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Ratoslov posted:Okay. So your answer to people having differing moral intuitions is that everyone who disagrees with the true morality is disabled in some sense. Great. So to repeat my question: Well of course I'd be inclined to assume it's me, but I won't exculde the possibility that I'm wrong, in the same way that I can admit I(m sometimes mistaken about visual experience. But I'd rather not say that murder in the abstract is wrong, instead preferring to look at a specific instance and the experience of it.
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May 27, 2016 20:55
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Hollismason posted:I'm saying the argument that there are moral facts , truths tokens whatever lead basically to fascism. That's a cornerstone of a fascist government is to know a moral truth above all others. Erm, "we hold these truths to be self evident"?
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May 27, 2016 20:56
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Hollismason posted:Not recognizing that your argument is fallible, has no evidence, and that there exists a truth beyond ourselves but you know it and your argument in of itself is the proof is kind of not great. That's not my argument. Insofar as my argument is empirical, it explicitly admits of the possibility of falsification. But if you think my argument 'in and of itself' is not great, then presumably you can tell me what my argument is and why it's not great. You don't absolutely have to, but you do if you want me to take your critique seriously. Sorry.
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May 27, 2016 20:58
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This is like the sovereign citizen thread of ethics, no combination of magical words are going to prove moral truth. That's my argument you cannot have the argument be evidence in of itself. You are writing a logical fallacy of affirming the consequent.
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May 27, 2016 21:04
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Hollismason posted:This is like the sovereign citizen thread of ethics, no combination of magical words are going to prove moral truth. Where has someone affirmed the consequent? Maybe I missed it but I don't recall that.
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May 27, 2016 21:06
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Hollismason posted:This is like the sovereign citizen thread of ethics, no combination of magical words are going to prove moral truth. I gotta admit that I'm enjoying the radical mistrust of language (itself rendered in the medium of language) . It's like I'm talking to Avvakum. It's not very convincing though. But, okay, I'll play along: where did I affirm the consequent? I'm looking for a conditional, an affirmation of the second place predicate, and an inference from there to the first place predicate.
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May 27, 2016 21:08
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Everything is that because you've offered no evidence only testimony.
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May 27, 2016 21:29
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Juffo-Wup posted:What goes for the both of us? Are you saying, by way of insult, that you agree that I do not understand how your argument addresses mine, or are you agreeing, by way of admission, that you also don't know? Neither. I'm saying that neither of us understand the other's position.
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May 27, 2016 21:29
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Zaradis posted:Neither. I'm saying that neither of us understand the other's position. Oh, okay, that's fair. I'm sorry I wasn't very good at communicating my thoughts clearly.
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May 27, 2016 21:30
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My opinion is that as a pragmatist without evidence, consequences, or any observable phenomena that morality is not otherwise subjective then morality is subjective.
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May 27, 2016 21:42
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Hollismason posted:My opinion is that as a pragmatist without evidence, consequences, or any observable phenomena that morality is not otherwise subjective then morality is subjective. That's a nice opinion. I had an argument that was supposed to show why facts about values are observable phenomena. What was it?
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May 27, 2016 21:43
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Hollismason posted:My opinion is that as a pragmatist without evidence, consequences, or any observable phenomena that morality is not otherwise subjective then morality is subjective. But you experience some moral sense as a phenomena (which may be subjective or obejective), yes? What distinguishes it from other phenomena that you might classify as objective? (Or is your intention to go maximum solipsism?)
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May 27, 2016 21:47
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I don't experience morals as a spiritual experience or phenomena I don't know where you got that. I can observe actions and then make a subjective opinion on whether they are good or bad , but I don't and no one does "feel" murder other than the physical actions associated with the act itself.
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May 27, 2016 23:15
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Hollismason posted:I don't experience morals as a spiritual experience or phenomena I don't know where you got that. I can observe actions and then make a subjective opinion on whether they are good or bad , but I don't and no one does "feel" murder other than the physical actions associated with the act itself. You're the one bringing the term 'spiritual' in here. Do you really experience something like 'knife here', 'blood here', 'body parts here',... ; are completely neutral about this, calmly analyze and then after a few minutes go 'yep this is murder', then analyze a few more minutes and go 'this is probably bad'; or what are you picturing here? EDIT: Feel free to go for a less extreme example / something you actually experienced if you didn't experience this if you prefer.
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May 27, 2016 23:43
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No, I believe murder is wrong just that you don't have to experience murder to know it is wrong. Just because the action is observable doesn't mean that it has to be broken down like a analytical computer. As a pragmatist though I believe that my morals are based on subjective lessons I've learned from my enviroment and my families upbringing. What I don't see the point of is the metaphysical argument of breaking down actual subjective moral questions and somehow revealing that these values can equal a token of morality and that through doing so we can reach a moral truth or moral fact. My other point is that people generally are utilitarian when it comes to certain philosophical questions. It differs from solipsism by the virtue that value is subjective and can come from outside oneself. I value life, others value life, this gives it its subjective value. The taking of life is wrong because of the value I place on life. That's my completely subjective view.
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May 28, 2016 00:36
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Hollismason posted:No, I believe murder is wrong just that you don't have to experience murder to know it is wrong. Just because the action is observable doesn't mean that it has to be broken down like a analytical computer. As a pragmatist though I believe that my morals are based on subjective lessons I've learned from my enviroment and my families upbringing. Thank you for your response. I was about to edit my post as I was worried I wasn't being clear (and I wasn't). I'm not asking you to outline some framework or to analyze the ethics of some hypothetical situation. I'm asking for an account of a situation you were in that involved ethics and how you experienced that situation. [Especially how ethical experience gets separated from the other sorts of experience. After you have the experience, sure, you can maybe start building some theory or framework in the same way you build theories from any other kind of experience.] EDIT: By ethical experience I don't (necessarily) mean anything spiritual. Looking at the experiences involved in quote:lessons I've learned from my enviroment and my families upbringing. As far as I know it isn't correct that most people are utilitarian. According to this poll: http://philpapers.org/surveys/results.pl , only 23% responded as being consequentialists. (I think utilitarianism is a form of consequentialism?) Of course polling the general population would be harder, especially as the terminology would be unfamiliar to some. The Belgian fucked around with this message at 00:58 on May 28, 2016 |
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May 28, 2016 00:50
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Well, there's some evidence that people get more utilitarian as they get more drunk.
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May 28, 2016 01:15
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Juffo-Wup posted:Well, there's some evidence that people get more utilitarian as they get more drunk. I'd totally peg ultilitarians as heavier drinkers! How's that line about John Stuart Mill go?
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May 28, 2016 03:01
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Like just in general how many times do you think people actually have to make a ethical decision ? In like day to day life? That interests me more. I honestly can't think of a situation that I've had in the last month where there was a moral question of what I was doing. Like just in general how often do you think people make what you would consider are moral decisions?
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May 28, 2016 03:08
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Stickman posted:I'd totally peg ultilitarians as heavier drinkers! How's that line about John Stuart Mill go? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9SqQNgDrgg
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May 28, 2016 03:09
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Hollismason posted:Like just in general how many times do you think people actually have to make a ethical decision ? In like day to day life? That interests me more. I honestly can't think of a situation that I've had in the last month where there was a moral question of what I was doing. What are your definitions of "moral" and "ethical" decisions?
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May 28, 2016 03:23
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Stickman posted:What are your definitions of "moral" and "ethical" decisions? What ever yours are , just like when was the last time you actually made a decision where you questioned whether you thought it was unethical.
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May 28, 2016 03:24
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AARO posted:Taking my definition of God, all goodness, love and truth, your question reads "What if God was not God." It's nonsensical. Not a fan of Jobe, huh? AARO posted:Read Husserl. There are things we can know through an insight he calls eidetic intuition. Or at least I'm open to that idea. It's one possible explanation. I've met people who want to castrate and sterilize all black people, they don't think it's wrong. It's all subjective.
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May 28, 2016 03:30
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Even the staunchest Kantians will become utilitarians upon coming face to face with Bentham's preserved head.
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May 28, 2016 03:31
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I think what you're trying is impossible for the same reason I don't think God exists: lots of people have tried to do prove it, failed, and there's no substantial reason to actually believe it. Being open minded is one thing, saying that someone who doesn't believe you and is skeptical is being prejudiced is another. You claim this reduction is possible, but have not performed it. Do you have an existence proof? I doubt it. All you're really being doing is stating your position (that this reduction is possible), over and over again, without providing justification. The closest you came was here:Juffo-Wup posted:To spell it out: So, we have an assumption on your part, that this is possible, without proof, and we have a counter assumption, that it is not possible. You then claim that an advantage of moral realism is that 'bivalence'. This is wrong, emotivism is more than capable of dealing with bivalence, and therefore use standard predicate logic - simply map 'truth' -> positive response from yourself and 'false' -> negative response from yourself. Predicate logic will work just fine with this set up. Contradictions in that logic, then, are informative, they're just not contradictions of truth, but of emotional reactions. So, therefore, there's no advantage in being a moral realist. It's the more complex assumption, because it makes a superfluous assumption (that this decomposition is possible, without evidence for it), so it is therefore the worse system.
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May 28, 2016 04:59
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No, seriously when was the last time that any one has made a conscious decision over something they would consider a ethical dilemma? Like a legitimate issue where you were like " Is this ethical for me to do this?" Not like a hypothetical but a actual decision that you had to actually think about and question whether what you were doing was right or wrong?
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May 28, 2016 05:13
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I've been lucky enough to never have been in such a situation, but I can't imagine many people are in such a situation all that often. If you're in anything but a leadership role, you already know exactly what's expected of you - it's more an issue of either being forced to do something you think would be unethical (the actual morality of the situation wouldn't be in doubt), or you're doing something you know is wrong but have some other interest in mind. The actual dilemma you're looking for, of having to choose between two options of unknown morality, would be quite rare.
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May 28, 2016 05:33
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rudatron posted:Which is incredibly dodgy, because 1 and 2 are not equivalent statements. Juffo-Wup posted:Rather than challenging me to perform the reduction in front of your eyes, instead ask yourself why you're convinced it's impossible. I strongly suspect you'll find that what's stopping you is the assumption that at no point in the reduction will the normative language be discharged. But I'm telling you it is. Maybe this language will be clearer: if you prefer, imagine that I am stipulatively redefining value-laden terms such that they are merely shorthand for certain ostended complexes of physical properties. This is why I've been asking people to restate my argument. If you missed that this is my central thesis, then I feel like you haven't been doing me the courtesy of making a genuine attempt to understand my position.
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May 28, 2016 14:36
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You don't get to redefine terms referring to different things, such that they refer to the same thing. You can't redefine up as down, or left as right, because that's nonsense. If they are the same, show that they are the same. If you cannot, accept that you cannot. Your entire argument is nothing but you restating, in different language, "I am a moral realist". Yes, we know, but why? You say this decomposition is possible. Yes, we know you say that, but why? There, you are silent. Imagine I said that that I was going to prove the P=NP, and then used the same tactic you did: "I've stipulatively redefining the set P as equal to NP". Uh, okay. Do you think what you're doing constitutes a defense of Railton's idea? Because frankly it's not.
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May 28, 2016 15:24
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rudatron posted:You don't get to redefine terms referring to different things, such that they refer to the same thing. You still clearly aren't carefully reading what I write. At least now you're criticizing the argument I actually gave, but it's one that I've already addressed: Juffo-Wup posted:Here's a brief abstract discussion that I hope is illustrative: Imagine that, instead of the account I gave, I said something like "when people talk about 'value,' what they really mean is 'a banana.' So if you want to find out what the normative value of something is, check to see if it's a banana, because that's just all that value is." What would be your response to this be? I think it would not be the response you are now giving me; you wouldn't say 'but prove that values reduce to bananas!' Rather, I expect it would be something like "yes, if I accept your definition of 'value,' then obviously bananas are it. But that's just not what people are talking about when they talk about value, sorry.' The only differences between the banana account and mine are A.) the reduction base I'm proposing is more complex, and B.) I think I have compelling reasons to believe that the physical facts I'm talking about really are what normative language refers to; I don't think my proposed semantics of normativity is merely arbitrary. As I've said multiple times, reference is determined by casual history, which is to say that discovering the referent of a term is an empirical project. So to know what, for example, 'good' means, we should look for some set of phenomena that reliably cause representations and utterances of that sort. I think it's extremely plausible that the sorts of physical facts I'm talking about are the ones that best explain and predict normative discourse. There are two ways this could be wrong: either there is a unified explanation of that discourse, and I'm wrong about what it is, or else the moral discourse can only be explained by a highly disjunctive set of physical phenomena types that don't really form a coherent theory. On the first possibility, moral realism is true and I'm wrong in the particulars, and on the second, moral discourse isn't truth-apt.
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May 28, 2016 15:43
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rudatron posted:You don't get to redefine terms referring to different things, such that they refer to the same thing. You can't redefine up as down, or left as right, because that's nonsense. If they are the same, show that they are the same. If you cannot, accept that you cannot. Your entire argument is nothing but you restating, in different language, "I am a moral realist". Yes, we know, but why? You say this decomposition is possible. Yes, we know you say that, but why? There, you are silent.  I've stated as much before in this thread and the red herring's continued to flow, but I wish you luck. How anyone misses this or thinks otherwise is beyond me.
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May 28, 2016 15:45
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Another point: when the discussion was at the level of moral realism vs emotivism, you were right that the burden of proof lay on me to give a positive account. But now you're claiming that I'm wrong about what 'good' etc. mean. This isn't a difference between a positive and a negative claim, this is two distinct claims about the nature of reference. If you are sure that you know the referents of value terms, then you ought to have a positive account that establishes that claim.
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May 28, 2016 15:48
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What you're meaning is different from what you are saying. What you mean is that:Juffo-Wup posted:As I've said multiple times, empirical reference is determined by casual history, which is to say that discovering the empirical referent of a term is an empirical project. For the hundredth time, you assume that normative claims reduce to empirical facts before you even get started. I've pointed out multiple times that you are begging the question. You continue to ignore this. Juffo-Wup posted:There are two ways this could be wrong: either there is a unified explanation of that discourse, and I'm wrong about what it is, or else the moral discourse can only be explained by a highly disjunctive set of physical phenomena types that don't really form a coherent theory. On the first possibility, moral realism is true and I'm wrong in the particulars, and on the second, moral discourse isn't truth-apt. Again, the ways in which you claim you could be wrong are based on the assumption that normative claims reduce to empirical facts. You cannot assume that normative claims reduce to empirical facts as part of your argument to reach the conclusion that normative claims reduce to empirical facts. This is logic 101. Juffo-Wup posted:Another point: when the discussion was at the level of moral realism vs emotivism, you were right that the burden of proof lay on me to give a positive account. But now you're claiming that I'm wrong about what 'good' etc. mean. This isn't a difference between a positive and a negative claim, this is two distinct claims about the nature of reference. If you are sure that you know the referents of value terms, then you ought to have a positive account that establishes that claim. Do you believe that the burden of proof is no longer on you? You're saying that we have to agree with moral realism if we want to dispute your account of how it works. That's absurd.
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May 28, 2016 15:57
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Zaradis posted:For the hundredth time, you assume that normative claims reduce to empirical facts before you even get started. I've pointed out multiple times that you are begging the question. You continue to ignore this. The line you quoted for this response was about the nature of reference, but the response is not about reference. Edit: I mean, yes, in order to buy anything I'm saying, you have to believe that there is a fact of the matter about what people mean when they say things, that it is a discoverable fact, and that the relevant evidence for discovering that fact is not exhausted by what people intend to mean. I assumed I had made clear that that was my view, sorry if I didn't. Juffo-Wup fucked around with this message at 16:06 on May 28, 2016 |
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May 28, 2016 15:59
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Juffo-Wup posted:The line you quoted for this response was about the nature of reference, but the response is not about reference. It's about the conclusions you reach from your assumptions about all reference. Are you ever going to actually respond to all these criticisms of your argument or are you just going to keep telling people who disagree with you that they "just don't get it" in fancier philosophy words? Because your responses are making your argument seem weaker than it already is.
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May 28, 2016 16:06
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Zaradis posted:It's about the conclusions you reach from your assumptions about all reference. Are you ever going to actually respond to all these criticisms of your argument or are you just going to keep telling people who disagree with you that they "just don't get it" in fancier philosophy words? Because your responses are making your argument seem weaker than it already is. Is your primary issue with the justification of my account of reference, or with how I get from there to naturalism about normative facts?
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May 28, 2016 16:09
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Juffo-Wup posted:Is your primary issue with the justification of my account of reference, or with how I get from there to naturalism about normative facts? Another misdirection in attempt not to answer criticism, what a surprise. My issue is clearly with both of the problems mentioned, but it doesn't matter. I give up. This is not an argument, it's a trolling and I'm not going to help you succeed in it anymore. 
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May 28, 2016 16:16
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Juffo-Wup posted:Another point: when the discussion was at the level of moral realism vs emotivism, you were right that the burden of proof lay on me to give a positive account. But now you're claiming that I'm wrong about what 'good' etc. mean. This isn't a difference between a positive and a negative claim, this is two distinct claims about the nature of reference. If you are sure that you know the referents of value terms, then you ought to have a positive account that establishes that claim. rudatron fucked around with this message at 16:23 on May 28, 2016 |
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May 28, 2016 16:17
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If you think that, for normative claims to be true, they must be true at all times in all places for all creatures in all possible worlds, then yeah, I can see how you wouldn't be inclined to think that the things I'm talking about are normative facts. But that's an a priori assumption about what normative facts must look like if there are too be any. I don't share that intuition about normativity. Contingent facts are still facts, after all. You don't expect facts about physics or economics to be true in every possible world, I assume.
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May 28, 2016 16:29
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Conversely, the claim that they are or can be specific would also be an a priori claim, that you are magicking out of thin air. More importantly, you haven't answered my question: on what basis are you excluded what you decide to exclude? Because it's inconvenient for you? That's not reasonable, that's the height of unreasonability. Moreover, if your 'objective' morality is now contingent, there is no 'invariant factor' to it, then doesn't that totally undermine it's utility you were describing before, about contradictions?
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May 28, 2016 16:33
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