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Morality is not commandments from God, nor is it a logical system. Deontology fails because it does not recognize context. Morality from God fails because what is to stop God from changing the rules of morality? Is God's subjectivity our objectivity? That makes no sense to me, but people can believe all sorts of things. Morality is, in large part, a matter of ambiguity. It is not always known what the right thing to do is, sometimes we do the thing we consider wrong knowingly, the context of a situation may provide conflicts in moral understanding. Morality is, in my opinion, the most complex human concept. If that is true then it is doubtful that it will fit nicely into any logical system or that any moral claim can and will always be absolute. Rakosi posted:Pretty sure you can compare cultures where stealing is okay and stealing is not okay and see how well the populations are getting on, scientifically. It's been said before, also, that giving women the right to own their own property, the right to work, access to education and freedom over their own reproduction raises the economical and sociological floor of any mud-hut 3rd world village. There are lots of moral values that can be shown through scientific method to be the best, or at least a good, way for human societies to function under. You're not addressing the OP's point. You're saying that you believe stealing is wrong because it is practically beneficial to human societies as wholes. That's consequentialism, not science. Because it IS beneficial to society that I provide healthcare to people says nothing about whether or not I OUGHT to provide healthcare to people. You assume that people should not steal because most people don't steal. What if most people did steal and derived pleasure from it? What if, as in Nazi Germany, most people though it was right to agree with Hitler? I don't agree with the OP, but at least I take his issue for the serious one it is. Elukka posted:I just don't claim my morals are some sort of objective truth. They're what I subjectively believe, and they have everything to do with how my brain works and the species and society I come from and nothing to do with universal truths. While I think it's fairly important to understand which of your beliefs are objective and which are fundamentally subjective, you can well hold on to both. We as humans are free to take up subjective beliefs regarding morality and recognizing them as such doesn't make them any less important for us. (or any less necessary for the functioning of any sort of society for that matter) And this is why you have no good reasons for telling other people they ought to also like the color orange. And since you claim that your moral beliefs are of the same type, the same is true for your moral beliefs. If you have no grounds for holding others responsible based upon your moral beliefs then morality falls apart. The point of morality is the ability to claim that one ought to act a certain way. If we have no logical grounds from which we can tell others what they should and should not do then there is no such thing as morality. This is the OP's point.
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May 19, 2016 17:08
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olin posted:I guess it would be moral for you to stop me from jumping in front of Mary, but i'm really not sure. The point being that morality is ambiguous. It is not a concept which lends itself to absolutes.
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May 19, 2016 17:50
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rudatron posted:The people I don't get are the atheist moral realists, which according to that poll posted, is definitely something that exists in philosophy departments. Why bother? The creation of moral realism was there to save the idea of god from the problem of evil, absent god you no longer need moral realism. I think people just like the idea of their morals being 'objective', because they're taught that subjective = bad and objective = good, which is important for theories of knowledge, but a bad way to think about ethics. As an agnostic atheist, I just want to say I totally agree with this statement.
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May 20, 2016 07:02
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Elukka posted:Oh, there's an excellent reason for everyone to act a certain way - no society can exist without a shared moral base on the broadest level. Now, the continued existence of humanity and society is not an objective good either, but humans including me unsurprisingly tend to agree it's a subjective good. A lot of subjective beliefs are shared by most people and are very important to us but in the end they're not really any more objective than liking a color. My conclusion that they are not objective doesn't make them less important or valid to me. Subjective morality clearly exists, that's true. But it provides no grounds from which one can hold others morally accountable. If our subjective moral beliefs clash then there is nothing to be done because neither of us are right or wrong since there is no objective basis from which those moral beliefs can be judged. Shared subjectivity does not make it any less subjective. That your subjective beliefs are important does not give you any right to hold others accountable according to those beliefs. Holding others accountable for your subjective moral beliefs is just as absurd as claiming that everyone ought to like the color orange because you like the color orange. The point is not that morality does not exist as a concept, it's that if morality is only subjective belief then no one is in any position to hold others morally accountable, which is the entire point of morality. I very much doubt the existence of a higher power from which we can obtain objective morality. So the problem of subjective morality is a problem for me as well. But pretending that it isn't a problem does nothing to solve it, it merely makes you (seem?) delusional. The idea that subjective beliefs can hold sway over others is pretty much the basis of totalitarianism.
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May 20, 2016 17:04
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Juffo-Wup posted:Can you explain what you mean by 'objective,' and how a higher power, if it existed, would give us a moral theory of that sort? In my opinion there is no such thing as true objectivity. What we call objective is simply the agreement of many subjectivities. However, if the universe has an infinite creator it would seem that creation would be an objectively real thing. That creator would also be responsible for creating morality since it created everything and thus morality would be objective. Infinity is a difficult concept for human beings to wrap our heads around, but I think one way of explaining what I'm trying to say is that an infinite subjectivity would be objectivity by virtue of its infinite-ness.
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May 20, 2016 17:32
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Juffo-Wup posted:Sure, okay, but unless you tell me what meaning you intend that word to have, I can't know what it is you think doesn't exist. Zaradis posted:In my opinion there is no such thing as true objectivity. What we call objective is simply the agreement of many subjectivities. Please don't take my words out of context. I told you exactly what I believe objectivity is. The nature of experience is entirely subjective, and since experience is all that we can possibly know, feel, be aware of, etc. then if objectivity exists we cannot know it. We cannot know facts about things in the world, we can only know facts about our experiences, but that it seems that we experience things outside of ourselves does not mean that we actually do (i.e. Kant). This is simply the nature of subjective experience, and when a bunch of them agree on something we call it objectivity because it's more comforting to believe that we know something objectively than accept that we can't. Most of us are naive realists about the objective world for practical reasons, but logically there is no bridge to get from subjective experience to objective reality. So to borrow your words, subjective facts about an individuals experiences are all that that individual can know by the very nature of subjectivity and experience.
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May 20, 2016 17:54
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Elukka posted:It's also the basis of all society ever. I don't see why it's a problem. Certainly having an objective truth makes an issue easier to resolve, but having one is a want, not a need. We can, always have and always will function with shared subjective morality. We do not disagree on this point. It simply means that there is a logical problem with claiming that a subjective belief should hold for all, some, or even a single other person. Practically, it clearly works well. Elukka posted:I don't see how the existence of a creator would give rise to objective morality. What if the creator didn't care or understand such things? If the creator simply caused the universe and took no part in it since then, how would that provide you an answer on why it's wrong to kill? A creator does not need to have created morality like they'd have to have created time and space, because morality is an emergent property of our brains, not a fundamental property of the universe. Granted, a deistic creator would merely put us in the same situation we are in now. But you missed the most important point regarding a theistic creator, that of being infinite. If a theistic creator existed and was infinite then that creator would be objectivity itself.
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May 20, 2016 18:02
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Juffo-Wup posted:Okay, yeah sure: universal radical skeptics have ground for refusing to assent to any objective theory of ethics. But it also means that you are barred from assenting to any conclusions from e.g. the natural sciences. I suspect that if a moral realist gets an interlocutor to agree that moral facts are on the same epistemic level as physical facts, they'd count that as a win. I would not call holding to the logical conclusions of subjective experience "radical", since it is a logical necessity. Bully for moral realists. So what? I'm not concerned with winning an ideological war against moral realists.
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May 20, 2016 18:11
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Juffo-Wup posted:Second edit: in fact, you can't even get intersubjectivity from your position, since your don't think you know other people exist. You're advocating solipsism. I'm not advocating solipsism. I'm not a practicing solipsist. I believe that other people exist and I have knowledge of them. That doesn't refute the fact that solipsism is irrefutable and a logically sound position to hold. It's the same issue as subjective morality. Logically it makes morality impotent but to accept a naive realist point of view makes practical and experiential sense, it just doesn't make logical sense.
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May 20, 2016 18:15
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Juffo-Wup posted:'Radical' in the sense of "All knowledge is illusory, pull it up by the root!" I never claimed that nobody can know anything and I've already claimed that I know things. I don't doubt that other people know things too. We all have a great deal of subjective experiential knowledge. That is the only type of knowledge that we can have. And when many subjectivities agree on what counts as experiential knowledge we call it objective knowledge. I think that the external world exists. I think there are things in the world which correspond to my experience of those things. Can I know that with any logical certainty? No. That's simply a fact. Do I believe that knowledge doesn't exist simply because a logical bridge between subjectivity and objectivity is not possible? Of course not.
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May 20, 2016 18:32
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Juffo-Wup posted:Wow, I'm having a hard time figuring out what it is you're saying. Let me know if I'm still missing the mark: Before I address your questions, do we agree that solipsism is the necessary logical result of subjective experience? If not, then we're both wasting our breath because that logical conclusion is the basis of all I've been talking about so far. For now I will assume we agree so as to answer your questions. Your second guess is correct. But this is not "fallible objective knowledge," it is subjective knowledge. As the guess implies, if objective knowledge exists or is possible it is not so for human beings. It certainly entails solipsism. Subjective knowledge is the only type of knowledge human beings can possibly hold, by the very nature of human experience. For a thing to be objectively real it must exist regardless of whether or not a subjectivity experiences it at a certain point in time. Objective reality is true independent of our subjective observations. Yet, all we can know are our subjective observations. So we cannot know anything objectively, since objective reality is dependent upon being true without subjective experience of it and we cannot know anything without subjectively experiencing it. If you believe that human beings are capable of knowledge without subjectively experiencing it, I would love to hear the insane argument supporting this idea.
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May 21, 2016 07:12
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Juffo-Wup posted:Finally this is all ignoring the fact that whichever of these positions you're prepared to endorse, the problem you're pointing out isn't unique to moral facts; it generalizes to all knowledge. If the most you can say about knowledge of moral facts is that I can be no more certain of it than I am that I have two hands, then that looks like a pretty weak argument against moral realism. It seems to me that a logically sound or valid argument that shows that objective knowledge is not possible would be quite a strong point against moral realism. But we don't seem to agree with or understand each other on any other topic, so why change that dynamic now?
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May 21, 2016 07:16
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Juffo-Wup posted:Wow, I'm having a hard time figuring out what it is you're saying. I'm saying that there is no logically sound argument that can show that we are capable of having objective knowledge of anything. This logical fact does not negate the fact that normal human experience makes the existence of objective reality extremely intuitively accurate. The strength of the logical argument regarding subjective experience and objective reality, coupled with the strength of the intuition that objective reality exists, means that naive realism is a reasonable philosophical position and one to which I ascribe.
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May 21, 2016 07:26
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Juffo-Wup posted:No, I think we can have knowledge of objects outside ourselves. Even though my mental representations only exist in my head, they nonetheless refer (in a Kripkean sense) to the things that cause them. Prove it. You cannot compare your mental representations (i.e. subjective experience) to things in the world, you can only compare them to other mental representations. How are you going to prove that mental representations which only exist in your head refer to anything outside of your head when all you have/know/experience are mental representations in your head? This cannot be done. It's the same type of problem of proving you are not dreaming (i.e. Stroud). It would require a test independent of your mental representations that you could have knowledge of but you cannot have knowledge of anything independent of your mental representations. If you believe that you can know things that are not mental representations I would like to know what those things are. This is the logical conclusion of the nature of our experience that I continue to speak of and you seem to continue to fail to comprehend. Juffo-Wup posted:No, this is an incoherent position based on a misunderstanding of the relevant terms. Either I have knowledge of objects outside my body or I don't. If I do, then I have objective knowledge; If I don't, then I don't. If this is not what you mean by 'objective,' then A.) you are misusing the term, and B.) you are misusing it in a way that you still haven't made clear. If you think metaphysics and epistemology are non-overlapping I would like to hear why you think this. Metaphysics, by its definition, is an aspect of all other schools of philosophy. Anyway, you're confusing a thing that exists independent of subjective experience of it with a thing that exists dependent on subjective experience of it. You're referring to a thing existing dependent on subjective experience of it, which means it would cease to exist if it weren't being subjectively experienced. I'm talking about a thing existing independently of subjective experience, meaning it would exist regardless of whether or not it were being experienced. This would be a thing which exists objectively. And, as I argued above and many times earlier in this thread, the very nature of our experience does not allow for knowledge of this objective thing. We cannot have experience that is not subjective, therefore we cannot know whether or not things exist independent of subjective experience. That does not mean it does not exist, it means whether it exists or not is not something that we are capable of knowing. Juffo-Wup posted:Anyway, here's an insane argument: I believe I addressed this issue above. However, if you think that subjective experience is the same as direct experience then you don't understand what the word subjective means. If you don't believe this, which you shouldn't, then you should not have inserted "direct" in place of "subjective." I have a sneaking suspicion that you're aware of this and this point is a purposeful misrepresentation of my argument, though I hope I'm wrong. Juffo-Wup posted:If you're willing to make this move and be a naive realist in the case of the external world, why aren't you willing to take the same position about moral facts? I am and I do. I never claimed otherwise. Yes, there is a logical path to this conclusion, but it must ignore the fact that solipsism necessarily follows from the nature of subjective experience and solipsism is logically irrefutable. I ignore this fact based on intuitive reasons like every good epistemologist does. But if asked they will all accept the point I'm making and some of them even make the point in their own arguments and articles (Stroud, Moore, Davidson, etc.) Zaradis fucked around with this message at 16:26 on May 21, 2016 |
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May 21, 2016 16:20
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Juffo-Wup posted:1.) If there is an external world, then there are persisting objects which are generally the causes of my mental representations. First of all, I apologize for the length. Philosophical conversation does not lend itself to brevity. But I will try to keep subsequent replies shorter. If objectivity is merely a question of reference that requires no justification then a man who experiences dancing pink elephants in his living room has objective knowledge of the existence of those dancing pink elephants because in that case those mental representations refer to the chemicals in his brain and those would constitute a referential ground for his beliefs. By your argument it seems all mental representations are objective. All you did was remove the justified from "justified, true belief." I doubt many would see this as a strengthening of an argument for objective knowledge. If objective knowledge is merely what one believes is true, a conclusion your argument would seem to lead to, then objective and subjective are the same thing. It is most definitely a matter of justification. If you're going to claim that your mental representations refer to an external objective reality then you might expect to be asked to justify that claim, which is exactly what you've been attempting to do. If all you needed was a reference point then we wouldn't be having this conversation. That you believe that your belief refers to an object in the external world is still justification, it's just justification ad infinitum. Which I think most would find unsatisfying. You'd have to show that your belief that you believe that your belief refers to an object in the external world is true. And then you'd have to do it again while adding another layer of belief. And so on. Still, if your beliefs refer to the actions of an evil demon who objectively exists that would give your beliefs objective value only if you had objective knowledge of the evil demon and his actions. That it may be true that your beliefs refer to an objective reality does not mean that you know that they do because you still have to discover that they do. Even if you're accidentally right you don't yet know that you're right. And this brings us full circle. Again: 1. Objective things are those which persist in the world. 2. Mental representations are the way in which human beings experience. 3. It is possible that mental representations correspond to objective things, but it is not obvious. 3. From 1, 2, and 3: If mental representations correspond to objective things this would need to be shown. 4. Mental representations can be false positive. 5. From 3 and 4: To show that mental representations correspond to objective things would necessitate a test which is independent of mental representations to prevent false positives. 6. Human beings only experience mental representations, regardless of whether they be of objective things or subjective things. 7. From 5 and 6: A test which is independent of mental representations cannot be experienced by human beings. 8. From 5, 6 and 7: human beings cannot experience the test required to discover a correlation between mental representations and objective things. 9. Therefore, human beings cannot know of the existence of a correlation between mental representations and objective things. While intuitively it seems to exist, agnosticism is the most logically sound position to hold regarding a correlation between mental representations and objective things. We may speculate all we like, but believing that a correlation between mental representations and objective things exists is a matter of faith. In the same way that one cannot know that God exists and to believe that God exists one must have faith. Though believers realize this, it does not prevent them from believing in God. We believe that the external world exists. We do not know that it does. But that belief is a justification for us to live and act as if the external world does exist. If you feel that a test is too much to ask for a claimed correlation to be accepted then all of science might have something to say about that. Zaradis fucked around with this message at 19:51 on May 21, 2016 |
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May 21, 2016 19:28
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Ocrassus posted:The view espoused by skepticism will inevitably lead to extreme skepticism which will in turn lead you to the so-called 'logical blackhole' (IE how can one 'prove' the validity of logic and it's mapping onto the universe without using logic and forming contradiction or a tautology) isn't very useful as an argument. I agree completely. Certainly, it isn't a practically useful argument. However, that says nothing of its truth or how interesting it is. But you are correct.
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May 21, 2016 19:33
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Juffo-Wup posted:First, you're still confusing metaphysics with epistemology. Again, by the very nature of metaphysics they are not mutually exclusive. Nothing is mutually exclusive with metaphysics. Juffo-Wup posted:To generalize: the truth or falsity of a proposition is independent of our ability to discover it. It would be very strange to think otherwise. I don't think otherwise, nor have I ever implied it. That is part of the point I'm making. Of course the truth or falsity of a proposition is what it is regardless of our knowing it. Which is why one ought to be an agnostic regarding a correlation between mental representations and objective things. It's truth value is independent of our knowing it. It just so happens that we cannot know it's truth value. That we do not know the truth value of a proposition is neither a good reason to accept it or reject it. It is a good reason to withhold judgement. Juffo-Wup posted:Finally, and again, no modern epistemologist thinks that a belief must be in-principle unrevisable to count as knowledge. Contextualists don't think so, reliabilists don't think so, epistemic virtue theorists don't think so. That's just not how we think about justification anymore. On any reasonable account of justification, it is in-principle defeasible. I don't know of anyone who thinks it is impossible to have a justified false belief. You can have a justified, false belief. I don't doubt that and haven't implied that you can't. However, if knowledge is justified, true belief then that belief would not be knowledge. If we do not know the truth value of a proposition then, again, accepting or rejecting it is a matter of faith; it is a leap outside of knowledge because one of the criteria for knowledge, truth, is indeterminate. If your definition of knowledge ignores a proposition's truth value, please explain what you define as knowledge. Zaradis fucked around with this message at 22:29 on May 21, 2016 |
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May 21, 2016 22:12
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Juffo-Wup posted:But see, here's the point. Whether a belief is objective is independent of whether it is justified, or whether or know that it is objective, or whether we know that it is justified. This simply makes the same point about objectivity that we've already agreed upon about truth. Yes, if a belief is true and objective then it is true and objective irrelevant of knowledge of it. Regardless, the attributes of true and objective in themselves do not equal knowledge. Juffo-Wup posted:C: If there is an external world, then we have at least some objective knowledge about it. The truth of the antecedent must first be determined before the truth of the consequent can be known, but it is not sufficient to determine the truth of the consequent. More than simply the existence of an external world is necessary to determine that we have objective knowledge of it. Extraterrestrial beings may objectively exist, but the objective fact of their existence provides us with no knowledge whatsoever of or about their existence. Hence the necessity of the justificatory standard for which I'm arguing. Juffo-Wup posted:A: There is an external world This is a mistake. External world skepticism does not make claims about what the external world is, if it in fact exists. The skeptic would not go so far as to agree that there is an external world; nor would he agree that there is no external world. The skeptic position is "I do not know." Though many thought experiments rely on the existence of the external world to make their point, no reasonable understanding of thought experiments would claim that their use constitutes a belief in their content. It would be quite odd to ascribe a belief in mindless zombies or people raised in black and white rooms to philosophers. Further, to say that the external world "does not resemble what we take it to be" is also much more than that to which a skeptic would agree. The most a skeptic would agree to is that if there is an external world, then human beings cannot know whether or not it resembles what we take it to be. An external world skeptic is an agnostic about whether or not an external world exists or what it would/does resemble. So both C, A and A* state too much for the skeptic without a higher level of justification. Juffo-Wup posted:I think Putnam addressed this in 1981: Since reference is fixed by causal history, then whatever phenomenon or collection of phenomena out there in the external world that are responsible for my mental representation 'hand' are, as a matter of fact, the referent of that representation. Which makes the utterance 'I have two hands' true even if I am a brain in a vat. The external world skeptic would not accept that reference is fixed by causal history independent of mental representations. A fixed causal history of reference between mental representations may be accepted by the skeptic, but the proposition that there is an external fixed causal history produces the same problem that the existence of the external world does according to skepticism; and thus, must provide the same sort of justification. Juffo-Wup posted:So then what you're looking for is a reason to believe that we know A. Which means that you are asking for an epistemic justification for belief in A. Correct, just as I've stated multiple times throughout this thread. Juffo-Wup posted:We've established that you do not think that justification has to carry with it absolute certainty. So then what would justify a belief that there is an external world? Well, here's an obvious inference: if there's a city in France called Paris, then there is an external world. So what would we normally take as justifying reasons for a belief that there is a city in France called Paris? I suppose we'd look at a map, or ask a Frenchman, or even take a trip there ourselves. Then, satisfied in our new belief about the existence of Paris, we happily infer: 'if Paris exists, then something that isn't me exists. Paris exists, so something that isn't me exists. That's just what an external world is, so QED' or some such thing. It would be because of the difference between mental representations and objective existence. Every belief mentioned in your example is a mental representation. Mental representations are not objective things, therefore, to determine whether or not they correspond to objective things would necessitate a way to do so that is independent of, or that does not rely upon any, mental representations. Otherwise, the test and its results would just be more mental representations, which we've established are not objective things. Juffo-Wup posted:Here's the crux, because I think you want to say something like "what you would need to justify such a belief would be to compare the correspondence of your representations of the world with some further standard that is not a mental representation." There are two possible readings of this requirement. On one, this is just what we do every minute of every day. This is not a given. You left out the most important clause. What you meant to say is that "this is just what we do every minute of every day, provided that the external world exists and our mental representations correspond with it." Yes, if everything in the second clause is assumed, then the first clause is correct. But the second clause is the entire point of contention. Juffo-Wup posted:On another, it is a logical impossibility; just so much gibberish. It's impossible to even imagine what that would look like. If you set the justificatory standard to something that you yourself regard as involving a logical impossibility, then you may as well just define 'external world' as 'something that we can't know if it exists or not.' The justificatory standard is the logical result of the nature of experience itself. That the standard itself is not logically possible is not "gibberish," it's simply the case. While this conclusion is understandably unsatisfying, that does not mean that it is not a truth of experience. To ignore this and set a different standard of justification is to ignore the very nature of experience itself, all in the service of providing a more satisfying conclusion. Wearing contact lenses that make your eyes appear to be the color blue when they are in fact brown because your favorite color is blue does not change the fact that your eyes are brown. The idea that this justificatory standard is tendentious results from dissatisfaction with the logical conclusion of the nature of experience. Dissatisfaction with a conclusion does not make it tendentious. In fact, I would argue that ignoring the nature of human experience is the tendentious position, though it does provide a more emotionally satisfying conclusion. Juffo-Wup posted:Here's a response you could give: "look, any choice of a standard of justification is basically arbitrary." I simply disagree that a standard of justification which is the logical result of the nature of experience (i.e. all that we have on which to base any justificatory standard, or anything else for that matter) is an arbitrary one. Juffo-Wup posted:What I'm trying to do is take paradigmatic cases of knowledge, look to see what is similar about those beliefs and how they are arrived at, and use that to synthesize a theory of justification to apply to all such cases. If you're going to take particular propositions or beliefs and say that they have a special, higher standard of justification, you need to have some independently compelling reason why they should be exempted from the general account. I believe that I have provided compelling reasons for this higher standard of justification regarding a correspondence between mental representations and objective things. That you find similarities between paradigmatic cases of knowledge does not make those cases of knowledge and their similarities any more than mental representations in your mind. Any justificatory standard ascribed to which is not independent of mental representations cannot provide for the existence of an objective reality. This is not logical gibberish, it is a logical matter of fact. In my opinion, if I'm mistaken about this you still have not provided any argument showing that this is mistaken. It seems to me that what you've been doing is trying to provide reasons for why a standard of justification which produces emotionally satisfying results should be ascribed to over one which is logically sound, yet, emotionally unsatisfying. I understand the philosophical motivation for this, but ignoring the result of the nature of human experience does not mean that it isn't the case. Juffo-Wup posted:Or maybe you think I'm not even justified in believing that Paris exists - that is, maybe you are prepared to apply the same impossibly high standard of justification for all beliefs (contrary, again, to your profession that you don't think justification entails certainty). And maybe it doesn't bother you that it turns out we don't, and indeed, could not in any possible world, know anything. You are justified in believing that Paris exists within the realm of your mental representations. You are not justified in believing that Paris exists in the realm of objectivity. The standard of justification which I have been arguing for is one which would justify knowledge of the existence of an objective reality. The existence of a realm of mental representations is a given; there is thinking occurring. There is an indefinite, if not infinite, number of justified beliefs that human beings may have. It just so happens that the nature of human experience is of such a type that beliefs about objective existence are not the sorts of beliefs that can be sufficiently justified. Sorry for all the quotes, but there were just too many points to address.
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May 22, 2016 22:09
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I want to offer you a sort of olive branch, Juffo-Wup: In the face of all that I've argued, setting different standards and weakening the criteria for what counts as objective is literally the only option we have other than solipsism. And human beings are not comfortable with not knowing, so we tend to take the first option. I can't imagine many philosophers would not agree that solipsism is an irrefutable position that follows from the nature of subjective experience, but, while that is acknowledged it also gets us nowhere so we must provide weaker justificatory standards for objective knowledge if we want to claim objective knowledge exists, which we all do. Acknowledging the fact of solipsism and saying "I do not like it, I'm going to ignore it within my epistemic system" is very different than denying the fact altogether. Just as we all know that someday we will all cease to exist, as will the universe itself, yet, moment to moment we continue to live and act as if existence will continue forward infinitely. Some of us acknowledge the fact, some do not, but we all live and act as if it is not the case because it does not appear, nor is it a satisfying idea, that life is meaningless. In short, a meaningful, satisfying, worthwhile human experience requires some level of cognitive dissonance in our day to day, moment to moment experience. It seems to me that almost all of us, including myself, feel that this is a price well worth paying. Regardless of our disagreements, I appreciate the conversation. There is little that gives me as much pleasure as a good philosophical discussion and I don't get them much anymore. As a good (though possibly mistaken) student of philosophy the passion I feel for philosophical arguments is not a personally hostile or disrespectful passion. I doubt this needed to be said, but I wanted to make it clear in case the loss of cadence and mannerism through text might have conveyed my words otherwise.
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May 22, 2016 22:18
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Zodium posted:here's another option, besides accepting solipsism or lowering standards. I just thought off it right now: get more comfortable not knowing. Which was the argument I was making throughout most of this thread.
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May 24, 2016 15:18
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Who What Now posted:Doing so doesn't require any cognitive dissonance, though. That implies a discomfort with holding conflicting positions. But to find meaning requires knowledge, neither of which can (in my opinion) be satisfactorily discovered. Yet, we want both meaning and knowledge. So we pretend that we have both.
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May 24, 2016 16:15
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Who What Now posted:I don't agree that meaning requires knowledge. Meaning is imposed, it's not innate. I agree, but that it is imposed means that it is subjective and that it is subjective means any claims that others also ought to find meaning in the things you do are no better than saying "People should like what I like because I like what I like."
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May 24, 2016 22:46
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Who What Now posted:Only if every single person is a hyper-logical nihilistic solipsist. But, thankfully, they aren't, people care about and value subjective opinions and claims. And there's nothing wrong with doing so that would cause anybody any sense of cognitive dissonance, there are not necessarily any contradictory positions being held. I'd say that clinical psychopaths only value their own subjective opinions and claims. So they put no value in the subjective opinions or claims of others. If another person claims that the psychopath ought to value others opinions then there is simply a disagreement, since both claimants' opinions are grounded in subjectivity, and neither is grounded on any stronger ground than the other. And the important point for your argument is that, according to you, for the psychopath to be wrong just requires more subjective opinions in agreement against his own. So if there are 100 psychopaths and 1000 utilitarians, then, following your argument, utilitarianism is correct. You're advocating a tyranny of the moral majority, which I doubt many would agree with, I certainly do not. The cognitive dissonance still clearly comes into play in even your scenario. The idea that a majority opinion regarding morality is the correct moral opinion is merely a confirmation bias of those who hold the same moral opinion as those in the majority.
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May 24, 2016 23:43
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Juffo-Wup posted:Just a quick question: on your view, is it possible for me to 'schmow' that there are objective moral facts, and what at least some of them are, where 'schmowledge' is what I have about propositions like 'Frank Sinatra was a singer' and 'oxygen is responsible for combustion, rather than phlogiston'? Or do I schmow the latter things, but not the former? I grant that we know things on the philosophical definition of knowledge. But we cannot be sure about the truth of the things that we claim to know. It simply isn't a possibility given the way in which human beings experience...don't get me started again, I got more invested last time than I justifiably had time for 
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May 25, 2016 00:04
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Who What Now posted:Woooooooooooooah there, where did I say this, again? It seemed to me that what you were saying is that because most people care about and value subjective opinions and claims then that makes subjective opinions and claims valuable; but that would be a vicious circle. I gave you the benefit of the doubt and assumed that you meant that because most people generally agree about which subjective opinions and values are valuable that this somehow grants some moral power for those subjective opinions to condemn or reward opinions that agree or disagree with them. Regardless of what you mean, the point that people care about and value subjective opinions and claims says nothing of the moral authority of those opinions and claims. I see no reason why the fact that an individual, a nation, or every being in the universe value certain opinions and claims would give those opinions and claims moral authority over anyone in disagreement.
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May 25, 2016 01:01
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Who What Now posted:By this do you mean that I cannot morally judge the actions of others, to condemn or condone them? Because that's just flat out wrong too, I can and nobody can stop me. Correct, I never claimed otherwise. What I said was that your condemnations and condoning have no moral authority over those being judged other than in your own mind. If I am stealing from you and you condemn me for it, so what? That's just you trying to impose your subjective morality onto me. It is no better or worse, no more right or wrong, than my imposing of my subjective morality that it is good for me to steal from you. To try to enforce that condemnation physically is no different in a moral sense than my act of stealing from you. If you want to condemn me within your own moral realm (i.e. your mind), then you certainly can. But this wholly defeats the purpose of morality, which is to reward and punish people for their actions in one way or another.
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May 25, 2016 15:11
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Dzhay posted:On the Zaradis/Juffo-wup nature-of-knowledge tangent: I think you're both putting a bit too much emphasis on certainty. People say they "know something is true" when they think that it's very likely. (Yes, this includes things like mathematics) Reasonable post. I do not disagree. Five stars.
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May 25, 2016 17:04
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Who What Now posted:Before I address this more in depth, are you also saying that morality's only purpose is to reward or to punish? And do you believe that only morality can be or should be the basis of rewarding or punishing actions? The point of morality is to have some ground from which one can claim that themselves and others ought to commit or not commit certain types of actions and to determine which of those actions deserve praise and which deserve condemnation. If morality is subjectively imposed on the world, a premise with which I do not disagree, then there is no such ground. That the morality you impose might conflict with mine is simply a fact of the matter. If there is no higher level of morality by which to judge which one of our subjective moralities is right or wrong then it's merely your word against mine. It's opinion versus opinion. Unless you want to claim that certain subjective moral beliefs have more moral worth than others then you have no basis from which to claim that others ought to act a certain moral way or to give praise or condemnation of moral action. And if you do want to claim that then you would have to make an argument that I cannot imagine without reference to a non-subjective morality. Therefore, if morality is subjectively imposed on the world, then to make moral claims necessitates that the person making the claim either actively deny, actively ignore, or be cognitively dissonant about the subjective origin of morality. Zaradis fucked around with this message at 18:42 on May 25, 2016 |
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May 25, 2016 18:40
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OwlFancier posted:You can certainly reject all the fundamental premises and goals of my concept of morality but being as we are both humans living on earth I would suggest that it is likely that we both aspire to things like maximising human wellbeing. I did not and would not disagree. This is a philosophical discussion, not a sociological one. OwlFancier posted:Thus, moral disputes are far more likely to be starting from similar premises than completely alien ones, in which case you can certainly argue that one set of actions better adheres to the goals and premises shared by both parties. Agreed. But, again, this is a philosophical discussion, not a sociological one. Let's not pretend that many subjective moralities in agreement have any more logical ground from which to make their moral claims than a single subjective morality. OwlFancier posted:The idea that morality is inevitably restricted to shouting conflicting opinions into a void with no possibility of meaningful debate doesn't really reflect reality. I never suggested that it did.
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May 25, 2016 18:53
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Who What Now posted:Could you please, for once, answer the question I actually asked? You seem to like to change your own interpretation of the question rather than addressing my responses. In my opinion, I have answered your question satisfactorily. If you disagree, then you must have a problem with the content of my answer or how I answered it and you should address the problem you have rather than simply claiming that I have not answered it. I'm responding to facilitate an interesting philosophical discussion, not to try to satisfy sophistry.
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May 25, 2016 19:01
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twodot posted:You're presuming human wellbeing has an objective meaning. I mean you're right that human beings being the same species and having similar experiences often agree on what wellbeing means, but if you are using common definitions as authoritative you're back to here: I agree with your first point, but the second is a reply to my post which is in fact agreeing with your response to it. I think you replied to the wrong post.
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May 25, 2016 19:03
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OwlFancier posted:Why would they not have logical ground? They can state their premises and their goal, and then reason from the premises to devise a method of action to achieve the goal. That is a perfectly functioning morality. You are correct. I did not state my point well. They would have logical ground from which to make moral claims. They would not have logical ground from which to claim that others ought to also agree with those moral claims. There is an internal, subjective logic to subjective morality. But I see no good reason why that subjective morality ought to hold sway over those who disagree with it. No opinion is more right or wrong than any other.
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May 25, 2016 19:19
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twodot posted:Sorry, I think your argument is structurally sound, so I was just pointing out that you already addressed where they were going. I also disagree it's an illegitimate way to build a moral system, like here: I see. I don't think it's an illegitimate way to build a moral system, I'm just pointing out that it provides no good grounds for claiming that others ought to agree with your morality. I agree with your point on ignoring the subjective origin of morality. I live my life in essentially the same way. I appreciate that at least two of us here can admit it.
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May 25, 2016 19:24
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OwlFancier posted:Again this is true assuming there are no shared premises or goals between the two subjective opinions. Which I think is rather unlikely. If you share premises and goals you are having what is essentially an internal debate, and I think that the number of things to which this would not apply with sufficient discussion is rather small. Very well, but multiple subjective moral opinions in agreement does nothing to give the internal system to which they agree any grounds from which they may claim their moral opinions apply to those outside of their internal system. That is my entire point. If a community agrees that stealing is wrong then the claim that stealing is wrong is a moral claim that holds within that community. But the community has no good basis from which to morally condemn those outside of their community who believe that stealing is morally right. Additionally, that stealing is morally wrong holds only as long as no community member changes their moral opinion about stealing and no new members who believe that stealing is right join the community.
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May 25, 2016 19:38
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OwlFancier posted:If you can find me a person who can set some premises, goals, and logic that stand up to dispute which prove that Stealing Is Right then I will quite happily become a kleptomaniac. Certainly. Just like the logical flaws I've pointed out with subjective moral claims. That you don't recognize them does not mean the flaws don't exist. Granted, almost all individuals, generally, ignore the absurdity of holding others accountable for having the same moral opinions as they themselves do. Which is why morality works in a practical sense, but a subjective basis for morality is no more than an opinion and holding others morally accountable to your moral opinions does not hold up logically. Who What Now posted:do you believe that morality's only purpose is to be a basis for rewarding and punishing actions? No, I do not believe that morality's only purpose is to be a basis for rewarding and punishing actions. Per my quote that you just cited, "The point of morality is to have some ground from which one can claim that themselves and others ought to commit or not commit certain types of actions and to determine which of those actions deserve praise and which deserve condemnation." The purpose of morality is to provide a basis for or against certain types of actions, as well as rewarding and punishing those actions. This, to me, seems a very direct answer to your question. Regarding whether or not there can be other bases for a system of rewarding or punishing; if morality is subjective, which I believe that it is, then it is no different than opinion. On this definition then it would seem that there cannot be other bases for a system of rewarding or punishing. You will reward those actions that you believe deserve rewarding and punish those actions that you believe deserve punishment. Why you believe what you do about which actions deserve what response is morality.
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May 25, 2016 21:15
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OwlFancier posted:I can disagree with your moral opinions because the premises they are founded on don't make sense, the logic you apply to them does not follow, or because the goals you are trying for are counterproductive. You cannot illustrate that another's morality is flawed by it's own rules if morality is subjectively imposed on the world. To do so would require appeal to a non-subjective moral standard by which to compare the flawed subjective morality. If a non-subjective morality does not exist then your only recourse is comparison to a different subjective morality, likely your own, which, once again, is simply your opinion against another person's opinion.
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May 25, 2016 21:36
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OwlFancier posted:How on earth can I not point out logical flaws in another's logically constructed morality? A morality derives its validity from its logical soundness, if it fails logical scrutiny it loses validity, it's just so much assertion at that point. Okay, you don't seem to be following the implications of your own argument. You're essentially saying that morality is subjective but logic is the non-subjective standard by which subjective morality can and should be judged. You make logic the objective standard by which to judge subjective morality and in the very next sentence you say that you don't need an objective standard to judge morality. You're essentially claiming that morality is subjective opinion and that opinions can be judged to be right and wrong by the objective standard of logic. Please explain how this could possibly work. Are subjective opinions about morality of some special type that non-moral subjective opinions are not? Because if this can't be shown then according to your argument we ought to be able to logically determine whether or not it is right to believe that chocolate tastes good. Juffo-Wup posted:This is obviously false. Imagine I concoct a system of simple associations, where if something is made of wood I call it a 'Flurg' and if something is taller than I am I call it a 'Beeble,' and further introduce a principle: 'no Flurg is a Beeble.' This is a semantic system that is subjectively imposed on the world, and all it would take for someone to show that it's flawed by its own rules would be to take a longish two-by-four and stand it on its end. Please see my response above. Also, I never claimed that logic cannot point out flaws in any sorts of systems, I claimed it cannot point out flaws in subjective moral systems without appealing to a non-subjective moral standard. If you disagree, please provide an example of a subjective moral system that can be shown to be morally wrong through the use of logic. Zaradis fucked around with this message at 21:59 on May 25, 2016 |
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May 25, 2016 21:52
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OwlFancier posted:Because if your morality is simply "Always gently caress pheasants" "Never eat toast" and "Sheep are Satan's instruments" then that's not really a morality, it's barely a coherent sentence. No, it really is a morality, just not a very good one, at least by mine or your subjective moral standards. I think you recognize this. OwlFancier posted:I am charitably assuming that there is some sort of thought going on in any form of morality that a human would employ and that humans are not simply walking around adhering to arbitrary, immutable, preprogrammed rules like they're a three-laws compliant android. That you can criticize someone's reasoning regarding their opinions does not show that their opinion is wrong. Whether I came to the conclusion that I like the taste of chocolate logically or illogically is irrelevant to the fact that I like the taste of chocolate. If my reasoning about liking the taste of chocolate is flawed it is not going to mean that, once the flaw is discovered, I no longer like chocolate. There is a flaw in the way you continue to treat moral claims as if they are statements of fact and not opinion while holding to the notion that morality is subjectively imposed on the world. This is a contradiction. There is room for debate about morality because morality is subjectively imposed on the world. If it were some strict logical system that you've been proposing then there would be no room for debate. Logical truths are not things which are up for debate. A=A is not a logically debatable statement. Juffo-Wup posted:Value-laden predicates aren't special, they're just further semantic units. So, if you think the problem with my counterexample was that it wasn't a system of normative associations, then in addition to the case of formal contradiction above, you can just replace 'Flurg' and 'Beeble' in the first counterexample with 'Good' and 'Not good' and it runs the same way. Replacing the words in your previous example does not solve the problem. By doing so, you're still comparing moral statements to facts about the world. You're committing a naturalistic fallacy.
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May 25, 2016 22:18
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Juffo-Wup posted:The naturalistic fallacy? Like, from G.E. Moore's Principia Ethica? The thing that Moore used to try to show that certain theories of values are wrong? That is the argument you are using to establish that it's impossible to be justified in saying of a theory of value that it is wrong? I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around that one. Sorry, I meant you're committing a reverse naturalistic fallacy. Instead of an is dictating what ought to be, your example wants to show that moral claims have truth value over and above the subjective truth of their internal system through the absurd use of an ought dictating what is. All your example does is show that morality does not dictate the facts of nature, which is a point of contention between no people I know of. But the idea that because a specific morality doesn't dictate the facts of nature is not a reason to claim that that morality is wrong. This is why your example fails. You have to show why a moral claim is morally wrong through the use of logic to produce the conclusion you want to produce.
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May 25, 2016 22:40
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Juffo-Wup posted:A contradiction entails all propositions. Standard formal logic permits one to infer the negation of a proposition that entails a contradiction. Refuting a position by showing that it entails a contradiction is the definition of 'logically backed up.' Again, the logical strength or weakness of a path of reasoning that brings one to an opinion is wholly irrelevant to the fact that the person holds that opinion. You're claiming that if I didn't follow sound logic to come to the conclusion that I like the color purple then either I don't like the color purple or I am wrong to like the color purple. Both conclusions are absurd because the fact remains that I like the color purple regardless of any logical path taken to form this opinion.
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May 25, 2016 22:46
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