The relationship between descriptive and prescriptive domains
The facet of my philosophical views that has perhaps gotten the most push-back on these forums is my view on the relationship between the parts of philosophy like metaphysics and epistemology, which I broadly call the descriptive side of philosophy, the side concerned with reality, truth, facts, etc; and the parts of philosophy like ethics and political philosophy, which I broadly call the prescriptive side of philosophy, the side concerned with morality, goodness, norms, etc.
I'm curious if it's just a few vocal people here who disagree so vehemently, rather than the dominant opinion, and also more generally where people fall in their views on the relationship between these two domains.
To elaborate on what I mean by the four poll answers below:
"They are separate and starkly different" - This is the option for views like Stephen Jay Gould's non-overlapping magisteria (NOMA), his view that matters concerning reality are the domain of science, with its methods, and matters concerning morality are the domain of religion, with its completely different methods, and the two cannot be mixed nor approached separately in the same way. You don't have to subscribe specifically to Gould's NOMA here, you don't have to think the two sides are science and religion exactly, but anyone who thinks anything in that ballpark should go with this option.
"There is only the descriptive domain" - This is the option for views like scientism, in the sense of attempts to reduce all questions, even questions about ethics, politics, etc, to questions of fact, which is to say, descriptive questions, questions about reality, that are to be answered by the methods of science. But again, you don't have to subscribe specifically to scientism here, you don't have to think that science exactly is the correct method of figuring out what is real, but anyone who thinks that questions about morality are just a subset of questions about reality should go with this option.
"There is only the prescriptive domain" - This is the option for views like some forms of social constructivism, the kind that would say that "reality is a social construct", claiming that all assertions of supposed facts are in actuality just social constructs, ways of thinking about things put forth merely in an attempt to shape the behavior of other people to some end, in effect reducing all purportedly factual claims to normative ones (as in claiming that all of reality is merely a social construct, such constructivism reframes every apparent attempt to describe reality as actually an attempt to change how people think and so behave, which is the function of normative claims). But again, your view doesn't have to be specifically such constructivism to pick this option, just anything that frames claims about reality as just as value-oriented as claims about morality.
"They are separate but still similar" - This is my view, and to be honest I'm not really familiar with any named philosophies or philosophers who espouse something like it. To put it shortly, I think that the questions of what is real and what is moral are inherently separate, respecting the is-ought or fact-value distinction, much like Gould's NOMA; but I think that similar methodologies can and have been applied to both of them, both in ways that I don't approve of (religions have applied their dogmatic methodologies to claims about reality just as much as they have to claims about morality), and in ways that I endorse (I think that a methodology analogous to the scientific method can be applied to questions about morality just as well as science is applied to questions about reality -- which is where I frequently encounter the push back that prompted me to ask this poll).
Please also elaborate below on why you answered as you did. Thanks!
I'm curious if it's just a few vocal people here who disagree so vehemently, rather than the dominant opinion, and also more generally where people fall in their views on the relationship between these two domains.
To elaborate on what I mean by the four poll answers below:
"They are separate and starkly different" - This is the option for views like Stephen Jay Gould's non-overlapping magisteria (NOMA), his view that matters concerning reality are the domain of science, with its methods, and matters concerning morality are the domain of religion, with its completely different methods, and the two cannot be mixed nor approached separately in the same way. You don't have to subscribe specifically to Gould's NOMA here, you don't have to think the two sides are science and religion exactly, but anyone who thinks anything in that ballpark should go with this option.
"There is only the descriptive domain" - This is the option for views like scientism, in the sense of attempts to reduce all questions, even questions about ethics, politics, etc, to questions of fact, which is to say, descriptive questions, questions about reality, that are to be answered by the methods of science. But again, you don't have to subscribe specifically to scientism here, you don't have to think that science exactly is the correct method of figuring out what is real, but anyone who thinks that questions about morality are just a subset of questions about reality should go with this option.
"There is only the prescriptive domain" - This is the option for views like some forms of social constructivism, the kind that would say that "reality is a social construct", claiming that all assertions of supposed facts are in actuality just social constructs, ways of thinking about things put forth merely in an attempt to shape the behavior of other people to some end, in effect reducing all purportedly factual claims to normative ones (as in claiming that all of reality is merely a social construct, such constructivism reframes every apparent attempt to describe reality as actually an attempt to change how people think and so behave, which is the function of normative claims). But again, your view doesn't have to be specifically such constructivism to pick this option, just anything that frames claims about reality as just as value-oriented as claims about morality.
"They are separate but still similar" - This is my view, and to be honest I'm not really familiar with any named philosophies or philosophers who espouse something like it. To put it shortly, I think that the questions of what is real and what is moral are inherently separate, respecting the is-ought or fact-value distinction, much like Gould's NOMA; but I think that similar methodologies can and have been applied to both of them, both in ways that I don't approve of (religions have applied their dogmatic methodologies to claims about reality just as much as they have to claims about morality), and in ways that I endorse (I think that a methodology analogous to the scientific method can be applied to questions about morality just as well as science is applied to questions about reality -- which is where I frequently encounter the push back that prompted me to ask this poll).
Please also elaborate below on why you answered as you did. Thanks!
Comments (133)
Where's the "other" option? I would say that they definitely have a different meaning, as "is" and "ought" have different meanings. But it's one philosophy, metaphysics, which deals with them both, so they are of the same domain.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
That would be one of the middle two options, each of which considers there to be only one domain. But in that case I’m curious how one would characterize that domain, in a way more fundamentally descriptive, or prescriptive, in the senses of those terms used by those who distinguish the two.
It’s like materialism and idealism as positions in philosophy of mind, both of which say that mind and body are not different kinds of things, but differ on what the one nature of both of them is like.
Quoting Tobias
My question here is basically about what you take those presuppositions to be. Are they radically different for the two sides, exactly the same for both (and if so what way are they like), or “separate but equal”.
To illustrate what I mean by that “separate but equal” thing: in my philosophy I apply the same exact principles to both reality and morality, but two of them manifest as different more familiar principles when applied to the different domains. The principle I call “universalism”, applied to descriptive questions, basically means anti-solipsism (or any other kind of metaphysical relativism), or in other words, realism; but applied to prescriptive questions, it means anti-egotism (or any other kind of ethical relativism), or in other words, altruism. Likewise, the principle I call “phenomenalism” breaks down into empiricism about descriptive matters, and hedonism about prescriptive matters.
Quoting counterpunch
Care to elaborate?
Quoting tim wood
Thanks!
I don't think it fits into the middle options. Those options are two ways of collapsing the distinction to one pole, rather than undermining the theoretical apparatus that would make the distinction in the first place. eg pragmatist considerations regarding what it means for something to be a fact containing behavioural commitments for that fact, a reciprocal co-constitution thesis like you might find from a Heideggerian, or Anscombe's virtue-ethical attacks on the distinction.
Facts are what prompts and couches our moral responses. In my experience, most people don't care about the alleged gap between the two, because in their minds they are linked by firmly held intuitions and moral theories. So things - events, situations, people, anything towards which we can have a moral attitude - may as well have inherent moral properties. I am not sure where that would fit in your classification, but it's considered to be a form of moral realism.
I voted for the third option but only because I'm a panpsychist and I think the way the world is is possibly the result of a negotiation between subjects. But I could have voted for any option - each has its argument.
In favour of the first option, I have been wondering if the fact that I am me and not another one (or no one in particular) makes a difference. In matters of fact, it does not matter who is making the scientific observation. The whole idea of science is that it doesn't matter who does it. We should get the same result. Whereas in matters of ethics it (arguably) does matter. From a God's eye view, everyone's suffering is of equal importance. But for me, one person's suffering is of massive significance compared to all the others. That one is bert1. So there's an asymmetry that doesn't exist (does it?) with the descriptive stuff. I can think of some rebuttals to this, so I could be wrong. I'm undecided on the subject.
I don't see how it is possible to separate between ethics and metaphysics -- thinking that they are unrelated.
I think metaphysics dictates ethics; ethics must have a metaphysical foundation. What one believes that should be done must have a foundation in how things really are.
— counterpunch
Quoting Pfhorrest
Glad to. Thanks for asking.
To my mind, the organism evolves in relation to a causal reality, and has to be 'correct' to survive. From the structure of DNA, to physiology, to the behaviours of animals, all are crafted by the function or die algorithm of evolution to be correct to reality, or are rendered extinct. To illustrate the point we might ask: why does a bird build a nest before it lays eggs? Does it know and plan ahead? Unlikely. Rather, all the bird like creatures that didn't are extinct. This is behavioural intelligence crafted by the function or die algorithm of evolution.
Human evolution begins with primate tribal groups - and it's here we see the origin of morality. Chimpanzees have morality of sorts. They share food and groom each other, and remember who reciprocates, and withhold such favours accordingly. A moral sense is advantageous to the individual within the tribe, and to the tribe composed of moral individuals. Assuming humans were little different in the early stages of their evolution, the origin of morality is a behaviourally intelligent evolutionary response to the environment, and manifests as an innate moral sense.
Human beings developed intellectual intelligence, and much later joined together to form multi-tribal social groups. At this point they needed an explicit moral code - so that, any dispute would not split the social group into its tribal elements. They justified social rules (think Moses coming down the mountain with the ten commandments and uniting the tribes of Israel) with reference to God. Society required faith in God, and consequently the origin and nature of morality was forgotten. Morality became objectivised - and it's this objectivised morality that is a separate magisterium to reality, truth, facts etc. Whereas, the moral sense is a consequence of the truth relation between the organism and a causal reality, and a innate part of human understanding.
In light of this, consider Hume's famous observation:
"In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remarked, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary way of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when of a sudden I am surprised to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not."
Putting aside the usual implication of this argument, it's what human beings do - and cannot help but do when presented with a list of facts. We see the moral implications of those facts. Facts are not a separate magisterium to us, because we are imbued with an innate moral sense, in turn a behaviourally intelligent, evolutionary response to a causal reality.
This much, I'm fairly certain about. But to get speculative, it gets interesting when considered in relation to the Anthropic Principle - which states that in order for intelligent life to exist, the universe must have qualities that allow for the existence of intelligent life. If morality is a behaviourally intelligent response to a causal reality, one could draw the implication that the universe has moral qualities.
That's how I think of it, yeah, but it seems apparent that not everybody else does; and even those who do, who agree that they are fundamentally different kinds of statements, sometimes differ on what can or should be said or done regarding the two different kinds (e.g. Gould vs myself).
That's very interesting. I hadn't thought of it like that.
...those trapped by erroneous notions of meaning, who would benefit from looking at what is being done with the words they misuse.
:up: That's an interesting idea.
The problem with Darwinism as an ethos, is that there is no inherent purpose other than propogation. Due to the historical situation in which it arose, evolutionary biology has displaced religion as a kind of secular creation story. It is underwritten by the assumption that the origins of life, whilst not known, are likely fortuitious, a consequence of not-yet-understood chemistry. But your implication is intriguing.
Quoting counterpunch
But facts under-determine the possibie outcomes. People can see the same facts, and have completely divergent opinions about what they mean. This does not happen with animals, because animals can't engage in hypotheticals.
[quote=Richard Polt]Consider the fact that human action ranges to the extremes. People can perform extraordinary acts of altruism, including kindness toward other species — or they can utterly fail to be altruistic, even toward their own children. So whatever tendencies we may have inherited leave ample room for variation; our choices will determine which end of the spectrum we approach. This is where ethical discourse comes in — not in explaining how we’re “built,” but in deliberating on our own future acts. Should I cheat on this test? Should I give this stranger a ride? Knowing how my selfish and altruistic feelings evolved doesn’t help me decide at all. Most, though not all, moral codes advise me to cultivate altruism. But since the human race has evolved to be capable of a wide range of both selfish and altruistic behavior, there is no reason to say that altruism is superior to selfishness in any biological sense.
In fact, the very idea of an “ought” is foreign to evolutionary theory. It makes no sense for a biologist to say that some particular animal should be more cooperative, much less to claim that an entire species ought to aim for some degree of altruism. [/quote]
Haha, count me as one of 'em (if you didn't already) :rofl:
Quoting bongo fury
Quoting Wayfarer
I disagree. It's a consequence of omitting a causal reality from evolutionary theory as a form of selection, but it's rather obvious when you think about it, that heat, cold, sunlight, time, chemistry, entropy - all these physical environmental factors impose requirements upon organisms, and so - evolution produces organisms that are correct to reality on a number of levels. Genetic, physiological, behavioural and intellectual. If you're wrong - you're gone.
Quoting Wayfarer
That's because morality is a sense, like a sense of humour, or the aesthetic sense. There's considerable overlap between individuals, but there's no definition of what's funny or beautiful. Similarly, as Scanlon concludes: "working out the terms of moral justification is an unending task."
So then you, or Polt - would deny that chimpanzees have morality of a sort, and that it's advantageous to the individual within the tribe - and an advantage to the tribe composed of moral individuals? Jane Goodall would strongly disagree. Is she wrong?
They are separate and starkly different
No, since both are statement and hence about things. We can take what ought be the case and make it the case. They are about the same thing.
There is only the descriptive domain
...as if we could not change what is the case. The denial of efficacy.
There is only the prescriptive domain
The denial of a world that is independent of how we want it to be.
They are separate but still similar
Similar only in that they are both attitudes to states of affairs; the way we decide what is the case is not like the way we decide what ought be the case.
Right - but that can only ever amount to either utilitarianism or pragmatism.
And 'intellectual' is in a different category. If you're a predator, you're adapted to an environment and to predation as a means of survival. Animals are generally adapted to an ecological niche, an environment. The intellect can either be adaptive, or maladaptive - if h. sapiens brings about environmental catastrophe that results in billions of deaths, then it's maladaptive. But even that is not the point - to compare intellect with physical faculties is to miss the point - it opens cognitive horizons that are not available to non-rational animals.
I don't know if Jane Goodall is wrong, or what she would be wrong about. I do vaguely recall she documented some pretty appalling violence in chimp tribes, including infanticide and killing of adults. Don't see how that has any bearing on whether chimps are or are not moral.
I selected the second option because prescriptive domains supervene on (a/the) descriptive domain (i.e. oughts/ought nots are enabled by can/not-constraints) in so far as facts are theory/value/ought-laden (i.e. socially selected and not 'constructed') from which normativity – hypothetical imperatives – can be derived (pace Hume) e.g. hygiene nutrition & exercise, clinical medicine, ecological sustainability, safety engineering ... institutional facts (e.g. money, mail delivery, traffic lights-signs, insurance, organized sports, markets, etc). In other words, unlike the OP's last option where the domains parallel or mirror each other (or overlap tangentially?), prescriptive domains (e.g. why) seem to me special cases of (the) more general, encompassing, descriptive domain(s) (e.g. how) – however, not that prescriptions are reducible to descriptions, but rather that the latter constitutes the sufficient condition for (i.e. materiality, embodiment, manifestation of) the former. And so I prefer (nonreductionist) scientific / moral naturalism to (reductionist) 'scientism'.
Quoting Banno
...that last move, here bolded, is the error Kenny attributes to Dawkins - I had understood you as agreeing with it.
I would have thought 'truth' was the take home concept in terms of an "inherent purpose other than propagation."
Quoting Wayfarer
Only human beings have intellectual intelligence.
Quoting Wayfarer
No. Just incorrect to reality.
Quoting Wayfarer
I don't know what this means? But, only humans are intellectually intelligent. Animals are behaviourally intelligent. Intellectual intelligence is built upon behavioural intelligence, in turn built upon physiological intelligence - right down to the structure of DNA. The organism has to be correct to reality.
Quoting Wayfarer
You seemed pretty certain in your previous post that:
So what are you saying? Where, in your philosophy - do 'oughts' come from?
'What it means' is that humans can contemplate 'what if....'; they can undertake different courses of action; they can consider the outcome of those courses of action. They can wonder what consequences their actions will have on others. And they can think about the meaning of it all, wonder what it was that brought them into this life, and whether there is any sense in it. And so on. My view is, as soon as h.sapiens becomes, well, sapient, then they're in a different category to non-rational animals, because they then live in a meaning-world, not simply a natural environment.
Quoting counterpunch
I'm trying to point out that evolutionary biology, per se, does not provide any particular grounds or rationale for ethical decision-making. It is a truism that if creatures are not adapted to their environment then they will perish; in that sense they need to be a 'good fit'. But that doesn't provide any basis for ethical decision-making, other than the obvious. We've slotted evolutionary biology into the role formerly occupied by virtue ethics and our other ethical codes, but it doesn't necessarily do the job. It's not equipped for it, and trying to make it fit results in biological reductionism.
As to what should drive ethical decision-making - obviously a huge question. Pragmatically, I would agree with a lot of what you say about the urgency of tacking climate change. But then ask yourself this: how can the Western industrial capitalist model, based on an untenable projection of never-ending growth on a finite planet, be reconciled with the likelihood of vast resource shortages and environmental disruption? What kind of life philosophy ought we to adopt to deal with these constraints? I think we need to learn to cultivate something other than endless consumption and endless growth. What kinds of philosophies could that draw on? So that's one element.
I think the anthropic cosmological principle supports the attitude of natural theology. The fact that Dawkins, et al, need to appeal to the notion that there might be endless other universes in order to defray that argument rather serves to strengthen my view, rather than weaken it.
Agreed.
Quoting Wayfarer
What are your grounds for deciding if a joke is funny? Or deciding if a painting is pleasing to the eye? There are no grounds, per se. There are identifiable regularities, and considerable agreement among people that a joke is funny, or a painting is pleasing. But humour and aesthetics are a sense - and so is morality. I explained this above.
Quoting Wayfarer
Limitless clean energy from the molten interior of the Earth.
Quoting Wayfarer
Accept that science is true, and act accordingly.
Quoting Wayfarer
I disagree.
Quoting Wayfarer
Mine.
Meaning what, exactly? There is no single authoritative source or oracle by the name of 'science'. Science is multi-faceted, always evolving. I think what you're advocating is actually scientism, which is the view that science is authoritative in ways it cannot be.
Quoting counterpunch
Here's the nub of the issue. But it both subjectivises, and trivialises, morality - it reduces them to an individual matter - essentially a matter of opinion. And this is precisely the issue that the OP is dealing with.
Quoting counterpunch
I haven't discerned one.
This is the kind of opinion that I meant to be covered by the first option, not the last.
I think there's enormous consensus on the shape and nature of a middle ground scientific understanding of the world around us - insofar as it relates to securing a prosperous, sustainable future. We know enough we need to know to know.
Quoting Wayfarer
As opposed to what? On the basis of our moral sense, we form and express opinions, not least by voting for politicians, who express their opinions in the formation of laws, that allocate values in society, and we have systems to punish transgressors. There's no inherent problem with morality being a sense.
Quoting Wayfarer
No, you haven't! I went to such pains to explain it, and whoosh!
Well Pfhorrest, what do you think? You asked if I care to elaborate. Was it just to antagonise Wayfarer?
That depends on the situation they are asked from and the historical epoch we are in. These presuppositions lay the ground work of our judgment so it depends on them whether they are close. In the middle ages they solved empirical questions in the same vein as they would solve legal matters, that is look at texts and compare the answers of various learned men on the matter. They identified axioms (such as the non-existence of a vacuum for instance). Today we do that differently, we still apply the same kind of method to legal questions but we do not apply them to scientific questions anymore.
This divergence has a history and if you consider the works of the earliest scientists you find lots of influences from these earlier models. See for instance this article
(It is popular, I could find something academic but that takes more time and time is scarce, but it gives the idea)
I am not a realist like you, I am an idealist, meaning that what is considered true ultimately depends on our criteria for truth. There are no criteria by which to judge those criteria, since that would lead to an infinite regress. There are of course reasons why we prefer one set of criteria over another. The scientific method works wonders in order to provide answers to scientific questions that work and conform to our experience.
Sorry, hadn't had time to read fully and respond until now.
Overall it looks like a case of option #2 (description only). You give an accurate enough (as far as I can tell) factual account of reasons that caused humans and other organisms to be inclined to approve and disprove various behaviors, and apparently take that to be sufficient to answer all normative questions; no separate account of normativity looks to be required, on your view, besides that causal account of what made us be who we are such that we do what we do.
Suffice to say I don't agree with that, since I picked option #4.
Quoting Tobias
I'm asking what are your criteria for truth in these respective two domains (or one domain if your view falls into one of the second or third choices). It sounds like you use / advocate the use of science for descriptive questions. Do you approach prescriptive questions as a subset of that? Or in a similar but separate way? Or in a completely different way altogether?
On a non-philosophical (non reflective) level I have scientific answers inform but not determine my ethical and legal positions. So in everyday life it would be option one of our depending on how strict you look at it. I do think legal questions are not reducible to scientific ones and that scientific questions are not legal or ethical matters in another guise so that would mean option one if I understand correctly. Banno's straighforward and excellent explanation comes to mind.
Sounds like you do, thanks.
That I disagree with your assessment subtracts nothing from my boundless gratitude. Wayfarer's bombardment wasn't particularly helpful in explicating the matter, but I did reconsider the is/ought distinction in the first post. Might that not have provided a clue?
Quoting counterpunch
It follows from my argument that the organism, imbued with a moral sense has to be correct to reality to survive. So assuming only that sustainability is of value, morally correct behaviour occurs as a consequence of what's factually true - and thus, my argument is both descriptive and prescriptive. Or none of the above.
I asked Wayfarer where 'oughts' come from. He refused to answer. Quite prepared to dismiss the evolutionary origin of morality to the immense reputational damage of chimpanzees - but utterly disdainful of the implication that religion, politics, law, economics and so forth, are expressions of that innate moral sense. If you adhere to position number 4 - you have to presume some objective source of morality. So what is it? The Ethics tree? Lake Morals? The Shoulda River? Mount Ought?
It sounds to me like you’re still asking the descriptive question of what caused us to have the inclinations toward moral judgement that we do. I don’t disagree with you about that question.
On my view, there is just another additional question, which is not one of the cause of our capacity for moral judgement, but rather a “how to” question about the optimal conduct of that capacity. Just like philosophy also has a “how to” question about conducting our faculties for figuring out what is real (epistemology), which is different from a causal account of how we came to have such faculties.
Quoting Pfhorrest
One looks at the facts, and the moral implications are apparent - in the same way it's apparent that a joke is funny, or a painting is pleasing to the eye. Because, like humour or aesthetics - morality is a sense. This is why recognising a scientific understanding of reality in common is important. If you feed someone falsehoods posing as facts, you get a falsely moral response.
Science does mostly bracket qualitative and normative considerations, since they are irrelevant to most of its inquiries. Ethics, morality and aesthetics are matters of feeling for me, and I do think there is a broad commonality of such feelings. The intellect has to play second fiddle here. It's role is more pragmatic; involved in figuring out how best to achieve what we generally, in accordance with our (mostly shared) moral intuitions want our lives to look like. Misinformation (deliberate and otherwise) is rife, though; which rather distorts the moral picture.
I don't understand.
What is "correct", if not that the organism indeed survives? Is it that for you an organism ought survive?
So your argument is that there is a universal moral obligation on living things to survive?
Replication begins with DNA unzipping down the middle, and attracting its chemical opposite from the environment. This is the basis of a truth relation between the organism and reality that plays out on every level; the physiological, the behavioural, and for us - the intellectual level.
The organism has to be correct to reality to survive, to breed, to pass on its genetic, behavioural and intellectual intelligence to subsequent generations. If it is not correct to reality it is rendered extinct. 99% of the organisms that have ever existed are extinct.
Only one organism that has ever existed has the intellectual intelligence to act to avoid marching blindly into extinction. We have a choice - and so for us it's a moral question.
After the occurrence of life, intellectual intelligence is only the second qualitative addition to the universe in 15 billion years. We, who look back at the universe from which we spring - and understand, would diminish the universe by our absence. We ought to follow in the course of truth, and survive - and find out where truth leads. Intellectual intelligence should play out to the fullest.
Maybe we'll find out that we are not alone; that there are other intelligent beings out there. Maybe we'll upload our minds into machines and live forever. Maybe we'll travel to other dimensions, or back in time. It could even be God. I don't know. But given the choice, we ought to stick around and find out.
Quoting counterpunch(My bolding)
Again, what is "correct" if not simply surviving? This is were the ought is inserted, is it not?
So again, is you claim that organisms have a moral imperative to survive? Or is it that this is just the sort of thing that organisms do?
Nobody denies that prescriptions exist. "Shut the window!" There. That's one.
And there can be descriptions of prescriptions. "Bartricks just ordered us to shut the window". And some of those descriptions can be true.
So I do not really understand the difficulty. There are prescriptions and there are descriptions. Prescriptions can be complied with or flouted, but can't be true or false. Descriptions can be true or false. But that doesn't prevent there from being descriptions of prescriptions, some of which are true.
Animal organisms have behaviours, and these too are functionally correct to reality to allow for survival. I'll provide the example again, of a bird that builds a nest before it lays eggs. Why? Does it know and plan ahead. That seems unlikely. Rather, it is programmed to do so by evolution. Because those that didn't behave this way are extinct - we are left with birds that build nests before they lay eggs. That's behavioural intelligence.
I'm no zoologist, but morality of any recognizable sort, seems to occur in social animals. According to Jane Goodall, chimpanzees have a moral sense insofar as they share food, and defend the troop, and groom each other - but further, they remember who contributes in these ways, and withhold their favours accordingly. Morality then, seems to be promoted as a social survival strategy - in that, a moral sense is an advantage to the moral individual within the troop, and to the troop composed of moral individuals.
Perrhaps if I ask a slightly different, but related question. As you say, Chimps remember who contributes in these ways, and withhold their favours accordingly. Ought they do so? But further, ought they do so if and only if it ensures survival? Is you claim that organisms have a moral imperative to survive?
The problem with that, again, is that if the 'biological determines the intellectual', then it undermines the sovereignty of reason. If reason depends for its validity on biological adaption, then what warrant does it have to be true? If you explain that warrant in terms of adaptation, then you're relying on the very faculty for the explanation, but at the same time, reducing it to an adaption instead of something inherently true.
I claim, and I think the Greek philosophical tradition as a whole claims, that man, as the 'rational animal' is able to ground rational statements in the apodictic certainty of rational truths such as the laws of logic. Again, if you say that those laws themselves are 'a product' of evolutionary biology, then you're deprecating them, wishing to explain them in terms of something else.
[quote=Leon Wieseltier]the reason [Dennett] imputes to the human creatures depicted in his book is merely a creaturely reason. Dennett's natural history does not deny reason, it animalizes reason. It portrays reason in service to natural selection, and as a product of natural selection. But if reason is a product of natural selection, then how much confidence can we have in a rational argument for natural selection? The power of reason is owed to the independence of reason, and to nothing else....Evolutionary biology cannot invoke the power of reason even as it destroys it.[/quote]
My view is that when h. sapiens evolved to becoming a language-using, tool-making, story-telling, meaning-seeking creature, then s/he 'escapes the bonds of biology'. Surely in the organic sense, we're biological organisms, and continuous with the whole spectrum of evolutionary development, but we have crossed a boundary by virtue of the explosive development of the homind forebrain, one consequence of which is the requirement to make moral decisions.
A 'realist criterion' for truth, if I may say so, discerns what is (proximately) true by matching a truth-claim to a truth-maker (i.e. fact of the matter and/or valid inference) – like turning a key in a lock – and thereby mismatches indicate non-truths. I suggest that adaptivity (for FLOURISHING, not mere 'survival') is a heuristic criterion for deciding on 'criteria of truth'.
If "there are no criteria by which to judge criteria of truth", then we cannot decide whether or not it is true that "there are no criteria [ ... ]", no? This sort of arbitrariness (e.g. relativism, nihilism, anti-realism) isn't adaptive outside of very narrow, parochial, niches (e.g. academia).
Quoting Banno
What do you mean?
Quoting Banno
Those that survived, survived - and did so because genetically and physiologically and behaviourally they were correct to reality. Morality is a form of behavioural intelligence.
Quoting Banno
Survivors do so.
Quoting Banno
I cannot answer in the way you require. Prior to the occurrence of intellectual intelligence, we cannot reasonably describe moral behaviour as a choice. It's behavioural intelligence that promotes survival. There is no question of whether they ought. But such behaviours make it more likely they will survive.
Quoting Banno
The human organism, yes.
Ah. Good. So "the human organism"(individual, species, genetic code...?) has a moral imperative to survive.
Why?
Edit: Perhaps I should put it this way: you say that those that survive are "correct to reality"; why ought we strive to be "correct to reality"? An anti-natalist, for example, might argue that survival only increases the amount of pain in the world, and hence is morally repugnant. Or a follower of Nietzsche might insist that we have an obligation to overcome the chains of our genetic code; that being glorious is more important than surviving.
So why ought we survive?
I do not find you an honest or reasonable debater. You are only out to shoot down these ideas; whether from personal enmity, or philosophical conviction - I don't know. I've asked you to explain your convictions, and you've refused, repeatedly - and I refuse to debate at a disadvantage with someone pursuing a concealed agenda - and willing to misrepresent my argument to further that agenda. If you can find where I've written the phrase 'the biological determines the intellectual' - ever, anywhere - I'll eat my hat. Otherwise, I shall decline to address your deliberate misunderstanding.
Morality, as I've explained, is a sense - and given due consideration to the facts, this is my considered opinion:
Quoting counterpunch
Obviously you don't understand my criticisms, but I assure you, they are not made in bad faith. In every interchange, I'm making an effort to explain the basis of what I'm saying, and even providing references and sources. You've joined a philosophy forum and I would hope you would be able to handle constructive criticism - given your user name! - but apparently not. :-)
Quoting Wayfarer
I understand that I have never said 'the biological determines the intellectual' - and am not about to claim the words you want to put in my mouth. I presume you know that if you highlight the text from my post, and hit quote - it will copy my exact words. There's no need to reinterpret anything. If you want to debate my ideas, debate my ideas.
Sure.
That doesn't answer the question. All you've said is that you have a preference for survival: "this is my considered opinion". The anti-natalist and the Nietzschean in my examples disagree. Have you an argument against them?
That is simply a paraphrase of:
[quote="counterpunch;499791]"The moral sense is a consequence of the truth relation between the organism and a causal reality [/quote]
Isn't it? Did I read it wrong?
I'm generally critical of the way that biological evolution has become a 'theory of everything' in respect of human nature. There is a very widespread assumption in modern culture that evolutionary biology replaced religion in the sense of providing an account of human origins. So in that context it is natural to assume that moral and intellectual capacities can be understood in such terms. And you're doing this throughout this thread. So that's why I'm referring to criticisms of this attitude from other sources, such as philosopher Thomas Nagel, who has devoted his career to this line of thought. Neither he nor I am afiliated with any form of creationism or intelligent design but are mindful of the shortcomings of the current orthodoxy (which he describes as 'neo-Darwinian materialism'). If you're interested in exploring them, I can recommend some sources.
Well said.
Instead, I'd say there is a very widespread assumption in modern culture that evolutionary biology replaced ethics in the sense of providing an account of human obligations. My point is that this is an assumption, not a conclusion.
Have a geez at:
Anything but Human, Richard Polt, New York Times.
It ain't Necessarily So, Anthony Gottlieb, New Yorker.
Quoting Banno
What do you mean?
The pretence is that there is a scientific account of what we ought do. But on analysis, it comes down to an expression of Counterpunch's personal preference.
welll, more than personal - it can be social, a widely-held view that an individual also accepts.
I choose my words with care to explain some quite fine distinctions that your paraphrasing is apt to disregard.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes, that is what I'm doing.
Quoting Wayfarer
I'm surprised Thomas Nagel has heard of me.
Quoting Wayfarer
I don't know of any other evolutionary theorist who posits a truth relation between the organism and a causal reality; to which the organism must be correct or be rendered extinct. The furthest any have gone along this line of reason, to my knowledge - is some consideration paid to entropy. Ingesting energy and excreting waste - but beyond that, it's as if evolution plays out against a blank background - rather than, a complex environment with definite physical, chemical and biological properties - to which the organism must be responsive, or die out.
There's an over-emphasis in my view, on the random blindness of evolution - which is not to say that random genetic mutation is not the basis upon which selection acts, nor to suggest that evolution has a purpose in mind. And this is why I'm so careful with the words I use - because between these lies the path of my argument; that the organism has to be correct to reality to survive.
I've done lots of reading on this subject, and have my own argument to make - so if you could quit it with the condescending implications that I don't know what I'm talking about, that would be super!
Edit: I read your linked articles. While I agree with them in the main, there is something a bit unsettling here as well. You see, I agree with Counterpunch that survival is not such a bad thing. Indeed, if made to choose, I would side with him over my posited anti-natalist or Nietzschean.
It is not condescending to point out that this is an insufficient basis for resolution of the question posed by the OP.
We have a choice. That's what gives the matter moral import. If we could only walk blindly into extinction, it wouldn't be a moral question. But because we are able to know, and able to choose - it is a moral question, and my answer to that question is, yes, we ought to survive.
My reasons are many, but most basically, it is reasonably possible to secure a prosperous sustainable future, and live well into the long term future. That so, I think we ought to; rather than inflict terrible suffering on our offspring, and allow the human species to become extinct.
I suspect intellectual intelligence matters - in some bigger sense, because of the truth relation between the organism and reality, that describes the entirety of evolution, and that is also the means to a prosperous and sustainable future. I think truth leads somewhere. I don't know where, but intellectual intelligence should play out to its full potential.
Hence,
Quoting counterpunch
SO arguably, 4: "They are separate but still similar"
It's not insufficient when one considers morality as the behaviourally intelligent survival strategy of social organisms that are built from the bottom up, to be correct to reality to survive.
Perhaps you would reconsider your original post here:
I answered "none of the above" because morality is behavioural intelligence. The capacity to have a moral opinion is a consequence of evolution, and reducible, in turn - to the truth relation between the organism and reality. The capacity to have a moral opinion is not the same as an expression of that moral capacity. If you ask me - ought humankind survive? Then for all sorts of reasons, yes. But I do not have that opinion by dint of some sperate magisterium, or Platonic ideal, less yet, God given rules of conduct. I am able to form that opinion because morality is a sense ingrained into the organism at the behaviourally intelligent level by evolution in a tribal context. So again, none of the above.
‘And then you bring in all these things I hadn’t thought of and writers I haven’t heard about which criticises this view. How condescending! You’re just insufferable!’ :razz:
...it might be worth someone pointing out that this phrase is quite obscure...
:up: I notice you do explicitly mention 'scientism' in that option.
Also I was going to suggest that 'normative' might be a better term than 'prescriptive' - means the same, but 'normative' is more recognisable in the context. Not that it really matters.
It's almost certainly, not my view being criticised. So wherein lies the benefit? Here's one of your quotes:
Should I defend Dennet then? If Leon Wieseltier wants to criticise Dennet, I'm sure Dennet can take it, but what has it to do with me? Dennet's conclusions are not my own. I thought Darwin's Dangerous Idea was a great book - but toward then end, we diverged.
I can give a probable explanation of the occurrence of intellectual intelligence, and it's not primarily as a product of natural selection. In 'The Neanderthal Enigma" James Shreeve identifies an event in evolutionary history dubbed 'the creative explosion.' It's the sudden appearance in the archaeological record of artefacts that display a truly human mode of thought. Cave art, burial of the dead, jewellery, improved tools etc. There is no concurrent increase in cranial capacity or change in diet that explains this change in behaviour.
I think it was conceptual evolution occurring in behaviourally intelligent homo sapiens that jump started intellectual intelligence. It could relate to a Creator God concept - as an answer to the question, formed for the first time ever: Who made me? Who made the world? I think primitive man was cast from innocence into superstition in the blink of an eye, and that intellectual intelligence is a consequence of this paranoia. But then, I've also read a lot of psychology.
Quoting Wayfarer
No, I don't agree with the first option. I think Wayfarer's right; that's the option I'd go for.
I figured you might. That's why I mentioned Dennett. But it's not specific to him - it's a general observation.
Quoting counterpunch
I've just learned an interesting phrase from modern philosophy 'the hermeneutics of suspicion', to wit:
So, whereas I might depict the advent of self-consciousness as opening up new horizons of being, you might depict it as 'paranoia'. I guess there will be, ultimately, no way of adjuticating that, but I know which one I'd prefer to believe.
I’ve been shying away from using “normative” because so many people seem to misunderstand it to mean specifically “regarding social norms”, as in what other people will approve of, or what’s commonly accepted, rather than what is right or good, regardless of whether or not that equates to social approval.
I would consider Wayfarer’s option to fall within either the first or fourth options, depending on whether you think the things seen from those different perspectives should be treated by different or similar methods.
I think (in my option 4 view) that there’s only one world that we consider in descriptivism and prescriptive ways, for instance; but I think both of those ways of considering it deserve the same principles be applied in the approach to them. If instead you think e.g. that prescriptive views, unlike descriptive ones, can’t be objectively settled and so much either be held on faith or left only relative to their holders, that’s option 1.
I'd say that ethical and aesthetical disagreements can't be settled the way that empirical disagreements can. Correct answers in mathematics and the more mathematical sciences can be determined, but not so much in the "softer" natural sciences and in the so-called humanities. Subtle ethical questions are even less amenable to determining what is correct.
This may often be due to things, for example, like determining what constitutes a person, when it comes to issues like abortion or animal rights. It hard to see how it will not always be a matter of interpretation with such questions.
So I'm not seeing how the "same principles" (other than general good faith and intellectual honesty) can be expected to apply in the various domains of inquiry.
You can only be objective with respect to topics which can be framed in terms of subject-object relations. To say this doesn't undermine objectivity, because it covers an immense range of subjects; there's a huge range of disciplines which benefit from objectivity and in which objective criteria are fundamental.
But there are also matters of judgement which transcend the scope of objectivity. This includes for example, moral principles, historical and even judicial judgements. I mean, juries can disagree in all manner of ways, even in cases where 'the facts' seem to be cut-and-dried.
But the implicit appeal of 'objective truth' is that it is 'the same for everyone'. You will notice that those who venerate objective truth tend to trivialise or subjectivise moral principles or at any rate to reduce them to matters of opinion. Also notice that this is specifically what Plato abhored about the sophists of his day, Protagoras and the like. In saying that, I don't want open the door for simple relativism or subjectivism, either. I believe there are real moral laws, but to say they're 'objective' overstates what objective judgement is capable of.
So, what I want to say is that there is therefore no method by which to judge moral statements. There are, instead, moral codes, which are frameworks of judgement which have been foundational to every culture. And yes, these do contain, and arguably rest upon, religious revelation.
But a code is not a method. The problem modern culture has, is that it believes scientific method is universal, that it therefore derives truths which are just so for everyone, but it doesn't deal with those subjects which cannot be framed in purely objective terms. 'One of the crucial differences between the method of science and the non-theoretical understanding that is exemplified in music, art, philosophy and ordinary life, is that science aims at a level of generality which necessarily eludes these other forms of understanding. This is why the understanding of people can never be a science. To understand a person is to be able to tell, for example, whether he means what he says or not, whether his expressions of feeling are genuine or feigned. And how does one acquire this sort of understanding?'
So, no, there can be no 'similar methodologies' between the descriptive and the normative, because normative judgement transcend methodology as such.
Quoting Janus
Agree.
What, in your mind is the purpose of these sly asides?
Quoting Wayfarer
So in your view, the advent of self-consciousness involves an apple tree, a talking snake and a pissed off deity? What one might call the "scrumping for consciousness" hypothesis? Provocative, certainly!
Quoting counterpunch
Do you know what 'hermenuetics' means?
Quoting Wayfarer
I know what it is supposed to mean. But perhaps you should say what you mean by it!
If you knew what it meant, you wouldn’t ask such questions.
I was hoping for something a little more productive. I was trying to give you a taste of your own medicine. It's bitter, because you're bitter in your sub rosa defence of a Biblical account of human origins. The difference between us is - I offend you incidentally as I seek to understand reality. You offend me deliberately to confound any other explanation but your own.
It's not hermenuetics that suggests a God concept occurred to primitive man; and that the nature of human intelligence is paranoid suspicion, as opposed to reason. The Mitochondrial Eve is the most recent common matrilineal ancestor - and she occurs about 200,000 years ago - before the occurrence of a truly human mode of thought. That so, how do we explain the universality of intellectual intelligence? Intelligence cannot be grounded in a random genetic mutation selected for by natural and sexual selection - because our common ancestor did not have this trait.
So it has to be something else; and when we take into account the nature of human intelligence - like you, a supposedly grown up, modern day and not unintelligent person, subscribing to the "scrumping for consciousness" hypothesis - it's not reasonable to call that reason. When we look at the history of humankind, and anticipate our most likely future - reason is clearly not the central faculty at work. Reason is some poor relation at the feast laid out by paranoid superstition - invoked by the simple question that Cicero, William Paley and Richard Dawkins grind upon - the "Who made this?" question.
That idea of a Creator God could be transmitted among people, and is clearly able to grip the human mind in a very profound way - such that, even now, in the modern world, given a rational explanation, you cannot let go of it. That's very difficult to explain in terms of reason as a random genetic mutation - selected for by natural and sexual selection. Even putting aside that fact no such genetic trait could be universally transmitted among all people because the Mitochondrial Eve occurs long before human intellect occurs, humans are not reasonable creatures. It must have been psychological evolution, and there's no other idea - with such great power, within reach by dint of a small and natural leap than the answer to the question: Who made all this?
It is indeed true that one of the things dissolved in the acid of Darwin’s dangerous idea, is philosophy itself. Unfortunately, the same acid it takes the sense of irony along with it (like COVID does to taste), so those propounding it can’t sense the acrid fumes. :-)
What is that, by the way? I googled the term, nothing comes up.
Also 'scrumping' - that yields:
scrump
/skr?mp/
verbINFORMAL•BRITISH
gerund or present participle: scrumping
steal (fruit) from an orchard or garden.
"I remember Gordon scrumping apples from the orchard next door"
That is true. That is evolutionary rationalism, applied to the human condition. Hermenuetics, as you may not be familiar with it, is 'the branch of knowledge that deals with interpretation, especially of the Bible or literary texts.' It's much more discussed in Contintental than in Anglo-American philosophy.
That's nonsensical; and betrays a paranoia I will explain to you.
You think Nietzsche was right, that man in a state of nature was some amoral brute, and that the strong were fooled by the weak. But that's not true. The human animal is a moral, social creature; and could not have survived otherwise.
We lived in hunter gatherer tribal groups - for millions of years, and if chimpanzees are any measure - we shared food, defended the tribe and groomed each other. ...
Nietzsche's idea of natural ethics in the will to power is simply false. And the inversion of values he identified was not the strong fooled by the weak but the innate moral sense imbued in the organism, and in the kinship structures of the tribe - made explicit when hunter gatherer tribes joined together to form societies and civilisations.
Don't seek to cast me as an agent for the ubermensch - because that's absolutely not what this is. It's what your paranoid superstition cannot but fear, but try letting reason take the wheel.
However, if there's no god, our ideas on how the world should be matter for what is defintely falls short of the mark.
I am trying to understand what you're saying, but the parts don't all fit together. You say
Quoting counterpunch
So here, you're appealing to a naturalistic basis for morality, you're arguing that morality is 'naturally selected' for adaptive reasons. This is what I've been criticizing, but it's not because I don't like you - it's on philosophical grounds, the fact that evolutionary biology maybe doesn't supply such grounds, that the moral sense is not innate for evolutionary reasons.
Anyway, if it were the case that we're 'selected to see the facts', then why is there any room for disagreement? Why could there be any conflict? Because we're not scientically advanced enough yet? If that is so, it seems an ever-receding horizon; science has long since provided the means for weapons of mass destruction, but it has no voice about whether to build them or not, or how to resolve human conflict. Bertrand Russell pointed this out in the Epilogue to his History of Western Philosophy in the 1940's.
You also say:
Quoting counterpunch
As if 'the intellectual level' is continuous with physiological and behavioural. That the ability to reason is like a claw, or a tentacle, or the beaver's ability to build dams. That is 'reductionist'. You know what 'reductionist' is, and the objections to it? Again, nothing personal here.
Quoting counterpunch
I don't like Nietszche at all, I think he's tremendously over-rated. That's my personal view.
Let's try and get to some consensus about what we're actually disagreeing about. You're arguing that morality appears in h. sapiens in a purely natural manner - that it is advantageous from the point of view of natural selection. I asked you, and you said that it was. You're of course not at all alone in believing that. It's probably the majority view, the mainstream view. So I'm not taking shots at you personally, even though you seem to be taking it that way. I'm taking the position of those criticizing the view of evolutionary naturalism as a basis for ethics. But as soon as I do that, then the question is: 'so you believe in a Talking Snake?' You see the issue here? I think there's actually a kind of subterranean fault-line showing up in this debate, which you might not be aware of - that is why it pushes buttons.
Not exactly, no. I am arguing that a MORAL SENSE is naturally selected for adaptive reasons. Not any particular moral or ethical principal, but a sensitivity to moral implication, that is, according to Goodall, present in chimpanzee tribal dynamics. Your naturalistic fallacy objection does not apply to the evolutionary development of a moral sense. It applies to any specific 'ought' - such as, Nietzsche's naturalistic ethics.
Quoting Wayfarer
I have never used the phrase - 'selected to see the facts." I can only suspect what aspect of what I have actually said, this is intended to refer to. I have asked that you stop paraphrasing me. You don't understand my argument, and so cannot conceivably paraphrase it correctly.
Quoting Wayfarer
This makes no sense of anything I've said. You are pitching at a windmill in your mind. A windmill you think is my argument, but in reality, you're riding a donkey and your armour is made from pots and pans. It is quite that absurd to imagine that my argument is that we are some rule following robot as a consequence of some sort of evolutionary determinism, or something. That's not what I'm saying at all.
Quoting Wayfarer
Try this. You have a list of instructions and a map, but you're holding the map upside down. You follow the instructions. Do you get to your intended destination? No, you do not. Why? Because your map is not correct to reality. It's upside down. There's a causal relation between the validity of knowledge, and human action, and the consequences of such action. And this is a continuation of the truth relation between the organism and reality, from the structure of DNA, to physiology, to behaviour - so too must intellectually intelligent human beings be correct to a causal reality to survive.
This is a well trampled area. There have been lot of thinkers pass through this neck of the woods. If you're going to attack my argument, try understand it before drawing in heavy weight philosophers that are not criticising the arguments I'm making. They are criticising the arguments they are making. I am aware of the arguments they have made, and the criticisms of those arguments. I may be traversing the same forest, but I am not on the same well worn path.
I tried earlier to describe how my argument picks its way between randomness and purpose, where I said:
Quoting counterpunch
And it's like you keep saying, that I do think evolution has a purpose in mind, and then you attack that position and ignore what I actually said. I do not suggest that evolution justifies any particular moral ought. I suggest evolution imbued human beings with a sensitivity to moral implication; a moral sense - that, with reference to Hume, allows that we see the moral implications of facts. Indeed, we cannot but see the moral implications of facts.
I’m more or less asking what people generally think about that gap, yes: it’s real and the sides of it are very different, it’s not real and everything is “is”-like, it’s not real and everything is “ought”-like, or it’s real but both sides of it are similar.
Quoting Wayfarer
Thinking on it, I'm going to resile from agreeing with this; there is no "one domain" that we can grasp, so it is really a baseless presumption to say that there must be, ontologically speaking, one overarching domain of reality.
The capacity to have a moral opinion would not have been possible without there having being an evolution of species, because the human species would not have have been possible without there having been an evolution of species. If that is all you mean by "the capacity to have a moral opinion is a consequence of evolution" then it is an uncontroversial claim.
As to the capacity to have a moral opinion being reducible "to the truth relation between the organism and reality" I don't know what that even means, it seems to be "not even wrong". Or it could be trivially true in the sense that we need a notion of truth and falsity in order to "have a moral opinion"; that is, to be able to judge that moral stances are right or wrong. It depends on what you mean, and that is far from clear.
It is not the topic of this thread, to be sure; but it would make an interesting topic fro another thread.
Beautiful. Do we have a "quotable quotes" thread?
...otherwise known as 'cosmos'....
Quoting counterpunch
But Hume didn't propose any such idea. He is famous for framing the very is/ought, fact/value dichotomy that is behind the question posed by this thread.
[quote=Hume]In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remarked, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary way of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when of a sudden I am surprised to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is, however, of the last [i.e. most important] consequence. For as this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation, it is necessary that it should be observed and explained; and at the same time that a reason should be given, for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it. But as authors do not commonly use this precaution, I shall presume to recommend it to the readers; and am persuaded, that this small attention would subvert all the vulgar systems of morality, and let us see, that the distinction of vice and virtue is not founded merely on the relations of objects, nor is perceived by reason.[/quote]
Agree that as h. sapiens evolved, so too did their sense of morality, and also agree that precursors to same can be observed in other primates. But the broader philosophical question revolves around the scope of naturalism, and the 'naturalist' project to account for human capabilities in naturalistic terms. I'm mentioning other philosophers, because I'm looking at the question philosophically, not through the lense of unquestioning naturalism, and Nagel is one philosopher in particular who has deeply explored this question. And the alternative to naturalist accounts is not reversion to simple Biblical literalism (e.g. believing in talking snakes). Religious accounts are to be interpreted metaphorically.
Quoting Banno
You saw the question I was asked, right?
Indeed; I found the irony quite amusing.
I fucking well know that Hume posed the question. That's why I mentioned him. I do not disagree with Hume's observation - that people state facts, and then switch to ought mode.
I disagree with Hume's analysis of that observation.
For me, people do this because they are imbued with a moral sense by evolution, and cannot but see the moral implications of facts.
For Hume, I imagine, he believed morality to be God given.
My argument addresses the same question Hume asked, but draws a different conclusion.
How do you not get that?
If you don't get that by now - please leave me alone. You're wasting my time.
I didn't get it, because it's obviously very confused. And I'm happy to leave you alone.
I'm not at all confused. You are. You have just failed to appreciate a very simple premise after a protracted discussion of my argument. Perhaps if you hadn't been so aggressively averse at every moment of that discussion; had you opened your mind even a little, some of it might have sunk in and you wouldn't be so confused now, about what my argument actually is.
No.
Hume was an atheist.
I am currently discussing it in another thread (the one about identity politics and morality) with Isaac, and have ended up going over it (always with him) in many, many threads before, which is what prompted me to start this poll.
Oh and yeah...Quoting Janus
I didn’t mean that to be a requirement for option 1, though that would be one possibility for it.
Quoting Wayfarer
Sure, but the cosmos can never be an object of perception like a tiger, a cloud, a fish, a mountain, a star or a galaxy.
So 'cosmos' is just the idea of the totality of things, and we cannot say whether there is a cosmos apart from our ideas.
Quoting Banno
Was he?
"One of the most hotly debated issues arising out of Hume’s philosophy is whether or not he was an atheist. Two methodological and historical caveats should be briefly noted before addressing this question. First, as already noted, many of Hume’s own contemporaries regarded him in these terms. Our own contemporaries have tended to dismiss these claims as coming from religious bigots who did not understand Hume’s philosophy. While there may be some basis for these concerns, this is not true of all of Hume’s early critics (e.g. Thomas Reid) and, even if it were, it would not show that his critics were wrong about this matter. Second, and related to the first point, Hume lived and wrote at a time of severe religious persecution, by both the church and the state. Unorthodox religious views, and more especially any form of open atheism, would certainly provoke strong reactions from the authorities. Caution and subterfuge in these circumstances was essential if difficulties of these kinds were to be avoided. (For this reason it is especially ironic to find religious apologists who confidently read Hume’s professions of orthodoxy as entirely sincere but who never mention the awkward conditions in which he had to express his views.) While conditions of suppression do not themselves prove a writer or thinker such as Hume had a concealed doctrine, this possibility should be seriously and carefully considered."
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume-religion/#WasHumAth
Seems unlikely, but even if Hume were an atheist, it wouldn't alter my point, which is that Hume probably attributed morality to God - whether extant or as a religious archetype, it was an objective conception of morality - as opposed to the innate moral sense I describe.
Quoting counterpunch
Perhaps not.
You talk of a moral sense, but show an antipathy towards Hume. See Sympathy, and the Nature and Origin of the Moral Sentiments
"Our moral evaluations of persons and their character traits, on Hume’s positive view, arise from our sentiments. The virtues and vices are those traits the disinterested contemplation of which produces approval and disapproval, respectively, in whoever contemplates the trait, whether the trait’s possessor or another. These moral sentiments are emotions (in the present-day sense of that term) with a unique phenomenological quality, and also with a special set of causes. They are caused by contemplating the person or action to be evaluated without regard to our self-interest, and from a common or general perspective that compensates for certain likely distortions in the observer’s sympathies..."
"Sentiments" is as deep as he can get, because for him, the moral sense as behavioural intelligence ingrained into the organism by millions of years of evolution is an unknown. He cannot know that moral behaviours were an advantage to the individual within the tribe and to the tribe composed of moral individuals - less yet, consider that in relation to the hierarchical nature of the hunter gatherer tribe, and translate all that - via a not quite Nietzschean transvaluation of values, into an explicit form necessary to multi-tribal societies and civilisations. Moral sentiments are for writers of romance fiction.
I agree with ou, however I do not know if we 'decide' in a Kantian autonomy kind of way on the criteria of truth. We do that from a bedrock of cultural assumptions. Just as 'fliurishing' is based on cultural assumptions. I belong to a group of researchers investigating 'the anthropocene' for instance and that very word contains different connotations about flourishing than the biblical (go forth and multiply) or the positivistic (bring nature into culture) ideals of flourishing.
Quoting 180 Proof
We cannot 'decide' whether there are criteria of truth or not in any definite once and for all way, no. That does not mean every criterion is arbitrary. We see, like your lock and key analogy, which work better than others and so provisionally we choose one over the other. The only thing that salvages us and perhaps the only criterion I would accept is that of the better argument. When you cease to abide by that rule you cease to pplay the game if 'triuth' altogether. However what constitutes a better argument is indeed dependent on the criteria of truth so the game is deeply circular. I do think it is meaningful because through it we get to know ourselves. Whether that is knowledge of the truth remains an open question, but those to me in the end coincide (in dogmatic idealist fashion :D ) .
But option (c) because facts are true descriptions, and true is a value.
But I'm wondering people haven't changed their votes after further clarification in this thread, or if people who didn't vote because of ambiguity did vote after those clarifications.
Maybe you only got 7 votes because the options offered are not exhaustive. They are, to be fair - the options offered by Western philosophy, but none of them - in my opinion, are correct.
Quoting Pfhorrest
Quoting Pfhorrest
Quoting Pfhorrest
Quoting Pfhorrest
Nope, no, niet, and non!
Life springs from the action of physical forces on inanimate matter, and the organism evolves in relation to a causal reality, and has to be correct to reality to survive. Surviving physiologies and behaviours are correct to reality because they survive. In the human organism, morality is a behaviourally intelligent sense fostered by evolution in a tribal context, prior to the capacity for intellectual intelligence that allowed, eventually, for an appreciation of fact. The descriptive "is" and the prescriptive "ought" are not separate, nor exclusive. They are interwoven in our evolutionary development and psychology; and we, human beings are by our evolved nature, situated between the is and the ought; our behaviours variations upon the ideal - of knowing what's true and doing what's right in terms of what's true!
Quoting Pfhorrest
I don't accept I'm suggesting that only the descriptive domain exists, because I assert that life stems from the action of physical forces on inanimate matter, and evolves in relation to causality - because, while the moral sense is rooted in behavioural intelligence, intellectual intelligence is qualitatively distinct - and illuminates an abstract realm of existence that does not exist for animals.
To illustrate - the bird doesn't plan ahead, even when it builds a nest before it lays eggs. Humans plan ahead because for humans the future exists by dint of intellectual apprehension. It's a matter of behavioural intelligence that chimpanzees share food - but intellectual intelligence has seen several thousand years of head scratching, seeking to define moral and ethical principles, then applied to religious, political and economic systems. Even if the prescriptive domain exists inter-subjectively, as a collective consciousness, it exists. And that it has a material, biological substrate - doesn't imply that moral questions can be reduced to matters of fact.
I do not claim that we should feed the poor because chimpanzees share food. That's the naturalistic fallacy - and is inherent to a descriptive explanation. Rather, there's a behaviourally intelligent, evolutionary advantageous moral sense - made explicit by intellectual intelligence, that exists between human beings. The descriptive and prescriptive are inseparable. And so, when we look at a list of facts, we see the moral implications. That's who we are! Both!
This would also constitute an option I would have voted for, had it been included in the poll. I like the idea of the co-constitution of the two "domains" (prescriptive and descriptive), which of course rather threatens their being meaningfully characterised as two distinct domains to begin with. I am not very well read in Heidegger, but his relevance to the issues of the relationship of (pragmatic) normativity to the constitution of "objective" empirical domains was made clearer to me by the work of John Haugeland (especially the last four essays included in his Having Thought: Essays in the Metaphysics of Mind) where he also draws heavily on Sellars and Sellars' Kantianism.
The connection with Anscombe's virtue-ethics also is suggestive to me since it's closely related to Putnam's own attack on the fact/value dichotomy, his pragmatism, and David Wiggins' own conceptualism (mostly developed in his Sameness and Substance: Renewed as well as several essays on theories of truth, Humean and Aristotelian ethics, and on the subjective/objective distinction.
That's a lot a references and name dropping but maybe I can highlight the gist of this broad line of thinking about facts/values, descriptions/prescriptions, objectivity/subjectivity, etc., by means of an appeal to the Kantian/Aristotelian distinction between theoretical reason and practical reason. Aristotle suggested (this may have been either in On the Soul, in Nichomachean Ethics, or both) that theoretical reason, which aims at knowing what is true, and practical reason, which aims at deciding what to do, are different employment of the (unique) faculty of reason that are distinguished by the direction of their employment, as it were, from the specific to the general, in the case of theoretical reason, and from the general to the specific, in the case of practical reason. Hence, theoretical sciences could be viewed as aiming to generate principles that find application in the development of general statement suitable as to serve as major premises in theoretical syllogisms. Practical wisdom, as well as virtue, on the other hand, enabling an agent to select both a general premise (pertaining to ends) and a particular premise (some statement regarding means and/or opportunity) for concluding in some more specific practical requirement and, ultimately, in a particular (concrete) action.
This view yields a rather pragmatic conception of theoretical sciences (and of the descriptive domains that they are concerned with) since their aim become inseparably linked to the general goal of rationally guiding action.
A second and related idea that I also owe to Wiggins consists in his employment of a distinction between two traditional distinction that are often being conflated: (1) the general/specific distinction and (2) the universal/particular distinction. Wiggins borrows this 'distinction between distinctions' from R. M. Hare who had first deployed it in the context of the philosophy of law. This distinction may help dissolve some puzzles that would stem from too crudely contrasting the employments or theoretical and practical reason in the way I have rather hastily sketched above. So, the main insight here is that although employments of practical reason that begin with some set of general requirements, ends, or desires, in order to arrive at (with the consideration of more local or specific means and opportunities) particular courses of action, the reasoning proceeds, dialectically, both from the general to the specific and from the particular to the universal. That is, in order to be successful, practical reasoning must not only aim at seizing (specific) opportunities suitable as to achieve pre-selected ends but must also contribute to select among the various ends and needs of the agent those that are rendered salient by the practical and moral demands of the current situation. This entails that the principles making a particular action rational (at some particular time and place) become universally applicable (by the light of practical reason) merely to the extend and on the condition that the ends being pursued have been selected in a manner that is sensitive to the specific requirement of the situation of the agent (and hence the role of practical wisdom, and of virtue, in sustaining rationality by making salient to the agent ends suitable as to being pursued in the right circumstances).
That sounds to me like either the first of fourth options, depending on whether you think the application of theoretical reason and practical reason are starkly different from each other or very similar. (It sounds like you think they're pretty different, but I'm not completely clear).
Maybe a better way of summarizing the four options would be this flowchart:
Do questions about "what is" and "what ought to be" have to be addressed separately (options 1 or 4), or does an answer to one automatically give you an answer to the other (options 2 or 3)?
- If they have to be addressed separately:
- - do the methods of answering the two questions differ greatly (option 1), or
- - are they generally similar / parallel / analogous (option 4)?
- Else, if an answer to one automatically gives you an answer to the other, is that:
- - because "ought" questions are just a subset of "is" questions (option 2), or
- - because every claim that something "is" inherently implies some "ought" as well (option 3)?
On the present view, they're different applications of a deeply integrated set of rational skills -- involving both 'knowledge that' and 'knowing how'. Knowing what is (knowledge of the descriptive domain, so called) involves knowing what can be done with elements of this domain and knowing how (knowledge of the prescriptive domain, so called) involves knowing how to make use of what is in order to sensibly conform to contextually relevant prescriptions.
Answering questions to one rely on our also answering questions to the other. But that's neither because of simple relations of inclusion or implication. It's rather because of a relation of co-constitution. Objects in an empirical domain are constituted by us in the way that they are because of the pragmatic point of our constituting them in that way, and our practical concerns are what they are in the light or our historically and materially situated sets of opportunities and capabilities (what is). What is (empirically, for us) and what ought to be (according to our ethical/political/technical practices and standards) arise together, historically, but they're not the same thing since they correspond to movements of thought in opposite directions along the specific/general and particular/universal continua.
That leaves entirely open the question of how to decide what the prescriptions to try to conform to are, which makes it sound like option 2 to me.
Option 2, that there exists only a descriptive domain? If there were only a descriptive domain, then this domain would be self-sufficient. What there is to be known would be quite independent from our pragmatic concerns. But the present approach denies that; although what it claims the descriptive domain to be dependent on for its constitution isn't a separate domain, or the existence of queer normative facts, but rather co-constituted rational practices and rational concerns.