Thinking Christian Comments
Original Post: Why Would You Deny Objective Moral Values?
Well, having been banished by SteveK and Holo because I said I don't care whether there is an absolute truth, I don't know whether you want me to comment here, but I'll risk it anyway.
First let me just say that when I said I didn't care, I followed it up by saying that I didn't care because I think it's irrelevant to how we live. It's not that I don't care about morality in general, or even that, if absolute morality were proven I wouldn't care, it's that I think the question of whether there is absolute morality is unanswerable and I am more concerned about how we actually live in the absence of an answer to that question.
Now let me say that I feel a bit misrepresented by your post, Tom. You write, "...he most certainly could not say to the cigarette-wielding baby-burner, 'Stop it! That's wrong!'--for their moral basis would be as valid as his own." This is not what I think at all. I've said in comments that I think morality is feeling so strongly about an idea that we are willing to sacrifice for it, and that my morality obligates me to convince others that my positions are correct. My own authority is enough for me to act on; I don't need an outside source that verifies my morality.
Also, I did mention that there is a culture that treats their babies roughly in the belief that this prepares them for life. I'm not saying that I agree that this is a good thing, only that a member of that culture would believe this is a good thing. When you present a scenario and appeal to people's response to it as a defense of your argument, you are only appealing to people who live in a culture similar to yours, in a time and place similar to yours, so you prove nothing about absolutes.
I'm much more interested in knowing how your morality, based on your understanding of an absolute, guides your choices in everyday life.
I am not, btw, avoiding God. I've only recently come to atheism after a long trial with being a believer.
You could say, "Stop it! That's wrong!" But you would be wrong, if morality is defined by the culture. That's one of the more common versions of relativist morality. Maybe instead you think it's not that, though, for you said, "My own authority is enough for me to act on; I don't need an outside source that verifies my morality." In that case they could say, "We don't need you as an outside source to comment on our morality." Then if you want to be consistent with your own principles, you would have to agree. Either way, by your principles, there's nothing immoral in that culture about torturing babies.
If there is a culture that treats babies roughly to prepare them for life, either (a) they are doing it a lot less roughly than in the example I raised, or (b) they are wrong, morally (under moral realism), or (c) under relativism, they have perfect moral justification for torturing babies.
I accept that you are not avoiding God. I think a lot of moral relativists are. I still wonder why you would hold to moral relativism when it leads to such crazy conclusions, such as that torturing babies could be morally justifiable.
No, I wouldn't be wrong if morality is defined by the culture. I would be "right" according to my own morality, and "wrong" according to theirs. My task would be to convince them that my morality is more "right" than their morality. This is, in fact, what we actually DO all the time: We intervene when we believe other cultures are acting immorally (you would say because we believe it is immoral based on the absolute morality provided by God; I would say because we as a society believe our morality is more "right" than their morality.)
You are right that they could say they don't need me as an outside source to comment on their morality (and, in fact, this is what other cultures DO.) But, I don't have to agree to be consistent with my principles! I don't see why you keep saying that. I think it's because you believe that there is only one morality. I believe in multiple moralities, but also that I have an obligation to act according to my own (and there are many instances in which I do have to respect the other culture's morality and not intervene, as well.)
You are right that I would say that that culture does not consider their acts immoral. But I would not say that I consider those acts moral.
There is another option, Tom: (c) they are morally justified according to their cultural beliefs and they are not morally justified according to others' beliefs. They are both moral and immoral, depending on the perspective. THIS is moral relativism (at least, according to OS).
I hold to this moral relativism because it allows me to understand. I don't believe it leads to "such crazy conclusions," as I just demonstrated.
This is getting even more interesting. If your task is, as you said, to convince them your morality is more right than theirs, then there actually must be a morality that is more right.
But, I don't have to agree to be consistent with my principles!
Wow. Did you really mean to say that? Read it again, please.
Tom, you wrote, "In that case they could say, 'We don't need you as an outside source to comment on our morality.' Then if you want to be consistent with your own principles, you would have to agree."
You're right, I would have to agree that they did not need me as an outside source. But that wouldn't cause me to stop trying to convince them.
As for there having to be a morality that is more right: No, *I* have to *believe* that *my* morality is more right.
Tom,
First, I have to object once more to your use of terminology.
Os was unwilling to commit to Mother 1's actions being actually, really, more morally right than Mother 2's.I think you need to be more exlpicit here. You keep saying "actually" and "really," but that's not what you mean. What you mean is "absolutely." It comes out in a way you don't intend.
Instead of saying:
OS doesn't think Mother 1 is objectively more moral than Mother 2.
you have OS saying:
OS doesn't really think Mother 1 is more right than Mother 2.
Can you see the difference? In the latter case, you have OS saying he thinks Mother 2's actions are subjectively moral to him and that, by implication, he's happy to let Mother 2 go on torturing her baby.
Not only that, but we must conclude that if os landed in that culture somehow, he could not raise any moral objection to the way mothers treat their children. He could say he disagrees, that he finds their practice distasteful, not preferred; but he most certainly could not say to the cigarette-wielding baby-burner, "Stop it! That's wrong!"--for their moral basis would be as valid as his own.On the last thread, I showed that this argument fails outright. This statement of yours assumes there is an objective moral law that one cannot impose one's subjective preferences on someone else. This assumption is part of a moral realist picture. So you're finding fault with relativism because it violates the rules of moral realism. So, you are incorrect here. OS can say "Stop!" and he can do so without the slightest hint of contradiction.
I think you also misunderstand the relationship between culture and moral relativism. Moral relativism doesn't say that morality is one and the same as the cultural view. No, the relativist says that culture is one of the causes of an individual's moral values (the other causes being genetics and personal history). A cultural moral norm does not necessarily cause an individual to hold that norm as a positive value in later life.
IOW, just because a culture thinks Mother 2 is acting correctly does not mean that every individual in that culture (nor people outside that culture) will (or ought) think so.
Moral relativism is basically a description of how we feel what we feel, and a description of the way an individual's feelings create moral imperatives for that individual. It also describes the way that a society takes these individual values and forms social contracts and cultural moral norms.
You are misinterpreting relativism to be the moral realist theory that "culture determines morality." As if "objectively, do what the majority say." You then disprove your misinterpretation by showing that an individual outside of the culture may not change his moral convictions when he realizes that he opposes societal norms. I would say you were attacking a straw man, but the straw man in this case is an objective morality.
Finally, you still insist that there is such a thing as an external moral authority. I would like to see you substantiate that claim because I think it is completely bogus. If the Pope said "burn that baby" would you obey her because she was a moral authority? I think that's nonsense. You would listen to the person and see how that person's actions fit into your own moral values, then accept or reject it on that basis. It is your own internal moral values that are your authority in any argument.
This is why the relationship between objective morality and God is a non-existent one. It doesn't matter what God says I ought to do. If he commands me to kill my son, I don't suddenly think it is a good thing to do just because God told me to do it. I think that's total nonsense.
What's dangerous is this idea that people should defy their own conscience because someone else says they ought to. And in the case of religion, the person saying they ought to defy their conscience is a MAN who thinks he knows what God wants (if God even exists).
The atheism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is—in its origins and aims—a type of moralism: a protest against the injustices of the world and of world history. A world marked by so much injustice, innocent suffering, and cynicism of power cannot be the work of a good God. A God with responsibility for such a world would not be a just God, much less a good God. It is for the sake of morality that this God has to be contested. Since there is no God to create justice, it seems man himself is now called to establish justice. If in the face of this world’s suffering, protest against God is understandable, the claim that humanity can and must do what no God actually does or is able to do is both presumptuous and intrinsically false. It is no accident that this idea has led to the greatest forms of cruelty and violations of justice; rather, it is grounded in the intrinsic falsity of the claim. A world which has to create its own justice is a world without hope. No one and nothing can answer for centuries of suffering. No one and nothing can guarantee that the cynicism of power—whatever beguiling ideological mask it adopts—will cease to dominate the world. This is why the great thinkers of the Frankfurt School [a neo-Marxist philosophical movement in 20th century Germany], Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, were equally critical of atheism and theism. Horkheimer radically excluded the possibility of ever finding a this-worldly substitute for God, while at the same time he rejected the image of a good and just God. In an extreme radicalization of the Old Testament prohibition of images, he speaks of a “longing for the totally Other” that remains inaccessible—a cry of yearning directed at world history. Adorno also firmly upheld this total rejection of images, which naturally meant the exclusion of any “image” of a loving God. On the other hand, he also constantly emphasized this “negative” dialectic and asserted that justice—true justice—would require a world “where not only present suffering would be wiped out, but also that which is irrevocably past would be undone.” This, would mean, however—to express it with positive and hence, for him, inadequate symbols—that there can be no justice without a resurrection of the dead. (Pope Benedict XVI, Encyclical Saved in Hope, 30 November 2007, §42)
Holo,
All I can say is that what you point to is not my reason for atheism. I find much good in the world, much hope; I don't need God for that.
To protest against God in the name of justice is not helpful. A world without God is a world without hope. (cf. Ephesians 2:12) Only God can create justice. And faith gives us the certainty that he does so. (Ibid., §44)
Holo,
If you are responding to me, then you are way off. I never said I was protesting against God in the name of justice. And I said that I have hope, without God.
If you are simply making a personal statement or directly your comment to someone else, of course, that's fine.
[The non-Christian approach to life] means shrinking back through lack of courage to speak openly and frankly a truth that may be dangerous. Hiding through a spirit of fear leads to “destruction.” (Hebrews 10:39) “God did not give us a spirit of timidity but a spirit of power and love and self-control”—that, by contrast, is the beautiful way in which Timothy (1:7) describes the fundamental attitude of the Christian. (Ibid, §9)
IOW, just because a culture thinks Mother 2 is acting correctly does not mean that every individual in that culture (nor people outside that culture) will (or ought) think so.
Pardon me, doctor(logic), but there is no "ought" if moral relativism is just a description of what people do. Given you own definition, your statement there doesn't make sense.
What's dangerous is this idea that people should defy their own conscience because someone else says they ought to. And in the case of religion, the person saying they ought to defy their conscience is a MAN who thinks he knows what God wants (if God even exists).
So you're saying there is an overarching moral imperative not to violate someone's conscience? That it's wrong for that religious person to do so, in a way that would be meaningful in any way to that person?
Let me ask you this: have you ever had to convince someone they got a math problem wrong? Have you ever tried to convince someone that your favorite flavor of ice cream should be theirs? In which of the two are you more successful? If, as you say, morality is more like the latter, do you see how your moral persuation may be a rather pointless endeavor? You're trying to convince us that it is wrong for a man's conscience to be superceded by the demands of an outside moral authority. (Hypothetically) I'm glad that tastes good to you, but I find the opposite to be much better. Thanks for the autobiography.
Folks, it would be helpful in this discussion to remember a simple but oft-overlooked fact:
In regards to the question of objective morality, absolutely nothing follows from the fact that specific moral views differ among individuals and societies.
Aaron,
So, whereas I call these cultural differences different moralities, you would call them different interpretations of the one absolute morality?
Aaron,
Pardon me, doctor(logic), but there is no "ought" if moral relativism is just a description of what people do.Then I guess it's fortunate for me that moral relativism is not just a description of what people do! It also describes what they feel and how they came to feel it.
So you're saying there is an overarching moral imperative not to violate someone's conscience?Not at all.
Aaron, I am saying that your own moral values are your own moral authority. And I am appealing to that authority to reflect upon information that you may not yet have considered. If the authority of your personal values tells you that one man's conscience ought to be overridden overridden by another's, then my appeal will fail. Pretty simple, and no objective morality required.
As it happens, it did fail in your case. And, if respect for moral authority in others was a fundamental value of yours, then it would be prudent for me to give up trying to persuade you.
However, I doubt that respect for moral authority in others is fundamental for you. I rather suspect that you think that external moral authority is the way people are persuaded to act in accordance with your own wishes (which, not surprisingly, are your god's wishes), and it is behavior in accordance with your own wishes which is fundamental.
Thus, there is still hope for me, and so I will continue to explain to you that moral authority is in the receiver and not in the claimant.
Let me ask you this: have you ever had to convince someone they got a math problem wrong? Have you ever tried to convince someone that your favorite flavor of ice cream should be theirs? In which of the two are you more successful?Can you see now why these two cases differ from my perspective?
The prior moral values of the math student are that one ought to respect mathematical axioms and consistency. If I explain that the student has made an error, the student does not alter his calculation because of my authority. The student fixes the error because he can prove to himself that the fix is more in keeping with his own values. My appeal on the math error is an appeal to the student's prior values.
Likewise, when we debate ice cream flavors, it is not in the receiver's prior moral values that other people should impose on him a flavor of ice cream he does not want.
Holopupenko,
A world which has to create its own justice is a world without hope. No one and nothing can answer for centuries of suffering. No one and nothing can guarantee that the cynicism of power—whatever beguiling ideological mask it adopts—will cease to dominate the world.Without hope of... perfection? I can live with that.
But what a wonderful, perfect world you yourself must live in. Earthquakes, tsunami, murder, child abuse... no problem! Perfection guaranteed by God himself! Yes, a world in which the punishment of the murderer rectifies all, as if the victim had never died and those who loved the victim never mourned.
Yeah, I'm kinda skeptical.
DL,
I would add that we change other people's morality when we appeal to some other value they hold (actually I think you may already have said this somewhere else.)
For example, if I try to convince Tom's Mother 2 that it would be more moral not to burn her baby, I might be successful if I know that she values beauty, and explain that she is making her baby less beautiful. Something like that...
ALL:
I go back to the fact that there must be one reality to be perceive. If you and I are perceiving this one reality in the same way and from the same perspective it follows that we must perceive it the same or one of us is dead wrong (or both are).
DL's tries to avoid this fact by focusing on the individual perception instead of the singularity of reality, but that fails too.
Saying "Tom thinks vanilla tastes better than chocolate" is still an objective truth claim about the tastes of Tom. It is either true or false because there is only one reality. Here we are being asked to perceive it from the perspective of Tom only. What DL thinks about vanilla is an entirely different question.
Moral truth claims are also objective in the same way and for the same reason - one reality. "Tom thinks X is more virtuous than Y" is objective for the reasons stated above.
The claim "X is more virtuous than Y" is objective independent of Tom's opinion per the one reality requirement. We may not know if it is true or false, but we know it cannot be both when perceived in the same way and from the same perspective.
SteveK,
I don't understand how this could work. How could any two people perceive reality in the exact same way from exactly the same perspective?
Steve,
I agree with OS here.
I think your first statement was probably okay:
Saying "Tom thinks vanilla tastes better than chocolate" is still an objective truth claim about the tastes of Tom.My personal belief is that this is indeed the case. Our tastes are defined by our biology, our environment, and our history. I personally think all of these things are objective, and that if we had enough technology we could explain in detail exactly how we come to feel what we feel. All objective.
However, that doesn't make morality objective in the sense we are all talking about it. If I say "X is right," and Tom says "X is wrong," then the two don't conflict because they are not beliefs about the same thing in the same way. They are not beliefs about external absolutes regarding X. They are the results of our respective biologies and environments. They are claims about our respective feelings and preferences. IOW, our beliefs do not logically contradict, they conflict.
If you think chocolate tastes better than vanilla, and I think the reverse, our views do not contradict each other. As you say, they are not about the same thing in the same way. Indeed, we can both be right because you are stating your feelings, and I am stating mine. It is a cognitive and linguistic accident that I will declare "vanilla is better than chocolate!" as if it were an absolute, or as if I meant "Steve also thinks vanilla is better than chocolate!" It is a linguistic illusion that they appear to logically contradict.
As it happens, not only do our views on flavor not logically contradict, they also do not conflict. At least, that is, until one of us is denied our preference on account of the other. If we share $1, and we can only have one flavor between us, then our mere preference becomes a moral preference because there is conflict. If we each have our own dollar, there's no conflict.
Paganism - you have your god, I have mine. [relativism, postmodernism] (The Ukrainian word for "bad" is the same word as "pagan" but used as an adjective: pohanyi.)
Idolatry - My god is the only real god. [scientism, naturalism]
Christ - I AM the Way, the Truth, and the Life. [Christianity]
SteveK:
One has to be a bit more careful: sensory perception (first act of the mind) is one thing; knowing the thing perceived (i.e., judging what it is) is another (second act of the mind); reasoning to acquire new knowledge is yet another (third act of the mind). The only way we know things (as opposed to merely having sensory knowledge) is by “grasping” immaterially their intelligible aspect, i.e., their essence: the object known “objects” (in Latin: throws itself) at our minds—hence we have definitions (genus and difference). The only way we know things not accessible to our five primary senses (say, “predicate,” “causality,” “the day after tomorrow,” “the rules of chess,” Godel’s Incompleteness Theorems,” “causality writ large,” “the scientific method,” etc.) is to reason to them. Remember the principle: while all knowledge comes to us by means of the senses, not all knowledge is sensory knowledge.
DL and OS (and Paul) limit themselves only to sensory knowledge, i.e., to accidents of real being. Indeed, they are correct—say in the following example: different light waves impinge upon my retina than the ones that impinge upon DL’s retina, and the object ever so slightly changes while we observe it. And so, merely from the sensory-only perspective these guys DO see something slightly different from what you or I see. BUT, whereas they each see a concrete cat (albeit slightly different from each sensory perspective), they unfortunately reduce it to merely the sum of its accidents (observable properties), they deny the existence of “catness” as a universal concept as the essence shared by all cats... which, at the very least is debilitating to science: without universal concepts, science is impossible. Note it is not the eye/retina that “sees,” nor is it one of the posterior lobes of the brain: it is YOU who sees… and knows.
DL is, as I’ve often reminded him, far worse off for he asserts categorically the “ONLY things we know are the ideas[/patterns] in our minds.” This neo-Kantian idealism shuts DL inside himself with no possible contact with (knowledge of) the outside world—doubly damning to science.
I wish you a happy start of the Christmas season with tomorrow’s first day of Advent.
Other than criticizing DL yet again, Holo, what are you trying to say? Because when you say, "Note it is not the eye/retina that “sees,” nor is it one of the posterior lobes of the brain: it is YOU who sees… and knows" it sounds like you are defending my position, and making a statement about relativity. Because if the knowing lies in the person, and not in the object itself, then the knowing is subjective...
Unless you are trying to be sarcastic.
DL:
You are getting distracted by details that don't matter. Is there one reality or not? Answer this question, please.
If you answer yes as I do, then we have a grounding source for all possible perspectives - reality. Reality can be experienced/perceived from various perspectives just as a car can be perceived from above, below, inside, etc. All perspectives, though different, either reflect reality correctly or they don't. There are no other options available.
Because of this, different moral perspectives either reflect reality correctly or they don't. These are our only choices. The claim "X is more virtuous than Y" is objectively either true or false when compared to our only grounding source - reality.
Holo,
I'm purposely not addressing the process of HOW we know, rather I'm focusing on the objective grounding source and progressing from there. How we know is very important but I think the only way we can settle this matter is to do it this way.
Steve,
The claim "X is more virtuous than Y" is objectively either true or false when compared to our only grounding source - reality.No. You still misunderstand moral relativism.
Moral relativism doesn't cleave the world into realities for each individual. There is still one reality. However, under relativism, the statement "X is wrong" made by person P means no more than "I, P, feel that X is wrong."
Under moral relativism, the only "moral reality" consists of the real mechanisms that give a person his subjective moral intuitions.
Your argument about there being a single reality is totally irrelevant because there's a single reality in both of our models. You mistakenly think that if I forcefully assert "Z is wrong", I must think that Z is wrong for everyone absolutely in my personal reality. However, this is not the case. I believe Z is wrong subjectively (not absolutely) in our shared reality, AND yet I intend to persuade others to my moral perspective.
Furthermore, your own argument works the same way for every subjectivity:
The claim "chocolate is better than vanilla" is objectively either true or false when compared to our only grounding source - reality.
The theists here have spilled a lot of pixels denying that morals are preferences, but by your own standard morals are indistinguishable from preferences, and preferences ought to be accorded an absolute reality. In other words, you're saying that it is impossible for a man to have a subjective opinion about any objective fact. For example, if I like hip-hop, that's not a subjective opinion about the objective lyrics, melodies, sound waves, etc., but a perception of the absolute goodness of hip-hop. Isn't anything about my affinity for hip-hop in me instead of in hip-hop itself?
Suppose that I was brought up on abstract atonal music. When I hear this music, I think of the good times I had as a child. Is my adult appreciation for abstract atonal music a measure of the objective goodness of abstract atonal music in platonic musical reality? No. I'm not perceiving some musical reality wherein abstract atonal is good. I am perceiving some aggregate of my own memories as jogged by the music. There's something objective to this story to be sure, but it has nothing to do with "musical reality".
I'm working on porting this blog over to WordPress, along with getting the whole yard raked today, so I haven't been looking at comments today. But it's been busy!
doctor(logic),
I think you need to be more exlpicit here. You keep saying "actually" and "really," but that's not what you mean. What you mean is "absolutely." It comes out in a way you don't intend.
I think they mean the same thing, where "actually," and "really" have reference to something beyond a person's opinion. But your correction here is a fair one, in view of that:
Instead of saying:
OS doesn't think Mother 1 is objectively more moral than Mother 2.
On the last thread, I showed that this argument fails outright. This statement of yours assumes there is an objective moral law that one cannot impose one's subjective preferences on someone else. This assumption is part of a moral realist picture.
No. I did not say os "should not" raise any moral objection; I said that he "could not." It's not that it would be immoral for him to try to do that, it's that he would be logically incorrect. He would be saying something is wrong when it is not; for he would be saying they are committing some kind of violation, when in fact they are being perfectly moral according to their own culture. So you have misunderstood me here. This objection does not assume moral objectivity in a circular way; it assumes logical coherence instead.
think you also misunderstand the relationship between culture and moral relativism. Moral relativism doesn't say that morality is one and the same as the cultural view. No, the relativist says that culture is one of the causes of an individual's moral values (the other causes being genetics and personal history). A cultural moral norm does not necessarily cause an individual to hold that norm as a positive value in later life.
Understood. Perfectly. But the grounding for morality is still such that os could not go into that cigarette-wielding culture and (in a logically coherent way) say "Stop! That's wrong!"
You are misinterpreting relativism to be the moral realist theory that "culture determines morality." As if "objectively, do what the majority say."
No, again, no. I'm interpreting moral relativism to mean that people derive their moral values from a source they deem to be personal, cultural, biological, anything at all that's contingent rather than objective. But culturally-determined morality is one common version of moral relativity; and if there is a culture that deems cigarette-baby-torture to be a culturally accepted moral value, as in my example, then the example is valid even if there are other versions of moral relativism. That culture has a morality that os would be violating if he said they were wrong.
Finally, you still insist that there is such a thing as an external moral authority. I would like to see you substantiate that claim because I think it is completely bogus. If the Pope said "burn that baby" would you obey her because she was a moral authority? I think that's nonsense.
But of course, and of course not. I do insist there is an external moral authority, and I don't think it's the Pope. I do insist there is a transcendent Good, not a transcendent Evil or even a transcendent Maybe Good, Maybe Not. And I'm substantiating that by all of these arguments, many of which you have definitely misunderstood.
Aaron, excellent point:
So you're saying there is an overarching moral imperative not to violate someone's conscience? That it's wrong for that religious person to do so, in a way that would be meaningful in any way to that person?
And later doctor(logic) answered with an absolutely certain prescription for anarchy and moral chaos:
Aaron, I am saying that your own moral values are your own moral authority.
So the cigarette-baby-torturing mother is being consistent with her own moral values. Who are you, who am I, to impose your or my values on her? Why shouldn't her values be as good as ours? Why does dl impose his values on us?
os wrote,
For example, if I try to convince Tom's Mother 2 that it would be more moral not to burn her baby, I might be successful if I know that she values beauty, and explain that she is making her baby less beautiful. Something like that...
All you can convince her of, os, is that it would be more moral in your private opinion if she did not burn her baby. By her private opinion, you would be imposing your morality on her, or at least trying to, even if you were doing it by rational argumentation. Who are you to think your morality is more moral than hers?
This is a serious question and not a rhetorical question. In order to have a "more," there must be some directionality to morality. There must be some kind of vectors toward greater or lesser moralities. If everyone (or every culture) chooses their own moral values, then there is no such thing as "more moral," for every person is living up to their full moral vision.
So I close with this final question: what is it about your opinion about baby torturing that makes it more moral than the opinion of some person in a culture where baby torturing is considered ethical? Do you stand on higher ground, such that your private (or cultural) moral opinion is better than theirs?
I think doctor(logic) has stated quite clearly that you have no basis for this at all:
... under relativism, the statement "X is wrong" made by person P means no more than "I, P, feel that X is wrong."
DL:
but by your own standard morals are indistinguishable from preferences, and preferences ought to be accorded an absolute reality.
No they are not indistinguishable because I (and everyone else) claims there is a distinguishable difference. If there was no difference we'd be saying that.
Yes, preferences ought to be accorded an absolute reality in accordance with the claim. "I prefer vanilla over chocolate" is either true or false according to the claim "I prefer". This is different than the claim "vanilla tastes better than chocolate". If reality is such that this statement is universally true then so be it. I don't think anyone will say it's universally true, but then again 100% consensus doesn't impose truth upon reality.
In other words, you're saying that it is impossible for a man to have a subjective opinion about any objective fact.
I'm not saying that at all. Subjective opinions are possible as shown in my vanilla vs. chocolate example. The truth of the opinion in light of objective reality is often a separate question with a separate answer.
Furthermore, your own argument works the same way for every subjectivity
Of course. Every subjective claim made about perceived reality is either true or false. The question is "how do we best discover the answer?"
Tom,
No. I did not say os "should not" raise any moral objection; I said that he "could not." It's not that it would be immoral for him to try to do that, it's that he would be logically incorrect. He would be saying something is wrong when it is not; for he would be saying they are committing some kind of violation, when in fact they are being perfectly moral according to their own culture.There's no logical contradiction.
In the relativist view, we have:
1) When I say "Mother #2 is wrong" I really mean "I subjectively feel that Mother #2 is wrong."
2) Mother #2 subjectively feels that she is right.
3) I take action to persuade Mother #2 that she should desist from torturing her baby.
There's no failure of logical coherence here.
Now, IF I add to this list something like:
4a) Good and evil is objectively determined by social consensus within the society where the act takes place.
Or maybe this:
4b) It is objectively illogical to morally persuade someone else who holds a differing subjective view.
THEN I would have a logically incoherent set. However, relativists don't claim either (4a) or (4b).
But the grounding for morality is still such that os could not go into that cigarette-wielding culture and (in a logically coherent way) say "Stop! That's wrong!"Why? What do you think "Stop! That's wrong!" means?
The relativist takes it to mean "Stop! If you consider all of the consequences of your actions, you will likely find that your actions go against your own values. If, upon reflection, your actions do not go against your own values, I will respond to your actions such that you will likely find that your actions plus my retaliatory response go against your own values."
And later doctor(logic) answered with an absolutely certain prescription for anarchy and moral chaos:This brought a smile to my face. This "prescription" is what I believe happens in the real world, so I don't see how it can be a prescription any more anarchy and chaos than there already is. In fact, I think that it would result in some progress.
Aaron, I am saying that your own moral values are your own moral authority.
If you don't think it's how things happen in the real world, I would like you to find an example in which someone is persuaded by external authority instead of internal values. Even in cases where one is persuaded by a "transcendent moral authority", one must first possess moral values like "transcendent moral authorities ought to be obeyed" or "I ought to trust X as a moral authority" etc.
So the cigarette-baby-torturing mother is being consistent with her own moral values.Not necessarily. Maybe Mother #2 has not considered all of the consequences of her actions. She may actually be acting inconsistently with her own values (I suspect this is the case in most moral debates).
Who are you, who am I, to impose your or my values on her? Why shouldn't her values be as good as ours? Why does dl impose his values on us?Perhaps her values are objectively as good as mine to some indifferent observer. However, no one is indifferent to their own moral values. Every man believes his own moral values outweigh those of others, and is committed to act accordingly. You are still assuming that we need some sort of an objective excuse to impose our moral decisions on other people. We don't.
If everyone (or every culture) chooses their own moral values, then there is no such thing as "more moral," for every person is living up to their full moral vision.I don't think that's true. Suppose your key moral value is "reduce suffering." Suppose you did not realize that your smoking was indirectly causing more suffering. In that case, you would have discovered that you were not living up to your moral vision because you previously never got around to reflecting on your actions enough to see it.
So I close with this final question: what is it about your opinion about baby torturing that makes it more moral than the opinion of some person in a culture where baby torturing is considered ethical?It's not more moral an any absolute sense. My opinion is more subjectively moral to me. After reflection, the mother may also find it more subjectively moral. But if she is unconvinced, then her opinion is more moral to her.
Steve,
Yes, preferences ought to be accorded an absolute reality in accordance with the claim. "I prefer vanilla over chocolate" is either true or false according to the claim "I prefer".So far, so good.
This is different than the claim "vanilla tastes better than chocolate". If reality is such that this statement is universally true then so be it. I don't think anyone will say it's universally true, but then again 100% consensus doesn't impose truth upon reality.So, what makes morality absolute and not the chocolate vs. vanilla? You say consensus doesn't count (and I agree). Is it because you think we act as if morality is absolute, therefore it is absolute? Is that an argument from consensus? Or is it an argument that anyone who treats morality as absolute has already made a statement about personal faith in absolute moral reality as opposed to merely the reality of moral opinion?
1) When I say "Mother #2 is wrong" I really mean "I subjectively feel that Mother #2 is wrong."
2) Mother #2 subjectively feels that she is right.
3) I take action to persuade Mother #2 that she should desist from torturing her baby.
There's no failure of logical coherence here.
That's because there's no syllogism. It's not unlike:
1. I like chocolate
2. You like vanilla
3. I take action to offer you chocolate, even to suggest reasons you might like it
There are two statements of value that have almost nothing to do with each other, except they both have to do with preferences. Then there's a statement of action. That's a non sequitir, and it's getting yourself out of the issue far too easily.
Now, IF I add to this list something like:
4a) Good and evil is objectively determined by social consensus within the society where the act takes place.
Or maybe this:
4b) It is objectively illogical to morally persuade someone else who holds a differing subjective view.
THEN I would have a logically incoherent set. However, relativists don't claim either (4a) or (4b).
There's also
4c) I try to persuade Mother 2 because I think she is wrong.
That's a logical contradiction, because you can't begin to explain to her what is simply wrong about torturing babies. If she won't accept it on her own grounds, you don't have any way to say "wrong" to her.
You won't pay attention to that for some reason. You don't think "right" or "wrong" are even relevant here. Fine. I'm addressing these comments to people who think that Mother 1 is more right than Mother 2, and I'll let you go on your way thinking neither is more right than the other.
Your employment of power here is exactly like what Jacob said about the law of non-contradiction. He said it was all about the use of power. You're speaking his language:
The relativist takes it to mean "Stop! If you consider all of the consequences of your actions, you will likely find that your actions go against your own values. If, upon reflection, your actions do not go against your own values, I will respond to your actions such that you will likely find that your actions plus my retaliatory response go against your own values."
Man, you're talking about fighting over preferences, when you can't even persuade anybody that your preferences mean anything but a hill of beans! Well, they don't mean anything, but if you point a gun at me I'll say they mean something.
Perhaps her values are objectively as good as mine to some indifferent observer.
If you think that's really possible, if you think the debate is up to "some indifferent observer," we're all done with this discussion.
DL,
Much of what you said in your 8:37 comment I have already said here. I'm not objecting to your saying it again, but I do wonder why it needs to be said over and over again. What is it that is unclear to Tom et al?
It's not that I necessarily expect to change anyone's mind here, but I would think that at this point at least someone would say, "Oh, I see what you're saying!"
Tom writes,
"There's also
4c) I try to persuade Mother 2 because I think she is wrong.
That's a logical contradiction, because you can't begin to explain to her what is simply wrong about torturing babies. If she won't accept it on her own grounds, you don't have any way to say 'wrong' to her."
It's not a logical contradiction, Tom. It doesn't logically contradict 1) or 2). Unlike DL, I would say that your 4c follows, only I would say, "I persuade Mother 2 because I subjectively think she is wrong." And of course I have ways of explaining why it's wrong to her! I can use her own values to try to demonstrate it's wrong, or I can use a variety of other arguments.
You think that DL's statement that he would retaliate is about power. Well, maybe it is. But when to use power is also a moral issue. Is it morally "right" to use power to protect a baby when one believes the baby is at grave risk of harm?
DL:
So, what makes morality absolute and not the chocolate vs. vanilla?
I said both are absolutely true or false with respect to the truth claim made. Go back and read it again.
You are mixing truth claims to a fault. You think "I perceive X to be more virtuous than Y" is the same claim as "X is more virtuous than Y (independent of I)". They are not the same truth claim and so they can have different, yet objective, truth values.
You say consensus doesn't count (and I agree).
It counts as far as perception goes so it's not worthless. Just to be clear I said 100% consensus doesn't impose truth upon reality. By contrast, reality does impose truth upon 100% consensus. This is Tom's Christian motto in a nutshell.
Is it because you think we act as if morality is absolute, therefore it is absolute? Is that an argument from consensus? Or is it an argument that anyone who treats morality as absolute has already made a statement about personal faith in absolute moral reality as opposed to merely the reality of moral opinion?
It's because logic dictates that what I'm saying is true. If you start with one objective reality and work back to individual perceptions about that reality you will see this.
If you reverse the order then the only conclusion you can reach is "perception is reality". Do you want to do that? If so, then you believe in multiple realities which means objectivity is nonexistent.
SteveK,
The problem is that we don't know whether there is one reality. There might be. There might not be.
I should have said:
"If so, then you believe in multiple realities which means common objectivity is nonexistent."
DL:
Let's skip closer to the endgame. Even if what I say is true it doesn't mean you have to change your opinion about morality.
It only means that there is an objective answer to the opinions/questions we all have. The important question to ask is: How do we come to know the answers? Philosophy is the starting place for this.
You deny that God could reveal some of the answers directly -- not because it's impossible, lacks prediction/verification or is statistically improbable -- but because you philosophically think these are the only paths from which to get the answers.
Think that if you must, but don't try to deny the fact that it's a philosophical point of view you have about how reality works.
Tom, I've written before that trying to convince someone to change their moral behavior is possible when you can show that the behavior is contradictory with another moral value that the person holds (assuming they also hold consistency to be a value).
DL is right:
IOW, just because a culture thinks Mother 2 is acting correctly does not mean that every individual in that culture (nor people outside that culture) will (or ought) think so.
That's why relativistic morality boils down to individual opinion, and, therefore, is not really morality. And yet the relativist borrows from reality and pretends that his opinions should be normative. The relativist borrows all the tenets from absolute morality but renames it relativism.
It also describes the way that a society takes these individual values and forms social contracts and cultural moral norms.
DL is mistaken here on this theory of morality as well: morality is not an expression of social contract. If one violates the terms of a contract the offended party does not try to reason with him, he merely points to the contract. The offender is objectively wrong, within that contract, when he violates it. One need not re-negotiate it because it already stipulates the behaviours expected. If morality were a matter of contract there would likewise be no convincing or negotiating.
It is a cognitive and linguistic accident that I will declare "vanilla is better than chocolate!" as if it were an absolute, or as if I meant "Steve also thinks vanilla is better than chocolate!" It is a linguistic illusion that they appear to logically contradict.
But it would not be a linguistic accident to say "vanilla can never be preferred over chocolate". That is an intentionally absolute claim about an objective reality.
DL to Steve:
Moral relativism doesn't cleave the world into realities for each individual.
Tell this to OS. Why do you keep telling everyone whether or not they understand relativistic morality when your version is being contradicted right here, by another authority?
In other words, you're saying that it is impossible for a man to have a subjective opinion about any objective fact.
False. We've said countless times that everybody does have a subjective opinion about objective facts. And that is precisely why noting the subjectivity of the opinion does not negate the reality of the fact.
addendum: I see Steve already addressed this fallacious claim. Oh well, two heads, and all.
but by your own standard morals are indistinguishable from preferences, and preferences ought to be accorded an absolute reality.Actually, DL, you have demonstrated that morals are not merely preferences by your own standards. You agreed with me that preferences do not create distress when they do not affect us directly. You waved away this realization by claiming that not all preferences are moral preferences. When pushed several times you said that you are talking about preferences about actions but the same problem, unaddressed, still holds. You are left with the same incoherent and unjustified position as OS; that morals are distinguished from other preferences by virtue of being strong preferences. In other words, in the words of Demi Moore, you don't merely object, but rather you strenuously object.
If you don't think it's how things happen in the real world, I would like you to find an example in which someone is persuaded by external authority instead of internal values.
Case study #1: Charlie's internal values do not preclude the use of profanity.
God's authority does.
Charlie is persuaded that God knows best and follows said dictate.
Even in cases where one is persuaded by a "transcendent moral authority", one must first possess moral values like "transcendent moral authorities ought to be obeyed" or "I ought to trust X as a moral authority" etc.
Ahahahah. But of course. And all knowledge is justified by induction and all beliefs are based upon prediction - because DL defines the case as such.
So the moral realist is only subjectively moral because, although he accepts the objective morality of God's word, he subjectively values God's word. Right. And you figured that out statistically.
Every man believes his own moral values outweigh those of others, and is committed to act accordingly.Not a consistent relativist. Only one who borrows the tents of absolute morality and renames it relativism. Which brings me back to the beginning.
OS,
It's not that I necessarily expect to change anyone's mind here, but I would think that at this point at least someone would say, "Oh, I see what you're saying!"
Indeed. I can't believe I have read this blog for almost two and a half years and never see this from the atheists. This goes for virtually every subject.
But then, from your side of the aisle, we have two people saying two different things.
As per this:
The problem is that we don't know whether there is one reality. There might be. There might not be.
===
Is it morally "right" to use power to protect a baby when one believes the baby is at grave risk of harm?That depends. Which reality are you talking about?
Holopupenko:
BUT, whereas they each see a concrete cat (albeit slightly different from each sensory perspective), they unfortunately reduce it to merely the sum of its accidents (observable properties), they deny the existence of “catness” as a universal concept as the essence shared by all cats... which, at the very least is debilitating to science: without universal concepts, science is impossible.
Exactly! How can we communicate, learn, and even develop science if OS's position is true? Obviously we are seeing the same reality in a similar enough way to share information about it - or else there is no knowledge.
To deny this is to deny reason, rationality and even science.
Hi Paul,
As I wrote when you last wrote that, so what?
If value A contradicts value B then value B contradicts value A.
They are equally contradictory so neither ought to supersede the other. Each can apply as the offender deems appropriate.
Well Charlie, let me be the first to say that I see what you and the other objective moralists are saying. I disagree, but I understand your reasoning.
The trouble with reality is that in some ways there appears to be one reality, and in other ways there appears to be multiple realities, and in yet another way, we have no idea what reality is. Let me explain: We live our daily lives within the assumption that what we perceive as real is real and most people around us agree with much of what we perceive (a chair is a chair, the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, etc.) But there are people whose perception of what is real is very different than ours and the people around us. Some people, for example, believe in the efficacy of witchcraft. For them, that is real, and there is even evidence that witchcraft is effective for those who believe in its power. So, is that reality real? I would have to say it is for those who perceive it as such; but, I don't perceive it as such, so I would have to say it is a different reality than mine. Finally, there is all that is unknown about reality: What is real may be much different than what we currently perceive.
Based on my perception of what is real and my subjective morality, it is "right" to use power to protect a baby. However, if Mother 2's perception of what is real is that the cigarette burns make her child more beautiful and more marriageable (think foot-binding, female circumcision), then her perception of what is real and her subjective morality would make my use of power immoral--of course, I may use it anyway.
Good morning, OS,
Thanks for bringing up foot-binding.
In your reality, is it good that Christians imposed their morality upon the Chinese to end this thousand-year tradition?
Were they right to call it wrong? Or wrong?
Thanks also for admitting that you condone judging the woman, impose your morality upon her, and use power to do so.
Call that relativism if you like, but that appears to me, as I said to DL, just calling realism relativism.
It is a denial of what you claim to be true when asking others to leave you and your morality alone.
It is also a recognition that reality doesn't really appear relativistic, as you earlier said, but more absolute, as I had said.
By the way, thanks for saying that you understand my reaosning. But let's try an example and see if you really do.
Do you think that when most people who say "a woman should have the right to choose" they mean "I personally prefer that a woman be allowed to choose but your opinion is equally valid"?
Do you think that most people protesting an execution are saying "in my reality killing this man as a punishment is wrong" or are they saying "it is wrong to kill him, regardless of your opinion"?
How about the environment? Do environmentalsist think it is wrong to destroy the planet for future By the way, thanks for saying that you understand my reasoning. But let's try an example and see if you really do.
Do you think that when most people who say "a woman should have the right to choose" they mean "I personally prefer that a woman be allowed to choose but your opinion is equally valid"?
Do you think that most people protesting an execution are saying "in my reality killing this man as a punishment is wrong" or are they saying "it is wrong to kill him, regardless of your opinion"?
How about the environment? Do environmentalists think it is wrong to destroy the planet for future generations? Or merely that they feel it is wrong and that others, from their perspective, are right to want to destroy it?
Please, if you really want to try to respect my thinking do not merely wave these questions away, as you guys do each time, by tacking in the words "absolutely" and "subjectively" wherever you deem them appropriate to make your case.
I know where you would put them, and they don't go there. I am asking about what people who use the words "right" and "wrong", "should" and "ought" are actually thinking and how they actually mean the words to be taken.generations? Or merely that they feel it is wrong and that others, from their perspective, are right to want to destroy it?
Please, if you really want to try to respect my thinking do not merely wave these questions away, as you guys do each time, by tacking in the words "absolutely" and "subjectively" wherever you deem them appropriate to make your case.
I know where you would put them, and they don't go there. I am asking about what people who use the words "right" and "wrong", "should" and "ought" are actually thining and how they actually mean the words to be taken.
Sorry.
I pasted the version witht he typos removed right into the middle of that last comment without erasing the first copy.
Try to read only this amount of it :
By the way, thanks for saying that you understand my reasoning. But let's try an example and see if you really do.
Do you think that when most people who say "a woman should have the right to choose" they mean "I personally prefer that a woman be allowed to choose but your opinion is equally valid"?
Do you think that most people protesting an execution are saying "in my reality killing this man as a punishment is wrong" or are they saying "it is wrong to kill him, regardless of your opinion"?
How about the environment? Do environmentalists think it is wrong to destroy the planet for future generations? Or merely that they feel it is wrong and that others, from their perspective, are right to want to destroy it?
Please, if you really want to try to respect my thinking do not merely wave these questions away, as you guys do each time, by tacking in the words "absolutely" and "subjectively" wherever you deem them appropriate to make your case.
I know where you would put them, and they don't go there. I am asking about what people who use the words "right" and "wrong", "should" and "ought" are actually thinking and how they actually mean the words to be taken.?
Good words, Charlie.
Paul,
Tom, I've written before that trying to convince someone to change their moral behavior is possible when you can show that the behavior is contradictory with another moral value that the person holds (assuming they also hold consistency to be a value)
and os,
Tom writes,
"There's also
4c) I try to persuade Mother 2 because I think she is wrong.
That's a logical contradiction, because you can't begin to explain to her what is simply wrong about torturing babies. If she won't accept it on her own grounds, you don't have any way to say 'wrong' to her."
It's not a logical contradiction, Tom. It doesn't logically contradict 1) or 2). Unlike DL, I would say that your 4c follows, only I would say, "I persuade Mother 2 because I subjectively think she is wrong." And of course I have ways of explaining why it's wrong to her! I can use her own values to try to demonstrate it's wrong, or I can use a variety of other arguments.
Was I careless in my speech here? It's not logically contradictory to say to someone you think she's wrong in this context, because it's another pair of preferences followed by an action. It's not a syllogism any more than the three statements dl proposed yesterday.
I would think you would see the intent, however. I'll spell it out for you. The original was:
1) When I say "Mother #2 is wrong" I really mean "I subjectively feel that Mother #2 is wrong."
2) Mother #2 subjectively feels that she is right.
3) I take action to persuade Mother #2 that she should desist from torturing her baby.
Let's do this instead:
1) When I say "Mother #2 is wrong" I really mean "I subjectively feel that Mother #2 is wrong."
2) Mother #2 subjectively feels that she is right.
3) I have a moral duty to persuade Mother 2 that she is wrong.
There is definitely a failure of logic there. The moral duty sneaks in from nowhere. So suppose you find yourself visiting this hypothetical culture. Imagine telling yourself this when you hear the screaming, tortured, starving infants:
"I don't prefer this. It goes against my values. I will try to appeal to these mothers' values, to see if there's something they value that would overturn their preference for torturing their kids. But if there isn't, then I will acknowledge that their morality--the term I'm giving to what is actually their preference--on this issue is of equal validity to my own. They are not wrong to do this."
Charlie has also provided some other real-life examples of moralizing by people who tend not to accept moral realism. Some moral realists would certainly agree with liberal positions on these issues, but generally all moral relativists would, on at least two out of three of these. That's why these are useful examples: the right to choose, capital punishment, and environmentalism. Would you say it's wrong to pollute the planet? Would you say it's wrong to deny a woman's right to choose? That's the language we keep hearing. We don't hear, "a woman's right to choose is my preference, and you have your preference, and we acknowledge that your preference is as valid as ours."
So ultimately the contradiction is this: if you believe in moral relativism, you cannot, while staying consistent with your own principles, say that a person is wrong--not unless you change the meaning of "wrong." Instead of its usual meaning it has to become a power word used for persuasive, rhetorical advantage, wielded for the purpose of changing someone's mind, even though its only real reference is to what you find not to be preferable.
Well, Charlie, I will do my best to respond to your questions.
First, you ask, "In your reality, is it good that Christians imposed their morality upon the Chinese to end this thousand-year tradition?
Were they right to call it wrong? Or wrong?" I dont' think you're really asking me whether Christians should have intervened; I think you're asking me whether I think foot-binding is immoral. My answer is that yes, given my time and place, I think foot-binding is immoral. Obviously, however, a whole culture believed it was moral, so I would say that it was both moral and immoral at the same time, depending upon one's perspective.
I don't really understand what you're saying in your second comment.
In your third comment you say, "I am asking about what people who use the words 'right' and 'wrong', 'should' and 'ought' are actually thinking and how they actually mean the words to be taken." I don't really like to conjecture about what other people are thinking, but I guess I would have to say that most people, when using those terms, are using them in an absolute sense. But that doesn't mean that they're right about there being an absolute.
Tom, I don't acknowledge that others' preferences/morals are as valid as mine. I think mine are better, that's why I value them. What I acknowledge is that others' right to value their preferences/morals is as valid as mine.
Tom,
DL and I have both refuted this statement in other comments: "if you believe in moral relativism, you cannot, while staying consistent with your own principles, say that a person is wrong" but you continue to say it. I don't know any different way to respond than DL and I already have. Obviously you are not convinced, nor do you need to be, but I do think it's time to stop saying it.
The difficulty, os, is with the definition of the word "wrong."
I have understood what you have said, and I have re-posted with a clarification:
Instead of its usual meaning it has to become a power word used for persuasive, rhetorical advantage, wielded for the purpose of changing someone's mind, even though its only real reference is to what you find not to be preferable.
I contend that though you may use the word "wrong," you cannot use it in its commonly understood sense while remaining consistent with your principles. I further contend that the remaining way in which you can use it is just as I said: as a power term, expressing your own preferences. Please respond strictly to those two contentions, for I don't think either you or DL have addressed them successfully at all.
By the way, do you think even if I were to say the same thing over and over again, paying no heed to your responses, it would be wrong?
Tom,
By the way, do you think even if I were to say the same thing over and over again, paying no heed to your responses, it would be wrong?
It depends on whose reality you are talking about.
Tom, what do you think is the "commonly understood sense" of the word "wrong?"
Where's the error in me saying, "I believe that's wrong?"
No, I don't think if you keep saying it, it's wrong; I just think it may be something we have to agree to disagree about.
"Wrong" usually means incorrect in relation to some objective standard, or failing to match what is real.
When you use it the way you do, you take it out of that context and put it in the other one I described.
OS,
I don't acknowledge that others' preferences/morals are as valid as mine. I think mine are better, that's why I value them.
Translation (for those of us who see an objective standard by which two things may be compared when we see the word "better"): I like mine more than I like theirs.
This makes your statement read, "I like mine more than I like their's, that's why I value them." Is this what you meant?
What I acknowledge is that others' right to value their preferences/morals is as valid as mine.
This just pushes the question back a step. If "acknowledging others' right to value their preferences/morals" is your preference, while maintaining that I could have a different yet equally valid (to me) preference, then you are acknowledging that others' preferences/morals are as valid as yours, which you claimed you weren't doing. Acknowledging others' right to value their preferences/morals is itself a moral stance that you seemly want to smuggle in the back door.
Hi OS,
You really need to anticipate a little better if you are going to presume to tell people how they ought to respond.
You said to Tom:
Tom, what do you think is the "commonly understood sense" of the word "wrong?"
I already asked and got your clarification on this:
In your third comment you say, "I am asking about what people who use the words 'right' and 'wrong', 'should' and 'ought' are actually thinking and how they actually mean the words to be taken." I don't really like to conjecture about what other people are thinking, but I guess I would have to say that most people, when using those terms, are using them in an absolute sense.
I expected DL to get here before you and say "oh, but that doesn't make it true that morals are absolute". Of course that wasn't my point, although you seem to have presumed it was.
Tom picked up on it, or, more likely, was well ahead of me, when he asked about the common usage.
You, DL, and Paul, are using the words in a manner contrary to that understood by your listeners. This is established thoroughly.
It is also now established that you know you are doing this and that you continue to do so. This is equivocation and it is not appropriate.
I would now ask you to stop doing it.
Tom, I don't acknowledge that others' preferences/morals are as valid as mine.This is a nice admission. So there is an objective source of morality after all. And you are it.
This is what I meant about morality in your reality not being relativistic afterall. You admit you condone the use of power to impose morality (which is more right) and that only your morality is the most right of all. This is a direct disavowal of relativism. You do, in fact, presume the right to judge another's morality and the right to impose your own. It is only that you have set yourself up as the judge and jury. This is egoism and idolatry.
I dont' think you're really asking me whether Christians should have intervened; I think you're asking me whether I think foot-binding is immoral.Thanks for trying to answer, but rather than presume what I am really asking you could answer what I did ask.
Was it good for the Christians to impose their morality upon the Chinese?
Tom,
So for you the very word "wrong" assumes an objective morality. I can understand then why you are confused by my use of it. This is not, however, the only way this word is used; we also use it when referring to preferences (for example, if someone said to me that Paul McCartney was a better songwriter than John Lennon, I could say, "You're wrong!" and be using the word correctly.)
When I use the word "wrong" in a moral context, I mean that I feel that whatever act is being referred to is contrary to my values. You may not like the way I use the word, but I think it's an acceptable use.
Aaron, I think you are trying to simplify something that is really quite complicated. I can hold more than one value at a time. I can value the other person's right to value his own values, and also value my values; if the value I hold that is contrary to his value is one that I am very invested in, and there is an action on his part that challenges that value, then I may choose to take some action against it. That doesn't negate my value of his right to value his values; it only means that I have been forced to prioritize my values in that moment in time. Even as I take action against his value, I still value his right to value his value. Who said, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it?" That is the sort of attitude I am trying to describe.
Charlie, you write,
"You, DL, and Paul, are using the words in a manner contrary to that understood by your listeners. This is established thoroughly.
It is also now established that you know you are doing this and that you continue to do so. This is equivocation and it is not appropriate.
I would now ask you to stop doing it."
What words would you have us use instead? And, since when are words restricted in their use by the understanding of the listener? I believe I am using these terms according to an acceptable and quite understandable usage, so although I am willing to flesh them out for you, I am not willing to stop using them.
Charlie, about my thinking my morals are more valid than others', you write, "This is a nice admission. So there is an objective source of morality after all. And you are it.
This is what I meant about morality in your reality not being relativistic afterall. You admit you condone the use of power to impose morality (which is more right) and that only your morality is the most right of all. This is a direct disavowal of relativism. You do, in fact, presume the right to judge another's morality and the right to impose your own. It is only that you have set yourself up as the judge and jury. This is egoism and idolatry."
No, me thinking I'm more right than someone else doesn't mean I think I'm more right than everyone else--if I did, then *that* would mean I thought there was an absolute morality. As it is, I think we *all* think our personal morals are more right than the morals of those who disagree with us--else why would we hold those particular morals and not the ones those who disagree with us hold? Of course, I understand that you think that you get your morals from God, so that gives you the right to think yours are better than the morals of those who disagree with you, but since I (and many others) don't believe in your God, then you attributing your superiority to another source means nothing to me.
Actually, I don't condone the use of power to impose morality, if by power you mean force. Really I think force is an absolute last resort and I would not use it except in the most dire of circumstances. What I do condone is the use of 1)example and 2)voting to communicate my sense of morality.
Of course I presume the right to judge others' morality, if by judging you mean making decisions about whether I agree or disagree with others. What I don't presume the right to is forcing others to live according to my morality, except when their doing so is harmful to others.
Oops, Charlie, forgot to answer your last question, about whether I think it was good for Christians to impose their morality on the Chinese.
Honestly, I don't think I know enough about the situation to form an opinion about it. My first reaction is no, but I might change my mind if I had more information.
os,
"if someone said to me that Paul McCartney was a better songwriter than John Lennon, I could say, 'You're wrong!' and be using the word correctly."
And then where would that discussion go? You might decide there is some objective standard according to which one really was a better songwriter than the other. In that case you would have to say something like, "I think you're wrong because..." -- and "because" would have to point toward some agreed standard that you share. Dare I say that standard is objective? I think so, for it would have to be something outside each of you, something external you could both look at, and somehow measure each of the songwriter's skills in relation to it. If the discussion is going to come out as anything other than trading opinions, you would in fact have to have an external standard against which you could objectively measure Lennon's and McCartney's skills.
Or you could agree that you have differing opinions, and that "wrong" is just a statement of your personal subjective belief. "Wrong" would not actually apply in that case to your friend's beliefs (nor to yours) in any useful sense of the word. It would mean no more than saying "you're wrong" when I say chocolate tastes better than vanilla.
"When I use the word 'wrong' in a moral context, I mean that I feel that whatever act is being referred to is contrary to my values. You may not like the way I use the word, but I think it's an acceptable use.
That's not how this works, os. Careful definition of terms is at the very heart of philosophical discussion. Otherwise you have the very famous fallacy, referred to by Charlie below, of equivocation.
What words would you have us use instead? And, since when are words restricted in their use by the understanding of the listener?
Use "preference" or "personal value" instead of "right" or "wrong." Again, in philosophical discourse, words are very frequently restricted in their use. For example in Kant the word "category" has a very restricted meaning, a restriction imposed by the necessity for clarity. It's not that we as listeners are trying to foist something on you, though. It's that we're trying to (yes) restrict the use of the word for the very legitimate purpose of preventing equivocation. This is standard practice.
(Post edited at 10:30 pm EST)
Hi OS,
Tom answered perfectly what words I think you ought to use instead of "right and wrong". The very words you end up using to define those terms when asked about them.
And, since when are words restricted in their use by the understanding of the listener?Since we are trying to communicate with listeners. And especially when you are using the words and the force and power they carry when you don't mean them in the same sense that has earned that force and power. You are writing cheques on an account without your name on it.
What I don't presume the right to is forcing others to live according to my morality, except when their doing so is harmful to others.
Of course you know you've set another absolute standard for morality.
So what if it is your preference that people not hurt other people? Why should you force anybody to live by any of your morals?
No, me thinking I'm more right than someone else doesn't mean I think I'm more right than everyone else--if I did, then *that* would mean I thought there was an absolute morality.You are contradicting yourself. Why are your morals not better than everybody else', given that you also say
As it is, I think we *all* think our personal morals are more right than the morals of those who disagree with us--else why would we hold those particular morals and not the ones those who disagree with us hold?
Or are you saying that you are not "more right" than only those whose morals are exactly coterminous with yours? Then you, along with those who agree with you, are the standard.
Of course, I understand that you think that you get your morals from God, so that gives you the right to think yours are better than the morals of those who disagree with you, but since I (and many others) don't believe in your God, then you attributing your superiority to another source means nothing to me.
But you and I both believe in the apparent rightness of our moral positions. I agree with you that we ought not hold beliefs that we don't actually believe in. Your mistake, of course, is acknowledging that there is something as moral superiority, but claiming at one time that you don't believe this and then at another mistakenly thinking you are the standard.
My first reaction is no, but I might change my mind if I had more information.
You say here that Christians should not have imposed their morality upon the Chinese when you admit that the Chinese were acting immorally. The Christians doing so, then, would have been immoral in your eyes. You should also realize that the Chinese were harming other people by this practice and you have given yourself permission to enforce your morality in such a case.
This is just another example of the incoherence of your position.
People who use moral language and then deny using it are like people who shout Stop!! or Don't Move!! and then claim they never intended it to be interpreted as a command, but as a suggestion. The urgency in their voice (if it's there) exposes the lie.
Tom, I'm a bit miffed (to put it nicely) that you are lecturing me about the definition of terms. I have on *numerous* occasions here asked for definition of terms and been ignored, so I can't say that now, so deep into this discussion, I'm willing to use terms based on your definitions. I'd be willing to use terms based on previously-agreed-on definitions in future, though.
Charlie, I only have an absolute standard for *my* morality. Did you read my response to Aaron, in which I said that it's all very complicated, and I can value more than one value at a time? I've also commented that my morality includes an understanding of group process and the social contract. These things play a large part, IMO, in how morality is enacted. I'm not trying to avoid answering your questions, but I'm tired of saying the same things over and over. Unless you want to begin a different discussion that includes the variables above, and *how your understanding of an absolute morality guides your moral choices in everyday life*, then I think I'm done here.
Hi OS,
I'd be willing to use terms based on previously-agreed-on definitions in future, though.
It has never been unclear that we rejected your definitions from the beginning and in comment after comment.
Likewise, we have rejected these definitions from Paul and DL for years now as well. This is why you guys keep trying to amend our statements about right and wrong with your terms "objectively" and "subjectively" when we say "actually" and "really".
It is only now, however, that we get your admission that you know you are not using the words the way we are or the way that people will interpret them when they hear them (DL has never denied this, as far as I can recall).
If you want to use them equivocally and thereby communicate ineffectively that is your choice, and you don't have to change your words now. But being "miffed" that you've been offered alternate and more accurate words for your beliefs is quite pointless since you explicitly asked me what words would be more appropriate.
Tom, OS,
I have no intention of conceding terminology to moral realism.
First, the facts. Humans have a bunch of moral behaviors. When we see a certain class of actions, we subjectively feel positively or negatively about them. By definition, that such actions are subjectively categorized as just or unjust. By definition, acts we subjectively dislike are called wrong, and acts we subjectively like are called right. It is a simple fact that these subjective feelings are what motivate us to persuade, argue and coerce. After all, these feelings are about what one subjectively ought to do, writ large.
All of these are facts, and philosophy does not change them.
Now, the moral realist philosopher says that these feelings are indicative of a moral reality. The realist says that our subjective feelings are subjective apprehensions of objective moral states of affairs.
The moral relativist says that the objective states of affairs are devoid of moral judgment. At best, the objective states of affairs describe why we feel what we feel. Our subjective moral feelings and imperatives are subjective preferences about what we ought to do.
You are claiming that the linguistic terminology that was based on the data (pre-philosophical reflection) has to be discarded if we reach a moral relativist philosophical conclusion. That's an unacceptable demand.
You might try to justify this by claiming that nearly everyone believes that your philosophical picture is the correct one, and so the words are now largely identified with your view. However, not only do I think children understand the term sans philosophical baggage, but I think this is just a rhetorical ploy.
Imagine that the majority of the population believes in moral relativism. You step up and say "Morality is objective!" And then I turn around and say that "You're saying morality isn't what everyone thinks it is, so come up with a new word. Like God's dictates. Just don't pretend you think killing babies is wrong, you think it goes against God's will, and that means something different."
This tactic would be a ploy so I can write you off (at least in abbreviated conversation) as someone doesn't really think things are right or wrong, moral or immoral.
You would (rightly) be rather off-put by this sort of a tactic, so I think you can see why I'm not going to concede it.
And neither should you, OS! (Assuming you prefer not to be the victim of a rhetorical ploy. )
Charlie,
You admit you condone the use of power to impose morality (which is more right) and that only your morality is the most right of all. This is a direct disavowal of relativism. You do, in fact, presume the right to judge another's morality and the right to impose your own. It is only that you have set yourself up as the judge and jury.Huh? In what way is it a disavowal of relativism? It's only in your head that relativism means live and let live.
Charlie, I only have an absolute standard for *my* morality.
And yours is the truest and most right. You've set yourself up as the standard.
Did you read my response to Aaron, in which I said that it's all very complicated, and I can value more than one value at a time?
Sure I did. You bet it's complicated. But especially so when you start from false premises and deny the truth.
And that is the very truth you, and DL, keep implicitly admitting.
I'm not trying to avoid answering your questions, but I'm tired of saying the same things over and over.We all tire of that.
Hi DL,
Huh? In what way is it a disavowal of relativism? It's only in your head that relativism means live and let live.
Faulty reading. My comment doesn't say that moral relativism is live and let live. It says moral relativism is denied when one person's morals become "more true" than another's and when a standard is set by which another's morals can be judged.
Tom,
If Osama bin Laden attacks you, what kind of logical argument will you use to stop him? After all, he is a moral realist, too. Will you tell him that what he is doing is "wrong"? And what effect do you think that will have?
People say "you're wrong" when they mean an act is wrong according to the receiver's own values. If they know that it isn't wrong according to the receiver's values, they don't bother to say "you're wrong" to the receiver.
I have an even better question for you. Suppose that moral relativism is the case. What would you do differently?
Obviously, there's the whole religious thing that might not make a lot of sense, but let's set that aside for a moment. When it comes to crime and fair play in social settings, would you just change your moral preferences?
Will you suddenly feel that theft is as good a thing as charity?
You see, this would be much like deciding to have no favorite flavor of ice cream after discovering that ice cream flavors are not absolutely ranked by goodness. That would not happen. If you liked chocolate, you'll still like chocolate.
If you carefully imagine a world in which moral relativism is the case, you'll see that it looks pretty much like our own.
Charlie,
Faulty reading. My comment doesn't say that moral relativism is live and let live. It says moral relativism is denied when one person's morals become "more true" than another's and when a standard is set by which another's morals can be judged.The only way that my morals are "more true" is in a subjective sense. They are true in the sense that "I feel cold" is true. And if the standard by which I judge another's morals is my own, that's relativism too.
On DL's use of moral language I had this to say just days ago:
http://www.haloscan.com/comments...3125506/
#225790
You said the preference for the action was the moral preference, but here you've made it contingent upon another moral preference - that of pleasure.
You do this again later. Is feeling pleasure then the "ought" and not the preference for the action or its outcome?
You've reduced morality to nothing but pleasure-seeking.
Having done so, and having made your preferences for recreational activities, radio stations and weather the equivalent of morality you really ought to recuse yourself from any discussions of the issue.
You have no right using the words "evil/good", "right/wrong", "moral/immoral" when those words mean so very little to you. At the very least you ought to tell people that this is what you mean by morality when you discuss its objectivity so that they can rightly dismiss your opinion as irrelevant to the conversation.
===
DL, we have this one left from the last thread as well ...
Me: Do beliefs change people physically, chemically and neurologically as you said above?
DL: Yes, this is a scientific fact.
Me: I agree.
So what is a belief and where does it come from - what is its source? If my belief that a person is immoral causes my belief, which causes my distress, what was the actual source? When I say, as per your requirement, that there is a predictable, observable result (physical, chemical, neurological change) when good/evil is presented to the sensory mechanism then why is this not evidence of the ontological existence of the moral quality?
Hi DL,
The only way that my morals are "more true" is in a subjective sense. They are true in the sense that "I feel cold" is true. And if the standard by which I judge another's morals is my own, that's relativism too.
Not so.
You are making OS' statement a mere tautology. Nobody would waste my time by saying "I ike what I like more than I like what I don't like". OS has set herself up as the standard for what right morals are and judges others against this standard.
This puts the standard outside of all those other moral agents and morality is no longer relative and equal to their likes.
And yet again, you do not mean to tell me that morality is the same as feelings because you would never say " nobody could ever feel that justice was served by thus and thus ..."
If you carefully imagine a world in which moral relativism is the case, you'll see that it looks pretty much like our own.
But not entirely.
Because people don't say "vanilla can never be preferred to chocolate" and they don't suffer distress when people halfway around the world prefer not to listen to hip hop.
Wait up a minute, DL.
You provided some statements above about moral terms and their definitions, but you slipped this one in under cover with them:
After all, these feelings are about what one subjectively ought to do, writ large.
Where did this come from? First you had a feeling about whether the action was just (morally right). This is, in your parlance, a personal preference about the action.
When did this leap to being a feeling about what actions ought to be undertaken?
You are still promoting the same claim that you failed to back up in the last thread (pattern emerging?).
What makes a preference (about and action) a moral preference (about an action)? Whence the "ought"?
I'm not so sure you actually stated a fact there.
All of these are facts, and philosophy does not change them.
Our subjective moral feelings and imperatives are subjective preferences about what we ought to do.Where does this feeling come from? Isn't the feeling actually "I like this" or "this repulses me"?
How is this translated to "I ought to" and, more problematically, "you ought to"?
This tactic would be a ploy so I can write you off (at least in abbreviated conversation) as someone doesn't really think things are right or wrong, moral or immoral.
No, this would be the honest response. If the words "right" and "wrong" meant "what we individually prefer" or "what our society has voted upon" then the realist, speaking about objective morality would not be talking about right and wrong. We have such an instance, where governments set laws. We do not come along and say "it is illegal to lust in your heart", we say it is wrong. Unlike you, we do not try to misappropriate the language to gain leverage which is not due us.
Charlie,
Because people don't say "vanilla can never be preferred to chocolate" and they don't suffer distress when people halfway around the world prefer not to listen to hip hop.A moral preference is a preference about options I have for action, or options you have for action.
The choice between chocolate and vanilla is moral as it applies to me, but not as it applies to you. I couldn't care less what flavor you choose to eat. (That's just a fact, sorry.)
See, the objective facts are that we have a choice to eat one flavor or the other. In one case (my own), I have a strong preference for me to choose chocolate. In your case, I am indifferent to your choice, and have no preference. Thus, my preference for food is moral for me, but not for you.
On the other hand, there is the objective fact that we both have the choice for theft. I prefer that I not engage in theft. I also prefer you not engage in theft. So my preference there is moral for my choice AND your choice.
Saying that morality is preference does not mean that I think all preferences are the same.
Nobody would waste my time by saying "I like what I like more than I like what I don't like".That's not what they are saying. They are saying "I don't like it when you do that."
OS has set herself up as the standard for what right morals are and judges others against this standard. This puts the standard outside of all those other moral agents and morality is no longer relative and equal to their likes.I'm sorry, but this just proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that you don't get moral relativism. Under relativism, every person is their own standard as far as judgment is concerned. The fact that OS imposes her morality on someone else does not mean that her standard of moral judgment is also the standard used by (or that ought to be used by) the other person. And OS knows this.
You keep coming back to the incorrect notion that imposing one's morality on someone else requires that morality to be shared or privileged. Under relativism, that's incorrect. I impose my will on you because I am motivated to do so, not because you have an imperative to do what I want you to (although, one way or another, my methods will attempt to convince you that you have an imperative to make the choice I prefer).
Hi DL,
A moral preference is a preference about options I have for action, or options you have for action.
I wonder. You've also said that "morally bad" is what repulses you and, most recently, that "good" is what brings you pleasure.
The choice between chocolate and vanilla is moral as it applies to me, but not as it applies to you. I couldn't care less what flavor you choose to eat. (That's just a fact, sorry.)But somehow you care what people halfway around the world do morally which does not apply to you.
In your case, I am indifferent to your choice, and have no preference. Thus, my preference for food is moral for me, but not for you.
As above.
And thank you so much for making your preference for ice cream a moral issue. This only reinforces what I just told OS.
On the other hand, there is the objective fact that we both have the choice for theft. I prefer that I not engage in theft. I also prefer you not engage in theft. So my preference there is moral for my choice AND your choice.There you go again, leaping to your strenuous objection.
What makes the difference? In each case we both have a preference and we both have a choice. Suddenly here you decide what I ought to do (because this one distresses you).
Saying that morality is preference does not mean that I think all preferences are the same.I know. One is strong.
That's not what they are saying. They are saying "I don't like it when you do that."No, OS said that she doesn't consider other people's morals (feelings, in your lingo) as valid as her own. Hers are the most right. That means she likes what she likes more than she likes what she doesn't - if you are right.
I'm sorry, but this just proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that you don't get moral relativism.I'm starting to think you are the one in the shade. Being that you disagree with OS and Paul on what moral relativism is what is the evidence that you get it? Maybe you only get your version (which steals from Peter to pay Paul)?
The fact that OS imposes her morality on someone else does not mean that her standard of moral judgment is also the standard used by (or that ought to be used by) the other person. And OS knows this.All you are saying is that relativists are hypocrites. OS not only wants to judge her own morality, and others, but wants to tell others not to judge hers.
You keep coming back to the incorrect notion that imposing one's morality on someone else requires that morality to be shared or privileged. Under relativism, that's incorrect. I impose my will on you because I am motivated to do so, not because you have an imperative to do what I want you to (although, one way or another, my methods will attempt to convince you that you have an imperative to make the choice I prefer).I keep coming back to the fact that morality cannot equal feelings, as you claim. If persons A and B both have feelings about a subject then, under relativism, they are equally right and equally moral. You have no right then to impose your preference on them. The fact that you do so proves that this is not a moral question, and is not about right (or rights) but is about power (this is, in fact, immoral). Therefore, the relativist who acts as you are promoting is not dealing with a moral question.
The consistent relativist who respects the idea that this is actually about rights and morals, that feelings really do determine morality, will not violate morality as you would endorse.
Oops,
I need a clarification here:
On the other hand, there is the objective fact that we both have the choice for theft.
Did you just make free will a criterion for moral judgments?
Charlie,
Just because some emotions are stronger than others does not mean the stronger emotions are measurements of external things.
If I witness a man committing theft, that hurts me because I have empathy with the victim. The thief causes me pain, so I impose my morality on the thief. Given a choice between me having pain and someone else having pain, I choose someone else. Furthermore, I have empathy with theft victims in cases I do not know of. If you say "theft statistics are up" I feel bad for the nameless victims. And I want to impose my morality on the nameless thieves.
I have no idea what you are talking about here. When I said "Thus, my preference for food is moral for me, but not for you," I mean that taste in food is a moral preference as it applies to my actions, but not a moral preference as it applies to your actions. Don't know if that clears anything up for you.
And thank you so much for making your preference for ice cream a moral issue. This only reinforces what I just told OS.
All you are saying is that relativists are hypocrites. OS not only wants to judge her own morality, and others, but wants to tell others not to judge hers.Aha! Yes, you've hit the nail on the head! I like this perspective. It's illuminating.
When you fight Muslims on moral issues, you want your faith to dominate theirs. That's utter hypocrisy. This is an extreme case of irreconcilable difference, of course. In the case where you share values with a Muslim, you might be able to convince the other side of your view without hypocrisy, right?
So, if I tell you that you ought not steal because an honest life will be better for you and be more in accord with your own values, that's not hypocrisy. But if your values do not line up with mine, then I am left imposing my values on you.
You can always reduce such differences to hypocrisy. You have a worldview with facts you think you can prove, and moral conclusions you support. So does your enemy. And yet you insist on imposing your view on the enemy. That's hypocrisy too.
If persons A and B both have feelings about a subject then, under relativism, they are equally right and equally moral. You have no right then to impose your preference on them. The fact that you do so proves that this is not a moral question, and is not about right (or rights) but is about power (this is, in fact, immoral).Again, your complaint is that moral relativism has no respect of objective rights. Bravo. Under moral relativism, a right is a principle people deem worth fighting for. It's not moral realism where rights are something that floats outside of people and that people appeal to.
Charlie,
Did you just make free will a criterion for moral judgments?Nope. Choices still get made in a deterministic universe.
doctor(logic), what's this about imposing values on someone else? Is there something you think is immoral about it? Is there something wrong with it? Is there something wrong with hypocrisy? Aren't you imposing values on us when you tell us to stop imposing our values on someone else?
doctor(logic),
I printed out eleven pages of comments, sat down to start reading them, beginning with your 11:56 comment last night. And then I realized I didn't need to print them at all; I could have stopped right here:
First, the facts. Humans have a bunch of moral behaviors. When we see a certain class of actions, we subjectively feel positively or negatively about them. By definition,, that such actions are subjectively categorized as just or unjust. By definition, acts we subjectively dislike are called wrong, and acts we subjectively like are called right. It is a simple fact that these subjective feelings are what motivate us to persuade, argue and coerce. After all, these feelings are about what one subjectively ought to do, writ large.
All of these are facts, and philosophy does not change them.
Well, why didn't you say so in the first place?! You could have saved us a lot of wasted time. I mean, that settles it. We're wrong, and you're right. Morals by definition are synonymous with likes and dislikes, and philosophy can't change that fact!
We've been arguing all along what morals are, and all this time you've been hiding the truth from us. All we needed to know is that you are right by the power of your definition, and we could have agreed with you from the start.
Pol Pot would have agreed: acts that he didn't like were called wrong, and acts he did like, such as killing 2 million people, were called right.
The Inquisitors might not have taken your definition as true, but certainly things they didn't liked, such as lack conformity to orthodoxy, were called wrong, and things they liked, such as killing a couple thousand heretics, were called right.
The bosses at Enron certainly would have agreed that things they didn't like, such as being accountable to stockholders, were called wrong, and things they liked, such as running off with millions of dollars while leaving thousands of others broke, were called right.
And my example Mother 1 probaby doesn't think about these things deeply, but if you asked her, she would agree that because she gets personal pleasure from torturing her baby (and tortures her baby for no reason other than her personal pleasure--not, as os has twisted the example to suppose, with some misguided sense that it's doing the child some good)--that because she likes it, it's right.
I'm just bopping my forehead with my hand now, saying, "wow, all this time wasted when it could have been so easy from the beginning."
Now, I said I could have stopped right here, and in fact I did (other than a sneak peek at the end of the most recent stuff, which I already responded to). I see that you and Charlie said a lot more to each other last night (when do you sleep?), and who knows, maybe Charlie said something that will muddy the whole thing up again. I hope not. It's all so clear to me now...
By the way, please don't impose any of your morality on me by saying a sarcastic response was wrong here. I don't like your doing that, so therefore it's wrong.
And now I'm going to take your response seriously, doctor(logic).
The best thing I can make of your definitions statement, other than that you are utterly (and astonishingly) begging the question, is that you're saying this:
1) We apply the word "wrong" to things we don't like.
2) We apply the word "right" to things we like.
3) Thus the terms "wrong" and "right" are fully and comprehensively defined by what we like and don't like.
That's my charitable take on what you wrote. I hope I don't have to spell out its weaknesses to you.
I'm not just saying that pre-philosophical versions of the terminology are at stake here. And I'm not staging a rhetorical ploy. This is part of the usual business of philosophy, to try to nail down meanings and defintions.
So I'm trying, for one thing, to get out of the equivocation that's been going on all along. And I'm trying to make explicit the contradictions inherent in your using "right" and "wrong" as you do. In my sarcastic post just now I should that Pol Pot could use your definition to make genocide "right," and I have little doubt that he did do something like that, in his own justification of his evil.
The word "right" in every other context has reference to some objective standard. My response to the Lennon-McCartney dispute illustrates this: either we find an objective standard to employ, or we have in the end to agree that "right" and "wrong" cannot actually be denoted of either person's opinion. (Again, for clarification, we could rightly say that Person A believes he is "right" when he says he thinks Lennon was the better songwriter. But we cannot say, without some objective standard, that Person A's belief actually is either wrong or right.)
Charlie's 12:26 am comment is very appropriate in this light.
So yes, I'm saying that the moral relativist has to drop what you called "pre-philosophical" uses of the terms. (Did you know, by the way, that among university faculty, the fewest moral relativists, proportionally, are found among the philosophers? So much for "pre-philosophical.")
However, not only do I think children understand the term sans philosophical baggage
Do you mean that when someone cuts in line in front of Trevor in kindergarten, and he says "that's not fair," that he means that relativistically? I doubt it!
If Osama bin Laden attacks you, what kind of logical argument will you use to stop him? After all, he is a moral realist, too. Will you tell him that what he is doing is "wrong"? And what effect do you think that will have?
It's not all about power, it's not all about persuasion, it's not all about effect. That's the first thing. If bin Laden comes after me, I will probably die. Someday he will too. Right and wrong don't get their full just treatment in this life, but they do in the end. I won't convince him he's wrong, but God will. Theistic moral realism includes that as a strong component--maybe we haven't talked enough about that.
If you carefully imagine a world in which moral relativism is the case, you'll see that it looks pretty much like our own.
Time for some empirical reality. Quick, name 5 or 6 of the great moral reformers of history. What would our world have been like without them? Which of them were moral relativists? I think of Jesus, Paul, Wilberforce, Lincoln, Ghandhi, Martin Luther King; I could also add the Buddha, Lao Tsu, and Confucius. I'm carefully imagining a world without their influence, and I don't like the way it looks.
There's a reason relativists don't make sweeping societal moral reforms. Their philosophy doesn't much call for it; certainly not enough to motivate them to take the risks and pay the price that Lincoln, MLK III, Socrates, and also Jesus and Paul paid. And even if it did, the best they could do is shout, "Hey, everybody--you ought to start preferring the things I prefer!" Not much effect comes of that!
Or they could do as you said at 1:30 am:
I impose my will on you because I am motivated to do so, not because you have an imperative to do what I want you to (although, one way or another, my methods will attempt to convince you that you have an imperative to make the choice I prefer).
They could impose their will. That's utterly chilling--especially since we've seen the result of that very mentality so much around the world.
It's chilling that you consider it part of your own bag of tricks. It's chilling just because of where it's grounded. Society imposes its will on criminals, but does so in an attempt to enforce what is actually right. We don't always get that correctly, but it helps that this is the objective. In your case, the objective is to make others like what you like, or at least to do what you like. You're a nice enough guy and all, but I hope you see the dangers of that philosophy in the hands of, say, a Ted Kosinski or a high-school shooter; or in the hands of a Stalin or a Ceausescu.
DL says that morality is subjective because he doesn't sense the compelling nature of the argument. However, he senses the compelling argument of the "Socrates is a Mortal/Man" syllogism, follows it's undetectable rules and declares the syllogism to be objective. Why?
In the past he said it's because the axioms of language that define all the terms (Man, Mortal, Socrates) forces him into this objective conclusion.
Q: If the Socrates syllogism is objective by this measure then what makes a moral syllogism subjective? Tom, I think, gave us one earlier but here is another.
a) Injustice is a moral evil.
b) It is unjust to put an innocent person in prison.
c) Putting an innocent person in prison is a moral evil.
Tom:
Your exposition of DL’s bag of tricks is why moral relativism eventually leads to violence. I’ve referenced the number of times DL has laughed as threats of death against those that don’t accept the inanity of positism, his intentional lies, his refusal to have his own thinking criticized, and the imposition of his will (regarding moral actions) against others. This is moral relativism with all the fancy smoke-and-mirrors removed: power over others.
And, hasn’t anyone noticed that initially DL was arguing moral relativism is about “persuasion”... but now it’s about imposition of personal will (as you quote him, Tom)? Is there any better witness to moral relativism being based NOT in reason (persuasion as to truth content is out as well as criticisms of DL’s thinking—per his own rules of the game) but in imposition of force? Since DL has now jettisoned “persuasion” for “I impose my will on you because I am motivated to do so,” he as by defintion jettisoned reason. What remains is sheer will-to-power and violence over others... to which his own words attest.
DL’s approach is the flip-side of the same postmodernist coin as Jacob: the cowardice of power over others.
Referring to my last comment, I suspect DL will say 'moral evil' is not objective and so the syllogism is ultimately subjective because of that.
What about 'man' or 'mortal' in the Socrates syllogism? Are these objective by the same measure? Try as he might, DL will ultimately be forced to appeal to some man-made axiom to avoid an infinite regress.
So again, my question stands. If the Socrates syllogism is objective by one measure then what makes a moral syllogism subjective?
Hi SteveK,
The problem is that DL (and more especially, Paul) doesn't believe in your second premise.
===
Hi Tom,
Sorry I muddied the waters when it was all so clear.
Here I go again ...
That's okay, Charlie. It wasn't wrong for you to muddy the waters. How could it be wrong? 
Hi DL,
Just because some emotions are stronger than others does not mean the stronger emotions are measurements of external things.
I'm going to finally take this as your answer. See comment to follow.
If I witness a man committing theft, that hurts me because I have empathy with the victim.And I have empathy for the Pepsi drinker - but somehow that doesn't translate into an ought. This one's just not strong enough, I guess.
Furthermore, I have empathy with theft victims in cases I do not know of. If you say "theft statistics are up" I feel bad for the nameless victims. And I want to impose my morality on the nameless thieves.See, you keep saying that. But you don't account for it. Empathy is unaccounted for and it doesn't translate into morality anyway. As I said, I have empathy for people who have to give speeches.
Nope. Choices still get made in a deterministic universe.
No they don't. Not unless there is somehow (as you've said before) free will in a deterministic universe. For there to be a choice there must be a will. For there to be morality there must be choice.
I have no idea what you are talking about here. When I said "Thus, my preference for food is moral for me, but not for you," I mean that taste in food is a moral preference as it applies to my actions, but not a moral preference as it applies to your actions. Don't know if that clears anything up for you.You exactly repeated what you said before, if I was confused Id still be confused. But who says anything needs clearing up. You said your taste ice cream is a moral position. So be it.
When you fight Muslims on moral issues, you want your faith to dominate theirs. That's utter hypocrisy. This is an extreme case of irreconcilable leaves difference, of course. In the case where you share values with a Muslim, you might be able to convince the other side of your view without hypocrisy, right?Faith is a matter of knowledge and evidence. I can be more right than the Muslim, or he than me. Saying so does not make one a hypocrite.
Feeling a preference for something and imposing your preference against someone else's felt preference while saying nobody should do likewise to you is hypocrisy.
So, if I tell you that you ought not steal because an honest life will be better for you and be more in accord with your own values, that's not hypocrisy. But if your values do not line up with mine, then I am left imposing my values on you.You mean your feelings, of course.
You can always reduce such differences to hypocrisy. You have a worldview with facts you think you can prove, and moral conclusions you support. So does your enemy. And yet you insist on imposing your view on the enemy. That's hypocrisy too.False. It is not hypocritical to point out that 2+2 does not equal 5. Neither is it hypocritical to stand by your belief that 2+2=4 when challenged. With objective morality we are talking about truths, not feelings.
Under moral relativism, a right is a principle people deem worth fighting for. It's not moral realism where rights are something that floats outside of people and that people appeal to.In moral relativism a right is nothing but what a society bequeaths upon its people. Let me clarify that: in moral relativism a right is NOTHING.
Human rights do not exist just as moral progress does not exist. You are talking about privileges, not rights.
And, as I said, you just allowed that you are not actually talking about morality. In moral relativism there is no morality and you are again misappropriating a term for the value it holds with the listener but which view you do not share.
Charlie:
The problem is that DL (and more especially, Paul) doesn't believe in your second premise.
But they DO believe the second premise: "Socrates is a man". Why? Precisely for the reasons I stated above.
DL, I'm tired of waiting for and repeatedly requesting your answer on the following point (repeated again above) so I am going to go ahead and draw my conclusion.
I'm sure that you, like OS before, decline to answer because you know what is in store.
When you brought up mirror neurons as the source for the feeling of empathy which leads to morality (another feeling) you had to retreat to claiming that the physical changes of the brain were the result solely of belief. Clarified, that point now refutes yet another of your strong claims.
You made a big deal, when discussing materialistic accounts of the mind, of the fact that physical changes could account for changes in the mind (claiming, therefore, that the mind was entirely the material brain). You ignored the fact that non-physical changes also could (placebo effect, for instance) which shows that the mind is likewise immaterial and non-physical. You disputed my example where I said that my girlfriend could have a physical change of brain state, initiated by non-material information being relayed to her.
http://www.haloscan.com/comments...5122655/
#217644 You denied this and claimed the information was material (?!).
http://www.haloscan.com/comments...5122655/
#217738
But now you refute this spurious claim yourself by allowing that beliefs (not objective, material reality) cause the physical states of the brain that result in moral preferences.
Now, of course, you will suddenly be compelled to answer the question, try to call the beliefs themselves "physical", and try to account for this, but the ship has sailed. Nothing "moral" has been received into the brain (as per your denial of realism), and yet the brain goes through all of the belief stages necessary to "feel" the moral implication. The subject even "feels distress", with accompanying physical brain changes caused by belief alone, when nothing has happened other than its imagining an activity halfway around the world.
Your theory of morality has defeated your materialism - the very thing it is invented to shore up.
Likewise, you just admitted that morality is contingent upon choice. But choice is not choice without free will. So your theory of morality has also defeated another of your great pillars, the denial of free will.
(Of course you will now slip back into compatibilism and say that you can have a determinsitic universe and free will).
Not to mention that your theory of morality has long since defeated itself when you claimed such things as "no crime could warrant a given punishment" and that "justice can never be served by a third party paying a moral debt"
http://www.thinkingchristian.net...0050/
index.html
and when you made moral value independent of your own feelings (the burn victim case), etc.
You have also admitted what Paul was adamant was not the case; that preference for ice cream flavours is the equivalent of morality to the relativist and that the individual, not the group, determines the moral value of an action.
Thanks for the chat.
You denied this and claimed the information was material (?!).
.....
But now you refute this spurious claim yourself by allowing that beliefs (not objective, material reality) cause the physical states of the brain that result in moral preferences.
.....
Your theory of morality has defeated your materialism - the very thing it is invented to shore up.
Because it's worth repeating.
Charlie,
I like the way you say things of the form "you must think X, and that cannot be, unless Y, but the ship has already sailed so you can't criticize the gaping hole in my argument."
You ignored the fact that non-physical changes also could (placebo effect, for instance) which shows that the mind is likewise immaterial and non-physical.No, it does not remotely do that. You are assuming that knowledge and beliefs are non-physical. But we know that this is not the case, or else we would be unable to change a person's knowledge or beliefs by tampering with their physical brain.
The placebo effect does not prove non-physicality.
Nothing "moral" has been received into the brain (as per your denial of realism), and yet the brain goes through all of the belief stages necessary to "feel" the moral implication.Correct! The morality you perceive is an invention of your brain. It's not received like light into the eye. If it were received, we would be able to detect evil by itself. Yet that is not possible for humans. (It was a handy spell in Dungeons and Dragons, though.) Neither can we detect pure beauty.
The subject even "feels distress", with accompanying physical brain changes caused by belief alone, when nothing has happened other than its imagining an activity halfway around the world.Yes, of course. If I tell you that there's torture taking place in the basement, you will feel distress. This is the case whether or not there is torture taking place. So your distress is not caused by the alleged torture but merely by your belief in it. There are no "torture waves" or "evil vibes" emanating from the basement that you are detecting. You get objective facts about the world, and you have opinions about them. It's all simple and consistent. You color the objective facts with your own moral emotions, then misinterpret those moral colors as objective facts.
Not so fast:
No, it does not remotely do that. You are assuming that knowledge and beliefs are non-physical. But we know that this is not the case, or else we would be unable to change a person's knowledge or beliefs by tampering with their physical brain.
This is also predicted by theories, including substance dualism, that say that the mind is not identical with the brain (or any completely physical manifestation thereof), but that its expression into the world is mediated through the brain. Yours is but one of the possible conclusions from the data, and thereby remains but one of the possible theories. Non-physicality is not ruled out by the data you've supplied here. We've discussed this before, and I know that you knew about this, so it seems rather perverse of you to pronounce that this data proves your theory.
Not so fast on the placebo effect either. New Scientist placed it at the top of their 2005 list of "things that don't make sense," for the difficulty of explaining it on just physical terms. So I doubt you have fully understood it and explained it physically.
The morality you perceive is an invention of your brain. It's not received like light into the eye. If it were received, we would be able to detect evil by itself.
Do you mean we could detect evil more or less in the air, wafting around, without a concrete expression in some person or action? That's a strange thing to suppose. But we do detect it when we see it instantiated. That's part of the fundamental data of human life. Our analysis of evil is not perfect, but we all have times when we see it and we know we see it.
DL,
No, it does not remotely do that. You are assuming that knowledge and beliefs are non-physical. But we know that this is not the case, or else we would be unable to change a person's knowledge or beliefs by tampering with their physical brain.
Sure, there's that defence I anticipated - a day late and a dollar short.
But we know that this is not the case,We know no such thing. We know that the brain/body can be changed by beliefs, by placebo, and by conscious desire - this would be impossible if the mind were purely physical.
The placebo effect does not prove non-physicality.
Why not?
Yes, of course. If I tell you that there's torture taking place in the basement, you will feel distress.
Why?
I wouldn't want to eat sushi but I feel no distress when you tell me there is a sushi bar in the basement.
This is the case whether or not there is torture taking place. So your distress is not caused by the alleged torture but merely by your belief in it. There are no "torture waves" or "evil vibes" emanating from the basement that you are detecting. You get objective facts about the world, and you have opinions about them.You just defeated your materialistic account of the mind again.
Does it smell like there's a sushi bar in the basement? That might cause distress.
Yuck.
Yes, I would be distressed.
So sushi is a moral value as well.
I'm out of here for the next 10 hours or so, so I'll try to fill those gaping holes DL finds in my argument when I get back.
I mean, if he decides to point them out.
Hi OS, you said:
What I don't presume the right to is forcing others to live according to my morality, except when their doing so is harmful to others
Would you mind elaborating for me on what you mean by "forcing others to live according to my morality"? If I tell an adulterer (whose morality does not forbid his adultery) that he is wrong to cheat on his wife, am I forcing my morality on him?
doctor(logic),
I was going to point out that, in regard to you comment:
But we know that this is not the case, or else we would be unable to change a person's knowledge or beliefs by tampering with their physical brain
no, that doesn't follow at all; look at your logic again.
But I see Tom has beaten me to it
Aaron,
You can *tell* an adulterer that his adultery is wrong, but simply telling him that is not forcing your morality on him. Enacting laws that prohibit a person from having more than one spouse would be forcing your morality on him, and would, IMO, be immoral, because his adultery hurts no one (assuming that his spouses are all consenting adults.)
OS,
Who said, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it?" That is the sort of attitude I am trying to describe
Wow, that's a pretty strong subjective liking or preference. That's like saying, "I like this thing [your right to say what you want] so much that I'm willing to die for it." Can you think of any other strong likings or preferences you have for which you would die? Exempt, for the moment, people in your life. Stick to abstract concepts. If someone was pointing a gun at me to prevent me from speaking my mind (or some similar thing), would you take a bullet for me?
Whoops, forgot the closing tag on that blockquote. That second paragraph was me, not OS.
OS,
You can *tell* an adulterer that his adultery is wrong, but simply telling him that is not forcing your morality on him. Enacting laws that prohibit a person from having more than one spouse would be forcing your morality on him, and would, IMO, be immoral, because his adultery hurts no one (assuming that his spouses are all consenting adults.)
But wait a second - aren't both telling him and enacting laws just attempts to get him to rethink his subjective morality based on my subjective morality? If I'm just trying to convince him based on his other values/preferences, in both cases I've succeeded: in the former, by verbally getting him to weigh his actions against, say, his value for his children's wellbeing; in the latter, by getting him to weigh his actions against his value of his freedom and his desire not to get arrested or punished. What in the world makes you distinguish between the two? What makes one illicit but not the other?
doctor(logic),
Thanks for the response way back up there, but you missed the point of my question here:
Let me ask you this: have you ever had to convince someone they got a math problem wrong? Have you ever tried to convince someone that your favorite flavor of ice cream should be theirs? In which of the two are you more successful?
Let me try to clarify what I meant. My point was to ask you to survey you experiences regarding two different types of disputes (one over an objective reality, the other over a subjective claim), and then to ask you which of the two is more like what people do when they try to convince each other of moral claims. IF moral statements are more like the ones about ice cream than about math problems, then you may as well give up ever trying to convince someone to adopt your moral stance. I can't think of anything you could say that would change my favorite flavor of ice cream, nor do I know anyone works that way, because my preferences are not based on reason. However, we do use reason to convince someone of our position in the case of the math problem. You seem to want to use reason to convince others to adopt your moral positions. What does this tell you?
Sorry folks for the five posts in a row, but one more question, doctor(logic):
What if something I like - a lot - is the very thing I call wrong? Does morality have to be about ultimate preference, or just about any old preference?
Aaron,
Telling the adulterer that I believe he is wrong is just expressing my opinion--I didn't say anything about trying to get him to rethink his morality. Even if I did, it would be just his opinion against mine.
Enacting a law to prohibit someone's behavior imposes a consequence for that behavior. This is a use of force, IMO.
Aaron,
You missed the point of my quoting, "I will defend..." I was trying to describe how one can support another's right to think differently while not agreeing with his thinking. I wasn't raising the issue of what I, or anyone else, is willing to die for, and I don't understand why you're asking about that.
Of course it's a use of force. Every law is a use of force. That's why law needs to be grounded properly, and not just in some persons' opinions...
Do you think all our country's laws are grounded properly (which I assume means to you that they are grounded in someone's interpretation of the Christian God's commands)? I think our country's laws are grounded in the checks and balances of our system.
Heavens no, they're not all grounded that way. But from the foundation that was at least the pursuit.
Checks and balances were based on a Biblically-based understanding that no person should be granted ultimate authority, and no person is free from the temptations of power, and because each person is of equal worth, a good governmental system requires something to keep any person or group from having too much power.
From where do you get that checks are Biblically based?
I'm going to punt on this one. The answer is, from my knowledge of history, and of the philosophers the Founders relied on. But for me to chase down the sources and cite them for you does not seem like it's worth the time. It's getting off the topic.
Hmm, well, I won't argue with you--as you say, it's not worth the time. But I still think that our laws are the result of group process and the social contract.
Oh, I agree with that, too. Group process, social contract, definitely; but informed by what? That's what the debate might be about, if we were to have one, but it's not worth pursuing here.
IF moral statements are more like the ones about ice cream than about math problems, then you may as well give up ever trying to convince someone to adopt your moral stance.There are other analogies besides ice cream and math. I'd say moral statements are more like languages given their grounding in culture as well as their flexible use by an individual, and that you can get another person to attempt to speak a foreign language, although the older they are the more difficult it is. And, one thinks one's native language is intuitively obvious and "real" (How can the word "Okaasan" mean mother? "Mother" means mother, obviously.)
Lastly, my favorite point is that a fair bit of moral persuasion and argument for relativists is actually about trying to get another person to be consistent; that is, to try to get them to change behavior by showing them that the change of behavior would make them consistent. (Please spare me the rejoinder about consistency being a relativistic value as well. Relativism does not fail on that point, it just means that attempts to convince someone to be consistent won't go far unless they believe in consistency. Duh.)
Tom,
Morality exists apart from metaphysical baggage. You have a metaphysical claim about morality, and now you want to claim the phenomenon doesn't exist unless it's shackled to your preferred baggage. That is question begging. Instead of saying that your metaphysics is the best explanation for the facts, you are saying that your metaphysics is, well, physics.
Also, I spent some time over at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy reading their article about moral relativism. I found it helpful in making distinctions between relativism, nihilism, scepticism, subjectivism and noncognitivism, as well as the folk conception of relativism:
Finally, the term ‘moral relativism’ is sometimes associated with a normative position concerning how we ought to think about, or behave towards, persons with whom we morally disagree. Usually the position is formulated in terms of tolerance... Since tolerance so-understood is a normative thesis about what we morally ought to do, it is best regarded, not as a form of moral relativism per se, but as a thesis that has often been thought to be implied by relativist positions such as DMR and MMR. Despite the popularity of this thought, most philosophers believe it is mistaken.You go on to say that there would be few (if any) moral reformers if we were all relativists. However, that seems rather difficult to believe. If I am enslaved, and I find my enslavement subjectively nasty, do you think I am indifferent about my freedom because my enslavement is arbitrary as opposed to objectively wrong? I don't think so.
If I see subjective injustice and empathize with the suffering of others, do I decide to endure my own empathic suffering merely because there is no objective basis for saying that my own suffering is particularly bad? Nope.
The kind of society that cares about objective morality above individual human suffering is not one you or I would like to live in. The Taliban proved that.
The great moral reformers did not change the world by altering the order of prayers said at a church service. They did not transform the world by establishing whether it is better to eat beef rather than pork, or dress in black versus white. The great reformers made changes that impacted issues of great human suffering, and correspondingly great human empathy. These changes provide their own motivation without the need for philosophical argument.
They could impose their will. That's utterly chilling--especially since we've seen the result of that very mentality so much around the world.Gosh, you say this as if I am saying that relativism says imposition of will is normatively good. It doesn't say that.
We all impose our respective wills on others. That is a primary function of moral conviction. Ghandi imposed his will on the British. MLK imposed his will on America. Lincoln most definitely imposed his will on the South.
I'm not a moral relativist because I want things to be that way or because I particularly want to impose my will on others. I am a moral relativist because I see no evidence that morality is objective. It always gets connected back to subjective opinion. I'm a moral relativist in the same way I'm unicorn agnostic. I'll be a moral realist when I see evidence that morality is fixed outside of personal opinions.
And I'm not going to say morality is objective if it isn't true! I don't care how much I want it to be true. I care about whether it is true. I have standards for truth, not faith that the world is how I might want it to be.
Whether we find the Holocaust subjectively bad or emancipation subjectively good are 100% irrelevant to the question of moral reality. If morality is real, then what we subjectively feel is irrelevant. Yet your arguments always say "if you're a relativist, you can't say the Holocaust is objectively bad!" As if my distaste for being in any way associated with the Nazis is enough to make me change my honest assessment of the truth. You cannot get traction that way, for what objective morality is founded on a disrespect for truth?
Hi DL,
I'll leave the first half of your repetitions for somebody else to deal with, as this one really caught my eye:
I'm not a moral relativist because I want things to be that way or because I particularly want to impose my will on others. I am a moral relativist because I see no evidence that morality is objective. It always gets connected back to subjective opinion. I'm a moral relativist in the same way I'm unicorn agnostic. I'll be a moral realist when I see evidence that morality is fixed outside of personal opinions.
And I'm not going to say morality is objective if it isn't true! I don't care how much I want it to be true. I care about whether it is true. I have standards for truth, not faith that the world is how I might want it to be.
I don't see this at all.
I see you believing in unintelligent abiogenesis without any evidence for it.
I see you believing that the universe is not fine-tuned for life against the evidence for it.
I see you wishing you could doubt Jesus' existence against the evidence.
I see you waving away placebo effect against the evidence.
I see you ignoring historical evidence to promote your favourite anti-Christian biases.
You are simply not credible when you take this "man of reason" stand.
You do not want morality to be objective and it is a pretense that you are standing against this desire because of an allegiance to evidence.
In fact,your own arguments provide strong evidence that morality is objective because they counter the claims you want to make. You concoct different tests thread by thread to support your desire that morality be subjective and fish for any theory that will explain morality away.
Whatever can or can not be proven, it is unconvincing for you to claim that you are the rational being here standing against a bunch of hopeful wishers.
DL,
If morality is real, then what we subjectively feel is irrelevant.
In what way?
Why is this not a non-sequitur, given what you've repeatedly been told about subjective interpretations of objective morality?
DL,
Another thing occurs to me as you make yet another appeal to empathy in your discussion of moral reformers.
Since you claim that empathy and morality are the direct product of mirror neurons (at least, I presume that is what you would like to say if you were to follow up on the issue) then it is a matter of biology.
So what happened, biologically speaking, to make the West suddenly empathize with slaves? Or with those suffering racial discrimination? Why would a person who could mirror their suffering before hand suddenly take that mirroring as normative?
Well, we know your answer from before, and that is that the cause was not biological but rather philosophical and rational - the person succumbed to reaosn. The West came to see other people as human, and deserving of human rights, and then they would empathize.
Not being biological in nature then, we see that your theory of mirror neurons (speculative as they are) and empathy (unaccounted for in the first place) are not the explanation for morality.
In fact, we see that the explanation is immaterial, that the altered opinions entail a change of mind, not a change of brain.
So reformers and empathy actually destroy two of your props; both materialism and mirror neurons/empathy bite the dust.
Like baseball statistics, moral relativism has a way of explaining a lot… until it suddenly explains nothing, and is left struggling for points of reference it itself doesn’t have—making a mockery of reason’s objective ability to inform the will by sinking into “empathy,” “subjective realism,” “cultural differences,” “persuasion,” and ultimately in sheer power over others by the imposition of a disordered will.
The latter is the most repulsive and frightening, for it strikes twice and deeply at the very nature of what it means to be human: it is, in fact, anti-human. Moral relativism abandons reason because it (1) a priori assumes moral categories such as “good” and “evil” are wholly subjective merely because these cannot be seen by the myopic eyes of the MESs and their methodologies, and hence (2) moral relativism inexorably leads to violence over other by the imposition of an uniformed and therefore disordered will.
Charlie,
Just a clarification to what you say here:
Mirroring wasn't the only thing going on. There was also, in the case of slavery, the economic advantage gave the South over the North, and in both the case of slavery and the case of racism, it was in fact appeals to beliefs other than slavery and racism that persuaded people that it was wrong to continue these practices--exactly what DL and I have been saying.
Hi OS,
Thanks for your view of historical facts.
To clarify your clarification, I wasn't talking about the war between the states specifically but rather the trend over all of Christendom.
But I agree with you that abolition did not result from mirror neurons and empathy.
As I said to DL:
"Not being biological in nature then, we see that your theory of mirror neurons (speculative as they are) and empathy (unaccounted for in the first place) are not the explanation for morality.
In fact, we see that the explanation is immaterial, that the altered opinions entail a change of mind, not a change of brain."
So that's two votes against this theory.
What happened to DL's commitment to statistics and prediction/verification? Suddenly it isn't important to him anymore. Why?
Statistics show that morality is objective (statistically speaking) in at least one case. If you predict that people perceive torturing babies for fun as evil -- your prediction will be verified as true probably 99.99% of the time. Compare this with the perception of other facts/data.
SteveK, your example is not saying that morality is objective, it only says that it is an objective fact that XX% of a certain population believe a certain belief. Those are two very different propositions.
When we say that morality is objective, don't we mean that a certain moral code is objectively true in the same way that we say it is true that there is a tree in my backyard (when the moral code is phrased like "torturing babies is evil").
But let's rephrase that mode code: "we should not torture babies." I'm unclear how we got from that "ought" to the "is" of objectivity. I'd love to use that move in a couple of other arguments we've had here, but I'm always told that that's impossible, yet some think it works on this issue for some reason.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=h...feature=related
In part 6 of his debate with Daniel Dennet Dinesh D'Souza describes the same
thing I was talking about at 2:10 am.
He says that that Dennet does believe in free will and consciousness, once his ideas are analyzed, but that he merely defines them differently.
And why does he define them differently? So that he can deny objective morality.
In this segment he also tackles the same claim that the atheist is the rational one, and that his is the evidence-based belief.
os,
it was in fact appeals to beliefs other than slavery and racism that persuaded people that it was wrong to continue these practices--exactly what DL and I have been saying.
Appeals by whom, and on what basis? (Don't make the mistake of thinking that doesn't matter.) The answer: appeals by Christians, on a Biblical basis. Have you seen Amazing Grace?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=M...feature=related
Part 9 DiSouza quickly on the slavery issue as illuminated by Tom, as well as morality and rvolution of same.
Tom, I think that, for the purposes of our discussion here, it doesn't matter *what* persuaded people, only that they were persuaded by an appeal to their other beliefs. At any rate, economic "persuasion" certainly isn't Biblically based.
It doesn't matter what people believe, then, apparently. Beliefs have no real impact on history on persons' actions. Beliefs did not motivate Wilberforce, and they did not motivate the other abolitionists. All that matters is that they persuaded some other people; what brought them to the point of doing that is irrelevant.
Speaking of beliefs, I find it really hard to believe you would suggest this!
I recommend you read up on Wilberforce or watch the film. Economics had nothing to do with what he did.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=A...feature=related
Dennett, D'Souza and Nietzsche on the fact that it is Christianity that led to
the societies we have now that value human life, equality, etc. and even that fostered science.
Dennett thinks we can move beyond these necessary foundations, D'Souza doubts it, and Nietzsche embraced the necessary loss of our moral grounding witht he loss of belief in God.
Tom, I said that *for the purpose of this discussion* what the particular beliefs were didn't matter. That is because the point I was making was about *persuasion.* I did not and am not suggesting that beliefs don't matter in general.
Hi Paul,
SteveK, your example is not saying that morality is objective, it only says that it is an objective fact that XX% of a certain population believe a certain belief. Those are two very different propositions.
But don't the statistics give us knowledge?
Surely they are not merely a reiteration of our observation but a source of new knowledge, right?
When we say that morality is objective, don't we mean that a certain moral code is objectively true in the same way that we say it is true that there is a tree in my backyard (when the moral code is phrased like "torturing babies is evil").
It might just be the same.
Since you can't know if there is a tree in your yard without asking other people and having them verify it then perhaps this works for morality as well.
Asking people if it is wrong to torture babies for fun and finding out that they all think it is verifies that truth, does it not?
But maybe we don't actually get all all our knowledge from statistics afterall? Maybe just the ones that confirm what we already know and conform to what we already accept as being knowable.
Hi OS,
I still agree with you on this issue of changing opinions about slavery.
I do find it interesting, however, that in pointing to other beliefs that may have been persuasive you select economic (selfish) concerns rather than the far more significant Christian belief as your illustration. That seems a little selective and begrudging.
Either way, we know it wasn't mirror neurons and a biological impetus.
There are other analogies besides ice cream and math. I'd say moral statements are more like languages given their grounding in culture as well as their flexible use by an individual, and that you can get another person to attempt to speak a foreign language, although the older they are the more difficult it is. And, one thinks one's native language is intuitively obvious and "real" (How can the word "Okaasan" mean mother? "Mother" means mother, obviously.)
No offense Paul, but this just seems to me to be a rabbit trail. Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see how this addressed my point at all, nor do I see your language analogy as working very well.
OS,
Thanks for the response.
You missed the point of my quoting, "I will defend..."
Fair enough, sorry about that. I just thought it applied in an interesting way to the conversation. Didn't intent to interject a rabbit trail, but maybe I did.
I'd like to pick up where we left off on the "forcing morality" issue, but I'm out of time right now - maybe later today I can get back to it.
Paul
your example is not saying that morality is objective, it only says that it is an objective fact that XX% of a certain population believe a certain belief. Those are two very different propositions.
This is precisely the kind of thing that DL's theories attempt to sort out. Why is he not using them here?
Since you can't know if there is a tree in your yard without asking other people and having them verify it then perhaps this works for morality as well.
Here Charlie is touching on the verification double standard that you and DL were peddling earlier. You've got your everyday standard and the religious (in this case, moral) standard of verification.
Hey Charlie,
Yes, statistics give us knowledge. I'm not sure if it is a mere re-iteration or not.Me: SteveK, your example is not saying that morality is objective, it only says that it is an objective fact that XX% of a certain population believe a certain belief. Those are two very different propositions.You: But don't the statistics give us knowledge?
But I'm also sure that SteveK mistook the idea of objective morality for statistics about what people think is moral. Surely you're not suggesting that morality is merely the result taking a poll of what people think? Similarly, I've never suggested that objective reality is merely a matter of what other people think. Other's opinions are necessary but not sufficient. An opinion about whether there is a tree in my backyard also has to be free of bias (confirmation and otherwise). The more people who weigh in, the more likely the biases will counteract each other.
As I've said before, however, the problem with applying this to morality is that morality is necessarily a biased viewpoint ("One *should* do X and Y, and *not* Z."). How does one remove bias (in a broad sense) from questions of morality? It's impossible by definition, and that's one reason why morality isn't objective.
SteveK, I didn't see your last comment above before I posted my last comment above, I hope that comment answered yours. There's no double standard, it's the same one applied: multiple independent and non-biased lines of evidence equal more confidence in a conclusion.
Aaron, I'm not sure I was explicitly trying to address your point, I don't think I said I was, I was just trying to make a point about a subject you brought up by showing that the range of choices (ice cream or math) was larger than you were implying.
If you care to share what exactly about the language analogy doesn't work, I'd be happy to comment on it. However, remember that I'm not saying that language is a perfect analogy (*No* analogy can completely equate its terms. It's only because *some* elements of one thing are analogous to another that one can make an analogy. If *all* aspects of one thing were equal to another, they'd be exactly the same thing, making the analogy useless. Any analogy only goes so far.
At the very least, I hope I've brought up the idea that the range of choices does not have to be limited to ice cream (whims, in general) and math (as rock-hard as any conclusion can be).
Hi Paul,
Surely you're not suggesting that morality is merely the result taking a poll of what people think?
No, not at all.
But I'm not the one who misapplies statistics and draws faulty conclusions from them.
An opinion about whether there is a tree in my backyard also has to be free of bias (confirmation and otherwise). The more people who weigh in, the more likely the biases will counteract each other.They can never counteract your biases, however. You just might be a brain in a vat.
As I've said before, however, the problem with applying this to morality is that morality is necessarily a biased viewpoint ("One *should* do X and Y, and *not* Z."). How does one remove bias (in a broad sense) from questions of morality? It's impossible by definition, and that's one reason why morality isn't objective.This is a very faulty syllogism.
1) Why is morality necessarily biased?
You mean a person's interpretation of good/bad is biased?
Yes, of course it is. So is a person's perception of the world, especially if he is a potential vat-man.
2) How does the word "should" make the statement biased? Why isn't "should" an objective term about reality?
3) How does one remove bias in a broad sense? By referring to the objective standard.
4) The question-begging builds up serious momentum by the time you hit your final sentence. Can you demonstrate that "bias" is a necessary part of the definition of morality (other than in your relativistic morality)?
Here's definition # 1
http://www.thefreedictionary.com...ry.com/ morality
mo·ral·i·ty (m-rl-t, mô-)
n. pl. mo·ral·i·ties
1. The quality of being in accord with standards of right or good conduct.
And can you demonstrate that the possibility of bias in a subjective opinion about reality negates the objective nature of that reality?
You said to Aaron:
At the very least, I hope I've brought up the idea that the range of choices does not have to be limited to ice cream (whims, in general) and math (as rock-hard as any conclusion can be).
Offering other analogies does not negate the appropriateness of the others.
DL is quite sure about the ice cream analogy.
I know you decided long ago that you didn't like it because it reduced morality to a whim, but your problem then is with DL. Surely one of you is the true expert on moral relativism, since you both like to tell us how we've misinterpreted it.
Aaron,
Sorry for the delay, but I'm having a bit of trouble keeping up with all the posts.
IF moral statements are more like the ones about ice cream than about math problems, then you may as well give up ever trying to convince someone to adopt your moral stance. I can't think of anything you could say that would change my favorite flavor of ice cream, nor do I know anyone works that way, because my preferences are not based on reason.First, I want to comment on this issue of the ice cream because I think it's being misinterpreted. If you go back and check what I wrote, you'll find that I have a moral preference only about my own choice of ice cream flavor, but am morally indifferent about others' choice of ice cream flavor. Whereas, when it comes to theft, I have a moral preference about my actions AND the actions of others. They are all preferences, but in the ice cream case I am (relatively) indifferent about your preference, and in the theft case I am not indifferent. To equating the two preferences in every way would be to ignore what I am saying. Just to clarify.
On to your question. It is reasonable to suppose that a moral principle is comparable with a physical or mathematical theory in the following way. We extrapolate from our moral feelings, and devise some moral theory to "explain" those feelings. The question is, what does this moral theory predict? Well, the theory is fitted to our subjective moral feelings, e.g. "X has to be the correct theory because otherwise you end up with eventuality Y, and we feel Y would be wrong." Such moral theories are useful for predicting when we are going to get ourselves into emotional trouble with our decisions. For example, if we ignore moral theories and fail to act according to the Golden Rule, we will likely find ourselves in a position we will later regret.
However, the moral realist claims that this theory does not merely predict how we feel, but instead predicts something entirely different. Something untouchable by anything except for (a subset of) our moral feelings. This is a classic case of mistaking the map for the territory. It's sort of like extrapolating from a street map of Queens to create a map of what Manhattan ought to look like. Then, upon finding Manhattan, you say "Manhattan should not look this way!"
Fortunately, our instincts are usually better than this. Upon finding Manhattan, we tend to prefer to fix the map. The analogy here is that when we find ourselves in a moral situation that was formerly forbidden by the old map, we may prefer to reject the map based on our intuitive sense of what is good or bad.
As to your contrast, mathematics differs because everyone agrees on the rules by stipulation. The only way two math students can disagree is by one (or both of them) making a mistake in computation.
So, a better comparison would be with physics, which is also taken to be objective. At first, morality and physics might appear to have much in common. We fit a theory to some data, and make predictions that are verified by future experience. The question is whether these theories are predicting something about ourselves or predicting something external to ourselves.
For example, I could come up with a theory about what makes a woman attractive. Statistically, such a theory could be pretty successful. We would calibrate it based on subjective opinions, and use it to predict subjective opinions. But that's not a way to prove that beauty is objective because we have no strong reason to believe that the predictability comes from anything more than a reliable (but arbitrary) human tendency.
Physics differs because the physical attributes of a thing affect the interactions of that thing with other non-sentient things. I can fire a projectile at a target, and the behavior of the target depends upon the physical properties of the projectile. If the physical properties of the projectile were subjective, why should the target care about the attribute? If mass were only in my perception of the projectile and not in the projectile itself, then I would not expect the projectile's mass to determine how it interacted with other physical objects in a predictive way. That is why physics is deemed objective. I have reasons to believe that I'm measuring the thing itself and not just phenomena.
For morality, this doesn't happen. Morality imprints itself only on beings with subjectivities. Moral events do not imprint onto non-subjective entities like walls or TV sets. That's the reason why it would not make sense for morality to be considered objective.
Paul,
the problem with applying this to morality is that morality is necessarily a biased viewpoint ("One *should* do X and Y, and *not* Z."). How does one remove bias (in a broad sense) from questions of morality? It's impossible by definition, and that's one reason why morality isn't objective.
A bias viewpoint presumes there is an unbiased viewpoint that the person should see if he/she weren't biased. If that isn't objective then I don't know what is. Prefacing a comment with "In my opinion..." doesn't change this fact.
Steve,
A bias viewpoint presumes there is an unbiased viewpoint that the person should see if he/she weren't biased. If that isn't objective then I don't know what is.You don't know what is. Sorry, you walked into that one.
So ice cream flavors are objective because otherwise we could not have biased views about them?
Again, you end up denying the distinction between the objective and the subjective in every case. You're actually making a very strong claim here. You're saying that it is impossible for someone's mind to add a subjective flavor or color to an objective quantity. For you, it is impossible for a man to say "that building is too tall" without there being an objective case that it is either too tall or too short or exactly right. We both agree that height is objective, but why do you dismiss the possibility that whether a building is too tall or too short is a result not of what the building is, but of what the observer feels? Maybe his granny fell out of a tall building, and so any building over 15ft tall is "too tall" to him. Maybe another guy's family grew up in the shadows of neighboring buildings and now as an adult he feels every building should be as tall as possible. Why can't these opinions about "too tallness" be generated exclusively by the history or biology of the individual observer, and have nothing to do with the building itself?
DL:
So ice cream flavors are objective because otherwise we could not have biased views about them?
I'm actually making a distinction between a preference and a bias so ice cream flavors are not a good example here.
For you, it is impossible for a man to say "that building is too tall" without there being an objective case that it is either too tall or too short or exactly right.
A terrible example. I don't say this at all.
Moral Relativism = The truth of a moral statement is relative to the individual making the claim. It’s relative to the SUBJECTIVE belief of the individual.
Moral Objectivism = The truth of a moral statement is NOT relative to the individual making the claim. It’s relative to the OBJECTIVE facts of the situation.
See the correspondence theory of truth
Steve,
I understand your belief. I'm looking for reasons for that belief, and the only reasons you have given so far completely obliterate the distinction between the objective and the subjective.
What I am looking for is the test you use that distinguishes the objective from the subjective.
If your belief in moral realism is just an assumption or faith without grounding, that's fine. Just say so and we can stop talking about this topic as if there were reasons for your belief.
If your belief in moral realism derives from belief in God and belief that a being can fix morality, then say so, but admit that moral realism isn't evidence for the existence of God (for that would be circular reasoning).
Moral objectivity is grounded in the same way that science, mathematics and logic are grounded. Each relies upon unproven axioms and premises and can be rejected by the skeptic. Each can be tentatively accepted and be further justified through experience.
Aside from the universal apprehension of moral law, one line of justifying objectivism can be the fact that moral questions, when presented to the conscience via the senses produce a physical, quantifiable, predictable, repeatable result.
Objectivism fits better with society's morals as well as the moral language and intuition we all use and rely upon. Relativism does not explain these as well. Realism has better explanatory power, is the better inference, as well as being the observed reality.
The source of the skeptic's doubt in moral objectivism, which is the observed default, is summed up in DL's final paragraph. It is false to claim that relativism is demanded by the evidence (it is rather a poor fit).
Relativism is the preferred conclusion because realism can be used as evidence for God.
Of course one day soon our resident atheists will discover atheistic objectivism and will then accept the evidence for objectivism as though they had seen it all along.
Once they are comfortable with an atheistic explanation all of the data will tell them just what they've been so far denying.
Charlie,
Moral objectivity is grounded in the same way that science, mathematics and logic are grounded.Do you mean the same way the objectivity of science is grounded?
Each relies upon unproven axioms and premises and can be rejected by the skeptic.Not true. The skeptic cannot rationally reject science and mathematics because science and mathematics require only the assumptions of rationality (which include induction).
one line of justifying objectivism can be the fact that moral questions, when presented to the conscience via the senses produce a physical, quantifiable, predictable, repeatable result.This line of justification is, frankly, inane. How is the predictability of a human subjective reaction to moral questions proof that that human reaction is a measure of something additionally objective? When I see an unjust act, I am seeing a bunch of objective physical facts. Upon seeing these physical facts, I feel an emotion. The fact that I feel the emotion is objective, but that doesn't mean that the emotion itself is measuring something objective emanating from the observed event. If that were the case then everything would be objective. The Mona Lisa would be objectively beautiful, and Brittney Spears would be objectively a wonderful musician.
The rest is just the statement that your gut must be right about the objectivity of morality. There's not a shred of evidence that moral realism explains anything except for your magic intuition (gut sense) you have that morality is objective. I find it utterly ridiculous (and tiresome) that you keep stalling on this point. If all you have to go on is your gut, just quit while you're behind.
And thanks for explaining once again that I am really a theist who is hiding from God. Yes, that's a really helpful tack to take. Pathetic, in truth.
How useful would it be for me to "explain" your failure to appreciate my argument by saying you're a closet atheist who realizes he's living in a magic fantasy world, but won't face the truth because he fears the possibility of there being no God? I guess it would serve to antagonize you the way you're antagonizing me with your incessant psychoanalysis.
Hi DL,
Sorry to have gotten you so bent out of shape as to resort again to hypocritical insults.
Not true. The skeptic cannot rationally reject science and mathematics because science and mathematics require only the assumptions of rationality (which include induction).
This does not follow. Even if science and mathematics require only the assumption of rationality, that does not entail that any assumption of rationality necessarily makes skepticism irrational.
Your application of skepticism and realism are very selective. Why do you always insist on declaring that anybody who disagrees with you is irrational? Why don't you tell them to their (virtual) faces (Paul, Jacob, OS, etc.)?
Here's a little bit on relativism and its skepticism of science.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/co...l/284/5420/ 1625
This line of justification is, frankly, inane.
No it's not. It's, quite frankly, excellent. It fits all your ad hoc criteria.
How is the predictability of a human subjective reaction to moral questions proof that that human reaction is a measure of something additionally objective?
Why is it subjective? The physical brain is not a matter of opinion, is it?
When I see an unjust act, I am seeing a bunch of objective physical facts. Upon seeing these physical facts, I feel an emotion. The fact that I feel the emotion is objective, but that doesn't mean that the emotion itself is measuring something objective emanating from the observed event.You must do something before you feel the emotion, however. Your brain must interpret and analyse the evidence. This is prior to your being aware (or unaware) of your emotion, or even of your own rationalizations.
If that were the case then everything would be objective. The Mona Lisa would be objectively beautiful, and Brittney Spears would be objectively a wonderful musician.
Is that so? Against what standard? Conformance to the Golden mean or symmetry, in the case of the Mona Lisa, or proficiency with tone, rhythm and dynamics in the case of Ms. Spears?
There's not a shred of evidence that moral realism explains anything except for your magic intuition (gut sense) you have that morality is objective.
It requires only the assumption of rationality.
If all you have to go on is your gut, just quit while you're behind.
Cute.
And thanks for explaining once again that I am really a theist who is hiding from God. Yes, that's a really helpful tack to take. Pathetic, in truth.I didn't do that. Your irrationality has blinded you.
How useful would it be for me to "explain" your failure to appreciate my argument by saying you're a closet atheist who realizes he's living in a magic fantasy world, but won't face the truth because he fears the possibility of there being no God?
You say that all the time. You claim that we invented God for any number of reasons that happen to suit the argument of the particular thread. If we merely invented God we are atheists.
Even without the implied atheism, your explanation is right on par with this characterization (but not with my argument). Your explanation is that only you are rational, although you fail your own tests for rationality, and that your methods are the correct ones for determining objectivity, although they fail when applied as well, and that you know how to dispassionately apply your standards without bias, and you fail this as well.
As always, your criticisms never seem to work when you're facing the mirror. That's relativism for you.
Yes, that's a really helpful tack to take.
About that tack:
frankly, inane.
magic intuition
utterly ridiculous (and tiresome)
just quit while you're behind.
really helpful
Pathetic
Uh huh.
Charlie,
Why do you always insist on declaring that anybody who disagrees with you is irrational? Why don't you tell them to their (virtual) faces (Paul, Jacob, OS, etc.)?So I cannot even argue about rational action (in general terms) with you without you taking it as a personal insult? I guess that explains why you cannot stick to the topic of debate instead of veering off into insults and psychoanalysis.
Why is it subjective? The physical brain is not a matter of opinion, is it?You're wasting time with these irrelevancies.
Don't you see what we are talking about? Something can objectively be subjective. So saying that a brain is objectively changed by an event doesn't make any difference. The brain is going to be objectively changed by a subjectively perceived property just as much as if it were changed by a perceived objective property.
You must do something before you feel the emotion, however. Your brain must interpret and analyse the evidence. This is prior to your being aware (or unaware) of your emotion, or even of your own rationalizations.Again, irrelevant because it cannot distinguish between the objective and the subjective.
Is that so? Against what standard? Conformance to the Golden mean or symmetry, in the case of the Mona Lisa, or proficiency with tone, rhythm and dynamics in the case of Ms. Spears?What are you saying here? Are you saying they are objectively good and that I am defective for not appreciating them above alternative art? For consistency's sake, I hope that's what you're saying.
Maybe it's time for you to declare victory again. It might make you feel better.
Strangely silent on this and this...
Hi DL,
Maybe it's time for you to declare victory again. It might make you feel better.
I feel just fine, thank you very much.
You can concern yourself over victories and losses as you wish, that's not my interest.
So I cannot even argue about rational action (in general terms) with you without you taking it as a personal insult?
I'm not the one insulted. It is the skeptic and relativist you called irrational in this case. As always, defining the entire issue in your own favour.
So saying that a brain is objectively changed by an event doesn't make any difference. The brain is going to be objectively changed by a subjectively perceived property just as much as if it were changed by a perceived objective property.
Is it? Like immaterial, non-physical information? Will that physically, chemically and neurologically change a brain? That seems funny for an entirely material brain.
Again, irrelevant because it cannot distinguish between the objective and the subjective.What can't?
You claim that morals are feelings, preferences and emotions. But fMRI indicates that many moral determinations have nothing to do with emotional correlates in brain states. And those that do still must be preceded by reasoning before a feeling can be formed and then rationalized.
The feeling is the result, not the cause, of the moral value.
What are you saying here? Are you saying they are objectively good and that I am defective for not appreciating them above alternative art? For consistency's sake, I hope that's what you're saying.
Your hopes are to be dashed.
I'm saying that if they are to be considered objective, as morals are, then there has to be some transcendent standard against which to measure them.
There might be one, but that is a case you can make, I'm not up to it just now.
This YouTube video should make Holo giggle a little.
Thanks Steve,
It made me laugh out loud several times.
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