I have never been very comfortable with the truce in the science vs religion wars established by Stephan Jay Gould'sNon-Overlapping Magisteria even though I appreciate the time it buys for heads to cool.
I was particularly disappointed with the National Academy of Sciences adoption of the policy in 1999 which was cited as a factor in the Dover decision. Ken Miller is probably NOMA's best representative and his perspective has been influential in both the Dover decision and the uneasy detente (insofar as there is one) here at Hatrack.
I never believed that NOMA actually settled anything making it inevitable that the war would heat up again. And if it were to heat up over NOMA itself then a future detente would seem unlikely.
The matter was then taken up by The Reality Club at Edge with people like Lawrence Krauss, Lisa Randall, Dan Dennett, Lee Smolin, Steven Pinker, Sam Harris and even Karl Giberson and Ken Miller weighing in.
Even though I am in the atheist camp, I am often disappointed in the level of discourse that my 'side' engages in. Coyne's article was no exception. It is a long piece and I do think it gets better near the end. But much of it misses the mark and employs poor examples which allows for contrary views to make a show of slicing away lots of fat while ignoring what meat there actually is.
I think we are still waiting for some devastating philosopher to really dismantle NOMA but there was a really succinct response from Michael Shermer that I thought was somewhat pithy:
quote:I don't think a union between science and religion is possible for a logical reason, but by this same logic I conclude that science cannot contradict religion. Here's why: A is A. Reality is real. To attempt to use nature to prove the supernatural is a violation of A is A. It is an attempt to make reality unreal. A cannot also be non-A. Nature cannot also be non-Nature. Naturalism cannot also be supernaturalism.
Posted by Lisa (Member # 8384) on :
That only works if what is termed "supernatural" or "unreal" really isn't part of reality. Right now, for example, many people consider telepathy to be unreal. Given that view, what Shermer wrote could be used to say that using science to determine the reality of telepathy is a waste of time. But if telepathy happens to be real, what Shermer says wouldn't apply.
Basically, the Shermer quote is very much like "A is A". It's a tautology. "That which is not real is not real". Well... duh.
Btw, I remember a guy on an Objectivist newsgroup back in the mid-late 90s whose name was Brad Aisa. He actually changed his last name so that it said "A is A".
Posted by JonHecht (Member # 9712) on :
I'd agree with that reasoning that correct science and correct religion cannot contradict. Science and religion do rely on different methods of reasoning, so it should be no surprise that they often appear to contradict one another. But both are attempting to get an accurate picture of reality, and reality is reality. So if they disagree, one or both of the two is in some way mistaken.
I think that to separate them, intellectually, into two separate spheres is a profound mistake that leads to very real problems on a cultural level. That's because inevitably, since both are talking about the exact same reality, the implications of Science and Religion are going to come into direct conflict, on real issues that apply to real people. When that happens, individuals and cultures are either going to resolve that conflict in either a rational or irrational way. If the two have been divided intellectually into separate magisteria, the rational path is essentially blocked. That leaves only the irrational options - commonly including wholely rejecting one source of information in favor of the other. It's that line of thinking that leads to some of the major underlying philosophical problems the world faces right now - fundamentalist extremism, the "tyranny of relativism" that has the Catholic Church so upset, consumerism and materialism, etc.
Posted by natural_mystic (Member # 11760) on :
quote:Originally posted by Tresopax: It's that line of thinking that leads to some of the major underlying philosophical problems the world faces right now - fundamentalist extremism, the "tyranny of relativism" that has the Catholic Church so upset, consumerism and materialism, etc.
I don't think any of these are derived from NOMA. I would be interesting in hearing you argue this claim.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
I'm with Heinlein (and apparently Lisa) on this: "Supernatural is a null word". Either a thing exists or it does not. If it exists, it can be studied. Science is good at that. If it does not exist, science can show that it doesn't, and then you're done. (99% confidence, and so on. I'm not getting into the tiresome business of "can't prove a negative"; you can't prove anything, but there's such a thing as the preponderance of the evidence.) What does the supernatural look like, anyway?
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:Science and religion do rely on different methods of reasoning,
Indeed they do. Happily, there is no contradiction: Only one of these methods gives verifiably correct answers, so the other can be discarded without qualms.
Posted by swbarnes2 (Member # 10225) on :
quote:Originally posted by Tresopax: I'd agree with that reasoning that correct science and correct religion cannot contradict.
Okay...so how does one tell the difference between "correct" religion, and "incorrect" religion?
If my religion tells me that I will survive drinking Draino if my faith is strong enough, is that "correct" religion, or not? How do I figure this out?
If my religion tells me that since you are a heretic, it is better for both you and others if I kill you before you poison the minds of others, is that a "correct" religion, or not? How does one know?
Or is the rule "if Tresopax believes, it's correct, if he doesn't, then it's not"?
quote:I think that to separate them, intellectually, into two separate spheres is a profound mistake that leads to very real problems on a cultural level. That's because inevitably, since both are talking about the exact same reality, the implications of Science and Religion are going to come into direct conflict, on real issues that apply to real people. When that happens, individuals and cultures are either going to resolve that conflict in either a rational or irrational way. If the two have been divided intellectually into separate magisteria, the rational path is essentially blocked.
How is that so? Either you can consult reality, and determine which actually matches reality, or you can't.
If you can, then you check reality. If you can't check reality, then you just make up whatever you like, and kill everyone who disagrees. (All the while saying "It's okay, I'm using my personal judgement", right?)
I think the rational path is quite clear here.
quote:That leaves only the irrational options - commonly including wholely rejecting one source of information in favor of the other.
No, sorry. It's not irrational at all to reject the source of information that can't be reality-checked in favor of the one that can.
It's actually a pretty smart idea.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
This post puts it very well.
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
quote:
quote: Originally posted by Tresopax: It's that line of thinking that leads to some of the major underlying philosophical problems the world faces right now - fundamentalist extremism, the "tyranny of relativism" that has the Catholic Church so upset, consumerism and materialism, etc.
I don't think any of these are derived from NOMA. I would be interesting in hearing you argue this claim.
I think all of the things I listed stem, at least in some part, from an inability to find an answer to the question of "what is meaningful/important?" Religions can answer these questions, but without connecting their answers to facts about reality, we can't figure out which religious answers are best or how to apply religious answers to our actions. Science, by itself, can't answer the question at all, by definion. That means that working independently, neither "magisteria" can solve the problem. To futher complicate things, our secular governments are typically expected to base decisions solely on Science, while individuals are often expected to base decisions more on Religion.
I think the result is confusion, and the problems I listed above. Materialism/consumerism is sort of a default; if we don't know how to answer the question of what matters, we tend to just go after our most basic instincts, which means material pleasures. Fundamentalism comes as an extreme reaction to that default, where people realize something is way off, and that religion somehow has the answer.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:Religions can answer these questions.
No, they can't. Or, more accurately, they do give answers to such questions but their answers are no better than what you get from just thinking about the dang question for two minutes instead of going about looking for the Wisdom of the ancients. I'm reminded of the Shakespeare bit that OSC has Peter quote in 'Children of the Mind':
- I can call spirits from the vasty deep! - Why, so can I, or so can any man. But can you make them come, when you do call?
Religion can answer questions about the vasty deep! Well, so can I, or so can any man. But what makes your answer any damn good?
Posted by natural_mystic (Member # 11760) on :
quote:Originally posted by Tresopax: I think all of the things I listed stem, at least in some part, from an inability to find an answer to the question of "what is meaningful/important?" Religions can answer these questions, but without connecting their answers to facts about reality, we can't figure out which religious answers are best or how to apply religious answers to our actions. Science, by itself, can't answer the question at all, by definion. That means that working independently, neither "magisteria" can solve the problem. To futher complicate things, our secular governments are typically expected to base decisions solely on Science, while individuals are often expected to base decisions more on Religion.
I think the result is confusion, and the problems I listed above. Materialism/consumerism is sort of a default; if we don't know how to answer the question of what matters, we tend to just go after our most basic instincts, which means material pleasures. Fundamentalism comes as an extreme reaction to that default, where people realize something is way off, and that religion somehow has the answer.
1)Religion can provide an answer to such questions but does a poor job of explaining why one should accept that answer. 2)I don't really understand what you mean here: "but without connecting their answers to facts about reality, we can't figure out which religious answers are best or how to apply religious answers to our actions." Please elaborate. An example would help.
The gist of your argument seems to be that if people were not confused by the apparent competition and/or incompatibility of science and religion-acceptable-to-Tresopax (RATT), they would choose to follow RATT in preference to consumerism, extremism etc.
I doubt this is true.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
I think its funny that Gould gets credit for NOMA. A side from naming it, nothing he said on the subject was at all novel.
The fact of the matter is that many people have had profound spiritual experiences. It isn't simply about what we've been taught at church or read in a sacred text. For some of at least, spiritual experiences are the most powerful, life and mind altering experiences we have. If you aren't one of them, then they are easy to dismiss. But what you, KOM are asking, is for me to reject the most powerful thing I've ever experience as imaginary?
I am reminded of a part in the movie a beautiful mind when the doctor tries to explain what its like for a schizophrenic person to accept that they are hallucinating. Imagine how difficult it would be to accept that some of your closest friends or companions weren't merely dead or gone but never actually existed.
Even if you believe that everyone who has had a profound spiritual experience is suffering from some sort of insanity, you should be able to recognize how difficult it would be for people to accept that the most powerful experience of their life wasn't real or meaningful. And the fact of the matter is that most religious people so no other outward signs of mental illness.
When people like you and Dawkins insist that people must either reject science or religion, you are asking people who have had profound spiritual experiences to either reject their own personal and powerful experiences or to accept scientific theories based on someone elses observations. Is it at all surprising that this pushes people to reject science?
Is that so difficult to accept and understand.
What NOMA offers is a compromise that allows people to believe in their own powerful experiences and still accept science as a way of understanding physical reality. Why do you find that objectionable?
Posted by advice for robots (Member # 2544) on :
quote:Originally posted by King of Men:
quote:Religions can answer these questions.
No, they can't. Or, more accurately, they do give answers to such questions but their answers are no better than what you get from just thinking about the dang question for two minutes instead of going about looking for the Wisdom of the ancients. I'm reminded of the Shakespeare bit that OSC has Peter quote in 'Children of the Mind':
- I can call spirits from the vasty deep! - Why, so can I, or so can any man. But can you make them come, when you do call?
Religion can answer questions about the vasty deep! Well, so can I, or so can any man. But what makes your answer any damn good?
So anything anybody needs to know can be answered by science. If it can't be answered by science, then it doesn't exist. And anytime anybody wants to know "why," a couple of minutes of thought should be all they need.
Welcome to 1984.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:But what you, KOM, are asking, is for me to reject the most powerful thing I've ever experienced as imaginary.
In a word, yes. If there is no independent evidence of your dream/vision/experience, then you should not accept its premises as true. Or you end up believing the little voices that tell you not to take the pills because they'll interfere with the functioning of your tinfoil hat and allow the aliens to take over your brain.
quote:What NOMA offers is a compromise that allows people to believe in their own powerful experiences and still accept science as a way of understanding physical reality.
I rephrase: "NOMA allows people to remain irrational while still benefiting from the rationality of scientists". I do not think this is a good thing.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:And anytime anybody wants to know "why," a couple of minutes of thought should be all they need.
That is not what I said. What I said is that the two minutes you dismiss would still be better than the instant retreat to religion, which, please notice, takes no thought at all. 2 minutes is better than zero minutes.
Posted by advice for robots (Member # 2544) on :
Could you be more arrogant?
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by King of Men: [QB]
quote:But what you, KOM, are asking, is for me to reject the most powerful thing I've ever experienced as imaginary.
In a word, yes. If there is no independent evidence of your dream/vision/experience, then you should not accept its premises as true. Or you end up believing the little voices that tell you not to take the pills because they'll interfere with the functioning of your tinfoil hat and allow the aliens to take over your brain.
Show me some evidence to support that premise. There are billions of people around the world who have had profound life altering spiritual experiences. Show me some evidence that would support the premise that spirituality leads to a greater probability of severe mental illness. You are the scientist. If there isn't objective data to support that people who have spiritual experiences are likely to end up displaying other symptoms of insanity -- then your hypothesis is fundamentally flawed.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Certainly. How arrogant would you like me to be? Arrogant enough to believe that an accusation of arrogance is a reasonable rebuttal to the statement "2 > 0", perhaps?
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:Show me some evidence that would support the premise that spirituality leads to a greater probability of severe mental illness.
Certainly. Second result on my first Google search. But this is not actually the point I was trying to make. Rather my point is that there is nothing to distinguish belief in the premises of one's dream/visions/whatever, from belief in the little voices talking about the pills, other than that the first is socially acceptable and the second isn't. A rational society would lock up both kinds of believers, or neither.
Posted by Strider (Member # 1807) on :
Thanks for posting this Orlox. I love Edge. I hadn't seen this article, but the star studded cast of responders is more than enough to get me to read it. Later when i have more time.
The Reality Club is great. Ramachandran had a new article on self awareness last month and a handful also chimed in.
Also, if you're not familiar with The Science Network's Beyond Belief conference I think it'd be right up your alley Orlox. Here's a link to the first one three years ago. I'm sure you can find the others if you enjoy that. Warning, they're long, there is probably like 15 hours of video for each conference.
Posted by scifibum (Member # 7625) on :
quote:...there is nothing to distinguish belief in the premises of one's dream/visions/whatever, from belief in the little voices talking about the pills, other than that the first is socially acceptable and the second isn't.
This isn't true. Indoctrination and social influence are both major factors in the former.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
quote:Originally posted by King of Men:
quote:Science and religion do rely on different methods of reasoning,
Indeed they do. Happily, there is no contradiction: Only one of these methods gives verifiably correct answers, so the other can be discarded without qualms.
SO can your opinion on most of these matter, but yet you still post.
Posted by advice for robots (Member # 2544) on :
quote:Originally posted by King of Men: Certainly. How arrogant would you like me to be? Arrogant enough to believe that an accusation of arrogance is a reasonable rebuttal to the statement "2 > 0", perhaps?
It wasn't a rebuttal. I was just saying you were being especially arrogant.
You are essentially saying that your way of thinking is the only way to think.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:n a word, yes. If there is no independent evidence of your dream/vision/experience, then you should not accept its premises as true. Or you end up believing the little voices that tell you not to take the pills because they'll interfere with the functioning of your tinfoil hat and allow the aliens to take over your brain.
I just did a quick pubmed search on religion and Schizophenia and another on Religion and mental illness. Based on my quick review of this subject, the modern scientific data on the subject does note support the idea of a connection between spirituality, religiosity and any pathological behavior associated with mental illness. In fact, traditional societies with a higher emphasis on spirituality and religion have lower rates of mental illness and higher rates of recovery among those who suffer from mental illness. Furthermore, many forms of spirituality and religion have positive influence in the treatment of mental illness.
I have yet to find any scientific evidence to support a claim that there is a connection between religiosity and pathological mental states.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by King of Men:
quote:Show me some evidence that would support the premise that spirituality leads to a greater probability of severe mental illness.
Certainly. Second result on my first Google search. But this is not actually the point I was trying to make. Rather my point is that there is nothing to distinguish belief in the premises of one's dream/visions/whatever, from belief in the little voices talking about the pills, other than that the first is socially acceptable and the second isn't. A rational society would lock up both kinds of believers, or neither.
Your link leads me to a bad page. At any rate, I found hundreds of scientific studies in pub med that contradict your conclusion.
Posted by scifibum (Member # 7625) on :
quote:You are essentially saying that your way of thinking is the only way to think.
Not at all. That would clearly be false to fact. Rather it is the only way to think which gives correct results.
quote:It wasn't a rebuttal.
You're quite right. Would you like to give one?
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:This isn't true. Indoctrination and social influence are both major factors in the former.
I trust you are not advancing these as points in religion's favour, though.
Posted by scifibum (Member # 7625) on :
quote:Originally posted by King of Men:
quote:This isn't true. Indoctrination and social influence are both major factors in the former.
I trust you are not advancing these as points in religion's favour, though.
They are good reasons not to compare religion and mental illness. I don't think it helps religion beyond that though.
Posted by advice for robots (Member # 2544) on :
quote:Originally posted by King of Men:
quote:You are essentially saying that your way of thinking is the only way to think.
Not at all. That would clearly be false to fact. Rather it is the only way to think which gives correct results.
And therefore the only way of thinking that's worth anything.
Posted by scifibum (Member # 7625) on :
Correctness might have some objective meaning. Worth, less so.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
For the article KOM linked.
quote:In a recent review of the research literature Batson et al. (1993) listed seven different measures of mental health and personality: absence of mental illness, appropriate social behavior, freedom from worry and guilt, personal competence and control, self-acceptance or self-actualization, unification and organization, openmindedness and flexibility. From literature search from the last century through 1991 they made a summary report of 115 findings based on 91 different studies that provided empirical evidence of the relationships to religiousness. They concluded that forty-seven findings showed a negative relationship, 37 a positive relationship, and 3 1 no relationship between religiousness and positive measures of mental health and personality. They found that correlations were rarely above 0.20 accounting for less than five percent of the variance in the measures of mental health and personality.
If you are trying to persuade me that my personal profound religious experiences are evidence of mental illness and likely to lead to pathological behavior, you are going to have to do a lot better than this.
Based on your own link, 77% of the scientific studies published over a 100 year period found that religiousity was either anti-correlated with mental illness or uncorrelated. That's pretty damning to your hypothesis.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
It would be most interesting to see those correlations as a function of year published; personally I would not have included results from before 1950 or so. In any case, as I pointed out, this is not the actual point I was making.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:Originally posted by advice for robots:
quote:Originally posted by King of Men:
quote:You are essentially saying that your way of thinking is the only way to think.
Not at all. That would clearly be false to fact. Rather it is the only way to think which gives correct results.
And therefore the only way of thinking that's worth anything.
Yes?
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
KOM,
I've now read the full article. It attempts to further clarify the issue by looking at different aspects of religiosity and their relationship to mental illness. It particularly focuses on intrinsic vs extrinsic religiosity.
quote:The person scoring highly on the Intrinsic Scale has his Christian belief as the meaning and the goal for his whole life. His religion is integrated in his personality. The intrinsically oriented person lives his religion. The person scoring highly on the Extrinsic Scale has his religion not so integrated in his personality and his life. For him religion is an instrumental and utilitarian means. He uses his religion to get assurance, consolation, relief and social acceptance, and may compromise with his religion in order to promote his social and economic interests.
The study found only one statistically significant (p<0.01,c>0.12) correlation between a religious factor and mental illness, that was an 0.12 correlation between personal extrinisicness and obsessive behavior. Intrinsic religiosity was not correlated with any indicator of mental illness.
I've scanned through the current publications in pubmed and have yet to find any current (or historic) scientific support for your hypothesis that there is even a correlation let alone a causal relationship between spirituality and psychosis, included the evidence you cited.
Face it, based on the scientific evidence your hypothesis should be rejected.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:. But this is not actually the point I was trying to make. Rather my point is that there is nothing to distinguish belief in the premises of one's dream/visions/whatever, from belief in the little voices talking about the pills, other than that the first is socially acceptable and the second isn't. A rational society would lock up both kinds of believers, or neither.
This is where you are wrong. Its social acceptable to believe you've had personal experiences because the overwhelming majority of people who claim to have had them do not exhibit any pathological behavioral patterns. They are able to hold jobs, maintain relationships with other people and do all the things necessary to function as a human being. People who hear voices tell them to take pills, aren't. That difference is immediately observable if you have ever dealt with someone suffering from severe mental illness and has been quantified by numerous objective measures discussed in the psychological literature. The two are without question distinguishable.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
I have already agreed to this. I have also pointed out that you misunderstood my point, and have consequently spent at least an hour attacking a causation I did not intend to defend. Would you please reread my last three posts on the subject?
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Actually, on second thought I will defend (weakly) the causation, because the studies you quote are not necessarily refuting it. The studies are looking at religiosity, whose markers are taken to be things like church attendance, self-reported beliefs, and such. But that is not the same thing as belief in the validity of visions, or dreams, or whatever we are to call these spiritual experience thingies.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:This is where you are wrong. It's socially acceptable to believe you've had personal experiences because the overwhelming majority of people who claim to have had them do not exhibit any pathological behavioral patterns.
Apart from believing things which are obviously not true, spending large amounts of time in rituals designed around these beliefs, and giving money to charlatans, you mean? Not to mention wasting a lot of time arguing on the Internets.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
Seems like a tempest in a teapot, may I remind everyone how this started.
quote:Originally posted by King of Men: But this is not actually the point I was trying to make. Rather my point is that there is nothing to distinguish belief in the premises of one's dream/visions/whatever, from belief in the little voices talking about the pills, other than that the first is socially acceptable and the second isn't. A rational society would lock up both kinds of believers, or neither.
See, the point is not particularly that religion leads to mental illness, but that religion is functionally largely similar to mental illness.
In other words, from our perspective whether a guy comes up to us saying that he's hearing Napoleon or that he's hearing God via "profound spiritual experiences," we're going to treat the two of you the same. Lots of space and maybe a tighter grip on the wallet and cellphone.
Of course, this isn't even unique to us. I don't think many theists would be much more receptive to say, a scientologist or some other cultist.
So in reality, this isn't even a controversial stance, merely an impolite stance to voice out (in this culture anyways).
Posted by scifibum (Member # 7625) on :
Again, Mucus, let me point out that there's a big difference between most religious believers and someone who's hearing Napoleon. One is likely to have been taught to seek and perceive religious experience and the other is likely to have a much more spontaneous aberration.
Put another way, religious experience is normal, and hearing Napoleon is not. Because of that, the comparison is offensive, even from my (currently) non-religious perspective. If anything it reduces the likelihood of useful communication.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
I don't know why thats compelling to you. I'm not going to be any more comfortable with a guy who claims to be hearing Napoleon if he can produce a high-school certificate that shows thats what he was brought up to believe. In fact, that may be even more disturbing.
Besides, "normal" is relative. Not all of us come from cultures where religious experience is the norm. Also, you seem to implying that we should treat the guy who hears Napoleon better if has a lot of friends that hear the same thing. That seems pretty inequitable to me. We shouldn't weigh how nicely we treat people who hear voices based on how many other people hear the same voices.
Posted by scifibum (Member # 7625) on :
"Besides, "normal" is relative."
But normal is what distinguishes mental illness from mental health.
Rabbit put it in very stark terms. What percentage of Napoleon's current audience can hold down a job and otherwise be a productive member of society?
Posted by natural_mystic (Member # 11760) on :
There are also degrees of religious experience e.g. believing that you see Jesus standing next to you is different from reading the Bible and experiencing a feeling of well-being.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Well, let's put it like this: If there are people out there who are indeed able to hear Napoleon, but are still sufficiently attached to reality that they are able to hold down a job, just how likely are they to tell you (as opposed to their therapist) about their hallucinations? I would not be at all surprised to learn that there are many people getting therapy or medication for auditory hallucinations, who are still functioning normally in their jobs. But they are quite unlikely to speak out loud about their experiences, for the aforementioned reasons of social acceptability.
Posted by natural_mystic (Member # 11760) on :
Do you have any reason to suspect that there are such people around?
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by King of Men: Actually, on second thought I will defend (weakly) the causation, because the studies you quote are not necessarily refuting it. The studies are looking at religiosity, whose markers are taken to be things like church attendance, self-reported beliefs, and such. But that is not the same thing as belief in the validity of visions, or dreams, or whatever we are to call these spiritual experience thingies.
Wrong. Read the studies. If you arrogantly proclaim your science as the only valid route to knowledge and understanding, you better be able to back up your claims with real scientific data.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by Mucus: Seems like a tempest in a teapot, may I remind everyone how this started.
quote:Originally posted by King of Men: But this is not actually the point I was trying to make. Rather my point is that there is nothing to distinguish belief in the premises of one's dream/visions/whatever, from belief in the little voices talking about the pills, other than that the first is socially acceptable and the second isn't. A rational society would lock up both kinds of believers, or neither.
See, the point is not particularly that religion leads to mental illness, but that religion is functionally largely similar to mental illness.
In other words, from our perspective whether a guy comes up to us saying that he's hearing Napoleon or that he's hearing God via "profound spiritual experiences," we're going to treat the two of you the same. Lots of space and maybe a tighter grip on the wallet and cellphone.
Of course, this isn't even unique to us. I don't think many theists would be much more receptive to say, a scientologist or some other cultist.
So in reality, this isn't even a controversial stance, merely an impolite stance to voice out (in this culture anyways).
Have you ever actually dealt with someone who is Schizophrenic? Seriously, I can't see how anyone who has experience dealing with someone suffering from severe mental illness could claim with a straight face that there is no real difference between people the hundreds of millions of people who believe they have had profound spiritual experiences and those who are suffering from Schizophrenia. I'm not even going to buy that you actually react to the crazy guy on the street who thinks he is Napolean exactly the same way you react to the Dalai Lama or the Pope. If you seriously can't see any significant difference between the homeless guy babbling on the street corner about how he is God and the Mormon missionary who knocks on your door and tells you how God has answered his prayer, you have some sort of social developmental disorder.
The differences are enormous, documented, quantified and have been studied scientifically.
If your claim is that you have no more reason to believe the Mormon missionary than you do the Schizophrenic on the street corner, I will agree. But I've never asked you to do that. What I and others have asked is that you believe and respect that many religious people who claim to have had spiritual experiences have in fact experienced something very powerful that is not a sign of mental inferiority.
We certainly do not have any consensus, scientific or religious, on the cause of spiritual experiences. What we do know from established facts is
1. that spiritual experience are not the product of ignorance, low intelligence, poor reasoning skills or mental illness.
2. that having a spiritual experience does not make people less able to function productively in society, more prone to be swindled, less able to maintain healthy relationships with other people, or more likely to participate in any behavior established to be anti-social or self-destructive.
3. People who have had these experiences frequently describe them as life altering and among the most powerful of human experiences
What I have claimed is it is unreasonable to expect the hundreds of millions of people who show no signs of any pathologies indicative of mental illness but who have had powerful, profound spiritual experiences to reject those experiences in favor of science.
If you want to persuade people that science is valid, you must first persuade them that it is consistent with their own personal powerful experiences. You can't expect people to reject their profound personal experiences as irrelevant fantasy simply because you can't reproduce them in a controlled environment.
[ February 25, 2009, 09:05 PM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
Posted by Jhai (Member # 5633) on :
I think it's easier to hold down a job if the imaginary voice that talks to you is widely acknowledge as real by the society around you - people who talk about what Napoleon told them to do are called "mentally ill" in America; people who talk about what God told them to do are called, among other things, "Mr. President".
Really I think the whole discussion around whether religion or "religiosity" counts as a mental illness is a dead end. It wasn't that long ago that being gay was considered a psychological disorder.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
quote:Originally posted by scifibum: "Besides, "normal" is relative."
But normal is what distinguishes mental illness from mental health.
I don't accept that because not only does "normal" change from country to country but it changes from time to time.
Homosexuality used to be classified as a mental illness, its not now. That doesn't mean that it used to *actually* be a mental illness.
Rather, there are actual mental illnesses and while our perception of what is or isn't is affected by the surrounding culture, it doesn't mean that what actually IS a mental illness changes.
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: If you seriously can't see any significant difference between the homeless guy babbling on the street corner about how he is God and the Mormon missionary who knocks on your door and tells you how God has answered his prayer, you have some sort of social developmental disorder.
*shrug* IF we're going to make this personal, I would suggest that your insistence that its OK to hear voices means that this conversation is striking rather close to home for you and you may wish to get checked out.
But I'm not making it personal. I'm just saying that from the point of an atheist, we don't believe in any god. Period. There's not a lot of wiggle room. Whether a guy comes up to us in a nicely starched shirt and claims he can hear god or we hear see a homeless guy that claims the same, its the same conclusion in both cases. The voices are imaginary. Whether we actually announce that loudly or not, thats all encapsulated in the very title of atheist.
Now, maybe the homeless guy who thinks he is god has other issues that should make us more wary of him rather than a clean-cut missionary. Sure. But thats not countering my original assertion.
My original assertion was:
quote: In other words, from our perspective whether a guy comes up to us saying that he's hearing Napoleon or that he's hearing God via "profound spiritual experiences," we're going to treat the two of you the same. Lots of space and maybe a tighter grip on the wallet and cellphone.
In other words, if the two people are otherwise equal, I have to treat the two of them the same regardless of who they hear. That doesn't mean I have to treat the two of them the same if they *aren't* otherwise equal. I'm more fearful of the guy who hears Napoleon if he's drunk, seems violent, or is physically diseased. I'm more fearful of the guy who hears god if he has a curious interest in flight manuals or if he's showing me a map of abortion clinics. In those two cases, they simply aren't otherwise equal.
And sure, maybe its offensive to say it out loud.
But at least we're honest about it because in reality, theists don't get terribly concerned about how they treat each other. Most people don't quibble over whether its "offensive" to say that what other people hear is imaginary. At best, they simply laugh at Scientology or Mormonism as simply being absurd and silly (see the TED thread). At worst, they claim that the other is simply evil (see like any Lisa thread about Muslims).
Subsequently, why atheists get special grief for pretty much stating what atheism means is beyond me.
Posted by orlox (Member # 2392) on :
JonHecht: You may have to clobber me. I am not sure that A is A is exactly the same formulation as A=B although the form is similar. Also, there are doubtless connections with dualism but I am not clear exactly how you see them manifest.
Generally, I see Descartes as a bait-and-switch argument perpetuated these days by Chalmers etc. Even if I was to concede the theoretical possibility that an evil genius could deceive me into believing that I had a body even though I did not, I do not have to concede that he could do so in non-material ways. Conceding the evil genius as supernatural would also void the first argument that "I still could not be mistaken in thinking that I have the thoughts I do".
Strider: Thanks! Great links!
Overcoming Bias is always good too.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:1. that spiritual experience are not the product of ignorance, low intelligence, poor reasoning skills or mental illness.
Neither are dreams. That is not a good reason to trust their content.
quote:2. that having a spiritual experience does not make people less able to function productively in society, more prone to be swindled, less able to maintain healthy relationships with other people, or more likely to participate in any behavior established to be anti-social or self-destructive.
Any spiritual experience which does have these effects, you instantly reclassify as mental illness and remove from your sample! As one scientist to another, would you consider rethinking your experimental design?
quote:3. People who have had these experiences frequently describe them as life altering and among the most powerful of human experiences.
Granted, but then again this is also true of people who've tried LSD and other hallucinatory drugs.
Posted by JonHecht (Member # 9712) on :
Oh, this had nothing to do with Descartes. My point was that the indiscernibility of identicals states that if x=y, then x and y are identical in ALL properties, which effectively means x=x, though the second x is called a different name.
Posted by orlox (Member # 2392) on :
That could be argued, as your linked aptly demonstrated, but I am still unsure of how you are relating it to Shermer... Perhaps you mean that Shermer implies that there is no supernatural even if he doesn't exactly say it?
Posted by JonHecht (Member # 9712) on :
My point was that if you are going to be comparing two separate things as the same, it is more accurate to start with the statement x=y and see if that is true. I think it's logically simpler than saying a=a then explaining why that's not the case here.
Posted by orlox (Member # 2392) on :
I'm not sure he is trying to say that. In fact he seems to be saying x=x, y=y, x/=y which may just be a re-statement of NOMA at bottom except that I think he does imply that there is only x and no y. He is definitely saying that y/=x so I think I of I doesn't really apply.
Posted by JonHecht (Member # 9712) on :
He seems (to me) to claim that some people are claiming that x=y, and this is a simple proof against that statement.
Posted by orlox (Member # 2392) on :
I see!
Posted by Xaposert (Member # 1612) on :
quote:2)I don't really understand what you mean here: "but without connecting their answers to facts about reality, we can't figure out which religious answers are best or how to apply religious answers to our actions." Please elaborate. An example would help.
Here's an example: Imagine your religion holds that human life is sacred and that people should not have children unless they are married. But then you are confronted by two groups of people. One group says we should teach about condom use in schools, and claims that would result in fewer premarital pregnancies and fewer abortions. The other group says we should NOT teach about condom use in schools, because doing so would result in more premarital pregnancies and more abortions. How do we know which of the two is correct? Lets assume that your religion's ancient texts do not go into the details of the effectiveness of various sex education methods. If that's the case then it's likely that the religion cannot answer the question of which policy best supports the goal of preventing pregnancies. The only way to resolve it is going to be to step beyond Religion, and use things like Science to figure out what works the best.
That's the problem with placing "What is meaningful?" in one magisteria, while placing "How does the world work?" in a totally separate magisteria. Answering the question of what is meaningful is only useful IF we can apply it to the world by knowing how the world works. Knowing the former doesn't help us in the least bit in resolving real problems unless we also know something about the latter.
quote:The gist of your argument seems to be that if people were not confused by the apparent competition and/or incompatibility of science and religion-acceptable-to-Tresopax (RATT), they would choose to follow RATT in preference to consumerism, extremism etc.
I didn't mention anything about anything being acceptable to me.
My argument is that the way we separate spheres of knowledge (separating moral/value questions from questions about pragmatic reality) makes it very difficult to come to any kind of cultural consensus on what matters and how we should act. I don't know what kind of consensus we'd come to or whether I'd agree with it, but without it there is a void that is filled with consumerism and materialism. Extremism is a reaction to that void.
Posted by swbarnes2 (Member # 10225) on :
quote:Originally posted by Xaposert: [QB]
quote:2)I don't really understand what you mean here: "but without connecting their answers to facts about reality, we can't figure out which religious answers are best or how to apply religious answers to our actions." Please elaborate. An example would help.
Here's an example: Imagine your religion holds that human life is sacred and that people should not have children unless they are married. But then you are confronted by two groups of people. One group says we should teach about condom use in schools, and claims that would result in fewer premarital pregnancies and fewer abortions. The other group says we should NOT teach about condom use in schools, because doing so would result in more premarital pregnancies and more abortions.
What exact religious question are you alleging is being asked and answered here, because as far as I see, the question is "How do we reduce the number of abortions?" which isn't religious. and your two potential answers aren't religious either.
If you are really going to call every question under the sun "religious', then you are engaged in serious equivocation here.
quote:How do we know which of the two is correct?
According to you, we use our personal judgment, see if the political and philosophical needs outweigh the scientific answer, and if they do, which they usually do when one doesn't like the scientific answer, then you do whatever the religious answer is, right?
quote:Lets assume that your religion's ancient texts do not go into the details of the effectiveness of various sex education methods.
Okay, so what do you do when your religious texts have a clear, black and white answer? Like your texts say "The world was created in 6 days?"
You claim that's "incorrect" religion?
Or you claim that in your "personal judgement" the philosophical needs "trump" the science?
quote:The only way to resolve it is going to be to step beyond Religion, and use things like Science to figure out what works the best.
Unless in your personal judgement, the religous answer is right, and the scientific answer wrong, correct?
quote:I didn't mention anything about anything being acceptable to me.
But you have offered absolutely no other way of determiing "correct religion" from "incorrect" religion, despite being asked a million times. The reason is obvious, and its embarrasing to see you play naive about it
quote:My argument is that the way we separate spheres of knowledge (separating moral/value questions from questions about pragmatic reality) makes it very difficult to come to any kind of cultural consensus on what matters and how we should act.
Well, the one common thing that we can all agree on is physical reality. So I don't know why you constantly advocate that people should ignore it in favor of their "personal judgement", and then wonder why no one can agree on anything. It's becuase you keep undermining the utility of the one thing that everyone can agree on.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Any spiritual experience which does have these effects, you instantly reclassify as mental illness and remove from your sample! As one scientist to another, would you consider rethinking your experimental design?
Your implication is that these are all part of the same continuum and that the only difference is one of degree of severity. But this contention is not supported by scientific research either from behavioral psychology or physio/chemical studies of the brain. Researchers have, for example, performed CT scans on meditating or praying monks to determine which areas of the brain are active during their "spiritual experiences" and from this it has been scientifically proven that "spiritual experiences" are a fundamentally different phenomenon than dreams, hallucinations or psychosis. This does not stands as evidence that one is necessarily more valid than the other. It does mean that equating spiritual experiences with dreams, hallucinations or psychotic behavior shows ignorance of the facts. They are distinctly different phenomena and not at all part of the same continuum of human brain function.
[ February 26, 2009, 01:18 AM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:I think it's easier to hold down a job if the imaginary voice that talks to you is widely acknowledge as real by the society around you - people who talk about what Napoleon told them to do are called "mentally ill" in America; people who talk about what God told them to do are called, among other things, "Mr. President".
Jhai, Have you ever actually known someone who suffers from Schizophrenia or any severe mental illness? I have known several including two of my close childhood friends and a couple of extended family members. When I say that Schizophrenics who think they are talking with God have every bit as much difficulty functioning in society as Schizophrenics who think they are talking with plants and rocks or even that they talking with Napoleon, I speak from experience. But you don't have to take my word for, read any of the scientific literature on Schizophrenia and you will find that your assertions are factually incorrect.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: ... Researchers have, for example, performed CT scans on meditating or praying monks to determine which areas of the brain are active during their "spiritual experiences" and from this it has been scientifically proven that "spiritual experiences" are a fundamentally different phenomenon than dreams, hallucinations or psychosis.
Two problems: a) Researchers cannot use scans to rule out mental illness in these individuals (or any individuals). That would be a fairly remarkable breakthrough.
quote: Imaging research cannot yet be used to diagnose psychiatric illness and may not be useful in clinical practice for a number of years. In the future, imaging techniques may be useful to examine medication effects and predict medication response. Specifically, no published investigation in the field has determined that any structural or functional brain abnormality is specific to a single psychiatric disorder. Additionally, imaging studies examine groups of patients and groups of healthy controls; therefore, findings may not apply to all individuals with a given disorder. Even when significant differences are identified between groups, there is a substantial overlap among individuals in both groups.
b) Meditating or praying is fairly unremarkable. Its hardly disturbing, after all, a fairly decent number of kids "send" whether its to Santa Claus or the tooth fairy. At least in my case, I'm talking about actually "receiving," as in actually hearing the voice of god/Napoleon/aliens/CIA.
Posted by Jhai (Member # 5633) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit:
quote:I think it's easier to hold down a job if the imaginary voice that talks to you is widely acknowledge as real by the society around you - people who talk about what Napoleon told them to do are called "mentally ill" in America; people who talk about what God told them to do are called, among other things, "Mr. President".
Jhai, Have you ever actually known someone who suffers from Schizophrenia or any severe mental illness? I have known several including two of my close childhood friends and a couple of extended family members. When I say that Schizophrenics who think they are talking with God have every bit as much difficulty functioning in society as Schizophrenics who think they are talking with plants and rocks or even that they talking with Napoleon, I speak from experience. But you don't have to take my word for, read any of the scientific literature on Schizophrenia and you will find that your assertions are factually incorrect.
I've never said I'm only talking about people with severe mental illnesses. In fact, I've never brought up the term schizophrenic at all. To reply to your point, however, I've seen examples of schizophrenics of both types as you describe above (mostly on street corners, sad to say), but I've also seen far less severe forms of self-delusion, both of the religious kind and the less socially-popular. Actually pretty much all religious believers, in my opinion, fall into this latter category.
But, as I said earlier, I think this talk of mental illness is rather useless - in the end, it's just arguing over a label that, win or lose, doesn't move the debate very far along. And one that I, personally, am not invested in at all. I much prefer "self-delusional" or "irrational" for people who believe in a god - and neither term, as I'm using them, immediately tells you how well a person can function in our society.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:I've never said I'm only talking about people with severe mental illnesses. In fact, I've never brought up the term schizophrenic at all. To reply to your point, however, I've seen examples of schizophrenics of both types as you describe above (mostly on street corners, sad to say), but I've also seen far less severe forms of self-delusion, both of the religious kind and the less socially-popular. Actually pretty much all religious believers, in my opinion, fall into this latter category.
Jhai, I'm afraid I really don't seem to understand the point you are making. You seem to be saying that all types of self-delusion are essentially different degrees of the same thing, the same way that people who have chicken pox all have the same disease whether they get only one pock or die of complications. I'm saying that hypothesis is not supported and in to some degree contradicted by the scientific study of religiosity and various forms of mental illness. If this was not the point you were trying to make, could you please clarify.
Posted by Jhai (Member # 5633) on :
I'm saying that I don't care for the term "mental illness", severe or not, and I don't want to defend it in anyway or discuss it because I don't care about it and never brought it up. I think the terms self-delusional or irrational better fit people who believe in an imaginary deity. I have not discussed the various ways people can be irrational or self-delusional, and it'd be rather idiotic to claim that they're all similar.
Posted by Darth_Mauve (Member # 4709) on :
It has been my belief that Science is good at telling us "How" things are done.
It has been my belief that Religion/Philosophy is good at telling us "Why" things are done.
Science is good at telling us How life evolved on Earth.
Religion is good at telling us Why life evolved on Earth.
When you mix the two questions, you get unsatisfactory answers.
Science ultimately does not say Why life evolved on Earth. At best it says, "That's what arose logically over time." Not a very satisfactory answer.
Religion ultimately does not say How life was created on Earth. "God made it" is not a very in depth recipe for construction.
Lets apply this formula to a variation on Xap's earlier conundrum. It states that Religion A promotes Life as sacred and that Unmarried People should not have Children. This is an obviously contradiction. The variation I would make is a bit more closer to what we face every day....
Religion B states Thou Shall Not Kill, and Thou Shall Not Commit Adultery. Killing is later defined as ending the life even of children in the womb--the fetus. Committing Adultery is defined as having sex while unmarried.
Science determines that if condoms are passed out to kids at school, there will be less pregnancies and hence less abortions--the Killing of the Fetus. It also lowers the number of kids killed from venereal diseases.
The Non-Religion B person asks, "How can we reduce abortions? We make sure the kids have safe sex.).
Religious B person ask, "Why are they having abortions and dieing of Venereal Diseases? Because the adulterous sex they are having is bad. We need to make them stop having sex. Passing out condoms is condoning sex, perhaps even encouraging it."
No matter how many scientific statistics you find proving a reduction in deaths due to condom availability, Religious Person B will not change their mind. They are tying to fix the Why problem, not the What.
No matter how many biblical quotes or moral arguments you find proving that condom availability leads to immoral behavior, you will not change the Scientific mind. He is focused on solving the "How" question of reducing deaths.
So far, the Religious Person B has tried to work around this problem. Some have searched for scientific answers to refute the "how" of lives saved. A few have used bad science, and confused the issues with lies or untruths. In some realms this has worked to stymie the scientific arguments over "how".
For the Scientific person to win this argument and save the lives they have to attack the "why" questions. As the religious have crossed the line and took the fight to science, so the science believer must study the religion and learn to take the fight to the Religious B person not on the level of How or Science, but on the level of "Why" and Morality.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
A few years back when I was involved with teaching a professional ethics course, I had a very interesting discussion on the differences between science education and philosophy education with the philosophy professor who lead the course . The basic points can be summarized as follows. Students enter both science and philosophy classes with a model of how things work. For example students nearly always enter a physics class with what is essentially an Aristotelian model of physical law. The goal of physics education is to get students to replace this model with a more accurate scientific model.
In contrast, my philosophy colleague claimed that all philosophical and ethical systems were at their roots subjective and so the goal of philosophy education wasn't to get students to replace their philosophical model with "the correct model", but to enable the individuals to recognize the the strengths, weaknesses and limitations of the various models.
I will agree that all religious philosophies are fundamentally subjective and that many religious individuals are unaware of the limitations of those world view. The same is also true for most of the strident Athiests I've known.
The scientific method has no tools for dealing with subjective, non-reproducible experience. But subjective, non-reproducible experiences (love, hate, beauty, ugliness, virtue, vice, and even spirituality) are important parts of the human experience.
Posted by Corwin (Member # 5705) on :
quote:Originally posted by Darth_Mauve: Science ultimately does not say Why life evolved on Earth. At best it says, "That's what arose logically over time." Not a very satisfactory answer.
For you.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by Corwin:
quote:Originally posted by Darth_Mauve: Science ultimately does not say Why life evolved on Earth. At best it says, "That's what arose logically over time." Not a very satisfactory answer.
For you.
Its not a very logical answer. Your typical bathroom scale is a tool for measuring weight. It can't be used to measure your height , girth, density or chemical composition. But even if no satisfactory tools existed for measuring height, density and chemical composition, it would be illogical to conclude that they did not exist or were irrelevant based on the fact that they could not be studied with a bathroom scale.
Science has only the tools to measure objective, reproducible, physical processes, it has no tools to answer the question "why" but this does not logically imply that there is no "why" or that "why" is an unimportant question.
The question of "why" may not be particularly important to you but millions if not billions of other humans find it important. Importance is one of those subjective qualities science can't deal with very well.
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
quote:When you mix the two questions, you get unsatisfactory answers.
The problem is that in order to act correctly, we MUST combine the answers to "Why should we do X" and "How should we do X". One doesn't do us much good without the other.
Science can give us a "How" answer to the question of how do we discourage abortions. But it can't tell the "Why" answer to whether or not we should bother to discourage abortions. So, a Science-only person would have no idea what to do; he'd know how to do lots of things, but he wouldn't be able to reason whether or not he should do them.
Religion is good at giving us "Why" answers to things like "Why is abortion bad?", but it often isn't good at telling us "How" to go about doing that. Unless God specifically gives you directions on what the correct method of sex education is, or unless we can find a section of the Bible about condom use, there is at least no clear explanation within Christianity about the best method to avoiding abortions and protecting life. On that note, there is no section in the Bible on fetuses, so it isn't even clear that they should be considered a human life. In the two-magisteria model, those would rely on facts from the Scientific sphere of knowledge. So while a Religion-only person would have great answers to questions about what is important and "why" we should do things, he'd be totally in the dark as to how to go about doing things.
But in practice there are no Science-only people and there are few if any Religion-only people, because you can't get through life without both "Why" and "How" answers. Even people who attempt to approach the world purely from the way science presents it nevertheless still end up accepting some basic non-scientific moral premises like "Killing is bad" or "Happiness is good". And even people who attempt to get all answers from Religion end up using scientific ideas derived entirely without reference to religion in their everyday life (gravity, genetics, etc.). But either of those approaches tends to create a lot of confusion and irrationality for the person, since there is an inconsistency between how they are trying to approach the world and how they actually act.
But, as I suggested earlier, I also think trying to be both Scientific and Religious by simultaneously maintaining two separate conceptions of the world leads to confusion too. I think the ideal would be to approach science and religion as complimentary sources of knowledge attempting to develop a single coherent view of the world, where A does equal A. That's not really how Western culture has approached it, though, so I could only guess at how such a society would be different or what sort of different problems it might have.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
Darth Mauve and Rabbit: I think you're both using the vague questions of "how" and "why", when in the end you are merely talking about Cause and Purpose.
Worse yet, I think you're confusing cause and purpose. I assume because the religions you grew up in claimed that the Cause of everything was that God Purposed them. (such is the case in the Abrahamic religions)
I think by combining this question of cause and purpose into a simple "why" you're limiting your minds to the possibilities: namely that the Universe may have a cause but not a purpose, or that the Universe may have a purpose that's utterly unrelated to its cause (or its lack thereof).
Posted by Corwin (Member # 5705) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit:
quote:Originally posted by Corwin:
quote:Originally posted by Darth_Mauve: Science ultimately does not say Why life evolved on Earth. At best it says, "That's what arose logically over time." Not a very satisfactory answer.
For you.
Its not a very logical answer.
What do you mean by that exactly? If scientists manage to recreate life in a laboratory experiment starting from an inorganic "soup" similar to the one deduced to have been on Earth prior to the formation of life wouldn't it be logical to conclude that life originally arose from that soup?
To restate what Aris says, if you search for a "purpose" behind that transformation, then the scientific explanation will not be enough for you. "Why" equals "for what purpose" for you, but my question is: who said there should be a purpose? Only by postulating that there might/should be a purpose does not finding a purpose become a problem.
And hey, Aris. I don't think I've met you before on Hatrack although you registered before me, but it's always nice to meet a fellow programmer. And a fellow European. Posted by Jhai (Member # 5633) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: In contrast, my philosophy colleague claimed that all philosophical and ethical systems were at their roots subjective and so the goal of philosophy education wasn't to get students to replace their philosophical model with "the correct model", but to enable the individuals to recognize the the strengths, weaknesses and limitations of the various models.
If the philosophy professor tried to present his view as the standard for the field - or even the majority view - then I'm rather shocked. I haven't run into many ethicists who believe morality to be subjective; typically the first day of an ethical theory class is spent on refuting this position, actually.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:What do you mean by that exactly? If scientists manage to recreate life in a laboratory experiment starting from an inorganic "soup" similar to the one deduced to have been on Earth prior to the formation of life wouldn't it be logical to conclude that life originally arose from that soup?
Aris comes close to identifying the problem. When I use the word "why?" I am referring to purpose not cause. Science can only address cause. Science does not have any tools to explore the issue of purpose. What is illogical is to conclude that because the scientific method is not equipped to address purpose, that purpose is nonexistent or irrelevant. Its like concluding that because a bathroom scale can't measure height, height is an irrelevant quality.
Relevance is a subjective quality and therefore something that is outside the purview of science. The purpose of life may be irrelevant to you, but it is extremely relevant to millions of human beings. Simply telling them that science can't find a purpose doesn't make the question less relevant to them. That is my point and I think the point of NOMA. When you fail to recognize that religion and spirituality fill a void that is important to many people and which science simply can not address, you are failing to recognize the limitations of your own model and therefore lacking true scientific objectivity.
Posted by Jhai (Member # 5633) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: When you fail to recognize that religion and spirituality fill a void that is important to many people and which science simply can not address, you are failing to recognize the limitations of your own model and therefore lacking true scientific objectivity.
I feel like you're creating a false dilemma here - either one recognizes that religion fills a void or you make people live with that void because science cannot address it (questionable premise there). There are other options. First off, science does "fill" that void for many people in my experience, typically by making them see that you need not see the lack of purpose as a void. If there need not be a purpose, then there's no void to fill - asking what the purpose of the universe is could be as silly as asking what the color of birdsong is.
If that doesn't do it for you, there are plenty of secular ways to fill that void - philosophy, the arts, humanism, etc. Religion and spirituality need not fill that void - and there are a lot of reasons why they may not be best suited to fill that void.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by Jhai:
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: In contrast, my philosophy colleague claimed that all philosophical and ethical systems were at their roots subjective and so the goal of philosophy education wasn't to get students to replace their philosophical model with "the correct model", but to enable the individuals to recognize the the strengths, weaknesses and limitations of the various models.
If the philosophy professor tried to present his view as the standard for the field - or even the majority view - then I'm rather shocked. I haven't run into many ethicists who believe morality to be subjective; typically the first day of an ethical theory class is spent on refuting this position, actually.
Clearly I didn't accurately express the point. There are numerous ethical models, utilitarian, deontological, contractual and so on. The underlying assumptions behind these different models, the basic laws on which they operate are fundamentally unprovable. The point my philosopher colleague was making was not that ethics was subjective in a broad sense, but that the point of an ethics education was not to persuade students that they, for example, should reject deontological ethics in favor of utilitarian ethics (or vice versa), but to enable students to logically assess the strengths and weaknesses of the different models with the recognition that all proposed models have limitations.
This is fundamentally different from science education where the goal is in fact to persuade students to accept a particular scientific model of the Universe as the most accurate.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote: Science does not have any tools to explore the issue of purpose.
Wrong. We can readily investigate the purpose of human activities through scientific means; an entity powerful enough to create the universe is not different in principle. Further, religion has no tools for this either, because it consists of making stuff up. This is not a viable solution to any problem at all.
Posted by Jhai (Member # 5633) on :
quote:The underlying assumptions behind these different models, the basic laws on which they operate are fundamentally unprovable
Depends on what you mean by proof, I suppose. I think they're about as provable as mathematics or logic - one of which is the bedrock of science. If you don't think mathematics is provable, I don't see how you can think science is provable.
quote: The point my philosopher colleague was making was not that ethics was subjective in a broad sense, but that the point of an ethics education was not to persuade students that they, for example, should reject deontological ethics in favor of utilitarian ethics (or vice versa), but to enable students to logically assess the strengths and weaknesses of the different models with the recognition that all proposed models have limitations.
The first part is clearly true - just look at any syllabus from an ethics theory class. The second part - that all proposed models have limitations - is not true, unless you're talking about a sketch of an ethical theory. The models as presented in an introductory class are limited. However if you accept that morality is not subjective, at some point one ought to be able to write out all of the rules of ethics, and this presentation would not have limitations. Ethics at a higher level is not about sketched-out models with limiting assumptions in the same way, say, economics is.
Most ethical theory courses end up persuading students that ethics are objective, at the very least.
Posted by JonHecht (Member # 9712) on :
I wish that there was a field devoted to the study of the nature of reality, if God really exists, etc... hmm... Oh yeah! Posted by Darth_Mauve (Member # 4709) on :
Tres, I was a bit vague on the "Mix the two". I meant to say "Seek How from Religion/philosophy and Why from Science."
I agree that there can not be Science Only or Philosophy/Religion only people--at least not being so and being able to operate in this world.
Aris, I think its the readers of my post who are limiting the discussion to Abrahamic religions. The idea that there is no reason for the creation of the universe, no purpose, no Why is a philosophy.
So what we have is not an argument of Science VS Religion but "Scientific Based Philosophy VS Religion".
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
I'm apologize but I'm going to have to bow out. I simply don't have the time to craft appropriate responses. Please don't assume I'm just ignoring what people have said or giving it inadequate consideration.
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
quote:If that doesn't do it for you, there are plenty of secular ways to fill that void - philosophy, the arts, humanism, etc.
I agree with this. Religion does not have a monopoly on being able to offer explanations of what is meaningful, good, or bad.
Science is not one of the things that can, though, based on the rules that define science. To explain the "Why" questions, something other than science is necessary, whether religious or nonreligious.
quote:First off, science does "fill" that void for many people in my experience, typically by making them see that you need not see the lack of purpose as a void. If there need not be a purpose, then there's no void to fill - asking what the purpose of the universe is could be as silly as asking what the color of birdsong is.
This I don't agree with. I don't think people can live a good life without some sense that something is in some way important and meaningful.
Posted by The Pixiest (Member # 1863) on :
There is no "Why."
The only meaning or purpose to life is what you make for yourself.
If "Why" is the only thing religion is good for, then religion is good for nothing.
But that's not all it's good for. It's a beautiful lie you can tell yourself in times of trouble to make yourself feel better. It can give you the strength you need when you are in danger, and the comfort when dealing with the loss of a loved one.
So long as you're not using it to hurt other people or write it into law, believe whatever the hell you want.
But it IS a lie.
Posted by rollainm (Member # 8318) on :
quote: Most ethical theory courses end up persuading students that ethics are objective, at the very least.
Really? I have not taken any formal ethics classes, but I have read a good bit and had fairly in-depth discussions on morality with many people with varying degrees of education - and I must admit you are the only person I've ever heard of that speaks of objective morality like you do, as if it is the consensus among those with the education and mental capacity to comprehend it.
Not that I'm calling you a liar. You're the one with the education, after all. But if this is true - I'm just fascinated by that, not to even mention the fact that this is coming from someone who isn't religious. Every atheist (and most who even question the existence of a god) I've ever spoken to about morality favors a subjective brand of it. None share your conviction.
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
quote:So what we have is not an argument of Science VS Religion but "Scientific Based Philosophy VS Religion".
I think that specifically what we are discussing is the NOMA thesis, which is an argument of science vs. religion. Philosophy exists too, but I don't think it is intended to be included in the magisterum of science. Here's a quote I'm borrowing from the wikipedia page in which Gould states his general thesis:
"the magisterium of science covers the empirical realm: what the Universe is made of (fact) and why does it work in this way (theory). The magisterium of religion extends over questions of ultimate meaning and moral value. These two magisteria do not overlap, nor do they encompass all inquiry (consider, for example, the magisterium of art and the meaning of beauty)." Posted by JonHecht (Member # 9712) on :
Rollainm: I am an atheist, and I am going to confirm his statement. Most top meta-ethicists have already moved past the objective-subjective debate. As well, I believe that ethics are objective. (I'm a Rossian intuitionist, or at least Audi's variant on it.)
Edit: I suppose that I should say that I am technically an agnostic, though I effectively act as though I am an atheist.
Edit2: By the way, I am TAing an ethics course now, and I'm pretty sure that we convinced most of the students to abandon subjectivism.
Edit3: Then again, if they thought that ethics were subjective, then they probably wouldn't have become meta-ethicists.
[ February 26, 2009, 12:00 PM: Message edited by: JonHecht ]
Posted by rollainm (Member # 8318) on :
quote: and I'm pretty sure that we convinced most of the students to abandon subjectivism.
But...how? I don't expect you to condense an entire course in a paragraph, but surely you can give me a general idea of how this is possible?
Posted by Jhai (Member # 5633) on :
rollianm, What would be the point in taking a class in something that, in the end, isn't applicable to your life in any way? Ethics is basically about what you ought to do and what a good life is. If ethics is subjective - i.e. none of the rules are necessarily the same from person to person - then systematically studying it seems a little silly.
My first ethical theory class opened up with the professor trying to see if anyone would say it's ever morally acceptable to torture innocent (non-evil) babies just for one person's fun. I understand that this is a pretty standard way to go about it.
Edit: I think it took about one class or so of arguing to get everyone on board with the "not okay to torture innocent, non-evil babies just for one's personal pleasure". It was a small class, and there was a lot of discussion regarding the exact nature of the statement. But in the end everyone agreed that it was not acceptable, period. And once you have that, then, clearly, there's at least one moral statement that is objectively true. Thus morality, as a whole, is not entirely subjective.
I agree that a lot of people say that morality/ethics is subjective. Hell, my husband is some sort of moral relativist, I think. However, I can't remember ever meeting someone who holds this view who has also studied ethical theory seriously - and that personal sample includes a lot of atheists. Many people, though, agree that holding an atheist world-view makes it more difficult to answer the question "why be moral?"
Jon, it's her, not him. Posted by rollainm (Member # 8318) on :
Point taken on the view of those taking the class.
But my basic curiosity is still there. I still can't reconcile an atheist that believes in objective morality.
quote: My first ethical theory class opened up with the professor trying to see if anyone would say it's ever morally acceptable to torture innocent (non-evil) babies just for one person's fun. I understand that this is a pretty standard way to go about it.
At risk of thread-derailing, I guess I just don't see how this gets to de facto objective morality. If morality is subjective, then this question is meaningless and proves nothing. If morality is objective, then a consensual morality is still not necessarily an objective one and it still proves nothing.
Posted by JonHecht (Member # 9712) on :
If you can refute a specific form of subjectivism, such as that, it implies that ethics aren't completely subjective.
Edit: Also against egoism there's also the classic arbitrariness argument, but that argument only came about nearly 20 years after Feinberg's argument.
Posted by Jhai (Member # 5633) on :
It wasn't a matter of gaining a consensus in the classroom. It was a matter of convincing each individual student to believe themselves that it could never be morally acceptable to torture babies for fun. Not that "you" just don't think it's not acceptable, but that it is, in fact, not acceptable. Run through the thought experiment yourself, rollainm. Could it ever be the right thing to do? For anyone?
It is in some ways similar to how you convince someone "2+2=4" is true or that "If A then B. A. Therefore B" is true. If they don't believe it, you can't convince them otherwise, but you can lead them through the thought process that will make it clear that that particular thing is true. Obviously, more complicated moral rules require more proofs, and may be quite difficult to understand - it's like the difference between simple addition and multivariable calculus, or between the simple logical axiom above and Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem.
Edit: Jon, I suspect that refuting egoism isn't a very good way to go about proving that morality isn't subjective. Just because that form of subjective morality is false, it doesn't mean that others are necessarily false. "If A then (B or C). Not C. Therefore not A" is bad logic. Also, in my experience most people pushing subjective morality are cultural relativists, not egoists.
Posted by JonHecht (Member # 9712) on :
That's why I was more specific and said that it implies that morals aren't completely subjective, rather than saying that morals aren't subjective.
Edit: If morals were COMPLETELY subjective, then it seems to imply that any moral statement (including ethical egoism) could be true.
Posted by rollainm (Member # 8318) on :
quote: Could it ever be the right thing to do? For anyone?
Well, yes. For a person that actually enjoys doing such a thing and has never experienced any negative consequences for doing so, I think it would be quite easy - and reasonable - for them to assume there's nothing wrong with it.
quote: Not that "you" just don't think it's not acceptable, but that it is, in fact, not acceptable.
I still don't understand how making this jump is possible without being presumptuous.
Posted by Jhai (Member # 5633) on :
I didn't ask if it were easy, or reasonable for someone to do, or if someone else could believe it to be the right action. I asked if it was, in fact, right. And if you don't like being presumptuous, philosophy (particularly ethics) is not what you should be studying. Most philosophers are incredibly arrogant (but nice) people.
Is it wrong/presumptuous of me to say that, even if you don't believe it, 2+2 still equals 4 for you? Can someone ever be correct in believing that 2+2 does not equal 4? Or to take a more concrete example, is it presumptuous for me to tell Flat Earthers that they're just wrong? It may be easy for them to believe it, it may be reasonable, but it's still a wrong belief.
Posted by Jhai (Member # 5633) on :
quote:Originally posted by JonHecht: That's why I was more specific and said that it implies that morals aren't completely subjective, rather than saying that morals aren't subjective.
Edit: If morals were COMPLETELY subjective, then it seems to imply that any moral statement (including ethical egoism) could be true.
Ah. I thought you were saying that of a given set of moral principles, at least one of them is not subjective, and that you prove this by disproving ethical egoism.
Posted by rollainm (Member # 8318) on :
quote: I asked if it was, in fact, right.
Doesn't answering that require an assumption of objective morality in the first place? Isn't that circular?
quote: And if you don't like being presumptuous, philosophy (particularly ethics) is not what you should be studying. Most philosophers are incredibly arrogant (but nice) people.
Perhaps I should have been more specific. Unreasonably presumptuous.
Posted by The Pixiest (Member # 1863) on :
Jhai: Not torturing babies might be a universal no-no, but they WHY behind the no-no is not universal. It all comes down to what you value.
If you think that torturing babies is a bad thing because god says it's bad, that's very different from thinking torturing babies is bad because it violates the individual rights of the babies.
Just because everyone agrees doesn't make it objective, just coincidence.
Posted by Jhai (Member # 5633) on :
quote:Originally posted by rollainm:
quote: I asked if it was, in fact, right.
Doesn't answering that require an assumption of objective morality in the first place? Isn't that circular?
No, it's not. Something could be morally right for Americans to do while not morally right for Chinese to do, if, for instance, you believed in cultural relativism - which is not objective morality.
Anyways, you're going to have to start defining terms at some point. And it's pretty much impossible to define anything perfectly - for instance, I've never heard a definition of "chair" that was completely accurate. Nonetheless, I imagine you have some idea by what I mean by "right" in that sentence. Clearly it's not the same as reasonable or easy, or you wouldn't have used those words. You could alternatively phrase it as what one ought to do, as what is good to do, what is acceptable to do, etc.
quote:Perhaps I should have been more specific. Unreasonably presumptuous.
Why is it unreasonable? Is it unreasonably presumptuous for me to say the other stuff I said above, such as the fact that 2+2=4, whether you believe it or not?
Posted by swbarnes2 (Member # 10225) on :
quote:Originally posted by Darth_Mauve: It has been my belief that Science is good at telling us "How" things are done.
It has been my belief that Religion/Philosophy is good at telling us "Why" things are done.
Science is good at telling us How life evolved on Earth.
Religion is good at telling us Why life evolved on Earth.
We judge how good a scientific explanation is by seeing how well its preictions match reality.
Christian religion tells us that people die today because Adam and Eve disobeyed a rule. How do you measure the "goodness" of this explanation?
quote:When you mix the two questions, you get unsatisfactory answers.
Says you. Do you think that Young earth Creationists agree?
quote:Science ultimately does not say Why life evolved on Earth. At best it says, "That's what arose logically over time." Not a very satisfactory answer.
Science can't "satisfactorily" answer the question "what color is 3?". Because the question is pointless.
quote:Religion ultimately does not say How life was created on Earth. "God made it" is not a very in depth recipe for construction.
A low detail answer is still an answer. There are other religious traditions which are more detailed. Are you arguing that those aren't "real" religions"?
Posted by Jhai (Member # 5633) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Pixiest: Jhai: Not torturing babies might be a universal no-no, but they WHY behind the no-no is not universal. It all comes down to what you value.
If you think that torturing babies is a bad thing because god says it's bad, that's very different from thinking torturing babies is bad because it violates the individual rights of the babies.
Just because everyone agrees doesn't make it objective, just coincidence.
Why does two plus two equal four? Does the reason why that mathematical fact is true depend on what I value?
I agree that those two examples of how morality might be based are different. I'm not sure of what your point is.
I never claimed that just because everyone agrees something is true makes a fact objective. I don't think that the fact that everyone agrees "2+2=4" is true is what, in fact, makes it true. *shrug* Again, I don't see what your point is.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
I think a useful definition of 'right' is "something I would not stop people doing". If I saw someone torturing a baby, I would use force to stop them. Now, it does seem possible that an explanation could be given so that I wouldn't do so; for example, if the torturer convinced me that it was either this, or the world is blown up by aliens from the fifth dimension. (Obviously, I would need some good evidence of this; but if I had such evidence, then ok, six billion is larger than one.) But when it is further specified that the torture is for fun - well, hand me that baseball bat.
So we can rephrase the question in terms of hypothetical actions, without the use of that ambiguous word 'right': If you saw someone torturing a baby, you had the power to stop them, and you believed that their reason was that they thought it fun to make babies cry, would you stop them or not? Unless you would indeed let them continue their fun, I do not think you can claim that you are convinced what they are doing is right.
Posted by The Pixiest (Member # 1863) on :
Jhai: I think perhaps I misunderstood your initial point. Please disregard.
Posted by MattP (Member # 10495) on :
quote:When I say that Schizophrenics who think they are talking with God have every bit as much difficulty functioning in society as Schizophrenics who think they are talking with plants and rocks or even that they talking with Napoleon, I speak from experience.
I'm skipping some other posts, so forgive me if this is ground already covered but, I think this may be a bit of a tautology. The DSM indicates that individual symptoms represent illness only when the symptoms are severe enough that "normal" social activity is significantly affected. People aren't schizophrenic because they hear voices. Rather they are shizophrenic because, among other things, their voice hearing experience results in unacceptable behavior causing them to get in fights, hurt themselves, lose their job, etc.
So yes, people that are schizophrenic don't manage life well, but that's because it's part of the definition of schizophrenic. Merely having delusions or hallucinations is not, by itself, a mental disorder.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
*nod* I see nothing wrong with merely pointing out that people who think they speak with God are delusional -- using the normal definition of the word -- without attempting to make a formal diagnosis.
Posted by El JT de Spang (Member # 7742) on :
Beyond the religious nonsense, I have enjoyed the ethical discussions in this thread.
Thanks, guys!
Posted by natural_mystic (Member # 11760) on :
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: *nod* I see nothing wrong with merely pointing out that people who think they speak with God are delusional -- using the normal definition of the word -- without attempting to make a formal diagnosis.
Depends what one means by 'speaking to God'. If someone is literally under the impression that they hear God's voice, then I regard that as delusional. If, on the other hand, they feel a sense of well-being when they read the Bible then the 'speaking to God' is an interpretation of a real phenomenon (i.e. they really feel the sense of well-being). I think it is a bit harsh to describe someone attaching a specific interpretation to an unexplained event as delusional. The obvious response is that other people experience a sense of well-being when reading poetry, listening to Bach etc. and so there is no reason to look to God for an explanation, and to do might be construed as a betrayal of the scientific method. However, given the cultural/social incentives for being religious I am not sure that it can accurately even be described as irrational (with regard to self-interest) to choose the God interpretation.
Posted by Mike (Member # 55) on :
quote:Originally posted by Jhai:
quote:Originally posted by rollainm:
quote: I asked if it was, in fact, right.
Doesn't answering that require an assumption of objective morality in the first place? Isn't that circular?
No, it's not. Something could be morally right for Americans to do while not morally right for Chinese to do, if, for instance, you believed in cultural relativism - which is not objective morality.
It is indeed circular. Among other things, the difference between objective morality and subjective morality is that in objective morality the term "right" has a meaning that stands alone independent from any POV, while in subjective morality "right" has no meaning without a subject. When we ask whether something is right, we always mean "right to whom?" Thus the phrase "in fact, right" quite literally has no meaning from the point of view of subjective morality.
Posted by Jhai (Member # 5633) on :
I think you don't quite understand the philosophical meanings of the terms "objective" and "subjective", at least as they relate to morality.
Posted by Mike (Member # 55) on :
Or perhaps it is philosophers who don't understand.
ETA: I'd appreciate it if you'd explain what I got wrong, actually. Though I suspect that any definition of subjective morality for which my above post is incorrect does not accurately represent my beliefs, and I believe in a different kind of subjective morality. Probably similar to the one rollainm is thinking of.
Posted by rollainm (Member # 8318) on :
quote:Originally posted by Jhai:
quote:Originally posted by rollainm:
quote: I asked if it was, in fact, right.
Doesn't answering that require an assumption of objective morality in the first place? Isn't that circular?
No, it's not. Something could be morally right for Americans to do while not morally right for Chinese to do, if, for instance, you believed in cultural relativism - which is not objective morality.
Anyways, you're going to have to start defining terms at some point. And it's pretty much impossible to define anything perfectly - for instance, I've never heard a definition of "chair" that was completely accurate. Nonetheless, I imagine you have some idea by what I mean by "right" in that sentence. Clearly it's not the same as reasonable or easy, or you wouldn't have used those words. You could alternatively phrase it as what one ought to do, as what is good to do, what is acceptable to do, etc.
quote:Perhaps I should have been more specific. Unreasonably presumptuous.
Why is it unreasonable? Is it unreasonably presumptuous for me to say the other stuff I said above, such as the fact that 2+2=4, whether you believe it or not?
I get that mutual understanding of any concept is dependent on an agreement of the definition of the terms being used. Let me see if I can clarify why I answered your question the way I did and why I think it's still an acceptable response.
You are asking me "Is x right?" I do not know how this question can be answered and a conclusion of objective morality thus be reached without defining "is" and "right" objectively. Alternatively, the question cannot be answered and thus a non-objective conclusion be reached without defining the terms from some predetermined position of subjective morality.
The latter is how I answered because my understanding of morality - my morality - is subjective*. But this was not the kind of answer you wanted. "I asked if it was, in fact, right." So it would seem there is only one other alternative: in order to get the kind of answer from me that you want, I would have to already have taken the objective "leap of faith", so to speak. Thus, circular.
*"Objective" morality seems rather nonsensical to me anyway. Any useful form of objective morality would need to be based on something to define/demonstrate its universality. But that very defining makes it subjective. Even if you could present a moral code that somehow necessarily applied to all of us (and I doubt you or anyone can), it would still be subjective, just at a higher level (or lower, depending on how you look at it).
Posted by Jhai (Member # 5633) on :
quote: Among other things, the difference between objective morality and subjective morality is that in objective morality the term "right" has a meaning that stands alone independent from any POV, while in subjective morality "right" has no meaning without a subject. When we ask whether something is right, we always mean "right to whom?" Thus the phrase "in fact, right" quite literally has no meaning from the point of view of subjective morality.
First, I am baffled by your sentence "in subjective morality "right" has no meaning without a subject". Take the sentence "David shouldn't do X". This is a moral claim. The subject of this claim is David. Whether or not the moral claim is universal or not is not clear.
Second, you're begging the question when you say "When we ask whether something is right, we always mean 'right to whom?'". This is only true if you take the stance that morality is not objective. It's like saying "When we ask whether the world is flat, we always mean 'is it flat to David?'" Doesn't parse if you believe the thing you're talking about is objective fact to begin with. You can't use this fact, however, to then say, "well, then, clearly whether the world is flat or not is subjective - it doesn't make sense otherwise". Like I said, that's begging the question.
Posted by Jhai (Member # 5633) on :
quote:Originally posted by rollainm: I get that mutual understanding of any concept is dependent on an agreement of the definition of the terms being used. Let me see if I can clarify why I answered your question the way I did and why I think it's still an acceptable response.
You are asking me "Is x right?" I do not know how this question can be answered and a conclusion of objective morality thus be reached without defining "is" and "right" objectively. Alternatively, the question cannot be answered and thus a non-objective conclusion be reached without defining the terms from some predetermined position of subjective morality.
The latter is how I answered because my understanding of morality - my morality - is subjective*. But this was not the kind of answer you wanted. "I asked if it was, in fact, right." So it would seem there is only one other alternative: in order to get the kind of answer from me that you want, I would have to already have taken the objective "leap of faith", so to speak. Thus, circular.
*"Objective" morality seems rather nonsensical to me anyway. Any useful form of objective morality would need to be based on something to define/demonstrate its universality. But that very defining makes it subjective. Even if you could present a moral code that somehow necessarily applied to all of us (and I doubt you or anyone can), it would still be subjective, just at a higher level (or lower, depending on how you look at it).
Do you truly believe a word can only have meaning if it actually refers to a thing that exists? Even if you don't believe that morality is objective, you can certainly understand the concept of an objective morality, no? It's not a logically impossible thing, like a squared circle is. There's no requirement that you say "yes" to my question. You could say no - it's not universality right because the concept of universal rightness doesn't apply to any moral statement in our universe.
I have no idea how you came to the conclusions in your final paragraph. Perhaps reading this article would help you clarify your understanding of the terms of the discussion, because right now it looks to me like you're just making wild blind leaps around without any logical connection.
Posted by Jhai (Member # 5633) on :
This quote might be useful to read over, at the very minimum:
quote:Metaethical moral relativist positions are typically contrasted with moral objectivism. Let us say that moral objectivism maintains that moral judgments are ordinarily true or false in an absolute or universal sense, that some of them are true, and that people sometimes are justified in accepting true moral judgments (and rejecting false ones) on the basis of evidence available to any reasonable and well-informed person. There are different ways of challenging moral objectivism. Moral skepticism says that we are never justified in accepting or rejecting moral judgments. Other views—variously called moral non-cognitivism, expressivism, anti-realism, nihilism, etc.—contend that moral judgments lack truth-value, at least beyond the truth-value implied by the minimalist claim that to assert that S is true is simply to assert S (a related view, the error theory, claims that moral judgments are always false). MMR is often distinguished from all of these views: Instead of denying truth-value or justification, it affirms relative forms of these. However, metaethical moral relativist views are sometimes regarded as connected with positions that say moral judgments lack truth-value, since the relativist views contend that moral judgments lack truth-value in an absolute or universal sense. This is sometimes simply a question of terminology, but not always. If it is said that moral judgments lack truth-value (beyond the claim of minimalism), then there cannot be relative truth-value in the sense that moral relativists usually intend (though it might be contended that there is a sense in which there could still be justification). As will be seen below, there is a debate about the relationship between MMR and non-cognitivist or expressivist positions.
Posted by Juxtapose (Member # 8837) on :
It seems odd that the path to moral objectivity would lie through asking my opinion on an ethical question.
Posted by rollainm (Member # 8318) on :
Jhai, I'm familiar with moral relativism and I've even read that particular article. I don't subscribe to it and I don't defend it. What exactly is it that you think I should find relevant there? What terms am I so obviously not understanding?
Obviously I understand the concept of objective morality - as well as I think anyone can anyway, and at least as well as most people in this forum do. What I'm saying is that in the reality in which we live and interact, objective morality - objectivity period, really - as a concept simply lacks pragmatism. But that last paragraph of wildly blind illogical leaps was just a tangent.
If you think my reasoning is off, then please, show me how. Dissect my argument. Define your terms. You don't even need to provide sources. I'm not looking for proof that your argument exists in the educated world. I'm looking for mutual understanding, and that I'm confident we can accomplish with just the two of us and a little patience.
Posted by Mike (Member # 55) on :
quote:Originally posted by Jhai:
quote: Among other things, the difference between objective morality and subjective morality is that in objective morality the term "right" has a meaning that stands alone independent from any POV, while in subjective morality "right" has no meaning without a subject. When we ask whether something is right, we always mean "right to whom?" Thus the phrase "in fact, right" quite literally has no meaning from the point of view of subjective morality.
First, I am baffled by your sentence "in subjective morality "right" has no meaning without a subject". Take the sentence "David shouldn't do X". This is a moral claim. The subject of this claim is David. Whether or not the moral claim is universal or not is not clear.
Second, you're begging the question when you say "When we ask whether something is right, we always mean 'right to whom?'". This is only true if you take the stance that morality is not objective. It's like saying "When we ask whether the world is flat, we always mean 'is it flat to David?'" Doesn't parse if you believe the thing you're talking about is objective fact to begin with. You can't use this fact, however, to then say, "well, then, clearly whether the world is flat or not is subjective - it doesn't make sense otherwise". Like I said, that's begging the question.
I wasn't attempting to make an argument for subjective morality. I was simply restating my understanding of what subjective morality means. Let me try to say it more clearly, because I think my phrasing was confusing.
From the moral subjectivist's point of view, talking about what is right is meaningless unless we reference a judge. Sometimes, confusingly, the judge is hidden or implied, but the moral subjectivist's point of view requires it. That is why it is circular to use the question "is it, in fact, right?" as an argument for moral objectivism: the question itself makes the assumption of moral objectivity. (For other examples of this type of question, see also "have you stopped beating your wife?" and variants.)
In fact, it's the same reason the question "is the world flat to David" is nonsensical according to the point of view of objective reality: the question makes the assumption that the flatness of the world is entirely subjective. (Nitpick: the sentence you mentioned parses just fine, but you're right that it doesn't make sense according to that point of view.) Now, whether it's possible to believe in an objective reality but only subjective morality is another question entirely (which I'm willing to entertain).
I haven't read your link yet, or the paragraph you quoted, but I'll get to in in a minute.
Posted by Mike (Member # 55) on :
I'm ok with saying that moral statements have no truth value. Unless you're saying something like, "I think killing babies is wrong", or "In this culture killing babies is wrong" — those are true. Does that make me a metaethical moral relativist? I've never been a big fan of labels.
Posted by Lisa (Member # 8384) on :
quote:Originally posted by Mucus: At worst, they claim that the other is simply evil (see like any Lisa thread about Muslims).
<cough>Bite me</cough>.
Not all Muslims are evil.
Posted by Jhai (Member # 5633) on :
quote:Originally posted by Mike: I'm ok with saying that moral statements have no truth value. Unless you're saying something like, "I think killing babies is wrong", or "In this culture killing babies is wrong" — those are true. Does that make me a metaethical moral relativist? I've never been a big fan of labels.
Um, both of your examples are moral statements. So if you think they have truth value, then you're at the very least a moral-cognitivist. It sounds to me like you subscribe to moral relativism (if you believe statements like "in this culture blah is good" have truth value).
Labels are extremely useful in philosophy, as long as everyone understands what they mean, since it allows others to get a quick grasp of where you stand on an issue.
Posted by Jhai (Member # 5633) on :
quote:Originally posted by rollainm: Jhai, I'm familiar with moral relativism and I've even read that particular article. I don't subscribe to it and I don't defend it. What exactly is it that you think I should find relevant there? What terms am I so obviously not understanding?
Obviously I understand the concept of objective morality - as well as I think anyone can anyway, and at least as well as most people in this forum do. What I'm saying is that in the reality in which we live and interact, objective morality - objectivity period, really - as a concept simply lacks pragmatism. But that last paragraph of wildly blind illogical leaps was just a tangent.
Sorry if I'm coming off as harsh - it's been an extremely stressful day at work & I have strep throat.
What do you mean by "objectivity lacks pragmatism"? From your phrasing it seems like this is suppose to be a point against why we should believe a concept to be objective - but what is true doesn't exactly depend on what is useful. What is right is not always easy and all that jazz... And, anyways, I don't see how objectivity can be considered not useful - I find it an extremely useful concept.
quote:my understanding of morality - my morality - is subjective
You're just wrong here. You don't have a personal morality anymore than Christians have a god.
quote:Any useful form of objective morality would need to be based on something to define/demonstrate its universality.
Again, truth isn't about what is useful. And you need to provide an argument for why a useful morality must be "based on something". I don't see how that follows in any way.
quote:Even if you could present a moral code that somehow necessarily applied to all of us (and I doubt you or anyone can), it would still be subjective, just at a higher level (or lower, depending on how you look at it)
Again, I don't see how this follows in any way. Does mathematics apply to you? Is it somehow subjective? Do basic logical arguments apply to you? Are they subjective? Do they change in truth-value from person to person or culture to culture?
How exactly are you defining "subjective"?
Posted by Mike (Member # 55) on :
quote:Originally posted by Jhai:
quote:Originally posted by Mike: I'm ok with saying that moral statements have no truth value. Unless you're saying something like, "I think killing babies is wrong", or "In this culture killing babies is wrong" — those are true. Does that make me a metaethical moral relativist? I've never been a big fan of labels.
Um, both of your examples are moral statements. So if you think they have truth value, then you're at the very least a moral-cognitivist. It sounds to me like you subscribe to moral relativism (if you believe statements like "in this culture blah is good" have truth value).
Very well, I'll amend that to "I'm ok with saying that absolute moral statements of the form 'killing babies is wrong' have no truth value, unless the answer to the question 'wrong according to whom?' is evident."
quote:Labels are extremely useful in philosophy, as long as everyone understands what they mean, since it allows others to get a quick grasp of where you stand on an issue.
I understand that labels can be useful, but they are often confusing and obfuscatory. Sometimes they have multiple subtly different meanings and typically any given person's position doesn't exactly match one of the accepted meanings of the label. Also, labels decrease accessibility to the layman, which is of course unavoidable some of the time (and not always bad, if the advantages are big enough). Finally, labels that are fuzzily defined can lead to faulty reasoning. There are pros and cons, to be sure; not being a pro myself, I tend to lean away from using them.
Posted by Jhai (Member # 5633) on :
Mike, see, this is where understanding terminology comes in handy. If you believe that the statement "it's wrong for you to do X" is ever true or false - relative to a culture or not - then it has truth-value.
Philosophy has built up a very specific vocabulary, similar to most sciences, so that discussing these concepts is easy to do, rather than "confusing and obfuscatory". They're rather important.
Posted by rollainm (Member # 8318) on :
Jhai, How about this. Why don't you tell me how you define objectivity and subjectivity? I don't want a link to an article. Please just tell me in your own words how you define these terms. This isn't me being snarky, I promise. But you are undeniably more familiar with the terminology, so I expect you will be able to explain how you define these terms more readily than I could. Hopefully then we can move on to understanding exactly what we disagree on.
Fyi, I would like to respond to your last reply more thoroughly when I get the chance, but that may be as late as this weekend.
Posted by rollainm (Member # 8318) on :
quote: Philosophy has built up a very specific vocabulary, similar to most sciences, so that discussing these concepts is easy to do, rather than "confusing and obfuscatory".
I question this, given the number of philo papers I've read where a large portion of the content is spent defining terms and all the past major works that often require rather in-depth interpretation in order to fully understand. It seems to me that defining key terms has always been and will continue to be a major issue with philosophical discussion. But that aside, if the people you're having the discussion with do not understand the terminology in the same way you do, then telling them how easy it is to understand isn't exactly helpful.
Posted by Jhai (Member # 5633) on :
To address the point on objectivism vs. subjectivism: the most classic form of understanding the distinction between the two is in terms of mind independence & dependence. If a thing is objectively true or exists objectively, it does not require a mind for it to continue to be true or to exist. This is pretty easy to see in terms of physical things: unless you subscribe to an extreme form of skepticism about the existence of all things, you'll probably agree that even if no mind existed, physical things like the Earth and the Sun would still exist. On the other extreme, beliefs about personal tastes are pretty clearly subjective. If I say "this food is tasty to me", then clearly this is a mind-dependent fact or belief - it only is true (or not true) in relation to my mental activity. And thus subjective.
When you try to close in on the exact line between what is objective and what is subjective, though, it gets difficult. Take pain, for instance. Many philosophers believe that form of consequentialism is objectively true, or at least informs objectively true moral facts, and yet consequentialism bases what is good and what is not on how much pain or pleasure it causes. But pain seems to be dependent on mental states, so how can part of an objectively true fact?
There's no easy out here, so, like the definition of a chair, we might have to wave our hands a bit. I think a good rule of thumb in understanding whether something that is dependent on mental states is nonetheless "mind-independent" is to ask whether it is "response-dependent" or not. (Now we're wading into philosophy of mind stuff, which generally sucks & is difficult.) I'd suggest you look up response-dependence, 'cause it's rather tricky. But perhaps a good example would be the loss of something I value. Let's say my pet, whom I value, dies. I will feel sadness/loss because my pet died. The fact that I valued my pet is response-dependent; the pet is valued only because of my mental state of valuing it. As soon as I stop valuing the pet, it stops being a valued thing. You can't know whether I value my pet or not unless I tell you about my mental state (altho you can certainly make guesses). However, knowing that I value my pet, you can know I will feel loss or sadness when my pet dies. Sadness is not response-dependent. The sadness, while a mental state, exists because of the loss & the existence of my mental state of valuing the pet. I could, for instance, temporarily forget about the fact of the death of the pet, and still a sense of sadness because of loss. But the moment I forget about valuing the pet, the pet is no longer valued.
Is that clear? I doubt it.
------- On the vocabulary of philosophy - well, of course a large part of philosophy is about defining terms. But that doesn't mean that there isn't specific language that is already known that is used to help define terms further. "it logically follows", "epistemology", "non-cognitivism", "truth-value", "a priori", etc, etc. These are all basic terms that I would expect any philosophy major to know & understand - but it could take a full class period to fully explain the concept of non-cognitivism to an introductory class. Once they know it, though, it helps speed along the conversation tremendously. This is half the reason why the study of the history of philosophy is important - they developed the basic ideas & terminology that everything now is based upon.
When I debated applied ethical problems we didn't bother explaining what consequentialism was to the judges - if we had to start there, we'd never get anywhere - but we did describe, say, the Non-Identity Problem, which is basically defining a particular problem that results when you try to apply consequentialist theories to potential-but-not-yet-conceived humans.
If people aren't completely clear on basic philosophical terminology, such as "truth-value" then it's best they look up the term before deploying it, because anyone who has studied philosophy will have a very specific understanding of the word, and will be building arguments based upon it.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:If people aren't completely clear on basic philosophical terminology, such as "truth-value" then it's best they look up the term before deploying it...
Not to burst your bubble or anything, Jhai, but you were the first person on this thread to "deploy" the term and are so far the only person who's used the hyphenated version of it. I believe charity demands that, if you're going to use specialized jargon, you get over the assumption that people will know specifically what you mean by it and either include your definition as you use the term or, more helpfully, replace the term altogether with a longer and more explanatory description of the phenomenon of which you're speaking.
Posted by Xavier (Member # 405) on :
quote: If a thing is objectively true or exists objectively, it does not require a mind for it to continue to be true or to exist.
Okay, so Tom suggested starting with "harm is bad" to deduce an objective morality. But that's not good enough, as far as I can tell, since I don't think harming a tree or fungus is bad. As best as I can figure, he really means "harm to an entity with a conscious mind is bad".
Even that probably doesn't go far enough, since I don't think we consider bacteria "bad" for killing it's host. I'd imagine it's more like "An entity with a conscious mind causing harm to another entity with a conscious mind is bad".
Since this axiom twice requires a mind, I can't see how morality could possibly be objective by the definition given here.
Unless I suppose we are considering this as p-->q which is true always if p is false. So if no minds exists, morality could still exist, but is meaningless.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:But that's not good enough, as far as I can tell, since I don't think harming a tree or fungus is bad.
You don't? Are you really completely neutral about the act of, say, destroying a tree for no reason? Does that only count as harm if the tree belonged to someone who did not wish it destroyed? I would argue that the tree is in fact harmed, and that this harm is bad.
Now, you can argue that this harm is only very slightly bad, and thus produces a net good, because there is a conscious actor who has benefited in some way from the destruction of the tree.
Of course, this means that harm is not only an integral part of the universe, but is absolutely unavoidable. Consequently, all our actions can at best only seek to minimize that harm; if we put an infinitely small value on the "life" of electrons, for example, we see nothing wrong with altering or destroying an infinite number of electrons so that one person might better enjoy a novel. It is worth noting that every time we produce a chemical reaction we are, in an infinitesimal way, hastening the heat-death of the universe (which is about as "bad" as something can be).
quote:So if no minds exists, morality could still exist, but is meaningless.
I would say that "meaning" is purely an internal property of a conscious mind, and that without a conscious mind nothing can be said to have meaning.
Posted by Xavier (Member # 405) on :
quote:You don't? Are you really completely neutral about the act of, say, destroying a tree for no reason?
I've kicked mushrooms for no reason but to see the mushroom head go flying. I feel somewhat more appreciative of trees (from both cultural and personal sources I believe) but don't think that harming one is inherently immoral.
I suppose I don't know what to say about an objective morality that says that destroying an electron is immoral.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
But choosing to do something "bad" is not inherently immoral. In fact, it is unavoidable if you wish to breathe, eat, or walk on the ground.
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
quote:Of course, this means that harm is not only an integral part of the universe, but is absolutely unavoidable. Consequently, all our actions can at best only seek to minimize that harm; if we put an infinitely small value on the "life" of electrons, for example, we see nothing wrong with altering or destroying an infinite number of electrons so that one person might better enjoy a novel. It is worth noting that every time we produce a chemical reaction we are, in an infinitesimal way, hastening the heat-death of the universe (which is about as "bad" as something can be).
This is a pretty ambiguous way of talking about harm though. After all, even though you might be destroying a tree, you could also say what you are really doing is rearranging its parts (many particles) into something else (a log perhaps). So you'd be helping the log as much as you are harming the tree. Then if you wanted to make a chair out of the log, you'd have to harm the log to generate the chair. And so on. Underlying that whole process are units of matter which are not harmed, but rather are merely rearranged. That makes it questionable how to measure the harm generated by those actions, or if any harm is actually occuring at all. It seems as if judging the harm requires us to make judgement calls about which object is better or more important than another. Is a tree better than a log because it is living, so the harm to it counts more? Is a chair better than a log because it is more functional, so it is moral to harm a log to create a chair?
quote:I would say that "meaning" is purely an internal property of a conscious mind, and that without a conscious mind nothing can be said to have meaning.
A potential dangerous thing for a materialist to say, although I suppose it depends on what sort of materialist you are... Posted by scholarette (Member # 11540) on :
I would say that you need to extend beyond harm is bad to a certain likelihood of harm is bad. For example, if you choose to drive drunk and no one gets hurt, the choice to drive drunk is still wrong. Because the chance that you could kill someone exists and the gain is too low.
Posted by Xavier (Member # 405) on :
quote:But choosing to do something "bad" is not inherently immoral. In fact, it is unavoidable if you wish to breathe, eat, or walk on the ground.
Then allow me to rephrase:
I suppose I don't know what to say about an objective morality that says that destroying an electron is bad.
Edit: and related to Tresopax's point, you can never actually "destroy" an electron. So why would it be "bad" to change the state of an electron?
Posted by Jhai (Member # 5633) on :
Tom, I see your point to some extent, but if I used a word you didn't know in a sentence, would you ask me to define it, or just go google it? If we were discussing a high-level concept in physics, for instance, would you expect someone to explain what they mean by the term "work" or "force" (which are used quite differently in physics than they are in non-technical English), or would the assumption be that the people in the conversation ought to know the basic terms? You'll note that I do explain terms like "mind-independent" or "response-dependent", which only someone who has studied epistemology or meta-ethics are likely to know.
----- Xavier, go back and read what I wrote about mind independence - it's not identical to "divorced entirely from any and all mental states". Take, say, human-induced global warming (as a hypothetical if you don't believe it actually exists). This global warming can be said to only exist because of people's mental states - if we didn't have mental states that made us want to do things that released carbon into the atmosphere, then it wouldn't exist. Yet the existence of human-induced global warming is an objective fact & mind-independent (remember, hypothetical thought-experiment if you don't actually believe that it exists).
Posted by Jhai (Member # 5633) on :
quote:Originally posted by scholarette: I would say that you need to extend beyond harm is bad to a certain likelihood of harm is bad. For example, if you choose to drive drunk and no one gets hurt, the choice to drive drunk is still wrong. Because the chance that you could kill someone exists and the gain is too low.
This is why simple utilitarianism isn't really believed by anyone. But it's a useful simplification for quick & dirty hypotheticals.
Posted by rollainm (Member # 8318) on :
quote:Originally posted by Mike:
quote:Originally posted by Jhai:
quote:Originally posted by Mike: I'm ok with saying that moral statements have no truth value. Unless you're saying something like, "I think killing babies is wrong", or "In this culture killing babies is wrong" — those are true. Does that make me a metaethical moral relativist? I've never been a big fan of labels.
Um, both of your examples are moral statements. So if you think they have truth value, then you're at the very least a moral-cognitivist. It sounds to me like you subscribe to moral relativism (if you believe statements like "in this culture blah is good" have truth value).
Very well, I'll amend that to "I'm ok with saying that absolute moral statements of the form 'killing babies is wrong' have no truth value, unless the answer to the question 'wrong according to whom?' is evident."
A bit of a nitpick here, but I think it's relevant. In fact, I think it will play a significant role in my more lengthy reply to you either tonight or tomorrow, Jhai. Anyway...
The statement "I think killing babies is wrong" is not a statement about morality but about what is being thought. Thus, truth-value is applicable without question. It is true (or false) that I think killing babies is wrong - regardless of whether or not that thought itself is actually wrong either objectively or relative to society or whatever else.
Now on to an actual moral statement: "Killing babies is wrong." What you'd really like to know is my/our response to whether or not this kind of statement has truth-value. The problem is that, for the moral subjectivist, answering this question directly is incredibly misleading, much akin the afore mentioned "And how long now have you been beating your wife?" Answering with a simple yes or no (and without redefining "objectivity" more subjectively*) presupposes either objectivism or obviously flawed subjectivism.
When I (and apparently Mike as well) make a moral statement such as "Killing babies is wrong", I do not mean what I say at face value. Unlike Mike, however, I disagree that "according to whom" is presupposed. Prefacing such statements with something like "I believe" might seem sufficient on the surface (and indeed, it allows for unquestionable truth-value), but this still inadequately describes my subjective understanding of morality. Rather, what I am really saying is "I am personally obligated to think and act as if killing babies is wrong", and my response to whether or not this kind of statement has truth-value is clearly "yes." Yes, this accurately describes me, or no, it does not. (What drives that specific obligation, btw, is a separate discussion, one that I'm skeptical would be very productive given such widely varying opinions on what justifies specific moral beliefs.)
*More on this later.
Posted by Jhai (Member # 5633) on :
quote: Now on to an actual moral statement: "Killing babies is wrong." What you'd really like to know is my/our response to whether or not this kind of statement has truth-value. The problem is that, for the moral subjectivist, answering this question directly is incredibly misleading, much akin the afore mentioned "And how long now have you been beating your wife?" Answering with a simple yes or no (and without redefining "objectivity" more subjectively*) presupposes either objectivism or obviously flawed subjectivism.
This isn't true for many (most?) moral subjecivists, actually. For instance, take cultural relativism. A cultural relativist will answer yes or no depending on their culture. The relativism simply means that they do not believe that others will necessarily have the same truth-value for the statement. A yes or no simply does not "presuppose either objectivism or obviously flawed subjectivism". I suspect your understanding of what is meant by "moral subjectivism" is flawed. I'd refer you to an article discussing the definition of the two, but you said you didn't want that.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:That makes it questionable how to measure the harm generated by those actions, or if any harm is actually occuring at all. It seems as if judging the harm requires us to make judgement calls about which object is better or more important than another.
I would agree wholeheartedly with both of these statements.
quote:related to Tresopax's point, you can never actually "destroy" an electron. So why would it be "bad" to change the state of an electron?
Well, it depends whether changing the state of an electron can be considered to be "harming" that electron. The smaller you get, the harder the determination of harm becomes. That doesn't mean, however, that the logic breaks down; it just means that determining harm is very difficult at the extremes.
Posted by MattP (Member # 10495) on :
quote:I'd refer you to an article discussing the definition of the two, but you said you didn't want that.
I'd appreciate the reference. I've been reading a lot on Wikipedia, but it does more defining than explaining.
Posted by Mike (Member # 55) on :
quote:Originally posted by Jhai: Mike, see, this is where understanding terminology comes in handy.
In mathematics, a string of symbols may or may not have truth value. Even well-formed (i.e. parsable) strings can lack truth value.
In natural language, as you no doubt know, things are often more ambiguous and dependent on context. As such, your contention
quote: If you believe that the statement "it's wrong for you to do X" is ever true or false - relative to a culture or not - then it has truth-value.
is incorrect. It's incorrect because the statement "it's wrong for you to do X" can mean different things in different contexts. Two meanings, for example:
1. It's wrong for you to do X [in this culture]. 2. It's [absolutely] wrong for you to do X [full stop].
My point of view is that [1] has truth value: it may be true or false depending on X and the culture (it might even have the same truth value in all known cultures!); [2] does not have truth value: it parses, but is nonsensical because the premise is incorrect (the premise being that anything can be absolutely right or wrong, and that "absolutely wrong" in fact has a meaning at all).
In short, truth value applies to the meaning of the sentence, in context, not to the string of words that comprise it.
Posted by Jhai (Member # 5633) on :
quote:Originally posted by MattP:
quote:I'd refer you to an article discussing the definition of the two, but you said you didn't want that.
I'd appreciate the reference. I've been reading a lot on Wikipedia, but it does more defining than explaining.
This article has a very good, clear discussion of moral objectivism vs. subjectivism. I think the author also does a very good job in explaining things using plenty of examples and non-dense text. The article is actually about moral anti-realism, which is the position that moral facts do not exist mind-independently - either they don't exist at all (non-cognitivism and error theory) or they exist, but are mind-dependent. That latter bit is where subjectivism comes from.
At the bottom of the article there's a fair number of links to other articles on the SEP dealing with metaethics. They vary in clarity, but all (to my knowledge) are accurate and quite informative.
Posted by Jhai (Member # 5633) on :
Mike, that is not the standard way of evaluating whether a statement has truth-value, at least in all philosophy classes I have been in.
Edit: to expand a bit, if you are, say, a cultural relativist, the statement "It is always wrong for anyone to do X" always has a truth-value. And that truth value is that the statement is false.
An utterance that doesn't have a truth-value would be something like a growl when someone approaches a hungry person's food. There's communication happening there (you're warning someone off), but the utterance doesn't have a false or true value to it. Moral non-cognivists basically say that all moral statements are growls (to "bad" things) or purrs (to "good" things). When you say "it is wrong to do X" what you're really saying is something like "X! Yucky! Ick!". According to the moral non-cognivists.
[ February 27, 2009, 02:04 PM: Message edited by: Jhai ]
Posted by Mike (Member # 55) on :
Note that I didn't use the statement "it is always wrong for anyone to do X"; I used the statement "it is absolutely wrong to do X" — absolute in the sense that there is an objective point of view from which doing X is wrong. If you don't believe that such a point of view exists, then it doesn't make sense to talk about whether something is wrong from said point of view. "It is absolutely wrong to do X" is not false. Nor true.
Now, including the premise explicitly in the statement changes things:
It is [absolutely] wrong to do X.
There exists an objective point of view from which it is wrong to do X.
The first has no truth value and the second has truth value and is false. Do you see the distinction?
You're right when you say that "Ick!" etc. lack truth value, but there are many ways a sentence can lack truth value, and using the term to refer only to a specific kind of statement (growls/purrs) is unreasonably restrictive.
Also, the growls and purrs idea is an interesting way of looking at it, to be sure, but it doesn't mean anything substantively different (to me, at least) that interpreting "it is wrong to do X" as "the idea of someone doing X give me icky feelings", which definitely does have truth value. 6 of one, 2 pi of the other.
Posted by Jhai (Member # 5633) on :
If there's no such thing as "absolute wrongness" then it's false that it's absolutely wrong to do X.
If there's no such thing as unicorns, then it's false that there are unicorns over there.
Do you understand, or do I need to spell it out clearer?
Posted by Mike (Member # 55) on :
The non-existence of absolute wrongness and the non-existence of unicorns are of two entirely different categories.
Edit: the statement "it is [absolutely] wrong to do X" is neither true nor false for the same reason the question "do you still beat your husband?" cannot be answered adequately with a yes or no.
Posted by Jhai (Member # 5633) on :
The "beat your husband" question is not at all - either linguistically or philosophically - like the existence or non-existence of a property.
"Absolute wrongness" is a property being applied to an action. If you don't want to talk about imaginary unicorns, then imagine a color that doesn't actually exist, or some other property that doesn't exist. Say, that sweater is eoraid, where eoraid is a color that doesn't actually exist. The statement "the sweater is eoraid" is false because the property eoraid doesn't actually exist, and thus can't be assigned to any thing.
I'm not going to bother arguing this with you any more, but right now you aren't displaying a correct understanding of the term "truth-value" as used in philosophy.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
I think you're misunderstanding, Jhai. What Mike is saying is that there IS truth-value in the statement "I think this sweater is eoraid."
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
I think what Mike is arguing is that "absolute wrongness" isn't actually a property at all - it's just some meaningless gibberish. That would mean that "it is absolutely wrong to do X" is not a proposition at all, and thus doesn't have a truth-value.
A more comparable example would be a math question asking if "1 5 = 17". Is this true or false? It is neither because " " doesn't mean anything here, so the whole statement isn't really a proposition at all.
----
I'd have my doubts about any claim that "absolute wrongness" is meaningless though. It certainly SEEMS like I know what it means. Is there some very compelling reason to believe what seems to me to be meaningful is not a meaningful concept?
Posted by Jhai (Member # 5633) on :
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: I think you're misunderstanding, Jhai. What Mike is saying is that there IS truth-value in the statement "I think this sweater is eoraid."
There's a difference between saying "I think <blank>" and just "<blank>". I'm referring to the latter.
---- Tres, if Mike is saying that "absolute wrongness" is gibberish, then he's going to have a hell of a time also saying that relative or subjective wrongness isn't gibberish. You can't have it both ways.
The two main schools of thought regarding gibberish & moral propositions is that either the speakers are only expressing their emotions (the growling of non-cognitivism) or that they do think they're talking about something real, but it's actually hogwash, in the same way that doctors talked about how the humors affected health back in the day (error theory). Both schools of thought deny the existence of moral propositions, but one thinks that you're just emoting and the other one thinks you're earnestly talking about something that doesn't exist. Neither one allows for some moral propositions to be real and some to not be.
Posted by Mike (Member # 55) on :
To use an example from mathematics again, sometimes we want to prove a proposition that states that certain objects have a certain property. However, in order to do that we have to first verify that the property is well-defined. Tres's example is pretty close to what I mean.
quote: Tres, if Mike is saying that "absolute wrongness" is gibberish, then he's going to have a hell of a time also saying that relative or subjective wrongness isn't gibberish. You can't have it both ways.
Then I'll have a hell of a time. I've already been over what I see as the difference between absolute and relative moral statements.
Of course, if you're done arguing, that's fine too. I hope you don't still think I don't understand the meaning of the term "truth-value", though.
Posted by Jhai (Member # 5633) on :
As it relates to philosophy, I do. Or else you don't have a clear understanding of the differences between objective, subjective, absolute, and relative as they relate to philosophy. It's likely the latter, actually, since you seem to use objective & absolute interchangeably, as well as subjective & relative.
Either way, your position is not logically valid.
Posted by JonHecht (Member # 9712) on :
"I think you're misunderstanding, Jhai. What Mike is saying is that there IS truth-value in the statement "I think this sweater is eoraid."
There's a difference between saying "I think <blank>" and just "<blank>". I'm referring to the latter."
I'm not really sure I understood your response here, but I am going to agree with the statement that there is truth-value in the statement "I think this sweater is eoraid", though the truth value may be different than "This sweater is eoraid" in that he can he can think that the sweater is eoraid but it may not be, and whether or not he is truly thinks this is also assigns truth-value to the statement. More interesting, with regards to gibberish, are questions of whether or not he has a mind or ontology. Let's change the phrase to make this easier: "The present king of France thinks this sweater is eoraid." Given that there's no present king of France to whom one is referring, then does that statement have meaning?
Well, I always found that type of question interesting in my phil. of language class.
[ February 27, 2009, 04:27 PM: Message edited by: JonHecht ]
Posted by Jhai (Member # 5633) on :
I'm with Russell on this one.
It's actually pretty easy to see why he's right if you write it out in logical syntax. Luckily for me, our Advanced Logic class was taught by the same person who taught philosophy of language, so we got a good dose of that along with all the logic. And she liked math too. Good times.
(Edit: my response was just a shorter form of what you basically said - that Tom's statement & Mike's statement are not saying the same thing)
Posted by JonHecht (Member # 9712) on :
Eh, I always felt Strawson's response to Russell (which was my response when we were learning it) was simple and true.
Edit: I just never felt that Russell's descriptive theory was sufficient.
Posted by Jhai (Member # 5633) on :
Did you guys look at it using logical syntax or words? I've never taken a philosophy of language course, so I've only seen it from the logic side of things, where it seemed quite clear.
Posted by JonHecht (Member # 9712) on :
In phil. of language, we primarily focus on semantics rather than syntax.
Posted by Jhai (Member # 5633) on :
I mean, did you use words to describe what you were talking about, or a more formal system like predicate logic or the like? For discussion of language & meaning it can be quite useful to write in a formal logic system, since it's far more precise than English. For instance, there's about, um, 12 ways (maybe more? It's been awhile) to translate Lincoln's "You can fool some of the people all the time..." quotation into predicate logic, and each one has a different meaning entirely.
Posted by JonHecht (Member # 9712) on :
We generally avoided symbolic logic in that class unless it was necessary. If we felt we couldn't get the meaning across in English, or it would be clearer in symbolic, then we would translate into symbolic, but otherwise we used words.
Posted by Jhai (Member # 5633) on :
I would have found that extremely frustrating. I do find it illogical, unless the point was to keep the class accessible to those who haven't spent a semester or two studying logic. Then it would have just been unfortunate.
Our Phil of Language class had Logic as a prereq. Since Logic was a requirement of the major anyways, it wasn't that large a problem.
Posted by Mike (Member # 55) on :
quote:Originally posted by Jhai: As it relates to philosophy, I do. Or else you don't have a clear understanding of the differences between objective, subjective, absolute, and relative as they relate to philosophy. It's likely the latter, actually, since you seem to use objective & absolute interchangeably, as well as subjective & relative.
That may be. It'd be great if you'd explain or point me toward an explanation of the differences between objective and absolute and between subjective and relative.
Posted by Jhai (Member # 5633) on :
A supplement to the moral anti-realism article I posted a page back.
Posted by Mike (Member # 55) on :
Thanks, that's helpful. So, as far as I can tell on those two axes I believe that morals are both relative (like tallness) and subjective (unlike tallness). I've gotta say, I really don't understand the subjective-absolute position, so I'm not convinced of the orthogonality of the axes (does this mean that morality is entirely in people's heads, but it manifests itself in precisely the same way for everyone? — I don't think I know anyone who believes that). I'm also still fuzzy on what exactly it means for something to be mind-dependent. Perhaps a link for that too?
Posted by Jhai (Member # 5633) on :
See the main Anti-Realism article for a discussion of mind-dependence. It's not an easy concept, tho.
A subjective-absolutist position could be something like an "ideal viewer" who determines morality. So, consider a possible God. He hasn't made morality to be an objective fact of the universe, but He has a subjective view of whether an action is moral or not. He's also an ideal viewer of all actions, since he knows everything and is perfectly impartial & all. A moral subjective-absolutist position would say that what God views as morally right is right. But it's still subjective because it's dependent on God's mind. There's a bit more detail about this in the same Anti-Realism article.
[ February 27, 2009, 06:01 PM: Message edited by: Jhai ]
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:For discussion of language & meaning it can be quite useful to write in a formal logic system...
You know, I loathe predicate logic. Can you provide me with an example of when it's actually useful to use predicate logic to discuss a real-world philosophical question instead of, y'know, actual words?
Posted by Jhai (Member # 5633) on :
What is this "real-world philosophical question" thing you speak of?
Seriously, though, predicate logic (or other logical systems) is useful whenever you need to be extremely, extremely clear what a statement or argument means, or whether a statements follow from previous statements.
Complicated arguments can come up in all fields, but the most often in metaphysics, philosophy of language, philosophy of the mind, philosophy of religion, and epistemology. And, of course, in the fundamentals of mathematics & different proofs in math.
[ February 27, 2009, 09:57 PM: Message edited by: Jhai ]
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:Complicated arguments can come up in all fields, but the most often in metaphysics, philosophy of language, philosophy of the mind, philosophy of religion, and epistemology.
But how many of those cannot be expressed in actual words?
Posted by Raymond Arnold (Member # 11712) on :
I'm sure they almost all COULD be expressed in actual words, but words can have multiple meanings and sentences can have multiple interpretations. When you're making (or refuting) an important point, you often need to be more clear than "plain english" allows.
(If I was really clever I would have found a way to respond to your point using as ambiguous language as possible, but it's late and I'm too tired)
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:When you're making (or refuting) an important point, you often need to be more clear than "plain english" allows.
When are important points made in metaphysics? Posted by Jhai (Member # 5633) on :
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson:
quote:Complicated arguments can come up in all fields, but the most often in metaphysics, philosophy of language, philosophy of the mind, philosophy of religion, and epistemology.
But how many of those cannot be expressed in actual words?
Remember that thread that we had about Arrow's Impossibility Theorem? The one where it took about twenty back & forths before everyone was on the same page on what it meant? Arrow writes all out in about two pages in logical syntax so that, if you understand the terminology, you'd completely understand what he's saying without need for clarification, and why it must be true.
Posted by Raymond Arnold (Member # 11712) on :
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson:
quote:When you're making (or refuting) an important point, you often need to be more clear than "plain english" allows.
When are important points made in metaphysics?
I've actually found that forcing my opponents to systematically break down their argument into "logi-speak" helps them to realize how ridiculous (and useless) their metaphysical argument really is.
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