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)
One might try and object to premise 1 on the grounds that for something to be morally valuable is for it to be happiness promoting, or autonomy respecting, or whatever (it really doesn't matter what you put in).
But such observations, even if correct, do not challenge premise 1. For premise 1 does not say anything about what produces moral value, yet that is what the objector is talking about. That is, all the objector is doing is pointing to features that seem to be being valued, rather than denying that what it is to be morally valuable is to be being valued.
For example, let's say I value my car because of its sleek appearance and speed. Well, it is no objection to premise 1 to say "the car is not valuable because it is being valued, but because it has a sleek appearance and can go fast", for all you are doing is pointing to those features that caused it to be being valued rather than challenging that its being valuable consists in its being valued.
One might try and object to premise 1 on the grounds that if it is true, then anything we value will be morally valuable. So, if I value being sadistic, then sadism would be morally valuable.
But this does not challenge premise 1 because premise 1 says only that being morally valuable involves being valued, it does not say that it involves being valued by me or you. So I agree that, quite obviously, if I value something that does not entail that it is morally valuable. But all this shows is that I am not the subject whose values determine what's morally valuable.
You might wonder who the subject is, then, whose values determine what's morally valuable. For clearly it is not me - as if I value something it is not necessarily morally valuable - and clearly it is not you - for if you value something it is not necessarily morally valuable either. And clearly it is not some collection of us, for the Nazis valued genocide yet that did not make genocide morally valuable.
Well, I would answer that if the subject is not me, and not you, then it is who it is. That is, moral values are the values of the subject whose values are moral values.
Can't the process of judging value be made objective?
So, while a subject values x or not the valuation itself is objective? It would be like someone using an instrument (objective) to do the measurement instead of without one (subjective)
Pain is subjective because it is made of states of a subject.
Pain cannot be true or false. Truth and falsity are properties of propositions.
The proposition "Mike is in pain" is true if Mike is in the subjective state constitutive of pain, false if he is not.
So, subjective and objective are terms that I am using to refer to something's composition.
Truth and falsity are properties of propositions.
Confusion is caused by some insisting on saying things such as "it is objectively true that Mike is in pain". They're just misusing words. What they mean is "it is true that Mike is in pain".
One can say "truth is objective" or "truth is subjective" on my usage, but when one does so one is saying something about what truth is made of.
Sorry for the error. I was distracted.
What do you wish to achieve with this formulation of the issue?
What implications follow from it?
How?
Am I understanding you?
1. If moral values are my valuings then if I value something it is necessarily morally valuable
2. If I value something it is not necessarily morally valuable.
3. Therefore moral values are not my valuings.
You can run the same argument for any human.
So moral values are not the values of any human mind.
1. Moral exist only in the mind as it's a form of value
2. Human minds can't be the receptacle of moral values because we value things other than morals
Ergo
3. There exist a mind (god/just mind) that values morals
I think premise 2 is problematic. Why can't humans be the valuators of morals? Also, moral values aren't uniform - some find child marriage abhorrent but it's a practice that's still prevalent in the Muslim world. So, if you say humans aren't the valuators of morals just because they have other values (can you clarify what you mean here) then how can this one mind (god or whatever) exist as it too seems conflicted in its values?
Why not?
The argument begins from there in my view. How did you realize that values need subjects/valuators? From recognizing your own and other people's status as a subject, no?
1. If moral values are my values, then if I value something necessarily it is morally valuable (if P, then Q)
2. If I value something it is not necessarily morally valuable (not Q)
3. Therefore moral values are not my values (therefore not P)
That argument is valid and sound. You can run it again with yourself mentioned in premise 1 and 2 rather than me and it will remain valid and sound.
You can run it for everyone.
I conclude that moral values are the values of a mind and the mind in question is who she is - which is not one of us.
On the one hand you have moral philosophers rejecting - quite rightly - individual and collectivist subjectivist views about moral value, and rejecting them on the same grounds that I did.
But then these self-same moral philosophers then conclude - insanely - that moral values are therefore 'objective'. That is, they conclude that somehow there are just values out there, shimmering about. In other contexts we would lock people in padded cells for believing such things. If I thought my keyboard values me typing on it, then I have lost my reason have I not?
The correct conclusion - the only one a sane person who is not morally incompetent can draw - is that moral values are the values of a mind distinct from our own.
My question is why the need for a final/ultimate valuator (god) for morals?
Your answer is that we need god because humans have values that aren't necessarily moral (your not Q). You probably are looking for the one ultimate, final valuator dedicated only to morals. Why is this necessary? Your posts suggest that humans are imperfect since they have non-moral/ immoral values too and so we require this final/ultimate valuator of morals - god. Is this what you mean?
Does this mean that every value has a god-like being that sustains it? After all humans have a variety of values, some cohere and others clash. Two answers, yes or no:
1. Yes, there are as many god-like beings as there are values as each is required to sustain the respective value. Why is this necessary? Even a simple human being, far-removed from being an ultimate/final valuator can hold more than one value at once. Surely there is no need to have an ultimate/final valuator for each possible value.
2. No. We're back to square one. If there is only ONE god and he sustains all values, including morals then why are humans incapable of doing the same? Your argument against morals being just human values was that humans are capable of valuing non-moral/immoral values and so can't be the valuators of morals. Why doesn't this restriction apply to god, the final/ultimate valuator?
I think that the awareness of 'the objective' denotes a shift in outlook, attitude or mentality towards consciousness of the notion of a subject-object relationship, whereas pre-modern culture was characterised as an 'I-Thou' relationship (with God, originator of laws, and so on.)
So in some respects, the ability to think of the world in an objective way is related to the emergence of modern thinking generally, and scientific thinking in particular.
I think Berkeley was indeed reacting against this, insofar as he objected to the notion that material objects have intrinsic reality. He doesn't deny that they exist but denies that they exist independently of any or all observers - hence 'esse est percipe'.
Kant's philosophy was more subtle that Berkeley's, in that he was quite willing to allow for the reality of appearance, but with the proviso that the mind still furnishes the categories according to which appearances are intelligible. The German idealists, generally, rejected the notion that the objective domain was intrinsically real, although they may not have used that exact expression.
But without dragging the debate into the arcanae of German idealism, one thing I think this helps to throw into relief, is the sense in which the categories of 'subjective' and 'objective' have been interpreted in later philosophy.
'Objective idealism' can accept the reality of ordinary objects in a practical or utilitarian sense, without however attributing to the 'objective realm' any kind of ultimate or mind-independent reality. It looks at the issue with consideration to the fact that the individual mind - your mind or my mind - is, on a deeper level, a cultural mind, and a species-mind, and ultimately maybe even a universal mind (but let's not go there right away.) But I think an objective idealist would argue that much or all of what we assume to be 'objectively real' has in some sense a subjective pole or grounding, in other words, doesn't exist 'in its own right' or objectively. This goes for objects just as much as 'values', so called. But it defuses the common assumption that the 'objective domain' is devoid of value or meaning, which is the default view of a scientific-secular culture, by pointing out that even the purported objective domain in fact has a subjective element, which is 'the mind' - yours, mine, the cultures', the world's.
At the turn of the 20th century, much of the Anglo-American philosophical world was idealist. Hegel was still held in high regard, and in America, Josiah Royce and Borden Parker Bowne were still highly regarded.
All of that began to change with Bertrand Russell and G. E. Moore, 'plain language' philosophy, naturalism and positivism.
But meanwhile quantum physics holed scientific realism beneath the waterline, so philosophy retreated to 'the study of propositions' and tea and scones in the LHC cafeteria.
And here we all are.
Turning to moral value: something (an act, a person, a state of affairs) cannot be morally valuable in some respect and morally disvaluable in the same respect. That seems clear to the reason of most, I think. Well, that implies that moral values are the values of a single subject, then.
I still don't understand the necessity for God.
Your argument was that humans can't be the valuators of morals because they can hold differing values and then you go on to say that this can't be done (above). Wouldnt that mean that God is like an extra in movie. There's no need for God if humans alone can value morals in such a unanimous sense.
Anyway, I do not see why you do not see it. For the arguments I gave were valid and the premises true beyond reasonable dispute. So either you do not see that the arguments are valid, or you do not agree with a premise. But which one do you dispute?
Imagine a morality with three basic rules B={R1, R2, R3}. Imagine that person X uses a statement P in first-order logic that R4 necessarily follows from B. In that case, system S can verify P, and on those grounds accept that R4 is necessarily a consequence of B.
Therefore, system S can objectively decide that R4 is morally required for any person who accepts B={R1, R2, R3}. Note that system S is not even a person. S is just a mechanical device.
Therefore, I have to reject that "Only a subject can value something", because machines are perfectly capable of verifying the first-order logic statement P.
You have to prove "a god" is necessary based on considering morals to be subjective.
You did this by firstly, requiring so, denying humans to be the subjects of morality. This, according to you, is because "If I value something it is not necessarily morally valuable". In other words we can have amoral or immoral values. It is then that you concluded the ultimate/final valuator- "a god".
This is not defensible because then you'd require a final/ultimate valuator for every single conceivable value and that's not necessary because humans can hold different values.
So, that means there's "a god", one, final/ultimate valuator of morals but then it also means this final/ultimate valuator must be the subject of any and all values. This is exactly the reason you rejected humans as the sole valuators of morals: "If I value something it is not necessarily morally valuable" and yet here you are positing "a god" who has the exact same deficiency.
A counter-example to premise 2 would have to be an unambiguous case of a valuing that lacks a subject who is doing the valuing.
Look, if I present an argument like this:
1. If P, then Q
2. P
3. Therefore Q
It is no good then saying that I have not proved Q. I have proved Q if there is no doubt about the truth of 1 and 2.
I said that all moral values are valuings. So, all As are Bs.
I then said that all valuings are the valuings of a subject. So, all Bs are Cs.
I concluded (not assumed, concluded) that therefore all moral values are the values of a subject - concluded that all As are Cs.
You said that moral values could have numerous subjects. But I then pointed out that this is not, in fact, possible, for nothing can be morally valuable and disvaluable in the same respect at the same time.
So, all moral values are the values of a single subject.
That's a proof.
It goes All As are Bs, all Bs are Cs, therefore all As are Cs. And then all As are Ds, therefore all As are Cs and Ds. That is, all moral values are the values of a mind and the mind is singular.
We would first have to agree that a morality is a set of rules. In that case, derived moral rules are not "valued" but evaluated. A machine is perfectly capable of verifying such evaluation.
If I take one of the premises: If I value something it is not necessarily morally valuable, it leads to a conclusion that contradicts your conclusion. There's an inconsistency in your position.
There's no contradiction. That premise, combined with the premise "If moral values are my valuings then if I value something it is necessarily valuable" entails the conclusion that moral values are not my values. That is consistent with moral values being someone's values (for I am not everyone)
So, let's forget about any ineffable moralities that cannot be expressed in rules, and limit ourselves to moralities that can. Humans can make inferences based on rules, but are not required for that purpose. Machines are perfectly capable of executing inference engines. Therefore, machines can reach conclusions from a set of rules.
Therefore, I have to reject that "rules require a (human) ruler" or "evaluations require a (human) evaluator":
Rule-based systems. In computer science, a rule-based system is used to store and manipulate knowledge to interpret information in a useful way. It is often used in artificial intelligence applications and research. Normally, the term rule-based system is applied to systems involving human-crafted or curated rule sets. Rule-based systems constructed using automatic rule inference, such as rule-based machine learning, are normally excluded from this system type.
A rule-based system is NOT a human at all, even though humans can do it too (usually with lots of errors, though).
Morality, if it involves any rules, is going to involve normative rules. And is those that require a ruler.
Normative rules lead to rulings, which are simply language expressions. A machine can traverse rules and produce a ruling. There is no need for a human to do that.
Are you changing your argument?
"If moral values are my valuings then if I value something it is necessarily valuable"
The above statement is incoherent. How do you go from "moral values are my valuings" to "it is necessarily valuable". In fact that means that there's no need for "a god" at all. After all anyone's values are necessarily valuable without the need for that ultimate/final god.
Not true at all.
The answer to a jurisprudential question (such as a fatwa) will declare a particular behaviour to be morally permissible or impermissible. These rulings do not tell you what to do, because you do what you want. Still, if you claim to accept the basic rules of the underlying morality then you may want to remain consistent by accepting all its consequences.
Example ruling: "He worked as a programmer for a company but they did not give him his dues; can he sell some of their programs to get his money?"
Whatever the answer may be, there is nobody who will force the person asking the question to act in accordance with the answer. There is, however, a real influence that goes out of the answer, because the person asking the question is likely to want to remain consistent with his basic beliefs. Otherwise, he would obviously not even ask this question.
Morality is much, much more about consistency than about enforcement. In fact, in certain ways, morality has a real and noticeable propensity of enforcing itself ...
There's nothing incoherent about it. Look, because pain is a feeling then if I feel in pain, necessarily I am in pain, yes? Likewise then, if moral values are my values - that is, if my valuing something thereby makes it morally valuable - then if I value something necessarily it will be morally valuable. Which is isn't, of course. Hence, moral values are thereby demonstrated not to be constituted by my valuings.
Moral norms are prescriptions. That's just what a norm is. Well, it's more of a rag bag than that. Moral philosophers often characterise them as 'favourings'. Doesn't matter. Favourings require a favourer.
I then argued that it is not possible for moral values to exist in this way. Moral values must be subjective becsaue they are valuings and only subjects value things.
No, in principle, rulings are produced, or at least verified, entirely mechanically by a rule-based system, i.e. a machine, from a set of basic rules.
The point is, 'subjectivism' is generally considered a very weak position in moral philosophy. Why? Because it reduces moral propositions to 'what I think is right (or not)'.
The problem is, that objective measurement doesn't tell us anything directly about moral goods. This is the root of the famous 'is-ought problem' of David Hume.
So I am trying to extend the analysis to draw out the deeper meanings of 'objective' and 'subjective' and why moral issues are said to be subjective but not objective. There's a philosophical issue involved which I think it deep, difficult and important. So I perfectly understand why you are having trouble seeing it, but nevertheless I think it's an important point.
Well, I'm definitely not enjoying this ride. The territory is not familiar and the guide (you) is either too knowledgeable or himself/herself perplexed by the domain of discourse.
You DONOT value your own valuations as is evidenced by you trying to shift the burden onto someone/something else, a poor helpless god who, it appears, is just there to be the bearer of your values. This is inconsistent because if your valuations of morals are insufficient to convince or satisfy you how then will it satisfy you when all you do is invent an ultimate/final valuator? Considering "a god" is better than us, humans, how will morals that is pointless because we value it suddenly become worthwhile by making "a god" value it? It only makes sense if you value morals because "a god" values it. Euthypro had an issue with Socrates on that.
Note, I am not saying I value or do not value moral values. I am talking about what they are - that is, what they are made of - not my own attitudes towards them.
As for the Euthyphro - what's the problem?
Say what? This is a complete non-sequitur with respect to your earlier comments.
Quoting Bartricks
(1) needs a "to you" at the end. It's just like If you feel pain, then necessarily you feel pain. It's about what's the case in your mind.
Where is (2) coming from?
Re (1), otherwise, the move you're trying to make is akin to this (excusing using "pain/paining" as a both a verb and noun): "If my leg paining is my pain, then if I pain something it is necessarily a pain"--where you're trying to suggest a universal scope at the end (as if everyone's leg should be paining then), rather than keeping the scope as something about you.
And no, nothing needs to be changed. The argument was deductively valid and both premises - as I wrote them, not as you might re-write them - are true. Deal.
Re your first premise, "then if I value something it is necessarily morally valuable"--to whom?
the point - which you don't seem to be grasping - is that my valuing of something is not of a piece with it being morally valuable. They're different. Not the same. Different.
Here, for your convenience, is the argument thus far:
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 moral values are my valuings, 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 a subject who is not me.
For example, imagine that meteorological conditions bring it about that the clouds above your head temporarily form into shapes that look to you like the words "buy some milk!" Are you being instructed to buy some milk? No, obviously not. Why? Because the clouds were not expressing the attitude of any subject - it was just a freak meteorological occurrence. We can describe why it happened by appealing to laws of nature - but those laws, note, are descriptive not prescriptive. Which is why explaining why it happened will not amount to showing that you were, in fact, being told to buy some milk. You were not being told to buy some milk and what appeared to you to be a prescription was no such thing at all, just some clouds.
Now, for it really to be the case that there is a prescription against being cruel, say - and there obviously is such a prescription, for virtually all of those possessed of reason recognise that there is - there would need to be a subject whose attitudes that prescription expresses.
So that's a problem as I pointed out. Valuations are always to someone. You can't have a valuation to no one.
Which would mean that your first premise is
"f moral values are my valuings then if I value something it is necessarily morally valuable to another subject"
or
"If moral values are my valuings then if I value something it is necessarily morally valuable to God"
Neither one of those seems noncontroversial as a premise, do they?
Now, I am not going to respond to you until you actually address one of my premises rather than insisting on changing them for quite different ones of your own invention.
Er, no, you're not really understanding this. It has to be "necessarily it is morally valuable to ____" How do you want to fill in the blank? It's not an option to not fill it in.
"If moral values are my valuings, then if I value something, necessarily it is morally valuable to me."
That's definitely true.
That makes this:
"If I value something, then it's not the case that necessarily, it is morally valuable to me."
Clearly false.
(I switched around the modal quantifier because if we don't fix that, the premises still wouldn't be true with the modal quantifier present--after all, it might be the case that you only contingently value something. Moving the modal quantifier makes it pertain to the semantics of the conditional instead.)
First, there is no 'to me' at the end of my premise, so stop putting it in. Address MY premise, not yours. It won't be morally valuable 'to me', it'll just be 'morally valuable' full stop, because that's the nature of moral value and my valuings will now constitute it. They DON'T of course, but that's the blooming point!!
Second, even if we change my premise for your one - which I won't, because it is thoroughly confused - the argument's conclusion will be the SAME!
Or do you think it won't be? You think, do you, that if I value something then necessarily it is morally valuable? So, if I value raping someone, then necessarily it is good for me to rape someone? Are you crazy? Put in 'to me' all you like, your claims are preposterous and self-evidently false.
Right. There's no "to you" written by you at the end of your premise, which is a problem, because valuations are ALWAYS to someone. There's no such thing as "morally valuable" full stop. The idea of that is nonsense.
If you value raping someone (and you consider that a moral stance), the necessarily, to you, it is a moral value, or it is morally good, to rape someone.
That's the whole friggin idea behind morality being subjective. So yes, that's correct.
Then, once you've done that, say which of my premises - MY premises, as written by me, not you - you disagree with.
Then present a deductively valid argument that has the negation of my premise as a conclusion and I'll then inspect the premises of your argument to see if they have any plausibility at all.
Do those things.
The first, because it's incoherent as written.
Valuations are always to someone.
Statements about value that don't state or at least clearly imply who is valuing something are incoherent.
Therefore, "If moral values are my valuings, then if I value something, it is necessarily morally valuable," especially in the context of your argument, is incoherent.
Perhaps I'll believe it is good for me to rape them, but again that won't entail that it is good for me to rape them.
You think otherwise. Fine.
But for those who agree with me that valuing raping someone does not entail that it is good for you to rape them, my argument goes through.
Needless to say, my argument will not persuade the morally insane or the unbelievable confused.
Morally good to you yes.
That's not false. It's obviously true, rather. That's the whole idea of you valuing something morally. It's morally valuable to you.
Ooo, I stand refuted. What an absurd view you hold. LIke I say, you haven't refuted my argument. All you've done is reveal yourself to be morally incompetent on many levels.
We have found out that Steve did nothing wrong to Steve. Once again, these things are ALWAYS to someone.
Someone else may have a different opinion.
That's objectivism. It's not subjectivism.
Moral objectivism is incorrect. That's not what the world is like.
Things are only morally good or bad to individuals. Different individuals have different opinions. There are no non-individual moral opinions or valuations to correctly match or to fail to match.
Okay, but what you're arguing isn't subjectivism then.
No, it's not. I'm a moral subjectivist. "X is morally bad regardless of S's opinion" is the exact opposite of subjectivism.
Your stupid modus ponens argument rests on trying to insert objectivism "quietly" by not specifying who is valuing. Because, as you pointed out, you believe that it's a "value full stop"--that's objectivism, not subjectivism.
At least you're entertaining as a clown.
People can be aspies, too.
:lol: :lol: :lol:
So we've figured out that your argument works just in case one agrees with it.
Dude, seriously?! Loo
How in the name of almighty Oprah are you still responding after all that?!
Quoting Bartricks
!. For something to be painful is for it to be felt as painful
2. On a subject can feel something.
3. Therefore, for something to be painful is for it to be being felt as painful by a subject.
The analogy you make between feeling pain and moral valuing is, for the moral subjectivist, perfect. There is no requirement that a particular instance of feeling pain should be shared by everyone or by some purported mind apart from everyone's in order to qualify as an instance of feeling pain, just as there is no requirement that a particular instance of moral valuing should be shared by everyone or by some purported mind apart from everyone's in order to qualify as an instance of moral valuing.
When you conclude that a purported mind apart from everyone's is required, this would only be to warrant an objective conception of morality. In other words something is objectively right or wrong because God has determined it to be so. So you are conflating subjective and objective conceptions of morality, and hence the confusion in your argument.
Having said this though, I think the whole polemic concerning whether morality is objective or subjective is flawed and plagued with category errors, reification and shallow thinking. Subjects are not apart from the world, or apart from the inter-subjective context in which the very idea of morality can become coherent.
The view I have defended above is subjectivist, not objectivist. I am defending a divine command theory of value - a divine command theorist about value is a subjectivist (in my sense of the term, given above), but a subjectivist is not necessarily a divine command theorist. Indeed, the vast bulk of those who call themselves subjectivists about morality are most certainly not divine command theorists - they're idiots who are (normally) guilty of confusing beliefs and other representative mental states with what they are beliefs about or representations of.
So, most subjectivists - bar divine command theorists - are ignorant fools who know little about morality and can't think straight, or they're ego-maniacs who've mistaken themselves for a god.
By comparison, most objectivists about morality are completely potty (if sincere). Why? Because they think that moral values and prescriptions can emanate from objects, or that they can just dance about all by themselves. It's mad either way.
'External' just means 'out there'.
Most moral philosophers agree that morality is 'out there' in some robust sense. And I think that's quite right - it obviously is. But 'out there' does not necessarily mean 'exists outside of minds'. For instance, George Berkeley thought the external sensible world was 'external' - that is, it exists outside of my mind and yours and his - but not objective. For he held that the external sensible world exists as the mental states of a god. Hence why he is called a 'subjectivist' about the sensible world.
Likewise, I am a subjectivist about morality in the same way as Berkeley was a subjectivist about the sensible world. I affirm its outness, but I deny its objectivity.
Again, that was just to clarify how these terms are operating here and to underline that my usage is not eccentric. It was not to invite discussion of the labels.
I don't think many moral objectivists would be silly enough to think that moral principles just exist out there somewhere in the kind of way physical objects are commonly thought to. Mortal principles might be thought to exist as social realities independent of any particular mind, but obviously not independent of the existence of humans tout court.
Quoting Bartricks
I think your argument in its two premises and conclusion equivocates between individual moral evaluations and the objectivist, or inter-subjectivist, idea that moral principles are true independently of individual moral evaluations.
For your convenience, here's the first leg of the case:
1. For something to be morally valuable is for it to be being valued. (So, for clarity, for something - anything - to be morally valuable is for it to be the object of a valuing attitude)
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.
To deny 3 you must deny either 1 or 2, so which one?
Here's the next leg:
1. If moral values are made of my valuings, then if I value something necessarily it is morally valuable
2. If I value something it is not necessarily morally valuable
3. Therefore moral values are not made of my valuings
Once again, to deny 3 you must deny either 1 or 2 - which one? Deny 1 and you're conceptually confused; deny 2 and you think it is morally good to rape someone if you value raping someone (which is as self-evidently false as that 2 + 3 = 97)
Perhaps I am wrong, but I really don't see a way of reasonably denying the conclusion of either argument, and together they imply that for something to be morally valuable is for it to be the object of the valuing attitude of some subject other than me, you, and everyone else.
I don't see any equivocation.
As for objectivists not being as crazy as I have represented them to be - on the contrary, that's precisely what they maintain. They can be sorted into either naturalist or non-naturalist varieties. The naturalist kind think that moral values are perfectly at home in the natural world. Well how? First, values are not objects. There are boulders and trees and clouds and giraffes. There aren't also moral values. Values are valuing relations - that is, to be 'valued' is to be featuring as the object of a valuing relation. That's a conceptual truth, yes? So, what, exactly, is doing the valuing according to the naturalist? I'll let them answer that.
Then there are the non-naturalists. They think moral values are moral values and not another thing. Which is just another way of saying that they think moral values just flit about by themselves. Or am I mistaken? I mean, these are cruel characterisations, I admit that, but I think they're accurate.
For instance, a second storey cannot exist independently of a first storey. But a second storey does exis outside of a first story (first storeys do not contain second storeys).
So one could consistently maintain that moral norms and values exist outside of humans, but not independently of them. Indeed, I would maintain that this is precisely what is the case, at least for moral norms. For moral norms are prescriptions issued to us. They are not our prescriptions - so they exist outside of us - but they are not independent of us, for if we did not exist they would not be being issued.
= I don't agree that it is correct, but I do agree that it is the subjectivist view. You apparently also don't agree that it is sufficient, so you posit an absolute subject. But that is an addendum to your argument or a hidden premise in it. I would say that Divine Command theory is more or less universally understood as being one kind of objectivist view of morality; to claim that it is subjectivist is what seems confused.
Quoting Bartricks
In your scenario if God considered moral norms and values only apply to humans they would not in that sense, and that sense alone, exist independently of humans, true. But if there were other sentient moral agents in the universe that God also considered moral norms and values to apply to, then they would exist independently of humans. Or even if God thought those moral norms and values prior to the existence of any moral agents at all, they would exist independently of the existence of humans or any other moral agents, but they would not exist independently of God's idea of moral agents, obviously.
I also did not mention God. The conclusion is that moral values are the values of a subject who is not me or you or any other human.
Re independence - my point was that you were conflating existing 'externally' to p with existing in a way that 'depends' on p.
Note, it is in the conclusions of my arguments that we get closer to understanding what is necessary and sufficient for moral values. So, it is necessary for a moral value to exist that there be some valuing going on. But that is clearly not sufficient, for I can value something yet that does not necessarily make that thing morally valuable. Thus, it seems that though being the object of a valuing attitude is necessary for possessing moral value, it is not sufficient. This, like I say, is what the arguments establish, not what they assume.
It's not the word vale which is ambiguous , but what it means to be valued by a subject.
Quoting Bartricks
The only such subject(s) that has/ have ever been conceived is God(s). If this universe were a computer simulation then you might say the values are moral because they are valued by the creator of the program, but that would only work if the programmer were the only one in existence. Other programmers might not value the same as s/he does, and then your problem would reappear at another level. Also there is the problem that Socrates raised; are virtues virtues because God(s) value them or do Gods value them, or are they valued by God(s) because they are virtues?
I do not know what you mean when you say that I am equivocating over what it means to be valued by a subject.
Which premise are you denying?
Maybe they are valued by society and are moral as such. Society is not a subject, though, even if it can be thought as the totality of subjects. There may be subjects that do not agree with what are almost universally valued or disapproved of acts such as murder, rape, torture and so on.
Quoting Bartricks
If not human and not God(s), then what other kind of subject is there that could be doing the valuing?
When we say 'society values p' we either mean that the majority of the subjects constituting society value p - in which case no premise is challenged - or we mean that society itself, quite apart from its subjects, values p, in which case we must be supposing that society IS a subject in its own right otherwise the valuing is not being done by anything. And again, in that case no premise is challenged.
So, the example of 'society valuing things' does not challenge any premise in the first leg of the argument.
And when it comes to the second, we can use the second leg to put to death the idea that moral values could be synonymous with the values of society. For I can simply exchange 'I' for 'my society' and the argument remains sound. Here:
1. If moral values are the valuings of my society, then if my society values something necessarily what it values is morally valuable
2. If my society values something what it values is not necessarily morally valuable (see Nazi society for more details)
3. Therefore, moral value are not the valuings of my society.
As for what other kind of subject there could be - well, we discover more about the subject by inspecting morality more carefully, given that morality appears to be made of this subject's valuings and prescribings.
I haven't said that any premises are being challenged, if by that you mean being asserted to be incorrect or inconsistent; I have said that you are equivocating on the notion of
Quoting Bartricks
I haven't said they are. But what other kind of subject is there that would satisfy the requirements for your argument? I mean if being valued by any individual human does not make something morally correct (which I agree with) what kind of subject would be able to make something morally correct, tout court, simply by valuing it? The only example I can think of is God(s). If you have something else in mind then spell it out, or else your idea of
And it means the same in every premise. So there is no equivocation.
An argument like this clearly equivocates:
1. Subjects can value things
2. History is a subject
3. Therefore history can value things
But my argument does not.
What you said about society valuing things didn't make any sense to me - yes, we can say that society is founded on moral principles, but it is exactly what moral principles (and values) are that is the topic of inquiry, so whether society is or is not founded on them is neither here nor there. The point, though, is that a) either 'society values p' is elliptical for 'the majority of the subjects constituting a society value p' in which case no premise is challenged, for subjects can value things, or b) society itself, distinct from the subjects composing it, can value things, in which case society is itself a subject and, once more, no premise is challenged.
So again, no premise in the first leg is challenged. And as for whether moral values would be identified with the valuings of a society (whether the society itself, or the majority of those composing it), no - clearly not, as the second leg demonstrates.
Once more you ask me something that the argument itself tells us about. We have discovered, via the arguments, that moral values are the values of a subject - of a mind. Not me, not you, but someone else.
Who? Well, that question is confused. I mean, you are a subject, yes? And you're not me, yes? So, now imagine I ask you "so who are you then?" That's confused, yes? You're you. You don't have to identify yourself with someone else - someone I already know. I know you now, via this. And you're you and not someone else.
Now, whose values are moral values? Well, the values of a subject. Which subject - who? Well, the subject whose values are moral values. Her. No one else. Her.
Is she God? Possibly - I don't know, the argument hasn't told us. But her values are moral values which, I think, makes her a god of a kind. It is not that she's a god and so her values are moral values - which seems to be how you're construing things. No, no, no. Her values are moral values and so she's a god. It is that way around.
To say that the subject whose values are moral is the subject whose values are moral tells us nothing: it is a tautology. You say that "she" is a god of a kind. But she cannot be of a kind, unless all other gods agree with her, otherwise the problem would be the same as with human subjects.
If she is a god only on account of her values being moral, and her values being moral are not determined by her being a god, then what determines her values as being moral? If you say that the values are determined as being moral by being moral you have not said anything; again it is simply an empty tautology. And none of this would tell us how we could know which values are moral, so what use is any of it?
You seem to think that unless I can identify the mind with some other mind of our previous or independent acquaintance then my arguments show nothing. That is so confused it hurts.
An analogy: Janet is lying dead on the floor and a careful inspection of her body reveals that she has been killed by someone. She has not killed herself and she has not been killed by something non-agential. She's been killed by a subject.
Your response? "Who, then?! Who has killed her? Was it me - no. Is it someone else I know?" Me: "no, we can rule out that it is you, and we can rule out all of those people you know. Someone else killed her". You: "Who?" Me: "Er, the person who killed her". You "that's a tautology - all you are saying is that the subject who killed her, killed her. We have learnt nothing. So, perhaps she was killed by an object or killed herself, or me, someone I know, yes?" Me: "Er, no - she did not kill herself, that's been established. And no, you did not do it, that's been established. And no one you know has done it either, that's been established. But we haven't learnt nothing - we've learnt something quite significant, namely that she's been killed by someone!!
You "but what use is that? How do we know who it was?"
Me "well, aren't we interested in what happened to Janet? And now we've discovered someone killed her. That's very significant, no?"
You: "No, not at all, all you've told me is that Janet was killed by a killer who is not me, or anyone I know. Big deal. What's the use"
Me: "Well, we didn't previously know that, did we - and it is very significant, as it means there's a killer on the loose".
You: "Well, what's the use of that if we don't know who they are?"
Me: "You're a detective!!! You're supposed to be interested in trying to find the killer, not just throwing up your arms at every opportunity. I mean, if we know there's a killer on the loose, then perhaps we can look at other suspicious deaths and try and figure out if the same killer was responsible. And so on".
Detective Janus: I am not asking who killed Janet, but rather I am asking what kind of a person could make Janet be dead just by killing her. All I can think of is God. God killed her. Case closed.
Me: well, I don't see why you're going straight for God - I mean, we're not even sure God exists. We're sure Janet has been killed by someone. And you ask what kind of a person could make Janet dead just by killing her, and I have to say I don't really understand what you're having difficulty with - the person who killed Janet made Janet dead by killing her.
Detective Janus: Well, once more that is just a tautology - you're just saying the person who killed Janet is Janet's killer. But I just don't see how anyone apart from God could have killed her. I mean, if it isn't me or anyone I know, or 'society', then it must be God. And that, of course, raises problems of its own. I mean, is she dead because God killed her, or did God kill her and that's why she's dead?
Me: er, is everything alright at home, sir?
Me: Well, he killed Janet. The killer of Janet is Janet's killer. And that killer is not you, or anyone down the office, but someone else. I can't yet tell you much else about her killer, apart from that he/she killed Janet and that he/she is not you or anyone down the office. But, er, have you and the others down the office been killing people?
Having said that I will comment on this:
Quoting Bartricks
Because it seems to me that this shows where the analogy fails. If we see someone dead in a way that could not have been accidental, naturally caused ( including by some animal or other) or self-inflicted, then we must conclude that she was deliberately killed somehow and that therefore someone must have done it.
But when it comes to moral values we do not know in any kind of analogous way that they are true in any absolute sense. You are simply presuming that they are so for the sake of preserving your argument.
On the other hand, ignoring the problems with the nalogy, I have even been willing for the sake of the argument to grant that we do know they are absolutely true somehow, and I am also granting that the only explanation is that some subject other than a human subject must be valuing such principles in order for them to be moral and true. But I am saying that if you cannot explain what kind of subject this could be other than a God, if there are no imaginable alternative kinds of subjects, then I fail to see what your argument is supposed by you to be demonstrating or discovering.
I have provided deductively valid arguments with premises that seem undeniable in support of every claim I have made.
You, by contrast, have said nothing to challenge any premise at all.
Describing a theory does not amount to refuting it. So, kindly say in more detail what the problem that the Euthyphro raises is, exactly, for I don't see it.
So again, I'm not seeing how your argument says anything different or more than the standard monotheistic arguments that constitute Divine Command theory.
Quoting Bartricks
If you can do that we all can and then we would have the self-contradictory claim that whatever any subject values must therefore be morally good.
I'll put it another way:basically your argument amounts to saying that because being absolutely morally good requires being valued by a subject and because we are not absolute subjects, then for there to be absolute moral goods there must therefore be an absolute subject. But the idea of an absolute subject just is the idea of God.
Well, yes, you can trace the rulings to a set of basic rules.
Whose attitudes these basic rules express is another matter. The setup would still work with pretty much arbitrary ones. I am not arguing here in favour of a particular set of basic rules, but once you accept any such set, then a mechanical device can verify rulings against the basic rules as the result of computational effort.
So, if you feed basic rules into the mechanical device, it will be able to verify a ruling for each case that you present to it. These rulings will only be accepted by people who subscribe to the basic rules.
Other people can feed other basic rules into the device and accept other rulings. As far as I concerned, you can select the basic rules that you prefer. I think that it would be unfair to ask people to accept rulings derived from basic rules that they do not subscribe to.
No one is saying that people are apart from the world or that people can't interact with each other and influence each other.
But your finger isn't a hot dog, and even though you can flick someone with it, it's still your finger and not a communal finger.
That much is fine, actually. The problem is the argument you present, where you posit moral value "full stop." That is objectivist.
What you'd need to say is something I suggested already:
"If moral values are my valuings then if I value something it is necessarily morally valuable to God"
Although you'd probably want to change that to:
"If moral values are my valuings, then if I value something correctly, it is necessarily morally valuable to God."
(Ignoring the modality problems with the placement of your "necessarily.")
But as I said, "If moral values are my valuings, then if I value something correctly, it is necessarily morally valuable to God," is very controversial. Anyone who would accept it as a premise of a sound argument would already agree with what you're wanting to argue.
And of course your second premise wouldn't work with the addition of "valuable to God."
It's synonymous with "external" in context. In other words, "external to minds," or rather "external to brains functioning mentally."
Once again you keep talking about 'God' despite God not being mentioned anywhere in my argument. I said that the subject whose values constitute moral values would seem to be a god, just in virtue of the fact their values constitute moral values. You don't seem to get this and keep substituting 'a god' for 'God' (or gods). This is just bizarre. The analogy again:
Me: it looks as if someone killed Janet
Detective Janus: So you're saying Mr Someone, the local bank manager, killed Janet. Well, there's a problem there because Mr Someone has an alibi - he's overseas.
Me: No, not 'Mr Someone', I said 'someone'.
Detective Janus: yes, Mr Someone, right, he was away overseas.
Me: The word 'someone' just means some subject or other, it isn't someone's name. Mr Someone is someone's name - he works at the bank and is currently overseas. Mr Someone is a someone, of course. And perhaps we'll discover that he's not actually oversees and that he killed Janet. I haven't ruled him out entirely. But nevertheless, the important point is that the evidence we currently have available to us tells us that 'someone' - not Mr Someone - 'someone' did it.
Detective Janus: Mr Someone is overseas though.
Me: someone, not Mr Someone
Detective Janus: yes, Mr Someone. I get it. he's overseas.
Me: Not Mr Someone. Someone.
Detective Janus: there's good evidence Mr Someone is overseas.
And on and on and on.
Moral values are the values of a subject. God, if God exists, is a subject. But all we have evidence for, at the moment anyway, is that moral values are the values of a subject. We do not have evidence that moral values are the values of Mr God.
So, again, what is the problem that the Euthyphro raises for my thesis? Not some other thesis that you're familiar with, but the thesis that the evidence is supporting.
The problem is that if moral values are the values of a subject, then they can change over time. What's morally valuable at one time, may not be at another. For after all, we know from our own case that what we value can alter. I may value sunshine at one time, but not at another. Tastes can and do change.
And thus, though - for example - pain seems to be in generally something that is morally bad, nothing stops it from being the case that in the future pain might be morally good. For the subject-whose-valuings-constitute-moral-values - let's call her Trisha for convenience and so that you don't keep calling her God - may value us suffering in the future even though she currently seems to disvalue it.
Why is that a problem? Well, because, as most contemporary moral philosophers agree, moral truths appear to be necessary truths. Just as it is necessarily true that the conclusion of this argument will be true if the premises are -
1. If P, then Q
2. Not Q
3. Therefore not P
likewise it is necessarily true that sadism is morally bad, when it is bad.
The above argument does not just happen to be valid at the moment. It is always and everywhere valid. Its validity does not alter. It does not have a best-before date.
Likewise for substantial moral truths. Such truths may be very complex and sometimes hard to discern - like the answers to complex sums - but whatever they are, they are necessary truths.
So, expressed as an argument, the problem the Euthyphro draws attention to is this:
1. If moral values are the values of a subject, then what is morally valuable will be contingent, not necessary.
2. Moral values are necessary, not contingent
3. Therefore, moral values are not the values of a subject
Fair enough?
you don't actually know what the Euthyphro problem is - that's clear from your description.
And you don't actually know what position my arguments have led to - that's clear from the fact you keep talking about God and gods and not the view that the evidence supported.
It is 'someone' not Mr Someone.
It is 'a god' not 'God'.
She's a god because her value are moral values, rather than her values being moral values because she's a god.
Now, I can explain this to you again and again and urge you to address the actual evidence that supports this view. But you do have to understand and not switch what I've said for some codswallop that your criticisms are designed for.
Detective Janus: the problem with you is that you don't listen. It is Mr. Someone - it has to be, because I can't imagine how it could be anyone other than Mr Someone and I'm so narrow minded and stuck in my ways I think others are not listening to me when they contradict me - and Mr Someone can't have done it because Mr Someone is on holiday. And nobody killed Janet anyway, because you haven't yet told me why my killings don't qualify as Janet killings, even though you did repeatedly and I ignored you. So there.
Damn. I was with you up until then.
OK, I'll try once more. "She" cannot be merely "a god" because only one god could be the absolute subject required for your argument. If there are other gods they might value differently, which would return us to moral values being not absolute, but relative.
And don't talk bullshit about me not understanding the Euthyphro dilemma. The dilemma is precisely as I already outlined it: 'Is something virtuous because the gods love it, or do the gods love it because it is virtuous'. If you want to claim there is an alternative Euthyphro dilemma then give an account of it, complete with sources.
Quoting Bartricks
Here's a distinction we might usefully make. Although I've pointed it out before, I will not apologise for bringing it up yet again.
I prefer (value) vanilla chocolate. But that's not a moral judgement. I am quite happy for you to prefer chocolate.
My valuing vanilla is not a moral judgement.
I value helping the unfortunate. That is a moral value. I am not happy for you not to help the unfortunate.
Hence, a rough distinction can be made between values per se and moral values, in that some values govern just my choices, while other values - moral values - govern the choices expected of others.
That is, moral values set out what we, and they, ought do.
Would you accept this as a defining characteristic?
This, I think, is easily demonstrated. For though you may value helping the unfortune, it is surely clear to our reason that it is morally valuable to help the unfortunate regardless of whether you happen to value it?
that would be impossible if your valuings are moral values. So therefore your values are not - and will never be - moral values. Your values may be morally valuable, of course, but that's different.
I will differ here - or at the lest say that the case needs to be made. But I suppose that would be for another thread.
Sure. But that might take a while.
Morality is "subjective" to the context of the basic rules that you accept. The term "subjective" is not really appropriate here, though. The proper term is rather "context-sensitive". Within a system of morality, however, moral rulings are perfectly objective. You could criticize theorems in any axiomatic system for being context-sensitive. It still works perfectly fine, though. Critical infinite-regress considerations about the axioms is not the solution.
My arguments assume nothing about what distinguishes moral values from other kinds of values apart from being distinct from our own values.
So, for instance, I value other people behaving in certain ways and instantiating certain character traits. And I value such things not because in doing so I perceive any of my interests to be being served, but just because. They are brute valuings. If someone asked me, for instance, "why do you value kindness in others, including in others you will never meet?" I would say "I just do".
I think moral values are those kinds of valuings - valuings that concern the conduct of others and that concern how others are affecting others, or how the world is affecting them - but that do not have either me, or you, or any of the rest of us, as their bearer.
Yes, moral values may just be functionally healthy human feelings, based on empathy or kind-ness, such as can also be seen in social animals.
So take the epistemic value of truth. Well, truth is valuable regardless of whether I happen to value it. And thus the epistemic value of truth does not have me as its bearer. I do value truth, but my valuing of it is not what makes it valuable, though it does give me insight into what actually makes it valuable, namely its being valued by someone.
And take the aesthetic value of beauty. Well, beauty is valuable regardless of whether I happen to value it. And thus the aesthetic value of beauty does not have me as its bearer. I do value beauty, but my valuing of it is not what makes it valuable, though it does give me insight into what actually makes it valuable - namely, its being valued by someone.
And so on. So all those values and prescriptions that some say are personally subjective, or inter-subjective, or objective, I say are the values and prescriptions of a subject who is not me, or you, but utterly herself.
And who is this "she who is utterly herself"? Mother nature perhaps?
This is a nice variation in Moore's open question?
Yep, it is morally valuable to help the unfortunate whether I think it so or not.
Going back to the distinction I wish to make...
A moral value is one that is taken to apply to everyone. Hence my preference for vanilla is not to be considered a moral value; and nor would my preference for helping the unfortunate, unless it is take to apply to everyone.
So again, would you agree that we can distinguish mere preferences from moral values in that moral values are taken to apply to everyone?
Exactly. Quoting Bartricks
Understood, and I agree.
Seems my point may be becoming clear.
Take me and my valuing of kindness (which is not, of course, a moral valuing but it serves as a model). I value kindness in others in a basic way. And I value others being kind regardless of whether they want to be kind. So I do not value others being kind just when or if it will serve their ends or satisfy their desires to be. No, I value others being kind just for the sake of it.
But let's say there are just some people that I do not value being kind. That is, bizarrely, I value tall people being kind and tall people alone. Well, now my value is not universal but it seems to me that were the subject - Reason, Trisha, she who is utterly herself - do value kindness in this kind of way, then kindness would still be a moral value.
So the universality of moral values, though an apparent feature of most of them, is not, I think, an essential feature of them.
But really it doesn't matter, I think, because the arguments still lead where they lead.
Me: Someone has killed Janet. Not Janet herself or an object, but someone. A killer.
You: Mr Killer?
Me: no, not Mr Killer - he works at the grocery (I mean, he could have done it, I suppose, but I am not saying he did - I am saying that a killer killed Janet, not that Mr Killer specifically killed her). Again, I mean 'a killer'.
You: which killer?
Me: the one who killed Janet.
You: Well, there have been lots of killers over the ages. Which one of them is it?
Me: why do you think it has to be one of them? It is Janet's killer. Janet's killer is Janet's killer and not another person.
You: why are you being so vague? Do you think such vagueness is really fitting in this kind of police work?
I'm interested in this line of argumentation. If the genesis of moral codes derive and are patterned, a la the capability for language, in our brain via selective processes that support group survival, does a statistical correlation of principle development against survival support derivation of a moral code, in an objective sense?
In this regard, narratives aside, some of the rules of behavior that arise as part of the group dynamic are described as 'moral'. Our actions, the prohibitions and prescriptions that surround them, are tied to the environment in which we develop. The narratives (e.g. God, Gaia, philosophical arguments) of their defense and their application, even if by force, are borne as a 2nd level rationalization and are part of the selection process.
This does not imply that the moral principles are fixed. They may very well develop and morph in a dynamic environment. This premise may support the development of physical/social principles, independent of a specific, human situation (e.g. alien species, animal species) predicting the development of specific social mores and actions within a group.
Is this unreasonable? If we, sociologically/ethologically, can develop statistically valid predictions of which actions (and under what narrative) are likely to give rise to counter-action (social stigma, physical aggression), does this not deserve the label of 'objective'?
This does not deny a subjective component to morality any more than the subjectivity of pain doesn't deny the objectivity of neuronal patterns consequent with the expression of that subjective mental state. Am I missing the boat?
OK. Think on it some more. You can value kindness, sure - but that's not a moral value. The moral value would be that everyone ought value kindness.
Like I say, it doesn't matter though, for the subject of this thread is whether moral values are subjective, not whether they are universal.
And I have presented a deductively valid and apparently sound argument demonstrating that they are subjective - they are the valuings of a subject who is not me, or you, or anyone else apart from herself.
But nevertheless, my values and prescriptions, whether they are applied universally or not, are not - not, not, not - moral values and prescriptions.
They do share features in common with moral values and prescriptions though. For one, they are values and prescriptions. For another, they are being born by a subject.
Hence why I conclude that moral values and prescriptions - regardless of their universality - are the values and prescriptions of a subject.
Well, may I at least raise an issue?
Assume that a subjective state is a state of mind.
How could we possibly know that your mind and my mind are in the same state?
I haven't made such an assumption. I assure you, if I did not think your opinion worthy, I would not be having this discussion.
I am unclear of the relevance
But even if that's true, it is a remarkably inefficient way of getting it - why not just tell me what you think I don't know, rather than hoping my own fumbling thinking will eventually reveal it to me?
I like the word represents in "...Reason represents the content of my mental state to be the same as yours". Do you mean that Reason (...do we need the capital?) permits or encourages us to use the same word?
That is, I want to do philosophy with you, and not just tell you what I think.
I like that you like the word 'represents', for its presence serves to underscore that this is a person we are talking about, as only subjects - persons, minds - can represent things to be the case.
To answer your question then, by 'represents' I meant 'represents'.
Incidentally master, earlier I could not help but notice what seemed to me to be a mistake, though of course it is much more likely I am mistaken, so ignorant am I. But you mentioned Moore and said that a point of mine was Moorean, yet the point in question was Kantian, not Moorean, though certainly other points I made were Moorean.
So if Fred is in pain, writhing and crying, and we see Fiona writhing and crying, we conclude that Fiona is also in pain? Something along those lines?
But of course, we might also be mistaken, and Fiona gets an Oscar for her performance.
The relevance? Let's do some more work on what sort of thing a mental state is - after all, they are the foundation of what you call subjective, so we ought give them some attention.
We are not doing moral stuff if we are not talking about how we ought treat others.
The attributes of an absolute entity, as in what is logically entailed by the idea, insofar as the idea is intelligible at all, has been comprehensively treated in philosophy and theology. You don't need to, and you cannot, reinvent the wheel from scratch.
If you are talking about an absolute subject you are talking about the "philosophers' God" as somewhat variously conceived by, among many other philosophers, Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz.
No need for you to take on a subservient role here. Don't be so hard on yourself.
You set your ideas out for critique, didn't you? That's what I am doing.
Yep. Also others as people: with bodies, capacities, life histories, social situations, desires, and the rest of it. Minds? The least of it.
Knowledge, whatever it involves, must involve a belief being endorsed by Reason, no?
I am not sure why I need to do this work of figuring out what a mental state is given that my argument seems to be in fine working order as it is and this seems to be another of those orthogonal issues.
For example, let's say you mistakenly believe that mental states are physical states. Okay, how will that affect my argument? Not in the least, it'll just mean that the subject - the one whom we call Reason - is a physical thing.
OK. I'll let that go, since I don't really see what you mean by "Reason represents me to be"; that does not sit well as an explanation.
Quoting Janus
Yes you can. I mean, I am not, But you can. Tim invented the wheel. Then he forgot. Then he reinvented it. So that's wrong.
Reason makes representations. She represents the arguments I have been making in this thread to be valid and sound, for instance.
Suppose I accept this.
Then suppose that I take moral values to be, not my valuings, but our valuings (using your somewhat uncomfortable wording).
What would you say?
Regardless of whether we think we actually have obligations not to destroy forests, the fact is a person who believes we do is not thereby demonstrating conceptual incompetence.
1. If moral values are our values, then if we value something necessarily it is morally valuable.
2. if we value something it is not necessarily morally valuable
3.Therefore, moral values are not our values.
And if I were to say that (2) is plainly false...? Since what is morally valuable IS what we say is morally valuable?
(Edit: I'm not sure what the word "necessarily" adds here - is this a modal argument?)
Brian: He raped you!?
Brian's Mum: Well, at first...
Nope; if we all think 'rape each other!', then raping each other is morally valuable.
Funny thing is, we don't.
Hm. That's debatable. Values do not pop into logic all that easily. One is more likely to introduce them as premisses. Your Cartesian views mislead you here, perhaps?
Gosh, I am getting a good education here.
You have argued that to be moral is to be valued by a subject. And you have argued that since we, as subjects, often value differently, we human subjects cannot be that subject who is the moral-maker.
Now if I count something as a moral value, it is a moral value (at least) for me; but for the sake of your argument this is not good enough; that is it is not good enough that it be merely moral for me, it must be moral per se, even if it is not considered moral by some other subjects.
So you are positing absolute, as opposed to relative, moral values. If relative moral values are contingent on ordinary subjects' valuations then absolute moral values must be contingent upon the valuations of an absolute subject according to your argument.
What else is God (as philosophically conceived by Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Berkeley Hegel and others) but an absolute subject?
So, I am not asking you to tell me who God is, as you claim I am in objecting to your analogy. It is a bad analogy, because we may not know who did the killing, but we do know it was a human, that is we know what kind of being it was. Likewise we know that if we are positing a subject as a ground for morals then it must be an absolute subject, and there can logically be only one absolute subject. You don't have to call it 'God' if you don't want to, you can call it "Kermot the Turtle" if you like, but that doesn't change the fact that you know what kind of being it must be to logically fulfill the requirements of being an absolute law-giver.
If you want critique then you need to read what others have written, consider it carefully and respond to it relevantly, otherwise others will find interacting with you to be a waste of time.
Not at all. That other people are wholly absent from your line of thought is not so much a problem as a symptom of a deeper one. When it comes to forests, one can still ask: is it a mind that values a forest? Or is it as one who lives with a forest - walks in it, grows food amongst it, breathes from it, who takes care of the plant life, whose body is cooled by its presence and so on.
I imagine cutting out your brain and putting it in a jar on the forest floor. Then you deliberate. By this point, the moral calculus has already changed beyond all recognition. You would, for instance, probably be quite upset about the whole brain in a jar thing to begin with. But your 'moral' reasoning has no space for even that. It is thin, thin to the point of irrelevance.
That's nonsense; we know what wheels are, we haven't forgotten, and so we cannot reinvent them from scratch.
If the folk being raped is part of the "we" - and why not? - then it is singularly unlikely that they will approve of the rape.
Hence, "what is moral is what we agree to" is not going to result in pack rape being morally obligatory.
But if it did, it would.
The incoherence comes from your example.
No I haven't, I have argued that to be morally valuable is to be being valued by a subject (the subject being Reason).
Quoting Janus
No I haven't. Where? I have argued that as what is morally valuable is morally valuable regardless of whether I happen to value it, then I am not the valuer whose values constitute moral values.
I am not positing 'absolute' moral values at all. I am not an absolutist. I am a relativist.
the purpose of https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/330068 was to show that there are other ways of bypassing your argument. Its logical validity does not in itself render the argument sound.
A group cannot value something. Not unless you attribute a mind to the group - a mind distinct from the individual minds composing it.
Now, if you say that the group of all of us has a mind of its own, then although I think that view has nothing whatsoever to be said for it, I would simply say that that mind - a mind, note, quite distinct from any of ours - is the mind whose values constitute moral values. Or at least, she could be.
But if by 'us' or 'we' you mean not a subject distinct from ourselves, but just a collection of subjects, then your view is incoherent as you are supposing that valuing is something a group of things can do, when in fact only subjects can value things. A mistake, of course, encouraged by our tendency - useful in many contexts, but misleading in this - to talk about groups as if they are people.
Why not?
Indeed, there would appear to be considerable evidence to the contrary.
Assuming that you do agree with the characterization, how do you know that there are absolute moral values? That there are absolute moral values is what the soundness or otherwise of your argument depends upon.
Hm. I was referring to cartesian philosophical method, not his dualism.
Can you explain the difference you apparently see in these two statements apart from "the subject being reason"?
As to the latter can you explain how reason qualifies as a subject (apart form being a subject in texts or discussion for example)? In order to value something a subject must be capable of judgement. Reason as it commonly understood is not, in itself, capable of judgement; it is a faculty we use to justify our judgements, and given different premises reason can lead to contradictory judgements.
If you say that moral values are so as such regardless of anyone's judgement you are an absolutist. The only way you could be considered to be a relativist would be to say that the absoluteness of moral values are relative to the absolute valuations of an absolute subject.
Quoting Bartricks
Yeah. I have. But you may not be able to see it.
Your argument starts with an assumption of the import of the self - the "I" in "I think, therefore I am". It fails to notice that in forming that very argument you make use of language. Now language is inherently communal; it takes more than one. That's the core flaw in the Cartesian method.
Hence, when you try to draw moral values out of your own individual values - as in your first premise - you fall flat. Moral values are about you and others, not only about yourself.
So here is one of your arguments:
Quoting Bartricks
Sure, it's valid. But then, few if any of us thought moral values are made of my values. So it is not sound.
Further, the assertion - and I can't see were it is actually argued for - that therefore there is a god...
Quoting Bartricks
does not even gain a toehold.
This has been fun; damn, I wasn't going to get back into this forum; you sucked me in. But I think we've reached a point beyond which neither of us will benefit.
Thanks.
That important mistake is easy to commit when one and the same word is used to refer both to the faculty and that of which it gives us an awareness, as in the case of Reason.
the faculty of reason - what we often call 'our reason' - is a faculty that gives us an awareness of the values and prescriptions of Reason herself. But Reason herself is not the faculty, any more than the things I see are my sight.
Your way of reasoning is one of infinite regress.
You see, knowledge is either about correspondence with the real, physical world, when the knowledge is empirical, or else, it is about the consistency of language expressions that satisfy particular basic rules, when the knowledge is axiomatic or at least logic-based.
Rejecting a particular choice of basic rules for governing language expressions is not "reason". That view is a complete misconception.
For example, reason in mathematics is about demonstrating that a particular theorem necessarily follows from a particular -- even arbitrary -- set of basic rules. It is never about questioning the basic rules themselves.
Seriously, "reason" is absolutely not what you think it is.
Reasoning is something that a machine can perfectly do too. Feed the basic rules into the device, feed the theorem into it, along with its purported proof, and the machine will perfectly be able to verify if the proof is correct. All of this is purely mechanical; and it has to be. Otherwise, it is not knowledge.
Perhaps. If so. don't discourage him playing; it may lead to something worthwhile.
Jesus, we're a patronising bunch of pricks.
Not that that's a bad thing. I think it's on the door as you come in.
Full marks for resilience.
Quoting Bartricks
So, for you reason is a human faculty and Reason is the values and prescriptions that faulty gives us an awareness of? But what if different people's faculties of reason show them different values and prescriptions? How could we know whose faculty is dysfunctional and who would be, consequently, wrong? How could our faculty of reason, by itself, tell us such a thing if it is dysfunctional as it may well be?
Constructively: the OP might ask after what makes anything said in it specifically moral. Say 'valuing' is indeed 'subjective'. But is all valuing moral? And is morality exhausted by the act of valuing?
Resilience. In order to really come to terms with Rationalism, or any other philosophical school, one must feel it in one's guts. How better than to take the style of argument and use it for some other purpose? That's what @Bartricks may be doing. He's applying his thinking in a new context. Way cool.
The resilience is demonstrated by the sheer number of replies he has put forth this morning.
OR at least post a few really poignant memes.
That is wrong, because "reason" is merely a mechanical faculty, that can be executed by machines. Humans can do it too, but are way less efficient at it; and much more error-prone.
I gather from something I noticed - not going to look for it now - that you used Euthyphro? That's another direction I would have taken.
Let's crowd fund to set it up. We'll be bigger than Lego!
Yes, but I was accused, without supporting argument for the accusation, that I did not understand it. :smile:
Bloody trollies. The ubiquitous carnal lust of the dilettante ethicist.
Yeah; you probably don't. :razz:
As I see it morality is inter-subjective and does not exist in a rational vacuum, so I guess that would qualify it as cognitive, in an enactive or embodied (as opposed to merely computational) sense at least.
Quite possibly, and if not I would have appreciated the instruction. :wink:
Good idea. Who will we get to instruct us?
God knows.... :joke:
Yes, reason is the faculty that gives us fallible insight into the values and prescriptions of Reason, who is a subject, a mind, like one of us though also importantly different.
Different people's faculties manifestly do give them different representations. And what this tells us - and our faculties of reason themselves tell us to think this - is that our faculties of reason are not infallible and thus not to place too much trust in what your own says but to compare it with those of others.
So, my reason says that if something is morally valuable, it is morally valuable irrespective of whether I happen to value it. Now I know that virtually everyone else's says the same thing, for this apparent fact about moral values is widely acknowledged among those who have reflected on the matter - that is, those who have consulted their reason on it.
Now last time I checked, that's how we figure out what's true. We don't ask ordinary folk. We ask Reason by consulting our reason.
I suggest that you simply feel revulsion at where my argument leads. Well, we're not 6 anymore and we have to grow up and realise that what's true isn't always what we want it to be. And I thought I was the one who was supposed to be a child in a nursery playing with toy theories who was going to be taken to big school by you - come on, I've put down my bricks, show me my mistakes, it's the only way I'll learn.
Reason is a subject. So, Reason is an object, as subjects are objects. Now, to 'reify' something is to 'mistakenly' identify it as an object. Am I mistaken? No. If I am, show me - you haven't yet.
And 'our reason' is a 'faculty'. A 'faculty' is not an object. So, in calling our reason what it is - a faculty - I am not reifying it.
The problem is not with your argument; it is with its relevance (to morality). Irrelevance is much worse than error. One can correct an error. Relevance requires reengineering one's assumptions from the ground up.
Yes, quite right - I could not make head nor tail of what you represented the Euthyphro to be. I then very kindly laid out what I take the Euthyphro to be and asked if you agreed, but you said nothing.
So here is the relevant portion of that post again, copied and pasted.
Tell you what, to move things along I'll suggest what the supposed problem may be, and you can just confirm that it is as I say it is.
The problem is that if moral values are the values of a subject, then they can change over time. What's morally valuable at one time, may not be at another. For after all, we know from our own case that what we value can alter. I may value sunshine at one time, but not at another. Tastes can and do change.
And thus, though - for example - pain seems to be in generally something that is morally bad, nothing stops it from being the case that in the future pain might be morally good. For the subject-whose-valuings-constitute-moral-values - let's call her Trisha for convenience and so that you don't keep calling her God - may value us suffering in the future even though she currently seems to disvalue it.
Why is that a problem? Well, because, as most contemporary moral philosophers agree, moral truths appear to be necessary truths. Just as it is necessarily true that the conclusion of this argument will be true if the premises are -
1. If P, then Q
2. Not Q
3. Therefore not P
likewise it is necessarily true that sadism is morally bad, when it is bad.
The above argument does not just happen to be valid at the moment. It is always and everywhere valid. Its validity does not alter. It does not have a best-before date.
Likewise for substantial moral truths. Such truths may be very complex and sometimes hard to discern - like the answers to complex sums - but whatever they are, they are necessary truths.
So, expressed as an argument, the problem the Euthyphro draws attention to is this:
1. If moral values are the values of a subject, then what is morally valuable will be contingent, not necessary.
2. Moral values are necessary, not contingent
3. Therefore, moral values are not the values of a subject
Fair enough?
Perhaps it doesn't interest you - perhaps you find rigorous defences of metaethical theories boring. Okay, go put up a shelf then.
Are you being sponsored by Mistakes-R-Us or something? I have argued - argued, not just blankly stated - that moral values are the valuings of a subject. Not an 'absolute subject' whatever one of those is (and I have no idea at all).
So, that doesn't mean that something is morally valuable regardless of anyone's attitudes, does it - for 'anyone' includes Reason herself. No, something is morally valuable if Reason values it. Now, because I am not Reason, then if something is morally valuable it is not valuable because I value, but irrespective of whether I do.
I am a relativist about morality in the sense that I think that the truth of a moral proposition is contingent, not necessary. And so I think the truth of a moral statement is relative to when (and possibly even where) it is made.
Hence the Euthyphro.
How would you address it?
1. If moral values are the values of a subject, then what is morally valuable will be contingent, not necessary.
2. Moral values are necessary, not contingent
3. Therefore, moral values are not the values of a subject
That is the argument I can address, but if you have something else in mind then I need to hear it before I can address it.
Doesn't this argument end up disallowing objective information altogether? Or did you already address that?
Mmm. Not sure why you found it important to introduce the modal element.
I was thinking more along the lines of, if morality is made of a god's values and prescriptions, then it is moral to act in a certain way because god prescribes it. Is that right?
Presumably you divide truths into objective truths and subjective truths?
"The handle is on the left." This statement is apt to be subjectively true or false, but not objectively either.
Quoting Bartricks
So what is moral is what god prescribes.
Now, is it moral because god prescribes it, or does god prescribe it because it is moral?
Seems you want to say that it is good because it is proscribed by god. Have I understood you aright?
It's on the left for me, but not for you. That's what it does.
Moral prescriptions are the prescriptions of a subject, Reason. And so if the subject prescribes it, then it is right.
Again, that's the theory, not a problem.
I described the problem - and most would agree that the problem I described is a huge one and that I wasn't replacing the hard problem with a softer one - but by all means describe a harder problem if you can, for I don't know what it would be.
You're misusing terms - I defined subjective in the opening post. Truth is a property of propositions. But to say that something is 'subjective' is to say something about what it is made of.
But if she did, it would be.
And that's a problem - yes. Why? Well, because moral truths are necessary and not contingent.
Quoting Bartricks
Odd. I will leave that here, for you to consider. Something went astray.
I believe it does, and the OP can't address that problem.
The problem, note, is not that it is likely that rape is right. For clearly rape is wrong and there's not a shadow of a doubt about that. And that remains the case regardless of whether you agree with me that the disvaluer of rape is a subject or, well, whatever.
So the problem has nothing to do with how sure we can be about the actual rightness or wrongness of anything.
The problem has to do with the fact that if my theory is true, then the wrongness of rape is contingent, not necessary.
Yes? That is the problem. And I am not softening it for my own purposes. I'll deal with it - but you need ot confirm that you and I are dealing with the same challenge.
God is not mentioned in any premise in my argument.
God is not mentioned in the conclusion.
The subject - Reason - whose prescriptions and values constitute moral prescriptions and values is a god. A god, not God (well, she might be God -not ruling it out). And she's one of those simply because her prescriptions and values are moral prescriptions and values.
@Janus - this is what I meant by incongruence. Is this 'wrong', an error in reasoning? One wants to say - reason departed long ago. This is a different game.
Do you mean 'information'? Or 'information about things that are objective" perhaps?
Stop assuming I'm an idiot.
and
Quoting JosephS
run contrary to each other.
To my understanding "objective" implies "fixed-ness". If moral principles can change then that would be admitting it's subjective. Unless, you have a real interesting explanation for this I'll have to disagree.
As for how objectivity relates to the question of morality, all I'm saying is that subjectivity can be studied objectively. Isn't that how we know something is one of the two?
Subjective means 'made of subjective states' - that is, states of a subject-of-experience, a mind.
Objective means 'not made of subjective states'.
If you don't like those definitions, then just deal with it or start up your own thread in which you use them as you wish.
Objective information has no particular point of view. When your doctor records objective information about your situation, she records heart rate, temperature, etc.
But let's put that to the side and embrace your way of understanding the terms. "Objective" refers to mind-independent things? Is that what you're saying?
If you are using them differently, then I refuse to understand what you're talking about. Plus I genuinely don't know what you're talking about.
'Objective' means 'not subjective' and 'subjective' means 'made of mental states'.
So, objective means 'not made of mental states'.
That does not mean the same as 'independent of minds' though.
Take minds themselves, for instance. Minds are not made of mental states. They 'have' mental states. But they are not made of them.
Thus, minds are objective, not subjective. They are not made of subjective states.
Minds clearly do not exist independently of minds.
Thus something can be objective, yet be incapable of existing independently of minds.
Another example - first and second storeys.
A second storey cannot exist absent a first. However, although second storeys cannot exist independently of first storeys, second storeys are not made of first storeys.
Some things are made of them.
Pain, for instance. It's a feeling, yes? Feelings are subjective states. So pain is subjective. When it exists, it exists 'as' a subjective state.
That's why anaesthetics work - they work by eradicating pain, rather than by inducing the hallucination that you are not in pain.
Deliciousness is subjective.
Funniness is subjective.
Beliefs are subjective (what they are 'about' will often not be).
Maybe; but what I was wondering is, if god thinks rape is right, does that make it right? I don't think so. I'd say that if god said rape was fine, rape would still be wrong.
You don't agree?
So for him external reality is subjective.
Most people assume he is incorrect and that the objects of sense experience are not made of mental states, but rather are extended things that some of our mental states give us insight into. That is, most people are 'objectivists' about the sensible world.
I think morality is subjective.
Yes, agreed.
According to Gödel's incompleteness theorems, there is no mechanical procedure that can generally discover new theorems along with their proofs. The reason why I mention this, is the Curry-Howard correspondence, according to which:
CHC: a program is a proof and a proof is a program
So, strange but true, the discovery of new theorems (or new programs) is not an exercise in rationality. It somehow uses other, unknown mental faculties.
However, proof verification is a purely mechanical procedure.
So, a human discovers a new theorem with its proof, and then a machine can verify that the proof establishes a path (=a proof) between the construction logic of the theory and the theorem which is being proven.
It is therefore a warning shot in the direction of the practice of memorizing knowledge or merely doing exercises in verifying their evidence. Machines can do that too. The real value is not there. The real value is in discovering these theorems and their proofs.
Is math subjective?
I mean I think the acid test here is that no one seems to be able to work out what Bartricks is actually saying. Perhaps it's because his is the only infallible reason? :yikes: :wink:
Seriously though, I think the explanation for why most people think murder, rape, torture and so on are all wrong is because if they didn't social life would fall apart and die. So, those attitudes and the empathic feelings that go along with them have been evolutionarily selected for. Other social animals are no different; although of course there can always be divergent aberrations.
How could you tell an hallucination of not being in pain from... not being in pain?
:yikes:
Math seems to be made of truths that are beyond any one individual. It's not like pain. If math is subjective, are we living in the mind of God?
But yes, 2 + 2 = 4 regardless of whether I think it does. But that's consistent with it being subjective.
For after all, I am arguing that rape is wrong regardless of whether I think it is, yet still the wrongness of rape is subjective.
As soon as beliefs are expressed in language, they are language expressions, which could possibly represent an uncanny correspondence with the real, physical world, or be provable from the construction logic of an abstract, Platonic world.
The existence of objectively justified ([s]true[/s]) beliefs (J[s]t[/s]B) is a widely-accepted assumption, axiomatized by epistemology, and without which epistemology would not even make sense as a discipline.
I have not denied that justified true beliefs exist, for instance, or that knowledge is made from them (although I think I might deny that, but I haven't done so here).
Objective is a description of the meta-ethical theory as it reflects its predictive capability in assessing suitability of a more to an environment. Hypothetically, if the addition of a more or principle to an environment reduces its competitive advantage that principle is liable to selected against (against a sample of groups that unsuccessful principle is less likely to be prevalent).
So any particular principle may not be predicted for an environment, the theory as a whole would provide an objective view of human ethics. I'm not looking to author it. I just want to see where this idea is likely to falter.
The idea that all beliefs are subjective, is not compatible with the idea that there exist objectively justified ([s]true[/s]) beliefs. Therefore, objectivity in beliefs is assumed to be possible.
Meta-ethics: moral realism or moral anti-realism?
Accept or lean toward: moral realism 525 / 931 (56.4%) - Phil Papers Survey.
...hardly an overwhelming majority is it? And that includes many ethical naturalists who'd still disagree with your conclusions despite identifying as moral realists. So where does it leave your argument (based as it is on the presumption that 'reason' when averaged over a mass of thinkers, delivers us answers we should take as being true? Over half of professional thinkers on ethics have not reached the conclusion you claim to be obvious despite whole careers of considered thought.
Your previous ones were written sober??
Yes.
Do you have a better dataset to support your assertion?
I am a subject. You are a subject. Reason is a subject. Get it yet?
Me: someone killed Janet.
You: who - I have no idea what a 'someone' this killer could be is.
Me: erm, a person - a someone, not a something.
You: nope, not getting it. Incongruence. I agree with the person who said incongruence because that sounds fancy. He's said nothing - just belched hot air and flung insults around - but I like that he said incongruence. Maybe the reason no one agrees with you is that you're not making any sense, but just using these deductively valid argument thingies that no-one seems able to follow despite them being models of good reasoning.
So, do you now agree that this representation of the Euthyphro problem is accurate:
1. If moral values are the values of a subject, then what is morally valuable will be contingent, not necessary.
2. Moral values are necessary, not contingent
3. Therefore, moral values are not the values of a subject
Express it as an argument in which the negation of my theory is the conclusion. Otherwise I genuinely don't know what problem you're trying to raise.
1. If moral values are the values of a subject, then what is morally valuable will be contingent, not necessary.
2. Moral values are necessary, not contingent
3. Therefore, moral values are not the values of a subject
I'm sceptical.
So, that becomes "is something morally valuable becuaes the gods value it, or is it valuable and so the gods value it?"
And then we have to change 'gods' to 'Reason' or 'the subject'.
And then I say "it is valuable because Reason values it"
And then I wait for you to tell me what the problem is.
Ah. I didn't notice you do this.
That seems to take us away from the post that puzzled me: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/329164
The original is not about morality. Or a god. But peity. And gods.
The 'Euthyphro' problem - the one that contemporary philosophers think dispels divine command theory - bears little resemblance to anything in the dialogue.
That's not to deny it is a problem, just that we really don't need to read the dialogue.
My argument concludes that moral values are the values of a subject, and the subject qualifies as a god. And as moral values exist, the god exists.
No grounds for puzzlement. Unless you think 'a god' and 'God' mean the same. But it puzzles me why you'd think that.
But then you say we need not have read it...
Quoting Bartricks
That your argument bears no resemblance to the Euthyphro I remember, however vaguely, nor to the tertiary sources I have at hand.
But by all means find the famous passage and quote it and we'll see.
Your claim includes the statement that some immoral act is immoral regardless of our personal opinion on the matter. That is a position of moral realism.
Quoting Bartricks
Categoricity is not in any sense 'almost universally acknowledged' it is accepted in a particular field of ethics and not even the most prevalent one. What evidence do you have (other than your own increasingly shrill arrogance) that such assumptions are 'almost universally agreed on'?
Quoting Bartricks
Yes, but Joyce's categoricity is to do with the property of moral utterances as @Banno has already mentioned. Your assertion is both categorical and moral realism. Categoricity is not in opposition to moral realism, so simply saying that your position is categorical does not serves as a rebuttal to my claim that it is moral realism.
Not all beliefs are subjective, because some beliefs are deemed objectively justified. Furthermore, once a belief is expressed in language it is no longer a state of mind, and does no longer require that a person be involved. Machines can also manipulate language expressions.
If we use "subjective" to refer to mental phenomena, then beliefs would be subjective unless we're claiming that beliefs can obtain outside of minds somehow. It wouldn't hinge on justification if we're using "subjective" to simply denote that something is a mental phenomenon. (Not that I'd agree that a justification can be objective anyway.)
Re language, I'd say that you're conflating things like sounds, pixels on computer screens, ink marks on paper--however language is expressed, with beliefs. The sounds, etc. are correlated to beliefs, but they're not literally beliefs.
Quoting Terrapin Station
I am convinced that some beliefs can be expressed in language -- and copied outside the mind -- and communicated to others. I have not said that I believe that about all beliefs; but that is not necessary anyway.
How do you think that sound waves or ink on a page or whatever can literally be a belief?
It is a language expression that is at best "isomorphic" with the corresponding belief, meaning that operations on the language expressions will still correspond to operations on the belief. For example, if you negate the language expression, it will somehow correspond to the negated belief.
We never really know what the belief is, because we only ever deal with the corresponding language expression.
In the justified ([s]true[/s]) belief (J[s]t[/s]B) doctrine, the term "belief" requires a corresponding language expression, without which it is not possible to communicate it, or from there, to verify its justification.
That does not mean that all beliefs can be expressed in language. It just means that formal knowledge only deals with beliefs that are expressed in language.
Quoting Bartricks
Staring with #1, I value eating ice cream (in moderation) - but I think we would all agree that eating ice cream is not morally valuable. What am I missing here?
You're not missing anything. The argument just conflates whole sets with members of a set, thereby appearing to show a contradiction. I've corrected it below.
1. If moral values are {a subset of the group} 'my values', then if I value something {it is not} necessarily [that] it is morally valuable (the subset P does not necessarily have only the properties of its containing set)
2. If I value something it is not necessarily morally valuable (P being a subset of Q does not imply that all members of Q must also be members of P)
3. Therefore moral values (subset P) do not have the same properties as the containing set (premise 1).
Its just a tautology.
Moral values are a subset of your values. Some of your values you are not inclined to universalise, the subset of moral values are generally those you are inclined to universalise. It's one of the properties which defines that subset.
That's what I was thinking, but I'd like to hear what @Bartricks has to say. I will keep an open mind on this.
??
Don't you deal with your own beliefs?
Quoting alcontali
I don't think I understand this.
So, let's say that I believe I stopped at the public library to use the restroom. I can write "I stopped at the public library to use the restroom." Now, I negate that, "I didn't stop at the public library to use the restroom," how does that correspond to a negated belief?
(Which is not to mention that what was at dispute isn't whether a linguistic expression can be correlated with a belief, but whether linguistic expressions literally are beliefs.)
That's not the first premise. The first premise expresses the thesis of individual subjectivism.
So, using your ice cream example, the first premise would say
1. If I value eating ice cream, then necessarily eating ice cream is morally valuable
the second premise then asserts something that is self-evidently true to the reason of most people:
2. If I value eating ice cream, then eating ice cream is not necessarily morally valuable
It might be morally valuable - we can no doubt dream up circumstances under which it would be - but it is not 'necessarily' morally valuable (yet it would be if moral value was made of your valuings).
the conclusion then follows as a matter of logic. Just as most people can see, with their reason, that 2 is true, they can see as well that this argument form is valid:
1. if P then Q
2. Not Q
3. Therefore not P
the argument therefore establishes, beyond a reasonable doubt, that moral value is not composed of your valuings.
Perhaps that is already obvious to you - it is to me - but it is not to some people and they need to be shown it in no uncertain terms (normally, in my experience, about 7 times before it sinks in).
Joyce believes that it is the mark of a moral imperative that it is categorical. Like Kant. And like, you know, the vast bulk of moral philosophers, now and throughout history. And like, well, most who have a moral sensibility.
I agree. But Joyce is not a moral realist becusae he thinks that categorical reasons - that is, categorical imperatives of reason - either don't, or can't exist (it isn't clear which of those views he holds).
I am a moral realist.
Anyway, this is tedious as the issue is not what this or that philosopher thinks about this or that, the issue is whether moral imperatives actually are categorical. And they are. And if they are, then that demonstrates that they are not imperatives that we are issuing to ourselves and others. And likewise for moral values.
I mean, that's by no means the only way to show this, it is just the way I have been adopting given there is such widespread agreement on the categoricity of moral values and norms.
Again, you're not addressing anything I've argued. I don't deny the existence of beliefs, or that knowledge involves having justified ones (though, like I say, I think I would deny that). Indeed, 'justifications' are what you have if - and only if - Reason, the subject whose values constitute moral values, endorses what you believe.
But, like I say, I don't see how what you're saying is connecting with anything I am saying.
If I write on a piece of paper that "I believe it is Sunday" I have not created a belief made of paper.
Firstly, I've asked you twice now for some empirical evidence to support this claim and you've provided none. Secondly, I've already explained that categoricity and moral realism are not mutually exclusive so referring to your claim as categorical is not a rebuttal to my assertion that it is moral realism. Your argument hinges on the plausibility of a premise which relies on moral realism (and then places that reified entity outside of human biology). You claim this premise is delivered by reason. You therefore need to provide a plausible explanation of why the majority of ethicists disagree with you on the matter. Has their reason failed them? If so, how can you demonstrate that it is not your reason which has failed you?
And finally, quit the condescending insults. This is a philosophy forum, not a schoolyard. Such an attitude may play well with students, but it just makes you sound like a child. No one will take you seriously if you maintain this delusion that anyone who doesn't share your personal understanding of a concept or author must be an idiot. If it is possible for someone to read these authors and yet still have such a poor understanding of them, then how do you know that someone isn't you?
You keep insisting, using your bad analogy, that I am demanding to know who the subject is, when I have told you repeatedly that all I want to know is what kind of subject you are talking about, and then you continue with this strawman even though you have already said the subject is Reason.
You insist on reverting to this bad analogy instead of addressing the problems or unclarities of your actual argument.
You present an interpretation of the Euthyphro that substitutes the "virtue" or "piety" of the usual translations of the dialogue for 'morality' which is fine since that is in accordance with the use of the Dialogue in modern ethics.
You say the import of the argument is to show that something is not moral on account of its being valued by a subject, and then go on to claim that moral values are such on account of being valued by a subject: namely Reason.
You cannot explain how Reason can be considered to be a subject, but then instead of explaining it, you attack others claiming that they misunderstand your argument. misunderstand the Euthyphro and so on.
Are you serious? Are you a troll? Who knows, but why should you be taken seriously unless you pay attention to, and try to address, the fair criticisms of your so-called argument that others having been presenting? I have not seen you give one response in good faith to any criticism; all you seem to be able to offer is ad hominems and insults, straw men and red herrings; in short, it seems, anything to avoid having to face the ambiguities, incoherences, inconsistencies and gaps in what you are presenting.
Charles Sanders Peirce, the founder of pragmati(ci)sm, drew distinctions between deductive, inductive and abductive reasoning.
If I remember correctly, Popper denies there is any inductive reasoning (as it is merely expectation that the future will be as the past), but Peirce's abductive reasoning is what Popper would call conjecture.
You can be a moral realist and deny the categoricity of moral norms and values.
You can be a moral nihilist and affirm the categoricity of moral norms (most do, in fact)
You can be a moral realist and affirm the categoricity of moral norms.
You're just ignorant and don't understand the difference between moral realism and the claim that moral norms are categorical.
And as for empirical data - go and read some moral philosophers writing about morality.
IN other words, I refer you to moral philosophy.
One of those. A person. A someone. A subject of consciousness. Someone it is something like to be. And so on.
And what's interesting about them - the one described in the conclusion of my argument - what marks them out as distinct from you and I, is not their subjectivity, but the fact their values constitute moral values and their prescriptions constitute moral prescriptions.
I don't think you're going to get this at this point if you haven't already. You're locked into your own view and unless I express your incoherent view you're not going to understand mine.
What you've done is done some googling on it and read some bonkers Wikipedia page or whatever - something written either by you or someone else on here.
"“A stupid man's report of what a clever man says can never be accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.”
I have told you what a subject is. But you insist you don't know and that I haven't told you.
I have told you that the arguments I have made are deductively valid. But you don't seem to realise this and don't seem to realize that this means you have to deny a premise.
I have told you that my argument does not conclude with 'God'. Yet you insist that the subject has to be God.
And so on and so on.
Which is irrelevant to whether the argument is semantically coherent. You're stating the argument in natural language. If it's not semantically coherent, that's a problem.
So, you are saying that Reason is a subject and hence in light of the above we can conclude that for you Reason must be a subject that experiences?
Quoting Bartricks
Of course I've read it. My interpretation of it is no different than yours, really. I agree that it shows that piety, virtue, morality, beauty or whatever cannot be merely the valuings of a subject. But you say they are the valuings of a subject: namely Reason.
I studied this Dialogue in a course on ethics as an undergraduate. The lecturer used the dilemma in this form: 'Is something pious because God loves it, or does God love it because it is pious.' I pointed out to her that in the original form it was not "God" but "the gods", and since the gods might disagree with one another about what they loved that could indeed be a problem.
I also pointed out that in the context of Christian theology, one could reasonably say that it is both the case that something is pious because God loves it and that God loves it because it is pious. There seems to be no contradiction or inconsistency in this because God is understood to be the divine lawgiver. IT is no good saying that God could love something evil, because God is understood to be goodness itself.
Are you claiming that something is both morally good because it is in accordance with Reason and that it is in accordance with Reason because it is morally good?
Quoting Bartricks
A stupid man quotes those he sees as authorities out of context to convince himself he is smarter than others instead of presenting arguments and then trying to see if there are any flaws in them.
Quoting Bartricks
You have said a subject is an experiencer, you have said Reason is a subject, and yet you refuse to answer the question as to whether Reason is therefore an experiencer. I wonder why! :roll:
And what problem is the euthyphro raising for me? The original does not address my view. So you have to tailor it to address my view. And then all I am going to say is "something is valuable because reason values it" and wait to hear why that's something I shouldn't say.
So on your view, if you're stating an argument in terms of a natural language, natural language semantics doesn't matter because ____?
Yes, there is. Saying that something is a value to no one in particular makes no sense. Value doesn't work that way.
But anyway, it's the argument that is important not the arguer. And it's a good argument
I was referring to the beliefs of others, which are only known to us when they somehow communicate them.
Quoting Terrapin Station
That is exactly what "isomorphic" refers to. It does not mean that two things are identical.
It just means that the mapping is structure preserving with regards to particular operations on both sides. For example, a Google map is isomorphic with the territory that it depicts, with regards to connecting points on both sides and measuring distances. If a one-inch line on the map corresponds to one mile in the territory, then a two-inch line will correspond to two miles.
So, a language expression is meant to be isomorphic with a belief with regards to logical operations that you could perform on both sides.
The language expression is an abstraction that seeks to represents the belief. It is the language expression that we communicate. It is processed in lieu of the belief. The map is obviously not the territory.
That kind of mappings obviously have their flaws and abstraction leaks, but they are part of what we experience as objectivity.
First order predicate logic is needed because different domains are forwarded and their variables need to be quantified. For example, when stating, I value something, two separate variables share a relation to the predicate value:
? = for all, ? = there exists a least one.
Predicate V = value, M = moral.
Variables x = not y nor z, y = person(implied by I or my), z = something,
Necessarily = ?.
[i]?x?y?z[
1. (Vx&Mx?Vy)? ( ?(Vyz)?Vx&Mx)
2. Vyz?¬?(Vx&Mx)
3. Vx&Mx?¬Vy
][/i]
Firstly, line 1 via Hypothetical Syllogism, is Vx&Mx ?Vx&Mx, which is circular.
Secondly, the modality is switched with no justifying premises.
Thirdly, even if line 1 is accepted and the switched modality ignored then the other premises don't follow as the correct version of Modus Tollens would be:
[i]?x?y?z[
1. (Vx&Mx?Vy)? ( ?(Vyz)?Vx&Mx)
2. ¬ ( ?(Vyz)?Vx&Mx)
3. ¬(Vx&Mx?Vy)
][/i]
Which is saying something different to what you're stating because Vyz?¬?(Vx&Mx)
doesn't have the same truth value as ¬ ( ?(Vyz)?Vx&Mx) and Vx&Mx?¬Vy
doesn't have the same truth value as ¬(Vx&Mx?Vy).
Now I'm not presuming I'm correct but if I'm mistaken, then I'd appreciate it if you would type it syntactically in first order predicate logic and define your domains of variables (or constants as the case may be) so we don't have to indulge in semantics.
I think that all three types of reasoning do not explain why new knowledge is discovered in the first place. They only kick in when we verify if a justification makes sense somehow and supports the conclusion.
For example, there is no rational explanation why Einstein felt like publishing his 1905 paper and how he discovered its content. In fact, the main ingredient could not possibly have been mere reasoning. There is no mechanical procedure known that will lead to that kind of results, and according to Gödel's incompleteness theorems, such mechanical procedure cannot even exist. Reasoning is just about verifying that Einstein's conclusions follow from the evidence he presented. In that sense, reason plays just a minor role in the entire mental effort and activity surrounding his 1905 paper.
Quoting Bartricks
I do not think that moral values are necessarily subjective.
A group of people can objectively share a moral system, by accepting the language expressions that represent the basic moral rules and by accepting the rulings -- also language expressions -- that necessarily follow from these basic moral rules.
It is the use of language and communication between these people that allows for some objectivity. Language is itself a common understanding meant to facilitate some measure of objective understanding, i.e. objective belief.
If water and gold are one and the same, then if I have some gold I necessarily have some water, do I not?
And yet if I have some gold, I do not necessarily have any water, do I? (I may have some water as well, but I won't have water just in virtue of having some gold)
And so I can now conclude that water and gold are not one and the same.
If moral values and my values are one and the same, then if I value X, X is necessarily morally valuable. I mean, how could it not be if my values and moral values are one and the same?
And yet if I value something, it is not necessarily morally valuable. It may be morally valuable too. But it won't be morally valuable just in virtue of the fact I am valuing it.
And so I can now conclude that moral values and my values are not one and the same.
I have defined 'subjective' as meaning 'made of a subject's mental states'. All beliefs are going to be subjective according to this definition, because beliefs are always the beliefs of some subject or other.
But anyway, my argument is not about beliefs. It is about moral values. And I am arguing that moral values are subjective because moral values must be a subject's values, as only a subject can value something. But as moral values are clearly not made of my values - my mental states - (for I cannot make something morally valuable just by valuing it - I mean, sometimes that may make something morally valuable but it won't necessarily do so) , or yours (for I take it you'd agree that the same holds true for you), then moral values must be the values of some other subject.
Some seem to think I need to say more about this subject, but I don't - the above reasoning, so far as I can tell, establishes that moral values are the values of a subject.
I do not see how what you're saying challenges this conclusion.
Quoting Bartricks
Again, you are saying that Reason is a subject - "LIke me. Like you" - and hence in light of that claim we can conclude that for you Reason must be a subject that experiences?
Last chance...answer the fucking question that I have conveniently underlined for you...answer it with a yes or no? I'm betting you dare not answer it, for it will reveal the incoherence of your position, whatever answer you give.
Quoting Janus
Yes.
You: what do you mean by 'yes'. Do you mean 'turnip'? Answer my fucking question!!!.
Me: no, I mean 'yes'.
You: I don't see how you could mean anything other than turnip. Do you mean turnip? Answer my fucking question and don't be rude to me, you fucking fuckstick. Why are you so rude to me.
Me: I did answer. I said 'no, I mean yes'.
You: you mean no means yes - you total fuckstain What does that even mean!!! Grrr. I am so righteously indignant.
Quoting Janus
Yes.
You: Answer the fucking question.
Yes.
The answer to your question is 'yes'. Y. E. S. Yessy yessy yes yes.
Sure, but that's a different thing though. I haven't claimed that there is a rational explanation for that; I am claiming that Einstein's discoveries involved abductive reasoning, that is involved thinking of new possibilities, theories, that he conjectured might turn out to be explanatory of what is observed.
For example a newly conjectured hypothesis or theory might be explanatory of anomalies that Newtonian physics could not explain, such as the observed procession of the perihelion of Mercury.
OK, so in what sense could we think of Reason as being an experiencer, given that the common notion of an experiencer is of a sentient, perhaps sapient, being. Are you saying that Reason is a sentient, sapient being?
What evidence do you have for that? What could it even mean to imagine that in the absence of any evidence? How could Reason sense things? How could Reason know things? How could it be a subject without being an entity (which you have already rejected)? How could it establish the absolute truth of moral values without being an absolute subject or entity? And if you say it is an absolute entity, then how would it differ form the common philosophical (never mind religious) conceptions of God?
Quoting Bartricks
As far as I can tell, this statement ( assertion / proposition / whatever-you-want-to-call-it) is clearly false.
Quoting Bartricks
#3 is only true iff both #1 & #2 are true. Since #1 is clearly false, we cannot determine the truth value of #3.
But maybe I'm still missing something. Can you please clarify?
Reason, the source of moral values, the valuer whose valuings constitute moral values is a subject of experiences, a.k.a. an experiencer.
I think by this time even my cat - ignorant fool that she is - has understood me. My cat, who spends most of her date licking her own anus - she, now, understands me. She too, incidentally, is a subject of experiences. Her values - which are sick - are not moral values. But she's a subject of experiences. As am I. As are you. As is the one whose values are moral values.
Quoting Janus
Sentient - yes. Sapient - no. She could be - but no, I don't think she is, because I think this argument is going to be sound no matter which human it names:
1. If moral values are made of Bartrick's valuings, then if Bartricks values something necessarily it is morally valuable
2. If Bartricks values something it is not necessarily morally valuable
3. .Therefore, moral values are not make of Bartrick's valuings.
1. If my values are moral values, then if I value eating ice cream then necessarily it is morally valuable for me to eat ice cream.
That one is clearly true.
(P.S. I have come to the conclusion that either you are incredibly obtuse or you are just fucking around. I suspect the latter, and have suspected it for some time. So I am just playing along for the entertainment, I don't expect to get any coherent explanation out of you).
She knows more than other sentient beings because she knows more than them - indeed, she is the source of all knowledge given that to have knowledge is to have a belief that she endorses
A belief expressed as language may not depend on any subject's mental state. If you represent a belief as a language expression and feed such expression to a machine, e.g. "a=5; b=7; print(a+b)", the output will not depend on any subject's mental state. The language expression still represents a belief. I can happily believe or not believe that "a=5 and b=7".
Furthermore, what exactly can be known about beliefs that are never expressed in language?
There are beliefs that can be expressed in language and can be shared even with a machine, who can then even manipulate these beliefs. Of course, this is not possible for all beliefs even if they can be expressed in language.
Language expressions can represent moral rules and rulings derived thereof. A machine can then verify if the ruling necessarily follows from the moral rules. Such ruling will be a new shared belief, shared by people who accept these moral rules. Hence, a measure of objectivity is possible in morality. I have never said that it would be universally shared. But then again, objectivity does not need to be universal. It is usually context-dependent.
And yet she is not sapient! Shows how much you care for consistency.
Quoting Bartricks
I didn't draw any definite conclusion, just listed the possibilities; so, since you are not fucking around (or at least claim not to be) I guess that leaves me with the alternative.
Quoting Bartricks
Lame pun-generated insults will get you nowhere...
Yes, agreed. Knowledge is rational, even though the mental discovery process of which knowledge is the output, is itself not rational.
For example, imagine that your dog wags its tail and knocks a bottle of ink all over a piece of paper and, by pure chance, the ink streaks form a pattern that says "it is sunday". Is that a belief? No. Is that even an expression of a belief? No. It is an 'apparent' expression of a belief, not the real thing.
I think anyone who denies that has lost their reason. I mean, whose belief would it be? that paper's? The dog's tail?
Nobody, apart from someone in the grips of a theory, would think that the lucky pattern expressed a belief.
So your view is plain and simply false.
Quoting Bartricks
Yes
Quoting Bartricks
Yes
Quoting Bartricks
Yes
What has any of that got to do with my assertion that your premise is moral realism?
Quoting Bartricks
How do you know this? I've asked you several times now to justify your claims of intellectual superiority, but you've failed to even address the argument. I obviously think I have a perfectly adequate grasp of the difference, you think I don't. We can't both be right. It is therefore possible for someone like us to be wrong about this kind of thing. How do you then know it's not you? You can't use your own reason to prove this because my reason proves that I am right, so you must appeal to something outside of your own judgement. You've not provided any sources, citations, even names of other academics who agree with you on this.
Quoting Bartricks
Why would you refer me to moral philosophy? If you are using the agreement of epistemic peers as justification that your premises are reasonable, then how do you explain the fact that only a tiny number agree with your conclusions. You can't coherently claim simultaneously that the reasoned application of skilled thinking yields results which we should trust as sound for our premises, but then claim a conclusion which does not concur with those same thinkers as being sound too.
Either the collective agreement of moral thinkers is worthy of taking as sound (in which case you could reasonably refer me to them as evidence), or it is not (in which case you cannot and will have to argue your premise from prior axioms). If the former, then you'll need to explain why it is that these thinkers whose conclusions you have just declared trustworthy, largely do not agree with your conclusions. If the latter, then your argument fails as one of its premises has no justification.
For I said that most moral philosophers agree that moral norms and values are categorical. I did not say that most moral philosophers are moral realists (although they are that too - even the contemporary ones).
Ah, because I said that most moral philosophers agree that moral norms and values are categorical and you sought to refute me by, bizzarely, providing me with data showing that most moral philosophers are moral realists. That, to my mind, demonstrated that you did not know the difference between believing that moral values and norms are categorical and being a moral realist. For you seemed to think that the fact only slightly more than 50% of contemporary moral philosophers are moral realists demonstrated that it was false of me to say that the overwhelming majority of moral philosophers agree that moral norms and values are categorical.
You claiming that your premise is merely categorical (rather than realist) and your premise actually being categorical (rather than realist) are not the same thing, do you understand that distinction?
I am arguing that the premise you were talking to Janus about, the one you claim is merely categorical, is, in actual fact realist in the context you are using it. It therefore cannot be supported by your claim that nearly every moral philosopher agrees with you.
A categorical claim can be just that the 'ought' is universalised, applies to all others. If your premise is merely that moral values are categorical, then your conclusion doesn't follow. There is no logical reason why values taken to apply to others must necessarily be not your subjective ones. Some of your subjective values you may consider apply to others, some may not.
I value good whiskey, but I don't care if others don't because I generally want them to be happy and I recognise that whiskey makes some people happy and others not.
I also value not mugging people, but I do care if others don't value this because I generally want the people around me to be happy and being mugged seems to make pretty much everyone unhappy. It's therefore a value which I want others to have.
Your premise that there exist such universal-seeming values does not therefore necessarily lead to a conclusion that such values must be held by some other entity. Only a moral realist set of values would lead there (presuming you also thought morals had to be values).
What would be any reason to believe that value could obtain independent of an individual valuing something?
So are you now saying that beliefs aren't literally a part of expressed language?
Quoting Happenstance
Quoting Bartricks
Are you really that arrogant, or is it something you think people are impressed by?
Is it possible for me to have some values that are not moral values? I.e., are there different types or categories of values?
Language expressions that correspond to beliefs are meant to communicate beliefs. In the definition of knowledge as a Justified ([s]true[/s]) Belief (J[s]t[/s]B), no distinction is made between both. Still, that distinction only becomes relevant when there is noticeable problem with the correspondence between belief and language expression. As soon as a belief is expressed in language, it can be shared and can acquire some measure of objectivity.
I think that language can express beliefs. However, the precise details of the correspondence is probably a question mark. We do not necessarily know anything about someone beliefs if he does not communicate them.
Your behaviour is far more interesting to me than your micky-mouse argument. I, along with about six other posters, have already addressed your arguments. We've all, in various guises, been told we don't understand the terminology, the opinion of other moral philosophers, or sometimes even just logic itself. On no occasion have you provided a shred of evidence to support your assertion that you have the 'right' interpretation in these disputed cases, and you've repeatedly failed to respond substantively to any of my counter-arguments (the moral realism of your premise, the epistemic peer argument with regards to disputed reasoning, the selective use of appeals to authority) and yet here you are talking about my approach instead. Hardly leading by example in the "address the argument not the person" stakes are you?
In the spirit of honesty, I admit to not being a very good philosopher but will say that if I don't understand anything pertaining to its ontology then I tend to lose interest in the discussion. When I asked you about the domain of a variable, I'm really asking you what is the ontological status of a predicated subject, in this case, moral value. I asked for it syntactically because then I will semantically interpret the predicated subjects myself in coherence (or incoherence as the case may be) with my own ontological beliefs. This is a useful utility I do find with formal logic; stripping semantic arguments down to syntactics (its what you do yourself in stating: p?q; ¬p therefore ¬q). And what I mean by ontological status is where does it reside? What type of substance is it? Or am I showing a bias in these specific questions due to my lack of philosophic skills?
Btw, I'm in the emotivism camp concerning morals and apologies if I don't attend to your replies immediately due to being in work at the moment!
How about answering "What would be any reason to believe that value could obtain independent of an individual valuing something?"
So I don't understand you and you don't understand my question. Seems like we are having some trouble communicating :smile:
Let me try another approach - let's go back to your statement #1, and take just the first part (what you are calling P):
Quoting Bartricks
What do you mean when you use the terms my values vs the term moral values? My assumption (which could be wrong) is that both of these terms identify sets of statements / assertions / propositions (which ever term best works for you).
So - just for example - I could loosely define the set my_Values like this:
my_Values = {"Ice cream is good", "Murder is wrong", "Chairs without cushions are better than chairs with cushions", etc etc etc}
Now you just said that none of my values are moral values. So how do we define the set moral_Values?
By the way, if he thinks that no valuing of ours are moral values, then re the "P" of "If my values are moral values," we have to assign "false" to it. So our conditional truth table. One upshot of this, and I'm not sure how it impacts the formal argument (I'd have to go back and look at the argument again), is that the truth value of Q is irrelevant to our conditional.
So, when you say "ice cream is good' that is not a value, that is a judgement. You are judging that ice cream has value. Either that it is valuable to you, or that it has moral value.
To be valuing ice cream is to be adopting a pro-attitude towards it. It may be more complex than that, but it is that whatever else it is.
Perhaps it will help to imagine someone who believes nothing is right or wrong, good or bad. Well, that person can and will still value things. They do not believe in morality - so they do not make any moral judgements (or don't if they are consistent and sincere). But they may still value ice cream.
What moral values are is what the argument tells you. We know that some things are morally valuable, for our reason - and the reason of most others - says so. And even if we disagree about which particular things are the morally valuable ones, we agree that some things are morally valuable.
What is moral value, though? We don't just stipulate, we investigate.
Are moral values my values? I mean, I know I value things. I am a valuer, among other things. Valuing is something I do. But are moral values my valuings? That is, is something - anything - morally valuable just if it becomes the object of one of my pro-attitudes? Any of my pro-attitudes?
No and no. That is clear to my reason and clear to yours too, surely?
So premise 2 - the one that says "If I value something it is not necessarily morally valuable" - is self-evidently true.
Premise 1 simply expresses a conceptual truth that cannot be denied, namely that if moral values are made of my valuings, then if I value something necessarily it will be morally valuable.
The conclusion that follows from these is that moral values and my values are not synonymous.
But as I know that moral values must be the valuings of someone - for how can something be valuable if it is not the object of a valuing attitude? - then I can conclude that moral values, though not constituted by my values, are nevertheless constituted by someone's values.
I don't understand the question
Go on then. Let's hear your counter to any of the positions I've put forward in opposition to it. I've listed them in my post above for your convenience.
Yes, that is my position and I think it is well supported.
I keep telling you that I am a moral realist. I am unclear how you think you're making a 'counter-argument' by pointing out that I am a moral realist. And you confused believing that moral values are categorical with being a moral realist. So I think I have excellent evidence that you don't now what you're talking about.
As for evidence in support of my position - well, here it is again:
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 moral values are made of my valuings, then if I value something necessarily it will be 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 a subject who is not me, but someone else entirely
7. If moral values are made of your valuings, then if you value something necessarily it will be morally valuable
8. If you value something it is not necessarily morally valuable
9. Therefore, for something to be morally valuable is for it to be being valued by a subject who is not me, and not you, but someone else entirely.
Now, note that at no point in that argument have I expressed the truth of moral realism. The above argument simply demonstrates what it would take for moral value to be a reality. It does not say that it is.
But I did say that moral values exist - I am a moral realist - and that it follows from this that the subject in question exists.
For convenience then:
10. If some things are morally valuable, then the subject described in 9 exists
11. Some things are morally valuable.
12 Therefore the subject described in 9 exists.
So, there exists a subject - a person, a mind, a subject-of-experience - whose values constitute moral values. He/she is not me, not you, but he/she exists.
Now, the argument is valid whether you like it or not. And so you must deny a premise - but note, simply denying one does not constitute a refutation. I know many of you think that if you think something it must be true. But that isn't actually true. And so just thinking that one of my premises is false is not sufficient to show it to be. You need to argue that one is false, or even that a reasonable doubt can be had about one, by showing how its negation is implied by premises more prima facie plausible than mine.
None of you have done that, or even seriously attempted to, so far as I can tell.
It's interesting that you decided to put up Reason as the source of morality without realizing that you need to put that into an ontological context.
The argument itself: stuff has meaning to a subject, and is therefore subjective: not so much.
Why do you call it Reason?
In other words, you're positing moral values independent of any individuals. As you said, "moral values full stop."
I'm asking what reasons there are to believe there are such things as "moral values full stop."
You said you understand values better than I do. So explain the reasons to believe that there are "moral values full stop."
1. Moral prescriptions are prescriptions of Reason
2. Moral prescriptions are the prescriptions of a subject
3. Therefore moral prescriptions are the prescriptions of a subject, Reason
No they aren't. And Reason is not a god.
This is indeed a really important question.
I think that reason is no more than the ability to verify that a conclusion necessarily follows from its evidence. It is a purely mechanical procedure that machines can also carry out. Reason itself does not produce evidence nor conclusions. That is achieved by other, unknown mental faculties.
In other words, you cannot discover new knowledge merely by reasoning. That is in my opinion the reason why metaphysics, i.e. trying to discover new knowledge by reasoning, is such a worthless endeavour.
They didn't have good grounds though, and they were wrong. Reason often reflects fashion.
Right. So it doesn't do any good to look at its conclusion for what I'm asking you, because what I'm asking you is something about the first premise. The first premise is not the same as the conclusion.
I just don't want you to get banned. Anyway re the first post?
"Right. So it doesn't do any good to look at its conclusion for what I'm asking you, because what I'm asking you is something about the first premise. The first premise is not the same as the conclusion. "
I'm not sure I understand that comment. You think that there is moral value "full stop" where it's not a particular individual morally valuing something right? Isn't that what the second part of the first premise is saying?
Many take that to entail that moral value is objective. But I think that's a mistake, for moral value would retain its categorical nature if being morally valuable consisted in being the object of a single subject's valuings.
1. if being morally valuable consisted in being the object of one of my valuings, then if something is valuable it would not be morally valuable irrespective of whether I value it. (if P, then Q)
2. If something is morally valuable, then it is morally valuable irrespective of whether I value it (Not Q)
3. Therefore, being morally valuable does not consist in being the object of one of my valuings. (Therefore not P)
So how does that relate to "there's the valuer - who is the one doing the valuing, so the one to whom the thing has value - and then there is the fact the thing is featuring as the object of a valuing relation"? What happened to the valuer?
I'm sorry but I'm still not following this. Right now I'm still stuck on your P from #1
Quoting Bartricks
I still don't know what this means. If you could give me some specific examples of things that you would consider to be "my values" and things that you would consider "moral values" that would be a big help to my understanding you - it would help me to get a handle on what you're saying.
1, If Gold is water, then if Gold is heated it will turn to steam
2. If Gold is heated it will not turn to steam
3. Therefore Gold is not water.
That's valid, yes?
that's my argument.
Yes, that's fine. I'm writing a different response but I need to get back to it in a minute.
Take loving someone. If you love someone you value them. The person you love is the object of your esteem. That - and no doubt a great deal else - is what's involved in loving someone. To be loving someone is to be adopting a valuing attitude towards them, and to be beloved is to be the object of a valuing attitude.
As for what's morally valuable - well, you are morally valuable, I am morally valuable, character traits, such as kindness, generosity, honesty- these are morally valuable (usually). Happiness is often morally valuable and so on.
They're morally valuable though, aren't they? None of us value them, but they are morally valuable.
Therefore being morally valuable cannot consist in being the object of the valuing attitudes of humans.
I think they don't agree with my conclusion because they are not aware of my argument and/or they think that that there is better evidence that the conclusion is false than that it is true, for most contemporary moral philosophers seem to think that the Euthyphro dispatches it.
But I think most moral philosophers would agree that if something is morally valuable, its moral value is not constitutively determined by our valuings.
Okay, that is valid in terms of the formal logic of it.
The problem with your argument above is with your second premise. Why should we assign "true" to "If something is morally valuable, then it is morally valuable irrespective of whether I value it"?
So, to respond to this, I think if most moral philosophers - or, well, just most people who carefully reflect on the matter - get the impression that moral prescriptions and values are categorical, then that counts for a lot, other things being equal.
Most moral philosophers do get the impression that moral prescriptions and values are categorical. And even among those who might deny it, most are likely to admit that they appear to be (they'll just deny that these particular appearances count).
But most moral philosophers also think that moral truths are necessary truths and so they think that moral values and prescriptions can't alter over time. This strikes them as every bit as self-evident as that moral prescriptions and norms are categorical.
Because moral norms and values could vary over time if they are the values and prescriptions of a subject, they reject subjectivist views.
The combination, then, of the categoricity and necessity of moral norms and prescriptions leads them - most of them - to embrace some form of objectivism.
And some of them embrace objectivism but find its demands too ontologically exotic and so become nihilists.
that's my crude analysis, anyway.
Because the reason of most of those who reflect on this represents that to be the case.
If I value hitting someone, that does not mean it is morally good for me to hit them.
In a court case the defence do not think it will be sufficient to exonerate their defendant from any wrongdoing simply to demonstrate that he/she fully approved of what he/she did.
We would consider a defence team who thought that might do the trick to have, well, lost their reason.
These things are manifest to reason. Premise 2's truth is manifest to reason.
If you think it's morally okay to hit someone, that does not mean that it's morally okay for you to hit someone in anyone else's opinion. It's only okay in your opinion. But that might only get you a cup of coffee if you've got 25 cents, too. (Well, or a couple bucks or whatever it costs now, depending on where you go.)
So that it's your opinion that it's morally okay to hit someone doesn't imply that it's morally okay or not for you to hit someone independently of anyone's opinion.
It's just that the opinions of those in power, which can be a democratic majority of opinions, determines what's allowed socially and legally. Most people do not feel that it's okay for you to nonconsensually hit someone else (at least not where you do any significant physical damage).
Sure, it's only morally okay in his opinion. Other people disagreed with him. So they're not going to allow him to do that.
But now you're not addressing the argument.
Premise 2 says "If I value something, it is not necessarily morally valuable".
Opinions have not been mentioned. And premise 2 is manifestly true. So the argument is sound.
You're confusing the opinion that something is the case, with it being the case.
I think there is universal (for all intents and purposes) agreement regarding egregiously antisocial acts such as murder, rape, torture that they are morally reprehensible, at least when carried out against members of one's own community.
Ideally what is considered to be one's own community would be all of humanity, and indeed if humanity is to continue as a flourishing global community and perhaps if it is to even survive in anything more than scattered communities that have reverted to a hunter/gatherer or basic agricultural life, this would seem to be the only way forward.
You might say that all these moral principles are the deliverance of a subject:Reason, but I don't believe there is any Reason apart from human reason, so I would say these principles are delivered by human reason at its best, that is reason freed from prejudice and bias.
I can't swallow the idea of Reason as a sentient subject; I cannot make any sense at all of that idea, unless you equate reason with God. But then God, as traditionally understood is more than merely Reason, He is also Love, and Goodness and so on. I can't say I believe in God, though.
So, I would disagree with your premise that to be morally valuable is to being valued by a subject. How are you going to convince me that I am wrong about that?
You don't seem to understand. If Himmler's values are moral values, then if he values gassing Jews and Homosexuals it will actually be morally good for him to do so (and good for everyone else to do so too). It won't just be that he has the opinion it is good. It will actually be good.
And it won't be, obviously, Which just underscores why the argument is sound. It underscores that moral values are not made of Himmler's values, or yours, or mine.
Well, if you morally value something, then necessarily it is morally valuable to you. It's not necessarily morally valuable to anyone else.
What is is for an act to be morally right or good to someone is for that person to consider the behavior in question permissible to obligatory conduct.
What it is to "actually be good" to someone--and it's always to someone is for that person to have a particular disposition towards the act.
Here's an argument that is obviously sound:
1. If my cheese is made of my thoughts, then if I think there is some cheese in the fridge, then necessarily there is some cheese in the fridge
2. IF I think there is some cheese in the fridge there is not necessarily any cheese in the fridge
3. Therefore cheese is not made of my thoughts
Your response? You ask what evidence there is that 2 is true. I point out that it is a self-evident truth of reason.
You seek to deny 2 by pointing out that if someone thinks there is some cheese in the fridge, then 'in his opinion' there is some cheese in the fridge.
Er, yes. But there won't necessarily be any cheese in the fridge, yes?
Likewise, if Himmler values gassing people, that does not mean it is necessarily good for Himmler to gas people.
It may result in Himmler forming the opinion that it is good. But it still won't be good, will it?
When we're talking about morality, I don't at all agree that it's self-evident that morality isn't ONLY mental dispositions towards actions. I think it rather couldn't be clearer that that's all that morality is. I wouldn't say that it's "self-evident," but it's clear as day that there are no extramental moral assessments to be found anywhere in the world.
If I were to believe that cheese is only a mental phenomenon, then of course, necessarily, if you have that mental phenomenon, then there's cheese in the fridge.
I don't believe that that's the case with cheese. But it couldn't be clearer that it's the case for morality.
The weakness of Bartricks' argument lies in its first premise.
First, that would only be the case to an individual who values social harmony, general well-being and happiness. There could be an individual who doesn't value those things and who values something else instead. They wouldn't be wrong about those other things being moral value, because there would be no facts that they're getting wrong. They would just have an unusual disposition.
You have tried to take issue with premise 2. But you haven't raised any reasonable doubt about it.
Premise 2 is self-evidently true. And when I point this out, you reply that a quite different claim is true. What's that got to do with anything?
No, a person who didn't not value those things would not be a morally motivated person, by definition.
Modus ponens is valid under traditional logic. If we ignore semantic problems with certain natural language formulations, and we retain the modus ponens relations, then sure, insofar as that goes, it's valid.
Of course, we shouldn't really ignore semantic problems once we start plugging in natural language, but that's an issue we've already discussed.
By your definition, maybe. Not by theirs. There aren't factually correct definitions. Just more or less common ones. It's not correct to be common, or incorrect to be uncommon.
Here it is again:
1. If my cheese is made of my thoughts, then if I think there is some cheese in the fridge, then necessarily there is some cheese in the fridge
2. IF I think there is some cheese in the fridge there is not necessarily any cheese in the fridge
3. Therefore cheese is not made of my thoughts
It is deductively valid and apparently sound. It has exactly the same form as my argument - the one you're trying to take issue with.
Now, you have to deny a premise. A premise of THAT argument, not some other premise you've just made up.
So, you say "well, 2 is false becusae if I think there is some cheese in the fridge then in my opinion there is some cheese in the fridge".
Er, yes, perhaps - but that doesn't contradict 2 so it doesn't begin to challenge it.
That's EXACTLY how you are responding to my argument.
Premise 2 of my argument says "If I value something it is not necessarily morally valuable"
You are trying to challenge it by saying "ah, yes, but 2 is false because if I value something then in my opinion it is valuable"
Er, well maybe - but that is consistent with 2 and doesn't contradict it.
Why can't you see this???
Why don't you understand that I don't accept the second premise in your argument when it comes to morality?
How many times have I made it clear that just because one person feels that x is morally permissible, it doesn't imply that anyone else will feel that x is morally permissible?
Why do you keep talking like you're an authority on these things? You thought my argument was invalid, didn't you? Be honest. And then you decided it was valid.
My argument is deductively valid it just leads to a conclusion that you don't like.
The argument's premises are true beyond a reasonable doubt. You can't challenge one by simply saying random things. You have to address the actual premise and show how another valid argument, with premises that are more powerfully self-evidently true than mine, has a conclusion that negates it.
I just said that there were common and uncommon definitions. (Not that I'm agreeing that your definition is common, but that's irrelevant for the moment.) What I said was that it's not correct to be common or incorrect to be uncommon. You're apparently saying that that is wrong. Per what?
I just explained this re formal logic versus plugging in natural language. What's difficult to understand about that?
Once more, my premise 2 says this: "If I value something it is not necessarily morally valuable"
So, what you need to do is construct an argument that has "If I value something, it is necessarily morally valuable" as its conclusion. I don't know what premises you'd need to put together to get that conclusion, but I am extremely confident - like 99% - that there will be one that is laughably false.
That's my bet. But by all means prove me wrong.
Do you understand that I don't agree with that premise?
How about this: do a search and see if you can find a definition of morality that says it is not concerned with interpersonal relations, or even one in which interpersonal relations could be interpreted to be irrelevant.
Show me that the premise is false by constructing an argument that has its negation as a conclusion. Then we'll look at your premises together. One of them, I guarantee, will be bonkers.
If morality is only mental dispositions, then if I value something, it is necessarily morally valuable to me.
Morality is only mental dispositions.
Therefore, if I value something, it is necessarily morally valuable to me.
Right, what the world is like determines that. What the world is like is that morality is only mental dispositions.
Reasonable and unreasonable according to whom?
One can construct a modus ponens argument in about two seconds to support any arbitrary thing, by the way.
One could also construct a valid argument in about two seconds that's simply in the form of (1) P (2) ~P therefore Q. Of course that wouldn't be sound (outside of paraconsistent logical interpretations, perhaps) but you don't really care about soundness, or at least your approach is simply to assert that the premises are self-evident, which anyone could do with any arbitrary modus ponens argument. That's not going to convince folks who disagree with one of the premises, but you don't seem to care about that. You're using the tactic of simply calling them unreasonable, insane, etc.
As to alternative definitions of what morality is concerned with; can you offer one from a search, or even one of your own devising?
Reason needs to stick to what it is meant to do, i.e. to verify a conclusion from its evidence.
The idea that you could discover new knowledge by reasoning is preposterous, especially, taking into consideration that it would imply the existence of a purely mechanical procedure to achieve that. Such procedure cannot possibly exist.
Any arbitrary knowledge statement can be encoded as a natural number. The question then arises: Can we run through all natural numbers, and check if the number represents a knowledge statement that is logically true? This procedure cannot possibly exist because it would also solve Alan Turing's halting problem, while we have another proof that guarantees that this cannot be done.
That procedure cannot possibly exist. Assume that we have a sound (and hence consistent) and complete axiomatization of all true first-order logic statements about natural numbers. Then we can build an algorithm that enumerates all these statements. This means that there is an algorithm N(n) that, given a natural number n, computes a true first-order logic statement about natural numbers, and that for all true statements, there is at least one n such that N(n) yields that statement. Now suppose we want to decide if the algorithm with representation a halts on input i. We know that this statement can be expressed with a first-order logic statement, say H(a, i). Since the axiomatization is complete it follows that either there is an n such that N(n) = H(a, i) or there is an n' such that N(n') = ¬ H(a, i). So if we iterate over all n until we either find H(a, i) or its negation, we will always halt, and furthermore, the answer it gives us will be true (by soundness). This means that this gives us an algorithm to decide the halting problem. Since we know that there cannot be such an algorithm, it follows that the assumption that there is a consistent and complete axiomatization of all true first-order logic statements about natural numbers must be false.
Therefore, the approach to use a rational procedure revolving around reason in order to discover new knowledge is nonsense. It cannot possibly work. Knowledge is produced by other, unknown mental faculties that are essential to the discovery of knowledge. Reason alone cannot possibly achieve this.
Well that's a weak argument and its first premise is garbled.
Note, you need to say that if morality is YOUR mental dispositions, otherwise the second bit simply isn't true and the premise is false. Furthermore, you need to identify moral values with your valuings, or again the second bit won't be true and the premise is false.
So, basically, for the first premise to be true, it needs to be the same as my first premise. YOu know, the one you kept telling me I hadn't written properly!
That'll make premise 1 undeniably true.
The problem, however, is that your argument has a conclusion that conflicts with the self-evident rational representations of most of us.
Now that doesn't mean it is false, but it is prima facie evidence that it is and so your premises need to be powerfully self-evident to justify drawing it.
Your first premise is true (well, it is if you adjust it so that it is). But your first premise is the same as mine.
Your second premise, however, is demonstrably not true.
Why? Well, first it has no support from reason. That is, it is not a self-evident truth of reason that moral values are your mental states. I mean, how many reflective people get the impression that moral values are 'your' mental states? Er, none at all - not even you, I'd wager.
So, it has no evidential support whatsoever. And in combination with a true premise - premise 1 - it leads to a self-evidently false conclusion.
That means all you've done is demonstrate the falsity of your second premise. Good one!!
And yes, you can construct these arguments for anything, but when you do so it becomes apparent what you need to assume to get to your desired conclusion - and if you find that what you need to assume is self-evidently false, or has no support from reason and entails something that is self-evidently false, then you've discovered that your assumption is false and that you need to revise your conclusion.
It's called 'reasoning' and most people find it incredibly irksome and so they don't bother doing it and when another does it and proves them wrong about things they care about they execute the one who did it.
Reason. According to Reason.
So, if it is your opinion that 2 + 3 = 9876543, but this appears self-evidently false to virtually everyone else, then you are not reasonable - not remotely - if you persist in believing that 2 + 3 = 9876543.
perhaps everyone else is wrong and you're right. Possible. But not remotely reasonable to believe.
Similarly, if it is your opinion - because your desire to refute me has committed you to it - that if Himmler approves of gassing people then it is necessarily morally good for him to do so, yet this same claim is self-evidently false to the reason of virtually everyone else, then you're not reasonable if you continue to think you're right and everyone else is wrong.
Not unless you've got good independent reason to think that everyone else's reason is malfunctioning on these issues. But to show that, you'd once more have to appeal to self-evident truths of reason that are widely corroborated or you will just be guilty of supporting your unreasonableness unreasonably.
So if I'm following you, then the way you are defining these, the intersection between the set of things that I value and the set of things that are morally valuable is the null set. Am I getting this correctly?
Imagine you order a pizza and after eating it your waiter asks you what, if anything, you valued about your dining experience. Are you going to reply "I am not really understanding what you are asking me. Do you mean that the intersection between this dining experience and the things I value is the null set?"
I mean literally what are you finding hard to understand? If moral values are my values - that is, if my valuing something makes it morally valuable - then if I value something necessarily it will be morally valuable.
That really can't be hard to understand. No need to bring null sets into this. IF you DO need to bring null sets into this - whatever they are - then I think you're beyond my help, to be perfectly honest.
There are things that I value. That is a set of things.. Call that set my_Values. I asked you for some examples of things that are in this set. I'm still not clear on exactly what you mean by this, but I believe you gave me one example: "The person I love."
Next there are things that are morally valuable. That is a set of things. Call that set moral_Values. I asked you for some examples of things that are in this set. I believe you gave me a longer list here:
Quoting Bartricks
What I am asking you is very simple. If you were to draw a Venn Diagram of these two sets of things, would they be disjoint, would they overlap somewhat (some items are in both sets, some are only in one or the other), or would they be identical?
Just do be clear, we are only talking about your P from #1.
Quoting Bartricks
We are not talking about Q or #2 or #3.
You seem pretty unflappable, but I just wanted to confirm that what you are saying should make sense to most people. I just didn't want you to get too discouraged by the infinite loop of assertions and insults, hidden beneath the occasionally decent argument, that is bartricks.
He is asking questions to which the answers are blindly obvious.
For example, here is the first premise that he is having such a hard time understanding:
1. If moral values are my values, then if I value something necessarily it is morally valuable.
He's asking - in an extremely painful and convoluted way (probably intentionally so, for a laugh - I hope so anyway, otherwise he's going to have terrible difficulty navigating the world and other people) - whether I mean by "if moral values are my values" "if moral values are 'among' my values" or 'if moral values are my values". Now I wonder if you can figure out which it might be? You know, do I mean what I said, or do I mean something quite different.
Now do you have a criticism of my argument, or are you just one of those who wants to express their disapproval of my inability to suffer fools gladly?
And you realize you - you - just insulted me, yes?
The word "more" there is redundant.
To say that you can't explain something more clearly implies that you explained it at least somewhat clearly, or at the very least somewhat. I don't believe you have explained the idea that Reason is a subject at all; you have merely said the words in the from of a stipulation 'Reason is a subject'.
But my argument is clear. What's clear is that some - many - do not recognise it for what it is, namely a deductively valid argument, for they do not recognise that they need to raise a reasonable doubt about a premise before they're entitled to dismiss the conclusion.
For instance, I don't think you understand that. For you keep saying I have stipulated, as if saying it will make it so, when I have argued for the controversial conclusion from extremely uncontroversial premises.
Has ANYONE conceded this premise yet? It seems that so far, everyone but you has some problem with this premise.
Quoting Bartricks
I am not convinced that I did anything but state fact...do you mean this:
Quoting ZhouBoTong
Are you saying that you don't make the occasional good argument?
Are you saying if I go back through this thread and read your posts I won't find assertions and insults along with a couple decent arguments?
And yet others think that if they disagree with something, that is some kind of evidence that it is false.
And yet others think that rather than addressing my argument they are free to change the premises and attack their own totally different premises rather than mine.
And yet others think that they can endlessly ask me banal questions and that if I eventually stop answering them that somehow constitutes a refutation of my case.
And others think that if they dislike me and my tone that this serves to demonstrate that my argument fails.
And so on and so on.
My argument is sound. That's the best kind of argument. Any argument must have at least one premise that is asserted. So yes, I have made assertions becusae you have to in order to argue for anything. Mine at least have the merit of either being self-evident truths of reason or conceptual truths that can't be denied by those who understand them.
Note, too that you can insult someone by accurately describing them. For example, let's say you're very ugly and I say "Hello. You are ugly". That's an insult, yes? Yet accurate.
You are the way, the truth and the light?
Nuh.
The analytic style of the OP is what interested me in your thread. As things stand, you are perhaps too defensive to take on board the genuine criticism presented by folk who have been here long enough to show that they have done a bit of philosophy.
You are far from the first vexatious litigant to drop by.
So you can't see how the famous criticism that derives from that dialogue might be relevant to my argument? Right. Okay then. I mean, it is the basis upon which most moral philosophers reject my kind of view. But okay.
Considering reason to be a sentient subject (and incidentally Reason would also need to be a sapient subject in order to be valuing things, even though you have denied this) is not only controversial, it also seems unintelligible. I don't know what it could mean, and you certainly seem to have made no effort to explain what it means; which leads me to conclude that you cannot explain it.
Maybe I'm wrong, maybe you can explain it; but if so, why don't you? Do you want others to understand your argument? If you don't care then why present it in the first place?
So I have judged that you have not explained your conclusion, and you want to claim that I believe that it must be a true judgement just because that is what I have judged. I am not claiming it is certainly a true judgement, but merely that it is likely a true judgement, that it is a reasonable judgement, given that I have seen nothing from you that I could count as an even as an attempt at explanation, and also given that no one else who has participated in this thread has said that they understand what you are talking about when you say reason is a sentient subject.
:wink:
Please, in the name of baby jeebus and Almighty Oprah above, someone please tell me Im not the only one who sees that?!
Its an illusion, both his argument, and the thought that this guy is going to listen. Illusion. Seems real...not real.
Anyone?
At first I thought he was a confused novice attempting to work through something and as you say there seemed to be something of a puzzle there, somewhat analogous to the Ontological Argument when you first encounter it.
I was hoping that he would at least explain what he means by saying that Reason is a sentient (if not sapient) subject; but even there, disappointingly, nothing was forthcoming. And he doesn't listen...so...there really seems to be nothing at all to be gained here.
I suspect a 4chan high level troll or somesuch, work has gone into the illusion I alluded to.
Ill grant that it was a pretty good fake (suckered in two of the more high level posters), but surely we’ve had a good enough look now?
Oh, you mean me and...? :joke:
Seriously, though I actually don't believe he is a troll; I think he is just incredibly powerfully wedded (or welded) to his arguments.
Maybe not, always hard to tell. Regardless, complete waste of time. I dont think its how wedded he is to his argument though, there is something else going on there.
I don't know what's wrong with him and I don't really care, Im just irritated that so many are acting as though its a discussion, its not. My motivation is purely selfish, lets get back to something interesting for me to read over :razz:
I think I saw Reason once. Far away and hunched over a bit as though engaged in some activity. I approached but then the bastard turned a corner in the street - and I never got to find out what the guy was up to.
Um, so it’s known, the above is my sense of dry humor … with a bit of self-deprecation thrown in, granted.
Right. So if most moral philosophers think that Euthyphro dispatches it (not that I agree at all with your assessment there), then it must be the case that despite both you and {all of moral philosophers} having possession of exactly the same evidence (you've advanced no previously unknown empirical data). They have reached, using nothing but their rational thought, a conclusion which you think is wrong. This proves unequivocally that it is possible for your epistemic peers (and I'm generously putting you in the same camp as all other moral philosophers here), in possession of the same material facts can nonetheless apply their reasoning faculties and reach the wrong conclusion.
If one part of your argument relies on the fact that it is possible for the majority of moral philosophers to apply their reasoning faculties to the empirical evidence they have at hand and reach the wrong conclusion, you can't coherently, in the same argument, support your premise by arguing the exact opposite, that what most moral philosophers have concluded after applying their faculties of reason to the empirical evidence they have to hand is most likely to be right.
Not that I agree with your assessment of what most moral philosophers think with regards to your premise anyway...
Quoting Bartricks
...may well be true, but that's a weaker position that the one you're using in your argument.
Quoting Bartricks
Most moral philosophers would disagree with this, for example. Especially those who are moral realists. Thus making the moral value you talk about as being categorical distinct from the moral value that most philosophers talk about as being categorical (where they talk that way). Kant, for example. the archetype of categorical morality, saw a moral value as a rule specifically that one did not value anyway. Otherwise, for him, it would not be moral. So your starting premise, the one on which you hinge your conclusion that categorical moral values must be valued by someone, is not one which most philosophers agree with. A standard which you've previously used to justify their prima facae acceptability.
The basis is how individuals reason. Not everyone reasons the same way.
Re definitions of morality, I've relayed mine many times here:
Morality is how one feels about interpersonal behavior that one considers to be more significant than mere etiquette. And specifically, it's feelings about whether behavior is "good" or "bad" or in a more fine-tuned analysis, whether it's permissible, obligatory, recommended, etc.
It's a modus ponens (If P then Q. P. Therefore Q.) That's what you always use.
Quoting Bartricks
If we're allowed to examine the semantics of the premises, then let's get back to that with respect to your argument.
Quoting Bartricks
No, morality is not just MY mental dispositions. I'm not the only one who has the mental dispositions in question.
I come to this forum to learn new things and to understand how I can integrate philosophical thinking into my life. Most of the people on this forum are far more knowledgeable about philosophy than I - and I have benefited from following and occasionally interacting with them.
When I first read your OP it seemed incoherent to me, but it looked like there were some interesting ideas in there. I said to myself that maybe I was simply not understanding what you were saying - or perhaps you were not expressing yourself clearly.
So I have been making a good faith effort to understand what you are saying - in particular I have been trying to get some clarity re how you are defining your terms.
I have not been trolling you.
I respectfully suggest that if you cannot communicate your ideas to a reasonably smart person who is making a good faith effort to understand you, then you should re-consider your situation.
And if you keep premise one as it is then that premise is just plain false too. So a valid argument with two false premises and a conclusion that conflicts with reason.
My argument, by contrast, is also valid but both of its premises are true. The first is a conceptual truth that only those who don't grasp things will deny and the second has overwhelming support from reason. It's conclusion does not contradict reason either. So it is sound. Yours is not.
Not at all. Again, it couldn't be clearer that morality only occurs as mental states that individuals have. All the evidence we have show that that is what it is, and there's zero evidence that it's something aside from this.
So again, and just for the record, when premise one says that 'If my valuings are moral values, then if I value something it is necessarily morally valuable" that does not leave open the possibility that moral values are a subset of my values. Not if you understand English anyway.
If you want to identify moral values with a subset of your values, that's fine for the argument will still work. It works for the whole set so it works for a subset.
For example, if I said "if EricH has asked questions of Bartricks, then those questions are not in good faith' then asking me endlessly whether I mean all of your questions or just some of them shows that you lack comprehension skills. All of them - like it says. But what's true of all of them will also be true of a subset.
So your questions are fake, so obvious are the answers to them all. Or so I charitably think. So drop the whole wounded fawn 'oh, but I only want to understand and learn from others' routine, I don't buy it.
Moral values are not made of our values. Again, for the umpteenth time, if they were, then if you valued raping someone necessarily it would be good for you to rape them. That's absurd. No-one sensible thinks that's correct. To think that's correct is as silly and unworthy of rational respect as the view that if you think 3 x 2 = 90 then it is.
If you value raping someone - guess what, that doesn't mean it is good for you to rape them.
If you value me raping someone - guess what, that doesn't mean it is good for me to rape them.
If you value someone else raping you - guess what, that doesn't mean it is good for someone to rape you.
And so on and so on.
Your view is absurd. Outrageous. It has nothing - nothing - to be said for it. That you hold it - that it exists in your head - is not evidence it is true.
Your view is demonstrably false. This argument demonstrates its falsity - this argument that has a first premise that cannot coherently be denied and a second premise that is self-evidently true to everyone who isn't determined that Bartricks is wrong because Bartricks is mean and that's how the world works:
1. If my valuings are moral values, then if I value something necessarily it is morally valuable
2. If I value something it is not necessarily morally valuable
3. Therefore, my valuings are not moral values.
That's a valid argument. It always was valid. When you thought it wasn't valid, it was valid.
When you thought the first premise was not expressed correctly - and it was and is expressed correctly, unlike your first premise which is false - it was valid.
It is valid. It's premises are true beyond all reasonable doubt. It is not a remotely controversial argument.
But when coupled with another argument - the argument that moral values must be someone's, it gets us all the way to divine command theory.
And you - and most others here - don't like that. And because you seem to have the mentality of six year olds and think that if you don't like something it isn't true, you reject it.
But the whole argument is valid. And its premises appear to be true beyond reasonable doubt.
The only threat to it - the only thing that suggests otherwise - is the Euthyphro argument. That argument has the negation of my conclusion as its conclusion and premises that appear to be as strong as mine.
But no-one has pressed it!
If Joe thinks it's morally permissible to rape Jane, then is it not the case that, to Joe, it's morally permissible to rape Jane?
According to your view - which you clearly don't understand - if Joe values (values - VALUES - values, values. V. A.L.U.E.S) raping Jane, then it will necessarily be good for Joe to rape Jane.
That view is just incredibly stupid. It really is. And it is your view. Join the dots.
First, why don't you agree with my assessment? It is correct. What, you think the Euthyphro is not the main basis upon which contemporary moral philosophers reject divine command theories??? It is. If you don't believe me, e-mail one or just pick up an introductory book on ethics and read what it says about divine command theory. So I think only ignorance could explain your scepticism about my assessment.
Most moral philosophers are going to accept that it appears to be a truth of reason that if we prescribe or value something it is not necessarily morally right or good. I mean, that's why the vast bulk are not subjectivists about ethics.
Most moral philosophers are also going to accept that it appears to be a truth of reason that if an act is right, then it is necessarily right. Which also appears incompatible with morality being subjective. So this too seems to be apparent evidence that morality is not subjective.
I agree - I agree that it appears to be a truth of reason that if we prescribe or value something it is not necessarily morally right or good.
And I agree that it appears to be a truth of reason that if an act is right it is right of necessity.
It's what my reason says too. It is what the reason of most moral philosophers says. And it is what mine says.
Does yours?
I don't know why you feel the need to tell me about my own argument. But it is 'true' (not 'may well be true' - is true) that most moral philosophers will accept that moral values are not constitutively determined by our valuings.
As for my premise that for something to be morally valuable is for it to be being valued - yes, I accept that they are going to be sceptical about that, but not because it is not plausible in itself, but because accepting it would then entail a subjectivist position in ethics - a position they think is incompatible with the previous premise!
Now, it is really not my fault if most contemporary moral philosophers don't realize that they're consistent with one another, is it?
My argument demonstrates their consistency.
What follows logically from the fact that to be morally valuable involves being valued, and the fact that moral value is not constitutively determined by any of our valuings, is that moral value involves being valued by someone who is not any one of us.
See? I draw that conclusion. Why? Because I ruthlessly follow reason. Unlike you lot I don't decide in advance what's true and then only listen to reason when I think she's endorsing my pre-existing views.
Why do most contemporary moral philosophers not draw that conclusion, though?
The Euthyphro, that's why. That is, their reason (and mine too) represents moral values to be necessary not contingent. And they think that's incompatible with moral values being the values of any subject whatever. As do I. And they conclude that therefore moral values are not the values of any subject whatever. But I do not draw that conclusion.
(1) You're ignoring the question I'm asking you: If Joe thinks it's morally permissible to rape Jane, then is it not the case that, to Joe, it's morally permissible to rape Jane?
(2) My view is that if Joe thinks it's morally permissible to rape Jane, then necessarily, to Joe, it is morally permissible to rape Jane.
(3) It is not my view that if Joe thinks it's morally permissible to rape Jane, then something follows outside of the scope of what Joe thinks.
Would Reason care to comment?
Analogy: me: apples are not oranges
You: bananas are not yellow bent things
Me: I didn't mention bananas. What you've said is false, but more importantly completely irrelevant.
You: just answer the question - bananas are not yellow bent things, yes!?
Address the actual premise, not quite different ones. Actually, don't bother, I am going to wait for someone who can read and who understands basic logic to come along.
So if Joe thinks it's morally permissible to rape Jane, then to Joe it's not morally permissible to rape Jane? That's what you're claiming?
Quoting frank
No.
Muslim?
You realize that if you deny that "if Joe thinks it's morally permissible to rape Jane, then to Joe, it's morally permissible to rape Jane," you're denying an identity, right?
You do.
So given that you don't want to deny an identity, you agree.
Do you think opticians have the best eyesight?
What are you doing?
Anyway, it is false, isn't it? That central tenet of ethics is false.
Not true, there are rules for valid reasoning. What you mean is that not everyone reasons from the same assumptions or premises.
Morality doesn't proceed from reason, though.
sapient adjective
/?se?pi?nt/
(literary)
having great intelligence or knowledge
I take it to mean "knowing" in the sense of discursive knowledge and reason. It seems to apply only to humans, but if there were an alien race with language and reason, they would be considered sapient.
Animals we generally think of as merely sentient.
I'm not saying that reason has no role in achieving justice, but morality in general does not proceed from it.
The fireman risks his own life to save a child. Reason doesn't ground that action. Agree?
I didn't know it could also mean having intelligence. But even if I did, I would have charitably assumed you meant it to mean 'human' given how blindingly obvious the answer to your question - the question you were actually asking - was.
So, 'yes', Reason is intelligent because intelligence itself is constitutively determined by her.
Anyway, Hugh, just engage the argument and stop asking inane questions. And stop saying - completely dishonestly - that I have just stipulated and not provided evidence. The argument 'is' evidence. It is what all evidence must ultimately boil down to. Reasoned arguments.
Me: I have a car
You: what do you mean by 'a car'
Me: do you have a car?
You: yes.
Me: one of those
You: you mean a metal box with an engine and wheels and a control panel?
Me: yes.
You: I have no idea what you mean
Me: I don't know how that can be.
You: do you mean it is a lemon? I think it must be a lemon
Me: no, I mean a car.
You: A Ferrari then. It must be a Ferrari if it is a car, I don't know how else to make sense of what you're sayting.
Me: no, it is not a Ferrari. At least I don't think it is - I don't see why it has to be. Perhaps it is, I do not know. But it is a car.
You: I don't know what you mean. Does it have rotams?
Me: Rotams, no I don't think so.
You: how can it be a car and not have rotams?
Me: I don't think it has them.
You: a rotam is latin for a wheel
Me: oh, okay, then it has rotams - you know, wheels.
You: I don't know what you mean.
A rational argument could be one which reasons validly from unsound premises, to be sure. But the ideal of reason is that it be free of bias, and I would say that any argument for inequality could not count as being free from bias.
The fireman saving the child could be driven by either emotion or principle, I would say.
You seem to think that you not being understood is a problem for other people.
Meditate on that for a bit.
So a biased scientist isn't rational? Einstein was very biased. He wasnt being rational?
Quoting Janus
The OP needs for all morality to proceed from reason. Do you think it does?
Quoting Bartricks
:lol:
The sad thing is that most of the others here are worse.
Remember the bit where I asked about the Euthyphro, and you went off on a tangent about other stuff, accusing me of not having read it?
Quoting Bartricks
Odd.
Inasmuch as he was being biased he would not have been being rational.
Quoting frank
No, I don't think morality has its genesis in rationality, but in emotion or instinct. But I do think principles of fairness and lack of bias can be rationally formulated to stand on their own. If a person is empathetic to the highest degree such that she has genuine compassion for all people or even all beings, then she will be a moral person. Are there any such enlightened people? I don't know. On the other hand it does seem unlikely that anyone would do their moral duty unfailingly in the Kantian categorical sense. No one is perfect, I guess.
So if science isnt approached entirely rationally, it's not likely that morality is.
Quoting Janus
I'd say love, but close enough. :up:
Edit: we can all do this passive aggressive shit. Be interesting.
Is this the third, or forth time, that I have asked you:
Quoting Banno
An act is right because the god - Reason - prescribes it. And the objection is?
Can we use that, and avoid the baggage that might go with "god"?
You good with that?
Reason cannot say where to find the basic rules for ethics, simply, because discovering the basic rules for anything is not the job of reason. It is always the job of other, unknown mental faculties to achieve that.
The ambition of (some) moral philosophers to discover the basic rules for ethics through reasoning, is in strict violation of Gödel's incompleteness theorems. Their approach is provably nonsensical.
It follows, then, that if something is reasonable - decided by reason - then it is good.
IS that right?
If something is decide by reason, it is right.
How's that?
Reason can only verify that a conclusion necessarily follows from its premise. At some point, the process of chaining back from premise to justifying premise will end in a basic premise.
Reason cannot say anything about that basic premise. Attempting to do so anyway, will simply degenerate in infinite regress, which seems to be the hallmark of metaphysics.
The basic premise for morality is either arbitrary or supplied by other, unknown mental faculties. It is never supplied by reason.
So it is not possible for an act to be both reasonable and wrong.
Yes?
Garbage in, garbage out! ;-)
Sorry - in your terminology,
it is not possible for an act to be both prescribed by reason and also not right.
Yes?
Unless she issued a contradictory prescription.
But let's just say yes.
OK, so far so good.
Given that it is not possible for an act to be both prescribed by reason and also not right, doesn't it follow that "being prescribed by reason" and "being right" mean exactly the same thing?
I can quite happily contemplate the notion that is prescribed by reason is also not right.
That is, when I contemplate what is prescribed by reason, I do not seem to also be contemplating what is right.
What do you say?
Quoting Bartricks
Not sure what that means.
Quoting Bartricks
Nor this.
SO - to deal with these modal concepts, what model will we use?
I'm for Possible World Semantics. Will that do? Or will you suggest something else?
Looks like a mistake. I must have misunderstood.
You agreed that in every case, what is prescribed by reason is what is right.
But now you are also saying that there may be cases in which what is prescribed by reason is not right.
Are you sure?
And in some possible world, an act can be prescribed by reason and yet not right.
I have not said that 'right' means the same as 'prescribed by reason'. I have said that if reason prescribes something it is right. Rightness and reason's prescriptions are one and the same, just as Clark Kent and superman are one and theven same. But Clark Kent doesn't mean superman which is why you van know that clark Kent likes pasta at the same time as not being sure ifor superman does.
Seems you might be setting back on track. Rightness and reason's prescriptions are the very same thing in all possible worlds. But there may be a world in which Superman is not Clarke Kent.
Do you agree?
OK, so back to my discomfort.
It seems to me that when I contemplate Clark Kent, I might not be contemplating Superman.
And it seems to me that when I contemplate what is right, I might not be contemplating what is prescribed by reason.
That is, even as "Clark Kent" does not have the very same meaning as "Superman", "Prescribed by reason" does not have the very same meaning as "right".
(Edit: correction.)
But hang on - so it is not possible that Clark Kent is not Superman?
that's a side issue - you can leave it as moot if you like.
SO you are saying that "what is right" rigidly designates "what is prescribed by reason"?
...because for me, given an act prescribed by reason, it still remains that I might ask "is it right?"; and yet, it seems you must deny this.
Such a rebel Banno, arguing with [s]God's[/s] Reason's prescriptions.
Come on, you gotta listen to the commands of Reason.
There is only "Reason From".
There is no Reason irrespective of what one is reasoning from. So, if you reason from X, the outcome will be determined by your choice of X. What is your ultimate X? Merely ignoring the question will not make it go away ...
It's alright, but probably a circumlocution.
This is one of the strangest threads I've ever read. I have not seen a moral realist (which the OP appears to be) so insistent to assert moral values are just subjective. I think the whole conversation is a confusion.
The OP seems to be missing crucial concepts which distinguish something which is independent, but might be understood (or not) in our experiences.
I'd say @Bartricks is starting out. Or perhaps home-schooled. In either case the important bit is whether he digs in or rethinks.
If he rethinks, he is on the way to doing philosophy.
I was making a pointed joke about the OP's argument just being another form of Divine Command Theory. Why did Banno have to listen to Reason? Well, Reason is just always right in what it says.
*edit*
But it seems the OP understood that, so I'm not sure what they are trying to go for.
Suppose @Bartricks is right, and what is good is exactly what is demanded by reason.
Even then, each of us must decide whether to do what is demanded by reason.
So, even then, we must each decide whether to follow the divine command or no.
Hence Divine Command Theory is of no use in helping us decide what to do.
Yes! :up:
Although I would add that some X's are more reasonable than others insofar as they are more consistent/coherent with the totality of human knowledge and understanding.
Reason is always right in what it says about X, if what it says necessarily follows from X. At the same time, you cannot use Reason to find X. Furthermore, if X is nonsense, then anything Reason says about X will also be nonsense.
Reason is a function with arity two: reason(C=conclusion,P=premise). It does not say what P should be (It cannot find P). It does not say what C should be (It can generally not find C either). It only verifies that C necessarily follows from P. It is very, very easy to overestimate the power or impact of this mechanical function. Reason is almost never what it is about.
The objection to my objection would be that if Reason sets out what is right, then one ought do as reason proscribes. You remain free to choose not to follow reason, but you ought not.
Sure, use the terms if you like; but the distinction cannot be made rigid in the way the OP supposes.
I'll keep how "the problem of evil" is common to all moral decisions and how each of as acts as (a?) God under my hat then. The similarity between DCT and the act of following a moral standard will probably be too much.
People never "follow reason". If you reason from X, then you are following X. You always follow the ultimate premise from which you are reasoning, while there is necessarily nothing reasonable about that ultimate premise.
Rather in most cases the reasons for our acts are given post hoc. Would you agree?
The problem would be that no one would be able to tell as to whether what their reason prescribes is what Reason prescribes. Bartitricks seems to appeal to majority thinking to get around this dilemma; that is, if the reason of the majority says, for example, that murder is wrong, then this would show that Reason judges murder to be wrong, and that murder is therefore objectively speaking (although Bartricks does not like that term) wrong.
I think this should be "while there is nothing necessarily reasonable about that ultimate premise".
How could they be reasonable, in the sense of "following the dictates of reason" if the reasons are given post hoc?
A lot of our behaviour -- I would even think most of it -- is inspired by other, unknown mental faculties that are not reason itself. Even the behaviour of producing a new theorem along with its proof from an ultimate premise, is not possibly guided by reason. Gödel proved that this would simply be impossible.
Therefore, post factum rationalization is more often than not, nonsensical.
You cannot discover a theorem merely by using reason. You cannot discover its proof from given foundations merely by using reason. You can actually not even discover these foundations merely by using reason. The use of reason is strictly limited to verifying that the theorem necessarily follows from such foundations.
Therefore, given the relatively small role of reason in knowledge, I do not see why there would necessarily be any guidance by reason in every possible act.
Well, if this ultimate premise were reasonable, we would be able to demonstrate how it necessarily follows from another, even more ultimate premise ... which is just a recipe for infinite regress. ;-)
Don't see how this follows from your first paragraph.
It ought be a lesson that three brilliant folk, using supposedly the same approach, came to three such different results...
Behaviour guided by Reason, means that the behaviour necessarily follows from some premise. This is possible, but in that case, which premise? Hence, the existence of unknown mental faculties that are not Reason and that also inspire behaviour; most likely more often than Reason.
Think of science: there are certain things it is reasonable to believe in light of science and others things that are not. The premise here would be the totality of scientific understanding as it is now known, or rather attempted (by any individual) to be known. So today it would be unreasonable per se, and not merely on some premise or other, to claim that the earth is flat, for example.
Hrmph. I've often thought that if you find yourself in agreement with Hegel, you're doing it wrong.
Being post hoc does not make one's reasons wrong.
Yes, agreed.
The hermeneutic circle (German: hermeneutischer Zirkel) describes the process of understanding a text hermeneutically. It refers to the idea that one's understanding of the text as a whole is established by reference to the individual parts and one's understanding of each individual part by reference to the whole. Neither the whole text nor any individual part can be understood without reference to one another, and hence, it is a circle.
There is clearly some truth to that. For example, the foundations of (classical) mathematics are considered impredicative (circular). I personally suspect that all mathematics rest on impredicative foundations, but that is not how the problem is traditionally phrased. So, I will limit the problem to "classical" mathematics (but I do not really believe in that limitation).
Still, mathematics may not have ramified foundations, but the remainder of mathematics is still exclusively built on these (possibly) circular foundations and is therefore ramified.
Mathematics is very intrusive and possibly unavoidable in other spheres, if only because logic has been annexed into mathematics in the 19th century. If mathematics -- which is our stock of syntactic consistency-maintaining formalisms -- has that problem already, everything else (which provides the actual semantics to knowledge) will not be any better ...
Quoting Janus
Unlike mathematics, science provides real-world semantics. So, the situation will only be worse there. What's more, there is a lot of academically-accredited ideology masquerading as science. But even real science is at best a Platonic-cave shadow of the true laws of nature, i.e. the true but unknown construction logic of the universe. Scientists may not necessarily stick to advocating theories that have effectively resisted experimental testing, i.e. the sound Platonic-cave shadows. They will happily sell opioids and kill a large number of people in the process, based on mere conjecture.
Quoting Janus
Yes, agreed. There really are sound Platonic-cave shadows. They obviously exist. Not all purported science is produced by opioid-flogging charlatans. There is science that is real science, i.e. Platonic-cave shadows that are impressively resilient to falsification by experimental testing.
Of course, this real science also exists.
Off to work now; "see" y'all later...
Not all value is moral value. On that ground I reject 4. So, 5 and 4 contradict one another and/or are otherwise incompatible/mutually exclusive.
I am not making the claim, you are. It a sign of a poor argument that you make outlandish claims and then pass the burden of proof to anyone opposing them. The vast majority of modern ethicists are atheist, so they dismiss divine command theory on the basis that God does not exist. Euthyphro is an hypothetical argument to bridge the gap linguistically (and for theists themselves to refine their conception). It cannot, obviously, be the actual basis on which divine command theory is rejected by those who, separately, have already concluded that there is no God to do the commanding.
Quoting Bartricks
Right. So you admit that it is reasonable to assume, within an argument, that the majority of rational people who have given the matter serious thought, are nonetheless very much mistaken. You've literally just assumed that as a central requirement for your argument to work.
So you cannot, remaining consistent, then also assume that your premises are most plausible for the very reason you later dismiss (that most rational people who have given the matter serious thought are right).
In addition, you have, again, failed to provide a shred of evidence in support of your assertion that the apparent contradiction with objective ethics is the reason why most moral philosophers reject the idea of morals as valuings.
Let's start with a representative from each of the main traditions. Take Phillipa Foot for the virtue ethicists, Lucy Allais for the deontologists and Peter Singer for the consequentialists. Where in any of their writings is your textual support for the contention that they reject morals as valuing because to not do so leaves them no other way to achieve categoricity?
They aren't so different, just talk about different topics. Largely, the are translatable into each other. The differences of one we can put in the context of others without really causing a contradiction or disagreement.
The Rosetta Stone is to understand God as univocal being rather than an existing creator of causality.
The OP thinks that if a moral statement seems true to him, it's necessarily true. He's declared himself to be a divinity and therefore needs no external divine commands.
Divine commands are usually understood in a framework of human fallibility. The OP needs to explain why he apparently isn't fallible. Without that, his argument crumbles.
You do realize your open question challenge has failed, right? You haven't pressed the Euthyphro, but made instead a completely different criticism
You mistakenly think that my view somehow commits me to the view that 'right' means the same as 'prescribed by reason'. That's just false. As false as thinking that Superman means the same as Clark Kent and that water means the same as H2O.
Which premise says that all value is moral value? None of them. (And for the sake of EricH - who has trouble with this sort of thing - 'none of them' includes 4). 4 and 5 do not contradict. I have no idea how you could think that unless you use the word 'contradict' to mean 'are consistent with one another'.
So how do you decide what to do?
You can't say reason. Do you see why?
Note the word 'If' at the beginning. I am not saying my values are moral values. I am arguing the precise opposite. So well done for not being able to follow arguments at all. I mean, not at all. Good job.
Anyway, debates between us get tedious and - for you - nauseating very fast, so I am off to bed now and you can go and find a toilet to be sick in.
Therefore your morality does not proceed from reason. It proceeds from what you think the divine has prescribed.
So if your argument holds, it's irrelevant to your life and the lives of everyone else.
It's the castle that cant be taken, but it sends out no troops to harass anyone, so we can pass by it without concern (Schopenhauer's take on subjective idealism).
Good night.
I don't know if he's confused, but some combo of delusional, trolling, irrationally stubborn, etc. might be the case.
If I value something it is not necessarily morally valuable.
:worry:
Question....just because:
Given herein that the principle of necessity makes explicit that for which contingency is impossible. What is it for any rational agent that it is absolutely impossible not to value, such that it must be valued necessarily?
Analogy - if water is made of gold then if I have some water necessarily I have some gold.
Then the next premise says that if I value something it won't necessarily be morally valuable.
Analogy - if I have some water I do not necessarily have some gold.
Both premises are consistent with each other, because the first does not assert that moral values 'are' my values. It says 'if'.
They are also both true. Like the water/gold ones.
Together they entail that moral values are not my values.
As for it having no practical implications - well you are incredibly bad at discerning implications so you have no reliable basis for drawing that conclusion. And it's wrong.
But anyway this is philosophy and we're interested in what's true, yes? Not what's therapeutic. What's 'true'.
But I thought you a) didn't care as it has no practical import (according to you) and b) I make you sick.
It is not the one making a claim who has the burden of proof - that's only something those who get all their information from youtube videos think. No, it is the one who says things that are contrary to appearances who has the burden of proof. After all, if you claim that the one who has made a claim has the burden of proof then you have made a claim yourself and have a burden of proof. And you are not going to be able to discharge that burden without appealing to other claims, and so nothing turns out to be justified. Which is really stupid, because that means you're not justified in thinking nothing is justified.
Anyway, you don't know what you're talking about. That's the message here.
Go to a bookshop. Pick up an introductory book on ethics - one written by a professional philosopher and published by a reputable academic publishing house, not one written by a scientist or a psychologist - and read what it says about divine command theories and the primary reason they should be rejected.
It isn't 'atheism'. After all, if divine command theory is true, then guess what - atheism is a very unreasonable position. That's something most atheists realize, hence why they typically argue 'against' divine command theory.
And guess what else - atheism and divine command theory are....compatible! Atheism says no gods exist. Divine command theory says that for morality to exist, a god needs to exist. Those are compatible beliefs. Nietzsche and Hobbes held this combination of beliefs.
What's not compatible with divine command theory is - wait for it - the conclusion of the Euthyphro argument!! Hence why that - and not atheism - is the main reason why divine command theories are rejected.
Again, because you have such a poor grasp of the dialectic here, let's go through it (pointless, I know, so determined are you that you're right, despite having no arguments to offer for anything).
Here are two arguments. Argument A.
1. If moral values and norms exist, a god exists
2. Moral values and norms exist
3. Therefore a god exists
Argument B
1. If moral values and norms exist, a god exists
2. No god exists
3. Therefore no moral values and norms exist
Which is the stronger argument, other things being equal?
A.
Why?
Because both are valid and share the same first premise. But they contradict, so we know that at least one premise is false.
As they only differ in terms of their second premises, it is those we must compare to judge their relative strength.
2A is self-evident to reason. That is, it is supported - extremely well supported - by rational representations.
2B, by contrast, is not. It is just a belief.
Furthermore, argument B entails a conclusion that conflicts with rational appearances.
Thus only a fool would endorse argument B over argument A, other things being equal.
And that - that - is why it is the Euthyphro, and not atheism, that is the main reason why divine command theories are rejected. For atheism is more reasonably believed to be false, if premise 1 is true.
And thus for atheism to be credible, premise 1 needs to be challenged.
You can't challenge it by just insisting atheism is true.. I mean, you would and so would most others here, becsaue you think if you think something it is true. But a competent arguer would not do that.
You need to dispatch 1 on independent grounds.
Most philosophers currently - I stress, 'currently', not historically - think that there are good rational grounds for rejecting premise 1. The....EUTHYPHRO. Deal.
Yes, and the further problem is how do we, with our fallible reason, know what is demanded by Divine Reason?
What's that got to do with the price of tea in China? Whatever theory of Reason is correct, that remains true. That is, whatever Reason is you still have to decide whether to follow Reason's prescriptions. So your point is utterly irrelevant.
The issue is what moral values are. And moral values are - demonstrably are - the values of Reason, and Reason is demonstrably a subject, a subject who is utterly herself and not you or I.
Be indifferent to that conclusion all you want, that won't affect its truth. Reality doesn't work like that.
That is sooo not my position! Just barmy.
If one theory says that gods do not exist and the other says that gods exist, how can they be compatible?
Some textual evidence from Hobbes and Nietzsche is required else there is no reason to think your claim about them is anything but another empty assertion.
And, granting for the sake of argument that there is a Divine Reason that issues moral commands how do we, with our fallible reason, know what Divine Reason commands?
And, as ever, you just don't understand these positions. Divine command theory is not a theory about what exists. It is a theory about what would need to exist for morality to exist. Hence it is compatible with atheism (which is a theory about what exists).
Atheist divine command theorists are nihilists. Not the only way to arrive at nihilism, but one way.
As to how you might know what Reason prescribes and values - you consult your reason. The faculty designed to give you insight into what Reason prescribes and values. The faculty that, if you would but consult it, will tell you that my arguments are sound.
No, your position is self-contradictory. Divine Command theory claims that morality exists. Divine Command theory claims that if morality exists then gods exist. Therefore Divine Command theory claims that gods exist. Atheism claims that gods do not exist. Therefore atheism cannot be compatible with Divine Command theory.
Quoting Bartricks
And if my reason prescribes something different than yours? What then? How could we know whose reason is in accordance with Divine Reason? What if my reason tells me (which it does) that there is no Divine Reason?
I'm not familiar with Hobbes' work, but I am familiar with Nietzsche's, and he was certainly no Divine Command theory adherent, or even sympathizer; quite to the contrary.
There are theories of reason? So we need to decide which is right. How? By reason...
Doubtless that's not a problem, either.
It's a bit manic in here, isn't it.
To present your argument, this argument needs to be reworded, as it is rather sloppy as presented.
1. For something to be morally valuable, that something needs to be morally valued.
2. Only a subject can value something.
3. Therefore, for something to be morally valuable, that something must be morally valued by a subject.
(Reason for improvement in wording: A spoon can be valued at 44 cents, so valuing in and by itself is not sufficient. It needs to be valued MORALLY.)
You say the premise and the logic are infallible, so your argument is infallible.
But they are not. Placing a moral value on something by a subject could be universal, that is, absolute or else the placing could be subjective. The stipulation in 1 and 2 do not exclude the possibility that the moral value the subject places on something is universal. NOT every subject must place a moral value on a universal moral value; it is sufficient if only some subjects place a moral value on a universally valuable morality.
Think of it this way: Two blind chickens are pecking at the ground, picking up small pebbles, hoping that one of the pebbles will be an edible piece of grain. One will find grain pieces repeatedly, the other will never find the grain. (Say, within a time period of an hour.) Do the grain exist, and its nutritional value exist? Yes. Does the one chicken that finds it see it justified to believe that the grain and its nutritional value exist? Yes. Does the second one find that? No. Yet the grain exists.
Two people valuate their actions for morals. Neither of them is on the opinion that universal morals exist. They just blindly, haphazardly keep changing behaviour, trying to find the ultimately absolute moral behaviour. One repeatedly finds this behaviour; he will feel good, he will feel that he acted morally. The other never finds this behaviour. He will not have the experience of feeling good due to moral behaviour. But absolute morality, despite not having been found by the second subject, exists.
---------------------
P.s. I don't believe in absolute morals. But I am also on the opinion that your argument is not fool proof or irrefutable, as I have shown it above.
These: Hobbes and Nietzsche are far from being far as a representative sample of atheists viewing morality.
It needs only to meet our definitions.
...is missing some necessary quantification.
As already stated, not all value is moral value.
Quoting Bartricks
The first premiss needs to say 'if all'...
Because if some values are not, then the first premiss is false on it's face.
If some water is not... the premiss is false on it's face.
The chicken sees the grain. Chickens do not see in terms of justification, nor are they even capable of thinking in such terms. Seeing belief as justified is to isolate that belief and apply a standard.
A belief being justified(well-grounded) is another matter.
I see neither in the example. Chickens do not know about the nutritional value of grain. Chickens do not have such thought/belief about the grain.
I reject entailment. Following the rules of entailment is the foothold of Gettier. It is to mistakenly connect claims that have nothing to do with one another. If I believe that I am going to get a job as a result of being told so, the number of coins in my pocket is utterly irrelevant. If I think to myself "I am going to get the job, oh... hey, I have ten coins in pocket... So, the man with ten coins in his pocket is going to get the job" then I am referring to myself. The man with ten coins in his pocket - in my mind - is me!
As aside. Worth a brief mention.
My argument is fine as it is, you just don't understand it.
Clue: the whole point of the argument - the whole point of it - is to establish that my valuing something (or your valuing something) is not sufficient for it to be morally valuable!!
I think you don't understand arguments.
They were not supposed to be representative of the views of athiests, but good examples of atheist divine command theorists!
And yes, you try and figure out which one is true by consulting your reason. I mean, if you want to find out about me, you'd ask me, wouldn't you? I'd be your first port of call. So if you want to find out about Reason, you consult - well, Reason! Who else? How would you go about it? Oh yes, you'd just think one is right and it would be.
Odd reply from someone who has just been shown that his/her premiss is false on it's face.
Your premiss is false. It contradicts the way things are. Need I spell it all out for you?
It is only "reason" if you can feed the premises along with the derivation path into a device so that it can use a purely-mechanical procedure to verify the derivation path as to arrive at the same conclusion. If this is not possible, then it is not "reason".
Note, however, that "reason" is not capable of discovering what premises to use, nor what conclusion to reach, nor what should be the derivation path between premises and conclusion.
Reason is just inferential execution that makes use of a few rewrite rules. It is just a mechanical thing .
Therefore, all this talk about "my reason(ing)" and "your reason(ing)" is absurd. It is based solely on a serious misunderstanding of what reason is, and/or what it can do. Seriously, the practice of glorifying reason is absurd.
That's a pretty limited interpretation.
What else can it do?
There exists a mechanical procedure to verify the purported path between conclusion and premises. It is the ability to carry out such mechanical inference that is defined as "reason". What else would it be?
In this context, there is no mechanical procedure to discover premises. There isn't one to discover conclusions. And even if you already have premises and conclusion, there is no mechanical procedure available to discover the inferential path that connects them.
It is not possible to discover anything new by using reason. It can only be used to verify what exists already. In that sense, it is a relatively weak capability.
You are not a god - your words do not determine what's true.
The argument I have presented is about moral values. It establishes - whether you like it or not, and whatever theory you favour - that moral values are the values of a subject, a subject who is not me, or you, but Reason.
This it does. If you don't believe me, inspect it. Try and refute it. But don't just ignore it and make arbitrary pronouncements from on high.
Reason is just a verification tool to travel safely from premises to conclusion. Morality rests on ultimate premises about which Reason necessarily says nothing at all.
Furthermore, once these ultimate premises are expressed in language, there is nothing subjective or subject-specific about them. At that point, these ultimate premises operate as the foundations of an absolutely objective theory. People are not needed for handling language-expressed abstractions, because machines can perfectly-well handle them too. Therefore, any reference to such a subjective person is totally unnecessary in axiomatic morality.
Experimental testing is another purely mechanical procedure. If a machine cannot (conceivably) carry out or repeat the tests, then there is something wrong with the empirical theory. In that sense, objectivity means that a machine can do it too, also for empirical knowledge. Otherwise, it is subjective. Formal knowledge is always objective in a sense that there must exist a purely mechanical way to carry out the verification of its justification.
:brow:
You're asking me to address the coherency aspect. Validity/coherency is insufficient for truth. The premiss is not true. That's the problem being shown.
What part of that do you not understand?
If all your valuings are morally values, then if you value something it will be morally valuable. If some of your valuings are not morally values, then if you value something necessarily it will not always be morally valuable, for some of your valuings are not.
Not all your(or anyone's) valuings are morally values. Some is/are. Some is/are not.
:brow:
Quoting Bartricks
This premis is wrong, @Bartricks
Quoting Bartricks
In reality anyone can value anything withoiut making it morally valuable. This is the reason we keep telling your that your premise is false.
I can say that a particular house is worth two hundred thousand dollars. Is this valuation? Yes, it is, I state the value of something. So it satisfies your statement of "being valued". Is this moral valuation? No it is not, a simple monetary worth has nothing to do with moral behaviour. Therefore your premise is false, because it names a process that is not true in every instance that it entails in its wording.
To continue the thought from my immediately preceding post:
To wit, I corrected your saying to "... being morally valued", which you quaffed at, but I think it needed that correction in order to make the premise hold. But you decried that improvement, and therefore you, yourself, denied the truth of your own statement (after the implementation of the improvement, without which improvement your statement in the premise was clearly wrong.)
I think it is also important to point out that I reject and resent your accusation of my not understanding an argument, my not knowing how arguments work.
I think you are so involved and have so much emotional investment in your ill-ly worded "proof", that you are consumed with emotions that prevent your ability to see reason.
This is a private opinion of mine, but I am confident it resonates with many users here.
My advice to you, unsolicited but maybe worth to use, is for you to sleep on it and look at the counter arguments that claim that your premise is invalid, tomorrow after a good night's sleep.
What on earth was that rant in aid of? Did I say the one making the claim always carries the burden of proof? You actually went to the trouble of quoting what I said, and then completely ignored it in favour of some straw man you can knock down. I said the burden is on the one making the outlandish claim. Exactly the position you seem to hold too. Your claim that all atheist moral philosophers either agree with Divine Command Theory, or dismiss it using Euthyphro is outlandish. So back it up. Where is the treatment of Divine Command Theory in any of the authors I mentioned? Note - your claim is that any moral philosopher would dismiss divine command theory only with Euthyphro, not (as I claim) that they might use Euthyphro as, say Singer does, to demonstrate how it is that those already decided to be atheists, share moral sentiment with theists.
Quoting Bartricks
Elizabeth Anscombe rejects divine command theory on the basis of secularism and replaces it with a revival of virtue ethics, to give one example.
Quoting Bartricks
This is utter nonsense. Replace with
Argument A.
1. If moral values and norms exist, a flying spaghetti monster exists
2. Moral values and norms exist
3. Therefore a flying spaghetti monster exists
Argument B
1. If moral values and norms exist, a flying spaghetti monster exists
2. No flying spaghetti monster exists
3. Therefore no moral values and norms exist
Are you suggesting that I cannot refute 1. simply by arguing that a flying spaghetti monster doesn't exist?
Er, no. You don't seem to understand the English language. Which of those two arguments is stronger. Say now. They are both unsound. Which is stronger though?
Er, no. That premise is TRUE. You seem to have trouble understanding sentences. It does not say "for something to be morally valuable is for ME to be valuing it, does it?
Noooo. It doesn't say that. Indeed, I have argued that moral value is not composed of my valuings.
It doesn't say that for something to be morally valuable is for YOU to be valuing it either, does it?
noooo. it doesn't say that either. Indeed, I have argued that moral value is not composed of YOUR valuings.
It says "for something to be morally valuable is for it to be being valued.
Now, learn to read. Then learn to understand arguments. Then read it again. Note what follows from what.
What. Follows. From. That. Premise. And. The. Other. Premises. Is. This. That moral value consists in something being valued by SOMEONE.
Not YOU.
Not ME
Someone.
Reason.
Once more - you cannot, absolutely 100% cannot, follow an argument.
The cheek of telling me I am misusing words. You said I claimed my argument was 'infallible'. Where? I would never say that. It doesn't make sense. Arguments aren't 'infallible'.
My argument is 'sound'. That is, it is 'valid' and its premises are 'true'. Not 'infallible'. Quote me saying my argument is infallible!
You, my sun, are the won who is Miss using words.
Pick up an introductory book on ethics written by a contemporary moral philosopher. Read what it says about divine command theories.
I repeat: you don't know what you're talking about. The basis upon which most contemporary moral philosophers reject divine command theories of ethics is the Euthyphro. Not atheism. The Euthyphro. For the reasons I said.
What? Why would only an idiot reject the existence of a flying spaghetti monster on the grounds of the complete lack of any evidence for one. That's the exact grounds on which we justify most things we consider do not exist. And what prevents me from doing both?
Quoting Bartricks
Because I have no grounds whatsoever to think there might exist a flying spaghetti monster.
Quoting Bartricks
Go back over this thread and tell me you've not made a single quoting error, typo or exaggeration for rhetorical effect, then lecture me on the matter. Your claim that most atheist moral philosophers reject divine command arguments solely because of Euthyphro is also outlandish. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that a claim that any atheist moral philosopher rejected divine command theories purely using Euthyphro is pretty outlandish since you've failed to provide a single citation in support.
Quoting Bartricks
Argument B is stronger, because it contains a premise which is self evident and can be falsified using a well-agreed upon method. All the while no one has any evidence of a flying spaghetti monster, the theory that no such thing exists is a good strong theory.
Notwithstanding that, your arguments as presented have little to do with Euthyphro because you have grouped {moral values and norms} which clearly exist, not {objective moral values and norms} which is what Euthyphro is about, and they do not clearly exist at all.
I'm not going to waste more time on this. If you've got a serious argument to make which references empirical data (most philosophers think this..., rational people conclude that...) then I expect you to be able to Cite sources, otherwise you're just consigned to the bin labelled 'stuff wot I rekon'.
Because if premise 1 is true, there would be good evidence for one. As premise 2a is well supported.
You don't understand arguments, do you?
That's why only an idiot would take issue with 2b. A wise person would take issue with premise 1. Because.....if premise 1 is true then the combination of 1 and 2a means that 2b is false.
Again, consider these arguments
A
1. If Isaac exists, then a flying spaghetti monster exists
2. Issac exists
3. Therefore a flying spaghetti monster exists
B
1. If Isaac exists, then a flying spaghetti monster exists
2. No flying spaghetti monster exists
3. Therefore Isaac doesn't exist
Now, which is stronger?
Why A, of course.
Because YOU do exist. Yes?
Now, 1 is false. But if 1 is true - and it isn't - but 'if' it was, then we'd have excellent evidence that a flying spaghetti monster exists. That evidence would be you.
Surely you can agree that you'd be a total idiot to think B is the stronger argument of the two?
I have not made a single quoting error or exaggeration for rhetorical effect. Typos, yes. But what you did wasn't a typo, was it!?
I mean, why do you think Plato/Socrates made that objection rather than your 'atheism' one? Because they are a) stupid or b) clever?
@Bartricks, I challenge you to show me where my claim is wrong.
In particular, if I value a car, to be worth $5000, I claim I am not making a moral valuation.
Please prove me wrong and I shut up.
Your example not good. I improve. Imagine three legged goat at market. Others do not buy goat, for it has three legs not four. But you know that this goat is young and these are its milk legs. It will grow more and bigger legs. You buy goat. Then you discover that goats not have milk legs. So you cut off one of wife legs and strap it to goat. Goat now better than ever, though wife not so good. And this shows something I think, but just my opinions.
— god must be atheist
@Bartricks, I challenge you to show me where my claim is wrong.
In particular, if I value a car, to be worth $5000, I claim I am not making a moral valuation.
Please prove me wrong and I shut up.
According to our definitions, which is immediately sufficient for any valuings so determined, to be merely empirically grounded, re: from experience alone. As they must be, in order to prevent some one definition from infringing on another in good standing antecedent to it. Hence, always contingent.
Nevertheless, there must be something necessary, and otherwise irreducible, from which all relevant contingencies arise, that which is a condition for, rather than a definition of, and to which logical syllogisms of empirical ground do not apply.
There is no such thing as morally valuable; there are only contingent values, and those of which are morally conditioned, the volitions which follow from them are thereby morally necessary.
Wouldn't that render moral agency sort of redundant, "morals" sort of an extraneous word?
I agree. That's my view. My view is our values do not constitute moral values. Moral values are the values of a subject. But it is manifestly not us.
I don't think you have followed my argument. None of your valuings - none of them - constitute moral values.
Not only is the car not necessarily morally valuable, but the evaluator -- who is a subject -- is not making a moral valuation.
Do you agree with that, @Bartricks?
Morality is not about empirically observing/testing patterns in the real, physical world and can therefore not possibly be correspondence-theory "true".
Hence, being "true", cannot possibly be a requirement for moral judgments.
All you can require from a moral judgment is that it necessarily follows from the basic rules of your morality. Therefore, a moral judgment would ideally be "provable" from these rules.
One line of reasoning may be used to establish premises for a different line of reasoning. I think you are looking at reason in too linear a fashion; it is more of an infinitely complex web or network. There is no ultimate first point in such a complex. It would be like asking which point is the centre of the universe.
For example, yes, I agree that morality is not empirically available. Moral values are the values of a subject, Reason. We learn about them via our faculty of reason, not via any sense.
To that extent, then, what you've said is consistent with what I've said. But then you just assert, without any argument at all, that moral judgements do not have truth conditions. Yes they do - the values of Reason. As my argument establishes.
The conclusions/theorems in an abstract, Platonic world are necessarily ramified. It is a non-optional requirement that conclusions/theorems can be reduced to a base level represented by a finitary set of unexplained basic rules, i.e. axiomata, i.e. "first principles" (which could internally indeed be circular). An "infinitely complex web or network" is not allowed, because logical inference is not allowed in that kind of web. It would automatically degenerate in infinite regress.
In that case, a serious problem occurs because the meaning of "true" defaults to correspondence-theory truth, which is always empirical.
Therefore, what you wrote in "the truth conditions of those judgements - so, that which would make the judgement true" is dangerously ambiguous. What meaning of "true" is it about?
There is also logically "true", but that is an arbitrary symbol in the construction logic of an abstract, Platonic world that allows for logical inference, or at least for basic boolean-aristotelian algebra. It has in principle nothing to do with correspondence-theory "true".
There is nothing magical about the choice of symbols for the values of Boolean algebra. We could rename 0 and 1 to say ? and ?, and as long as we did so consistently throughout it would still be Boolean algebra, albeit with some obvious cosmetic differences.
So, in the algebra with values V and operators P, i.e.
It is not because a logical inference -- always in an abstract, Platonic world -- ends in a logically true statement, that this statement says anything at all about the real, physical world.
Claiming some kind of definite connection between logical "true" in an abstract, Platonic world and correspondence-theory "true" (always in the real, physical world) is only permissible on the basis of an extensive, experimental test report. In all other cases, liberally associating logical "true" with correspondence-theory "true" is simply spurious.
The truth-maker of a judgement such as "Helen values X" is a valuing attitude in Helen. The truth-maker of a judgement such as "Y is morally valuable" is a valuing attitude in Reason.
If we suppose that our definitions are immediately sufficient, we are saying that they are enough to value all these things mentioned above.
The traditional use of "necessary" is incapable of doing so and remaining coherent.
The irony.
Quoting Bartricks
Close but no...
Not all Helen's valuing attitudes are valuing X.
So...
Not all valuing attitudes are ones that value X. Some valuing attitudes value Y. Y is not X. Helen valuing Y does not make "Helen values X" true. Helen's valuing Y counts as a valuing attitude in Helen. It does not count as a truth-maker of "Helen values X".
What makes all statements true is correspondence to what's happened and/or is happening. Helen must have a valuing attitude, but not just any one. In order for her attitude to make "Helen values X" true, it must be one in which she values X. She has remarkably many more, none of which make "Helen values X" true.
Quoting creativesoul
er, I said the truth condition of the judgement that Helen values X, is a valuing attitude of Helen's. That's true. Obviously true.
The judgement that "my car is blue" has my blue car as its truthmaker. Pointing out that not all cars are blue is so confused I have to conclude you've recently suffered a head injury.
No you didn't.
There's a valid objection waiting for it's due attention. I'll wait alongside it.
:wink:
No, you didn't say that at all. Regardless, you're repeating the same mistake. This new claim is not true either. It's false on it's face for the same underlying reason the other was. Only a specific valuing attitude of Helen counts as either the truth conditions or the truthmaker of "Helen values X".
Try this...
Helen's valuing Y counts as a valuing attitude of Helen's. Helen's valuing Y does not count as a truth condition or a truth maker of "Helen values X". It does satisfy the criterion you've set forth for both. So...
The criterion you're using(the standard/definition/conception/idea/notion) for what counts as a truthmaker and/or a truth condition for "Helen values X" is wrong. They're both satisfied by that which is neither.
Suit yourself.
Try "Put on your suit".
Your modal suit. The modal suit with the quantification in the buttonhole.
There are two possibilities. Either the judgment is about the real, physical world, or else it is about an abstract, Platonic world.
In the first case, making assumptions about the real, physical world is not allowed. The judgment is necessarily a conclusion. Therefore, you need an extensive, experimental test report as evidence; which is impossible to provide. Therefore, we need to reject such empirical proposition both as a starting point (=assumption) and as an end point (=conclusion) in knowledge.
In the second case, it is about a hypothetical Helen in an abstract, Platonic world. Since the construction logic of living beings is unknown, they cannot be constructed as part of an abstract, Platonic world, of which we always need to have access to the full construction logic. Therefore, logical propositions about a hypothetical living Helen are not allowed in knowledge either.
There may be other, unknown mental faculties -- that are not reason/rationality -- that can take the proposition "Helen values X" as input or produce it as output, but it can never be part of knowledge.
Justification means that our view on Helen's attitude necessarily follows from it. What justification could you ever produce? Anything solid? Anything that other people would not be able to trivially reject?
If you cannot produce such justification, then claims about Helen's attitude must be excluded from the domain of knowledge.
Whatever you say about Helen's attitude, it is not possibly knowledge, because there is no way in which you could ever justify it.
Yes, definitions are sufficient to value, for to be defined is to be conceived, which is always the primary ground for some immediate and subsequent mediate cognizant ability, in this case, re: to value. Nothing inconceivable can be thought, therefore can never be valued.
But the capacity to value is not the same as to place a value. The former, as a function of understanding, and therefore the possible cognition of an object to which this particular activity would apply, is a relation category of which the principle of necessity has no part......
(If I cognize the subsistence of thing, or think the content of an idea, does not necessitate a value be inherent in it)
.......the latter, the placement or assignment of some value, as mere judgement a priori, is a modal category, of which the principle of necessity may have a significant part, for the reality of that which is to be given a value must already be presupposed, and depending on its form, or its content, may indeed require a very specific value to be assigned to it.
(When I judge a thing as beneficial for me, I absolutely must value it as good)
It still remains, as to whether there exists something valued necessarily in and of itself, something of value necessarily in and of itself, without regard to definition, form or content.
And being defined/conceived...
What does that take?
For humans, self-consciousness and a rational methodology.
In what way will you justify your claim about Helen's attitude?
You have absolutely no certainty about what she really values. Helen may possibly not even know it herself. Neither what you say about what Helen values, nor what Helen herself says about that, can be considered knowledge.
You would need to present two documents:
document 1) What does Helen value? Explain.
document 2) Justification for document 1
There is simply no way in which you can produce a legitimate document 2. Therefore, document 1 will always end up being considered unsubstantiated.
I won't. Not until you justify something - say something that addresses my argument. And don't just blankly state things as if you're saying them makes them true. Appeal to some supposed self-evident truths of reason and try and raise a doubt about a premise of my argument.
Quoting Bartricks
The term "moral values" describes rules which decide what behaviour is permissible and what is not. If these rules can be expressed in language, then they can be shared. At that point, they become shared values between people who subscribe to the same rules.
Quoting Bartricks
"To value" in this context means "to accept a rule". If the rule is expressed in language, then even a machine can accept it. There is no need for a human subject for that. Morality expressed in (formal) language as a system of rules can perfectly be used by a machine to determine what behaviour is permissible and what is not.
What else than "to accept a rule" can "to value" mean in the context of morality? Is there any reason why you would deny that a moral "value" is simply a moral "rule"?
Those were some clever insults there - nicely done.
But seriously, I’m a kumbaya kind of person. When I see a someone assert something that looks obviously wrong, my first impulse is to find common ground and/or to try to re-phrase what that person is trying to say in my own words so as to better explain to that person how they are mistaken. I prefer not to start out by being critical, since that puts the other person into a defensive position and it makes it harder to communicate.
That said, I can see where my approach could be perceived as being disingenuous. So let me start from the beginning.
You appear to be making some basic errors in logic, What you are calling P & Q contain hidden variables and operators. BUT I keep an open mind - it is possible that I am mistaken.
However, if you want to convince me that your logic is sound, we will need to unpack your logic. In order to do this I will be asking you a series of questions - some of which may seem really stupid - but I have to ask them in order to make sure that there is no mis-understanding.
In asking these questions I will be dealing strictly with the underlying logic. Many other folks out here have pointed out that there are some serious semantic issues with your terms, but I will not deal with those. I will be treating your terms as abstract logical variables - so there should be no need to give any real life examples.
If you are willing to do this, then my first question is this:
Going back to your #s 1->3:
1. If moral values are my values, then if I value something necessarily it is morally valuable (if P, then Q)
2. If I value something it is not necessarily morally valuable (not Q)
3. Therefore moral values are not my values (therefore not P)
We need to start off with the term “moral values”. For purposes of analyzing your logic, this must be defined as a set of individual moral values; let’s call this set Moral_Values.
Moral_Values = {mv1, mv2, . . .}
This implies that there is at least one additional set of values that are not moral; let’s call this Not_Moral_Values (for want of a better term). There is then a third set called Values which is the union of Moral_Values and Not_Moral_Values. If, for your purposes, you need to further sub-divide Not_Moral_Values into, say, Un_Values & Miscellaneous_Values, that’s OK, as long as we agree that every moral value is a member of at least one sub-set and that the set Values is the union of the subsets.
I’m using italics here so the variables stand out, but if you prefer to use a different nomenclature and/or different names for these sets and variables that’s fine.
Are we in agreement so far? If not, please clarify. BTW - if you want to continue insulting me? That’s fine too.
So prior to our first cognition... we need definitions, self-awareness, and a rational methodology.
Does that sound right to you?
Seems quite evidently wrong to me.
Anyway, be so good as to answer some of mine.
Do you think this argument is valid?
1. If Bartricks Potter is Superman, then if Superman went to the grocery, necessarily Bartricks Potter went to the grocery
2. If Superman went to the grocery, Bartricks Potter did not necessarily go to the grocery.
3. Therefore, Bartricks Potter is not Superman.
Or do you need to put some things in sets? Or is there something wrong with the semantics?
If you think it is valid and understand what the premises mean, then just swap 'Bartricks Potter' for 'moral values' and 'Superman' for 'my values' and you've got my argument.
I have no idea what a 'hidden variable' is. And I have no idea why you think you need to talk about sets.
The word 'are' in my first premise identifies moral values with my values. That is, it means they're the same - one and the same.
Not the same argument. The original was false(not necessarily true). The new one is always true. The old lacks proper quantification. The new does not.
All your valuings count as valuings. Not all people count as superman.
Not the same argument.
I'll put it in terms you understand.
1. if bag of turnips is wife, then if wife go market, necessarily bag of turnips go market
2. If wife go market, bag of turnips not necessarily go market
3. Therefore, bag of turnips not wife.
Truth. Meaning. Thought. Belief. World-views. Understanding. Etc.
If you're answering honestly... I'm sorry, but evidently you do not see where you've went wrong. Your last reply is irrelevant.
1. If picture in paper of General Mszveslescvi - war criminal wanted for atrocities committed during people's uprising - is picture of me as young handsome man, then if I go to the pawn shop to sell gold medals to buy fake passport, then necessarily General Mszveslescvi, war criminal wanted for atrocities committed during people's uprising went to pawn shot to sell gold medals to buy fake passport
2. If I go to pawn shot to sell gold medals to buy fake passport, General Mszvelescvi did not necessarily go to pawn shop to sell gold medals to buy fake passport.
3. Therefore, picture in paper of General Mszveslescvi is not picture of me. (I General Slvednicodo, also wanted for atrocities committed during people's uprising)
You're picking an individual out to the exclusion of all others... sometimes. You did not do that in the original argument.
Have no idea what the chicken reference is doing here.
Nonsensical meaningless use of the term "necessary". If I go somewhere, I am necessarily there.
Freudian slip?
:lol:
Only one wife, yeah?
:brow:
I understand the terms just fine. If wife go to market, wife is necessarily at the market.
If the bag or turnips and your wife are one and the same, then if your wife went to market necessarily the bag of turnips did.
Only if all your values are moral values. Are all bags of turnips your wife?
Quoting Bartricks
:roll:
Not all bags of turnips go to the market simply because your wife does. If your wife is equivalent to a bag of turnips, then it is a specific bag of turnips. That specific bag of turnips is necessarily at the market each and every time your wife goes to the market.
If A is B is what you want.
If all A's are B is what you need.
You think so at least.
Reason doesn’t give a hoot how old you are; the day you die you’ve got the same brain you were born with....albeit more developed and rather more well-organized, I should think.
As to first cognitions....just because a subject doesn’t recognize a particular terminology for his conscious mental machinations, isn’t sufficient reason to suppose he isn’t doing the same thing he’d be doing if he did.
All of which is quite irrelevant. I, at least, because I exist in the present, must always think in the present.
This conflicts what you said earlier.
How so?
This may seem like a minor point, but I'd like to clear it up before moving on. Why do we need the word necessarily in here? To me, the implication is that if we were to take out the word "necessarily", then there could be some hypothetical situation in which Barticks Potter did not go to the grocery. Clearly that is not the case. If A = B, then A & B identify the same entity/object, and by the basic rules of logic they must have the same properties.
I.e, removing the word necessarily does not alter the meaning of the proposition, the word is redundant and unnecessary.
1. If Bartricks Potter is Superman, then if Superman went to the grocery, Bartricks Potter went to the grocery
Are you OK with removing necessarily? If not, would you please explain.
Of course, in reality if superman is in the grocery it does not follow of necessity that I am in the grocery - I may be, I may not be. And thus we can conclude that I am not superman.
Likewise for moral values. If moral values and my values are the same - that is, if moral valuings and my valuings are synonymous - then if I value something necessarily it is morally valuable. It won't just happen to be, it 'must' be if I am valuing it, precisely because my values and moral values are the same.
But clearly if I value something it does not follow of necessity that what I am valuing is morally valuable. It may be, it may not be. And thus we can conclude that my values and moral values are not one and the same.
Quoting creativesoul
Quoting Mww
Quoting creativesoul
Quoting Mww
If definitions are required for cognizant ability... He couldn't possibly be doing the same thing.
Yet clearly that's false. I mean, let's remove it from the argument and see what it becomes:
1. If superman is me, then if superman is in the grocery I am in the grocery
2. If superman is in the grocery I am not in the grocery
3. Therefore, superman is not me.
That argument is not sound. Premise 2 is obviously false.
This argument is sound:
1. If superman is me, then if superman is in the grocery, necessarily I am in the grocery
2. If superman is in the grocery then I am not necessarily in the grocery
3. Therefore, superman is not me.
Your replacement is not.
So I am at a loss to understand why you think the word 'necessary' is dispensable, given that taking it away would render a sound argument unsound.
So again, here is my argument - an argument that is fine as written, and that is valid and sound.
1. If moral values are my values, then if I value something necessarily it is morally valuable
2. If I value something it is not necessarily morally valuable
3. Therefore moral values are not my values.
If moral values are my values, then if I value something necessarily it is morally valuable.
If turnip is wife, then if wife at market necessarily turnip at market
If bag of turnips is wife, then if wife at market necessarily bag of turnips at market
If turnip is wives, then if wives at market necessarily turnip at market
If bag of turnips is wives, then if wives ta market necessarily bag of turnips at market.
And on and on and on.
No equivocation. Nothing but a straightforward deductively valid argument that has a conclusion you, and others, wish were false.
You're an idiot.
1. If turnip is wife, then if wife at market necessarily turnip at market
2. If wife at market, not necessarily turnip at market
3. Therefore turnip not wife?
Because it seems to me that it would be idiotic to think that it was invalid.
And if that argument is valid - and it is - it would be idiotic to think that this argument was invalid at the same time as acknowledging that the above is valid:
1. If moral values are my values, then if I value something necessarily it is morally valuable
2. If I value something it is not necessarily morally valuable
3. Therefore, my values are not moral values.
That would be spectacularly idiotic. That would be idiotic by idiot standards. Yet that seems to describe you down to a T. Do you have a secretary who types your replies for you, and cleans your food and excrement off the walls at the end of the day?
I didn’t say definitions were required, you did:
Me: to define is to conceive
You: What does that take?
Me: self-consciousness and a rational methodology
You: we need definitions, self-awareness, and a rational methodology.
I said to define is to conceive, which makes explicit conception is the presupposition for definition. Conception enables the cognition; definition is the transition from thought to expression of thought. We don’t define to ourselves as a matter of mere cognition, we image or we synthesize images. We manufacture the expression which represents the synthesis of images in pure thought when we wish to communicate, or, when we think as if we are to communicate.
Besides, if he isn’t, as you suggest, doing the same thing, by means of self-consciousness and a rational methodology alone, we are left with the absurdity of requiring of two separate and distinct res cogitans in otherwise congruent agencies, predicated solely on the existence or non-existence of mere word play between them. Nahhhh.....it is the more parsimonious to grant any two separate agencies are doing exactly the same thing in the exercise of a singular rational methodology, but one may very well be doing a better job of it than another.
Disclaimer: non-Cartesian, i.e., representational, dualism being understood as given. Right? I mean....all the cool kids are doing it.
Another one would be
If Bartricks isn't a moron, then if Bartricks says P is self-evident, P is self-evident
If Bartricks says P is self-evident, not necessarily P is self-evident
Therefore, Bartricks is a moron
You'd agree that's valid, right?
So an argument isn't valid if the premise is semantic gibberish?
Sure. No I don't agree. It's valid as it stands. Okay, your turn.
You're always chastising folks for their logic. You understand the differences between:
[]P
~[]P
x[]F
x~[]F
right?
My answer to your question: depends. For instance, this argument is valid and gibberish: If squirt, then flimsy, not flimsy, therefore not squirt.
But your one was gibberish and invalid.
What does it depend on?
Quoting Bartricks
Haha. Okay. Not surprising, unfortunately.
What happened to "What does it depend on?"
That part was cool.
What in the world? I'm asking you a question. You said that in your view, the answer to whether semantic gibberish is relevant to validity is (that it) "depends."
So I'm asking for more details about your view: what does it depend on?
Let’s take a step back here and review the big picture
Quoting Bartricks
You have been stating that this is logically sound because the sentences map to this logic:
Quoting Bartricks
However, as many people have demonstrated, this mapping is clearly incomplete since both P & Q have embedded logic. E.g., at an absolute bare minimum we need to start by splitting out P into A = B. In fact it’s a lot more complicated than that.
On top of that, you are using the word necessarily. Now 6 or 7 days ago,@Happenstance explained that if you are using the word necessarily then you need to use modal logic to represent your sentences in some proper logical form. Here is how @Happenstance converted your sentences into modal logic:
Quoting Happenstance
I did a quick run through of this, and while I am far from an expert in these things, it looks sound to me. @Happenstance then demonstrated that this is invalid for various reasons. He then asked you to map your sentences into first order predicate logic.
Your response was that you were Quoting Bartricks
What I am attempting to do here is to do what @Happenstance asked you to do, the only difference is that I am trying to use second order logic. The reason I am using second order logic is because it makes more sense to me to represent your term Moral Values as a set of individual moral values.
But this still means that we must eliminate the word necessarily - and now we are back to this point. Here is your #1, along with some alternatives:
A. If I am superman, then if superman goes to the grocery necessarily I go, because I am he.
B. If I am superman, then if superman goes to the grocery obviously I go, because I am he.
C. If I am superman, then if superman goes to the grocery then of course I go, because I am he.
D. If I am superman, then there are no occurrences of superman to go to the grocery but not me, because I am he.
E. If I am superman, then if superman goes to the grocery I go
As far as I can tell, these sentences all have the exact same semantics and the same truth value - the word necessarily serves no purpose except to add additional emphasis.
However, you seem be saying is that you need necessarily, otherwise your #2 is false. I have not even gotten to formulating #2; removing the necessarily from that is a separate task. But there’s no point in doing that if we cannot convert #1 into some formal representation.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
SO - all that said, you now have a decision to make. Do you want to convince me (and many others) that your logic is valid & sound? If yes, then you need to demonstrate that your sentences can be converted/mapped into some recognized system of formal logic.
1. You can continue to work with me and see if we can convert your sentences into second order propositional logic. I cannot do this on my own, since some of your terms are not well defined and I need to figure out exactly what you mean.
2. If you insist that the word necessarily is necessary, then you need to demonstrate that @Happenstance’s reasoning is flawed - of course you would also have to demonstrate a logically sound representation in modal logic.
3. You can use some other generally recognized system of formal logic.
Quoting Bartricks
The truth of #2, and thus the soundness of the entire argument, depends upon the (unstated) assumption that Superman's identity is contingent. Someone who insists that I am Superman can simply deny #2, since it then follows from #1 that if Superman is in the grocery, necessarily I am in the grocery.
Quoting Bartricks
Likewise, the truth of #2, and thus the soundness of the entire argument, depends upon the (unstated) assumption that moral values are contingent. Someone who insists that moral values are my values can simply deny #2, since it then follows from #1 that if I value something, necessarily it is morally valuable.
Anyway, let us indeed take a step back, as you recommend. Do you accept that this argument is valid:
1. If superman is Bartricks, then if superman is in the grocery necessarily Bartricks is in the grocery.
2. If superman is in the grocery Bartricks is not necessarily in the grocery.
3. Therefore superman is not Bartricks?
The problem is that premise 2 is self evidently true.
My objection to your initial statement would be to premise two. In that premise you state that only a subject can value something. I believe someone attempted to make a similar objection earlier in this thread but just tried to say you were wrong, without actually addressing a premise, so hopefully this will be more direct. I would say that, things can have inherent value without a subject valuing them. This highlights the argument between the objectivity and subjectivity of morality. I believe that people have values that are subject to them. I don’t believe that all things only obtain their value from a subject. Finding one instance where this is the case would disprove the basic form of your argument.
I would say that murder is objectively morally wrong. I think that any person in their right mind will admit that human life is inherently good. If something is inherently good then it must have some inherent value. A person could attribute no extra value to it themselves as a subject and yet life still has value. Therefore, if they were to take life away from someone they would be going against something of inherent value. And that would be immoral.
Put in to a simple argument form, this would read:
1. Human life is inherently good
2. If something is inherently good, then that thing has inherent value
3. If something has inherent value, then destroying that thing, while in your right mind, is objectively immoral.
4. Therefore, ending a human life (aka murder), while in your right mind, is objectively immoral.
I believe this serves as a solid counterargument for what you are saying. The only way I could really see you raising an objection to this would be by objecting to premise 3, but it seems to me that if anyone disagreed with that statement, they themselves would be deemed immoral. I want to make clear that when I say good, I don’t mean good in the subjective sense like "Man that was some good pizza," but instead similar to a platonic view of something being part of THE Good.
Thoughts?
In that case, the entire argument seems unnecessary. Everyone presumably knows that you and I are not Superman, and I doubt that there are very many people who seriously think that their particular values are moral values binding on all, merely because they happen to hold them.
As for the argument in the OP, it is similarly question-begging by stipulating in #1 that being morally valuable (adjective) requires being valued (verb), which already implies a subject that does the valuing per #2. The OP even acknowledges that objectivists instead hold that being morally valuable is a quality that is external to any subject--for example, inherent in things themselves as just suggested--regardless of whether anyone properly recognizes it. They reject #1 accordingly.
Are you aware that there are different systems of formal logic, and not all operations are permissible in all systems? Do you know what the term "modal" means?
Yes, I have been collecting modal cars for years. Joke. No, I am not sure exactly what it means, which is why I don't use it. I've getting from its use here that it means something like "I am about to confidently start talking nonsense". Is that right? That's how I interpret it. You, for instance, are about to talk nonsense, I think.
Anyway, do you think the argument is valid? The superman one. Is it, or is it not, valid?
Do you think my values are moral values? Do you think yours are? Just asking.
And yes, you're quite right that any objectivist worth their salt had better deny premise 1 of the OP argument. That is, they have to deny that being morally valuable involves being the object of a valuing relation.
But I think you're operating with too broad a notion of what it is to beg the question. It is not question begging to refute a view with a deductively valid argument all the premises of which are extremely plausible. To deem arguments of that kind question begging simply because they have some premises that the proponent of a certain view is logically committed to deny is to render all refutations of all views question begging - which is to have stopped being 'question begging' from being any kind of vice.
The credibility of objectivism, then, rests on just how plausible that opening premise is.
So let's assess it then - first, do you value anything? And if you do - and you surely do - is it not true to say that whatever you value is valuable to you? And doesn't something's being valuable to you just consist in it being the object of a positive attitude of yours, whatever else it may involve in addition?
Well, if all of that is true of 'values' when we use that word in relation to ourselves, what reason is there to think that the word 'value' in 'moral value' denotes something quite different?
I cannot see any reason to think that, apart from that our own values are clearly not moral values. But that's beside the point, for that is not evidence that our values are different in kind to moral values, anymore than the fact it is clear I am not you is evidence that you and I are different kinds of thing.
OF course, an objectivist might reject premise 1 because accepting it would mean their theory will turn out to be false. But that - that - is question begging.
1. (Vx&Mx?Vy)]? ( Vyz&¬?(Vx&Mx)))]
2. Vyz&¬?(Vx&Mx)
3.Vx&Mx?¬Vy
But the argument is still invalid because it should read as:
1. (Vx&Mx?Vy)?( Vyz&¬?(Vx&Mx))
2. ¬( Vyz&?(Vx&Mx))= ¬Vyz or ¬?(Vx&Mx) (via DeMorgan's Theorem, which is not the same as: Vyz&¬?(Vx&Mx))
3. ¬(Vx&Mx?Vy) = (Vx&Mx)&¬Vy (via truth tables, which is not the same as: Vx&Mx?¬Vy).
In English the argument should read something like:
1. If moral values are my values, then if I value something, necessarily it is morally valuable
2. I don't value something nor it is necessarily morally valuable
3. Therefore it is not the case that moral values are my values
Which is something different regarding truth values.
When quantifying a singular such as superman we treat predicates as a connectives rather than implications because by saying superman is barticks, we are really saying: there is a subject that is predicated superman and bartricks. So with this in mind:
P = S&B, Q = [(S&G)&necessarily(B&G)]
1. (S&B)?[(S&G)&necessarily(B&G)]
2. not[(S&G)&necessarily(B&G))]= [not(S&B) nor necessarily(B&G)] (DeMorgan's Theorem)
3. Therefore not (S&B) = not S nor B (again DeMorgan's Theorem)
This is modus tollens and should read in English as:
1. If superman is Bartricks, then superman is in the grocery [and] necessarily Bartricks is in the grocery.
2. Superman is in not in the grocery nor is Bartricks necessarily in the grocery.
3. Therefore not superman nor Bartricks
Which is something totally different than what I quoted from you which is not modus tollens nor is it valid. Basically, You've made the connection in line 1 so regardless of the word necessarily, you cannot say superman is in the grocery while Bartricks is not. It's as simple as.
1. If moral values are my values, then if I value something, necessarily it is morally valuable
2. I don't value something nor it is necessarily morally valuable
3. Therefore it is not the case that moral values are my values"
I am afraid I do not know how to express things symbolically, so I must sick with English.
But I don't see how the above can possibly be my argument.
Surely the argument is this:
1. If moral values are my values, then if I value something, necessarily it is morally valuable
2. If I value something, it is not necessarily morally valuable
3. Therefore, moral values are not my values.
I don't see why that's not valid. Q says 'if I value something, necessarily it is morally valuable". Q is false if, were I to value something it would not necessarily be morally valuable. And that's what 2 says.
So how does the argument fail to have this form:
1. If P, then Q
2. Not Q
3. Therefore not P?
I am not seeing it. It seems to have exactly that form, and thus to be valid.
Like I mentioned before, I valuing something are singular subjects(I and something) being predicated(value), so you've made a connection between I valuing something and morally valuable rather than an implication. Therefore you cannot just say I don't find something morally valuable and ignore the I value something. You may say for line 2: I don't value something nor necessarily [find a subject] morally valuable, whether you think this subject Reason, objective, subjective, god, whatever you call your subject.
Quoting Bartricks
P=(M&V implies V), Q = [(S&V)&(M&V)].
1. if (M&V implies V) then [(S&V)&(M&V)].
2. not [(S&V)&(M&V)] = [not (S&V) nor(M&V)] (notice how the connective(&) changes to a disjunction (nor) via DeMorgan's Theorem. This means that you have to consider both in the negative, not just one. So you cannot write: If I value something, it is not necessarily morally valuable if indeed modus tollens is what you're after for justification for validity. Rather it should be: If I don't value something, nor necessarily morally valuable, which is something totally different.
valuings are relations, so let's take an example that involves valuing relations, just not of the contentious moral kind.
1. If Superman's love for Lois Lane is Bartrick's love for Lois Lane, then if Superman loves Lois Lane, necessarily Bartricks loves Lois Lane.
2. If Superman loves Lois Lane, Bartricks does not necessarily love Lois Lane
3. Therefore, Superman's love for Lois Lane is not Bartrick's love for Lois Lane.
That's valid, yes?
or, perhaps better,
1. If Superman's love is Bartrick's love, then if Superman loves something, necessarily Bartricks loves something.
2. If Superman loves something, Bartricks does not necessarily love something
3. Therefore Superman's love is not Bartrick's love.
Q says "if I value something, necessarily it is morally valuable"
The negation of Q is not "if I don't value something, necessarily it is not morally valuable". That's not the opposite of Q at all, but Q again.
The negation of Q is "If I value something, it is not necessarily morally valuable"
So, I still don't see why you think my argument does not instantiate this valid argument form
If P, then Q
Not Q
Therefore not P.
Can you give an example of an argument like mine, in which it is clear that the conclusion is not entailed. I mean, in those examples of Superman's love it seemed to me that the conclusion clearly did follow from those premises. It seemed no less clear than if we were talking about water and gold, for in all of these cases we are exploring the possibility of two things being identical, be it either water and gold. Superman and me, or moral values and my values.
If Superman and I are one and the same person, then wherever Superman is, I am. And if being morally valuable and being valued by me are one and the same property, then if I value something it will be morally valuable. I mean, that strikes me as obviously true. Can you explain in English why, if being morally valuable is one and the same as being valued by me, it would not be true that, were I to value something, it would not necessarily be morally valuable?
My point is about quantification of subjects being predicated. if a universal statement about all supermen or all Lois Lanes or all Bartricks then we can only make an implication due to the generality of the statement but if talking about specific subjects predicated, such as one superman, one Lois Lane or one Bartricks then we can connect the predicates rather than imply them due to being specific so your above argument would be:
There is are singular subjects with the predicates superman, Lois Lane and Bartricks:
P= (S&L)&(B&L), Q = (S&L)&necessarily(B&L).
1. if (S&L)&(B&L) then (S&L)&necessarily(B&L) .
2. (S&L)¬ necessarily(B&L) this isn't not Q, not Q = not[(S&L)&necessarily(B&L)] = (by DeMorgan's theorem) not [(S&L) nor necessarily(B&L).
You have made your predicates(S and B) in Q connectives by virtue of being singular subjects rather than universals/generalities so due to this connection, you need to negative S or B, not just B.
Does this make anymore sense?
It doesn't matter about DeMorgan. Via truth tables, not[(S&L)&necessarily(B&L)] as the same veracity as not [(S&L) nor necessarily(B&L) regardless whether true or false. Your version of . (S&L)¬ necessarily(B&L) does not, therefore not modus tollens, that is , it isn't not Q, it's some other truth value.
And I take it by 'inherent' moral value, we mean moral value that does not derive from the thing's usefulness as a means to securing some other end, but moral value that it seems to have in its own right. That is, when we say that something is inherently morally valuable, we mean that it is morally valuable for its own sake, or something like that.
Well, we can agree that some things are morally valuable in that way too. And nothing in the argument I gave implies otherwise. Something will be inherently morally valuable when the subject values it for its own sake rather than for some other sake.
So, the existence of things possessing inherent moral value does not constitute a counterexample to any premise in the argument, so far as I can see.
But perhaps you mean by 'inherent moral value' something more than I said above. Perhaps when you say that something is 'inherently morally valuable' you mean, in addition to being valuable for its own sake, that it is 'objectively' morally valuable.
Okay, but now you have begged the question. Whether inherent moral value is subjective or objective is the issue under discussion, so one cannot just assume it is objective at the get go.
Note, my argument does not assume that moral value is subjective. It's subjectivity is asserted in a conclusion, not a premise.
My argument assumes that for something to be valuable in any sense is for it to be the object of a valuing relation. And my argument assumes that only subjects of experience - minds - are capable of adopting attitudes towards things.
An objectivist must either deny the first premise or the second. Note, to deny the second what is needed is an example of a genuine valuing attitude that is not being borne by a subject of experience. You cannot use moral values as your example, as that's question begging - it is to assume moral objectivism is true, not show it to be. We need an example in which a) it is clear we have real valuing going on, and b) the valuer is not a subject of experience.
Now, I don't believe there are any such examples. But perhaps there are, I am just unaware of them. Plus it does seem that my reason, anyway, represents anything that is not a subject of experience to be positively incapable of having any real attitude towards anything.
Perhaps you can just say if you consider this argument to be valid:
Quoting Bartricks
It depends on how we define "moral values." If we mean values that have a moral aspect, then certainly some of your values and my values are moral values, because everyone has moral values in that sense. If we mean values that are morally binding on everyone, then there is still a good chance that some of your values and my values are moral values--but not because they are your values or my values. Your argument seems to be--please correct me if I am wrong--that certain values are moral values only because some mind (a god?) holds them. Objectivists would argue that certain values are moral values for a different reason, such as them being inherent in things as suggested.
Quoting Bartricks
It is question-begging to assume what you are trying to prove, which your argument does by presupposing that having value requires being valued (#1), which then requires a subject to do the valuing (#2). In fact, you just admitted as much, apparently without realizing it.
Quoting Bartricks
Since being the object of a valuing relation requires a subject to do the valuing, your argument begs the question. An objectivist would counter that there is a relevant sense in which something can be valuable without being the object of a valuing relation; i.e., regardless of whether any subject actually values it.
Quoting Bartricks
This comes back to the same distinction between having value and being valued. My sense is that the alleged plausibility of premiss #1 in both the OP and your later argument relies heavily on the repetition of the same root word. With that in mind, it might helpfully clarify the issues to use different terminology; for example, replace "moral values" with "moral principles."
Yes, it is question begging to assume the truth of the thesis you are trying to prove. I haven't done that. No premise asserts the thesis. The thesis is expressed in the conclusion, not the premises.
What is question begging is to reject a premise on no better grounds that it conflicts with your thesis, whatever that thesis may be.
So, if you reject a premise because your thesis - rather than any self-evident representation of reason - is inconsistent with it, then you are begging the question.
Again, I am not begging the question. If you say otherwise then show me which premise asserts the truth of my thesis (not entails it - asserts it).
Why on earth would I replace moral values with moral principles??? that makes no sense at all.
the issue is what are moral values. that is, what are they made of. Now, if you think moral values are not 'values', then you have the burden of proof. Discharge it. I think moral values are 'values'. Why? Because that's what they're called.
We are already familiar with values - we value things. Is there some other kind of valuing - a kind that does not require a subject? Provide an example, and don't make it 'moral' values, for that's question begging.
For instance, Peter Singer believes that killing infants and individuals with mental disabilities is morally acceptable because they don't possess a certain level of intelligence. I am saying that regardless of his subjective views on the matter, morally speaking, life still has value and the killing of an mentally disabled adult or infant would be objectively morally wrong, since in this instance it is outside of the subjective moral view of Singer. The preservation of life has intrinsic moral value outside of what any subject thinks about it ever.
Even if you don't care for that particular example, it seems to me that if you are to claim that things can only be of value if they are valued by a subject, then you are denying the value of things like the virtues or a platonic sense of the Good like I mentioned earlier. This concept revolves around the idea that there is a perfect good and that as humans we should be striving towards it and if we were ever to find it in its fullness, that we would be compelled to act in alignment with it. It is made up of many elements and I am of the opinion that we will never be able to fully grasp the entirety of the Good but just the fact that it exists presupposes that there are things that are morally good without a subject necessarily valuing them at that moment.
I fear my statements may have become a little incoherent but the point is that I do as a subject believe that murder is immoral but I also assert that there is such a thing as the Good and since we agree that life has intrinsic value, it seems to me that preserving it would be part of the Good. This would be an example of something objective creating moral value, since the Good is not a subject.
As a side note my Platonic philosophy is a little sloppy sometimes so if you object to something in that particular section of this response, I would love to hear your thoughts.
Anything that one premiss entails by itself, without the addition of a second premiss, is effectively asserted by it. With that in mind, consider the OP argument again.
Quoting Bartricks
The only difference between #1 (premiss) and #3 (conclusion) is the addition of "by a subject," which is already implied; #2 is superfluous. To me, that is begging the question.
In any case, again, the objectivist denies #1 because actually being valued (by a subject) is not necessary for something to be morally valuable. Note that we could substitute just about any other verb here, and the same would be true--actually being "Xed" (by a subject) is not necessary for something to be "Xable."
Really the only difference between my view and that of a Platonist is that on my view the Form of the Good is a person: Reason. She's a single person whose values constitute moral values, and whose prescriptions constitute the prescriptions of reason, among which feature moral prescriptions.
So there is still one source of all goodness - Reason. And moral value is no more in our gift than before.
What's morally valuable is what Reason values, not what you, I, or Peter Singer does.
But yes, I admit that if this person - Reason - does not exist, then nothing has any moral value. But you'd surely have to admit that too, albeit about the form of the Good - you'd have to admit that if that thing did not exist, then nothing would have any moral value.
You might reply that the Form of the Good cannot not exist - that it exists of necessity, or exists more certainly than anything.
But I think by whatever licence you say those things about the Form of the Good, I can say them about Reason, for Reason is simply the Form of the Good made personal.
The first premise says only that to be valuable is to be featuring as the object of a valuing relation. It says nothing about the nature of that relation. And thus this premise does not beg the question against the objectivist about value,
the second premise says that only subjects of experience - minds - can bear attitudes towards things.
Minds do things like hope, desire, sense, intend, value. And it seems that they have a monopoly on doing those things.
That's what the second premise asserts. Now, does that beg the question against the objectivist? No, because it says nothing about moral value. The first premise does, the second just says something about the nature of valuing attitudes.
Now, of course in combination those premises entail that objectivism about moral value is false. Well, so much the worse for objectivism about moral value. That's what its being demonstrably false looks like.
I mean, if moral objectivism is false, how would you find out? What do you think a refutation of it would look like? The above?? If not, what do you think a refutation would look like - or is moral objectivism an unfalsifiable thesis?
Not at all. As I said, what begs the question is a premiss that already entails the conclusion by itself. A proper syllogism requires both premisses in order to entail the conclusion.
Quoting Bartricks
The nature of every relation is that it requires at least two correlates. An objectivist would claim instead that to be valuable is a quality that an object possesses in itself, thus requiring no valuing subject.
Quoting Bartricks
No, for the reasons that I have already provided. Again, in my view these debates almost always come down to the premisses, not the reasoning. No objectivist would accept your #1, because actually being valued (by a subject) is not necessary for something to be morally valuable.
Quoting aletheist
No premise does that. Wishful thinking on your part. Indeed, you've explained why it does not. An objectivist can, in principle, accept premise 1 and reject 2. They can identify the valuer with an object. I mean, it's utterly insane to do that. But that's, you know, the problem. That's why, if you're reasonable, you'll conclude - with me - that moral values are not objective.
But again, neither premise by itself entails the conclusion.
Nonsense, that is not what it means to be an objectivist. Rather, as I have stated repeatedly, an objectivist rejects #1 because "being valuable" does not entail "being valued." On the other hand, "being valued" does entail "being valued by something," and what we call that something--subject, object, Reason, God, whatever--has no bearing on the argument itself.
Quoting Bartricks
How should I know? If I were aware of any such argument, then I already would have been persuaded by it! Again, in my experience it always comes down to the premisses, rather than the arguments.
When considering the terms that you use in your argument: "good", "inherently", "value", "objectively", "immoral", the very first question that springs to mind is: How do you even define these terms? If you do not define these terms first, then how do you know that you know what you are talking about?
In my opinion, it is simply not allowed to arbitrarily connect these terms with logical connectors without extensively and unambiguously defining them first.
All of this is a throwback to that Platonic dialogue between Socrates and Meno, in which Meno went on and on about "virtue". When Socrates asked him to explain what exactly he meant by "virtue", Meno ended up having to admit that he did not know what he was talking about.
Therefore, your simplistic argument form is very, very pre-Socratic. Your simplistic argument ignores almost 2500 years of learning why it does not make sense to do that.
Now, if you are an objectivist which option do you go for? Either explain why being morally valuable does not involve being the object of a valusing relation or explain how something objective can value something.
Quoting aletheist
Quoting aletheist
Quoting aletheist
Quoting aletheist
So, Geach's misconception becomes an excuse for not having to define essential terms in a proposition? It is trivially easy to connect the one ambiguous term to the other and then conclude whatever you want.
Things of value are hard and take serious effort. Otherwise, everybody and their little sister can do it; and that is not progress. When it is just too easy to do what you are doing, then we must safely conclude that it has no value.
For instance, look at what you say here:
Quoting aletheist
What sense? I mean, literally 'what sense'? Make sense of it. I can't. I mean, there's a clear and distinct sense in which I can value something. But it isn't that sense, is it. So, what sense? And explain without begging the question.
Same here. Exactly the same. It is necessary, as the argument demonstrates. Question begging.
So, construct an argument in which the negation of one of my premises is the conclusion and then let's look at the assumptions you need to make to get to it (they'll be batshit crazy, I reckon)
Question begging.
Question begging.
If I rejected your argument by simply claiming that I could not make sense of it, what would be your response?
Quoting Bartricks
I am confident that if I were to construct such an argument, you would immediately reject it by denying one or both of the premisses. As I keep saying, the disagreement is about the premisses, not the arguments.
Quoting Bartricks
Quoting Bartricks
Quoting Bartricks
To which I respond ...
Quoting Bartricks
Quoting Bartricks
I've just spotted this thread which seems to hinge on the straw man dichotomy of 'subjective-objective'. Straw man because all concepts are socially acquired.. a point particularly relevant to morality which involves relationship with others. The futility of the 'debate' is further underscored by the notion of 'self' being a social phenomenon.
Apologies to anybody who has already raised this in the multiple pages.
At first I would charitably take you to be being dishonest, for someone who cannot see that the argument is valid is quite stupid in my opinion. I know you think I'm quite stupid - but I think anyone who thinks the argument is invalid is quite stupid.
Likewise, if you don't know what a valuing relation is, then I would ask you to notice that you value things - that if asked "do you value anything" you would, in other contexts, answer "yes" - and ask you to notice that those valuings are valuing relations.
At that point even if you don't think that moral values are valuing relations of that kind, you could not longer pretend that you do not know what I am talking about.
And if you didn't know what a subject of experience is, I would ask you to inspect yourself, for you are one.
Probably none of that would work and by that point I'd have peppered what I said with little insults here and there as payback for subjecting me to your dishonest attitudes, and you'd be all uppity and tell me what a terrible person I am and give me some advice on how to be a better person, and that would make me even more angry and it would all end badly.
All of that is hypothetical, of course.
I also don't know what you mean by the 'objective/subjective' straw man dichotomy. Are you claiming that moral values are inter-subjective? That is, are moral values like, say, the value of money?
Why not test that thesis? Note, I don't just deny things, I argue them. Unlike you Argue!!
Note too that for hundreds - literally hundreds - of posts now I have been saying time and time and time again that the argument is valid and that one needs to attack a premise. If you have only just cottoned on to that, well done. But yes, to refute the argument you need to attack a premise. Not just nay say. You need to construct a valid argument with the negation of one of my premises as a conclusion and then what I'll do is see if your premises are more prima facie plausible than mine. If they're not - and I'm currently confident they won't be, but am perfectly happy to end up with egg all over my face - then your argument fails to challenge the soundness of my argument.
And as for all of those 'question begging' accusations I made above - we both know what begging the question involves, yes? It involves assuming the truth of the thesis you are trying to prove. So, if you just blithely assume that moral value is objective, then you have 'begged the question'. And that's what you did. You just said "an objectivist will say this". Yes, defend it though.
If you think that something can be valuable without being the object of a valuing relation, show it. Give a non-moral example of it. Can a cup value being full of tea, for instance?
If you give a moral example you've - guess what - begged the question. YOu need to 'conclude' that moral value is objective, not assume it.
My premise says that being morally valuable involves being the object of a valuing relation. Now it is beyond question that valuing relations exist, and beyond question that when something is featuring as the object of one it is being 'valued'. Hence why the burden of proof is on you if you think there is some other way in which something can get to be valued. Again, don't invoke moral values as your example - why? Because it'll be question begging!
If you think that something other than a person can have an attitude towards something, then provide a non-question begging example. I've got plenty of examples of persons adopting attitudes. You give me a non-question begging example of something that is not a person valuing something.
Don't mention moral value though - don't use that as your example. For that'll be - you guessed it - question begging.
And if you can't do those things, then that's because my argument is a proof. It proves, beyond a reasonable doubt, that objectivism about moral values (and prescriptions) is false. If you don't believe me, try and refute the argument.
Quoting Mww
Quoting Mww
To be defined is always the primary ground for some subsequent cognizant ability.
That's your words. Primary ground is required for what subsequently follows. That's - purportedly - a cognizant ability in this case.
What you said presupposes that definition is required for some subsequent cognizant ability.
If one is using common language to take account of one's own mental ongoings, then one needs to recognize a particular terminology. If one cannot recognize that particular terminology, one cannot possibly be thinking about it.
The meaning of your argument depends on the meaning of the terms that it uses. By not strictly defining these terms first, you refuse to make a commitment as to what these terms mean in your argument. The result of doing that, is that your argument does not necessarily mean anything in particular. How could I refute an argument which could have lots of different meanings? Which arbitrary meaning would it be about?
When you precisely define terms, you will discover that it is actually quite hard to discover a non-trivial conclusion that logically connects them. It is certainly not possible to do that on the fly, just like that, between breakfast and lunch. That kind of statements tend to be named after the first person who discovered them. That is how hard it typically is to do that.
There is simply not enough commitment in what you say. You would have to take a real risk by precisely defining every term you use in your argument.
By your own admission, you're not really familiar with predicate logic, modal logic, etc.--even though your arguments rely on these things (modal logic, for example, is logic centered on things like necessity and possibility). But whenever anyone brings up issues with predicate or modal logic, instead of going, "Geez, let me spend some time trying to learn about that stuff"--even if you were to just quietly think that to yourself -- you basically ignore it and try to "start over," essentially by restating your argument and telling people that they really need to learn logic better, so they can someday achieve your level of knowledge about it.
Right, and there is a reason for that. I, like you, am ignorant of the specifics of anything other than simple predicate logic, but it's important to know that these other systems exist and that predicate logic is limited.
Quoting Bartricks
Modal comes from mode. Modal statements are one where the predicate is modified in some way. Say if the predicate is "blue" and the subject is the sky, a normal predicate statement is "the sky is blue". Statements such as "the sky is usually blue" or "the sky is necessarily blue" are modal. The terms "usually" or "necessarily" are modal, because they modify.
Am I talking nonsense to you?
Quoting Bartricks
Simple predicate logic doesn't function correctly with modal statements. Like others, I'll attempt to illustrate, but I'll use standard language.
Let's start with the simple "Socrates is mortal" syllogism, but with a modal component:
1. All humans are mortal.
2. Socrates is not necessarily mortal.
3. Therefore Socrates is not human.
This is invalid, the conclusion doesn't follow. It would have to read "Socrates is not necessarily human", but he could be, because he could be mortal.
What works is structuring the syllogism so the modal component is effectively "bracketed out"
1. All beings that are necessarily human are necessarily mortal.
2. Socrates is not necessarily mortal.
3. Therefore Socrates is not necessarily human.
Now, your argument is:
1. If moral values are my values, then if I value something, necessarily it is morally valuable
2. If I value something, it is not necessarily morally valuable
3. Therefore, moral values are not my values.
Let's change the terms:
1. If men are mortals, then if Socrates is a mortal, necessarily he is a man.
2. If Socrates is a mortal, he is not necessarily a man.
3. Therefore, men are not mortals.
It is immediately apparent that this isn't valid. If Socrates is a cat, premise 2 is true, but the conclusion is nevertheless false. In fact, premise 1 is also invalid in it's internal structure. This is merely less visible in your example.
So what's up with your superman example?
1. If S is B, then If S is at G, necessarily, B is at G.
2. If S is at G, B is not necessarily at G.
3. Therefore, S is not B.
This is valid, but it is valid because of a special circumstance: That S and B are identical. This has the effect of "bracketing out" the modal statement again, due to the following:
If S is identical to B, then S is necessarily B and B is necessarily S.
We can therefore add an additional step between 2. and 3.:
2a. Therefore, S is not necessarily B.
From this 2a., 3. follows. But in our earlier Socrates example, it did not.
A final example:
1. If Bartricks is a superhero, then if Bartricks is at the grocery, necessarily a superhero is at the grocery.
2. If a superhero is at the grocery, Bartricks is not necessarily at the grocery.
3. Therefore, Bartricks is not a superhero?
I'm not sure where you got the 'most' from. From a pragmatist pov, most dichotomies tend to be futile...this one in particular which refers back to the more basic one of 'realism-antirealism'. in fact the key issue in 'morality' is more usually 'relative vs absolute' which tends to involve religion.
My objection is that you tend to play logic games with shaky axioms. This may be traditional in 'analytic philosophy' but the latter has taken quite a few body blows in recent years which cumulatively devalue the applifation of traditional logic, based on fixed set membership, since it cannot handle dynamic state transitions in cognition.
The rest of what you said was ignorant gibberish. Continental philosophy is where you belong!
For objectively, I used the definition given by Bartricks in his original argument.
For immoral, I mean the opposite of moral and I feel like it would be insulting your intelligence to define what that is. If you do actually want me to define it check the first entry in Webster’s.
For inherent, I mean something that is characteristic of a thing from the moment it comes into existence or a characteristic that is part of its core being, so just as one might say that God (if you were to believe in one, I don’t know your religious beliefs) is inherently omnipotent, I am thus saying that human life is inherently good.
Good, as I briefly mentioned in the post you quoted and more directly in the following one, I define as something that is an attribute of the Form of the Good. You seem to have a deeper knowledge of Plato then I do and I don’t claim to have a ton of experience with platonic writings so I feel as though you can understand what I mean by that probably better than I can put it into words but I feel like I was pretty explicit about what I meant on that topic in my second post.
And as for value, I would define it just as Webster does I believe, as the worth or importance of a particular thing.
I don’t think any of those definitions end up changing the validity of my argument but I would be happy to address any objections you have to the argument itself.
There is a definition possible for the term "definition". The definition for term X is a predicate function that accepts arbitrary input S and will return yes, if S is an instance of X, and no, if it is not.
So, the term "definition" refers to a purely mechanical procedure that can distinguish between members and non-members of a class. So, a definition is also a set membership function.
The term "purely mechanical" is a synonym for "objective" in this context. The only reliable way of guaranteeing objectivity is to hand over the input data and the algorithm to a machine. If that is not possible, then such classification could in fact be subjective, i.e. dependent on the opinion of the person carrying out the classification.
There are weaker meta-definitions possible, but they tend to be less effective in stamping out ambiguity or in guaranteeing objectivity.
I think that the problem of the meta-definition is indeed an interesting one.
The problem is that the clause after the modal only follows if we're saying morally valuable to me, but he's not saying that, he's saying morally valuable intransitively.
Morality can be a body of standards or principles derived from a code of conduct from a particular philosophy, religion or culture, or it can derive from a standard that a person believes should be universal.
A morality is a system of rules, i.e. a theory. Therefore, the terms moral and immoral must always be understood in reference to such system/theory. If a system of morality specifies a list of forbidden behaviours, then immoral means behaviour in violation of this system. Which system is it about?
There is an interesting twist to this. Atheists generally reject religious systems of morality but pretty much never propose an alternative. From there on, they often construct theorems outside any possible theory, even though it is mathematically not allowed to do that. Hence, the essential question: Within the confines of which theory are you operating?
And no, "no theory" is not a legitimate theory.
Thanks! You're right that there are more problems with the statement than just that the second premise is modal. I only realized the issue with the internal structure of the first premise when I wrote it down with changed terms.
Of course, if all and only moral values are my values, we have a case of identity again.
Even with his nested conditionals (P-->(Q-->R)), he's reducing Q-->R simply to Q in his mind, so that it's just a simple, not a nested conditional, for modus tollens etc. purposes. So in other words, what reads as if it's a conditional he's basically thinking of as if it's just a long-string variable name for Q.
Haven't read this whole thread yet, not sure if I want to defend Batricks on the whole, just nit picking logic stuff for now.
Yeah, but just to the same someone. That's not what he's saying though. He wants the consequent to be the claim that it's morally valuable in general, universally, not just to the people who value it. Because this is all just an ad hoc argument designed to "prove" that morality can't be only a matter of individuals valuing whatever they do.
That's not intransitive. It's only valuable to the people who value it. It's not universally valuable or valuable independently of the particular individuals who value it. (And being valuable intransitively especially wouldn't follow from the supposition of value only being an individual phenomenon.)
Yes, this is the point that @aletheist was trying to make above (and having about as much luck as the rest of us in getting through to the OP). That something can be valuable is a judgement about how it is possible to have a subject relate to it, not about any subject actually relating to it. A bike is ride-able even without anyone riding it - this absolutely has to be the case otherwise no-one would ever be able to have invented the bike because no-one would have been able to conceive of it as being ride-able without someone first having ridden it.
:grin:
No The rest of what I said is over your head. 'Continental philosophy' is merely another pole of one of your dichotomy games. I doubt whether 'neurophilosophy' for example, which also questions 'logical thinking' can be be deemed to be 'continental' .
If we're just saying that something is "able to be valued," nothing would be excluded from that. And everything would be able to be both positively and negatively valued.
At any rate, Bartricks wasn't saying anything about it being a possibility that someone might value something when he used the term "valuable."
Only if we were talking in absolutes, and I don't think there's any need to do that when it comes to morality. Anything is also ride-able (to take my example) in that anyone, in their opinion, could claim to be 'riding' anything, but the concept what is 'sensibly' ride-able is, and has been, nonetheless very useful in, for example, the invention of the bike. The reason why other prototypes were mentally discarded before even being made is because they were considered to be not ride-able by the inventor. But not considered that way just for the inventor, considered that way universally. Doing so was inaccurate, but useful.
There is no reason at all why such should not be the case, for example, when trying to derive laws that are widely agreed upon (prior to something like a democratic vote to check they are truly widely agreed upon). The law-makers can make a useful judgement about what is really valuable and what is unlikely to be so. Humans are not that diverse.
This pragmatic sense is the only sense in which the term has any meaning at all, otherwise we've just defined it away, which seems pointless.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Yes, that was the point of the objection in that form. It makes his first premise incoherent.
There would be no way to make sense out of saying that someone could "ride a neutrino," because it's not physically possible. But an individual could positively or negatively value anything. It's not physically impossible to positively or negatively value anything. We don't need to do incomprehensible (or very vague and fantastical) things to the term "value" for that.
How do you know it's not physically possible? We don't currently have any mechanism by which fundamental particles can be made to carry a human, but that doesn't make it physically impossible. Maybe we could one day convert humans to data contained within other dimensions and somehow 'attach' that multi-dimensional data to a fundamental particle (in our common dimension).
We can't do this right now (nor probably ever) because of the limitations of the physical world as we currently know it. Part of those limitations as we currently know them, are the workings of the human brain. So far we do not have evidence that humans randomly value things, so far our valuing of certain things is incredibly similar. Similar enough to draw very useful conclusions from.
Because we know something about neutrinos and how they interact with bodies.
Other dimensions? That's incoherent nonsense stemming from the reification of mathematics by mathematical platonists.
Re the comment about valuing similar things, you're confusing contingency with physical possibility.
Re the neutrino comment, you're confusing physical and logical possibility, by the way, although the logical possibility there relies on loose, vague, fantastical nonsense.
Yes, but we also know something about human brains (the source of value). For some reason you're treating what we know about physics as being unequivocal fact and yet treating what we know about human brains as being irrelevant, and I don't understand why.
Of course riding a neutrino is fantastical nonsense, but you cannot rule it out as a physical impossibility because our knowledge of physics is not complete. We do not know everything there is to know about physics. We just know some of it.
We also do not know everything there is to know about the human brain, but, like physics, we do know some of it. To treat that knowledge as irrelevant to constraining options regarding what subjects reasonably can and cannot do is dogmatic and unproductive. It is not unreasonable to say that, based on what we know about the human brain, a healthy adult probably cannot morally value a pile of sick. We have disgust mechanisms, empathy mechanisms (via mirror neurons, a limited number of neurotransmitters, which only have a limited range of possible functions... There are limits to what the brain can do, and if (for practical purposes) you're talking about the vast majority of healthy brains, those limits are even more constraining.
What was the thesis that my argument was addressing? Was it the thesis that 'some' moral values are 'some' of my values?
Nope.
What is the thesis that moral values and 'some' of my valuings - my values - are synonymous?
Nope, although I did address that one too for I have said time and time again that the same argument can be run for any subset, just as it can be run for your values as well as it can be for mine.
It was the thesis that moral values are my valuings. That is, that being morally valuable involves nothing more than being valued by me.
That thesis.
Again: I stress that the same argument can then be run for any subset of my valuings, and the same argument can be run for your values (and any subset of them). And again for any groups valuings. And it was precisely by going through this process that I ended up at the conclusion that therefore moral valuings are valuings of just one subject. I mean, how else did I get to that conclusion!?!
But again, the thesis being considered in the argument we're focussing on right now, is whether ALL moral values are synonymous with being valued by me. Not 'some' valuing activity of mine, but just 'being valued by me'.
Now, the word 'valuings' is ugly, I know, and some pointed this out, but I used it on purpose - to convey that what we are considering is whether the valuings constitutive of moral valuings are synonymous with my valuings - that is, my valuing activity.
So, are moral values - moral valuings - identical with my valuings? To express it a different way: is 'being morally valuable' synonymous with 'being valued by me"?
Well, if being morally valuable and being valued by me are synonymous, then if I value something, necessarily it will be morally valuable.
That's true. Obviously true. Do I really need to explain why? If "being morally valuable" is one and the same as "being valued by me" then if I value something, it is "being valued by me", which - by hypothesis, is what "being morally valuable" is being supposed to consist in. I don't know how to make that clearer. The thesis is that 'being morally valuable" and "being valued by me" are synonymous. The same. Identical. One and the same. Samey samey sameingtons. The same. And if they are, then it follows - obviously follows - that if I value something, it will inevitably be morally valuable because 'being morally valuable' just is to be being valued by me. Nothing more, nothing less.
Put some symbols in there if you want, and use terms like 'modal' too if you like - but just realize, as any competent English speaker surely would (if, that is, they were not fanatically obsessed with my argument turning out to be invalid) that what I am saying is that if moral values and my values are one and the same, then if I value something it must be morally valuable, because 'what it is' to be morally valuable just is to be being valued by me. I mean, that's the thesis under consideration (a thesis I reject, of course, before someone decides I endorse it).
So is that clear? Is premise 1 now clear?
Premise 1 says "If P, then Q"
P says "if moral values (all of them, not some of them) are my values (so, if being morally valuable is one and the same as being valued by me).
Q says "if I value something, necessarily it is morally valuable"
It is true. Not false. True.
Now what about premise 2?
Well, what is 'not Q'? If Q is "If I value something, necessarily it is morally valuable" then what is the opposite of that?
This: "If I value something, it is NOT necessarily morally valuable". And that's what premise 2 says.
Premise 2: If I value something, it is NOT necessarily morally valuable"
It follows from those that "being morally valuable" is not the same as just being valued by me.
That is, the thesis that for something to be morally valuable it is sufficient that I be valuing it, has been demonstrated to be false.
Now what about a subset of my values? What about things I am valuing on Tuesday, or things I value and value valuing? Well I said - umpteen times in fact - that the same argument can be run for any subset of your valuings that you care to identify. Any subset. Any at all. Could moral valuings be identified with what you value when you're wearing green? Nope - same argument will be valid and sound for those. Could moral valuings be identified with what you value on Tuesdays alone. Nope - same argument will be valid and sound for those too. Just run them. But you don't need to, do you - it is obvious that it is going to work just as well for any subset.
And what goes for my valuings - all of them and any subset - will go for yours. The same argument with your valuings or some subset of them - will be valid and sound.
How else did I arrive at the conclusion that moral values are the values of a single subject - someone who is not me, not you, not anyone other than herself - apart from by this winnowing process? Put in any of your values - any of them - and the same basic argument will demonstrate that moral values are not identical with them.
All you have done is change my first premise and then show me how arguments with different first premises are invalid. What was the point in that?
So you're arguing that there are things it's physically impossible to positively or negatively value?
I use 'analytic philosophy' to mean 'philosophy'.
Am I misusing these terms?
Yes. The brain (which does the valuing) is just a machine. I can't think of any good reason at all not to think that the limits and trends we observe in psychology are limits and trends imposed by the physical make up of that machine.
Valuing is a thing that machine does, so I don't see any reason not to presume that the limits and trends we observe (with respect to valuing) are not limits and trends imposed by the machine.
We have not yet observed an undamaged brain morally valuing a pile of sick, we have a sound theory as to the mechanism that might cause such a limit, so it's completely reasonable to hold the theory that a pile of sick is not morally valuable (ie cannot be valued by the machine that does valuing).
I have no idea what that might be, and I am not sure I want to know. Sounds like it will be second-rate philosophy combined with second-rate neuroscience, but perhaps I'm cynical.
Two systems could have one or more common rules but still generate substantially different outcomes. In that sense, a single rule out of context does not say particularly much.
One example would be the system of Presburger arithmetic. With only addition defined, it is complete. With only multiplication defined, it is also complete. With both simultaneously defined, it is incomplete. (Highly counter-intuitive, isn't it?) Therefore, saying anything about the rule for addition or for multiplication, outside context, is not particularly meaningful.
It is like discussing the steering wheel for a car in absence of the remainder of the car. Systems are typified by the interconnectedness of their rules. Therefore, you need to look at the complete list of rules in a moral system before drawing conclusions.
Sorry. Didn't mean to divert the topic.
Anyway...
You want to prove god exists by way of demonstrating that a god is a necessary subject that values morals. You haven't been able to show that a god is a necessary subject that values morals yet. Yes, you claim humans can't be the subject that values morals but you haven't proved it.
Some things are morally valuable to others. Some of your values are not moral. Thus being morally valuable must include something more than just being valued by you.
:joke:
Same problem. Different set of statements.
First, I don't want to prove a god exists, I want to establish what moral values are.
Second, I have proved it and no-one has raised the least reasonable doubt about any premise at all.
Moral values are valuings. That is, for something to be morally valuable is for it to be the object of a valuing relation. What else could it consist in? Nobody has said anything to suggest this premise is false. At best some have simply pointed out - as if I didn't know - that some objectivists may want to reject this. Well, yes. But want away. Wanting or needing to reject a premise is quite different from raising any reasonable doubt about its truth.
I then pointed out that only subjects of experience - minds - value things. Anything can be valued, but only subjects of lives value things. So, though anything can the object of a valuing relation, not anything can be a valuer. In fact, one thing and only one kind of thing can be a valuer - a subject.
I then pointed out - and this seems to have been the main bone of contention in this thread thus far - that moral values are self-evidently not my values or yours. Any of them. I cannot make something morally valuable just by valuing it. My valuings - all and any of them - do not constitutively determine what's morally valuable. And that goes for any of us.
So, though being morally valuable involves being the object of a subject's valuing attitude, it manifestly does not involve being the object of any of our valuing attitudes.
I am led by this - as will anyone else be who follows the argument - that being morally valuable involves being the object of the valuings of a subject who is none of us, but is Reason.
And that subject is a god.
And as some things clearly are morally valuable, that subject - the god - exists.
So there: I bloody well did prove it. :razz:
And my argument is a damn sight stronger than the standard moral argument for a god.
For it applies to the prescriptions of Reason.
And no-one can intelligently deny that the prescriptions of Reason exist.
There are some moral error theorists out there. And I think moral error theory is manifestly false, of course (because it is). But whatever we think of moral error theory, the fact is any argument for it is an argument - an appeal to Reason - and thus even moral error theorists must, if they think there really is reason to believe there theory is true - accept that prescriptions of Reason exist.
And thus everyone - but everyone - must accept that Reason, the subject, the mind, 'She', exists.
So again, I blood sodding well have proved it. :razz: And I did it without any symbols or without saying 'modal' once.
Let me try to explain the set objection like this. Consider 3 dimensional measurement (depth, height, width). Measuring is something a subject does, and something being measurable means it can be measured by a subject.
P says "if depth measurements (all of them, not some of them) are my measurements (so, if being depth-measurable is one and the same as being measured by me).
Q says "if I measure something, necessarily it is depth-measurable"
This is patently false, because it is possible for you to measure 2-dimensional objects, yet they are not depth-measurable, they have no depth.
All things in the set {things which are depth-measurable} are in the set {things which are measured by me} (not in the real world, of course, but in our hypothetical). But the set {things which are measured by me} is not exhaustively constituted by the set {things which are depth-measurable}, also there are {things which are height-measurable} and {things which are length-measurable}.
So simply saying things which are depth-measurable are measured by me does not sufficiently lead to the conclusion that if I measure something it is necessarily depth-measurable (it might be one of the other types measuring I do). To lead to your conclusion you need a stronger identity (as others have already pointed out). You need to say that depth measurements (morally values) are exhaustively the same as you measuring something (your values).
So your argument, as it stands, still allows that moral values are your values because it does not lead to absurdity you suggest (where simply by valuing something you make it morally valuable). It is possible to value something without making it morally valuable and still maintain that moral values are your values. You do this by claiming that moral values are a subset of your values. Same as aesthetic values are. So when I value something I might be morally valuing it, but I might not. I might be aesthetically valuing it. These are still all my values.
So, if you want to raise an objection to the idea that moral values are my values, you'll have to take a line other than the argument that this leads to a situation where me valuing something makes it morally valuable.
I am of the opinion that such radical empiricism can be sustained without resorting to God to maintain a common reality, resulting in an empirical realism or physicalist phenomenalism. I am also of the opinion that a radical hedonism (all good lies in the satisfaction of "desires", though I'd quibble about that terminology some) can be sustained without resorting to God to maintain a common morality.
And that "objectivity", contrary to the OP definitions, more typically means such commonality, an un-biased-ness, and "subjectivity" likewise means the opposite of that, bias; and that such radical empiricism and hedonism, if somehow or another held together with some common, shared, mutual sense of reality and morality (respectively), do not make the resultant views of reality and morality non-objective, in that more typical sense, despite the "subjectivity" (in the OP sense) of the radical empiricism and hedonism they contain.
Will try to elaborate more tomorrow, sleep now.
In what way are my examples inadequate, precisely?
Quoting Bartricks
It's not, because the things that are "valued by me" include more than just my moral values. One is a subset of the other.
Quoting Bartricks
So, to be clear, is the thesis that "my values" and "moral values" are identical in a strict sense? Every member of "my values" is also a member of "moral values", and vice-versa?
Or merely that every moral value is a personal value, but not the other way around?
Quoting Bartricks
It's true if all and only Moral values are my values. I.e. all of my values are moral values. Otherwise it doesn't follow.
Quoting Bartricks
If Q is "if I value something, necessarily it is morally valuable"
Then not Q is: "If I value something, necessarily it is not morally valuable".
Edit: I edited the part above since my earlier version may have been wrong.
Your sentence is not a case of "not Q", because Q could still be true: If I value something, it is not necessarily morally valuable, but it could be.
Quoting Bartricks
I have merely changed the name of the variables:
Moral values - men
my values - mortals
I - Socrates.
Validity can be assessed irrespective of the name of the variables.
Isn't this Euthyphro's dilemma?
Does god determine what's right or does reason determine what's right?
If it's god then by your own logic god can't be the subject of moral values. What if he thinks killing and rape are good?
If it's reason then again god isn't the subject of moral values. He uses reason just like us. Also it would make god at best redundant and at worst nonexistent.
The problem is you're trying to shift the subject of moral values to a god while simultaneously claiming reason determines moral values. This can't be done because reason isn't a godly prerogative. Humans can reason too.
Why are you introducing words like "healthy" or "undamaged"? I'm not saying anything like that. Are you saying that for "unhealthy" or "damaged" brains, there's nothing that would be physically impossible to positively or negatively value?
I'm saying that moral valuing can reasonably be said to be an activity that healthy, undamaged minds do. Healthy, undamaged minds are machines, the range of possible functions of which are limited. It is not unreasonable to form theories about what those limits might be based on our observations. One of those theories might well be to do with the limits of what it is possible for these brains to morally value.
This process (theorising about limits based on observations) is no different to any other epistemological venture, including the idea that one cannot ride a neutrino.
Here (and elsewhere) you seem to be working on the presumption that people can value anything, can have any foundational principles, can believe anything to be the case. The human brain is the source of all these feelings. It is a physical machines like any other, all physical machines we have so far encountered have had their range of options limited by their physical characteristics. I don't see any reason to think brains are any different and therefore theories can reasonably be held about objective limits to the feelings that they can have.
Your original claim, which I objected to was "If we're just saying that something is "able to be valued," nothing would be excluded from that."
Your assertion there that nothing would be excluded from that is a very controversial and wildly unsupported assertion for the complete uniqueness of the human brain among all other mechanisms (biological and merely physical) which we have ever encountered, all of which have had their range of possible states constrained by their natures.
Thank you for taking this on, you're doing a far better job than I could. I hope this is not too much of a burden on your time.
No, actually, they are not. Not quite.
(To be defined).....is to be conceived, which is always the primary ground.....
Those are my words. Please recognize the temporal displacement native to the statement.
———————
Quoting creativesoul
Granted, of course. Nevertheless, in his normal course of events, e.g., some arbitrary objective appearance, one doesn’t take account of his own mental machinations, insofar as he is not thereby examining how cognitive relations manifest according to rules, such that those machinations arrive at a cognition proper to that occasion. In such case, the cognition is merely an inference abstracted from experience.
In any case, people don’t make mistakes in cognition a priori because they have mis-defined something; people make mistakes in conversation a posteriori because they have mis-defined something. People make mistakes in cognition because they misjudge a conception, and if it should be talked about it thereafter, the mistake in conception will necessarily manifest as a mistake in the definition that linguistically represents it.
Remember my disclaimer, which I probably should have qualified with “cognitive reductionism”. It’s just that I would have expected you to recognize that conditional and accept it as such, even if I can’t convince you of its theoretical validity.
Your facile comment about 'misusing terms' is merely a bit of belligerent posturing to cover up either your indolence regarding keeping up with the literature, or an admission of a limited intellect.
From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on neurophilosophy.
ITALICS MINE
If this is too difficult for you, let me know.
So what would be something that you believe it would be physically impossible to positively or negatively value?
I'm not talking about positive or negative values sensu lato, I'm referring to moral values. I'm sorry if I've caused any confusion with sloppy shorthand terms, but I think I specified in a number of cases that I'm talking about moral values.
But to answer your question directly, I'd say it's impossible for an undamaged infant brain to negatively value it's caregiver. Brains just aren't wired that way, we have no examples of it happening (in undamaged brains) and we have sound theories as to both the mechanism which ensures it and the reason such a mechanism may have evolved.
I'd say its impossible to positively value extreme pain. Mild pain may be at a level where other feelings can override the base reaction, but at extreme levels we see autonomous circuits engage which force negative responses. Again, the undamaged brain is simply wired to produce negative responses to extreme pain.
Even flatworms, when placed in a resource-poor environment show a drop in serotonin, which, in humans is somewhat correlated with negative feelings. You'd have to first make a compelling argument for human exceptionalism before asserting that we do not have the same basic mechanisms limiting our range of responses.
Plus, I should add, we're also not talking about 'impossible'. As I said, it's not 'impossible' to ride a neutrino, it just doesn't seem at all likely given our current theories. It's that same basis I'm using here. Psychological theories are considerably less certain than theories of physics, but they are not categorically different, so any change in approach on the basis of that uncertainty would be arbitrary.
Holy moley. You go on with all of this Aspieish crap, and you don't answer one friggin question.
Obviously we're talking about moral values.
And I've been saying OVER AND OVER that I'm talking about whether it's physically possible for there to be something not "able" to be either positively or negatively valued.
I asked you why you were bringing up the idea of "healthy"/"undamaged" (I know why, but I want you to address the crap you're trying to "sneak in"), and you first responded with some oblique nonsense without answering the question, and here you bring it up again.
Yeah, you said that because you don't know what the fnck you're talking about.
Yeah, whatever. I'm gradually learning I feel much better about my involvement here if I just stop responding when it gets to this kind of crap. "You don't know what you're talking about" is kind of a red flag. Happy to resume when you've calmed down, otherwise not.
Maybe stop assuming my argument is invalid and trying to diagnose why. It isn't. It is valid.
The argument - the argument in the OP - makes clear that we're talking about valuing relations.
The argument that everyone is getting their knickers in a twist about, seeks to assess the thesis that moral values - all of them, not just some - are one and the same as my values. That is, the thesis under considering is whether I am morality- whether I am the source of the good.
My argument demonstrates that that thesis is false. And it works for any subset too. It works when you identify all moral values with all of my valuings. It works when you identify all moral values with some subset.
Here it is again with a subset:
1. If moral values are what-I-value-when-I-am-sitting-on-the-toilet, then if I value something when I am sitting on the toilet, necessarily it is morally valuable.
2. If I value something when I am sitting on the toilet it is not necessarily morally valuable
3. Therefore, moral values are not what-I-value-when-I-am-sitting-on-the-toilet.
That is, 'being morally valuable' is not one and the same as being 'valued by me when I am sitting on the toilet".
It is valid.
This argument:
1. If my toilet has depth, then I am sat on it.
2. It is Tuesday
3. Therefore I have wet myself
Is not valid. And it is also nothing like my argument.
1. if being loved by Superman is one and the same as being loved by me, then if I love you necessarily Superman loves you
2. If I love you Superman does not necessarily love you
3. therefore being loved by Superman is not one and the same as being loved by me.
Don't, don't, don't, change anything. Don't offer an alternative and tell me your view about the alternative. Don't say 'ah this is a special case - one involving superheros, and there's a special logic for superheros.
Just say whether you think it is valid or invalid.
Right. You're getting somewhere. But now, with proper account taken of subsets, your premise 2 is far less plausible. It's gone from implying that simply valuing something sensu lato makes it moral (so valuing something like vanilla ice cream makes it moral - obviously ridiculous) to saying only that some specific subset of your values are moral values. Now you've lost the ad absurdum argument. It's quite possible that some subset of your values are moral values. It's quite possible that their apparent categoricity is simply the near unanimity they have because of our shared evolutionary heritage, for example. You might not agree with that position, many don't, but the corrected version of the argument is far less conclusive than you've been presuming.
(That is, if we take it as meaning "It is necessarily the case that if being loved by Superman is one and the same as being loved by me, then if I love you then Superman loves you" and "It is not necessarily the case that If I love you then Superman loves you". A more literal but less charitable interpretation would have those talking about the necessity or lack thereof of Superman loving you, rather than the necessity of the if-then statement as a whole. Compare for example: "if x lives in California then x necessarily lives in California" literally means that anyone who happens in fact to live in California could not possibly have lived or come to live anywhere else, because them living in California is a necessary, immutable truth, somehow. But a more charitable interpretation of that would be the obvious statement "It is necessarily the case that anyone who lives in California lives in California", which has the trivial tautology as the thing that is necessary and immutable, not anything in particular about people in California. This might have been the point others were trying to make by talking about modal logic).
Substituting the stuff about moral valuation in there is still valid too.
But that only disproves individualist moral subjectivism (and I agree that that's false). It doesn't necessarily prove what you're trying to prove with it.
Still meaning to write more on that later but have to go for now...
No, I am not getting anywhere at all. The original argument was valid. You - you - are slowly, dimly, starting to see that. Well, no you're not, your own arrogance is going to prevent that. You're going to have to cast it as you taking me - me - on an intellectual journey.
The original argument is valid and you've got nothing to say about it. You actually need to address a premise, but you can't do that. So all you're going to do - and prove me wrong - is keep generating different arguments to mine and saying 'modal' and 'transitive' a lot, words I take to be synonymous with "I don't know what I am talking about, but I'm not letting that stop me".
So, no charity at all. Just valid. And I haven't put 'necessarily' in the wrong place. You did in your rewrite. The original is fine. Absolutely fine. Valid and sound. The problem is that no-one wants to concede that in its entirety. I have to have made 'some' mistake. I haven't - the argument is find as it is. It is expressed properly. It is valid. It is sound.
Then you point out that all my argument does is refute individual subjectivism.
That's what its bloody purpose was!! I mean, I know!! That's what I was seeking to refute with it.
When you take your car to the garage to be fixed, and they fix it, do you say "well, don't be so proud of yourself, all you've done is fix my car". Or when you go to a baker, do you say "well, I don't know why you've put all these cakes in the window - all you've done is bake some cakes and now you're just trying to sell them".
The purpose of the argument - the argument that is perfectly well expressed and that is valid and sound - was to refute a certain kind of subjectivist view. That is, the view that moral values are one and the same as my valuings (or yours, or some subset). That view. That view was the one being assessed.
I have already established, by means of another equally valid and sound argument, that moral values are the values of some subject or other.
Now I have established that they are not the values of me or you.
Conclusion - they are the values of a subject who is not me or you.
Now, tell me that doesn't follow!
It does.
Moral values are the values of a subject.
Moral values are not the values of me.
So moral values are the values of a subject who is not me.
Moral values are not the values of you.
So moral values are the values of a subject who is not me, not you.
Agree?
Anyway, sidestepping all that stuff about necessity, the form of the argument you gave before soundly proves that "moral values are not the values of me". But you have a separate premise, "moral values are the values of a subject", and that's necessary for the rest of the argument to prove that moral values are the values of a subject other than me. That's where I would disagree, and what I intend to write more about when I get the chance.
You say, in your lofty way, that a 'subset' view may well be plausible. Oh really? Go on then. Let's go out to the car park and sort this one out, shall we?!
Say which subset of your values you want to identify moral values with and we'll take it from there.
And don't use Latin or I'll start throwing in Ukranian phrases and see if that helps things. "??????????? ? ?????? - ?? ?? ??????? ?? ?????: ??????????, ??? ?????????" as my mother says.
Second, even granting that communities can value things (and they can't) the same argument applies:
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.
Nothing uncalm about it. Just honest. I'm not going to indulge something ignorant just because you said it.
It is you - not I - who keeps mentioning God. My argument leads to the conclusion that moral values are the values of a subject, Reason.
She is a god. Why? Because she's Reason. It's that way around. She's a not a god and so she's Reason. She's Reason and so she's a god. 'A god' not 'God'. Again, it is you - your ears - that are hearing 'God' every time I say 'a god'. It derails things as it invites a discussion of religious matters not relevant to my case.
I am interested in what's true. I am interested in what moral values and prescriptions are. I have simply discovered that they are the values and prescriptions of a person. And because moral prescriptions are just a subset of the prescriptions of Reason, I have discovered that Reason is a person.
That person, precisely because she is the one whose values constitute moral values, and precisely because she is the one whose prescriptions constitute the prescriptions of reason, is a god. I mean, she determines what's morally valuable. We have reason to pursue our own interests because and only because she says so. And what's true seems to be constitutively determined by her as well. For what is truth apart from what Reason asserts to be the case?
So Reason, this agent, this subject who is herself and not anyone else, seems to me to be omnipotent. She can make anything true. She can do anything. So, I think it is beyond dispute that she's a god. But 'God'? Well, I don't know and I don't care. But 'a god' certainly.
And as for the Euthyphro question, well I have started a thread on it as it is the only concern that, in my view, is capable of raising a reasonable doubt about my case's soundness. Ultimately it fails to do this, I think, but for not-immediately-obvious reasons. On its face, then, it seems like a good objection.
The answer to the Euthyphro question is, of course, not open to negotiation - the god determines what's right. I mean, that's just the view.
The 'problem' that this raises is that it means that moral values and prescriptions (and the other prescriptions of Reason) will be variable.
I don't think that is a problem, but I admit that it appears to be.
And you're saying that if reason values something, it is necessarily morally valuable?
Why?
If that subject values something, necessarily it will be morally valuable.
Who is this subject? Well, moral values have the same source as moral prescriptions, don't they?
And the same argument applies to them. That is, moral prescriptions are demonstrably the prescriptions of a subject.
And as the source of moral prescriptions must be the same as the source of moral values, it is the same subject who is the source of both.
And moral prescriptions are among the prescriptions of reason, are they not? For instance, if an act is morally prescribed, then we necessarily have some reason to do it, don't we? Well why? Because for an act to be morally prescribed just is for it to be being prescribed by reason, and what it is for us to have reason to do an act is for reason to be prescribing it.
So, if moral prescriptions are the prescriptions of a subject, and moral prescriptions are just a subset of the prescriptions of reason, then the subject is reason. Reason is the subject.
Hence why we virtually all recognise that when it comes to getting insight into what's right and wrong, good and bad, it is to our reason - our faculties of reason, faculties that give us insight into what Reason herself prescribes and values - that we must turn.
Note, if moral values were our values, then it would be by introspection, not reason, that we would gain insight into moral matters.
And if moral values were the values of our community, then it would be by sociological surveys that we would gain insight into moral matters.
But as is clear to all right-thinking folk, it is by rational reflection - not surveys and introspection - that we gain moral insight.
If that were not so, then moral philosophy would not even exist as a subject.
That, then, is why if Reason values something necessarily it is morally valuable. Reason is the subject, a person. And she determines what is good, bad, right wrong, true, false - everything.
Your argument suffers from the bare assertion fallacy.
So, without invoking a label, say what you mean.
I have made arguments. My reply to you contained arguments. You just don't know what an argument is, or what a fallacy is. Yet, bizarrely, you're confident you do. Odd. Are you, by any chance, thick?
no, that's false. I am 'concluding' that reason is the source of those things. Now, you don't know things.
What is a fallacy? Say what you understand that word to mean.
You don't commit a fallacy just by asserting something. For instance "I want a cake" is not fallacious.
It is an assertion. But it is not a fallacy.
"If I want a cake, then I want some tea. I don't want a cake. therefore I don't want some tea" is a fallacy.
I have not committed any fallacies.
I have argued - using valid arguments, not fallacious ones - that moral values are the values of a single agent, an agent who is reason.
Bye. That was thoroughly unpleasant.
1. Moral values and prescriptions have the same source
2. the source of moral values is a single subject.
3. Therefore, the source of moral values and prescriptions is a single subject
4. if and only if moral prescriptions are prescriptions of reason would it be the case that we would necessarily have reason to do what we are morally prescribed doing.
5. We necessarily have reason to do what we are morally prescribed doing
6. Therefore moral prescriptions are the prescriptions of reason
7. if moral prescriptions are prescriptions of reason and moral prescriptions are prescriptions of a subject, then reason is a subject.
8. therefore reason is a subject
There are more arguments than this - more reasons to think that moral prescriptions are prescriptions of reason, but that will do for now.
Cool. I'm just curious what this thread really is. Psychology experiment?
Look, the insults are not coming out of nowhere. You. Just. Insulted. Me. I politely, efficiently, answered your questions.
You then told me that I had not argued anything.
I had.
You then contemptuously kept sending the same messages when I called you on your ignorance.
I went to the trouble of explaining to you what a 'fallacy' is. I went to the trouble of outlining the argument that you thought was not there. The argument that was there. I numbered it so you could recognise it as an argument.
And now, rather than addressing that argument, you decide - as so many others do - to focus elsewhere. To focus on me. To insult me.
The insults are not coming out of nowhere. They are coming out of you and your attitudes and the attitudes of others.
Now, focus on the argument and either highlight an error in the reasoning or make a case against one of the premises.
And it appears to be a thread in which someone is presenting a proof of a god. Deal.