Moral value and what it tells you about you.

Moral value is based not on who or what we are, but on who or what we think we are. This makes irrelevant your notes about mind and body, because it all depends on our decisions. For example, even a corpse can be considered morally deserving value and respect, if we think so: big buildings like Egyptian pyramids show this..

Reply to Angelo No, I am morally valuable even if I don't think I am.

Quoting Bartricks

a mindless foetus or a corpse both seem to be things whose destruction is not morally bad

Interesting! So, we're treating fetuses like corpses but then the crucial difference - one is alive but the other is not!

Moral value? I guess, going by what you said above about fetuses & corpses, life in and of itself, simply being alive, immediately and unequivocally, confers moral value. So moral value looks something like this:

1. Physical life. Moral value? +
2. Physical life + Mental life. Moral value? ++

Reply to Bartricks
That’s impossible: you are saying this because now you think you are morally valuable. If tomorrow you think you are not morally valuable, tomorrow you can’t say “I am morally valuable even if I don't think I am”, because this would mean that actually you still think you are morally valuable.

Reply to Angelo If roger thinks he has no moral value, it obviously doesn't follow that he actually lacks moral value.

Reply to TheMadFool I don't understand your point. I have argued that our minds are the bearers of moral value and that we can learn from this that our minds are immaterial.

Reply to Bartricks
I have never said that it follows. I said
Quoting Angelo

Moral value is based not on who or what we are, but on who or what we think we are

This means that what can be opposed to what Roger thinks is not what actually is, but what other people think. It is impossible to know what actually is, because any kind of knowledge is filtered by what we think. We can’t have knowledge without thinking. We can’t have knowledge of morality without thinking something about it.

Reply to Angelo Your position is asserted without any argument. It is implausible (if I think I am not morally valuable, that does not entail that I actually lack moral value). And it doesn't engage with the OP.
Imagine a detective lays out carefully some evidence that mark did the crime. And you just ignore it and declare that ghengis Khan did it.

Reply to Bartricks

There is no moral value to something that isn't material. You have it backwards

Reply to Gregory Again, address the argument. Don't just declare things as if you are God and if you say it, it is so. Argue.

Reply to Bartricks

But there is no argument in the OP

The possibility of the soul has to be proved, since it's nowhere in experience

It's existence has to be proved

It's value has to be proved.

Why can't meat have value?

Why can't meat think? To me it's obvious that it does. It does in animals

Reply to Bartricks
I followed the OP in my first answer
Quoting Angelo

Moral value is based not on who or what we are, but on who or what we think we are. This makes irrelevant your notes about mind and body, because it all depends on our decisions.

Mine is not an argument, but a reminder to take subjectivity into consideration. Your OP seems working just because it ignores subjectivity, you ignored the involvement of yourself in what you said in the OP. This is the general error of apparently objective statements: they ignore that they have been made by somebody.

Quoting Bartricks

I don't understand your point. I have argued that our minds are the bearers of moral value and that we can learn from this that our minds are immaterial.

Minds augment/enhance the moral value of the physical body. That, in my humble opinion, doesn't imply that the mind is immaterial.

Reply to Gregory okaaaaay.

Reply to Bartricks You can say we’re morally valuable because we are close enough to a specific configuration of meat. A configuration where we deem that things that take it are morally valuable. None of what you said above necessitates souls, only proposes them as an explanation of moral value.

Quoting Bartricks

To put it another way, if you think we are lumps of meat - just lumps of meat that happen to think things - then you have a problem when it comes to explaining our moral value.

False. You can say we are morally valuable because we follow a certain configuration of meat. Problem solved.

Reply to Angelo There's no argument to which you wouldn't have said those silly things.

Whether we have moral value or not is not an individually subjective matter. You are convinced it is. That's just confused. If I think I am morally valuable, it doesn't follow that I am. But even if your fallacious and ignorant view was correct, my op would still show that anyone who thinks they are morally valuable irrespective of their physical features or conscious states was, by virtue of that, an immaterial mind. Which is absurd - but just underlines the absurdity of subjectivism about those things that are not subjective. So, your subjectivism is both silly and doesn't challenge my argument.

Reply to khaled Read the OP again. I do not hold the view you think I do

Reply to Bartricks

So value is objective but not necessary?

Maybe on an ontological level something simple is always completely one with some composite, everytime

Reply to Gregory What? No, moral value is constitutively determined by God's attitudes. So it is subjective but external.
And it's not 'necessary', because God can change her attitudes. But none of that is essential to my case. Focus!!
Just read the op and try and understand the argument. I mean, you don't even think there is an argument there, so I don't hold out much hope.

Quoting Bartricks

And you can't say that we are morally valuable because we are made of meat, because the meat itself is not morally valuable absent a mind inhabiting it.

What about functionalism? If a mind is a lump of meat functioning in a particular way, lumps of functioning meat can be valuable without there being any immaterial objects. I'm just going with your assumptions again here. I'm not a functionalist, but you haven't adequately dealt with actual materialist theories of mind here.

"Not because of the shape or size or colour or location of your physical body. For if your body was a different shape, or size, or colour, or location, this would not affect your moral value. Plus I myself do not seem to have any of those features, yet I seem morally valuable (it is my body - not me - that seems to have a size, shape, colour and location)."

Each body is valuable and unique

"It also seems obvious that when a mind is not present in a body, the body has no moral value and its destruction is not morally bad. For instance, a mindless foetus or a corpse both seem to be things whose destruction is not morally bad (those who think it is always bad to destroy a foetus, think a mind is always present from conception - which as well as being implausible, just underlines that it is the presence of a mind, not the presence of this or that physical feature, that is doing the moral work)."

Well abortion is immoral but that's a different question. The issue is live humans and what makes them valuable

"What about consciousness? I don't think so because a) when I am unconscious I am still morally valuable - it is not morally ok to destroy those who are unconscious, other things being equal and b) many conscious states are morally disvaluable - such as undeserved pain - yet a mind that is in undeserved pain does not thereby come itself to be morally disvaluable. I can have thoroughly bad mental states, yet still be morally valuable. So, if a mind can have moral value despite its conscious states having moral disvalue, then the mind's moral value is not grounded in its mental states."

It's grounded in biology. So you haven't addressed the issue

"It seems, then, that we are morally valuable because we are minds."

Why? All you made where asserions

"And we can also conclude that our minds are not our bodies, because our bodies would not be morally valuable were it not for the fact they have our minds in them."

Statement, not argument

"To put it another way, if you think we are lumps of meat - just lumps of meat that happen to think things - then you have a problem when it comes to explaining our moral value."

Statement, not argument

"You can't say that we are morally valuable because of our conscious states, for they can be thoroughly morally disvaluable, yet we can still be morally valuable despite this."

Who said it was based on conscious states? That is not the issue

"And you can't say that we are morally valuable because we are made of meat, because the meat itself is not morally valuable absent a mind inhabiting it."


Statement, no argument

"Reflection on our moral value seems to reveal something about what we are, then. It reveals that we are not physical bodies, but immaterial objects."

This last sentence should have been the whole thread. You didn't make argument, like I said

Reply to Bartricks

The problem is when you speak of a mind you tacitly speak of the body, or at least you are unable to produce or point to anything else called “mind”. One is left to wonder what it is exactly you are ascribing value to.

Reply to bert1 Quoting bert1

What about functionalism? If a mind is a lump of meat functioning in a particular way, lumps of functioning meat can be valuable without there being any immaterial objects. I'm just going with your assumptions again here. I'm not a functionalist, but you haven't adequately dealt with actual materialist theories of mind here.

I don't have to, for if I can show that immaterialism is true, then I have shown that all materialist views about the mind are false. And that is going to include functionalism, if that's what functionalism is.

However, it seems to me that functionalism is compatible with immaterialism. For functionalism is the view that two functionally isomorphic mechanisms will both have mental states if one does (regardless of what the mechanism may be made of). But so understood it does not take a stand on what kind of thing is bearing the mental states in question. So, one could be an immaterialist about the mind 'and' be a functionalist. Someone could hold that we have immaterial minds associated with our brains, and agree that were a similarly functioning mechanism to be made out of silicon or copper or whatever, that it too would thereby get to have an immaterial mind associated with it.

So, if functionalism is a form of materialism about the mind, then my argument refutes it. I don't need to specify each materialist theory about the mind, when the argument implies that immaterialism is true. That's like thinking that if I have excellent evidence that John did the crime, I nevertheless still need to discount everyone else on independent grounds - no, the evidence that John did it is , eo ipso, evidence that discounts everyone else.

And if functionalism is not a form of materialism - and I don't think it is - then any credibility it has does nothing to challenge my argument.

Reply to Gregory Quoting Gregory

Each body is valuable and unique

Oh, okay. If you say so. I mean, they're not unique (entirely possible for two bodies to be qualitatively identical - presumably you think twins do not have mora value?) and you've sort of entirely ignored my argument that our value has nothing to do with our bodies, as we are morally valuable irrespective of what kind of body we have. But, you know, excellent point. You really are a smart one.

Quoting Gregory

Well abortion is immoral but that's a different question. The issue is live humans and what makes them valuable

Oh, abortion is immoral is it? Thanks for sorting that one out for us. I thought there was a long and intricate debate over it and a multiplicity of reasonable - or reasonable-ish - positions on the market. But silly me. If Gregory says they're immoral, well that's good enough for me.

Look, you're not arguing anything. There's no question my OP contains an argument. One might disagree with it, but it's there. Now, this is for philosophy grown ups. So take your pronouncements and go play with the traffic like a good boy.

Reply to NOS4A2 One can know what something isn't, without having to specify what it is. Detectives would be in trouble if they had to know who did the crime 'before' they start their investigation. For instance, if John has a cast iron alibi, then I can rule him out even if I don't yet know who, specifically, murdered Mary.

I am doing what a detective does: I am discounting candidates. I am morally valuable. Why? Well, not because of any of my sensible features, for they seem clearly irrelevant (I am not morally valuable 'because' of my size, but regardless of it, and so on for any sensible feature whatsoever).

And not because of my mental states either, for they can all be morally bad without it following that I am morally disvaluable.

So that leaves my mind - the object, not its states - that bears moral value. That still leaves open the possibility that the mind could be a material object. But we can test that. For if it was the material object itself, rather than something distinct from it that was or is inhabiting it, then it would be obviously bad to destroy that object. Yet a corpse or corpse brain is something that it is not obviously bad to destroy. I mean, there seems a world of difference morally between cremating uncle John's body before it becomes a corpse and cremating it afterwards. Materially speaking it is the same body either way. (And if one objects that the significant change that has occurred is that it has gone from having mental states to not having them, then one is assuming that moral value is grounded in mental states rather than the object that is having them - a view already discounted).

Thus, it seems that it is not the physical object - be it the brain or whatever - that has moral value, but something else. 'I' then, am not a physical object with sensible features, but an immaterial thing that lacks any and all of them.

Reply to Bartricks
Quoting Bartricks

There's no argument to which you wouldn't have said those silly things.
... your fallacious and ignorant view...
... your subjectivism is both silly and doesn't challenge my argument.

Considering that your argument consists in insulting people, I have no reason to continue.

Reply to Angelo No it doesn't. There are no insults in the OP. You did not address the OP.

Reply to Bartricks

I am a twin and they have separate bodies. Duh. You dont understand natural law which is why you make unfounded statements over and over again

Reply to Bartricks

If dualism is true, what is wrong with killing someone? The body alone dies, the outer shell, so you say, but the identity survives?

Reply to Bartricks

Corpses are much different than living bodies, biologically speaking, so no one needs to insert a mind into the equation in order to discern a difference between one and the other. Though the debate about when the moment of death occurs is ongoing and challenging, the “organismal integration” of a living human organism displays activity and functions not present in its corpse state. So materially speaking it’s not because there is no mind that we cremate corpses, but because there is no organismal function and we require a way to dispose of the decaying organic material. Corpses aren’t obviously bad, but the infectious hazards and smells are more than enough reason to dispose of them in such a manner.

I do not think there is any reason to posit an immaterial substance or object when we already have a complex and dynamic organism to consider. Until we learn to value and sanctify that organism itself, evil will persist.

Reply to NOS4A2 But the point is that you would have to ground the moral difference - that is, the vast difference in moral value between a corpse and a person - in those biological differences. But that's already been shown to be implausible, for all those differences are sensible differences. I mean, corpses smell in a way that living persons do not, but it would be implausible to ground the moral difference in that olfactory difference. I am morally valuable irrespective of my smell. And so on for any sensible- and thus any biological - feature.

Reply to Bartricks

It's not difficult to see the difference between something alive and something dead. We see this even with plants. You say something outside space is what makes something alive. We say it's the configuration of the biology and yes biological things die. How are dead bodies suppose to prove we (our identities) are really outside space?

Reply to Gregory I have arrived at the 'conclusion' that my mind is immaterial, based in part on the argument in the OP - an argument you have not addressed. Stop pronouncing and try arguing something.

Reply to Bartricks

You think thinking itself is immaterial and matter dead.

I think that matter has the *potentiality* to be a living loving thinking evaluating thing

There is no full proof argument either way. Even you say "it SEEMS obvious" in your OP

Quoting Bartricks

So, if a mind can have moral value despite its conscious states having moral disvalue, then the mind's moral value is not grounded in its mental states.

I think some people who are in certain conscious states have no moral value. You know, like Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, Adolf Hitler, Donald Trump.

Reply to James Riley I didn't argue that one's mental states are incapable of affecting one's moral value. I think they clearly can do. One can lose one's moral value depending on what one freely does or thinks or desires. So I agree that mental states can alter one's moral value, even to the point of eradicating it altogether or making one disvaluable. So, some - some - kinds of mental state may be sufficient for having no value or disvalue. But no mental state is necessary for possession of moral value.

So our mental states are not the source of our moral value, even though they can affect it. I can use my teeth to destroy a bun, but that does not mean the bun came from my teeth.

My example was of undeserved pain. That's a mental state an innocent person can be in. And it seems thoroughly bad. Yet it does not follow that the person undergoing it is bad. Yet it would follow if the value of us derives from the value or otherwise of our mental states.

Reply to Gregory I don't just think it. Don't tar me with your brush. I 'concluded' it. Big difference. You are just pronouncing. But until or unless you show there to be something wrong with the reasoning that led me to my conclusion, why would I care what you think? Thoughts are ten a penny. Arguments for interesting conclusions are scarce. I give you a diamond, you give me worthless pebbles.

Quoting Bartricks

So, some - some - kinds of mental state may be sufficient for having no value or disvalue. But no mental state is necessary for possession of moral value.

Sounds good. When I read "So, if a mind can have moral value despite its conscious states having moral disvalue, then the mind's moral value is not grounded in its mental states." I took that as a disagreement with "some - kinds of mental state may be sufficient for having no value or disvalue." But when you say "But no mental state is necessary for possession of moral value." it makes sense. I was also tired and flip when I read it. I should have taken a seat.

Reply to Bartricks

Position: biology is the basis of our rights, thoughts, and value. You state:

"To put it another way, if you think we are lumps of meat - just lumps of meat that happen to think things - then you have a problem when it comes to explaining our moral value."

"And you can't say that we are morally valuable because we are made of meat, because the meat itself is not morally valuable absent a mind inhabiting it."

Without these dogmatic pronouncements you have no thread. But you can't defend them. If you think your identity is not in space and some fairy substance is what you think has value, then you're not in reality

Reply to Bartricks

But the point is that you would have to ground the moral difference - that is, the vast difference in moral value between a corpse and a person - in those biological differences. But that's already been shown to be implausible, for all those differences are sensible differences. I mean, corpses smell in a way that living persons do not, but it would be implausible to ground the moral difference in that olfactory difference. I am morally valuable irrespective of my smell. And so on for any sensible- and thus any biological - feature.

I think the moral difference between a fully functioning human being and a corpse is quite profound. The physical differences and biology might not be apparent upon immediate inspection, sure, but the absence of physical and biological activity is. Minding is but one of these activities, but it is no less a function of the material constitution and its array of activities as a living whole. In any case, I cannot see or find any other thing or substance upon which to place value.

Reply to James Riley Quoting James Riley

Sounds good. When I read "So, if a mind can have moral value despite its conscious states having moral disvalue, then the mind's moral value is not grounded in its mental states." I took that as a disagreement with "some - kinds of mental state may be sufficient for having no value or disvalue." But when you say "But no mental state is necessary for possession of moral value." it makes sense. I was also tired and flip when I read it. I should have taken a seat.

Yes, I certainly would not want to deny that our mental states can often affect - and can often affect very dramatically - the moral value of ourselves. So I think - and would hold that widespread rational intuitions corroborate - that we have default intrinsic moral value. But I do not think our intrinsic moral value is inalienable. Our moral value can go up or down according to how we behave and so on. All my argument requires, so far as I can see, is that our default intrinsic value is not itself grounded in our mental states.

Reply to Gregory Quoting Gregory

You state:

"To put it another way, if you think we are lumps of meat - just lumps of meat that happen to think things - then you have a problem when it comes to explaining our moral value."

No, that was a conclusion, not a blank assertion. The argument that preceded that quote - so, you know, the bulk of the OP - established it.

By contrast this:

Quoting Gregory

Position: biology is the basis of our rights, thoughts, and value. You state:

Is just an assertion of yours. And it conflicts with the 'conclusion' of my argument. So you need to refute my argument, else all you're doing is nay saying.

Reply to NOS4A2 Quoting NOS4A2

In any case, I cannot see or find any other thing or substance upon which to place value.

But I don't see an objection to my argument. And it is by such means - that is, by arguments of the kind I have presented - that one comes to 'see' that there must something else that bears our moral value apart from our sensible body.

If one insists on sensible evidence for an insensible soul, then one has blinded oneself from the outset. That our sensations provide us with evidence of a sensible body, is something that we learn not from the sensations, but from what our reason tells us to infer from them. So it is by reason, not sense, that one learns one has a sensible body in a sensible world.

And it is by reason, not sense, that one learns that one has intrinsic moral value.

And it is by reason, not sense, that one learns that the bearer of that intrinsic value - so, you - is not a sensible object.

That is a negative definition, but that is not a fault. For again, ruling out candidates is how one progresses. So, we do not have to know precisely what the mind is before we can rule out that it is a sensible object, anymore than a detective has to know precisely who killed Mary before she can rule out that John killed her.

It seems clear enough that though we are morally valuable, we are not morally valuable due to our possession of any sensible feature. Biological features are all sensible features. Thus no matter how complex and subtle the sensible differences may be between a corpse body and one that has intrinsic moral value may be, this will do precisely nothing to challenge my argument.

Am I morally valuable because I have a certain shape? No. And does it do anything to challenge this to note just how complicatedly shaped I am, or that the living me is compared to a corpse's body? No. And likewise for all other sensible features. They just aren't in the running. It has nothing to do with complexity or simplicity. Locate as many sensible differences between myself an a corpse, non of them accounts for why I am morally valuable.

Reply to Bartricks

I already quoted every sentence of the OP each at a time to show there is no argument presented. Bye

Reply to Gregory Look, in my view you're a very silly person who is outclassed by my cat in terms of comprehension skills.
There is clearly an argument in the OP. Quoting individual lines out of context - that is, just ignoring the argument that ties them together - and insisting that this demonstrates that no argument is present, is as stupid as trying to show that Rachmaninov's second piano concerto has no tune because if one re-arranges all the sounds it becomes nothing but a heap of noises.

Reply to Bartricks

The previous page I quoted and commented on all of it. It's OK if you can't make an argument but you're too much of a hot head to have a discussion with. Firebrand

Reply to Gregory No, you just quoted lines and insisted that those lines are just assertions when they're conclusions of arguments. And then you just made a bunch of assertions and did nothing whatsoever to show how they are implied by anything more rationally fundamental.

Look, you don't have a clue how to argue - understandable, given that you can't even identify one when it is given.

It's simple. All evidence for anything boils down to one thing and one thing alone: a self-evident truth of reason.

So, try and find a claim so manifest to reason that virtually everyone's reason will confirm it, or if you can't do that, a claim that is more manifest to reason than its negation, and then find another and then extract their implications by means of a deductively valid argument. If you can do that, then you've made a powerful argument.

So, this is a deductively valid argument form:

1. If P, then Q
2. P
3. Therefore Q

Not because I say so, but because the reason of virtually all of reflective people will confirm that 3 is true if 1 and 2 are.

So, the validity of that argument is itself something that is manifest to reason. That is, virtually all reflective people confirm that their own reason says that if 1 and 2 are true, then 3 will as well. That's the evidence that that argument is valid. The reason of most reflective people represents it to be.

Now, I can express the argument in the OP in that form: that is, I can give you a series of such arguments that leads to my conclusion.

For instance, the reason of virtually everyone will also confirm that we are default intrinsically morally valuable and confirm that our intrinsic moral value has nothing to do with our shape, size, colour or location. Thus, the reason of virtually everyone confirms that we are intrinsically morally valuable 'irrespective' of our sensible properties, not 'because' of them.

That's one of my arguments. And it establishes an interim conclusion: that our moral value is not grounded in any of our sensible properties.

You can just assert that this is not so, but that's the very definition of unreasonable.

So:

1. If the reason of most reflective people represents us to have intrinsic moral value irrespective of any and all of our sensible features, then we have good evidence that we have intrinsic moral value irrespective of any and all of our sensible features
2. The reason of most reflective people represents us to have intrinsic moral value irrespective of any and all of our sensible features.
3. Therefore, we have good evidence that we have intrinsic moral value irrespective of any and all of our sensible features.

Now, do you have any objection to that argument?

Reply to Bartricks

I can make any assertion into steps like that too. You haven't prove things outside the world exist, that I exist outside the world, that matter has no potentiality of life and thought, or anything else

Reply to Gregory Well, a) you can't. And b) if you did, it would become apparent that your premises are nothing more than assertions as opposed to being propositions our reason represents to be true.

Anyway, this is like trying to teach a duck to drive a truck. Realistically we're not going to get beyond the flapping about in the cabin stage.

Reply to Bartricks

You're already crazy