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Author Topic: Objective morality
MattP
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In the A=A thread a subdiscussion was started on the topic of subjective vs objective morality. I'm interested in digging a little further into this. Specifically, I'm trying to understand the concept of objectivity in this context. It *sounds* like objectivity is being determined by consensus, but knowing that consensus can be wrong, I doubt this is actually how the conclusion is reached.

I also don't understand the analogy to 2+2=4. I can demonstrate that concept using stones. The agreement is ultimately based not on whether you get four stones from two groups of two, but on a grammar to describe how we move the stones around in the sand. Morality seems more... etherial. How can I demonstrate that objective "rightness" of a thing the way I can place 4 stones in the sand?

EDIT: Typo

[ February 26, 2009, 03:22 PM: Message edited by: MattP ]

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Raymond Arnold
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I think any moral system is going to have to have, at it's heart, an arbitrary decision.

If your moral system is "Most happiness for the most people" (I subscribe to this) then any situation in which you can easily discern Action A produced more net happiness than Action B is an objectively "better" action. (Determining "Net Happiness" is often hard, of course, but there are plenty of situations where it's easy)

If your moral system is based off inalienable rights (I do not subscribe directly to this but I think assuming rights exist help us achieve the previous goal) then once you know what those rights are you can make objective decisions like "torture is bad."

If your moral system is based off of a particular religion, that religion will (presumably) give you objective rules to follow.

Unfortunately, there's no objective way I can think of to determine which of these arbitrary systems to follow in the first place.

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Xavier
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It's hard for me to even fathom the possibility of an objective morality, when morality is a concept 100% defined by humans.

You can say that "torturing a baby for fun" is objectively immoral, because:

A) Torturing a baby is bad.
B) Doing bad things just for fun is immoral.

However, A only evaluates to true because all human societies (that I know of) have decided it is true. Being members of a human society we have a difficult time seeing A as being possibly false. That does NOT mean that is objectively immoral.

You can try to deconstruct it:

A1) Torturing causes harm to the being that is tortured.
A2) Babies are innocent.
A3) Causing harm to an innocent being is bad.

Of course now you are stuck with explaining why A3 evaluates to true in an objective way. You'd have to give rights and considerations to innocent beings that are not necessarily inherent. Despite the popular sayings, human rights weren't given by God, they were decided by humans.

For instance, two alien societies may exist with a long-standing hatred on a planet. Each have been attempting to eliminate the other for generations. For whatever reason, one society cannot prosper on this planet while the other exists.

The members of one of these societies may not see the other as having any rights, or even being "people" at all. In this society, they might think that torturing captured babies of the other group to be grand sport.

An otherwise "moral" person raised in this society, being told his whole life that the members of the other group aren't people, and that torturing them is nothing to be ashamed of, could easily take to baby-torturing as a hobby.

You could tell the people of this society that baby torturing for fun is objectively immoral, and they would ask you how you could possibly know this.

My impression is that those who study ethics pretend that morality is objective in the same way that they pretend that free-will exists. It isn't true, but you have to pretend it is to base your policies on it.

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TomDavidson
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It's not as hard as it sounds, Phil. Start with "harm is bad" and you'll get to "you shouldn't torture babies, unless the net good outweighs the downsides" in about three steps.

The problem, of course, lies in the definition of "harm." If one definition of "harm" is "prevents someone from torturing babies," then you've got some difficulties. [Smile] It's not difficult to define harm in such a way, though, that physical pain and the like are easily included.

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Raymond Arnold
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For the record, while I'm not an official ethics scholar I am deeply fascinated by the subject, but I do not believe free will exists, nor do I think it's necessary to base ethics off of.
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Xavier
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But how do you know that harm is objectively bad?
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Jhai
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MattP, it sounds like you're pretty much addressing things I said in the thread, so I'll start things rolling. Do note, however, that it's been a couple years since I talked about metaethics, and not all things I believe/say are necessary widely accepted or the only way that objectivity in ethics can be understood.

Consensus:
No, there's no way you can prove something is objective through consensus. That's not what I was trying to imply at all. I think the whole consensus idea came up via the discussion of ethics in the classroom discussion. A good teacher of ethics would, at the very minimum, make sure everyone gets the "objective morality" thing, since the rest of the class is centered around the idea that you can actually talk about a moral principle being right or wrong. If you left a student behind at that point the entire semester would be wasted for him.

With stones you can only prove that two stones plus two stones gets your four stones. It's not quite the same thing. You can't get calculus from stones, but you can get calculus from numbers. And, to return to the "consensus" thing, even if everyone except you in the universe had their IQ dropped to the point where they couldn't understand calculus, that wouldn't make calculus wrong. Even if everyone else thought you were just talking crazy gibberish, it's still a true thing.

Perhaps a better analogy can be made through logic. You can't prove to anyone the following statement:
1. If A then B.
2. A.
3. Therefore B.
Nonetheless, it's a completely true, objectively true statement. Once you "get" the idea, it's obvious that it must be true. I personally think the objectiveness of morality is like that, except it's tougher to "get". It's more like the Incompleteness Theorem, which is some tough stuff, but, once you fully understand the terms & argument used, you can't deny it. That doesn't mean that everyone is capable of understanding it - and some people might deny it. But they'd be completely wrong to do so.

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Raymond Arnold
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quote:
It's not as hard as it sounds, Phil. Start with "harm is bad" and you'll get to "you shouldn't torture babies, unless the net good outweighs the downsides" in about three steps.
quote:
But how do you know that harm is objectively bad?
Yeah, each of those three steps is pretty arbitrary.
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TomDavidson
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quote:
But how do you know that harm is objectively bad?
That's your starting axiom. And you CAN challenge it. But it's pretty hard to do so, since it's almost a tautology. It's very difficult to come up with a situation in which harm is NOT bad (remembering that harm for a greater good is not a net harm); I can't do it.
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King of Men
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Consider this: If morality were really subjective, then you could choose a different morality; you might for example decide that it was ok to torture babies. I do not think anyone is capable of actually, genuinely making such a decision; I would want to see evidence of real baby-torturing going on before I believed any declaration of such a change of morality. But if you are unable to change (some parts of) your morality, then in some sense that is objective; it is possible to discover what the unchangeable parts of your morality are. This is not the same as saying that it is written in the stars; it is written in your brain, and if I knew enough neuroscience I could overwrite it. But each human's morality is objective in this sense, and there are large degrees of overlap. You could write some moral rules that 99% of humanity would agree with, and call that "The objective morals of H. Sap."

Side note: As I said in the other thread, the question of what X considers right is amenable to experimental testing: Set up the situation, give him the power to stop whatever action is going on, and give him a justification for it. If he pushes the stop button, then he considers action X wrong given justification Y.

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Tresopax
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quote:
I also don't understand the analogy to 2+2=4. I can demonstrate that concept using stones. The agreement is ultimately based not on whether you get four stones from two groups of two, but on a grammer to describe how we move the stones around in the sand.
What do you mean by that? I'd say it IS based on the fact that you get four stones from two groups of two, and that that would be true whether or not anyone was around to make a grammar to describe it.

Similarly, if you throw four stones at an innocent baby and kill it, I'd say that is wrong whether or not anyone was around to describe it as wrong.

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Xavier
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quote:
That's your starting axiom. And you CAN challenge it. But it's pretty hard to do so, since it's almost a tautology. It's very difficult to come up with a situation in which harm is NOT bad (remembering that harm for a greater good is not a net harm); I can't do it.
I guess that's where I differ then. I may agree that "harming a sentient organism is bad" but I certainly don't think it's some inherent truth in the universe. I think it's something we collectively decided over the course of human society.

I don't even think that every society on earth has accepted it as applying to all of humanity. It certainly isn't universally accepted in recent tribal genocides. Mostly I'd say the axiom is "harming one of us is bad".

I also think it helps to think of another race of sentient organisms. If an alien race of giant mushrooms turned out to be sentient in a way that manifests itself much differently than humans, I don't think humanity would be quite as generous about declaring that harming the alien mushrooms is objectively bad. Especially if those sentient mushrooms were inconvenient in some way.

And then how do we decide if another race is, in fact, sentient. Or am I assuming that part of the axiom? Is it really "harming a human is bad"? Would a sentient alien apply to the axiom? A non-sentient human?

[ February 26, 2009, 03:37 PM: Message edited by: Xavier ]

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Jhai
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quote:
Originally posted by Tresopax:
Similarly, if you throw four stones at an innocent baby and kill it, I'd say that is wrong whether or not anyone was around to describe it as wrong.

This made me choke on my tea.
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Jhai
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Xavier, would some really obscure branch of pure mathematics still be true in the universe if no one was around to think of it? Or something like the Incompleteness Theorem?
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Samprimary
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quote:
How can I demonstrate that objective "rightness" of a thing the way I can place 4 stones in the sand?
can't.
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King of Men
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quote:
Similarly, if you throw four stones at an innocent baby and kill it, I'd say that is wrong whether or not anyone was around to describe it as wrong.
Point of order: There are at least two people in the scenario described, to wit, the stone-thrower and the baby.
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Darth_Mauve
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Dead babies tell no tales.

From Homer on there have been stories about killing and torturing babies. The secret is to say "Torturing their babies is not wrong. Only torturing our babies is wrong."

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King of Men
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I will give you killing. But torturing? I do not think there are many people who have deliberately kicked a baby for the express purpose of seeing it scream. Dashing their brains out on the nearest handy wall, certainly, that's always popular; but not causing deliberate pain for its own sake.
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natural_mystic
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quote:
Originally posted by TomDavidson:
quote:
But how do you know that harm is objectively bad?
That's your starting axiom. And you CAN challenge it. But it's pretty hard to do so, since it's almost a tautology. It's very difficult to come up with a situation in which harm is NOT bad (remembering that harm for a greater good is not a net harm); I can't do it.
Here's an example where (additivity issues aside) net harm is negative, but most would disagree that the action was moral. Underlying it is a transitivity assumption that is controversial. Anyway, hang nails are a painful irritant. Suppose someone came up with a machine that could, powered by torturing a baby, cure 100,000 hang-nails. Should this machine be activated? (Feel free to increase the number of hang-nails). Most would say no, and to do so would be immoral.

Edited to add: this situation is not as irrelevant as it a priori looks. I have heard arguments for transitivity saying essentially "Look, we do this all the time. When adding a lane to a highway actuarial tables tell us 3.5 people will die in the construction, but no one suggests we don't add the lane on this basis."

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natural_mystic
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quote:
Originally posted by Jhai:

Perhaps a better analogy can be made through logic. You can't prove to anyone the following statement:
1. If A then B.
2. A.
3. Therefore B.
Nonetheless, it's a completely true, objectively true statement. Once you "get" the idea, it's obvious that it must be true. I personally think the objectiveness of morality is like that, except it's tougher to "get". It's more like the Incompleteness Theorem, which is some tough stuff, but, once you fully understand the terms & argument used, you can't deny it. That doesn't mean that everyone is capable of understanding it - and some people might deny it. But they'd be completely wrong to do so.

Is the Principle of the Excluded Middle obviously true? (I regard it as true, but I think it worth pointing out that primitive logical constructs can still be controversial).

What makes you think morality is not like geometry i.e. with many logically valid variants that can be usefully applied in the real world in certain circumstances?

Edited for grammar.

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Raymond Arnold
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Another example refers back to the old "is torture okay if we're preventing a nuclear bomb?" scenario. Say we have a terrorist, who has proven unresponsive to torture (he's willing to sacrifice everything to ensure his bomb goes off). But he's not willing to sacrifice his family. In this case, is it okay to torture his baby, to stop a bomb and save millions of other babies?

I don't actually know what the right answer is there, even though I do subscribe to the Utilitarian axion. Sure, in the immediate future, that's a lot of lives we're saving. But you're also helping to create a world where a child's life is treated as a commodity, which I think has an overall negative impact on the world.

Which is more important, those particular lives or the preservation of human dignity as a whole? I don't know. In any given situation, one probably IS objectively better than the other, but knowing what to do at the time isn't always possible.

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Jhai
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quote:
Originally posted by natural_mystic:
What makes you think morality is not like geometry i.e. with many logically valid variants that can be usefully applied in the real world in certain circumstances?

I haven't studied non-Euclidian geometry much, but don't the different versions basically depend on the surface you're drawing on? To stretch the analogy, I'd say that the different circumstances around a particular moral case are like the different surfaces. Killing is wrong... when the person you kill objects to it and the only effect will be your personal pleasure. Killing is right... when the person you kill desperately desires it and the only effect will be a decrease in the harm in the world.
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natural_mystic
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quote:
Originally posted by Jhai:
quote:
Originally posted by natural_mystic:
What makes you think morality is not like geometry i.e. with many logically valid variants that can be usefully applied in the real world in certain circumstances?

I haven't studied non-Euclidian geometry much, but don't the different versions basically depend on the surface you're drawing on? To stretch the analogy, I'd say that the different circumstances around a particular moral case are like the different surfaces.
When you talk about objective morality, do you mean:
a) That in any situation there is an objective ordering (with respect to morality) of actions, or
b) That there is a single unified, consistent theory of morality that can be universally applied.

I was assuming you meant the latter, which I am skeptical of. The quoted comment made me think you meant the former, which I am more optimistic about. I agree with your interpretation of the analogy i.e. with regard to circumstances influencing the geometry of the moral space.

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Jhai
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I'd say there's as much a single unified theory of morality as there is a single unified theory of mathematics or logic. Which is to say, not really, at least not in such a manner that you could say it all in a page, but it all does hang together. Those three occupy a very similar epistemological space in my mind.
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Samprimary
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I'd say there's more or less a model imposed by biology combined with the necessarily imposed developmental environments of functioning societies that has enough crossover to create, if not universal, than near-universal concepts of morality widely held by our communal human population.

We still can't create mathematically styled proofs of morality. The best anyone can do is create psychological models which neutrally observe the patterns in our habits, or, if we're trying to 'create' a model of an objective morality, point to a book and say god done wrote it and it lays it all out for us.

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MattP
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quote:
Originally posted by Samprimary:
I'd say there's more or less a model imposed by biology combined with the necessarily imposed developmental environments of functioning societies that has enough crossover to create, if not universal, than near-universal concepts of morality widely held by our communal human population.

We still can't create mathematically styled proofs of morality. The best anyone can do is create psychological models which neutrally observe the patterns in our habits, or, if we're trying to 'create' a model of an objective morality, point to a book and say god done wrote it and it lays it all out for us.

This summarizes my own intuition on the subject very well. Can morality as a feature of biology be considered to be objective the same way that math or logic is considered to be objective?
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Glenn Arnold
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quote:
I will give you killing. But torturing? I do not think there are many people who have deliberately kicked a baby for the express purpose of seeing it scream. Dashing their brains out on the nearest handy wall, certainly, that's always popular; but not causing deliberate pain for its own sake.
Read "Things Fall Apart" by Chinua Achebe. Babies thought to be evil spirits that are continually reborn to torment their mothers had their skin sliced and were then put in ceramic crocks and left in the forest to die. The point was that a painful death would dissuade the spirit from being born to the same mother again.

I have less interest in whether morality is objective, than I do in whether it's possible to have a morality that isn't "moral relativism." Tom's "harm for a greater good is not a net harm" is an example of this. Theists often claim that atheism leads to moral relativism, but I have yet to see a religious morality that doesn't have exceptions for immoral acts when it serves the "greater good," whatever that is.

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Raymond Arnold
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> Tom's "harm for a greater good is not a net harm" is an example of this.

To clarify, you DO consider this to be moral relativism? If so, what exactly is moral relativism and why does that qualify?

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TomDavidson
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quote:
Can morality as a feature of biology be considered to be objective the same way that math or logic is considered to be objective?
I doubt it, if only because some of the axioms relied upon are social constructs that are a consequence of our biology. A pure sociopath, for example, cannot be convinced that harm experienced by anyone besides himself is bad. (Note: this doesn't mean he's right; it just means that he won't accept any morality that includes this presumption.)
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Jhai
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If you just describe what people do or believe, it's anthropology or psychology or sociology - not philosophy.
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Lisa
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quote:
Originally posted by MattP:
In the A=A thread a subdiscussion was started on the topic of subjective vs objective morality. I'm interested in digging a little further into this. Specifically, I'm trying to understand the concept of objectivity in this context. It *sounds* like objectivity is being determined by consensus, but knowing that consensus can be wrong, I doubt this is actually how the conclusion is reached.

I also don't understand the analogy to 2+2=4. I can demonstrate that concept using stones. The agreement is ultimately based not on whether you get four stones from two groups of two, but on a grammar to describe how we move the stones around in the sand. Morality seems more... etherial. How can I demonstrate that objective "rightness" of a thing the way I can place 4 stones in the sand?

I'm going to suggest that you read this. Ignore the fact that Rand wrote it. No one is going to adopt her philosophy solely on the basis of one article, however well written. But read it and see whether you think it provides a foundation for at least some objective morality. You may conclude that there are parts of what you consider morality that are still subjective, but I've never heard a convincing argument for why the contents of this article don't substantiate the concept of objective morality.
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Lisa
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quote:
Originally posted by TomDavidson:
quote:
But how do you know that harm is objectively bad?
That's your starting axiom. And you CAN challenge it. But it's pretty hard to do so, since it's almost a tautology. It's very difficult to come up with a situation in which harm is NOT bad (remembering that harm for a greater good is not a net harm); I can't do it.
I wouldn't say that "harm is bad" is an axiom at all. It's a logical conclusion from real axioms, like the primacy of existence and, yes, A is A.
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TomDavidson
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quote:
It's a logical conclusion from real axioms, like the primacy of existence and, yes, A is A.
Yes, that's perfectly true. I'm engaging in shorthand here: "harm is bad" is the last step in that chain that I think people can universally agree on, and therefore I'm calling it axiomatic. From that point forward, we start getting into personal perceptions.

(I don't think there is anyone on Earth, for example, who will claim that A is not A. Nor do I think there is anyone who will claim that harm is not bad. For every step thereafter, however, I can imagine someone trying to argue the point.)

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Glenn Arnold
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quote:
A pure sociopath, for example, cannot be convinced that harm experienced by anyone besides himself is bad.
A pure sociopath doesn't understand what bad is at an emotional level, but I think your image of what a sociopath is is oversimplified.
link

quote:
The thought of these people wearing suits and working a 9-5 job conflicts with most people’s image of psychopaths gleaned from films like The Godfather and The Silence of the Lambs. But it shouldn’t be surprising. A lack of empathy does not necessarily imply a desire to do harm—that comes from sadism and tendencies toward violence, traits which have only a small correlation with psychopathy.

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Glenn Arnold
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quote:
I'm going to suggest that you read this.
I'm going to suggest that you read this.
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Lisa
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Interesting. Do you think Huemer realizes that there's a difference between a premise and a definition? He doesn't seem to.

When Rand says that a value is that which one acts to gain or keep, she isn't taking the word "value" as used generally (read: as used fuzzily) and saying that entities act to gain or keep them. She's saying that her use of the term "value" denotes that which one acts to gain or to keep.

That's his #6. And my evidence that he's making this mistake comes from #7, which assumes that Rand is making an assertion about what other people call "value", rather than simply defining the term for the purposes of rational discourse.

You do realize that without defining the terms you're using, you might as well be babbling, right? What's the point of discussing "value" if you don't define what you mean by it? And since it's a prime example of a word that is understood differently by many groups and individuals, it requires definition in order for it to mean anything.

Once Huemer starts out by misrepresenting Rand's argument, everything else he writes stems from that mistake. I applaud his attempt to analyze the article using the language of logic. And I admire the fact that he starts his analysis by writing "Rand's argument seems to be as follows" (bolding mine). He appears to recognize that his analysis may be wrong, which is good, since it is.

And then he moves on to use language in a very sloppy way. Take this, for example:
quote:
Premise 2 seems to be false. If I knew that I was inevitably going to get a million dollars tomorrow--there's no way I can avoid it--would that mean that the money will have no value? Again, Rand offers no defense of this assertion.
The Premise 2 that he's referring to is "Something is valuable to an entity, only if the entity faces alternatives." But Rand never says that; that's just his reformulation of what she says, and I think it's a misrepresentation.

Furthermore, looking at his example, he's using "value" in a fuzzy way again. It's quite possible that a person might not place any value on money. Would that prevent the money from having monetary value? No. But monetary value is a very different thing, denoting a symbol of a mutually agreed upon value. What's the "value" of a penny, for example? Its monetary value is $0.01. Its value as copper is about 50% greater than that. Its value to a child placing it in a machine at the museum to get it smushed into a souvenir trinket is probably much greater than that. If a respirator has a broken wire, and the only metal you can find to bridge the gap and get someone breathing again is a penny, well, then that penny might be of inestimable value to you.

Words have meanings. When you're gabbing to someone on the subway, it may not matter that you use them with any degree of rigor. But when you're discussing concepts of this sort, that kind of semantic laziness renders the entire exercise useless. It's precisely the reason why Rand made a point of defining the terms she was going to use prior to using them. I guess Huemer didn't completely get that.

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Samprimary
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quote:
Originally posted by Lisa:
Interesting. Do you think Huemer realizes that there's a difference between a premise and a definition? He doesn't seem to.

He's actually quite aware.

His teleological points and his criticism of rand's 'fudge words' are actually quite apt. Every time Rand's metaphysics get looked at, the conclusion is generally the same, which is why the philosophical world rapidly began to move past her.

quote:
You do realize that without defining the terms you're using, you might as well be babbling, right? ... since it's a prime example of a word that is understood differently by many groups and individuals, it requires definition in order for it to mean anything.
Funny you would say that; Huemer himself ably points out that Rand never gives a precise and unambiguous criterion for the applicability of "Rational" and "Man qua man" as she uses them.
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Samprimary
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quote:
Originally posted by TomDavidson:
quote:
Can morality as a feature of biology be considered to be objective the same way that math or logic is considered to be objective?
I doubt it, if only because some of the axioms relied upon are social constructs that are a consequence of our biology. A pure sociopath, for example, cannot be convinced that harm experienced by anyone besides himself is bad. (Note: this doesn't mean he's right; it just means that he won't accept any morality that includes this presumption.)
Yup. You can only look at patterns, or you can try to pull some real Laplace's Demon crap with the Ultimate Guiding Rule of Human Actions, but that ain't going to be philosophy, just pattern recognition of a sequence of biological events.

[ February 27, 2009, 09:14 AM: Message edited by: Samprimary ]

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Occasional
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Here is the problem if we are to say there are "objective moralities" and not human constructs. All those harmful acts, including killing babies for fun, happen in nature without a sense of shame for those animals. True, we can't look into the hearts of animals. Yet, the old idea of "caught red in tooth and nail" isn't a truth. The animals aren't worried about getting caught in a horrible deed according to aphorism. They are protecting the food source from getting stolen.

Morality is a human invention. The only alternative to that, the one I believe, is particular actions and attitudes have been divinely appointed. Even those divine decrees may be either higher law natural or decided by committee. That goes into a longer theological discussion that is mostly interesting within my own faith group.

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Tresopax
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It is possible that objective moralities exist but that animals don't have the capacity to understand them - sort of like how human beings can't hear a bat's sonar.
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Jhai
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Or... you could just invoke "ought implies can" and realize that animals can't act differently than their natures, given that they can't think abstractly. Since they can't act in a moral manner, they can't be obliged to do so.

If some animals are intelligent enough to understand something along the lines of "it's bad to hurt others" (like, say, chimps & dolphins), then I don't see why we can't judge their actions as being moral or immoral.

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Samprimary
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People with certain personality disorders, whether you want to call them sociopaths, psychopaths, or anti-socials, are assumed to be incapable of acting in a moral manner. It can't be cured, only 'managed' as a lifelong condition.

So that presents some interesting issues. In terms of comparing them to the animals, they have the ability to think abstractly but are still biologically(?) incapable of acting in a moral manner.

Furthermore, the cases where you have a full sociopath, it's often the result of an exceedingly traumatic childhood and it could be insinuated that the resulting condition was due to circumstances outside of their control.

The straightforward debate this generates is to wonder: to what extent do we consider them responsible for their own unavoidable immorality? If they're not responsible for it, are they still immoral no matter what? Etc.

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Jhai
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Uh, sociopaths aren't at all biologically incapable of acting morally. I mean, are you saying it's physically impossible for them to stop hurting others? Read Glenn Arnold's link above. Most sociopaths just do not have the emotional twinges most of us get when we act immorally. But they could still rationally decide that they wish to act morally. To give an example, my parents never taught me to floss. I don't feel bad when I don't floss in any way - no guilt, no shame, nothing. But I've still decided that I ought to floss because the benefits outweigh the costs. It's the "right thing" to do, but I've decided that without appeal to emotions or my intuition.

If you're talking about other mental issues (such as with sociopaths who have poor impulse control, or hear voices, or whatever), then we'd probably judge them in exactly the same way we judge other people with mental problems.

Edit: it's also worth pointing out there's a difference between behaving wrongly and being blame-worthy, at least in many ethical theories. So there could be a morally right thing to do, but it's very, very difficult for you to do. Someone could judge you as behaving immorally if you don't do the right thing, but also find you not blame-worthy. In basic consequentialism, for instance, an act is judged by the amount of pain or pleasure it causes. So you could act with the best of intentions but still perform an immoral act because you failed to know some fact that no one would ever expect you to know. Thus, acted wrongly, but not blame-worthy.

[ February 27, 2009, 10:15 AM: Message edited by: Jhai ]

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Samprimary
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It more or less has to do with their lack of capacity to be driven by 'moral' impulses. They can only really act in ways that they decide will prevent them from getting into trouble, or will otherwise benefit them by being in line with society's expectations. If you take a look at the hardliner cases, it's all for show. When I say that they can't act in a moral manner, I mean that everything they choose to do is not chosen because of a 'moral' process, but because of a cost/benefit analysis. (To clarify, I am talking about this to consider it versus a perspective that says that acts can't be moral unless they are meditated by conscious, moral intent)

quote:
If you're talking about other mental issues (such as with sociopaths who have poor impulse control, or hear voices, or whatever), then we'd probably judge them in exactly the same way we judge other people with mental problems.
Well, sociopathy is a mental issue. When you are talking about a person with antisocial personality disorder, you are talking about a person with 'mental problems.'
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Jhai
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Yeah, but you've given no argument for why an objective moral system - or, really, any moral system - must consider intent, and intent alone. In fact, consequentialism is all about cost-benefit analysis. So if, say, simple utilitarianism is actually the correct moral system, there's no reason why a sociopath couldn't be a completely upright and moral person.

Basically, your point only stands given a specific type of moral system, but you haven't given any argument at all for why any moral system must be of that specific type. Until you do, arguing along in this vein is pretty much worthless.
---
Insert a "such" after "we judge other people with" and my intent is clear.

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TomDavidson
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quote:
So if, say, simple utilitarianism is actually the correct moral system, there's no reason why a sociopath couldn't be a completely upright and moral person.
Here's the thing, though: the utility of any given act might be -- for hard-coded, physical-brain-based reasons -- very different for a sociopath. So while a sociopath might well use the same approach to developing a code of ethics that a "normal" person would, the values they're plugging into that same equation will be so different that the end result might be unrecognizable.
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MattP
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Jhai, so are you saying that objective morality is an inherent feature of the universe - something that we discover and which exists independent of the existence of our species, rather than being something that we construct or even something that emerges as a property of the system that includes us?
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King of Men
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quote:
To make this point fully clear, try to imagine an immortal, indestructible robot, an entity which moves and acts, but which cannot be affected by anything, which cannot be changed in any respect, which cannot be damaged, injured or destroyed. Such an entity would not be able to have any values; it would have nothing to gain or to lose; it could not regard anything as for or against it, as serving or threatening its welfare, as fulfilling or frustrating its interests. It could have no interests and no goals.
Sez Rand! But what I find interesting is that she has just described the god of the Judeo-Christian tradition.
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scifibum
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quote:
I mean that everything they choose to do is not chosen because of a 'moral' process, but because of a cost/benefit analysis.
Morality is always a cost benefit analysis. The problem with sociopaths is that their analysis doesn't extend to others.
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Jhai
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quote:
Originally posted by MattP:
Jhai, so are you saying that objective morality is an inherent feature of the universe - something that we discover and which exists independent of the existence of our species, rather than being something that we construct or even something that emerges as a property of the system that includes us?

I'm saying that objective moral facts are mind-independent - check out the A is A thread for more (where the conversation has continued, despite your efforts here).

----
Sociopaths could extend their analysis to others - they just don't have an emotional impulse to do so. Rationally, though, they could decide it to be worthwhile. For example, it is quite possible for a sociopath to decide, from reason alone, that the Christian God exists. Being of the rational sort, he would then follow the Christian rules regarding morality as best he could, since that's the way to get into Heaven rather than eternal suffering. *shrug* You wouldn't be able to tell him from anyone else.

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