The Subjectivity of Moral Values
First, I am going to stipulate what 'objective' and 'subjective' will mean in this thread. Something is 'subjective' when it exists as subjective states - that is, as states of mind. If you don't agree, that's fine -but that's how the word is being used here.
So 'pain' would be a classic example of something that is subjective in this sense of the term. Pain is a feeling and feelings are subjective states - they exist in subjects and nowhere else. So, if you feel in pain, then necessarily you are in pain.
Saying that something is 'subjective' does not mean denying its existence (or affirming it). It is to say something about its mode of existence. So, when I say that "pain is subjective" I am neither affirming nor denying the reality of pain. I am saying that what it would take for some pain to exist is for some subjective states - the ones constitutive of pain - to exist (which in turn requires that there exists a subject - a mind - whose states they are).
Saying something is 'objective', by contrast, means saying that it exists as something other than states of a subject.
The external material world is, most assume, 'objective' in this sense of the term (which is why we often call it 'the objective physical world'). that is, most assume that it exists outside of their mind - indeed, outside of all minds.
Some dispute this. Most famously George Berkeley, who argued that the external world exists as mental states in the mind of a god. But that's why Berkeley is described as a 'subjectivist' about the external world. A subjectivist about the external world believes the external world is made of subjective states (albeit, in Berkeley's case anyway, of an external mind). An objectivist about the external world believes the material world exists outside of all minds.
Applied to moral values: an objectivist believes that moral values - so moral goodness and badness - exist, if they exist, outside of minds. Our minds give us some awareness of moral values, just as our minds give us some awareness of tables and chairs. But the moral values, like the tables and chairs, exist extra-mentally (if they exist at all).
Subjectivists about moral values believe that moral values exist as subjective states, if or when they exist.
I think moral values are demonstrably subjective. Here is my simple argument:
1. For something to be morally valuable is for it to be being valued.
2. Only a subject can value something
3. Therefore, for something to be morally valuable is for it to be being valued by a subject.
So 'pain' would be a classic example of something that is subjective in this sense of the term. Pain is a feeling and feelings are subjective states - they exist in subjects and nowhere else. So, if you feel in pain, then necessarily you are in pain.
Saying that something is 'subjective' does not mean denying its existence (or affirming it). It is to say something about its mode of existence. So, when I say that "pain is subjective" I am neither affirming nor denying the reality of pain. I am saying that what it would take for some pain to exist is for some subjective states - the ones constitutive of pain - to exist (which in turn requires that there exists a subject - a mind - whose states they are).
Saying something is 'objective', by contrast, means saying that it exists as something other than states of a subject.
The external material world is, most assume, 'objective' in this sense of the term (which is why we often call it 'the objective physical world'). that is, most assume that it exists outside of their mind - indeed, outside of all minds.
Some dispute this. Most famously George Berkeley, who argued that the external world exists as mental states in the mind of a god. But that's why Berkeley is described as a 'subjectivist' about the external world. A subjectivist about the external world believes the external world is made of subjective states (albeit, in Berkeley's case anyway, of an external mind). An objectivist about the external world believes the material world exists outside of all minds.
Applied to moral values: an objectivist believes that moral values - so moral goodness and badness - exist, if they exist, outside of minds. Our minds give us some awareness of moral values, just as our minds give us some awareness of tables and chairs. But the moral values, like the tables and chairs, exist extra-mentally (if they exist at all).
Subjectivists about moral values believe that moral values exist as subjective states, if or when they exist.
I think moral values are demonstrably subjective. Here is my simple argument:
1. For something to be morally valuable is for it to be being valued.
2. Only a subject can value something
3. Therefore, for something to be morally valuable is for it to be being valued by a subject.
Comments (1222)
1. For something to be morally valuable is for it to be being valued. (That is, being morally valuable must involve featuring as the object of a valuing relation - it is to be the object of a valuing)
2. Only a subject can value something (anything can be valued, but only subjects are capable of doing any valuing)
3. Therefore, for something to be morally valuable is for it to be being valued by a subject.
That is the argument that refutes all objectivist views - or so I believe (and I would run the same argument for moral prescriptions - so the whole show, moral values and moral norms, are the values and norms of a subject). I don't think it is the only way to refute them - I think the Euthyphro does too - but it is sufficient.
Then I take some arguments that the objectivists standardly use to refute subjectivist views, and use them to refute all bar one subjectivist view: the view that moral norms and values are the norms and values of one subject, Reason.
Possibly that is why so many are finding me a bit bewildering. I am using the other side's weapons.
That is the premise I think I would disagree with, for the same (or at least an analogous) reason that I disagree with Berkeley's principle that "to be is to be perceived". Yet like Berkeley I am also a radical empiricist: I don't think there is anything to reality besides the observable properties of things. Observation is a "subjective" relationship just like valuing is, but nevertheless I still hold that there is an objective reality. That's because I think there's a difference between something being observable, and something being observed; and also a difference between observation and perception.
I take an analogous approach to morality. I would break down "valuing"-like attitudes into three types -- intentions, desires, and appetites -- that are analogous to belief, perception, and sensation (or observation), and say that just as reality consists in whatever satisfies all observations (but not necessarily all perceptions or all beliefs, and it continues to be real even if no observation is actively happening), likewise morality consists in whatever satisfies all appetites (but not necessarily all desires or all intentions, and it continues to be moral even if no appetites are actively happening). That is "subjective" in the sense that you use in the OP, but still "objective" in the sense that there is single common unbiased truth that in principle everyone could agree upon following sufficient investigation via the correct methods. Just like the scientific view of reality.
I recently wrote about this view in more detail in my essay On Teleology, Purpose, and the Objects of Morality, which you will find refers back to my earlier essays Against Nihilism and Against Transcendentalism for most of its support.
I have a lot of time for Berkeley, but I don't think he subscribed to that principle. He does not say that 'to be' in general is to be perceived, only that the objects of sense are made of sensations and thus that the objects of sense cannot exist objectively (he says of them - of trees and such like - that their essence is to be perceived, but he does not claim that it is the essence of everything that exists to be perceived). For instance, he does not believe that minds themselves exist subjectively, for minds are not objects of sense.
But anyway, you are quite right that my principle is similar, namely that to be valuable is to be being valued. However, I do not see - not yet, anyway - on what rational basis you are rejecting it (or Berkeley's principle - but I put that aside).
I am a valuer. Valuing things is something I can - and do - do. Those things I value can correctly be said to be 'valuable to me'.
When we talk about something being 'morally valuable' what reason is there to think that we are not talking about something being 'valuable' in exactly the same sense in which something that is 'valuable' to me is valuable - namely, valuable by being the object of a valuing attitude?
On the basis of contemporary philosophical developments which transcend 'classical'logic', your 'argument' has been consigned it to the 'folk psychology/philosophy bin'.
You're reifying Reason, even going so far as to call it a she.
I can understand why though. You need a subject for moral values. However you deny subjecthood to humans because just the simple act of valuing something doesn't make something morally valuable. According to you there has to be Reason.
To prevent further needless repetition can you kindly define Reason and god. Thanks.
Yeah, that's valid, like your other superman example.
Where have a denied subjecthood to humans?? That's total nonsense. You're a subject. I am a subject. We're humans. We're subjects.
No, I am not defining 'God' as I didn't mention God. And Reason is the subject whose values are moral values and whose prescriptions are the prescriptions of Reason, a subset of which are moral prescriptions. That's what the argument establishes.
To prevent further needless repetition just follow the argument.
So this argument:
Quoting Bartricks
Is valid. Right. And that is my argument. That. Is. My. Argument. Note, to be loved is to be the object of an attitude. To be morally valuable is to be the object of a valuing attitude - that's what my first argument established. Then the thesis under consideration was whether I could be the valuer whose values constitute moral values. That is the thesis my argument was addressing - and refuting.
Here:
1. If being morally valuable is one and the same as being valued by me, then if I value something necessarily it is morally valuable
2. If I value something it is not necessarily morally valuable
3. Therefore, being morally valuable is not one and the same as being valued by me.
And that argument works for any subset of my values. And it works for your valuing attitudes too. All of them, and any subset.
Premise 1 can just as accurately be expressed this way:
1. If moral values are my values, then if I value something necessarily it is morally valuable.
That's the same exact premise.
The argument is valid, then. And it is sound. And it refutes all subjectivist views bar mine.
But no-one claims that: Quoting Bartricks
That would imply me liking cats more than dogs is a moral stance, but it clearly isn't. What this argument establishes is trivial.
No, because premise 2 doesn't work for those subsets.
Edit: which is to say the justification for premise 2 would be a matter for debate, defeating the purpose of the argument.
Quoting Mww
I want you to keep the above in mind. It is the standard by which we now compare my report of what happened with yours. That's what's in question. You are claiming that what I reported as your words were not your words. You then offer your own report on what you said earlier, and it is guilty of exactly what you're charging me with.
Very odd. Look for yourself...
Quoting Mww
This strikes me as very very problematic.
No, any and all subsets. It works for them all. Try it.
Ok:
1. If being morally valuable is one and the same as being morally valuable to me, then if I morally value something necessarily it is morally valuable
2. If something is morally valuable to me, it is not necessarily morally valuable
3. Therefore, being morally valuable is not one and the same as being morally valued by me.
Premise 2 requires justification, as it is essentially what you mean to establish, i.e that me valuing something as a moral value is not sufficient to establish it's moral value.
1. Humans valuing something doesn't make that thing moral
2. Therefore humans are NOT the subjects of moral values
3. Reason determine moral value
4. Reason = god, a she the subject of moral values
The above is your argument.
Now, if this she-god is a person having her own will the question that arises is:
Is moral value determined by what this she-god likes/dislikes or by reason?
If moral value is determined by what this she-god likes/dislikes then you contradict your claim 3 above. If you say moral value is reason-based then this she-god is unnecessary.
Euthyphro dilemma!!!
@Echarmion is already following this exact same line of argument. I won't bother duplicating unless I think I have something different to add. The subset of my values which I would identify with moral values are my moral values (ie those values which relate to the treatment of others particularly where I value their welfare). This is as any subjectivist would, but I don't even agree with your definition of morality as a set of values in the first place, I'm a virtue ethicist, so I'm already having to talk hypothetically to fit your axioms.
I already answered that. With examples.
Quoting Isaac
Quoting Terrapin Station
I already answered that too.
Quoting Isaac
Your latest question was
Quoting Terrapin Station
So I answered that too.
Quoting Isaac
Then you start in with...
Quoting Terrapin Station
...in response. Hence my reasonable assumption that things had got a bit heated.
Now, do you have a question that I haven't already answered, or is there some answer I've given that you find unsatisfactory?
You seem to be using value intransitively thinking that it is independent from a subject and then using value transitively, justifying subjective, thinking it 'refutes all subjectivist views bar mine' if the argument is valid, which is just baffling. Logic is a great tool for rational discourse and so is a hammer a great tool, but I don't think everything is a nail!
Yeah typing all them symbols out is tiresome but, like yourself probably, I read what seems as @Bartricks nay-saying all talk of semantics and so I decided to tackle the syntactic of his arguments but this seems of no use either. :sad:
You are correct about the spatial ordering of the words of the statement. I asked you to be aware of a temporal order.
I apologize for not making it understood I meant the temporal order native to the statement to reference the cognizant temporal order the terms of the statement represent.
If that makes no difference, we can either drop it, or you might explain to me what is so damn problematic, and why it is so.
That's the problem because it is not true. Consider when one is thinking about one's own thought/belief. I know you come from a Kantian framework. Kant can't account for the distinction between thought/belief and thinking about thought/belief. Not a big deal.
Did I answer your initial question to your satisfaction?
On pg 24, my initial question was......
Quoting Mww
......and you answered.....
Quoting creativesoul
......then, sorry, no. Well......sorta. I understand you must define such a value before you could tell me what you think it is, and, subsequently, I must conceive the object you’ve defined in order to understand if I possess it.
Irrespective of a Kantian framework, I submit it is a natural condition of being human that there exists a sub-system of intrinsic values necessarily incorporated into the cognitive apparatus, and furthermore, its reality and my use of it can’t in any way be concerned with how I define it. And would I ever define it at all, if I had no occassion to talk about it? Why would I, when I already know all about it by acquaintance.
Which inevitably leads us to the crux: if I am already entirely familiar with the content of my rationality by my inescapable acquaintance with it, why in the hell do I have to think about it in terms of their respective definitions, which you explicate as “thinking about one’s own thought/belief”? Only in the telling, methinks, never in the doing.
So.....tell me all about the subjectivity of moral values. In 30 words or less.
I cannot conceive of a less trivial conclusion! I think you have no grip on what is and is not significant. You think laying waste every metaethical theory with five premises is nothing?!
No, as I have pointed out repeatedly, you have presupposed that by defining the terms accordingly. An objectivist maintains instead that some things are morally valuable by virtue of possessing intrinsic value, regardless of whether they are actually being valued by anyone.
Quoting Bartricks
No, I think that anyone who claims to have accomplished this is either joking or delusional.
All. Arguments. Make. Assumptions. The issue is whether those assumptions can reasonably be denied.
In the case of my argument, they can't. Which is, you know, kinda significant.
You talk about intrinsic value. So, er, 'moral' value, then! My argument is about what that value is - what it is made of. I know that some things are intrinsically morally valuable. Where have I denied that? I am showing what it is made of, not denying its existence.
For something to be intrinsically morally valuable is for it to be being valued for its own sake. There still needs to be a valuer. And the valuer is demonstrably not me or you. Same argument. Same conclusion.
Imagine I have said that cheese is made of milk. You say "ah, but Edam is cheese". Yes. I know. And it is made of milk.
You then say "ah, but those who deny that cheese is made of milk will deny that it is made of milk"
Yes, but I have this evidence that it is made of milk - it is demonstrably made of milk.
You: yes, but those who deny that cheese is made of milk will deny it.
on and on.
Anyway, you don't get to speak on behalf of others. Why assume that an objectivist will reject my argument?
two points.
A) why think they will? If they're proper philosophers and they cannot refute the arguments I have presented, then why think they'll stubbornly stick to their original thesis? You're assuming they're all like you. That is, so wed to their original view that they won't give it up for love nor money. But they may not be.
I used to be an objectivist about moral value. Then I discovered the arguments I have presented above. I could not refute them. I concluded that moral value is therefore subjective and that I had quite the wrong view about it.
Why think that objectivist moral philosophers won't do that?
B) Obviously - obviously - an objectivist must deny a premise of my argument. I mean, that's why the argument disproves objectivism!
Which one and on what basis? Don't just keep telling me about what an objectivist will or will not do. Put some skin in the game. Challenge a premise.
And don't think you're doing that by just mentioning intrinsic value. Again, intrinsic value is a kind of moral value and my argument is about every kind - every kind - of moral value.
Which premise do you deny?
Your last statement is incorrect. That is not the negation of Q. Statement Q is an inference - it is in the form
Notice that I am keeping the word necessarily in here, per your insistance,
In order to negate an inference (your Q) you need to negate the full inference, not just part of it. This means that
In plain language that translates to "It is not the case that if I value something, [then] necessarily it is morally valuable"
This is very different than "If I value something, it is not necessarily morally valuable". If you set up the truth tables you can verify this for yourself.
If you do not believe me or otherwise think I'm wrong, please google negating an inference and show me a logical framework that says otherwise.
Consider this premise: if I say something is true, it is not necessarily true.
Does that need justifying, in your view? No, it doesn't. It is obviously true - that is, its truth is manifest to reason.
imagine someone saying "ah, but what about a subset of things I say"
Okay - what subset? (And you can't invoke truth, of course, for that would be circular).
Identify the subset and let's test it.
Things you say on Saturday? Are things you say on Saturday 'necessarily' true just by dint of you saying them on Saturday? Nope.
And on and on.
Justifications have to come to an end, otherwise nothing will be justified. What is the appropriate stopping point? When you have found that your view is manifest to reason.
It is manifest to reason that this argument form is valid:
1. If P, then Q
2. Not Q
3. therefore not P.
Now, that does not mean it is valid. But it does mean that in terms of justifying our belief in its validity, its self-evidence suffices.
If someone held that that argument form is invalid, then they would have the burden of proof. They may be able to discharge it. But note, in discharging it they too would have to appeal to some self-evident truths of reason, including the self-evident truth of reason that contradictions cannot be true.
So the currency of arguments is self-evident truths of reason.
Premise 2 is self-evidently true.
You want to deny it. Be my guest. But provide an argument. That is, show me that the self-evident truth of 2 conflicts with some even more abundantly self-evident truth of reason.
No, for something to be intrinsically morally valuable is for it to have that property regardless of whether anyone actually values it at all.
Quoting Bartricks
No, there does not; that is what "intrinsic" means. Some things are morally valuable even if no one actually values them; i.e., even if no one ascribes the property of value to them. Likewise, the earth is round(ish) even if no one actually ascribes the property of roundness to it. In other words, the objectivist holds that there are real moral facts, much like real physical facts.
Quoting Bartricks
That indicates a lot more about you than about the arguments.
Quoting Bartricks
I have told you repeatedly--#1, since the intrinsic property of being morally valuable does not require actually being valued by anyone. When you begin by defining the terms in accordance with subjectivism, of course you wind up with a conclusion that affirms subjectivism.
The argument is valid, yes? Or do we have to go through this again. I don't know what a truth table is, but I do know not to trust what you say about arguments.
Now, in plain English, once more, is the argument I made valid? You have said that it is. Are you now changing that position - because I am getting fed up of having my premises either changed (and then told that the changed one means the argument is invalid) or being told a lot of technical stuff about arguments only to eventually have it turn out that my argument is valid.
You know how I test whether an argument is valid? I don't use symbols or truth tables or anything like that. I think about it. I use my reason.
Now, my argument is valid. Put brackets here there and everywhere, change where you put the word necessary - either you will be changing the meaning of my premise, in which case it is not the same argument you are assessing, or you're going to find that it is still valid. That's my bet. So far I have been winning my bet.
We can distinguish between subjective and objective intrinsic value. That is, the 'objective/subjective' distinction is orthogonal to the 'intrinsic' 'extrinsic' distinction. (Hence why you have begged the question).
To see this, forget moral values and focus instead on our valuing activity.
Some things are valuable as means. Money, for example. I value money, but not in and of itself (I could - some people do - but I don't). I value it because of what it can do for me. So for me money has value extrinsically.
And then there are some things that I value not as means, but just in themselves. I value them just because of what they are, rather than what they can do for me. that is, I value them in virtue of their intrinsic properties, rather than their extrinsic properties.
So, there are things I value extrinsically, and there are things I value intrinsically. And the former presupposes the latter - that is, to value anything extrinsically there would seem to need to be some things you value intrinsically that the things you value extrinsically are means to.
The distinction, then, between intrinsic value and extrinsic value is not a distinction between a valuing being objective or subjective, but between the nature of the valuing - that is, whether it is a valuing of something for its own sake, or a valuing of something for what it can achieve.
Thus, to insist that intrinsic moral value is 'objective' - to build that into the definition, when clearly we od not need to as we can distinguish between our own intrinsic and extrinsic valuings - is to beg the question.
It's obvious to me that the compendium of behaviours and attitudes we associate with the word 'morality' is a function of the forces which govern interelationships vital to humans as a cooperative species. Our understanding of those relationship vectors may have 'objective' genetic correlates in terms of survival value, and 'subjective' social correlates in terms of idiosyncratic variation of 'moral behaviour' within and between groups and individuals on different occasions. It is totally pointless to argue for the predominance of either side of the subjective-objective dichotomy on the basis of 'value', as value, like that of 'currency' depends on the shifting contexts of usage.
Obviously, the investors in the ongoing language games about this (the 'proper philosophers' :razz: ) will be annoyed by interruptions to their recreatIonal activity. Let them carry on by all means,...after all, they can always consign dissenters like me into the 'improper philosophy' polar region !
If someone did that - that is, actually did lay waste every metaethical theory bar one with five simple, self-evident premises - how would you tell?
If someone thinks they have won the lottery with 5 numbers, then the chances are very low that they have - probably a million to one or something.
Does that mean that if someone says they have won the lottery you are justified in disbelieving them?
if someone said "I am going to win the lottery tonite" then, I grant you, it is not reasonable - not remotely - to believe that they will, no matter what degree of confidence they have in the matter. For the odds are just too low.
But if someone says "I have won the lottery" and then shows you their ticket, and you can see that their ticket appears to have written on it the numbers that appear to have just been called on the lottery draw, then I think you are unreasonable if you continue to believe that they haven't just because the odds of that having happened were so low. Don't you? I mean, they appear to have won. They have all the marks of a winner.
Now, I have said that I have won the lottery. And I have outlined the five winning numbers - the five that, together, lead to something amazing (or 'trivial' if you are Happenstance). And I have asked you to check that they correspond to things reason says. And you have yet to point to any one of those numbers that does not correspond to something reason clearly says.
So at this point I think you're very unreasonable. You've rendered yourself incapable of recognising lottery winners when they come along. And, indeed, incapable of recognising when or if you've won the lottery.
Well that's precisely why you shouldn't sniff glue. Things that are false - indeed, incoherent - will appear obviously true to you and other things (such as why no-one else is listening to what the lamppost is saying) will bemuse you and seem like just so much 'claptrap' as you put it.
I have presented a deductively valid argument that establishes an astonishing conclusion. But you're a continental wannabe and so you're already convinced you know it all and that the Enlightenment was a bad thing and that reasoning is just a tool nasty westerners use to oppress tribes and everything would be so much better if we all just found a guru - someone who's bald and wears sunglasses, or perhaps someone who sniffs glue and lives under a bridge - who knows next to nothing but who makes up for it with alarming confidence and charisma. Something like that - that's the gist, isn't it?
No more so than your definition of "valuable" as "being valued." As I keep pointing out, the debate is not about the arguments, but the premisses--in this case, the definitions of key terms in the first place.
Quoting Bartricks
No, to insist that being valued by something/someone is a strict prerequisite for anything to be valuable is to beg the question. The subjectivist must maintain that all moral values are subjective in that way. By contrast, the objectivist need only maintain that some moral values are objective--i.e., do not require anything/anyone to affirm them--because they are moral facts that are true regardless of what anyone thinks about them. The intrinsic/extrinsic distinction is not a matter of why something is valued, but of whether it has to be valued at all in order to be morally valuable.
Quoting Bartricks
Other than the multiple times I have explained that being valuable does not entail being valued by something/someone. Your whole argument hinges on this contested definition.
Quoting Bartricks
Right back at you.
No, I am not going patiently to explain again why the 'intrinsic/extrinsic' distinction is quite different from the 'objective/subjective' distinction. If you don't want to engage with my explanations, that's fine - well, no it isn't, it is rude - but there's really no more I can do for you on that front.
My argument is not question begging. But you seem not to know what that means. You sometimes say things that indicate you do, but in practice you don't.
I mean, your argument - if we're generous enough to call it that - is "intrinsic moral value is objective moral value. Therefore moral value is objective.
That's question begging. Unquestionably question begging.
Contrary to what you assert (with that characteristic combination of ignorance and confidence that defines most people here), when it comes to assessing argument is it not all about the presmises. You first assess whether the argument is valid, then you assess the premises.
If you want to deny a premise, do so - but say which one you are denying and then provide a deductively valid argument that has its negation as a conclusion.
You haven't done that. You've just asserted false things about intrinsic value - you've just confidently confused it with objective value, as already explained.
But just go on asserting things. You know, you can't be wrong, can you?
How many times do I have to repeat that I deny your #1 because I reject the definitions of terms that it presupposes? Here is my deductively valid argument, since you seem to think that providing one makes a difference.
1. If being morally valuable entails being valued, then no things are morally valuable regardless of whether they are being valued.
2. Some things are morally valuable regardless of whether they are being valued.
3. Therefore, being morally valuable does not entail being valued.
This is perfectly valid, but you will likely reject my #2 as question-begging, just as I reject your #1 as question-begging. The bottom line is that we disagree about the definition of "morally valuable," and no deductive argument is going to change either of our minds.
That argument makes no mention of objective value in its premises (hence it is not question begging). Rather, it appeals to the intuition I mentioned in brackets in my previous reply. It is not question begging, and it is not question begging precisely because you've now stopped insisting that intrinsic value and objective value mean the same and have instead appealed to something reason says about moral values.
So let's stick to that argument, because I admit that THAT argument is a good one.
I will reject premise 2 but I am not going to do so on question begging grounds. I know you're convinced - convinced - it will be. But it won't be.
You agree, I take it, that it is question begging to assume a theory is false for the purposes of refuting it?
And if you agree to that, do you agree that, to avoid begging the question against a view, we must start out by being open minded about its truth - that is, we should grant the possibility that it may be true, even if after investigation we may conclude that it is not? That is, we don't stay open minded - we can close our mind at the end - but not at the outset.
I mean, if you don't do that, then you're begging the question - you're assuming the view is false at the outset and then dismissing any potential evidence to the contrary in advance.
So, for instance, if there are only two people who could have done the crime - Jane and Jill - we should not start out assuming Jane did it. What we can do - indeed, should do - is entertain the thesis that Jane did it, and see if it fits the crime scene data, and entertain the thesis that Jill did it and see how well that fits the crime scene data. Yes?
There are only two possibilities where moral value is concerned: it is subjective or objective.
So, we should entertain the possibility that it is subjective and see how well it fits the crime scene data - in this case, how well it comports with what our rational intuitions say? Yes?
I mean, I am admitting that premise 2 of that argument is very - very - powerfully supported by both my rational intuitions and, I suspect, most other people's.
So, I admit that. But do you agree that to non-question beggingly assess a thesis, we should entertain the possibility that the theory is true and see how it fits the data?
After all, there does seem to be quite a significant miss-match in the case of my theory - so I can hardly be accused of loading the deck in my favour.
So, for example, this:Quoting Bartricks
is a limited view for a start. Moral value may be inter-subjective. But you simply insist on your stipulation that it must be subjective, and then groundlessly repeat the claim that it is not assuming what it purports to prove.
If you understood logic adequately you would know that deductive arguments never prove anything about what is the case in the world.
No, that is not a possibility since the vast majority of people make sense of moral values (even if they don't always adhere to them or agree with them).
On the contrary, my #2 is not substantively different from what I have been repeatedly saying all along:
Quoting aletheist
Quoting aletheist
Quoting aletheist
Quoting aletheist
Quoting aletheist
Quoting aletheist
Quoting aletheist
Quoting aletheist
In other words ...
Quoting aletheist
Sigh. I never once said that your argument was valid. But you're engaging in many cross discussions, so perhaps you mixed me up with someone else.
Here is what I said:Quoting EricH
Anyway . . . besides myself, multiple people have demonstrated to you from different angles that - while your formula may have the superficial appearance of being correct - when you get into the details it falls apart. It is neither logical nor valid. You can shout it from the rooftops, you can buy a billboard and plaster it across Times Square or Piccadilly Circus (which ever is closer to you), you can repeat the same thing over and over again and insult everyone who disagrees with you, but that is not going to change anything.
- - - - - - - - - - -
Now please take what I am about to say as constructive criticism. It is clear from your writing that you're reasonably intelligent and articulate. However, by your own admission:Quoting BartricksQuoting Bartricks you have made it clear that not only are deeply ignorant of basic Predicate and First Order Logic but that you have no desire to educate yourself. That's a shame.
This is a highly technical philosophy forum, and the ability to understand Predicate & First Order Logic along with rudimentary set theory are basic skills needed to engage in any philosophical discussion. These are things that a philosophy major would take in their first year of study. If you don't understand these basic building blocks of modern philosophy, then no one here is going to take anything you say seriously.
If you want to engage with other people on this forum, I recommend that you take some time and learn these skills - there are numerous online resources. If you get that far, you can stop at Modal Logic - that stuff is really hairy. :razz: If you are having trouble understanding some particular concept (e.g. negating an inference), then this forum is an excellent resource; there are many folks out here who will be glad to help.
And now I give you the last reply (or insult) in this conversation . . .
Thinking about definitions is one way to think about one's own thought/belief. It's not the only way. One can also just use language. That's just to clarify a nuance of my position to you, it's not that germane to this particular exchange. However, we've had many, and I suspect that that will continue.
To address the rest...
It's the content and/or complexity of the rationality(thought/belief) that matters here. Being acquainted with one's own rationality is a situation that requires different things, depending upon the content and/or complexity of the thought/belief(rationality) itself.
Follow me?
A different tack on the question...
What must be valued? That seems to be what your asking. What do all people value, regardless of their individual particular circumstances?
Is that an acceptable re-wording?
On my view, moral values consist entirely in/of thought/belief. All thought/belief consists of both objective and subjective things. So, moral values are neither.
You needed to make an argument - not just state something time and time again - and show how that statement, in conjunction with another, entails the negation of my conclusion. Furthermore, you needed to make clear that there is evidence in support of that claim - that is, that reason represents it to be true. Otherwise all you're doing is saying things. That's incredibly important. Premises need to be supported by reason - that is, they either need to be self-evident truths of reason or they need to be entailed by self-evident truths of reason. Otherwise, it is once more just you saying things. Anyone can say things, arguing is different.
Anyway, premise 2 is false and I can show why without begging the question. But I am not going to waste time explaining why unless you play by the rules. I think you are already completely convinced that anyone who rejects any premise of any argument you make has, regardless of the strength of their case, 'begged the question' .
So, do you accept that one begs the question if one assumes that the thesis under consideration is false for the purposes of refuting it? And therefore do you accept that one must entertain the possibility that it is true - not false, but true - and then see, on that assumption, how well it comports with our rational intuitions?
I am not going to explain why my argument is valid again. I am happy to leave you in your illogical little fox hole. So - lovely as it has been to take lessons from someone who doesn't know what they are talking about - this is now over and you can either take issue with a premise or go away.
Hugh: No, Janet also could have been killed by Mark.
Bartricks: That would be someone. Mark is a someone.
Hugh: So say you. But you've lost us a useful distinction. The distinction between someone, Mark, and natural causes.
Bartricks. Er, okay. That really doesn't seem useful to me at all. And anyway, what we're discussing here is whether Janet was killed by someone or she died of natural causes.
Hugh. No, not 'someone' or 'natural causes' but 'someone', 'Mark' or 'natural causes'. And Jim.
Bartricks: okay, thanks, but you're actually not a detective anymore are you - you were demoted for being just absolutely mind-numbingly bad. So, you know, finish the hoovering and then leave please.
I happen to have been teaching 'truth tables' last week to class of 12 year olds on an ITC course. (I'll send you the notes if you like).I use arbitrary premises, like yours to demonstrate the difference between 'truth' and 'validity', which highlights the difference between humans and machines.
The adage 'garbage in gives garbage out' is underlined in their notes..
In an adult group I belong to which includes university philosophers, we recently discussed the limits of classical logic in dealing with semantic drift in discussions.
Non binary logic, and adaptive state transition models were suggested as alternative frameworks
We continentals have moved on from games to game theory.
Alas no... the 12 year olds had great fun with premises like 'all US presidents have red hair'.
I use 'truth' in the pragmatist's sense of 'what works in terms of social agreement as to what is the case'.
BTW Your example of perceptual bias causing you to 'wrongly' extrapolate my capital letter usage, would for an intelligent reader , signally illustrate those dynamic set membership issues I have suggested above, which take place in communicative exchanges. But the phrase 'intelligent reader' is of course problematic in your case.
I'm laughing at myself as well because I should've realised by now that I don't have the medical or clinical training to deal with you (nor the pedagogical training for that matter).
Let's just say that I find no moral value in aiding your delusions :wink:
Depends on your definition of truth, which is a contested term. But in ordinary language use, it's usually true.
Quoting Bartricks
Some statements that are true for the whole are not true for subsets. This can be easily shown:
"Not all animals have a placenta" is trivially true.
"Not all mammals have a placenta" is trivially false.
Quoting Bartricks
So, is it a self-evident truth that the currency of arguments is self-evident truths? I certainly don't think it is.
There is an epistemic difference between the form or arguments - in this case predicate logic - and their content. The form of arguments is given by pure reason and is, in this sense, self-evident. But the content of the premises can be anything, from a-priori truths to empirical statements. These are not self-evident, they need to be at least reasoned.
If you refuse to Reason the premises of your argument, your argument fails.
In this case, an argument can be made against the modified premise 2 as follows:
The only evidence we have of moral values in practice are the moral values of human persons. So, prima facie, Moral values are identical with the personal moral values of individuals. Therefore, it's not self-evident that personal moral valuings are not necessarily moral values.
Well that made me laugh, I must admit. You don't say!!
There is no way on earth that any responsible educational establishment would let you near impressionable young minds. In a country in which the national currency is the chicken you might be able to persuade the local drug lord/mayor let you have a rant at some local kids, but then only because you've agreed to take a few extra suitcases back with you.
Quoting fresco
You'll need to do a lot better than that if you're going to make it as a continental philosopher. If you've got nothing to say, at least say it well.
Maybe you should have a lie down !
'I thought I was done and dusted! Game over man! Game over!!'
1. If moral values are the values of a subject, then that which is morally valuable is morally valuable if and only if the subject values it.
2. That which is morally valuable is morally valuable even if no subject values it.
3. therefore moral values are not the values of a subject
Premise 1 surely can't be denied, and premise 2 enjoys powerful support from our rational intuitions. So it appears to be a refutation.
Replied to the wrong insult.
:lol: :lol: :lol:
Anyway, would the new you like to address the argument?
.....when thinking about thought/belief, yes. The proverbial voice in my head, the private monologue, the alleged “dreams of spirit seekers”; its name is legion.
———————
Quoting creativesoul
You mean other than physical existence, intelligence, functional physiology, those conditions presupposed in order that acquaintance to be possible in the first place? Such as......?
———————
Quoting creativesoul
Yeah, in effect. What is something, or, is it possible for there to be something, all people value in response to any individual particular circumstance. If there is, then a foundation for all or any morality can be derived from it, and can theoretically serve as a logical proof for the primary domain for morality itself. Which, of course, absolutely requires us to think about our thought/belief.
Funny how that works, innit?
———————
Quoting creativesoul
Oh. Well, there ya go.
———————
Quoting creativesoul
Wait....whaaa????
Moral values = thought/belief;
Thought/belief = O and S things;
Moral values can be neither O nor S things of thought/belief;
Moral values /= thought/belief.
Hmmmmm.........
Til tomorrow, then.
You may have been over this, but what standing do rational intuitions have compared to rational knowledge?
We could argue that humans have a rational intuition that there are metaphysical forces shaping the physical world, that these forces have personalities, and that the world/time have start and end points.
All of these intuitions have been questioned by philosophers though. Is your rational intuition in the same category?
It was quite obvious all along that my statement entailed the negation of your #1, and therefore the negation of your conclusion--i.e., the unsoundness of your argument, even though it was valid--but apparently you were unable to see it until I presented it as a formal deductive syllogism.
Quoting Bartricks
In my experience, there are very few (if any) "self-evident truths of reason" other than the laws of identity and non-contradiction. There are certainly no "self-evident truths of reason" that pertain to moral values, which is why there is still so much disagreement about them after millennia of debates. Seriously believing that one can settle them in favor of subjectivism with a simple deductive argument reflects either hubris or delusion (or both).
Quoting Bartricks
Of course we must "entertain the possibility" that a premiss is true in order to evaluate it fairly, but "how well it comports with our rational intuitions" is a contentious and highly fallible basis for doing so, since different people have different "rational intuitions." For example, my rational intuition finds my #2 vastly more plausible than your #1, while your rational intuition apparently indicates exactly the opposite.
Quoting Bartricks
This is not equivalent to my #2. In order to refute your #1, it is sufficient to argue that some things are morally valuable even if no subject values it--a particular proposition, not a universal proposition. Even just one such thing is enough. In other words, the objectivist does not claim that all moral values are objective, only that some moral values are objective.
Which is ridiculous to need to do, but Bartricks seems to have some sort of fetish for it.
Indeed. Should we reveal the big secret that in any valid deductive argument, there is nothing in the conclusion that is not already entailed by the premisses?
Anyway, if you think that premise 2 has no support from our rational intuitions then, as far as you're concerned, 2 has nothing to be said for it. In which case, from your perspective anyway, the argument does not work as a refutation of my position.
So, do you think it challenges my position or not, for you're not really making much sense, to be honest.
I think it appears to be a refutation or at least something capable of raising a reasonable doubt about my conclusion's truth.
But if you think this is just a game and all you're doing is expressing your beliefs - beliefs that you can change at a moment's notice, beliefs that count for nothing in terms of evidence - then you must think that my original argument has no probative force, and that this apparent refutation doesn't either.
Can you see why I am confused by you? No, probably not. Silly question.
Look, l don't think you're in good faith. I think you're convinced I'm wrong, which - for you - constitutes my being wrong. And that's really all there is to it. There's no point in my trying to show why premise 2 is false, and why my case against it is not question begging, to someone who doesn't appreciate how arguments work or really what begging the question involves.
Which, for you, means they're all question begging - right? You have such a poor grasp of how arguments actually work, that you think valid arguments are question begging by dint of being valid. That 's true isn't it - that's what you actually think. Be honest. And you're so confident you're right, you'll never be able to learn you're wrong.
Here is what I actually said:
Quoting aletheist
Arguments cannot be settled solely on the basis of rational intuitions, because they are not uniform; different people have different rational intuitions.
Quoting Bartricks
Right back at you.
Quoting Bartricks
Right back at you again.
A proper report does not change the truth conditions of what it's reporting upon.
All moral value consists of both objective and subjective things. Talking about moral value being one or the other cannot possibly take proper account of the fact that it consists of both. Moral value is both. One must talk in terms of both hydrogen and oxygen in order to take proper account of water. Water is neither. The same holds good for moral value.
As a tool, the objective/subjective dichotomy cannot possibly glean anything at all about that which is both... and is thus... neither. There is no hydrogen water, there is no oxygen water, at least not in terms of elemental constituents. We can name something whatever we want.
There is no objective moral value. There is no subjective moral value. There is moral value. It consists of a particular kind of thought/belief(about acceptable/unacceptable things). All things called "moral" have that same common denominator. It's always about acceptable/unacceptable thought, belief, and/or behaviour.
Moral value is a kind of thought.
All thought/belief formation requires one thing to become sign/symbol, a different thing to become significant/symbolized, and a creature capable of drawing a correlation between different things.
Moral value is about acceptable/unacceptable thought, belief, and/or behaviour. Having some moral value does not require being able to talk about. Weighing the differences between differing moral values does. Some moral value(thought/belief about acceptable/unacceptable behaviour) is prior to language acquisition.
That leans towards/helps develop a good basis.
I don't know what you mean by 'rational knowledge'. But a rational intuition is another name for a representation of the faculty of reason.
Take the validity of this argument:
1. If P, then Q
2. Not Q
3. Therefore not P
Well, how do we know it is valid? We don't see it with our eyes, or smell it, or taste it, or hear it, or feel it. Validity doesn't have an appearance, smell, taste, sound or texture.
So how do we know it? Well, because our reason represents it to be valid - that is our reason effectively tells us that if assumption 1 is true, and assumption 2 is true, then 3 must be true.
I don't decide it is valid and that makes it so. I don't believe it is valid and that makes it so (though I do believe it is valid, but it is not my believing it that makes it so).
It is via our rational intuitions that we are aware of morality. I mean, morality is not something that our senses give us insight into. That's why it is not studied by the empirical sciences. It is not an object of sense. But we - most of us - are aware of moral norms and values. And our fundamental source of insight into moral matters is our reason.
Anyone who thinks otherwise is a) wrong and b) thinks moral philosophy is a waste of time, for moral philosophy just is the practice of applying our reason to moral questions.
So, I'd have thought that here - of all places - it should be agreed that it is via our reason that we are aware of morality.
But a rooky mistake in this area is to confuse rational intuitions - especially those that have moral representative contents (so, moral intuitions) - with that of which they give us an awareness. That is, to confuse the intuition that X is wrong, with its wrongness. A mistake that leads many quickly and confidently to conclude that morality is made of their own subjective states - and due to the staggering arrogance and ignorance that infects most people they will then never, ever, ever, change their position.
Anyway, ultimately all appeals to evidence are appeals to representations from our faculties of reason. For one thing is not evidence for the truth of some proposition until or unless it is generating some reason - epistemic reason - for us to believe the said proposition. And it is only by our faculties of reason that we can be aware of epistemic reasons to believe things.
So someone who denies the probative force of rational intuitions is someone who denies there is any evidence for anything. Although someone who denies the probative force of rational intuitions is almost invariably so confused a thinker that they won't realize this and will simply deny the probative force of intiuitions they find it inconvenient to acknowledge. The technical term for such people is 'fools'.
Rational intuitions have probative force. They're the only thing that does. All appeals to evidence are appeals to rational intuitions.
They don't always agree. That's why we have arguments in which we try to find clearer rational intuitions from which we can rationally infer the answer to contentious issues - issues where rational intuitions conflict.
It is called reasoning. But I can't do it with you, you're just not consistent enough and you reserve the right to change the rules at will. One minute rational intuitions are going to count, and the next they won't for no better reason than that I've shown that some of them stack up against whatever view you're defending.
It isn't worth the keystrokes.
:blush:
Right back at you one more time.
Quoting Bartricks
Laughably false, as I have demonstrated over and over. I will not bother to go back and quote myself again; as someone once said:
Quoting Bartricks
What does all that even mean?
A natural condition. All humans have it. Intrinsic values. "Intrinsic" seems redundant. Remove it.
A sub-system?
Are there values 'embedded' into our thinking by virtue of other people's language use prior to our being able to take account of them?
Sure.
We draw correlations between pre-existing situations and pre-existing language use long before we begin to talk about our own worldview. In that way, perhaps our adopted morality(moral thought/belief) is part of the subsystem of the cognitive apparatus required to reflect upon one's own thought/belief? It would not be part of the cognitive apparatus required to have some moral value.
One can be witty, foolish, and irrational.
“(>?)”
A deductive argument is non-ampliative which is what aletheist is stating in definitional form. This is logic 101. But the stolen valour and shitty attitude is entertaining!
Nahhhh, I don’t think I will. Natural condition modifies human, i.e., the general, empirically real, phenomenon; sub-system of intrinsic values modifies human i.e., the particular, rationally ideal, phenomenon. All humans are both, always congruent in the former, yet not always congruent in the latter.
Quoting creativesoul
True, but inconsistent with what I said. I didn’t say anything about moral value being required for cognitive apparatus; I said incorporated into: just as the wet ingredients of a pastry are incorporated into the dry to construct a finish-able product, so too are moral values incorporated into pure practical reason, aka cognitive apparatus, to construct the finish-able product called a volition of will.
A proper report must change the truth conditions of that which is being reported upon, if the truth conditions being reported upon are known with certainty to be false.
.........Empirically, a report by the police that I was in Santa Fe last weekend will be properly reported to the police as me being in Vancouver, if I certainly was in Vancouver last weekend.
.........Rationally, my report to myself of the loud boom just around the corner from my sight as the sliding glass door from a 4th floor balcony, was properly reported to myself by my sight as merely a minor fender bender between a little ol’ lady and a meter maid.
——————
Quoting creativesoul
Agreed. The creature, if it is a human creature, always draws a very specific kind of correlation between the symbol and the symbolized, which we come to know as the subject/copula/object propositional relation. While there may be no such things as subjective or objective moral values, moral values in and of themselves can be, and sometimes must be, subjects or objects of propositional correlations.
——————
Quoting creativesoul
Absolutely, albeit with reservations concerning the parenthetical; the moral value antecedent to language, and indeed, everything else, including pure practical reason itself, is a feeling.
And for the human creature, the sole moral value is.........are you ready for it???
...........the worth of his own private happiness.
BOOM!!!!!
Essentially, I'd consider everything that can be derived from synthetic a priori conclusion knowledge. Descartes "I think, therefore I am" would be an example, if it were entirely correct.
Quoting Bartricks
Ok, that sounds convincing. There is no way to "reason" the validity of logic itself, so it makes sense to call it an intuition.
Quoting Bartricks
Right. I agree with the reason bit, but I think what makes moral stances a unique is that they are not just intuitions, which you can only assert, but are reasoned from principles. You can make arguments for and against them, so they aren't just intuitions.
Quoting Bartricks
But, if it's the case that moral stances are arrived at via rational intuition, and intuition is not constitutive but rather descriptive, what would moral philosophy consists of? It seems to me getting the right answers would merely be a matter of having the right intuitions, no arguments required.
And if there are no arguments required, there is no way to test the rational intuition. There is no way to know, under this system, whether you actually have a rational intuition or just imagine it being so.
Ok. I see no point in continuing here.
Yes, moral intuitions - a subset of our rational intuitions - are 'about' morality, but they are not morality itself. Just as I cannot make an act right - not of necessity, anyway - by just ordering myself to do it, or make it valuable - not of necessity anyway - by valuing it, likewise I cannot make an act right or good by simply having the rational intuition that it is.
So, having the rational intuition that something is the case - that an argument is valid, or that a course of action is enjoined, or that something is morally valuable - does not constitute its validity or its being enjoined or its being morally valuable.
Nevertheless, rational intuitions are prima facie - that is, default - evidence that what they represent to be the case, is the case.
But then you say this:
Quoting Echarmion
This simply does not follow. If you allow - and you must on pain of being unable to argue for anything at all - that rational intuitions have probative force, then we do - absolutely do - have a way to test rational intuition. Rational intuitions!
So, you've on the one hand accepted the probative force of rational intuitions only to in the very next breath deny it! Rational intuitions count. Ultimately they're the only thing that counts, because they're our only source of insight into what Reason prescribes and values, and Reason is our ultimate source of insight into what's true.
The whole of philosophy - proper philosophy, that is - is premised on this. I mean, am I not doing philosophy? You think that in presenting this argument, I am not doing philosophy:
1. If something is morally valuable, it is the object of a valuing relation
2. Only a subject of experiences - a mind - can value things (that is, can be the bearer of the valuing attitude)
3. Therefore, if something is morally valuable, it is the object of a subject-of-experience's valuing attitude?
That is an argument. It is valid. That is, our reason seems to tell us - not just me, but virtually everyone who consults their reason - that the argument is valid. That is, that reason says the conclusion will be true if the assumptions are. And reason also seems to say that those assumptions are true. So it appears to be sound.
Others may dislike the conclusion, but disliking something is not evidence it is false. Those who wish rationally to reject its conclusion must find something else reason seems to say that contradicts what this argument entails.
And that is precisely what I have done - there do indeed seem to be some other things that reason seems to say that, in combination with other things she seems to say, contradict the conclusion of the above argument.
So this too appears to be a sound argument:
1. If I am morally valuable, I am morally valuable even if no subject values me.
2. I am morally valuable
3. Therefore I am morally valuable even if no subject values me
The conclusion of my first argument says that for something to be morally valuable, it needs to be featuring as the object of a subject's valuing attitude. That is, for something to be morally valuable, someone needs to be valuing me. Yet the conclusion of this argument contradicts that.
That is where we are at. Reason seems to be telling us contradictory things. I think there's a way through.
I think that this premise: "If I am morally valuable, I am morally valuable even if no subject values me" is actually false. And I think I can show it to be false without begging any questions.
Oh. Well....good luck, then.
By your own admission you never took logic 101. Here's that quote from you that I am currently having tatooed across my buttocks:
Quoting Happenstance
My argument is valid. You can squiggle and squoggle it to your heart's content - you can try your utmost to translate what I said into your squiggle-squoggle language and then declare that according to your squiggle-squoggle language my argument was not a valid squirt, or a transitive modal. But that won't stop it being valid.
To be perfectly honest, I don't think you have anything to say. Nothing apart form insults, anyway. And that would be starkly apparent if you used English -as you briefly did earlier - so you have to squiggle and squoggle instead and then other like-minded squiggle squogglers can approving squiggle and squoggle in turn. To my ears, however, it is just a herd of cows mooing at each other.
Anyway, the argument is valid. And it establishes that moral values and prescriptions are the values and prescriptions of a subject, a mind, a person.
That is inconsistent with the thesis that moral values and prescriptions are mine. So it is inconsistent with individual subjectivism, if the individual is identified as me. Likewise if the individual is identified as you or anyone else among us, including a group of us (if, that is, a group of us is a subject - which it isn't). So it refutes the metaethical theories known as 'individual subjectivism' and 'inter-subjectivism' respectively (views that no-one takes seriously anyway).
It is inconsistent with non-cognitivist views.
It is inconsistent with objectivist views (so inconsistent with objectivist naturalism, and inconsistent witwh objectivist non-naturalism).
It is, in other words, inconsistent with all metaethical theories bar one: my one. The one described in the conclusion. So. It. Refutes. Them. All. Something you can never recognize - never - because you have already decided in advance, so sure of yourself are you, that anyone who claims to have done such a thing is deluded.
If you want to refute my argument the only hope - the only hope - rests with this argument:
1. If I am morally valuable, I am morally valuable even if no subject values me.
2. I am morally valuable
3. Therefore I am morally valuable even if no subject values me.
For that argument is also valid and its premises appear every bit as powerfully self-evident as any premise of mine, yet its conclusion is inconsistent with the conclusion of my argument.
It isn't sound. But it does appear to be.
Quoting Echarmion
No, it establishes its conclusion - it establishes that moral values are not my values. Or yours. Now run the same argument for all 7billion people on the planet. It is sound in all of their cases too.
So, what you are now admitting is that the argument establishes - proves - that moral values are not the values of any one of us.
And the same argument works for a group, if a group could be a subject (which it can't be).
So, what you are now admitting is that moral values are not the values of any one of us, or any group of us.
Good. That's, you know, what I was arguing. Arguing it with a valid argument that you could not see was valid, despite its validity being obvious.
Now you're just pretending it doesn't matter - that you I believed that all along or that everyone already does! Really? Okaaay. Whatever you say!
So, to recap, this argument is valid and apparently sound:
1. To be morally valuable is to be the object of a valuing relation
2. Subjects and only subjects can value things
3. Therefore, to be morally valuable is to be the object of the valuing relation of a subject
That seems to establish the truth of moral subjectivism. But moral subjectivism is a family of views, not just one. I am a subject. You are a subject. There are literally billions of them.
However, this argument is valid and sound:
1. If being morally valuable consists of being the object of my valuing attitudes, then if I value something necessary it is morally valuable
2. If I value something it is not necessarily morally valuable.
3. Therefore, being morally valuable does not consist of being the object of my valuing attitudes.
That argument works just as well for any subset of my valuing attitudes. And it works just as well if we swap you for me, or anyone else for me.
So moral values are not the values of any of us. Whose values are they, then? Well, the subject whose values they are. Reason. Her. She isn't me, she isn't you, she is herself.
Is that trivial? Er, not by anyone's wildest dreams. If you think that's a trivial conclusion then you have no grasp whatsoever on the concept of triviality. What you mean by 'trivial' is 'sound'. The argument is 'sound' and it establishes an astonishing conclusion.
All of your attempts to show my case to be invalid have failed. The argument I have laid out is simple and obviously valid to anyone who reflects on it. You have had to change the argument - desperately play around with the placement of key terms, or try and blind everyone with symbols. But it won't work - the argument is valid and so unless fault can be found with a premise the conclusion must be accepted.
The only real challenge to my view comes from this argument, as just noted in my reply to your fellow logic garbler, Happenstance.
1. If I am morally valuable, I am morally valuable even if no subject values me
2. I am morally valuable
3. Therefore I am morally valuable even if no subject values me.
That is valid and it seems as sound as my argument. Yet it contradicts it and thus raises a reasonable doubt about the truth of its premises.
:lol: :lol: :lol:
You must have one seriously fat arse. How does that work? Do you have, ‘would it interest you that I’ve never’, on the left cheek and ‘actually took a course in formal logic’, on the right cheek?
That reminds me of a joke: An airplane lands on a desert island to refuel and the pilot chances upon a castaway.
‘I’m so glad that you’re here. I’ve been stranded on this island for ten years’, said the castaway. The pilot, being a wag, replies, ‘I will rescue you from this island if you can name the people I have tattooed on my butt.’
The pilot pulls down his trousers to show the castaway his tattoos. ‘The one on the left is Pope John Paul II and the one on the right is Nelson Mandela but I don’t know the one in the middle’ said the castaway. ‘Wait, I’ve got it! It’s Bartricks!’
Once more, your only hope - and obviously I think it is a vain one - of refuting my case rests with this argument:
1. If I am morally valuable, I am morally valuable even if no subject values me.
2. I am morally valuable
3. Therefore I am morally valuable even if no subject values me.
But presumably you can't see that until I turn it into some worms and triangles and squares. Here's my best attempt:
1. wormy triangle square. Wall. Square. Two more worms.
2. worm and a lopsided v.
3. Therefore,worm square lopsided v, square, wall, triangle, worm, worm. bee. snail.
There, that make more sense to you?
I'm confusing Happenstance for someone who gives a shit about my crappy argument!
Anyway tell us again how a definition of non-ampliative implies question begging. That shit was hilarious
Let's remember that you were sure - quite sure - this argument was invalid:
1. If moral values are my values, then if I value something it will necessarily be morally valuable
2. if I value something it is not necessarily be morally valuable
3. therefore moral values are not my values.
Yet it is valid. Obviously.
Your worms and squares - whose behaviour you understand so well - did not help you to see this. Far from it.
Then you conceded that it was indeed valid - something that would have been obvious to anyone who just thought about it - and instead insisted that it established something trivial.
That's wrong too. Not remotely trivial. An argument that seems to establish the truth of a divine command theory of value cannot - by any sane person's estimation - be considered trivial.
I would never say such a thing, given I haven't the foggiest what 'non-ampliative' means. I don't use words I don't understand. No doubt you'll try and tell me, but please don't bother as I'm running out of room on my buttocks.
Quoting Bartricks
And as for your so-called valid argument, you don't even know how the fuck one is constructed to be valid. You can't just come on a board with the attitude of you being the only one who knows logic when it is obvious, if you do a bit of reading, that there a great number of people here who are far more intelligent than you or I. It is a silly, self-conscious, stupid attitude that just gets you laughed at.
But please do continue with your dance of the dodgers because it is entertaining.
Anyway got to go now fella, but please don't ever change! :grin:
LOL. Good one.
Are you finding our conversation productive?
So 'Reason' establishes her own divinity through her favorite son. But we already knew she was divine. The fact that you chose to establish her via an argument says it all.
People are bringing up God because many of us have been exposed to quite a few "philosopher's gods" over the years. A subject who determines what's right and wrong for all of us....that's largely why people want gods in the first place. And often enough this [s]divine[/s] 'subject' will endorse the preferences of his or her discover. The 'philosopher' is the Reason-whisperer. For better are worse, all of your opponents in this thread are also servants of that particular goddess. Reason dictates that you and your argument have to march through misunderstanding and criticism.
Do you still not see that the primary premiss is false? Some values are not moral values. "moral values" is not equivalent to "values". With that in mind...
Quoting Bartricks
Some values are not moral values. All values are valued. When non moral values are being valued they do not become moral values, but things are still being valued.
So...
The primary premiss is false. It contradicts the way things are. As it stands we have more than just moral values. As a result we can be valuing something and it not be morally valuable.
Being morally valuable takes more than being valued.
Incorporating one thing into another requires both things.
You may not have said it, but the coherency of your position depends upon it.
An earlier assertion of yours stands in direct contradiction with thought/belief existing on a rudimentary level prior to definition. Some(non-linguistic, rudimentary, basic) thought/belief exists in it's entirety prior to language. Definition and conception are not required for rudimentary level thought/belief. Thought/belief are more than sufficient for cognition, just not meta-cognition. Pure Practical Reasoning is metacognition.
Kant can't take account of this.
Yes.
Quoting Bartricks
I agree.
But looking only at the argument above, the moral values belong to something like the community. If we didn't always already agree on all kinds of behavior being good or bad, we wouldn't have made it this far. We're social animals. So the word 'moral' seems already charged with some impersonal subject, a kind of 'we' that does and does not do certain things.
On the 'God' issue again: if the commanding divinity offends our moral intuitions, then he or she had better have the power to back it up. Even then conformity would only be prudence. 'Our' moral intuitions are already the commanding divinity. Tribes have their 'gods,' which cannot be questioned. To really be in the tribe is to see/feel why such questioning is impious or irrational.
It looks to me that history is largely about the modification of our conceptually mediated moral intuitions. The 'divine commander' looks organic, like a kind of mist thrown up by our doings. We remake the world, and the changed world forces us to remake ourselves. Repeat until we run out of world.
I didn't actually admit that. I only admitted that moral values are not identical to the entire set of values of any one of us. Because, obviously, the entire set of values contains things like "I like cats more than dogs", which don't have anything to do with morality.
Quoting Bartricks
How do we know that? My rational intuition tells me that logic is itself a rational intuition. The rational intuition doesn't tell us something about some logic "object", these rational intuitions are logic itself.
So the same could be true for moral intuitions.
Quoting Bartricks
How can something test itself? I allow there are basic principles, logic itself, which can not themselves be subjected to reasoning. Because, essentially, they are reasoning itself. Anything beyond that doesn't enjoy the same necessity though, so I don't see why I must accept all manner of so-called intuitions.
Quoting Bartricks
The problem is that you seen impervious to criticism of either the form of your arguments or the content of their premises. You are unwilling to subject your arguments to the reasoning of other people, claiming instead that their premises are given by unchallengeable rational intuition. That's not convincing, and the way this thread has devolved should be ample evidence of that.
I have no idea what you're talking about. Are you drunk?
Quoting joshua
Aw diddums. Philosophy isn't therapy and the truth sometimes hurts. The argument establishes the being of a god, regardless of how that may or may not impact your psychology or anyone else's.
Quoting joshua
The what now?
No, that view is the least plausible of all. For a community is not a subject and so it cannot value anything. Second, this argument adds another head-shot to an already dead head:
1. If moral values are the values of my community, then if my community values something necessarily it is morally valuable.
2. If my community values something it is not necessarily morally valuable
3. Therefore moral values are not the values of my community.
Quoting joshua
Well, that's just false as my argument demonstrates. You need to follow reason, not your pet theories.
No, completely false. Your criticisms have been poor. You have gone to great lengths to try and show that my argument is invalid. You failed. The argument is valid.
Now, that doesn't mean I am impervious to criticism. It means your case against me failed. Simple.
You are impervious to criticism because you're never going to accept that you're wrong. You've already decided I'm wrong and no matter how good my arguments are, that's your position and you're sticking to it.
The fact is you haven't raised a reasonable doubt about anything I have argued.
Quoting Echarmion
If you want to know if an argument is valid, you consult your reason and the reason of others, yes? And what is an argument apart from a prescription of reason? So, that is an example of us using our reason to confirm what our reason says.
if you want to know about me, who's the best person to ask? Me. For you that's some kind of contradiction - how can I be the best source of information about me?!? Well, I can and am, obviously. I mean, the real question is why would anything think otherwise?
Likewise, if you want to know what Reason says, who's the best person to consult? Reason. And how do we gain insight into what Reason says? By means of our reason. And how do we know that? By our reason.
There's nothing problematic about that. But anyway, if the only way you can raise a doubt about my argument is by attempting to dismiss the whole project of consulting reason, then my argument must be incredibly strong. Which it is!
Unfortunately, you are the only one here who thinks so.
Quoting Bartricks
Good point. I concede that reason self-checks when we are crafting an argument in our minds. But, crucially, this process is open to the reason of other people, who can run it in their minds and tell us their conclusions. That's what differentiates an argument from intuition. I can transmit the argument to someone else, but not the intuition.
Since your position is that our faculties of reason merely access a metaphysical entity that embodies reason itself, it's all merely a self-check. But I think there are alternatives that don't require us to establish reason as a separate subject.
As far as I’m concerned, a conversation doesn’t have to be eventually productive as it has to first be interesting. And what interests me about your apparent personal speculative philosophy, is that if I badger you long enough, in the form of proper Socratic dialectical procedure, you’ll get around to telling me exactly how such personal philosophy works, rather than merely laying a bunch of self-invented terminology on me, and leave me hanging like Grandma’s laundry. You can’t just inform me the rational framework of my choosing doesn’t work without giving me something to compare it to, and thus allowing me to judge for myself.
Case in point....
Quoting creativesoul
And how would I know that, if you don’t show what this is, how it works hence why the Kantian account doesn’t, which presupposes you know Kant at least as well as I do.
———————
On another stage, I shall assume you’re aware a sound deductive syllogism predicated solely on rational premises cannot be falsified. It’s impossible, actually, for no purely rational dictum whatsoever lends itself to verifiable negation outside itself.
“....any attempt to employ it (general logic) as an instrument in order to extend and enlarge the range of our knowledge must end in mere prating; any one being able to maintain or oppose, with some appearance of truth, any single assertion whatever. Such instruction is quite unbecoming the dignity of philosophy....”
The best that can be done, if one feels he must do something, is to present different, better, more logically exact premises entailing an equally sound deduction, which only shows the former deductive conclusion to be relatively useless in comparison to it, that is to say, the latter demonstrates a stronger logical inference. The whole being nothing but a.....currently.....38-page exercise in metaphysical circle jerking.
So? Philosophy isn't diplomacy and the truth isn't democratic. None of the criticisms offered thus far work. Not my fault, they just don't. Demonstrably don't. If you took a vote on it, I wouldn't win. But that's because most of the voters have made the poor criticisms in question. You have to show a criticism to be good, not just show that a lot of people whose powers of rational discernment have in common that they all seem poor, think that it is good.
Quoting Echarmion
I fail to see the distinction you are drawing. Certain chains of thought are valid, and their validity consists in them being chains of thought that Reason approves of. Reason approves of thinking that if P entails Q, and P obtains, then thinking that Q must obtain. She approves of that - tells us to draw that conclusion - and her telling us to do so is what its validity consists in.
How do we know which chains of thought are the ones Reason wants us to engage in and which she does not? We consult our reason and the reason of others. And in consulting our reason we are doing no more than seeing what rational intuitions it generates about the matter. If our rational intuitions are corroborated by the rational intuitions of others who have sincerely engaged in the same process, and we have no independent reason to think our faculties of reason have been corrupted on this particular matter, then that's good evidence that the rational intuitions are accurate. That is, that Reason herself really does approve of it. And how do we know that? Because it is what our faculties of reason say is the case.
Anyway, if you consult your reason and resist any squiggling and squoggling urges, it will be evident that this argument is valid:
1. If I am morally valuable, then I am featuring as the object of a valuing relation (if P, then Q)
2. I am morally valuable (P)
3. Therefore I am featuring as the object of a valuing relation (therefore Q)
And both of those premises also seem supported by reason. It is by reason that we are aware of our moral value and the moral value of others. And anyone who thinks that being morally valuable involves something other than being the object of a valuing relation, they have the burden of proof.
This too is valid:
1. Subjects and only subjects can value things
2. I am valued
3. therefore I am valued by a subject.
So, if I follow reason I now get to the conclusion that my being morally valuable consists in me being valued by a subject - a subject of experience, a mind.
I am one of those myself and there are billions of others. But upon reflection it is simply not plausible that I am the subject in question:
1. if I am the subject whose valuings constitute moral valuings, then if I value something, necessarily it is morally valuable
2. If I value something it is not necessarily morally valuable
3. Therefore I am not the subject whose valuings constitute moral valuings.
That argument works for you too and, I suspect, all other human subjects. And once more, Reason says not jus that the argument is valid, but that it is sound - that its premises are true.
Moral values, then, are the values of a subject, but the subject is not you or I, but someone else. Who? Well the question presupposes that we have to locate her among other subjects - that's absurd. We don't. She is who she is. And who is she? She's the one whose values constitute moral values and whose prescriptions constitute moral prescriptions. She's Reason herself. For moral prescriptions are - as Kant held - simply a subset of the prescriptions of Reason. Well, if moral prescriptions are the prescriptions of a subject, and if moral prescriptions are a subset of the prescriptions of Reason, then Reason is the subject in question.
There. That's the argument again. It is valid all the way through and each leg consists of arguments whose premises seem themselves to be manifest to reason.
The only challenge that this case faces, comes from this argument, one that no-one has yet pressed;
1. If I am morally valuable, I am morally valuable even if no subject values me
2. I am morally valuable
3. Therefore I am morally valuable even if no subject values me.
That too is valid, and that too has premises that are manifest to Reason. Yet it seems to contradict my case.
Fair enough.
There's no need for you to beat around the bush though. If you want to know how it all works, as best as I've figured it out anyway, just come straight out and ask me that. I'm always willing to show my work. The charge against Kant does not require understanding my view though, to be clear. Kant does not and cannot draw and maintain the actual distinction between thought/belief and thinking about thought/belief. He is not alone. In fact, he has all the company in the world. As far as I'm aware, there is no philosopher from any school of thought that has... even to this day.
Quoting creativesoul
The above needs to be understood, in order to grasp the totality of what I'm saying. That seems a good place to go from here.
All thought, belief, and statements thereof consist entirely of correlations between different things. On the rudimentary level(regarding a language less creature) those correlations are always drawn between directly perceptible things. Language is not always one of them.
Imagine a language-less creature that has just touched fire for the first time. This creature learns that fire hurts when touched despite not being able to say that. It can recognize and/or attribute causality, and does, as is demonstrated by it's subsequently avoiding fire. The creature thinks/believes that touching fire caused the pain that immediately followed.
There is no place and no need for language here. Definition and conception are both existentially dependent upon language. Learning that fire hurts when touched is not. Neither definition nor conception is required for such rudimentary level thought/belief. All that is needed is a creature capable of drawing correlations between their own behaviour(the touching) and the pain that immediately ensued.
Our understanding of all this is another mater altogether. Definition, conception, and language are all required for our knowledge/understanding regarding this matter. What we're reporting upon(the thought/belief of a language-less creature) is not existentially dependent upon language. Our report most certainly is.
It's all a matter of existential dependency. Being verifiable/falsifiable helps too. :wink:
I said to you:
Quoting joshua
Quoting Bartricks
My point is that your theory and your sense of its importance is self-flattering. You seem to be casting yourself as the 'favorite son' of the Goddess Reason.
Quoting Bartricks
I counter that a sane person who thinks an argument establishes the truth of divine command theory would instead look for the mistake in that proof (find out its sophistry.)
Quoting Bartricks
You're fun, bro. At least we've finally squeezed it out you: You're an internet-tough-guy theologian. I've seen the atheist version, but the theist version is new to me. It;s like church lady clothes becoming hip again. Instead of appealing to 'science,' you appeal to 'logic.' In either case some magic word is invoked in order to generate a new magic word. Your 'logic' 'establishes' the 'being of a god.' No small accomplishment. I'd be proud of myself too.
But you'll have to add your 'proof' that there is a God to a list of other 'proofs' that few take seriously.
Now I do agree with you that 'philosophy isn't therapy and the truth sometimes hurts.' The real 'god' at work is a personal investment in exactly this principle (which is also the macho fantasy of the intellectually identified .) We pay for truth by sacrificing the parts of our personality that don't want to see it. Our cherished fantasies of who we are must be thrown into the flames, a living sacrifice. We must be washed in the [s]blood of the lamb[/s] fires of logic.
It's an investment, though, because we expect in return the narcissistic pleasure of belonging to the exclusive club of those who know the spiritual/metaphysical truth.
Note how often you use the 'diddums' condescension gimmick. I laughed at some of your insults. They're your best work so far. But that's because this is where the essence of your position is manifest.
It's the ancient game of projecting yourself as daddy. And you are playing a retro version, where you (little daddy) are 'proving ' the existence of big daddy classic, no doubt created in your image.
Your hidden assumption seems to be that there is only one subject bestowing value. You can't have your cake and eat it too.
Much of our sense of right and wrong is inherited from the community. There are things that 'one' does not do. But in highly complex and pluralistic cultures like ours, one of the things we do is ...question the things that one does. We obey by disobeying. But that's another issue.
It's easier to just think in terms of tension between the community and the individual. With certain basic norms, the individual is impossible. But most of us these days think of the community as being justified in terms of what it offers the individual (at the price of a certain conformity.) In a democracy with laws that can be changed, it's even almost the duty of a citizen to think how the laws themselves can be improved. And of course there's moral progress to be chased, like setting a good example. A person could try to make vegetarianism cool. Or make transphobia look bad. [Simply labeling things 'phobias' was the PR move.]So individuals can use persuasive speech (and so on) to edit the current norms --but they will usually reason from uncontroversial norms toward the establishment of new norms.
This is why you appeal to logic in order to prove the existence of God to us decadent, heathen philosophers. And it's why certain evangelical atheists will use the 'it's science, bitch' approach. What matters is no whether the logic or science is good but rather the assumed investment of the target market in the magic word. (Of course there is good science and good logic, but perhaps you see what I mean.)
Ah, I see. Well, that's false - but whatever. Just focus on the argument and stop trying to analyse me or I'll tell my mum.
Quoting joshua
That's exactly what I'm bloomin' well doing! Literally. Here. Now. I'm presenting the argument in the cold light of day on a philosophy forum to see how it fares. Answer: hasn't even been dented.
Quoting joshua
Yes, I'm the pope. I have to be nice to losers all day long so I unwind by being really nasty to some on the internet in the evenings.
Quoting joshua
Hmm, thanks Freud. And yes, I do find my mum sexy - what of it?
You can. Buy a cake. Eat it. Who's telling you these things?
Quoting joshua
I think that's false, but even if it was true it wouldn't challenge anything in my argument. My argument is not about where our 'sense' of right and wrong, good and bad comes from, but about what it would take for anything actually to be right or wrong, good or bad.
So, take the belief that there is a god. Now, perhaps the full explanation of why some people have that belief is that having a disposition to form it meant their ancestors had more babies than those who lacked this disposition. Okay, fine. But what would it take for that belief to be true? Well, there would need to be a god, wouldn't there?
Now take the belief that some things are morally good. Once more, perhaps the full explanation of why so many of us have this belief is that a disposition to form it meant our ancestors had more babies than those humans who lacked such a disposition. Okay, fine. But what would it take for that belief to be true? That is, what would it take for anything actually to be morally good?
That's the question I am answering. You don't answer it by looking into the history of the belief, but rather by looking at what the belief is 'about'.
I've noticed that you, like others, are getting hung up on God and keep mentioning him - I have not, except to point out to people like you that I have not mentioned him. God is not mentioned in any premise in my argument or in the conclusion.
Again, I am like a detective who says that "someone has killed Janet" and you - and lots of others - are hearing "Mr Someone killed Janet". No, not "Mr Someone" - although if Mr Someone exists, let's not rule him out - but 'someone'.
First, the agreement...
A sound deductive syllogism has both true premisses and a valid conclusion and/or argumentative form. A true statement/proposition cannot be falsified simply because it's true. True statements are not false. Being falsified is being shown to be false. Only false statements are falsifiable.
There are no false statements in a sound syllogism. It is impossible to falsify a true statement. A sound deductive syllogism cannot be falsified.
Now, the disagreement...
Validity does not equal truth. A false conclusion can result from a valid inference if being valid is following the rules of correct inference and/or having valid argumentative form.
Some valid syllogisms provide verifiable/falsifiable conclusions. Verifiability/falsifiability has nothing to do with a valid syllogism being predicated solely on rational premisses. Those premisses cannot be verified. Logical possibility alone(argument by definitional fiat) is inadequate ground for belief. Some valid syllogisms predicated solely on rational premisses can most certainly be falsified.
The verification of something to the contrary, a mutually exclusive set of statements/propositions provides us with true statements about fact/reality that offer more than adequate ground to reject any and all claims to the contrary as false. That is more than adequate to falsify a valid deductive syllogism with unverifiable premisses... those consisting solely of rational premisses notwithstanding.
See my critique of the OP's first premiss...
The right answer would consist of two remarkably different standards/criterion. Right and wrong are a matter of being true/false. Good and bad are a matter of what counts as acceptable/unacceptable, praiseworthy/blameworthy, glorified and celebrated/vilified and shunned, good/evil, helpful/harmful, etc.
I suspect you know this already.
Pretty good answer. Threatening to tell your mum is a nice pivot. Change the mask. I really was pleasantly surprised. I tried to push your buttons and you kept your cool. I respect that.
Quoting Bartricks
OK, that helps. Are you saying that without something like a god there can be no 'true' right or wrong? That in the absence of a god we just have 'monkey' opinion and feelings about right and wrong?
Quoting Bartricks
This helps too. If you are looking into the ground (or its absence) of some kind of timeless, pure morality, then that is a different issue. I was just taking it for granted that there is no such ground --that we are animals who ended up (for various reasons) calling and feeling certain actions and attitudes 'right' and 'wrong.' I was concerned with morality as it exists and evolves historically.
This applies to the god issue in general. People have vague notions of the real nature of god(s), but religion (in my view) is mostly manifest in how people actually act. This even applies to math. For the most part the metaphysical status of numbers and so on is unimportant enough to remain endlessly undecided.
Specialists in god, pure math, and philosophy can endlessly refine their attempt to formulate the absolute versions of their concepts, but mostly the world never cared. It makes due with coarser and more embodied versions in each case. It performs comforting rituals, acts on standard calculations, and gets its philosophy from politics and other forms of pop culture. Just as look at which books are bestsellers, etc. People are more likely to be annoyed than impressed by a quotation from Plato or Marx.
Quoting Bartricks
Well I did misunderstand where you were coming from --with your help. If you can answer some of my questions above, I might figure out your motivations. For instance, do you believe in something like the biblical god? Or is your divine subject secondary to your point?
But since there are a number of fairly intelligent and well read members on this forum, their opinions should have weight to you. Especially since you agree that one should consult others to test whether one's reason is "corrupted".
Quoting Bartricks
As has been pointed out multiple times, this argument isn't valid, and premise 1 is obviously false.
What a strange mixture of honesty and bitchiness. Philosophy is supposed to be about reality and not just serve as therapy. That's what I've heard. Yet we come anonymously to a place where we can be rude with impunity (which is pretty escapist) to talk about reality.
It's not as crazy as it sounds, because the collision of worldviews is violent. And intellectual types don't really want a physical fight. Their brains are too precious. Their unhatched eggs must be protected from something as vulgar as actual war.
We wear polite masks to pay the bills, and then come for the sublimated violence of a philosophy forum. If it was all logic, a computer could do it for us. If it was all rhetoric, it would be rap battle. We need something simultaneously cruel and respectable.
But you're the one deciding it hasn't been dented. And you've insulted those who challenge you. That is crankish behavior. If you invented a time machine that worked, I'd understand the arrogance. But it's only a philosophical argument. We already know that people mostly believe what they want to believe. It's power that convinces people more than arguments.
You do deserve some credit for hanging around and debating the point.
So, take Superman and Clark Kent. They're one and the same person. Consequently, anywhere Superman is, Clark Kent is, and vice versa. Given that they're one and the same person it is obviously impossible for Superman to be somewhere and Clark Kent not.
Now, imagine someone denies this. I would not 'decide' that the person in question was a total idiot. Rather, I would judge that they were. As, surely, would you - yes? I mean, something has either gone seriously wrong with their ability to reason, or they just don't grasp concepts like 'one and the same'.
If you agree - if you agree that in the above case I would not just be dismissing the critic, but justly deeming them an idiot and their criticism misguided - then consider identical argument.
If being morally valuable and being valued by me are one and the same property, then if I value something it must be morally valuable. Forget the fact they're obviously not the same property - that would be like getting hung up on the fact Superman doesn't actually exist. 'If' they are one and the same property, then obviously anything I value will be morally valuable - why? Because - by hypothesis - that's just what being morally valuable involves. Nothing more, nothing less.
So, now consider this premise:
1. If being morally valuable and being valued by me are one and the same, then if I value something necessarily it is morally valuable.
That's obviously true. Someone who didn't see that it was true is literally as idiotic as someone who doesn't see that this is true:
1. if Superman and Clark Kent are one and the same person, then if Superman is in Texas, necessarily Clark Kent is in Texas.
Yet if you go through the thread above you will find several people - one in our immediate vicinity - denying that this premise is true. And these people have the cheek to represent themselves as knowledgeable about logic and keep telling me I don't know enough of it.
Just consult your own reason though and tell me if you agree with me, or with them. Do you agree with me that if I am the pope, then if the pope is in a brothel I am in a brothel? Or do you agree with them and think that if I am the pope then if the pope is in a brothel I might not be?
Am I just 'deciding' that they are mistaken? Or am I entirely reasonably judging that they are mistaken?
Or take this argument:
1. If P, then Q
2. Not Q
3 Therefore not P.
is that valid or invalid? Well, it is obviously valid. Someone who kept insisting that it was invalid is just a berk, plain and simple. And yet there are many above who have denied that my argument is valid despite it having precisely that form.
Am I just 'deciding' that they are wrong? Doesn't your reason confirm that the above argument is valid?
Not in the form you posted it again.
Quoting Bartricks
It doesn't say that. It says:
Quoting Bartricks
Not the same words and not the same meaning.
If it said: "if moral valuings and my valuings are one and the same."
Then it would be pointless, because that doesn't describe any subjectivist position. It's clearly nonsense to claim that "moral valuings and my valuings are one and the same".
Then why use different words? What use is the conclusion that "moral values are not one and the same as my values"?
Like I say, I am no longer willing to argue with someone who thinks that premise 1 is false or that the argument is invalid, because that's just not going to be worth any of my time or theirs, is it?
So the two sentences "mammals are animals" and "mammals are one and the same as animals" mean the same thing?
Quoting Bartricks
If you are unwilling to have your rational intuitions checked, then why post in the first place?
That's fine. By now, the quality of your arguments is obvious to any reasonably intelligent reader either way.
Do you mean just because of "my"?
I read "If moral valuings and my valuings are one and the same" to amount to "If moral valuings and the valuings of subjects are one and the same." I know that "literally" it's not the same, but I don't figure that anyone is going to literally equate all moral valuings with only their own valuings, unless they're also a solipsist, which is unlikely. So I figure that "my" is a way to say "one's," with a connotation that we're talking about every one.
The issue here is with the identity of moral values and values in general. If they are "one and the same", every member of the set "my valuings" is also a member of the set "moral valuings". But that would be an absurd claim.
This all came out of an attempt to right the argument, because in it's original form, without the added stipulation that they are "one and the same", i.e. the sets are identical, the argument is invalid.
Ah. Wouldn't you normally just assume that "my valuings" is "my (moral) valuings," but where "moral" isn't repeated because that should be clear from context?
I would rather be surprised to learn that someone who wrote that sentence was thinking of "my valuings" in a literal, context-independent way, to refer to every single thing they value, moral or not.
One would, but if one does that, the argument no longer works as well, because then Premise 2 becomes:
"My moral valuings are not necessarily moral values", something which I think you wouldn't accept without justification.
Right. That's the part I disagreed with.
What makes you think that subjectivity/objectivity isn't also a property of propositions?
Let us suppose that society never spoke of abstract pain, and that it instead invented a unique "pain designation" term for each and every person, that applied only to that particular person. E.g, "Bartrick-ouch", "MadFool-ouch" etc. In such a community, would it make sense to classify utterances of "Bartrick-ouch" as being subjective/objective ?
Recall that we use public criteria for determining whether a verbal report is subjective or objective. In the case of "abstract pain" applied to a particular individual, we use more than the behavioural response of an individual for determining whether "abstract pain" is an appropriate designation of their situation; for the meaning of "abstract pain" is in relation to the average behavioural response of the average individual with respect to the average situation.
Yet in the case of "Bartrick-ouch", we cannot, by definition, compare your behavioural responses to other peoples. As far as we are concerned, if you yell "Bartrick-ouch!", that can only mean bartrick-ouch.
We have to get a lot more persnickety than that about what we're referring to.
First, re propositions as the meaning of statements like that, are we saying that the proposition itself is objective? That would amount to saying that meaning is objective (which I don't agree with).
If we're instead talking about "what we're referring to," then it would depend on whether we're referring to a mental state that Barticks, etc. has, or whether we're referring to observable aspects of their behavior and not their mental state.
Do you have values other than moral ones?
For the language-less creature, it is sufficient to say his correlations are given from instinct. Is it not an error of equivocation, to suggest that just because a language-less creature, e.g., preserves his well-being instinctively, he is drawing correlations? Isn’t it rather the case we think he must be making correlations because correlation is the only way humans can think anything at all? Including, what it’s like to be a language-less creature merely from his observable reactions.
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Quoting creativesoul
Any report of ours is existentially dependent on language. That does not grant us authority to report on the thought/belief of language-less creatures. I mean.....what would the report say? That some animal emphatically withdrew from the effect of fire can tell us nothing about his inner workings, except there seems to be a mode of self-preservation that prevented him from NOT withdrawing, but that mode does not in itself suggest a responsible thought/belief process.
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Quoting creativesoul
I’m going to wait for expansion on this. I tentatively hold that the only thought/belief possible to say anything about is our own, and in which conception is most certainly required. As to rudimentary level...we’ll see.
Quoting creativesoul
Counterpoint:
Except when the statement was never true in the first place, re: in the case of the time-evolved knowledge that conditions the premises.
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Quoting creativesoul
Falsification of valid syllogisms is possible merely by not holding with the conditions in the premises, yes. But a logical construction of a single subject, with his own purely rational premises, is not likely to be merely valid to himself, for the only productive reason to construct a logical argument at all, is to tell himself something with as much certainty as possible, the construction of which should then be conclusively valid. Or.....sound. That is not to say, on the other hand, that he cannot subsequently falsify his own argument, by simply re-thinking the conditionals.
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Quoting creativesoul
Yeah, I’m aware. Although, your first entry concerning this whole shitshow rejects the 4th minor. I thought you were critiquing from that platform.
In the OP I explained how I am using the terms 'subjective' and 'objective'. To say that something is 'subjective' is to say something about what it is made of.
To say that a proposition is 'subjective' is therefore to say something about what it is made of. It is not to say anything about its content - what it is 'about' - but about what it, the proposition itself, is composed of.
Now, I actually agree that one can say, perfectly sensibly -and I would say, truthfully - that a proposition is subjective. For I think all propositions are subjective as all propositions are kinds of thought, and thoughts are subjective states.
But propositions have content - that is, they represent something to be the case. And in virtue of this, they can be true or false.
So of any proposition we can ask two quite different questions: what does the proposition say? And what is the proposition made of?
Completely. Different. Questions.
For an analogy: what does the book say? What is the book made of? The answer to the first question is "It says that Napoleon lost Waterloo". The answer to the second is "paper".
Likewise then, in respect of the proposition "I am in pain" we can ask "what does the proposition represent to be the case?" and "what is it made of ?" The answer to the first is obviously "that I am in a certain subjective state - the state constitutive of pain" and the answer to the second is "a thought".
Because propositions represent things to be the case, they can be true or false. Take the proposition "I am in pain". That proposition is true: I just burnt the roof of my mouth because I misjudged the temperature of the coffee. But, given my usage, it is nonsensical to say that it is "subjectively true" or 'objectively true". No, it is just "true".
Note, I am not denying that one can meaningfully ask whether truth is objective or subjective. But that is different from saying of a proposition that it is 'objectively true' or 'subjectively true'.
So, given how I have stipulated these terms are to be used here, a proposition can be true or false, and a proposition can be subjective or objective, but a proposition cannot be subjective true, or objectively true.
I think that in general usage the terms 'subjective' and 'objective' often function expressively, and for the most part when someone says that something is 'objectively true' the word 'objective' is just there to express confidence or something like that.
But anyway, this is all beside the point. Here 'subjective' means 'made of subjective states' and 'objective' means 'not made of subjective states'.
I agree that the argument in terms of P's and Q's is obviously valid.
Quoting Bartricks
I agree. But you are asking for trouble with this identification. If you value ice-cream, then ice-cream is morally valuable. It's rhetorically awkward.
I think it would help if you answered my more abstract questions about your motivations. Are you trying to show that a 'true' or 'absolute' morality depends on something like a god?
I returned to your OP to get an idea of where you are coming from. I agree with the subjectivists in your terminology.
Premise 1 does, however, cast the morality in terms of 'subjective' experience (the experience of value) to begin with. In others words, you are perhaps assuming what you'd like to prove.
To me this is the problem with P's and Q's. Abstract arguments can be checked by a computer. The real problems happen in the meanings of words.
When people say 'murder is wrong,' they don't mean 'I feel that murder is wrong' or even that 'we feel murder is wrong.' They are generally aiming at something beyond mere feeling. One can of course argue that this 'something' they are aiming at isn't really there (that 'murder is wrong' ultimately describes the way that people react to murders. Or might as well be understood that way, since it's hard to make clear sense of that extra something.)
I'm moving our discussion into the thread with our other one. They're much the same and less external distraction there...
I am just trying to figure out what's what. I am not sure what you mean by a 'true' or 'absolute' morality - it implies right at the get go that there are 'moralities'. But there is morality, not moralities. And it is morality that I am interested in understanding.
No, premise 1 says nothing about our 'experience' of moral value. Rather, it says something about what it is to be morally valuable - it says that to be morally valuable is at least to be featuring as the object of a valuing relation.
The basis for it is that we are already familiar with valuing: we ourselves value things, and when we value something we say of it that it is 'valuable to us'. When we talk of non-moral value, then, we are talking of things featuring as objects of our attitudes - our valuing attitudes. What is it for something to be valuable to me? It is for me to be valuing it.
So, when it comes to moral value it is reasonable to assume that being morally valuable also involves featuring as the object of a valuing relation. If someone thinks that is not so - that is, if someone thinks the word 'value' as it features in the expression 'moral value' has a quite different meaning to what it does when it features in 'what I value' then they have the burden of proof.
I do not think that burden can be discharged, for it seems to me that anyone who rejects premise 1 is going to be doing so on no better basis than that accepting it is incompatible with their favourite theory about the nature of morality.
That's the wrong way of doing things. It is, unfortunately, the way most people do things - they start out with a theory, whichever one got into their head first, and they then interpret the data in light of it and will only be persuaded by arguments that support it, or something close to it. When in fact that is quite perverse and is to set oneself up as the source of insight into reality. But we're the ignorant ones otherwise we wouldn't be asking questions and wondering about what morality is. So it is important, then, that we not allow ourselves to intrude and instead just follow reason. Not someone else, not ourselves, but Reason.
Premise 1 together with premise 2 entail moral subjectivism. I have yet to have any evidence presented to me that implies either one of those premises is false, and in the face of it they appear to be true.
But as it appears every bit as obvious - every bit as manifest to reason - that our own values and prescriptions do not constitute moral values and prescriptions, I reach the conclusion that moral values and prescriptions are the values and prescriptions of a single subject who is not me, or you, or anyone apart from herself.
Again, I have yet to be presented with any evidence to the contrary. I do not see how to avoid drawing that conclusion. For the argument is valid - the conclusion really is entailed by those premises - and the premises seem undeniable.
Yes, I know. That's what I too have argued. When I judge an act to be morally bad I am clearly not judging that I myself disvalue it, or that you do. But I am still judging that it is disvalued. So, moral value is radically external. Our reason tells us this: it tells us that some things are disvalued, full stop. Not disvalued if and only if we happen to disvalue it, but disvalued independently of our disvaluing of it.
That is partly what's distinctive about moral value. But people - in particular, contemporary philosophers - go wrong in concluding too hastily that therefore moral value is 'objective'. No, it is not objective; that thesis makes no real sense at all. Nothing apart from a mind can value things, as is clear upon a moment's reflection. So moral value remains subjective, it is just that the subject is not any one of us, but someone else. Reason. Reason is a subject. So a subject like us, but not one of us. The conclusion is, I am finding, completely unavoidable. Though of course, only those who undertake to listen to reason will reach it. But that's to be expected - if you don't listen to Reason how can Reason tell you who she is?
I have been arguing that my values - that is, my valuings of things - do not constitute moral values (same goes for yours). That is, if I value something it is not necessarily morally good.
Note, 'moral goodness' and 'moral value' are interchangeable. I am talking about - this entire thread is about - moral value, that is, morally goodness.
But anyway you have demonstrated time and time again that you cannot follow an argument, not one that has any degree of subtlety whatsoever, so I am not surprised that you have to keep asking these inane questions.
I can follow a valid argument just fine. I can also spot a false premiss. Your first premiss(in the OP) is false. Plain and simple. Something being valued is not equivalent to something being morally valuable.
You're also all over the place here. You've just contradicted yourself, yet again.
Do you see it?
Quoting Bartricks
Quoting Bartricks
Where is the contradiction? Those two claims are consistent. Together they 'entail' that for something to be morally valuable is for it to be being valued by someone, just not me.
So you're patently not very good at following arguments.
And the first premise is not false. This is a philosophy forum - how about arguing something rather than just pronouncing? I have explained why the burden of proof is squarely on the shoulders of anyone who wants to deny 1. if you disagree about that, 'argue' that I am wrong. Don't just declare it. I mean, how arrogant are you that you think if you disagree with something that's sufficient to demonstrate its falsity. Show your reasoning!
They are not.
Therefore, either one of your premisses is false or you've an invalid argument.
You could always address the earlier arguments. I've shown enough.
That is consistent with - consistent with - it also being the case that if I value something it is not thereby made morally valuable.
I really don't see how you can't see that - no wonder you're having trouble with the argument as a whole!
Here: only a person can be president of America. I am a person, but I am not the president of America. Those are not contradictory statements.
Likewise, only something that is being valued is morally valuable. I am a valuer, but if I value something it is not thereby morally valuable.
Sheesh.
The above is true. We all know that much. Even the OP has admitted not all his values are moral values. What's curious is how he can still somehow think/believe that the first premiss in the OP is true. It contradicts with the way things are.
So, are you now rejecting your original argument? The one you just presented is new.
All moral value is value.
Not all value is moral value.
Agree?
Quoting creativesoul
What on earth are you on about? Look, this exchange is going to get mighty rude mighty fast unless you up your game and start making sense.
Yes = all moral value is a kind of value, yes.
Cool. What makes it moral - in kind? What do all moral things have in common such that having it is what makes them moral things, as compared/contrasted to things that are not?
For something to be morally valuable it must be being valued by someone.
But evidently not your or I.
So, for something to be morally valuable is for it be being valued by someone, but the someone in question is not you or I, or any of the rest of us.
What's distinctive about moral value, then, is that it is a kind of valuing that we are aware of, but is not done by any of us.
Who is it done by? Well, by Reason. Again, that's what the argument uncovers. We don't start out by stipulating what moral values are, we discover it by consulting our reason about them - the same faculty that brings them to our awareness in the first place.
Nevermind.
I take trolling to require a lack of sincerity. I don't believe that Bartricks isn't sincere.
Why can no-one show it to be invalid despite trying every dirty trick in the book? Because it is valid, that's why.
Why can no-one raise a reasonable doubt about a premise? Because they're all true, or at least far better supported by reason than their opposites.
I have actually mentioned the only hope for defeating it - this argument:
1. If I am morally valuable, I am morally valuable even if no subject values me
2. I am morally valuable
3. Therefore, I am morally valuable even if no subject values me
So I have actually put a machete on the table for anyone to pick up and have a go if they think they're hard enough. But no, you stick to your water balloons. Odd.
Perhaps this is because it's rather obvious you desperately want someone to play along so you can display your superior resoning some more. Unfortunately most people aren't interested, and in any event the flaw of that argument is rather obvious.
Well, obviously I'm confident I can deal with it. But I'm also interested in what's true and so want to test my argument against a rival reasoner. That's what philosophers do, right?
In any case the other sense may fit too: as it seems Bartricks must be either slow-witted, or arguing in bad faith (not sincere); I can't see any other explanation for his refusal to even consider the possibility that his argument is unsound, possibly even invalid (some have claimed this; I can't be bothered spending the time to determine if it is so). He's like a Troll, blindly deflecting all missiles hurled at him, and all swords thrust at him, and stubbornly refusing to budge an inch from his cave, from his myopic stronghold.
And it wasn't meant to be an insult, but a wake-up call, so you got it wrong again.
Your intellect is a blunt instrument as usual. It could be sharpened, but that's up to you.
If an argument is stated by Bartricks, then it refutes no rival positions.
The argument in the first post of this thread was stated by Bartricks.
Therefore, the argument in the first post of this thread refutes no rival positions.
(The premises above are self-evident, by the way.)
Well that at least has the merit of being valid. But it isn't sound. It does, however, accurately express how you think.
So, I have argued that moral values and prescriptions are the values and prescriptions of a mind, a subject-of-experiences: Reason. The case is simple: values and prescriptions require a valuer, a prescriber. Subjects-of-experience - minds - are manifestly the only kinds of thing capable of being valuers and prescribers. Yet as the values and prescriptions of morality are clearly not our own, we must conclude that the valuer and prescriber is someone radically other - another mind, but not any of ours. Reason.
However, if there is another apparently sound argument that leads to the negation of my conclusion, then that itself raises a reasonable doubt about the soundness of my argument. Even without being able to identify the false premise in my argument, one would be within one's rights to reject its conclusion on the grounds that another, seemingly equally powerful argument, negates it.
There is such an argument, here:
1. If I am morally valuable, then I am morally valuable even if no subject values me
2. I am morally valuable
3. Therefore, I am morally valuable even if no subject values me
Both 1 and 2 seem every bit as self-evident as any premise in my argument. That is, Reason represents both 1 and 2 to be true as forcefully as she does the premises of my argument.
However, the fact Reason has been discovered to be a subject now gives us reason to question just what those representations really mean. We can look to our own analogous representations for insight.
Imagine I say "I value you staying alive even if I do not exist" or "I value you being happy even if there is no-one around" or something like that. What would you take me to mean? Surely not that somehow my values will exist even in my absence. That's silly. No, what I mean to express is that I value you being happy for your own sake, rather than for mine or anyone else's. I value you being happy even in circumstances in which I, the valuer, do not exist, because you can still be happy under those circumstances and it is you being happy that I value.
This is just the nature of intrinsic valuing; to value something intrinsically is to value it for its own sake, rather than one's own. If I value a work of art intrinsically, then I don't want anyone to destroy it, including in circumstances where I do not exist - something I might express by saying "don't destroy it, even if I don't exist", or even "don't destroy it, even if I want you to"
By hypothesis, intrinsic moral value involves the subject - Reason - adopting precisely this intrinsic valuing attitude towards something (by hypothesis, that is what it is for something to have intrinsic moral value). But if, when I value something intrinsically, I might well say "don't destroy this even if I am not around" or some such, then it is reasonable to suppose that this is what Reason will say about the things that she values intrinsically. So, if she values me intrinsically, she'll represent me to be valuable even under circumstances in which no-one values me. Just as I might say "I value you being happy even if no-one is around" Reason says "I value Bartricks being happy even if no-one is around" and/or even "I value Bartricks being happy even if no-one values Bartricks being happy".
I conclude that premise 1 of the counter-argument is not true. Yes, Reason does represent it to be true. But all Reason is doing when she represents premise 1 of the counter-argument to be true is telling us that she values me intrinsically, not extrinsically. So it appears to be true, but actually it isn't.
There. The original argument appears to be sound and the only argument that held out any hope of raising a reasonable doubt about it is unsound. The argument is sound, then.
Anyway, it gets into eigenvectors (?) as potentially effective measures of objective moral standards - based on what I got. I don't quite understand eigen-business, but this was thought-provoking nonetheless:
https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1820
What in the world would it mean for a person to be morally valuable?
It's when reason values you. Duh!
I have my own question: how is it "intrinsic" value if it's entirely based on the subjective assessment of reason?
Haha. It's weird he doesn't see the category error there, though. Morality is about specific actions, or at least specific types of actions. A person overall isn't morally valuable or not.
Regarding reason, he seems to either be using that as something like a metonym for God, where he's hoping it will be less controversial, or he's simply positing some sort of platonic form of (unchanging, non-relative) reason (without realizing that to some of us, that's at least as controversial as simply saying "God is responsible"). Although how he's reconciling that idea with the claim that this stuff is subjective, I don't know.
Correct. Note, a proposition won't be rendered false by you sneering at it. You don't have that power.
Quoting Echarmion
We can value something as a means, or as an end in itself. When we value something as an end in itself we are valuing it due to what it is. That is, due to its intrinsic properties.
When Reason values something in that way, it is intrinsically morally valuable.
It's weird you don't see that it is question begging to insist that a category error has been committed when an argument has been provided that proves, beyond all reasonable doubt, that for something to be morally valuable is for it to be being valued by Reason.
Again, see the OP. Register that the argument is valid and all its premises true beyond a reasonable doubt. Then draw the conclusion: to be morally valuable is to be being valued by a subject, a subject who is not me, not you, not anyone apart from herself.
You have a secret invisible 3rd premise that points to "a god" as the source of moral values:
3. Moral values are not my values or your values.
Your argument should read (roughly):
1. For something to be morally valuable is for it to be being valued.
2. Only a subject can value something
3. Moral values are not my values or your values (not created in my subjectivity or in your subjectivity)
4. Therefore, for something to be morally valuable is for it to be being valued by a subject (but not my subjectivity or your subjectivity; therefore the subjectivity of a god).
Premise 3 is easy to take issue with. I just say: Moral values are my values or your values.
Here it is:
1. For something to be morally valuable is for it to be being valued.
2. Only a subject can value something
3. Therefore, for something to be morally valuable is for it to be being valued by a subject.
4. If something's being morally valuable consists in it being valued by me, then if I value something, necessarily it is morally valuable
5. If I value something it is not necessarily morally valuable
6. Therefore, for something to be morally valuable is for it to be being valued by someone other than me.
As you can substitute yourself for me, that argument operates to put all of us out of contention.
Now, no doubt you will just deny premise 5. But that's absurd. That means you think that if you value raping someone, then necessarily it is morally good for you to rape them.
That's plainly false. That's as manifestly false as the idea that if you think 3 x 18 = 67 then it does.
So, wrong and wrong. And note, just 'saying' that a premise is false won't make it so. So yes, you're right that it is easy to 'say' that moral values are your values (or my values). But they actually need to be - that is, it needs to be self-evident to most of us - that moral values are your values or my values for premise 5 to be placed in any doubt.
The issue is if you're positing reason as a platonic form. In that case it's not mental. It's a real abstract whatever-the-heck-platonic-forms-are-supposed-to-be-ontologically.
You didn't at all understand my post. The category error occurs in saying that a person, overall, can be morally valuable or not.
Also that's not what begging the question is.
If you're really interested in this stuff, learn about it. You don't have to admit ignorance about anything but at least quietly, to yourself, read a bit about stuff that people bring up that you don't understand. The more you read about it the more it will start to make sense. This is also not to suggest that it will lead to your views, your conclusions changing, so there's no need to be afraid of that.
In the course of this discussion it has become painfully apparent to anyone who actually does know their stuff - that is, someone who's been properly educated and isn't just gleaning everything from Wikipedia pages and youtube videos - that you don't know what any of the following terms actually mean: category error; non-sequitur; begging the question; valid. It's also apparent that you don't know what a Platonic Form is or how Plato's view and those associated with it differ radically from mine.
So who have you read recently, then? Which contemporary moral philosopher's work have you recently read? I'm intrigued. Clearly you think you know a great deal more than me - so come on, if I'm to be shown the error of my ways I need to do some due-diligence on my teacher. Whose works have you recently read?
Now either make a proper argument - that is, construct a deductively valid argument that has the negation of either one of my premises or my conclusion as its conclusion - or go away.
So you weren't suggesting some abstract notion of reason. You're referring to a particular person's reason?
That's fine to say. But seriously, read about this stuff.
Reason is a person. A person. You know, like wot we is. A person.
What we call 'our reason' is a 'faculty'. That is, it is the means by which we gain some awareness of Reason's prescriptions and values.
Simple. Painfully, painfully simple.
Not Platonism, note.
Incidentally, what's the name of those contemporary metaethical theories that are often called - normally disparagingly - Platonic?
Where does that person live just out of curiosity?
Don't be offended. You could have decent conversations about this stuff, but you can't be so sensitive about criticism.
It's not taking instruction from me, it's trying to better yourself.