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"?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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*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.
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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.
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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.
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I think you don't quite understand the philosophical meanings of the terms "objective" and "subjective", at least as they relate to morality.
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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.
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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).
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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.
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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.
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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.
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It seems odd that the path to moral objectivity would lie through asking my opinion on an ethical question.
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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.
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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.
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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.
Posts: 1810 | Registered: Jan 1999
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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.
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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"?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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... Posts: 8120 | Registered: Jul 2000
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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.
Posts: 2223 | Registered: Mar 2008
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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?
Posts: 5656 | Registered: Oct 1999
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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).
Posts: 2409 | Registered: Sep 2003
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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.
Posts: 2409 | Registered: Sep 2003
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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.
Posts: 1945 | Registered: Jul 2005
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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.
Posts: 2409 | Registered: Sep 2003
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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.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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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.
Posts: 3275 | Registered: May 2007
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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.
Posts: 1810 | Registered: Jan 1999
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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.
Posts: 2409 | Registered: Sep 2003
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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.
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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.
Posts: 1810 | Registered: Jan 1999
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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.
Posts: 1810 | Registered: Jan 1999
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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.
Posts: 2409 | Registered: Sep 2003
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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."
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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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?
Posts: 8120 | Registered: Jul 2000
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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.
