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My philosophical experience consists of one high school level philosophy course from over a decade ago and some random internet surfing, so tell me if I'm talking complete nonsense. Even calling me a dabbler in philosophy would be an insult to actual dabblers in philosophy. Is this what is being argued about? I'm just trying to follow the conversation. -Assuming we are talking about the case where physical universe exists and has caused humanity to exist. -Assuming morality is a phenomena of human thought, that humans experience. -Assuming human experience is somehow linked to their physical interaction with their environment in the physical universe. ->Morality as a phenomenon is somehow linked to the physical interactions of humans with their environment. -Assuming that the general scientific consensus is reasonably true, and at least some kind of fundamental laws of nature apply to the universe. -Assuming that humans interact physically with their environment according to those laws. -Assuming that all humans are subject to the same laws of nature. ->Morality as a phenomena can be reduced to the physical laws that govern the interactions of humans with their environment. -->The "objective moral truth" if it can be called such is the same as the universal laws of nature, ie. whatever the scientific "theory of everything" ends up being, if we ever find it. --->All humans are applying the same "moral truth" of "theory of everything" to their current subjective situation. ---->All human moral judgements are equally right/valid in their current subjective situation via the "moral truth" of "theory of everything". ----->We're back to all morality being subjective? I've probably made a mistake in my logic chain somewhere since this is the first time I've tried to unpack a philosophical argument in text like this, so tell me if I'm wrong anywhere?
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May 28, 2016 16:41
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Juffo-Wup posted:I didn't totally follow these steps. I think that normative facts are a proper subset of all the physical facts, not that they're coextensive with the whole truth about the universe. -Assuming the previous argument. -Assuming the universe is complex interconnected system governed by fundamental laws of nature. ->The fundamental laws of nature give rise to all phenomena that exist in the universe by cascading upwards into more abstract and more contingent laws of nature, like for example whatever subset of those more abstract and more contingent laws of nature end up being responsible for governing human environmental interaction, thought and value/moral judgements. (psychology, neuroscience, something else?) Does that work?
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May 28, 2016 17:09
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Juffo-Wup posted:I'm not totally sure, but I think I'm with you. So how do we get from there to the conclusion that people can't be mistaken about normative matters? If we're studying morality from empirical point of view, then it all reduces down to whatever is physically happening in our nervous system to cause us to experience morality. One cannot know things that one doesn't know and having perfect knowledge about a situation is practically impossible. So any moral decision an individual makes is always valid as far as they know. They might act differently with more information but they're still doing what they think is right, which is explained by how their nervous system works, ie. the laws of nature. From what I managed to gather you're trying to derive objective morality from neuroscientific basis, by looking at what norms people agree on, why they do so and why human brains work in such a way that they seem to agree on them. But whatever morality you derive from that will always depend on what your sample population is. So the only way of getting anything resembling objective morality from that is either by just reducing that objective morality to the laws of nature and letting emergent behaviour of the system loose, which results in every individual moral actor doing their own thing. Or using every moral actor in the entire universe across all space and time, past and future as the sample population. Otherwise the best theory of morality one can get is just another contingent abstraction of the fundamental laws of nature which might tells us what things and norms a given population values and why they do so, but has nothing to say on whether those valuations are correct. Except in the trivial sense that populations like individuals are complex systems and act like they act because that's how the system works. So just like every moral action an individual takes is valid as far as they know, so is every moral action a population takes valid as far as that population collectively knows. Also feel free to tell me if I'm writing nonsense. I'm making things up and refining my thoughts as I go, so a lot of this is still somewhat half baked.
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May 29, 2016 01:11
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Juffo-Wup posted:I wouldn't say that I'm depending entirely on what norms people agree on, or would be inclined to endorse, or what-have-you. That kind of conscious report is certainly evidence of the sort of thing I'm interested in, but it also certainly is not decisive. Consider: setting morality aside, humans make normatively valenced decisions all the time. Any decision a person makes which they regard as being directed toward the improvement of their life is such a decision. Given their beliefs about the world at the time of that action, that action indicates something that they valued, which may or may not be something they would consciously report valuing. This kind of goal-directed behavior, which includes verbal and linguistic behavior, is taking place constantly all over the world. I'd agree that you could probably find some such set of values for any given population and that that set of values probably counts as objective as far as that population is concerned. But those values are only how the given complex population system expresses the fundamental laws of nature given their current situation. Given perfect knowledge of a sample system (universe), one could hypothetically arrive at an equation for the phenomena that causes some sample population to experience the thing that they tend to call value, from first principles based on nothing but the fundamental laws of that system and enough time/computing power to crunch the numbers. But if that counts as objective value, and I can see that arguably it does, at least so far as it is an expression describing value that was arrived at with objective means. Then it can obviously be reduced down further to eliminate contingencies based on the sample population and their situation, and you will eventually arrive back at the sample system (universe) and it's fundamental laws. So I basically agree with you if you define objective value as "the goal that a given sample population of a given system works towards with the knowledge they have to guide them", but that expression of objective value is contingent at least on the system, the sample population and the knowledge of their situation being fed into the expression as inputs, before it's going to give any answer at all, and all that it gives as an answer is a list of things that the sample population values. That list will change according to what sample population and knowledge is being fed into that expression. If one feeds it the inputs of "the universe", "humanity" and "perfect knowledge of the situation of humanity" it will return what you've been arguing for. If one feeds it the inputs of "the universe", "the cells of a single human individual" and "that individual's limited knowledge about their own situation" then that same expression of objective value is going to return a list of that single individual's subjective values. So one might as well just declare the universe and it's laws of nature as the only objective value because they are the only things in the "equation of objective value" that aren't contingent on being given a specific sample population. And even that is assuming that "the universe" stays constant. edit: And given that determining what that "equation of objective value" is requires one to have perfect knowledge of the sample universe and it's laws of nature and a practically infinite amount of time and/or computing power at their disposal, it's going to require a scientist with powers equivalent to those of God's to actually determine, so I'd guess that is how God would determine the objective values of the universe, if it didn't already bake them in in the design phase of the creation of the universe. 
Oo Koo fucked around with this message at 11:59 on May 29, 2016 |
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May 29, 2016 11:45
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Juffo-Wup posted:I think your concern here is something like: if value facts are just physical facts, then there can be no independent science of normativity, since it's all just the laws of fundamental physics with a layer of abstraction on top. I think this is incorrect: particular instantiations of (a.k.a 'token') normative facts are identical to sets of token physical facts, but types of normative states of affairs are not reducible to types of physical states of affairs, because of multiple realizability. For detailed arguments to this effect, see Fodor's Special Sciences, which is also just a really good paper. I skimmed through the paper and another refutation paper that appeared on the same google search, and I'm not buying that multiple realization is a problem for reduction. We're ultimately talking about processes happening in complex systems and different processes can appear similar even they're completely different. A given computer program can be programmed in an infinite number of ways and the flow of water and the flow of electricity can appear similar if looked at from the right perspective. Every boiling pot of water has a different state of matter and energy. Physics is full of generalizations about physical processes that can be realized in an infinte number of ways. One absolutely might derive an abstract science of ethics that works and is practical from neuroscience, and it will probably be actually possible to achieve unlike trying to derive it from fundamental physics and first principles but like all scientific fields it will only apply and hold truth value when used in the correct context. One doesn't use classical mechanics to study the brain, one doesn't use thermodynamics to build a house, one doesn't use quantum mechanics to design a refrigerator and one doesn't use neuroscience to interpret the results of the large hadron collider. And so on. Edit: Actually one might use thermodynamics when dealing with the insulation and heating systems of the house, but I hope everyone gets what I meant. Oo Koo fucked around with this message at 16:49 on May 29, 2016 |
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May 29, 2016 16:44
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