, we can think of many things that are
>not physical:
I would agree with the position you outline in your mind/body paper, in which
the mental is a subset of the physical. This sounds pretty common-sensical to
me, and I am surprised that you seem to find the view strange.
>the number 2
But surely numbers are not platonic forms or anything. There is no "twoness"
that exists apart from two things. The number two is just a concept that we
abstracted from reality. It exists in our minds, which are physical processes.
>Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata
A sequence of physical sounds that have been encoded in music notation. Some
people also probably keep this sequence of sounds in their brain. I don't see
anything nonphysical there.
>emotions
>thoughts
Various electrical/chemical/physical activity in the brain.
>truth
Depending on how you want to define truth, this is just whether or not various
propositions represented by physical things in our brains correspond to
reality. Nothing non-physical here.
>honesty
Just a behavior of an organism.
>seven points (e.g., in football)
Another concept existing only in our brains, much like numbers in general.
>time
Isn't time a property of space? Or, just the way that space changes? This is
probably your best example. I am not sure I know enough about physics to
comment too correctly on it.
>exchange rates
>irrationality (palpable as it seems at times)
>possibilities (or, similarly, unrealized potentials)
>propositions
>a sense of humor
>and, of course, rights.
Similar comments apply for all of these.
-User
Mark Young
>> The problem as I see it is that different people intend different
>> things by their utterances. The position that "Evaluative
>> propositions are false" is an "outside" view. For instance, when I
>> say "Hitler was bad" I intend to express a complex attitude
>> regarding Hitler, his actions, and people's evaluations of those
>> actions -- one of the consequences being that I will have a negative
>> evaluation of people who evaluate Hitler positively. But when you
>> say "Hitler is bad", you intend to express a proposition --
>> something that just is true and is supposed to have some normative
>> consequences for me, regardless of my feelings on the matter.
gsollars:
> First, that a proposition "just is true" does not imply that it fails
> to express something complex[....] So the moral realist need not
> think that there is anything simple or direct about "Hitler was bad",
> although I guess that is true of Owl's version.
I did not intend to impugn the complexity of moral propositions, only
to innoculate myself against the objection that I think "Hitler is bad"
amounts only to "Boo for Hitler".
> Next, (1) you seem to be assuming that your feelings must be tied to
> normative statements in some way, and (2) you seem to tell us that
> when you say "Hitler was bad" you /only/ express an attitude
> regarding Hitler.
Well, only to express an attitude that involves Hitler deeply -- the
attitude also extends to (some of) his actions and his supporters. The
point is that I do not *intend* to express a proposition.
> But your intentions need not exhaust the meanings of "Hitler was bad".
True enough. It's possible I do express a proposition, in spite of my
intentions. (At least, on the "public meaning" model of language.)
> It could well be that you and most others only intend to express
> attitudes with such statements. Now what separates you, as a
> thoughtful and reflective person, is that you offer us a theory about
> what is going on when you make such statements. Most folks probably
> just have the feelings.
Most folk have the complex attitude, but not the theory -- that's what
you mean, right?
> That brings us back to (1).
>
> The moral realist can account for this by saying that you and most
> others have the right moral psychology, that is, you have the proper
> affect or attitude towards moral statements. Given that people are
> motivated by their attitudes, it is good when their attitudes provide
> incentive for them to act on moral truths - and good parents, for
> example, try to see to it that their children's attitudes work out
> this way. You and others express the attitude that Hitler was bad,
> and this is because your moral psychology lines up with the truth:
> Hitler was bad. So your use of "bad" and "good" piggyback on the
> moral use.
Quibble -- my use of "good" and "bad" in such examples *is* a moral
use, not merely piggybacked on moral use. If they were not moral uses,
then they would mean no more than they do in such statements as
"Dutch apple pie is good" -- which expresses a simple attitude I have.
The sentence "Hitler was bad" expresses a moral attitude -- the
question is: does it do more?
> OTOH, a Nazi would have the wrong moral psychology; his attitudes -
> and hence his usage - fail to line up with moral truths.
Other than the quibble above, I agree with all this (qua possibility).
> Of course, this does not /settle/ the issue of which theory - yours
> or a moral realist's - is the better explanation of morality. Your
> post went on to imply that Occam's Razor is on your side.
Yes, I suppose it did -- it was meant tho' as an explanation of why
some people take moral propositions to be always false, and why Owl's
objections to that position are inadequate to disprove it.
> Even if I grant you that (which I am not really willing to do), there
> are other dimensions on which to evaluate theories. Thus when you
> say:
>
> ...
>> To me the whole edifice you're building looks like castles in the
>> clouds -- it has no practical consequences of any sort, only more
>> evaluative propositions -- so it makes no difference whether it's
>> true or not.
>
> You seem to be saying that you would, say, accept Ptolemy's astronomy
> were it not for Occam's razor. Or, more generally, that we should
> prefer any purely instrumental theory - since it makes no difference
> if it is true or not - so long as it is simpler than a realist
> theory. Is that actually your view?
What I intended to say was that I do not hold that moral propositions
exist but are all false -- but that I could take that position if the
form of realism my opponent proposed seemed to make only false ones.
Propositions are mathematical objects. Particular ones exist or not
based on the axioms selected -- and different people select different
axioms. I may at one time assume moral propositions to exist, and at
another time assume them not to exist -- that is my perogative as a
moral anti-realist. Only the realist must assume that they exist.
As for Prolemy's astronomy, it is a way of modeling the solar system
(and, to a lesser extent, the universe). Models are neither true nor
false -- they are useful or not. Newtonian physics is useful, even
tho' it makes false predictions, because in most contexts the errors
are much smaller than measurement errors. Being much easier to use
than Einsteinian physics, I prefer it -- I do all my "train" problems
in Newtonian physics. Of course, if I ever find myself in a context
where Newtonian physics is known to give large errors, I switch to
Einsteinian. My preferences are conditioned on my circumstances.
When two theories do not make different predictions, you use whichever
one is most convenient for you at the time -- that makes prefer(A,B)
both subjective and relative, in my language.
...mark young
user...@my-deja.com
Owl <a@a.a> wrote:
> User 1DE7 <user...@aol.com> wrote in message
> news:20000630142935...@ng-md1.aol.com...
> > I think I figured out the root of our disagreement earlier.
> >
> > I think that it is impossible for something to correspond to
reality yet
> not be
> > physical.
>
> That is indeed a fundamental point of disagreement. Moral properties
are
> definitely not physical on my view (though some philosophers have
tried to
> maintain that they are).
>
> convince me
> > that there can be facts that are not physical?
>
> Without limiting ourselves to facts, we can think of many things that
are
> not physical:
> Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata
> emotions
> thoughts
> truth
> honesty
Actualy, nwo that I think about it a little, "time" seems to be almost
as physical as you can get. It seems that time and space yield
physicality, so that time is even part of the definition of what it
means to be physical.
-User
Gordon G. Sollars
...
> gsollars:
> > First, that a proposition "just is true" does not imply that it fails
> > to express something complex[....] So the moral realist need not
> > think that there is anything simple or direct about "Hitler was bad",
> > although I guess that is true of Owl's version.
>
> I did not intend to impugn the complexity of moral propositions, only
> to innoculate myself against the objection that I think "Hitler is bad"
> amounts only to "Boo for Hitler".
I suspected as much, but I wanted to make it clear.
...
> > But your intentions need not exhaust the meanings of "Hitler was bad".
>
> True enough. It's possible I do express a proposition, in spite of my
> intentions. (At least, on the "public meaning" model of language.)
I am willing to for /you/ not to be expressing a proposition because of
your intentions - you get to explain what you mean. However, we seem to
agree that your usage is compatible with "Hitler was bad" being a
proposition, /on the realist assumptions/.
> > It could well be that you and most others only intend to express
> > attitudes with such statements. Now what separates you, as a
> > thoughtful and reflective person, is that you offer us a theory about
> > what is going on when you make such statements. Most folks probably
> > just have the feelings.
>
> Most folk have the complex attitude, but not the theory -- that's what
> you mean, right?
Yes. You put forward one theory for why they have the complex attitude;
the moral realist puts forward another. The complex attitude itself is
not in question. Which theory is better is.
...
> Quibble -- my use of "good" and "bad" in such examples *is* a moral
> use, not merely piggybacked on moral use. If they were not moral uses,
> then they would mean no more than they do in such statements as
> "Dutch apple pie is good" -- which expresses a simple attitude I have.
> The sentence "Hitler was bad" expresses a moral attitude -- the
> question is: does it do more?
Yes, good quibble. It is hard to find enough terms to discuss the
various usages we each want without unintentionally biasing the argument.
Now, why do you make a distinction between the simple attitude and the
complex moral attitude? And why do you hold these complex moral
attitudes? My explanation is that your moral psychology has been
trained, more or less, to match the moral facts.
Also, can you say whether it is good that you hold a particular moral
attitude?
...
> > Of course, this does not /settle/ the issue of which theory - yours
> > or a moral realist's - is the better explanation of morality. Your
> > post went on to imply that Occam's Razor is on your side.
>
> Yes, I suppose it did -- it was meant tho' as an explanation of why
> some people take moral propositions to be always false, and why Owl's
> objections to that position are inadequate to disprove it.
Well, I might have to go back and look; I started reading with your post,
not Owl's. Do you mean "always false" because they never actually refer?
...
> Propositions are mathematical objects. Particular ones exist or not
> based on the axioms selected -- and different people select different
> axioms.
Mathematical objects only exist because of the axioms selected? How do
you account for there being true mathematical statements that can not be
proven?
> I may at one time assume moral propositions to exist, and at
> another time assume them not to exist -- that is my perogative as a
> moral anti-realist. Only the realist must assume that they exist.
You seem to have a different notion of "exist" from mine. Suppose the
propositions are not moral statements but physics statements. Do you
reject the idea that some of these statements can correspond to the world
regardless of what axioms you have selected?
> As for Prolemy's astronomy, it is a way of modeling the solar system
> (and, to a lesser extent, the universe). Models are neither true nor
> false -- they are useful or not. Newtonian physics is useful, even
> tho' it makes false predictions, because in most contexts the errors
> are much smaller than measurement errors. Being much easier to use
> than Einsteinian physics, I prefer it -- I do all my "train" problems
> in Newtonian physics. Of course, if I ever find myself in a context
> where Newtonian physics is known to give large errors, I switch to
> Einsteinian. My preferences are conditioned on my circumstances.
Is Einsteinian physics also a model? If not, why? If so, can there be a
body of statements, call it a theory, that /could/ be true or false
rather than simply useful or not? If not, what do you reserve the terms
"true" and "false" for?
> When two theories do not make different predictions, you use whichever
> one is most convenient for you at the time -- that makes prefer(A,B)
> both subjective and relative, in my language.
Well, I am confused here between what you mean by "models" versus
"theories".
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Bert Clanton
> Mark Young:
> >> The problem as I see it is that different people intend different
> >> things by their utterances. The position that "Evaluative
> >> propositions are false" is an "outside" view. For instance, when I
> >> say "Hitler was bad" I intend to express a complex attitude
> >> regarding Hitler, his actions, and people's evaluations of those
> >> actions -- one of the consequences being that I will have a negative
> >> evaluation of people who evaluate Hitler positively. But when you
> >> say "Hitler is bad", you intend to express a proposition --
> >> something that just is true and is supposed to have some normative
> >> consequences for me, regardless of my feelings on the matter.
>
What *I* mean by "Hitler is bad" is any one of three things, depending
on why I am saying it at the moment. Two of these intended meanings are
emotive; one is descriptive.
First, I might *actually* mean something best expressed verbally as
"Boo for Hitler" (an "expressive" meaning). If I understand them
correctly, this is what emotivist ethical philosophers think that all
"disapprobative" moral judgments mean: I understand them as denying
that "Hitler is bad", or any other moral judgment, *has* any
descriptive meaning. If it is intended to be understood in this sense,
"Hitler is bad" is neither true nor false, since it does not express a
proposition, but is intended to evoke an empathic realization in its
addressee that the utterer disapproves of Hitler. Since this utterance,
taken as equivalent to "Boo for Hitler", is neither true nor false, it
cannot be a premise or conclusion of any argument.
Or I might actually mean something best expressed verbally as
"Disapprove of Hitler!" (a "preciative" meaning). Again, if it is
intended to be understood in this sense, "Hitler is bad" is again
neither true nor false, since it does not express a proposition, but is
intended to evoke a feeling of disapproval toward Hitler in its
addressee. Again, since this utterance, taken as equivalent to
"Disapprove of Hitler!", is neither true nor false, it cannot be a
premise or conclusion of any argument.
Finally, I might mean something like "Hitler satisfies the criteria for
disapproval-worthiness embodied in the moral system which you and I are
assuming". If it is intended to be understood in this sense, "Hitler is
bad" is intended as a *descriptive* statement, is intended to express a
proposition, and *is* either true or false: true if Hitler *does* meet
those criteria, false if he does not. Since such a descriptive
statement is either true or false, it *can* be a premise or a
conclusion of an argument. However, such a statement does not assert
that Hitler has some property of "badness", independent of any
evaluator and any moral system. Rather, it asserts a *relationship*
between Hitler and a particular system of moral evaluation.
> gsollars:
> > First, that a proposition "just is true" does not imply that it fails
> > to express something complex[....] So the moral realist need not
> > think that there is anything simple or direct about "Hitler was bad",
> > although I guess that is true of Owl's version.
>
> I did not intend to impugn the complexity of moral propositions, only
> to innoculate myself against the objection that I think "Hitler is bad"
> amounts only to "Boo for Hitler".
>
IMHO that *is one* of the possible intended interpretations of "Hitler
is bad"; but there is also a possible intended *descriptive* meaning.
> > Next, (1) you seem to be assuming that your feelings must be tied to
> > normative statements in some way, and (2) you seem to tell us that
> > when you say "Hitler was bad" you /only/ express an attitude
> > regarding Hitler.
>
> Well, only to express an attitude that involves Hitler deeply -- the
> attitude also extends to (some of) his actions and his supporters. The
> point is that I do not *intend* to express a proposition.
>
> > But your intentions need not exhaust the meanings of "Hitler was bad".
>
> True enough. It's possible I do express a proposition, in spite of my
> intentions. (At least, on the "public meaning" model of language.)
>
Yes. See above.
[big snip]
> The sentence "Hitler was bad" expresses a moral attitude -- the
> question is: does it do more?
>
It *can* do more, but does not necessarily do more: see above.
Of course, the *interesting* question is, "Why adopt *this particular*
set of criteria for moral approval-worthiness rather than some *other*
set of criteria? "
My answer to this would be an elaborated view along the lines of,
"Because it seems to me that this particular set of criteria for moral
approval-worthiness is more effective than others in motivating
behavior which promotes human survival, health, and flourishing". (So I
guess I'm a moral "objectivist" (small-o), but definitely not a moral
Objectivist.)
Why adopt *this* as one's ultimate rationale for choosing a particular
set of criteria for moral approvalworthiness? Because I think that the
promotion of human survival, health, and flourishing is "what morality
is for". That's where *I* stop asking "Why?"
You gotta stop asking "Why" at *some* point if you want to avoid
infinite justificational regress or circular justificational argument.
Why not there?
[big snip]
Best wishes,
Bert
Gordon G. Sollars
writes...
...
> Finally, I might mean something like "Hitler satisfies the criteria for
> disapproval-worthiness embodied in the moral system which you and I are
> assuming".
The problem with this, Bert, is that - if the third usage is to be
independent of the second (and you seem to want it so) - you should say
"Hitler satisfies the criteria for 'bad' embodied in the moral
system...". If you want to be neutral, you have to let the content of
"good" and "bad" be filled in by the moral system under consideration;
you can't assume that it is a form of approval and disapproval.
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Mark Young
>>> But your intentions need not exhaust the meanings of "Hitler was
>>> bad".
Mark Young:
>> True enough. It's possible I do express a proposition, in spite of
>> my intentions. (At least, on the "public meaning" model of
>> language.)
gsollars:
> I am willing to for /you/ not to be expressing a proposition because
> of your intentions - you get to explain what you mean. However, we
> seem to agree that your usage is compatible with "Hitler was bad"
> being a proposition, /on the realist assumptions/.
I object to identifying propositions with sentences, but I agree with
the underlying statement (that my usage is consistent with there being
a fact expressed by this sentence).
>> Most folk have the complex attitude, but not the theory -- that's
>> what you mean, right?
> Yes. You put forward one theory for why they have the complex
> attitude; the moral realist puts forward another.
Actually, I didn't propose any theory for *why* we have these complex
attitudes -- neither why we have any at all, nor why we have any one in
particular. I want first to understand what makes an attitude moral
versus non-moral, as a step toward the ultimate goal of understanding
morality "in all its glory".
[...]
>> Quibble -- my use of "good" and "bad" in such examples *is* a moral
>> use, not merely piggybacked on moral use. If they were not moral
>> uses, then they would mean no more than they do in such statements
>> as "Dutch apple pie is good" -- which expresses a simple attitude I
>> have. The sentence "Hitler was bad" expresses a moral attitude --
>> the question is: does it do more?
> Yes, good quibble. It is hard to find enough terms to discuss the
> various usages we each want without unintentionally biasing the
> argument. Now, why do you make a distinction between the simple
> attitude and the complex moral attitude?
Because my moral attitudes have more consequences -- it's not *just*
murder I dislike, but all those who commit it, and all those who feel
that it's OK. With dried coconut (another thing I dislike), it stops
at the dried coconut -- I don't dislike those who like dried coconut.
> And why do you hold these complex moral attitudes? My explanation is
> that your moral psychology has been trained, more or less, to match
> the moral facts.
My moral attitudes have been trained -- by my parents, peers and,
especially in my later years, by myself. I note that others are
trained to *other* moral attitudes -- the "iniquity of Jews" and the
"perversion of homosexuality", for example. Why do you assume that
it's *me* that's been trained to moral facts, and them to moral
fictions? I say it's because you have been trained to the same moral
attitudes as I was -- plus your faith in moral facts, of course
(this lack explaining *my* rejection of "trained to the facts").
> Also, can you say whether it is good that you hold a particular moral
> attitude?
I can. But I only intend to express my moral attitude toward that
moral attitude when I do so....
I hold that it is possible for someone to morally disapprove of one of
their moral attitudes -- this leads to dissonance and any of several
strategies for dealing with dissonance come into play, leading to a
resolution of the internal moral debate. The state in which one feels
moral disapproval for oneself is not stable (why this is so is an
interesting question of pshychology).
[...]
> Well, I might have to go back and look; I started reading with your
> post, not Owl's. Do you mean "always false" because they never
> actually refer?
I'm not sure what that means, so I can't say for sure whether I agree.
They are said to be false because they do not describe reality -- much
as the claim "There are invisible faeries all around us, but we cannot
interact with them" is said to be false. (I, personally, do not care
whether it is taken to be true or false, since one of its consequences
is that it is naturalistically irrelevent.)
> ...
>> Propositions are mathematical objects. Particular ones exist or not
>> based on the axioms selected -- and different people select
>> different axioms.
> Mathematical objects only exist because of the axioms selected? How
> do you account for there being true mathematical statements that can
> not be proven?
Goedel proved that there are mathematically true statements that cannot
be proven *in any consistent formal system*. But we need a formal
system to create statements (= propositions, in math).
The axioms I had in mind are proposition formation axioms, not
propositional truth axioms. Thus they are like the axioms for the
naturals -- 0 exists; if n exists, n+1 exists.
>> I may at one time assume moral propositions to exist, and at
>> another time assume them not to exist -- that is my perogative as a
>> moral anti-realist. Only the realist must assume that they exist.
> You seem to have a different notion of "exist" from mine. Suppose the
> propositions are not moral statements but physics statements. Do you
> reject the idea that some of these statements can correspond to the
> world regardless of what axioms you have selected?
I am a physics realist -- I must assume physics propositions exist, or
be inconsistent. I am a morality agnostic -- I may assume either way.
Here's the explanation -- if I believed that there were facts of the
matter, I would have to make my model have propositions to represent
those facts. But if there are no facts (as the anti-realist believes),
then the model is free with respect to the claims of others -- it may
have propositions to represent realist claims, and make them all false,
or it may arrange things in such a way that the realist claims are not
well-formed formulae -- do not exist as propositions in the model. And
in fact, the model does not have to choose between these options -- an
anti-realist model may be underdetermined wrt the issue (just as the
agnostic's model is underdetermined wrt the truth value of the claims).
>> As for Prolemy's astronomy, it is a way of modeling the solar system
>> (and, to a lesser extent, the universe). Models are neither true
>> nor false -- they are useful or not. Newtonian physics is useful,
[...]
> Is Einsteinian physics also a model? If not, why? If so, can there
> be a body of statements, call it a theory, that /could/ be true or
> false rather than simply useful or not? If not, what do you reserve
> the terms "true" and "false" for?
In order to tell whether a statement is true or false, we must be able
to check it against reality. The model tells us what reality should be
like if the statement is true. The model also restricts what can and
cannot be said *meaningfully*.
>> When two theories do not make different predictions, you use
>> whichever one is most convenient for you at the time -- that makes
>> prefer(A,B) both subjective and relative, in my language.
> Well, I am confused here between what you mean by "models" versus
> "theories".
I was being sloppy.
A model fixes the statements possible and their meanings. A theory is
a set of statements within a model. Theories have consequences, and
those consequences have meanings (from the model of the theory). If
there is no way to tell one theory from another (whether in the same
models or different ones), then we are free to use either -- they are
the same modulo reality. If there is really no way to tell them apart,
then they are really the same.
But usually there is some way to tell them apart, so one has
"seniority" (= preferred when very precise consequences must be
discovered) -- or will have seniority, once we tell which one
corresponds to reality and which does not.
Mark Young
>>>> The problem as I see it is that different people intend different
>>>> things by their utterances. The position that "Evaluative
>>>> propositions are false" is an "outside" view. For instance, when
>>>> I say "Hitler was bad" I intend to express a complex attitude
>>>> regarding Hitler, his actions, and people's evaluations of those
>>>> actions -- one of the consequences being that I will have a
>>>> negative evaluation of people who evaluate Hitler positively. But
>>>> when you say "Hitler is bad", you intend to express a proposition
>>>> -- something that just is true and is supposed to have some
>>>> normative consequences for me, regardless of my feelings on the
>>>> matter.
Bert Clanton:
> What *I* mean by "Hitler is bad" is any one of three things,
> depending on why I am saying it at the moment. Two of these intended
> meanings are emotive; one is descriptive.
This is fine with me. I did not mean to rule out one person meaning
different things at different times.
I still say you have the complex attitude, but that you do not always
(or possibly ever) intend to express that attitude. But your three
meanings all flow from this attitude -- you disapprove of Hitler:
"Boo, Hitler"; you intend to evoke disapproval of Hitler: "Disapprove
of Hitler"; you express your conviction that Hitler satsifies the
criteria for disapproval-worthiness which you and I share: "We agree
that Hitler is a bad dude under this system of evaluation".
[...]
gsollars:
>>> First, that a proposition "just is true" does not imply that it
>>> fails to express something complex[....] So the moral realist need
>>> not think that there is anything simple or direct about "Hitler was
>>> bad", although I guess that is true of Owl's version.
Mark Young:
>> I did not intend to impugn the complexity of moral propositions,
>> only to innoculate myself against the objection that I think "Hitler
>> is bad" amounts only to "Boo for Hitler".
> IMHO that *is one* of the possible intended interpretations of "Hitler
> is bad"; but there is also a possible intended *descriptive* meaning.
And so "Hitler is bad" does not amount "only" to "Boo for Hitler".
[...]
>> The sentence "Hitler was bad" expresses a moral attitude -- the
>> question is: does it do more?
> It *can* do more, but does not necessarily do more: see above.
I meant "does it necessarily do more" -- granting a "public meaning"
model, whereby meanings are social facts, not subjective intentions.
> Of course, the *interesting* question is, "Why adopt *this
> particular* set of criteria for moral approval-worthiness rather than
> some *other* set of criteria? "
That's *an* interesting question, and one that a realist morality
answers quite handily -- it's because this one is true and that one is
not. Not being a realist, I need a different answer.
> My answer to this would be an elaborated view along the lines of,
> "Because it seems to me that this particular set of criteria for moral
> approval-worthiness is more effective than others in motivating
> behavior which promotes human survival, health, and flourishing".
> (So I guess I'm a moral "objectivist" (small-o), but definitely not a
> moral Objectivist.)
Only if you take other answers to be *mistaken* (that is, not the
answer that's *true*).
Mark Young
internet norms, doncha know -- but I thot of a good (for me, any way)
example on this issue after I sent the other note off.
Mark Young:
>>> I may at one time assume moral propositions to exist, and at
>>> another time assume them not to exist -- that is my perogative as a
>>> moral anti-realist. Only the realist must assume that they exist.
gsollars:
>> You seem to have a different notion of "exist" from mine. Suppose
>> the propositions are not moral statements but physics statements.
>> Do you reject the idea that some of these statements can correspond
>> to the world regardless of what axioms you have selected?
Mark Young:
> I am a physics realist -- I must assume physics propositions exist,
> or be inconsistent.
But let's consider phlogistine propositions. I am a phlogistine anti-
realist -- I believe that phlogistine does not exist. I assume you are
as well. Now consider p = "phlogistine has negative mass", a statement
about phlogistine. What can you and I say about p?
We could say that it's really not expressing a proposition, since it
has a component that doesn't refer. We could say that it is a
proposition, but it's false. We could say it's a proposition, but it's
true or false only based on some property of the speaker.
Now, as phlogistine anti-realists, do we have to choose one of those
options and stick with it? No. Our anti-realism only commits us to
there not being objectively true phlogistine propositions. Phlogistine
*claims* we cannot get rid of -- they are in everyone's power to make,
and some may choose to make them. We may choose to interpret these
claims in any of the ways above -- even changing from one to another if
the situation cseems to call for it (for example, we may base our
interpretation on the intent of the speaker -- someone lecturing on the
history of science might make such a claim by way of showing why the
phlogistine model came into disrepute).
Now an argument can be made against phlogistine anti-realism along the
lines of -- well, which is it? (This is weaker than the argument
against moral anti-realism, but *only* because phlogistine has been so
thoroughly discredited).
(1) Phlogistine claims do not express propositions.
They certainly *seem* to express propositions -- so the burden of
proof is on the anti-realist in this case. Also, phlogistine
claims can participate in conditional statements, as in "If
phlogistine has a negative mass, then it would tend to travel up
(rather than down) gravity gradients." Only propositions can do
this, so (1) must be wrong.
(2) Phlogistine claims express propositions, but only false ones.
Well, it seems that some of them must be true -- after all,
phlogistine rises, even in a vacuum, so it must have negative mass
rather than no mass or positive mass. Even if that were disproved,
it seems unlikely that *all* phlogistine propositions would be
false. How about "air is not made up entirely of phlogistine"?
Surely *that* is true rather than false.
(3) Phlogistine claims are about the beliefs of people making them.
This is not the way the claims are used -- people make them and
treat them as true or false simpliciter, not as mere reports of
beliefs. For instance, if A says "Phlogistine has negative mass"
and B says "Phlogistine has positive mass", then they do not merely
concur that they are reporting beliefs of different people -- they
argue about it and try to settle the matter by appeal to reason and
observation.
Since none of the three options gives a satisfactory case against
phlogistine, it seems we are perfectly justified in taking phlogistine
claims to be expressing propositions that are (sometimes) true.
Bert Clanton
Sollars <sol...@nji.com> wrote:
I don't think that I want to be neutral. If I were trying to formulate
a general metaethical theory, I'd want to be as neutral as possible, so
that the theory could "handle" *any* kind of moral system. But I have
an axe or two to grind. So I'll opt to propose just the form of moral
theory that seems most credible to me.
To simply say "Hitler satisfies the criteria for 'bad' embodied in the
moral system which you and I are assuming" seems unsatisfactory to me.
I immediately want to ask, "But what do we *mean* by 'bad', used
descriptively?" Some people seem to mean one thing and some another.
What *I* mean by "bad", used descriptively, simply *is* "satisfying the
criteria which are taken by adherents of the assumed moral system to
justify moral disapproval". What I mean by "good", used descriptively,
simply *is* "satisfying the criteria which are taken by adherents of
the assumed moral system to justify moral approval".
This might be called a "semi-relativistic" position, in that it defines
"good" and "bad" relative to particular assumed moral systems, rather
than in any directly "absolute" way. But I don't consider myself to be
an ethical relativist, since I believe that there are meaningful
non-moral criteria for *choosing one moral system over another*. These
criteria have to do with what the probable consequences might be of
collectively adopting and living by one moral system rather than
another. Hence I believe that there *are* in an "indirect" sense
"absolutistic" definitions of "good" and "bad".
"Morally good" actually means, for me, "satisfying the criteria which
are taken to justify moral approval by adherents of that moral system
which is most likely, over the very long term, to promote collective
human survival, health, and flourishing". This assumes that morality is
not just an abstract intellectual exercise, such that any moral system
is "just as good as" any other; but that moral deliberation performs an
important practical function in the cultural programming of human
conduct. In some ways, this is like Objectivism's "man qua man" notion.
Best wishes,
Bert
Owl
> >1. There is a faculty called 'moral sense.'
> >2. It causes us to 'feel that' Hitler was bad, but this is not the same
as
> >an emotion.
> >3. This sort of feeling is 'subjective.'
> >4. The sentence, "Hitler was bad," is false.
>
> The sentence "Hitler is bad in an objective sense" is false.
Does that mean the sentence, "Hitler was bad", is *not* false? Is it
true? Is it true 'in a subjective sense'? (And what does that mean?)
> >5. 'Morals' have the same truth value as emotions.
>
> They have the same truth/false value when someone claims that they are
> objective as emotions would be if they claimed they were objective. If
Which is to say, false? So, if I say, "Fear is objective", then fear is
false, because emotions are false when someone claims they are objective?
Well, presumably not. Probably what you mean is that the statement, "Fear
is objective," is false. But fear, itself, is neither true nor false (no
matter what I say!) What would it mean to say, "Fear is objective",
anyway?
> someone
> said that there was an objective property of a situation that we
percieve
> making us feel anger, then it would be false in the same way as when
someone
> says something is objectively good or bad.
Let's say someone walks up to you and punches you in the nose. You feel
anger. Wasn't that caused by his punching you in the nose? Was the
punching-you-in-the-nose an "objective property"? Well, it's not a
property but an event; was it an objective event? If no, why not?
> >I'm having a hard time putting these together. Let's say that there is
> >such a faculty as moral sense, and that it produces a special sort of
> >feeling, different from the other emotions. This sort of feeling, it
> >sounds like, has propositional content?
>
> It is often used to have that content, and I think in that case it can
be
> interpreted as "assuming subjective moral intuitions that are more or
less
> universal are true, <place moral statement here>"
What is 'that content'?
I don't follow the sentence in quotation marks. So an example would be,
"Assuming subjective moral intuitions that are more or less universal are
true, Hitler was bad." I'm not sure what a 'subjective' moral intuition
is in this context, especially when it's being said to be both universal
and true. Also, are you saying that "Hitler was bad" means something
different in that sentence, than it would mean if it appeared by itself,
without the beginning phrase of the sentence?
> >What is the relationship between
> >the feeling and the sentence, "Hitler was bad"?
>
> "Assuming certain subjective moral premiss are true, hitler was bad."
?
And what 'subjective moral premises' would those be (the 'premise' that
Hitler was bad?)
> >Does the sentence express
> >or report the feeling?
>
> It assumes things that are the direct result of the feeling (the moral
> premises), then asserts a proposition assuming those premises are true.
What things?? What, according to you, does it mean to say x is bad?
> See above. The feelings are often just assumed to be true for the
purposes of
> the assertation.
Since feelings aren't propositions, I'm not sure what it means to assume
one to be true.
> "1. Whatever should be done can be done. "
>
> This seems to imply that something should be done, and that it should be
done
> is a fact. No?
Actually no. "Whatever is F is G" does not entail "something is F", in
the standard interpretation. (You can check your logic book, in the
chapter on predicate logic.) Plus, nothing in (1) used the term
"objective" or any related term.
> Maybe I just have a hard time immagining moral facts. They just don't
make
> sense to me. Anyway, I will respond to this and the rest of your post
later, as
> I have to go now, and the post is divided into two main topics anyway.
The main question I'd like to see answered is, What, according to you,
does it mean to say something is good?
Owl
I join you in your phlogiston anti-realism. But to me, it is obvious what
our position should be. All positive assertions about phlogiston are
false. Thus, "Phlogiston was just released when I lit this match!" is
false. What's the problem?
Mark Young <mark_anth...@my-deja.com> wrote in message
news:8jntm3$13n$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
> (2) Phlogistine claims express propositions, but only false ones.
> Well, it seems that some of them must be true -- after all,
> phlogistine rises, even in a vacuum, so it must have negative mass
> rather than no mass or positive mass.
Nope. Phlogiston doesn't rise, since it isn't there.
> Even if that were disproved,
> it seems unlikely that *all* phlogistine propositions would be
> false. How about "air is not made up entirely of phlogistine"?
> Surely *that* is true rather than false.
Indeed, negative assertions about phlogiston, such as, "Phlogiston is
*not* present here," "This is *not* a sample of phlogiston", are true.
Just as, for the moral skeptic, a negative assertion such as, "It is *not*
wrong to torture people just for the fun of it," would be true.
Owl
news:8jlgjf$fqf$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
> Actualy, nwo that I think about it a little, "time" seems to be almost
> as physical as you can get.
I'm not sure what you mean by "physical" then.
> It seems that time and space yield
> physicality, so that time is even part of the definition of what it
> means to be physical.
It would be great to have that definition.
Owl
> >the number 2
>
> But surely numbers are not platonic forms or anything. There is no
Surely! The Platonists won't be impressed with this argument.
> "twoness"
> that exists apart from two things. The number two is just a concept that
we
> abstracted from reality.
The concept of the number 2 is a concept. What is it a concept of? The
number 2. It is not a concept of a concept.
This "so-and-so is a concept" sort of confusion is really rampant, as in
"justice is a concept...", "equality is a nice concept..." What is it a
concept of? Itself?
> It exists in our minds, which are physical processes.
(Not.)
> >Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata
>
> A sequence of physical sounds that have been encoded in music notation.
Some
> people also probably keep this sequence of sounds in their brain.
How do you keep a sequence of sounds in your brain? You mean their brain
is vibrating? If you open up their skull, it's going to be really noisy
in there?
Anyway, which sequence of sounds? Can a particular 'sequence of sounds'
(what does that mean, a collection of vibrating molecules?) exist in two
different, unconnected spatio-temporal regions? Can the same molecules be
vibrating in two different places at the same time? Can the Moonlight
Sonata exist in two different places at the same time? Does the Moonlight
Sonata cease to exist as soon as the piano stops playing (and there are no
other pianos playing it at the same time)?
> I don't see
> anything nonphysical there.
You have to look harder in order to see things.
> >emotions
> >thoughts
>
> Various electrical/chemical/physical activity in the brain.
(not)
> >truth
>
> Depending on how you want to define truth, this is just whether or not
various
> propositions represented by physical things in our brains correspond to
> reality. Nothing non-physical here.
And propositions are what, physically? And what is 'representation' and
'correspondence', physically?
> >honesty
>
> Just a behavior of an organism.
Just a behavior? You mean being honest is just moving around in certain
ways with your body?
> >seven points (e.g., in football)
>
> Another concept existing only in our brains, much like numbers in
general.
A concept of what?
> >exchange rates
> >irrationality (palpable as it seems at times)
> >possibilities (or, similarly, unrealized potentials)
> >propositions
> >a sense of humor
> >and, of course, rights.
>
> Similar comments apply for all of these.
Indeed they do.
User 1DE7
>From: Owl a@a.a
>Message-id: <8jr9ev$e1v$4...@slb1.atl.mindspring.net>
>> >1. There is a faculty called 'moral sense.'
>> >2. It causes us to 'feel that' Hitler was bad, but this is not the same
>as
>> >an emotion.
>> >3. This sort of feeling is 'subjective.'
>> >4. The sentence, "Hitler was bad," is false.
>>
>> The sentence "Hitler is bad in an objective sense" is false.
>
>Does that mean the sentence, "Hitler was bad", is *not* false?
It might be neither if interpreted as "my moral sense dissaproves of hitler."
It all depends on what the person means, it seems. If they mean that hitler
posessed some objective property of badness when they say "hitler was bad",
then I'd say that is false.
>> >5. 'Morals' have the same truth value as emotions.
>>
>> They have the same truth/false value when someone claims that they are
>> objective as emotions would be if they claimed they were objective. If
>
>Which is to say, false? So, if I say, "Fear is objective", then fear is
>false, because emotions are false when someone claims they are objective?
Ok, I will try to be clearer, as my posts on this have been sort of sloppy.
In claiming an emotion is objective, I had in mind something like "fear is an
objective property of this situation, regardless of anyone's ideas about the
situation, or of any particular individual" In reality, fear is agent relative.
What frightens you might not frighten me. Surely there are things about the
situation that might cause fear in you, and those things are objective, but the
fear is still being generated on the client-side, to use a computer analogy.
>> someone
>> said that there was an objective property of a situation that we
>percieve
>> making us feel anger, then it would be false in the same way as when
>someone
>> says something is objectively good or bad.
>
>Let's say someone walks up to you and punches you in the nose. You feel
>anger. Wasn't that caused by his punching you in the nose? Was the
>punching-you-in-the-nose an "objective property"?
Yes, the thing that caused the anger was objective, and it is also an objective
fact that the anger exists, supposing I get angry. What I mean is that the
anger is generated internaly and depends on my biology and personal feelings
and whatnot, as I claim morals are generated internaly and based on biology and
conditioning and whatnot.
>> >I'm having a hard time putting these together. Let's say that there is
>> >such a faculty as moral sense, and that it produces a special sort of
>> >feeling, different from the other emotions. This sort of feeling, it
>> >sounds like, has propositional content?
>>
>> It is often used to have that content, and I think in that case it can
>be
>> interpreted as "assuming subjective moral intuitions that are more or
>less
>> universal are true, <place moral statement here>"
>
>What is 'that content'?
Propositional content.
>I don't follow the sentence in quotation marks. So an example would be,
>"Assuming subjective moral intuitions that are more or less universal are
>true, Hitler was bad." I'm not sure what a 'subjective' moral intuition
>is in this context, especially when it's being said to be both universal
>and true.
I was being sort of sloppy and just giving a general idea. I will try to avoid
that from now on. The above should read:
"Assuming that the moral items that I percieve can be mapped onto reality in
this fashion:
I experience a negative moral sensation about Hitler -> Hitler is bad.
I experience a positive moral senseation about Owl -> Owl is good.
I experience a positive moral sensation about human life -> Human life is good.
Where the above are of the form <this means> -> <this is true>
..then since I experience a negative moral sensation about Hitler, Hitler is
bad."
..where all the stuff up to the next to last instance of "Hitler" is implicit
in utterances of "Hitler is bad."
Now I don't think lots of people go through this consciously. They simply take
it for granted that they are mapping their self-generated moral sensations onto
reality. For instance, Christians probably think these self-generated
sensations are really God's creation. You may think they are objective
properties of things that you percieve with your moral intuition.
So, when people say "Hitler was bad" that may *mean* that he is bad in some
objective sense, but my theory is that they mean it because they are going
through the process described above.
>Also, are you saying that "Hitler was bad" means something
>different in that sentence, than it would mean if it appeared by itself,
>without the beginning phrase of the sentence?
If it appeared by itsself, then it would be hard to interpret it, as it could
be a false claim that it corresponds to fact, or it could simply be an
expression of ones moral sense in a non-propositional manner.
My quoted phrase was supposed to clear up the implicit meaning that is usualy
intended when people say simply "Hitler was bad."
My original phrase was sort of sloppy though, as you saw. Hopefuly my
clarification above helps.
>> >What is the relationship between
>> >the feeling and the sentence, "Hitler was bad"?
>>
>> "Assuming certain subjective moral premiss are true, hitler was bad."
>
>?
>
>And what 'subjective moral premises' would those be (the 'premise' that
>Hitler was bad?)
See above. "After going through the process of mapping my moral-sensations into
reality.." And the moral statement would follow after that.
One of the premises might be that people who order the deaths of millions of
others due to their race are bad. That hitler was bad contins some meshing of
moral premises and empirical facts about Hitler, so I doubt moral premises
would come to someone in the form "Hitler was bad."
>> "1. Whatever should be done can be done. "
>>
>> This seems to imply that something should be done, and that it should be
>done
>> is a fact. No?
>
>Actually no. "Whatever is F is G" does not entail "something is F", in
>the standard interpretation.
Ok.
4 is false then.
"4. We should believe only truths. "
I think it is false in the same sense as all moral propositions -- moral facts
don't exist.
Anyway, it seems like this does assume objective morality. I am saying
objective morality being true means that there is at least one moral fact. 4
seems to claim to be a moral fact.
>The main question I'd like to see answered is, What, according to you,
>does it mean to say something is good?
See earlier in the post about mapping moral sensations onto reality. That is
what is going on, I think, and I think a lot of the people may *mean* to refer
to some real property of goodness, but the mean to do this after they have gone
through the mapping process that I describe.
Also, I think the number of people who don't really think morality is objective
is higher than you assume. I just mention this because I thought I remembered
you saying something before about how to common folk, it seems obvious that
moral facts exist. I don't think -any- of my friends think that moral facts
exist, and I really cannot remember, of all the people I have discussed
philosophy with away from this newsgroup, any of them being moral realists. The
only non-religious person I really know who was ever a moral realist was myself
a few years ago when I was an objectivist.
If you do actualy think that most common folk are moral realists, do you have
any statistics for that? Are there surveys done and such? I think I may actualy
write one up and see for myself, it would be interesting.
-User
Mark Young
> Indeed, negative assertions about phlogiston, such as, "Phlogiston is
> *not* present here," "This is *not* a sample of phlogiston", are true.
>
> Just as, for the moral skeptic, a negative assertion such as, "It is
> *not* wrong to torture people just for the fun of it," would be true.
The problem is that that statement can itself be interpreted as a moral
claim. For instance, in spite of being a moral skeptic, I disagree
with that sentence -- that is, I have an incompatible attitude (I have
a negative attitude toward torturing people (regardless of the motive)).
The only way to make that sentence true is to go half-way into your
world -- interpret "wrong" as a predicate, and then note that *in my
world* there is nothing that predicate applies to (actually, it may
apply to some things in my world if I interpret it as a naturalistic
predicate -- but I don't think you intend it to be naturalistically
reducible, so then I'd be going half-way into someone else's world).
(Note -- "world" is not the right word, but nothing else is coming to
me right now. It's supposed to be encompass beliefs about words and
how they are applied to the actual world.)
Your argument against anti-realism relies on this fuzzification. *I*
do not intend my moral statement to have truth values -- they merely
express my attitudes. But you treat them as items with truth values
anyway, and insist that I do the same by assenting to *negations* of
moral claims (which are just more moral claims).
user...@my-deja.com
Owl <a@a.a> wrote:
> <user...@my-deja.com> wrote in message
> news:8jlgjf$fqf$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
> > Actualy, nwo that I think about it a little, "time" seems to be
almost
> > as physical as you can get.
>
> I'm not sure what you mean by "physical" then.
I don't have a rigorous definition for you, but maybe you could think
of it as anything that is the subject of modern physics.
> > It seems that time and space yield
> > physicality, so that time is even part of the definition of what it
> > means to be physical.
>
> It would be great to have that definition.
Maybe I will think of one sometime. I will put it on my "to ponder"
list.
Isn't time just one of the 4 coordinates that we use to plot physical
events and such? To say time is not physical seems like saying the x
axis is not part of a standard x-y graph.
-User
user...@my-deja.com
Owl <a@a.a> wrote:
> User 1DE7 <user...@aol.com> wrote in message
> news:20000701125348...@ng-cg1.aol.com...
> > >the number 2
> >
> > But surely numbers are not platonic forms or anything. There is no
>
> Surely! The Platonists won't be impressed with this argument.
Right, I was assuming you were not a platonist and in fact thought
platonism was silly.
> > "twoness"
> > that exists apart from two things. The number two is just a concept
that
> we
> > abstracted from reality.
>
> The concept of the number 2 is a concept. What is it a concept of?
The
> number 2. It is not a concept of a concept.
The number 2 is a concept. The concept of the number two is a concept
of a concept, not simply a concept. The concept of the concept of the
number 2 is a concept of a concept of a concept.
The number two is an abstract concept of particular instances of two
things. "But why do these number concepts make so much sense to me? Why
do they seem to logical? That must mean they are real, right?" I don't
think so. Those people who the concept of twoness or numbers in general
did not make sense to likely did not survive to pass on their genes.
> This "so-and-so is a concept" sort of confusion is really rampant, as
in
> "justice is a concept...", "equality is a nice concept..." What is
it a
> concept of? Itself?
Well, in my case, two is a concept abstracted from particular instances
of two specific things. For instance, you see two frogs, two dogs, two
logs, and you abstract the similar thing about them out to arrive at
the concept of 2 by itsself. For things like "equality is a concept", I
don't see anything terribly wrong with that. Equality is a general
property, a concept, abstracted from particular instances of equality.
Maybe some people get confused by this and are unable to consider
actual instances of equality and seperate them from the concept of
equality apart from specific things being equal, but this seems like
the fault of the person and not of thinking of equality as a concept.
> > It exists in our minds, which are physical processes.
>
> (Not.)
>
> > >Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata
> >
> > A sequence of physical sounds that have been encoded in music
notation.
> Some
> > people also probably keep this sequence of sounds in their brain.
>
> How do you keep a sequence of sounds in your brain? You mean their
brain
> is vibrating?
No, the same way you would store it on a magnetic disk, perhaps.
Certain patterns or symbols are associated with certain sounds. The
symbols are stored, and later recalled. Would you guess that your
harddrive vibrates when you download an audio file, because it is
representing audio?
Now, don't take this too literaly, I am not saying things are stored in
the brain in a similar way as they are in a harddrive, but that is just
an example of how it could be in such a way that your brain didn't
vibrate, and perhaps the brain's storage is similar in some way.
> If you open up their skull, it's going to be really noisy
> in there?
>
> Anyway, which sequence of sounds? Can a particular 'sequence of
sounds'
> (what does that mean, a collection of vibrating molecules?)
The sequence is what is being represented. I could represent it with
1's and 0's on a page, and they would be quite still, but they'd
represent the music just fine.
> exist in two
> different, unconnected spatio-temporal regions? Can the same
molecules be
> vibrating in two different places at the same time? Can the Moonlight
> Sonata exist in two different places at the same time?
Can a software program exist in two places at the same time? When I
write a computer program, and distribute it over the internet, there is
no special form of that program. There are simply many copies which are
represented in many different places on magnetic disks.
Similarly, with the music you were referring to. The song exists as
patterns in the brains of everyone who has learned the song. If they'd
like to think of the song, they somehow access these patterns in their
brain and decode them into something simulating what happens when
vibrations in your ears cause your brain to hear things.
Does the Moonlight
> Sonata cease to exist as soon as the piano stops playing (and there
are no
> other pianos playing it at the same time)?
There are no instances of it being played, but it certainly exists, as
above. I think this is sort of silly. Would you claim that throwing has
some non-physical existance, that there is some owl-ian special form
for throwing? A throw is just the physical process of an arm moving in
a certain way, involving an object. Just like a song is simply the
process of sound waves being created. You could represent a throw just
like a song. Write out instructions in throw-notation, just like you do
in music-notation, telling the person how to move their arm and such.
Will this particular throw have some objective non-physical existance?
> > I don't see
> > anything nonphysical there.
>
> You have to look harder in order to see things.
Hm, I am trying, but I can't seem to see your platonic-like ideas and
not-silly. I will try to think of some devestating argument though,
even if I do not have one right now and must just rely on the fact that
my view sounds intuitively obvious to me and yours intuitively absurd.
> > >emotions
> > >thoughts
> >
> > Various electrical/chemical/physical activity in the brain.
>
> (not)
>
> > >truth
> >
> > Depending on how you want to define truth, this is just whether or
not
> various
> > propositions represented by physical things in our brains
correspond to
> > reality. Nothing non-physical here.
>
> And propositions are what, physically? And what is 'representation'
and
> 'correspondence', physically?
Propositions could be beliefs in our brains, or the actual utterances
that we make in converting these beliefs or ideas into sound waves. I
am not sure how ideas are represented in the brain exactly, but I think
it is reasonable to assume that they are. A statement would correspond
to reality if whatever it represented in our brain was true of reality.
For instance, in a very simplified example. Suppose we have B, and B is
some lower organism. When B thinks he is on land, B will store pattern
1 in a certain region of its brain. When B thinks it is in the water, B
will store pattern 2 in a certain region of its brain. If B is storing
pattern 1 in his brain and is indeed on land, then we could say that B
holds a true belief.
Now, these is very very simplified, but hopefuly it illustrated the
point.
>
> > >honesty
> >
> > Just a behavior of an organism.
>
> Just a behavior? You mean being honest is just moving around in
certain
> ways with your body?
Right, certain ways that include not trying to decieve people, etc.
Most of the movement is probably taking place in the brain, and not in
other regions of the body. So, moving your arms around is not a good
visual image to use when you picture being honest.
> > >seven points (e.g., in football)
> >
> > Another concept existing only in our brains, much like numbers in
> general.
>
> A concept of what?
The symbol 6 symbolizes that a touchdown has been scored, or two field
goals, or 3 safetys. The concept of either a guy posessing the ball in
the endzone, two instances of kicking the ball through the fieldgoal-
thing, or 3 instances of tackling someone in their own endzone is
represented by the symbol "6", in football, when it appears as the only
digit in a score. So, 6 literaly is not the same thing as all of those
things happening, it represents the concept of them happening. Not only
particular instances of them, but even more abstractly, the concept of
them. For instance, if we are making up a football score, and I
say "the score will be 42 to 13", those numbers don't represent actual
instances of any of those things(touchdown, fieldgoal, etc) because
none of that really happened, but they represent the concept of those
things happening.
> > >exchange rates
> > >irrationality (palpable as it seems at times)
> > >possibilities (or, similarly, unrealized potentials)
> > >propositions
> > >a sense of humor
> > >and, of course, rights.
> >
> > Similar comments apply for all of these.
>
> Indeed they do.
>
Indeed.
Owl
news:20000701125348...@ng-cg1.aol.com...
> >the number 2
>
> But surely numbers are not platonic forms or anything. There is no
Surely! The Platonists won't be impressed with this argument.
> "twoness"
> that exists apart from two things. The number two is just a concept that
we
> abstracted from reality.
The concept of the number 2 is a concept. What is it a concept of? The
number 2. It is not a concept of a concept.
This "so-and-so is a concept" sort of confusion is really rampant, as in
"justice is a concept...", "equality is a nice concept..." What is it a
concept of? Itself?
> It exists in our minds, which are physical processes.
(Not.)
> >Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata
>
> A sequence of physical sounds that have been encoded in music notation.
Some
> people also probably keep this sequence of sounds in their brain.
How do you keep a sequence of sounds in your brain? You mean their brain
is vibrating? If you open up their skull, it's going to be really noisy
in there?
Anyway, which sequence of sounds? Can a particular 'sequence of sounds'
(what does that mean, a collection of vibrating molecules?) exist in two
different, unconnected spatio-temporal regions? Can the same molecules be
vibrating in two different places at the same time? Can the Moonlight
Sonata exist in two different places at the same time? Does the Moonlight
Sonata cease to exist as soon as the piano stops playing (and there are no
other pianos playing it at the same time)?
> I don't see
> anything nonphysical there.
You have to look harder in order to see things.
> >emotions
> >thoughts
>
> Various electrical/chemical/physical activity in the brain.
(not)
> >truth
>
> Depending on how you want to define truth, this is just whether or not
various
> propositions represented by physical things in our brains correspond to
> reality. Nothing non-physical here.
And propositions are what, physically? And what is 'representation' and
'correspondence', physically?
> >honesty
>
> Just a behavior of an organism.
Just a behavior? You mean being honest is just moving around in certain
ways with your body?
> >seven points (e.g., in football)
>
> Another concept existing only in our brains, much like numbers in
general.
A concept of what?
> >exchange rates
Owl
news:8jlgjf$fqf$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
> Actualy, nwo that I think about it a little, "time" seems to be almost
> as physical as you can get.
I'm not sure what you mean by "physical" then.
> It seems that time and space yield
Owl
I join you in your phlogiston anti-realism. But to me, it is obvious what
our position should be. All positive assertions about phlogiston are
false. Thus, "Phlogiston was just released when I lit this match!" is
false. What's the problem?
Mark Young <mark_anth...@my-deja.com> wrote in message
news:8jntm3$13n$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
> (2) Phlogistine claims express propositions, but only false ones.
> Well, it seems that some of them must be true -- after all,
> phlogistine rises, even in a vacuum, so it must have negative mass
> rather than no mass or positive mass.
Nope. Phlogiston doesn't rise, since it isn't there.
> Even if that were disproved,
> it seems unlikely that *all* phlogistine propositions would be
> false. How about "air is not made up entirely of phlogistine"?
> Surely *that* is true rather than false.
Indeed, negative assertions about phlogiston, such as, "Phlogiston is
Owl
> >1. There is a faculty called 'moral sense.'
> >2. It causes us to 'feel that' Hitler was bad, but this is not the same
as
> >an emotion.
> >3. This sort of feeling is 'subjective.'
> >4. The sentence, "Hitler was bad," is false.
>
> The sentence "Hitler is bad in an objective sense" is false.
Does that mean the sentence, "Hitler was bad", is *not* false? Is it
true? Is it true 'in a subjective sense'? (And what does that mean?)
> >5. 'Morals' have the same truth value as emotions.
>
> They have the same truth/false value when someone claims that they are
> objective as emotions would be if they claimed they were objective. If
Which is to say, false? So, if I say, "Fear is objective", then fear is
false, because emotions are false when someone claims they are objective?
Well, presumably not. Probably what you mean is that the statement, "Fear
is objective," is false. But fear, itself, is neither true nor false (no
matter what I say!) What would it mean to say, "Fear is objective",
anyway?
> someone
> said that there was an objective property of a situation that we
percieve
> making us feel anger, then it would be false in the same way as when
someone
> says something is objectively good or bad.
Let's say someone walks up to you and punches you in the nose. You feel
anger. Wasn't that caused by his punching you in the nose? Was the
punching-you-in-the-nose an "objective property"? Well, it's not a
property but an event; was it an objective event? If no, why not?
> >I'm having a hard time putting these together. Let's say that there is
> >such a faculty as moral sense, and that it produces a special sort of
> >feeling, different from the other emotions. This sort of feeling, it
> >sounds like, has propositional content?
>
> It is often used to have that content, and I think in that case it can
be
> interpreted as "assuming subjective moral intuitions that are more or
less
> universal are true, <place moral statement here>"
What is 'that content'?
I don't follow the sentence in quotation marks. So an example would be,
"Assuming subjective moral intuitions that are more or less universal are
true, Hitler was bad." I'm not sure what a 'subjective' moral intuition
is in this context, especially when it's being said to be both universal
and true. Also, are you saying that "Hitler was bad" means something
different in that sentence, than it would mean if it appeared by itself,
without the beginning phrase of the sentence?
> >What is the relationship between
> >the feeling and the sentence, "Hitler was bad"?
>
> "Assuming certain subjective moral premiss are true, hitler was bad."
?
And what 'subjective moral premises' would those be (the 'premise' that
Hitler was bad?)
> >Does the sentence express
> >or report the feeling?
>
> It assumes things that are the direct result of the feeling (the moral
> premises), then asserts a proposition assuming those premises are true.
What things?? What, according to you, does it mean to say x is bad?
> See above. The feelings are often just assumed to be true for the
purposes of
> the assertation.
Since feelings aren't propositions, I'm not sure what it means to assume
one to be true.
> "1. Whatever should be done can be done. "
>
> This seems to imply that something should be done, and that it should be
done
> is a fact. No?
Actually no. "Whatever is F is G" does not entail "something is F", in
the standard interpretation. (You can check your logic book, in the
chapter on predicate logic.) Plus, nothing in (1) used the term
"objective" or any related term.
> Maybe I just have a hard time immagining moral facts. They just don't
make
> sense to me. Anyway, I will respond to this and the rest of your post
later, as
> I have to go now, and the post is divided into two main topics anyway.
The main question I'd like to see answered is, What, according to you,
Owl
news:8jrndq$lha$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
> > I'm not sure what you mean by "physical" then.
>
> of it as anything that is the subject of modern physics.
But wouldn't that then make it pretty easy to show that there are lots of
non-physical things? After all, the physicists don't study everything.
They don't study the works of Shakespeare, for instance. (Or
epistemology, or exchange rates, ...)
> Isn't time just one of the 4 coordinates that we use to plot physical
> events and such? To say time is not physical seems like saying the x
> axis is not part of a standard x-y graph.
You might want to try the following definition:
x is physical = x occupies spacetime.
However, this will not have the consequence that time is physical, since
time does not occupy spacetime.
Descartes' def. of matter was "extended substance," so you might try
something along those lines. You'd want to be more liberal, perhaps like
this:
x is physical = x is something whose existence follows from the existence
of extended substances, or from some particular (spatial) configurations
of extended substance (perhaps over time).
The last clause is intended to enable something like 'squareness', or
'velocity' to be physical. However, on this definition, there are lots of
nonphysical things. The electric field, for instance. And that's not
even getting into consciousness and suchlike.
Some people in philosophy actually say things similar to your first
suggestion above, i.e.:
x is physical = x is studied by physics (or physicists)
But, first, how do we determine what is or isn't part of the field of
'physics' -- isn't that determined *by reference to* a prior understanding
of what is physical? And what if some physicists decide to start studying
mental telepathy--will that automatically make it physical?
Anyway, surely it is not a locus of major, important philosophical
dispute whether a certain *group of people* (the physicists) or a certain
academic field does or will someday decide to study a particular subject
matter. Surely that's not what's interesting about the materialism /
dualism debate.
Another idea that might occur is:
x is physical = x is the sort of thing you could perceive with the 5
senses.
But then atoms aren't physical. (Neither are numbers, or time, or empty
space, or fields.)
This is interesting, because it is very difficult to come up with a
definition of "physical", other than:
x is physical = x exists
--such that there are not obvious examples of things that exist and are
not physical.
Owl
news:8jrqpu$noj$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
> Right, I was assuming you were not a platonist and in fact thought
> platonism was silly.
User,
I'm taking this to the new thread, "Platonism".
I can't take time to respond to everything here, so I will just focus on
Platonism.
Owl
> of a concept, not simply a concept. The concept of the concept of the
> number 2 is a concept of a concept of a concept.
There are some simple problems with saying 'numbers are concepts.' Things
can be proven about numbers that cannot be proven about concepts, and are
almost certainly false about concepts. For instance,
1. There are uncountably many numbers. Are there uncountably many
concepts?
2. There is a number greater than 100. Is there a concept greater than
100? (Similarly, is there a prime concept? A concept that, when divided
by 2, yields the concept multiplied by itself?)
3. There are numbers (infinitely many, in fact) that cannot be named. Are
there concepts that cannot be named?
4. A concept (according to User) is in your head. Is the number 2
literally in my head? When I get in my car on the freeway, is the number
2 traveling at 60 mph? (For that matter, is a concept traveling at 60
mph?)
5. Before there were humans, there were no concepts (barring space aliens
and intelligent animals). Before there were humans, were there no
numbers?
5a) Before there were humans, there was no concept of the number of
planets in the solar system. Before there were humans, was there no
number of planets in the solar system?
You get the idea.
> The number two is an abstract concept of particular instances of two
> things.
And what is it that these particular instances of 'two things' are
instances of? Are they instances of themselves? (Probably not.) Are
they instances of the concept? (So the number 2 is the concept of
particular instances of the concept of particular instances of .... I
think I smell some circularity here.)
> "But why do these number concepts make so much sense to me? Why
> do they seem to logical? That must mean they are real, right?" I don't
> think so. Those people who the concept of twoness or numbers in general
> did not make sense to likely did not survive to pass on their genes.
Those people who rejected the laws of logic probably didn't survive to
pass on their genes either (except for a few of them, whose descendants
make it to usenet now and then). Does that mean the laws of logic are
probably not true?
Snip.
GENERAL ARGUMENT FOR PLATONISM
Definitions: For our purposes, 'Platonism' will be the view that abstract
objects exist necessarily. 'Abstract objects' will be taken to include
things like numbers, propositions, universals, and/or sets. Platonism
will be taken to be true if there is at least one abstract object that
necessarily exists. Since the existence of concrete things is generally
accepted to be contingent (except for St. Anselm's claim that God exists
necessarily, but he's wrong), Platonism thus defined implies that the
existence of abstract objects is independent of the existence of concrete
objects. I.e., that abstract objects (at least one of them) exist
regardless of the disposition of the concrete things in the world--which
is closely connected with traditional 'platonistic' claims.
Argument A:
Premise 1. It is logically necessary that 2 is prime.
Premise 2. The form of the proposition that 2 is prime is: Pa.
(where 'P' is a predicate and 'a' an individual constant)
Premise 3. The truth conditions of a statement of the form Pa are as
follows:
that there exist an object denoted by "a" that has the property
ascribed
by "P".
Premise 4. The numeral "2" denotes 2 (in any possible world), if it
denotes
anything.
Inferences:
5. The truth conditions of the statement that 2 is prime are that there
exist an object denoted by "2" that has the property ascribed by "is
prime." (from 2,3)
6. The truth conditions of the statement that 2 is prime are that 2 exist
and have the property ascribed by "is prime." (from 4,5)
7. It is logically necessary that 2 exist and have the property ascribed
by "is prime." (from 1,6)
8. It is logically necessary that 2 exists.
Argument B*:
1. It is necessary that it is true that all bachelors are unmarried.
2. The proposition that it is true that all bachelors are unmarried has
the form: Ta.
3. Same as 3 above.
4. The expression "that all bachelors are unmarried" denotes the
proposition that all bachelors are unmarried (in any possible world), if
it denotes anything.
5-7: analogous to 5-7 above.
8. It is logically necessary that the proposition that all bachelors are
unmarried exists.
*The basic idea of this argument derives from George Bealer. His
presentation, however, is much longer and defends each step in detail.
(Bealer isn't responsible for any errors in my presentation, however.)
You can construct analogous arguments using:
C1. It is necessary that red and green are incompatible colors.
D1. It is necessary that the empty set is a subset of every set.
et al.
Robert J. Kolker
Owl wrote:
>
> The concept of the number 2 is a concept. What is it a concept of? The
> number 2. It is not a concept of a concept.
Ah but it is. The number 2 is a concept. It is the set of all sets that
can be put in 1-1 correspondence with the set of my feet. Nowhere
in the insensate physical universe does the number 2 exist. It exists
in my head and yours.
Bob Kolker
User 1DE7
>From: Owl a@a.a
>Message-id: <8jtqtg$l69$1...@slb1.atl.mindspring.net
>> I don't have a rigorous definition for you, but maybe you could think
>> of it as anything that is the subject of modern physics.
>
>But wouldn't that then make it pretty easy to show that there are lots of
>non-physical things? After all, the physicists don't study everything.
>They don't study the works of Shakespeare, for instance. (Or
>epistemology, or exchange rates, ...)
Okay, I meant things that the subject of modern physics can in principle
explain fully. For instance, the laws of physics can explain the works of
shakespear if you get detailed enough, by explaining how his physical mind
operated in creating his works, etc. It could also explain how physical human
organisms gain knowledge, by explaining the processes in their brain that
constitute this gaining of knowledge, and simularly for exchange rates, etc.
That is what I meant.
>You might want to try the following definition:
>x is physical = x occupies spacetime.
>
>However, this will not have the consequence that time is physical, since
>time does not occupy spacetime.
>
x is physical = x occupies spacetime OR x is a property of spacetime OR x is a
coordinate of spacetime.
How about that?
>This is interesting, because it is very difficult to come up with a
>definition of "physical", other than:
>
>x is physical = x exists
Yes, I'd agree with that. It is unfortunate that it seems to be begging the
question in the context of our disagreement though. I think my earlier
definition does the trick though. It takes into account time and atoms and
elctrical fields and all sorts of waves and consciousness and everything else I
can think of at the moment.
-User
user...@my-deja.com
concept
> > of a concept, not simply a concept. The concept of the concept of
the
> > number 2 is a concept of a concept of a concept.
>
Things
> can be proven about numbers that cannot be proven about concepts, and
are
> almost certainly false about concepts
Sure, they can be proven given mathamtical axioms, and these proofs and
axioms model reality quite well, but they are not literaly real. As of
now this just seems intuitively obvious to me, and I don't think there
is really any evidence that abstract numbers are real. However, I will
try to work on some devistating argument.
>
> 1. There are uncountably many numbers. Are there uncountably many
> concepts?
Yes. I can concieve of a rabbit. I can concieve of a rabbit leaping
into a stream. I can concieve of a rabbit leaping into a stream and
swimming. There seem to me to be countless variations I can make to
concieve of unique instances of the rabbit leaping into the stream and
swimming. I could vary the rabbit, the scenery other than the stream.
The stream itsself, including all of its ripples and whatnot, the way
in which the rabbit swims, etc. Even if I could not concieve of
countless ways of rabbits jumping insto streams and swimming, I could
simply keep adding to the complexity of the situation without limit.
Thus there are countless concepts.
> 2. There is a number greater than 100. Is there a concept greater
than
> 100?
You are taking a certain class of concepts -- mathamatical concepts,
and trying to apply properties of that concept to other concepts where
the properties don't apply. Being greater than 100 is a strictly
mathamatical concept.
(Similarly, is there a prime concept? A concept that, when divided
> by 2, yields the concept multiplied by itself?)
Not a non-mathamatical prime concept. All you seem to be showing here
is that some concepts have certain properties that other classes of
concepts don't have.
> 3. There are numbers (infinitely many, in fact) that cannot be
named. Are
> there concepts that cannot be named?
Cannot be named? In theory, or you just mean there are too many to name
them all? If the later, one of my infinite rabbit examples would work.
> 4. A concept (according to User) is in your head. Is the number 2
> literally in my head? When I get in my car on the freeway, is the
number
> 2 traveling at 60 mph?
The brain pattern(or some other aspect of the brain) that represents
the concept of number is, including the concept of the number 2.
> 5. Before there were humans, there were no concepts (barring space
aliens
> and intelligent animals). Before there were humans, were there no
> numbers?
There were no abstract concepts of numbers, but there were certainly
specific instances of things that could theoreticly be grouped in two.
> 5a) Before there were humans, there was no concept of the number
of
> planets in the solar system.
There was no concept of it, there was were those planets themselves,
without any abstraction.
> You get the idea.
>
> > The number two is an abstract concept of particular instances of two
> > things.
>
> And what is it that these particular instances of 'two things' are
> instances of? Are they instances of themselves? (Probably not.)
Why probably not? A rock is an instance of a rock. Two rocks are two
instances of a rock. This is sort of like a=a.
Are
> they instances of the concept?
No, the concept is abstracted from them. There is a difference
between "two rocks" and "two" in general. "Two" is more abstract. "Two
rocks" is less abstract but still abstract unless you are actualy
referring to two specific rocks. Pointing to two specific rocks and
referring to those specific two rocks ia probably not abstract at all,
though I am sort of winging this breaking down of my theory into this
added complexity. I may have to revise it a little later.
(So the number 2 is the concept of
> particular instances of the concept of particular instances of .... I
> think I smell some circularity here.)
What I just layed out for you doesn't seem circular to me. Hopefuly it
will be clear to you as well.
>
> > "But why do these number concepts make so much sense to me? Why
> > do they seem to logical? That must mean they are real, right?" I
don't
> > think so. Those people who the concept of twoness or numbers in
general
> > did not make sense to likely did not survive to pass on their genes.
>
> Those people who rejected the laws of logic probably didn't survive to
> pass on their genes either (except for a few of them, whose
descendants
> make it to usenet now and then). Does that mean the laws of logic are
> probably not true?
The laws of logic themselves are abstractions and have no platonic
existance, I don't think. Sort of like numbers. So, while they may
accurately model reality 100% of the time, I don't think they
objectiviely exist.
I will respond to your general argument for platonism later, when I
have some time.
Robert J. Kolker
User 1DE7 wrote:
>
> Okay, I meant things that the subject of modern physics can in principle
> explain fully. For instance, the laws of physics can explain the works of
> shakespear if you get detailed enough, by explaining how his physical mind
> operated in creating his works, etc. It could also explain how physical human
> organisms gain knowledge, by explaining the processes in their brain that
> constitute this gaining of knowledge, and simularly for exchange rates, etc.
>
> That is what I meant.
Two cheers for Reductionism! Anything that really exists
is physical. That is why minds are brains.
Bob Kolker
f
t
b
f
t
b
f
t
b
Owl
news:8k0pek$5ct$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
> Sure, they can be proven given mathamtical axioms, and these proofs and
> axioms model reality quite well, but they are not literaly real. As of
I'm not sure what you mean by that. Presumably, by 'not literally real',
you don't mean that the proofs and axioms don't exist. For, if they don't
exist, then what is the subject of your sentence? On the other hand,
perhaps you mean merely that they are distinct from the reality that they
'model.'
Well, statements in general are distinct from the things the statements
are about. Mathematical statements are no exception, of course. But if
that is all you mean, I don't see the difference alleged between
mathematical statements and statements about physical objects.
Perhaps what you mean is that mathematical statements are statements
*about* things that don't exist. In that case, I would find it hard to
see why they are not false. And therefore I would find it hard to see in
what sense they can be said to 'model reality.' Furthermore, if you think
it is false that 2+2=4, you need to go back to grammar school!
Lastly, perhaps you want to draw a distinction between a statement that
refers to reality, and a statement that 'models' reality, and to claim
that mathematical statements only do the second thing. In that case, I
want to know more about that distinction.
> now this just seems intuitively obvious to me, and I don't think there
> is really any evidence that abstract numbers are real. However, I will
> try to work on some devistating argument.
Well, I think it follows from the fact that 2+2=4 that numbers are real.
If so, that seems like powerful evidence that numbers exist -- it is more
powerful evidence than any evidence we have that physical objects exist.
> > 1. There are uncountably many numbers. Are there uncountably many
> > concepts?
>
> Yes. I can concieve of a rabbit. I can concieve of a rabbit leaping
> into a stream. I can concieve of a rabbit leaping into a stream and
> swimming. There seem to me to be countless variations I can make to
> concieve of unique instances of the rabbit leaping into the stream and
> swimming. I could vary the rabbit, the scenery other than the stream.
> The stream itsself, including all of its ripples and whatnot, the way
> in which the rabbit swims, etc.
It's doubtful whether there are even as many as, say, a million different
ways you can conceive of the rabbit jumping into the stream. (Try it. I
bet you don't get past 1000.)
> Even if I could not concieve of
> countless ways of rabbits jumping insto streams and swimming, I could
> simply keep adding to the complexity of the situation without limit.
I think what you mean is that you could combine a finite set of simple
concepts into more and more complex combinations, yielding indefinitely
many of these complex concepts. An example is provided by the way you can
make longer and longer sentences in the propositional calculus, just
recombining the atomic sentences and the connectives.
All the possible combinations generated in such a way would form a
countable set. A countable set is a set that can be put in 1-1
correspondence with the set of natural numbers (the 'counting numbers',
hence the terminology). However, there are uncountably many real numbers
(as Cantor showed a while back).
> Thus there are countless concepts.
Also, what you're referring to are potential concepts, not actual
concepts. What is the status of merely potential objects?
> > 2. There is a number greater than 100. Is there a concept greater
> than
> > 100?
>
> You are taking a certain class of concepts -- mathamatical concepts,
> and trying to apply properties of that concept to other concepts where
> the properties don't apply.
No I'm not.
> (Similarly, is there a prime concept? A concept that, when divided
> > by 2, yields the concept multiplied by itself?)
>
> Not a non-mathamatical prime concept. All you seem to be showing here
> is that some concepts have certain properties that other classes of
> concepts don't have.
No, I'm showing here that some numbers have properties that concepts don't
have. You claimed that a number is a concept. But no one (except you!)
thinks that there is such a thing as a prime concept. No one thinks that
it makes sense to 'multiply a concept by another concept.' That is a
category error, like trying weigh Beethoven's 9th Symphony.
> Cannot be named? In theory, or you just mean there are too many to name
> them all? If the later, one of my infinite rabbit examples would work.
Both. Between any two real numbers, there are uncountably many other real
numbers. The proportion of numbers that actually have names is, well, 0.
(The mathematicians would say: "It's a set of measure 0.") The rational
numbers plus a few of the irrational numbers have names because they're
special, such as pi, e, and the square root of 2. Those numbers form an
infinitesimal (or, since I don't believe in infinitesimals, 0) fraction of
the total of all the real numbers. To put it in other terms, if you had
an infinitely sharp dart and you threw it at the real number line, the
probability that you would hit an irrational number is 1. The probability
that it would be one of the special irrational numbers like pi, e, etc.,
is 0.
> > 4. A concept (according to User) is in your head. Is the number 2
> > literally in my head? When I get in my car on the freeway, is the
> number
> > 2 traveling at 60 mph?
>
> The brain pattern(or some other aspect of the brain) that *represents
> the concept of number* is, including the concept of the number 2.
[my emphasis]
But I didn't ask if a brain pattern or even a concept was traveling at
60mph. I asked if the number 2 was traveling at 60 mph. You're not
having a hard time accepting that, are you?
This is, of course, the flip side of my earlier argument. According to
your theory, the number 2 is a configuration of neurons in someone's head,
or something like that. It follows that, according to you, any property
that a number can have, a configuration of neurons can have, and vice
versa.
We saw the implications of the first part of that above: on this theory, a
configuration of neurons can be 'prime', can be 'multiplied' by another
neuron configuration, 'squared', and so on. We now look at the second
half: on this theory, the number 2 can 'occur at 12:30 on July 7,' can
travel at 60 miles per hour, and so on.
All of which seems pretty illogical. Of course you *could* just say,
"Nope, I endorse all of those consequences." But then, I could also
maintain in much the same way that I am Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. The
question is whether all those things *really* seem right to you.
> > 5. Before there were humans, there were no concepts (barring space
> aliens
> > and intelligent animals). Before there were humans, were there no
> > numbers?
>
> There were no abstract concepts of numbers, but there were certainly
> specific instances of things that could theoreticly be grouped in two.
Number terms, of course, are used in two different kinds of contexts--they
appear as adjectives and as nouns:
(1) There are 9 planets in the solar system.
(2) 9 is greater than 7.
You might say that facts such as (1) were true, but there were no facts
such as (2).
This then raises the following interesting question: In your view, is
there any connection between the use of "9" in sentence 1, and its use in
sentence 2? Or is "9" ambiguous, having a totally different meaning in
those two sentences? (Like "bank" meaning "river bank" and "bank" meaning
"money-lending institution.")
> > And what is it that these particular instances of 'two things' are
> > instances of? Are they instances of themselves? (Probably not.)
>
> Why probably not? A rock is an instance of a rock. Two rocks are two
> instances of a rock. This is sort of like a=a.
Sounds more like a=/=a to me. A rock isn't "an instance of" itself; it
just IS itself.
Unless you mean that an individual rock--let's call it Bob--unless you
mean that Bob is an instance of the general kind, 'rock'. But that would
just be appealing to those abstract objects that you don't believe in.
Bill Clinton is an instance of Mankind, you might say, but he's not an
instance of Bill Clinton. He just is Bill Clinton.
> > (So the number 2 is the concept of
> > particular instances of the concept of particular instances of .... I
> > think I smell some circularity here.)
>
> What I just layed out for you doesn't seem circular to me. Hopefuly it
> will be clear to you as well.
Maybe what you intend is something like a Randian concept of
concepts--concepts are just groupings of concretes. The concept '2' is
the concept--that is, is just the mental grouping together--of all pairs
of things. I think, however, that this view of concepts also leads
directly into the Randian view of 'meaning', and we all know how badly
flawed that is.
Owl
news:8k3j5u$59u$1...@sshuraab-i-1.production.compuserve.com...
> > directly into the Randian view of 'meaning', and we all know how badly
> > flawed that is.
>
> believes, after all of the arguments about it, that it is flawed.
You forgot the other, even more powerful piece of evidence that the theory
is flawed: Dbuel believes it.
User 1DE7
>From: Owl a@a.a
>Date: 7/6/00 9:59 PM Central Daylight Time
>Message-id: <8k3h31$jt3$1...@nntp9.atl.mindspring.net>
In article <8k3h31$jt3$1...@nntp9.atl.mindspring.net>,
Owl <a@a.a> wrote:
> <user...@my-deja.com> wrote in message
> news:8k0pek$5ct$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
> > Sure, they can be proven given mathamtical axioms, and these proofs and
> > axioms model reality quite well, but they are not literaly real. As of
>
> I'm not sure what you mean by that. Presumably, by 'not literally real',
> you don't mean that the proofs and axioms don't exist. For, if they don't
> exist, then what is the subject of your sentence?
They exist in our minds. So they do exist, although not outside of our minds.
But for instance there is no proof that:
1/(N+1) < ln(N+1) - ln(N) for all positive integer values of N
or even an axiom like:
A=A
that actualy exists apart from in our minds. A=A is simply an abstraction that
we have derived from things that do exist. We percieve reality and whatnot, and
it seems that all things that we percieve are themselves. So "that pencil is
that pencil" is not an abstraction, but "A is A" is. My view is that
abstractions have no objective existance.
There may be an issue with our respective definitions of "exist."
For instance, if there was an abstration like A=A, and there was a universe
(like ours, maybe), in which you could replace A with anything that existed,
and you'd have a true statement, I would not say that "A=A" actualy "existed."
I would say that perhaps "A=A is true for all things that exist in universe U",
but this would not nessesarily imply that A=A had some objective existance
itsself.
Is that compatible with your usage of existance as it refers to abstractions?
> Perhaps what you mean is that mathematical statements are statements
> *about* things that don't exist. In that case, I would find it hard to
> see why they are not false.
I will just go on with my post assuming that my definition of existance above
is consistant with your ideas about exisetance. If not, then you may want to
ignore a lot of the things I say hereafter and just focus on the existance
thing.
Mathamatical statements are about things that exist in our minds. They are
about our definitions and such. To assert that 2+2=4 can be interpreted as
asserting that 2+2=4 is a correct statement according to the given the rules
and definitions of math which exist in our minds and on paper that we write
them on and such.
> Lastly, perhaps you want to draw a distinction between a statement that
> refers to reality, and a statement that 'models' reality, and to claim
> that mathematical statements only do the second thing. In that case, I
> want to know more about that distinction.
Yes, that would be a good distinction to draw. A statement that models reality
could be thought of as a statement that refers to an abstraction derived from
reality. So "the cat is the cat" does not *model* reality, but "A=A" does. "If
you put 5 balls in a sack, then Jim put in 3 balls, there will be 8 balls to
remove from the sack" does not model reality, instead it refers to it directly.
But "5+3=8" does model reality. I am not 100% certain of my definition here. I
will keep thinking about it.
> > > 1. There are uncountably many numbers. Are there uncountably many
> > > concepts?
> >
> > Yes. I can concieve of a rabbit. I can concieve of a rabbit leaping
> > into a stream. I can concieve of a rabbit leaping into a stream and
> > swimming. There seem to me to be countless variations I can make to
> > concieve of unique instances of the rabbit leaping into the stream and
> > swimming. I could vary the rabbit, the scenery other than the stream.
> > The stream itsself, including all of its ripples and whatnot, the way
> > in which the rabbit swims, etc.
>
> It's doubtful whether there are even as many as, say, a million different
> ways you can conceive of the rabbit jumping into the stream. (Try it. I
> bet you don't get past 1000.)
I am very close to certain that I could think of more than a million ways. Even
if I attempted to think of the rabbit leaping into the water the exact same
way, one million times, I may actualy think if it one million very slightly
different ways, if my conceptions of the rabbit leaping into the stream differ
even a little.
If I try to immagine the same exact thing twice now, what I am immagining is
very similar, but I am not sure that they are identical, and they actualy do
seem very slightly different.
>
> > Even if I could not concieve of
> > countless ways of rabbits jumping insto streams and swimming, I could
> > simply keep adding to the complexity of the situation without limit.
>
> I think what you mean is that you could combine a finite set of simple
> concepts into more and more complex combinations, yielding indefinitely
> many of these complex concepts. An example is provided by the way you can
> make longer and longer sentences in the propositional calculus, just
> recombining the atomic sentences and the connectives.
Yes, I could do this. Just as a mathamatician could combine an N number of 1's
to form any positive integer he wanted.
> All the possible combinations generated in such a way would form a
> countable set. A countable set is a set that can be put in 1-1
> correspondence with the set of natural numbers (the 'counting numbers',
> hence the terminology). However, there are uncountably many real numbers
> (as Cantor showed a while back).
>
> > Thus there are countless concepts.
>
> Also, what you're referring to are potential concepts, not actual
> concepts. What is the status of merely potential objects?
The status? They don't exist until they are concieved of, just as the
abstraction "the number 466775" did not exist until someone abstracted it in
their minds, even though there was likely 466775 specific instances of
something, or degrees, or something, before then.
> > > 2. There is a number greater than 100. Is there a concept greater
> > than
> > > 100?
> >
> > You are taking a certain class of concepts -- mathamatical concepts,
> > and trying to apply properties of that concept to other concepts where
> > the properties don't apply.
>
> No I'm not.
Hm, it seems to me that you are. I don't see anything wrong with different
concepts having different properties. If I say math concepts have certain
properties than other concepts don't have, there doesn't seem to be anything
inherantly wrong with that. It doesn't seem any more wrong than saying that
electrons or photons or waves have properties that people don't have. If you
say that people are made up of electrons and such, I would reply that
non-mathamatical concepts posess mathamatical properties.
> > (Similarly, is there a prime concept? A concept that, when divided
> > > by 2, yields the concept multiplied by itself?)
> >
> > Not a non-mathamatical prime concept. All you seem to be showing here
> > is that some concepts have certain properties that other classes of
> > concepts don't have.
>
> No, I'm showing here that some numbers have properties that concepts don't
> have.
That other concepts don't have, that is.
> You claimed that a number is a concept. But no one (except you!)
> thinks that there is such a thing as a prime concept.
If numbers are a subsclass of concepts, they do. I am pretty sure I am not the
only one who thinks that. I will check later though.
> No one thinks that
> it makes sense to 'multiply a concept by another concept.' That is a
> category error, like trying weigh Beethoven's 9th Symphony.
Though people including myself think it makes sense to apply the concept of
multiplication to only mathamatical conepts, and not other concepts, and of
these mathamatical concepts only numbers or matrices and such, not other
mathamatical operations.
> > Cannot be named? In theory, or you just mean there are too many to name
> > them all? If the later, one of my infinite rabbit examples would work.
>
> Both. Between any two real numbers, there are uncountably many other real
> numbers. The proportion of numbers that actually have names is, well, 0.
> (The mathematicians would say: "It's a set of measure 0.")
Exactly zero? I would say infentesimaly small, but for some reason you don't
seem to believe in that. Though I am no math expert. In any case, if math is
actualy defined so that this proportion is zero, then I would point to this as
a case where the rules of mathamatics do not accurately model reality, and show
their nature as abstract concepts springing from our definitions and axioms and
not from reality. However, I am only in calculus 2 right now, so I could be
wrong.
> The rational
> numbers plus a few of the irrational numbers have names because they're
> special, such as pi, e, and the square root of 2. Those numbers form an
> infinitesimal (or, since I don't believe in infinitesimals, 0) fraction of
> the total of all the real numbers. To put it in other terms, if you had
> an infinitely sharp dart and you threw it at the real number line, the
> probability that you would hit an irrational number is 1. The probability
> that it would be one of the special irrational numbers like pi, e, etc.,
> is 0.
It seems that there is not some special quality of these irrational numbers
like pi and e that would make them less likely to be struck by other irrational
numbers, so, let us try this:
Suppose you throw this dart and it hits some specific irrational number. The
probability of it hitting this specific irrational number should have been the
same as the probability of it hitting any other specific irrational number. Pi
is another specific irrational number, so the probability of it hitting this
specific one and pi should have been exactly the same. However, the probability
of hitting pi was 0, so the probability of hitting the number that you just hit
is zero. But you just hit it, so how can that be? This is why to me it makes
sense to call it infinitesimal and not zero.
Again though you've likely completed much higher level math courses than me, so
maybe there really is some reason why the probability of hitting pi or e is
actualy less than that of hitting any other specific irrational number, or
maybe there is some solution to the puzzle above that makes sense.
>> > 4. A concept (according to User) is in your head. Is the number 2
>> > literally in my head? When I get in my car on the freeway, is the
>> number
>> > 2 traveling at 60 mph?
>>
>> The brain pattern(or some other aspect of the brain) that *represents
>> the concept of number* is, including the concept of the number 2.
>[my emphasis]
>
>But I didn't ask if a brain pattern or even a concept was traveling at
>60mph. I asked if the number 2 was traveling at 60 mph.
This is slightly weird, and it has made me think about it a little, and I'll
probably have to think about it more later, but here is a preliminary response:
Immagine a computer game, like quake2. You are playing a this game in your car,
while on the freeway. Your character is walking around in some cave. Would it
make sense to say that your character is traveling at 60 mph? Certainly his
representation is, but the actual character? It doesn't seem to make sense that
he is, but as the character is simply a manifestation of a physical process
that is traveling, then in a strict sense he is. There is no platonic form for
quake2, right?
Similarly, if instead of an actual model of an entire physical thing (a person,
your character), your brain was producing a model of a certain characteristic
of a pair of things, then it would make as much sense to say that this
characteristic was traveling as it would in the earlier example.
It seems weird to think of the number two traveling, yet in a strict sense,
since the number two is a concept, and the concept is located in your brain,
then while you are concieving of the number two and moving at 60mph, the number
two is moving at 60mph.
I am not certain of this concusion, and it does look sort of odd, yet this may
simply be because we usualy just ignore the fact that numbers are simply
concepts existing in our minds. So when we do start talking about them in that
sense, it seems odd, just like talking about the actual character in the game
moving at 60mph is odd. In this case I think it seems even more odd because we
have a better understanding of exactly how the game is programmed, and such,
and with math concepts we are more used to projecting them onto reality and
giving them objective existance.
>This is, of course, the flip side of my earlier argument. According to
>your theory, the number 2 is a configuration of neurons in someone's head,
>or something like that. It follows that, according to you, any property
>that a number can have, a configuration of neurons can have, and vice
>versa.
The "vice versa" part doesn't seem to follow. If math concepts are a subset of
all possible configurations of neurons, then it does not seem to follow that
all properties of configurations of neurons can be had by math concepts.
Also, I think you are mixing up the representation and the actual concept. Does
it follow that all properties of the worlds that quake2 models are also
properties of the way in which the information in quake2 is represented? After
all, the worlds are reducable to bits of ones and zeroes, yet a world can be
grassy whereas just the configuration of bits apart from what it represents
cannot.
>All of which seems pretty illogical. Of course you *could* just say,
>"Nope, I endorse all of those consequences." But then, I could also
>maintain in much the same way that I am Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. The
>question is whether all those things *really* seem right to you.
Well, I will admit that I believe they are true with a lower probability than
before, but I still think it is much more likely than numbers dont really
exist. I currently think that the weirdness that seems to be present in my
theory is a result of the wrong way of thinking about such things, and the
imprecision of language and certain concepts I have, or me not just realizing
good arguments yet. If by next week I still haven't clarified the issue better
in my mind then I'll feel more like abandoning my position.
>> There were no abstract concepts of numbers, but there were certainly
>> specific instances of things that could theoreticly be grouped in two.
>
>Number terms, of course, are used in two different kinds of contexts--they
>appear as adjectives and as nouns:
>
>(1) There are 9 planets in the solar system.
>(2) 9 is greater than 7.
>
>You might say that facts such as (1) were true, but there were no facts
>such as (2).
>
>This then raises the following interesting question: In your view, is
>there any connection between the use of "9" in sentence 1, and its use in
>sentence 2?
I think (2) just uses an abstract notion of numbers, that has no objective
existance by itsself yet is derived from things with existance.
>> > And what is it that these particular instances of 'two things' are
>> > instances of? Are they instances of themselves? (Probably not.)
>>
>> Why probably not? A rock is an instance of a rock. Two rocks are two
>> instances of a rock. This is sort of like a=a.
>
>Sounds more like a=/=a to me. A rock isn't "an instance of" itself; it
>just IS itself.
Okay, maybe I should not have used the term intsances of. Two is simply an
abstraction for two things. In the latter cause, we use "two" to refer to
things that we can group into a pair by some criteria.
>> What I just layed out for you doesn't seem circular to me. Hopefuly it
>> will be clear to you as well.
>
>Maybe what you intend is something like a Randian concept of
>concepts--concepts are just groupings of concretes. The concept '2' is
>the concept--that is, is just the mental grouping together--of all pairs
>of things.
Hmm, that may be like what I mean, I haven't read ITOE though, so I am not sure
. >I think, however, that this view of concepts also leads
>directly into the Randian view of 'meaning', and we all know how badly
>flawed that is.
Yes, but how exactly do you think it leads to that view?
-User
User 1DE7
>From: Owl a@a.a
>Date: 7/4/00 7:01 PM Central Daylight Time
>Message-id: <8jtts0$9op$1...@slb7.atl.mindspring.net>
>GENERAL ARGUMENT FOR PLATONISM
>
>Definitions: For our purposes, 'Platonism' will be the view that abstract
>objects exist necessarily. 'Abstract objects' will be taken to include
>things like numbers, propositions, universals, and/or sets.
Propositions exist apart from in our minds? That is the strangest thing I have
heard yet. Maybe you are not claiming that though. I am not sure what exactly
you mean by "nessesarily exists."
>Platonism
>will be taken to be true if there is at least one abstract object that
>necessarily exists. Since the existence of concrete things is generally
>accepted to be contingent (except for St. Anselm's claim that God exists
>necessarily, but he's wrong), Platonism thus defined implies that the
>existence of abstract objects is independent of the existence of concrete
>objects. I.e., that abstract objects (at least one of them) exist
>regardless of the disposition of the concrete things in the world--which
>is closely connected with traditional 'platonistic' claims.
Still not sure what exactly you mean by exist, see my comments in my other post
in this thread.
>Argument A:
>Premise 1. It is logically necessary that 2 is prime.
Not sure what you mean. The definition of 2, along with the definition of
prime, nesessitates that 2 is prime.
>Premise 2. The form of the proposition that 2 is prime is: Pa.
> (where 'P' is a predicate and 'a' an individual constant)
>Premise 3. The truth conditions of a statement of the form Pa are as
>follows:
> that there exist an object denoted by "a" that has the property
>ascribed
> by "P".
An object? Then I'd say you can't use 2 for a, since 2 is not an object.
However, I don't see why these truth conditions are this way (why it has to be
an object), but if they are that way, then calling 2 an object is not valid.
>Premise 4. The numeral "2" denotes 2 (in any possible world), if it
>denotes
> anything.
Ok.
>5. The truth conditions of the statement that 2 is prime are that there
>exist an object denoted by "2" that has the property ascribed by "is
>prime." (from 2,3)
Maybe you don't mean non-concept object, and this object could just be a
concept.
>6. The truth conditions of the statement that 2 is prime are that 2 exist
>and have the property ascribed by "is prime." (from 4,5)
Right, the concept exists, and by definition what is prime, two is a prime
mathamatical concept.
>7. It is logically necessary that 2 exist and have the property ascribed
>by "is prime."
Right, the concept two exists and is prime.
>8. It is logically necessary that 2 exists.
>
Yes, the math concept two.
As you can see, I don't think your proof rules out 2 being a concept, and
primality being a concept, and this concept existing.
>Argument B*:
>1. It is necessary that it is true that all bachelors are unmarried.
Right, by the definition of a bachelor. "Bachelor" itsself is a concept.
>2. The proposition that it is true that all bachelors are unmarried has
>the form: Ta.
>3. Same as 3 above.
Ok, if concepts qualify as objects, all is well.
>4. The expression "that all bachelors are unmarried" denotes the
>proposition that all bachelors are unmarried (in any possible world), if
>it denotes anything.
>
>5-7: analogous to 5-7 above.
>8. It is logically necessary that the proposition that all bachelors are
>unmarried exists.
I don't see that your proofs exclude that proposition existing as a concept in
someones head.
-User
Brian Scheetz
Owl <a@a.a> wrote in message news:8k44jl$hpo$1...@slb7.atl.mindspring.net...
> Brian Scheetz <Scheet...@cs.com> wrote in message
> news:8k3j5u$59u$1...@sshuraab-i-1.production.compuserve.com...
> > > flawed that is.
> >
> > believes, after all of the arguments about it, that it is flawed.
>
> You forgot the other, even more powerful piece of evidence that the theory
> is flawed: Dbuel believes it.
>
Ouch.
Hey wait - I thought dbuel was just User's other name. Aren't they the same
guy?
Brian Scheetz
Owl <a@a.a> wrote in message news:8k44jl$hpo$1...@slb7.atl.mindspring.net...
> Brian Scheetz <Scheet...@cs.com> wrote in message
> news:8k3j5u$59u$1...@sshuraab-i-1.production.compuserve.com...
> > > flawed that is.
> >
> > believes, after all of the arguments about it, that it is flawed.
>
> You forgot the other, even more powerful piece of evidence that the theory
> is flawed: Dbuel believes it.
>
Wait - maybe dbuel mistakenly thinks he believes it, but actually doesn't.
You know - like Kolker.
db...@tampatrib.com
Owl <a@a.a> wrote:
> You forgot the other, even more powerful piece of evidence that the
theory
> is flawed: Dbuel believes it.
How would you know?
-- at no extra charge
Owl
> For instance, if there was an abstration like A=A, and there was a
universe
> (like ours, maybe), in which you could replace A with anything that
existed,
> and you'd have a true statement, I would not say that "A=A" actualy
"existed."
> I would say that perhaps "A=A is true for all things that exist in
universe U",
> but this would not nessesarily imply that A=A had some objective
existance
> itsself.
>
> Is that compatible with your usage of existance as it refers to
abstractions?
We have to be careful here. The sentence,
A=A exists.
is ungrammatical, so I would neither affirm nor deny it. (Because "A=A"
isn't a noun but a whole sentence.) What would be grammatical would be
the likes of:
The fact that A=A exists.
The proposition that A=A exists.
The statement that A=A exists.
The belief that A=A exists.
I believe all four of those, although I think the latter two are
contingent (if all the people in the world died, the last two would become
false). I'm not sure if this is answering your question, but in your
example, I would say that the fact that A=A exists. (There is such a
fact.)
Why say that it 'exists'? Well, you could construct an argument like the
'general argument for platonism' given earlier. All you need is a true
statement about the fact that A=A, that is of the form Pa.
> Mathamatical statements are about things that exist in our minds. They
are
> about our definitions and such. To assert that 2+2=4 can be interpreted
as
> asserting that 2+2=4 is a correct statement according to the given the
rules
> and definitions of math which exist in our minds and on paper that we
write
> them on and such.
This reminds me of a proposal that someone once made about the meanings of
proper names. The question was something like, whether you could give a
definition for a proper name. The proposal was that "John Smith" means
"the person who is called 'John Smith'." Then some analytic philosopher
pointed out that this was like saying "frupple" means "the thing that is
called a 'frupple'".
Your theory is something like this: when I say, "2+2=4," that means, "The
statement that 2+2=4 is true (or correct, or follows from some other
statement, or whatever)." I think you can see the circularity here.
Also, of course, there's the question of what exactly the rules themselves
mean.
> > It's doubtful whether there are even as many as, say, a million
different
> > ways you can conceive of the rabbit jumping into the stream. (Try it.
I
> > bet you don't get past 1000.)
>
> I am very close to certain that I could think of more than a million
ways. Even
> if I attempted to think of the rabbit leaping into the water the exact
same
> way, one million times, I may actualy think if it one million very
slightly
> different ways, if my conceptions of the rabbit leaping into the stream
differ
> even a little.
Don't be so certain. We know from computers, movies, and such, that human
visual acuity only allows the discrimination of about 2 million colors at
the outside, about 22 changes per second (the speed of a film that looks
like continuous motion), and, well, some finite number of dots in the
visual field (the resolution that looks to a human eye like a continuous
field of view). I'm pretty sure, however amazing your imagination is,
that it's a good deal less detailed than the most detailed visual
experience.
Anyway, you didn't respond to the point that concepts in a mind would form
only a countable infinity, not an uncountable infinite like the real
numbers.
> The status? They don't exist until they are concieved of, just as the
> abstraction "the number 466775" did not exist until someone abstracted
it in
> their minds, even though there was likely 466775 specific instances of
> something, or degrees, or something, before then.
So for example, the claim that there are infinitely many prime numbers is
false?
> Hm, it seems to me that you are. I don't see anything wrong with
different
> concepts having different properties.
No, but there is a problem with concepts having properties that it doesn't
make any sense to say a concept has!
> seem to believe in that. Though I am no math expert. In any case, if
math is
> actualy defined so that this proportion is zero, then I would point to
this as
Actually, strictly speaking, there is no such thing as the proportion,
because you can't perform division or other arithmetical operations on
'infinity,' which isn't a real number.
> a case where the rules of mathamatics do not accurately model reality,
and show
> their nature as abstract concepts springing from our definitions and
axioms and
> not from reality. However, I am only in calculus 2 right now, so I could
be
> wrong.
What, you mean there's some reality out there that the mathematical rules
are at variance with? How can that be? Now it sounds like you're
prepared to make a distinction, somehow, between the mathematical systems
that are correct, and the ones that aren't. But how can you do that,
without an independent reality for them to correspond to?
> Again though you've likely completed much higher level math courses than
me, so
> maybe there really is some reason why the probability of hitting pi or e
is
> actualy less than that of hitting any other specific irrational number,
or
> maybe there is some solution to the puzzle above that makes sense.
No, they're all probability 0. That doesn't mean none of them will
happen, though. But that's another discussion. (Expect some weird shit
when you start talking about infinity.)
> . >I think, however, that this view of concepts also leads
> >directly into the Randian view of 'meaning', and we all know how badly
> >flawed that is.
>
> Yes, but how exactly do you think it leads to that view?
I claim that meanings are ideas in the mind, whereas referents are things
in the world. However, if an idea is nothing but a grouping of concretes,
then it would seem to follow that you have the same idea whenever you have
the same grouping; hence, the same meaning whenever you have the same
reference.
In the non-Randian theory, meanings are differentiated by the properties
that are required to fall under a given concept, rather than by the set of
actual, concrete objects.
Owl
User 1DE7 <user...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20000707195634...@ng-md1.aol.com...
> Propositions exist apart from in our minds? That is the strangest thing
I have
> heard yet. Maybe you are not claiming that though. I am not sure what
exactly
> you mean by "nessesarily exists."
It means "could not fail to exist". Roughly speaking: they would exist no
matter what (they can't be destroyed, etc.); however the concrete objects
in the world were arranged, they would still exist.
> >Premise 1. It is logically necessary that 2 is prime.
So, there is no possible way to make it false that 2 is prime; however the
concrete things in the world were arranged, 2 would still be prime; 2
couldn't have failed to be prime; etc. For those who believe in the
concepts of 'possibility' and such at all (which is excluding
Objectivists), this is uncontroversial.
(Descartes thought, bizarrely enough, that God created the laws of
mathematics, and could make them different if he wanted. So God could
make it so that 2+2 was 7, or so squares had 5 sides, etc. The reason why
this is incoherent is premise 1.)
> >Premise 2. The form of the proposition that 2 is prime is: Pa.
> > (where 'P' is a predicate and 'a' an individual constant)
This is necessary because there are some sentences whose logical form is
different from what appears at first glance. E.g., the form of "The
average man has 2.3 children" is not 'Pa', even though the grammar would
suggest that. This is revealed by consideration of logical implications,
e.g.:
"Pa" entails "(Ex) Px" (something has P).
But "The average man has 2.3 children" does not entail, "Someone has 2.3
children."
Since the form of "the average man has 2.3 children" is not "Pa", the
truth of the sentence does not require that there exist an entity denoted
by "the average man."
Premise 2 is, then, necessary to the argument. Its truth is demonstrated
by consideration of the logical relations between various sentences.
E.g.,
2 is prime.
All prime numbers are divisible by themselves.
Therefore, 2 is divisible by itself.
is a valid inference. In general, I promise that you won't find any
examples of inferences in which "2 is prime" behaves differently from
"Pa."
> >Premise 3. The truth conditions of a statement of the form Pa are as
> >follows: that there exist an object denoted by "a" that has the
property
> >ascribed by "P".
"a" must refer to something. It doesn't matter whether what it refers to
is a substance, property, event, or whatever. However, if it refers to
nothing, as in, "The king of France is bald," where "the king of france"
refers to nothing, then the sentence is not true.
Thus, if "2" referred to nothing, then "2 is prime" would not be true.
> >Premise 4. The numeral "2" denotes 2 (in any possible world), if it
> >denotes anything.
> >5. The truth conditions of the statement that 2 is prime are that there
> >exist an object denoted by "2" that has the property ascribed by "is
> >prime." (from 2,3)
> >6. The truth conditions of the statement that 2 is prime are that 2
exist
> >and have the property ascribed by "is prime." (from 4,5)
At this point, we've established that, in order for "2 is prime" to be
true, 2 has to exist. This might seem obvious, but enough philosophers
have denied it.
> >7. It is logically necessary that 2 exist and have the property
ascribed
> >by "is prime."
>
> Right, the concept two exists and is prime.
In your view, concepts are just configurations of your brain, so if
someone rearranges your brain, the concept doesn't exist any more. Since
the existence of brains is contingent, that would mean it is contingent
that 2 exists, it would be possible to destroy 2, etc.
However, in fact it is necessary that 2 exists.
db...@tampatrib.com
Brian Scheetz <Scheet...@cs.com> wrote:
> Hey wait - I thought dbuel was just User's other name. Aren't they
the same
> guy?
This is what you said to me June 18:
"You're wasting your breath. User, Wrathbone, Owl, et al are addicted
to solipsism.
"It is imperative to their approach that 'logic' remain divorced by
'fact,' because they want to be free to offer up intricate, stylized
'proofs' of their positions, and don't want the elegant veneer of their
formations disturbed by anything as annoying as reality.
"Of course, at the same time, they want to take advantage of the fact
that, to most people, 'logical' means the same thing as 'rational' in
common usage. When User says, 'Look at my logically-proven argument,'
most people would assume that means 'proven as *right*,' and not
'proven as internally consistent.' "
You didn't have any trouble keeping straight who was who then.
-- at no extra charge
User 1DE7
>From: Owl a@a.a
>Date: 7/8/00 9:32 AM Central Daylight Time
>Message-id: <8k7e0n$2ke$1...@nntp9.atl.mindspring.net>
>> >Premise 1. It is logically necessary that 2 is prime.
>
>So, there is no possible way to make it false that 2 is prime; however the
>concrete things in the world were arranged, 2 would still be prime; 2
>couldn't have failed to be prime; etc. For those who believe in the
>concepts of 'possibility' and such at all (which is excluding
>Objectivists), this is uncontroversial.
Similarly, suppose I define 4 abstract things that I will call quobs: "yargle",
"snargle", "blargle", and "flargle". I also define an abstract procedure called
"jarf".
When jarf is applied to either yargle or flargle, the result is snargle. When
jarf is applied to blargle, the result is itsself: blargle. When jarf is
applied to snargle, the result is yargle.
Now, suppose I say that something is considered to be trzak if one or more
application of jark to it will yield snargle eventualy. So blargle is the only
quob that is not trzak. All of the other three quobs are trzak.
It seems that I can now say that "yargle is trzak" the same way that you can
say that "2 is prime." They are both systems in which there are abstract things
(numbers for you, quobs for me), at least one abstract procedure (squaring,
jarfing), and some property of these things that we have given a name (prime,
trzak).
So we can now use your platonic argument for my system defined above:
Premise 1. It is logically necessary that yargle is trzak.
Premise 2. The form of the proposition that yargle is trzak is: Pa. (where
'P' is a predicate and 'a' an individual constant)
Premise 3. The truth conditions of a statement of the form Pa are as follows:
that there exist an object denoted by "a" that has the property ascribed by
"P".
etc, etc...
Do you think yargles and flargles and snargles are objective now?
>> >Premise 1. It is logically necessary that 2 is prime.
>
>So, there is no possible way to make it false that 2 is prime; however the
>concrete things in the world were arranged, 2 would still be prime; 2
>couldn't have failed to be prime; etc. For those who believe in the
>concepts of 'possibility' and such at all (which is excluding
>Objectivists), this is uncontroversial.
And isn't it just as logicaly nessesary that yargle is trzak? There is no
possible way to arrange things so that that is false.
>2 is prime.
>All prime numbers are divisible by themselves.
>Therefore, 2 is divisible by itself.
>
>is a valid inference. In general, I promise that you won't find any
>examples of inferences in which "2 is prime" behaves differently from
>"Pa."
Yargle is trzak
All trzak numbers eventualy yeild snargle from repeated applications of jark.
Therefore, yargle will eventualy yield snargle from repeated applications of
jark.
So it seems that immaginary or fictional things can be put into your Pa form
and it does not imply that either the object or the property really exists.
(assuming you're not going to tell me that yargle is objective)
>> >Premise 3. The truth conditions of a statement of the form Pa are as
>> >follows: that there exist an object denoted by "a" that has the
>property
>> >ascribed by "P".
>
>"a" must refer to something. It doesn't matter whether what it refers to
>is a substance, property, event, or whatever.
But in my case it refers to something that I just defined with no objective
existance. I think it does this in your case too.
>However, if it refers to
>nothing, as in, "The king of France is bald," where "the king of france"
>refers to nothing, then the sentence is not true.
But both "2 is prime" and "yargle is trzak" are true. So there can be true
statements about fictional things, or things that are simply defined, it seems,
no?
>Thus, if "2" referred to nothing, then "2 is prime" would not be true.
>
<insert yargle-analogy here>
>At this point, we've established that, in order for "2 is prime" to be
>true, 2 has to exist. This might seem obvious, but enough philosophers
>have denied it.
>
I don't think so, for the above reasons.
>> >7. It is logically necessary that 2 exist and have the property
>ascribed
>> >by "is prime."
>>
>> Right, the concept two exists and is prime.
>
>In your view, concepts are just configurations of your brain, so if
>someone rearranges your brain, the concept doesn't exist any more. Since
>the existence of brains is contingent, that would mean it is contingent
>that 2 exists, it would be possible to destroy 2, etc.
Well, my position has been revised slightly. The number 2 is not merrely a
concept. The number two refers to a fictional thing, like yargle. So while you
can destroy someones concept of yargle, or 2, by destroying their brain, you
can't destroy either yargle or 2 because neither actualy exist.
-User
User 1DE7
>From: Owl a@a.a
>Message-id: <8k7d10$n2e$1...@slb6.atl.mindspring.net>
>
> The fact that A=A exists.
> The proposition that A=A exists.
> The statement that A=A exists.
> The belief that A=A exists.
>
>I believe all four of those, although I think the latter two are
>contingent (if all the people in the world died, the last two would become
>false). I'm not sure if this is answering your question, but in your
>example, I would say that the fact that A=A exists. (There is such a
>fact.)
>
>Why say that it 'exists'? Well, you could construct an argument like the
>'general argument for platonism' given earlier. All you need is a true
>statement about the fact that A=A, that is of the form Pa.
See my other response in the platonism subthread, that deals with snargles and
quods and such.
I would not say that "the fact that X exists", facts don't exist, the things
they are about exists and are the case.
When I say "it is a fact that the cat is on the mat" then I am saying that "it
is the case that the cat is on the mat", but the fact itsself doesn't exist,
the fact is simply a statement of what is the case.
If the fact itsself existed, then I could do something like:
(assume the cat is on the mat)
It is a fact that the cat is on the mat.
But, since the above fact exists in some sense, then I can say:
It is a fact that [the a fact that the cat is on the mat] exists.
Then:
It is a fact that [the fact that [the a fact that the cat is on the mat]
exists.] exists.
etc, on forever.
Now, maybe an infinite chain of facts like that does objectively exist for each
fact, I don't think so, but I guess the above is really not a convincing reason
against it, it is just a sort of weird consequence.
Anyway, it just doesn't make sense to me to think that claiming something is a
fact is claiming anything other than what you say to be a fact is the case.
When I refer to facts I am not saying the facts exist themselves, but what is
allegedly a fact is the case, and nothing more.
We could totaly dispense with the word "fact" and just use "is the case"
without any loss of meaning.
So instead of "it is a fact that the cat is on the mat" or "it is a fact that
rabbits eat lettice" if you simple said "it is the case that the cat is on the
mat" and "it is the case that rabbits eat lettice", then no meaning is lossed.
I think that thinking that facts are real is a consequence just of english
grammar perhaps, due to referring to facts as nouns. When looking at my "it is
the case that.." examples, what can you say objectively exists?
["it is the case that the cat is on the mat" exists]
Hmm, doesn't make sense, even aside from the fact that it isn't gramatical.
>This reminds me of a proposal that someone once made about the meanings of
>proper names. The question was something like, whether you could give a
>definition for a proper name. The proposal was that "John Smith" means
>"the person who is called 'John Smith'." Then some analytic philosopher
>pointed out that this was like saying "frupple" means "the thing that is
>called a 'frupple'".
It does mean the person who is called john smith, but that is simply implicit
in saying "john smith", there is nothing more primary about it. The frupple
example seems to make sense too. When you give something a name, the name
refers to what you give it to. It doesn't refer to itsself. So frupple refers
to what you gave that name to, in other words, it refers to the thing that is
called frupple. That seems like a decent definition to me.
>Your theory is something like this: when I say, "2+2=4," that means, "The
>statement that 2+2=4 is true (or correct, or follows from some other
>statement, or whatever)."
2+2=4 follows from the axioms of math, which were defined to be true, just as
in my other post, yargle is defined to be trzak, and it is true that yargle is
trzak in the same sense as 2 is prime.
> I think you can see the circularity here.
I don't know about circularity. I see some sort of infinite regression hinted
at by your summary. For if it followed from some other statement, then that
statement would really mean "this statement follows from statement X" and
statement X would mean "this statement follows from statement Y", etc.
But, in the case of math or my quod example in this subthread, axioms are
define to be true, and that is the starting point.
It seems like there is actualy two types of truth, and maybe english should
have two words for them instead of one. There is truth in the sense that X is
true means that it is the case that X (or X corresponds to reality), and there
is the true in the sense of math and quod statements, where axioms are simply
defined to be true and then more complex true statements just need to be
consistant with them.
I am not positive these two types are distinct though, I'll have to think about
it some more. They seem to be, and my preliminary diagnosis is that you see the
second kind as no different fromt h first kind.
>> I am very close to certain that I could think of more than a million
>ways. Even
>> if I attempted to think of the rabbit leaping into the water the exact
>same
>> way, one million times, I may actualy think if it one million very
>slightly
>> different ways, if my conceptions of the rabbit leaping into the stream
>differ
>> even a little.
>
>Don't be so certain. We know from computers, movies, and such, that human
>visual acuity only allows the discrimination of about 2 million colors at
>the outside, about 22 changes per second (the speed of a film that looks
>like continuous motion)
Hm, I am not positive that we are talking about the same thing, but a person
can tell the difference between playing quake2 at 90 frames per second and
playing at 120 frames per second, and it is very obvious at 60 vs 120, so I
hear. However, I personaly have only had the chance to compare 30 vs 50, and it
was very noticable to me. So this seems to indicate that humans can
discriminate more than 22 changes per second.
Also, the reason that film doesn't look choppy is party from some blending
effect of how film is shown, or residual images in your eye or something, I
think. That is why movies in theaters are only shown at like 22 frames per
second and live TV is shown at higher, I think 50-60 frames per second. I am
not positive about all this stuff, but I remember reading about it awhile ago.
I know TV has a higher FPS than films, just not how much higher.
This isn't too relevent though.
>and, well, some finite number of dots in the
>visual field (the resolution that looks to a human eye like a continuous
>field of view). I'm pretty sure, however amazing your imagination is,
>that it's a good deal less detailed than the most detailed visual
>experience.
Probably. Suppose though that I can immagine 100 different colors. Suppose also
that I can immagine the rabits head in one of six positions (up, down, forward,
back, right, left), and I can also immagine all four of its legs in 6 similar
positions, and I can mix and match these. All of those combinations of body
positions give me 7776 possibilities. Combining these with all of the different
colors I can immagine, I get 777,600 different ways it can leap into the water.
Suppose I also add 20 body positions. It can face north, south, west, or east,
and its body can also be tilted so that it is straight up, diagonaly up,
horizontal, diagonaly facing down, or verticaly facing down. This gives me
15,552,000 possibilities. Suppose I can immagine ten different types of
splashes. Suppose I can also immagine 100 different types of background
(forests, mountains, plains, cliffs, etc). This gives me 15,552,000,000
possibilities. So, that is larger than 1,000,000, and that is why I am pretty
certain that I could immagine over 1,000,000 different ways.
Anyway, I will accept that the number of ways I can immagine it is finite *if I
don't add complexity*, but adding complexity will produce infinite concepts,
although countably infinity, perhaps.
>Anyway, you didn't respond to the point that concepts in a mind would form
>only a countable infinity, not an uncountable infinite like the real
>numbers.
>
Perhaps this is so. I didn't think it that important. Some types of concepts
(math concepts) can form countable infinities and some (concepts about rabbits
and streams) cant. Now you will say "but numbers arent concepts, and this is
evidence that they aren't, since concepts cant be uncountably infinite. But,
when you say concepts can't be countably infinity, you assume that numbers
arent concepts, so you assume your conclusion. I do the same thing. When I say
concepts can be uncountably infinite, I assume numbers are math concepts
(actualy, I don't really want to refer to them as concepts anymore, see my
other post), and thus I seem to be right. The point is that we both can assume
our conclusion and conclude that numbers either are or arent concepts, so
asking whether concepts can be infinite doesn't really help if I can just claim
that math concepts are a special sort of concept that can be infinite.
However, I think I will stop refering to them as simply concepts now, since
I've come up with a better theory that is explained in my "velocity of the
number two" thread.
>> The status? They don't exist until they are concieved of, just as the
>> abstraction "the number 466775" did not exist until someone abstracted
>it in
>> their minds, even though there was likely 466775 specific instances of
>> something, or degrees, or something, before then.
>
>So for example, the claim that there are infinitely many prime numbers is
>false?
No, my above quote does not speak for me anymore, refer to my other responses
that I recently comopsed for my modified position.
>> a case where the rules of mathamatics do not accurately model reality,
>and show
>> their nature as abstract concepts springing from our definitions and
>axioms and
>> not from reality. However, I am only in calculus 2 right now, so I could
>be
>> wrong.
>
>What, you mean there's some reality out there that the mathematical rules
>are at variance with?
I was saying that perhaps the concept of infinity and the various mathamatical
things you can show with it does not model our reality, or, the only reality.
This could be because there is nothing infinite in reality, or, maybe there is
but our system of math doesn't handle infinity well, etc.
>Now it sounds like you're
>prepared to make a distinction, somehow, between the mathematical systems
>that are correct, and the ones that aren't. But how can you do that,
>without an independent reality for them to correspond to?
By using reality to test to see if they correspond? I don't see why I need some
other reality unless you think that math describes reality perfectly and I am
really talking about some other reality, when I am speaking of the reality that
we all know.
You have a system that models various relationships in reality, and you have
reality, and you can test to see how well the system can model reality, where
do the other realities come in?
For instance, which of these is true:
(1) For any line and point not on that line, there exists only one parallel
line passing through the point.
(2) For any line and point not on that line, there exists more than one
parallel line passing through the point.
(3) Neither one or two.
..?
-User
Mark Young
> Well, I think it follows from the fact that 2+2=4 that numbers are
> real. If so, that seems like powerful evidence that numbers exist --
> it is more powerful evidence than any evidence we have that physical
> objects exist.
Perhaps I've confused you with someone else -- but isn't it the case
that you believe that i (the square root of -1) does not exist? So
you take it that i*i=-1 is not a fact? If so, then how do you
distinguish that mathematical statement from 2+2=4?
...mark young
Owl
> Now, maybe an infinite chain of facts like that does objectively exist
for each
> fact, I don't think so, but I guess the above is really not a convincing
reason
> against it, it is just a sort of weird consequence.
Yes, I think there are infinite series of facts, and I'm sure there is
more than one way you can generate infinite series.
> We could totaly dispense with the word "fact" and just use "is the case"
> without any loss of meaning.
>
> So instead of "it is a fact that the cat is on the mat" or "it is a fact
that
> rabbits eat lettice" if you simple said "it is the case that the cat is
on the
> mat" and "it is the case that rabbits eat lettice", then no meaning is
lossed.
How would you deal with something like:
The book contained many important facts.
All of your insistences won't change the facts.
John said a lot of things, but the facts proved him wrong.
The fact that the roads were icy contributed to the accident.
You might try substituting "things that are the case" for "facts", but
there doesn't seem to be much point in that. Now you're just using
another noun, and I can just as well say that the things that are the case
exist.
> It does mean the person who is called john smith, but that is simply
implicit
> in saying "john smith", there is nothing more primary about it. The
frupple
> example seems to make sense too. When you give something a name, the
name
> refers to what you give it to. It doesn't refer to itsself. So frupple
refers
> to what you gave that name to, in other words, it refers to the thing
that is
> called frupple. That seems like a decent definition to me.
That's not a definition. A definition tells you what it means--not just
that it means whatever it means.
> But, in the case of math or my quod example in this subthread, axioms
are
> define to be true, and that is the starting point.
>
> It seems like there is actualy two types of truth, and maybe english
should
> have two words for them instead of one. There is truth in the sense that
X is
> true means that it is the case that X (or X corresponds to reality), and
there
> is the true in the sense of math and quod statements, where axioms are
simply
> defined to be true and then more complex true statements just need to be
> consistant with them.
>
> I am not positive these two types are distinct though, I'll have to
think about
> it some more. They seem to be, and my preliminary diagnosis is that you
see the
> second kind as no different fromt h first kind.
I don't believe in a second kind of truth. I don't think meaningless
marks or sounds can be true in any decent sense of the word "true," and I
don't think a sentence's truth can consist in the fact that someone says
it is true. (Which saying would appear to be vacuous.)
Owl
> Similarly, suppose I define 4 abstract things that I will call quobs:
"yargle",
> "snargle", "blargle", and "flargle". I also define an abstract procedure
called
> "jarf".
Okay, as soon as you define those words, then I'll consider arguments
about the things they refer to.
> When jarf is applied to either yargle or flargle, the result is snargle.
When
> jarf is applied to blargle, the result is itsself: blargle. When jarf is
> applied to snargle, the result is yargle.
>
> Now, suppose I say that something is considered to be trzak if one or
more
> application of jark to it will yield snargle eventualy. So blargle is
the only
> quob that is not trzak. All of the other three quobs are trzak.
All those sentences are meaningless--not even sentences, in fact. None of
those are words of English, or any other language that I know of, and you
never defined any of them either, either discursively or ostensively.
Gordon G. Sollars
In article <8jngv6$om0$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>, Mark Young writes...
> gsollars:
> > Yes, good quibble. It is hard to find enough terms to discuss the
> > various usages we each want without unintentionally biasing the
> > argument. Now, why do you make a distinction between the simple
> > attitude and the complex moral attitude?
>
> Because my moral attitudes have more consequences -- it's not *just*
> murder I dislike, but all those who commit it, and all those who feel
> that it's OK. With dried coconut (another thing I dislike), it stops
> at the dried coconut -- I don't dislike those who like dried coconut.
Do you have an explanation for why these consequences follow in the wake
of your moral attitudes but not of others? Do you think that moral
attitudes are related to other complex but non-moral attitudes in any
interesting way?
BTW, have you tried both sweetened and unsweetened dried coconut? Many
delicious south Indian dishes are prepared with unsweetened coconut. And
does your dislike extend to coconut milk?
> > And why do you hold these complex moral attitudes? My explanation is
> > that your moral psychology has been trained, more or less, to match
> > the moral facts.
>
> My moral attitudes have been trained -- by my parents, peers and,
> especially in my later years, by myself.
How is it that you train yourself? Are you removing inconsistencies or
adopting substantively new views? In either case it seems that you need
some guidance about what to reject or accept. Where does that come from?
> I note that others are
> trained to *other* moral attitudes -- the "iniquity of Jews" and the
> "perversion of homosexuality", for example. Why do you assume that
> it's *me* that's been trained to moral facts, and them to moral
> fictions?
Well, perhaps you have been trained to some moral fictions. People
commonly believe a mixture of fact and fiction about physical things, so
I don't find a similar situation in morality at all surprising. Nor am I
concerned, at least from the standpoint of the theoretical adequacy of
moral realism, with the fact that some people hold tenaciously to certain
moral fictions - this is true of other fictions as well. People
frequently tie the assessment of their own worth or their view of
themselves to fictions, and this can obviously lead them to strongly
defend such fictions.
I agree that the "iniquity of Jews" might only express an attitude. But
I also think that /judgments/ can be made about the iniquity of the Jews
or the perversion of homosexuality, and I think that many people do make
such judgments. Further, I think that when they are challenged to
provide the basis for such judgments they retreat to implausible
explanations - like flat Earth defenders - or simply to the statement
that they are "entitled to my opinion", itself a substantive moral
judgment.
Now you can inform me that /you/ never intend such expressions to be
judgments, but I think that that makes your discourse less interesting.
For instance, that you hold a certain attitude is not a very good reason
for me to change my mind about (what I take to be) some moral judgment,
unless I already have some reason to be concerned about your attitudes.
...
> > Also, can you say whether it is good that you hold a particular moral
> > attitude?
>
> I can. But I only intend to express my moral attitude toward that
> moral attitude when I do so....
Well, we are left with the same issues that were raised by your "training
yourself".
...
> >> Propositions are mathematical objects. Particular ones exist or not
> >> based on the axioms selected -- and different people select
> >> different axioms.
>
> > Mathematical objects only exist because of the axioms selected? How
> > do you account for there being true mathematical statements that can
> > not be proven?
>
> Goedel proved that there are mathematically true statements that cannot
> be proven *in any consistent formal system*. But we need a formal
> system to create statements (= propositions, in math).
>
> The axioms I had in mind are proposition formation axioms, not
> propositional truth axioms. Thus they are like the axioms for the
> naturals -- 0 exists; if n exists, n+1 exists.
I don't follow this. Formation axioms just tell us that we have a
grammatical sentence in some language. You say you are a realist about
physical things - I take this to mean that you believe that true
propositions can be made about physical things. The exact tokens used to
express such a proposition grammatically can be said to depend on
"formation axioms", but how, as a realist, can you say that "particular
propositions exist or not based upon the axioms selected"?
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Gordon G. Sollars
...
> Since none of the three options gives a satisfactory case against
> phlogistine, it seems we are perfectly justified in taking phlogistine
> claims to be expressing propositions that are (sometimes) true.
Let's see if I follow this, Mark. Your examples are intended to show
that (what I will call) our general language commitments appear to tie us
to the existence of "phlogistine claims" - yet there is no phlogiston.
So we should not conclude based upon the tie we have to moral claims that
there really is some moral thing, truth, world, etc.?
As a critique of Owl's position this might well be good - I see that he
has commented on your post. But, for myself, I am willing to allow that
moral claims /might/ turn out to be no better than phlogiston claims.
But I think that our reasons for rejecting the phlogiston theory are much
better than our reasons for rejecting all versions of moral realism.
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
User 1DE7
>From: Owl a@a.a
>Message-id: <8kefvn$ol6$7...@slb0.atl.mindspring.net>
>
>> We could totaly dispense with the word "fact" and just use "is the case"
>> without any loss of meaning.
>>
>> So instead of "it is a fact that the cat is on the mat" or "it is a fact
>that
>> rabbits eat lettice" if you simple said "it is the case that the cat is
>on the
>> mat" and "it is the case that rabbits eat lettice", then no meaning is
>lossed.
>
>How would you deal with something like:
>
>The book contained many important facts.
>All of your insistences won't change the facts.
>John said a lot of things, but the facts proved him wrong.
>The fact that the roads were icy contributed to the accident.
>You might try substituting "things that are the case" for "facts", but
>there doesn't seem to be much point in that. Now you're just using
>another noun, and I can just as well say that the things that are the case
>exist.
>
It seems that the "thing" in the phrase "things that are the case" actualy
refers to what is the case, and it does not mean that [that something is the
case] is a thing. Even now, "thing" isn't really the proper term from a literal
standpoint, since you shouldn't be using a noun there, but still the "thing" is
supposed to refer to [what is the case] and not [that it is the case].
Anyway, this seems to be just a peculularity with the english language, sort of
like "it is raining" where "it" is not a noun here.
When I say something is a fact, I am appealing directly to reality and not to
some abstract thing called a fact, which is some sort of go-between between me
and reality.
You could think of a statement of fact as a piece of reality. The fact simply
refers to reality. Im not sure how to describe it exactly since it seems so
primary. Maybe using fact as a noun does make sense if you keep in mind that
the fact simply refers to reality, and reality is a noun.
So to rephrase your sentances more literaly:
The book contained many important references to reality.
All of your insistences won't change reality.
John said a lot of things, but reality proved him wrong.
That the roads were icy contributed to the accident.
I don't think there is any meaning lost in those sentances.
>> It does mean the person who is called john smith, but that is simply
>implicit
>> in saying "john smith", there is nothing more primary about it. The
>frupple
>> example seems to make sense too. When you give something a name, the
>name
>> refers to what you give it to. It doesn't refer to itsself. So frupple
>refers
>> to what you gave that name to, in other words, it refers to the thing
>that is
>> called frupple. That seems like a decent definition to me.
>
>That's not a definition. A definition tells you what it means--not just
>that it means whatever it means.
Ok, maybe it isn't a definition, but it is true.
>> But, in the case of math or my quod example in this subthread, axioms
>are
>> define to be true, and that is the starting point.
>>
>> It seems like there is actualy two types of truth, and maybe english
>should
>> have two words for them instead of one. There is truth in the sense that
>X is
>> true means that it is the case that X (or X corresponds to reality), and
>there
>> is the true in the sense of math and quod statements, where axioms are
>simply
>> defined to be true and then more complex true statements just need to be
>> consistant with them.
>>
>> I am not positive these two types are distinct though, I'll have to
>think about
>> it some more. They seem to be, and my preliminary diagnosis is that you
>see the
>> second kind as no different fromt h first kind.
>
>I don't believe in a second kind of truth. I don't think meaningless
>marks or sounds can be true in any decent sense of the word "true,"
If you call the first kind of truth decent, then I would agree with you, but I
would also say that math and quod definitions rely on the indecent definition
of true.
>and I
>don't think a sentence's truth can consist in the fact that someone says
>it is true. (Which saying would appear to be vacuous.)
>
Well, the truth would simply be relative to the axioms in question. For
instance
"Given a line and a point not on that line, there exists only one paralell line
that goes through the point."
and
"Given a line and a point not on that line, there exists more than one paralell
line that goes through the point."
In math, if you assume either of these, then you reach things that are
considered true in that math system but false in the other, no? They are
considered true because they follow from what was defined to be true. Which one
of the above is false, btw?
-User
User 1DE7
>From: Owl a@a.a
>Message-id: <8kefvl$ol6$6...@slb0.atl.mindspring.net>
>> Similarly, suppose I define 4 abstract things that I will call quobs:
>"yargle",
>> "snargle", "blargle", and "flargle". I also define an abstract procedure
>called
>> "jarf".
>
>Okay, as soon as you define those words, then I'll consider arguments
>about the things they refer to.
They are defined in terms of their behavior and their properties. A yargle is
the thing that when you apply jarf to it is turns into snargle. You might say
that they are all defined in terms of eachother then and so there is
circularity there, but I don't really see that as a problem. They are still
well-defined enough for me to know their properties and to do all sorts of
operations on them. It still seems that I have defined yargle is trzak to be
true in the same way that mathamaticisns have defined two to be prime. The
difference seems to be that mathamaticians were trying to develop a tool with
practical uses and I am not.
However, I will try to come up with some sort of application to reality:
Suppose there are 4 kinds of meat that a meat-trader accepts. One kind for
every quod. Suppose the quods model how he trades meat. For instance, if yargle
symbolizes ham, and snargle symbolizes turkey, then he will only give out
turkey in exchange for ham, etc.
However, suppose there is also a vegatable trader who trades by the same
pattern, and suppose there are various other situations which my quods can
model. So, I simply think of my abstract quods when doing my calculations for
how to trade with whom, instead of thinking of the ham or turkey, etc.
Now do quods have objective existance?
Also, can you define "number" for me?
-User
Mark Young
>>> [W]hy do you make a distinction between the simple attitude and the
>>> complex moral attitude?
Mark Young:
>> Because my moral attitudes have more consequences -- it's not *just*
>> murder I dislike, but all those who commit it, and all those who
>> feel that it's OK. With dried coconut (another thing I dislike), it
>> stops at the dried coconut -- I don't dislike those who like dried
>> coconut.
gsollars:
> Do you have an explanation for why these consequences follow in the
> wake of your moral attitudes but not of others?
The fact that there are such consequences is what separates moral
attitudes from simpler attitudes. We would hardly call a dislike of
murder moral if it extended only to not performing it -- if it did not
infect the person's judgements of murderers. We'd call it
squeamishness, or perhaps something else non-moral. We wouldn't call
an attitude moral if it did not motivate us to condemn people who have
the opposite attitude. We'd call it partisanship, or some such.
> Do you think that moral attitudes are related to other complex but
> non-moral attitudes in any interesting way?
Interestingness is subjective. My moral attitudes are related to my
attitudes of belief in various ways, none of which seem particularly
interesting to me right now....
> BTW, have you tried both sweetened and unsweetened dried coconut?
> Many delicious south Indian dishes are prepared with unsweetened
> coconut. And does your dislike extend to coconut milk?
My loathing of dried cococut is so intense that it inhibits me from
trying other forms. I'd have to be both feeling relatively adventurous
and in a situation where the other kind was immediately available....
>>> And why do you hold these complex moral attitudes? My explanation
>>> is that your moral psychology has been trained, more or less, to
>>> match the moral facts.
>> My moral attitudes have been trained -- by my parents, peers and,
>> especially in my later years, by myself.
> How is it that you train yourself? Are you removing inconsistencies
> or adopting substantively new views?
Reconciling conflicting attitudes, which is approximately the same as
removing inconsistencies. I don't think I've adopted any substantive
new views lately, but there has been a fair amount of drift over the
years....
> In either case it seems that you need some guidance about what to
> reject or accept. Where does that come from?
I have all the guidance I need inside me. I respond to situations, and
I am aware of my responses, and I respond to *them* in their turn. If
I find myself lacking, I try to change myself into something I like
better.
>> I note that others are trained to *other* moral attitudes -- the
>> "iniquity of Jews" and the "perversion of homosexuality", for
>> example. Why do you assume that it's *me* that's been trained to
>> moral facts, and them to moral fictions?
> Well, perhaps you have been trained to some moral fictions. People
> commonly believe a mixture of fact and fiction about physical things,
> so I don't find a similar situation in morality at all surprising.
> Nor am I concerned, at least from the standpoint of the theoretical
> adequacy of moral realism, with the fact that some people hold
> tenaciously to certain moral fictions - this is true of other
> fictions as well. People frequently tie the assessment of their own
> worth or their view of themselves to fictions, and this can obviously
> lead them to strongly defend such fictions.
All true (tho' I'd have to say that some of them were false if I
followed Owl's strictures on the truth values of non-referring claims
;-).
> I agree that the "iniquity of Jews" might only express an attitude.
> But I also think that /judgments/ can be made about the iniquity of
> the Jews or the perversion of homosexuality,
You mean judgements about whether Jews are iniquitous or homosexuals
perverse, I take it. I'd again say that iniquity and perversion are
non-objective judgements -- what one person judges perverse another may
judge normal, and there is no all-encompassing point of view that
settles the question.
> and I think that many people do make such judgments. Further, I
> think that when they are challenged to provide the basis for such
> judgments they retreat to implausible explanations -
Explanations that *you* find implausible.
> like flat Earth defenders - or simply to the statement that they are
> "entitled to my opinion", itself a substantive moral judgment.
One I agree with -- they are entitled to their opinions (others
disagree). Then I form opinions about them based on the opinions they
express and the wheel goes round. Crank it all the way and you get
moral attitudes.
What you haven't addressed is the question of how *you* modify your
moral attitudes. How do you determine that one of your moral attitudes
is "fiction"? I take it you'd have to do that before you determined
that a moral attitude should be extinguished....
> Now you can inform me that /you/ never intend such expressions to be
> judgments,
You're using "judgment" as a synonym for proposition or claim here,
right?
> but I think that that makes your discourse less interesting.
So why do you keep responding :->.
> For instance, that you hold a certain attitude is not a very good
> reason for me to change my mind about (what I take to be) some moral
> judgment,
Of course not. And if I wanted you to change your judgement, I'd
appeal to (what I think are) *your* moral attitudes. I'd try to find a
way of framing the issue so that different of your underlying attitudes
were brought to bear (I don't think that your moral attitudes are
entirely consistent (= all give the same result to the same situation),
so this strategy can bear fruit).
I, in particular, do not find anyone's moral pronouncements very
interesting. I find especially boring unexplained comments to the
effect that I "must" X or Y, or that I should not Z.
On the other hand, I often find other (factual!) claims interesting.
I read about history and geography and economics and astronomy and
.... It's not that I find morality boring (as I find celebrity boring,
and much of what passes as politics boring) -- I do, after all, spend
a lot of time engaged in debates, like this one, about the *nature* of
morality. I don't recognize moral claims as claims about any fact of
nature, and so of interest only insofar as they have political
implications (the moral claims of a candidate for election, for
instance).
[...]
>>> Also, can you say whether it is good that you hold a particular
>>> moral attitude?
>> I can. But I only intend to express my moral attitude toward that
>> moral attitude when I do so....
> Well, we are left with the same issues that were raised by your
> "training yourself".
It's very simple, really. I have moral attitudes about much of what
goes on around me. Most of what goes on around me involves me, and so
I am often in the position to judge my own actions. Sometimes I fail.
When I analyse those failures, sometimes I decide it's because of some
moral attitude (intuition) I have -- and then my stronger moral
attitude is brought to bear on my weaker, in an attempt to prevent me
finding myself immoral again.
> ...
Mark Young:
>>>> Propositions are mathematical objects. Particular ones exist or
>>>> not based on the axioms selected -- and different people select
>>>> different axioms.
>>> Mathematical objects only exist because of the axioms selected?
>>> How do you account for there being true mathematical statements
>>> that can not be proven?
>> Goedel proved that there are mathematically true statements that
>> cannot be proven *in any consistent formal system*. But we need a
>> formal system to create statements (= propositions, in math).
>>
>> The axioms I had in mind are proposition formation axioms, not
>> propositional truth axioms. Thus they are like the axioms for the
>> naturals -- 0 exists; if n exists, n+1 exists.
> I don't follow this. Formation axioms just tell us that we have a
> grammatical sentence in some language.
Yes -- and you need a language to express a moral claim.
> You say you are a realist about physical things - I take this to mean
> that you believe that true propositions can be made about physical
> things.
Absolutely.
> The exact tokens used to express such a proposition grammatically can
> be said to depend on "formation axioms", but how, as a realist, can
> you say that "particular propositions exist or not based upon the
> axioms selected"?
Propositions are truth-carriers, and truth is correspondence between
something said and reality. Thus propositions are *representations* of
reality (or non-reality, as the case may be). There may be facts that
are not expressible in any given language (indeed, I believe that there
are bound to be), but that's not the same thing.
As a physics realist, I say that there are formal languages that allow
true propositions about physics to be built -- and that our common
claims about physics are linked to these propositions according to the
semantics of those languages. I am not commited by my realism to any
*particular* formal language (tho' I may have commitments formed for
other reasons), and so neither to any particular set of propositions.
As a moral anti-realist, I am committed only to there being no formal
language about morality that allows true propositions about morality to
be built (actually, my view is somewhat weaker than this, but let's
leave that aside for now). I am not committed to there even being a
way to form propositions that are appropriately linked to the common
claims about morality. There being no morality to correspond to, there
may be no fact of the matter as to whether some formal system captures
the system of morality that's commonly thought to exist.
Robert J. Kolker
Mark Young wrote:
> As a moral anti-realist, I am committed only to there being no formal
> language about morality that allows true propositions about morality to
> be built (actually, my view is somewhat weaker than this, but let's
> leave that aside for now). I am not committed to there even being a
> way to form propositions that are appropriately linked to the common
> claims about morality. There being no morality to correspond to, there
> may be no fact of the matter as to whether some formal system captures
> the system of morality that's commonly thought to exist.
There is a dual view of morality. One can calculate the likely
consequences of immoral behaviour ( such as a hostile
reaction from you neighbors ) and make factual or inductively
plausible statements about probable outcomes of immoral
behaviour. Pragmatics is just another way of viewing morality
and it is more accessible to empirical analysis.
Bob Kolker
Mark Young
>> Since none of the three options gives a satisfactory case against
>> phlogistine, it seems we are perfectly justified in taking
>> phlogistine claims to be expressing propositions that are
>> (sometimes) true.
gsollars;
> Let's see if I follow this, Mark. Your examples are intended to show
> that (what I will call) our general language commitments appear to
> tie us to the existence of "phlogistine claims" -
To be more precise -- phlogistine claims exist (as do moral claims).
> yet there is no phlogiston.
And yet there is no phlogistine.
> So we should not conclude based upon the tie we have to moral claims
> that there really is some moral thing, truth, world, etc.?
Right.
> As a critique of Owl's position this might well be good - I see that
> he has commented on your post. But, for myself, I am willing to
> allow that moral claims /might/ turn out to be no better than
> phlogiston claims.
> But I think that our reasons for rejecting the phlogiston theory are
> much better than our reasons for rejecting all versions of moral
> realism.
Me, too. I allowed that in the article you responded to.
Mark Young
>> As a moral anti-realist, I am committed only to there being no
>> formal language about morality that allows true propositions about
>> morality to be built (actually, my view is somewhat weaker than
>> this, but let's leave that aside for now). I am not committed to
>> there even being a way to form propositions that are appropriately
>> linked to the common claims about morality. There being no morality
>> to correspond to, there may be no fact of the matter as to whether
>> some formal system captures the system of morality that's commonly
>> thought to exist.
Robert J. Kolker:
> There is a dual view of morality. One can calculate the likely
> consequences of immoral behaviour ( such as a hostile
> reaction from you neighbors ) and make factual or inductively
> plausible statements about probable outcomes of immoral
> behaviour. Pragmatics is just another way of viewing morality
> and it is more accessible to empirical analysis.
Yes. This is relevent to my weaker view. I allow that some of the
realist re-interpretations of morality may result in true propositions.
I call them re-interpretations because they seem to me to be missing
some of what is commonly held to be true of morality. In particular,
most people do not view morality as equivalent to pragmatics -- the
good is to be done whatever the consequences to yourself. A person in
Nazi Germany could use the above to justify turning Jews in to the
govt -- if I had not there was a good chance my neighbours would find
out and I would be sent to a concentration camp myself -- plus, the
Allies aren't likely to track down every person who did that after they
win the war, so I'm unlikely to be punished for it. This is commonly
seen as rationalization of evil, and I (even in my moral anti-realism)
agree with that sentiment.
Gordon G. Sollars
...
> > How is it that you train yourself? Are you removing inconsistencies
> > or adopting substantively new views?
>
> Reconciling conflicting attitudes, which is approximately the same as
> removing inconsistencies.
When attitude A conflicts with attitude B, how do you decide which one
will give way (or if a new attitude will replace both)?
...
> > In either case it seems that you need some guidance about what to
> > reject or accept. Where does that come from?
>
> I have all the guidance I need inside me. I respond to situations, and
> I am aware of my responses, and I respond to *them* in their turn. If
> I find myself lacking, I try to change myself into something I like
> better.
So you like yourself better if you manifest certain attitudes rather than
others, and you adjust your attitudes in the direction of greater liking
of yourself? Do you find that your likings follow any pattern? Do you
treat the likings as coming from some hidden mechanism that can not be
observed?
...
> > I agree that the "iniquity of Jews" might only express an attitude.
> > But I also think that /judgments/ can be made about the iniquity of
> > the Jews or the perversion of homosexuality,
>
> You mean judgements about whether Jews are iniquitous or homosexuals
> perverse, I take it. I'd again say that iniquity and perversion are
> non-objective judgements -- what one person judges perverse another may
> judge normal, and there is no all-encompassing point of view that
> settles the question.
The issue is whether a person who judges someone as perverse or
iniquitous has good reasons for doing so. If not, he /ought/ to change
his judgment - whether he is willing to do so or not. For example, I
have heard people argue that the Jews are iniquitous "because they killed
Jesus" or that homosexuals are perverse "because animals do not engage in
homosexual behavior". The moment someone gives a reason there is an
objective component to the claim.
Now in some cases this component rests heavily on a single subjective
element. Thus you say "Dried coconut is bad because of the way it tastes
to me". Not having access to how things taste to you, I will probably be
willing to stipulate that you are correct about the attitude you relate,
but perhaps I have seen you enjoy dishes that I know contain dried
coconut, so even this claim /might/ be contested. Or I could suspect
that it is really only /sweetened/ dried coconut that you dislike, but
you do not know this.
In any event, you have characterized your attitude toward dried coconut
as a /simple/ attitude as opposed to the complexity that obtains with
moral attitudes. So I can grant that you have an uncontestable claim
about dried coconut, and still distinguish your moral expressions. The
very complexity of these attitudes makes the situation much less
subjective, allowing for many more avenues of investigation, as opposed
to everything turning on you relating the truth about how something
tastes
to you.
> > and I think that many people do make such judgments. Further, I
> > think that when they are challenged to provide the basis for such
> > judgments they retreat to implausible explanations -
>
> Explanations that *you* find implausible.
The example explanations I gave above /are/ implausible. Are you
claiming that all explanations are equally good or that no reasonable
account of plausibility can be given?
> > like flat Earth defenders - or simply to the statement that they are
> > "entitled to my opinion", itself a substantive moral judgment.
>
> One I agree with -- they are entitled to their opinions (others
> disagree).
That "they are entitled to their opinions" is an /attitude/? It seems
like a straightforward proposition to me. But /why/ do you agree with
it?
(And why do others disagree?) Simply because you find that you like
yourself better if you entertain the notion (and others like themselves
better if they do not)?
> What you haven't addressed is the question of how *you* modify your
> moral attitudes. How do you determine that one of your moral attitudes
> is "fiction"? I take it you'd have to do that before you determined
> that a moral attitude should be extinguished....
I ask if a moral attitude fits the moral facts. If I held the moral
attitude that Jews were iniquitous, I would want to change this attitude,
since I see no good reason to hold that the Jews are iniquitous.
> > Now you can inform me that /you/ never intend such expressions to be
> > judgments,
>
> You're using "judgment" as a synonym for proposition or claim here,
> right?
Yes, sorry.
> > but I think that that makes your discourse less interesting.
>
> So why do you keep responding :->.
Because this is a /meta/ ethical discussion, and you might be correct
about the nature of morality. But if you /are/ correct, your ethical
discourse would be less interesting - indeed, everyone's ethical
discourse would be less interesting.
> > For instance, that you hold a certain attitude is not a very good
> > reason for me to change my mind about (what I take to be) some moral
> > judgment,
>
> Of course not. And if I wanted you to change your judgement, I'd
> appeal to (what I think are) *your* moral attitudes. I'd try to find a
> way of framing the issue so that different of your underlying attitudes
> were brought to bear (I don't think that your moral attitudes are
> entirely consistent (= all give the same result to the same situation),
> so this strategy can bear fruit).
Not that you intend this, but your second and third sentences could
express very different ideas. Appealing to my attitudes will be
disingenuous to me, if I know that your attitudes are substantially
different. I could judge that you are simply using moral language to
manipulate the outcome to your liking. Trying to show that I am
inconsistent, however, is a strategy that I would be as likely to use
with you. The difference is that I would be treating your moral
attitudes as propositions.
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Mark Young
>>> How is it that you train yourself? Are you removing
>>> inconsistencies or adopting substantively new views?
Mark Young:
>> Reconciling conflicting attitudes, which is approximately the same
>> as removing inconsistencies.
gsollars:
> When attitude A conflicts with attitude B, how do you decide which
> one will give way (or if a new attitude will replace both)?
I answered that --
>> I have all the guidance I need inside me. I respond to situations,
>> and I am aware of my responses, and I respond to *them* in their
>> turn. If I find myself lacking, I try to change myself into
>> something I like better.
> So you like yourself better if you manifest certain attitudes rather
> than others, and you adjust your attitudes in the direction of
> greater liking of yourself? Do you find that your likings follow any
> pattern? Do you treat the likings as coming from some hidden
> mechanism that can not be observed?
Yes. Yes. I suppose so.
[...]
>> You mean judgements about whether Jews are iniquitous or homosexuals
>> perverse, I take it. I'd again say that iniquity and perversion are
>> non-objective judgements -- what one person judges perverse another
>> may judge normal, and there is no all-encompassing point of view
>> that settles the question.
> The issue is whether a person who judges someone as perverse or
> iniquitous has good reasons for doing so.
Reasons *you* find good....
> If not, he /ought/ to change his judgment -
Well, you think he ought -- presumably you'd find him morally
reprehensible if he didn't.
> whether he is willing to do so or not. For example, I have heard
> people argue that the Jews are iniquitous "because they killed
> Jesus" or that homosexuals are perverse "because animals do not
> engage in homosexual behavior". The moment someone gives a reason
> there is an objective component to the claim.
Sure. And what the objective part may be true or false. But the
attitude of disapproval is neither -- it is either there or not. But I
think you'll find that for these people proving their "reasons" false
would not undermine their attitudes -- they are really just
rationalizations for their pre-existing attitudes.
[...]
> In any event, you have characterized your attitude toward dried
> coconut as a /simple/ attitude as opposed to the complexity that
> obtains with moral attitudes. So I can grant that you have an
> uncontestable claim about dried coconut, and still distinguish your
> moral expressions. The very complexity of these attitudes makes the
> situation much less subjective,
Don't see how. The attitude is complex because it extends in so many
directions from the simplest statement of it.
> allowing for many more avenues of investigation, as opposed to
> everything turning on you relating the truth about how something
> tastes to you.
Instead it turns on how I feel about a lot of things....
>>> and I think that many people do make such judgments. Further, I
>>> think that when they are challenged to provide the basis for such
>>> judgments they retreat to implausible explanations -
>> Explanations that *you* find implausible.
> The example explanations I gave above /are/ implausible. Are you
> claiming that all explanations are equally good or that no reasonable
> account of plausibility can be given?
Not all explanations are equally good, but that does not entail that
implausibility is objective. If someone said there were too many dogs
in the room when there were none, I'd think he might be crazy. But if
he said it when there were three -- well it'd be a matter of taste
as much as any other factors (the size of the room; the size of the
dogs; etc.).
>>> like flat Earth defenders - or simply to the statement that they
>>> are "entitled to my opinion", itself a substantive moral judgment.
>> One I agree with -- they are entitled to their opinions (others
>> disagree).
> That "they are entitled to their opinions" is an /attitude/? It
> seems like a straightforward proposition to me.
They may be legally entitled -- that's a fact about the local legal
system. Whether they are morally entitled in spite of local
prohibitions is a moral attitude -- one I agree with.
> But /why/ do you agree with it?
It's the way I'd like the world to be.
> (And why do others disagree?) Simply because you find that you like
> yourself better if you entertain the notion (and others like
> themselves better if they do not)?
Pretty much (it's also about how we'd like others to be).
>> What you haven't addressed is the question of how *you* modify your
>> moral attitudes. How do you determine that one of your moral
>> attitudes is "fiction"? I take it you'd have to do that before you
>> determined that a moral attitude should be extinguished....
> I ask if a moral attitude fits the moral facts.
I'm sorry, but that's non-responsive. How can you tell if it fits the
moral facts?
> If I held the moral attitude that Jews were iniquitous, I would want
> to change this attitude,
No you wouldn't -- not unless you also had an attitude that those who
find Jews iniquitous are bad people.
> since I see no good reason to hold that the Jews are iniquitous.
I see no good reason to believe morality is objective. But I don't
*want* to disbelieve it -- I have no desires regarding it -- I'm just
not convinced.
[...]
>>> For instance, that you hold a certain attitude is not a very good
>>> reason for me to change my mind about (what I take to be) some
>>> moral judgment,
>> Of course not. And if I wanted you to change your judgement, I'd
>> appeal to (what I think are) *your* moral attitudes. I'd try to
>> find a way of framing the issue so that different of your underlying
>> attitudes were brought to bear (I don't think that your moral
>> attitudes are entirely consistent (= all give the same result to the
>> same situation), so this strategy can bear fruit).
> Not that you intend this, but your second and third sentences could
> express very different ideas. Appealing to my attitudes will be
> disingenuous to me, if I know that your attitudes are substantially
> different. I could judge that you are simply using moral language to
> manipulate the outcome to your liking.
Why would that matter if you think what I'm saying is *true* (it agrees
with your moral attitudes, after all)?
Owl
> >Okay, as soon as you define those words, then I'll consider arguments
> >about the things they refer to.
>
> They are defined in terms of their behavior and their properties. A
yargle is
Except that 'defining' an unknown by reference to another unknown doesn't
really explain anything.
> the thing that when you apply jarf to it is turns into snargle. You
might say
As in that example. If you first told me what "jarf" meant, then you
might have succeeded in explaining something.
> that they are all defined in terms of eachother then and so there is
> circularity there, but I don't really see that as a problem. They are
still
Well, my objection is that all of those are nonsense words as far as I can
tell -- indeed, I think you deliberately picked them as nonsense words.
It seems that by forming sentences where you throw a few of the nonsense
words in with real English words, you hope to render the nonsense words
sensible.
If that worked, why not try formulating 'sentences' consisting of nothing
but the nonsense words. Thus, suppose that I offered the following
'definitions':
Yargle snarf quod jarf.
Jarf jarf jarf.
Snarf jarf.
Great, now do you know what all those things mean?
> well-defined enough for me to know their properties and to do all sorts
of
> operations on them. It still seems that I have defined yargle is trzak
to be
> true in the same way that mathamaticisns have defined two to be prime.
I think not. Mathematicians didn't define "two". They didn't make up the
word "two" as an arbitrary nonsense word, and then just start making up
some arbitrary, meaningless sentences involving it. "Two" was a word of
ordinary English -- before that, it was a word of ancient Greek, and
before that of Indo-European, or whatever language preceded it. The
practice of mathematics grew out of common concepts that ordinary people
possessed, going back to ancient times. If it had been just a game with
nonsense symbols, as the formalists portray it, then no one would have
paid any attention to it. It would have been rightly regarded as
frivolous.
> The
> difference seems to be that mathamaticians were trying to develop a tool
with
> practical uses and I am not.
Again, no one decided to develop the concepts of numbers, any more than
someone up and one day decided to invent language. People had number
concepts, shape concepts, and the like. Then, some of the people got very
interested in numbers and shapes and such, and decided to try and figure
out a lot of facts about them. That's where mathematics came from. Then,
two thousand years later, the (il)logical positivists arrived on the scene
and decided to try to rewrite reality, because they didn't like the fact
that there was non-empirical knowledge; and so they decided to say that
the whole previous practice of mathematics was all just playing a silly,
meaningless game; what else could they say, without having to admit that
there was something non-empirical?
The first mathematicians -- Euclid or Archimedes, say -- thought
(correctly) that they were telling people the properties of numbers and
shapes. They didn't think that they were developing a 'tool', consisting
of playing games with nonsense words, that somehow coincidentally happened
to be useful for something. People got their mathematical concepts in
exactly the way they got all their other concepts. By noticing that there
were things that multiple particulars have in common.
> Suppose there are 4 kinds of meat that a meat-trader accepts. One kind
for
> every quod. Suppose the quods model how he trades meat. For instance, if
yargle
> symbolizes ham, and snargle symbolizes turkey, then he will only give
out
> turkey in exchange for ham, etc.
>
> However, suppose there is also a vegatable trader who trades by the same
> pattern, and suppose there are various other situations which my quods
can
> model. So, I simply think of my abstract quods when doing my
calculations for
> how to trade with whom, instead of thinking of the ham or turkey, etc.
>
> Now do quods have objective existance?
If you use "quod" to refer to meat, then yes, meats exist. Vegetables
also exist. If you tell me what you're using it to mean, I'll tell you
whether it refers to something that exists.
Mathematics was and is the most undeniably successful, and objective,
field of a priori knowledge; and not only that, but perhaps the most
impressive field of knowledge of any kind. That was why the empiricists
had to target it for their efforts at completely and hopelessly confusing
people about it (beginning, of course, with themselves).
User 1DE7
>From: Owl a@a.a
>Message-id: <8kmgop$k4o$4...@slb7.atl.mindspring.net>
>
>> They are defined in terms of their behavior and their properties. A
>yargle is
>
>Except that 'defining' an unknown by reference to another unknown doesn't
>really explain anything.
Well, it doesn't explain how it relates to reality, if that is what you wanted,
but it explains how it relates to other abstract objects and operations.
>> that they are all defined in terms of eachother then and so there is
>> circularity there, but I don't really see that as a problem. They are
>still
>
>Well, my objection is that all of those are nonsense words as far as I can
>tell -- indeed, I think you deliberately picked them as nonsense words.
I picked words so it would be clear I had invented them.
>It seems that by forming sentences where you throw a few of the nonsense
>words in with real English words, you hope to render the nonsense words
>sensible.
But I didn't simply throw them together. I made it known that quods were
abstract objects and jarf could be apply to them, then I made known the rules
for doing this. This makes sense, but it just doesn't correspond to reality (or
didn't, that you knew of), but I think it is quite different than complete
nonsense.
> Thus, suppose that I offered the following
>'definitions':
>
>Yargle snarf quod jarf.
>Jarf jarf jarf.
>Snarf jarf.
>
>Great, now do you know what all those things mean?
But what I did was different. I gave my words abstract definitions. They were
defined as abstractions whoose connection to reality was not specified, but
they were still defined as something.
>> well-defined enough for me to know their properties and to do all sorts
>of
>> operations on them. It still seems that I have defined yargle is trzak
>to be
>> true in the same way that mathamaticisns have defined two to be prime.
>
>I think not. Mathematicians didn't define "two". They didn't make up the
>word "two" as an arbitrary nonsense word, and then just start making up
>some arbitrary, meaningless sentences involving it.
Right, but I believe it started out as a non-abstract term. As in "two rocks",
or "two sticks", and it took people awhile to actualy abstract twoness out of
that without any reference to an object. I read part of a history of
mathamatics book last year and the author discussed how primitive cultures
would actualy add an arbitrary object after their numbers because they hadn't
concieved of twoness apart from any object. So they'd talk about "<number>
stone" instead of "<number>."
>The
>practice of mathematics grew out of common concepts that ordinary people
>possessed, going back to ancient times.
Yet didn't this all start with very particular and non-abstract usages? For
instance, my number example above, and adding and subtracting likely began with
adding and taking away real objects from a pile or something, until peoples
minds begain to abstract the underlying concept out.
>If it had been just a game with
>nonsense symbols, as the formalists portray it, then no one would have
>paid any attention to it. It would have been rightly regarded as
>frivolous.
I am not claiming it is that at all. We abstract our math concepts from
particular things and their properties which are real, then we do all sorts of
things with these abstract concepts, then we apply the results back to reality.
>The first mathematicians -- Euclid or Archimedes, say -- thought
>(correctly) that they were telling people the properties of numbers and
>shapes.
Wasn't euclid also some wacky mystical cult-leader?
>They didn't think that they were developing a 'tool', consisting
>of playing games with nonsense words, that somehow coincidentally happened
>to be useful for something.
I don't think math concepts are "nonsense" and it is just a coincidence that
they model reality, either.
>People got their mathematical concepts in
>exactly the way they got all their other concepts. By noticing that there
>were things that multiple particulars have in common.
I would agree.
>> Suppose there are 4 kinds of meat that a meat-trader accepts. One kind
>for
>> every quod. Suppose the quods model how he trades meat. For instance, if
>yargle
>> symbolizes ham, and snargle symbolizes turkey, then he will only give
>out
>> turkey in exchange for ham, etc.
>>
>> However, suppose there is also a vegatable trader who trades by the same
>> pattern, and suppose there are various other situations which my quods
>can
>> model. So, I simply think of my abstract quods when doing my
>calculations for
>> how to trade with whom, instead of thinking of the ham or turkey, etc.
>>
>> Now do quods have objective existance?
>
>If you use "quod" to refer to meat, then yes, meats exist. Vegetables
>also exist. If you tell me what you're using it to mean, I'll tell you
>whether it refers to something that exists.
Good. Same with numbers. If you use 2 to refer to two rocks, then I'll say the
rocks exist and there are two of them. I will however not say that two exists
by itsself.
How is your refusal to say quods exist except for particular things different
from my refusal to say numbers exist apart from particular things? I could see
you objecting before I showned how they modeled reality, but now that I've
shown examples where they do, I don't see a major difference.
>Mathematics was and is the most undeniably successful, and objective,
>field of a priori knowledge; and not only that, but perhaps the most
>impressive field of knowledge of any kind. That was why the empiricists
>had to target it for their efforts at completely and hopelessly confusing
>people about it (beginning, of course, with themselves).
Ive asked this a few times, and maybe you've answered it and I just haven't
seen it, but assuming math does not model reality and actualy is real, which of
the following is true:
1. Given a line and a point not on that line, there exists only one parallel
line going through the point.
2. Given a line and a point not on that line, there exists more than one
parallel line going through the point.
..?
-User
Gordon G. Sollars
...
> gsollars:
> > When attitude A conflicts with attitude B, how do you decide which
> > one will give way (or if a new attitude will replace both)?
>
> I answered that --
>
> >> I have all the guidance I need inside me. I respond to situations,
> >> and I am aware of my responses, and I respond to *them* in their
> >> turn. If I find myself lacking, I try to change myself into
> >> something I like better.
Sorry, I did see this in another part of your post, but it isn't enough
to help me really understand how it works. Does it mean that the
stronger attitude always wins out? Or do you ever say, "Well, this
weaker attitude A really /ought/ to trump B"? Does it ever happen that a
new attitude replaces both A and B?
> > So you like yourself better if you manifest certain attitudes rather
> > than others, and you adjust your attitudes in the direction of
> > greater liking of yourself? Do you find that your likings follow any
> > pattern? Do you treat the likings as coming from some hidden
> > mechanism that can not be observed?
>
> Yes. Yes. I suppose so.
Why not conjecture a theory that would explain the mechanism?
...
> > The issue is whether a person who judges someone as perverse or
> > iniquitous has good reasons for doing so.
>
> Reasons *you* find good....
You keep implying that all standards of evaluation are equally good. Do
you really believe that? I am quite willing to engage in a critical
analysis of the standards that I that I use, and I strongly doubt that
they are uniquely "mine".
> > If not, he /ought/ to change his judgment -
>
> Well, you think he ought -- presumably you'd find him morally
> reprehensible if he didn't.
That might be too strong, depending on the circumstances. I think that
anyone who makes a judgment without the support of good reasons has made
a mistake, and that mistakes ought to be corrected. Do you think
otherwise? Whether that mistake itself is a matter of serious moral
culpability would depend on a number of things.
> > whether he is willing to do so or not. For example, I have heard
> > people argue that the Jews are iniquitous "because they killed
> > Jesus" or that homosexuals are perverse "because animals do not
> > engage in homosexual behavior". The moment someone gives a reason
> > there is an objective component to the claim.
>
> Sure. And what the objective part may be true or false. But the
> attitude of disapproval is neither -- it is either there or not.
But why should the attitude be present if the objective part does not
really provide support for it? Why isn't that failure a good reason to
change the attitude (since you seem to assume that there can be good
reasons for changing moral attitudes)?
> But I
> think you'll find that for these people proving their "reasons" false
> would not undermine their attitudes --
So? Seeing pictures of the Earth taken from space might not undermine
the beliefs of a member of the Flat Earth Society. But it /ought/ to.
> they are really just
> rationalizations for their pre-existing attitudes.
So they have no good reason to have such attitudes.
> > The very complexity of these attitudes makes the
> > situation much less subjective,
>
> Don't see how. The attitude is complex because it extends in so many
> directions from the simplest statement of it.
>
> > allowing for many more avenues of investigation, as opposed to
> > everything turning on you relating the truth about how something
> > tastes to you.
>
> Instead it turns on how I feel about a lot of things....
Well, I don't see how to make any progress here until I understand how
your complex attitudes hang together and how, as I asked above, one
attitude replaces another. I think that complex attitudes are connected
to reality in complex ways, which magnifies their connection to a wide
variety of facts, more so than your dislike of dried coconut.
...
> > The example explanations I gave above /are/ implausible. Are you
> > claiming that all explanations are equally good or that no reasonable
> > account of plausibility can be given?
>
> Not all explanations are equally good, but that does not entail that
> implausibility is objective. If someone said there were too many dogs
> in the room when there were none, I'd think he might be crazy. But if
> he said it when there were three -- well it'd be a matter of taste
> as much as any other factors (the size of the room; the size of the
> dogs; etc.).
I think you invoke "taste" to explain the statement the way someone might
invoke "instinct" to "explain" how birds navigate. You mention
important factors like the size of the dogs and the room, and there are
others. Of course, we might not get the same answer from everyone, but
we will not get the same answer if we ask if Pluto is the farthest planet
from the Sun, either.
It might be very difficult to determine if three dogs (or 30) is too
many, but easy to know that one dog is not (or that 100 /is/ too many).
Different topics have differing amounts of precision available.
...
> >> What you haven't addressed is the question of how *you* modify your
> >> moral attitudes. How do you determine that one of your moral
> >> attitudes is "fiction"? I take it you'd have to do that before you
> >> determined that a moral attitude should be extinguished....
>
> > I ask if a moral attitude fits the moral facts.
>
> I'm sorry, but that's non-responsive. How can you tell if it fits the
> moral facts?
My moral attitudes fit the moral facts when they motivate me to act
according to what is right, and fail to fit when they do not. I think
what you are really asking is, how do I know what is right? Well, I
don't always know. If challenged to show that something is a moral fact,
I make the best argument I can, recognizing the possibility that I could
be wrong.
> > If I held the moral attitude that Jews were iniquitous, I would want
> > to change this attitude,
>
> No you wouldn't -- not unless you also had an attitude that those who
> find Jews iniquitous are bad people.
Well, here it seems you are projecting your view of the situation on me.
I've already said that it might be too strong to call such people
"reprehensible"; it could be complex in some cases why they make the
mistake that they do, and this can serve to mitigate their culpability.
But if I held the attitude that Jews were iniquitous, I would think that
/I/ was a bad person, since I think that my moral attitudes ought to
match the moral facts, and it is false that "The Jews are iniquitous",
and I think that a good person has attitudes that match the facts.
> > since I see no good reason to hold that the Jews are iniquitous.
>
> I see no good reason to believe morality is objective. But I don't
> *want* to disbelieve it -- I have no desires regarding it -- I'm just
> not convinced.
Well, as I have said before, we seem to mean different things by
"objective". I wouldn't want a word to get in the way. My point is that
we ought to have reasons for our attitudes, and I think there is
something importantly "objective" about having reasons, but perhaps I
should find a different term.
...
> > Not that you intend this, but your second and third sentences could
> > express very different ideas. Appealing to my attitudes will be
> > disingenuous to me, if I know that your attitudes are substantially
> > different. I could judge that you are simply using moral language to
> > manipulate the outcome to your liking.
>
> Why would that matter if you think what I'm saying is *true* (it agrees
> with your moral attitudes, after all)?
Because I want to avoid making mistakes. Perhaps I share a moral
attitude with you that I ought not have.
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Mark Young
>>> When attitude A conflicts with attitude B, how do you decide which
>>> one will give way (or if a new attitude will replace both)?
Mark Young:
>> I answered that --
Mark Young:
>>>> I have all the guidance I need inside me. I respond to situations,
>>>> and I am aware of my responses, and I respond to *them* in their
>>>> turn. If I find myself lacking, I try to change myself into
>>>> something I like better.
gsollars:
> Sorry, I did see this in another part of your post, but it isn't
> enough to help me really understand how it works. Does it mean that
> the stronger attitude always wins out?
That's how we know it's stronger.
> Or do you ever say, "Well, this weaker attitude A
It's only identified as weaker after-the-fact.
> really /ought/ to trump B"? Does it ever happen that a new attitude
> replaces both A and B?
Sometimes an amalgam of the two wins out -- perhaps closer to one than
the other....
gsollars:
>>> So you like yourself better if you manifest certain attitudes
>>> rather than others, and you adjust your attitudes in the direction
>>> of greater liking of yourself? Do you find that your likings
>>> follow any pattern? Do you treat the likings as coming from some
>>> hidden mechanism that can not be observed?
>> Yes. Yes. I suppose so.
> Why not conjecture a theory that would explain the mechanism?
Who says I haven't? I treat them as coming from some unobserved
mechanism -- hmmm, I guess the answer should have been 'No', because I
don't treat them as coming from some unobserv*able* mechanism....
Sorry, I guess I didn't read close enough....
> ...
>>> The issue is whether a person who judges someone as perverse or
>>> iniquitous has good reasons for doing so.
>> Reasons *you* find good....
>
> You keep implying that all standards of evaluation are equally good.
No I don't. I imply only that standards differ. To judge one
standard better than another requires a standard -- and no prizes for
guessing whose standards I use in judging one standard better than
another.
> Do you really believe that? I am quite willing to engage in a
> critical analysis of the standards that I that I use, and I strongly
> doubt that they are uniquely "mine".
I doubt they are unique to you as well. Nevertheless, standards are
imposed, not natural, and as such they do not give us any interesting
(to me) kind of objectivity.
[...]
>>> whether he is willing to do so or not. For example, I have heard
>>> people argue that the Jews are iniquitous "because they killed
>>> Jesus" or that homosexuals are perverse "because animals do not
>>> engage in homosexual behavior". The moment someone gives a reason
>>> there is an objective component to the claim.
>> Sure. And what the objective part may be true or false. But the
>> attitude of disapproval is neither -- it is either there or not.
> But why should the attitude be present if the objective part does not
> really provide support for it? Why isn't that failure a good reason
> to change the attitude (since you seem to assume that there can be
> good reasons for changing moral attitudes)?
The attitude is there. The objective part is rationalization. You
make a mistake when you assume that the objective part is the *reason*
for the attitude. The objective part is an *excuse* -- and as such it
is something that the giver finds a good reason for the belief, tho'
others may (*do*) differ. In order to change *their* attitude, you
have to give them a good (by *their* lights) reason to change it.
>> But I think you'll find that for these people proving their
>> "reasons" false would not undermine their attitudes --
> So? Seeing pictures of the Earth taken from space might not undermine
> the beliefs of a member of the Flat Earth Society. But it /ought/ to.
Since their "reasons" are only excuses, undermining them should
(logically) have no effect (and it does not -- score one for my
theory).
>> they are really just rationalizations for their pre-existing
>> attitudes.
> So they have no good reason to have such attitudes.
Maybe they do -- maybe you'd see things their way if they told you.
But I do doubt it -- it would have to be good by *your* lights to be
convincing, and you're well inoculated against it (as am I).
>>> The very complexity of these attitudes makes the situation much
>>> less subjective,
>> Don't see how. The attitude is complex because it extends in so
>> many directions from the simplest statement of it.
>>> allowing for many more avenues of investigation, as opposed to
>>> everything turning on you relating the truth about how something
>>> tastes to you.
>> Instead it turns on how I feel about a lot of things....
> Well, I don't see how to make any progress here until I understand
> how your complex attitudes hang together and how, as I asked above,
> one attitude replaces another. I think that complex attitudes are
> connected to reality in complex ways, which magnifies their
> connection to a wide variety of facts, more so than your dislike of
> dried coconut.
OK. But I still don't see how that makes them any less subjective.
And I'll give you a hint -- I'm not going to see it unless you give me
a reason that *I* find convincing. It doesn't matter how good *you*
think a reason is if I think it's horse shit.
> ...
>>> The example explanations I gave above /are/ implausible. Are you
>>> claiming that all explanations are equally good or that no
>>> reasonable account of plausibility can be given?
>> Not all explanations are equally good, but that does not entail that
>> implausibility is objective. If someone said there were too many
>> dogs in the room when there were none, I'd think he might be crazy.
>> But if he said it when there were three -- well it'd be a matter of
>> taste as much as any other factors (the size of the room; the size
>> of the dogs; etc.).
> I think you invoke "taste" to explain the statement the way someone
> might invoke "instinct" to "explain" how birds navigate.
Now, now. I'm not explaining why they have such-and-such an attitude,
I'm stating my views regarding the objectivity of the question. Is it
true or false that these three dogs in this very room are too many or
not? The answer I give is that it is neither. There are facts about
the attitudes people have toward the question, and there are facts
about the way these attitudes were formed, and perhaps even facts about
which factors a given person considered when considering the question.
But there is no fact about whether there are too many dogs in the room
simpliciter. "It's a matter of taste" is simply an expression of this
analysis of the situation.
> You mention important factors like the size of the dogs and the room,
> and there are others. Of course, we might not get the same answer
> from everyone, but we will not get the same answer if we ask if Pluto
> is the farthest planet from the Sun, either.
We won't get the same answers if we ask whether Pluto is even a planet
(there is a serious effort to get it officially downgraded). But if we
make some stipulations we can make an objective question out of it, and
then we can speak to whether someone has made an error in their
answer.
[...]
>>>> What you haven't addressed is the question of how *you* modify
>>>> your moral attitudes. How do you determine that one of your moral
>>>> attitudes is "fiction"? [...]
>>> I ask if a moral attitude fits the moral facts.
>> I'm sorry, but that's non-responsive. How can you tell if it fits
>> the moral facts?
> My moral attitudes fit the moral facts when they motivate me to act
> according to what is right, and fail to fit when they do not. I think
> what you are really asking is, how do I know what is right?
[That something is right] is a particular kind of moral "fact".
> Well, I don't always know.
But when you *do* know, how is it that you know?
> If challenged to show that something is a moral fact, I make the best
> argument I can, recognizing the possibility that I could be wrong.
And how would you find out you were wrong? The only answer you've been
able to give is that someone would convince you you'd been wrong. So
again, that's non-responsive.
Here's my theory -- you *never* know when anything is a moral fact --
you only have your "best" guesses (= the guesses that you currently
find the most agreeable to your moral attitudes). Now, demonstrate
that I am wrong.
>>> If I held the moral attitude that Jews were iniquitous, I would
>>> want to change this attitude,
>> No you wouldn't -- not unless you also had an attitude that those
>> who find Jews iniquitous are bad people.
> Well, here it seems you are projecting your view of the situation on
> me. I've already said that it might be too strong to call such
> people "reprehensible"; it could be complex in some cases why they
> make the mistake that they do, and this can serve to mitigate their
> culpability.
OK.
> But if I held the attitude that Jews were iniquitous, I would think
> that /I/ was a bad person, since I think that my moral attitudes
> ought to match the moral facts, and it is false that "The Jews are
> iniquitous", and I think that a good person has attitudes that match
> the facts.
But this says only that you have the attitude that people who find Jews
iniquitous are "not good" -- their attitudes do not match the facts and
good people have attitudes that match the facts. So you would have
agreed if I'd said "not good" instead of "bad" -- and to do that all
I'd have to add would be "and you want to be good" (which describes
most people).
>>> since I see no good reason to hold that the Jews are iniquitous.
>> I see no good reason to believe morality is objective. But I don't
>> *want* to disbelieve it -- I have no desires regarding it -- I'm
>> just not convinced.
> Well, as I have said before, we seem to mean different things by
> "objective". I wouldn't want a word to get in the way. My point is
> that we ought to have reasons for our attitudes, and I think there is
> something importantly "objective" about having reasons, but perhaps I
> should find a different term.
Perhaps you could explain this more -- I don't recall you saying what
you think objectivity is, or why it's important to have it.
[...]
>>> I could judge that you are simply using moral language to
>>> manipulate the outcome to your liking.
>> Why would that matter if you think what I'm saying is *true* (it
>> agrees with your moral attitudes, after all)?
> Because I want to avoid making mistakes. Perhaps I share a moral
> attitude with you that I ought not have.
But we don't share the attitude in question -- that was the point.
What would the flaw in my argument be if it used only premises that you
accept in ways that you accept? Why would *my* disbelief in one or
more of those premises make the argument any less convincing? You are
on record as saying that there are moral facts -- and I believe you
supported the notion that one may say true things without having good
reasons to believe them (Hell -- you said *parrots* could say true
things even without understanding them).
To me, this admission that you would find the moral argument less
convincing if it came from someone who you thought disbelieved it makes
a nonsense of your claim that you believe in moral facts.
Bert Clanton
<user...@aol.com> wrote:
>
> Ive asked this a few times, and maybe you've answered it and I just haven't
> seen it, but assuming math does not model reality and actualy is real, wh
> ich of
> the following is true:
>
> 1. Given a line and a point not on that line, there exists only one parallel
> line going through the point.
>
> 2. Given a line and a point not on that line, there exists more than one
> parallel line going through the point.
>
Both.
#1 is true in "flat" spaces, and #2 is true in "positively curved"
spaces.
This grand old physical universe of ours seems to include both kinds.
By the way, *neither* is true in "negatively curved" spaces.
And your point is?
Best wishes,
Bert
Gordon G. Sollars
In article <8krals$7dv$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>, Mark Young writes...
...
> gsollars:
> > Sorry, I did see this in another part of your post, but it isn't
> > enough to help me really understand how it works. Does it mean that
> > the stronger attitude always wins out?
>
> That's how we know it's stronger.
>
> > Or do you ever say, "Well, this weaker attitude A
>
> It's only identified as weaker after-the-fact.
So you are unable to deliberate about A and B in terms of their strength?
The relative strength is only revealed "after-the-fact"? Doesn't this
undercut the idea that you can find yourself holding a moral attitude
that you don't want to hold?
...
> > ...
> >>> The issue is whether a person who judges someone as perverse or
> >>> iniquitous has good reasons for doing so.
>
> >> Reasons *you* find good....
> >
> > You keep implying that all standards of evaluation are equally good.
>
> No I don't. I imply only that standards differ. To judge one
> standard better than another requires a standard -- and no prizes for
> guessing whose standards I use in judging one standard better than
> another.
In a trivial sense, any standard that you use is /your/ standard. This
does not imply that standards can be objective. What matter are the
reasons you have for adopting your standard.
> > Do you really believe that? I am quite willing to engage in a
> > critical analysis of the standards that I that I use, and I strongly
> > doubt that they are uniquely "mine".
>
> I doubt they are unique to you as well. Nevertheless, standards are
> imposed, not natural, and as such they do not give us any interesting
> (to me) kind of objectivity.
I am concerned with standards which are /chosen/, and with whether they
are chosen for good reasons. What do you mean by "natural"?
...
> > But why should the attitude be present if the objective part does not
> > really provide support for it? Why isn't that failure a good reason
> > to change the attitude (since you seem to assume that there can be
> > good reasons for changing moral attitudes)?
>
> The attitude is there. The objective part is rationalization.
Or so you claim.
> You
> make a mistake when you assume that the objective part is the *reason*
> for the attitude.
I assume that it /could be/ the reason. Of course, for some persons it
/is/ simply a rationalization. These are persons who hold their
attitudes
uncritically, and latch on to such support as they can find - unless,
with you, they advance the idea that their moral attitudes are not held
for any reason tied to objective fact whatsoever. As I said, I think
that this is a rather sophisticated view, which most people do not hold,
that is, they really think they are giving reasons for holding the
attitudes that they hold.
> The objective part is an *excuse* -- and as such it
> is something that the giver finds a good reason for the belief, tho'
> others may (*do*) differ.
Well, now I am confused. Does the giver find it a good reason or merely
a rationalization? Of course people may differ over what is a good
reason. But people disagree over all manner of things in the physical
world, too.
> In order to change *their* attitude, you
> have to give them a good (by *their* lights) reason to change it.
Well, no, under some conditions I could force them to change their
attitude, as with brain washing, and I don't think that that is a good
reason to change one's attitudes. In any event, at this point, I am not
concerned with the mechanics of changing someone's attitude; my concern
is cognitive, not motivational. However, if I am dealing with a person
who agrees with me that his attitudes should match the facts, then then
he will, I assume, try to change his attitude if I show him that the
reasons on which he based his attitude do not hold up. For someone who's
reasons are merely rationalizations for attitudes he refuses to give up
come what may, I am satisfied with showing that his reasons /are/ merely
rationalizations.
...
> > So? Seeing pictures of the Earth taken from space might not undermine
> > the beliefs of a member of the Flat Earth Society. But it /ought/ to.
>
> Since their "reasons" are only excuses, undermining them should
> (logically) have no effect (and it does not -- score one for my
> theory).
But I already granted that they will not change their attitudes. My
point, which you seem to accept, is that they /ought/ to change.
...
> > So they have no good reason to have such attitudes.
>
> Maybe they do -- maybe you'd see things their way if they told you.
> But I do doubt it -- it would have to be good by *your* lights to be
> convincing,
But, as I said, I am willing to change my "lights" if they do not hold up
to criticism. It is possible that we would have to push the discussion
back, and perhaps very far back from the original topic to get a basis
for resolution, but I don't see why we could not, in principle, get one -
unless one side stops being willing to expose their arguments to critical
analysis.
...
> > Well, I don't see how to make any progress here until I understand
> > how your complex attitudes hang together and how, as I asked above,
> > one attitude replaces another. I think that complex attitudes are
> > connected to reality in complex ways, which magnifies their
> > connection to a wide variety of facts, more so than your dislike of
> > dried coconut.
>
> OK. But I still don't see how that makes them any less subjective.
>
> And I'll give you a hint -- I'm not going to see it unless you give me
> a reason that *I* find convincing. It doesn't matter how good *you*
> think a reason is if I think it's horse shit.
I can hardly expect, in fact, to convince you without reasons you find
convincing. But this does not show that you /ought/ not be convinced.
...
> We won't get the same answers if we ask whether Pluto is even a planet
> (there is a serious effort to get it officially downgraded).
One of the reasons I picked it.
> But if we
> make some stipulations we can make an objective question out of it, and
> then we can speak to whether someone has made an error in their
> answer.
And if we make some stipulations we can get an answer to whether there
are too many dogs in the room.
...
> > My moral attitudes fit the moral facts when they motivate me to act
> > according to what is right, and fail to fit when they do not. I think
> > what you are really asking is, how do I know what is right?
>
> [That something is right] is a particular kind of moral "fact".
>
> > Well, I don't always know.
>
> But when you *do* know, how is it that you know?
The way I know anything: I have a justified, true belief (let's ignore
Gettier stuff, OK?).
> > If challenged to show that something is a moral fact, I make the best
> > argument I can, recognizing the possibility that I could be wrong.
>
> And how would you find out you were wrong? The only answer you've been
> able to give is that someone would convince you you'd been wrong.
No, I could discover the mistake myself.
> Here's my theory -- you *never* know when anything is a moral fact --
> you only have your "best" guesses (= the guesses that you currently
> find the most agreeable to your moral attitudes). Now, demonstrate
> that I am wrong.
"Here's my theory - you /never/ know when anything is a physical fact --
you only have your "best" guesses, or theories. Now, demonstrate that I
am wrong."
I think that you are simply more at home with one form of skepticism that
with the other; I reject them both. In any event, even if I can not
demonstrate that you are wrong, I can tell you that my "best" guess is
not determined by my attitude; rather my attitude is determined by my
best guess.
...
> > But if I held the attitude that Jews were iniquitous, I would think
> > that /I/ was a bad person, since I think that my moral attitudes
> > ought to match the moral facts, and it is false that "The Jews are
> > iniquitous", and I think that a good person has attitudes that match
> > the facts.
>
> But this says only that you have the attitude that people who find Jews
> iniquitous are "not good" -- their attitudes do not match the facts and
> good people have attitudes that match the facts.
No, I said before that persons might not be culpable; I was merely saying
that that would not be true of me, given what I know about myself. Some
people may (mistakenly) believe that it does not matter if their
attitudes match the facts.
...
> > Well, as I have said before, we seem to mean different things by
> > "objective". I wouldn't want a word to get in the way. My point is
> > that we ought to have reasons for our attitudes, and I think there is
> > something importantly "objective" about having reasons, but perhaps I
> > should find a different term.
>
> Perhaps you could explain this more -- I don't recall you saying what
> you think objectivity is, or why it's important to have it.
Something is objective when you can be mistaken about it. Being mistaken
can lead to bad consequences.
...
> What would the flaw in my argument be if it used only premises that you
> accept in ways that you accept?
Stated like that (especially "in ways..."), I would not see any flaw.
(Of course, there might be one that I would see later.) But one of the
"the ways" I accept your premises in a moral argument is that they are
statements about facts.
> Why would *my* disbelief in one or
> more of those premises make the argument any less convincing?
It would not make the /argument/ less convincing; but my suspicion of
your disbelief would make /you/ less convincing.
> You are
> on record as saying that there are moral facts -- and I believe you
> supported the notion that one may say true things without having good
> reasons to believe them (Hell -- you said *parrots* could say true
> things even without understanding them).
But on my view, a parrot that says "Harming the innocent is wrong" is
making a factual statement - its understanding of it is unnecessary. On
your view, a parrot would be reporting the holding of a complex attitude
- one that I don't think parrots are capable of.
--
Gordon Sollars
gsol...@pobox.com
Mark Young
>>> Sorry, I did see this in another part of your post, but it isn't
>>> enough to help me really understand how it works. Does it mean
>>> that the stronger attitude always wins out?
Mark Young:
>> That's how we know it's stronger.
>>> Or do you ever say, "Well, this weaker attitude A
>> It's only identified as weaker after-the-fact.
gsollars:
> So you are unable to deliberate about A and B in terms of their
> strength?
Why would I do that? B being stronger than A is not my *reason* for
choosing B -- my reasons for choosing B over A have the same shapes as
your reasons for choosing one attitude over another -- the shapes of
moral and factual claims. The identification of B as stronger is
post-hoc.
> The relative strength is only revealed "after-the-fact"? Doesn't
> this undercut the idea that you can find yourself holding a moral
> attitude that you don't want to hold?
I don't see how.
[...]
>>> I am quite willing to engage in a critical analysis of the
>>> standards that I that I use, and I strongly doubt that they are
>>> uniquely "mine".
>> I doubt they are unique to you as well. Nevertheless, standards are
>> imposed, not natural, and as such they do not give us any
>> interesting (to me) kind of objectivity.
> I am concerned with standards which are /chosen/, and with whether
> they are chosen for good reasons.
Reasons *you* find good. I believe I said that before....
[...]
>>> But why should the attitude be present if the objective part does
>>> not really provide support for it? Why isn't that failure a good
>>> reason to change the attitude (since you seem to assume that there
>>> can be good reasons for changing moral attitudes)?
>> The attitude is there. The objective part is rationalization.
> Or so you claim.
This was in the context of people holding some whacked-out factual
views.
>> You make a mistake when you assume that the objective part is the
>> *reason* for the attitude.
> I assume that it /could be/ the reason. Of course, for some persons
> it /is/ simply a rationalization. These are persons who hold their
> attitudes uncritically, and latch on to such support as they can find
> - unless, with you, they advance the idea that their moral attitudes
> are not held for any reason tied to objective fact whatsoever.
I do not hold that. I hold that they are not *incorrect* in any case.
That is, there are no facts that contradict them. But they are
generally very intimately *tied* to objective fact.
> As I said, I think that this is a rather sophisticated view, which
> most people do not hold, that is, they really think they are giving
> reasons for holding the attitudes that they hold.
They may well. And they are often wrong.
But when they are not wrong, it makes no difference. Moral attitudes
are justified by more moral attitudes down until you get down to
attitudes that are not justified at all. Sure, objective facts are
*also* invoked in justification -- but they get no moral grip unless
there are moral attitudes there to augment them.
>> The objective part is an *excuse* -- and as such it
>> is something that the giver finds a good reason for the belief, tho'
>> others may (*do*) differ.
> Well, now I am confused. Does the giver find it a good reason or
> merely a rationalization?
The giver typically finds it a good reason. Rationalization is not
something many people notice themselves engaging in.
[...]
> However, if I am dealing with a person who agrees with me that his
> attitudes should match the facts, then then he will, I assume, try to
> change his attitude if I show him that the reasons on which he based
> his attitude do not hold up.
If you show him. More likely, tho', he'll deny that you *have* shown
him that his "reasons" do not hold up (he says, blithely :-).
> For someone who's reasons are merely rationalizations for attitudes
> he refuses to give up come what may, I am satisfied with showing that
> his reasons /are/ merely rationalizations.
Showing *whom*? Not him.
[...]
>>> So they have no good reason to have such attitudes.
>> Maybe they do -- maybe you'd see things their way if they told you.
>> But I do doubt it -- it would have to be good by *your* lights to be
>> convincing,
> But, as I said, I am willing to change my "lights" if they do not
> hold up to criticism.
And whom do you deputize to decide for you whether they hold up to
criticism?
[...]
>>> I think that complex attitudes are connected to reality in complex
>>> ways, which magnifies their connection to a wide variety of facts,
>>> more so than your dislike of dried coconut.
>> OK. But I still don't see how that makes them any less subjective.
>>
>> And I'll give you a hint -- I'm not going to see it unless you give
>> me a reason that *I* find convincing. It doesn't matter how good
>> *you* think a reason is if I think it's horse shit.
> I can hardly expect, in fact, to convince you without reasons you find
> convincing. But this does not show that you /ought/ not be convinced.
O' course not. But no rational person is going to believe that he
ought to be convinced and not *be* convinced. Ergo, if he is rational
and not convinced, he believes that he ought not to have been
convinced -- that you did not give good reasons for him to change his
mind. The fact that you think you *did* give good reasons is
irrelevent -- of *course* you would think so, because you, too, are
rational, but you are also *convinced*.
So where is this "fact of the matter" [that he ought to have been
convinced]? It is in the same place as the original disagreement. It
is a mere meta-argument for the original claim.
[...]
>> But if we make some stipulations we can make an objective question
>> out of it, and then we can speak to whether someone has made an
>> error in their answer.
> And if we make some stipulations we can get an answer to whether
> there are too many dogs in the room.
Absolutely. But what if someone finds the stipulations unsatisfactory?
What is the fact of the matter regarding whether Pluto is a planet?
> ...
>>> My moral attitudes fit the moral facts when they motivate me to
>>> act according to what is right, and fail to fit when they do not.
>>> I think what you are really asking is, how do I know what is right?
>> [That something is right] is a particular kind of moral "fact".
>>> Well, I don't always know.
>> But when you *do* know, how is it that you know?
> The way I know anything: I have a justified, true belief
That's not a *how*, Gordon. This is non-responsive AGAIN.
[...]
>> Here's my theory -- you *never* know when anything is a moral fact
>> -- you only have your "best" guesses (= the guesses that you
>> currently find the most agreeable to your moral attitudes). Now,
>> demonstrate that I am wrong.
> "Here's my theory - you /never/ know when anything is a physical fact
> -- you only have your "best" guesses, or theories. Now, demonstrate
> that I am wrong."
I don't have to -- you know that you are wrong already.
> I think that you are simply more at home with one form of skepticism
> that with the other; I reject them both.
Well, yeah. But I'm a rational guy, Gordon. I wouldn't be more at
home with my skepticism if I felt I'd got good reasons to deny it. I
feel I do have good reasons to deny skepticism in physics -- it's the
existence of well-understood and well-accepted theories of objective
reality -- theories I have seen and at least partly understood and
accepted.
In fact, the theories of physics invoke relativism of many concepts we
have previously taken to be objective (time and mass, for example).
The relativism of these concepts is *objective fact*.
> In any event, even if I can not demonstrate that you are wrong, I can
> tell you that my "best" guess is not determined by my attitude;
> rather my attitude is determined by my best guess.
I believe that that's true of many of your attitudes -- but not all of
them.
> ...
>>> But if I held the attitude that Jews were iniquitous, I would think
>>> that /I/ was a bad person, since I think that my moral attitudes
>>> ought to match the moral facts, and it is false that "The Jews are
>>> iniquitous", and I think that a good person has attitudes that
>>> match the facts.
>> But this says only that you have the attitude that people who find
>> Jews iniquitous are "not good" -- their attitudes do not match the
>> facts and good people have attitudes that match the facts.
> No, I said before that persons might not be culpable; I was merely
> saying that that would not be true of me, given what I know about
> myself. Some people may (mistakenly) believe that it does not matter
> if their attitudes match the facts.
Errrm. Lemme get this straight. A person who thinks that it does not
matter whether his attitudes match the facts can believe that Jews are
iniquitous and still be a good person? Can they believe that the Jews
should all be killed and still be a good person? Can they *act* on
that belief and still be a good person? (Always maintaining that he
thinks it matters not whether his attitudes match the facts.)
In particular, I believe that there are no facts to match my moral
attitudes to -- and so I could plausibly be said to think that it makes
no difference whether my moral attitudes match the facts. So could *I*
believe that Jews are iniquitous and still be a good person?
And what was the point of the clause "I think that a good person has
attitudes that match the facts"? It sounds like you're making a
general (as opposed to personal) claim there.
Getting back to the earlier (deleted) point....
I claimed that you would only be motivated to drop an attitude that the
Jews were iniquitous if you believed that people who had that attitude
were bad. I take it now that the above was intended to show that you
might be motivated to change your own attitude even if you did not
entertain a *general* belief that people who have that attitude were
bad. I acknowledge your point, and revise my claim to -- you would
only be motivated to drop the attitude if you believed that it was bad
for you (in particular, whether for particular or general reasons) to
have that attitude.
> ...
>>> Well, as I have said before, we seem to mean different things by
>>> "objective". I wouldn't want a word to get in the way. My point
>>> is that we ought to have reasons for our attitudes, and I think
>>> there is something importantly "objective" about having reasons,
>>> but perhaps I should find a different term.
>> Perhaps you could explain this more -- I don't recall you saying
>> what you think objectivity is, or why it's important to have it.
> Something is objective when you can be mistaken about it. Being
> mistaken can lead to bad consequences.
Ah, yes. As I recall, I was unhappy with the extent of your predicate
"mistaken"....
> ...
>> What would the flaw in my argument be if it used only premises that
>> you accept in ways that you accept?
> Stated like that (especially "in ways..."), I would not see any flaw.
> (Of course, there might be one that I would see later.) But one of
> the "the ways" I accept your premises in a moral argument is that
> they are statements about facts.
The argument is what it is, regardless of who gives it.
>> Why would *my* disbelief in one or more of those premises make the
>> argument any less convincing?
> It would not make the /argument/ less convincing; but my suspicion of
> your disbelief would make /you/ less convincing.
You mean it would make you find me less trustworthy, don't you? It is
the argument that convinces -- me being convincing is me giving a good
argument. Me saying things I don't believe makes me insincere -- and
thus the sort of a person you would not trust. But if I said something
true, it would still be true.
>> You are on record as saying that there are moral facts -- and I
>> believe you supported the notion that one may say true things
>> without having good reasons to believe them (Hell -- you said
>> *parrots* could say true things even without understanding them).
> But on my view, a parrot that says "Harming the innocent is wrong" is
> making a factual statement - its understanding of it is unnecessary.
> On your view, a parrot would be reporting the holding of a complex
> attitude
Not so. On my view the parrot is not reporting at all. The human who
speaks this sentence sincerely is reporting it (the human who speaks it
insincerely is purporting to report it). A parrot can no more report
this attitude than a modern computer can report that it is bored.
(Likewise, on my view, parrots are generally not making statements at
all -- tho *what they say* may be either true or false, in a given
interpretation.)