posted
*blink* I don't think you're following me, or you couldn't possibly have asked that question. Where are you confused?
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
I guess what's got me confused is that I asked about a specific belief (belief in God). So I don't see how your answer could "depend on the belief," since I was just asking about that one belief.
Posts: 4600 | Registered: Mar 2000
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posted
Belief in any god, in and of itself? You're asking if that's categorically a moral wrong? Heck no.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
Well, really I was asking about belief in a theistic God, given the evidence that's publicly available.
I must say I'm very surprised to hear you say that there's no objective sense in which atheism is (or could be) the correct belief to hold given our evidence, and theism is incorrect.
The examples can get really, strikingly ludicrous. Think of a guy who is holding a tennis ball in each hand, yet simultaneously says (and believes) "There's no such thing as a tennis ball. That's all just a myth."
You don't think it's objectively true that his belief is irrational and he shouldn't have it?
Posts: 4600 | Registered: Mar 2000
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quote:You don't think it's objectively true that his belief is irrational and he shouldn't have it?
His belief is irrational. I don't think it's objectively true that he shouldn't have it. Rationality is not inherently virtuous.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: How would you test for the superiority of a moral priority?
By knowing a sufficient amount about human neurophysics and how it interacts with our subjective experience of "X is morally right" to determine which such statements are correct and which aren't, in the same way that we currently know enough about cardiophysics to determine which rhythms are healthy and which aren't.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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quote:By knowing a sufficient amount about human neurophysics and how it interacts with our subjective experience of "X is morally right" to determine which such statements are correct and which aren't
Why do you think neurophysics can tell us anything about objective truth? At best it might tell us what we prefer.Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
The way the terms usually get used in ethics and epistemology,
"immoral" is to the moral should as "irrational" is to the epistemic should.
So it seems like either you're using the words in a different way than they're usually used, or you do in fact acknowledge the epistemic should.
Another way of saying this is that the concept of rationality is itself a normative concept (it concerns how things should be, not just how they are).
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posted
Fair enough. In the future, I'll keep in mind that when you say someone is irrational, you don't mean that as a criticism of them, and there's no objective reason for them to change.
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posted
There may be reasons for them to change. But those reasons have to go beyond simple irrationality.
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