A Case for Moral Anti-realism
NOTE: I no longer believe this to be a cogent argument against moral realism.
I think that Hume’s Guillotine can be deployed to validly extinguish the existence of moral facticity, if ‘moral’ language signifies ‘what one ought to be doing’, since in any event of reasoning about ‘what one ought to do’ it is going to be grounded in non-facts.
No matter what prescription is being utilized, even if it is a normative fact or not, it will eventually take the form of the following (no matter how many syllogisms it takes to get there):
P1: [normative non-fact]
P2: [non-normative fact]
C: [target normative statement {or some other normative fact/non-fact that derives the target}]
As a quick short-circuited example, let’s say that the target normative statement, T, is a normative fact, then one would have to argue something which will bottom-out at:
P1: One ought to abide by the normative facts.
P2: T is a normative fact.
C: T
This implies, even if it is conceded that normative facts exist, that what informs the individual of ‘what they ought to do’ is a taste: not a normative fact. If this is the case, then the study of ‘what one ought to do’ is completely non-factual—and since ‘moral’ language signifies exactly that study, it is purely non-factual.
I don’t think that the moral anti-realist has to concede that there are no normative facts but, rather, just that none of them dictate ‘what one ought to be doing’.
Ammendments:
I think I understand better some of the objections the moral realists have been making, and there is one in particular that I think is worth outlining and countering in this OP: if a normative fact is, well, a fact, then it is true in virtue of it corresponding correctly to reality (i.e., to a state of affairs) and thusly doesn't require further justification; and this doesn't seem to violate Hume's Guillotine since a normative statement is being justified with only normative statements. I think my original elaboration (above the updates) missed this key point, and to demonstrate let's take my short-circuited example:
P1: One ought to abide by the normative facts.
P2: T is a normative fact.
C: T
If T were a normative fact which expresses 'one ought...', then T is a true depiction of a state of affairs such that 'one ought...' and, thusly, it does not require further justification such as P1 and it informs the person what they ought to doing (since the normative fact refers to a prescriptive about the subject). I think, and correct me if I am wrong, this is what @Banno and @Leontiskos (as well as @J) are expressing (in a nutshell).
I think that Hume’s Guillotine can be deployed to validly extinguish the existence of moral facticity, if ‘moral’ language signifies ‘what one ought to be doing’, since in any event of reasoning about ‘what one ought to do’ it is going to be grounded in non-facts.
No matter what prescription is being utilized, even if it is a normative fact or not, it will eventually take the form of the following (no matter how many syllogisms it takes to get there):
P1: [normative non-fact]
P2: [non-normative fact]
C: [target normative statement {or some other normative fact/non-fact that derives the target}]
As a quick short-circuited example, let’s say that the target normative statement, T, is a normative fact, then one would have to argue something which will bottom-out at:
P1: One ought to abide by the normative facts.
P2: T is a normative fact.
C: T
This implies, even if it is conceded that normative facts exist, that what informs the individual of ‘what they ought to do’ is a taste: not a normative fact. If this is the case, then the study of ‘what one ought to do’ is completely non-factual—and since ‘moral’ language signifies exactly that study, it is purely non-factual.
I don’t think that the moral anti-realist has to concede that there are no normative facts but, rather, just that none of them dictate ‘what one ought to be doing’.
Ammendments:
I think I understand better some of the objections the moral realists have been making, and there is one in particular that I think is worth outlining and countering in this OP: if a normative fact is, well, a fact, then it is true in virtue of it corresponding correctly to reality (i.e., to a state of affairs) and thusly doesn't require further justification; and this doesn't seem to violate Hume's Guillotine since a normative statement is being justified with only normative statements. I think my original elaboration (above the updates) missed this key point, and to demonstrate let's take my short-circuited example:
P1: One ought to abide by the normative facts.
P2: T is a normative fact.
C: T
If T were a normative fact which expresses 'one ought...', then T is a true depiction of a state of affairs such that 'one ought...' and, thusly, it does not require further justification such as P1 and it informs the person what they ought to doing (since the normative fact refers to a prescriptive about the subject). I think, and correct me if I am wrong, this is what @Banno and @Leontiskos (as well as @J) are expressing (in a nutshell).
Comments (1570)
I can remember what sorts of things other people describe as moral.
This begins to look like the sort of situation Ciceronianus had in mind.
I already said that there is practical value to resolving one's contradictory beliefs. However, it is no more an indication of moral badness to find that one holds contradictory beliefs than it is an indication of moral badness to find that one has been wounded.
It is simply a consequence of having an evolved brain, that develops intuitions in response to the limited evidence/training available to each individual to learn from, that results in fallible humans having conflicting intuitions. Sure ongoing learning, like bodily hygiene, is practically valuable. However, morally judging people for not being omniscient seems more than a tad unreasonable to me. Do you agree?
I say that a claim like “you ought listen to my music” isn’t a moral claim because I recognise how people use moral language and recognise that they don’t use moral language to describe such a claim.
I accept that a claim like “you ought not hurt puppies” is a moral claim because I recognise how people use moral language and recognise that they use moral language to describe such a claim. But I don’t know what they mean when they describe it as a moral obligation, which is why I’m asking you to explain it.
The issue is that your suggested explanations would include claims that most people wouldn’t describe using moral language and so it seems that your explanations fail in their task.
So I’ll try to make this simple. Here are two interpersonal normative claims:
1. You ought listen to my music
2. You ought not hurt puppies
If the first isn’t a moral obligation but the second is then a) what does it mean to say that the second is a moral obligation and b) what evidence or reasoning determines that the first isn’t a moral obligation but the second is?
No, I just understand how people use moral language.
I know that quarks can be up, down, strange, etc., but I don’t know what this means.
A contradiction allows anything to be true. That's why they are best avoided - they are unhelpful.
But the word "moral" - which we inherited from the original title - is far from being unproblematic. "Ethical" is perhaps better, but still not without complexity. "Ought" is somewhat better still, since it at least refocuses on action. We've come to the point where a much broader analysis of action is needed to clear up a morass of misuse. Without that, the thread will just be folk talking past each other.
Angry dolphins.
Cross porpoises.
Cheers.
It’s not pretend. There is a significant amount of well reasoned literature on anti-realist metaphysics, whether that be non-cognitivism, error theory, subjectivism, fictionalism, etc., all of which recognise which claims are supposed moral claims but none of which agree on the meaning (or truth) of such claims, so your apparent suggestion that anyone who doesn’t accept your “common sense” realism is being disingenuous is itself disingenuous.
That's not what was suggested at all, of course. We talk about what might be done, what ought be done, what's the best thing to do, and so on. Whatever word you choose for this behaviour, it would be absurd to deny that you engage in it.
None of this requires positing the existence of moral facts. We can do all of this without introducing moral language.
So when do you get to the part where you make sense of morality?
Quoting Michael
You do not have to call our talk of "what might be done, what ought be done, what's the best thing to do, and so on" moral, if you do not wish to. That's neither here no there. But there are such sentences, and some of them are true. QED.
You think non-cognitivists and error theorists don’t say that I should brush my teeth or that it’s best if I don’t eat too much sugar?
Quoting Leontiskos
Yep. Michael's direction is absent. We still have the problem of What To Do.
If you don’t recognise the difference between a moral obligation and a pragmatic suggestion then you ought try reading some philosophy.
Yawn.
I hadnt intended those remarks on realist and subjectivist morality for you, although it’s true that I figured you would see them. That I find certain approaches to morality unpalatable does not mean that I dont accept their value for those who embrace them, it just means that they don’t work for me. As far as back-patting, I think we should all pat ourselves on the back, don’t you? Each of us feels a secret sense of superiority over others, an illusion born of knowing ourselves better than we know anyone else.
I recognize that your arguments are based on careful reading of the relevant theological and philosophical scholarship. So if I were to directly engage with you on these topics I would attempt to form a bridge between your background and mine. Who knows, the interchange might even be non-vacuous.
Right.
Quoting Michael
Nope, because the central issue is the is-ought divide, and, "I should brush my teeth" is an 'ought'. They will reduce it to a hypothetical claim and avoid giving any sort of non-hypothetical support to that claim. Conceived as a binding or non-hypothetical 'ought', they would have as many problems with it as anything else.
But you also vacillate on things like A3, so it's hard to believe these ever-shifting tactics are in earnest:
Quoting Leontiskos
With A3 you shift tactics, saying, "That's just a command. I see nothing but a command." (Well of course it's not a command, because it's the conclusion of a practical syllogism!)
Else, consider when you claimed that the dilemma you posed () was an "inclusive or" ().
-
Quoting Michael
You are the one claiming that they are different, not me. You are the one presuming your own definition of moral without defining or defending it. I have given two definitions now. You have given none, despite making claims about what is and is not moral.
Quoting Michael
When you speak of a "moral obligation" you are clearly speaking of a Kantian moral obligation. I think I understand this better than you do. I am not a Kantian. I don't think Kant's Groundwork holds up. I have directed you to freely available academic articles illustrating the problems and context of such an approach. You are the one who ought to try reading some philosophy.
Agreed. "You can lead a horse to water..." There are a lot of folks here who are not genuinely interested in doing philosophy, and others who are capable of doing philosophy but choose not to on certain topics.
This is why Plato was so harsh on the Sophists: because Sophistry is Philosophy's evil twin, in large part indistinguishable from it. I wrote <a post> looking at Plato's conditions for philosophical dialogue, and that passage of the Meno is something I occasionally return to.
I haven't written a thread on morality because I am convinced the moral sophists are too thick on the ground for it to be fruitful. The only reason I wrote that <reference post> is because I came to believe that there were people who were genuinely interested in and troubled by Anscombe's thesis. Or in other words, that some people are interested in serious moral philosophy. I'm sure moral realists would be more willing to expound their theses if they believed that they would meet with genuine philosophical interaction.
Not so much. I do appreciate your more serious recent posts, and I shouldn't have allowed Joshs' comments to poison the well of your posts. At the same time, I think you are prone to twist things in a rhetorical direction instead of addressing the central issues. I am not really interested in a rhetorical focus on terms like "moral badness," "evil," "blame," etc. In my philosophical lexicon these are all very precise terms, used to address serious questions. Yet in your mouth they seem to be merely pejorative, and your posts end up becoming a kind of excoriation of these terms conceived as pejorative.
For example, if you look at my first post you will see that I sidelined the question of whether the failure is moral as rather unimportant, purely definitional (). I gave my reasons why I believe it is bad, why it is a failure, why it should be avoided, etc. In contrast, both in the post I was responding to and the post you responded with, you are are preoccupied with rhetorical-pejorative terms, such as "moral failure," "evil," etc. (and this is a little bit ironic given your allusion to Zen).
People shouldn't contradict themselves or make intellectual mistakes. They do happen, and then we correct them (because we know they are bad). "One swallow does not make a summer." But those who contradict themselves with abandon and without qualms, or assert and publish what they know to be false, are intellectually dishonest and intellectually depraved. They have made a habit out of bad intellectual acts, and have hence become unreasonable and untrustworthy in matters of the intellect. I don't really care whether we call this a moral failure. I don't think most people have any precise idea what they mean when they use that term, "moral."
No. And I'm really beginning to doubt you truly understand the distinction between normative and descriptive, or an ethical and metaethical theory.
You asked me whether my theory was descriptive or normative, and I very clearly answered that it is descriptive. Then you demand that it contain normative claims. What sense does that make? To describe things like "ought" without making ought-claims is not to deny that "ought" is normative.
Quoting Leontiskos
I personally believe that one should follow their conscience. But this 'should' has no place in a descriptive moral theory. That "one should follow their conscience" is a moral claim like any other. An it is far from obvious. It is reflective of an ethos of individualism. More authoritarian or collectivist ethos don't place much value on following your conscience, at least when it contradicts the state or party.
Just so you know, normative/non-normative does not map to ethics/meta-ethics. It's a conflation that pops up occasionally, but this is the first time in this thread.
Quoting hypericin
My concern is that you purport to provide a non-normative theory and then begin flirting with normativity, and given the large number of times I have seen subjectivists flip-flop, I am keen to address this from the beginning.
Quoting hypericin
I agree.
But think about that. You simultaneously hold that one should follow their conscience, while at the same time considering yourself a non-normative subjectivist who is propounding a non-normative theory. Your non-normative theory says, "Many people do follow their conscience but I do not say you should follow your conscience." Yet you simultaneously hold the belief that one should follow their conscience. You simultaneously say that 'You should follow your conscience.' It would seem as if your beliefs contradict your system (and this has of course been my main contention in conversations with subjectivists).
So how do you resolve this apparent contradiction?
You are right. I thought I was just adopting your terminology, but there is a difference. What I meant, and what I think this whole thread has been discussing, is metaethics.
Quoting Leontiskos
Except I haven't, you haven't shown that I have, and it seems like you are insisting my theory is not normative enough!
Quoting Leontiskos
There is no contradiction between holding a metaethical theory describing what ethics is, while holding normative views on what one ought do. Both may reside comfortably in the same brain. And here they do not contradict one another. Being subjectivist does not mean that there is no normativity. It means that normativity is rooted in subjective values, rather than objective facts about the world.
There is a contradiction if they follow Hume in his is-ought distinction, for in that case a non-normative metaethical theory will not account for a normative ethical theory.
Quoting hypericin
Hypericin, you have literally contradicted yourself in this thread:
Quoting hypericin
Quoting hypericin
Do you not admit that this is an apparent contradiction?
Why should one thing I believe be accounted for by another? My subjectivist view on moral realism does not account for the particulars of my moral beliefs.
Quoting Leontiskos
I admit that this is an apparent contradiction, due to your taking the two quotes out of context. as well as some honestly poor wording on my part. The first quote was a response to:
Quoting Leontiskos
A better wording would be something along the lines, "I would phrase the theory not that one should listen to their conscience, but that one does".
Given that metaethics is about the grounding, foundation, and rationale of moral statements, a metaethic which allows no room for normativity does not provide an adequate foundation for a normative ethics.
Quoting hypericin
Thanks.
Quoting hypericin
When I was speaking about the law of non-contradiction and the first principle of practical reason, I would have said, "We should and we do." You say something distinctly different, "It's not that we should, but that we do." If you wish to change the claim to say, "We should and we do," then you are free to do that. That is what I would say.
Quoting hypericin
I insist that this is not the case. The claim that you originally made follows with logical necessity from the non-normativity of your theory. Your theory, if it is to be non-normative, must affirm that, "It is not true that one should follow their conscience." It is no coincidence that you affirmed this proposition, even if the proposition was not the sole or primary purpose of the sentence to which it belonged. Note, too, that you were answering my question, "Is your subjective conscience theory intended to be normative?" To answer that question requires answering the 'should' question.
(The theory you hold denies normative truths and yet you "personally" affirm normative truths.)
I don't avoid admitting it. I've admitted it several times, in fact. What I see you and others avoiding is actually addressing the issues of cognitivist meta-ethics. What does it mean for an obligation to be moral? Are moral obligations discovered or socially constructed (or other)? How does one verify or falsify a supposed moral obligation?
This I would call making a virtue out of necessity, that you refuse to provide justification has nothing to do with who is deserving of it or not, and everything to do with your own inability to do so.
Why blame him?
You said that moral obligations are concerned with justice. Are you saying that the normative claim “you ought listen to my music” is concerned with justice? If not then you recognize that they are different, and so my questions need answering.
If you think that it is concerned with justice then the same questions can be asked about justice itself. It certainly seems like an unusual use of language to describe listening to my music as being “just” (and presumably not listening to my music as being “unjust”).
Quoting Leontiskos
I don’t vacillate. I accept that it’s true in the sense that it’s a reasonable pragmatic suggestion (much like “you ought brush your teeth”).
I don’t know what it means for it to be something more which is why I’m asking you to make sense of this “something more”.
But incidentally the syllogism is invalid. The first premise should be “I should not cause suffering for anything like me”.
Sigh.
Quoting Michael
It’s a moral objectivism without a realist ontology.
I’m not sure how you would formally define the concept of blame, but it seems hard to avoid the connotation of blame when one accuses another of being intellectually bad, dishonest, unreasonable, depraved and untrustworthy. Would you use such terms to describe the behavior of someone who has recently suffered a head injury that makes it difficult for them to recall or process information?
I would assume not, because you might point out that that person cannot help their deficits. They are not deliberately intending to contradict themselves with abandon, to lie or misinform. These behaviors are the result of something they has no control over and would not endorse.
What makes a person blamefulness, culpable, responsible in our eyes in an ethical sense is connected to how we understand the concept of intent or will. There are vitally important practical implications associated with how our moral philosophy makes sense of the process of intending or willing. We can see these implications manifested in the free will vs determinism debate. For instance, modern attempts to defang concepts of moral blame begin with moral responsibility, or blame, skepticism, which has historically been defended by Spinoza, Schopenhauer and Voltaire. Contemporary representatives of this group like Galen Strawson, Derk Pereboom and Martha Nussbaum argue that our blame practice is morally inappropriate because we lack free will or a certain kind of knowledge
These approaches endeavor to take the sting out of blame, resulting in a less violent understanding of moral action. For instance, Pereboom rejects the idea of blame as moral responsibility because he claims that:
I wonder how your Aristotelian-Thomistic approach compares to the position of blame skeptics like Pereboom and Nussbaum.
See your own response:
Quoting hypericin
---
I'm tired of chasing you guys around in your circles. I think this is a good place to leave it, and in my opinion my recent posts to have saddled him squarely with the contradiction at hand.
---
@Michael, on the other hand, has been reduced to a flow chart approach, designed for evading philosophical dialogue:
(A sophistical way to ward off any possible objections and circumvent deeper moral inquiries.)
Lol, another victory lap after a series of senseless posts. You are a classic time waster, and you don't know what the hell you you are talking about.
I must stop at some point. Of the thousands of philosophical conversations I have had, this conversation with you has been one of the most definitive. Only very few times have I seen someone contradict themselves as obviously as you have contradicted yourself in these recent posts. At such a point it is very easy to walk away, for the evidence speaks for itself, and beyond that, there is nothing more to be done on my part. In any case, you are the one who failed to respond to my final post: . One could of course ridicule such a person for their irrationality and self-contradiction, or respond to their angry outbursts which occur as a result of their self-apparent irrationality. I do not find this to be necessary in this case. In all seriousness, good luck. I hope you change your position.
(I only request that you do not edit these recent posts and falsify the record.)
:rofl:
No one gives a shit, but yeah the record speaks for itself just fine
Ought you listen to my music? Does it then follow that you are morally obligated to listen to my music? Does it then follow that it is an injustice for you to not listen to my music?
All I am saying is that this seems inconsistent with how moral language is actually used. That strikes me as a justified descriptive claim. Perhaps you want to say that moral language isn’t actually used correctly?
It's purely defensive or eristic and not inquisitive. It looks more like fly-swatting or contradicting than philosophy. And as far as I'm concerned, to reject a definition without providing an alternative is bad faith argumentation. It's, "Effort for thee, but not for me." You're the one with a self-contradictory moral philosophy (). Maybe you should be doing a bit of the work?
Quoting Michael
Common usage is characteristically imprecise. Adverting to that imprecision is no way to do philosophy.
Which of these are moral utterances? Where should we draw the arbitrary line?
Proof by contradiction is a valid argumentative response.
Quoting Leontiskos
I’m not the one claiming that there are moral facts.
Quoting Leontiskos
Is it arbitrary? Or is it a fact that some sentences are moral sentences and some sentences aren’t? There may be cases where we’re not sure if a sentence is a moral sentence, but it’s certainly not the case that every sentence is a moral sentence.
"That's not moral and I refuse to say what I mean by 'moral'," is not a proof by contradiction, it's just sophistry.
Quoting Michael
You are precisely the one claiming there are moral facts. I am the one claiming there are binding normative propositions. ()
I am saying that these are not the sort of sentences that are usually described as being moral sentences. This is a straightforward empirical observation of actual language use.
My hairdresser tells me that I shouldn’t wash my hair every day because it makes the hair brittle. I don’t know anyone who will say that this is a moral obligation. Most will say that this is just a pragmatic suggestion.
Quoting Leontiskos
No I’m not.
Quoting Leontiskos
But you refuse to explain what this means or how one can verify or falsify the claim that some proposition is normatively binding.
I don’t understand this. This is a philosophy forum. Our entire purpose here is to argue the merits of some philosophical theory. Are you just here to evangelise?
"Eristic"! This guy is too much.
Quoting Leontiskos
:gasp: :rofl: :lol:
Quoting Michael
Sometimes I feel he mimics the form of philosophical debate.
You are projecting your "gotcha" mentality onto others. This was not a joke. Michael freely admits that his moral theory contains unresolved contradictions. My academic reference post was a direct response to his quandary (link).
Of course, not everyone is able to recognize the obvious contradictions in their thought. :wink:
Quoting Leontiskos
Some believe that it is best not to assume a direct correlation between a person’s philosophical perspective and their behavior in social situations. Others believe that the latter are a reflection of the former. In this case, I am inclined to argue that Leontiskos’s above personal comments are guided, and limited, by the strictures of their moral philosophy. Depending on one’s perspective, one can take this as praise for the clarity of a foundational morality, or as putting into question the thinly disguised authoritarianism and empathy-blindness that such a fundamentalism generates.
Quoting hypericin
I dunno. Seems like he’s developing a cult following.
I don’t need to argue for any theory. You’re shifting the burden of proof. You made much the same comment to another poster earlier in the discussion from what I recall.
Quoting Leontiskos
I’m interested in testing the strengths of each theory whether I agree with their conclusions or not. If these arguments cannot stand up to scrutiny then they fail in their task.
I don’t know why you think my personal beliefs matter at all.
I'm not avoiding these questions. I am avoiding glib answers. I've offered, here and in other threads, ways of thinking about them that I think are productive: direction of fit, status functions, existential autonomy, the capabilities approach. I''m not pretending to have an answer, indeed I don't think this is the sort of issue that that an answer, but instead consists in a process of self-development. I've little patience with poor thinking, and doubtless get more pleasure from kicking the occasional pup that I should. But I've avoided kicking hyperchin for a few days.
Nice list. Yes, that's the way to proceed, looking at how the words around "obligation" are used rather than just making up a definition.
Quoting Leontiskos
This captures neatly the problem with @Michael's writing.
Divorce the utterance from the label and walk away a free man. "One ought not kick puppies" is both sensible and true. It's definitely sensible, and that's enough, if you'd like to set the truth issue aside. If categorical imperatives make no sense, and "one ought not kick puppies" makes perfect sense, then "one ought not kick puppies" cannot count as a "categorical imperative", for the claim cannot do both, make perfect sense and make no sense..
Time to choose between the archaic taxonomy(categorical imperatives) and what you know is true despite not fully understanding how and/or why it is.
The end.
It's not true. Thank you for your time :)
It's very easy to pick our young, or the young of our pet species, and say "Its just true! We shouldn't harm them! Like, obviously!" But why a puppy? Why not all dogs? Until recently kicking dogs was a pretty normal, accepted thing to do. Only lately did it acquire a stink. Or, why dogs at all? Why not, pigs? Cows? Chickens? These are, after all, intelligent, feeling creatures. Is there some fine moral distinction I'm missing whereby "Thou shalt not kick puppies" is a commandment from God, whereas we collectively exploit and abuse the others with total indifference to the "obvious" moral facts concerning their well being? Or, maybe, just maybe, we like dogs more?
Pseudo-philosophers do seem to love inflating their biases and inclinations into universal truths.
I worked as a debt collector for a time in finance and I no kidding once had to put through an application for hardship for a fellow who had been suspended from his rural job for kicking the pigs out of frustration at the COVID lockdowns .. yikes.
Denied. Naturally.
Normativity in Metaethics
There is more to the issue than you and some others seem willing to admit. Robust moral realists, non-realist cognitivists, and moral non-objectivists all believe that we have moral obligations, but they disagree on what this means and how such obligations can be verified or falsified.
Back in the days when I edited Wikipedia, I was at pains to keep the distinction between substantive and minimalist theories of truth. That distinction has persisted, so I'll continue to think it useful For my part I prefer minimalist theories. Perhaps those who like substantive theories will be less amenable to ought statements having a truth value because of the execs baggage they attach to truth.
I'm not sure where stands in this regard, but @Bob Ross is surely thinking in terms of correspondence, along with many others hereabouts. A correspondence theorist might well be rightly puzzled as to what it is to which an ought statements corresponds. But to my eye this is not a reason to think there are no true ought statements, but instead to question if truth is always correspondence.
Anyway, the kicking puppies example was chosen because it is hard to come onto a page such as this and admit to engaging in puppy kicking as a pastime without losing some credibility. Even those who for whatever reason think "One ought not kick puppies for fun" is not true do not kick puppies for fun. @Michael elevated the preference to the status of a categorical imperative, while trying to leave the baggage associated with that term at the door. Others here, despite their agreeing with it, have insisted on its being justified or evidenced. Odd, that. To insist on a warrant despite agreeing; to insist on something incorrigible rather than what is already apparent.
Since we can build on the simple fact of our agreement. We can discourage puppy kicking, try to avoid the temptation provided by puppies, or introduce sanctions against puppy kickers. All the bits we need for a moral practice still follow, without a grounding in deontology or consequentialism, and with precious little metaethics.
Parfit’s non-realist cognitivism seems like it addresses this distinction.
The best analogy I think there is to this is the distinction between mathematical realists and mathematical nominalists. Both believe that there are mathematical truths but the former believe that these mathematical truths depend on the existence of non-natural (abstract) mathematical objects whereas the latter don’t.
So assuming that there are moral truths, do these moral truths depend on the existence of non-natural “moral” properties? This is the kind of substantive (“robust”) realism that many moral antirealists reject, and if one subscribes to physicalism then it certainly seems that one must reject this kind of realism.
But what of Parfit’s “non-realist cognitivism”? It’s difficult to make sense of what it means for a moral proposition to be true if not by accurately describing some non-natural moral property of the world.
Would that this were so. They throw out the babe with the bathwater, adopting convolute notions in order to avoid the simple fact that ought statements can be true.
So can mathematical statements, but surely you understand the distinction between mathematical realism and mathematical nominalism?
Which of the metaethical equivalents of mathematical realism and mathematical nominalism is correct?
I certainly don’t think that non-natural or abstract properties or objects exist, and Moore’s open question argument strongly suggests that any naturalist account of morality fails, so something equivalent to mathematical nominalism is most likely.
But with mathematical nominalism we can make sense of it as a kind of coherence theory. I’m not sure how we can make sense of something like “moral nominalism”?
Well, in my own defense, I was simply working from exactly what you boiled the dissonance down to.
Quoting Michael
Hence, from that I offered...
Divorce the utterance from the label and walk away a free man. "One ought not kick puppies" is both sensible and true. It's definitely sensible, and that's enough, if you'd like to set the truth issue aside. If categorical imperatives make no sense, and "one ought not kick puppies" makes perfect sense, then "one ought not kick puppies" cannot count as a "categorical imperative", for the claim cannot do both, make perfect sense and make no sense..
Time to choose between the archaic taxonomy(categorical imperatives) and what you know is true despite not fully understanding how and/or why it is.
I find the focus on what counts as normativity as irrelevant to whether or not some utterances of ought are true. I'm open to be persuaded otherwise.
It’s not about taxonomy. It’s about not understanding what it means for a moral sentence to be true and not understanding how to verify or falsify a moral sentence.
This makes them very unlike empirical and mathematical sentences.
If I can’t make sense of this then perhaps I ought abandon my dogma and either accept that all moral sentences are false or that no moral sentence is truth apt.
See the distinction between meta ethics and normative ethics. The former addresses the meaning of moral sentences and what sort of things must obtain for them to be true (if they are indeed truth apt). The latter addresses which of them are true.
If you’re only interested in normative ethics then by all means ignore meta ethics. But I’m interested in meta ethics and so that is what my questions are trying to uncover.
And I think an answer to the questions of meta ethics is necessary to answer the questions of normative ethics, hence why I have repeatedly asked for how to verify or falsify a moral sentence. If you don’t know how to verify or falsify a moral sentence then how do you expect to determine whether or not some moral sentence is true? Is it simply a matter of faith?
Those could be perplexing considerations if we work from the conventional notions of truth as in using one and one only. Perhaps different sorts of claims are true by virtue of different means, or by virtue of corresponding to different sorts of things.
So by what means are moral claims made true? What sort of things (if any) do they “correspond” to? Does the world contain non-natural “moral” properties that can be detected by some non-natural moral “intuition” that supervenes on our physical brain?
I find it a bit amusing that you're insisting that I'm not doing metaethics while I'm doing nothing but thinking about morality and ethics as a subject matter in its own right. As if the only thing that counts as "metaethics" is discourse about what it means for a moral judgment/statement to be true.
I'm attempting to openly consider many different takes/positions on the matter at hand.
So, I do not care what label/name you give it... I'm interested in discussing what it takes for some utterances of ought to be true.
Those are good questions.
Quoting Michael
You seem to be burning some of your Analytic philosophy bridges. Keep this up and you’ll have to join us Continental relativists. Wouldn’t that be a revolting development.
Correspondence is an emergent relation between what is thought and/or believed about what is going on and what is going on. When what is thought about what's going on is 'equivalent' enough, or close enough to what is going on, then truth emerges. That is how meaningful true belief become real/actual/manifest/formed. That's what it takes. That's how correspondence 'between' belief about reality and reality(hence, meaningful true belief) emerges onto the world stage.
If it is the case that we ought not kick puppies, then "we ought not kick puppies" is true.
Are you questioning whether or not it is the case that we ought not kick puppies?
Realise you didn't ask me, but it's apt to my considerations of the discussion - I don't think it could be the case, as it's a judgement, not a state of affairs with with one's opinion could correspond.
Banno will disagree, but i've not seen a way to conclude that it is inaccurate.
Hey my friend. I think perhaps correspondence and coherence combined.
I've been mulling over promises...
When the direction of fit is such that keeping one's word confirms one's sincerity, it is certainly the case that if one is sincere, then one will keep one's word. Hence, when a promise is made to do something, it is always the case that one ought do it. If it is not the case, then it is not a promise.
As if codes of conduct cannot be considered as an elemental constituent within a state of affairs? As if it is never the case that kicking puppies is forbidden?
:brow:
I don't think so no. It can be the case that a code of conduct exists, and that a group or society accept, and live by, a code of conduct. So you could say, "In this quite particular scenario, it is the case that one ought not kick puppies" but that's just an appeal to authority... so, I suppose in some sense i have to concede here but it's not a concession on my position, just on the way it applies.
That one ought not kick puppies isn't the state of affairs in the above. It's the existence of, and assent to, a code of conduct which includes that proscription. It may well not have that proscription and the state of affairs still obtains, but without that obligation.
What is the what is going on with respect to the obligation to not kick puppies?
Are obligations physical objects? Are obligations physical events? Are obligations mathematical conclusions from some set of formal axioms and rules of inference? Are obligations Platonic entities that exist in some abstract realm of Ideas?
That's odd. While contradicting yourself out loud you (inaccurately)charge me with a fallacy?
So I ask again, for the zillionth time: how do I verify or falsify the claim that we ought not kick puppies?
What? I didn't charge you with anything.
And what contradiction, sorry? I'm trying to have a discussion not a pissing match.
I used the phrase to reference reality. There are many such linguistic tools. None of which are capable of effectively capturing everything that has ever happened. So, the phrases "the way things are", "the way things were", "the case at hand", "what's going on", "what went on", "events", etc. are all rightfully employed when the appropriate situations/circumstances need discussed.
If it is the case that kicking puppies is forbidden, then it is the case that one ought not kick puppies, and hence "one ought not kick puppies" is true.
The bits in bold are the bits I'm trying to make sense of. Are they physical states-of-affairs?
An appeal to authority is a fallacy. You charged me with exactly that.
Quoting AmadeusD
Performative contradiction.
You first claimed that it is not the case that one ought not kick puppies. You then went on and realized that sometimes kicking puppies is forbidden and accused me of 'appealing to authority'.
I wouldn't put it like that.
They how would you put it? You're arguing that something is the case but seem unwilling to make sense of it.
What's the confusion? I don't get it.
:yikes:
Sometimes, kicking puppies is forbidden.
Are you saying that you cannot make sense of that? Are you saying that I somehow, in some way, need to make more sense of it? Seems plain and simple to me.
Are you denying it?
If by this you just mean that someone or something bigger and stronger than me has threatened to punish me if I kick puppies then I understand what you mean. If you mean something else then you're going to have to explain it.
That's the very first time you've asked me.
Here, here, and here were the earlier comments.
From whence punishment from external entity/judge? There is no need on my view. I covered that part already. In the first few posts of this particular discussion. It has since went sorely neglected.
Which one has the question?
What if such a claim cannot be verified/falsified by your choice of method?
I don't have a choice of method. I'm asking you how to do it. Are you going to answer?
A search for posts by you containing the word "forbidden" for the past year brings up five results, all of which only assert that something is forbidden without explaining what this means.
Are you saying that someone has threatened to punish us if we kick puppies? If not then what does it mean for kicking puppies to be forbidden?
How do I verify or falsify the claim that I ought not kick puppies?
Where do I find them?
You objected that you could not make sense of what I wrote.
Is your argument that if you cannot find the applicable code of behaviour which clearly and unambiguously forbids kicking puppies that it does not make sense to you or is it that making sense requires being verifiable/falsifiable? Something else?
What I wrote stands. I'm failing to see the relevance in what you're doing.
I'm trying to show you that the concept of something being forbidden only makes sense in the context of some relevant authority telling you to not do something and possibly threatening you with punishment for disobeying.
If you try to argue that things can be forbidden even without this then you are quite literally talking nonsense. Hence Anscombe's remark that the word "ought" is simply "a word of mere mesmeric force" with no real substance.
Moral realism is a dogma. It baselessly treats a claim like "you ought not kick puppies" as being something of a truism. Unless you can justify this assertion then it is literally an unjustified assertion.
Do you think this something we discover, or is it just two ways of talking about numbers? https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/8110/1-does-not-refer-to-anything/p1.
This is coming across to me like "What is wrong with you for questioning whether the emperor is wearing clothes?"
You missed the point. You unnecessarily multipled entities again.
Earlier you expressed your cognitive dissonance involving a, b, and c. I argued how b was false, leaving a and c. That alone would have resolved the dissonance if that report was accurate.
You didn't. You just asserted it and threw out vague suggestions to "check the codes of behaviour" without explaining where to find these codes of behaviour and where they come from. Do I check the village noticeboard where the Elders have listed their decrees?
Ahh, i see, I see. Fair enough. I think you have misunderstood - I invented a scenario in which a COC was in place which forbade the kicking puppies, and called the claim that this means "one ought not kick puppies" is, as a result, a state of affairs an appeal to authority, because the 'state of affairs' there involve only the COC existing, including that proscription, and having been assented to. The claim that, because of that rule, it is a moral truth that we ought not kick puppies, is an appeal to authority. The claim rests on the rule being the benchmark for truth.
It wasn't my intention to charge you with an appeal to authority. Sorry if it came off that way. I didn't assume it was your position that a code of conduct supported the claim that it is a state of affairs, rather than a rule. My point was that the existence, content, and assent to the COC does not establish 'one ought not kick puppies' as a state of affairs anymore than than the first commandment establishes that one ought have no God's before the Abrahamic one is a 'state of affairs'.
Quoting creativesoul
Hmm. I see how it comes across that way, and maybe I just don't know how to express myself adequately yet - but this was not the intention behind what i wrote. Hence, I conceded, in some sense (and i should have said in a sophistical sense) that in that scenario it is a rule that one ought not kick puppies and so, linguistically, one could claim "one ought not kick puppies" but it's not a state of affairs. The state of affairs is "There is a rule to not kick puppies, and to adhere to the rule, one ought not kick puppies" which again, doesn't establish "one ought not kick puppies" in itself, as a state of affairs. Without the rule in place, there is no state of affairs.
I was trying to point out the fallacious nature of the claim that a rule establishes a state of affairs. The states of affairs are the existence, content, and assent to, the rule. That doesn't touch the proposition 'one ought not kick puppies' as a state of affairs in itself. To my mind.
Quoting Michael
It seems im not the only one...
Platonism in the Philosophy of Mathematics
I believe that the above is false. I am not a mathematical realist, but I still believe in mathematical truths.
Similarly, one can accept that there are moral truths but not accept that moral truths are "independent of us and our language, thought, and practices". One can believe that moral truths are invented, not discovered.
There is simply more to metaethics than just accepting that some moral sentences are true.
You're conflating two separate issues.
A few pages back I argued how an external judge was not necessary. You now offer a case where one is. I never argued that there are no such cases, only that it is not always the case. Your counterexample to my claim is of no issue, I've not made such a universally applicable claim... yet. The counterexample to b is most certainly an issue for your claims.
There is no single place where you can find all particular behavioural codes. The point is that they can be found sometimes. Wherever they may be kept, assuming you have access, that's where they are.
I was under the impression that metaethics was entirely about how, and why moral sentences could be true and then what makes them so, if they can be.
This seems to preclude a "brute fact" analysis of any moral sentence. However, as should be clear to the forum by now, im early in my learning and look for setting-straight.
Though, i sheepishly acknowledge Banno's dismissive attitude is what got me this humble LOL
Can you link to the post in question? I don't recall an argument, only ever assertions.
Nah. Sometimes codes are wrong/mistaken.
Metaethics
It is about far more than just "are moral propositions truth-apt and if so are any true?"
In light of? Other codes?
If you're appealing to a COC to establish that one it's rules is a state of affairs(i.e is true), i'm unsure what else that truth could be resting on?
I owe your last reply more consideration than that. :wink:
Not an argument, but an agreement. That's adequate enough here.
This case requires rule giver and/or reward/punishment... an external judge. Granted.
So moral obligations are pragmatic suggestions? I ought not kick puppies because... they might bite me in retaliation?
I can accept that. But I don't think that's what moral realists mean.
Forgive me if i've been a Jump-The-Gun Jones lol
No worries.
Yup, when our report of the utterance is qualified enough, we'll be talking about certain communities' codes. Not all.
That's not what I mean either. While you may get bit if you were to kick certain puppies, that's not why you ought not kick them.
Sorry if i'm just dumb - to what specifically does this reply? I have a response in mind, but I don't want to waste time if it's not relevant.
But you just quoted yourself saying "demonstrably provable negative affects/effects stemming from not honoring one's voluntarily obligations(promises) should work just fine in lieu of a rule-giver and/or reward/punishment."
If this had nothing to do with explaining what it means for one to be forbidden from kick puppies then why did you bring it up?
Those expressions reference states of affairs, the case as it was/is, the particular situation/circumstances at the time, etc.
Such things consist - in part at least - of that consists of things that are both physical and nonphysical, hence, I would not put it quite like that... "physical states of affairs".
Okay, so we're getting somewhere.
Obligations are non-physical states of affairs. As it stands it then seems that a moral realist cannot be a physicalist.
So what evidence – whether empirical or rational – suggests that non-physical states of affairs exist?
Well, you were seeking verification. Hence... rules. Rules... are an example of b. At least you're consistent.
I personally do not feel the need to verify that we ought not kick puppies. I do not need a rule for that. I could also care less whether or not that particular claim could be verified. So, it's not so much that I brought it up for any other reason than to point out where the need for verification leads one sometimes.
Rules require a rule-maker.
Quoting creativesoul
Right, so as I said, moral realism is a dogma. It doesn't even try to justify its assertions.
This seems to give up the claim of truth, then.
That doesn't follow.
It seems your argument is something like if a claim cannot be verified it ought not be believed, or it doesn't make sense, or something like that?
Well no. A claim need not be verified in order for it to be true.
Then, again, how could you possibly establish it's truth? If the case is that you just trust that it's true, I can get on with that - But i think Michael and I are trying to find out on what basis that is the case?
I understand that things which are true, will be true whether or not anyone can be convinced of them/whether they can be verified. Not a problem. But i assume you've been convinced, by reason. I'm trying to understand why you think one ought assent to an argument that doesn't actually establish any truth of the claim? What reason you have for assenting to the statement
I suppose I was unfairly equating "verified" with "justified". So rather than ask you how you would verify the claim that one ought not kick puppies I will ask you how you would justify the claim that one ought not kick puppies.
If, like above, you "do not feel the need to [justify the claim] that we ought not kick puppies" then your assertion is, quite literally, unjustified. Moral realism appears to be a dogma.
I make no claim that one ought not hold unjustified beliefs.
That particular state of affairs consists of both physical and non physical things.
So what evidence – whether empirical or rational – supports your assertion that there are non physical things?
And are we to be a realist or a nominalist about these things, mirroring the distinction between mathematical realism and mathematical nominalism?
Quoting Michael
These are all irrelevant questions. Relations are not physical. Intent is not physical. Truth is not physical.
All of these things and others are existentially dependent upon physical things, but do not consist of only physical things. I'm that sort of physicalist, I suppose, but I'm not married to stuff that is that far beyond the practical matter at hand.
I do not require omniscience from others either. Do you satisfy your own criticisms/criterion about what counts as dogma and being irrational?
Just curious.
They're not. They're central to metaethics.
You're asserting that some type of ontological entity exists ("moral obligations") but won't justify your assertion. Hence your position is unjustified, and I am justified in rejecting the unjustified. So I reject your moral realism.
A mortgage is a line on a title to a property. A marriage is technically two signatures on a marriage certificate which contains the legally correct wording for that contract, and a company is a set of documents establishing the legal entity of X company. I think what you're trying to assert is exactly what these facts circumvent.
Can you verify those claims? I'd love to see that.
I cannot make you read and/or take into consideration what I've wrote in support of what claims I've made here.
You also seem fixated upon changing what I write into statements I've not made. All of this can be verified.
Here is empirical evidence of you admitting that you're not even interested in justifying your position.
A position that isn't justified is, by definition, unjustified.
Being justified in rejecting the unjustified strikes me as an epistemological truism, perhaps because it too is true by definition.
He used the word 'verify'.
I don't think he's equivocating the two the way you are
I did comment here that I was unfairly equating "verify" and "justify" and so re-phrased my question to ask about justification and in his response here he refused to offer such justification and so I took it as implied that the same comments he made about verification apply also to justification.
But if he does have some means to justify the assertion that there are non-physical states of affairs that make the sentence "one ought not kick puppies" true then I'd like to hear them.
Right right; i followed that element of the exchange; but I anticipate what i've pointed out may be a defense to your charge. If he's, unfortunately, not taking that into account by noting he requires no verification, he may still have an answer as to the justification of the belief.
That was me rejecting your method of justification/verification(criterion for what counts as being justified).
My position is that some utterances of ought are true. Utterances of ought are a kind of claim. All true claims correspond to reality. Some utterances of ought correspond to reality. I set all that out simply already. My position may not be readily amenable to your current view. I suspect your view cannot meet it's own standard of what it takes to be sensible, rational, and justified. I could be wrong, but I doubt that I am in that regard.
I'll circle back to something earlier...
If it is the case that kicking puppies is forbidden, then it is the case that one ought not kick puppies. Those two claims express the same state of affairs/situation/set of circumstances/the way things were/are...etc. When it is the case that one ought not kick puppies, then it is also the case that kicking puppies is forbidden, and vice versa. Hence, "one ought not kick puppies" is true when those situations 'obtain'(to borrow your language).
The same is true of something like "electrons have no mass" and "electrons have mass". One of them is true and the true claim is the one that "corresponds" to reality.
But we have means to verify or falsify each claim. We have means to justify the claim that electrons have mass.
So far you are unwilling to offer even an attempt at justifying the claim that we ought not kick puppies.
It's not, though. It's the case that a rule exists forbidding it. Not that one ought obey the rule. And in any case, the claim here would be "One ought obey the rule that one ought not kick puppies".
The statement is not a state of affairs. The state of affairs is that "There is a rule to not kick puppies, and X(or Y, or Z) adheres to that rule".
Your argument here is:
Premise 1. If it is the case that kicking puppies is forbidden then it is the case that one ought not kick puppies.
Conclusion. Therefore, "one ought not kick puppies" is true
This is a non sequitur. You're missing a second premise. Your argument should be:
Premise 1. If it is the case that kicking puppies is forbidden then it is the case that one ought not kick puppies.
Premise 2. Kicking puppies is forbidden
Conclusion. Therefore, "one ought not kick puppies" is true
I'm asking you to justify the second premise.
I, for one, cannot make sense of something being forbidden unless there is some authority figure who has commanded us not to do something.
Fair summation of that part... :smile:
How do we 'justify' stating the rules?
Your question is ambiguous.
If I were to say that it is against the rules to move a pawn backwards in chess then I would justify my assertion by referring you to the FIDE handbook.
If FIDE were to say that it is against the rules to move a pawn backwards in chess then they would justify their assertion by explaining that they are the authority who issued the rule.
But what do we do about moral rules? There's no authority to point to. The very concept of there being rules without a rule-giver is nonsense.
Or are you arguing for cultural relativism where we, as a society, invent (rather than discover) moral rules?
Statements are not states of affairs. I'm not sure what you're objecting to. I've never claimed statements are states of affairs.
Premise 2 is stating the rules. You're the one asking me to justify 2. Hence, I asked. I'm not sure why you think it's ambiguous... it's pretty straightforward to me.
You answered. Why do the same standards not apply to codes of conduct? That's what the rules of chess are? If those are good enough for your to justify claims about chess behaviour, then why are the rules governing behaviour in a society/community that forbids kicking puppies not good enough?
I acknowledge that all moality(codes of conduct) are subject to individual particulars. I do not profess moral relativism/subjectivism.
Well, yeah. For the most part. Currently the American legal system is just a gloried form of morality. But why the need for rules here? Kicking puppies is wrong in and of itself.
So you say. But I say kicking puppies is not forbidden. That's me stating the rules.
Presumably you will say that one of us is right and one of us is wrong. So how do we determine which of us is right? How do we determine what the real rule is?
Because you brought up rules. I'm happy to do away with them.
So what does it mean for something to be wrong? How do we verify or falsify (or justify) the claim that something is wrong? You say kicking puppies is wrong, I said kicking puppies is right. How do we determine which of us is correct?
Oh.
Quoting creativesoul
Ok. I cannot escape the thought that you are contradicting yourself.
Let me shift the question: From where does your confidence in that claim come? No need to justify - I want to know where your confidence in it's "truth" comes from?
Well... I think that rules come down to individual particulars. I'm sure you'll agree. Different communities hold different rules/moral belief.
So, with enough qualification it may be the case that kicking puppies is forbidden in some communities but not in others.
I'm okay with that.
Right, so you're arguing for moral relativism. I'm okay with that.
I know what they both mean.
Not exactly, although like I said... I acknowledge the fact that all codes of conduct are subject to individual particulars.
There's all sorts of different standards/criterions for what exactly counts as being right/wrong. If we are to set the societal norms aside, then our own respective moral belief would need to be argued for.
Right?
So, how do you justify that kicking puppies is acceptable?
We agree on that. Where we disagree is on b earlier. There is no need for such a thing, as I said earlier for the reasons I said earlier, all of which you agreed with. Sometimes, all we need is knowledge of causality to justify admonishing certain behaviours and/or encouraging others.
We could be the authority.
At base, they are physical objects in the world. How people behave as regards those facts is not.
Ok. Accepted.
But this doesn’t establish a state of affairs as claimed.
Franky, that's shoehorning. A company, a marriage, a mortgage, a promise - these are not physical. Destroy the building, the company continues. Burn the certificate, the marriage remains. Shoot all the bankers, the mortgage is still owed. But that you can't see this helps explain why you think you have no obligations. Humans build a world of purpose and intent around them. You live inside that world, and deal with it every day, but like the allegorical fish in water you can't see it.
Meh. Not my problem, except that it prevents you seeing the solutions to these philosophical issues.
Did I claim anything about what - exactly - establishes a state of affairs?
That’s because they also exist in a register which is a physical thing also.
But if the records are destroyed those things do not persist. They are the record of “promise” as you put it.
Quoting Banno
Suffice to say, no, it’s not. But it’s not my problem if you ignore things either. Such as the physical nature of a mortgage.
You seem to be trying quite hard to avoid this, which was why I changed the question.
When the Public Records Office in Dublin burned down, the various incorporations and marriages who's documents were destroyed did not cease to be.
You are mistaken.
Yeah, I'm still working through all this... for me "states of affairs" are just what's happening at some specific time and place. It's a proxy for the term "reality" and the phrase "the way things are", etc.
There's always Hume's guillotine. I see it. However, I think there's a way to render it toothless.
I'm trying very hard to 'dovetail' the substantive to the minimalist version you voice.
:razz:
I've no idea what you're on about. I think that you're misattributing meaning to my posts.
If there is no record of your company existing, it doesn't exist. Fact. When the company office burned down, there were still plenty of records for the vast majority of the involved entities to rely on for their existence where were not in that office. I can be sure of this, based on your claim that they remained on foot.
Tell me how you would go about enforcing a property interest if there's no record anywhere of you having any interest in the property?
Given I deal with this problem for my clients regularly - this should be quite interesting.
Ok. My position is that this is another superfluous comment avoiding where you substantiate your confidence in the truth of moral statements.
Im fine to leave it there, with our differing takes.
Weird. Those words were just used by you for the first time, and yet I'm somehow avoiding something that you've just now expressed.
Odd indeed.
Do you have a question that you've asked that I've not answered clearly enough?
Enforcing it is not the question. It's whether or not the agreement remains intact. The agreement is not physical. The record of it is.
I'm not speaking for Banno, although I suspect he would agree.
Which words?
You haven’t answered either:
What makes the statement true; or
Where your confidence comes from.
Neither of your answers are in any way adequate.
Quoting creativesoul
The agreement isn’t the contract/mortgage. Are you trying to say that in some form the agreement supersedes the legal requirement for a mortgage? Because it certainly doesn’t. A mortgage is a legal instrument.
I would also suspect that’s his position - but the idea that a promise 'exists' is incoherent to me, so that explains that. A promise happened.
Let's check with the local lawyers...
@Ciceronianus, @Tobias, If you have time, could you tell us if a contract, marriage or mortgage ceases to exist if the documents on which it is written are destroyed?
Since in many cases a contract does not even need to be written down in order to be valid, it would be odd. Wills are an obvious exception.
Sorry to bother you with such trivialities.
No. This needs to read "any record of it whatever, is destroyed" which is the case i made.
I literally work in law firm dealing with solely mortgages. IN New Zealand. So, i doubt this is going to be any help. If there is literally no record of an agreement it will not be accepted by a court.
A good eg to consider this issue, is promissory estoppel. You can be prevented from disposing a property under promissory estoppel if there is record of some intent which would have, if made 'official' prevented the sale (doesn't only apply to just.. just setting out an example). For instance, if there's say an email trail in which you agree, on certain terms, to sell a property to A, A then makes financial decisions based on that exchange, a court will (in some cases) stop you from disposing of hte property based on that promise. Because there's a record. It is extremely, extremely rare that a court will even entertain a verbal agreement on an application for promissory estoppel.
Quoting Banno
I assume you meant to say "much more" so will go with that.. The intention behind them is, for sure. The mortgage, which is merely a line on a page, will motivate someone to do certain things on the back of the agreement. Accepted. But those things aren't a mortgage. Those things are actions related to a subjective stance on whether or not to carry out hte recorded obligations that the mortgage carries.
Quoting Banno
Depends how you want to except them. Probate can be granted in what's called "solemn form" even with no written Will.
Pretty much.
Quoting AmadeusD
Your argument is that therefore the contract is physical?
But the point is that the contract, mortgage, promises, marriages and so on are much than the physical item: at the least they include the obligations and actions therein set forth. Don't move the goal. You know this to be the case. They are more than physical.
Quoting AmadeusD
You made the claim that they are physical. I pointed out that they are more than just physical.
Ok. Amend to “physical records”. Which is my position.
But the promise which informs a mortgage is not a mortgage. Careful.
There's more than the paperwork. There's the actions and intents that form it and are formed by it.
We do things with words.
Thanks, I agree. I've lost the thread of this thread, and that's probably for the best. :grin: In any case, good posts in this thread. :up: I am reluctant to enter into the fray of these sorts of threads unless I see others arguing for sensible positions.
Oh, i readily accept that these things are either motivated by, or done in respect of, the contract/s in question. But the resulting obligation consists in the contracts terms.
This isn't the case with plain promises though. AS far as im concerned, promises don't exist in an of themselves and confer no obligation.
The explanation I gave previously, pretty much ignored by those who are still here, and so I presume not understood, is to do with direction of fit. 'I promise to give you a pie", uttered without. duress and so forth, places the speaker under an obligation to provide the pie. It brings about the obligation.
The direction of fit for making a promise is world-to-word. In loose terms it brings a previously non-existent obligation into existence. There is now something in the world that was not there previously: the obligation (or the marriage, the contract, the company, the mortgage, and so on). The notion of demanding a justification for saying there is an obligation utterly misunderstands the situation. As if someone were to demand that you produce your marriage for our inspection. It's not the piece of paper, nor anything else physical.
Hume's guillotine is explained, the direction of fit for "is" statements is word-to-world, (the words change to match the world) but for commissives and ought statements is better thought of as world-to-word (the world is changed by the words)
Yeah, it's a bit lost, as tends to happen in the dregs of an interesting thread. I'm just drawing out a few final points.
What bizarre, magical thinking. As if, *poof!*, a newly minted promise, shiny and golden, floats down from The Land of Ought.
The promise exists in the mind of the promiser, and their audience. That's it.
Quoting hypericin
Among the alternatives to physicalism is the idea that thoughts are real objects in the world.
Indeed. I think John Searle's paper on the topic is quite good: ' How to derive "ought" from "is" ' (The Philosophical Review, Jan., 1964, Vol. 73, No. 1 (Jan., 1964), pp. 43-58). (link)
What is claimed here is not at odds with that. We agree that the promise now exists, where prior to the promising it did not.Take care with "that's it" A contract to build a house usually leads to there being a house, which does not exist only in someone's mind. Unless you are Joshs.
Quoting Joshs
I'd drop the superfluous "real", which misleads into idealism of one sort or another. Thoughts are objects in that we can predicate to and identify them. In other ways they are not like tables and chairs. Again, Austin's analysis of "real" shows how to avoid being misled.
It depends.
Here in God's Favorite Country, or at least my part of it, most records concerning marriage and mortgages are duly recorded or registered with offices of the state, certified copies of which will normally serve to establish their existence and may serve as evidence in disputes landing in courts if the originals aren't available. Should events result in the destruction of those offices and other electronic records as well as the originals, then there may be problems of proof, but in that event of such a catastrophe there likely will be problems of all sorts, like finding food to eat, for example.
Certain contracts may be verbal; some must be in writing (generally in the case of the amusing named "statutes of frauds", specifically by a requirement imposed in the case of particular contracts). When they must be in writing under the law and are not, they'll usually be unenforceable. But in some cases even though there is no writing, there may be a claim in quasi-contract. For example, when one is owed money for conduct which resulted in a benefit to another, but there is no written agreement, there may be a claim for "unjust enrichment" which could require payment for the value of the services rendered.
It involves lawyers. Of course it does.
Cheers. Happy Christmas. Or whatever.
No, I'm pointing out that without agreement there can be no mortgage, in the very same way, by the very same means that without obligation there can be no promise. Mortgages require agreement and promises require obligation because in both cases the one consists of the other much like an apple pie requires apples.
But still, a contract is not a house.
It is best not to blur the real/imaginary divide. Even though Imaginary things do exist, and have real consequences. A man imagining a tentacle monster in front of him shouts and waves his arms in the real world.
A promise is just as imaginary as that monster.
And your marriage? Is it imaginary too?
A "promissory note" – that's imaginary? Money - imaginary?
Along with Amazon and The Conservative Party - these are imaginary, as well?
And your property deeds - also imaginary?
A promise between two people, I guess, is a minimal social reality. Notice how much weaker it is than say money, which itself can collapse in a poof once confidence is lost en masse. Whereas a promise to oneself, we will experience again after New Year's, is nothing at all.
Now you are starting to get it.
Searle's status functions??? Institutional facts???
Social Institutions
Collective Intentionality
Yup. I've been listening to/watching Searle lectures from time to time for a while now. Trying to keep the ontology closer to ground level. Dennett helps too!
:cool:
Interesting. Thanks for that. Collective intentionality may dovetail nicely with my own position.
Can we tease this out a bit further?
Would you agree with my saying that we need no 'rule giver', 'enforcer', and/or judge aside from ourselves if for no other reason than strictly because we are all we have? Since that's the case, then the mantra of "practice makes perfect" is the best approach we have. If that's all we have, then it's best for us to accept the facts and begin openly discussing which sorts of behaviours are better than others and why... without appealing to external judges and rule makers aside from ourselves.
At some point we must discuss consequences lest we have no other basis upon which to ground our belief about what and/or which behaviour is best in some set of circumstances.
Seems a brute fact to me. There is no need for an external judge, especially one of supernatural origin. Occam's razor applies. It is almost certainly the case that we humans 'make up the rules' governing our own behaviour. We are the ones who decide what is acceptable/unacceptable.
That's the natural progression of human thought. We act. We reflect upon actions. Then, we reflect upon those reflections, ad infinitum. In this way, morality and moral discourse emerges.
So, we arrive at not so much as admitting that codes of conduct are subject to influence by individual particulars, but insisting upon keeping that fact in mind and building upon it.
Well, if I've not answered then what are you possibly referring to when writing "Neither of your answers are in any way adequate"???
:brow:
First question...
Quoting creativesoul
That was early on. Perhaps you missed it?
The second question has not been asked. Those meaningful marks have not been presented to me in that order prior to now. Earlier you asked where my confidence came from when I said that if it is the case that kicking puppies is forbidden then it is also the case that we ought not kick puppies and vice versa. You queried regarding my confidence in making those claims. I answered as clearly, concisely, and completely as possible in the fewest meaningful marks possible to do so.
I stand by that answer. I know what they both mean. They mean the exact same thing.
Given any rule, there remains the choice whether to follow it or go against it.
Will you decide by looking to another rule? Then for that rule, will you follow it or go against it? And so on. If it is to be rules all the way, no decision can be reached. At some point you have to act. So at some point you have to choose. That includes the choice to follow a faith or an authority.
This is the core of Existentialism. One's acts are one's own. After all the ratiocination what remains is the choice of what to do.
So again we are at Philosophical Investigations §201.
That presupposes a subject capable of complex metacognition.
Sometimes there are choices other than just faith or authority There have been times when neither faith nor authority had things right.
I love it when people put 'fact' after their statement. "Ohh, if you put fact, well now, clearly, it must be true...."
Quoting Banno
No bother at all. Cic already commented so I do not have much to add but something interesting is going on here, so I will venture anyway.
In the Netherlands oral agreement can lead to obligations, just as a written contract can. Under Dutch law an agreement is reached when one person makes an offer and another accepts it and unless stated otherwise by law the form of both offer and acceptance are free, meaning oral agreement suffices.
Of course there are issues of evidence when one tries to enforce oral agreements. It may well be difficult to prove in a court of law. It is not impossible though, one may call witnesses for instance.
Of course, this does not mean that ownership is transferred immediately, That depends on the successful delivery and some deliveries entail the registration of a deed, for instance when buying and selling real estate.
In marriage witnesses are especially crucial because they may vow for the marriage in case one loses the necessary documentation.
So indeed, obligations can come into existence without any material pendant of the agreement.
The question to ask is why some people feel so uncomfortable with that
Quoting hypericin
Yes indeed a newly minted obligation emerges and binds me, because of the communicative connection between the parties to the agreement. This obligation exists in the sense that it can be a subject of communication (hypokemenon), it can be considered, it can be fulfilled, I can, in the worst case scenario, be incarcerated for not delivering on it and the other party, might when he has a court order to that extent, take my goods to make good on the obligation.
Modern society is in fact based on the existence of stuff without a material counter part, take money for instance. Money in our day and age does not have material pendant necessarily.
My feeling is that people who insist on the necessity of a material part to anything that exists, do so out of both some passed on Aristotelian intuition but also because they feel that immaterial things are somehow fleeting, they are 'less real' because they seem less durable.
Quoting AmadeusD
It is interesting to see that apparently 'persistence' is the issue. Amadeus position comes down to, 'existence means to persist and persistence happens if there are physical records of it'. So that which is not recorded does not persist and that which does not persist does not exist. This is actually our beloved bishop Berkeley making an appearance on Christmas day... ;) What it shows is that when one view is being absolutized, it generally reverts to its opposite. Here this utter materialistic view of law reverts to an idealist view.
Quoting AmadeusD
In a court of law you are not really of concern. "Hey I solemnly promised to kill my father in law at the Christmas table, but you see the promise does not really exist so sentencing me for threatening murder is not warranted". A judge will make short work of that defense.
"Of course I offered to sell you the house for E200.000 and you accepted, but you see, it was only an oral promis and no obligation occurs from purely oral promises and so yeah, I sold it to my cousin instead". Well, I suggest not dealing with a Dutchman as you might well find yourself paying indemnification because of your rather outlandish views on promises and obligations.
Disclaimer: apologies if all of this has already been dealt with in this 40+ page threat or when it derails more than enlightens. Merry Christmas all of you!:flower:
Of course not. That tentacle monster is not there, he merely thought it was. The promise may well not be a figment of his imagination, but a promise he made and is now bound to keep. One is unreal the other is real, quite simple.
Quoting Tobias
It’s my knowledge of what constitutes a legal entity at play here.
Quoting Tobias
This makes absolutely no sense whatsoever and anyone who thought this even constitutes a defense or a sensible thing to say regarding a charge around threatening to kill isn’t thinking, or has no clue what they’re talking about.
Ignoring the glibness of your other responses, this one shows I may not even need to address them.
Quoting Tobias
You’ve described a constructive trust. Consists in different facts and requirements than a “promise”. “Promise” may be the problem here. Promissory estoppel for instance relates to a provable, recorded promise on which one relies. You’re discussing hearsay. “A judge would make short work of that defense”.
If your claim relies on a mere oral promise and you have no record of it, you will be ordered to pay costs. Having credible witnesses is a record. Best to read thoroughly ;) Quoting Tobias
You then address a view unrelated to the law, and not the view actually put forward.
Promises don’t exist; they occur. Obligations can exist. But I do not think a promise confers any. Can’t see any argument here from either yourself or Banno that gets close to satisfactory
How can something that does not exist occur?
Quoting AmadeusD
Of course you do not need to address them, only if you want to. My reply apparently drew you in, so you wanted to.
Quoting AmadeusD
Indeed. It shows that utterances, whether they are recorded or not, have actual legal consequences.
Quoting AmadeusD
I have no idea whether I described a constructive trust or not. I am not familiar with common law legal terminology. I also do not know whether promissory estoppel "relates to a provable, recorded promise on which one relies.", but I take your word for it. Of course there might be legal facts the coming into being of which relies on them being registered. However, not all legal facts rely on them being recorded and entered into a registry of sorts. It is also wholly beside the point.
Quoting AmadeusD
The point is this. You equivocate having evidence for a certain obligation with the obligation per se. The obligation is there, whether you have evidence for it or not. Let's say I am married, but the witnesses have died and I lost the certificate of our marriage. Of course I am still married, I just cannot prove it. My lack of proof may well lead to my claim being rejected in court, but courts are no arbiters of ontology. They adjudicate claims. If I cannot prove my claim, then it is tossed out of the window, it is as easy as that, but that does not mean my claim to being married is somehow false. That is what I mean with this:
Quoting Tobias
Your materialist view, taken to its logical consequence, leads to idealism, 'to be is to be perceived' in your case, 'to be is to be recorded'.
Quoting AmadeusD
Of course it does. If I would be a judge in a criminal court I might ask a witness to promise to tell the truth when she is being interrogated by me. When she in fact promises to do so, she is under oath. Her not telling the truth makes criminally liable. You merely thinking that this promise does not convey any obligation to tell the truth does not make it different. My hunch is that you are thinking of unrecorded promises. They are indeed unenforceable, because of the rules of evidence. That does not render them non existent though. The promise is there, the obligation has arisen, it simply cannot be proven. That is why I think your view comes down to a rather crude form of idealism.
Quoting Tobias
A flight of fancy doesn't exist. Yet it occurs. Plenty of things occur without existing. Including causal relations, strictly put. Not sure you're thinking...
Quoting Tobias
False. I went through this giving examples of both conceptually. You are just wrong. A person claiming bare that someone promised them something isn't even a legal consideration. It's a nothing. A nonsense. It isn't going to even get you listened to by the judiciary in any form, unless you have some evidence. Even that, usually, needs leave to be adduced.
Quoting Tobias
That's true - but they must be presentable in a reliable and usually, corroborated form. You seem to think not? It is entirely on point re: whether you ahve a point.
Quoting Tobias
You could have stopped here, acknowledged you have defeated your own point, and moved on. But here we go...
Quoting Tobias
If you can't prove it in court, it probably does. If there is literally no record of your marriage, you are not married. That's how a legal obligation works. If you're conflating moral obligations with legal ones, that's a bit rich.
Quoting Tobias
This is plainly self-contradictory. Not sure what you thought would come of it. It also really has nothing to do with my views. I am telling you what is required for a legal obligation to obtain.
Quoting Tobias
Why you are mentioning ontological positions is beyond me so I'm just going to ignore that dumbass conclusion.
It literally renders them non-existent. If you have a false memory of making a promise, does it exist? No. You can't prove it. You have absolutely nothing but your memory to rely on. THe promise doesn't exist. Your apparent attachment to it does.
It seems that there is almost universal agreement about the most serious ethical issues. Physics on the other hand is rife with disagreement (regarding its metaphysical implications at least) and is in any case accessible only to the very few (which doesn't stop the many from pontificating about its purported metaphysical implications).
I assume you mean the almost universal agreement concerns when to assign blame and culpability?
No, not addressing the question of blame. but rather of value and disvalue. Love is generally preferred over hate, courage over cowardice, selflessness over selfishness, kindness over cruelty, help over harm and so on. Murder, rape, torture, theft, deceit, exploitation and the like are universally (perhaps sociopaths excepted) condemned as being evil acts. As far as I can tell these facts about people are the only viable basis for moral realism, not some imagined transcendent "object" or whatever.
Quoting Janus
We can associate disvalues with people that don’t involve blame, such as ugliness, physical weakness, cognitive slowness. But are concepts like murder, hate, deceit, exploitation, cowardice, cruelty and evil at all intelligible without the implication of blame? We only blame persons for actions that they performed deliberately, with intent. Is it possible to be an accidental, unintentional murderer, coward, deceiver or hater?
I beleive that all forms of blame, including the cool, non-emotional, rational desire for accountability and justice and well as rageful craving for vengeance, are grounded in a spectrum of affective comportments that share core features. This affective spectrum includes irritation, annoyance, hostility, disapproval, condemnation, feeling insulted, taking umbrage, resentment, anger, exasperation, impatience, hatred, fury, ire, outrage, contempt, righteous indignation, ‘adaptive' or rational anger, perceiving the other as deliberately thoughtless, rude, careless, negligent, complacent, lazy, self-indulgent, malevolent, dishonest, narcissistic, malicious, culpable, perverse, inconsiderate, intentionally oppressive, anti-social, hypocritical, repressive or unfair, disrespectful, disgraceful, greedy, evil, sinful, criminal, a miscreant. Blame is also implicated in cooly, calmly and rationally determining the other to have deliberately committed a moral transgression, a social injustice or injustice in general, or as committing a moral wrong.
Of course they are intelligible without the implication of blame. We can say as Jesus reportedly did: "forgive them for they know not what they do". The idea of intent and responsibility may be inherent to those ideas, but the imputation of intent and responsibility is not indissolubly linked with the idea of deserving blame.
This is not to say that the great majority of people do not think in terms of blame and the concomitant terms of punishment and vengeance, but perhaps the great majority have not thought deeply enough about the connection of intent and responsibility with blame.
Forgiveness and turning the other cheek only make sense in the context of blame, which implies a belief in the potential capriciousness of human motives. From this vantage, if, rather blaming and condemning another who wrongs me, I respond with loving forgiveness, my absolution of the other presupposes my hostility toward them. I can only forgive the other's trespass to the extent that I recognize a sign of contrition or confession on their. part. Buddhist perspectives talk of substituting compassion for anger. Others say we move beyond anger by forgiving those who wrong us. Traditional religious ideals of unconditional forgiveness, of turning the other cheek, loving one's oppressor need to be seen as conditional in various ways.
In the absence of the other's willingness to atone, I may forgive evil when I believe that there are special or extenuating circumstances which will allow me to view the perpetrator as less culpable (the sinner knows not what they do). I can say the other was blinded or deluded, led astray. My offer of grace is then subtly hostile, both an embrace and a slap. I hold forth the carrot of my love as a lure, hoping thereby to uncloud the other's conscience so as to enable them to discover their culpability. In opening my arms, I hope the prodigal son or daughter will return chastised, suddenly aware of a need to be forgiven.
Even when there is held little chance that the sinner will openly acknowledge their sin, I may hope that my outrage connects with a seed of regret and contrition buried deep within the other, as if my `unconditional' forgiveness is an acknowledgment of God's or the subliminal conscience of the other's apologizing in the name of the sinner. This kind of unconditional forgiveness forgives in the name of a divine or natural moral order that the guilty party is in some sense answerable to, thereby linking this thinking to the normalizing, conformist impetus of conditional forgiveness.
For example, the man-eating tiger intends to kill; do we blame her? She is certainly responsible for the killing, but do we hold her morally responsible? Of course, some people, so enraged by their loss may even seeks revenge on the tiger, but this would not be rationally driven.
When we deem someone responsible for what we see as an unethical action, when we believe it was intentional, deliberate, this is precisely what blame is. Blame is synonymous with the attribution of intentional capriciousness, waywardness to another, their straying from the path of right behavior.
It doesn’t have to be a libertarian notion of free will. All one needs in order to justify the concept of blame is to believe that habits of thought can become ‘sticky’, that we can become entrenched in a way of thinking such that it becomes self-reinforcing and blinds us to other possibilities. We get angry and blame when we believe we can get that person ‘unstuck’ , make them see the error of their ways, force or cajole them into an empathy or relational intimacy they have fallen away from. When you raise your voice in anger at someone you know in order to shake them out of their complacency, are you indulging in a fantasy that they have libertarian free will, or is it because you have discovered that it often achieves its effect?
Blame assumes the freedom of arbitrary influences and temptations , or stubborn inertia , acting upon volition. It does t need to assume the will is hermetically sealed within itself. And even when one does believe in libertarian free will , this can still be seen as the influence of outside ‘demons’ acting on the will in evil ways.
.Blame discovers the arbitrary and capricious in a behavioral system, wherever it is to be found. If we are a biological determinist we blame heredity. If we are a behaviorist we blame the environment. If we are a Freudian we blame unconscious impulses. But regardless of what we blame, when we find ourselves getting angry with another person, we believe, however their motivational demons line up ,they can be responsible for showing contrition and mending their ways.
The way to transcend the need for blame is not to substitute for free will a determinism in which we are conditioned by forces beyond our control. This only displaces the target of blame. Rather, it would require believing that human beings are intending sense-makers whose thinking can never be arbitrary, subject to wayward demons and influences. But it would also require that thinking can never be deliberately unethical. I know of no philosophical position that accepts both of these propositions, so in some sense all philosophy is a thinking of blame.
On the other hand, it seems obvious to me that some individuals can deliberately cultivate their freedom from culturally acquired and genetically determined compulsions, but whether or not a particular individual is capable of this and the degree to which they are capable of it is down to what they are constitutionally equipped to be capable of. Blame is not pragmatically necessary but of course restraint is necessary in cases where individuals are a threat to others.
Quoting Janus
You find it irrelevant to the question because you have paired down your definition of blame (strictly the product of sui generis will) so severely that most of the ways in which it is treated by contemporary psychologists and philosophers is off limits to the discussion.
I say that blame is not any more rationally justifiable in cases where harm is caused by humans than it is in cases where harm is caused by other animals or natural events.
I happen to agree with you on that, but just to make sure we’re on the same page, do think that any of the following cognitive assessments can be rationally justified, and if so , which ones and on what rational basis?
the cool, non-emotional, rational desire for accountability , condemnation, contempt, righteous indignation, perceiving the other as deliberately thoughtless, rude, careless, negligent, complacent, lazy, self-indulgent, malevolent, dishonest, narcissistic, malicious, perverse, inconsiderate, intentionally oppressive, anti-social, hypocritical, repressive or unfair, disrespectful, greedy.
Most philosophers find anger to be a rational assessment in certain situations. For instance, Robert Solomon argues that anger can be ‘right'. Striking his own balance between subjective relativism and objective rationalism, he says
Philosopher Jesse Prinz writes:
Existentialist philosopher John Russon offers:
The social constructionist Ken Gergen writes that anger has a valid role to play in social co-ordination “There are certain times and places in which anger is the most effective move in the dance.”
Eugene Gendlin, a phenomenological psychologist and philosopher allied with Heidegger, considers anger to be potentially adaptive. He says that one must attempt to reassess, reinterpret, elaborate the angering experience via felt awareness not in order to eliminate the feeling of anger but so that one's anger becomes
Do you agree with any of these philosophers about the rational value of anger?
When I spoke of rational justification I was referring to "pure' rational justification, I think the examples you offered may be cases of practical rational justification. The difference is that practical rational justification does not issue from the nature of the thing as pure rational justification does, but from the nature of the effect the thing has, or the nature of the effect that holding the judgement has.
It depends on jurisdiction and on where and when it is uttered. If I interview a witness than him or her saying that something promised them something, is relevant. Of course the defense can argue it is somehow not recorded but I as a judge can take into account whether I find this witness credible or not.
Quoting AmadeusD
No, that is not how legal obligation works. You confuse obligations with rules of evidence. If I am married legally and the marriage is not legally dissolved I am simply married. Say a nuclear weapon wipes out all the registries, then there is no evidence of my marriage anymore, but I am still married. I still have the legal obligation to care for my partner. There is just no evidence for the marriage and if I walk away from my obligation it cannot be enforced by a court. That though does not make the obligation somehow disappear, or the marriage somehow annulled.
Quoting AmadeusD
You could have dispensed with your silly condescending tone, but here we go...
Quoting AmadeusD
It is indeed beyond you but that is not really my problem.
Quoting AmadeusD
No, it If I remembered making a promise but I did not make a promise, there is no promise. If I think I see a pink elephant but it is in fact a figment of my imagination, then it does not exist. However not because I cannot prove that there is no pink elephant but because there is no pink elephant. The same holds for promises.
Sorry to intrude myself in your debate, but since I am also a law graduate and I work for the land registry in Madrid, I think I can make some useful points:
As you previously stated, Tobias, it depends on the legislation we are taking into account, but since you and I live under the "umbrella" of the European Union, there is a basic principle: the company does not exist if it is not recorded. If the company is not recorded, it becomes irregular and the stakeholders respond with their goods and not with the company's goods. I mean, without a registration, the company lacks of "affectio societatis"
On marriage and its registration. It is interesting that you state that if the civil records get destroyed, the marriage remains.
Well, yes and no...
It is obvious that you still have some obligations to your spouse, but your marriage becomes "insufficient" as the legal codes of my country says. Specifically, the 61st of the Spanish Civil Code says: For the acknowledgment of the marriage it ought to be recorded in the civil registry.
If it is not registered, or you lack some certificate, you can lose some advantages. For example, in terms of taxes, it cannot be proven you are a family unit. In terms of perceiving a pension from the state, there could be problems of evidence that marriage existed, etc.
With the aim of preventing unfair results, the Civil Code provides basic rights and principles between spouses, but these are very basic.
So, more or less, your marriage remains, but it is insufficient. I would say it mainly exists between you and your spouse, not to the state, me (if I am a creditor) or the judges.
I agree. The sale of a house in the Netherlands is also not complete until the asset is transferred and its transfer is recorded in the registry. There is sound wisdom is that, especially on a corporate level. People who are dealing with the company need to know on what kind of entity it can take regress. In order to minimize confusion the rule is that there is only a company when it is registered as such.
Quoting javi2541997
I think under Dutch law a marriage also needs to be inscribed in the registry to enter into force. What I do not know is whether the marriage is dissolved when it is not anymore recorded because no such registry exists anymore. It might be, but I do not think so. Article 1:149 of the Dutch civil code mentions that a marriage can be dissolved on a number of grounds. These grounds are summed up limitatively which means that only those grounds have legal force. The eradication of a registry is not among them. Therefore I can only conclude that under Dutch law the marriage is not dissolved.
https://wetten.overheid.nl/jci1.3:c:BWBR0002656&boek=1&titeldeel=9&afdeling=1&artikel=149
Of course there will be all kinds of problems with evidence. That is my point exactly. the points of evidence should be separated from the point of whether a marriage or some other promise of sorts exist or not. Of course the state might well demand proof of you being married and when no such proof can be given, the relevant institution may well treat the marriage as not having any force. That does not mean the marriage is gone though in any ontological sense. When I see my loved one after this horrendous catastrophe that destroyed all the registries, I will say "we are married". I will not say "I used to be married to you", and rightly so. The duties of the spouses to each other would still apply even though they are not enforceable in court due to issues of evidence. We still gave our word, we are married and the marriage is not dissolved, at least not under Dutch law as far as I can tell. (I am the first to admit though I am not very knowledgeable on family law).
Interestingly perhaps under Dutch law we know the figure of the 'natural obligation'. That is an obligation that cannot be enforced but is still there. The most prominent example of it is when a thief becomes the owner of a certain good due to the statute of limitation. Since he became owner the original owner cannot revindicate his or her property. Yet, the thief/owner is still under a natural obligation to return the good to the person he/ she stole it from. A lot of law simply serves to protect economic activity and trust in the system. It does not uphold ontological truths. I think that is where lots of the confusion lays.
That thank you has been sitting in drafts for six months. My apologies for not posting it earlier.
My apologies also for involving you in what has become a somewhat farcical discussion. The ideology of physicalism prevents some folk from seeing the reality of social constructs. A basic category mistake.
I just wanted to share the perspective using the legislation of my country and I realised that the legislation of our nations has common legal principles thanks to the European framework.
Here the "existence" of the mortgage depends on its record in the land registry. Even when the guaranteed amount is paid, the cancelling of the registry is needed. Because one thing is extinguishing the loan by paying and the other the guarantee on the house.
Quoting Tobias
It is not dissolved, yes. The marriage remains, and the spouses maintain basic obligations, as we noted before. Our legislation foresees two basic procedures to dissolve a marriage in the 85th article of the Civil Code: the death of one spouse and "divorce". The latter requires a lot of formalities or ceremonies. Public deeds, spouses consent, authorisation by a legal public worker like a Notary or Judge and then... its record in the civil registry to prove the date of dissolution. :sweat:
Quoting Tobias
Yes, I am aware of the existence of natural obligations in Dutch civil law. Our jurists demand more framework over these obligations, because they are there, even though it cannot be forced. It is true that some articles in the book "Obligations and Agreements" contain, briefly, references to natural obligations. For example, the articles 1755 and 1756 say: Interest is not due unless it is stipulated. A borrower who has paid interest that is not stipulated may not charge it to the principal.
Quoting Tobias
I like it. It reminds me of the figure of proxies and agents. When the principal resolves the authorisation to act in his name, those have the natural obligation to return him the deed where the authorisation is.
No. This is a complete misunderstanding. If there is literally no evidence of hte marriage the law does not hold a position on it. It does not exist. It is not there to be spoken about (again, if you're conflating legal obligation and moral obligation, which you clearly are - that's fine, but wrong).
Quoting Tobias
Yes. That's literally what it would mean. Although, you've used misleading terminology - there is no marriage to be annulled in that scenario. The same way if your bank loses its server, you have no money. You cannot claim that wealth, if it literally disappears from the register in which it exists.
Quoting Tobias
Its not condescending. You are very wrong, and adamant about it. It's not easy to pretend that's a reasonable position to take.
Quoting Tobias
It is if you wanted to make a point. You didn't. It was a red-herring.
Quoting Tobias
Ok, we're done here. Your inconsistency is becoming funny, and that's going to make me mean. ALmost every response you've made to the other two interlocutors instantiates my points and defeat your own. Wild.
No. The non existence of registries is not among the limititative grounds for annulment of marriages under Dutch law. Therefore the marriage is not annulled. Just you saying so does not make it so. Your point comes down to when something cannot be proven to have existed it never existed. That is why your extreme materialist position lapses into idealism, but well, that point was beyond you.
Quoting AmadeusD
There is my GF and I were married on the 10 of the 12th, 1998. It has not been disbanded. I just have no means of proving it.
Quoting AmadeusD
That might be because the money stopped existing. The marriage did not stop existing. The wedding ring may well be lost in that catastrophe as well, but so what?
Quoting AmadeusD
Mirror mirror on the wall...
Quoting AmadeusD
I am doing a helluva job so far.
Quoting AmadeusD
Your face is funny.
Quoting AmadeusD
You are not mean, just a bully and a silly one.
Amadeus has been trying to work out the difference between an assertion and an argument for some time now.
I do not see any convincing point, but maybe you do. I gladly see it, so please tell me if you are willing...
But I will ask you a quick question:
Quoting Tobias
What if the nuclear weapon wipes out the entire nation and the legal order. Would you still be legally married? Or would the legality of the marriage fall away and it become a purely natural marriage?
Quoting Joshs
I'd say Janus is clearly correct here, and the key is not some vague notion of libertarian free will, but rather his condition "that the person really could have done otherwise." Joshs needs to put "blame" in scare-quotes, for by 'blame' he seems to mean nothing more than negative conditioning. ...It is interesting that without free will the distinction between rebuking and gaslighting seems to collapse. Oh, and anger has a great deal to do with blame, but it is simply false to claim that we get angry when we think we can get a person unstuck. We get angry with someone when they have done something wrong, and our anger is supposed to motivate them to set it right. If someone is "stuck" but is not to blame for anything then we do not get angry with them.
No, the point I was making is that believers in reductive determinism like Sapolski are not some strange anomaly within the history of philosophy, deviating from both defenders of traditional free will and postmodernists like Derrida and Heidegger in denying that blame is attendant upon the idea that the person really could have done otherwise. (Heidegger writes that Dasein is primordially guilty. “Existing, Da-sein is its ground, that is, in such a way that it understands itself in terms of possibilities and, thus understanding itself, is thrown being. But this means that, as a potentiality-of-being, it always stands in one possibility or another; it is constantly not other possibilities and has relinquished them in its existentiell project.”)
‘Could have done otherwise’ is alive and well in Sapolski, but is hidden within the way he understands natural cause. As far as the association of blame with negative conditioning, I have always sided with those within psychology and philosophy who have strongly critiqued behaviorist notions. For instance, my favorite psychologist, George Kelly, argues that what motivates behavior is not reinforcement of drives but the ability to make sense of one’s world by effectively anticipating events.
Quoting Leontiskos
That was the point I was making. The other’s ‘stuckness’ only provokes our anger when it involves their deliberate, intentional choice to fall away from an intimacy of relationship with us, a falling away from trust, empathy, loyalty, etc.
No, but they are a significant minority.
Quoting Joshs
Sure, but I am not sure that you are appreciating the relation of choice to free will. To deny the ability to do otherwise is to deny choice and fault, and the onus is on you to show how a deterministic paradigm could provide for the ability to do otherwise.
My apologies, I did not get it. We do share the same impression it does seem :)
Quoting Leontiskos
Well, for me it is hard to think of a legal order to be wiped out in any material sense. The legal order is a good example of an immaterial concept, it is a web of relations, of habits and ideas accepted by the people in a community. Of course such a community could be wiped out, as you suggest, the nation is wiped out. Ok, let's look at the scenario. Bombs fell and we stumble over the rubble of our civilisation blindly and shell shocked. With some great coincidence you find your wife (or husband) back and she is a shell of her former self, hardly recognizing you. What would you say about how you know her and to tell her who you are? I think you would say "we are married remember, you are my wife". You would not say "we used to be married, but the marriage is annulled because our civilisation has been destroyed.
But, you might object, my point is whether legally you are married. Well I would say in the circumstance that there is no legal order anymore, it does not matter. There is no 'legally married' anymore, there is married or not married, it is of no legal consequence. Yet I am right to claim I am married. There is also no instance that can annul the marriage and say I am wrong, because such an instance is only possible within a legal order. The question becomes meaningless to ask. I though, in that scenario, still hold that I am married and rightly so. There used to be a legal order and I am married in proper process.
The question becomes meaningful again if a new legal order is established. I hold that I am married and start to tell my story before the person or rudimentary institution which has somehow obtained competence. Probably, if my wife still does not recognize me and says she knows of no such thing, the 'court' would tell me I cannot prove my marriage and that clearly the other party does not know about her marriage. The court cannot establish the legal fact of my marriage and would probably state that we have never been married. From that moment on I may cry and tell my sad story, but legally my marriage is not there anymore. The court establishes the facts and established them without my marriage. That does not make the court right. It established the wrong state of affairs as fact. But alas that is how law works at times. I was right before the court, my wife was wrong. However, the rules of evidence were in the way.
You might think I am just playing with words here. I intent not to. What I take issue with is the idea that something only exist when there is a record of it. That according to me confuses evidence with existence. For me it is simply 'if a tree fell and no one heard it, did it make a sound' all over again.
I’m all for free will. My claims about determinism weren’t an attempt to privilege them over freedom-based positions, but to show that they share a limitation with many such approaches. What most free will based perspectives have in common with deterministic ones is making fault and blame a necessary consequence of choice and freedom, the latter simply displacing the focal point of freedom to a ‘pre-subjective’ domain. I believe we are free, within the looose constraints set by our contingent schemes of understanding, to reconstrue the meaning of events. Determinations of culpability, fault and blame tend to prematurely end that process of re-interpretation and questioning.
Okay.
Quoting Joshs
If you are saying that all incompatibilists agree that
Quoting Joshs
It seems to me that you are throwing out the baby with the bathwater. For me the simpler point is that the consequence that incompatibilists agree on is true and important, as is its antecedent.
Edit: I was recently reading Stephen Brock on intention, so as I was traveling today I began to listen to an informal talk he gave on free will ("Is Free Will an Illusion?"). At the very beginning, starting at 1:48, he gives the exact argument that I had in mind regarding your own position.
I take it you're not reading these responses thoroughly:
If there is no evidence you are married, the marriage doesn't exist. This has nothing to do with 'Dutch' law. This is fact of any legal matter. It would be the exact same scenario if you were (in the proper sense) never married, yet claim you were 'still' married. Same thing. It doesn't exist. Your cliam is simply your claim and is at the mercy of the legal proofs you can present.
A discussion about whether it did exist in 'our' scenario here gets further. Annulment is only relevant if you can make out the marriage to begin with. You can't. The scenario i've set up is exactly that. You pretending it's not is beyond me, at this stage.
Quoting Tobias
Then you cannot have it annulled. It's getting tedious, because this part here leads me to think you are trolling. If you cannot prove the marriage, you can't have it annulled or otherwise. It isn't there to be attended, at all, except in your mind. Which i already gave you. A lot of people allow this to suffice for their entire life. But they don't then pretend they are legally married, either. A legal marriage requires instruments of law. Wont be addressing this further unless you stop being dead wrong (or, you try it and provide me a judge's opinion which supports the idea that an assertion at law is as good as an instrument).
Quoting Tobias
*sigh*.
Quoting Tobias
This says quite a lot more than you wanted it to, I would think.
Quoting Tobias
ONce again, conflating 'promise' with legal obligation. What is going on here, Tobias? Are you literally not reading the responses to your points, or what? Equivocating like this is extremely bad form and ensures we could never have a fruitful exchange. I would implore to not do this
Quoting Tobias
No one claimed this. I didn't claim this. I claimed you would be wrong. You would be. It's become clear you're making arguments for me and then trying to beat them. Please dont.
Quoting Tobias
Here is where "A discussion about whether it did exist in 'our' scenario here gets further" comes in. You've worded this equivocally. You're not currently married if that legal instrument no longer exists. But you can absolutely make the argument for the legal system to carry through your 'promise' into a new legal instrument. I have no idea why you're having trouble teasing these two things apart. I have not once at any stage tried to make the point that your mental state of believing you are married is either dishonest, or an act of some legal kind. It is delusional in the way i described earlier. It is incorrect. You were married and that fact no longer obtains, legally. You need to do the above to reestablish the legal marriage. There is simply no grey area here to be argued. I think you're still, despite my noting it gently several times, conflating a legal marriage and your attachment to your 'wife'. Not really my thing to do so.
You keep saying that and it is at the core of this whole debate. It comes down to the maxim: "What cannot be shown to exist, does not exist". I think that claim is wrong. We do not require evidence for existence. If I promise my brother I will return a book to him I borrowed from him, I made that promise, no matter whether he can prove it in court or not. The problem is that such a view undermines the ethical dimension of promise because it leads to the view that promises have no moral force per se, but only if there is evidence for it. Most promises are made orally, without any witness and have, in your view, no claim to existence, allowing me a lot of leeway with such promises, because if they do not exist in the first place, I may disregard them. Because how can I be bound to something that does not exist?
This view is, in my opinion absurd, and rests on a mistaken conflation of existence with perception. Banno and others have also pointed it out to you but you keep holding on to it. Fine, but do not expect me to agree with what I consider to be absurd.
Enjoy your day and kind regards,
Tobi
(Edit: I find the way you write offensive, facetious and displaying an arrogance which is I think both unnecessary and baseless. Therefore, from now on, I will keep any an all interaction with you to a bare minimum).
Then you're flat-out wrong because the second part is false.
Quoting Tobias
I don't care. You're stubborn in your incoherence so this is par for the course.
And on what metaphysical theory are you basing that assertion? Common sense speaks against it. When I open my eyes the first impression of it is that what I see is real. I am not thinking, 'fuck, what I see here is amazing, but is it really real? I must find some evidence for that? Moreover, most of us assume that reality goes on being there after I die and I am not anymore around to perceive. However, any conclusive evidence for that is lacking. Your assertion collapses into the modest crude form of idealism.
Quoting Tobias
So you really want to hold on to the view that I did not promise my brother to return the book when there is no record of it? Even though I told him: "I promise i will return this book"? It 'poof', magically, just did not happen? Best not to take your word for anything then.
Quoting AmadeusD
You should care because you are violating rules of civil conduct. Last time I checked they were taken seriously on this website.
This is true, but might not be obvious to some. Some will insist that a proposition can be true even though there is no fact of the matter, a fact being something in the world we can point to. Since this sort of thing is in opposition to Witt's private language argument, and that argument is persuasive on its face, one would need to explain how a marriage can exist when there's no evidence of it. That would be helpful.
It's a commonplace that if no evidence exists for X, X doesn't exist. By this we don't mean you have to have that evidence in your hand. It just means that it needs to be accessible in a logical sense.
For example. I tell you there is a little man on the stairs, but this doesn't show up in any facts of the world. He's invisible and he leaves no trace anywhere. You can safely assert that the man doesn't exist. The same would be true for promises and marriages.
I can safely assert it and I would probably be believed by all. However, if there really was such a man, I would still be wrong. He did exist, he just didn't leave a trace. You who told me there was such a man, were right, I was wrong. You won't be believed though, however, that is sad, as you were right all along. The same holds for promises and marriages.
Quoting Tobias
Yep. Folk hereabouts regularly confuse something's existing with something being known (believed, shown...) to exist.
It's very basic stuff.
@AmadeusD can settle which of us read him correctly when he said "literally no evidence."
I think he meant there is no fact regarding the existence of X. X does not show up in any way in the world. If something belongs to the set of all things that exist in our world, one expects there to be facts associated with this existence. This is not about knowledge. It's about the state of the world.
With regard to a promise of which there is absolutely no evidence, you might think your memory of the making of the promise would stand as a fact. Surely your mental states are facts of the world. But let's look more closely (with Kripke's help). How would you, yourself determine if your memory was correct? How would you answer that?
But there is such a fact, namely my assertion that I am married. I attest to it, vouch for it, plead with my audience. I am simply not believed because others cannot corroborate my assertion and there are no records of it.
Quoting frank
I cannot know if my memory was correct. All I can do is remember something. I also know my memory is mostly correct. Of course, I might well be wrong and there are good reasons for the audience not to believe me. However, if I indeed made that promise, I have said "I will return the book to you", there simply is a promise whether it is recorded or not. I just cannot convince anybody else of it, and for good reason. Rules of evidence are important, but not to establish the ontological status of X, but merely whether I should or should not believe X to be the case.
In everyday practice we constantly end up in such situations. Let's say you told your friend you'd return him some money you owe, what do you do? I think you will return the money. Or will you think: "Well there is no written record of me owing the money and hey my memory may be wrong and so might his, so there is no need to return the money, the promise does not exist". No, of course not.
Exactly. What exists in the world is you behaving as if there are certain rules you ought to follow.
Its not a metaphysical assertion. The explains a huge amount about hte dullardry you're putting forward.
Quoting Tobias
No. Because I didn't intimate this was the case. You are an extremely confused interlocutor.
Quoting Tobias
Given the utter ridiculousness of your responses, I still do not care.
Quoting Tobias
Tobias, you sweet summer child - I take part in the real world. This forum is not significant, and 'civil' discourse requires I be honest in my reactions to your responses. And I have been. If you're offended, that's up to you. I simply don't care.
Quoting Tobias
Begging the question. Also explains a lot. "If there were such a..." is not what we're talking about. A marriage is literally a legal instrument. For whatever reason you don't believe this is the case - which amkes everythign you say about it honestly tooth-grittingly stupid.
Quoting Tobias
This isn't a fact about your marriage. It is a fact about you. The marriage doesn't obtain because you claim it does. You're in the exact same position as someone who was never married yet made the claim. There is zero difference. Zilch. Nada. None. You can claim whatever you want, and in this case at least you'd be right that you believe you are married. That has nothing to do with whether you are married.
Quoting Tobias
I take it you are not seeing the inanity coming to the fore here?
Quoting Banno
Banno, you don't even understand straight-forward sentences half the time.
Quoting frank
I meant exactly what the quoted line means. There exists zero (none) evidence for proposition X. If that X is something which requires specific evidence such as the legal instrument of a marriage, then the rest of this is dull side-points that aren't relevant. If you're talking conceptual existence, which it seems Tobias is, that has nothing to do with what we're actually talking about and i've clarified this multiple times. I should be clear - I'm bored - not being 'uncivil'. This is tedious. Its like trying to explain something to my six year old:
[u]See this? Its a marriage license. It's required to be married to someone in law
See this? "No" Exactly. That's the promises your mother and I made.[/u]
Two complete different things that exist in different arenas in the world, in the mind and in practice. If Tobias wanted to discuss the merits of claiming the existence of a promise, we'd have a lot more to say to each other. However, it seems he's trying to have kind of a debate between legal concepts that literally don't exist.
Quoting Tobias
The an exquisite misunderstanding of what's being discussed. Ignoring that you have designed what amounts to a 'lie by omission' your scenario does not talk about what we're talking about. But, on it's face, I still disagree. The fact that you, in your head, note a 'chance' that you could be wrong does not intimate that you even could be wrong. So none of this goes anywhere.
If you, and your friend have faulty memories and neither remembers the promise - it doesn't exist. That is the only source of it. And those sources no longer exist. There is no other way that a promise could obtain. Unless you're of hte position there is a secret cosmic repository of promises in the ether..
Frank has the right idea. What exists is your beliefs. Not the things you believe (when those things are mental, like a promise).
Yea, I don't think he was being disingenuous. He just wasn't up for a discussion about ontology. He didn't seem to understand that his points were irrelevant.
Still not understanding sentences it seems. Well done mate.
Odd, the reactions it elicits.
Are morals arbitrary, random, mere matter of whatever opinion? No.
Are morals existentially mind-dependent? Yes.
I'm not seeing a problem with that, though.
There are sentient beings behaving as if they have obligations. For a variety of reasons, the details of this are inscrutable. It's incredible!
Quoting frank
Maybe you can explain to me how they are irrelevant? I thought I was discussing ontology. The point I make and Banno agrees with is that in the posts of some people here the quality of being provable is mistakenly identified with the quality of existing or not. (Not sure if I have my analytic phil. terminology straight but you know what I mean.). That is an ontological point I would think.
Quoting frank
I am having trouble unpacking this. Are you referring to the existence or non-existence of rules? I am not trying to misrepresent your point, but from this it seems that you feel a rule does not exist perse but what exist is 'me behaving 'as if' there are such rules'. Why though would you hold that these rules do not really exist?
Quoting jorndoe
Agreed.
Your point seemed to be that a marriage (that is without any other kind of evidence) may be a feature of the world by virtue of your attitude:
Quoting Tobias
Note that what actually exists here is you demonstrating the behavior of assertion making. Compare this to the value of a currency. Literally the only fact regarding this kind of value is the way people behave. Imagine this exchange:
Ama: There is no fact regarding the value of currency other than people and the way they behave.
Tobi: So you're saying the value doesn't exist? That's crazy! Of course it exists!
We could say value exists as part of an explanation for certain kinds of behavior. As such, it's an abstract object because it's possible to be wrong about value. It's like numbers, sets, propositions, etc. It's a resident of complex intellectual activities that bear on interactions with one another and with the world. But that's their only domain: intellectual activities. They don't exist out there with dirt and dynamos. So we have two ways of talking about existence.
Quoting Tobias
This would require a dive into Wittgenstein's private language argument with a little help from Saul Kripke. Is that something you're interested in?
Ohh no, that is not what I tried to convey. So maybe I did not formulate it aptly. A marriage is not constituted by my attitude, it is constituted by a certain procedure. It is an interesting procedure, it culminates in a 'speech act', as Austin called it. Me saying 'yes I do' has consequences for the state of affairs in the world, namely that I am no longer a bachelor, but a husband. The following of proper procedure causes a marriage to exist, not my attitude.
Quoting frank
Well, what makes the marriage exist or not is whether this procedure has actually taken place. If it has taken place, I, with good cause, attest and vouch for the presence of my marriage. Whether I can prove it is a wholly different matter, as provability is, at least under Dutch law, not a precondition for marriage. However, of course, it had to be registered. It not being provable anymore has no impact on the actual existence of my marriage. The ritual has been followed, the speech act has been uttered. I am married and the marriage has not been dissolved also according to procedure. Think of it this way: is there for you a difference in my utterance that I am married in case that: A the proper ritual has indeed been followed and B. the proper has not been followed? My argument is that I am telling the truth in case A., whether or not I can prove it and I am not telling the truth in case B, irrespective of proof. Therein lays the crux of the matter.
Quoting frank
Yes, but so what? Currency is a piece of paper to which we attach value, because it has been issued by a certain procedure. That is why currency which has been minted according to proper procedure has value and currency not minted according to proper procedure is actually valueless, the possession of which may actually cause legal trouble for you. Now of course, in a world that is blown to bits and is reduced to barter economy the value of that piece of paper might well become 0. No one wants to trade anything for it. But that does not mean that somehow its existence is of any less status than, say, a doorknob, which is also only a real doorknob because of the very existence of a door in which it has its proper place. It is also only a certain something within a network of all kinds of things. that is why I keep saying that at the core our disagreement is about metaphysics.
Quoting frank
We do have come to the heart of the matter. That is that you feel you need some kind of material substrate for something to really exist, 'dirt and dynamis'. If there is not some material thing, it cannot really be a certain something. I think that is actually a metaphysical assumption which is not needed. It does not matter whether something is made out of wood or stone or whether something is made out of numbers on a bank account. A certain phenomenon is always a certain something in virtue of the network within which it has a place. You want to restrict existence to something existing as stuff, something tangible, material. I do not see a good reason to speak about existence in such a way. It leads to confusion and the instability of institutions. When you are asked 'are you married?', you would have to answer with: "well really not, you see, because actually marriage is unreal, there is no dirt involved (though I hope for you there is, but I digress ;) ) but we behave as if we are married". I would answer the question much simpler: "yes". (Or in my case, "no", but that is again beside the point.
Quoting frank
I might though my vocabulary may well be different stemming from a different tradition. I do not see the link to private language though because the very existence of such institutions displays that we have no private language. We actually share a public like mindedness which makes such institutions possible. They are not subjective, they are the product of interactions. That is why I think here you mistake the horse for the carriage:
Quoting frank
No, I think, value has come into existence because of certain kinds of behavior.
This isn't touching the problem that I'm seeing missed: "the promise" does not exist. The act of commitment happened, and that can't be changed retroactively(so, depending on position this could be said to 'exist'. But the 'promise existing' is just an incoherent statement. Where is it? What is it? Who arbitrates? The promise doesn't exist, per se. It obtains in two related mindstates which assumably exist. If those mindstates change, the 'promise' fails to obtain. There is no other way to explain what a promise is, again, unless you think there's a cosmic repository somewhere of all promises made.
Banno's attitude here is simply the kind of non-engagement that Searle loves so much. Literal hand-waving.
(y)
Quoting Tobias
If you're not reading my posts, don't talk about htem - particularly using terms like 'trolling' which you are doing with that exact sentence. Tsk tsk. Civil discourse and all. But, in all honestly Tobias - your posts are crap. This has nothing to do with your mental abilities or you as a human. Your posts are crap. I'm allowed to say that. You taking personal offense is something you're going to need to work on.
Quoting Banno
Haha - yeah, this happens a lot with you. They aren't odd to those of us paying attention, though.
That happens a lot.
Laugh and walk away.
:: virtual hug::
You are really not very good at this. I read the whole post, and chose the bit that was most ridiculous. Your claim is that there are no promises. That speaks volumes for your comprehension of the discussion here. It shows us why we should not pay heed to you on this topic. Your repeated vindictive and lack of substance reinforce the opinions already expressed by .
No, he didn't. Stop with the provocative crap.
Frank, he said:
Quoting AmadeusD
Therefore he thinks there are no promises.
You know better than this. The promise is an abstract object. You yourself deny their existence as features of the world. Stop playing this game.
Your implication is that abstract objects do not exist. The backdrop here is presumably a belief that only physical objects exist. This is simply muddled.
"There is an x such that x is a promise" is true. Therefore promises exist.
Nothing in this says that promises are physical objects.
Again, really, really basic stuff. Not everything is a physical object.
You finally allowed the existence of abstract objects. It only took you ten years to do it, but you made it! Congratulations professor!
See for example the thread on Searle where I present his discussion of the construction of social reality. Social reality consists in what you call abstract object.
And the thread on Austin, in which the hegemony of the physical is overturned.
Or the threads on Midgley, where talk of what you call abstract objects is central.
:roll:
No. You took something out of context to make it seem ridiculous. This is called strawmanning among other things. IN the real world, this sort of underhanded nonsense is ignored. Perhaps why you're here?
Quoting Banno
Hahaha. And then you go on to impugn my comprehension. Cannot make up this level of irony. Sniff away!!
Quoting Banno
If you think clearly, precisely rebutting a clearly erroneous argument repeatedly is "lack of substance" this is explains you quite well. And again, why you're here.
I would recommend how you could overcome yourself but I don't think you want to gain any insights. Just sniff.
Here again is what I have argued: People make promises. Therefore there are promises. Therefore promises exist.
I'll offer you now the opportunity to agree with this.
All I can say is lets hope you aren't quite this fragile in the real world. As with Tobias, I don't care, and nor should you.
Thanks for this. I can tell you see something in it, regardless of your protestations.
No. People 'make promises' in the same sense people 'make friends' or 'make sense' or 'make out' an image in the distance. There is nothing that exists beyond the act. There are no promises out there waiting for you to fulfill them. There are no free-floating 'friends' that you've made out there waiting for you to call. You don't 'make sense' of a sentence, and then the 'sense' sits there to be observed. Exists in the sentence. It is nothing, of itself.
There are other people with particular brain states in both accounts, as result of your behaviour. Those brain states obtain, exist, affect and all the rest(with the addition of being, while extant, related). And while we disagree, there's nothing wrong with noting these can be considered moral aspects of having caused those brain states i.e to disappoint one to whom you've agreed to idk, provide food, is 'bad' because you said you would. Not just because you didn't do it.
However, the promise was a singular act and quite clearly doesn't exist as 'an' anything. It is the person's brain state that exists. But as noted earlier, if both parties to a 'promise' forget that it was made, the there aren't even these brain states and te claim that the 'promise' still exists becomes risible to the point of perhaps being an indicator of sillygooseness.
I would be hard to imagine a funnier response than Banno's above.
Well, seems to me that the obligation exists beyond the act of making the promise. That is, to make a promise is to place oneself under an obligation.
Now that obligation is not physical. It is not "floating around". But it does exist.
But it is a mistake to think of the promise or obligation as "nothing, of itself." It is a promise, it is an obligation. So "...the promise was a singular act and quite clearly doesn't exist as 'an' anything" Isn't right, either - the promise exists as a promise; as the undertaking of an obligation.
So to this:
Quoting AmadeusD
If both parties forget about the promise, what is it that they have forgotten about? Not nothing. They have forgotten about the promise. Hence, there is a promise to be forgotten about, and again the promise exists.
Quoting AmadeusD
I gather that you would like to argue that promises are brain states? What would that look like? Is the promise the brain state in the head of the promiser, or the promisee? Or both? What about those who hears about the promise - is the promise the sum of all the brain states of everyone who has heard of it?
Or is the promise a similar structure that each and every person that has heard of the promise has in their brain? Could that be made coherent?
And what ab out written promises, or audio recordings - are these also promises? And how does the promise move from one page to another? If it is a physical state, then the nature of that state is quite irresolute.
The promise seems to be something quite apart from any such physical state. Isn't it more a construction, put together by people using language to get things done? Isn't it a way of undertaking an obligation in a social and linguistic context?
But why shouldn't we talk of such things as existing? Along with money, property, friendship, and so much more. We live in a complex of social constructs.
Fragile? :rofl: What an idiotic inference; what makes you think I care about some random ad hominem projections beyond making the effort to call them out for what they are? I'm not interested in participating in your silly game of one-upmanship.
Of course you are free to point out that you think my posts are crap. I disagree with that assessment but that is to be expected. What is uncalled for is your incessant stream of arguments ad hominem and your condescending tone. Those are not needed and uncivil. I have every reason to take offense when I am talked to with disrespect. Of course probably in your world there is no such thing as rules of civil discourse as rules altogether lack the quality of existence, but in the real world they are certainly there. So, may I ask you kindly to please leave me be and go away?
Quoting frank
Fair enough. I would like to know where I misunderstood you, because indeed that does happen. But if I do not get to find out, alas. I honestly tried to address the points you made, that is all I can say. Philosophy, in my view, is the examination of one's propositions. In that vein my posts were written. If you find them unhelpful, you are free to disregard them of course.
This is an ambiguous claim.
Are you suggesting that "I promise to do this" means "I am obliged to do this"?
Are you suggesting that "I promise to do this" entails "I am obliged to do this"?
Is "I promise to do this but I am not obliged to do this" in some sense a contradiction?
Quoting Banno
This is also an ambiguous claim.
To say that people make promises is to say that people promise to do something, and to say that people promise to do something is to say that they say something like "I promise to do this".
Does "promises exist" mean the same thing as "people say something like 'I promise to do this'"?
Because at least prima facie the former would suggest some sort of platonism/realism regarding the existence of abstract objects whereas the latter wouldn't.
Sure. Oaths, covenants, verbal contracts, and promises are ideas that come to us as parts of a religious heritage. For our ancestors, a marriage was a holy sacrament, and oaths were made using Bibles. God was involved.
For us, all the divine trappings have fallen away. There's nothing but people talking, people behaving in a certain way. People don't usually talk about whether promises exist somehow, but if we had to make sense of that, we'd say the proposition involved in the promise exists as an abstract object. This means it's an element of intellectual life. So yes, they exist. In another sense, they don't.
It's like when Margaret Thatcher said, "There's no such thing as Society." If you really don't understand what she was saying, that's your choice. Most of us understand it perfectly.
Well, yes. Except that your rendering misses the direction of fit. That is, "I promise to answer you" places me under an obligation to answer you, and "I promised to answer you" entails that I am obliged to answer you.
Quoting Michael
Yes. In promising you place yourself under an obligation. It's much the same as "I promise to answer you but I will not answer you".
See Searle, "How to promise, a complicated way"
Quoting Michael
More than that. "Promises exist" means that there is an illocutionary act that involves placing oneself under an obligation. Such an act occurs in the world, not in some other domain.
Not seeing any ambiguity.
Kinky.
The ambiguity is in making sense of the distinction between a) communicating the proposition "I promise to do this" and b) placing oneself under an obligation.
Do (a) and (b) mean the same thing?
If so then what is gained in asserting (b) rather than just (a)?
If not then how do I make sense of (b), especially if I am a nominalist? Is (b) even possible if nominalism is correct? And does (a) necessarily entail (b)? How would such a claim be justified?
If "promises exist" only means that (a) occurs then I can agree, but if it means that (b) occurs then the issue is unclear.
The linked paper sets out an account that shows how sometimes uttering "I promise to do this" is placing oneself under an obligation. They are not the same thing.
Where?
I can see these closely related conditions:
7) S intends that the utterance of T will place him under an obligation to do A, and
8) S intends to produce in H the knowledge that the utterance of T is to count as placing S under an obligation to do A
These conditions can be satisfied even if the utterance of T does not in fact place S under an obligation to do A, e.g. if obligations do not actually exist. We can intend whatever we like, but the facts do not always accord to our intentions.
And how does one even justify the claim that (7) and (8) are necessary conditions of promises? Perhaps (1) - (6) are sufficient.
Of course, this all depends on what being placed under an obligation actually means, as asked above in my previous comments, e.g. are obligations abstract objects of the kind that platonists believe in and nominalists don't? Until this is answered with any clarity it isn't clear what is even being said.
I'll let you work through it.
No. Where have you derived that conclusion? My issue is with the suggestion that promises entail obligations.
These are two distinct propositions:
1. I promise to do this but I won't
2. I promise to do this but I have no obligation to
I can't sincerely assert (1) but I can sincerely (especially if I'm a nominalist) assert (2).
OK. You are not a man of your word.
I don't know what it means to be held to a promise. You don't seem to want to make sense of obligations, so maybe you can at least make sense of this?
Quoting Banno
Whether or not I'm a man of my words depends only on whether or not I actually do as I promise. The existence of some supposed "obligation" or "holding" (whatever they are) is utterly irrelevant, if even sensible.
You don't see this as problematic? Then I need provide no answer.
No, because it isn't clear to me what obligations are, or whether or not they exist, and you are yet to make sense of them.
Quoting Banno
So you will neither make sense of nor defend your claims? OK.
That's not what I said. If "...it isn't clear to (you) what obligations are" and you do not think there are such things as obligations, then you are not going to understand what is involved in making a promise.
That's why I'm asking you to make sense of them (and then justify their existence).
As it stands, I am content with accepting Searle's conditions (1) - (6) as being sufficient for promises.
But also as previously mentioned, not even Searle's conditions (7) and (8) require one to actually be placed under an obligation; they only require that one intends to be. So even under Searle's account obligations are seemingly superfluous.
So you think that S can intend that the utterance T will place him under an obligation, and utter T, but not thereby consider themself under an obligation.
How odd.
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/obliged
Hoping this helps
I didn't say that.
I'm saying that Searle's necessary and sufficient conditions (1)-(9) do not entail that if S promises to do A then S is obliged to do A.
S can intend that the utterance T will place him under an obligation, and utter T, but not thereby be under an obligation.
Quoting Michael
Why can't you? Why do you answer, "No"? Banno is right, you need to work through it. The problem with your position is found in those two little letters you would sweep aside unnoticed. They show that you are not as ignorant of promises as you pretend to be.
('s karmic law requires me to agree with Banno here for disagreeing with him elsewhere.)
Because a promise is sincere only if one intends to do as one promises.
Right, and is it not also true that if a promise is sincere then one will do what they promised (unless some unforeseen impediment intervenes)?
No, because I may choose not to, i.e. I changed my mind.
So you responded, "No, because I may be prevented from doing so." But then you deleted that post and wrote a different one after thinking more carefully about my parenthetical remark. That's good.
Now a promise means not only that you intend to fulfill it at the moment it is made, but also that you intend to fulfill it up until the time it is fulfilled, barring the intervention of unforeseen impediments.
So suppose that yesterday you told a client that you would meet with him today at 2:30. But today comes around and you "choose not to." You choose not to, and instead go golfing. Your client waits for you at the coffee shop and eventually leaves, frustrated. On his way home he drives past the golf course and sees you teeing off on hole #3. What will he say to you? What will you say to him? Will it be sufficient to tell him that you "chose not to" meet with him?
Mattew 5:33 “Again you have heard that it was said to those who lived long ago: Don’t make a false solemn pledge, but you should follow through on what you have pledged to the Lord.[d] 34 But I say to you that you must not pledge at all. You must not pledge by heaven, because it’s God’s throne. 35 You must not pledge by the earth, because it’s God’s footstool. You must not pledge by Jerusalem, because it’s the city of the great king. 36 And you must not pledge by your head, because you can’t turn one hair white or black. 37 Let your yes mean yes, and your no mean no. Anything more than this comes from the evil one."
Sufficient for what? I don’t really understand the question or how it relates to my comments to Banno.
Sufficient to avoid the conclusion that your promise was insincere.
My promise was sincere because I intended to fulfil it when I made it. I was being honest at the time. I just happened to change my mind after making it.
And that is the sort of thing you tell your professional clients?
No.
What relevance is this question?
So for you, someone who places themselves under an obligation is not, thereby, under an obligation.
Ok.
The only oddity is why you continually misrepresent what I am saying.
I am saying that you haven't shown that anyone places themselves under an obligation when they promise something.
It certainly doesn't follow from Searle's account, even if his conditions (7) and (8) are correct. Intentions do not prima facie entail the intended.
Prima facie these are two different propositions:
1. S intends that the utterance of T will place him under an obligation to do A
2. The utterance of T will place S under an obligation to do A
In Searle's list of necessary and sufficient conditions, he uses (1) – and (1) does not prima facie entail (2).
As a comparison, these are two different propositions:
3. S intends to do A
4. S will do A
In Searle's list of necessary and sufficient conditions, he uses (3) – and (3) does not entail (4).
To defend your position you must either show that (1) entails (2) (and justify Searle's claim that (1) is a necessary condition) or find some other way to justify (2) – as well as actually explain what obligations are.
Something like that.
For example, I think that this is a sufficient account:
a) I promise to do something. If I do it then I did as I promised. If I don't do it then I didn't do as I promised.
Whereas others want to bring in talk of obligations and being held to a promise and of promises existing. It isn't clear what any of these things mean, or what they add to (a). To borrow from Anscombe, they seem like terms with "mere mesmeric force" and no real substance.
The question is, was she right? Of course I understand what she was saying. I also understand what it does when saying that. It was a way to get rid of social policy. I think that is always. Metaphysics, the question what is really real, is idle speculation. What we need to know is, what does ascribing 'reality' or 'existence' to a certain something do? The question is not 'does a promise exist'.
Quoting frank
That seems a sociological claim, and to me a rather dubious one. Aren't covenants, verbal contracts and promises not just very handy devices by way of which we structure our relations towards one another? We do not need God to make them handy. Quoting frank
Welcome to current society. Lying is actually pretty common, "Does my ass look fat in that dress, no of course not honey", or "I will be at your brothers party on Saturday" When push comes to shove it is raining... Promising is a way to make the other reflect on his/her yes or no, it lends emphasis and indeed brings forth obligations, in more or less strong degrees of enforceability. That is also why parents ask their children "do you promise to be good?" . They know what a promise is before they had any religious education.
Quoting frank
I would leave the 'nothing but' out, but for the rest I agree with you. Though stating that institutions are products of social action is something else than stating that therefore they do not exist. Thatcher's quote is often used as an example of methodological individualism. That position is not unproblematic. The 'I' that does things is also shaped by the institutions in which it exists. I am myself much more partial to Anthony Giddens' structuration theory.
Quoting frank
No, they do not and probably for good reason. The only reason I can think of why it might be meaningful to discuss the existence of a certain something it to know what it does when we ascribe or take away the quality of existence of that something. If we decide on God not existing, prayer makes little sense. For this reason the existence of God is hotly debated I guess. What one does when one denies existence is to decrease them in importance. That is also what denying the existence of promises does. What holds for promises actually holds for all other concepts. Truth is also never found 'floating around', kindness is not, 'principles of good governance' aren't and so on. Yet all these concepts do things in the world.
Quoting frank
If that is the conclusion I would think it merits some investigation in what you consider meaningful for existence. What does it matter for the existence of something to be an aspect of intellectual life? My hunch is that it is 'dirt and dunamis' as you put it in an earlier post. What advantage does it have to hold on to a position that cannot make sense of the distinction between rules of evidence and existence?
Perhaps we are indeed running around in circles, but I would like to know what attracts you to such a physicalist position? Materialism is all back in favour, but I am trying to wrap my head around why one would go out of his or her way to absolutize this position and rather deny the existence of anything else or relegate it to 'existing in some sense'. But well, if you see nothing in it feel free to disregard.
That seems of no use to people who write/philosophise in other languages.
I'm sure people of other languages make the same arguments about the words in their language – some of which may be exactly translatable into English with no change in meaning, and some of which may not.
Considering that analytic philosophy, as it is today rather than relating to Frege and the Vienna Circle, is a phenomenon particular of the English-speaking world, I wouldn't say so. I at least have not seen any book written in German about what 'wissen' mean or in Spanish about 'conocer'.
Well, Plato certainly asked that question in ancient Greek. It's where "justified true belief" comes from.
I'm an ontological anti-realist. I don't believe the categories of physical, mental, and abstract should be cashed out as more than elements of a worldview. I take that a lot more seriously than most, but I'm still bound to pay attention to what my worldview says. It says mind-dependent items don't exist as any more than the shenanigans of the mind. Is that part of my worldview problematic? Sure. But my worldview grew organically out of the experiences of my kind. It's part of my foundation.
Quoting Tobias
True. I'm conditioned by my environment, including the human world. Still, what exists is me and other individuals, not a phantom society. Don't jump to the conclusion that my take on Thatcher's comment is simple. My interest is in understanding the world. It's not a football game where I cheer for one side.
Quoting Tobias
My worldview says dirt and dynamos exist. A philosophical analysis will say we should probably deflate the concept of existence so that we don't run into problems denying the existence of things we can't do without. By and large, I think we're in agreement.
Perhaps for another thread.
I'd go farther and say it is of no use to anyone, period. :grin:
Dictionaries should solve it, but they won't for Michael. Michael will sooner deny every form of future accountability rather than abandon his strange position. He will deny promises, oaths, contracts, marriages - you name it. The more reductio that is applied, the muddier he is willing to get.
It is relevant because, like you so often do on these forums, you whip up an imaginary problem. You have no difficulty understanding the obligation that a promise creates in real life, but when you hop on the philosophy forum you magically forget what you know. It's no wonder that philosophy is so often associated with foolish pretense. "A promise means not only that you intend to fulfill it at the moment it is made, but also that you intend to fulfill it up until the time it is fulfilled, barring the intervention of unforeseen impediments" ().
I am of the same opinion. I don't think philosophy has any business dealing with analytic statements (red is a colour), that is up to lexicography in the prescriptive sphere and semantics in the descriptive — kidnapping-common-words-to-turn-them-into-jargon aside.
That is, promising counts as placing oneself under an obligation.
That is what making a promise consists in.
If you just happen to change your mind thereafter, that does not remove the obligation.
Your mention of Anscombe was interesting. Do you care to fill it out? I wouldn't have taken you as an advocate of divine command theory - are you going to claim we can only promise before god?
Anscombe talks of obligation as if it functions only under a law, citing medieval etymology. From what I understand the word derives from obligationem, "a binding". It's the "counts as" that is peculiar, binding and worthy of consideration.
Again, someone who places themselves under an obligation is, thereby, under an obligation.
So for Michael promises don't exist, and what he calls a "promise" is a promise shorn of all obligation.
If the word derived from obligationem it would be obligationem. It derives from French obligacion (today 'obligation', English followed French in changing the spelling of the -cion suffix for -tion around the 16th century), and obligacion derived from obligationem.
From my experience, French people have little issues with their own words.
Quoting Etymology online
Is this not correct?
My access to the OED is not functioning at present. I don't see what it is you are saying is problematic.
Which is what I say.
I haven’t missed it. I’m asking you to justify this claim. It doesn’t follow from Searle’s list of necessary and sufficient conditions. His conditions only talk about intending to be placed under an obligation, but intentions do not prima facie entail the intended.
Quoting Banno
Here are two sentences:
1. You ought do this
2. Do this
The first appears to be a truth-apt proposition, whereas the second isn’t. But beyond this appearance I cannot make sense of a meaningful difference between them. The use of the term “ought” seems to do nothing more than make a command seem like a truth-apt proposition. It’s make-believe a la fictionalism.
Well, that's what promising is. I'm at a loss to explain it any further.
Can you offer an alternative meaning for "promise"
Quoting Michael
Oh, very nice. I like that.
As a first response, if you are given a command, by someone with the authority to command you, then "do this" does imply "you ought do this".
If your boss tells you to take the tray to table five, you ought take the tray to table five.
It does seem that you are ignoring an important social aspect of language: that we do things with words, including placing ourselves and others under certain obligations.
Searle’s conditions 1-6 seem sufficient. But again, even 7 and 8 don’t entail the existence of an obligation.
Quoting Banno
The problem with this claim is that I cannot make sense of the difference between “do this” and “you ought do this”. At best it just claims that “do this” entails “do this”.
In the past Michael has said that God would not change things, but there is good reason to doubt Anscombe's etymological inferences. William Diem, in addressing the Medieval sense of obligation, says:
Quoting Diem, Obligation, Justice, and Law: A Thomistic Reply to Anscombe
Sorry - can you give an account of what making a promise is, that does not involve placing oneself under an obligation? Is it your contention that one ought not keep one's promises?
Quoting Michael
Then perhaps you ought not get a job waiting on tables? It is beginning to look as if you are describing a peculiarity of your own psychology rather than something of general interest.
It appears we disagree as to the nature of "obligation".
The backstop here is the way you will also claim that terms like 'ought' and 'should' make no sense to you if they are interpreted in their colloquially normative sense. See our conversation where you do precisely this: link.
Searle's conditions 1-6 that you linked me to. I would copy them here but I cannot copy and paste from that document and I'd rather not manually type it all out.
Quoting Banno
My contention is that a) it hasn't been explained what obligations are and b) it hasn't been explained how/why promises entail obligations. Even Searle's account doesn't explain this.
Quoting Banno
I don't even know what an obligation is, if something more than a command. I have asked several times for an explanation.
The colloquially normative sense is just to treat a command as if it were a truth-apt proposition. It's fictionalism. If you think there's more to it than that then I'd need an explanation and a justification for them.
As I said:
Quoting Leontiskos
That depends on what you mean. Here are two propositions:
1. Promises exist
2. People promise to do things
If (1) and (2) mean the same thing then I agree with (1). If they mean different things then I need an explanation of this difference.
Quoting Leontiskos
That depends on what you mean. Here are two propositions:
1. Obligations exist
2. People command others to do things
If (1) and (2) mean the same thing then I agree with (1). If they mean different things then I need an explanation of this difference.
Without (8), the promise does not count as undertaking an obligation. And that, apparently to all except your good self, is the very point of making a promise.
Quoting Michael
Perhaps an obligation is a binding of an individual to the performance of an act. It can be brought about by, amongst other things, promising and commanding.
If you do not consider yourself to be bound to enact those things that you promise, then it seems to me that you have simply misunderstood the nature of making a promise.
I am curious whether you think contracts exist. If no one is obliged to fulfill a promise, then surely no one is obliged to fulfill a contract? You will say, I think, "There is a penalty but no obligation." But then what is the one who breaks contract being penalized for? Is there something he failed to do?
Even with (8) it doesn't count as undertaking an obligation.
Here are two propositions:
1. S intends to produce in H the knowledge that the utterance of T is to count as placing S under an obligation to do A.
2. The utterance of T is to count as placing S under an obligation to do A.
Searle uses (1), and (1) does not prima facie entail (2).
Quoting Banno
This is yet another thing that needs to be explained. What does it mean to be "bound" to the performance of an act?
I just either do it or I don't. What are these other things you're trying to introduce?
If you do not agree that someone who undertakes an obligation is not thereby obligated, then I have no more to offer you.
Yet again you still haven't told me what it means to be obliged to do something.
Quoting Leontiskos
He didn't do what he was contracted to do and so as per the terms of the contract (or the law in general) he is penalized.
That's all there is to it. I don't understand what this additional thing – the "obligation" – is, or what part it plays.
That's not what I'm saying. I am saying that Searle's conditions – even with conditions (7) and (8) – do not entail that when one promises to do something one is agreeing to undertake an obligation.
You are just reasserting the very thing that needs to be justified.
Take a contract. You tell me that you will build me a house in a year, and if you don't complete it in that time you owe me $25,000. The year completes and the house is not completed. Do you owe me $25,000?
Yes.
So what do you think - if someone undertakes an obligation, are they thereby obligated?
If so, then you seem to be claiming that making a promise is not undertaking an obligation. And that does not appear right.
When I say that you owe me $25,000, why couldn't you just say, "I changed my mind," like before? ()
Yes. I've been very clear on that. This is true even using Searle's definition of a promise. Your claim that if S promises to do A then S has undertaken an obligation to do A is as of yet unsupported.
Well I can certainly change my mind and not give you the money, and then face whatever punishment follows.
I don't really understand your question.
So if you change your mind and renege, do you still owe me the money, or not?
Right, by "owe" you mean "obligated to give you the money"? Again, you haven't told me what it means to be obligated to do something. I just either do it or I don't.
Well, you are the one who told me that you owed me the money. What did you mean when you affirmed that proposition?
I was thinking of it in terms of the conditional "If I don't do X then Y will happen", and that this proposition does not entail "I ought X".
Hmm? What are X and Y?
As in, "If I don't build the house on time then some authority will fine me."
This is true if in the terms of the contract. But this does not prima facie entail "I ought build the house" (or "I ought pay the fine").
And so presumably after the deadline, "I owe you money," just means, "Some authority will fine me if I don't give up the money."
Why is the authority fining you?
For not doing what I was contracted to do.
Did you tell him you changed your mind and reneged?
I don't understand the relevance of the question. If you're asking what I would do in real life then I would either pay the fine or hire lawyers to find a way to save me from paying the fine.
Earlier you told me that you honestly believe that you can just change your mind and decide not to fulfill a promise. Why can't you just change your mind and decide not to fulfill a contract? Why not just tell the authority that you've changed your mind and decided not to fulfill the contract?
I think obligation is something people feel sometimes. "He didn't want to go to the party, but he felt obligated.". Or it could be something that people in the area believe. "Most Americans believed he was obliged to resign.". It's just describing how people feel or attitudes they have.
I can do all of that. And then I will presumably face some further punishment.
But why? Why not reason with the authority and explain to him, like you did to me, that you intended to fulfill the contract when you signed it and now you've changed your mind? If you are not obliged to pay the contract, then surely you are not subject to further punishment...?
I can say whatever I want. I doubt it would convince a judge. The contract states that if I do not build the house then I am to pay a fine. The law states that if I do not pay the fine then I am to be jailed. So I build the house, pay a fine, or go to jail. Unless I have very good lawyers, I have to choose between one of these outcomes.
That's all there is to the matter. I don't see what role obligations have – or even what obligations are, as both you and Banno refuse to make sense of them.
Well, suppose your judge is a good philosopher, and he admits that laws cannot be premised on non-existent realities. And really, wouldn't any logical person affirm the same? So why not explain to the judge that you agreed to the contract when you signed it, but you disagree with it now? Do you think you would have a plausible argument to convince an impartial judge? Do you think you have good arguments to convince him that there is no metaphysical basis for obligations, and therefore obligations cannot exist, and therefore you do not owe me $25,000? If your arguments are sound, then why not apply them in real life?
The terms of the contract simply say "Michael is to build the house or pay a fine". The law simply says "if someone does not fulfil the terms of their contract then they are to be jailed".
Neither the contract nor the law depend on the existence of obligations, and so arguing that obligations don't exist is an irrelevant argument.
Well, if you don't like the word 'obligation', then instead of trying to convince the judge that you have no obligation to fulfill your contract you should convince him that you need not fulfill the contract and that you need not be punished. After all, why must you fulfill the contract? Why must you be punished? Why must you do what the law tells you to do? Why must you do what you said you were going to do when you signed the contract? Why must you be held to your word? Surely the judge would have little to answer you.
The law simply says "if someone does not fulfil the terms of their contract then they are to be jailed". The judge then rules that I did not fulfil the terms of my contract and so orders the bailiffs to take me to jail.
Again, the existence of some supposed obligation is utterly irrelevant.
People want a contractor who will build them a house; they don't want a contractor who will not build them a house.
You are really overthinking this.
Well, what is a promise, if not the undertaking of an obligation?
Presumably, nothing, and there are no such things as promises.
Yet there are promises.
Which forms a neat reductio to show that you are mistaken.
Searle’s conditions (1) - (6) (and maybe sometimes even (7) and (8)).
These do not entail the undertaking of an obligation.
Is my girlfriend obligated to marry me?
What even is an obligation? She just either does or she doesn’t.
Seems to me that the social setting is more important than one's mind: so if you promise something, you're under an obligation because that's how we understand one another and that has causal properties.
Yes. She undertook to marry you. Either she reneged on that obligation or you allowed her to leave it.
Quoting Moliere
yep.
She intended to marry me. That’s all there is to it.
Quoting Banno
You still haven’t explained what an obligation is.
It's a mind-dependent thingy.
And you think it is possible to claim that one of the contractors is more reliable without at the same time saying that he is more likely to fulfill his obligations?
Quoting Michael
You are recasting the entire social sphere. Your "promises" and "contracts" are not real promises or contracts. Your "penalties" are not real penalties. Your "debts" ("owes") are not real debts (although you slipped there for a second). For example, a contract involves a promise to fulfill what one says they will fulfill, and the penalty that may follow is a real penalty, not just someone forcing you to randomly do something you'd rather not do. I think your error is quite similar to Anscombe's, noted above, in that the occurrence of natural debts is being overlooked in favor of a purely positivistic legal conception.
You think promising involves saying and intending to do something in the future, with no regard to the fulfillment of that thing. You admit that the promise either is or is not fulfilled, but you deny that the promiser has any obligation to so fulfill it. This is wrong. To promise and to intend are two different things. We intend to do things in the future all the time, but it does not follow from this that we are making promises. Banno got at it earlier:
Quoting Banno
What does it mean to give one's word, or to make a promise? Here is Aquinas:
Quoting Aquinas, ST II-II.88.1 Whether a vow consists in a mere purpose of the will?
In his reply to objection 1 he addresses your claim directly, namely the claim that a promise is nothing more than a purpose or intention.
Why is it bad to go back on promises, not only for others but also for oneself? It is bad because it is to be a shitty man, in the same way that to continually try to do something and fail at it is to be a shitty man. "By promising he directs what he himself is to do for another," and someone who continually reneges or simply fails in his promises is a failure. He is unable to direct himself. He is unable to do what he promises—and yes, also intends—to do. To fail to understand why promises involve obligations is a bit like failing to understand why reaching out to turn on the light involves turning on the light. "If it turns on, it turns on. If not, not. It has nothing to do with my reaching out." :scream:
Your bizarre ideas also undercut any notion of debt. On your view if you borrow a shovel from your neighbor you have no debt to him, you do not owe it to him to give it back; or if you tell your girlfriend that you will marry her then on your view you have no obligation to marry her. If you didn't then the engagement would mean nothing at all! And when you renege on your contract to build my house you owe me a debt. The thing imposed for breaking a contract is a penalty, not merely a consequence; and when you fail to fulfill a promise or a vow, what you subsequently owe to the other party is more than what you originally promised, because by breaching their trust you incur an additional debt. This is why, why you stand up your girlfriend at a restaurant, she has a right to be angry with you rather than simply sad because she lost out on a meal.
Well, no. She also committed to marrying you. She did not just intend to do so, she undertook doing so. She said she would. She bound herself to you. She placed herself under an obligation.
But we are now in the usual tediously circular posture of so many of our chats. No blame, just no progress.
Which still needs to be explained.
I've offered my own understanding of obligations; they are commands treated as if they were truth-apt propositions, but as commands are not truth-apt propositions obligations are a fiction, and barely even sensible.
If this account is incorrect then please provide a correct account, else how am I to even understand what you are trying to argue? All I can point out is that your conclusion does not follow from Searle's list of necessary and sufficient conditions, which you yourself directed me to. You appear to misinterpret his conditions (7) and (8). They only describe what S intends to happen. S intends to be placed under an obligation (and for H to know this), but this does not prima facie entail that S is placed under an obligation (whatever an obligation is), much like intending to be President does not entail being President.
In this context what is the difference between these two propositions?
1. He is more likely to fulfil his obligations
2. He is more likely to complete the contract
If they're the same then I have no objections, except to point out that the introduction of the term “obligation” is unnecessary, and evidently susceptible to misunderstanding.
If they're different then I need (1) explained, and to know why (2) is not a sufficient account.
I guess you're asking what "obligation" is supposed to be adding to the act of uttering a promise.
And the rest of us would simply ask what a promise is supposed to be without the inclusion of obligation.
As I said above, it makes as much sense to ask what the turning on of the light is supposed to be adding to the act of turning on the light. You could think of a promise as an act prolonged through time, just like the turning on of a light. To promise to do something without directing yourself (by binding yourself) to the fulfillment of the promise is like reaching to turn on a light without turning on the light. "I reached to turn on the light, but it makes no difference to my act whether the light turns on or not. If it does, it does. If it does not, it does not. It's indifferent with respect to my act."
Quoting Leontiskos
I guess you could. I don't.
I think I have explained the situation at some length, but perhaps more can be said.
Thanks for this topic, one more interesting than most. I think you make an ostensible point, and I suspect Anscombe may have agreed with you, but I think there is more going on here that needs attention.
In Modern Moral Philosophy Anscombe talks of a sort of "ought" that has a "...special so-called 'moral' sense... a sense in which they imply some absolute moral verdict". From about p.11 she lists and dismisses various "standards" which might permit one to infer an ought. The list includes the following:
I've bolded the part that caught my eye. I think Austin and Searle are embarked on just the enterprise described. But they are not interested so much in prohibiting murder and sodomy - so far as I know - so much in providing a description of the social role played by our utterances, of how we do things with words.
Your girlfriend may well have intended to marry you, and this may have been so were it expressed or not. But she went further, making a promise, and thereby she also committed to marrying you, undertook doing so, binding herself to marrying you and placed herself under an obligation.
And all of that is a result of her having made the promise. It was an act done by her in making the utterance. One amongst many, many other acts we perform in making utterances - naming ships, asking questions, issuing demands or orders - and undertaking obligations.
We enter into these "contracts" by our participation in, and understanding of, these social facts.
Now I don't think this will convince you. You have a leaning towards notions of individualism that lead you to deny such social facts. But for me that's neither here nor there.
There is something of Moore's paradox here, the insincerity that English speakers see in "it is raining but I do not believe that it is raining". What would we make of your girlfriend saying "I promise to marry you, but I do not undertake an obligation to marry you"? Perhaps only that she has not understood what it is to promise.
Are we trying to teach Michael how to make a promise so he can have a real girlfriend and really get married? It's sort of a sine qua non quality in a man.
Obviously Michael is mistaken when he claims that to promise to do something is no more than to intend to do something, but if we are to teach him how to make a promise, what more is required than the intention to act in the future? Going back to Aquinas from my earlier post:
Quoting Aquinas, ST II-II.88.1 Whether a vow consists in a mere purpose of the will?
(Note that "praying" = "petitioning," i.e. asking someone to do something for you.)
Now if @Michael concedes that commanding and petitioning are real acts that he can really do, then we're only one step away from the act of promising. If a sergeant can successfully command the soldier to scout ahead and the child can successfully petition his mother for a candy, then apparently commands and petitions are alive and well in the world. If Aquinas is right then what is happening here is that the sergeant and the child are directing others, albeit in very different ways. And we can direct others. We can command and petition, both successfully and unsuccessfully.
Now if this is all conceded, then is the objector to maintain his position by claiming that although it is true that we can direct others, nevertheless we cannot direct ourselves vis-a-vis some other? If the mother can receive a petition from her child, cannot she also promise her child that the petition will be fulfilled? When our father says, "Yes, I intend for us to go on vacation next summer, and more than that, I promise you that we will go on vacation come hell or high water!," does the latter part of that sentence change nothing at all? As I have said in many ways, the sort of directing involved in promising extends over the temporal duration of the promise. We can "hold him to it." If summer is near and there is no sign of travel arrangements, we have a right to apply a pressure to our father in a way that we would not if he had not promised.
The reason I never really think Michael is being sincere is because he is never willing to do any of the leg work. How many times have we told him that to intend something is not yet to promise it, only to be met with mute silence? He is not the sort of person who would ever say, "Oh hey, you're right! Give me some time to revise my understanding of what a promise is and then get back to you." The eristic is too heavy. It seems to be a game where he tries to be as slippery as he can.
Quoting Banno
I don't think so. I assume Anscombe understood what a promise is and how to make one. A promise is a special kind of obligation in that it is conditional and voluntarily entered into, and I don't think Anscombe's arguments cut against this form of obligation.
Edit: I am reminded of a "promissory note," which is what money is, or at least was. Or the simpler example of a coupon given out by the grocery store.
A promise establishes an obligation, and that obligation ceases if: 1) it is fulfilled, 2) the promise is "broken", or 3) the promisee releases you from the obligation. There are of course many subcategories of (2). Where legitimate exceptions fit in is arguable, and perhaps this is a fourth category.
I re-read MMP this morning and was again in awe of the complexity of her thinking. Better not to assume, so I went with "may". She almost certainly would have had much more to say on the issue, and I don't think she had a soft spot for Austin.
I was going to bring up the same point, which is why these matters are best discussed in the third person:
S promised to marry H but S is not obligated to marry H.
Whether or not this sentence is contradictory depends on what it means to be obligated to do something, but as previously mentioned it is barely a coherent concept. It seems to me that obligations are nothing more than commands fictitiously treated as truth-apt propositions.
Your reference to contracts does not explain them further. It simply asserts that a contract lists our obligations; it doesn't explain what obligations are. At best I understand a contract as a list of commands that if not followed entail a penalty. The introduction of further (abstract) entities certainly seems superfluous. See also my recent comment to Leontiskos, where we are discussing this very issue.
But still, do you at least accept that your claim that a promise is the undertaking of an obligation is not one of Searle's conditions, and nor does it follow from Searle's conditions? His conditions (7) and (8) only describe what S intends to happen, and intentions do not prima facie entail the intended.
I'm still waiting on a reply to this.
Yes. I want to know what an obligation is, and why it is necessary.
To me, it's simple; we use the verb "promise" in conversation and sincerely intend to do what we say we promise to do.
No need to make things more complicated by bringing in some further conditions, especially conditions that entail/require the existence of some abstract object.
As a comparison, consider these two propositions:
1. You will love this movie
2. I promise you that you will love this movie
What does the addition of "I promise you that" add? Not much. It's more of an emphasis; an expression of certainty.
I think it's probably context dependent. Noam Chomsky said "real" is like an honorific, just specifying that a certain thing is special. Promising can be like that for a declaration of intent.
I mean, the emphasis placed on putting things in writing shows that verbal announcements are of dubious value.
As a further example, consider something like "I'll try to do this, but I can't promise that I will". This isn't me saying that I intend to but am not obligated to; it is me saying that I am not certain that I will.
The use of "I promise" over "I intend" is just to emphasise the strength of one's belief that it will happen.
I am not sure what the ultimate relevance for moral realism will amount to in any case. If obligations are just rules in some game we "play," why is it good that we should play such games? Certainly deception can be better than honesty in some cases, e.g. promising a crazed friend that you will "give their knife right back to them" while having no intention of doing so.
If one condition for obviating any promise or obligation is just, as points out, breaking that obligation or promise, i.e. just ignoring it, what exactly does it do?
I don't see why likening morality or obligations to "truth conditionals" or "logic" helps cement morality. Why is it "good" to prefer truth to falsity or good faith arguments to bad ones?
Perhaps I am missing something since I have not followed the conversation. It seems to me that attempts to reduce practical reason to theoretical reason always seems to founder on the same rocks.
Or it could come from an attempt to assure someone. Meaning depends on context.
I’m not really sure how your comments are related to mine? I am simply asking what “obligation” means, and how the sincere use of the verb “promise” entails an obligation.
As I understand it obligations are an incoherent concept and superfluous to the use of the phrase “I promise”.
It's "incoherent" to you that lifeguards are obligated to jump into the water when a child starts screaming "help I'm drowning," or that firefighters are obligated to try to put our fires?
I can't really imagine what the objection here is TBH.
It's not clear to me what "if someone is drowning then you are obligated to jump into the water and save their life" even means.
Does it just mean "if someone is drowning then jump into the water and save their life" but phrased as if it were a truth-apt proposition? Because that's all it seems to be to me.
No, it means your role entails a duty to perform that action. If you don't save drowning people when you easily could have you are a bad lifeguard, just as obviously as striking out at every at bat makes you a "bad hitter" in baseball.
We might ask: "Is it good that Orestes kills his mother to avenge his father's death?" without having to claim nescience about his obligations given his membership in ancient Greek society. The fact that he is "obligated" to kill his mother under his society's norms is an objective fact. The drama comes from the fact that he is also obligated to protect and care for his mother now that his father is dead and he is the sole living son, putting two obligations into conflict. But Aeschylus' plays aren't "incoherent," they are about the difference between justice and obligation and the potential for conflict between the two.
What does "if someone is drowning then you have a duty to jump into the water and save their life" mean?
Does it just mean "if someone is drowning then jump into the water and save their life" but phrased as if it were a truth-apt proposition?
What the complaint here, that the claim that "lifeguard's primary purpose is to prevent drownings," has no truth value?
That the concept of obligations isn't clear, and that it isn't clear that the sincere use of the phrase "I promise" entails the undertaking of an obligation.
What isn't clear? I'm finding it hard to believe that you cannot parse the meaning of sentences like: "soldiers are obligated to report all instances of sexual assault to their superior officers." The conditions under which this obligation is upheld or not is straightforward.
Why? Moral nihilism, fictionalism, and nominalism are legitimate philosophical positions.
None of those positions entail that sentences about obligations are "incoherent." That would be quite a claim to make. Moral nihilism claims that are no facts about whether or not it is good to uphold one's obligations, not that obligations, rules, laws, etc. don't exist or lack any content. Moral nihilism need not (and usually doesn't) even claim that there are no facts about what is "good" vis-á-vis certain contexts. E g., if moral nihilism made us claim that there was no truth value to the claim "Michael Jordan was a good basketball player," it would be a pretty silly position on the face of it. Moral nihilism generally tries to divorce "moral" and "practical" reasoning to deal with this, although how well this works in practice is debatable.
I would maintain that it is a silly position, in that people are always forced to smuggle practical reasoning back into their thinking, but not quite so obviously.
I didn't just mention moral nihilism.
I also mentioned nominalism: obligations, if they exist, are abstract objects. Abstract objects do not exist. Therefore, obligations do not exist.
But my main position is that there is no meaningful distinction between these two sentences:
1. Soldiers are obligated to report all instances of sexual assault to their superior officers
2. If you are a soldier then report all instances of sexual assault to your superior officers
(1) is just (2) but fictitiously treated as a truth-apt proposition. If you think that (1) means something more then please explain what that is because I promise you that I don't see it.
Quoting Michael
Perhaps this has been cleared up earlier. As a caveat I have to say that what both propositions actually means, depends on context. They might come down to the same thing, for instance when a police officer utters the sentence, but they might also not. the different is that the first proposition appeals to an outside authority or process that has caused you to you being ought to do a certain something. The second proposition appeals to no such authority. It has al sorts of ramifications, the most important being that propsition 1 may be questioned and countered: "Why ought I to do it?, on what authority, for whom?"
The second proposition does not allow that.
Quoting Michael
You are fined because you disregarded an obligation and that is call for punishment. The punishment is the fine for breach of contract. It is not a sum of money you can or cannot pay. There is a moral dimension to it, which you disregard. Ultimately this moral obligation depends on the social rule that we should keep our promises, or in Latin, Pacta sunt servanda.
Quoting frank
There are of course multiple senses in which we use the word obliged. One indeed often feel obliged to do x. But consider the difference between these two sentences: "He felt obliged to go to the party" and "he was obliged to go to the party". They are not the same sentences, but in your account of obligation they are. That is because you think an obligation is subjective. The obligation though has an objective side to it. We are bound to certain acts and that bind we call an obligation. They arise out of certain procedures, being you signing a contract, or a legislator promulgating a law.
Quoting Michael
Obligations are not the same as commands and the difference lies in the legitimacy of the procedure by which they are issued. A command makes no appeal to legitimate procedure whereas an obligation does. This discussion actually mirrors the Hart Austin debate on whence the law derives its legitimacy from. To Austin law was merely the command of the sovereign. Hart contested that and won, at least that is the current view of jurisprudence. https://thecolumnofcurae.wordpress.com/2020/07/20/h-l-a-hart-his-criticism-on-austins-theory/
Quoting Michael
Nothing, just a figure of speech. I promise you ... here means: "I am sure you will..." You can though never promise someone else will like something. You would also never see someone asking for indemnification. With a marriage proposal it might be different though there may well be laws guarding against asking for indemnification in such cases. However, for instance if you promise to sell me X and I contract with Y that I will deliver him X after I have gotten it from you and you do not deliver, I might well ask for indemnification, under circumstances, even Y might.
Quoting Michael
No, it means there is some rule that states that one should save drowning people. This rule may either be customary or codified somewhere. In the second case I might also be appealing to such a rule, but I might also be appealing to just my whim. In case one, we can try to find out if such a duty is there or not, by looking at law or custom.
Quoting Michael
Like in many cases of speech acts it depends on context. It may well be just a figure of speech, it may also put you under a pretty heavy legal obligation. Obligations are such are simply burdens imposed on you by way of legitimate procedure, are because you bound yourself to a certain course of action or because a legitimate outside force did so, such as the organs of a recognized state, or recognized custom.
This all seems to reduce to the claim that some authority has told me to do something. I understand and accept that. What I cannot make sense of is the conclusion "therefore I ought do as I'm told". What does this conclusion add that hasn't already been covered by the fact that some authority has told me to do something?
You seem to think that there is the command and then also the obligation. I don't know what this second thing is, or how/why it follows from the command.
Neither nominalism or fictionalism require people to claim that obligations are incoherent, nor to claim that they don't exist. They are theories describing the metaphysical underpinnings of such phenomena. Likewise, one can be a nominalist without denying that triangles exist.
Indeed, nominalists as much as anyone else often argue against realism precisely because of the "metaphysical obligations" it entails.
Because nominalists don't claim that triangles are abstract objects. There are concrete objects with three sides, or there are instructions that one can follow to draw a triangle.
What would it mean to be a nominalist and to claim that obligations exist? Perhaps it amounts to nothing more than the claim that some relevant authority has told me to do something, and that if I don't do it then I will be penalised.
It seems to me that most nominalists are motivated by naturalistic intuitions (perhaps joined to an inadequate understanding of universals as necessarily existing in some sort of "spirit realm"). As such, an explanation of obligations purely in terms of statements that burst forth from authority figures seems like it will be unsatisfactory. We will be forced to ask "but why do authority figures make these claims on people?" Not to mention that it seems hard to trace all obligations back to some single authority figure in history making a pronouncement.
I think we're just going to disagree here. I said earlier that what exists is people saying and doing things. The rest is feelings and ad hoc explanations. I was hoping you'd agree that obligation comes down to personal sentiment because we could finally explore the way the private language argument blasts away the veracity of the stories we tell about obligation. But instead, you're saying the binding is out there for all to see. I'm not sure what you're talking about.
It's been interesting and fun to talk with you. :smile:
Hence why I cannot make sense of obligations (if something other than a command fictitiously phrased as a truth-apt proposition). I understand being told to do something, I understand either doing as I'm told or not, and I understand being punished if I don't do as I'm told. But that's it. I don't understand what else there can possibly be, or why something else is necessary, or what evidence there is of something else.
I mentioned Anscombe before, and so I'll quote more from her:
Yes, but the naturalistic frame begs some sort of explanation for obligations, not claiming they "don't exist," which is clearly not the case. Likewise, for goods defined in terms of normative measure. It wouldn't make sense to say "Babe Ruth was good as baseball," has no truth value. Nor would it make sense to say "in chess the bishop can change what color square it is on," simply because it is physically possible for a player to violate the rules of chess and switch their bishop onto a new color with an illegal move.
And from a naturalistic frame explaining these simply in terms of "authority" or "sentiment" is likewise insufficient, since presumably human sentiment isn't springing forth uncaused into the world. It is either emergent from underlining processes or else reducible to them.
As for the "if... then" phrasing, this is just confusing things. In natural language if/then stands in for all sorts of entailment and implication, e.g. material, casual, etc.
Why is it clearly not the case? Because we use the sentence "you ought not kill"? I think it's far simpler to just interpret this as the phrase "don't kill". You haven't actually explained what makes the former any different, you just reassert the claim that we ought (not) do things.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I haven't said that. I haven't mentioned anything about success at hitting a ball at all. I've only questioned the coherence of obligations.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I haven't said anything to suggest otherwise. The rules tell you not to move the bishop to another colour. If you do then your opponent tells you to move it back, and then either you do or he declares victory.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
How is "if you are playing chess then don't move the bishop onto another colour" more problematic than "if you are playing chess then you ought not move the bishop onto another colour"?
On analytic philosophy and thought experiments, a post I read elsewhere might be funny:
[hide="Reveal"]
An example I can think of is p-zombies, completely derivative from the old discussion on ontology and dualism and solves nothing except serve as a didactic example of what those ontologies would entail.
And then we have "qualia", a truly "horribly philistine" word that can only come about when philosophers no longer have any language skills.
[/hide]
Because obligations are everywhere in human culture and they dictate a great deal of behavior. They show up everywhere, in economics, in law, in finance, in ethics, in dramas.
I can't tell what you mean by obligations being "incoherent." I presume that when your mechanic finishes working on your car and hands you receipt stating that you are obligated to pay him some amount you don't stand in front of him dumbfounded, unsure of what is being said to you, nor that your annual tax bill provokes complete puzzlement.
And obligations are clearly not the same thing as all imperative statements. "Watch out, those stairs are icy," is an imperative statement with no obligation. The terms of a loan, by contrast, will speak about obligations.
So I assume you mean something like: "there is no reason why people should honor obligations outside of individual preferences," or something to that effect. To claim that obligations don't exist and play no role in determining human behavior would be like claiming laws don't exist and don't determine human behavior. Even if they are reducible to something else, they certainly exist, and I think you'd be hard pressed to make a compelling argument that they reduce to "individual preferences," as some sort of unanalyzable primitive either.
What do you think laws reduce to?
Money, oaths of office, marriage, contracts, the possibility of perjury, internet trust certificates, banking, fiduciary responsibilities, the list goes on... All of society would collapse in about 0.2 seconds without obligations and promises. I wonder why it doesn't...
---
- Yes, thank you! I could not agree more. :lol:
Hume's claims about the skeptic also come to mind:
He fixes my car in exchange for money. It's a trade we agree to. So what additional thing is this "obligation", and what further purpose does it serve?
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
There is "do this" as a command and there is "do this" as advice. Something like "brush your teeth" can be one or the other depending on whether it's your mother telling you or your dentist. What additional thing is this "obligation", and what further purpose does it serve?
They can speak of whatever they want; it doesn't then follow that there are such things.
Loans are simple; the bank gives me money and I pay them back with interest, else I will be prosecuted. So what additional thing is this "obligation", and what further purpose does it serve?
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I mean exactly what I have said very clearly. Here are two sentences:
1. You have an obligation to do this
2. Do this
I cannot understand (1) except as (2) treated as if it were a truth-apt proposition.
If (1) means something else, or something more, then please tell me. Nobody is ever explaining this. Whenever I ask someone to explain what an obligation is I am only ever told "obligations exist" or "you have an obligation to do this". Why is that? I suspect it's because Anscombe is correct; it's a word with force but no substance.
I don't really think reduction is a particularly helpful endeavour in most cases, particularly not when it comes to the social sciences or history. But for the person committed to reductive materialism it seems that "personal preference," cannot be were explanation stops. Why is personal preference what it is? Well here we are going to need to call in biology, psychology, economics, sociology, history, etc. People don't have the preferences they have for no reason at all.
The driving assumption behind reductive explanations seems to generally be smallism, the idea that any facts about large scale things must be reducible to facts about smaller parts (down to some "fundemental building block"). Prima facie, I see no reason to believe this is true. A sort of bigism seems just as plausible, everything being defined in terms of its relation to the whole. So I would tend to think of laws as being dependant on things like human biology, history, etc., without necessarily being fully explicable in terms of them. For one thing, laws themselves end up affecting history, sociology, psychology, etc. The influence is bidirectional.
Obligations are recognized in the cultures or institutions they are situated in. This is not true for "all imperative commands." "Lay down your arms and come out now," yelled by an enemy soldier comes with no socially/institutionally recognized obligation. No one would say someone is "a bad soldier," for not doing what the enemy tells them to do. Soldiers are not obligated to obey imperative commands from the enemy. The same is not true for orders given by soldier's commanders. All imperative commands do not involve duties or obligations.
People are generally not confused by this difference. The idea that "if I am going to be a priest, soldier, doctor, etc. I am expected to preform certain duties," is ubiquitous. This is not any different from any other normative good.
I think Hegel's thinking here is at least partially correct, one role of institutions is to objectify obligations and duties. Obligations and duties clearly can exist outside of institutionalization. For example, it is true that in his society Orestes had an obligation to try kill his father's murderers as a surviving male child, but there was no institution set up to concretize this obligation. By contrast paying taxes are an obligation that is formalized and objectified by institutions.
For a reductive materialist, the explanation would have to stop wherever physics says it stops. Particles? Waves? Somewhere in there.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I think it's because of discomfort with the idea that parts of the universe are alive and conscious. Seems like voodoo. As Tobias mentioned, it's a minority view at this point.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Does it interest you to ask what kind of thing a law is? You don't feel it must be reducible, you don't believe they're mental objects. What are they?
Quoting Michael
A contract establishes an obligation, and therefore someone who is more likely to fulfill his obligations is more likely to fulfill his contracts. You are falsely assuming that promises and contracts do not involve obligations, and that obligations are an unnecessary add-on. See my post <here>.
The point about the contractor is that the reason you prefer the reliable contractor over the unreliable contractor has to do with obligations. It has to do with the fact that he is a man of his word, and when he says that he will do something he does it. You can dance around this all day, but in fact you do prefer reliable contractors to unreliable contractors, and the only reason you prefer them is because they honor their obligations. Yes, you want your house built on time, and therefore you want a contractor who honors his obligations. The one who enters a contract is simply not indifferent to the two outcomes of completion vs. legal settlement. The consequences of breaking a contract are a penalty, not merely a consequence.
Quoting Michael
See:
Quoting Leontiskos
The first difference between intending and promising, as Aquinas says, is that "by promising he directs what he himself is to do for another." A mere intention has no necessary relation to another.
Quoting Michael
I don't think trying is the same as intending.
Note that we have a number of different ideas from you. Intending that something will happen, believing that something will happen, and trying to make something happen. You say:
Quoting Michael
"I intend to marry that woman over there." "Do you believe it will happen?" "Yes, I believe it with all my heart."
On your account he has just promised to marry the woman, which is obviously false. It is false because it has no relation to another (i.e. it does not regard something that he is to do for another). It is also false because he has not bound himself.
"Honey, do you think we will ever get married?" "I fully intend to eventually." "So that's to say that you're not ready to propose?"
A man can tell a woman that he intends to marry her, and he can affirm his belief in this future act to the maximal degree, and yet not propose (promise) to marry her.* On your view this would not be possible.
* Technically a proposal is a mutual promise.
Again, you're not telling me what obligations are. You're just insisting that they exist. That's no explanation at all.
So I'll try to make this very simple. Please explain to me the difference between these two propositions:
1. According to the law I have an obligation to pay income tax
2. The legislature has passed a bill that says that I am to pay income tax
A contract tells the party what he is to do, and therefore someone who does what the contract tells him to do is more likely to fulfil his contracts.
So, again, how is my phrasing different from yours?
Like Count Timothy von Icarus, you're not explaining what obligations are. You're just insisting that they exist. That's no explanation at all. As it stands, what they are hasn't been explained, what purpose they serve hasn't been explained, and what evidence there is for them hasn't been explained.
They just seem to be meaningless and superfluous.
Oh really? A contract is like the sergeant who goes around commanding people what they are to do? This is in line with your first harebrained theory that obligations are commands. I hate being ordered around so I'll have to keep a keen eye out for this "contract" you speak of. :roll:
Quoting Leontiskos
I knew this discussion would be a joke from the start:
Quoting Leontiskos
...but even so, that's enough for me.
As to what an obligation is: Obligation, from ob- (“to”) + ligare (“to bind”): the act or process of binding, hence limiting, hence determining, hence constraining possible future states of affair relative to relationship(s) between the psyches addressed—i.e., relative to the persisting interactions, both present and future, of the psyches in question (these persisting interactions being that which defines relationships (and not necessarily of a romantic kind)).
As to what their purpose is: To benefit either some or else all parties concerned. Issues of fairness and unfairness being at play here. E.g., the typical slave will consider their obligations to the slave-master unfair.
As to evidence for them: on equal par to evidence for interactions between different parties that persist over time.
I don't deny future accountability. I have repeatedly said that if I don't do as I'm told, whether it be by some authority figure or by the terms of a contract, then I will be penalised.
You are the one claiming that there is some additional thing involved – the "obligation" – which you refuse to make sense of.
No, you think they will forcibly take some money from you. One is only penalized for having done something wrong, and in denying obligations you deny that you could ever have done anything wrong. Again:
Quoting Leontiskos
Accountability also implies obligation, but you would redefine that word as well. You are redefining words left and right, and at some point this is nothing more than dishonesty.
Let's take 18 U.S. Code § 1111 - Murder as an example.
It starts by explaining what counts as murder:
It then describes how anyone found guilty of murder is to be punished:
Nothing in here implies or entails or requires anything else, e.g. "obligations", whatever they are.
It is just the case that if you murder then you will be executed or imprisoned. There is no need to imagine phantom abstract entities.
And by "punished" you presumably do not mean what every dictionary in the world says, because then we would be right back to the equivocation on "penalty."
If you break a contract you should say, "They think they are punishing or penalizing me, but really they are just taking away something that I value." To punish or penalize presupposes wrongdoing, and wrongdoing presupposes obligation. Without obligation there exists no penalization, only the mistaken impression of penalization.
Only if you're caught. Perfect crimes are never punished. Ergo ...
Quoting Michael
A "relationship" - which, as my previous post, can only obtain just in case there likewise occur one or more obligations between the parties concerned - is only a "phantom abstract entity"; what a worldview this must be like to live in.
I mean that I will be put in prison or executed. It's right there in the text of the law.
As I've said, taking away something you value is not punishment. If it was then the thief who stole your car has necessarily punished you.
It's a punishment because it was done in response to something I did. If the thief stole my car because I insulted him then it could be construed as punishment.
You're missing the word "wrong" at the very end of your sentence.
You left your garage door open. The thief stole your car (because of something you did). He did not punish you.
Criminals have punished witnesses who testified against them in court. Was it wrong of the witnesses to testify against the criminal in court? What does "wrong" even mean?
For something to be seen to be a punishment it must be seen to be in response to wrongdoing. So as I said:
Quoting Leontiskos
Quoting Michael
The mafia who does so may be punishing or else merely using negative conditioning. Negative conditioning does not require punishment, although that is more subtle.
This is all just meaningless word games, like when I asked you to explain the difference between "he is more likely to fulfil his obligations" and "he is more likely to complete the contract".
So I stand by what I have previously said. A sentence like "you ought not do this" is just a command (or, as someone else mentioned, advice) that is fictitiously phrased as if it were a truth-apt proposition. Any attempts so far to show otherwise have amounted to nothing more than the bare assertion that "obligations exist".
I can only take the unwillingness of anyone to actually make sense of obligations as evidence that Anscombe was right.
I feel like the right word for things like laws, recessions, culture, etc. would be "incorporeal" as in "lacking a specific body." Recessions might be an easier example. Recessions clearly exist. They have effects. They aren't exclusively mental. The causal reach of the 2008 financial crisis was global. It led to a drastic change in green house gas emissions. It led to half completed homes in Florida, "roads to nowhere" in China, etc.
Likewise laws continue to exist regardless of whether anyone is thinking of them at any particular moment. It would seem weird to say they flit in and out of existence as they enter someone's mental awareness. "Japanese culture," would be the same way. It exists in mental awareness, in synapses, in artifacts of all sorts, etc.
I do think information theory gives us some good ways to think about how such substrate independent, incorporeal entites might exist.
[Reply="Michael;917385"]
Obligations are a norm or rule that dictates behavior. They can be based in one's role in society, caste, profession, etc. Some people will argue that there are obligations and duties incumbent on all human beings. That seems like a more open question. The question of "do police officers have specified duties," seems like a no brainer.
I've already given an example of why duties are not the same thing as imperative sentences. They also differ in that they are widely recognized. No one needs to say "hey you, police officer, stop that criminal from breaking into that jewelry store." Every adult in the community knows that a function of the police is to prevent theft and that it is the duty of police officers to prevent thefts if they are able to without undue risk.
Taxes are seen as an obligation of good citizens. Since citizens benefit from their state they are obliged to help support it. A person who refuses to pay taxes is failing to uphold a normative good in their community. They are a "bad citizen."
By contrast, consider if a random person walks up to you and demands money. In this case there is no norm. No one will say a person has "failed to be a good citizen," or failed at fulfilling any other sort of social role/norm if they refuse to acquiesce to a random imperative statement that is not grounded in normative measure, regardless of the threats or rewards they offer up to motivate agreement.
We might argue if such norms are truly just, if they are appropriate, etc., but that doesn't change the fact that they demonstrably exist and play a widespread role in human behavior and how people think about their actions.
I'm glad we're on the same page! (And I'm also glad you threw in the towel on your attempt to remove fault from punishment.)
Here is some of the crazy stuff you have been peddling:
The thread is filled obvious refutations of all of these bizarre ideas.
Quoting Michael
I can only take the above to mean 1) you are deeply unintelligent, or 2) you are not trying to understand obligations, or promises, or penalties, etc. You don't strike me as unintelligent, so I conclude that you must not be trying to understand these things.
So then what is going on here? Presumably you are playing a kind of game where you throw away the dictionary, common use, and social practice; you redefine a whole swath of terms in accordance with your anti-obligation dogma; and then you see if you can give short, noncommittal answers to all of the objections that get directed against your project. I can't believe that you are actually trying to understand promises, because you accounts of promises have frankly been silly. What you are trying to do is defend a thesis at all costs.
Quoting Michael
As I have pointed out many times in the past, the answer is simple: obligation is simple, it is not complex. It is not reducible to other kinds of realities. All your arguments ever amount to is something like, "Show me how to derive obligation from my quasi-materialistic premises. You can't. I win." An obligation is not a product of quasi-materialistic premises. You may as well say, "I hold that everything is made of wood, and I deny that metal exists. If you cannot show me how wood is transmuted into metal I will not accept the existence of metal." The answer you usually get is, "Metal is not made of wood, but it does exist. Look around."
No it isn't. There is just the bare assertion that if I sincerely use the phrase "I promise to find your cat" then I am obligated to find your cat, without any explanation of what "I am obligated" means. And when I ask what "I am obligated" means I am not given an explanation but am instead given different examples of things that I am said to be obligated to do.
And it's all nonsense.
There's just me using a certain verb, intending to find your cat, possibly looking for your cat, possibly finding your cat, and possibly being told off if I don't. This simple, straightforward, parsimonious description of what actually happens (or doesn't happen) provides an exhaustive account of the reality of the situation, without the need for nebulous, abstract entities.
Focusing only on the last few pages, and ignoring the 'penalty' conversation which you seem to have in large part already conceded:
Quoting Banno
Quoting Banno
Quoting Leontiskos
Quoting Leontiskos
Quoting Leontiskos
And they all just baselessly assert "promises are more than just intentions". There's no justification for this assertion, or an explanation of what else there is.
You say "it is also false because he has not bound himself". But what does "bound himself" even mean? It's just more vacuous phrases.
So there is no difference between a man saying "I don't ever intend to marry," and a monk vowing to never marry? Seems pretty far fetched to me.
Can I be obligated to do something that I am incapable of doing?
So you'd be ok saying they don't exist in corporeal form, wouldn't you? In a context where you detect that "exist" is being used to talk about corporeal entities, would you agree that they don't exist?
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Incorporeal entities might be described as eternal, in that they don't age. We imagine that the law written in 1860 is the same law we have today. It hasn't changed at all. Nothing that exists in time is changeless in that way. One term that mathematicians use for this sort of entity is "abstract.". If it's incorporeal, but I can be wrong about it's properties, it's an abstract object. Are you cool with that language?
In such a strict context of corporeal entities, interpersonal relationships - such as friendships - do not exist either: a relationship cannot be seen, heard, smelled, tasted, etc. and its attributes cannot be mathematically measured, and so is not corporeal. But for most of us at least, though we know them to exist, interpersonal relationships are never "changeless and eternal abstract objects".
Why am I mentioning this? Only because I feel obliged to some hereabouts (no, not to you @Michaell) to share a good humored joke:
Q: What is the difference between the chicken and the pig in a breakfast of eggs and ham?
A: The chicken was merely involved; the pig was committed.
Hence, in its own equivocal way, clearly evidencing there being quite the substantial difference between mere involvement with possible future realities (i.e., mere intentions at large) and commitment to them (i.e., promises).
I think this argument sort’a works. Gives me reason to smile at least.
That said, I’ll be taking my leave.
Oh really? So when I tell my friend, "I intend to marry that woman over there," who holds my promise? Who is the promisee? You haven't even figured out that a promise involves a relation between two people and an intention does not. You seem to be clueless as to what a promise is.
I am not sure what the relevance of the question is. The answer would seem to be "yes," in some cases. The Spartans with King Leonidas had a duty to try to protect him against the Persian army, but clearly they were going to be incapable of doing it in the long run.
Maybe I shouldn't have used "incorporeal," due to its past associations. I really just wanted to get at how these things exist in a way that is substrate independent and without any definite/discrete "body." A recession has existence within time, it begins and ends. I think cultures, along with their laws, do as well. "Minoan culture," doesn't exist anymore, although we can certainly point to it (same with material artefacts that no longer exist, e.g. the Twin Towers).
I would say a recession exists in the same way songs do, or War and Peace, the Star Spangled Banner, punk rock, etc. I don't know if there is any equivocity at play in saying these things exist in the same way tables and rocks exist.
I wouldn't say recessions or laws are either eternal or "abstract objects."
Well, Kant said "ought implies can". If this is correct then one cannot be obligated to do what one cannot do. But one can promise to do what one believes one can do, even if in fact one cannot do it. Therefore, one can promise to do what one cannot do. Therefore, promises do not entail obligations.
People use the phrase "I promise to do so-and-so". That's all a promise is; the use of those words with honest intentions.
Honest intentions to do what!? This completely begs the question.
Do you admit that promises have an enormous impact on day to day life?
To do what was promised. In using the phrase "I promise to find your cat" with the honest intention to find your cat I have promised to find your cat. That's all there is to the matter. All this further talk of "obligation" and "being bound" is vacuous.
I tell my landlord that I replaced the furnace filters. He tells me, "Thanks, go ahead and deduct that from your rent." At the beginning of the next month I pay $975 rather than $1000 for my rent. My landlord informs me that I have underpaid, as the rent is $1000. Do I have recourse? Why?
Speak to a lawyer.
Whenever your position falls apart you bury your head in the sand.
My position hasn't fallen apart and I'm not burying my head in the sand.
I don't understand what kind of answer you want to a question like that.
I am wondering if I have recourse. What would you do in that situation? Would you invoke the promise he made? Why?
I just told you; I'd speak to a lawyer.
Quoting Leontiskos
Perhaps, and to convince him not to ask me for more money? I don't know why you think asking for the pragmatic course of action has any relevance to the philosophical dispute regarding the existence of abstract entities like obligations.
So you would invoke his promise in order to convince him that he should not require an additional $25?
You conclude that there are no such thing as obligations.
Compare:
The first appears to be a truth-apt proposition, whereas the second isn’t. Beyond this appearance is there a meaningful difference between them? Will you say that the use of the term "asked" seems to do nothing more then make a question seem like a truth-apt proposition?
Do you also conclude that there are no such things as answers?
I think not. Answers are brought about by asking questions, just as obligations are bought about by (amongst other things) commands and promises.
Or this:
The use of the term "greeted" seems to do nothing more than make "Hello" seem like a truth-apt proposition?
Will you conclude that there is no such thing as a greeting?
We bring answers and greetings into existence; they are things we do with words, and a part of our social life. As are obligations.
Anscombe argued against the moral "ought" found in ethics, but was very clear that there was a place for "non -emphatic ought" apart from a moral sense:
There follows a passionate defence of the justice. Your girlfriend did you an injustice when she reneged on the promise she made. It was an injustice because she undertook an obligation to you, which she did not fulfil. One ought fulfil one's obligations, since that is what an obligation is.
To my eye, this and my last post answer your objection.
Heading back a few days and a few pages, this was all in answer to your attempted defence of
Quoting AmadeusD
I will maintain that questions, greetings and obligations are examples of things that exist "beyond the act", along with property, currency, marriage, incorporation, institutionalisation, legality... and a few other things.
Yes, if I thought it would work. And if he's religious I might appeal to Christian charity, even though I'm an atheist.
And why is it plausible that it might work? Why would this move plausibly convince him to do as you wish?
It sounds like you're most comfortable leaving the parameters of the issue fuzzy. You don't want reduction, you don't want obligation to reduce to personal feelings, which are mental objects, and you don't want it to be described by the established jargon of abstract object.
It's possible that your cup of tea would be the ordinary language philosophical approach. That way you don't really need to talk about anything metaphysical. The cost of that approach is mass confusion, though. Always the best ingredient of an interesting discussion, huh? :grin:
No, I conclude that obligations are commands fictitiously treated as if they were truth-apt propositions.
You and others are claiming that obligations are more than this, but are refusing to make sense of them or justify their inclusion despite repeated requests.
Quoting Banno
So the proper comparison would be:
1. You were given an order
2. Do this
I have no problem with (1). Is this all "you ought do this" means?
Because, like you, he might believe in obligations.
I don't know why you are appealing to human psychology and the pragmatics of interpersonal relations. None of this proves your assertion that there is more to a promise than just the use of the phrase "I promise to do so-and-so" with the honest intention to do so-and-so. And none of this is you making sense of obligations.
It's all just red herrings.
So was it irrational to write the check for $975 rather than for $1000? Are you claiming that you would never have written the check for $975?
No. I was told to only pay $975 by my landlord, so that's what I did.
Aka: everybody is a realist when they walk out of the door.
Right, but how would it be rational to depend on his promise if obligations don't exist? If it is rational to write the check for $975, then it must be plausible that reminding him of his promise will produce an effect.
Relevant:
He told me to only pay him $975. So I believed that he is only expecting me to pay him $975. So I only pay him $975.
This isn't rocket science.
That's right, and so I ask again: would it be rational for you to invoke his promise when he tells you that you underpaid?
If there's reason to believe that it will work then yes. Much like it would be rational for me to appeal to the Bible if he were a Christian. But the Bible is still bullshit.
If you think the obligation is bullshit then how can you tell me that it was rational to pay him $975?
Because he told me to, and it's rational to pay less if the person asking you for money asks for less.
These questions are getting tiresome. If this is your desperate last attempt then it's an utter failure.
Then suppose you invoke the promise and he says, "Oh sorry, I forgot about that. Never mind."
Is he being irrational in this? Is he deluded and engaged in bullshit?
You say that his word is good enough to write the check for $975, but it is not good enough for you to invoke when he says you underpaid. You are contradicting yourself. You wrote the subsidized check on the basis of a promise - a real promise that involved obligations. Without those obligations it would make no sense to write the subsidized check, and given the promise it makes no sense not to invoke it when he says you underpaid.
The point here is not that the landlord must, of absolute necessity, honor his promise. That is a strawman form of obligation. The point is that it is rational for him to do so, and therefore it is rational for you to invoke the promise when he says you underpaid, and therefore it is rational for you to write the check for $975 in the first place.
This sort of thing happens all the time in real life. Compare this to a different person who writes a check for $975 for no reason. Do they have recourse? Of course not. They are in an entirely different situation. The only difference between the two cases is an obligation.
An obligation is simply something you ought to do. Your inability to make sense of obligation is not our problem. Eventually this reduces to a personal psychological issue.
But I wonder how widespread this inability is, and what place it plays in odd political ideals.
Edit: I was unable to make anything of this:
Quoting Michael
Yep. :up:
The Bible has a very high view of promising, a very high view of God's word (dabar):
Quoting Isaiah 55:11 RSV
God's word is associated with his power. Why? Because the one who has power over his word is the one who has power over the future. It is the one who can make and fulfill promises who has power over the future. The one who is not able to make and fulfill promises has no power over himself or his surroundings, and he a fortiori has no power of the future. He is a shitty man:
Quoting Leontiskos
lol, this is torturous, from the appeal to authority taken out of context on down.
Again, if you think a young man saying "I don't intend to get married," and a monk vowing to never marry are functionally equivalent I don't know what to tell you.
The "something you ought to do" is what needs to be explained. I understand what I've been told to do and what I've been advised to do, but beyond that nothing.
Quoting Banno
But your inability to explain or justify obligations is – especially when you don't even try. It's telling. It suggests that Anscombe was right.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
You could tell me what the difference is.
But I should point out that you are misrepresenting my position. Here are two propositions:
1. I intend to find your cat
2. I will find your cat
There is something of a difference between these two. The first just expresses my intentions whereas the second (also) predicts the future. But in both cases the propositions are sincere if I intend to find your cat. No further conditions are involved. And then the same principle with these two propositions:
2. I will find your cat
3. I promise to find your cat
Such statements are sincere if I intend to find your cat. No further conditions are involved. The second no more requires or entails an obligation (whatever such a thing is) than the first. Especially as, as previously mentioned, whether or not I will find your cat is beyond my control alone. I may in fact be incapable of finding your cat because it has already been killed and incinerated.
That this authority is recognized as legitimate. That you yourself has submitted to this procedure, or in any case, that by participating in the social fabric of society you accept the rules of the game. We all tacitly assume and subscribe to the principle that promises need to be kept and that therefore a: "but you promised!" is a reasonable reproach. One that can of course be countered, for instance by appealing to 'force majeure', but that in any case the claim itself is not illegitimate. That is different from the orders of a gang leader when he robs the bank and tells you to give him the money.
Quoting frank
Of course people say and do things, but what they say and do has consequences for the rights we bear, the debts we owe, and indeed the marriages we conclude. Because that is the case, because language is public, an obligation does not come down to personal sentiment. If that was the case we could change our obligations at whim and we cannot. The whole notion of an obligation is that it is not your personal sentiment but an outside force that imposes it on you. If it were different the notion would be meaningless and the notion is not meaningless. The binding is indeed there for 'all to see' at least for two people to see and maybe more. An obligation always has an outward component. Of course you could impose one on yourself, but that you could change at whim.
So I agree to do what I'm told. That's fine. But what does it mean to say that I ought do what I'm told?
Quoting Tobias
Do you just mean that it is pragmatic for us to do what we promise to do? That's fine. But what does it mean to say that we ought do what we promise to do?
And what special relevance is the verb "promise"? If instead of saying "I promise to do this" and "but you promised", what if we said "I will do this" and "but you said you would"? This certainly seems like the ordinary thing we do. Does this then entail that we enter into an obligation every time we assert our intention to do something, irrespective of whether or not it's a promise?
Even if you agree or not you ought to do what you are told, because the authority that governs your conduct is legitimate. I might like to not fulfill the terms of my contract, but that is irrelevant, because I am bound by the terms of it. It is not mere whim, not by me, or my counter party. but my submission to a relevant institution.
Quoting Michael
No, even when it is not pragmatic for you to do what you are told you ought to do it. If it was pragmatism, 'efficient breach of contract', would be a legal thing to do. It is not.
Quoting Michael
It makes known your intention to oblige. I will do it given an indication of your conduct. I promise to do it expresses your wish to also be bound to do it (as you signal your acceptance of the institution of promising). Imagine the following perfectly believable conversation: "Will you help me move the house next month?" "sure I will!" "You will?" "yeah yeah, sure!" "You promise?" "Well, I can't promise it at this point because my father is ill and I might need go to the hospital at exactly that day, so I can't promise anything, but if there is a chance, I definitely will".
Quoting Michael
Like I said, words are always context dependent. Sometimes an "I will" is construed as a promise. Certainly during a wedding ceremony. The "I do" actually has large scale legal consequences. In general though, no, that is the difference between expressing an intention and a promise.
What does "you ought" mean? What does "I am bound" mean?
Whenever someone uses such phrases, all I understand is "do this" (or at best "so-and-so says to do this"). I might even understand it with an additional "or else".
If they mean more than this then I need it explained. I keep asking for someone to make sense of these phrases and nobody ever does. They just reassert the claims "you ought do this" and "you are bound by this". You might as well just replace the terms "ought" and "bound" with "floogle".
Quoting Tobias
What does the law have to do with obligation? Does "you ought do this" just mean "do this or you will be fined/imprisoned"? I have no problem with this latter claim.
In the first case changing one's mind simply reflects a change in opinion. "Oh, he finally found the right woman and decided marriage was for him." The change in opinion doesn't really reflect on the individual within the context of their culture.
In the second case, the monk changing his mind entails much else:
He has to leave his vocation and change his entire lifestyle.
He had to leave what is essentially his adopted family.
He is breaking a "sacred vow," and might be seen by many as "a bad monk."
If we consider Thomas Merton's considerable difficulties after falling in love with his nurse while in the hospital, we could also consider here that even questioning if one should break the vow can become a life defining personal struggle of immense emotional import, whereas young men claim they "don't intend to ever get married," all the time and regularly default on that claim without any concern for "what people will think of me."
The social customs and expectations at play in each situation are not the same. If the claim is that such social customs and expectations, the substance of "duty," aren't 'real,' that starts to seem to me a lot like begging the question (while also being implausible).
I've never suggested that there won't be undesirable consequences to not doing what one promised to do. In fact I've explicitly accepted such things.
Are you now saying that "you ought do this" just means "do this or you will face undesirable consequences"? Because I have no problem with this latter claim.
No. Are people widely accepted to have a duty to give a mugger their money when they demand it? Nope. Might they face harm if they refuse to do what the mugger demands? Yes.
If obligations and duties are the same thing as "someone saying do this or else," who exactly is doing the saying? Who tells Orestes "avenge your father's murder or else?" What explicit threat does he face?
The fact that Orestes had this duty, that it was socially recognized in his culture, is a historical fact. His obligation emerges from his culture and his social role, not from any particular person saying "do this or else."
Then why did you bring up undesirable consequences when I asked you to make sense of obligations?
I just want to know what "you ought" means. You keep asserting "you ought do this" and "you ought do that", and now you're asserting that "you ought" doesn't just mean "do this or else".
I need an actual explanation.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Your parents, your teachers, your employer, your government, FIFA, FIDE, etc.
I keep telling you and you keep running around in circles. You are bound means that there is an outside authority to which you have submitted by following its procedures, that exert some sort of legitimate power over you that compels you to do x. This is different from the command to do x. A command is based on whim and therefore arbitrary whereas a promise or any speech act that incurs obligations is based on procedure. I can only explain distinctions by focusing on its differences. Of course you can ask me what compels means and what power means but than you are like the child that just goes nahnahnahnah when something is explained.
Quoting Michael
Yes, that is commonly what you understand, and what many people at face value understand. Even Austin did. Yet the distinction between a command and legitimate authority needs to be made when one wants to make sense of law and obligation. Your everyday understanding of those terms is fine in general, but not when engaging in conceptual analysis.
Quoting Michael
I just did. You just do not accept the explanation and want something more. I cannot force you to accept anything, in other words, you are not obliged to ;) However, if you like to make sense of law and obligation it is wise to accept it.
Quoting Michael
No it does not. That would be spanning the horse behind the carriage. You will be imprisoned because you violating a certain obligation (not all) which is laid down in law, under which you are bound by participating in society and in a democratic society at least, is legitimized by democratic procedures, hence is not arbitrary. The imprisonment is also not arbitrary and based on some whim but again on legitimate authority and proper procedure.
Who exactly makes these statements? Presumably they can also release people from them if the obligation "just is" the statement "you should do this?"
So who can go up to a lifeguard and say, "see that drowning kid? You don't have to save them," such that no one will hold them responsible for not saving the child? Who exactly can go up to the monk and say "that sacred vow? Forget about it," such that no one will see them as having reneged on their vow?
One key difference here is that obligations and duties are emergent, bigger than the imperatives of any one person.
But to make it simple, are you actually claiming that "Orestes had an obligation to avenge his father's death because that was a norm in ancient Greek culture," is a false statement? If it isn't false (it isn't) then who exactly told him "do this or else?"
The difference should be obvious here. Obligations can't be reduced to imperative statements.
Because you claimed "I intend to..." and "I vow to..." are functionally the same statement. The examples I gave show they are not functionally the same, people take them to mean different things and act on them differently. This is a real difference in the world. Saying "people should see them as the same because I can't understand duties," doesn't obviate this is an obvious factual difference.
Which just means that I agree to do what some outside authority says.
Quoting Tobias
I don't understand what this means. Is this a physical compulsion? A psychological compulsion?
Quoting Tobias
Because you engage in the circular claim "you ought do what this authority tells you to do". I want to know what the "you ought" part of this sentence means. A reference back to this authority is no explanation at all.
All I understand by the phrase "you ought do what this authority tells you to do" is "do what this authority tells you to do".
Quoting Tobias
I addressed this here. All this talk of "violating obligations" and "being bound" is vacuous and superfluous. It is just the case that the law says "anyone who is found guilty of murder is to be imprisoned". We then choose to murder or not with this knowledge in mind, and will inevitably face whatever consequences follow if we choose to murder. There's nothing more to it.
You're bringing up consequences again. Why do you keep doing this when you say that consequences have nothing to do with the meaning of "you ought"?
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I am saying that I don't know what "Orestes had an obligation" means. I am asking you what it means and you appear to be doing everything in your power to avoid answering.
I could perhaps interpret it as "the Greeks demand that people avenge their father's murder, and Orestes' father was murdered", which is true. Beyond that I don't know what else it is saying.
I didn't say that. Consequences and obligations are related.
Anyhow, you didn't answer the questions above. If duties are just imperative statements, who is making these statements? Isn't it a little odd that presumed duties cannot be "released" by any single individual in most cases (e.g. the lifeguard example)? What sort of imperative statement is made by no one in particular?
I answered it before. Parents, teachers, government, society, FIFA, FIDE, etc.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Okay, I understand that. But I don't care about consequences. I only care about obligations. Please just tell me what "you ought" means. Everything else is a red herring.
And so "society" as a whole makes imperative statements?
But then these statements are not like the utterances of a single person in many important respects. Duties are indeed something like the "imperative demands" of society as a whole, or of institutions, etc.
They are not just like imperative demands though because they define normative goods like "being a good citizen" or "being a good basketball player." A lone person saying "do this," does not define a normative good like "what it means to be a good soldier." That's a crucial difference because so much of human life and the human good is bound up in normative goods.
And I'm fine with that. We understand that a phrase such as "you ought do this" just means "do this", with the additional understanding that it is the will of society as a whole (or some other authority) and not just the individual speaker.
And also the phrase "you ought do what society tells you to do" just means "do what society tells you to do", with the additional understanding that it is the will of society as a whole and not just the individual speaker.
It's not divine command theory, but it is a command theory. Ought-claims are commands phrased as if they were truth-apt propositions.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I don't quite understand what is being said here. To be a good basketball player is just to be a successful/talented basketball player, i.e. being able to dribble, pass, block, and shoot, scoring points, helping teammates score points, preventing opponents from scoring points, and so on.
Being a "good" citizen is a little more vague. Does this just mean that the citizen obeys society's commands?
Well, on some version of social contract theory maybe. In any case the agreement is implied when following the procedure and cannot be retracted. For instance you cannot say: I promise to bring to back book X, but do not want to be bound to do it". That would be contradictory.
Quoting Michael
Well, you tell me. You would like to bring it into agreement with a materialist worldview I guess. Use some introspection, how do customs compel? If you see an outstretched hand with the intention to shake yours, by what force do you feel compelled to shake back that hand? In any case you know you have a choice, so how does that outstretched hand compels you to choose? I do not feel the need to psychologize of physicalize behavioral patterns.
Quoting Michael
Legitimate authority. I do not know what you really want, as an explanation, but as I said one can only explain by reference to certain kind of distinctions. I can tell you the difference between a command and a legal act, or a command and a contract, or promise. What you want is an explanation why we ought to do things. The reasons are different, sometimes we ought to do things to stay alive, sometimes because some bandit threatens to do it and sometimes because you are under an obligation to do it. Such an obligation may be incurred by your promises, or your contracts, or by damages you caused another party. The difference is that you incurred am obligation because of submission to legitimate authority (whether agree or disagree in that particular instance is not relevant, you submitted yourself under its rules), you ought to keep yourself alive because of some psychological drive I guess and you ought to obey the commands of the bandit because of the same reason. They are different though from obligations. That was the point.
Quoting Michael
You think it is vacuous but it is not. Your view of punishment is misguided. We do not punish because we like to do so, but because murder is wrong. On your view law is simply arbitrary. It is not. There is a pattern to it and conforms by and large to the way we treat other and like to be treated by others. this congruence between law and morality is inexplicable in your scheme. Hence, it lacks any clarificatory strength. But hey, if you want to use a scheme of thought which cannot make sense of the world as it is, be my guest.
Quoting Michael
And indeed command theory as a theory of jurisprudence has been rendered obsolete after the Hart Austin debate. But as said, hold onto it if you must...:ok: Here it is in very simplified form. https://carneades.pomona.edu/2016-Law/04.HartAustin.html
No, it's not. I want to know what "you ought do this" means. I don't know why I need to keep repeating this?
You just respond with "you ought do what a legitimate authority tells you to do" or "you are bound by what a legitimate authority tells you to do" without ever explaining what the "you ought" or "you are bound" parts of these sentences mean.
All I understand by these phrases is "do what a legitimate authority tells you to do".
And that's fine by me, but you and others seem to want it to mean something more, but seem incapable of making sense of what that something more is.
Yes and it can mean different things in different contexts, that is why no one can give you an exact definition. That is actually more often the case with concepts. If I tell you 'you ought to lose weight' I might mean 'it is good for you to lose weight'. If I tell you 'you ought to see this movie' I might mean that you will certainly enjoy this movie. If I tell you, you ought to pay the fine it means you are obliged to pay the fine.
It’s this “obliged” meaning that I’m asking about.
Anyway, we are back to the difference that is in play, between a command and an obligation. Well, that we went over already. Being obliged is different from being commanded, because a command is uttered by whim of the commanding entity while an obligation is incurred by following specific procedures, such as promising or contracting etc. What I do not understand is why you would hold on to a theory that does not explain a certain distinction we all feel that is relevant in favour of a theory that cannot make heads or tails of it.
And this is the fiction.
We take the command “do this”, we phrase it as the truth-apt proposition “you ought do this”, and then we believe in the existence of some abstract entity - the “obligation” - but when asked to make sense of it we can’t; we just insist that it’s more than a command.
Anscombe understood this.
Quoting Tobias
The distinction you feel is a delusion, perhaps a bewitchment by language.
You could (and please don't take this is prickly... it really is not) have just explained legal positivism to establish why a 'legitimate authority' could be a reason for adherence. It's a common position.
Quoting Tobias
I think this is true. However:
Quoting Michael
This is also true. This speaks to our previous fracas but not directly. You can establish the existence of some 'obligation' in the sense of "you promised X" happened in time. You cannot establish "the promise" as it's own entity(this to me seems beyond discussion. Not because I'm stubborn but because there is literally nothing to be spoken about under that concept). This is why, i think, Michael is calling it 'fiction'. There is no logical compass that lands on "fulfill your promises". That's only ever going to be relevant case-by-case and is, in fact, a moral decision which only exists at the moment it is made. Sometimes, promises are made to be broken in service of some other greater good for instance so that 'decision' never imported what you're terming an 'obligation'. You actually didn't promise anything despite creating the apparent 'obligation' to fulfill the promise. Now, I've not gone back to Banno's response/s yet but I see this as the crucial point he (and, i'm presuming you) seems to think explains itself, rather than providing one (or, in fact, being a bad quippist - even worse). What is the promise? There is no possible answer to this without simply describing something else (a brainstate, a decision, or one's personally 'ought' motivation - Banno likes to fulfill promises, it seems. Fine).
As noted previously, "making a promise" obviously exists and imports (given honesty is involved) some reason to do something. It does not create an obligation beside you wanting to keep your promise, as it were. It is yours. It isn't 'out there' as anything.
Quoting Tobias
The sense in which this is true, is that he's giving you far more opportunity to answer the question than is reasonable. He's chasing an answer that you cannot give. Which is interesting, as you seem to think that the opposite is true - that anti-realism can't explain obligations. Well, the answer there is pretty simple. You see an obstacle he (we) don't. Is that a bit more diplomatic here? What these last two pages look like is Michael wants a reason to think obligations exist outside the internal emotional state of having chosen to hold oneself to that intent.
No one has even tried to do this. It looks to me, and probably to Michael, like every one is simply talking around the point. Particularly bad in this regard is Leontiskos' posts on the previous page. They are bordering on unjustified condescensiion. Michael has pointed out that simply appealing to convention isn't actually an argument. And there the conversation seems to stall. A perfect example:
Quoting Leontiskos
This doesn't do anything to establish an obligation as an 'object'. It's an attempt to explain the psychology (potentially contradictory) behind why a person would fulfil their promises. And the answer (honestly, imo, well put here - despite his attempt to claim a different landing pad) is that convention has meant that if you crunch the numbers, people generally do what they say. Therefore, reasonable to expect someone's word to hold. There is nothing remotely about obligations or what the 'ought' involved is. It is states of affairs leading to a statistical outcome informing a course of action. Contradiction isn't even a problem now.
I think that unless the below is adequately addressed, without avoiding the direct question, this is a futile attempt to convince someone to believe your emotional responses are facts:
Quoting Michael
That bold is going to make this thread pages and pages more of nonsense until it's sorted.
It is, but I dislike using shorthand. Usually it is just to show off your knowledge and send a reader into the woods, because something like legal positivism is stated all sorts of ways. I believe in explanation, not some reference to a certain position. Though, yes, this is a simplistic legal positivist account. However, I am also not necessarily a legal positivist. I am more Dworkinian in any case as I do believe in the reality ;) of legal principles and reject judicial discretion in hard cases but I think I hold a different position from Dworking as well, as will become clear from this post.
Quoting AmadeusD
Yes, but I do not think that is at all necessary. It seems that you and Frank and Michael are under the assumption that to be really real entails mind independence. I think that is a metaphysical assumption that one need not make.
Quoting AmadeusD
It needs no logical compass. It simply needs a society in which one expect from one another that one fulfills his promises. Of course other societies are thinkable in which the notion of promise does not exist. However we live in ours. The fact that some concept is dependent on our societal interaction doesn't make it any less real. The 'I do' establishes a marriage under the right procedures. That marriage is as real as say, a doorknob. We live in a world with doors, similarly, we live in a world with marriages. In an apocalyptic world in which our institutions have broken down, I am still married, because in the world that preceded the apocalypse the marriage was duly ordained. However, I might die and all the people remembering the institution of marriage might die. Than indeed, there is no marriage anymore. Same holds for the doorknob, in a world without doors, the material shaped in what we have known as doorknob is meaningless matter.
Quoting AmadeusD
This I really cannot follow. At what time does it exist then? There is a moment it existed and was real and then, poof, it is gone? And when is the decision actually made, when it is made in my head or when it is uttered? I think one would prefer a theory that avoids such questions... I also actually would not know what is implied with it. The decision can be undone at any time? If it cannot and you are still bound to the decision, what is it then that binds?
Quoting AmadeusD
It is not Banno that holds Banno accountable. Others do. Promises are relevant within a network of people for which they are relevant, but see above. What I think is the problem is that you want an explanation in terms of some sort of individual thing to which it refers, a brain state or one individual decision by an individual person. Promises, just as obligations are relational and come into being within a network of relations. I would really not know why one would hold a position that cannot make sense of obligations. I see it as a flaw of the metaphysical position in question, not the flaw of the notion of the obligation.
Quoting AmadeusD
This displays the previous point aptly. It is not me wanting to keep my promise. I might not want it at all. I might have to and legally I might well be forced to. Promises do not rest on the individual will of the promisor, but on the relationship the promise has established between promisor and promisee. I think law and actually all social rules emerge out of patterns of behavior of people. It is culturally embedded. That does not make it arbitrary, it makes it historical. It is different from 'command of the sovereign', it is also different from: "rules made by a competent authority", it is also not "the heaven of concepts above", it is a set of culturally developed practices that have attained consistence and resilience over time. My position comes down to what I know as 'interactionism', but I do not know if that is a thing in American jurisprudence, or rather native to my law faculty.
Quoting AmadeusD
Yes, but I think missing the obstacle causes you to stumble. You need to hold on to all kinds of obscure positions, namely that a promise exists one moment and stops existing the next or that a promise should really be conceived of as a brain state or that an obligation only reaches as far as I am willing to be bound to the promise. That is incoherent because the whole notion of promise exists to make sure I perform the task promised even if I am unwilling to. Michael apparently thinks it does not matter whether one is ordered by a gang of robbers or whether one is taxed by legitimate authorities. If a theory causes me to have to embrace such notions, I consider the theory implausible.
Quoting AmadeusD Even though we still disagree, it is in any case a lot nicer to answer this post, so I do appreciate your effort at diplomacy :flower: :wink:
If you do what's right because you're trying to satisfy others, that's a lesser form of morality. If you do what's right because otherwise you'd let yourself down, that's the higher form.
Quoting Leontiskos
*Crickets* again?
Quoting Leontiskos
You are contradicting yourself. You know it is rational to invoke your landlord's promise, and you would do so in real life, but in your TPF sophistry-mode you just bury your head in the sand instead of facing up to the irrationality of your position.
"You ought not kill" is a counsel, whereas "don't kill" is a command; that's the difference between the two.
When you sincerely promise to do something, you intend to place yourself under an obligation to do that thing, you understand yourself to be under an obligation, on account of your sincere promise, to do what was promised.
That it is possible that you could change your mind only entails that you cannot be forced to do what you promised. An obligation does not consist in some external force, but in internal consistency. If you want to say that obligations cease if and when people change, then the recognition of that should forestall you from making promises. It is dishonest to make a promise that you do not believe you will be able to keep.
You could do the exact same thing with "do flowers exist."
A. Flower's don't exist.
B. Yes they do, x and y are flowers.
A. Nope, all I am seeing is they you are calling them flowers. Why are they flowers?
B. Flowers have such and such properties and the word has such and such a history. This is how the word is used and and understood, to refer to flowers.
A. Nope. When you say "this is a flower," you aren't saying anything. You are just saying "call this sort of thing a flower." But why is it a flower? Why should I call it a flower? Saying "this is a flower," is just another way of saying "call this a flower, it doesn't mean anything else "
B. *Explains more of the properties of flowers, how they differ from plants, why people have the word.
A. Nope. You haven't explained what a flower is at all. You are just explaining how people use the word flower and what they think they mean by it. Explain to me what a flower is.
B. *Offers an explanation of the word and usage of "flowers" in terms of social practices and their intersection with the world.
A. So flowers aren't real. They are just a social rule saying "call some things flowers or else."
C. Offers a naturalistic explanation of both language and flowers.
A. Where is the explanation of flowers from particle physics on up? I am not seeing an explanation. What is a flower? They don't exist. All you have pointed to is how people use language and what they think they mean by words, not what the things referred to actually are. Apparently every human language strangely developed this way to say the same thing in two distinct ways. Weird, everyone but me must be confused...
The question "is it good in any absolute sense to honor one's obligations," seems like a question with some legs. The question: "do obligations exist?" is a silly question. They clearly do, and they clearly don't reduce to individuals imperative statements. They might be explicable in terms of something other than any sort of "absolute" or "human good," but they sure ain't the same thing as "do this."
Or Santa Claus
Fair - i suppose I was looking toward a situation where you'd have just outlined your personal position with reference. But in any case, it looks like we saw that similarly.
Quoting Tobias
Hmm. I really appreciate the clarity this seems to be granting me. Things don't need to be mind-independent to exist (im further down the concepts-exist-in-reality line than Banno, eg), true. But some things do. Such as, the authority in the previous element of the discussion. That exists. It's authority exists (perhaps by consent, so it's some levels above the mechanics of an interpersonal obligation) and is arbitrarily enforced to the emotional contentedness of the majority of it's subjects and little, if anything else, is involved. In this case, I can't quite see how you could then still claim obligations exist.
The same can be said of an "obligation". It's an empty space between commitment and expectation. But there is nothing there. I guess, while this example is pretty parochial in terms of what concepts its engaging:
Person A promises;
Person B that they will attend X event on date Y specifically to accompany/support. Meaning B being present is crucial.
Person B, unfortunately, perishes on date V (i.e prior to the maturity of the 'promise').
Person A feels their promise is unfulfilled.
Person B is ... dead. There is nothing to oblige. They couldn't feel one way or the other. There is no obligation.
I think you would be wrong in all conceivable respects to claim that the obligation still exists (this is worded as if momentarily granting the idea that an obligation can exist besides the two or more brain states involved).
The situation has not changed for person A. They mentally/emotionally feel their 'obligation'. This is all they had before, too. But Person B is dead. Given that there is no material difference whatsoever to Person A prior to, and after person B's death with regard to the 'obligation' (i.e it exists in their head as a commitment) either:
1. Obligations do not exist. People with commitments and expectations exist; or
2. Obligations can exist in a positivist sense only.
Now, that gets messy - the kinds of 'authority' vary, and the enforceability varies etc.. etc.. etc. etc.. but the overall point seems clear to me: the obligation only exists as an instrument of authority and does not obtain without it. However, I now anticipate some type of "well, your emotional reaction is a kind of authority". Yes, it is. But it is not an obligation. It's an enforcement mechanism. So, "obligation" is the wrong word, I'm just trying to be least-confusing.
Quoting Tobias
Fair enough, but per the above I think it's required in this case - otherwise, "obligation" can only obtain within descriptions of other things. "thing" not needing to be physically extant, here.
Quoting Tobias
Seems to me here you've inadvertently dropped your point here, and picked up mine? I'm only hearing, as conclusions to these points "It leaves a bad taste" or "It would hurt the relationship between entity X and entity Y". Yep. Not an obligation? Onward...
Quoting Tobias
It does. But that aside, what you seem to be saying is that IFF your society has the concept promises, that magics them into existence as actual things (or, to be a bit arcane - choses). This is plainly not true?
Quoting Tobias
A marriage is not at all analogous to a door. Forgive if my next response is a little glib. The above is really difficult to parse...
Quoting Tobias
That is, by your own description, exactly what it is. A society with the same collective concept, but not enforcing authority simply doesn't have marriages the way we think of them. Which is literally, a legal instrument evidencing a commitment and expectation enforceable by the relevant authority. Telling someone you wont cheat, that you'll raise kids right, always take care of htem etc.. is meaningless to a marriage. That's just being nice to each other.
Quoting Tobias
So, your position here is that if anyone knows about hte purported marriage, then it obtains? Yikes. That is extremely confused to me. And it also violates your entire position - if one must know of the thing for it to exist, then we're back at rejecting that reasoning and having no basis for invoking an obligation separate to the individual brain states involved. Banno's entire point is that we can accept things exist without knowing. You seem to be saying if no one knows about it, it doesn't exist - which is plainly wrong, too.
Quoting Tobias
The decision exists at the moment the decision is made (or thereabouts). It doesn't create anything further. It is a decision made. That's all.
Quoting Tobias
This is not relevant. What one prefers is a road to the end of rational discourse.
Quoting Tobias
You're getting it.
Quoting Tobias
It is (and this is directly in response to the questions in the quote immediately above this. It is Banno. If he doesn't care what hte other side of the "obligation" does in response, he couldn't care less whether he fulfills the promise. If he does care about their response, he will likely do it (assuming it causes that response that he wants) because it makes him comfortable with himself. However,
I recognise in your addendum here ("it is others") you are essentially invoking just authority. It is on the authority of the other's expectation Banno should be accountable for his promise. Sure. That has been accepted. It does not mean an "obligation" exists. It means someone expects something, and Banno doesn't want that smoke. These are, put plainly, hold-over tactics masquerading as some moral concept of "obligation". And, while i take your earlier point - these are culturally embedded and for the most part, agreeable, forms of interaction - they are arbitrary. There is no objective benchmark, or divine reason for them. It's just how we best-get-on. And that is all we can hope for, surely?
Quoting Tobias
It can, though. The problem is you want something to exist which doesn't - and so the position seems incomprehensible (wrt obligations, anyway). To me (and, i guess Michael and Frank) we see no issue. The obligations simply don't obtain. Other, relevant and important things obtain which give the same appearance you're trying to explain with 'obligation'. We see no issue, because we don't take that position. You already took that position, and so the theory seems torturous. Understandable. I just htink you're wrong, and you think I (we) are. Fair.
Quoting Tobias
yes. You're getting it (maybe ;) )
Quoting Tobias
This explains a whole lot about your responses around Marriage, but this just makes it all the more obvious there exists a legal obligation and where there is no enforcing authority, there is no obligation. And, here, "obligation" actually just means "threat of consequence".
Quoting Tobias
Bold: Not my position. I was actually really, really clear to try to avoid this charge. The promise happens. It is an action not something which "obtains" in the "thing" sense. A promise can be made the same way an explanation can be "made". Its more "made out" or "enunciated". It doesn't come into existence. I would suggest thinking here of someone making a false promise again. The actions are the same. Only hte brainstate changes, and (in this story) only for the promissor.
Italics: Not only is this plainly true (to me), this is probably one of hte better descriptions i've seen. Maybe its uncomfortable? But yeah, the obligation isn't there if you don't attend to it. If you, personally, jettison your promise you have no obligation. Even if we're going to grant the obligation "thing" status, its collapsed because you pulled your support out from it. Quoting Tobias
It doesn't. One is simply "legitimate authority". The behaviour is the same (i touched on this earlier in this post, funnily enough). What could possibly be said to be different?
"Do this or I'll break your legs" - Dealer
"Do this or I'll take your kids and give them to another set of parents temporarily" - Gov'munt
I may prefer my legs broken, personally. But that aside, there are given rules, and given consequences to not following them. The "culturally embedded" concept of promise functions the same in both of the above scenarios. In fact, I would argue that both of these scenarios exist precisely because the obligation itself is no where to be found. Enforcement solves that.
Quoting Tobias
Purely on a legal mind-to-legal mind basis, what do you mean here? Is the assertion that there is some kind of legal principle which actually transcends human minds? I have never been able to get on board with anything remotely close to "natural law" type arguments so Im really curious.
Quoting Leontiskos
Because legal support exists. Otherwise, no one in their right mind would go to a landlord and try to hold them to their word. This is intensely naive to the history of commerce.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
No. You could not. And you did not. I shall illustrate why not:
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
This doesn't appear to be relevant at all to the discussion. WHAT an obligation is, can be gleaned clearly from the descriptions given.
"where is it?" is the question, and flowers are demonstrably extant as "whatever it is we call flowers". This cannot be done for an obligation or promise (i use that word alittle differently, but I take yours/tobias/bannos use here). You have to describe something else. It's a shadow, at best.
Here you are, Janus. I need to do no more.
Understood. I think, though I wouldn't assume your mind, that i've groked that correctly across all exchanges to that end. You believe the obligation comes into existence, and that you are "under" this "thing' that you posit "exists". I understand.
Quoting Banno
Descriptively, I'm with you - but i'm already off the bus. Onward..
Quoting Banno
Which is it? I am already sensing self-confused response here.. They aren't the same thing in either this post, or your quite thorough responses to Michael. So why are they here?
Quoting Banno
Is an act - which clearly exists 'in time' as they say. So, so far, descriptively, I'm still with you. This fits my account nicely. I just don't make use of "thing" here, rather than "act". To the above "calling out", this is apt - If the promise causes the obligation, they aren't the same thing - could you be pressed to say the promise "occurs" and creates "an obligation"? If so, we've made some headway.
Quoting Banno
This one is somewhat hard to respond to, because I can see exactly what you're trying to point out. But the answer is: the question makes no sense. If both parties (assuming no one else knew) have forgotten, there isn't anything to be spoken about. There is nothing. We are playing God with time and perspective to even have this discussion. IN real life, that can't happen.
Quoting Banno
Ok, for hte moment ignore that previous response, because this is interesting. How does it exist if neither the commitment, or expectation, currently exist? This indicates there must be a "something" out there in the world which constitutes that promise. What/where is it once both parties forget?
Quoting Banno
On my account, which is probably quite incomplete in the sense that this has never interested me as something to write about before - it exists as the two complimentary brain states of "commitment" and "expectation" on the opposite sides of the act of promise. Promises happen - no issue. Those two brainstates then result, and are (barring mental weirdness) inextricably linked to a single end. That, to me, is enough to fulfil the concept. Perhaps more than.
Quoting Banno
The above may have already done this for me, but not quite. They are highly relevant, but they are not, individually "an obligation" or 'a promise'. The act of 'promising' creates brain states. The relation between them (which is a state of affairs only, on this account) is where people want to say some third thing, "the obligation", comes in. I deny this. The two states obtain. The "obligation" is just a description of the resulting emotional states of the two parties. You describe the two brain states - indicate the emotional states (determination and expectation, i guess), and you're done. There's nothing further to add (again, on my account). We don't need to go further to explain what's happening here...
Quoting Banno
I really like this, which is why I've quoted it, but I don't take that, no. Other than the two "assigning" parties, as it were, other brain states aren't relevant. This can be easily accepted because it also applies to your account. The two parties involved are the relevant ones, in either account (unless you disagree? Interested if so).
Quoting Banno
I don't think the situation changes, unless we're talking Law again in which case - lots to be said! But roughly, yes, they are records of promises. Not acts as above, but recordings. The only difference here is they create legal obligations which are actually just rules pursuant to punishment or loss of some kind. Not hte same thing we're talking about, to be sure.
Quoting Banno
Quoting Banno
These two go together well, and make for a relatively straight-forward set of things to respond to at once.
To me, no, it doesn't seem that way at all. BUT, giving some credence to that version of things, the 'promise' is literally an act made. The obligation might come into existence, but the promise exists ephemerally as a decision, not a 'thing'. It doesn't exist anymore than 'the decision to shut the fridge' exists. If you feel that decisions 'exist' as 'things' then that's fine. I suppose I would put this in the category that 'personality' goes in. It can exist, and then not exist(perhaps as the exact firing of certain exact neurons at an exact moment?). No issue.
Yes, I think "obligation" is a language game we use to allow us to get things done. We socially enforce promises made to avoid the chaotic nuisance a majority-dishonest society seems to devolve into. I do not think this means it 'exists'. It is a useful fiction. A heuristic-type thing, perhaps? A concept under which we denote instances, but under which no actual token occurs. Its descriptive only - maybe this can be thought of as similar to "dancing around the point". It does not actually occur. But we use it all the time to symbolize certain behaviour and the resulting emotional response to it.
In terms of why we shouldn't think of these things as 'existing' - I note the stark difference between "money/property" and "friendship". The former can literally be pointed at, even in the endless contexts in which they occur - the concept is unchanging and we have millions of tokens to be analysed. The latter is ... grey, and probably just a symbol for several emotional states that people can share. They can be transferred to other people, which says to me it relies on the brain state involved to even get off the ground as a concept - in reality, there is no 'friendship' to be talked about. There are activities and attitudes - in a certain box, we'll call these reciprocal attitudes friendship. But whence aquaintancship? Friendship? Bestfriendship? Friendswithbenefitship? Also, to note, people's version of what constitutes a friendship vary quite a bit. The particular emotional states required aren't set. It's, at best, an indicator that someone one (or people) are within a range of emotional states with regard to one another. That's not actually a thing. That occurs with anyone who has interacted. We're just sort of picking a colour and going with it.
These are all murky, "best we've got" terms for things that we 'feel' but do not actually exist, is my view there (though, again, this hasn't interested me to talk about before so Its entirely possible more good exchanges like this might change the view).
Quoting Banno
I agree. Mostly in the mind. Shared delusions don't cause things to exist.
Nonsense. People succeed in this sort of thing all the time without legal means. @Michael has literally been arguing that the landlord would only honor his promise if he were irrational, which is an even stronger form of the argument you give. Here is the whole post:
Quoting Leontiskos
I see you've chosen to deny what is clearly a reasonable take, in terms that themselves indicate you're not thinking very clearly.
Quoting Leontiskos
I read the whole post. Do with that what you will.
I don't know what to do with that level of sillygooseness ( my tongue is rather in my cheek but i got the same impression from you.. so *shrug* lol)
Quoting Leontiskos
I was in effect posing this same question to you, which is why I said that your argument (or assertion) is the same as his but less strong (as you focused on the tenant rather than the landlord). My argument addresses his argument, and therefore it a fortiori addresses yours.
I can't see how. They are not parallel questions to me. I was addressing whether or not there is an obligation Not what one would do about it. My glib response to your initial point was quite clearly apt and reasonable.
Before tenancy enforcement infrastructure, you would be an absolute moron to try to 'force' your landlord's hand. You're out on your arse.
As I noted elsewhere (actually, I think it was a different topic, but im leaving that lead in) what people do about things isn't the same as "whether or not" in regard to those things. So, my point illustrates a different issue: There is no obligation. THere is enforcement. Without adequate enforcement, do whatever you want as regards your promises or 'obligations' (i have at length noted that I don't think that even makes sense, but hey - a new comer :) )
Not well.
Quoting AmadeusD
Quoting Leontiskos
I read it fine. You don't seem to want to see I'm talking about something other than what you're trying to say. Which, I also think is dumb - but I don't take Michael's position on that. Neither are acting rationally (wrt some promise or obligation) without the infrastructure. The Landlord, though, in pre-infrastructure world, is acting rationally as to his power to elicit his desired response. So, we agree that the obligation is irrelevant. I hold it doesn't exist.
So, you got that bit wrong too :) Fantastic!
Which means what?
We have all these different phrases:
1. You ought do this
2. You should do this
3. You must do this
4. You are obliged to do this
5. You have an obligation to do this
6. You have a duty to do this
etc.
They all seem to express the same concept, but nobody is giving a coherent account of what this concept is.
All I ever understand by these phrases is "do this". It's just been phrased as if it were a truth-apt proposition, leading to the misplaced belief that it means something more.
In your 1-6, the subject is a person other than yourself. With respect to the general topic under discussion, shouldn’t the subject in fact be yourself? By what right does one have to say another ought, or is obliged, when the only possible way for one to say that, is by way of what he himself has already determined? So it isn’t really “you ought….”, but instead, is, “I think you ought….”, or, “if it was me you would have…..”, the truth of which in the former is in fact impossible to grant, insofar as the totality of conditions in one cannot be given in another. And this is readily apparent, for the internal relations necessary in the construction of a promise/obligation/etc., by one, can indeed be very far from those relations necessary for the experience of its object by another.
But then, it may just be the exposition you seek for the coherence of said conception(s) resides entirely in some metaphysical domain, from which the sum of raised participatory eyebrows inevitably takes away whatever power and justification that may have been contained in it.
For my money, ’s one-liner says it all. Or perhaps, establishes the groundwork for saying it all.
Can you give an account of "do this" which is much more coherent than obligation and its synonyms though? Maybe you can and I haven't thought about it enough but then I am curiousto test my intuition about this.
It's a command; a phrase we use when we want or need someone to do something.
Apologies, I was thinking more about the literal meaning of the phrase. The phrase "to do something" in your reply or "to do" I would say are more or less along the same lines.
I am saying that something like "you ought brush your teeth" just means "brush your teeth" (or possibly "it is in your best interests to brush your teeth", but I don't think this meaning is relevant to this discussion).
I don't know what other thing it could mean. It is this other meaning that others claim is there that I want explained.
In fairness, I don't think I could explain to you what "to do" means if you didn't already have the intuition! I don't need that explanation to use the phrase. But I would agree that obligation can be trivialized/redundant and deflated significantly similarly to other social constructs when we analyze it in terms of just social interactions - people telling eachother what to do, having emotional reactions, etc. etc. It is naturalistically flimsy.
I said that when you make a promise, if you are being honest, you are obligating yourself, barring unforeseen circumstance that prevent you, to do what you have promised. Note the caveat "if you are being honest'.
The social mores do not differ too much in substance if not form from culture to culture. This reflects the fact that people naturally generally want to be able to trust and feel safe with their fellow citizens, friends and family.
As @Mww points out you are looking on mores merely as kinds of impositional commands The salient question is 'what do you expect from yourself'? Would you be comfortable making promises to others that you had no intention of keeping?
People are giving you answers that reflect a perspective that is participatory, whereas you are ignoring what they are telling you, looking at yourself as an isolated individual and complaining about not knowing what the obvious means.
Quoting frank
I see the two as integrally connected, entangled, unless "satisfying others" for you means purely a matter of appearances, like wishing to merely seem honest, compassionate or whatever as opposed to actually being those virtuous things.
We all want basically the same things which I outlined in my reply to Michael above. So from the point of view of actually caring about others, satisfying others and being satisfied with yourself are not two different things.
Quoting AmadeusD
I do not think that entirely fits. On two accounts actually. Also a government that is not chosen by its people, say the government of the Soviet Union, still promulgated law and therefore on this positivist account you now seem to embrace (if only for the sake of argument perhaps), that law also backs up obligations. Secondly, obligations may also arise due to customs and not backed up by sanctions, at least not formal sanctions. For instance if you enter into a promise with your brother to return you the book. Whether it is legal or not is I think overly formal. The obligation arises out of the institutions of promising, contracting perhaps even principles of good conduct, legal or otherwise. The are institutional, so historically grown ways of speaking and acting that causes people to expect certain ways of speaking and acting. I think institutions are historically grown and determined in continuous practice so much so that they become part and parcel of our everyday world. That is where I part ways with the positivist.
Quoting AmadeusD
I would say the obligation ended with the death of B. In this case I would construe the obligation as conditional, namely "I will be at event X under the condition that you will also be there". It does not change the fact that there was a promise between A and B and that A incurred the obligation to be there in order to assist B. That part of the promise being unfulfillable the promise becomes moot and so does the obligation that resulted from it. I have no qualms about saying an obligation exists and now does not exist anymore, due to some sort of circumstance ending it. Things pop in and out of existence all the time, they break, die, melt, etc. Obligations do not physically die but they may end, as the statute of limitations proves time and time again. (Although as mentioned very early on, in the Netherlands we have the legal figure of the 'natural obligation', an obligation which is unenforceable but still on the subject, also after exceedance of the statute of limitations, for instance on someone that stole a bike 20 years ago, he is still under the natural obligation to return it to the original owner)
Quoting AmadeusD
I would not see why ... If they do, it is fine of course, but every good friend would tell them that under this condition they have no obligation anymore, at least I would assume...
Quoting AmadeusD
I am actually with you on 1, People with commitments and expectations exist. But between them certain relations are established. Your account, like those of Michael and Frank, still seems to individualistic to me and committed to the idea that things exist but relations do not. I feel like echoing Wittgenstein suddenly(something I really rarely do :eek:) "The world is the totality of facts not of things" (prop. 2 of the Tractatus). They live within a wholly constructed world of relations. My questions would be, why deny them existence?
I know this view does not solve all problems. As you rightly state, there is some sort of 'authority' needed. I seem to hold a very broad view of authority, but there are limits. Fortunately you seem to also agree that authority varies and enforceability varies. I would not put all my eggs in the basket of enforceability though. I think the enforcement mechanism is actually logically posterior in the sense that we feel some obligations must be protected and cannot be ignored. To ensure that we impose a system of sanctions on some. Yet, to have an obligation I think there must be a relation to the other person perhaps or to so third party, which may be a community or whatever. I am with you that merely an emotional state does not bring on obligations. They are not private they are public in the sense that they must have a moment of externalization, often by certain procedure. That can be an elaborate and public procedure such as a marriage, or a very small and informal procedure by uttering the word 'I promise'. Also not all obligations are equally serious, like not all doors are equally heavy.
Quoting AmadeusD
No, as per my view outlined above, there is something more than "it leaves a bad taste" or "it would hurt the relationship between X and Y". The law might demand it, or custom might demand it. I might even go as far as saying 'the social order demands it', though I also feel antsy with such sweeping reifications. Yet I think the point of an obligation is exactly that. The institution of promising is violated when promises are not kept. That is not only a private issue between people, but a social issue because the institution of promising is an important pattern by which we govern our conduct and negotiate our journey through the world.
Quoting AmadeusD
I think I addressed this above. Threat of sanction does not explain it and I think sanctions are posterior. If it was mere sanction you and probably the others would be right. The word usually used in jurisprudence and in socio legal studies is legitimacy, but that is a beast that does not clarify much. I would hold that legitimacy derives from adhered to procedure, the notion that this is they way things should be done.
Quoting AmadeusD
The funny thing is that here our disagreement has some interesting consequences. To me a false promise (a promise one is not intended to keep) is still a promise as good as any. That the brainstate differs for me matters nothing. To me it is actually a dire consequence of the idea that promises are related to brain states that one must say that whether a promise is made or not is totally subjective (depending on the brain state of the promisor. As we do not have access to it we never know whether a promise is real or false. What is false is actually not the promise, that is real and should be kept, what is false is the intention of the promisor.
Quoting AmadeusD
I truly wonder why you would hold on to a theory that grants this result. "If I feel I have no obligation, I have no obligation". That is odd because an obligation is almost by definition a burden. Why would one want to keep a burden? If that would be a convincing position the whole notion of obligations and promises and what not, would collapse no?
Quoting AmadeusD
There is a world of difference and your example makes clear you see the difference too. you do not say: "Do this or I'll break your legs" - Dealer
"Do this or I'll break your legs" - Gov'munt
That is logical because a government does not say that. If it does it acts no better than the dealer and its exercise of power is wholly arbitrary like the dealer's. The taking of your kids is probably an action to protect them, taken in accordance with proper procedure and therefore legitimate and therefore you have the obligation to do so. What the government does is to force you to adhere to a norm, in this example it is not clear to what norm, but probably something relevant to your kids' well being. The dealers' threat is a means to force you to carry out an action brought force by his whim. I think an argument can well be made that if a government would behave like a dealer and threaten in the same vein, the obligations its command are moot as its reign lost legitimacy. (The sanctions of govt could be every bit as severe, often even moreso, but that is not the issue I think.)
Quoting AmadeusD
I am not a natural law theorist. The legal principles I hold to exist stem from the coherence, consistency and goals of the body of laws itself. They might not be stipulated as such, but they are the principles in accordance to which our law is laid down and can be construed by comparing and interpreting its rules in a consistent manner. A legal principle for instance is the notion that promises should be kept. One is also that "no one may profit from his own wrong" as in Riggs v Palmer. I am not going further into Dworkinian philosophy of law though. The difference though between these and natural law principles is that these principles stem from the law itself, our customary interpretation of it and even from our customs themselves, but they are not transcendental. They are immanent.
It has been a long post but worthwhile to write. Now I am off to bed...
Take care,
Tobias
To be entirely clear, I don't hold that view. I think 'legal obligations' exist, and are pursuant to written laws. Those laws may be arbitrary, and that's another argument for another day. But the obligations themselves only exist in light of whatever that legislation requires from person X.
Quoting Tobias
This is what I reject, entirely, and have seen nothing which would establish this to be more than a nicety of mind.
Quoting Tobias
this is incoherent to me. Nothing here gives me anything except that you consider non-physical concepts of mind institutions. That seems...absurd? Perhaps that's a bit harsh but I can't grasp where you're coming from, or going. To make a little clearer where i'm going I take obligations to come into existence, as legal entities for lack of a better term. Obviously tehy aren't 'entities' but there are enforceable 'promises' made in law. They are not enforceable outside of this. You are not obliged. There is no obligation (beyond that which I've described earlier - I just don't see how two other, unrelated, physical things, could amount to a non-physical obligation).
Quoting Tobias
I agree that this is the the state of affairs, generally. The 'obligations' never arise from custom. They arise from formalising a custom (so that goes to our disagreement re: positivism to some degree too).
Quoting Tobias
Can you outline why there would be any difference here between someone forgetting their own commitment? If person A in that story simply drank too much, forgot, and didn't turn up. There's no mens rea. Can you point out the wrong-maker there?
Quoting Tobias
So, just a mis-named extension of a legal obligation to my mind
. Hard to see how that's being missed?
Quoting Tobias
(this will elicit more, so I quoted it after the previous one)
Yes, I agree. And a promise would fit this bill, imo. You make a promise, in a moment, and that moment is then gone. It's up to you what you do after that (again, allowing for enforceability mechanisms creating artificial obligations such as at law - It's a "If you want X, then do/don't do Y - this is true without hte Law too).
Quoting Tobias
Im not sure this can supported by anything. It's a assertion, and one that we've developed Law to enforce. Otherwise it's a nothing.
Quoting Tobias
There is not any difference, conceptually, as my examples show. They are separate practical scenarios, but nothing changes at-base. Your response here is perplexing in that regard.
Quoting Tobias
This, also, explains how you're approaching this. I'm unsure you can get away with claiming anything but that your responses represent your emotional reactions to these issues after this, and the line noted in your previous email (i think, addressed further down this post).
Quoting Tobias
Conceptually, perhaps, but you're conflating hte conceptual with the practical here so I can't really make heads or tails.
Quoting Tobias
It doesn't do this at all imo. Relations exist. An obligation isn't a relation. An expectation/commitment nexus is a relation. An obligation, in all the ways outline in this thread, is a free-floating nonsense. It literally has nothing to it except the above attitudes, in relation to each other. No where does an obligation pop into existence. Again, except at the behest of enforcement. And even here, it's still boiled down to what one, personally, is happy to accept as a consequence. Conflating something which can be described (relation, commitment, expectation) with someone literally made up is... not a good move to me.
Quoting Tobias
Yet, it does. Entirely. There is no loose end in my description of how 'promises' work. I take it that you're simply uncomfortable with it, whcih is fine. That's why we have the Law.
Quoting Tobias
Which is arbitrary. Obviously. Going to your point about - the government does act like a dealer. It has just been given 'legitimacy'. Like a pharmacist. Postivism is baked into this account, or ignored entirely. Going to the below couple of responses...
Quoting Tobias
This is not logical, in any way, because the Government says "I'll put you in jail" "Ill take your kids" "I'll put you in a labour camp" "I'll make your life economically untenable" among other things. The fact that governments no longer specifically break legs (some do, actually) isn't relevant. The threat of force is EXACTLY the same. We just assent to the Government because we assess it as legitimate. There is nought else involved. In fact, that's largely how governments get going - Kowloon is a perfect example.
Quoting Tobias
The relevant norm is paying for your goods in a society of commerce. The Dealer is doing the same thing
Quoting Tobias
This is, in fact, what a huge section of society feels. And it's a completely legitimate position. Questioning why, how and how far we asset to the government's demands is one of the most important socio-political questions that is available to modern society. Generally speaking, half the population of a given country is at the behest of a system it doesn't assent to per se - but democracy has prevailed. And so we accept "legitimacy" as the mediating factor. Governments get overthrown when the go as far as a dealer, and are small enough to be overthrown. When the government is too big to be overthrown (analogously: Cartels) we have to muddle through.
I understand that you assent to government demands. You would not assent to a dealer's demands. The difference is very, very little. Attitude.
Quoting Tobias
So, you are a positivist? If you're not a natural law theorist, where does this legitimacy come from for you to asset to these principles? Seems to me you agree with them. Fair.
Was absolutely worthwhile, and I thank you immensely for your time!