The Value of Life considered as a Function of Pleasure and Pain
If the value of life is considered to consist in the overall balance of pleasure and pain, then in attempting to determine such a balance, and thus to ascertain a measure of value, the pains and pleasures that derive from what might be thought as 'illusory' sources must be taken into account as much as the pains and pleasures that derive from the 'real'.
Nihilists that wish to emphasize the lack of value of life generally ignore this principle, which is nicely explained by Rudolph Steiner, here very roughly paraphrased:
The idea that feelings of pleasure that come from so-called 'illusory' sources (fantasies, wishful thinking and so on) should not be counted in the ledger of life, is like an accountant who claimed that of all my businesses the profits that come from the manufacture of childrens' toys should not be counted as commensurate with the profits from my other businesses, since they come from the production of mere playthings for children
One of the arguments nihilists use to support the claim that life is predominately painful is that most of our "so-called pleasures" are of just this kind that derive from mere fantasies (such as fantasies of love, success or religious fantasies of redemption and immortality, and so on), and are rightly negated by the "reality" of our situation. (Note that nihilism is also, by virtue of its rejection of any idea of inherent value whatsoever, logically committed to think of value only in terms of pleasure and pain as such).
But if mere pleasure and pain, simpliciter, are the only rightful criteria from the considerations of which the value of life is to be judged then any claim as to the significance of the purported 'reality' of the sources of pain and pleasure, or the means used to derive pleasure from life and overcome suffering is utterly unjustifiable.
Nihilists that wish to emphasize the lack of value of life generally ignore this principle, which is nicely explained by Rudolph Steiner, here very roughly paraphrased:
The idea that feelings of pleasure that come from so-called 'illusory' sources (fantasies, wishful thinking and so on) should not be counted in the ledger of life, is like an accountant who claimed that of all my businesses the profits that come from the manufacture of childrens' toys should not be counted as commensurate with the profits from my other businesses, since they come from the production of mere playthings for children
One of the arguments nihilists use to support the claim that life is predominately painful is that most of our "so-called pleasures" are of just this kind that derive from mere fantasies (such as fantasies of love, success or religious fantasies of redemption and immortality, and so on), and are rightly negated by the "reality" of our situation. (Note that nihilism is also, by virtue of its rejection of any idea of inherent value whatsoever, logically committed to think of value only in terms of pleasure and pain as such).
But if mere pleasure and pain, simpliciter, are the only rightful criteria from the considerations of which the value of life is to be judged then any claim as to the significance of the purported 'reality' of the sources of pain and pleasure, or the means used to derive pleasure from life and overcome suffering is utterly unjustifiable.
Comments (65)
I understand that the "value of life is considered to consist in the overall balance of pleasure and pain" is a very old notion. But, I don't agree that pleasure or pain can be ends in themselves, they are always attached to something...such as the pleasure we take in the act of eating.
It goes to the question of 'what value is'. A judgement, the value of labor, an abstract construction, the measure of exchange. It can be 'real' as it you have it framed, or abstract, objective or subjective. Value as desire perhaps a form of fetishism, where the 'real' becomes idealized...money is happiness.
I am aware of two forms of nihilism active and passive.
Yes, I think passive nihilism is conceptual, it is not performative.
Hi Cavacava, thanks for responding. I agree that pleasure and pain cannot be "ends in themselves", in fact to show the absurdity of that idea is partly the purpose of the OP. If pleasure and pain are taken as ends in themselves then it seems it can only be the quantity of pain and pleasure, and the balance between them that could be understood to determine the value of life.
Yes, but if value consisted only in the balance of pain and pleasure, could it matter whether we called it "abstract", "real", "objective" or "subjective"? That is precisely the point!
Can you explain what you mean by "passive nihilism" ( as distinct from active nihilism)?
The passive nihilist comes to point of this transformation and then denies any sense to going any further, it makes no sense for the passive nihilist to affirm any values, they see no truth as they step back from the the world by becoming addicted to a form of alienation, weakness, & radical hedonism.
The active nihilist comes to the same point, but through force of will the active nihilist transforms its value system into one it creates and in doing so is able to embrace the real in a new, un-dogmatic manner, beyond the limits of logic. It is rebellious and destructive of all imposed conventions.
That is why philosophy in the traditional sense was generally concerned with finding something beyond the vicissitudes of the sensory domain. However if you believe that to be a 'fantasy of immortality', then there aren't a lot of options.
It's interesting: what you say highlights for me the difference between inherent meaning and received meaning. Nietzsche, as I understand him, was reacting against the nihilism inherent in the blind adherence of the "herd" to received values (the "slave morality" of institutional Christianity).
So, looked at this way the question becomes whether I can see any meaning inherent in life; the other alternatives being that I blindly accept meanings created by others, that is by tradition, (generally fossilized institutions) or that I merely fabricate meaning for myself in a kind of gesture of posturing rebelliously against an unacceptable cosmos.
In any case, the nihilism I am targeting is mostly the passive variety, as you have described it, but only insofar as it wants to justify itself philosophically by claiming that the only inherent values are pain and pleasure. I say this is self-deception if the nihilist also wants to claim that the life-sustaining pleasures that come from faith (or fantasy) are disqualified, because they cannot be disqualified in terms of mere pain and pleasure; some other extraneous value must be assumed in order to justify their disqualification. Of course, this also goes for the stance of the active nihilist, because to justify a claim that others should share his self-created value he must show that it is not merely arbitrary, and that there are good reasons to share his view. This cannot be done without appealing to something beyond mere pleasure and pain.
So, the nihilist viewpoint above all nihilates itself, actually nihilates nothing but itself.
First I would question whether pleasure and pain are merely sensations. Can they not also be emotions?
Second I would question the nihilist's justification for claiming that life is predominately painful. Whose life? And how would we measure it?
If nihilist's believe that immortality is a fantasy, then that would be merely an opinion, no? It seems that, from a purely discursive perspective, the truth about this cannot be known, and nor can any opinion about it be, by mere logic, proven, or by empirical (at least as currently understood) enquiry justified.
My point, in attacking the consistency of the nihilist position, is that in the absence of any values (other than pleasure and pain) to decide on what to believe about immortality (a subject obviously dear to the human heart), they should be thrown back on choosing what is more pleasurable and less painful to believe; because, besides that consideration, it just doesn't matter, according to their own lights, what anyone believes anyway!
It was Nietszche who foresaw nihilism as a consequence of the death of God, and therefore the disappearance of the traditional source of meaning; and that became a predominant theme in existentialism, especially Camus and Sartre. So I think they were at least aware of the problem which belief was supposed to remedy, whereas now even that been forgotten. Now it has turned into a kind of indifference, a shrug, a 'whatever'.
I don't know of any actual nihilist philosophers, but if I did, I wouldn't bother arguing against them, it's like trying to shine a light into a black hole, it will just suck in whatever light you shine on it.
Would not the nihilist dispute this very assumption? Steiner's observation would only apply to the nihilist if he ceded this.
Quoting John
Ah, and here is the parenthetical clarification. I don't know why this ought to be the case, so perhaps you can elaborate on this claim.
From this it seems that nihilism inherently devolves into crude hedonism. It doesn't matter what the source is, since morality would not exist and aesthetic judgement would be unwarranted. It would be entirely in-the-moment, what are you experiencing right now.
If the nihilist claims there are no inherent values, then nothing can matter except to the individual, and then only insofar as it is conducive to pain or pleasure. It seems obvious that pain and pleasure do, in and of themselves, matter to the individual; and it seems to follow, in the absence of any other value that could make the bearing of necessary pain desirable or the absence of pleasure more easily lived with, that pain should be avoided at all cost, and pleasure should be sought always.
Nihilism seems logically to lead inexorably to either suicide or hedonism.
OK, but I was thinking of pain and pleasure in the broadest sense; happiness would be generally pleasurable, and sorrow painful (unless you're a masochist of course).
I think you're right Nietzsche was acutely aware of the psychological effect of the "death of God"; Camus, on the other hand seems to sneak quasi-religion in with his "sublime indifference". (But then I suppose Nietzsche does too with his Zarathustra).
I'm surprised you say that you don't know any nihilist philosophers; surely you cannot mean "know of"? There certainly seem to be many nihilistically minded 'would-be' philosophers on philosophy forums. I have toyed with the standpoint myself at times.
I think a nihilist would be correct to reject "the existence of impersonal values" . It doesn't seem to make sense to say that values exist apart from being held.
From this it follows that if I want to say there are inherent values then I must acknowledge that there can be no impersonal nature. Of course this does not mean that nature is a person!
I agree with you that our pleasures and pains cannot be "valueless and meaningless". For a start pain is, just in and of itself, undesirable, which means it is, if there can be no mitigating factors, inherently of no value or even of negative value, to us. The obverse holds for pleasure.
We cannot measure the balance of pain and pleasure unless there is some other criterion (value) by means of which to measure. So nihilism and the radical hedonism which follow from it fail as philosophical standpoints due to incoherency. That has been the precise point of my argument.
You're right, I put that a bit carelessly. I think nihilism is a strong tendency in today's thinking (as Nietszche correctly predicted). But I was referring to philosophers who systematically advocate nihilism - I suppose I am aware of some from the forums, but I don't see a lot of point in trying to debate about them, as I think that it really is an affective disorder rather than a philosophy as such.
(Although I do recall, when attending lectures on Hindu philosophy, the Hindu saying that 'it's a greater misfortune to be born than to die'. That might be interpreted as 'anti-natalism'; but the rationale is different, because it is set against the idea of moksha, liberation, as an overall ethical and spiritual aim, rather than as an acknowledgement of the essential meaninglessness of life.)
Collective personal values may make an impersonal value. Impersonal values tend to describe states of affairs: if you have to pick between scenario A that has 10 people experiencing great pleasure and scenario B which has 20 people experiencing great pleasure, it is clear that scenario B is impersonally better than scenario A. There seems to be a value to collective personal values.
So the nihilist might say that there is no difference between the two states. The anti-realist would merely have to say there is no objective difference in value between the states. The nihilist, though, being an anti-realist, would have to not only presume that there is no objective difference but also argue that they feel no motivation to pick scenario B over scenario A.
The trouble with value nihilism is that the nihilist still has to make a decision. And unless they're going to make decisions at random and without any deliberation, their nihilism starts to fall apart.
The other day I was listening to an online reading of a lecture delivered by Steiner entitled: The Principle of Spiritual Economy In Connection With Questions of Reincarnation.
Steiner says that the spiritual significance of the Golgotha event is that it brings the highest spiritual truth to humanity: the truth that the physical world and all its events no matter how trivial is a manifestation of the spiritual world, and that nothing that is gained in life is lost at death. That, he says, is the esoteric truth of the Incarnation, the Crucifixion and the Resurrection. This is a spiritual truth, according to Steiner, which necessarily comes after and goes beyond the Four Noble Truths of 'life as suffering'.
Steiner makes what would generally be considered to be very radical claims about the complex nature of reincarnation, dealing with multiples copies of the great sage's and avatar's etheric, astral and egoic bodies, claims which he says may be substantiated by reading from the Akashic Records. He supports the notion of intuitive spiritual knowledge, the idea that we all have access to these 'truths' if only we are open to them. I remain somewhat skeptically open, but I do find his ideas strangely fascinating. His Philosophy of Freedom is also an interesting read in the context of German Idealism.
Sorry I don't have time to respond further right now; but I will just question the idea that "collective personal values" could rightly be considered 'impersonal'. I guess you mean they are impersonal in the sense that they are 'outside' or 'beyond' the individual; but, even if that were true, I don't think that warrants calling them 'impersonal'.
But notice the binary you set up. I can understand the general claim that, under nihilism, nothing can matter except to the individual, but this need not entail that what matters to the individual is pain or pleasure. One can act out of self interest without acting in the interest of obtaining pleasure or avoiding pain, it seems to me. Then again, perhaps this is impossible. I'm not sure.
Maybe a good question to ask is whether egoism is the same as hedonism.
I'm not sure if harming oneself out of self-interest is even coherent. Surely, we can go through some tough times for the greater good, the overall goal, but that's still self-interest. Even a masochist who gives themselves pain is still doing something they want to be done (even if this is not the best thing for them, something a nihilist would reject since it's an impersonal value).
But surely this underlines the binary I just pointed out, that there is a difference between acting out of self-interest and acting due to pleasure/pain calculi, as the hedonist would have it.
What I feel John might do, which perhaps is what you are trying to do, is to say that acting out of self-interest is inherently hedonic in a broader sense than the physical, such that the masochist, for example, may feel physical pain, but he nonetheless feels some (abstract) pleasure in harming himself. I'm not sure about this.
Our tendency to equate our ethics with pleasure and pain with ethics is really tied to the ethical/unethical world is joyful/hurts. Sometimes to the point where pain of the body hurts less than seeing a world destroyed by immorality. Self interest and desires are themselves a manifestation of pleasure/pain and impossible to avoid in holding an ethical consciousness. To suggest other is to pose someone can care about ethics without feeling a sense of justice/injustice.
In other words, the value is equal to the personal pleasure minus the personal suffering (which is multiplied by a certain constant, since suffering is more pressing than pleasure), minus the net suffering caused by the individual on other persons (multiplied by the same constant), in which pleasure and suffering are measured by intensity, duration, and likelihood of happening. The amount of pleasure the individual causes other people is left out, since it can lead to instrumentalizing the individual.
In the case of the maschoist, this is not true. The pain of the forces on the body is something ethically joyful, not painful. Their body might hurt under force, but's that's actually good (ethically joyful) to them.
Trying to box them into one or the other doesn't work and drags us away from describing what is important: the particular instance of a person in pain and what that entails. Instead of viewing each instance of pain as it's own thing (e.g. the pain of being hit, the ethical pain of being hit, etc.,etc.), as we should, we end up trying to prescribe what people can feel and ignoring what they do.
Yes, but the exception of the masochist seems to contradict this. Are you saying that he may feel bodily (what I would call physical) pain but nonetheless have a different than normal psychological reaction to it? What would that reaction be?
In this context, there is no standard of "normal" reaction or otherwise. Each person just feels what they feel. Whether we call this a psychological reaction or physical reaction doesn't matter. There is a bodily pain and ethical joy, and both a response/presence of a mind and body.
I'm still not getting this distinction. What and where is "ethical pain/pleasure?"
The hurt/joy we experience upon encountering a world which as it ought not/ought to be.
The idea I am proposing is that what matters to the individual on the most basic animal level is the avoidance of pain and the seeking of pleasure. Anything that is of interest to the individual beyond that is of interest either because it leads to a pleasurable feeling or avoids a painful feeling (however attenuated away from simple physical sensations those feelings might be, for example it might be the self-satisfaction of obtaining a doctorate or making millions or the pain felt while watching your house burn with all your worldly possessions, or seeing a loved one slowly become ever more fragile as a result of a debilitating terminal illness).
But the salient point is that what makes those more elaborated pursuits and situations joyous or sorrowful must be the acceptance of values which embody some conception of what is beautiful, true or good, or on the other hand, what is ugly, false and evil; values which are well outside of the simplistic animal ambit of 'pleasure/pain'.
So, for example, the masochist may enjoy pain because he feels that he is somehow unacceptable, not good enough, deserving of punishment and so on. And that desire to punish the self because of its unworthiness may become connected with sexual desire.
As the popular Divinyl's song would have it: "It's a fine line between pleasure and pain".
If I have understood, then that is just what Willow means by "ethical pain/ pleasure":
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
I don't think egoism is always coterminous with hedonism, unless you broaden the latter term to cover all self-interested pursuits whatsoever.
The immoral/moral world is not immoral/moral because it painful/pleasurable. It's painful/pleasurable because it's immoral/moral. A question not of what is morally sought after or how ethics are justified, but how we are affected.
A masochist does not necessarily need think they need to be punished. Some might, the ethical victory of delivering oneself just punishment is certainly ethical pleasurable. But others just happen to feel pleasure at certain instances of pain. That is beautiful enough on it's own to give to some people ethical pleasure.
I would certainly agree that egoism and hedonism are functionally inadequate if not incoherent. But in any case the little I said regarding a possible connection between them was not addressed to anything you had said.
So, I certainly would not wish to say that people should be said to be acting morally or immorally on the basis of whether they are experiencing pleasure or pain. I don't want to say that morality/ immorality is contingent upon pleasure/pain, in other words. The whole point of the OP implies a movement away from any such idea, as far as I can see. If this idea follows from anything I have said then I will be pleased to be corrected.
Now, the obverse idea that things are painful/pleasurable insofar as they are moral/ immoral I am more sympathetic with; although I certainly don't agree that this formulation is universally true. Many simple things which are pleasurable or painful are simply morally neutral, as far as I can tell.
Also, in regard to masochists, I didn't say they must think they need to be punished, I said the masochist may enjoy pain because he feels that he should be punished. The Divinyl's quote that I endorsed also implies that pain shades into pleasure, regardless of any considerations about morality or psychologically based desires to be punished, so of course I will agree that Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
I suppose I get this. We're still talking about what the nihilist is committed to, right?
Quoting John
And this is a problem for the nihilist, as you see it, correct?
I might question what you mean by nihilism. Ethical nihilists deny meaning to moral terms. Someone who assigns meaning to moral terms, but does not consider there to be any such thing as intrinsic moral worth, need not be a nihilist.
Yes, exactly.
Quoting Thorongil
Yes, the problem for the nihilist is that, because of her rejection of any objective values of truth, beauty and goodness, she has no way of explaining why pursuits or situations where the joy or suffering involved in them is well beyond mere sensory pleasure and pain, should be joyful or sorrowful.
Now she might say that while there are no objective values there are subjective values, but the problem with this is that if we genuinely believed values were merely subjective, then they would be seen as utterly arbitrary and would have no power to compel, or even persuade, us to adhere to them. So, we must be committed to the belief that values are objective in order to take them seriously at all. Therefore we are logically committed to the belief that there objective values, even if we are unable to say precisely what their objectivity consists in.
So, if an ethical nihilist denies there is any meaning to moral terms, are they not merely denying that there is any objective meaning; and would this not be the same as to say that they are inconsistently denying there are any objective values? If so, then I say their denial is inconsistent, because they are recommending that we should believe as they do, which is implicitly to claim that there is some normative (i.e. objective) value that should compel our adherence; at least in this instance.
On the other hand if someone "assigns meaning to moral terms" is this not to acknowledge that there are objective meanings as opposed to merely subjective meanings, since otherwise their position would be indistinguishable from the "ethical nihilist's"? If so, then it would seem to be inconsistent for them to claim that there is no such thing as "intrinsic moral worth".
Perhaps the nihilist would say, I too live in the same world, speak the same language, but I choose to be ruled by the avoidance of pain and the pursuit of pleasure...I call these good and bad as experiential categories. As a nihilist I do not accept any non-experiential categories, beyond what is pleasurable or painful. Value for the nihilist seems to be more like instinctive attraction/repulsion, attracted to the pleasant and repulsed from the painful, not essentially a cognitive reaction. The fact that these categories pleasure/good, pain/bad can be applied to more complex behaviors does not detract from their origins.
My question concerns the quantification of pleasure and pain. Are pains and pleasures additive, accumulative in some manner, or is this some sort of temporal bias. Is a life that is 80% pleasurable better (quantitatively) than a life that is 50% pleasurable? Suppose the life that is 80% more pleasurable only lasts 20 years and the one that is 50% pleasurable lasts 80 years. I suppose a similar approach is possible if the nihilist say that pleasures and pains are qualitative.
It seems to me that in denying meaning to moral terms, they deny it in an objective and subjective sense. Hedonism, as an ethical position that does think moral terms are meaningful (in a subjective sense), would be something the nihilist would deny. So I think your target is actually hedonism, not nihilism.
On the other hand, if moral nihilism is the view that rejects "intrinsic" value, but not necessarily the meaning of moral terms, then would this be the same as what you mean by "objective?" If so, one could deny that there is intrinsic moral worth and yet still hold to moral objectivity. The latter would be to claim, so far as I am aware, that ethical statements are not relative. If X is wrong, then it is wrong everywhere and for all time. I think one could hold to this and yet claim that there is no intrinsic moral worth, for the word "intrinsic" points to something that ought to be pursued for its own sake. Moral objectivism is thus a metaethical position, whereas the notion of intrinsic value applies to normative ethics.
Yes, if the nihilist truly believed there were no inherent values at all ( including pleasure and pain) then he or she would say that life is simply neutral. But it is mostly impossible to be genuinely indifferent to pleasure and pain, so I think where the hedonic element necessarily comes in, even for the most ardent (sic) nihilist is that pleasure and pain, irrespective of any other considerations, are naturally imbued with value by all humans due to their incapacity to be indifferent to them and their capacity for reflection. We observe everywhere that the animal unreflectively gravitates towards the pleasant and away from the unpleasant.
So, all other values may be thought by the nihilist to be arbitrary, but our primordial concerns about pleasure and displeasure cannot genuinely be so thought. If the distress caused in the nihilist by her (for her, necessarily inculcated and hence irrational) desire that the meaningless world be somehow meaningful, causes sufficient distress to interfere with the 'normal' balance of unreflective pleasure and displeausre, then she may become an obsessive seeker of ever more extreme pleasures to fill the gnawing hole opened by her distress, or she may become a masochist in an attempt to subvert pain, or she may lose all interest in life and simply fade into states of ennui, anhedonia and/or overwhelming despair leading to suicide.
I think it is impossible to quantify pleasure and pain without assuming some value extrinsic to them, which provides the criteria used to carry out the quantification. Since all other values are relative to beliefs, worldviews or intuitions based on values other than pleasure/displeasure, then quantifications of pleasure and pain can only make sense within various ethical paradigms, and not at all in their own terms. I think the same could probably be said for any qualitative approach.
I think my response to Cavacava should clarify my position further and may answer your questions here.
I found it difficult to understand exactly what your objection here is, but just to touch on a couple of points which may make my perplexity clearer:
I don't know what it could mean to "deny meaning to moral terms in a subjective sense". Would that be to deny that people believe they mean something when they make moral statements or claims?
I don't understand how "moral nihilism" could be a position that "rejects "intrinsic" value, but not necessarily the meaning of moral terms", unless by that you mean "subjective meaning of moral terms". Are you asking here whether by intrinsic, I would mean objective? (Your next sentence seems to contradict this interpretation, though!) If so the answer is 'yes', but by intrinsic or objective I am not invoking any idea that values exist somehow 'out there in the physical world".
You say that moral objectivity claims that ethical statements are not relative, where not-being-relative is understood in terms of the formulation: "If X is wrong, then it is wrong everywhere and for all time". I don't agree with that and would say that both what is intrinsically valuable and what is objectively moral (which for me are themselves equivalent) may evolve or be otherwise context-dependent, and so would not necessarily be "everywhere and for all time". The point is that they would always be dependent on objective contexts and not arbitrary subjective opinion.
Why do you say that?
Also, one may be either an ardent hedonist; one who positively, even passionately, affirms the value of a life of pleasure-seeking, or a hedonist by default; one who resignedly resorts to mere pleasure because life can have no other value for him or her due to his or her nihilistic disposition.
It's also questionable whether pleasure is universally valued. There's a certain sense in which that's true, but it has to be carefully worded -- there's a sense in which the experiences creatures have are such that these experiences present pleasure as intrinsically valuable. To deny this would seem not to know what 'pleasure' means (in other words, 'pleasant' is synonymous with 'feels good,' meaning that our feelings present the pleasant as good, and must do so, or it wouldn't be pleasant). But it seems that someone could very well hold an opinion at odds with their own experiences, and deny those experiences had any grasp on the truth. Although our experiences present pleasure as valuable, we might nonetheless deny that pleasure actually is valuable, by saying our senses can't arbitrate these things. This in fact seems to me what a nihilist must say, on pain of contradiction.
In other words, pleasure is intrinsically valuable in the court of our experiences, but those experiences can always simply be denied as irrelevant, misguided or illusory. I don't think that's a smart position to take, but then, neither is nihilism.
I think that people all (or even almost universally) valuing something is precisely the only possible ground for claiming that something is objectively valuable.
Also, I think that the claim that there are no objective values other than the sensory pleasures of the individual would certainly qualify as one form of moral nihilism.
Quoting The Great Whatever
Yes, our experiences can be "denied as irrelevant, misguided or illusory", but any such denial presupposes objective values beyond pleasure/pain, and could never be a position coherently held by an avowed nihilist.
Of course, I am not arguing that nihilism is correct, or even coherent, and certainly not that it is smart.
Not at all. Just because everyone values x, doesn't mean x is valuable. They can simply all be wrong. There are plenty of things in history that nearly everyone has been in agreement about and were demonstrably wrong about.
Quoting John
That would be a form of hedonism, which seems on its face to be incompatible with nihilism, in that the former endorses and the latter denies some sort of intrinsic value.
Quoting John
I don't see why. The experiences could be denied as relevant without supposing that some other set of values would have to take their place.
The converse to this is where just an individual or a few individuals, usually under the influence of some arbitrary belief system, think an act or attitude is right or wrong in which case it is merely a contingent (subjective) opinion.
In general, the inference scheme 'everyone thinks x' to 'x' is invalid. People having an opinion doesn't make the opinion so. If everyone believes the world is flat, it's still round.
I think John is more concerned with the method of finding truth. Or, in this case, estimating truth. I don't think he's going to deny that group agreement is fallible. It's just that group consensus is the best thing we have going for us, as well as keeping the door open for any changes.
Actually I wasn't saying that at all.
Second of all, even if this held, the relevant moral fact would be the wrongness of murder, which is no more or less mysterious than any empirical fact. There is also no imaginable state of affairs that confirms or denies any 'factual' proposition (as the Skeptics have shown us), but for some reason people treat values as if they are different. This is in my opinion simply a prejudice -- empirical facts and value facts are equally inapprehensible, and it makes no sense to countenance one while being suspicious of the other, if you have any epistemological scruples at all.
Third of all, your position leads into obvious contradictions in that people can disagree, even unanimously disagree at different times, over what the relevant values are, which would mean that you'd be committed to affirming various contradictions, unless you adopt some sort of relativism about values by means of which they're constituted by whatever people (or most of people, I guess?) happen to believe at the time / place. But then this seems to conflate what people think with what is, which shows a basic misunderstanding of how belief works, that even the people who espouse the values you're looking at wouldn't agree with. That is, they would say they believe because it's so, not that it's so because they believe (and life would be quite convenient, don't you think, if we could make valuable whatever we wanted to just through consensus -- why not just all agree that whatever happens to us is valuable or good, and so solve all problems forever? Of course, because it doesn't work that way).
Finally, even if everything you said was true, this would go exactly no way to establishing that universal approval of some value does anything to establish that approval as right-headed.
I'm not assuming any "controversial principle of verification as if it obvious" I am just arguing for what I see as the only possible discursive or intersubjective justification of moral principles; that they are more or less universally believed. I think it is fair to say that the fact that ( at least almost) everyone believes in certain moral principles reflects the fact that they are in accordance with human moral intuitions.
The only possible discursive or intersubjective justification of an empirical belief is also that it is more or less universally believed.
In the case of morals the beliefs are based on moral intuition, in the empirical case on adequate observation. I am not, in either domain, arguing for infallibility, but to say, as you do that there is no difference between moral beliefs based on moral intuitions and empirical beliefs based on observations is just plain wrong. Observation is obviously subject to a different set of conditions than intuition is.
What do you think the skeptics have shown us except that our beliefs cannot be deductively certain? The certainty of empirical beliefs can only be relative, because they are contingent on observation, The certainty of moral beliefs is only as good as the intuitions they are based upon. I am not arguing for deductive certainty, so the skeptics' findings are irrelevant here.
You say that people can "disagree, even unanimously disagree at different times" over moral principles. Can you give me any examples from history of cultures wherein the people unanimously agreed that, in general, murder, rape, child torture or sexual exploitation, or even theft, dishonesty, cowardice, disloyalty or refusal to work and contribute to the life of the community were OK practices within their own culture?
I am not conflating "what people think with what is" either. In the empirical context it is obvious that what people think is what has been observed to be the case. Generally people cannot be wrong about their consensual observations such as that the sun is shining, the leaves are beginning to fall, the snows have come, it is windy today and countless other such common observations. When it comes to the flatness of the Earth, or the nature of the heavens, these are a different class of observations which may be improved upon, so that earlier observations may be contradicted by later ones. The general observation that the Earth is flat may be contradicted, but the general observation that the sun is shining cannot be contradicted unless the objective conditions change.
No analogy with this possibility of future contradictions exists in relation to the broadest moral principles regarding murder, theft, honesty and so on. But such things are ultimately determined by context; so perhaps in extremis it could be said that possibly there could be a society in which murder, theft, dishonesty, disloyalty, and unlimited sexual exploitation were universally considered to be right and just; but this would be a society based solely on the principle that might is absolutely right, and only the mightiest would want to live in such a society, so it could never be viable at all. It is actually highly implausible that even in such a necessarily short-lived 'society' any but the mightiest, the exploiters, murderers, thieves, rapists and so on, would think their behavior was just, that is morally right.
In reference to your final sentence; what could it possibly mean to say that disapproval of murder, child torture, dishonesty, cowardice and so on could be "wrong-headed"? What alternative standards could you offer to support such a contention, and on the basis of what could you justify them?
Anyway the thread seems to have moved considerably away from the OP, but that's OK; I'm all for unfettered organic evolution within discussions, as long as it doesn't move away from significant relevance, however tenuous.
Well, then your imagination isn't very good. I don't think this is even a plausible lay account of how these things work. Moral principles don't become true in virtue of people believing them, and by and large no one thinks they can make them true by getting everyone to believe them. Presumably, people want to believe in moral principles or values because they're right or valuable, not vice-versa, and I'm not sure how the notion of a value is coherent otherwise.
Quoting John
But that's simply false. Again, if everyone believes the earth is flat, it's still round. And a way better justification for this is, say, looking at it from a distance and seeing what shape it is, not asking everyone what shape it is. They try to believe what is true, rather than trying to make true what is believed. I mean, to even consider this plausible makes a hash of the notion of any sort of inquiry other than survey taking, and of any attempt at advancement besides opinion-changing.
Quoting John
Observations are just certain kinds of intuitions -- we have certain feelings and then draw conclusions from them. What is the difference? Those feelings don't justify anything outside of themselves.
Quoting John
The Skeptics have shown, not that such beliefs cannot be certain, but that thus far no means has been proposed to show that any one is any more likely than any other.
Quoting John
First off, this doesn't matter, because what you're committed to is actually far stronger -- you must believe that no community, past, present, or future, nor any possible community, could ever hold inverse values. This is what you must say if you think consensus is somehow what is required, or definitive of, the correctness of values. What's more, you have the same problem on a smaller scale so long as any two people, ever, at any time, have any value disagreement, even within a community. So providing examples isn't necessary, since your argument is flawed in a way that makes examples irrelevant. But even if it weren't, sure, people vary widely on whether it is okay to kill infants or the old, what constitutes rape versus use of one's property, whether torture is acceptable, what counts as theft and whether it's appropriate (see, taxation), and so on. To suggest otherwise is just profoundly sheltered.
Quoting John
Of course they can. What a bizarre claim. Suppose we discovered the sun was a visual artifact and not a real object. Then we would have been very, very wrong about it.
Quoting John
That's not at all clear, and in any case, this could mean any number of things.
Quoting John
If it turns out those things are acceptable. Every decade people decide that things that were once deemed acceptable are now unacceptable and vice-versa. These people are not, and do not see themselves as, literally changing what is right and wrong by changing their opinion, but changing their opinion in light of a new moral sensibility and so discovering or taking seriously new moral truths. This is how they think of and present their motivations, and their desire to change them makes little sense otherwise.
Also, don't give me this dismissive crap. If you don't have answers, then just cop to it. All my points are targeted directly at what you say and refute your central points. It's not like anyone's going to believe you if you just claim nothing is being said.
Ultimately, the approach of tying ethics to popular opinion disrespects the objectivity of subjectivity. It treats the world and its people like they are devoid of ethical significance. Ethics is turned into a sort of recreation which is only about making a majority happy, as if it were a trival pursuit papered over the top of insignificant lives.
It's like Unitarianism, only with a standard of "what most people think," even if it results in destruction which makes many very miserable indeed.
OK, great... whatever...if you have no cogent objections or examples, but just vague assertions and implied put downs....or else...
Quoting The Great Whatever
give me some (relevant to the actual argument) examples of these "plenty of things" for analysis, or answer the challenge I offered in the last post you responded to, or give a decent argument to support your contention that there is no substantial difference between moral intuitions and empirical observation.
In short, provide anything that would constitute an intelligent response, instead of practicing evasion by attempting to dismiss my challenge to you to offer an imaginable alternative to what I had proposed as "dismissive crap". Do something like that if you want me to take you seriously as a discussant. Otherwise...not so great...whatever...
It is simply not plausible that people generally would ever think revenge attacks or genocide are a good thing. The society we have today reflects what people predominately have thought over time.
What I have been saying has nothing to do with "popular opinion" but with the most general moral intuitions.
But more to the point, what is possible matters too. Even if no-one had believed such acts were moral, it would still be a possibile outcome. If people were to think a cycle of revenge kill was good, then it would be-- clearly a contradiction with what is ethical.
Not demonstrably wrong at all, and nor have you demonstrated it to be wrong. Some people may have thought revenge killings, per example, to be a good idea; and groups within society may have been embroiled in clan conflicts involving ongoing revenge killings, but that fact, even if true, would by no means demonstrate that nearly everyone or even a majority of people in those societies thought that revenge killing was a good idea.
What it is (presumably logically) possible for people to think is utterly irrelevant; what is relevant is the empirical fact as to whether historically most people have thought that such acts as murder, theft, lying, betrayal and so on are morally wrong, because if it is so, that fact could be said to represent a natural human moral intuition.
Of course, I am not saying that this can be applied to things such as wearing a hijab, bowing before the queen, gay marriage, transvestitism, transexualism and so on, because all those sorts of things that might be wrongly supposed to be moral issues are really not important moral issues at all but matters of mere custom, and it is important for the freedom of those who wish to practice or refuse to practice such mere customs that that they be recognized as such, and that it be recognized that they have no genuine moral significance.