Metaethics and moral realism
I have this argument brewing in my head, and I think it works, but it begs for critical review.
Consider: the ethical anti objectivist John Mackie's thesis (Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong) that there are no objective ethics, and he runs through R M Hare's objections, the notion that "value statements cannot be true or false" and Kant, Plato, Sedgwick, Aristotle, but I am not going through all this. His Argument from Queerness I find central, which is quite simple: ethics is just too weird to consider as objective, and here he cites G E Moore's non natural property. Mackie denies this both on epistemological grounds and well as ontological, the former focused on intuitionism, etc., the latter essentially: what in blazes would objective ethics even BE? Inconceivable.
Mackie is wrong: To deny moral objectivism on the grounds that it is too weird implies a non weird standard already in place, and this would be, of course, empirical science. But how is it that empirical science is allowed to be the foundational basis for determining the nature of ethics? Ethics is about value, in its essence: If you want to really get the center of ethics, you have to give it its due analysis, after all, an ethical case is a thing of parts. On the one hand, there is its entanglement with the "facts" of the world. On the other, there is the metaethical, the "bad" and "good" of moral affairs. It is here, in the metaethical, that the essence of ethics has its objectivity and its reality.
The question is, what makes the ethical shoulds and shouldn'ts what they are? Ethical goodness and badness, and we will simply call this ethical value and, are not like contingent value and judgment. A good knife is good, say, because it is sharp and cuts well, but this virtue entirely rests with the cutting, the goodness, if you will, defers to the cutting context. But change the conditions of the context and the good can easily become the opposite of good, if, e.g., the knife is to be used for a Macbeth production. Here, sharpness is the very opposite of good, for someone could get hurt. This is how contingency works, this deferring to other contextual features for goodness or badness to be determined.
Ethical value, on the other hand, is very different, for once the context is taken away, and no contextual deference possible, there is the metavalue "presence" remaining. How so? Now we are in Moore's territory. Consider: You have a choice between the torture of one child for a hour, or the torture of a million children for, let's say an eternity (forget the foolishness of the idea). Utility clearly states the former over the latter, and even the most die hard Kantian deontologist would have to yield to the straight forward utility of this (Did Kant ever make any sense at all in ethics??). But here is the rub in this: the child torture for the one hour is in no way mitigated due to the "contextual" justification. You may have done the right thing, but the value in play is not at all effected by the conditions vis a vis the other children. In fact, there is no set of contingent conditions imaginable that undo or even mitigate the ethical value, the "badness" of the one child's torture. It is impossible to conceive of such a mitigation.
What IS ethical badness as such? Try this thought on an empirical object, looking for the "empirical as such" and you get what I call mundane qualia, and, just ask Dennett, qualia is without meaning, or, very close to nonsense, and I think he's right on this. But, if you want to use this language, value-qualia is certainly not nonsense, for apply a lighted match to your finger for a few seconds, review the experience, and remove all contingencies, all talk that could contextualize it entirely out of the analysis, and there is the remaining "presence" of the non natural quality of value/ethical badness and goodness. It cannot be observed, but that burning finger is more than Wittgensteinian "fact" (and Wittgenstein knew this) like the fact that my shoe is untired of that the sun is a ball of fusion. Such facts are all contingent. The metaethical dimension of ethics is not. It is absolute, though, not absolute in the way it is taken up in a conceptual analysis (where analytical philosophy often goes so wrong), but in the injunction not to do something. This is critical to my position: I cannot tell you what an absolute is, for this would be beyond what language can do, not to put too fine a point on it. It only "shows" itself, in the same manner logic shows itself, but cannot reveal itself in the showing. It only reveals itself in the inherent injunction not to do (my example is negative. Doesn't have to be) something.
Consider: the ethical anti objectivist John Mackie's thesis (Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong) that there are no objective ethics, and he runs through R M Hare's objections, the notion that "value statements cannot be true or false" and Kant, Plato, Sedgwick, Aristotle, but I am not going through all this. His Argument from Queerness I find central, which is quite simple: ethics is just too weird to consider as objective, and here he cites G E Moore's non natural property. Mackie denies this both on epistemological grounds and well as ontological, the former focused on intuitionism, etc., the latter essentially: what in blazes would objective ethics even BE? Inconceivable.
Mackie is wrong: To deny moral objectivism on the grounds that it is too weird implies a non weird standard already in place, and this would be, of course, empirical science. But how is it that empirical science is allowed to be the foundational basis for determining the nature of ethics? Ethics is about value, in its essence: If you want to really get the center of ethics, you have to give it its due analysis, after all, an ethical case is a thing of parts. On the one hand, there is its entanglement with the "facts" of the world. On the other, there is the metaethical, the "bad" and "good" of moral affairs. It is here, in the metaethical, that the essence of ethics has its objectivity and its reality.
The question is, what makes the ethical shoulds and shouldn'ts what they are? Ethical goodness and badness, and we will simply call this ethical value and, are not like contingent value and judgment. A good knife is good, say, because it is sharp and cuts well, but this virtue entirely rests with the cutting, the goodness, if you will, defers to the cutting context. But change the conditions of the context and the good can easily become the opposite of good, if, e.g., the knife is to be used for a Macbeth production. Here, sharpness is the very opposite of good, for someone could get hurt. This is how contingency works, this deferring to other contextual features for goodness or badness to be determined.
Ethical value, on the other hand, is very different, for once the context is taken away, and no contextual deference possible, there is the metavalue "presence" remaining. How so? Now we are in Moore's territory. Consider: You have a choice between the torture of one child for a hour, or the torture of a million children for, let's say an eternity (forget the foolishness of the idea). Utility clearly states the former over the latter, and even the most die hard Kantian deontologist would have to yield to the straight forward utility of this (Did Kant ever make any sense at all in ethics??). But here is the rub in this: the child torture for the one hour is in no way mitigated due to the "contextual" justification. You may have done the right thing, but the value in play is not at all effected by the conditions vis a vis the other children. In fact, there is no set of contingent conditions imaginable that undo or even mitigate the ethical value, the "badness" of the one child's torture. It is impossible to conceive of such a mitigation.
What IS ethical badness as such? Try this thought on an empirical object, looking for the "empirical as such" and you get what I call mundane qualia, and, just ask Dennett, qualia is without meaning, or, very close to nonsense, and I think he's right on this. But, if you want to use this language, value-qualia is certainly not nonsense, for apply a lighted match to your finger for a few seconds, review the experience, and remove all contingencies, all talk that could contextualize it entirely out of the analysis, and there is the remaining "presence" of the non natural quality of value/ethical badness and goodness. It cannot be observed, but that burning finger is more than Wittgensteinian "fact" (and Wittgenstein knew this) like the fact that my shoe is untired of that the sun is a ball of fusion. Such facts are all contingent. The metaethical dimension of ethics is not. It is absolute, though, not absolute in the way it is taken up in a conceptual analysis (where analytical philosophy often goes so wrong), but in the injunction not to do something. This is critical to my position: I cannot tell you what an absolute is, for this would be beyond what language can do, not to put too fine a point on it. It only "shows" itself, in the same manner logic shows itself, but cannot reveal itself in the showing. It only reveals itself in the inherent injunction not to do (my example is negative. Doesn't have to be) something.
Comments (141)
Mackie et al’s problem is in conflating “objective” with “descriptive”. Though to be fair “robust” moral realists do the same thing, so Mackie is right that their view is weird. But that says nothing against “minimal” moral “realism”, i.e. moral universalism, which doesn’t require that moral claims be descriptive and so can escape the problem into a nondescriptive cognitivism.
All such claims miss the point rather dramatically, which is to be expected from analytic philosophers. They hover over a problem on wings of categorial thinking (minimal moral realism??? you're kidding, right? I know you're not) having fun mingling logic and concepts, never touching the ground. Mackie and others needs to, perhaps, spend (well, he's no longer a living person) time in a Roman dungeon before he realizes that the world is, as Kierkegaard put it, qualitatively distinct from armchair theory.
Usually it’s not “too hard” it’s “outright impossible”. Because we can’t fix a starting point.
Of course there are. Especially if they’re religious. Those can mitigate the badness of anything. But thankfully I don’t agree with any of them and I hope no one here does either.
No, you are incapable of fixing a starting point. That's on a person's inability to do something. To claim, "I can't do it, and several other people can't do it, so its impossible" smacks of an over-evaluation of one's and other people's abilities. There is nothing wrong in saying, "I and others can't figure it out". But until it has been irrevocably proven that such things are impossible, claiming it is impossible is the equivalent of giving up while claiming, "And its because I'm really smart, but I can't do it."
And when and how will this happen? What would you take as “irrevocable proof”?
When it is logically shown that it must be the case that it is impossible. Proof by contradiction for example. There is no logical proof that such things are impossible. Just a bunch of arrogant thinkers who failed to conquer a challenge and come up with the excuse that "there's just no answer" to appease their wounded egos.
Any application of logic requires premises. I’m saying we cannot fix moral premises. You’re saying we can. What I am saying is supported by observation that people find different things wrong. What do you say to support your position?
But more importantly what would a “logical” proof of this even look like? How do you “logically prove” that ethical premises are not fixed? I’d say if you’re looking for empirical data, then there’s plenty to support that people see different things as wrong, so I don’t see the need for a “logical proof” here when you can clearly see, that we cannot fix these premises.
Do you need “logical proof” that gravity works?
If you wish to have a serious discussion on this, that's fine. This, I greatly respect. If so, please state your premise clearly, then state the support of your premise. I do not want to summarize for you and put words or intentions you do not mean into your post. My statement is that there is no proof that it is impossible to create moral objectivism. If you disagree with this, supply your proof, and we will discuss.
These are all statements. But none of these statements are supported by logical evidence. As an example, I can state just the opposite.
That moral premises are fixed. There are universal moral premises. That moral realism is sound. Same thing.
As you can see above, these are just statements. Instantly, you should be asking, "But you must give an argument or proof in support of these statements!" The request I have made is for you to prove your statements as logically sound and irrefutable. Can you do it? If you can, then I concede. If you cannot, then you understand where I'm coming from in this discussion.
Ok. How do we come to figure out these fixed moral premises? Because as it stands it is very easily demonstrable that they are not self evident. Since different people consider different things right and wrong.
You misunderstand. I am not claiming evidence to these statements. They were an example for you to understand what a premise is, and that a premise needs evidence. I am asking you to explain why you have irrevocably proven that morality cannot have an objective basis. Take your premise, and present your logical argument which demonstrates why this must be true.
Quoting khaled
These are simply questions. Not evidence, or logical thought. If you are to prove that fixed moral premises are impossible, you should have the answer to this question. As an example, think of someone stating in the 1600's, "It is impossible for humanity to figure out how to fly." There was no logical certainty or proof that humanity would never be able to fly. Only a question of, "Well if its not impossible, how do we do it?" A question that has not been answered yet is not a proven certainty that it has no answer.
Too long of a topic that should have its own thread so as to not derail the OPs! It is several pages long, and my attempts to post long posts here have often resulted in people who do not take it seriously. Feel free to check my post https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/9015/a-methodology-of-knowledge if you are interested in discussing an objective look at knowledge. Just do me a favor and read the entire thing before opening a discussion. People can't seem to read past part 2, even when I tell them the solution to their questions is in part 3 and 4.
Exactly.
In the strictest sense, I agree that there might not be anything real or moral at all. But all we could do in that case is one of two things. We could either baselessly assume that there is nothing real or moral at all, and stop there, simply giving up any hope of ever finding out if we were wrong in that baseless assumption. Or else, instead, we could baselessly assume that there is something real and something moral – as there certainly inevitably seems to be, since even if you deny their universality some things will still look true or false to you and feel good or bad to you – and then proceed with the long hard work of figuring out what seems most likely to be real and moral, by attending closely and thoroughly to those seemings, those experiences.
Quoting khaled
Thinking you need a starting point is what makes it seem impossible.
Any reason put forth in support of some opinion is itself another opinion, for which the justificationist must then, if consistent with this principle, demand yet another reason. But that in turn will be some other opinion, for which the same demand for justification must be made. And so forth ad infinitum. This can only lead to one of three outcomes:
The most typical one is foundationalism. This abandons the principle of justification at some point by declaring some step of the regress of demands for justification to be self-evident, beyond question, without need of further support. That is transparently tantamount to dogmatism. Nevertheless, as I will soon explain, I have sympathy for the need to hold some opinions without them being rigorously supported from the ground up. I simply reject holding them to thus be unquestionable.
Another possible outcome is coherentism. This appeals at some point to an earlier step in that regress as support for a later one, establishing a circular chain of reasons that together can then support other reasons. I am sympathetic to the coherency criterion employed here, as surely all of one's opinions must be consistent with each other, and finding inconsistencies is a good reason to rule out some opinions.
But while that is a necessary feature, I think it is not a sufficient one: mere consistency is not enough to justify opinions in the sense demanded by justificationism, without again falling to dogmatism. For as that whole circular chain of reasons is then collectively unsupported and held as needing no further support besides itself, it is then, as a whole, tantamount to one big foundational, and therefore dogmatist, opinion.
The last possible outcome, and the most honest application of justificationism (in that it never breaks from the demand for reasons, to hide instead in dogmatism), is infinitism. This accepts the infinite regress of demands for justification, leaving the initial opinion, any and every initial opinion looking to be supported, forever insufficiently supported. That leaves one unwarranted in holding any opinion, and so is transparently tantamount to relativism.
Self-avowed infinitists do at least nominally hold that knowledge is still possible, and therefore conclude that it must somehow be possible to have an infinite chain of justification, even while acknowledging that it would be impossible for anyone to ever complete one in practice. While I am again sympathetic to this unending search for deeper and deeper principles to underlie our opinions, as I will soon elaborate, this infinitist position seems to me simply incoherent when framed as a form of justificationism: if you cannot ever complete the chain of justification, and you must have justification to have knowledge, then you cannot ever have knowledge.
Most theories of knowledge are either foundationalist or coherentist, and most of those who reject both of those conclude that therefore knowledge is impossible, seeing infinitism to be as incoherent as I do. But a few philosophers, including Immanuel Kant and Karl Popper, have instead rejected the justificationist principle tacitly underlying all of those positions, and instead say, as do I, that it is not necessary to reject every opinion until you can find reasons to justify it; it is only necessary to reject an opinion if you find reasons to reject it, and it is acceptable to hold any opinion, for no reason at all, until such reasons to reject it are found.
Like with coherentism, contradictions between different opinions are good reasons to reject some or all of them; and like with infinitism, this process of whittling away incorrect opinions is unending. But because both coherentism and infinitism tacitly accept the justificationist principle, neither of them quite adequately escapes the dilemma of either following it into relativism, or else abandoning it for dogmatism.
When considering reasons to intend something rather than reasons to believe something, this anti-justificationism seems largely uncontroversial. Most people will accept that it is acceptable to do something simply because you want to do it, for no particular reason, so long as there is not a good reason not to do it. We don't demand that everybody stop doing anything at all until they can show that what they want to do is justified by the need to do something that is justified by the need to do something that is justified by the need to do something... ad infinitum. We instead just accept that they're free to do whatever there's no reason not to do.
My rejection of justificationism includes that kind of freedom of intention, and to deny such freedom of intention, as in to insist that nobody does anything until it can be shown that there is a good reason to do so, would also qualify as a form cynicism in the sense that I am against here. But my rejection of cynicism also extends equally to a freedom of belief like that put forth by philosophers such as Kant and Popper. I say that it is not irrational to hold a belief or an intention simply because you are inclined to do so, for no reason; it is only irrational to continue to hold it in the face of reasons to the contrary.
But in rejecting justificationism, I am not at all rejecting rationality, or the importance of reasons. I am still against dogmatism, as I have previously argued; against irrationally holding opinions in the face of all reasons to the contrary of them, or asserting them to others with no reasons to back them. I only hold, for the reasons I have shown, that such an anti-justificationist position is the only practicable form of rationality, the only one that leaves us with reasons from which to reason.
Justificationism, if true, would make it impossible to ever rationally hold an opinion, instead insisting either that we hold no opinions, or else hold some core opinions to be, quite irrationally, beyond question. In rejecting justificationism, we make room to hold some opinions, still open to question, that can nevertheless serve as reasons to hold or reject other opinions.
We do lose any hope of ever having absolute certainty in any of those opinions, as they all remain constantly open to question and revision. But justificationism never offered any hope of rational certainty anyway, only the irrational false certainty of dogmatism (or else none at all). And with justificationism out of the way we can at least begin to compare our tentatively held opinions against each other and progress towards sets of opinions that gradually make better models of both reality and morality.
What makes a “good reason” for rejecting something? And why is it a good reason? Boom, another infinite regress/circular logic/dogma. I don’t think rejecting the justificationalist position is what’s actually being done here. All that’s being done is hiding it under one extra layer of unjustified belief (what makes a good reason for rejecting an opinion?)
Now, instead of having to answer for why you believe in something, you have to answer for why you believe there is no good reason to reject the thing. Which is the exact same requirement. In both cases you’re asked to justify a belief, with all the problems that come with that. Just one is more roundabout.
Quoting Pfhorrest
I don’t think so. As I understand it, it would only make it impossible to insist on any opinion or other. It makes knowledge and certainty impossible. But most of us hold opinions we are not certain about anyways. It’s only the dogmatists that don’t. And even then, I don’t think it’s possible to truly believe something without question.
I don’t think your position is any different from justificationalism, it just sounds different. It’s hiding the uncertainty behind an extra layer that makes us not think about it all the time. That’s all.
Quoting Pfhorrest
I don’t think your position gets rid of the need, only obscures it.
Quoting Pfhorrest
Non sequitor. That it seems good for you doesn’t make it universal in any sense.
Well, I'm not sure about that. From the perspective of someone who most of us would think is a selfish asshole, simply not being the kid in question renders their torture ethically neutral. But I'm a relativist, so I would say that. That's the contingent set of circumstances, the fact that I (i.e. selfish asshole bert1) could have been the kid, but phew!, I'm not.
No, you don’t. That there is no good reason to reject anything is the default state of affairs. The onus is on those who want to change your mind to show that there is good reason to reject your current opinion. (“Good reason” doesn’t mean anything more than just “reason” here, the “good” isn’t doing any work, it’s just emphasizing that the reason is genuine and not a faulty non-reason in some way, which again doesn’t need to be proven, it’s the default state of affairs).
Quoting khaled
Justificationism is precisely the view that less than certainly is unacceptably and so we should be thinking about justification all the time. It’s a “put up or shut up” principle: prove your opinion or discard it. That leads inexorably to rejecting everything, or else abandoning that principle for some articles of faith.
Being comfortable with uncertainty is the normal way of holding opinions though, because doing otherwise would logically require holding no opinions. I’m arguing against a bad philosophical standard, not against common practice.
Back to the topic: People are commonly of the opinion that this or that is morally right or wrong. It’s justificationism to say “nothing is objectively right or wrong because you can’t prove that anything is”.
“Show me moral certainty or reject all morality as baseless opinion” is bad philosophy: it’s just giving up, or worse, insisting that everyone else do so.
This could be taken as a justificationalist’s dogma is my point. Which is why I don’t think your position is fundamentally different. You need to believe that there is no reason for you to reject your opinion that you’re not considering right now. Instead of just believing the opinion itself. Both come with the same issues.
Quoting Pfhorrest
You haven’t actually answered what constitutes a reason for rejecting an opinion. Is me saying “I don’t like your opinion” a good reason for you to reject your opinion?
Quoting Pfhorrest
The first statement is not the second. I never said “reject all morality”. And it doesn’t even follow hat we should from that it’s baseless.
"Could be" isn't "has to be".
I arrived at critical rationalism (the rejection of justificationism) not via justificationist means, not by appealing to some deeper principle that entails it, but rather via critical rationalist means themselves, by finding a reason to reject justificationism and so being left with its negation the remaining possibility, adhering to that remaining possibility requiring no justification in itself.
Quoting khaled
No, I only need to not believe that there is reason to reject it. There might be reasons to reject any of the things I believe, reasons that I'm not aware of yet. I don't have to actively believe that there are no such reasons in order to be warranted to hold those beliefs. I just need to be unaware of them. Holding a belief in the face of evidence to the contrary is irrational. Holding a belief without evidence for or against it is not. And the latter does not imply a belief that there is no evidence to the contrary, only that one is not aware of any such evidence, and so of any reason to reject a belief.
If you committed to rejecting every belief against which there might be contrary evidence of which you are unaware, then you would be forced to reject all beliefs, forever, because absolute certainty is not possible. That is the very problem with justificationism, and a reason to reject it.
Quoting khaled
In the first post of mine that you responded to, the bit you quoted said that logical contradiction is a reason to reject something. My argument above against justificationism implies that impracticality is a reason to reject that, which is contradiction with your goals ("to do X, don't do Y, because Y prevents X").
Elsewhere I'd say that contradiction with phenomenal experience (of either an empirical or hedonic nature, depending on whether you're talking about descriptive truth or prescriptive goodness) is also a reason to reject (the respective kinds of) claims, but that ultimately boils down to impracticality as well (in that a notion of reality unconnected to what looks true is useless, as is a notion of morality unconnected to what feels good).
Quoting khaled
To "reject as baseless" is a compound verb phrase, that means to deny its objectivity. It's not the simple verb "reject" and then baselessness as a reason for that.
If you're saying there is no objective morality, you're saying that all moral claims are mere baseless opinion and so none are binding on anyone ("binding" in the sense that it'd be as wrong to deny them as they would be to deny an objectively correct claim about reality). That nothing is actually right or wrong, people just have opinions about it and none of those opinions are any better or worse than anyone else's.
If your argument that there is no objective morality is "prove even one moral claim conclusively objectively correct", you're using justificationism to argue for moral relativism. The same thing could be turned around and used to "prove" metaphysical relativism too: "prove even one factual claim conclusively objectively correct".
The best you can do is show that a factual claim is the most comprehensive and efficien) of the explanations thus far proposed for satisfying some aspect of the sum of all empirical experiences thus far had. And that's plenty enough for us to talk about what's objectively real or not.
You can do just as well for moral claims, showing that something is the most comprehensive and efficient of the plans thus far proposed for satisfying some aspect of the sum of all hedonic experiences thus far had. That should likewise be plenty enough for us to talk about what's objectively moral or not.
Sure. Just saying it is not doing much new.
Quoting Pfhorrest
But this results in how much you doubt each belief and at what point you decide that you have researched enough to belief something to continue to be arbitrary.
With justificationalism, you believe something after investigating for a while and then coming up on a premise which you deem "self-evident", where that is is arbitrary (I think the other two solutions are BS). With this, you believe something after investigating for a while, and then coming up on a premise which you don't doubt, where that is is arbitrary. You are practically doing the exact same thing in both scenarios. There is no difference between what you're proposing and dogma-justificationalism.
Quoting Pfhorrest
I'm not. But I am committed to not elevating any belief to the status of being undoubtable.
Quoting Pfhorrest
Correct. Not sure what you mean by "better or worse" though. Obviously some are more conductive to certain goals than others. But if you mean that there is some objective metric by which to measure them then no, since we don't share these goals.
Quoting Pfhorrest
What constitutes "most comprehensive and efficient" is just as subjective as what constitutes "moral". You haven't gotten rid of the subjectivity in the least. For someone who believes that God has ordered them to wage war on a certain country, with the risk of suffering eternal damnation should they refuse to do so, the most comprehensive and practical thing to do is to become a terrorist.
Where does objectivity come into this? As opposed to just inter-subjectivity mind you (where everyone happens to share the same starting premises)
compared to how real people normally think no. compared to the false standards raised for the sake of philosophical argument it is.
Quoting khaled
there is a very important difference. the dogmatic justificationist (foundationalist) says that the premises they find self-evident constitute a reason why someone shouldn’t believe differently than they do. the critical rationalist admits of multiple unfalsified possibilites, and will say only that particular sets of possibilities have been eliminated, not which of the remaining set is definitely the right answer.
Quoting khaled
Then you are not a justificationist, you are a critical rationalist. Welcome to the club, I’m not arguing against you... unless you actually are doing what you say you’re not, and don’t realize it.
Quoting khaled
The same thing I mean for claims about reality, just involving a different facet of experience: hedonic rather than empirical.
Quoting khaled
The objective just is the unbiased, so what is objectively good is what is good in an unbiased sense, in other words a shared sense. Just like what is objectively real is what (empirically) looks true and not false to everyone in every circumstance (but regardless of who does or doesn’t believe it), what is objectively moral is whatever feels good and not bad to everyone in every circumstance (but regardless of who does or doesn’t want it).
Quoting khaled
I substituted that phrase for “best” be sure I thought you would cry “subjectivity!” at that. Sigh.
Most comprehensive means actually account for all of the experiences of the type we’re trying to account for. For claims about reality, that means empirical observations (things “looking true”); for claims about morality, it’s hedonic experiences (things “feeling good”).
Most efficient means in the way that requires the least effort. For claims about reality this means basically parsimony, simpler is easier and so better if you get the same output either way. For claims about morality this means more straightforward efficiency, like if you can do the same good with less work.
Quoting khaled
There is nothing more to objectivity than the limit of ever more comprehensive intersubjectivity, unless you want to appeal to things entirely beyond the realm of phenomenal experience, but there’s pragmatic reasons not to do that either.
Still peddling this?...
As we've been through before "...actually account for" and "...requires the least effort" are no less subjective than the terms you started with. Unless between now and the last time we discussed this you've managed to come up with some truly unbiased measure of 'account for' or 'efficiency' - whatever they mean.
That’s what I’m comparing to
Quoting Pfhorrest
Sure but if you’re going to suggest an objective morality then that’s more in line with the former not the latter.
Saying “there is objective morality” while also holding that we can be wrong about it, is in absolutely no way different from saying there is no objective morality.
Quoting Pfhorrest
Never said I was. I’ve been saying that critical rationalism doesn’t escape any of the problems you pointed out with justificationalism
Quoting Pfhorrest
Quoting Pfhorrest
I disagree that it has anything to do with hedonism. Punching people you disagree with feels good to everyone all the time. Yet is wrong. I don’t think it’s very difficult to come up with things that feel good but are wrong.
Quoting Pfhorrest
This makes objectivity no more than a popularity contest. Which I think is a very disingenuous way of defining it.
And what are these “pragmatic reasons not to do that either”? If someone believes in God then it becomes very pragmatic to consider things entirely beyond the realms of phenomenal experience.
You should be wary of assuming others share your sociopathic world-view.
Do you ever plan on replying on the other thread btw?
Quoting Isaac
We seem to agree on something for once though
No, stealing where it only feels good is Kleptomania, it's a psychological illness, not a normal state of humanity. For most people it also involves remorse, guilt, anxiety, and negative empathetic feelings for the victim.
Quoting khaled
No. Figured we're just going round in circles, I've made my case.
Just declaring it doesn't make it the case. It is unlikely that in a normally functioning brain antisocial behaviour overall feels good and cases where it does seem to require significant alteration in brain structure - https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0366(20)30002-X/fulltext
This is not to say that there aren't such people in whom it 'feels good', and that it is still wrong, but that's not the same as an argument that 'wrong' is divorced entirely from what 'feels wrong' to most people most of the time.
Quoting Isaac
Whereas the article states:
Quoting Isaac
“Life course persistent antisocial behavior is associated with neurocognitive abnormalities” is entirely consistent with “It feels good to rob people if you hate the victim”. One is talking about life course antisocial behavior, one is talking about a single instance. Is there a study showing that a single instance of guilt-free theft is enough evidence to diagnose people with sociopathy?
Is your claim literally that there is never a situation where violence or theft feels good and that it is always a result of a neurological abnormality? I just want to get that clear.
Quoting Isaac
That’s not the argument I’m making though. I’m saying that what is wrong is entirely divorced from what feels good in a hedonic sense (in the sense that eating chocolate feels good).
I'm not talking about a single instance either, that's why I used the word 'overall', and referred to "what 'feels wrong' to most people most of the time". If we're just going to have the same trouble following an argument here then I'll quit now before I waste too much time.
Quoting khaled
No. There is a significant body of evidence showing that numerous brain regions are involved in decision-making where multiple competing risks and benefits have to be assessed, for example https://science.sciencemag.org/content/293/5537/2105.full, or http://users.econ.umn.edu/~rusti001/Research/Neuroeconomics/JNPAmbiguity.pdf. It would be inconsistent with most of what we know about the psychology of decision-making to assume a model of a single objective from short-term pleasure to be capable of accounting for any given behaviour.
Quoting khaled
Yes. I would bet money on the claim that you could find no case at all where the only psychological response to an anti-social act was pleasure without also seeing signs of significant neurological abnormality. We're social creatures, have been for some time, and our neurological processes reflect this in our motivating endocrine responses.
Which I took to mean overall for a single instance. As in it feels good despite the guilt.
Quoting Isaac
No one said "the only".
Now back to the actual topic, do you agree with:
Quoting khaled
No - hence the 'not only' aspect of the model of decision-making I've been outlining. Decisions are made by the combination of multiple brain regions utilising several endocrine motivators. Hence it would be as ridiculous to say that that what is wrong is entirely divorced from what feels good in a hedonic sense as it would to say it's entirely divorced from any other motivating factor. The list of behaviours we generally agree are 'wrong' are loosely connected by their evoking certain types of displeasure - particularly associated with feelings of empathy for the victim, feelings of social condemnation and feelings of poor self-evaluation. We appear to have biological mechanisms designed specifically to deal with each of these systems and each is activated at the respective type of moral decision. It's fairly easy for a culture to introduce moral 'wrong's by indoctrination, but it's difficult to explain the universality of certain endocrine responses without a very substantial biological basis being inferred.
What is not supported by any evidence I've seen (and is, in fact contradicted by all the evidence I've seen) is the idea that the types of behaviour we generally label 'wrong' have no connection at all and are put into the 'wrong' classification entirely at random.
Ok. My bad then.
Quoting Isaac
Sure would be ridiculous if anyone claimed that huh.
Then what are we to make of...
Quoting khaled
and...
Quoting khaled
?
If hedonic pleasure is not involved at all "entirely divorced from..." and not "...anything to do with", yet the label is not applied randomly either, then what is [one of] the common motivating factors for inclusion in that category?
If what is wrong morally felt bad on a purely sensual level, there would be no need for morality. People would naturally do the right thing because it would be their pleasure. But it ain't like that, as you say. I suspect it is precisely because short term gratification can be pleasurable but anti-social that human societies have a need for a moral code.
Quoting Isaac
That there is no ulterior practical motive behind it.
Quoting Isaac
We don't. But we could.
Well, that's great. As I've mentioned before, why don't you get yourself a grounding in social or psychological sciences, put together a research proposal and pursue it. It sounds like an interesting line of investigation...unless, heaven forbid, someone in the world actually thought of that possibility before the topic was blessed with your Solomonesque gaze, and, like, actually did the research, and actually found out and wrote it down in a fucking book or something.
I would think this is obvious too.
Quoting khaled
Is what we generally as a society consider moral related to what kinds of experiences the activity produces? Absolutely.
However, does that lead to pforrest's claim that what feels to everyone in a hedonic sense is what is good? No. Nor does it lead to your even more ridiculous claim that the phrase "Moral claim" only refers to acts that bring about a stable society.
How does this explain the overwhelming grouping of moral codes, the presence of specific brain regions activated in moral decision-making, the similarity of endocrine response to moral activity, the overlapping psychology of anti-social behaviour with moral impulse control problems, the involvement of regions like the vPFC in moral decision-making, the commonality in criminal psychoses...
The idea that the only common factor in what is considered 'morally wrong' is that lack of ulterior motive is ridiculous.
You can't just claim stuff and not back it up with empirical evidence, it's pointless on a public forum. I can't understand what makes you think people would be interested in what you just 'reckon' is the case. If you've found out something people might be interested in, then great, but just coming on and idly speculating without any prior research seems utterly pointless.
Agreed. Which is why you should learn to read carefully.
The label in question was "Moral claim" not "Morally wrong".
Quoting Isaac
Read the second response. Maybe you'll finally understand.
What makes you think I need that anymore than you do?
Too obvious for Isaac, apparently.
The fact that you keep making inane speculations on the subject which have been already dealt with by entire schools of thought to which you could otherwise have referred. If you are that well-schooled it should be a trivial matter to put your hands on the actual research backing up your claim. This is a public forum, not a private blog. It is a common standard to back one's claims up with reference, quotes or citations. Anyone remotely experienced in academia should have a visceral reaction to making claims without thinking "how do I support that?"
No. The claim I was responding to was
Quoting khaled
This clearly specifies a reason for inclusion in the category 'morally wrong', not the category 'moral claim' which has not, in this topic, even been mentioned.
If that's what you're referring to then yes, obviously how an activity feels goes a long way in determining whether or not we consider it right. If it brings about a lot of guilt it is usually labeled wrong.
But that does not lead to pforrest's claim that what is right is what feels good to do. As there are many cases where something feels good to do despite the guilt.
What is guilt if not a 'bad' feeling, thus rendering the activity one which does not 'feel good'?
Do you know what "despite" means?
And I would say that it is pretty clear that how much guilt you experience varies greatly depending on context. Stealing from an orphanage is likely to produce a lot more guilt than stealing from someone you hate for example. The latter might even overall feel good (in the one instance).
Fair enough, I misread that.
Quoting khaled
Indeed. So why do you hate the person? Are all wars considered morally wrong, for example, despite that fact that they involved much suffering? It seems that in most calculations of 'moral', these considerations have already been taken somewhat into account. Stealing from a orphanage would definately cause more guilt than stealing from someone you hate, but it would also be considered more morally wrong, especially if you hated the person in question for good reason.
...and, if you didn't hate the person for good reason then we're back to abnormal psychology again.
Quoting Isaac
What does this have to do with anything. Also the "it" is ambiguous, idk what you mean.
Of course it's a trivial matter. It all starts (?) with Le développement du jugement moral chez l’enfant, by Piaget and Lawrence Kohlberg, 1932, which describes how hedonic incentives are altered in the family cell by punishments and rewards so that young children would see an advantage in 'behaving'. So the first stage of moral development would be in effect hedonistic: the parents try to align the incentive structure in which their kids operate with their moral requirements through a carrot and stick approach. This is the level where your Buridan-inspired conceptual framework is valid: young children tend to chose what feels good for them. But as the child grows up (still according to Piaget and Kohlberg), she starts to realize higher levels of moral judgment: a sense of social justice and fairness through rules, then a sense of pragmatism in applying those rules and also a sense of self-worth, that allow her to outgrow selfish hedonism and the fear of punishment and develop her own realistic, workable life ethic. This is where your own conceptual framework becomes inadequate.
But if you were that well schooled yourself, you wouldn't need me to point you to Piaget.
It has to do with...
Quoting khaled
I disagree that stealing from someone you hate is morally wrong for normal people. Hating someone so much that stealing from them becomes overall pleasurable involves either a pathological psychology, or the assignation of a social status to that person which renders stealing from them morally acceptable to the person in question.
That's why I brought up war. Killing Germans was morally acceptable during the Second World War. Why? Because we'd assigned a social status to Germans based on their aggression toward us. Certain types of soldier might even feel good both hedonically and morally about a victory in which hundreds of enemies died.
I'm not suggesting that individual hedonic value can be directly equated with societal-level moral judgement, but I don't see much evidence for factors other than societal-level hedonic value in explaining the vast majority of societal-level moral judgement. Once we've isolated the pertinent subject matter (empathy, social cohesion, self-evaluation), then it seems hedonic responses in those areas are pretty much the be-all and end-all of what is considered 'morally right/wrong'. An exception might be made perhaps for the initiation of some new social taboo, but even then, I'd argue there's little evidence that the initiators themselves considered their new taboo in that way (but rather more as tool for social control) and within barely a single generation acting against it would already be causing negative hedonic values in the social cohesion areas.
Good. That's all I was saying was not the case.
Then why not just include it in the first place. The purpose of a citation is so that we can see where the opinion derives from and follow the line of argument. Without it, there's nothing to argue. We might as well just write "yes it is", "no it isn't" all day - pointless.
A couple of issues -
Firstly Le développement du jugement moral chez l’enfant 1932, was by Piaget. Kohlberg was 5 in 1932, he would have been incredibly precocious to have been involved.
Secondly, why are you citing a work from nearly a hundred years ago to support a modern argument. Are you suggesting that no progress at all has been made in the neuroscience of morality since then? Or do you think that all modern work simply upholds what the likes of Piaget and (presumably the 1958 publication by Kohlberg) concluded? Why no mention of Gilligan, Singer, Wynn or Gopnik?
Then you're talking past me, because I'm not criticizing the way ordinary people usually think, I'm criticizing a bad philosophical argument.
Quoting khaled
So if you admit that we might be wrong about what is objectively real, is that the same thing as saying there is no objective reality? I suspect your answer to that is "no", so why the double standard when it comes to morality?
Quoting khaled
Not the people being punched. (Not to mention, even if you only consider the punchers, that's dubious. If you were within punching range right now I'd be pretty hesitant to punch you, despite our disagreement).
Quoting khaled
There are things that feel good to some people in some circumstances that are still wrong, but they're wrong on account of them feeling bad in other circumstances or to other people. Just like there are things that look true (to empirical observation) to some people sometimes but then look false in other circumstances. It's by those other contrary experiences that we assess something that looked true or felt good as actually false or bad.
Claiming that there's something that's good or bad in a way that has no bearing whatsoever on what hurts or pleases anybody anywhere ever is as absurd as claiming that there are facts about reality that have no observational implications. (And the reason that's absurd is another practical concern, namely that it leaves you with no possible way of evaluating those claims).
Quoting khaled
Intersubjectivity is not majoritarianian. We don't do natural science by asking people to vote on whether or not things look true to them, do we? No, we strive to build models that account for all observations.
Quoting khaled
Believing in God is already an appeal to things entirely beyond the realm of phenomenal experience, which is a reason not to believe in God. (You're not going to tell me you're a theist now, are you?)
Anyway, as I said just above, the reason is that it leaves you with no possible way of evaluating those claims. If it makes no noticeable difference whether it's true or not, how are you to assess its truth? (Which means if you care at all about what is or isn't true, that's an impractical thing to do; and if you don't care at all about what is or isn't true, you've just bowed out of any argument about that subject and everyone else can just ignore you while they try to sort out the truth).
Precisely because it's trivial. You could find some literature supporting pretty much any common sense position. In fact even the most non-sensical positions would have some literature backing them up.
Quoting Isaac
It's still fresher than Buridan, who dates back to the middle ages and is what you seem to go by. You are just another behaviorist if you ignore the multilayered complexity of our cognition, and the role of language in it, and behaviorists are basically treating people as beasts, like Buridan was doing. That's bad middle age thinking...
My answer is "What's the difference?" Or, in more detail: Why propose an objective reality that you can be wrong about? What advantage does that give you that a lack of an objective reality lacks? What does it allow you to say that the no objective reality model doesn't? Same question with objective moralities. Though I guess this is more meta-meta-ethics now.
Quoting Pfhorrest
Thanks for clarifying. If that's what you mean then I largely agree.
Quoting Pfhorrest
Even more absurd, because claiming that something is good or bad forces you to act in a certain way whereas claiming some super convoluted physical explanation for things that uses 50 more variables than required doesn't actually change anyone's behavior, it just makes calculations harder.
Quoting Pfhorrest
But it does make a huge difference in the case of God. A difference that will last an eternity.
You can analyse people's biases, it makes sense to do so. And hence you can start to resolve differences of perception. In today's post-truth wako world, it's important to postulate that we all live in the same world, in spite of our differences of opinion about it.
Two people who agree that there is an objective answer and disagree about what it is have reason to try to sort out which if either of them is right. If they think there is no such thing as objective answers at all then there’s no point trying to figure out what it is... so if there actually is one, they’ll never figure it out, simply from lack of trying. That’s why that’s an impractical way to go about things for anyone interested in figuring out what if anything is the correct answer to their question.
Quoting khaled
Then it is in principle possible to judge whether or not God exists between these on the basis of that difference, and you’re not appealing to things beyond all phenomenal experience after all.
To postulate an objective reality that we can be wrong about is to say that everyone is biased. Or at least, that there is no way to tell that you have the “one and only unbiased objective view”. So you still can’t resolve these differences conclusively. All you can do is reach an agreement. Which you don’t need that postulate for.
You can reach agreement without objectivity. Which is what makes me wonder why you would want to postulate an inaccessible objectivity. Seems as useless as proposing the existence of an undetectable, massless teapot that cannot interact physically with anything. Just why?
To do that we’d have to understand what happens to consciousness when we die. We don’t yet.
We can’t ask the dead if they’re in heaven. You can twist any of the major religions to fit in with the science. And it’s not even hard to do so.
Quoting Pfhorrest
But they will never know is the point. You’re proposing an inaccessible objectivity. There is no point at which they can’t doubt the agreement they came to. There is no point at which they know their answer is the objective one.
Quoting Pfhorrest
Sure. But that doesn’t preclude trying different answers, seeing which work best, and reaching agreements. Which is exactly the same thing that you would be doing if you propose the inaccessible objectivity anyways. It only precludes going for the objective answer. Which is not possible even if you proposed an unknowable objectivity anyways.
You do need to agree that the world is one in spite of our different views of it, in order to WANT to resolve differences of opinion. Otherwise e.g. the flat-earthers' world would be actually flat and there would be no need for them to discuss this with non-flat-earthers, who literally would live on another planet.
What does "flat earthers' world" even mean?
Quoting Olivier5
Doubtful. Or else every moral relativist would never speak about morals again. But they do. Wanting agreement is not dependent on whether or not a correct version exists. I would say wanting agreement precedes the meta consideration of whether or not a correct version exists.
The world in which those people who believe the earth is flat are living.
Quoting khaled
Nope. Without the idea that we all live in the same world, perceived by each of us differently, without this axiom, there is nothing to try and agree about.
False. We can still agree and disagree about our perceptions. In the sense that we can have different ones. And we can also want everyone to have the same ones as us. There are clear advantages to that.
Of it? What does 'it' stand for in your sentence?
As I said, there are countless advantages. Having people who agree with you is great. You can cooperate, agree on certain things, reinforce each other's beliefs, defend each other from opposing beliefs, create a harmonious community, etc etc. I'm sure you can think of many more on your own.
And what does "They don't actually live in the same world" even mean? Here you are proposing the existence of multiple, objective, and independent worlds. Idk why you are still doing that.
The closest thing it could mean that makes sense is "Why would we want everybody to have the same views when they don't actually have the same views", which I answered. But also, not postulating an objective reality doesn't prevent people from having the same view as you so idk where you get that either.
Once again, if your world is different from mine, there's nothing to agree about. Like if you were watching some crappy TV show on channel 1 and I was watching some crappy western movie on channel 2 and then we can agree that what we both watched was crap?... I don't see the point. It was two different sorts of crap. Likewise if we all live in different worlds then any cooperation is logically an illusion.
Quoting khaled
Quoting Olivier5
What is channel 1 and channel 2 supposed to be analogous for?
Oh, so you agree we all live in the same world? That's all I want to point out.
If it's the same then the same things happen or are the case in your world and mine. And our different views of it may be related to our viewpoint, our angle, our perspective, which are indeed different by definition. IOW, our biases are often best explained by our respective positions in this common world of ours. Rich and poor people often don't share the same views of the world, to take an obvious example, because they view it from different social positions.
In a forum discussion long ago, someone proposed to have solved this problem by pointing out that ethics was originally a part of aesthetics, and that it was aesthetics that dictates what is ethical.
How do you feel about this?
Those aren't the only two alternatives. How about: No world, only perceptions? Like the idealists like it.
Well then, once again there would be nothing to agree or disagree about, and no collaboration would seem possible.
Does that setup somehow make it impossible for people to have the same perceptions/views? No.
Last I checked idealists did not spontaneously lose their ability to collaborate with others.
These idealists must have assumed they lived in the same world as other people, then.
Of what?
I don't follow what that's got do do with it. As I said, quite clearly, in my post "The purpose of a citation is so that we can see where the opinion derives from and follow the line of argument. Without it, there's nothing to argue. We might as well just write "yes it is", "no it isn't" all day - pointless."
The purpose is not to say "I've got a reference so I must be right". I cannot argue against, nor learn from, a position whose supporting evidence is not properly cited. That much should be obvious. This is not an exercise in canvassing the opinions of some random people on the internet.
Quoting Olivier5
I have literally no idea what you're talking about here. My understanding of moral development comes from researchers like Karen Wynn, Tania Singer, Alison Gopnick, Paul Bloom, Naomi Ellemers, Joshua Greene... None are from the middle ages.
Why do they need to be of anything? I literally just said "perceptions with no world".
Granted though I'm venturing into some very weird territory here and I do in fact agree that we're all living in the same world and I'm not an idealist. But I just wanna see how far I can take this. In my view, there is an objective reality, but one that is inaccessible, and is just there out of logical necessity (because perceptions need to be of things).
But as for an objective morality however, that I don't see at all. Doesn't seem to be a logical necessity required for anything. Nothing about reality implies an objective morality in an of itself. And postulating an inaccessible objective morality doesn't seem to have any practical value.
Quoting Olivier5
They didn't.
Right from the start, my argument was that if what feels good hedonistically was always equal to what is a moral course of action, then there would be no need for punishments and rewards. This is pretty clear, and dare I say obvious. You could have addressed the point a long time ago if you wanted to.
No, I couldn't because you provided no evidence for your assertion for me to examine. Would "no, you're wrong" have been a remotely interesting response for anyone else to read? A thing appearing obvious to you does not constitute evidence that it is the case.
I agree. But it's useful to postulate the existence of an objective reality, and also to assume that we can say something true about it. These are just axioms: points of departure which themselves are not proven. But without them one lands logically into very weird territory.
What’s the weird territory you land in for not having:
Quoting Olivier5
Because I can’t think of any.
Quoting Olivier5
Is to say that there is a point at which you can be sure you’re not making a mistake. Which from the definition of a mistake, is impossible. Short of some sort of divine intervention which waves the problem away.
You're seriously telling me you can't think of a single other explanation? I'm not sure how to interpret that.
In philosophy you need the axiom of truth to say anything. Because the subject matter in philosophy is not quantitative but conceptual, logical (or not), i.e. qualitative; it's about the conceptual framework that is a prerequisite for any measurement. In conceptual terrain, you get lost in logical contradictions if you assume that none of what you can say can be true (the liar's paradox).
Can you think of a single other explanation yourself?
Take for example the incest taboo. Why would you think it is there, almost universally?
How about “None of what I can say is true except this”? Paradox resolved.
Or something like “I cannot know that what I say is true but I don’t see how this can be false so I’ll believe it”. Paradox resolved.
Quoting Olivier5
I didn’t say the concept makes no sense. I said it’s unachievable. If a scientist comes out and says he’s “figured it out and there is no longer reason to doubt his findings” then he’s not a scientist.
Philosophers do that all the time though. I haven’t found one whose findings have not been critiqued as of yet. Maybe that says something.
Yes but note that in both cases you have to assume that you can say something true about the world.
We agree if this is changed to “and one cannot be certain of it”. I also assume the possibility of truth. Not that there is any way to confirm such a possibility though
I propose instead: "and sometimes one cannot be certain of it”. For I can say for certain that the earth is not a flat rectangle, for instance, or that the heart is a muscle that pumps blood.
But an approachable one. All we need is some notion of what makes something closer to or further from correct in order to comparatively evaluate opinions and show that some are less correct than others. That doesn’t require we know what the completely correct one is, but it implies that there is such a thing as completely correct in principle, at the limit of less and less incorrect.
We know where this comes from, Wittgenstein in his Lecture on Ethics (Tractatus, too). Ethics and aesthetics are value themes, and at the center of value is what Witt thought has no place at all in discussion, which is Moore's non natural property. Mackie thinks like, is influenced by, Witt, and they are both wrong: In the proffered idea above, the one thing that stands out is this: take the extreme example of a finger put to flame and abstract from this the ethical, well, "badness", and I mean badness simpliciter. All that could be predicated of the event removed, the physical observables, the evolutionist's claim that pain is conducive to survival and reproduction, the possible ethical contexts, the regard one might have toward the event (all of which beg the question: Oh, you are averse to having your finger in the flame, you abhor it, denounce it, are disgusted by it, and so on...The question begged being about the unexamined value simpliciter: the literal horrible suffering event unnamed; or, the value qualia of pain, if you prefer). Remove all that falls safely within the boundaries of standard meaningful utterances, and there is the residual ethical; the metaethical, which isn't as "meta" as one thinks
Flaming fingers are not like the "facts of the world" as Witt noted regarding his great book of facts, facts like Mars being closer to the Sun than Jupiter or that my shoe is untied. All are equal, AS facts, according to Witt, and value never reveals itself sufficiently, as with logic, to discuss its nature, and thsi is true! BUT: It does reveal in its nature very explicitly, with the sharpest "presence" possible, the injunction not to do something (as well as to do something, on th e positive side of the metaethical).
No, I say rather firmly on this. What is mitigated is not the inherent badness of the torture of the the one child: the thumbscrews still are equal in there pain production, and the pain production is not one whit diminished. It stands outside the ethical dilemma, as an independent, unalterable, for the badness in play is not contextual, does not depend on anything form its being bad. This is the point.
But you are being called upon to remove your being the kid, not being the kid, being selfish, and so on. These are quite out of consideration, for the argument looks directly to, and only to, the pain simplciter. THAT pain is not diminished. If you don't care because you are, as you say, selfish, you are looking in the wrong place: Your regard for others doesn't matter. Consider this an argument about value qualia. Qualia is usually just easily dismissible (see Dennett, e.g.), note what qualia is supposed to be: the simpliciter "presence" of color or the sound, and nothing more. Here,. it is the same.
Sorry, this should read: Just like it is with logic. the point being that Wittgenstein saw that certain themes in philosophy are simply pseudo themes, like metaethics or metalogic. The are off the grid.
I think aesthetics and ethics have the same relationship to each other as logic and metaphysics.
Despite those relationships, "descriptive" things still factor into aesthetic things (verisimilitude, "truthiness", is a factor in the aesthetic evaluation of things), and logic still applies to "prescriptive" things (deontic logic is a thing).
But logic naturally has connections to the philosophy of mathematics which naturally has connections to ontology, and likewise aesthetics just like ethics is evaluative. The concrete-abstract distinction relevant to ontology and philosophy of mathematics is analogous to a "good at" vs "good" distinction in ethics and aesthetics.
Yes, because despite all the subjectivism, individualism, or relativism, or what is in-effect, solipsism, that so many swear by, they still cannot ignore that they are in some vital ways interconnected with other people and dependent on them for their livelihood.
False. I think it's very clear that badness is contextual. Murder is bad, killing in self defense is not for example. Similarly, torturing a child is not bad, if they are a child of Satan.
In daily social life, this works out in such a manner: the person who holds a position of more power gets to have the say over what is closer to objective reality than the person who has less power.
For an epistemic approach like yours to work in some meaningful way, people would need to at least temporarily be willing to put down their hierarchical roles and their expectation of deference, and work together for the greater good.
From what I've seen, people resent to do that.
I can see how your approach works for things -- such as for solving engineering problems.
But humans seem to be primarily interested in power games.
How about injuries to one's body that are intended as part of the greater good? Think, for example, of that mountainhiker who fell into a crevice, got stuck, and cut off his arm in order to free himself and get out.
Yeah, the problem at hand is "how do we figure out what's good?" If someone doesn't care about what's good, then they will be unpersuaded by means of figuring that out.
I think there are in principle reasons -- even self-interested reasons, so long as they care about anything at all -- for every person to care, in the long term, and the big picture, what is good. But people are often stupid and will do things that are against even their self-interest just because they couldn't be bothered to think about it.
Yes, I know. One does have to look more closely at the argument. I am not arguing that the judgment against the child isn't a contingent matter. I am arguing that such cases are not, qua ethical, analytically simpliciter. You may say that it is right to torture the child of Satan because s/he is a child of Satan, by definition evil, and therefore evil is what is deserved. But this has no place in these thoughts here.
Here, we are examining the anatomy of an ethical act, judgment. There are usual suspects, the contingencies that are complex and are responsible for much of the messiness of our world, and it is this that brings ethical ambiguity into our lives. But here, I am doing what Kant did with reason and judgment: Abstracting from the many convolutions of disagreements in our everyday lives and giving analysis to determine its basic structures and contents. So, put aside all that is there in the complexity of ethical problems, and ask, what makes this ethical at all? It is here that the metaethical makes an appearance. It is wrong to torture others for fun, say. But this "wrongness" looks to the nature of torture, the pain itself which is the basis of the ethical in actuality, apart from how it fits into the many complexities. THIS pain as such is an absolute in the what I will call "pure injunction" against inflicting it.
Of course I know this case. And the greater good is certainly a moral priority. But the metaethical question is begged: What do you mean by "good"? For this, one has to go to the source, the primordial actuality, the "intuition" of pain or bliss and everything in between, the raw thereness, the value qualia--just take a hammer, bring it down hard on your kneecap and observe. You are not facing a fact, a caring, a negative judgment, an aversion, a denunciation, a condemnation, and so on. What is that there, in your midst, that screaming pain "itself"?
I don't think "greater good" is entirely reducible to pain, value-qualia or something like a primordial actuality... it also has to do with the identity and meaning we give to our lives. This is I'd say what is missing in most of these account, we are also beings who live in societies, have certain roles to play, identities to assume, societal goals to reach etc... all of which give our lives meaning. And this is what determines morality for the most part. Ofcourse some of this bigger story will be determined by these value-qualia to some extend, but I don't think you can skip straight past this bigger picture from value-qualia to morality and still have something that would be remotely the same.
Frankly, I don't see your position on this. Do you think there is something of the "identity and meaning we give to our lives" that intervenes between you and the screaming pain? Do you think pain is an interpretative event?
Morality is not only about screaming pain is my point. In some extreme case it might be the only thing that matters, but it usually is not.
And yes and no, I think suffering is an interpretative event, which I would argue we care more about than pain.
Edit: Here's an example, I think it would to simplistic, if not plainly incorrect, to say that racism is morally wrong only because of the physical pain it causes.
Edit 2: Another example, rape even if it would be relatively painless physically (for instance by drugging someone), would be morally wrong.
I think it's more complex than mere stupidity. So much in social interaction is said and demanded between the lines, without it ever being explicitly stated, and people are used to this. People also hate to be pushed. Which leads to the stalemate situation where it is impossible to have a discussion without people reading it as some kind of demand. So for them, even a mere discussion is felt as an imposition. Which they would rather not comply with, simply because they don't like being pushed.
Suffering is an interpretative event after the fact, no doubt, when it is contextualized, weighed in theory and among competing justifications, and so on. But pain as such? How can this in any way be interpretative? Interpretation requires language, consideration, a taking something up AS something. How is this there, in scorching of the live finger? One receives this instantly, not deliberatively.
Morality is analyzable, and so I agree morality is NOT only about screaming pain (or intense gratification), and I would add, obviously. But the argument then asks about what this complex affair is and finds that the essential part of it is the element of the presence that carries its own measure of valuation. We cannot say what this is, and this is why Wittgenstein would never talk about it (save in the Tractatus and the Lecture on Ethics where he essentially says it should be passed over in silence), but its presence does, as with logic, "show" itself in the event.
A loose way to put this is to say that pain and pleasure speak for themselves, but looseness like this invites casual responses, and is not that kind of question. It is an analytic of ethics that tries to bring out this salient features at the level of basic questions.
If you have a persistent headache, focusing on it seems to make the pain worse. Or rather the pain is probably still there, you just don't notice it as much if your attention is elsewhere. Is that an interpretative event? Maybe not.
Quoting Constance
See I don't know if I agree with this. I spoke about meaning and identity, and added the examples of rape and racism to my previous post, probably after you read it. It seems to me that meaning and identity as part of a larger social context, play a large part in why we consider certain things immoral. And those are I think underdetermined if you would view them only from a present moment. Meaning and identity precisely play out in time, over extended periods. What is the most damaging thing about racism, is not any direct physical pain or direct material consequences it may have (those are bad too to be clear), but social exclusion, imposition on identities, and the fact that it prevents people from building up a meaningful life in society.
For one, I wouldn't deliberately hit myself with a hammer, tyvm, not even for a philosophical experiment!
I will remember some instances of where I injured myself when working in the garden. Such as when I accidentally hit myself with a handsaw on the back of my hand. The blade hit a vein; I've never seen so much blood! It was gushing out, I held the palm of the other hand below the wounded hand so as to not drip blood everywhere, and it was full in a few seconds. (The wound healed quickly, and a year later, there wasn't even a scar anymore.)
So, graphic details aside, what was there?
It hurt, but the hurt was overshadowed by the fear that the injury might be serious or that the wound will get infected.
There was also, "I need to take care of this wound."
And, "This shouldn't have happened."
What did you have in mind?
If it were a matter of what you call mundane qualia, being appeared to redly, and the like, then I would agree that what presents itself to inquiry is a blank when considered apart from (conceptual) meaning and identity, which is reducible to pragmatics, I would add. But qualia is infamously vacuous. A spear in your kidney is not. What makes a spear in your kidney "bad" at all, in any possible disputed judgment, is not mundane qualia, but value qualia.
I do share your thoughts about rape and racism. But this argument is really very different as it asks more fundamental questions. I say rape is morally bad, not to put too fine a point on it, but then, why? I say the same about many things, but the matter always turns to some pain or gratification, some discomfort or joy that is THE determining ground at the level of basic questions. No pain or pleasure, suffering or bliss in play: NO ETHICS.
I am dismissing the particulars of a given case, in the same way Kant dismissed such things, such accidents. Kant was looking into a specific dimension of experience, the rational structure of judgments. Here, I am abstracting from all the is an accident, a mere contingency, vis a vis ethics, like the conditions of a rape AS a rape: not all ethical affairs are rape affairs, nor are they stealing affairs, not this nor that, and on and on. No specific conditions are essential, and are therefore dismissible in determining what the nature of ethics is. it is the essence of ethics I am on about: what has to be the case in order for ethics to be possible. Value is this, or, metavalue. Yes, you can also look to conflicts of value acquisition: no conflict, no competing value-things, no ethics, but note: it is the value that is at the heart of what makes an entanglement what it is: all issues turn on what is at stake, and this is always value.
Alas, the proof in IN the graphic details. You are looking at the post wound, the overshadowed hurt, the taking care of and the regret, and all of this is extraneous to the argument. The argument is far less complex. It has an implicit premise that what it is that grounds ethics is staring one right in the face, kind of the way Heidegger talks about being: the furthest from being understood, yet the closest, most prevalent in everyday affairs. But Heidegger didn't get it. Caring is an essential part of his phenomenological ontology, but caring is ABOUT something that is cared about, that is, the embedded yet most salient feature of caring: the concrete event of having your eyes gouged out by vultures!
I use extreme examples for they are the most poignant, and this is not unusual in philosophy to illustrate a point. Utilitarians have their utility gluttons as counterexamples, after all. I could talk about how yummy pizza is or how inconvenient having to do homework is, but nothing says a moral issue quite like the extremes.
Anyway. what I have in mind is an ontology of value, a metavalue. Not at all interested in how things are practically worked out, how they get entangled with the affairs of others, with value hierarchies, and the the rest. These are important, of course, but not the concern here, where all simply want all eyes on the experience give a proper, objective analysis. My claim is that once all "accidental" matters are put aside, the particulars of entangled cases, there is the, as I have said, residual metaethical: the "badness" the pain, or the "goodness" of the pleasure. If Hitler smoked a fine cigar and it just hit the spot right when he issued extermination orders, this latter would in no way whatever metaethically intrude upon the pleasure he experienced, for we are considering only the pleasure as a phenomenon, the pleasure itself as Husserl might have put it (maybe he did. Haven't read all of his works).
You mean my regard for others is ethically irrelevant? And which person I am is ethically irrelevant? If we divorce ethics from particular interests and a point of view, doesn't it just become irrelevant to that person? I mean I need a reason to do the right thing that is consistent with what I want. If x y and z are ethically correct, but I don't give a shit about them, I'm not sure where we go from there. Objective ethics are irrelevant ethics. They don't connect to anything.
EDIT: convergent intersubjective ethics are quite different from objective ethics. They are still wholly relativist.
Can we just assume there has to be an essence? A lot of philosophy historically has been about trying to extract essences out of things, to its detriment I would say.
I do agree that if there is something at the heart of ethics than it would be value. But I don't think value is something unmediated, directly given like you seem to be pointing to with value-qualia, but rather something constructed socially.
I'm not sure I have much to add here, it seems i'm going the opposite direction. I think more can be learned if you look at morality from a societal and historical perspective, rather than trying to look for essences or basic principles.
Then the consequence to this needs to be made clear: If value is both given in the world, not some theoretical construct or simply part of the ethical equation which subsumes valuing under a complex contingent consideration, but an actual given simplicter, that is, irreducibly "there"; as well as being the foudation of ethics (and aesthetics, says Wittgenstein) then we must conclude the unpopular view is true: moral realism.
No, I don't mean your regard for others is ethically irrelevant. I am saying that in the analysis of a given ethical issue, what drives the whole affair prior to any and all possible entanglements, what is essential for the matter to be at all ethical in the first place, is value, and value qua value is not "relative" or contingent or context dependent, but is a stand alone given in the world, in the, to quote Mackie, "fabric of things". This certainly and by no means, means that we can produce ethical principles in our lived affairs that apply absolutely, as Kant tried to do. It does mean that value as such where's its determinations pretty much on its sleeve. If I don't like something, if it causes pain, misery, I know it, and for simple physical matters, well, the judgment is generally very clear: it's hard to be mistaken about splinters and broken bones: they're bad, bad as hell, often. And of course the same goes for good experiences as well.
What makes ethics contingent is value's embeddedness in the muddy waters of things that are extraneous to value, as with beliefs, competitions for valued things, value hierarchies, ethical institutions, legal complications, political lying, and so on. The point is that beneath all this dynamic play of human affairs there is this stand alone foundation, and tis makes for moral realism.
At first I was kind of surprised that you would come to conclude that moral realism follows from what I said about values, because I would conclude from values being socially constructing that something like a constructivist metaethics would follow. But yes, from the point of view of an individual in a certain society, morality would look largely the same no matter if constructivism or moral realism were true. Where I think those metaethical theories would make a difference in practice is that in a constructivist metaethics you can have different societies construct different values, whereas in moral realism values would be the same over different societies.
Beware to differentiate between descrfiptive and metaethical moral relativism here. Moral realists (or more broadly moral universalists, not all of whom are robustly realists) don't deny that different societies come up with different value systems, they just don't say "...therefore no value system is any more correct or incorrect than any other". It's possible for there both to be disagreement, and for the participants in that disagreement to be more or less correct or incorrect than each other because there is such a thing as universally correct despite disagreement about what it is.
Yes, agreed, I should have said, "should be the same" instead of "would be the same".
Agreed.
Quoting Constance
So, if I'm understanding you correctly --
I'll illustrate on an example:
There are three major Viennese schools of psychology, classified by what a person's will is considered to be centered on:
the Freudian will to pleasure,
the Adlerian will to power,
the Franklean will to meaning.
The idea behind this classification is that a person is driven by will; there is difference as to what exactly that will is about, but the agreement is that the will is the essential driving force of a person and that this is the optimal way to approach psychological issues both theoretically and practically.
It seems to me that you are after a similar principle of classification as above (not specifically in terms of psychology, the example with the Viennese schools of psychology occured to me because it seems to be structually the same as what you're looking for).
The illustration above aside, what you're saying here seems to be in line with Adler's will to power, related to Nietzsche's Wille zur Macht.
If we start from the premise that what drives a person is a will to power, then this also lends support to moral realism.
I think it works like this: If you admit that there is within the analysis of the essence of ethics something that is NOT constructed, then one has crossed the boundaries of meaningful discussion and it must be "passed over in silence" just as one must pass any qualia over in silence. Ethics remains an entangled affair, in relations, politics, jurisprudence, and so on. E.g., it is rarely an issue that murder, rape, theft, torture are bad for obvious reasons. The issue rests with how be bad cashes out in complex, irreducible actual cases which deal with responsibility, accountability, constructed collective sentiment, legal precedents, and all of the things that make the world a morally messy place. Free will, for example, is always compromised in descriptions of accountability, yet it is has a essential place at the foundation of legal justification. This does not get resolved if there is something apriori right or wrong at the basic level of analysis.
R M Hare argued that if there were something in the fabric of things in ethics, it would make no difference. He writes;
‘Think of one world into whose fabric values are objectively built; and think of another in which those values have been annihilated. And remember that in both worlds the people in them go on being concerned about the same things – there is no difference in the “subjective” concern which people have for things, only in their “objective” value. Now I ask, “What is the difference between the states of affairs in these two worlds?” Can any answer be given except “None whatever”?’
I would argue against this: While affirming an absolulte foundation to ethics does not yield an inviolable body of practical rules, it does issue some that apply to all. Mill's harm principle comes to mind. But much more than this is, if ethics is, call it eternally grounded, then what does this say about US? For such a grounding transforms the conception of the self as a valuative creature. Saying value as such is eternal means that WE and our world are so grounded.
Not this. It is prior to this. If Freud thinks the pleasure principle rules egoic motivations, I ask, what is pleasure? A reasonable question for philosophy, not for psychology, though. I ask this as a phenomenologist who wants to take the honest confrontation with with the world at its foundation: the first encounter that is presupposed by empirical science. So, before psychology even makes an appearance, we can examine what things are at a more basic level, not unlike what Kant (the father of phenomenology, before Husserl) did with reason.
What is pleasure, joy, happiness, misery, and so on? This is a metaethical question, which is generally dismissible, for one cannot "speak the world' so to speak. But in the argument I laid out above, I claim pleasure, pain and the rest of our value words designate something metaphysical that has a presence which can be talked about, and this is the injunction, in the case of pain, misery, and all the other "bad" experiences possible, not to do X. Torture possesses absolutely the defeasible directive not to do X: sounds contradictory, but it's not. In and of itself the injunction against doing X stands absolutely, but entangled in accidental affairs. It stands as a prima facie obligation, only.
I always take issue with "will". I simply have never detected such a thing. I will something. What does this come to outside wanting it, and doing what is required to get it, the driveness of the whole affair no more than this? Will seems superfluous, reified out of bad metaphysics: a will? Is this a noun? To will is just to want, desire.
But here, it is simply descriptive. I ask, what is pain? and you are invited to be the dutiful scientist and observe, then see how it conforms to "normal science" (Kuhn's term) paradigms. It simply does not. Pain, joy, and all that belongs to these are sui generis, all because of that non natural property, the ethical badness and goodness (as opposed to contingent badness and good ness; see above).
To will is not just to want, but to want to want. Weakness of will is when you want to want X (you will X), but nevertheless you do Y. Strength of will, also freedom of will, is when wanting to want something causes you to actually want (and so try to do) something.
So will is not in play until you want to want. Does it have to be explicit wanting to want, or if I want it and I pursue it I am implicitly willing it? I want a new computer and I go to the store, pick one out and purchase it. No will in this? Not until I put the wanting before me as a want, review its contents, and determine to satisfy it is it a will. this puts will as a reflective positioned perspective as the wanting is no longer simply the spontaneous drive to acquire, but it reviewed at a higher order: I reflect on the wanting. But how does this differ from regular wanting, for all it adds is a second guessing of the wanting, then a reaffirmation that the wanted thing is truly wanted. If I am choosing veggies in the produce department, turn to the broccoli, reach for it, then remember I want squash instead, is this a matter of simple want turning to willing? Or is it a matter of just wanting intelligently?
Yes, exactly. Much as belief differs from perception in the same way. You see something in the distance on a hot day that looks like a pool of water. But from other knowledge, such as of the local geography and climate and of the refraction of light in air of different temperatures, you do not believe there is a pool of water there, even though you perceive one. You believe there is a mirage, the false appearance of what looks like water, but isn't.
On my account, willing is thereby also equivalent to what might otherwise be called "moral belief". It's not just having a want, but judging a want as the correct thing to want, the thing you ought to want; just as belief is not just perception but the judgement of perception.
(Both perception and desire, on my account, factor into judgements of either kind: you must perceive your mental states and desire them either to remain as they are or to change. The difference between a willing, or an intention as I prefer to term it, and a belief, is which kinds of mental states you are judging: the first-order perceptions, or the first-order desires).
Actually, when you see something like a pool of water in the distance, what happens is that the little people in your brain ('numbskulls' is the technical term), check the image your eye-cameras project against a database of images accessed by Wi-Fi (which our brain naturally receive). If comes back labelled 'pool' we're good to go, if it comes back labelled 'illusion', it's a non-starter.
I mean, whilst you're just making shit up you might as well have it interesting.
You know, there is a lot in this a take to instantly. First order beliefs and thoughts of any kind puts one in the mode of existing whereby past predispositions naturally and fluidly become present realities and the future openness is closed, predictable, fixed. If you read enough existential theory, you take this idea as central to grasping what a self is: it is a temporal "event" structured by historical familiarity determining one's reality. existentialists typically look upon the everyday living affairs of people as inauthentic, sleep walking through lives.
I think you're right calling it a moral belief, for when one realizes one's "freedom" one is placed in the midst of choices, and choices are value laden, not merely factual, and value is the very heart of ethics. What is right or wrong is always built into choice, even if one is not aware; indeed, it is awareness that makes freedom possible. A good Nazi perhaps never gave an order a second thought, for, if you will, he knew not what he was doing, and to use the concept of "will," this was simply not there, and technically, no "decision" was really made, for without the will, that is, without the second guessing, the standing apart from one's beliefs and autonomic behavior, one remains innocent!
Kierkegaard is an interesting read on this in his Concept of Anxiety, which is a study on the nature of sin, entirely removed, in most of the analysis, from Christian exegesis.
First order perceptions and first order desires? I think these talk about the same kind of thing, the stepping apart what would claim one otherwise immediately, in an unquestioned way, and this is the way we live our day to day lives.
Still not fond of the concept of will. It can be a useful term, but it is misleading for the will would be reducible to things that have a clearly meaning, like existential freedom.