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AtlasSniperman
2016-09-09, 05:40 AM
Sorry folks, Here comes another alignment discussion(<sarcasm>yaaaaay</sarcasm>). But please hear me out on this, as I think it will really help merge some views into an understanding.

I'd like to start by quoting TB's "Treatise on Morality" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWNW-NXEudk)(youtube link) before going into defining the 4 neutrals of alignments.

"A particular action or choice is moral or right when it somehow promotes happiness, wellbeing or health OR it somehow minimizes unnecessary harm or suffering OR it does both."
"A particular action or choice is immoral or wrong when it somehow diminishes happiness, wellbeing or health OR it somehow causes unnecessary harm or suffering OR again it does both."

Now this, at least to me, really helps define Good and Evil in an objective way for a fantasy games and literature. But we can go a little further and create a distinction that is still objective, however it fits the tribalistic nature of human past and actually matches old perspectives on good and evil. Here we go;

Good: "A particular action or choice is good when it somehow promotes the happiness, wellbeing or health of a person in a group, OR it somehow minimized unnecessary harm or suffering of a person in a group, OR it does both."

Evil: "A particular action or choice is evil when it somehow diminishes the happiness, wellbeing or health of a person in a group, OR it somehow causes unnecessary harm or suffering of a person in a group, OR it does both."

Now, yes I realise this severely limits the scope and therefore universality of TB's treatise. But it does explain why winning a war is good, but the people who beat you in a war are evil. Because they aren't "Your group".
If you go to another "group"s(By group I mean; nation, civilization, peoples, etc. The people who you identify with and live among) land and kill someone. You're likely to see it as neutral, but to the people of that group, it's evil. As you have caused unnecessary harm or suffering to it's people. It's still Evil, as it's "causes unnecessary harm or suffering of a person in a group". Not your group, but a group.

I know that seems shaky ground, and you are well within your rights to disagree. But it's a pair of definitions that can apply to ones own perspective, anothers perspective, or an objective perspective and be consistent with reality and the rules of magic in fantasy settings.

So, if we have Good/Evil sorted, can we do the same for Law and chaos? Yes

Lawful: "A particular action or choice is lawful when it somehow promotes the stability of a group, OR it adheres to the desires of the peoples of a group, OR it does both."

Chaotic: "A particular action or choice is chaotic when it somehow diminishes the stability of a group, OR it violates the desires of the peoples of a group, OR it does both."

With these in mind, we could say that nomadic raiders, that attack a village are performing(in their minds) a neutral act as it doesn't apply to any of the above definitions. While the town being attacked sees this raid as CE, and objectively it is CE. But troops of one town attacking another town on the desires of its people is LE; as it's following the desires of the people, but it's likely to incur retaliation, which is unnecessary harm to the people of the attacking town.

You are well within your rights to disagree, and I will not argue. But this is a set of definitions for people to use if they'd like a system where Subjective and Objective moralities have the same definition.

Khedrac
2016-09-09, 05:52 AM
Good: "A particular action or choice is good when it somehow promotes the happiness, wellbeing or health of a person in a tribe, OR it somehow minimized unnecessary harm or suffering of a person in a tribe, OR it does both."

Evil: "A particular action or choice is good when it somehow promotes the happiness, wellbeing or health of a person in a tribe, OR it somehow causes unnecessary harm or suffering of a person in a tribe, OR it does both."
Take another look at your definition of Evil - you have definitely got it wrong, but I cannot tell what, exactly, you want it to be.


Lawful: "A particular action or choice is lawful when it somehow promotes the stability or wellbeing of a tribe, OR it adheres to the desires of the peoples of a tribe, OR it does both."

Chaotic: "A particular action or choice is chaotic when it somehow diminishes the stability or wellbeing of a tribe, OR it violates the desires of the peoples of a tribe, OR it does both."
Now these compare to your definition of good in an interesting way - they are fundamentally different.
Your definition of good has both an individual definition and a group definition (which can lead to an action being both at once - something that does not fit D&D's alignment system).
Your definitions of law and chaos are both group definitions only. There are non individual grounds for declaring an action lawful or chaotic - this means that an action that cannot affect the group cannot be lawful or chaotic!

Also I disagree with having "wellbeing" in there - that, to me, is an item for the good/evil axis not the law/chaos axis.
Having too much stability can be bad (going towards lawful evil) so I think the stability term works, but wellbeing? - that is very different.

If you take out "wellbeing" and look towards an individual clause for law and chaos then I think you have a potentially very useful definition, but, as is, I think them both wrong and insufficient. (Oh and change tribe to group - this way the size of the group can vary with circumstances.)
Incidentally I really like the "desires of the group" part of the definition - that is really well thought out, and pretty much the origin (if not the definition) of laws.

AtlasSniperman
2016-09-09, 06:10 AM
Take another look at your definition of Evil - you have definitely got it wrong, but I cannot tell what, exactly, you want it to be.
Yep, fixed it, thanks for the spot.


Now these compare to your definition of good in an interesting way - they are fundamentally different.
Your definition of good has both an individual definition and a group definition (which can lead to an action being both at once - something that does not fit D&D's alignment system).
I don't think it is, the two definitions of good are in relation to making the circumstances of a persons life better. The first one is promoting happiness, health and wellbeing, which is a direct thing to the person. While the second is the removal of things that cause harm or suffering, which is still direct to the person.


Your definitions of law and chaos are both group definitions only. There are non individual grounds for declaring an action lawful or chaotic - this means that an action that cannot affect the group cannot be lawful or chaotic!
Don't know if you're being supportive, but yes that is the intention there. As it's possible in D&D alignment to be neither Lawful or Chaotic.


Also I disagree with having "wellbeing" in there - that, to me, is an item for the good/evil axis not the law/chaos axis.
Having too much stability can be bad (going towards lawful evil) so I think the stability term works, but wellbeing? - that is very different.
Agreed, and removed until I can find something that suits better. Thanks.

ImNotTrevor
2016-09-09, 06:52 AM
Not to be a stickler, but the definition you're using for what is "Moral" isn't necessarily true, and certainly isn't objective. (As noted by the fact that there are morality systems that disagree with that basic premise.)

But if you want to use THIS particular morality system as the one to base an objective D&D cosmological alignment system on, more power to you.

AtlasSniperman
2016-09-09, 07:02 AM
Not to be a stickler, but the definition you're using for what is "Moral" isn't necessarily true, and certainly isn't objective. (As noted by the fact that there are morality systems that disagree with that basic premise.)

But if you want to use THIS particular morality system as the one to base an objective D&D cosmological alignment system on, more power to you.

I would be very interested in knowing what you mean by this :) All I mean by 'objective' in this situation is the definition of objective: "(of a person or their judgement) not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts." Which is what this intends to do; determine something as being right, wrong, lawful or chaotic based on a set of rules. Yes individuals can interpret something as good or evil in the perspective of their group, but there is also the objective matter that considers all groups. That's all I mean.

arrowed
2016-09-09, 07:24 AM
So, by the definitions given in the original post for law/chaos... a dictator who enforces a law that most of their subjects dislike (and does not induce stability) is making a chaotic law? And if a populace votes to free convicts imprisoned for a particular crime, even though the local law says otherwise, that decision is inherently lawful?

ImNotTrevor
2016-09-09, 07:34 AM
I would be very interested in knowing what you mean by this :) All I mean by 'objective' in this situation is the definition of objective: "(of a person or their judgement) not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts." Which is what this intends to do; determine something as being right, wrong, lawful or chaotic based on a set of rules. Yes individuals can interpret something as good or evil in the perspective of their group, but there is also the objective matter that considers all groups. That's all I mean.


Sure. I'm just saying that the basic premise of "things that increase happiness are objectively good" is not objective. That's basically Utilitarian morality. It allows for logic like "it's ok to murder a single child to end a war that would rage for a decade" because it causes the largest net increase of happiness compared to the alternative. There are moral systems which would disagree with that statement, hence why basing a moral system on that one statement doesn't really make it objective, since Objective Morality doesn't exist IRL.

But! Using it as the basis for a theoretical system of objective morality enforced by Gods and Magic is a-ok.

AtlasSniperman
2016-09-09, 07:36 AM
So, by the definitions given in the original post for law/chaos... a dictator who enforces a law that most of their subjects dislike (and does not induce stability) is making a chaotic law? And if a populace votes to free convicts imprisoned for a particular crime, even though the local law says otherwise, that decision is inherently lawful?

Dictator creating a Chaotic Law, yes.
Voting is neutral, as the government can decide not to follow the whims of the people. This is a chaotic act on the governments side, but doesnt make the people's act "lawful". However, someone who breaks out a prisoner that the people are rallying to have freed, is commiting a lawful act in these definitions.

AMFV
2016-09-09, 10:02 AM
Sure. I'm just saying that the basic premise of "things that increase happiness are objectively good" is not objective. That's basically Utilitarian morality. It allows for logic like "it's ok to murder a single child to end a war that would rage for a decade" because it causes the largest net increase of happiness compared to the alternative. There are moral systems which would disagree with that statement, hence why basing a moral system on that one statement doesn't really make it objective, since Objective Morality doesn't exist IRL.

But! Using it as the basis for a theoretical system of objective morality enforced by Gods and Magic is a-ok.

I take issue, as do many, with the statement that objective morality doesn't exist IRL. Demonstrable objective morality doesn't... But as you've pointed out Utilitarianism is an objective morality system, and there are many others. Now presupposing that there is no objective morality in real life, means that Utilitarianism is wrong. But it also makes it very hard to classify or create many systems of morality. So it's not always a good claim to be making.



"A particular action or choice is moral or right when it somehow promotes happiness, wellbeing or health OR it somehow minimizes unnecessary harm or suffering OR it does both."

"A particular action or choice is immoral or wrong when it somehow diminishes happiness, wellbeing or health OR it somehow causes unnecessary harm or suffering OR again it does both."

What is "wellbeing"? How is health defined? What is unnecessary harm? What happens when those options are in conflict? If I get enjoyment out of murdering other people but that enjoyment is proportionally higher than the harm caused by their murder, does that make murdering moral? What if I get enjoyment out of simply irritating other people? If their annoyance is less than my relative enjoyment would that then be the good and moral thing to do?

Let's take smoking. Smoking is harmful to my health. So by that metric it's evil, smoking could potentially be harming the health of others, so again evil. But I enjoy it, so by the happiness metric, it's good. And by smoking around other people I'm giving them a buzz as well, so also good, even though I am risking their health (potentially) without their consent. See that's what makes utilitarianism particularly tricky. You have to really nail down how you're defining the terms.



Now this, at least to me, really helps define Good and Evil in an objective way for a fantasy games and literature. But we can go a little further and create a distinction that is still objective, however it fits the tribalistic nature of human past and actually matches old perspectives on good and evil. Here we go;

It can help, but you do have to realize that among utilitarians there are still some pretty fierce debates. Just having a definition for what is and isn't good or bad isn't really going to stop debates. Instead you get into arguments about how something is or isn't good or bad. Particularly in the case of utilitarianism where things aren't necessarily measurable. And where you're using many many definitions that are in the very best slightly ambiguous, and in the worst case completely malleable.



Good: "A particular action or choice is good when it somehow promotes the happiness, wellbeing or health of a person in a group, OR it somehow minimized unnecessary harm or suffering of a person in a group, OR it does both."

Evil: "A particular action or choice is evil when it somehow diminishes the happiness, wellbeing or health of a person in a group, OR it somehow causes unnecessary harm or suffering of a person in a group, OR it does both."

Again you've got the same problem, you'd need to define your terms very concretely or you're going to have a lot of arguments that result from poorly defined terms



Now, yes I realise this severely limits the scope and therefore universality of TB's treatise. But it does explain why winning a war is good, but the people who beat you in a war are evil. Because they aren't "Your group".


That's not necessarily true either. And you won't find many moral philosophers who would argue that. You might find many who would argue that warfare is inevitable, or that participation in war is necessary. But you wouldn't find many who would argue that the enemy in a war is objectively evil. Or that winning a war is objectively good. Although there are certain philosophies where that might hold true. Utilitarianism is notably NOT one of them though. So if you're wanting a moral system that supports that sort of philosophy you'd have to find a different moral system to base it on.



If you go to another "group"s(By group I mean; nation, civilization, peoples, etc. The people who you identify with and live among) land and kill someone. You're likely to see it as neutral, but to the people of that group, it's evil. As you have caused unnecessary harm or suffering to it's people. It's still Evil, as it's "causes unnecessary harm or suffering of a person in a group". Not your group, but a group.

What if it isn't unnecessary? My people are starving, the people to the east are eating, should they not suffer a little so that my people could be saved? My people are crowded and pressed into such a small space, there's a large unoccupied area (or at least not occupied by people who matter), shouldn't my people have their living space? The other problem is that you have classes who literally are punished for committing any evil action. And a few other things that are involved in that. You haven't defined a system where good and evil are objective. But rather subjective. If moral Goodness or moral Badness changes from perspective to perspective, that isn't an objective system at all. Like not even a little bit.



I know that seems shaky ground, and you are well within your rights to disagree. But it's a pair of definitions that can apply to ones own perspective, anothers perspective, or an objective perspective and be consistent with reality and the rules of magic in fantasy settings.

Not really, since again, those definitions result in different results from many different perspectives, that doesn't actually work for a system of objective morality That's in-fact the definition of subjective morality.



So, if we have Good/Evil sorted, can we do the same for Law and chaos? Yes

Lawful: "A particular action or choice is lawful when it somehow promotes the stability of a group, OR it adheres to the desires of the peoples of a group, OR it does both."

Chaotic: "A particular action or choice is chaotic when it somehow diminishes the stability of a group, OR it violates the desires of the peoples of a group, OR it does both."


This is important because it's pretty much not at all even mildly related to the D&D definitions. You're basically transposing Good and Evil, and notably bringing all of the problems you've had with you're versions of Good and Evil to a group setting.

Also you're making Chaotic, morally bad. Which in most editions of D&D (after the first few) it's not. So that's a notable thing.



You are well within your rights to disagree, and I will not argue. But this is a set of definitions for people to use if they'd like a system where Subjective and Objective moralities have the same definition.

Subjective and Objective morality cannot have the same definition, it doesn't work, they're opposed, by definition.

tomandtish
2016-09-09, 10:39 AM
Subjective and Objective morality cannot have the same definition, it doesn't work, they're opposed, by definition.

Very much this.

The important thing to remember is this: the vast majority of evil beings (at least those native to a prime material plane) don't necessarily consider themselves evil. If you try and make subjective and objective morality the same, then you're creating a world where ALL evil beings believe themselves to be evil. And that's just not the case.

OldTrees1
2016-09-09, 10:56 AM
Now, yes I realise this severely limits the scope and therefore universality of TB's treatise. But it does explain why winning a war is good, but the people who beat you in a war are evil. Because they aren't "Your group".

By definition if an action's moral nature can change without changing the action, then the moral system is not objective.

Segev
2016-09-09, 11:04 AM
The interesting thing about good and evil is that human beings tend to be pretty good at categorizing particular instances of behavior or action accurately as one or the other, but are awful at giving solid, immutable criteria for those definitions. i.e., "We tend to know it when we see it."

There are deliberately confusing cases, of course, and there are disagreements at times, but IN GENERAL we are pretty good at identifying that rape, murder, and abuse are "evil" and we can identify that charity, mercy, and support are "good."

I won't entirely disagree with the OP's definitions, but I am not sure they're complete and wholly accurate.

I do believe that there is objective morality in the real world, and I also believe that this is the case whether or not there is a divine Being Who laid it out. Essentially, objective morality is the set of behaviors which, when followed by the majority of a population, leads that population to prosperity and success. At a minimum, "success" is defined by surviving and multiplying, and (so long as the same morality is adhered to) becoming the dominant culture or people of their region.

Typically, the successful culture starts to fail not because their moral system fails them, but because they deviate from the successful moral codes that led to their prosperity.

Many "moral codes" inherent to cultures are noisy. They have more than the essentials. The best of these will have harmless additional moral rules, rules which don't cause harm so following them or breaking them is irrelevant to the success of the individual or his culture. Others have actively detrimental ones, but are (if the culture is succeeding) outweighed by the useful and beneficial ones.

Notably, poisonous cultures - those with moral systems that lead to self-destruction - can appear to succeed and do so strongly for a time. It can only do so by devouring other cultures (healthy or not), making up for its self-destructive practices by cannibalizing others to sustain itself.

The difference between the rise and fall of moral cultures and poisonous cultures is that moral cultures only fall when they abandon their moral code, taking up a self-destructive one instead. Their fall is internal, and represents a failure to adhere to the morals that built them. Poisonous cultures fall when they run out of victims to cannibalize to cover up their deficiencies, and their own poisonous culture destroys them. Their fall is external, because they cannot support themselves without external resources to consume.

(Please note that I make no judgments nor comments in this post about specific real-world moral codes nor cultures.)

ImNotTrevor
2016-09-09, 11:49 AM
I take issue, as do many, with the statement that objective morality doesn't exist IRL. Demonstrable objective morality doesn't... But as you've pointed out Utilitarianism is an objective morality system, and there are many others. Now presupposing that there is no objective morality in real life, means that Utilitarianism is wrong. But it also makes it very hard to classify or create many systems of morality. So it's not always a good claim to be making.


The point is that all morality is arbitrarily defined by human beings. Unlike objective truths like the existence of gravity (which exists and behaves exactly as it behaves regardless of how you feel about it) morality does not have similar objectivity. It is invented by human brains, enforced by them, and without human brains wouldn't continue to be. (Save for any intelligent aliens with similar concepts, but let's not get that nitpicky)

Essentially, nothing in the universe enforces morality except people, in our universe.

Since being objective means uinfluenced by feelings or opinions, but all morality is born from feelings and opinions, but is sometimes written down. Utilitarian Morality is no more objective then Hedonistic Morality, or any other. They're not based on logical reasoning.

Sorry to burst any bubbles, but that's the case in reality.

Now, if you want to say that in your fantasy world behaving according to a certain reasoning imbues you with "goodness" or "evilness" accordingly, that's fine, and such morality would be objective within that universe.

Segev
2016-09-09, 11:58 AM
That's actually why I do think objective morality exists, and demonstrably so. At a minimum, you can find hints of it in laws that tend to be universal to even moderately successful cultures. They tend to include things like the notion that murder (not "killing," there's a difference) is wrong.

AMFV
2016-09-09, 12:11 PM
The point is that all morality is arbitrarily defined by human beings. Unlike objective truths like the existence of gravity (which exists and behaves exactly as it behaves regardless of how you feel about it) morality does not have similar objectivity. It is invented by human brains, enforced by them, and without human brains wouldn't continue to be. (Save for any intelligent aliens with similar concepts, but let's not get that nitpicky)

Hardly, moral theory is rarely arbitrary. Certainly not any of the sorts of moral theory we're discussing here. Utilitarianism isn't arbitrary either. And certainly few other moral theories are. It's also worth noting that by declaring that there is no objective morality, you are also declaring that most moral theories are wrong, and several religions are also wrong. Which is a pretty bold statement.



Essentially, nothing in the universe enforces morality except people, in our universe.


Arguably untrue. Certainly not something you can demonstrably prove.



Since being objective means uinfluenced by feelings or opinions, but all morality is born from feelings and opinions, but is sometimes written down. Utilitarian Morality is no more objective then Hedonistic Morality, or any other. They're not based on logical reasoning.

Here's where you are COMPLETELY wrong, like ENTIRELY wrong. Utilitarian morality is very logical, with a very strict set of reasoning. It has precepts as you saw in that YouTube video. Certainly there is an aspect of feelings in utilitarianism and in hedonism. Being objective doesn't mean that it's not influenced be feelings or opinions, being objective means that is equally correct regardless of feelings. I can have an opinion about something that is objectively true. For example, I can say that gravity sucks because it's always keeping me down. That's an emotional feeling, but it's not going to effect the truth.

OldTrees1
2016-09-09, 12:18 PM
The point is that all morality is arbitrarily defined by human beings. Unlike objective truths like the existence of gravity (which exists and behaves exactly as it behaves regardless of how you feel about it) morality does not have similar objectivity. It is invented by human brains, enforced by them, and without human brains wouldn't continue to be. (Save for any intelligent aliens with similar concepts, but let's not get that nitpicky)

I think it is important to separate
The question
The proposed answers
The actual answer (if one exists)

All moral systems proposed by humans as possible answers to the question "What ought one do?" can be described as being arbitrarily defined by those humans. This statement says nothing about the actual answer. Let's consider another example to see this relationship clearer:
What is the dominant color of the 4th planet in the solar system furthest from ours but still in the same galaxy? I can arbitrarily propose many answers just like you can. The fact that those proposed answers were derived arbitrarily does not affect the fact that there is an actual answer to the question (even if that answer might be "null").


Essentially, nothing in the universe enforces morality except people, in our universe.
Wait, why are you mentioning enforcement? Nothing enforces numbers to be even, yet numbers can be even.

ImNotTrevor
2016-09-09, 12:48 PM
Hardly, moral theory is rarely arbitrary. Certainly not any of the sorts of moral theory we're discussing here. Utilitarianism isn't arbitrary either. And certainly few other moral theories are. It's also worth noting that by declaring that there is no objective morality, you are also declaring that most moral theories are wrong, and several religions are also wrong. Which is a pretty bold statement.

And one it is their job to disprove, not mine to prove. Google "Burden of Proof" for why. (Short version, this is an Argument from Ignorance.)

As for arbitraryness, it actually is, definitionally:
"Based on or determined by individual preference or convenience rather than by necessity or the intrinsic nature of something"
If Morality had an intrinsic nature, we'd be using science to study it instead of philosophy. But it doesn't, so we don't. *shrug*




Arguably untrue. Certainly not something you can demonstrably prove.

The burden of proof is not on me, so it's not my problem. (This is another Argument from Ignorance.)



Here's where you are COMPLETELY wrong, like ENTIRELY wrong. Utilitarian morality is very logical, with a very strict set of reasoning. It has precepts as you saw in that YouTube video. Certainly there is an aspect of feelings in utilitarianism and in hedonism. Being objective doesn't mean that it's not influenced be feelings or opinions, being objective means that is equally correct regardless of feelings. I can have an opinion about something that is objectively true. For example, I can say that gravity sucks because it's always keeping me down. That's an emotional feeling, but it's not going to effect the truth.

Ahem... some definitions of Objective that invalidate this entire paragraph:

"based on facts rather than feelings or opinions : not influenced by feelings" -Merriam Webster
You admitted in this paragraph that moral systems are influenced by feelings, making them inherently non-objective.

"Of, relating to, or being an object, phenomenon, or condition in the realm of sensible experience independent of individual thought and perceptible by all observers : having reality independent of the mind" -Merriam Webster, again.
Since the burden of proof is on YOU to prove morality exists outside the human mind, this also invalidates moral systems as being objective until proven otherwise.

So they aren't objective in real life by two definitions of objectivity. Sorry if that rocks your foundations, but it's not a bad thing to be unobjective or arbitrary. It just is what it is.

Trust me, if subjected to enough "Why?" Questions, any morality system utterly breaks down because they're ultimately based on a value judgement which is inherently illogical. For Utilitarianism that value judgement is that the highest goal is maximum total happiness, but happiness is not defined. It also denies individuals seeking their own happiness as being less valuable than sacrificing part of their owm happiness to increase overall happiness for the collective. So why is that inherently better? They can't actually tell you under scrutiny because it's a logicless value judgement. *shrug*

OldTrees1
2016-09-09, 01:04 PM
As for arbitraryness, it actually is, definitionally:
"Based on or determined by individual preference or convenience rather than by necessity or the intrinsic nature of something"
If Morality had an intrinsic nature, we'd be using science to study it instead of philosophy. But it doesn't, so we don't. *shrug*

Good definition of arbitrary and why it applies to all moral theories people have proposed.

However I don't follow your second line.
1) Back in ancient Greece Biology and Math were studied under Philosophy. Does human progress dictate what if something does or does not have an intrinsic nature?
2) Why do you presume all intrinsic natures are observable natures?


Trust me, if subjected to enough "Why?" Questions, any morality system utterly breaks down -snip-
Correct.

Segev
2016-09-09, 01:07 PM
Trust me, if subjected to enough "Why?" Questions, any morality system utterly breaks down because they're ultimately based on a value judgement which is inherently illogical.

Nonsense. Unless you wish to state that "self-defeating is not inferior to self-perpetuating," you can start by rooting your examination of "good" in whether or not a system sustains itself, or self-destructs. If you are a believer in the concept that evolution is a good thing, that "natural selection" leads to improvement, then you must accept the fundamental proposition that any system which destroys itself is inferior to a system which can persevere.

I contend that the point at which you suggest that cessation of being is not inferior to the being in question (and here we are examining cultures) that you have reduced your position to absurdity in order to make a point that could potentially be true in a hypothetical, theoretical way, but to which no sane human being would subscribe to an extent that they would seek to implement anything that leads to it nor stems from it.

i.e., if you accept that it is illogical to say that cessation of being is inferior to continuation, then why do you keep sustaining yourself rather than just playing video games until you die of deprivation? There is an inherent hypocrisy in the reductio ad absurdium at that point.

ImNotTrevor
2016-09-09, 01:42 PM
Nonsense. Unless you wish to state that "self-defeating is not inferior to self-perpetuating," you can start by rooting your examination of "good" in whether or not a system sustains itself, or self-destructs. If you are a believer in the concept that evolution is a good thing, that "natural selection" leads to improvement, then you must accept the fundamental proposition that any system which destroys itself is inferior to a system which can persevere.
Why would that kind of system of judgement be better than any other?
Why is a self-sustaining system the best option?
Is it always the best option?
If a crime-ring is self-sustaining does it become moral?

Etc. This is a value judgement. The only thing determining that one kind of system is better is You.



I contend that the point at which you suggest that cessation of being is not inferior to the being in question (and here we are examining cultures) that you have reduced your position to absurdity in order to make a point that could potentially be true in a hypothetical, theoretical way, but to which no sane human being would subscribe to an extent that they would seek to implement anything that leads to it nor stems from it.
You see a train car speeding towards a crowd of people stranded on the track. There is a switch next to you that can divert the train, but it will kill a single infant. Do you pull the switch?
A Utilitarian says Yes, because overall suffering is minimized.
Other moral systems may or may not agree, and for a variety of reasons. I didn't come up with them. That's just how they are.



i.e., if you accept that it is illogical to say that cessation of being is inferior to continuation, then why do you keep sustaining yourself rather than just playing video games until you die of deprivation? There is an inherent hypocrisy in the reductio ad absurdium at that point.

Why is playing videogames until death of deprivation wrong if that is the way you want to live your life? If it makes you happy, why would someone be correct in attempting to stop you?

This is another value judgement made by you. One that someone might disagree with. (See: people with knowingly self-destructive habits who don't care for their personal safety because they value the high over guaranteed survival.)

Segev
2016-09-09, 02:03 PM
Why is playing videogames until death of deprivation wrong if that is the way you want to live your life? If it makes you happy, why would someone be correct in attempting to stop you?

And here you make my point for me. It's morally wrong in the sense that it will eliminate itself and anything that is interdependent with it and unable to disconnect from it.

The rules of morality are not about judgment, despite what people think. The rules of morality are about creating a culture that will survive and perpetuate itself and its values.

I mean, sure, you can make an argument that it's morally superior to kill every living thing you see, with yourself being the last thing you kill. Any system where that was the highest moral goal would destroy itself so fast that there wouldn't be anything left to perpetuate it.

Objective morality are rules for success as individuals and as a culture. If you take a nihilistic philosophy, then you define success in a self-defeating way and your "morality" is objectively ineffective. An ineffective morality - one which destroys itself - is definitionally false.

Morality is objective because its success can be objectively measured.

A species which seeks to promote only its own destruction will succeed in a single generation, and cease to be a species.




The fact that you focused on "why should anybody stop you?" and on whether anybody has a right to judge you reveals that you're not grasping my point at all: morality is not about judgment. The only reason judgment enters into it is because judgment of individuals is how a culture enforces a moral code that is necessary to its survival and success.

Societies that have moral codes which are closer to the proven objective morality (by virtue of their having survived this long) tend to judge people who self-destructively play video games until they die of deprivation because if too many people take that as their "morality," it leads to the destruction of the society.

Heck, a morality that said playing videogames is all that matters would be inherently destructive if it didn't DEMAND that you went out and got food, water, and worked to promote yourself in other ways, because you'd cease to be able to play video games when you stopped living, stopped being able to afford them, etc. It wouldn't even support the CREATION of video games, so it is, worse, a parasitic "morality" that could only START due to another, more objectively true one.

OldTrees1
2016-09-09, 02:20 PM
The rules of morality are not about judgment, despite what people think. The rules of morality are about creating a culture that will survive and perpetuate itself and its values.

It sounds like you are not talking about what Philosophers discuss in the subfield of Philosophy called Ethics. A rose by any other name may still smell as sweet but it confuses people that thought you were talking about a pig.

Specifically I think you are talking about the memetic behavior of the values societies hold. As such you are judging both these memes and the societies that host them by the metric of reproductive fitness. While this is an interesting look at the memetic properties of ideas and their impact on their hosts, it is no long dealing with the questions in the field of Ethics. So some confusion may arise if you call the former by terms/names used by the latter.

To say it a different way: The answer to the question is related to the question which, in turn, is related to the individual and societal beliefs about what the answer is, which, again in turn, is related to the memetic behavior of those beliefs. However none of those things is equivalent to another of those things.

Segev
2016-09-09, 02:35 PM
My thesis is that morality is objective because the morals of societies which have succeeded and perpetuated enough to imprint their morals mimetically have had definite things in common, and it is as those things-in-common have propagated that societies which hold to them have thrived.

The causal connection between holding certain morals and ethics and the success of societies and cultures reveals that there is an objective benefit to certain moral outlooks.

Moral outlooks thus can be judged based on their objective functionality: do they promote societies and cultures capable of growth, or do they poison those cultures which hold and adhere to them?

Frankly, if you want to claim that suffering, misery, and ultimate destruction are "just as good" as what is more traditionally defined as "success," feel free (but please don't force me to endure your decay, nor try to drag me down with you). But it is undeniable that one can stat that, if one values certain metrics of success, one can objectively state that there are morals which promote success by those metrics.

Therefore, morality is as objective as the laws of physics. You're free to think it wonderful or terrible that splitting the atom produces energy we can use to run computers, but it objectively is true. You're free to think it wonderful or terrible that certain rules in a moral code, when followed, lead to wealth and health for a culture and its members and those who adhere to it, but regardless of whether you like it or not, they do.

That is why I say morality is objective. Moral codes, when followed, have objective, measurable, repeatable consequences. If you want the consequences, follow those codes. If you do not, don't. If you actively abhor those consequences, follow a moral code that expressly forbids that other one's precepts.

Tl;dr: Objective morality just means that moral rules have consequences, and disliking the rules doesn't change the effects of following - or refusing to follow - them.

ImNotTrevor
2016-09-09, 04:14 PM
My thesis is that morality is objective because the morals of societies which have succeeded and perpetuated enough to imprint their morals mimetically have had definite things in common, and it is as those things-in-common have propagated that societies which hold to them have thrived.

The causal connection between holding certain morals and ethics and the success of societies and cultures reveals that there is an objective benefit to certain moral outlooks.

Moral outlooks thus can be judged based on their objective functionality: do they promote societies and cultures capable of growth, or do they poison those cultures which hold and adhere to them?

Frankly, if you want to claim that suffering, misery, and ultimate destruction are "just as good" as what is more traditionally defined as "success," feel free (but please don't force me to endure your decay, nor try to drag me down with you). But it is undeniable that one can stat that, if one values certain metrics of success, one can objectively state that there are morals which promote success by those metrics.

Therefore, morality is as objective as the laws of physics. You're free to think it wonderful or terrible that splitting the atom produces energy we can use to run computers, but it objectively is true. You're free to think it wonderful or terrible that certain rules in a moral code, when followed, lead to wealth and health for a culture and its members and those who adhere to it, but regardless of whether you like it or not, they do.

That is why I say morality is objective. Moral codes, when followed, have objective, measurable, repeatable consequences. If you want the consequences, follow those codes. If you do not, don't. If you actively abhor those consequences, follow a moral code that expressly forbids that other one's precepts.

Tl;dr: Objective morality just means that moral rules have consequences, and disliking the rules doesn't change the effects of following - or refusing to follow - them.

This does not account for cultural shift or why cultures change moral outlooks.

If one moral code worked, why change it? The society reproduced itself just fine. Someone made a decision to change that moral code.

Nazi Germany had a moral code that suited itself just fine. Within a vacuum (assuming no outside influence from other cultures who disagreed with their morals) Nazi Germany would have carried on just fine, in all likelihood. Russia has done similar.

There are tribes in South America and Africa whose cultures are virtually unchanged from hundreds of years ago. Why did their morals NOT change while others did? If these tribes, such as certain Paupa New Guinea tribes, have practiced cannibalism for hundreds of years and have successfully carried on with their culture, does that make cannibalism a moral behavior? (According to your basic premise, yes.)

The second problem is that multiple sets of morals of opposing beliefs may lead to "health and wealth." Free Market Healthcare and Socialized Healthcare disagree almost completely, yet both can achieve similar results from a pure "amount of health" rating.

Though this then adds the question "How do you measure wealth/health/happiness? The United States has a lot of money, but Paraguay (a third world country) beat it in terms of happiness in 2014 or 2015 in a Gallup poll of happiest country. So is wealth the great determiner of a moral society? Is health? According to who? Paraguayans seem happy without either, and happier than Americans.


ANY moral system when subjected to scrutiny breaks down to an arbitrary value judgement. This one is no exception.

Segev
2016-09-09, 04:24 PM
This does not account for cultural shift or why cultures change moral outlooks.

If one moral code worked, why change it? The society reproduced itself just fine. Someone made a decision to change that moral code.

There are usually one of two outcomes from a society shifting its morality: either it goes into decline, or it surges. By this you can generally tell if the moral shift was a bad one, dropping useful or adopting destructive rules, or a good one, dropping destructive or adopting useful rules.

If it stays the same, then you've discovered the rules it added or lost are superfluous but harmless.

In order to really make a case that the rules are not, themselves, objective, it would be required to show that one culture's adoption of them had the opposite effect as another's, and even that would be quite the lengthy study to determine all the interactions.

This is why my thesis is largely restricted to a claim that the objective morality that has been discovered is found by examining as many successful cultures as possible and finding similarities, and then comparing and contrasting to failed cultures and the morals they actually practiced (not merely preached) as they fell, to determine if those similarities are absent in the declined civilizations.


Please note, again, that I am deliberately refusing to identify any cultures in my discussion here, to avoid violating forum rules. I will not respond to statistics quoted about real-world cultures; I encourage people to research them to their own satisfaction. I will posit that, if one believes that one finds contradictory morals leading to equivalent results, that one has found one of two things: a moral rule which is irrelevant (since it and its antithesis are equally (in)effective); or a set of statistics that need further research, as liars are very good at figuring when their power and money is on the line.

ImNotTrevor
2016-09-09, 04:58 PM
There are usually one of two outcomes from a society shifting its morality: either it goes into decline, or it surges. By this you can generally tell if the moral shift was a bad one, dropping useful or adopting destructive rules, or a good one, dropping destructive or adopting useful rules.

If it stays the same, then you've discovered the rules it added or lost are superfluous but harmless.

In order to really make a case that the rules are not, themselves, objective, it would be required to show that one culture's adoption of them had the opposite effect as another's, and even that would be quite the lengthy study to determine all the interactions.

This is why my thesis is largely restricted to a claim that the objective morality that has been discovered is found by examining as many successful cultures as possible and finding similarities, and then comparing and contrasting to failed cultures and the morals they actually practiced (not merely preached) as they fell, to determine if those similarities are absent in the declined civilizations.


Please note, again, that I am deliberately refusing to identify any cultures in my discussion here, to avoid violating forum rules. I will not respond to statistics quoted about real-world cultures; I encourage people to research them to their own satisfaction. I will posit that, if one believes that one finds contradictory morals leading to equivalent results, that one has found one of two things: a moral rule which is irrelevant (since it and its antithesis are equally (in)effective); or a set of statistics that need further research, as liars are very good at figuring when their power and money is on the line.

The problem then becomes the definition of success. There are fallen cultures which still hold huge sway over modern life, even though the culture itself is no longer present. By your definition of success = memetic/cultural reproduction, and failure = societal collapse, these cultures are both.

Not to mention in your last argument your response is to either dismiss as irrelevant (even though it isn't) or claim conspiracy, which is more of a red flag about a huge hole in the theory rather than an adequate response. There are, factually, cultures with opposing morals and nearly equivalent amounts of cultural, financial, and health success. Whether you like it or not, every single point of contradiction leading to similar outcomes is a strike against the theory and cannot be simply handwaved away, especially when similarities are vital to its function. You've basically pre-declared cherrypicking data as a fundamental tenent of your moral system. Which is a big no no

Segev
2016-09-09, 05:06 PM
Note how those fallen cultures' influence tends to stem from the climb and height of their power, not their decline. The moral codes they abandoned are often found in their successors that rose to prominence. Especially those which lasted.

But you're welcome to disagree. My thesis remains that morals can be evaluated objectively. Truly moral rules tend to be like the maintenance manual for your car: you can ignore them and your life and culture will do okay for quite a while, but they will slowly degrade and fall apart compared to the vehicles/societies of who follow the maintenance instructions.

kyoryu
2016-09-09, 05:09 PM
Utilitarian ethics are self-consistent, if you accept their base premises.

I personally don't. That doesn't mean that any other system of ethics is also not self-consistent.

ImNotTrevor
2016-09-09, 05:14 PM
Note how those fallen cultures' influence tends to stem from the climb and height of their power, not their decline. The moral codes they abandoned are often found in their successors that rose to prominence. Especially those which lasted.

But you're welcome to disagree. My thesis remains that morals can be evaluated objectively. Truly moral rules tend to be like the maintenance manual for your car: you can ignore them and your life and culture will do okay for quite a while, but they will slowly degrade and fall apart compared to the vehicles/societies of who follow the maintenance instructions.

Until it's proven, it's just an idea.

Good luck with that.

And remember: conflicting morals with similar outcomes DO happen, and reasonably often in human societies. So work on a way to explain those when they arise because they will, and they'll be the biggest blemish on your theory.

AtlasSniperman
2016-09-09, 06:11 PM
Wow, I didn't just open a can of worms. I detonated it.
Sorry folks.
Okay, going to try and address some of the problems that have erupted here :D

@AMFV
I fear the definitions discussion. Because all words are defined by other words, inevitably someone will disagree or not understand a word I use in one definition and require a definition of that. And this will continue for every definition, soaking up the whole discussion and reducing everything to semantics. But in this case, since you asked nicely, I will answer.
Wellbeing: "the state of being comfortable, healthy, or happy."
Which leads easily into
Health: "the state of being free from illness or injury."
Unnecessary harm: "illness, injury or pain inflicted upon someone without necessity or their wishes."

When the options are in conflict we get Neutral entries.
Your enjoyment of killing people is one persons enjoyment, however the act of murdering a person causes unnecessary harm to the people you kill, and unnecessary psychological harm to the family left behind.
No matter how much pleasure you get out of something, you are only one person.

Re: smoking, this is easy. Again you've got a net neutral situation. If there is someone in the area of your 2nd hand smoke that does not consent or enjoy it, it becomes evil. However if you move away from all people to smoke alone, this is also a neutral act by your definitions.

The problem people are having with this debate is very very simple. People are seeing something as being Good OR Bad, but you can also have Neutral in D&D. Neutral is "Both good and evil in equal measure." OR "Neither good or evil"



The Law and Chaos things are defined in a way that can be viewed from a local and universal stance. "a group" is intentionally vague to a point. "a group" can mean "any and all groups", or "my group".
Yes, performing an action that helps the people of your nation and strengthens the stability of your nation is Lawful, but these other people see your action as Chaotic to their group. So on net this is neutral. Expanding into empty territory is Lawful.

The good, evil, law and chaos in my definitions are defined so that you can get relative answers from the perspective of two people, while people outside the situation can all gather the same answer.


@ImNotTrevor
Thank you for post #17

Segev
2016-09-09, 06:11 PM
Until it's proven, it's just an idea.

Good luck with that.Thanks! It can't be proven, but I do think there is a preponderance of evidence supporting it.


And remember: conflicting morals with similar outcomes DO happen, and reasonably often in human societies. So work on a way to explain those when they arise because they will, and they'll be the biggest blemish on your theory.

I've already mentioned that such might be an indication that the conflicting morals are, in fact, not objectively moral laws, but simply somebody's preference. You can have objectively positive/good morals (which lead to desired outcomes / success of the society), objectively negative/evil morals (which lead to undesired outcomes / failure of the society), and amorals (which don't really do anything).

LudicSavant
2016-09-09, 07:51 PM
The point is that all morality is arbitrarily defined by human beings.
What is your point even supposed to be here? Literally every word is arbitrarily defined. That's how words work. The word "gravity" isn't inexorably linked to the force that pulls things together by some intrinsic trait of the universe. We just rather arbitrarily decided that those sounds should point to that meaning.


Though this then adds the question "How do you measure wealth/health/happiness?

Interesting that you mention health. "Health" faces many of the same challenges that "morality" does. It is indeed difficult to give a simple definition or measurement of health; modern physicians still haven't settled on one. Moreover, every person's body is different. And you can even talk about how one person's health can diminish another person's when you're talking about group health (such as with a Typhoid Mary), which leads to some pretty complex questions which we totally handle in fields like epidemiology. And yet it would be a fool's errand to boldly claim that because of this, the study of medicine or biology or epidemiology was beyond objectivity, and couldn't be furthered by empirical research.

To get hung up on the dilemma of "different people use different definitions" is to misunderstand how language works in the first place, and make even the simplest of questions seem far more dramatic and unsolvable than they really are. (http://lesswrong.com/lw/np/disputing_definitions/) The value of empiricism comes from being able to make observations which allow you to constrain your anticipations (http://lesswrong.com/lw/i3/making_beliefs_pay_rent_in_anticipated_experiences/), and you can totally do that with moral questions so long as they're phrased intelligibly (sometimes they aren't, but that's not the universe's fault, that's because people get confused about language all the damn time).

For example, "which of these two presents would Claire like more for her birthday" is an intelligible question about what action will result in greater happiness. It is possible to get an answer to this which is correct or incorrect, and concoct a test which would constrain your expectations to some degree or other (for example, you could just give her both and observe the reactions). Seriously, it's that simple.

Every time someone uses a word, like "morality," that word is a pointer pointing to some definition or other. And as soon as you figure out what that pointer is pointing to, it frequently turns out that the question is answerable.

The bit where people just throw their hands in the air and say it's all relative just strikes me as intellectually lazy... a sort of philosophical poverty. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_relativism#Philosophical_poverty)


Since being objective means uinfluenced by feelings or opinions, but all morality is born from feelings and opinions, but is sometimes written down.

What an odd thing to say. Would you look upon an archaeologist and say "You can't say anything objective about history! After all, that pottery you found was influenced by the feelings and opinions of the artists!"? Would you look upon a neuroscientist and say "You can't say anything objective about the brain! After all, that brain was influenced by the feelings and opinions of the brain!"?

Human beings aren't magical exceptions to empricism. Our behavior can be observed, studied, and predicted.

Kriton
2016-09-09, 08:06 PM
Nonsense. Unless you wish to state that "self-defeating is not inferior to self-perpetuating," you can start by rooting your examination of "good" in whether or not a system sustains itself, or self-destructs. If you are a believer in the concept that evolution is a good thing, that "natural selection" leads to improvement, then you must accept the fundamental proposition that any system which destroys itself is inferior to a system which can persevere.

Evolution and natural selection my friend, is a mindless force of nature. It has no more morality than the freezing of water. Your argument is invalid.

AtlasSniperman
2016-09-09, 08:42 PM
@LudicSavant
Why isn't there a "Like" or "Kudo" button on posts on this forum. Gaaaaah! That was great!

RazorChain
2016-09-09, 08:47 PM
I would be very interested in knowing what you mean by this :) All I mean by 'objective' in this situation is the definition of objective: "(of a person or their judgement) not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts." Which is what this intends to do; determine something as being right, wrong, lawful or chaotic based on a set of rules. Yes individuals can interpret something as good or evil in the perspective of their group, but there is also the objective matter that considers all groups. That's all I mean.

I love it. My paladin is going to use it when he's torturing, maiming and killing, shouting "For greater good!"

I think this epitomizes the stupid DnD alignment system. You can kill evil because it's for greater good as long it's within the law.

Of course Law and Chaos are totally different thing but who wants to be Orderly Good Paladin? Or Unlawful Evil Necromancer?

Or like when my DM asked "Is your Paladin going to follow that law? It's unjust!"
Me: "Well my paladin is Lawful, not just"
DM: "But you are good"
Me: "Yep...but not just, now start whipping that serf he broke the law"


Me: "Why does my monk have to be lawful?"
DM: "Because he is used to rigid discipline!"
Me: "Wait....is disciplined now included in lawful, he's going to be a vigilante type, breaking all kinds of laws for his own perceived sense of justice. Like Batman!"

AMFV
2016-09-09, 08:59 PM
I would be very interested in knowing what you mean by this :) All I mean by 'objective' in this situation is the definition of objective: "(of a person or their judgement) not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts." Which is what this intends to do; determine something as being right, wrong, lawful or chaotic based on a set of rules. Yes individuals can interpret something as good or evil in the perspective of their group, but there is also the objective matter that considers all groups. That's all I mean.

Well the problem with this is that the definition you cite is NOT the definition that people are talking about when they refer to Objective Morality vs. Subjective Morality. Objective morality refers to a set of moral rules that are equally true all of the time. Subjective morality means that moral rules are not necessarily absolute. The rules can change depending on different people and their interpretation of the rules.

RazorChain
2016-09-09, 09:06 PM
Well the problem with this is that the definition you cite is NOT the definition that people are talking about when they refer to Objective Morality vs. Subjective Morality. Objective morality refers to a set of moral rules that are equally true all of the time. Subjective morality means that moral rules are not necessarily absolute. The rules can change depending on different people and their interpretation of the rules.

Exactly

In DnD it would be like this

Killing a good sentinent being is Evil
Killing a neutral sentinent being is Evil
Killing a evil sentinent being is Good

And this would be absolutes no buts or ifs other than these:

Stopping someone doing an evil act is good
Stopping someone doing an neutral act is ??? depends I guess
Stopping someone dong a good act is evil

I think this about sums up the Good/Evil axis in DnD

ImNotTrevor
2016-09-10, 04:50 AM
What is your point even supposed to be here? Literally every word is arbitrarily defined. That's how words work. The word "gravity" isn't inexorably linked to the force that pulls things together by some intrinsic trait of the universe. We just rather arbitrarily decided that those sounds should point to that meaning.

Morality does not exist in and of itself without humans/sentients around to make it a thing. If we all die tomorrow in a big meteor impact, the force we call Gravity will carry on without us. Morality won't. (Not on Earth, anyways.)

Hence, this isn't a linguistics issue. We're using language to talk about it, but trying to muddy the waters with "nothing means anything if deconstricted enough" isn't going to do anything against my argument. Gravity exists. Call if gravidad, call it Tim, call it Beldegrofflenish, it will exist regardless of language used to describe it.

Morality doesn't exist outside of human brains. It's a humans thing. Humans are wonderful and we come up with great things, like justice and mercy and freedom and stories and etc. None of those things exist without people. You think the universe gives a rip about justice or freedom? Nope. People do, though! And that's why people are great. We worry about this kind of thing. Freedom and Justice are arbitrarily defined by people, too.

The problem comes in when you make the leap that I'm saying arbitrary = bad. I never said that, and in fact said that it's not. Arbitrary is what it is, and in and of itself is arbitrarily defined. (So meta)

But being arbitrarily defined doesn't make a thing bad or an invalid subject for conversaton and philosophy. But you'll not find me saying that the concept of arbitraryness is Objectively real. It's not. Arbitrary is a tag humans invented to describe a human phenomenon.
So is Morality.
Gravity is a tag humans invented to describe a thing that exists without us.
So is The Sun.

Getting the difference, now?



Interesting that you mention health. "Health" faces many of the same challenges that "morality" does. It is indeed difficult to give a simple definition or measurement of health; modern physicians still haven't settled on one. Moreover, every person's body is different. And you can even talk about how one person's health can diminish another person's when you're talking about group health (such as with a Typhoid Mary), which leads to some pretty complex questions which we totally handle in fields like epidemiology. And yet it would be a fool's errand to boldly claim that because of this, the study of medicine or biology or epidemiology was beyond objectivity, and couldn't be furthered by empirical research.

This is a very different situation for fairly obvious reasons. We can empirically test for which medicines/treatments work best. We cannot empirically test which actions are more moral, because there is no concensus unless someone first makes a value judgement that X is always the best option. On person decides that Yes, they will flip the switch and just kill the one guy on the train track, and not the 5. Someone else decides not to flip the switch. How do you measure which is more moral?
Utilitarianism says to measure the total happiness/suffering as a result.
Hedonism might say the second is right because it makes the decider not feel guilty for killing the one, and that allowing the 5 to die isn't any worse than what would have already happened, and within the rules of Hedonism that's a moral decision.

So there you go.



To get hung up on the dilemma of "different people use different definitions" is to misunderstand how language works in the first place, and make even the simplest of questions seem far more dramatic and unsolvable than they really are. (http://lesswrong.com/lw/np/disputing_definitions/) The value of empiricism comes from being able to make observations which allow you to constrain your anticipations (http://lesswrong.com/lw/i3/making_beliefs_pay_rent_in_anticipated_experiences/), and you can totally do that with moral questions so long as they're phrased intelligibly (sometimes they aren't, but that's not the universe's fault, that's because people get confused about language all the damn time).

For example, "which of these two presents would Claire like more for her birthday" is an intelligible question about what action will result in greater happiness. It is possible to get an answer to this which is correct or incorrect, and concoct a test which would constrain your expectations to some degree or other (for example, you could just give her both and observe the reactions). Seriously, it's that simple.
Excellent Begging the Question for Utilitarianism. That is exactly what a Utilitarianist would use as their measurement of what morality is. The problem is, they have no way to prove that that's actually how morality should be measured



Every time someone uses a word, like "morality," that word is a pointer pointing to some definition or other. And as soon as you figure out what that pointer is pointing to, it frequently turns out that the question is answerable.

The bit where people just throw their hands in the air and say it's all relative just strikes me as intellectually lazy... a sort of philosophical poverty. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_relativism#Philosophical_poverty)


Neato burrito how you disperaged an entire philosophical view of morality by just wholesale calling it philosophical poverty without actually delving into its merits (the intellectually honest thing to do.) Basically, you've been arguing that utilitarianism is correct. Utilitarianism breaks down when subjected to "why" questions... even basic ones.

Why is the happiness of the One less important than the happiness of the Collective?
If they are equally important, when the two come into conflict which one is prioritized? (Just dealing with the "they're equally important" bs before it's brought up)
In the above example, would getting the wrong gift that produces less happiness be an immoral choice? Why?
Does intention count for anything? (Ie, if a robber goes to steal something from his neighbor and ends up instead getting spotted in the front lawn and invited in for tea, and spending time with the lonely old lady that lives there without stealing anything... was he moral? Does your morality system care? If so, how do you measure Intention?)
Why is it the greatest good to sacrifice my own happiness to ensure happiness for others rather than simply allowing everyone to pursue their own happiness individually, at all times, with no concern for the collective?
Why are we measuring morality based on happiness/suffering? Would this mean that third world countries that rate higher on Happiness than first world countries are more moral despite their governmental corruption?
If two Individuals must be chosen between, lets say a baby and a teenager in a burning building and you can save only one, which one will be chosen by the Utilitarian standard? How do we assess which one will lead to the most happiness?
What if it is a single baby vs. A sheaf of papers that detail the simple cures for every single disease? Do we then prioritize papers over human life for the sake of maximum happiness? (Utilitarianism says YES.)







What an odd thing to say. Would you look upon an archaeologist and say "You can't say anything objective about history! After all, that pottery you found was influenced by the feelings and opinions of the artists!"? Would you look upon a neuroscientist and say "You can't say anything objective about the brain! After all, that brain was influenced by the feelings and opinions of the brain!"?
This is borderline nonsense. Check the OTHER quoted definition and come back to me. The pottery EXISTS even if all archeologists vanish tomorrow. Even if we all vanish tomorrow the pottery will still be around. You CAN objectively study the pot because we're not saying things like "the pot makes me feel good." We're discussing what the pot IS.
The Pot may not have been created objectively, but it can be observed objectively.

Come on, you're obviously smart enough to see the obvious differences there.



Human beings aren't magical exceptions to empricism. Our behavior can be observed, studied, and predicted.

Yes it can. And that has nothing to do with morality being objective. Because by its nature it CANNOT be objective unless it starts to exist without mankind. Find me a Morality particle and we'll talk about its Objectivity IRL.


For the purposes of FICTION, we know that in D&D the alignments (moralities) imbue people with a measurable, detectable energy. (Hence why Detect Alignment works, and why you can hide your alignment with magic, and why some items will interact negatively with your alignment energies.) So in D&D land, morality DOES objectively exist. These energies would exist even with no people around to have them.

That's the difference.

LudicSavant
2016-09-10, 08:24 AM
we know that in D&D the alignments (moralities) imbue people with a measurable, detectable energy. (Hence why Detect Alignment works, and why you can hide your alignment with magic, and why some items will interact negatively with your alignment energies.) So in D&D land, morality DOES objectively exist. These energies would exist even with no people around to have them.

Why is the happiness of the One less important than the happiness of the Collective?

D&D alignment is no more or less an objective morality system than, just off the top of my head, "whatever the robot overlord commands us to do is moral."

What's important to you is up to you. But the specific moral questions of how to optimize things can be evaluated objectively.

For example, considering it important whether you detect as Good or Evil in the D&D world is up to you. Whether a character detects as Good or Evil in the D&D world can be evaluated objectively. By the same note, considering it important whether or not you're obeying the robot overlord's code is up to you. Whether a character actually is obeying the robot overlord's code can be evaluated objectively. The robot overlord exists outside of your character, even if your character stops believing in it, and you can check its code and everything.

Or, to go back to the health example again, you don't have to consider it important that you're healthy for the study of medicine to ask and answer objective questions.


Find me a Morality particle and we'll talk about its Objectivity IRL. This argument is specious. You can't find a "health particle" either, but that doesn't invalidate the study of medicine.


You CAN objectively study the pot because we're not saying things like "the pot makes me feel good." You can study brains (and the thoughts they generate) even if you are literally saying "this dopamine thing causes people to feel good." This is the entire reason why fields like cognitive neuroscience are a thing.

Frozen_Feet
2016-09-10, 09:37 AM
Once more, the discussion gets sidetracked by treating subjective as antonym to objective, when at sufficient level of knowledge, subjective (mind-dependent) things are subset of objective things.

Arbitrariness is a different thing entirely. All units of measurement are arbitrary. This is orthogonal to whether they're objective or subjective. 1 meter is an arbitrary unit, yet also objective.

The system posed in the OP is fairly intuitive. You have several layers of morality: one universal, as decided by the GM, and multiple local ones, as decided by in-group/out-group distinction made by the characters. Within it, you can answer both how a character stands in respect to universal morality and how he is perceived by local peoples.

Also, bringing up how "in real world, people have different moralities and they don't always agree" is really tired old hat. Everyone can be expected to know that. Just as well everyone ought to know a GM can arbitrarily choose one morality system and declare it right within a setting, just like a GM can decide gravity is really a subjective illusion or generated by tiny invisible angels.

LudicSavant
2016-09-10, 09:39 AM
Once more, the discussion gets sidetracked by treating subjective as antonym to objective, when at sufficient level of knowledge, subjective (mind-dependent) things are subset of objective things. Pretty much. Consider this (http://lesswrong.com/lw/s6/probability_is_subjectively_objective/).


@LudicSavant
Why isn't there a "Like" or "Kudo" button on posts on this forum. Gaaaaah! That was great!

I try. :smallsmile:

OldTrees1
2016-09-10, 10:17 AM
Pretty much. Consider this (http://lesswrong.com/lw/s6/probability_is_subjectively_objective/).



I try. :smallsmile:

Interesting read.

1)
If we examine "your probability that the trillionth digit of Pi is 4" and try to map that to something in the topic of morality, would it map to a person's belief about morality, or to moral truth? I would map it to the belief abut morality.

2)
Also people's belief about morality is not always them same kind of belief.
a) I could be a utilitarian and firm believe that utilitarian ethics accurately describes reality. This would be a subjectively objective belief.
b) I could be a moral relativist and also consider murder immoral. However, being a moral relativist, I would not consider my position superior to a different culture's. This would be a subjectively subjective belief.
c) Then we get to people with simultaneous beliefs. I could be someone that has Deontological Ethics, but also considers that belief of mine to be completely unsupported and thus no better than anyone else's. The former is a subjectively subjective belief according to the latter subjectively objective belief.

3)
However I am most concerned in Moral Truth. While our beliefs about reality can be subjective, can reality itself be subjective without ceasing to be objective? Analogy: The mass of the 4th planet in the solar system furthest away from us but still in the same galaxy can have a value or be null but can it be subjective?

LudicSavant
2016-09-10, 10:38 AM
Interesting read.

1)
If we examine "your probability that the trillionth digit of Pi is 4" and try to map that to something in the topic of morality, would it map to a person's belief about morality, or to moral truth? I would map it to the belief abut morality.

2)
Also people's belief about morality is not always them same kind of belief.
a) I could be a utilitarian and firm believe that utilitarian ethics accurately describes reality. This would be a subjectively objective belief.
b) I could be a moral relativist and also consider murder immoral. However, being a moral relativist, I would not consider my position superior to a different culture's. This would be a subjectively subjective belief.
c) Then we get to people with simultaneous beliefs. I could be someone that has Deontological Ethics, but also considers that belief of mine to be completely unsupported and thus no better than anyone else's. The former is a subjectively subjective belief according to the latter subjectively objective belief.

3)
However I am most concerned in Moral Truth. While our beliefs about reality can be subjective, can reality itself be subjective without ceasing to be objective? Analogy: The mass of the 4th planet in the solar system furthest away from us but still in the same galaxy can have a value or be null but can it be subjective?

I'm not sure exactly what you're trying to ask here.

Consider tabooing (http://lesswrong.com/lw/nu/taboo_your_words/) the words "subjective" and "objective" and "moral truth" and seeing if you can still ask your question. Hopefully I'll understand what you're trying to ask better then.

ImNotTrevor
2016-09-10, 11:05 AM
Once more, the discussion gets sidetracked by treating subjective as antonym to objective, when at sufficient level of knowledge, subjective (mind-dependent) things are subset of objective things.
This is true. And morality is still subjective.



Arbitrariness is a different thing entirely. All units of measurement are arbitrary. This is orthogonal to whether they're objective or subjective. 1 meter is an arbitrary unit, yet also objective.
Yup. Meters, feet, etc are arbitrary. Agreed. Definitions of morality are similarly arbitrary.

Both of those things can be arbitrary.



The system posed in the OP is fairly intuitive. You have several layers of morality: one universal, as decided by the GM, and multiple local ones, as decided by in-group/out-group distinction made by the characters. Within it, you can answer both how a character stands in respect to universal morality and how he is perceived by local peoples.

Also, bringing up how "in real world, people have different moralities and they don't always agree" is really tired old hat. Everyone can be expected to know that. Just as well everyone ought to know a GM can arbitrarily choose one morality system and declare it right within a setting, just like a GM can decide gravity is really a subjective illusion or generated by tiny invisible angels.
I'm not arguing against that reasoning for D&D. That's A-ok in my book, as I've stated several times. xD



D&D alignment is no more or less an objective morality system than, just off the top of my head, "whatever the robot overlord commands us to do is moral."
It is far less subjective since morality within D&D, by RAW, has an effect on the physical wlrld. Your example can be described as "might makes right" morality. Which, while enforced, ceases to exist without said overlord. But in D&D, Good and Evil are universal forces like gravity and heat.



What's important to you is up to you. But the specific moral questions of how to optimize things can be evaluated objectively.
Then that's not a Morality question. It's an optimization question.



For example, considering it important whether you detect as Good or Evil in the D&D world is up to you. Whether a character detects as Good or Evil in the D&D world can be evaluated objectively. By the same note, considering it important whether or not you're obeying the robot overlord's code is up to you. Whether a character actually is obeying the robot overlord's code can be evaluated objectively. The robot overlord exists outside of your character, even if your character stops believing in it, and you can check its code and everything.
So... you can only decide if you are or are not following a set of rules, but the rules continue to be arbitrary.
You cannot simply choose to no longer obey the law of gravity. But you CAN choose to have a different moral outlook.

All of this business is just agreeing with my point, here.



Or, to go back to the health example again, you don't have to consider it important that you're healthy for the study of medicine to ask and answer objective questions.
That's because health is based on the existence of the human body as a physical object. We can touch and examine a body, measure it, and reach conclusions therefrom. "Health" is the term we use to describe a human body operating as it is supposed to. We're still learning about how it is supposed to function, but we know it has a proper function. If we weren't sentient, our bodies would still have a proper function. That exists independent of our minds.



This argument is specious. You can't find a "health particle" either, but that doesn't invalidate the study of medicine.
We can find a Healthy Body, though. So this counter is only valid if you word it dumb on purpose.



You can study brains (and the thoughts they generate) even if you are literally saying "this dopamine thing causes people to feel good." This is the entire reason why fields like cognitive neuroscience are a thing.
Yes. That's not a counter to my argument. This is saying "But a similar-ish sentence can be used in an objective manner." Yes, it can. But this sentence is not an emotional evaluation of the thing being observed.

Do you not recognize the difference between
"This pottery pleases me"
And
"This chemical causes a pleasure reaction in the subject's brain."

LudicSavant
2016-09-10, 11:23 AM
We can find a Healthy Body, though. You can find a mind too. It's a part of the body you just found. :smalltongue:




D&D alignment is no more or less an objective morality system than, just off the top of my head, "whatever the robot overlord commands us to do is moral."
It is far less subjective since morality within D&D, by RAW, has an effect on the physical wlrld.
So wait, you think the robot overlord's commands do not have an effect on the physical world? It's got that whole tower full of miles of processors moving electricity about. It's over there, smashing up houses with its loyal machines executing the instructions of its code.


Do you not recognize the difference between
"This pottery pleases me"
And
"This chemical causes a pleasure reaction in the subject's brain."

The pottery pleasing you and the pottery causing a pleasure reaction in your brain are the same thing. Your mind is not mystically separate from reality.


Then that's not a Morality question. It's an optimization question.

These categories are not mutually exclusive. Any question where there are options of "better" or "worse" is an optimization question. "Is it better to do X or Y?" is an optimization question.


You cannot simply choose to no longer obey the law of gravity. But you CAN choose to have a different moral outlook. That's not a proper analogy.

Consider "You can choose to have a different moral outlook. You can choose to have a different outlook on physics."

Or, alternatively "You cannot simply choose to no longer acknowledge that some of your actions are hurtful to others, and have your actions no longer be hurtful to others. Likewise, you cannot simply choose to ignore the law of gravity, and no longer be pulled towards the earth."

OldTrees1
2016-09-10, 11:45 AM
I'm not sure exactly what you're trying to ask here.

Consider tabooing (http://lesswrong.com/lw/nu/taboo_your_words/) the words "subjective" and "objective" and "moral truth" and seeing if you can still ask your question. Hopefully I'll understand what you're trying to ask better then.

Moral Truth: The answer to the question "What one ought to do?"
Moral Belief: A belief as to what the answer to the question "What ought one do?" is.

Subjective: Something that can change depending on the observer rather than merely having the observation change.
Objective: Something that does not change depending on the observer, although the observation might change.
Subjectively Subjective: read the article you linked about probability being subjectively objective
Subjectively Objective: read the article you linked about probability being subjectively objective

So what I am asking is: The article you linked discussed how probability is subjectively objective. I was asking if, to apply that to the topic, that would map to Moral Belief or Moral Truth. I would think that LessWrong's argument about probability being subjectively objective maps to Moral Belief being subjectively objective. However I am more concerned about Moral Truth.*

*That 3rd example where the person was dismissive of their own Moral Belief? That is me.

PS: I have noticed you are posting links to LessWrong more frequently of late. It is a nice site isn't it?

Max_Killjoy
2016-09-10, 11:52 AM
These discussions, while fascinating and often containing some interesting ideas, are also why I cringe at "moral systems" in RPGs, and prefer to deal with character interactions and social "mores" instead of getting into "good vs evil".

LudicSavant
2016-09-10, 12:09 PM
You're defining the words, not tabooing them, but okay.
the first line of defense is not to define your problematic terms, but to see whether you can think without using those terms at all.


Moral Truth: The answer to the question "What one ought to do?"
Moral Belief: A belief as to what the answer to the question "What ought one do?" is.

Okay. To both of these, I have a nitpick. That nitpick is that the question "What one ought to do?" requires a context in order to parse. What should one do in a situation? What are you trying to accomplish? Etc etc. Coherent, internally consistent moral philosophies provide these contexts, but internet alignment arguments often don't.

One of the reasons some people think the things we call moral questions are unanswerable is because they render them in hopelessly vague ways (often in ways so hopelessly vague that they're not even an intelligible question). "What should I do?" isn't a complete question, moral or otherwise. "What ought I do to avoid hurting Mel's feelings in such and such situation?" or "How ought I carry out the prisoner sentencing in order to avert the robot overlord's wrath?" is, and can thus be discussed.

Often, when people say "What ought I do?" in casual conversation the context is implied; we humans are good at finishing incomplete thoughts with assumptions in order to make them compile (it's one of the skills you sorta have to unlearn to be good at computer programming). But that should not be mistaken for thinking that a context isn't required for the question to be intelligible. Does that make sense?

Basically, an awful lot of philosophical discussions that seem hopelessly unsolvable become simple matters when people actually bother to stick to specific contexts instead of taking refuge in overgeneralized vagaries.



Subjective: Something that can change depending on the observer rather than merely having the observation change.

Sensible enough.

Objective: Something that does not change depending on the observer, although the observation might change.
Also works.

Subjectively Subjective: read the article you linked about probability being subjectively objective
Subjectively Objective: read the article you linked about probability being subjectively objective
Well that doesn't help me understand how you interpret his words at all :smalltongue:

OldTrees1
2016-09-10, 12:52 PM
You're defining the words, not tabooing them, but okay.



Okay. To both of these, I have a nitpick. That nitpick is that the question "What one ought to do?" requires a context in order to parse. What should one do in a situation? What are you trying to accomplish? Etc etc. Coherent, internally consistent moral philosophies provide these contexts, but internet alignment arguments sometimes don't.

One of the reasons some people think moral questions are unanswerable is because they render them in hopelessly vague ways (often in ways so hopelessly vague that they're not even an intelligible question). "What should I do?" isn't a complete moral question. "What ought I do to avoid hurting Mel's feelings in such and such situation?" or "How ought I carry out the prisoner sentencing in order to avert the robot overlord's wrath?" is, and can thus be discussed.

Often, when people say "What ought I do?" in casual conversation the context is implied; we humans are good at finishing incomplete thoughts with assumptions in order to make them compile. But that should not be mistaken for thinking that a context isn't required for the question to be intelligible. Does that make sense?

Basically, an awful lot of alignment discussions that seem hopelessly unsolvable become simple matters when people actually bother to stick to specific contexts instead of taking refuge in overgeneralized vagaries.

Sensible enough.
Also works.
Well that doesn't help me understand how you interpreted his words at all :smalltongue:

The activity of tabooing takes 2 minds (I only can construct one). So instead I used a substitution definition (aka defining my usage and letting you substitute the meaning in place of the word). I find this works even better because it conserves the power of words as symbols while still removing conflicting meanings.

1) Why would "What ought one do?" require context in order to parse? If you require context then you are not planning on giving a complete answer.

2) "One ought to do X in order to Y" does not parse. Ought is a statement about a final end while Should is a statement about an instrumental end. Ex: I should exercise in order to lose weight, but ought I exercise?

3) The meanings I got from the article
Subjectively _____: Can vary from observer to observer

Subjectively Objective: While it can vary from observer to observer, for that observer it will feel objective
(Ex: I believe X but while different priors would have me believe Y, I still consider X to be correct)

Subjectively Subjective: While it can vary from observer to observer, for that observer it will feel subjective
(Ex: I believe X and if I had different priors I would believe Y, therefore neither position is superior)

LudicSavant
2016-09-10, 01:06 PM
1) Why would "What ought one do?" require context in order to parse? Because the answer varies dramatically depending on context. "What ought one do [to create the strongest possible Fighter build]?" "What ought one do [to find the correct answer to this mathematical puzzle]?"


Ought is a statement about a final end while Should is a statement about an instrumental end. Ex: I should exercise in order to lose weight, but ought I exercise?

You ought to if you want to lose weight.


used to say or suggest what should be done

Clearly you're using a different definition than this, but I don't know what it is. I know the guy in the OP's link is using this version of the word ought (he clarifies it in one of his videos).

Edit: I'm looking through dictionaries right now and I can't find a "final end" definition of ought. So now I don't know what you mean by ought. >_<

OldTrees1
2016-09-10, 01:20 PM
Because the answer varies dramatically depending on context. "What ought one do [to create the strongest possible Fighter build]?" "What ought one do [to find the correct answer to this mathematical puzzle]?"

You ought to if you want to lose weight.

Clearly you're using a different definition than this, but I don't know what it is. I know the guy in the OP's link is using this version of the word ought (he clarifies it in one of his videos).

Are you aware of the concept of an end in and of itself or of the concept of a final end?

In Ethics "Ought" is often used to describe right/wrong, not in some conditional (if you want to Y) or instrumental (in order to Y) sense, but in a final sense.

LudicSavant
2016-09-10, 01:34 PM
In Ethics "Ought" is often used to describe right/wrong, not in some conditional (if you want to Y) or instrumental (in order to Y) sense, but in a final sense.

Even the least developed, most banal ethical system is going to answer the question "what ought you do?" with something like "you ought to do X [because X is the right thing to do]." And then you've gotta say what "right" means if you want your ethical system to be anything other than meaningless circular reasoning.

All questions of right/wrong are necessarily conditional. Whether or not "42" is a right/wrong answer is conditional upon the question being asked. If an ethical system fails to acknowledge this, that is a failing of that system and you can safely disregard it.

Remember...

http://lesswrong.com/lw/ip/fake_explanations/

And as we all know by this point (I do hope), if you are equally good at explaining any outcome, you have zero knowledge.

Edit: Looks like this was responded to while I was adding more to it, so I reposted it below.

Segev
2016-09-10, 01:38 PM
Evolution and natural selection my friend, is a mindless force of nature. It has no more morality than the freezing of water. Your argument is invalid.

My argument is quite valid; your first sentence even backs it up: morality is an objective, mindless force of nature. It is the set of rules which have been discovered by natural selection to work. They are ingrained in the laws of nature and in human nature. The only way to change them is to change human nature...or to change the laws of nature. The former is probably easier, and I wish you luck if you seek to try.

Again, they are not laws in the sense that you are compelled to follow them. They are laws in the causal sense: follow their strictures and guidance, and you will succeed more than if you do not.

The rules in your car's owner's manual are things you can easily ignore, but the consequences for doing so will lead to your car breaking down faster and more often than if you do not.

In a sense, morals are like the rules about freezing water: if you bring water to below a certain temperature, it will freeze. It doesn't matter if you brought it down to that temperature out of carelessness or through deliberation. It doesn't matter if you think it unfair that making water that cold freezes it. The act of doing so makes it freeze.

OldTrees1
2016-09-10, 01:49 PM
Even the least developed, most banal ethical system is going to say something like "you ought to do X [because X is the right thing to do]." And then you've gotta say what "right" means if you want your ethical system to be anything other than meaningless circular reasoning.
Usually one does not demand that the question contain its own answer. The question "What ought one do?" is not required to contain the answer to "What ought one do?". Proposed answers(like Utilitarianism) do need to both detail what the end in itself is and how to determine the moral character of every possible case. However you were nitpicking the question (because you wanted it to be begging the question?).

"What ought one do?" is the question about what is the end in and of itself and what flows from that end without presuming the answer before asking the question.

I feel rather silly walking you though this fundamental stuff after reading you responding to a higher order conversation. (All the more so since the question I asked you could have been answered without this walking)

LudicSavant
2016-09-10, 01:57 PM
Usually one does not demand that the question contain its own answer.

That is not what is being demanded. What is being required is that the question be defined so that there is something to answer in the first place. "What ought you do" is a meaningless question without a context.

I added a bit of extra clarification while you were replying... so I guess I'll just repost it.


In Ethics "Ought" is often used to describe right/wrong, not in some conditional (if you want to Y) or instrumental (in order to Y) sense, but in a final sense.

Even the least developed, most banal ethical system is going to answer the question "what ought you do?" with something like "you ought to do X [because X is the right thing to do]." And then you've gotta say what "right" means if you want your ethical system to be anything other than meaningless circular reasoning.

All questions of right/wrong are necessarily conditional. Whether or not "42" is a right/wrong answer is conditional upon the question being asked. If an ethical system fails to acknowledge this, that is a failing of that system and you can safely disregard it.

Remember...

http://lesswrong.com/lw/ip/fake_explanations/

And as we all know by this point (I do hope), if you are equally good at explaining any outcome, you have zero knowledge.

OldTrees1
2016-09-10, 02:01 PM
What? It's not that it has to contain its own answer, OldTrees, it's that it has to be conditional. If you just tell me "What's the answer to my question?" I don't know, because you didn't specify what the question was.

I did specify the question:

"What ought one do?" is the question about what is the end in and of itself and what flows from that end without presuming the answer before asking the question.

No more specification can happen without presumption.

PS:I so love that you are quoting about fake explanations in an attempt to critique a question. Almost like you are not differentiating between questions and answers anymore.

LudicSavant
2016-09-10, 02:07 PM
"What ought one do?" is the question about what is the end in and of itself and what flows from that end without presuming the answer before asking the question.

Oi, you're responding so fast... I edit things to avoid double posting and by the time I'm done there's already a response >_<

Did you see my clarification above?

OldTrees1
2016-09-10, 02:11 PM
Oi, you're responding so fast... I edit things to avoid double posting and by the time I'm done there's already a response >_<

Did you see my clarification above?

Yeah I saw the response. You are continuing to insist on having me beg the question and insist your insistence would not have me beg the question. This time your clarification included talking about fake explanations.

As a reminder, false explanations are when you would provide the same answer for different data to the same question. Questions and data both exist prior to false explanations.


Edit: Idea: Try this experiment
1) Take something you consider Moral.
2) Ask why is it Moral
3) Repeat Step 2 & 3
4) Assertion: This step should not be reached
Eventually you will be unable to answer. This is because you have reached what you consider the end in itself. The question "What ought one do?" does not presume the same presumption. Rather finding the end in itself is part of a complete answer to the question. For a complete answer to also be correct, it must correctly identify what the end in itself is.

Thrudd
2016-09-10, 02:12 PM
It seems like what segev is proposing is a species-specific morality which is comprised of those behaviors that collectively promote that species' survival. It would, theoretically, be possible to determine what behaviors and strategies were key for a species to create and perpetuate their niche and declare those to be objective moral behavior for that species. Of course, no system is static, the environment is always changing and thus survival strategies also must change. So this "objective morality" of a species can only be true at one specific time in one specific environment. Additionally, by what do measure success? For what period of time must a behavior pattern be observed and remain consistent before we can determine that it has brought success and therefore is objectively moral?

In practical terms, we can only talk about what is known of human civilization over the last 10,000 years. Even on that tiny time scale, how do we measure success? Are we comparing different groups of humans and judging which ones lasted longer? What is used to distinguish the "end" of one group and the beginning of another? People aren't actually divided into distinct societal or cultural units, we exist as a gradient, unless a group has total isolation, which is extremely rare to nonexistent. And we talk of civilizations "ending", but that is not really the case. Civilizations change over time. In some sense, human kind has had the same civilization which has been growing and adapting ever since the advent of agriculture. And even that "event" was not a distinct boundary but a gradual gradient of activity.

To determine what of our human behaviors has kept us alive and succeeding as a species may be a question only answerable by an outside observer. And even then, it is impossible to say if that behavior which seems to be working now (or even for ten thousand years) is really ultimately successful. So our "objective morality" is subjectively determined by ourselves based on our judgement about what currently appears like successful behavior, entirely dependent on this specific time and environment.

The truest judge of success for a species might be its ability to achieve immortality and probably transcend the need for a specific material form. That is a species that could look back and see what behaviors and strategies were key in allowing it to reach that state, and declare an objective morality. Of course, who's to say that another species might not get to the same point from an entirely different behavioral/moral framework? Which implies that any objective moral system may only be one of many such systems dependent on different environments and physiologies.

Esprit15
2016-09-10, 02:19 PM
I'm rather partial to the "There is a difference between Good and good. What is Good may not be good, and what is good may not be Good" idea, that is, DnD morality is simply the actions that specific forces in the universe operate on. Actual morality is another matter entirely. Just as a chemical reaction creates heat and entropy, a social action creates Good or Law or Chaos or Evil, even if the action may feel like a mix of those actions to a casual observer.

The easiest ingame example is Sanctify the Wicked, which is basically Mindrape in all but name. It's a spell that's so Good it gets the tag, but to any moral philosopher is rather horrifying in its implications.

LudicSavant
2016-09-10, 02:24 PM
PS:I so love that you are quoting about fake explanations in an attempt to critique a question. Almost like you are not differentiating between questions and answers anymore.

*Facepalm*


Moral Truth: The answer to the question "What one ought to do?"

In Ethics "Ought" is often used to describe right/wrong, not in some conditional (if you want to Y) or instrumental (in order to Y) sense, but in a final sense.

According to you, moral truth is the answer to the question "What ought one do?" To derive the answer I must know the question.

Now, according to your clarification of the question, "ought" means "right/wrong" with no extra context or conditions at all, an end in and of itself. In other words, "What ought one do?" is similar to asking" "What is the right/wrong answer?"

And... that's impossible to give a non-fake answer to. "42" is the right answer to some questions, and the wrong answer to others.

OldTrees1
2016-09-10, 02:32 PM
And... that's impossible to give a non-fake answer to. "42" is the right answer to some questions, and the wrong answer to others.

Oh now I understand your objection (sorry about the sarcasm before). You think that the field of Ethics asks a question (What ought one do?) that is impossible to answer with knowledge but only with fake explanations, correct? Well yes, unfortunate as it may be. However those fake explanations are Moral Beliefs and the correct answer they were trying to find is Moral Truth.

So now are we ready to go back to the question I asked you?

Max_Killjoy
2016-09-10, 02:49 PM
I'm rather partial to the "There is a difference between Good and good. What is Good may not be good, and what is good may not be Good" idea, that is, DnD morality is simply the actions that specific forces in the universe operate on. Actual morality is another matter entirely. Just as a chemical reaction creates heat and entropy, a social action creates Good or Law or Chaos or Evil, even if the action may feel like a mix of those actions to a casual observer.

The easiest ingame example is Sanctify the Wicked, which is basically Mindrape in all but name. It's a spell that's so Good it gets the tag, but to any moral philosopher is rather horrifying in its implications.


To expand on this, D&D (and similar) alignment systems are based on "good by fiat" -- that is, "good because we said it's good" -- instead of "good based on the intent and the outcome".

If an entity/actor is by definition "Good", then anything it does no matter how terrible and obviously wrong, is by definition "Good" -- it really is a vile way of looking at the world.

LudicSavant
2016-09-10, 03:56 PM
Oh now I understand your objection (sorry about the sarcasm before).

Okay. :smallsmile:


So now are we ready to go back to the question I asked you?

Uhm, you mean the ones in post #42?



1) If we examine "your probability that the trillionth digit of Pi is 4" and try to map that to something in the topic of morality, would it map to a person's belief about morality, or to moral truth? I would map it to the belief abut morality.

It would map to a person's belief about morality.


2) Also people's belief about morality is not always them same kind of belief.
a) I could be a utilitarian and firm believe that utilitarian ethics accurately describes reality. This would be a subjectively objective belief.
b) I could be a moral relativist and also consider murder immoral. However, being a moral relativist, I would not consider my position superior to a different culture's. This would be a subjectively subjective belief.
c) Then we get to people with simultaneous beliefs. I could be someone that has Deontological Ethics, but also considers that belief of mine to be completely unsupported and thus no better than anyone else's. The former is a subjectively subjective belief according to the latter subjectively objective belief. This isn't a question.


3)
However I am most concerned in Moral Truth. While our beliefs about reality can be subjective, can reality itself be subjective without ceasing to be objective? Analogy: The mass of the 4th planet in the solar system furthest away from us but still in the same galaxy can have a value or be null but can it be subjective?

No, not if the definition of subjective is (IIRC, as you gave before) "changes based on the observer" and objective is "does not change based on the observer."

OldTrees1
2016-09-10, 04:19 PM
Hooray!



Uhm, you mean the ones in post #42?


Yes the one in part 1 of post #42.

Edit: You edited again.

Thanks!

LudicSavant
2016-09-10, 04:25 PM
Yes the one in part 1 of post #42.

Edit: You edited again.

Thanks!

You're welcome. :smallsmile:

ImNotTrevor
2016-09-10, 06:39 PM
You can find a mind too. It's a part of the body you just found. :smalltongue:
I never argued that minds don't exist. Only that Morality doesn't exist without Minds. I've made that clear several times. This is either a vast misunderstanding of my point, or a blatant strawman. In either case, this does nothing to disprove my point.




So wait, you think the robot overlord's commands do not have an effect on the physical world? It's got that whole tower full of miles of processors moving electricity about. It's over there, smashing up houses with its loyal machines executing the instructions of its code.
By "effect on the physical world" I mean an effect that exists even when enforcers are no longer around. If your robot overlord is ousted, the enforced morality also goes away. In D&D if every person, God, sentient machine, and sentient being all cease to exist "Goodness" and "Evilness" would continue to exist as fundamental universal forces like gravity, magnetism, etc. That isn't the case in real life. If there is no one around to have sentient thought, there's no way for good or evil to exist. They are the products of human minds.



The pottery pleasing you and the pottery causing a pleasure reaction in your brain are the same thing. Your mind is not mystically separate from reality.

Again, you seem to be struggling with the diffefence between evaluating the merit of a thing emotionally, and describing an emotional reaction in another person. You continue to conflate the things as the same, which leads me to believe you're either not reading my points carefully or you're intentionally misreading them. In either case, this is not a point I'm attempting to make. The Mind can exist without all of its byproducts (Freedom, liberty, etc) also existing in the physical world.



These categories are not mutually exclusive. Any question where there are options of "better" or "worse" is an optimization question. "Is it better to do X or Y?" is an optimization question.
They are not NECESSARILY mutually exclusive, but in many systems of ethics they are. Hedonism doesn't care what produces the most efficient output of pleasure. Just what you in particular want to do. Doing that is what is morally right, regardless of how much pleasure it brings you or how efficiently it brings you that pleasure.



That's not a proper analogy.

Consider "You can choose to have a different moral outlook. You can choose to have a different outlook on physics."

Or, alternatively "You cannot simply choose to no longer acknowledge that some of your actions are hurtful to others, and have your actions no longer be hurtful to others. Likewise, you cannot simply choose to ignore the law of gravity, and no longer be pulled towards the earth."

Actually, it is perfectly valid for the point I'm making.

Your point is not arguing against my actual point, which is:
Morality doesn't exist without human minds around to make it exist, and is defined arbitrarily.Essentially, if we all die tomorrow so does the concept of Morality. It does not exist in and of itself.

You are arguing against some point that human minds and emotions don't exist, which isn't a point I'm making at all. They do. They invented neat things like Philosophy and Science, which also don't exist outside of human minds. (Science is simply a tool used to examine the natural world, after all.)

Unlike Morality, Justice, and Philosophy, things like Gravity, Heat, and The Strong Nuclear Force will carry on without us, as evidenced by the fact they carry on even when we aren't aware of their existence yet/aren't looking.

Hence, it's existence is arbitrary. There isn't a Moral Truth that exists without us around.

An oddly good way to parse out what does and doesn't exist is to see if you can subject a rock to the thing you're thinking of with measurable effect. If yes, that thing definitely exists.
I can subject a rock to heat (make it hot)
I can subject a rock to a lack of heat (make it cold)
I can subject a rock to gravity (just let it sit there)
I can subject a rock to momentum (chuck it)
I cannot subject a rock to utilitarian morality. (Yell ethical dilemmas at it all day, the thing won't react in any way except maybe getting very slightly wet from your spit or atomic-scale wind erosion from your voice. But it's not going to do anything else.)

In D&D you can subject a rock to Goodness and have it react. (Hallow spell, for instance, or enchanting the rock to be Good-aligned.)

You can't do the same with a rock in real life, regardless of how many charitable people you have sit on it.

That's the difference between D&D and real life. If Saint Saintly sits on a chair, that chair becomes religiously important and maybe culturally important.... but it's still just a chair. Remove the religion and the culture and the meaning behind the chair vanishes with it. Because that's a human thing, and not an intrinsic property of the object.

LudicSavant
2016-09-10, 08:17 PM
By "effect on the physical world" I mean an effect that exists even when enforcers are no longer around. So, not what the words "effect on the physical world" mean at all. :smallsigh:


Your point is not arguing against my actual point, which is:
Morality doesn't exist without human minds around to make it exist That is not the only point that you have attempted to make. It certainly isn't the point that we are rejecting. Thinking that this is the point that we are rejecting would be a misunderstanding on your part, not the other way around.

ImNotTrevor, we were responding to your posts on the first page, where you made various statements about the applicability of things like logical reasoning and objectivity to morality. Like the third paragraph of this one. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=21185985&postcount=13) You then made various other claims in order to try to support these claims, none of which have... well, actually supported them.


Morality doesn't exist without Minds. Let me ask you a question: What do you think is the significance or relevance of this point to the topic?

I believe I have already made it clear in my previous posts why this is a moot point, as have other posters.

You appear to be treating "doesn't exist without minds" as somehow being "not objective," "not logical," or "not scientific."

Here are some things that don't exist without minds which can fairly be said to be logical, objective, empirical, or scientific: Neuroscience, neurobiology, neuropathology, cognitive science, psychology, psychiatry, sociology, history, anthropology, archaeology... need I go on?

In short, saying that morality doesn't exist without minds does not refute anyone claiming that it can be logical, objective, empirical, or scientific (and there are, in fact, an awful lot of scientists making such claims (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_of_morality)). Also this guy (http://lesswrong.com/lw/sm/the_meaning_of_right/).

Kriton
2016-09-10, 08:42 PM
My argument is quite valid; your first sentence even backs it up: morality is an objective, mindless force of nature. It is the set of rules which have been discovered by natural selection to work. They are ingrained in the laws of nature and in human nature. The only way to change them is to change human nature...or to change the laws of nature. The former is probably easier, and I wish you luck if you seek to try.

I'm not sure you are not trolling here, but I will try to answer.

Generally speaking natural selection can't discover things. It's mindless, it's a more or less a phenomenon that can be observed when studying a population of living beings over the course of generations. You seem to suggest that morality should increase the evolutionary fitness of mankind. Eugenics was based on that notion, good job there. Regardless of that though, that doesn't make morality a force of nature even if you were correct.

From wikipedia:

"A force of nature is a natural phenomenon that humans cannot control.

In physics, there are four fundamental forces.
An event outside of human control for which no one can be held responsible

"

"Morality (from the Latin moralitas "manner, character, proper behavior") is the differentiation of intentions, decisions, and actions between those that are distinguished as proper and those that are improper."

Forces of nature are events for which no one can be held responsible, morality is about the propriety of intentions, decisions and actions. Forces of nature have nothing to do with intentions, or decisions (edit: or propriety for that matter).

Now you introduced the Laws of Nature in the conversation, I'm curious as to how you define the Laws of Nature.


Again, they are not laws in the sense that you are compelled to follow them. They are laws in the causal sense: follow their strictures and guidance, and you will succeed more than if you do not.

It appears the Laws of Nature can be casual.


The rules in your car's owner's manual are things you can easily ignore, but the consequences for doing so will lead to your car breaking down faster and more often than if you do not.

The Laws of Nature are suggestions that we are advised to follow.


In a sense, morals are like the rules about freezing water: if you bring water to below a certain temperature, it will freeze. It doesn't matter if you brought it down to that temperature out of carelessness or through deliberation. It doesn't matter if you think it unfair that making water that cold freezes it. The act of doing so makes it freeze.

"the rules about freezing water", are not casual and are not suggestions to be followed. Water is mindless.

Morality though is all about what we think, it starts and ends in our brains so it's nothing like the freezing of water. (temperature is not the only variable that affects it though)

I'm getting the feeling you are trolling here. All your arguments are invalid.

P.S. I don't need luck to change human nature. I have no such intent, I don't even know what human nature is.

Max_Killjoy
2016-09-10, 09:08 PM
I'm not sure you are not trolling here, but I will try to answer.

Generally speaking natural selection can't discover things. It's mindless, it's a more or less a phenomenon that can be observed when studying a population of living beings over the course of generations. You seem to suggest that morality should increase the evolutionary fitness of mankind. Eugenics was based on that notion, good job there. Regardless of that though, that doesn't make morality a force of nature even if you were correct.

From wikipedia:

"A force of nature is a natural phenomenon that humans cannot control.

In physics, there are four fundamental forces.
An event outside of human control for which no one can be held responsible

"

"Morality (from the Latin moralitas "manner, character, proper behavior") is the differentiation of intentions, decisions, and actions between those that are distinguished as proper and those that are improper."

Forces of nature are events for which no one can be held responsible, morality is about the propriety of intentions, decisions and actions. Forces of nature have nothing to do with intentions, or decisions (edit: or propriety for that matter).

Now you introduced the Laws of Nature in the conversation, I'm curious as to how you define the Laws of Nature.



It appears the Laws of Nature can be casual.



The Laws of Nature are suggestions that we are advised to follow.



"the rules about freezing water", are not casual and are not suggestions to be followed. Water is mindless.

Morality though is all about what we think, it starts and ends in our brains so it's nothing like the freezing of water. (temperature is not the only variable that affects it though)

I'm getting the feeling you are trolling here. All your arguments are invalid.

P.S. I don't need luck to change human nature. I have no such intent, I don't even know what human nature is.


We might passing by the land of Natural Law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_law)... keep walking, and don't go in... it's a silly place (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_Law_Party).

Mechalich
2016-09-10, 09:12 PM
Fantasy can have, and usually does have, different inherent moral underpinnings compared to reality. For a simple example, you can write a fantasy series where a strictly Biblical literalist interpretation of morality is fact, with all the implications thereof. And of course, this has been done, most obviously in the Left Behind series of books.

In fantasy you can setup a moral law that is superior to human judgment. You cannot do this in reality because human judgment is all there is.

Now this can be done in perverse and tragic ways that creates situations where the moral incentive in universe is absolutely horrific to the outside human observer from out-of-universe - things like murdering little infant orcs as a good act and so forth, and this is in fact quite common given how difficult it is to create a moral structure out of whole cloth and to have it interact with situations that have no parallel in active human experience like dealing with other species. Of course it's not like those humans who believe in objective moral structures that are superior to human judgment (which is the majority of humans who have ever lived) haven't come up with their own horrors in the name of their moral systems.

Fantasy, as a genre, generally has objective moral systems - systems where there is a higher law than human judgment - which makes sense given the roots of fantasy in mythology and the deep faith in objective moral systems by founding voices in modern fantasy. Tolkien wasn't as obvious about it as C.S. Lewis, but LotR is deeply Christian.

RazorChain
2016-09-10, 09:40 PM
I must admit that I'm kinda with ImNotTrevor on this. Just like Tagore said about beauty...it can't exist without mind to appreciate it and the same thing goes for morality.

If you have no way to separate good from evil then you can't be good or evil. Are animals evil? Is a lion evil? Is a shark evil? No because those beings can't discern between good or evil. Good and Evil to them is merely survival, surviving is good, not surviving is bad.

The Universe doesn't care about good or evil. It's a distinction the human mind has made. I mean it might be debatable that human life is good for the planet earth at all.


Of course when we are talking fantasy rpg where there is a higher power that makes the distinction of objective good or evil then it best works in monotheism or dualism. Polytheism is kinda all over the place with each "superior judgement" in it's own corner trying to dictate things.

Religion has often a set of rules which are considered good but when you have lots of deities then those rules might conflict. To the god of Death euthanasia might be considered good but to the godess of Life it might be abhorrent. So which is right?

I think it works best by using virtues like in ancient times, like the platonic virtues of temperance, prudence, courage and justice or the Roman virtues which are too many to list.

ImNotTrevor
2016-09-11, 10:52 AM
So, not what the words "effect on the physical world" mean at all. :smallsigh:
I apologize for not communicating with utterly perfect clarity 100% of the time. Please forgive my horrible slight against your intelligence.
Let's not delve into being sarcastic and passive aggressive about little nitpicks.



That is not the only point that you have attempted to make. It certainly isn't the point that we are rejecting. Thinking that this is the point that we are rejecting would be a misunderstanding on your part, not the other way around.

ImNotTrevor, we were responding to your posts on the first page, where you made various statements about the applicability of things like logical reasoning and objectivity to morality. Like the third paragraph of this one. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=21185985&postcount=13) You then made various other claims in order to try to support these claims, none of which have... well, actually supported them.
You've asserted that minds are observable phenomenon. Yes they are, more or less. We can't really interpret or translate individual synapses firing into actual thoughts just yet. (In the most advanced MRI's we're capable of, one pixel is 400,000-ish neurons. We can't even view each individual neuron firing yet in the human brain, so the study of thought as the firing of neurons is still beyond us.

For that purpose we use Psychology, which doesn't really claim to be a hard science at all. Neuroscience is more medical than psychological. There is a reason why you need to study medicine to be a psychiatrist, but not to be a psychologist.

Essentially, just saying that you can study it doesn't mean you can study it Objectively.




You appear to be treating "doesn't exist without minds" as somehow being "not objective," "not logical," or "not scientific."

Here are some things that don't exist without minds which can fairly be said to be logical, objective, empirical, or scientific: Neuroscience, neurobiology, neuropathology, cognitive science, psychology, psychiatry, sociology, history, anthropology, archaeology... need I go on?


Objective ALSO means "existing independent of the mind." As evidenced by this definition from Merriam Webster:
"of, relating to, or being an object, phenomenon, or condition in the realm of sensible experience independent of individual thought and perceptible by all observers : having reality independent of the mind"

So actually, my usage of Objective is correct.

[QUOTE)
In short, saying that morality doesn't exist without minds does not refute anyone claiming that it can be logical, objective, empirical, or scientific
[/QUOTE]

"of, relating to, or being an object, phenomenon, or condition in the realm of sensible experience independent of individual thought and perceptible by all observers : having reality independent of the mind"

Refuted. My usage is correct.

We done here?

LudicSavant
2016-09-11, 01:29 PM
I apologize for not communicating with utterly perfect clarity 100% of the time. Please forgive my horrible slight against your intelligence.
Let's not delve into being sarcastic and passive aggressive about little nitpicks. From my perspective, you appear to have been sarcastic and passive aggressive (or perhaps even openly aggressive) not only in this very comment, but throughout the entire conversation. Please do not project that sarcasm and aggression onto me.



Neato burrito how you

Excellent Begging the Question

NECESSARILY

Good luck with that.

Come on, you're obviously smart enough to see the obvious differences there.

Getting the difference, now?
We done here?

Sorry to burst any bubbles, but that's the case in reality.
and so on and so forth.


We can't really interpret or translate individual synapses firing into actual thoughts just yet. (In the most advanced MRI's we're capable of, one pixel is 400,000-ish neurons. We can't even view each individual neuron firing yet in the human brain, so the study of thought as the firing of neurons is still beyond us.

For that purpose we use Psychology, which doesn't really claim to be a hard science at all. Neuroscience is more medical than psychological. There is a reason why you need to study medicine to be a psychiatrist, but not to be a psychologist.

Essentially, just saying that you can study it doesn't mean you can study it Objectively.

This is in not an accurate depiction of the vast interdisciplinary field of neuroscience. This is what neuroscience is. (https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Fundamentals_of_Neuroscience/What_is_Neuroscience)


Refuted.

Not even slightly. There are several glaring flaws in your reasoning.

First of all, the definition you have been using in your arguments throughout this thread (doesn't exist if all minds don't exist) is not the same as the Merriam Webster definition you quoted ("of, relating to, or being an object, phenomenon, or condition in the realm of sensible experience independent of individual thought and perceptible by all observers").

Here's an example:
Brains don't exist if all minds don't exist. (Fits your definition of subjective)
Brains exist independent of an individual thought, and are perceptible by all observers. I can put one in a pan and poke it and prod it and everything. I can confirm that they are squishy. You should try it sometime! The consistency is much softer than most of the meat you'd see in the market. (Fits Merriam Webster's definition of objective)

Second of all, you've apparently been using multiple definitions throughout the thread. The definition you quoted in your immediately prior post was definition 1b in Merriam Webster's online dictionary. The definition you used in post #13 was definition 3a in that same dictionary.

Third of all, you originally didn't just claim that you had a valid definition, you claimed that someone else didn't.

If someone says "this is objective" and you say "no it isn't!" then you need to refute the definition that they are using, not just note that there's another definition that they're not using which means something different.

For instance, if someone says X+2=4 if X=2, it would not be a successful refutation to say "well, X=1 is a valid definition of X, refuted! Are we done here?"

Fourth of all, your statements made quite a few more claims than just whether or not it could be claimed to be subjective. It included statements like

They're not based on logical reasoning.

the rules continue to be arbitrary.

Your many arguments have never provided support for such conclusions.

So no, you have not refuted me. In fact, you have introduced several more problems to your argument.


We done here?

Probably. I feel I have spent too much time on this already.

Segev
2016-09-12, 08:54 PM
I will not yet accuse anybody of deliberate misunderstanding; it is a little confusing.

My assertion is that the objective moral rules are of the form, "If you do this, the consequences will be that." Not that you are as unable to disobey the strictures suggested as you are to disobey gravity.

The law of nature part is the consequence of your choice. Example moral rule: "You shouldn't jump off this cliff." The reason is that, if you do, you will be badly injured or even die. The law of nature part is "if you do, you will be badly injured or die because you will fall."

Since people are deciding to question whether "you will die if you do this" is in fact a detrimental effect, I will simply state that the moral rules are the guidelines to follow if you desire certain results, or behaviors to avoid if you desire to avoid certain results.

There are consequences for actions. Objective moral laws are the guidelines that let you know what actions to take if you desire (or desire to avoid) particular consequences. The law of nature is that, if you make a choice, the choice's consequences will come about.

Mechalich
2016-09-12, 11:40 PM
The law of nature part is the consequence of your choice. Example moral rule: "You shouldn't jump off this cliff." The reason is that, if you do, you will be badly injured or even die. The law of nature part is "if you do, you will be badly injured or die because you will fall."

Your proposed example is not a moral or ethical scenario at all, it's merely a case of cause and effect. Falling applies gravity based acceleration to an object and when it strikes another object a portion of the accumulated force is redistributed through the object, which in the case of animals, tends to cause damage to tissues. That's a physics problem, not an ethical one.

Thrudd
2016-09-13, 10:27 AM
I will not yet accuse anybody of deliberate misunderstanding; it is a little confusing.

My assertion is that the objective moral rules are of the form, "If you do this, the consequences will be that." Not that you are as unable to disobey the strictures suggested as you are to disobey gravity.

The law of nature part is the consequence of your choice. Example moral rule: "You shouldn't jump off this cliff." The reason is that, if you do, you will be badly injured or even die. The law of nature part is "if you do, you will be badly injured or die because you will fall."

Since people are deciding to question whether "you will die if you do this" is in fact a detrimental effect, I will simply state that the moral rules are the guidelines to follow if you desire certain results, or behaviors to avoid if you desire to avoid certain results.

There are consequences for actions. Objective moral laws are the guidelines that let you know what actions to take if you desire (or desire to avoid) particular consequences. The law of nature is that, if you make a choice, the choice's consequences will come about.

So what are some real examples of objective moral laws as you perceive them? It seems like you are suggesting that there are "physics" of human behavior that can be predicted with as much certainty and act with the same consistency as does the action of gravity or other physical forces.

"Do X, and Y will always happen"

Like "if you hurt people, they will have negative emotional reactions"?

It's hard to think of any that would work without exception or without specific cultural frameworks and conditions.

OldTrees1
2016-09-13, 11:58 AM
My assertion is that the objective moral rules are of the form, "If you do this, the consequences will be that."

Pardon my ignorance, but isn't that a purely descriptive statement and thus not the same kind of statement as what others would refer to as "moral rules"?

Max_Killjoy
2016-09-13, 12:19 PM
Pardon my ignorance, but isn't that a purely descriptive statement and thus not the same kind of statement as what others would refer to as "moral rules"?


Plus... I've never seen -- not one single example -- a moral outcome that was of that cause-and-effect, objective "if X then Y" sort.

Quertus
2016-09-13, 04:22 PM
Exactly

In DnD it would be like this

Killing a good sentinent being is Evil
Killing a neutral sentinent being is Evil
Killing a evil sentinent being is Good

I think this about sums up the Good/Evil axis in DnD

And this is why we murderhobo everyone we meet, in order to maintain our neutral alignment.


Morality does not exist in and of itself without humans/sentients around to make it a thing. If we all die tomorrow in a big meteor impact, the force we call Gravity will carry on without us. Morality won't. (Not on Earth, anyways.)

And if all matter in the universe disappears tomorrow, gravity won't be a thing, either.

Or will it?


You're defining the words, not tabooing them, but okay.

If I say that the way I respond in this forum at times parallels the way I roleplay certain characters that I've played in role-playing games - especially my signature wizard, for whom this account is named... what is the value in restating that without using words like "character", "roleplay", and "game"?


Okay. To both of these, I have a nitpick. That nitpick is that the question "What one ought to do?" requires a context in order to parse. What should one do in a situation? What are you trying to accomplish? Etc etc. Coherent, internally consistent moral philosophies provide these contexts, but internet alignment arguments often don't.

One of the reasons some people think the things we call moral questions are unanswerable is because they render them in hopelessly vague ways (often in ways so hopelessly vague that they're not even an intelligible question). "What should I do?" isn't a complete question, moral or otherwise. "What ought I do to avoid hurting Mel's feelings in such and such situation?" or "How ought I carry out the prisoner sentencing in order to avert the robot overlord's wrath?" is, and can thus be discussed.

Often, when people say "What ought I do?" in casual conversation the context is implied; we humans are good at finishing incomplete thoughts with assumptions in order to make them compile (it's one of the skills you sorta have to unlearn to be good at computer programming). But that should not be mistaken for thinking that a context isn't required for the question to be intelligible. Does that make sense?

Basically, an awful lot of philosophical discussions that seem hopelessly unsolvable become simple matters when people actually bother to stick to specific contexts instead of taking refuge in overgeneralized vagaries.

To parallel, "'what is RAW' requires context to parse. You can ask, 'what is RAW on initiative?' or 'what is RAW on polymorph?', but 'what is RAW?' is the reason why so many internet debates about rules are pointless."

I suspect it's easy to see why I might not agree with that stance. Unless you agree on what counts as a primary source, what is allowed to change the rules, etc, you cannot come to a consensus on what RAW is on a given point. You can give one person's particular point of view on what constitutes RAW on this question, just like you can give one morality system's stance on what is moral.

Thus, "what is moral" is a valid - and much more interesting - question.

And one which must be answered before you can answer those other little questions satisfactorily.


Are you aware of the concept of an end in and of itself or of the concept of a final end?

In Ethics "Ought" is often used to describe right/wrong, not in some conditional (if you want to Y) or instrumental (in order to Y) sense, but in a final sense.

Would you say that the prisoner's dilemma provides an example of final ends ought?


It seems like what segev is proposing is a species-specific morality which is comprised of those behaviors that collectively promote that species' survival.

I think this is where the system breaks down.



I never argued that minds don't exist. Only that Morality doesn't exist without Minds.

Morality doesn't exist without human minds around to make it exist, and is defined arbitrarily.Essentially, if we all die tomorrow so does the concept of Morality. It does not exist in and of itself.

Do all unicorns have horns?

One branch of philosophy says no, unicorns do not exist, therefore you cannot claim that all unicorns have horns.

Another claims that, by definition, unicorns have horns, therefore, yes, all unicorns have horns.

Philosophers do not unanimously agree with you that existence is required.

The number 3 exists, whether or not we have named it, whether or not we exist to perceive it.

Similarly, the answer to certain mathematical, logical, moral constructs, such as the prisoner's dilemma, will remain the same, regardless of whether sentient beings exist to analyze it.


So what are some real examples of objective moral laws as you perceive them? It seems like you are suggesting that there are "physics" of human behavior that can be predicted with as much certainty and act with the same consistency as does the action of gravity or other physical forces.

"Do X, and Y will always happen"

Like "if you hurt people, they will have negative emotional reactions"?

It's hard to think of any that would work without exception or without specific cultural frameworks and conditions.

How about, "if your society values suicide..."?


Pardon my ignorance, but isn't that a purely descriptive statement and thus not the same kind of statement as what others would refer to as "moral rules"?

I think Segev is proposing An answer to your question, "what is moral?". And his answer is, "that which allows the species and civilization to continue is moral".

Thrudd
2016-09-13, 05:23 PM
How about, "if your society values suicide..."?

I think Segev is proposing An answer to your question, "what is moral?". And his answer is, "that which allows the species and civilization to continue is moral".

What is the next part of that statement? If your society values suicide...then there will be a higher rate of suicide? (which doesn't really mean anything) or, It won't survive because too many people will kill themselves without procreating? (not plausible)

We have had societies that value or promote suicide in certain situations, and their descendants have survived. So what is the condition where having a prohibition on suicide is an objective moral rule? That suicide is not just valued, but encouraged over procreating? That doesn't seem like a plausible scenario which would ever develop a need for a rule.

I guess we could say that it is a good rule for a species, however unnecessary it may seem. "Don't commit suicide before you procreate."


That which allows the species to survive changes over time according to environmental conditions. How do we define/delineate civilization in order to judge what has allowed one to survive? We either have not yet seen civilization end and therefore can't judge what behavior might contribute to its end (since humans have engaged in all manner of "immoral" behavior, yet civilization is still here) or we haven't seen one that has survived and therefore haven't yet found a set of moral rules that have been successful, depending on how you view it. We don't have any examples of other civilized species to compare to. 10,000 years is a blip, a tiny speck of time in the universe. Have we been at all successful as a species or a civilization yet? I don't think we've been around long enough to tell.

LudicSavant
2016-09-13, 07:19 PM
To parallel, "'what is RAW' requires context to parse. You can ask, 'what is RAW on initiative?' or 'what is RAW on polymorph?', but 'what is RAW?' is the reason why so many internet debates about rules are pointless."

I suspect it's easy to see why I might not agree with that stance. Unless you agree on what counts as a primary source, what is allowed to change the rules, etc, you cannot come to a consensus on what RAW is on a given point.

You mean providing a proper context?


If I say that the way I respond in this forum at times parallels the way I roleplay certain characters that I've played in role-playing games - especially my signature wizard, for whom this account is named... what is the value in restating that without using words like "character", "roleplay", and "game"?


This is thoroughly covered in this sequence of articles: https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/A_Human's_Guide_to_Words

I recommend reading the entire thing.

AMFV
2016-09-13, 07:32 PM
Plus... I've never seen -- not one single example -- a moral outcome that was of that cause-and-effect, objective "if X then Y" sort.

Well you clearly haven't read most Greek Philosophers, Kant, or many other moralists. Generally they posit morality in terms of the outcome, or they argue that morality only due to the outcome is a worse form of morality. Depending on which particular camp they fall into.

In the end it's harder to make morality as science work. Not because you can't apply logic or reasoning to morality, but because generally "What is Good" tends to have a lot of experiential baggage, and so perception of it will vary from individual. Also most moral systems take into account intentions in one way or another, since people can lie about their intentions (changing the moral nature of an act) it becomes very hard to assume that something happened because of a moral action one way or the other.

Generally, the idea of a universal Good tends to be wrapped up in all sorts of forum forbidden topics. The closest I've seen to an argument for that from a non-theist perspective is Kant. Although to be fair what Segev is discussing comes close. The same holds true of Aristotle (although I'm not as intimately familiar with him)

OldTrees1
2016-09-13, 08:21 PM
Would you say that the prisoner's dilemma provides an example of final ends ought?

No (or at least I don't see the connection). The Prisoners' Dilemma is a description of a 2 person game (in the Game Theory meaning of the word).

Unless you are referring to how Game Theory simplifies humans so that the simulated humans treat their payouts as an end into itself (aka "You ought to adopt the strategy that leads to the greatest payout for you").


I think Segev is proposing An answer to your question, "what is moral?". And his answer is, "that which allows the species and civilization to continue is moral".

This is one of my 2 suspicions. However as someone that cares about both Philosophy and Biology, I want to double check that we are not seeing someone mistake Selection for Morality.


Well you clearly haven't read most Greek Philosophers, Kant, or many other moralists. Generally they posit morality in terms of the outcome, or they argue that morality only due to the outcome is a worse form of morality. Depending on which particular camp they fall into.

Since you have read the works of those philosophers, then I think you would agree that they made prescriptive statements rather than just descriptive statements. I think Max_Killjoy was referring to the descriptive nature of Segev's comments I was questioning.

Max_Killjoy
2016-09-13, 09:34 PM
Well you clearly haven't read most Greek Philosophers, Kant, or many other moralists. Generally they posit morality in terms of the outcome, or they argue that morality only due to the outcome is a worse form of morality. Depending on which particular camp they fall into.)

Only that's not the sort of claim that I was questioning.

"If you do this, the consequences will be that."

It's a sort of "karmic" claim about the universe and morality that even a few moments of reflecting on news coverage or the study of history should squash thoroughly.

AMFV
2016-09-13, 10:04 PM
Only that's not the sort of claim that I was questioning.

"If you do this, the consequences will be that."

It's a sort of "karmic" claim about the universe and morality that even a few moments of reflecting on news coverage or the study of history should squash thoroughly.

Well that depends entirely on when you think the karmic comeuppance will happen... In D&D for example, that karmic payback happens after death when souls go to whatever afterlife they deserve. That's a pretty clear karmic comeuppance, of course, we can't really discuss the real world alternatives, but they're fairly clear on examination.

Heck, you could even argue, as Segev did, that survival is the Karmic reward for "right" behavior, and that "right" leads to the propagation of the species as a whole. That being the case the karmic reward is present in-universe. Provided that you accept that particular definition of "right".

And to be fair many arguments of the sort you cite are prevalent in certain religions and philosophies as well. Of course, I can't go into detail on which ones, but they are present. Philosophy-wise there are many political philosophies that hold that a certain type of behavior will lead to certain specific outcomes, of course, real life tends to be more muddled, but that's true in even the hardest of the sciences.


Edit:


Since you have read the works of those philosophers, then I think you would agree that they made prescriptive statements rather than just descriptive statements. I think Max_Killjoy was referring to the descriptive nature of Segev's comments I was questioning.

So it is, serves me right for not reading the entirety of the thread and skimming it. Although there are philosophers who've made descriptive statements in the same vein. Mostly political philosophers at that point though, and therefore pushing themselves thoroughly out of our realm of discussion.

Max_Killjoy
2016-09-13, 10:09 PM
Well that depends entirely on when you think the karmic comeuppance will happen... In D&D for example, that karmic payback happens after death when souls go to whatever afterlife they deserve. That's a pretty clear karmic comeuppance, of course, we can't really discuss the real world alternatives, but they're fairly clear on examination.

Heck, you could even argue, as Segev did, that survival is the Karmic reward for "right" behavior, and that "right" leads to the propagation of the species as a whole. That being the case the karmic reward is present in-universe. Provided that you accept that particular definition of "right".

And to be fair many arguments of the sort you cite are prevalent in certain religions and philosophies as well. Of course, I can't go into detail on which ones, but they are present. Philosophy-wise there are many political philosophies that hold that a certain type of behavior will lead to certain specific outcomes, of course, real life tends to be more muddled, but that's true in even the hardest of the sciences.


While I don't think I should post them, it's very easy to start listing off acts that are positive or neutral under the standard of "propagation of the species as a whole", and yet are clearly morally repugnant to most of us reading this forum.

On the "karma" issue, I should clarify that I'm struggling a bit to find a way to describe the apparent claim that actions have moral effects/consequences that are immediate, clear, and deterministic, in the same way that they have physical effects. I am commenting on the descriptive claim, which as far as I can tell, is clearly false.

AMFV
2016-09-13, 10:20 PM
While I don't think I should post them, it's very easy to start listing off acts that are positive or neutral under the standard of "propagation of the species as a whole", and yet are clearly morally repugnant to most of us reading this forum.


Well that may not be the case, for everybody. After all, many different people have different moral compasses. And if propagation of the species is the highest good, that would mean that your moral repugnance is wrong, it's a mis-aimed disgust. A psychosis in that particular sort of universe. Particularly since it wouldn't help to propagate the species and society as a whole.

Now as a note... I don't agree with Segev's reasoning, but if you assume he's correct, then that would mean that you finding actions that would ensure survival of society as morally repugnant would just be wrong... probably even mentally wrong.



On the "karma" issue, I should clarify that I'm struggling a bit to find a way to describe the apparent claim that actions have moral effects/consequences that are immediate, clear, and deterministic, in the same way that they have physical effects. I am commenting on the descriptive claim, which as far as I can tell, is clearly false.

Well that depends entirely on what sort of descriptive claims have been made. Segev hasn't really made any, he's only claimed that it would be possible to make some. Since he hasn't made any such claims, the veracity of his claims can't really be verified. Now the problem is that what you're looking for, the kind of accuracy you're aiming for, isn't really found in real life outside of a lab. Even the physical sciences in their application tends to have a lot of unclear, delayed, and confusing results, which doesn't necessarily mean that they aren't of good quality, it just makes them harder to evaluate, and morality is a very difficult subject.

Mechalich
2016-09-14, 05:14 AM
Well that may not be the case, for everybody. After all, many different people have different moral compasses.

Well, the thing is, the idea of objective morality generally precludes the idea of multiple moral compasses, or in fact moral compasses at all. That there is some set of moral rulings about what is right and wrong and that actions can be mapped onto those rules and determined to be good or evil. In such a system what people think about the rules ultimately doesn't matter, they exist independently of human thought and culture and even evolutionary psychology. In such a system people arguing about what is 'good' does not change what is actually good any more than people arguing about 'which way is north' actually changes the direction of the north pole.

Now, you can have an objective moral system and not have any idea about the moral implications of a particular action. There's nothing that says the moral arbitration has to be clear or known, or unable to shift according to context, intent, and other factors (the use of the Force as a moral arbiter in Star Wars has wrestled with this over the years).

What most people mean by subjective morality, by contrast, is that different people can view different ethical scenarios different and hold vastly different values. You can even have different people who hold directly contradictory values both will still be 'good' people. Moral codes are culturally generated and map to the needs and traits of cultures, there are no absolute properties for them to be based on.

So far as can be determined by the tools available to human science, the 'subjective' situation is the one that holds in the real world. Everything we experience is the interaction of four fundamental forces (gravity, electromagnetism, strong, and weak) with a set of fundamental particles as governed by the rules of quantum mechanics. As there are no moral rules built into that system, the universe lacks any fundamental moral properties from which a system of 'objective' morality can be derived.

Quertus
2016-09-14, 07:19 AM
No (or at least I don't see the connection). The Prisoners' Dilemma is a description of a 2 person game (in the Game Theory meaning of the word).

Unless you are referring to how Game Theory simplifies humans so that the simulated humans treat their payouts as an end into itself (aka "You ought to adopt the strategy that leads to the greatest payout for you").

Yes, that's what I meant. Sorry for being unclear.

I imagine it's actually about the opposite of what you are looking for, to be honest, but thought it might be a good foundation from which to explain what you were really looking for, at least.

AMFV
2016-09-14, 08:33 AM
Well, the thing is, the idea of objective morality generally precludes the idea of multiple moral compasses, or in fact moral compasses at all. That there is some set of moral rulings about what is right and wrong and that actions can be mapped onto those rules and determined to be good or evil. In such a system what people think about the rules ultimately doesn't matter, they exist independently of human thought and culture and even evolutionary psychology. In such a system people arguing about what is 'good' does not change what is actually good any more than people arguing about 'which way is north' actually changes the direction of the north pole.

That's not true at all. People have differing perceptions of gravity after all, despite that being an objective force, and there are many other things that would be affected by perception. The difference is that in a system where Objective Morality exists, where there's a difference in perspective, there's not a chance (as much anyways, depending on situational complexity) of both sides being correct, only one side would typically correct.

After all, people's innate compass-compass, doesn't always tell people which way magnetic north is, and I have seen people arguing over that when they've been lost. The same way that a person's moral compass could point in a different than correct direction. That's what I was saying. If there was objective morality as Segev suggested that if Max were to find something in that morality to be wrong, morally, then that would mean that Max's perception and his revulsion at that would be the thing in error. That's what I was saying, and in Segev's particular set of argumentation would likely indicate some vestigial evolutionary flaws. Not that Max would be correct in his assertion, only that in a system with objective morality, seeing something as reprehensible doesn't necessarily make it so, the same way that physically seeing something can be mislead by optical illusions.



Now, you can have an objective moral system and not have any idea about the moral implications of a particular action. There's nothing that says the moral arbitration has to be clear or known, or unable to shift according to context, intent, and other factors (the use of the Force as a moral arbiter in Star Wars has wrestled with this over the years).


Or you can have an objective moral system and have the wrong idea about the moral implications of a particular action. Which is what I was discussing.



What most people mean by subjective morality, by contrast, is that different people can view different ethical scenarios different and hold vastly different values. You can even have different people who hold directly contradictory values both will still be 'good' people. Moral codes are culturally generated and map to the needs and traits of cultures, there are no absolute properties for them to be based on.


True, which is what I said my very first post in this thread, where I pointed out that objective and subjective morality were contradictions-in-terms and could not be reconciled. I understand what subjective morality is, and wasn't suggesting that subjective and objective morality could be applied equally, I was suggesting that in a universe with objective morality, subjective perception would still cause people to have errors regarding what was objectively moral.

Take this for example, you can pick up two objects and try to determine their relative weight, that's going to be not as accurate as weighing them, because your perception may be flawed (one arm may be stronger than the other). The same holds true of moral discourse in an objective moral reality. We can perceive gravity, differently than it actually is.



So far as can be determined by the tools available to human science, the 'subjective' situation is the one that holds in the real world. Everything we experience is the interaction of four fundamental forces (gravity, electromagnetism, strong, and weak) with a set of fundamental particles as governed by the rules of quantum mechanics. As there are no moral rules built into that system, the universe lacks any fundamental moral properties from which a system of 'objective' morality can be derived.

Actually as far as I can tell, no scientists have really attempted to address moral conditions. It's more of a topic for Philosophy than for science anyways. There certainly could be moral laws that are physically present though (they're finding new particles every day after all). And we do not understand enough of the universe to make a blanket claim of a negative when something is pretty culturally present. Now certainly it would be difficult to make solid proofs in the other direction as well, but that's mostly again, the domain of philosophy. You sometimes see sociology making claims in that area based on universal laws. Or you could Natural Law folks like what Segev is proposing. But there are many physical laws that are not necessarily implied by the existence of the four fundamental forces, yet are true throughout, in science. So it's entirely possible that a moral law exists, we simply don't have the tools to measure it.

Additionally, I find this line of argumentation rather distasteful. Many of the arguments for objective morality require us to go towards several forum prohibited topics, but when people argue against, they can completely sidestep that, that strikes me as being not entirely in-line with an attempt at solid argumentation, and strikes me as being more an attempt to create a setting where Subjective Morality is treated as the default. Which isn't a very scientific stance, to be sure. Sciences require treating all possible options as having equal weight until there is sufficient evidence. As you've pointed out there is very little moral evidences that we can physically measure, which means that there's as much chance of having an objective moral reality as a subjective one.

ImNotTrevor
2016-09-14, 09:44 AM
This is in not an accurate depiction of the vast interdisciplinary field of neuroscience. This is what neuroscience is. (https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Fundamentals_of_Neuroscience/What_is_Neuroscience)



Not even slightly. There are several glaring flaws in your reasoning.

First of all, the definition you have been using in your arguments throughout this thread (doesn't exist if all minds don't exist) is not the same as the Merriam Webster definition you quoted ("of, relating to, or being an object, phenomenon, or condition in the realm of sensible experience independent of individual thought and perceptible by all observers").
That's not the definition I've been using. That has been an example I've used to show that it does not exist outside of human thought.


Brains don't exist if all minds don't exist.

This is a logical leap the definition I didn't use can't actually reach without using one very broad definition for mind that I still don't think covers things like insects, since it requires adaptability in thought and lots of organisms with brains don't really have that.



Brains exist independent of an individual thought, and are perceptible by all observers. I can put one in a pan and poke it and prod it and everything. I can confirm that they are squishy. You should try it sometime! The consistency is much softer than most of the meat you'd see in the market.
Yes. And since I've only used "morality stops existing if all HUMANS stop existing" as my example, this does nothing to counter that assertion, and actually does nothing since that's not a definition, it's an example.


Second of all, you've apparently been using multiple definitions throughout the thread. The definition you quoted in your immediately prior post was definition 1b in Merriam Webster's online dictionary. The definition you used in post #13 was definition 3a in that same dictionary.[/QUOTE)
I have quoted that definition before, and by multiple definitions of Objective, Morality doesn't hit the mark. Especially in the case of non-emotional.

For example, the biggest criticism of the proposed Objective Morality system that you sent me is that it ignores the difference between a Fact and a Value. Meaning, there is no way to prove their measuring stick for "goodness" is the right one since it's an arbitrarily value judgement.

[QUOTE]
Third of all, you originally didn't just claim that you had a valid definition, you claimed that someone else didn't.
I've explained why the burden of proof isn't on me already, but feel free to assume it is. There has been no proof of objective morality, either. Since the burden of proof isn't on me....
:D



If someone says "this is objective" and you say "no it isn't!" then you need to refute the definition that they are using, not just note that there's another definition that they're not using which means something different.
As I've said, the morality being used within their game world IS objective and that's A-ok.
Just don't believe some schmoe on Youtube who claims to have solved Morality when he hasn't.
Or any other schmoe who claims to have found what Morality Objectively Is And Is Not, especially on a roleplaying forum and without some pretty damn vetted scientific backing.

I can claim there's a teapot orbiting just on the opposite side of the earth. I can have 40 million people agree with me. But the burden of proof would be on me to prove it is there, not on my detractors to prove it isnt.

It is your job to prove Objective Morality, not mine to disprove it.

The Burden of Proof remains yours, and has yet to be satisfied.



For instance, if someone says X+2=4 if X=2, it would not be a successful refutation to say "well, X=1 is a valid definition of X, refuted! Are we done here?"

Nice callback. But this isn't an apt comparison since logic isn't math. (Yes, you can display logical arguments with mathlike symbology, but allow me to explain.)
My argument wasn't that for 1 value of X, the equation doesn't exist. And your example assumes the equation itself is sensical. As far as I see it the equation is X = X-1 and people keep bringing up the number Quelf as the key to solving it while I keep saying "There is no number on the number line for this" but you insist I must disprove Quelf. It's not my job to disprove Quelf. It's YOUR job to put it on the number line. I've already explained where the burden of proof is, and no one has proven that Morality is Objective by ANY of the following metrics, namely:

"of, relating to, or being an object, phenomenon, or condition in the realm of sensible experience independent of individual thought and perceptible by all observers : having reality independent of the mind"
Fails at being in the realm of sensibility (perceivable by senses being the operative meaning)
Fails at being real independent of the mind

"involving or deriving from sense perception or experience with actual objects, conditions, or phenomena"
You can't measure morality without breaking the next criteria ->

"expressing or dealing with facts or conditions as perceived without distortion by personal feelings, prejudices, or interpretations"
All morality bases itself on a core value judgement that decides that X thing is the highest Good and it will be chosen when placed into conflict with other Goods. This is an obvious Interpretation found even in the pseudo-scientific proposals of what Objective morality is. When faced with the Fact-Value Distinction, proponents of that school handwave it as something science needs to be rid of.

The only definition for Objective that is met, as far as I can tell, stopped being in wide use for medieval period philosophers, and looks nothing like the definition anyone here has been using.
"relating to or existing as an object of thought without consideration of independent existence"
But since no one here is trying to take the philosophical approach....




So no, you have not refuted me. In fact, you have introduced several more problems to your argument.

These problems only exist if the burden of proof is mine. But it isn't.

Prove that Objective Morality is REAL and EXISTS, demonstratably and without reliance on ignoring the Fact-Value Distinction and I'll concede my point.

This has yet to be done and so my point still stands.

AMFV
2016-09-14, 10:05 AM
These problems only exist if the burden of proof is mine. But it isn't.

Prove that Objective Morality is REAL and EXISTS, demonstratably and without reliance on ignoring the Fact-Value Distinction and I'll concede my point.

This has yet to be done and so my point still stands.

But it is... you're the one who is making a claim. It doesn't matter in the sciences if you're claiming that something doesn't exist. That's actually as much of a claim as claiming that something does exist. As a matter of fact, all I can tell that's been claimed on the other side is that people have claimed that there isn't strong proof science-wise, either direction. With the exception of Segev, who made specific postulations that were pretty much not explored in any detail (a feat which would require some pretty heavy breaking of rules here).

I've seen a lot of internet philosophers (of a certain persuasion) claim that "because you can't prove a negative... the burden of proof is to prove something exists" neither allegation is even slightly true. In the sciences it's fairly easy to prove a negative. I can prove that I am not on fire, because I'm not burning to death. I can prove that there isn't a huge Jupiter-sized gravity mass in my bedroom (because its effects would be clearly demonstrable), proving a negative is completely a requisite if you're making a claim that something doesn't exist. Science assumes neither that something is there or that it's not, without evidence. And any argument to the contrary is a pretty strong indication that you're not as familiar with experimental rules and proofing as you suspect you are.

Also there's the matter of what was discussed in my last paragraph (edit: In my previous post)... A great deal of the proofs that would be used for this, involve real world religion (or real world Politics, in the case of Natural Law examples), so by putting the burden of proof on others then crowing about your success you're arguing fairly dishonestly, essentially walling people up with the forum rules, and then declaring yourself the victor for erroneous reasons (as my previous paragraph explains). That isn't a very good faith argument tactic, and is rather unsavory to my mind. But again since the burden of proof is on the individual who is making a claim, you still have to prove your allegation, or admit that it is unproven (which it is), and then you would have to defend your allegation as the more likely case. Since you have ZERO evidence, you can't do that, you have no evidence against the existence of morality as a universal force.

If you wanted to gain that sort of evidence, here's what you would do. You would create a hypothesis that supposed the existence of such a force, and then determine measurable consequences of it's existence. Then you would test those, if they didn't happen, you could conclude that such a moral force doesn't exist. That's how you prove a negative, and that's why that particular line of internet philosopher argumentation is bull.

ImNotTrevor
2016-09-14, 11:00 AM
But it is... you're the one who is making a claim. It doesn't matter in the sciences if you're claiming that something doesn't exist. That's actually as much of a claim as claiming that something does exist. As a matter of fact, all I can tell that's been claimed on the other side is that people have claimed that there isn't strong proof science-wise, either direction. With the exception of Segev, who made specific postulations that were pretty much not explored in any detail (a feat which would require some pretty heavy breaking of rules here).

I've seen a lot of internet philosophers (of a certain persuasion) claim that "because you can't prove a negative... the burden of proof is to prove something exists" neither allegation is even slightly true. In the sciences it's fairly easy to prove a negative. I can prove that I am not on fire, because I'm not burning to death. I can prove that there isn't a huge Jupiter-sized gravity mass in my bedroom (because its effects would be clearly demonstrable), proving a negative is completely a requisite if you're making a claim that something doesn't exist. Science assumes neither that something is there or that it's not, without evidence. And any argument to the contrary is a pretty strong indication that you're not as familiar with experimental rules and proofing as you suspect you are.

Also there's the matter of what was discussed in my last paragraph (edit: In my previous post)... A great deal of the proofs that would be used for this, involve real world religion (or real world Politics, in the case of Natural Law examples), so by putting the burden of proof on others then crowing about your success you're arguing fairly dishonestly, essentially walling people up with the forum rules, and then declaring yourself the victor for erroneous reasons (as my previous paragraph explains). That isn't a very good faith argument tactic, and is rather unsavory to my mind. But again since the burden of proof is on the individual who is making a claim, you still have to prove your allegation, or admit that it is unproven (which it is), and then you would have to defend your allegation as the more likely case. Since you have ZERO evidence, you can't do that, you have no evidence against the existence of morality as a universal force.

If you wanted to gain that sort of evidence, here's what you would do. You would create a hypothesis that supposed the existence of such a force, and then determine measurable consequences of it's existence. Then you would test those, if they didn't happen, you could conclude that such a moral force doesn't exist. That's how you prove a negative, and that's why that particular line of internet philosopher argumentation is bull.

If there is zero evidence to support the existence of a thing, (such as with an Objective Morality) then anyone who claims it exists must provide the evidence.

If there is no evidence that you are made of jello, and I assert that you are, the burden of proof is on me, isn't it?

Now, if there was an abundance of evidence that Morality existed as a natural force in the universe and I claimed that it didn't, the burden of proof would be on ME. But that isn't the case.

In fact, by admitting that there is no evidence to suggest Morality is self-existant, you are in fact providing evidence that it DOESN'T EXIST. (This is why physics is moving away from Dark Matter, since no evidence that it exists is that same as evidence that it does not exist)In the same way that there is no evidence that you are currently surrounded by tiny invisible lizards, and therefore we can conclude that you aren't surrounded by tiny invisible lizards. The moment you say that you have to disprove something even if there is no evidence to support it, you can make darn near any claim you want and someone else has to do all the work to show that you're wrong. That's why Burden of Proof exists, and why it almost ALWAYS falls on the one making the positive claim.

Rules of the forum notwithstanding, it is also a rule that any assertion made without evidence can be refuted without evidence. So no matter how you try to slice it, the burden of proof is not, and cannot be, on me.

OldTrees1
2016-09-14, 11:10 AM
If there is zero evidence to support the existence of a thing, (such as with an Objective Morality) then anyone who claims it exists must provide the evidence.

And when there is no evidence but I claim something does not exist, do you just take my claim as granted without any effort on my part?

No assertion is granted without merit, be it an assertion of presence or an assertion of absence.

So consider carefully: Are you trying to assert an absence or merely disagree with the reasoning for an assertion of presence? Your initial post surely felt like you were making a claim and trying to convince everyone with an assertion of absence.

AMFV
2016-09-14, 11:15 AM
If there is zero evidence to support the existence of a thing, (such as with an Objective Morality) then anyone who claims it exists must provide the evidence.

But I'm not claiming a specific existence. And there are many such claims (which I'm sure you've read). But as I've pointed out most of those aren't forum appropriate. Ergo, you demanding that I present them is either an attempt to incite me to violate the rules of the forum, or is an attempt to solidify your position without providing evidence. Neither is really an appropriate argumentation tactic, and both are fairly dishonest (at least to my thinking)



If there is no evidence that you are made of jello, and I assert that you are, the burden of proof is on me, isn't it?


But that isn't what happened, here. The burden of proof is on you in that example, because you made a specific claim, not because the claim was positive. If you claimed that I was not made of Jello, the burden of proof would still be on the claimant. This is true regardless of the positive or negative nature of the claim. Hell, if you claimed "there is no evidence that you are made of meat" then the burden of proof would still be on you, and in that case you'd be wrong. The burden of proof rests with the person who makes the claim, not with the assumption of something not existing. That would be absurd. If that was the case, then I could assert that Southeast Asia didn't exist, and I would have a stronger claim than somebody asserting the opposite. I could assert likewise that the moon was an optical illusion, and I would have a stronger claim than somebody asserting the opposite. That's why in the sciences, the burden of proof is on the person who states the claim, the actual person making a hypothesis, not a presumption that things don't exist, because that would be not only absurd, but would reduce the sciences to impossible standards of proof.



Now, if there was an abundance of evidence that Morality existed as a natural force in the universe and I claimed that it didn't, the burden of proof would be on ME. But that isn't the case.

The evidence itself is very difficult to define in this case, again without violating forum rules. But I'll do the best I can. There exists moral law in all human cultures. In fact even in very disparate and distant cultures without any contact there is evidence of similar moral laws being developed. It is not sensible that this could happen without some form of moral advantage being gained. Ergo there is more to morality than human opinion and your earlier claim is wrong.

For example, see laws regarding arrangement of marriages that developed in disparate cultures, often with no contact. Laws regarding incest which developed in disparate cultures with no contact. The taboo against general cannibalism which developed in virtually all cultures. The presence of these rules cross-culture suggests that there is some sort of moral truth, or at least a sort of natural law as postulated by Segev earlier in the thread. So how do you explain those similarities cross culture and across thousands of miles?



In fact, by admitting that there is no evidence to suggest Morality is self-existant, you are in fact providing evidence that it DOESN'T EXIST.

I didn't admit that, nor did I claim that. I claimed that there was not a great deal of research on it. However I did as you asked and I provided some evidence, so now it's on you to refute that. Certainly refutations exist. Part of the problem is that since we cannot measure moral impact, it is more difficult and complicated to examine the effects of morality on anything. And the first part of the problem is that most different belief systems view things very differently, making a discussion without examination of terms impossible at the best of times.



Rules of the forum notwithstanding, it is also a rule that any assertion made without evidence can be refuted without evidence. So no matter how you try to slice it, the burden of proof is not, and cannot be, on me.

I haven't made an assertion. YOU DID. That puts the burden of proof on you. I've claimed only that there was insufficient evidence to assert that there were no moral laws that were universal. That being the case, the burden of proof is on you. If I had claimed, initially, that there were moral laws that were universal, the burden of proof would in fact be on me. But since you are the one who is making a solid claim, then that puts the burden of proof on you, it doesn't magically shift to me when I point out that you aren't backing up your supposed position.

ImNotTrevor
2016-09-14, 11:17 AM
And when there is no evidence but I claim something does not exist, do you just take my claim as granted without any effort on my part?

No assertion is granted without merit, be it an assertion of presence or an assertion of absence.

No evidence is the same as evidence against a thing existing. Since for many things, that's the only evidence we could possibly get.

For instance,

There is no tiny, intangible, and utterly undetectable gremlin sitting on your head.

Now, how do I prove that?

I cannot do it via weight since it is intangible. I can't detect its existence and detecting nothing would prove the assertion right.

When the only reliable evidence is a lack of evidence, then that lack can be treated the same as evidence against.

Max_Killjoy
2016-09-14, 11:18 AM
And when there is no evidence but I claim something does not exist, do you just take my claim as granted without any effort on my part?

No assertion is granted without merit, be it an assertion of presence or an assertion of absence.


I would say, as a general policy, if there is no evidence that a thing exists, it's reasonable to proceed as if that thing does not exist.

That is, if someone is claiming that something exists, and they haven't been able to provide any empirical evidence for that claim, others should not be under an equal burden of proof to show that it does not exist before they proceed as if it does not.

OldTrees1
2016-09-14, 11:27 AM
The evidence itself is very difficult to define in this case, again without violating forum rules. But I'll do the best I can. There exists moral law in all human cultures. In fact even in very disparate and distant cultures without any contact there is evidence of similar moral laws being developed. It is not sensible that this could happen without some form of moral advantage being gained. Ergo there is more to morality than human opinion and your earlier claim is wrong.

For example, see laws regarding arrangement of marriages that developed in disparate cultures, often with no contact. Laws regarding incest which developed in disparate cultures with no contact. The taboo against general cannibalism which developed in virtually all cultures. The presence of these rules cross-culture suggests that there is some sort of moral truth, or at least a sort of natural law as postulated by Segev earlier in the thread. So how do you explain those similarities cross culture and across thousands of miles?

First, thank you for your detailed explanation of the burden resulting from the act of making an assertion/claim.

Second, unfortunately the evolutionary behavior of memes is a strong alternative explanation for most of the evidence (and certainly all the evidence I think can be said without violating forum rules)

OldTrees1
2016-09-14, 11:36 AM
No evidence is the same as evidence against a thing existing. Since for many things, that's the only evidence we could possibly get.

For instance,

There is no tiny, intangible, and utterly undetectable gremlin sitting on your head.

Now, how do I prove that?

I cannot do it via weight since it is intangible. I can't detect its existence and detecting nothing would prove the assertion right.

When the only reliable evidence is a lack of evidence, then that lack can be treated the same as evidence against.

I would outright laugh at your claim. While I presume no such gremlin is on my head, I would not be so foolish as to try to prove that presumption. I would just have it as an unproven premise. Although the thing about unproven premises is that they are not convincing to anyone that does not share that premise (to tie it back to your original assertion of absence).

However perhaps you were talking about every white swan being evidence in support of the position that no black swans exist? Although I could show you an infinite number of white swans and there could still be 1 black swan that you did not see. So assertions of absence always have a lower maximum confidence level than assertions of presence.


I would say, as a general policy, if there is no evidence that a thing exists, it's reasonable to proceed as if that thing does not exist.
There is a difference between this and trying to assert it does not exist (as my response to ImNotTrevor should show). I presume that I don't have a gremlin on my head, but I don't seek to assert such.

ImNotTrevor
2016-09-14, 12:49 PM
There is a difference between this and trying to assert it does not exist (as my response to ImNotTrevor should show). I presume that I don't have a gremlin on my head, but I don't seek to assert such.

What exactly is the functional difference between saying a thing doesn't exist and saying that you presume a thing doesn't exist, assuming neither has any supportive evidence?

It strikes me as having no functional difference outside of semantics. Would I suddenly be making people less upset by saying "I have no reason to assume objective morality exists?" Likely no.

Your example with the swans isn't a good one since there is a finite amount of Swans to be observed. If we observe every single Swan, and none of them are black, then we are safe in assuming black swans don't exist. If we judge things based on "maybe we missed the single unique individual that makes our statement untrue" then we can't assume anything as not being real, and in that direction lies madness.
For instance, it means the following:
We cannot assume Cthulu isn't real.
We cannot assume Santa isn't real.
We cannot assume Harry Potter isn't real.

Because for all of those perhaps there is one piece of evidence that proves their existence but we haven't seen it yet.


I feel like Occam's Razor applies here. Sure, it's POSSIBLE that we happened to miss the one piece of evidence to prove the existence of the undetectable gremlin orbiting mars.

But the simpler explanation is that there isn't one.

LudicSavant
2016-09-14, 12:50 PM
Yes. And since I've only used "morality stops existing if all HUMANS stop existing" as my example Which still isn't an example of the Merriam Webster definition you quoted, for reasons already explained.


I've explained why the burden of proof isn't on me already As other posters have explained to you, it is on you. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophic_burden_of_proof


I haven't made an assertion.
On the contrary, you have made many assertions. You have asserted that neuroscience can't be studied objectively, that morality cannot be objective, that morality is always arbitrary, and that all systems of morality are not based on logical reasoning. The burden of proof for these assertions is on you.


especially on a roleplaying forum and without some pretty damn vetted scientific backing. I actually provided scientific backing in earlier links. It seems to me as though you have ignored them entirely, in favor of referring to a Youtube source an entirely different poster gave. :smallsigh:


If Morality had an intrinsic nature, we'd be using science to study it

We are! (https://www.edge.org/event/the-new-science-of-morality)

OldTrees1
2016-09-14, 01:28 PM
What exactly is the functional difference between saying a thing doesn't exist and saying that you presume a thing doesn't exist, assuming neither has any supportive evidence?

It strikes me as having no functional difference outside of semantics. Would I suddenly be making people less upset by saying "I have no reason to assume objective morality exists?" Likely no.
Oh there is loads of difference and that difference would have resulted in a different reaction. An assertion makes a demand on your target. A statement of fact makes a demand on nobody.

Consider: "I have no reason to assume you exist" vs "I claim you do not exist".
Although this only is to demonstrate the fact to you, I myself am enough evidence to heavily suggest against your "Likely no" estimate.



Your example with the swans isn't a good one since there is a finite amount of Swans to be observed. If we observe every single Swan, and none of them are black, then we are safe in assuming black swans don't exist. If we judge things based on "maybe we missed the single unique individual that makes our statement untrue" then we can't assume anything as not being real, and in that direction lies madness.
For instance, it means the following:
We cannot assume Cthulu isn't real.
We cannot assume Santa isn't real.
We cannot assume Harry Potter isn't real.

Because for all of those perhaps there is one piece of evidence that proves their existence but we haven't seen it yet.
1) Fine you don't like the hyperbole I used with the swans. Here it is without the hyperbole and with your artificial assumption that the possibility space for swans contains only a finite number of swans:

There is a finite but extremely large number of swans in the entire 4 dimensional volume of the universe(past, present, and future). I will never run out of swans to show you (I would be dead before I showed you even a significant fraction). Each swan I show you that is non black adds support to the claim that no swan is black. However our confidence in that hypothesis will never reach 100% since there could always be a counterexample (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_swan) unless we exhaust the entire possibility space (which is just as much out of my reach for swans as the universe is out of your reach).

The only way to reach 100% confidence is if there is no possibility of a counterexample that disproves your hypothesis. Assertions of presence reach 100% confidence when they discover an example. Assertions of absence approach but never reach 100% because there is always the possibility of a counterexample.


2) I assume but do not attempt to assert/claim/prove that Cthulu isn't real. This is a direct disproof of your claim that I cannot assume Cthulu isn't real.

Segev
2016-09-14, 01:31 PM
As an example, "Don't murder people," is an objectively moral law if your interest is in a successful society because the more a society tolerates murder, the more wasted of resources it tends to be due to the costs associated with self defense, and the lost productivity of a higher mortality rate. I could go into more detail, but I risk stepping on religious and real-world socio-economic theory that is discouraged to forbidden on this forum.

But the "law of physics" form of this would be something like: don't murder people or you will cause a fundamentally less prosperous society.

Max_Killjoy
2016-09-14, 01:34 PM
As an example, "Don't murder people," is an objectively moral law if your interest is in a successful society because the more a society tolerates murder, the more wasted of resources it tends to be due to the costs associated with self defense, and the lost productivity of a higher mortality rate. I could go into more detail, but I risk stepping on religious and real-world socio-economic theory that is discouraged to forbidden on this forum.

But the "law of physics" form of this would be something like: don't murder people or you will cause a fundamentally less prosperous society.

There seems to be no historical basis for this, and it's also not a moral question being presented, but rather a purely cost-benefit equation on the impersonal level of "a society".

OldTrees1
2016-09-14, 01:40 PM
As an example, "-snip-" is an objectively moral law if your interest is in -snip-
Typo? Are you using "moral" as an adjective modifying "law" or are you using "moral law" as a noun?

Also I have no evidence that my interests have any dictatorial power over moral truth. So again I must ask, are you talking about the beliefs people hold (Moral Belief) about the question or about the correct answer (Moral Truth) to the question.

Thrudd
2016-09-14, 02:20 PM
As an example, "Don't murder people," is an objectively moral law if your interest is in a successful society because the more a society tolerates murder, the more wasted of resources it tends to be due to the costs associated with self defense, and the lost productivity of a higher mortality rate. I could go into more detail, but I risk stepping on religious and real-world socio-economic theory that is discouraged to forbidden on this forum.

But the "law of physics" form of this would be something like: don't murder people or you will cause a fundamentally less prosperous society.

Caveat: "don't murder people in our group"
Because several important societies were quite successful murdering and looting other people. Murder until they give up and are absorbed into your group as slaves and subjects. Then don't murder them, because you need them to do work.

ImNotTrevor
2016-09-14, 03:14 PM
As other posters have explained to you, it is on you. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophic_burden_of_proof
That link explains what Burden of Proof is, and doesn't say any of the things people have been saying causes the Burden of Proof to be mine.
*shrug*

[QUOTE]
On the contrary, you have made many assertions. You have asserted that neuroscience can't be studied objectively,
When? Quote me saying that.
You made that extrapolation by yourself.
I have never at any time stated that neuroscience cannot be studied objectively, and any inferrence that I did is just that: Inferrence.



that morality cannot be objective, that morality is always arbitrary, and that all systems of morality are not based on logical reasoning. The burden of proof for these assertions is on you.
All morality systems are based on a Value Judgement that determines one thing as the "Greatest Good" by which all other goods are measured.
In Segev's instance, that Greatest Good is the survival of the species/culture which would make it immoral for humanity to sacrifice itself for any reason.
It also, in times of population crises, would make it moral to chain females to the wall and force them to produce as many children as possible. Because their individual wants/needs don’t matter compared to what carries the species forward.

Utilitarianism decided that Overall Happiness within the collective is the Greatest Good.

Hedonism states that everyone's happiness is their own responsibility and so what makes you happy is moral.

The core is a value judgement that is not based on a logical decision, but a value-based decision. The thing the decider thinks is most important. They can explain it logically, and many do, but the core conceit of EVERY moral system is a value judgement, not Fact.

Even the one attempt/movement you linked has come under criticism for ignoring the difference between Fact and Value. Because they are all based on a Value Judgement.



I actually provided scientific backing in earlier links. It seems to me as though you have ignored them entirely, in favor of referring to a Youtube source an entirely different poster gave. :smallsigh:
You've linked a lot of wikipedia.
And no data.
And a lot of the wikipedia you've linked has the criticisms and flaws already on the same page.



We are! (https://www.edge.org/event/the-new-science-of-morality)

I've already dropped the point you're quoting, but I will point out that the field of study here is well within behavioral psychology.

I'll also note that their study is Descriptive, where Morality Systems are Prescriptive. It is the same as the difference between Grammar (not a science) and Linguistic Usage (a science)

OldTrees1
2016-09-14, 03:39 PM
All morality systems are based on a Value Judgement that determines one thing as the "Greatest Good" by which all other goods are measured.
In Segev's instance, that Greatest Good is the survival of the species/culture which would make it immoral for humanity to sacrifice itself for any reason.

-snip-

The core is a value judgement that is not based on a logical decision, but a value-based decision. The thing the decider thinks is most important. They can explain it logically, and many do, but the core conceit of EVERY moral system is a value judgement, not Fact.

Even the one attempt/movement you linked has come under criticism for ignoring the difference between Fact and Value. Because they are all based on a Value Judgement.

Let me help you out a bit:

It seems like you are categorically criticizing the answers people provide to the question rather than claiming there is no correct answer to the question. Is this correct to say? You are saying that all proposed moral theories were proposed after the proposer's conceit of choosing a greatest good by a value judgement. As such all those proposed moral theories are subjective (they originate from that value judgement). This is obviously not saying that a moral theory could not be coincidentally identical to some objective moral truth, it is merely saying that even such a proposed moral theory is dependent on the author and independent of moral truth. Is this a correct rephrasing?

If so, are you making any claims about objective moral truth?

ImNotTrevor
2016-09-14, 03:52 PM
Let me help you out a bit:

It seems like you are categorically criticizing the answers people provide to the question rather than claiming there is no correct answer to the question. Is this correct to say? You are saying that all proposed moral theories were proposed after the proposer's conceit of choosing a greatest good by a value judgement. As such all those proposed moral theories are subjective (they originate from that value judgement). This is obviously not saying that a moral theory could not be coincidentally identical to some objective moral truth, it is merely saying that even such a proposed moral theory is dependent on the author and independent of moral truth. Is this a correct rephrasing?

If so, are you making any claims about objective moral truth?

I don't believe there is an objective moral truth outside of humanity/sentience. We have behaviors that have some degree of sameness in humanity (but clearly we all still argue about it so no concensus has been reached by collective humanity, so even that's a rocky foundation) and that's about it.

There is no evidence to support any claim of the existence of a Force of Goodness or Force of Evilness that passes muster. By Occam's Razor, this tells us the mosy likely outcome is that they don't exist, and so until otherwise shown, they don't exist.

If they do, and they're discovered and demonstrated, then the point will be conceded for the same reason no one in the scientific community gives flat-earth believers any credence.

LudicSavant
2016-09-14, 03:53 PM
I've already dropped the point you're quoting

No you haven't. You've been arguing over the entire last page that you've been shown no data, no evidence, no science.


Quote me saying that.



For that purpose we use Psychology, which doesn't really claim to be a hard science at all. Neuroscience is more medical than psychological. There is a reason why you need to study medicine to be a psychiatrist, but not to be a psychologist.

Essentially, just saying that you can study it doesn't mean you can study it Objectively.

Seriously pretty much everything you've said about neuroscience indicates a fundamental lack of understanding of the subject matter...

Also, many, many times, you have argued that something's not objective if it doesn't exist without minds. Do I need to quote the dozen-odd times you've said that too?

ImNotTrevor
2016-09-14, 04:01 PM
No you haven't. You've been arguing over the entire last page that you've been shown no data, no evidence, no science.
I got one link to some people discussing data in a Descriptive manner ie, "This is where moral systems come from and how brains make them, neat!" As opposed to "This is what Morality definitely is and anyone who does different is definitely immoral, thus decrees science."
A lot of the first, which is fine.
None of the second, which people are telling me can be done if we throw enough science at the wall. Or in fact that it HAS been done. (It hasn't)




Seriously pretty much everything you've said about neuroscience indicates a fundamental lack of understanding of the subject matter...

So saying that Neuroscience is a medical science more than it is a psychological science, (EDIT: I took a second to google it. Neuroscience is considered to be a Biological science, related to Biochem and Microbiology. A little harder of sciences than Psychology is.) and then In Another Paragraph! I say that the capacity to study a subject matter doesn't make the subject matter objective, which is a different but related point, it is the same as saying
"Neuroscience is not objective."

Remember what I said about inferrence?



Also, many, many times, you have argued that something's not objective if it doesn't exist without minds. Do I need to quote the dozen-odd times you've said that too?
By one definition of Objective, things that don't exist independent of the mind AREN'T objective. I've already shown why this is a valid usage of the word, and quoted that definition multiple times.

I'm not incorrect in saying that, because it is definitionally true. *shrug*

LudicSavant
2016-09-14, 04:36 PM
Remember what I said about inferrence? You keep misspelling and misusing words like this. For one thing, you seem to underestimate the significance of something being a direct inference from your statements.

For example, I know that "inference" is defined as "a conclusion reached on the basis of evidence and reasoning" or "the process of deriving the strict logical consequences of assumed premises. " I also know that I can utilize the rules of inference (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_inference) in order to show that two statements mean the same thing.

You, on the other hand, seem to believe that saying that something is an inference from your statement is some sort of magical get out of jail free card.


By one definition of Objective, things that don't exist independent of the mind AREN'T objective. I've already shown why this is a valid usage of the word, and quoted that definition multiple times.

Yes, by your own rather impractical definition, which you have thoroughly established throughout this thread as what you, personally, mean by "not objective." Neuroscience does not exist if all minds don't exist (the definition you have repeatedly given), and therefore meets your personal, impractical definition of "not objective."

AMFV
2016-09-14, 04:38 PM
No evidence is the same as evidence against a thing existing. Since for many things, that's the only evidence we could possibly get.

For instance,

There is no tiny, intangible, and utterly undetectable gremlin sitting on your head.

Now, how do I prove that?

You can't prove that, but you can't assume that there isn't such a creature inside your head, since you can't disprove it's existence. Now moral laws are not the same as that ridiculous assertion, because there are evidences either way for them, but again WE CANNOT present them, that would violate forum rules. So the more you insist on that, the more you are attempting to goad people into violating the rules, that's extremely poor form. Now if you want to do some research, I am sure that you can find some solid evidences both directions, and decide personally what you find the most compelling.



I cannot do it via weight since it is intangible. I can't detect its existence and detecting nothing would prove the assertion right.

When the only reliable evidence is a lack of evidence, then that lack can be treated the same as evidence against.

That isn't true though, the lack of evidence is NOT evidence against, because there is no clear way to prove that it does not exist, ergo we can't assume either way, but it doesn't make a difference, therefore it doesn't matter.


First, thank you for your detailed explanation of the burden resulting from the act of making an assertion/claim.


You're welcome!



Second, unfortunately the evolutionary behavior of memes is a strong alternative explanation for most of the evidence (and certainly all the evidence I think can be said without violating forum rules)

I agree completely but Natural Law is the only thing that really could be presented without violating forum rules. Also one could argue that the presence of those evolutionary memes is evidence for a universal moral law that results in those memes rather than the reverse. But I personally don't hold a Natural Law based moral viewpoint, so I'm probably not the best person to argue it's merits.


What exactly is the functional difference between saying a thing doesn't exist and saying that you presume a thing doesn't exist, assuming neither has any supportive evidence?

It strikes me as having no functional difference outside of semantics. Would I suddenly be making people less upset by saying "I have no reason to assume objective morality exists?" Likely no.

It's a VERY large difference. You stated your opinion as fact. Several people then said "that isn't a fact, there's no evidence" you then attempted to shift the burden of proof away from your opinion which had been stated as fact to the others using bad argumentation.

If you had said "I don't believe that there is an external force in the real world. That would be fine. But you said "There isn't" which barring evidence is NOT fine. That is the distinction that you're missing, you made a claim, you claimed that something for which you have no evidence is a fact, then people called you on it, that's the issue. You're free to have that opinion, however unbased in fact and unsubstantiated when you start asserting it as fact, then it's an issue.



For instance, it means the following:
We cannot assume Cthulu isn't real.

No but we could prove he's not, using sonar in the Ocean, we can also prove that there is no biomass large enough to sustain the amount a creature that size would need to eat. We can further prove that a creature that size would not be self-sustaining, ergo, no Cthulu. Later on, if we find Cthulu, we'll know that our earlier science was wrong.



We cannot assume Santa isn't real.


People have been to the North Pole and not observed him, there are RADAR nets tracking that area all of the time and they have not observed him. Since he would be travelling through those areas we can conclude that he does not exist. So again that's provable



We cannot assume Harry Potter isn't real.


Birth records, adoption records, his Uncle and Aunt's address, school records prior to Hogwart's acceptance, medical records. It's fairly easy to prove that Mr. Potter does not exist, particularly because the time frame in which the books were written is known.



Because for all of those perhaps there is one piece of evidence that proves their existence but we haven't seen it yet.





I feel like Occam's Razor applies here. Sure, it's POSSIBLE that we happened to miss the one piece of evidence to prove the existence of the undetectable gremlin orbiting mars.

But the simpler explanation is that there isn't one.

A.) Occam's Razor is NOT, I repeat, NOT, a prescriptive law. The simplest explanation does not have to be true. Hell, the razor itself doesn't claim that, it only claims "most often" which doesn't help you because you stated absolute certainty.

B.) You would have to also demonstrate that a moral law not existing is simpler than one existing, that's a trickier proposition than you realize. Something not existing vs. it existing is not really that different in terms of inherent complexity, ergo Occam's Razor doesn't even apply here since neither explanation is really simpler.

C.) There are other evidences one could use to detect the Gremlin in orbit, it's influence on other particles around it for example. Of course, since you've stated that it was undetectable that would mean that it wouldn't influence other particles, and functionally would not exist.


I don't believe there is an objective moral truth outside of humanity/sentience. We have behaviors that have some degree of sameness in humanity (but clearly we all still argue about it so no concensus has been reached by collective humanity, so even that's a rocky foundation) and that's about it.

There are a lot of things that are true that took a very long time to reach consensus on. In fact differences of opinion don't matter to scientific theory at all.



There is no evidence to support any claim of the existence of a Force of Goodness or Force of Evilness that passes muster. By Occam's Razor, this tells us the mosy likely outcome is that they don't exist, and so until otherwise shown, they don't exist.

A.) Such evidence exists, we are just unable to provide it, given the forum rules. We aren't even able to provide non-theological evidences for such a thing. So it's again discourteous of you to repeatedly claim "NO EVIDENCE" when the truth of the matter is that we are not able to present the evidences that we might present in another area of conversation.

B.) Occam's Razor is not a law (see my earlier points).



If they do, and they're discovered and demonstrated, then the point will be conceded for the same reason no one in the scientific community gives flat-earth believers any credence.

Scientific community members also don't claim that things don't exist without evidence of such. Otherwise it would be very difficult to prove anything through inference and a great deal of science would remain undiscovered.

Zale
2016-09-14, 04:51 PM
Caveat: "don't murder people in our group"
Because several important societies were quite successful murdering and looting other people. Murder until they give up and are absorbed into your group as slaves and subjects. Then don't murder them, because you need them to do work.

This reminds me of how the Spartans would sometimes declare war on their slave underclass so that they could kill them without bearing the moral penalties associated with murder.

Remember kids: It's not murder if it's government sponsored!

veti
2016-09-14, 10:30 PM
What exactly is the functional difference between saying a thing doesn't exist and saying that you presume a thing doesn't exist, assuming neither has any supportive evidence?

It strikes me as having no functional difference outside of semantics. Would I suddenly be making people less upset by saying "I have no reason to assume objective morality exists?" Likely no.

Why don't you try it and see?


Your example with the swans isn't a good one since there is a finite amount of Swans to be observed. If we observe every single Swan, and none of them are black, then we are safe in assuming black swans don't exist.

Ahem (http://nzbirdsonline.org.nz/species/black-swan).


If we judge things based on "maybe we missed the single unique individual that makes our statement untrue" then we can't assume anything as not being real, and in that direction lies madness.
For instance, it means the following:
We cannot assume Cthulu isn't real.
We cannot assume Santa isn't real.
We cannot assume Harry Potter isn't real.

Yes we can. We can assume whatever we like. What we can't do is persuade others who don't share our assumptions, because in order to persuade someone you need some common ground to start from.

By way of "common ground", I would suggest your most promising avenue is metaphysics. What does it mean to say that something "exists"? If there is absolutely no way of detecting it - not just "we can't detect it because our technology isn't up to the job yet", but "in principle, no matter how good our technology gets, we will never be able to detect it because it's simply not in the category of things that can be detected" - can it still be said to "exist"?


TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY.

ImNotTrevor
2016-09-14, 10:57 PM
You keep misspelling and misusing words like this. For one thing, you seem to underestimate the significance of something being a direct inference from your statements.

For example, I know that "inference" is defined as "a conclusion reached on the basis of evidence and reasoning" or "the process of deriving the strict logical consequences of assumed premises. " I also know that I can utilize the rules of inference (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_inference) in order to show that two statements mean the same thing.

You, on the other hand, seem to believe that saying that something is an inference from your statement is some sort of magical get out of jail free card.

You can infer things from a statement that aren't true. If a person looks at a blue car and says "I like that car" I could infer that he likes blue, but it may not actually be true.

Just because you used logic to arrive at a conclusion doesn't make that conclusion true. Such as you inferring due to two different statements about two different fields of study (one of which I admitted was a little off, since Medical fields and Biology fields are connected but not identical) and a third sentence not related to the first two which is a true statement. (You can objectively -meaning without regard to emotion in this case- study a work of art, but works of art aren't really created without regard to emotion -and thus not meeting the previous same Objectivity standard-)



Yes, by your own rather impractical definition, which you have thoroughly established throughout this thread as what you, personally, mean by "not objective." Neuroscience does not exist if all minds don't exist (the definition you have repeatedly given), and therefore meets your personal, impractical definition of "not objective."
That's a Merriam Webster definition I've been using.
You can keep asserting it's only mine, but a quick google search will disprove that notion handily. I'll let you get there on your own.

And you are correct. Neuroscience itself doesn't exist without minds to do it. Luckily it meets more definitions of Objective than it fails.

Also, I broke down definition by definition why Moral Systems (what many of us seem to be shorthanding for when saying Morality) fall short of Objectivity, and why Morality as a concept also does.

Sure, I'll concede the point that you can study morality objectively. But that doesn't make the thing itself objective any more than objectively analyzing a shakespeare play makes the play objective.


You can't prove that, but you can't assume that there isn't such a creature inside your head, since you can't disprove it's existence. Now moral laws are not the same as that ridiculous assertion, because there are evidences either way for them, but again WE CANNOT present them, that would violate forum rules. So the more you insist on that, the more you are attempting to goad people into violating the rules, that's extremely poor form. Now if you want to do some research, I am sure that you can find some solid evidences both directions, and decide personally what you find the most compelling.
Most of the reasons you're quoting would require proof themselves. Just sayin'.




That isn't true though, the lack of evidence is NOT evidence against, because there is no clear way to prove that it does not exist, ergo we can't assume either way, but it doesn't make a difference, therefore it doesn't matter.

So then any statement contrary to mine is exactly as nonsensical. *shrug*



It's a VERY large difference. You stated your opinion as fact. Several people then said "that isn't a fact, there's no evidence" you then attempted to shift the burden of proof away from your opinion which had been stated as fact to the others using bad argumentation.
Welp, as you've made clear, they're exactly as nonsensical as me so we're all wasting time.



If you had said "I don't believe that there is an external force in the real world. That would be fine. But you said "There isn't" which barring evidence is NOT fine. That is the distinction that you're missing, you made a claim, you claimed that something for which you have no evidence is a fact, then people called you on it, that's the issue. You're free to have that opinion, however unbased in fact and unsubstantiated when you start asserting it as fact, then it's an issue.
It has been asserted just as frequently that Morality IS self-existant and with similarly non-present evidence. If those were exactly as unfounded then We're still just going in circles about nothing for no reason.




No but we could prove he's not, using sonar in the Ocean, we can also prove that there is no biomass large enough to sustain the amount a creature that size would need to eat. We can further prove that a creature that size would not be self-sustaining, ergo, no Cthulu. Later on, if we find Cthulu, we'll know that our earlier science was wrong.

Cthulu is an elder god that does not need sustenance, and does not abide by our physical laws. Indetectable. We can never be sure.



People have been to the North Pole and not observed him, there are RADAR nets tracking that area all of the time and they have not observed him. Since he would be travelling through those areas we can conclude that he does not exist. So again that's provable

Santa uses magic to stop time while he delivers presents, or some other form of magical shenanigan. Not provable.



Birth records, adoption records, his Uncle and Aunt's address, school records prior to Hogwart's acceptance, medical records. It's fairly easy to prove that Mr. Potter does not exist, particularly because the time frame in which the books were written is known.
Records were removed by the ministry of magic or Harry Potter is simply the name given within the book but the real name is different. (Names changed to protect the innocent, etc)
Can't be sure.




There are a lot of things that are true that took a very long time to reach consensus on. In fact differences of opinion don't matter to scientific theory at all.

That's not what I meant.
I meant that cultures can have vastly different moral systems based on their histories, and as such trying to draw conclusions based on all the same points will meet with issues since there are just as many differences.




A.) Such evidence exists, we are just unable to provide it, given the forum rules. We aren't even able to provide non-theological evidences for such a thing. So it's again discourteous of you to repeatedly claim "NO EVIDENCE" when the truth of the matter is that we are not able to present the evidences that we might present in another area of conversation.

That evidence DOES require you to prove the source material as correct, properly translated, and truthful for it to have any impact. So it might not actually be all that useful.

Though religion being an excellent window into human behaviors when observed in a secular light would still hint towards samenesses being caused by human nature and not the other way around.




B.) Occam's Razor is not a law (see my earlier points).

I'll concede this point.




Scientific community members also don't claim that things don't exist without evidence of such. Otherwise it would be very difficult to prove anything through inference and a great deal of science would remain undiscovered.
I am fairly certain science makes lots of claims to that effect about various things.
Maybe they shouldn't, but it seems to be the case that science has a standing policy of "If we can't prove it exists, it functionally doesn't until proven otherwise."

Which I suppose is a better way to word my stance on morality systems, especially prescriptive ones. (Which basically all of them are.)

AMFV
2016-09-14, 11:33 PM
Most of the reasons you're quoting would require proof themselves. Just sayin'.

And there are proofs. Of course, there may not be proofs that you find compelling or convincing, but arguing that there is "NO PROOF" over and over again doesn't mean that there is no proof at all. Just not proof that you, personally find compelling. Part of the problem with any sort of religious or philosophical proof is that in the end it is more difficult to define just exactly at what point something is proven by inference, since there's a lot of dispute over the proofs involved and what exactly can be inferred.



So then any statement contrary to mine is exactly as nonsensical. *shrug*

Any statement directly contrary to yours without proof would be, yes. But that's not an argument people have been making here. The only people who have made direct contradictory statements (Segev) used a set of proofs for his example, of course he was unable to go into much detail since that would have required a large political discussion and that would violate forum rules. But he made that statement in light of proof which he mentioned. The other statement that people have made is that you're assuming certainty where none exists, which is the case. Demonstrably so, since you refuse to cite any proof for your assertion of absence.



Welp, as you've made clear, they're exactly as nonsensical as me so we're all wasting time.

Actually, what I said was that they could not be discussed here, because of forum rules. You assumed that I was referring to rules on religion (which is true in some cases), but also I would have to discuss real world philosophy (also a frowned on topic) and real world politics (a banned topic as well), so any discussion that would point out the sense in these arguments would be not forum friendly.

There are certainly arguments for and against moral law that are not nonsense arguments. Many of them are quite well framed. Of course, since we can't go into them, that doesn't really matter.



It has been asserted just as frequently that Morality IS self-existant and with similarly non-present evidence. If those were exactly as unfounded then We're still just going in circles about nothing for no reason.

And if people were asserting that in this forum, I would call them on it as well. But to be fair, very few people would assert something like that without any evidence at all. It just might not be evidence that you personally find compelling.



Cthulu is an elder god that does not need sustenance, and does not abide by our physical laws. Indetectable. We can never be sure.


Then I can't disprove Cthulu. And I would make no assumptions regarding his existence. Although here's the rub, something that is "indectable" literally cannot interact with anything else, meaning that it can't hurt or impact anything, so no dice on that, the entire world could be full of things that we can't detect and it would make no difference at all. So we can't make any assumptions either way.



Santa uses magic to stop time while he delivers presents, or some other form of magical shenanigan. Not provable.

That doesn't actually address all of my complaints, but supposing that you could, then I would be unable to disprove the existence of Santa Claus. Which makes sense as he was a real person. In any case, again we're going to get to "undectable" which is not a real thing, since again that would imply that matter itself and gravity aren't impacted by the person, meaning that functionally they would not be a part of our universe.



Records were removed by the ministry of magic or Harry Potter is simply the name given within the book but the real name is different. (Names changed to protect the innocent, etc)
Can't be sure.

Then I can't disprove Harry either, and again make no claims as to his existence or non-existence.

Of course, when you construe your arguments as such there can't be any disproving of the things you're discussing. But at that point it's madness to claim that these things don't exist as well. Because there's no way to tell, and that's not a very reasonable position to be taking.



That's not what I meant.
I meant that cultures can have vastly different moral systems based on their histories, and as such trying to draw conclusions based on all the same points will meet with issues since there are just as many differences.


That depends... if there is a moral law, then we can expect that most early understandings of it would be incomplete. Which is why you see variation in cultural understanding. It's not people who are coming up with things from nowhere, it's people trying to understand the same phenomena with different lenses and coming up with slightly different theory.



That evidence DOES require you to prove the source material as correct, properly translated, and truthful for it to have any impact. So it might not actually be all that useful.

Again, not all of the evidences I'm mentioning are religious. In fact, I would probably avoid religious texts, since those tend to have the same sort of proof difficulties in the eyes of most people as what you're discussing. Additionally, source material doesn't need to be completely accurate, only mostly so. Look at what they do in scientific studies, they get outliers all the time, that doesn't make an entire study pointless because it's not all completely accurate.



Though religion being an excellent window into human behaviors when observed in a secular light would still hint towards samenesses being caused by human nature and not the other way around.


Only if you presuppose your viewpoint to be the correct one. Otherwise it would point equally towards both conclusions.



I am fairly certain science makes lots of claims to that effect about various things.
Maybe they shouldn't, but it seems to be the case that science has a standing policy of "If we can't prove it exists, it functionally doesn't until proven otherwise."

Which I suppose is a better way to word my stance on morality systems, especially prescriptive ones. (Which basically all of them are.)

That isn't how science works at all. Do you know anybody that does experimental science? Because they don't assume things don't exist, they make no assumptions regarding things about which they have no data. You're potentially being confused by the fact that once they start amassing data if there's no data indicating something, they may act as though it isn't of consequence to the particular question they're answering, since that would be reflected.

Moral argumentation is a little bit trickier, since data collection is rougher on that scale.

OldTrees1
2016-09-14, 11:50 PM
That depends... if there is a moral law, then we can expect that most early understandings of it would be incomplete. Which is why you see variation in cultural understanding. It's not people who are coming up with things from nowhere, it's people trying to understand the same phenomena with different lenses and coming up with slightly different theory.
This claim is not self evident. While this is a possible result, the opposite is also possible, as well as the situation where beliefs about moral law were independent from moral law.

Of course these other possible results I mentioned would also fit the data "Early cultures did not start with perfectly matching moral beliefs". So if you had backed off and made a weaker claim it might have been self evident while also still being useful for your point.


Sidenote: Why do we call the less daring claim with greater confidence the "weaker" claim in contrast to the more daring claim with lower confidence or "stronger" claim? It makes for werid sentences like "I think your stronger claim is weak and so I will only assume your weaker claim."

LudicSavant
2016-09-15, 01:06 AM
Neuroscience itself doesn't exist without minds to do it. And there you go. You just claimed, yet again, that neuroscience is not objective according to the definition which you've been using throughout this thread (e.g. doesn't exist without minds). Therefore it is one of the many assertions that you have made (contrary to your claim that you are making no assertions at all). See post #102.


That's a Merriam Webster definition I've been using. This was addressed in post #74.

Edit:
EDIT: I took a second to google it. Neuroscience is considered to be a Biological science, related to Biochem and Microbiology. A little harder of sciences than Psychology is.)

So, just to get this straight, you were previously making sweeping assertions about the nature and limits of neuroscience not only despite lacking a background in neuroscience, but also despite not even taking a second to google it. Kay. Well, that's pretty much what I had expected was the case.

Incidentally, your impression from... whatever source you googled for all of a second... is still misinformed. For one, you are under the mistaken impression that biology and psychology are mutually exclusive categories. For example, "biological psychology" and "experimental psychology" are subfields of neuroscience.

Neuroscience is a vast, interdisciplinary field. Here are a few of its subfields:

Molecular: Neurochemistry, Cellular Neuroscience, Molecular Neuroscience, Neurobiology
Cognitive: Computational Neuroscience, Cognitive Science, Neuropsychology, Affective Neuroscience
Behavioral Neuroscience: Biological Psychology, Behavioral Genetics/Epigenetics, Experimental Psychology, Learning and Behavior
Medical: Neuroimmunology, Neuropathology, Neuropharmacology, Neuroprosthetics, Neurotoxicology, Psychopharmacology, Neuroimaging
Other: Neurolinguistics, Cultural Neuroscience, Neuroanthropology, Evolutionary Neuroscience, Developmental Neuroscience, Neuroengineering, Neuroinformatics, Paleoneurology, Social Neuroscience

veti
2016-09-15, 02:22 AM
It seems to me that "objective morality" is a special case of the is-ought problem (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem). There is no logical way to construct a statement of what "ought" to be, solely from premises of what "is".

At some point you have to introduce an axiom that "This" is preferable to "That". And as soon as you do that, "objectivity" is out the window.

Once you have a definition of "good", then you can objectively assess other things as "good" in terms of how closely they adhere to your definition. But the definition itself is not "objective", it's a value statement. Utilitarians define it one way, Kantians another, religious people have their own yardsticks - but I don't see how any of them can defensibly be called "objective". And of course you can introduce a new rule for choosing between alternative interpretations of "good"... but that's ultimately just another, contending definition, and in itself another demonstration of the subjectivity of the whole enterprise.

LudicSavant
2016-09-15, 02:30 AM
It seems to me that "objective morality" is a special case of the is-ought problem (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem). There is no logical way to construct a statement of what "ought" to be, solely from premises of what "is". How did you arrive at this conclusion?

The page you linked contains a number of suggestions for how to construct a statement of ought from is. In fact, this comprises the bulk of the linked article.

Indeed, the article presents a rather different sort of argument to your "there is no logical way." It instead makes statements like "it is not obvious how one can coherently move from descriptive statements to prescriptive ones" or "Hume calls for caution against such inferences in the absence of any explanation of how the ought-statements follow from the is-statements." It even notes that Hume himself may not have supported your position. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem#Misunderstanding)

veti
2016-09-15, 03:31 AM
How did you arrive at this conclusion?

The page you linked contains a number of suggestions for how to construct a statement of ought from is. In fact, this comprises the bulk of the linked article.

All of which, on close inspection, consist of inserting an axiom of "This is preferable to That" into your reasoning.

Which, although it appears to be an "is" (i.e. purely factual) statement, is inescapably a subjective statement. "I prefer this to that" may be perfectly true for any given speaker, but it's not universally true.

LudicSavant
2016-09-15, 03:48 AM
There is no logical way to construct a statement of what "ought" to be, solely from premises of what "is".

At some point you have to introduce an axiom that "This" is preferable to "That". And as soon as you do that, "objectivity" is out the window.At some point you have to introduce an axiom that "This" is preferable to "That". And as soon as you do that, "objectivity" is out the window.

Are you counting "ways that express preferences" as "not logical ways"?

Expressing goals or preferences doesn't throw logic or rationality out the window. Quite to the contrary, instrumental rationality is entirely goal-based. (https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Rationality#Instrumental_rationality)


Once you have a definition of "good", then you can objectively assess other things as "good" in terms of how closely they adhere to your definition.

Yep, sure can.


But the definition itself is not "objective" . . . Utilitarians define it one way, Kantians another, religious people have their own yardsticks

Of course. The entire basis of language is agreeing that some arbitrary sounds point to some meaning or other. It's not just "good" that can be defined in multiple ways, it's all words. This is a non-problem.

Any time you are actually successfully communicating, you are addressing a shared definition (e.g. you tell a guy that there's a "globble" over there and he knows what you mean by globble). And, according to you...


Once you have a definition of "good", then you can objectively assess other things as "good" in terms of how closely they adhere to your definition.

The notion that "nobody can agree on a definition" is some big philosophical conundrum is a confusion over how communication works, not a confusion over any specific question about what world we're living in.

For example, let's take two people (Ace and Bob) who are arguing. They are asked "When a tree falls in the forest with no one around to hear it, does it make a sound?" Ace answers "Yes" and Bob answers "No." This seems like an apparent contradiction! But... what is each one understanding the word "sound" to mean?

Ace's definition of sound is "a vibration in the air." Bob's is "an auditory experience."

But if you ask the question "When a tree falls in the forest with no one around to hear it, does it create an auditory experience?" the disagreement vanishes. Both answer no.
If you ask the question "When a tree falls in the forest with no one around to hear it, does it create a vibration in the air?" the disagreement again vanishes. Both answer yes.

In short, Ace and Bob never actually disagreed on the nature of the world, they just failed to communicate by not understanding which definition the question was using.

Refusing to agree on a definition isn't the same thing as refusing to agree on any specific philosophical question. It's just a refusal to communicate. Nothing more, nothing less.

One should be wary of variable question fallacies. Often, when two different people (or even the same person in two different contexts) asks "Is this good?" they are actually asking different questions. The fact that the same words can be used to express different questions should not be confused for those distinct questions being unanswerable.

For more information, see this (http://lesswrong.com/lw/oc/variable_question_fallacies/). If you can understand that, you should understand why "everyone has a different definition" is no great barrier to being able to answer questions of whether something is good or not. See also this (http://lesswrong.com/lw/np/disputing_definitions/).


Which, although it appears to be an "is" (i.e. purely factual) statement, is inescapably a subjective statement. "I prefer this to that" may be perfectly true for any given speaker, but it's not universally true.

How is this even relevant to addressing the is-ought problem, as presented in the article you linked?

All that you have to do to solve the is-ought problem presented is show ought statements which follow reasonably from is statements, and that's easy.

Pretty much any time you solve a practical problem, you're solving the is-ought problem as presented in the link you gave. So, for example, you could say "If I want to win the race, I ought to run quickly, because running quickly is going to help me win the race." There's no category error there, that's a perfectly reasonable statement.

Here's another example.
"It is the case that Knowledge Devotion grants at least a +1 bonus to all attack and damage rolls, regardless of your Knowledge roll. It is the case that Weapon Focus only grants a +1 bonus to a subset of attack rolls and no damage bonus. It is the case that I want to optimize my character to have the best attack and damage bonus in as many cases as possible. It is the case that my character meets the requirements for both feats. Therefore, I ought to take Knowledge Devotion rather than Weapon Focus."

Optimizers solve this is-ought problem all the time. It's utterly, completely trivial.

AMFV
2016-09-15, 07:32 AM
It seems to me that "objective morality" is a special case of the is-ought problem (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem). There is no logical way to construct a statement of what "ought" to be, solely from premises of what "is".

This only holds true provided that we assume that morality is not a force external to people. If morality is in fact a force external to people then we could construct statements on what ought to be based on what is, in this case the external moral force. That's not illogical or a serious problem, it's a difference in perspective right at the beginning of many contrasting moral theories.

The difficulty comes not from contrasting opposed ideas about goals or "oughts" as Hume supposes, but from different people believing different evidences with regards to the moral force (or lack thereof), the argument is almost always about what "Is" at least once you get into more serious philosophical treatises, the arguments about "oughts", tend to fall by the wayside, since those are most often evident from the "Is" in a particular line of reasoning.



At some point you have to introduce an axiom that "This" is preferable to "That". And as soon as you do that, "objectivity" is out the window.


This is true, but such statements are not necessarily a part of every kind of moral theory. Objective moral theories don't tend to take preference into account at all. And most strive for at least some semblance of objectivity.



Once you have a definition of "good", then you can objectively assess other things as "good" in terms of how closely they adhere to your definition. But the definition itself is not "objective", it's a value statement. Utilitarians define it one way, Kantians another, religious people have their own yardsticks - but I don't see how any of them can defensibly be called "objective". And of course you can introduce a new rule for choosing between alternative interpretations of "good"... but that's ultimately just another, contending definition, and in itself another demonstration of the subjectivity of the whole enterprise.

Having multiple definitions of something is not necessarily an indication of subjectivity. It may only be an indication that one side is wrong. After all there are people who believe that the Earth is flat, they have a different definition of what the Earth is. That doesn't mean that the Earth is subjective. It means that one side is wrong. If Utilitarians and Kantians have differing definitions of what Good is, then one side will be less or more correct (unless of course there is no Good, in which case there are other evaluative methods).

The whole deciding what is "Good" is a large part of philosophy, theology, and many other enterprises.


All of which, on close inspection, consist of inserting an axiom of "This is preferable to That" into your reasoning.

Only if you define "this is preferable" in a way that it is unlikely to be used. I would "prefer" a medical procedure that has a higher chance of my survival, that doesn't make the choice of which medical procedure I should have a subjective one. It's only an attempt at muddying the waters some.



Which, although it appears to be an "is" (i.e. purely factual) statement, is inescapably a subjective statement. "I prefer this to that" may be perfectly true for any given speaker, but it's not universally true.

But again, that is only true providing that they are not dealing with an objective force, in which case, one side is simply incorrect.


This claim is not self evident. While this is a possible result, the opposite is also possible, as well as the situation where beliefs about moral law were independent from moral law.

To be fair I wasn't actually trying to prove the statement, I was presenting as a potential alternative interpretation to something that I thought might be raised as an objection. Although that may not have been clear at whatever hour I was posting that.



Of course these other possible results I mentioned would also fit the data "Early cultures did not start with perfectly matching moral beliefs". So if you had backed off and made a weaker claim it might have been self evident while also still being useful for your point.


Very possibly true. To be fair, hands are pretty tied as to what evidences we can present here though, so I'm mostly trying to avoid trying to actually prove anything (when I won't be able to properly defend any such points).



Sidenote: Why do we call the less daring claim with greater confidence the "weaker" claim in contrast to the more daring claim with lower confidence or "stronger" claim? It makes for werid sentences like "I think your stronger claim is weak and so I will only assume your weaker claim."

Not sure, language is a funny beast sometimes.

OldTrees1
2016-09-15, 08:16 AM
It seems to me that "objective morality" is a special case of the is-ought problem (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem). There is no logical way to construct a statement of what "ought" to be, solely from premises of what "is".

If I knew the end in itself* I could derive a complete list of all the correct "ought" statements from that one fact and descriptive statements about reality. So I can derive an "ought" from an "is", I just need to start with the right "is" statement (___ is the end in itself aka the essence of what makes something moral).

So your objection is not a special case of the is-ought problem. Your problem is believing that:
1) Nobody can fill in that blank from a place of knowledge
2) There is nothing that belongs in that blank (whether you mean this as {} is a proper answer, just don't believe in any particular answer, or some third thing is unclear)


*I can name loads of philosophers that did the same given a proposed end in itself. So doing it with the correct end in itself should not be that hard if given the correct end in itself.

ImNotTrevor
2016-09-15, 09:37 AM
And there you go. You just claimed, yet again, that neuroscience is not objective according to the definition which you've been using throughout this thread (e.g. doesn't exist without minds). Therefore it is one of the many assertions that you have made (contrary to your claim that you are making no assertions at all). See post #102.
Take the blinders off to read the very next sentence, which states that Neuroscience succeeds in more definitions of Objective than it fails at, and so by ONE definition I've been using, it isn't, but by several others it is.
(Especially in being an analysis not based on emotion.)

I've been using several definitions of Objective throughout the discussion. You've just been harping on about one that happens to apply to a great portion of human endeavour. *shrug*

And by that one singular definition, no. Neuroscience is not Objective (meaning not existant independent of the human mind, being a human mental product)



So, just to get this straight, you were previously making sweeping assertions about the nature and limits of neuroscience not only despite lacking a background in neuroscience, but also despite not even taking a second to google it. Kay. Well, that's pretty much what I had expected was the case.

Incidentally, your impression from... whatever source you googled for all of a second... is still misinformed. For one, you are under the mistaken impression that biology and psychology are mutually exclusive categories. For example, "biological psychology" and "experimental psychology" are subfields of neuroscience.

Neuroscience is a vast, interdisciplinary field. Here are a few of its subfields:

Molecular: Neurochemistry, Cellular Neuroscience, Molecular Neuroscience, Neurobiology
Cognitive: Computational Neuroscience, Cognitive Science, Neuropsychology, Affective Neuroscience
Behavioral Neuroscience: Biological Psychology, Behavioral Genetics/Epigenetics, Experimental Psychology, Learning and Behavior
Medical: Neuroimmunology, Neuropathology, Neuropharmacology, Neuroprosthetics, Neurotoxicology, Psychopharmacology, Neuroimaging
Other: Neurolinguistics, Cultural Neuroscience, Neuroanthropology, Evolutionary Neuroscience, Developmental Neuroscience, Neuroengineering, Neuroinformatics, Paleoneurology, Social Neuroscience

I'm not sure what this has to do with the actual matter at hand.
But you seem to have worked up a real dander about this.

LudicSavant
2016-09-15, 09:44 AM
Take the blinders off to read the very next sentence, which states that Neuroscience succeeds in more definitions of Objective than it fails at, and so by ONE definition I've been using, it isn't, but by several others it is.
Therefore, the claim that neuroscience fails a definition you've been using is an assertion you've made. Look, you just made it yet again. :smallsigh:


I haven't made an assertion.

When? Quote me saying that.

Max_Killjoy
2016-09-15, 09:50 AM
And by that one singular definition, no. Neuroscience is not Objective (meaning not existant independent of the human mind, being a human mental product)


By that standard, there are no objective sciences, as "science" is a human process undertaken by human minds and human hands, attempting to understand the reality that humans inhabit.

ImNotTrevor
2016-09-15, 01:18 PM
Therefore, the claim that neuroscience fails a definition you've been using is an assertion you've made. Look, you just made it yet again. :smallsigh:

Does it not fail that one Webster's definition of objectivity? I mean, you made the case yourself so clearly you understand that it fails in one of 3 applicable definitions. Namely:
"of, relating to, or being an object, phenomenon, or condition in the realm of sensible experience independent of individual thought and perceptible by all observers : having reality independent of the mind" where that last phrase is the kicker. You've asserted several times that neurology doesn't exist without the mind.
And by this reputable definition of the word, Neurology isn't Objective in THIS PARTICULAR SENSE.

Luckily, Objective has multiple meanings, as words often do in English.

Under THIS definition:
"expressing or dealing with facts or conditions as perceived without distortion by personal feelings, prejudices, or interpretations"
It DOES meet the standard of being Objective.

So Neuroscience both IS and IS NOT objective, depending upon the definition of the word you are using. I've never suggested it is unobjective in the second sense. (Which is the definition you seemed to be suggesting I was using to call it unobjective, which isn't true.) However you've provided plenty of your own evidence for why it doesn't fit the bill for the first, and I've just agreed with your own assertions. :D

veti
2016-09-15, 03:55 PM
If I knew the end in itself* I could derive a complete list of all the correct "ought" statements from that one fact and descriptive statements about reality. So I can derive an "ought" from an "is", I just need to start with the right "is" statement (___ is the end in itself aka the essence of what makes something moral).

So your objection is not a special case of the is-ought problem. Your problem is believing that:
1) Nobody can fill in that blank from a place of knowledge
2) There is nothing that belongs in that blank (whether you mean this as {} is a proper answer, just don't believe in any particular answer, or some third thing is unclear)

Suppose there's a property, that is exactly equivalent to "good" but is itself not defined in terms of "good". You call it "___". Okay, let's go with that.

Now consider the question "is ___ good?"

Since ___ equals good, that's a tautological question. It's like asking "does 2 = 2?" No analysis is required or even possible, the answer is right there in the question.

My belief is: there is no morally-neutral word, or combination of words, or even of concepts, that I could substitute for "___" in that analysis. (You could use a morally-loaded word, like 'excellence' or 'benefit', but that's begging the question.)

Edit: sorry, I should have attributed this. It's called the open-question argument (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-question_argument).

LudicSavant
2016-09-15, 03:57 PM
Does it not fail that one Webster's definition of objectivity? I mean, you made the case yourself so clearly you understand that it fails in one of 3 applicable definitions. Namely:
"of, relating to, or being an object, phenomenon, or condition in the realm of sensible experience independent of individual thought and perceptible by all observers : having reality independent of the mind" where that last phrase is the kicker. You've asserted several times that neurology doesn't exist without the mind.
And by this reputable definition of the word, Neurology isn't Objective in THIS PARTICULAR SENSE.

Luckily, Objective has multiple meanings, as words often do in English.

Under THIS definition:
"expressing or dealing with facts or conditions as perceived without distortion by personal feelings, prejudices, or interpretations"
It DOES meet the standard of being Objective.

So Neuroscience both IS and IS NOT objective, depending upon the definition of the word you are using. I've never suggested it is unobjective in the second sense. (Which is the definition you seemed to be suggesting I was using to call it unobjective, which isn't true.) However you've provided plenty of your own evidence for why it doesn't fit the bill for the first, and I've just agreed with your own assertions. :D

There are three points that have been raised, none of which you are addressing in this post.

- You claimed that you had not made any assertions, and thus do not have burden of proof... a notion many posters have attempted to correct you on. I therefore listed a few examples of assertions you had made (whether the assertions are true or not is obviously irrelevant to the point that you made them).


I haven't made an assertion.
On the contrary, you have made many assertions. You have asserted that neuroscience can't be studied objectively, that morality cannot be objective, that morality is always arbitrary, and that all systems of morality are not based on logical reasoning. The burden of proof for these assertions is on you.

- You then claimed that you never made the assertion that neuroscience wasn't objective, and challenged me to quote where you said it. I then quoted where you said it. Then another place where you said it. Then another place where you said it. You then threw various insults at me for simply noting that you said what you said.

You have asserted that neuroscience can't be studied objectively,

When? Quote me saying that.

Neuroscience is not Objective

-_-

- I also noted that the fact that whether something meets that "doesn't exist if all minds don't exist" definition of yours is a moot point for the same reason that Max Killjoy just did. If all sciences don't meet a given definition, then noting that something doesn't meet that definition is not actually a justification of something being unscientific, illogical, arbitrary, or any of those other things you've said.

In other words, the problem isn't that the definition is an invalid definition, it's that meeting the definition does not have the implications that you have claimed it to have.



Morality doesn't exist without Minds. Let me ask you a question: What do you think is the significance or relevance of this point to the topic?

I believe I have already made it clear in my previous posts why this is a moot point, as have other posters.

You appear to be treating "doesn't exist without minds" as somehow being "not objective," "not logical," or "not scientific."

Here are some things that don't exist without minds which can fairly be said to be logical, objective, empirical, or scientific: Neuroscience, neurobiology, neuropathology, cognitive science, psychology, psychiatry, sociology, history, anthropology, archaeology... need I go on?

In short, saying that morality doesn't exist without minds does not refute anyone claiming that it can be logical, objective, empirical, or scientific (and there are, in fact, an awful lot of scientists making such claims (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_of_morality)). Also this guy (http://lesswrong.com/lw/sm/the_meaning_of_right/).


It's called the open-question argument (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-question_argument).

The problem with the open-question argument is that its first premise is false.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-question_argument#Objections_and_rejoinders

Meaningful analysis
The main assumption within the open-question argument can be found within premise 1. It is assumed that analytic equivalency will result in meaningless analysis.[5] Thus, if we understand Concept C, and Concept C* can be analysed in terms of Concept C, then we should grasp concept C* by virtue of our understanding of Concept C. Yet it is obvious that such understanding of Concept C* only comes about through the analysis proper. Mathematics would be the prime example: mathematics is tautological and its claims are true by definition, yet we can develop new mathematical conceptions and theorems. Thus, X (i.e. some non-moral property) might well be analytically equivalent to the good, and still the question of "Is X good?" can be meaningful. Ergo premise 1 does not hold and the argument falls.

Mechalich
2016-09-15, 05:21 PM
Once you have a definition of "good", then you can objectively assess other things as "good" in terms of how closely they adhere to your definition. But the definition itself is not "objective", it's a value statement. Utilitarians define it one way, Kantians another, religious people have their own yardsticks - but I don't see how any of them can defensibly be called "objective". And of course you can introduce a new rule for choosing between alternative interpretations of "good"... but that's ultimately just another, contending definition, and in itself another demonstration of the subjectivity of the whole enterprise.

I think this sums a lot up very effectively.

All possible value statements for the definition of good are equal - you cannot claim that one is preferable to another. You can't even claim that the one that the greatest number of people accept is preferable, since that's an argument ad populum. If you consider the possibility of alien sapient species, this becomes fairly obvious, since any other sapient species is bound to have a vastly different psychological outlook and to prioritize value statements in a way that will almost certainly conflict with any human value judgment.

So that's what most people consider subjective morality - that moral frameworks are ultimately 'based on personal feelings, tastes, or opinions,' which is a common definition of subjective.

Objective morality means that you have a universe where there is a single, universal definition of good that holds for everyone, regardless of culture, species, or other factors. In such a scenario people who are using that axiom to build their moral framework are correct and everyone else is wrong, full stop. This can happen in fiction because fictional creators can establish word of god properties of their universes for the purpose of storytelling (though they're rarely blatant about it, because that's no fun). To use an example that should be universally recognizable: belief in the Force in Star Wars. In Star Wars the Force demonstratively exists and has word of god support, and any character in that universe who chooses to believe that the force does not exist is wrong, and any moral or religious system in Star Wars that does not base its moral reasoning off the principles of the Force - and there are several in the Star Wars EU - is wrong.

LudicSavant
2016-09-15, 06:42 PM
Objective morality means that you have a universe where there is a single, universal definition of good that holds for everyone, regardless of culture, species, or other factors. In such a scenario people who are using that axiom to build their moral framework are correct and everyone else is wrong, full stop. This can happen in fiction because fictional creators can establish word of god properties of their universes for the purpose of storytelling (though they're rarely blatant about it, because that's no fun). To use an example that should be universally recognizable: belief in the Force in Star Wars. In Star Wars the Force demonstratively exists and has word of god support, and any character in that universe who chooses to believe that the force does not exist is wrong, and any moral or religious system in Star Wars that does not base its moral reasoning off the principles of the Force - and there are several in the Star Wars EU - is wrong.

Why does there have to be only one single definition of good? This doesn't apply for any topic we hold to be objective, such as gravity (totally has multiple definitions). (http://www.dictionary.com/browse/gravity) Why would you require it for "good," but not for any other topic?

I can speak objectively about the pitch of sounds (definition 8). I can also speak objectively about the force of attraction by which we fall towards the center of the earth (definition 1). There doesn't need to be a single definition at all.

veti
2016-09-15, 07:04 PM
The problem with the open-question argument is that its first premise is false.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-question_argument#Objections_and_rejoinders

That's why I'm presenting it only as an argument, not claiming it's a formal proof.

You'll note my position is that "I, personally, cannot imagine there being a value of ___ such that this analysis is fulfilled". That's clearly not proof, it's just a lack of imagination on my part; if you can imagine such a value, then you'll reject the whole thing.

But if you agree and admit that you can't imagine it, then you might be persuaded to accept the analysis that follows from that.

OldTrees1
2016-09-15, 07:08 PM
Suppose there's a property, that is exactly equivalent to "good" but is itself not defined in terms of "good". You call it "___". Okay, let's go with that.

Now consider the question "is ___ good?"

Since ___ equals good, that's a tautological question. It's like asking "does 2 = 2?" No analysis is required or even possible, the answer is right there in the question.

My belief is: there is no morally-neutral word, or combination of words, or even of concepts, that I could substitute for "___" in that analysis. (You could use a morally-loaded word, like 'excellence' or 'benefit', but that's begging the question.)

Edit: sorry, I should have attributed this. It's called the open-question argument (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-question_argument).

"Does 2 = 2?" is trivial but not meaningless. It has a truth value of "true".

However I was talking about deriving a moral system given "___". Given "___" I can derive what one ought to do in specific cases in a manner I cannot do with "good" since I understand the significance of "good" (what one ought to do?) but not its specific definition(what makes something good?). Just like someone would understand "does not eat meat" before "vegetarian" and only by linking those identical concepts do they learn what "vegetarian" means. So I don't believe the open-question argument effects my claim.




Your believe is that "___" does not have a descriptive definition. I don't fully parse what you mean by this since even an amoral reality (aka all actions are amoral) does not fit your belief.

LudicSavant
2016-09-15, 07:17 PM
The problem with the open-question argument is that its first premise is false.That's why I'm presenting it only as an argument

If a premise is shown to be false, the argument is rendered unsound. I'm not sure what else you want. :smallconfused:

Mechalich
2016-09-15, 08:08 PM
Why does there have to be only one single definition of good? This doesn't apply for any topic we hold to be objective, such as gravity (totally has multiple definitions). (http://www.dictionary.com/browse/gravity) Why would you require it for "good," but not for any other topic?


Once you change the values and properties of the axioms, you're operating in a different system. For example, if you alter one of Euclid's Postulates - the axioms governing Euclidean geometry - then you're now doing non-Euclidean geometry.

Gravity may have multiple definitions in language, but the fundamental gravitational force only has one definition - if you change that definition, such as by changing the value of the universal gravitational constant, you have suddenly created a new universe. There are certainly fantasies that do this, with more or less rigor (Greg Egan is famous for this), but a single universe can't do that and actually function. My knowledge of theoretical physics is insufficient to speculate properly as to what happens if you vary the value of G, but I suspect it wouldn't be pretty.

It is certainly possible to have a fantasy multiverse that does this - the D&D multiverse holds moral truth constant while varying physical conditions, but you could certainly vary moral truths while holding physical conditions constant, or even varying both.

Note that having an objective moral foundation to a fantasy universe does not mean there's no moral ambiguity, or that what is 'good' needs to be knowable, or that morality can't be situation dependent, or any other complications. For the overwhelming majority of human history the overwhelming majority of all humans have firmly believed that the world they live in follows an objective moral system, that hasn't made their grappling with the moral quandaries any less complex, because any objective moral system attempting to explain the real world has to deal with the complexity of the real world.

Objective moral systems in fantasy, by contrast, are often deliberately used to simplify. Tolkien is an obvious (and highly relevant due to outsize influence) case. In Tolkien creatures like orcs and trolls are evil because they aren't natural creations; they are perversions of the works Iluvatar (who is an thinly-veiled version of the Abrahamic God) by Melkor (who is an equally thinly-veiled version of the Devil) which means they lack any right to life of their own and the complete and total genocide of all orcs is right and good within the moral universe of Middle-Earth. This simplification is used to erase moral questions that might otherwise complicate the narrative of LotR and the Silmarilllion - which isn't about the servants of evil anyway.

Max_Killjoy
2016-09-15, 08:13 PM
Why does there have to be only one single definition of good? This doesn't apply for any topic we hold to be objective, such as gravity (totally has multiple definitions). (http://www.dictionary.com/browse/gravity) Why would you require it for "good," but not for any other topic?

I can speak objectively about the pitch of sounds (definition 8). I can also speak objectively about the force of attraction by which we fall towards the center of the earth (definition 1). There doesn't need to be a single definition at all.


One has to be careful to differentiate between that statement, and a claim that all theories of gravity are valid and need to be agreed on before proceeding.

LudicSavant
2016-09-15, 08:30 PM
One has to be careful to differentiate between that statement, and a claim that all theories of gravity are valid and need to be agreed on before proceeding.

Indeed!


Gravity may have multiple definitions in language, but the fundamental gravitational force only has one definition You appear to be using the word "definition" to mean something different than what I understand the word definition to mean. Definitions conventionally refer to a thing in language. It can also refer to sharpness (as in optics) or other visual features ("His biceps have great muscle definition"), but that's clearly not what you mean by it either.


if you change that definition, such as by changing the value of the universal gravitational constant, you have suddenly created a new universe.

The fundamental gravitational force has only one nature, changing that nature creates a new reality. However, changing the definition of a term wouldn't change reality in this way at all.

veti
2016-09-15, 08:35 PM
If a premise is shown to be false, the argument is rendered unsound. I'm not sure what else you want. :smallconfused:

How about, instead of fretting about the formal logic as originally formulated, you engage with the argument as I've presented it?

Because when I said "My belief is:", I was stating the disputed premise as my belief. If you reject that belief, then there's nothing in the argument for you. But if you don't, then it still deserves consideration.

LudicSavant
2016-09-15, 08:40 PM
How about, instead of fretting about the formal logic as originally formulated, you engage with the argument as I've presented it?

Mmkay. Though this has the exact same answer.


Since ___ equals good, that's a tautological question. It's like asking "does 2 = 2?" No analysis is required or even possible, the answer is right there in the question.

The premise that no analysis is possible is false. "Does 2=2?" is trivial and tautological but not meaningless. For example, I can provide the analysis that it has a truth value of "true". I can provide the analysis that it is a tautology in the first place. And so on and so forth.

Indeed, A=A is the Law of Identity, a foundational theorem of all rational discourse. https://proofwiki.org/wiki/Law_of_Identity


"Does 2 = 2?" is trivial but not meaningless. It has a truth value of "true".

Exactly this.

Mechalich
2016-09-15, 09:58 PM
The fundamental gravitational force has only one nature, changing that nature creates a new reality. However, changing the definition of a term wouldn't change reality in this way at all.

Fine, whatever, since the meaning was apparently easily discernible it really doesn't matter. The point is, if in the construction of a universe you set Good = X you cannot also set Good = Y where Y != X.

In fact I would simplify a statement of Subjective versus Objective Morality in this fashion:
In objective morality the equation Good = X is solvable for some value of X - though that value may not be discernible by any observer within the universe and may in fact be a highly complex field.
In subjective morality the equation Good = X is not solvable because X has all possible values. You may chose any value you wish from which to found a moral system, but anyone else can choose any other value to do the same thing and that would be equally valid.

LudicSavant
2016-09-15, 10:31 PM
In fact I would simplify a statement of Subjective versus Objective Morality in this fashion:
In objective morality the equation Good = X is solvable for some value of X - though that value may not be discernible by any observer within the universe and may in fact be a highly complex field.
In subjective morality the equation Good = X is not solvable because X has all possible values. You may chose any value you wish from which to found a moral system, but anyone else can choose any other value to do the same thing and that would be equally valid.

Sure. Just as long as you realize that you can totally solve for gravity = X where gravity is the pitch of sounds (definition 8 (http://www.dictionary.com/browse/gravity)), and you can solve for gravity = X where gravity is the force that pulls you to the center of the earth (definition 1 (http://www.dictionary.com/browse/gravity)), in the same world. They are two distinct solvable objective problems that just happen to be represented by the same symbols, and a name collision should not be mistaken for a genuine contradiction of theoretical models.

Edit: In other words, one should not make the mistake of saying "Hey, you can't say that's good! In D&D, good can only mean alignment!" This just isn't true... nothing made all of these definitions (http://www.dictionary.com/browse/good) go away in D&D, nor have statements using those definitions been rendered unsolvable. For example, definition 13 (http://www.dictionary.com/browse/good) of good can be objectively evaluated (by your solvable/not solvable definition) in a D&D world, and has nothing to do with alignment. Nothing about D&D alignment suddenly made the question of "is X healthful/beneficial" unsolvable. You need not throw up your hands and say "Oh man, I can't tell whether or not this cure disease spell will improve the health of this diseased person. That's subjective and therefore not solvable because X has all possible values!"

AMFV
2016-09-15, 11:30 PM
Suppose there's a property, that is exactly equivalent to "good" but is itself not defined in terms of "good". You call it "___". Okay, let's go with that.


Well here is the first part of where this particular argument breaks down. Typically moral argumentation and ethical discussion doesn't deal with "The Good" or any supposed equivalent property, but rather Goodness is a characteristic of degree rather than a specific thing. For example in my room there is light, but not all light is equivalent, if my welding helmet doesn't auto-darken the light there is many many thousands of times brighter than the light in my room from my laptop.



Now consider the question "is ___ good?"

Since ___ equals good, that's a tautological question. It's like asking "does 2 = 2?" No analysis is required or even possible, the answer is right there in the question.

But analysis is possible, because we aren't dealing with mathematical principles. Hell, even in physics, the hardest of the hard sciences there are enough variances to make things that seem very similar worth discussing. If you're reducing granularity by that huge an amount then you're going to have some trouble with making any kind of meaningful argument.

For example, "does 2 apples equal 2 oranges" they're both fruit, both of similar organic composition, both have skin, both are brightly colored. There are two quantities, we'll make them even weigh the same. That's asking if 2 = 2, but they aren't equivalent, because once you have sufficient granularity to make the question meaningful then it's a different ballgrame. If you simplify away all of the relevant parts naturally the question of morality isn't going to be meaningful.



My belief is: there is no morally-neutral word, or combination of words, or even of concepts, that I could substitute for "___" in that analysis. (You could use a morally-loaded word, like 'excellence' or 'benefit', but that's begging the question.)


Well "morally-neutral" is very nebulous to define. After all certain moral systems value things like "excellence" as you've pointed out. So in a system where competency has a moral value, that would be a morally charged term. But there are other moral systems where "excellence" has no moral character at all. Naturally, this make figuring out exactly which set of terms are morally neutral to be almost impossible unless you make certain presuppositions about which moral system is most correct.

And again, if you're supposing an objective good, that would mean that either you are correct or incorrect in your presuppositions, not that all such arguments have equal merit.



Edit: sorry, I should have attributed this. It's called the open-question argument (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-question_argument).

We'll note that this is an argument attempting to refute a particular brand of moral philosophy that claims moral character to acts in nature. That isn't exactly going to have a strong impact on objective moral arguments that don't have a lot to do with nature, or moral arguments with an altered or different character. It's not a bad starting point for a discussion, but it's hardly the silver bullet in the heart of Objective Morality. Now you might find it personally compelling, and I can't argue with that.


Sure. Just as long as you realize that you can totally solve for gravity = X where gravity is the pitch of sounds (definition 8 (http://www.dictionary.com/browse/gravity)), and you can solve for gravity = X where gravity is the force that pulls you to the center of the earth (definition 1 (http://www.dictionary.com/browse/gravity)), in the same world. They are two distinct solvable objective problems that just happen to be represented by the same symbols, and a name collision should not be mistaken for a genuine contradiction of theoretical models.

But if you start talking about a different kind of Gravity in say, physics... where you aren't using it to refer to the attraction of mass-objects towards each other. Then you are using the wrong definition. Certainly there are multiple definition of Good. But in Moral Philosophy there is only a smaller subset of meaningful definitions in that particular field. Since we are discussing that particular field, that would mean that the other definitions are not useful. And as much fun as all this running to Dictionary websites is... it isn't particularly meaningful or cogent to the discussion.

You're using a sort of linguistic argument, but it's not really a fitting or meaningful argument here. If there is objective good then good is defined in a set way. If it's a physical force then it has a specific meaning. After all Gravity being the "Pitch of Sounds" is not a technical definition which encompasses the force of "Gravity" the physical force in the universe, and using that definition to discuss that particular sort of gravity would be... wrong. That would be an incorrect usage.

The reason why this is a non-sequitur is because we're referring to Goodness as it is perceived in moral and ethical philosophy. Now whether that's subjective or objective or what-have-you, it's still a very specific aspect. Not unlike if we were discussing "gravity the fundamental force" and bringing up an unrelated definition doesn't actually do anything but muddy the waters.



Edit: In other words, one should not make the mistake of saying "Hey, you can't say that's good! In D&D, good can only mean alignment!" This just isn't true... nothing made all of these definitions (http://www.dictionary.com/browse/good) go away in D&D. For example, definition 13 (http://www.dictionary.com/browse/good) of good can be objectively evaluated (by your solvable/not solvable definition) in a D&D world, and has nothing to do with alignment. Nothing about D&D alignment suddenly made the question of "is X healthful/beneficial" unsolvable. You need not throw up your hands and say "Oh man, I can't tell whether or not this cure disease spell will improve the health of this diseased person. That's subjective and therefore not solvable because X has all possible values!"

This is true, but is also a non-sequitur. After all different things that affect health can also have values of Goodness in terms of D&D. Say I kill an innocent, an action which most editions define as Evil, that would have a negative Goodness value, but also a value of the health of a person. So it affects both spectrums. The correlation between them might vary significantly depending on the actual definition of Goodness, and therefore we shouldn't be excluding all those things that we might use to define Goodness in a D&D context.

Also of note, in D&D alignment is NOT subjective. There aren't multiple possible Good/Evil values, it's a universal law, same as Gravity is. Meaning that the impact of Good is pretty much a set thing. Of course, they don't go too much into it, I assume for DM discretion, but that doesn't make it subjective.

LudicSavant
2016-09-15, 11:50 PM
This is true Okay. But you're gonna argue with it anyways, even though it's true. -_-

After all different things that affect health can also have values of Goodness in terms of D&D. Say I kill an innocent, an action which most editions define as Evil, that would have a negative Goodness value, but also a value of the health of a person. So it affects both spectrums. The correlation between them might vary significantly depending on the actual definition of Goodness, and therefore we shouldn't be excluding all those things that we might use to define Goodness in a D&D context. Correlation is not the same as equivalence.


Also of note, in D&D alignment is NOT subjective.

but that doesn't make it subjective. This is not in disagreement with my position. If you think it is, you have misconstrued my position.


But if you start talking about a different kind of Gravity in say, physics . . . Then you are using the wrong definition.

If you are having a conversation about the physics of pitch, and in that conversation refer to a lowness of pitch as gravity, you are using a correct and proper definition of gravity, at least according to dictionary.com It is definition #8, here. (http://www.dictionary.com/browse/gravity)

You can objectively observe the lowness of a pitch. You can measure the lowness of a pitch. All the check boxes for objectivity can be filled, even though you're using the word gravity to refer to a different phenomenon in physics than the force of attraction.

More to the point, it would be deeply erroneous to tell someone that gravity (the lowness of pitch) is subjective (by mechalich's definition) just because it's not gravity (the force of attraction).

Segev
2016-09-16, 10:53 AM
If there is zero evidence to support the existence of a thing, (such as with an Objective Morality) then anyone who claims it exists must provide the evidence.The evidence lies in the fact that societies which adhere to certain moral sets are more successful, and societies which reject them or adhere to alternate ones (which do not align with objective morality) fail. This is especially evident in the collapse of once-great societies, as it is possible to trace the shift in societal mores from one moral code to another (or its rejection of a previously-held moral code) leading causally to that collapse. And, to a lesser extent, witnessing the upswing of previously-unimpressive societies as they adopt moral codes and practices hitherto ignored or rejected.

Where commonality in the successful societies' codes is found, there lies the objective morality.


There seems to be no historical basis for this, and it's also not a moral question being presented, but rather a purely cost-benefit equation on the impersonal level of "a society".How do you define "a moral question?"

I'm not being facetious; you seem to be objecting based on claiming that what I describe has nothing to do with "morality." To even begin to analyze this, I must ask you how you define the term, because to me the two are inextricable. The notion of "right" and "wrong" inherently has some measure of societal cost/benefit, even if the "society" is two people.


Typo? Are you using "moral" as an adjective modifying "law" or are you using "moral law" as a noun?

Also I have no evidence that my interests have any dictatorial power over moral truth. So again I must ask, are you talking about the beliefs people hold (Moral Belief) about the question or about the correct answer (Moral Truth) to the question.I'm saying that there is objective good and objective evil, because you can measure the effects of actions and see that which is called "good" has definite, predictable, over-all effects and that which is called "evil" has similarly definite, predictable, over-all effects. We term things "good" if they lead towards what we tend to agree are desirable results. Greatness, success, life, survival, posterity, etc.

This isn't consequentialism in the sense that "anything which leads here is good." It's consequentialism as a measure of the validity and veracity of a moral claim.

My contention is that our moral systems, our moral beliefs, our very ideas of "good" vs "evil" are rooted in real laws of reality. Morality is a "users' guide" to civilization on every level, from familial to tribal to community to country. Even to "humankind."

Further evidence of this stems from the fact that most efforts to construct "blue and orange morality" or to construct justifications for moral systems which condone behaviors normally frowned upon by what we consider civilized societies require changing the base nature of the beings involved. Making them alien in some fashion from real-world humans, or making their circumstances have factors which fundamentally alter the natural laws to which they are subject.

I've actually played with this, myself, in trying to make some fantasy races distinctly inhuman without making them unrecognizable. Orcs, for instance, I wrote as having increased efficiency to their labor capacity and their return-on-resource-investment as they get bigger and stronger and consume more. So the notion of a Big Chief orc who claims the majority of resources and of a tyranny where most resources are concentrated in an elite makes more sense for them, because they literally are more productive and successful as a society, with more resources to go around, when the majority of resources are concentrated in the biggest and strongest orcs. This is distinctly different from humans, where there's a point of dramatic diminishing returns as you feed the biggest and strongest more and more.

But objective morality exists because there are objective consequences for behaviors, and there is a pattern of what kind of behaviors lead to what we tend to deem desirable on an individual and societal level.


Caveat: "don't murder people in our group"
Because several important societies were quite successful murdering and looting other people. Murder until they give up and are absorbed into your group as slaves and subjects. Then don't murder them, because you need them to do work.Poisonous, consumptive cultures can seem to succeed as long as they can prey upon or be parasites to other cultures. They destroy the cultures surrounding them, and grow far less than the sum of the two cultures would have been. Such destructive consumption leads to fall when they run out of other cultures to exploit.

The most successful expansion-based cultures can subjugate the others, but they don't consume them in a draining fashion; they introduce their moral systems and apply them to the newly-added peoples, and their moral systems are the sort which can continue to succeed even without consuming yet more neighbors.

I suppose, in truth, expansionist cultures inculcate their moral structures on their new acquisitions, no matter what. But the destructive ones which do not align with the moral codes which are objectively capable of self-sustainment will be dependent on the next victim-culture as the moral codes they utilize ruin any productive capacity of the latest acquisition as they have that of the parent culture. The ever-growing parasite diminishes all it touches for its own much less than parity growth.

Those which have moral codes which can sustain themselves without new acquisitions to drain will, on the other hand, elevate those cultures which didn't share their morals before they acquired them. And - given what seems to be the case for where objectively successful moral codes point - they tend not to subjugate and acquire (except by mutual agreement) those who share their moral systems, so both groups grow by interaction rather than one consuming the other.



Perhaps, though, the disagreement stems from something I touched on earlier in this post: What does "morality" mean? What is it, if not a code to help you differentiate "good" from "evil?" Particularly in action-choices?

OldTrees1
2016-09-16, 11:35 AM
I'm saying that there is objective good and objective evil, because you can measure the effects of actions and see that which is called "good" has definite, predictable, over-all effects and that which is called "evil" has similarly definite, predictable, over-all effects. We term things "good" if they lead towards what we tend to agree are desirable results. Greatness, success, life, survival, posterity, etc.

This isn't consequentialism in the sense that "anything which leads here is good." It's consequentialism as a measure of the validity and veracity of a moral claim.

My contention is that our moral systems, our moral beliefs, our very ideas of "good" vs "evil" are rooted in real laws of reality. Morality is a "users' guide" to civilization on every level, from familial to tribal to community to country. Even to "humankind."

Further evidence of this stems from the fact that most efforts to construct "blue and orange morality" or to construct justifications for moral systems which condone behaviors normally frowned upon by what we consider civilized societies require changing the base nature of the beings involved. Making them alien in some fashion from real-world humans, or making their circumstances have factors which fundamentally alter the natural laws to which they are subject.

I've actually played with this, myself, in trying to make some fantasy races distinctly inhuman without making them unrecognizable. Orcs, for instance, I wrote as having increased efficiency to their labor capacity and their return-on-resource-investment as they get bigger and stronger and consume more. So the notion of a Big Chief orc who claims the majority of resources and of a tyranny where most resources are concentrated in an elite makes more sense for them, because they literally are more productive and successful as a society, with more resources to go around, when the majority of resources are concentrated in the biggest and strongest orcs. This is distinctly different from humans, where there's a point of dramatic diminishing returns as you feed the biggest and strongest more and more.

But objective morality exists because there are objective consequences for behaviors, and there is a pattern of what kind of behaviors lead to what we tend to deem desirable on an individual and societal level.

That was a really poor reply if your goal was answering either of my questions. You are forcing me to make torturous inferences about what the answers to my questions would be if you directly answered them. I will do my best but you are making this very difficult.

I think you are saying that "There are objective trends in the consequences of what people tend to consider 'good' or 'evil'. Aka Segev is talking about how people's beliefs about moral truth are objective rather than talking about moral truth at all."

If I am wrong then you should be able to give an explanation that involved moral agents without referring to their beliefs about "good" or "evil" but does refer to "good"/"moral".

LudicSavant
2016-09-16, 11:41 AM
A practical moral system is an optimization system; it differentiates "better" and "worse" choices. And that's just covered by instrumental rationality (https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Rationality#Instrumental_rationality).

Differentiating choices that will improve the well-being of creatures is no more or less objective than differentiating choices that will optimize health, or optimize maintenance of electronics, or... pretty much any other question where there are right and wrong answers.

"Health" faces many of the same challenges that "morality" does. It is indeed difficult to articulate a simple definition or measurement of health; modern physicians still haven't settled on one. Moreover, every person's body is different. And you can even talk about how one person's health can diminish another person's when you're talking about group health (such as with a Typhoid Mary), which leads to some pretty complex questions which we totally handle in fields like epidemiology. And yet it would be a fool's errand to boldly claim that because of this, the study of medicine or biology or epidemiology was illogical, arbitrary, beyond objectivity, and couldn't be furthered by empirical research.

And that's pretty much the only challenges I've seen people bring up. My suggestion? When making an objection to the idea of objective morality, make sure your goalpost isn't one that also invalidates medical science as being objective.

"Different people use different definitions" :: Physicians do not agree on a definition of "health."
"Different people want to be treated differently" :: Different human bodies need to be treated differently in medicine.
"But sometimes the well-being of the individual is not the well-being of the group!" :: The same applies in medical sciences, such as in epidemiology.
"I haven't seen anyone give a 100% accurate knockdown answer to all moral questions!" :: Uhm, yeah, and you won't see that in any scientific discipline.

Segev
2016-09-16, 11:42 AM
I think the trouble we're having in communication is that, as far as I can tell, the objections to my points amount to, "But you're not talking about morals."

I patently think I am.

I apparently, therefore, do not understand what those objecting believe "morals" to be.

I attempted a proposed definition, but either it was missed or not satisfactory.

So, then, what do you mean when you say "morals" or "morality?" What is morality? I can then address whether, by that definition, there exists an objective one.




To me, morality is the "users' manual." Whether it's written by trial and error passed down through generations as it's been refined, or it's written by a divine Being Who knows the way His creation works and has told His worshippers how to best operate it, there are things that work if your goal is to keep your metaphorical car running, and things which will cause your metaphorical car to break down.

The former are objectively morally "good" in that we assume as premise that the metaphorical car's continued functionality is the thing we desire. By the same token, the latter are objectively morally "evil."

OldTrees1
2016-09-16, 12:54 PM
So, then, what do you mean when you say "morals" or "morality?" What is morality? I can then address whether, by that definition, there exists an objective one.



To me, morality is the "users' manual."

What do I meant by Moral Truth?:
1) There exists a positive number of moral agents (being capable of making decisions of moral significance)
2) Said moral agents make decisions which have 1 or more options available to choose (There only being 1 option available is the trivial Deterministic case while there being more than 1 option is the less trivial Free Will case)
3) Moral is a descriptor labelling all the options in a choice that are consider valid responses (aka what one ought to do)
4) The singular metric of unknown complexity that determines an options validity is Moral Truth.
5) Moral Belief is _insert person_'s belief about what that Moral Truth is


A "user's manual" is completely different (I have written a few myself). User Manuals are:
Descriptive rather than prescriptive
A person's interpretation of reality rather than reality itself (although they are refined over time)
Refined over time rather than a constant fact
etc.

Specifically your user manual is a continually refined collection of cause and effect relationships cross indexed with whether people tend to desire those consequences.


So I think I finally understand what you are talking about, but have concluded that you are not talking about something I would care about.

Edit: Removed a point(See LudicSavant's counterexample)

LudicSavant
2016-09-16, 01:20 PM
User Manuals are:
Descriptive rather than prescriptive

https://www.google.com/search?q=prescriptive+statement&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8


A prescriptive statement suggests a course of action.

Are you seriously suggesting that user manuals do not suggest courses of action? Here I'll open a user manual for one of my machines right now. "Replace the disposable filter every week." Sounds prescriptive to me.

OldTrees1
2016-09-16, 01:25 PM
https://www.google.com/search?q=prescriptive+statement&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

Are you seriously suggesting that user manuals do not suggest courses of action? Here I'll open a user manual for one of my machines right now. "Replace the disposable filter every week." Sounds prescriptive to me.

I have dealt more with the "To do X -> see these steps" kind of user manuals (which are descriptive). Your counterexample ("Do X") is a good one.

Segev
2016-09-16, 02:24 PM
What do I meant by Moral Truth?:
1) There exists a positive number of moral agents (being capable of making decisions of moral significance)
2) Said moral agents make decisions which have 1 or more options available to choose (There only being 1 option available is the trivial Deterministic case while there being more than 1 option is the less trivial Free Will case)
3) Moral is a descriptor labelling all the options in a choice that are consider valid responses (aka what one ought to do)
4) The singular metric of unknown complexity that determines an options validity is Moral Truth.
5) Moral Belief is _insert person_'s belief about what that Moral Truth is
Morality is then objective in the sense that, based on the goals one views as desirable, there are objectively correct choices to achieve them. Whether somebody believes that changing your oil every 6000 miles is what one ought to do, or that using high fructose corn syrup as a fuel supplement is what one ought to do, doesn't change the consequences of performing those actions. Objectively, if your goal is to have a functioning car, following the first and rejecting the second is what you ought to do. If your goal is to wear out your car quickly (perhaps so you can trade it in by proving to your parents that they bought you a lemon and owe you a nicer one), then you ought to reject the former and perform the latter.

If there is room to argue that morality is subjective, then it lies in the premise that the goals of "build a successful society that propagates the ideals which lead to its success" and "build a self-destructive society which consumes its neighbors and itself until it brings about its own collapse" are equally valid and that we can't say we ought to prefer one over the other.

I do tend to go a step further and suggest that any moral code which has as its result the destruction of the memetic fiber that sustains it (barring infection to a new host, which it then also destroys) is objectively inferior to one which self-sustains by promoting the survival and thriving of its host societies, since it will propagate without need for discovering a new, uninfected host to jump to upon the death of its prior one.

Much like we might consider a symbiot to be objectively better than a parasite.



A "user's manual" is completely different (I have written a few myself). User Manuals are:

A person's interpretation of reality rather than reality itself (although they are refined over time)
Refined over time rather than a constant fact
etc.Note that I defined objective morality-as-user-manual to be, if not given by a Divine Being Who knows with perfection His creation, the tried-and-true aspects that have been found to be proven successes.

Many users' manuals as written through trial-and-error are imperfect and represent people's possibly-mistaken perceptions of what is needed. This doesn't negate that, where they're right, there will be commonality between their discoveries and those of others who use the same system. Where those commonalities exist and persist due to the consequences of following vs. ignoring them, there lies discovery of objective truths about morality (or car maintenance, depending on what we're making a users' manual for).


Specifically your user manual is a continually refined collection of cause and effect relationships cross indexed with whether people tend to desire those consequences.It can be. Barring a Divine Being giving perfect knowledge to His worshipers, it would be how objective morality is discovered.

That this process MUST be is why I state so strongly that morality is objective, independent of the presence or absence of God or gods.


So I think I finally understand what you are talking about, but have concluded that you are not talking about something I would care about.Looking at your definitions, I still think my conclusion is inescapable.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the subjectivity you perceive lies in the fact that morality and moral codes are about people's beliefs. To which I posit the following "religions of automotive care:"

The Chrysler Methodists believe that you must rigorously follow all advice given in the manual that came with their car. They adhere to it faithfully, and believe the wrath of the gremlin-devils befalls those who fail to perform the prescribed rituals. (Or, at least, that your car will break down if you don't do things like follow the oil-changing schedule, keep the air pressure in the tires where it should be, and otherwise perform upkeep.)

The Toyota Animists believe that your car merely needs to be kept gassed up, and that it will live until it is time for it to die. If you see symptoms of ailment, perform maintenance on it, but it is in listening to your car that you learn its needs. (i.e., they don't bother with maintenance or the manual, but just do trial and error for car features and keep it gassed up according to its fuel gauge. They take it in for repairs of things break down, and accept that they'll have to buy a new car when this one wears out.)

The Chevy Pastafarians believe that cars run on spaghetti sauce and that maintenance is an evil ritual performed by those who would enslave the pirates who are the chosen people of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. They only ever refill the tank with spaghetti sauce.


These are subjective beliefs. But I hope it's obvious that some of those beliefs are more in line with objective reality about the functionality of a car than others. (I posit that the Chevy Pastafarians would get about 300 miles, on average, out of any vehicle they buy, before it breaks down and they need a new one. If they're lucky and wait for it to be near empty before refilling the spaghetti sauce tank.)

Where one's beliefs about morality align with reality's objective laws of consequence-for-action, one has an objectively correct moral system. Where one's beliefs do not align with reality's objective laws of consequence-for-action, one has an objectively incorrect moral system. If you believe you will get a car that drives wonderfully for millions of miles with Chevy Pastafarian practices, you will be baffled as things go wrong.

Most surviving objectively wrong moral systems are more insidious. Like the most dangerous diseases, they do not present immediately fatal symptoms, but inculcate themselves for a time. Like certain dangerous drugs, they can even seem beneficial in the short term ("Killing all who oppose me does wonders for making sure nobody does!"), and become addictive for the short-term highs while setting up for the long-term failure ("What do you mean, I can't kill this guy? Why is he killing me!? How did this come about!?").



Ultimately, though, I state that morality is objective because you can, through examination of past results, determine which moral systems align behavior to expected outcome correctly.

If your moral code says you will get what you want by doing X, and doing X increases your chances of (or guarantees that you are) getting what you want, then it is objectively correct.

If your moral code says that you will get what you want by doing Y, and doing Y has no impact on (or worse, decreases) your chances of getting what you want, then it is objectively incorrect.

Your beliefs might be subjective, but subjectively believing that riding a ship to Antarctica will let you find the edge of the flat world doesn't change whether or not you are objectively wrong about the shape of the Earth. Nor does subjectively believing you can take a boat and circumnavigate the globe change whether or not you are objectively right about said shape.

OldTrees1
2016-09-16, 03:13 PM
Morality is then objective in the sense that, based on the goals one views as desirable, there are objectively correct choices to achieve them.
My views about if an end is or is not desirable is completely irrelevant to whether or not I ought to pursue that end. The end that I ought to follow is the end that I ought to follow (that end, whatever it is, is called Moral Truth).



Looking at your definitions, I still think my conclusion is inescapable.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the subjectivity you perceive lies in the fact that morality and moral codes are about people's beliefs.
I have been seeking to learn what you were talking about (to see if you were making a claim I cared about or not). I did not call it subjective because I did not know what it was. Nay, it is not subjectivity I perceived in the rooting morality as coming from people's beliefs about morality, it is irrelevance to me that I perceived (and sought to check).

However your conclusion is that such a user manual is objective despite its prescriptive statements being based on the judgements arising from people's moral beliefs. One could argue "If I can change the prescriptive statements merely by changing the moral theory(and the ends) some ascribe to, then is it still objective?"



Correct me if I'm wrong, but the subjectivity you perceive lies in the fact that morality and moral codes are about people's beliefs. To which I posit the following "religions of automotive care:"

These are subjective beliefs. But I hope it's obvious that some of those beliefs are more in line with objective reality about the functionality of a car than others. (I posit that the Chevy Pastafarians would get about 300 miles, on average, out of any vehicle they buy, before it breaks down and they need a new one. If they're lucky and wait for it to be near empty before refilling the spaghetti sauce tank.)

Yes, a self contradicting moral theory is objectively wrong. That is unquestionable (ok technically someone could question it :p).

What about the Buick Pastafarians that believe the purpose of maintenance is to have a vehicle full of pasta? If your point is that a self contradicting moral theory is self contradicting then sure. But I can name some quite alien yet self consistent moral theories. If I can change your user manual by changing the dominant moral theory to an alien but self consistent moral theory, is your user manual reflecting something beyond my editor's pen?

Segev
2016-09-16, 03:47 PM
My views about if an end is or is not desirable is completely irrelevant to whether or not I ought to pursue that end. The end that I ought to follow is the end that I ought to follow (that end, whatever it is, is called Moral Truth).So your definition of morality is that the goal should be prescribed by the moral code as well. That would be inherently subjective, to a degree: what you WANT to have happen, what your GOAL is, is...well, your goal.

I would still posit that you can objectively grade such goals: A goal which is self-defeating is one which will objectively remove itself from being, and make it less relevant to the universe (or multiverse).

For instance, if Jim belongs to a nihilistic cult which believes that it is morally required that everybody die by their own hand as soon as they're persuaded of the truth of the faith, as soon as Jim finally convinces himself he's fully converted, he'll kill himself. And, as the notion won't be attractive to many, it won't spread much, so eventually everybody in the cult will kill themselves, and the moral philosophy of their nihilistic cult will have wiped itself out. It has ceased to be relevant. Whereas a moral code which promotes its own promulgation will remain relevant, and one which promotes not only its own promulgation but the active growth, success, and self-preservation of the cultures it guides will be of greater relevance to the state of all things.



However your conclusion is that such a user manual is objective despite its prescriptive statements being based on the judgements arising from people's moral beliefs. One could argue "If I can change the prescriptive statements merely by changing the moral theory(and the ends) some ascribe to, then is it still objective?"It still is objective whether the ends are relevant, and maintain relevance. It is also still objective whether your prescriptions actually lead to the ends purported.



What about the Buick Pastafarians that believe the purpose of maintenance is to have a vehicle full of pasta?Then they'll be quite satisfied with their moral guidelines that tell them how to fill a car with noodles. I posit, however, that Buick Pastafarians and their noodle-filled cars will be far less relevant to the world than the Chrysler Methodists or even the Toyota Animists, who will have their vehicles achieve far more of relevance to far more people.


If your point is that a self contradicting moral theory is self contradicting then sure. But I can name some quite alien yet self consistent moral theories. If I can change your user manual by changing the dominant moral theory to an alien but self consistent moral theory, is your user manual reflecting something beyond my editor's pen?In the terms you've outlined, it remains a question of relevance. Does changing the goal of the moral system to align with the prescriptions of that moral system make it more or less relevant to the populations who adhere to it, and to their neighbors?

I had written some analysis of religions and how they basically give their moral laws as the "guidebook" or "users' manual" that I posit, because they frame it in terms of "do this, get the good afterlife/next life/result" and "don't do that, or get the bad afterlife/next life/result." The idea that you "ought" to want the good end is implicit; they just assume you do. (There's at least one real-world religion whose idea of final reward for doing it "right" sounds utterly horrifying to me. Were I a believer, I wouldn't pursue activities which would lead me to it; I'd rather it's supposedly middling-to-bad "what comes next.") But I have deleted that analysis for fear I was stepping on the line of forum rules.

Instead, I'll try to focus on this life's results. I posit that, like religious moral codes, morality is a set of guidelines towards or away from certain outcomes, with the implicit assumption that those outcomes are desirable or undesirable. If you find those outcomes desirable, then you will behave opposite to their rules.

I don't think you can have an "ought" without a "because." You ought to do X because it will lead to Y. You ought not to do A lest it lead you to B. Implicit is the assumption that Y is something you want and B is something you don't. But I've never seen a moral system that says "you ought to do X for no reason other than you ought to," with no consequence listed for refusal and no reward listed for obedience.

LudicSavant
2016-09-16, 03:50 PM
One could argue "If I can change the prescriptive statements merely by changing the moral theory(and the ends) some ascribe to, then is it still objective?"

What about the Buick Pastafarians that believe the purpose of maintenance is to have a vehicle full of pasta?

This is another of those spurious objections that falls into the category "if you actually think this is a valid argument against something being objective, it would knock down medical science."

"Doctor, how can I improve the patient's health?"

"Give them this pill twice a day. The infection should be gone within a week."

"No doctor, that's subjective, because you're assuming that the end is "cure the disease." I don't want to cure the disease, I want this man to be full of pasta."

"Oh... well... that's not the question I thought you were asking. If you want them to be full of pasta, here's a pot, some boiling water, some spaghetti, and a scalpel."

Segev
2016-09-16, 03:55 PM
This is another of those spurious objections that falls into the category "if you actually think this is a valid argument against something being objective, it would knock down medical science."

"Doctor, how can I improve the patient's health?"

"Give them this pill twice a day. The infection should be gone within a week."

"No doctor, that's subjective, because you're assuming that the end is "cure the disease." I don't want to cure the disease, I want this man to be full of pasta."

"Oh... well... that's not the question I thought you were asking. If you want them to be full of pasta, here's a pot, some boiling water, some spaghetti, and a scalpel."This much more eloquently says what I was trying to get across. Well done.

OldTrees1
2016-09-16, 04:08 PM
This is another of those spurious objections that falls into the category "if you actually think this is a valid argument against something being objective, it would knock down medical science."

"Doctor, how can I improve the patient's health?"

"Give them this pill twice a day. The infection should be gone within a week."

"No doctor, that's subjective, because you're assuming that the end is "cure the disease." I don't want to cure the disease, I want this man to be full of pasta."

"Oh... well... that's not the question I thought you were asking. If you want them to be full of pasta, here's a pot, some boiling water, some spaghetti, and a scalpel."

How is this analogous to my objection rather than in support of my objection? Did "health" change definitions when the client decided they wanted to fill the patient with pasta? No. No it did not. That is the objection to having morality defined by people's moral beliefs. If I change it so 80% of the world populace is ultilitarians would that have any impact on whether utilitarianism is correct in its assertion that utils are the greatest good? No. No it would not. That assertion stands alone and is correct or incorrect regardless of its popularity. Unless you for some reason believe that making such a change would change the fundamental Moral Truth. If you do believe that changing the popularity of a Moral Theory changes the Moral Truth, then the Moral Truth is theoretically subject to my choice of what Moral Theory will be popular.

Segev
2016-09-16, 04:10 PM
I have to admit, OldTrees1, that I no longer know what your point is. You seem to be arguing that morality is subjective because goals are subjective but that goals aren't subjective...

I'm failing to follow you somewhere.

OldTrees1
2016-09-16, 04:13 PM
I have to admit, OldTrees1, that I no longer know what your point is. You seem to be arguing that morality is subjective because goals are subjective but that goals aren't subjective...

I'm failing to follow you somewhere.

Try this summary:

My Goals are Subjective and thus not a basis for Objective Moral Truth.
The Objective Moral Truth is the goal we all ought to pursue and is independent of our beliefs about what it is (The elephant exists independently of my beliefs about what an elephant is).
Oh and "A & !A" has a truth value of False.

Segev
2016-09-16, 04:16 PM
My Goals are Subjective and thus not a basis for Objective Moral Truth.
The Objective Moral Truth is the goal we all ought to pursue and is independent of our beliefs about what it is (The elephant exists independently of my beliefs about what an elephant is).

I have to fundamentally disagree with your definition, then.

Moral Truth says nothing about the goal you ought to have. I know of no moral system which actually declares you must desire the reward and fear the punishment. It simply assumes you do.

Moral Truth is of the form, "Follow these commandments to go to heaven; avoid these sins or go to hell." It is Objective Moral Truth if it is actually right about it.

(Substitute "build a healthy and thriving society" or "live a life of satisfaction and joy" or whatever you like for "go to heaven," and similar alternative "bad things" for "go to hell" if you want to avoid consideration of the afterlife.)

OldTrees1
2016-09-16, 05:10 PM
I have to fundamentally disagree with your definition, then.

Moral Truth says nothing about the goal you ought to have. I know of no moral system which actually declares you must desire the reward and fear the punishment. It simply assumes you do.

Moral Truth is of the form, "Follow these commandments to go to heaven; avoid these sins or go to hell." It is Objective Moral Truth if it is actually right about it.

(Substitute "build a healthy and thriving society" or "live a life of satisfaction and joy" or whatever you like for "go to heaven," and similar alternative "bad things" for "go to hell" if you want to avoid consideration of the afterlife.)

There are almost no moral systems that rely on reward and punishment in their definition of what is moral. Even most religions have the reward as a consequence of right action rather than part of the definition of what makes an action right.

Also who said "must desire the reward"? I said the end that is 1:1 with what makes something what one ought to do is the end that we ought to follow. Any coincidental rewards are not part of my claim.

When we are being logically rigorous there is no reason to assume any of those goals (go to heaven, a healthy and thriving society, life of satisfaction and joy, ...) are 1:1 with what we ought to do because we have no reason to presume that goal/end is the end we ought to follow.


I fundamentally disagree with your definition because your definition is useless to me. Your definition is an algorithm at outputs an action best suited to the goal that was given as an input. Such an algorithm only works if I have the hubris to presume a goal is correct. So I would continue to sit there thinking about the question "what I ought to do" for your algorithm does not answer the question.

But on the question of subjective vs objective. If you define your answer as the algorithm then it is objective (it will always function the same no matter who uses it). But if you define your answer as the output then it is subjective(it will vary with each person based upon their input).

LudicSavant
2016-09-16, 05:19 PM
How is this analogous to my objection

Because the nurse changed the prescriptive statements merely by changing the health theory and ends they ascribe to, in precisely the same fashion as your Buick Pastafarians did.


If I can change the prescriptive statements merely by changing the moral theory(and the ends) some ascribe to, then is it still objective?"

Just as your Buick Pastafarians replaced the definition of a well-maintained and optimally operated car with "vehicle full of pasta" rather than the definition the other three factions were using, the nurse replaced the definition of "health" with "man full of pasta." If you replace the definition, you are asking a different question.

And if you're asking a different question, you're actually having an entirely different conversation. The Buick Pastafarians might think they're debating the same thing as the three other factions, but in reality they are not. They are just confusing themselves by failing to resolve namespace collisions properly.



If I change it so 80% of the world populace is ultilitarians would that have any impact on whether utilitarianism is correct in its assertion that utils are the greatest good? No. No it would not.

Number of people I can find in this thread who have made an argument that the number of people believing something was relevant to whether or not that thing was objective: Zero. Your argument here appears to address no one. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man)

OldTrees1
2016-09-16, 05:50 PM
Because the nurse changed the prescriptive statements merely by changing the health theory and ends they ascribe to, in precisely the same fashion as your Buick Pastafarians did.



Just as your Buick Pastafarians replaced the definition of a well-maintained and optimally operated car with "vehicle full of pasta" rather than the definition the other three factions were using, the nurse replaced the definition of "health" with "man full of pasta." If you replace the definition, you are asking a different question.

And if you're asking a different question, you're actually having an entirely different conversation. The Buick Pastafarians might think they're debating the same thing as the three other factions, but in reality they are not. They are just confusing themselves by failing to resolve namespace collisions properly.


Ah, but what about the question "What ought one do?"? If I understand correctly segev was taking the commonly held beliefs as to the answer to that question and then using that set to judge the results of actions by their consequences. If Segev is correct that that derivation reaches the correct answer, then changing the answers to the question "What ought one do?" that people commonly believe would change Segev's answer. I have not touched the question people are asking, merely changed people's beliefs as to the answer to their question.


Sidenote: Perhaps this is because "What ought one do?" is placed before a definition of "What makes something moral?" which is backwards of the maintenance and health questions (health is defined before the person asks "what should they do to improve their health?").



Number of people I can find in this thread who have made an argument that the number of people believing something was relevant to whether or not that thing was objective: Zero. Your argument here appears to address no one. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man)

Didn't Segev say he was using the commonly held answers to "What ought one do" as a basis for his answer to "What ought one do"? If so then changing what answer is popular would change Segev's answer.

LudicSavant
2016-09-16, 05:51 PM
Didn't Segev say he was using the commonly held answers to "What ought one do" as a basis for his answer to "What ought one do"? If so then changing what answer is popular would change Segev's answer.

Oh. Well I can't speak for Segev.

For the purposes of this discussion, I am using "objectively exists" to mean essentially "exists even if nobody believes in it."

When I say that health exists, I mean that the concept I refer to when I use the word "health" exists even if nobody believes in it. It exists even if everyone is a Health Pastafarian who uses the word health to refer to an entirely different concept, such as "filling men with pasta."

Likewise, the concept I refer to when I use the words "effective maintenance of cars" exists, even if nobody believes in it. It exists even if everyone is a Buick Pastafarian" who uses the word to refer to an entirely different concept, such as "filling cars with pasta."

Likewise, the concept I refer to when I use the word "morality" exists, even if nobody believes in it. It exists even if everyone is a Moral Pastafarian who uses the word "moral" to refer to an entirely different concept, such as "whether or not you eat pasta."

OldTrees1
2016-09-16, 05:58 PM
Oh. Well I can't speak for Segev.

For the purposes of this discussion, I am using "objective" to mean essentially "exists even if nobody believes in it."
Yeah. I am not in disagreement with you. I am in disagreement with Segev.

Sidenote: Hmm "What ought one do?" is placed before a definition of "What makes something moral?" which is backwards of the maintenance and health questions (health is defined before the person asks "what should they do to improve their health?").


When I say that health exists, I mean that the concept I refer to when I use the word "health" exists even if nobody believes in it. It exists even if everyone is a Health Pastafarian who uses the word health to refer to an entirely different concept, such as "filling men with pasta."

Likewise, the concept I refer to when I use the words "effective maintenance of cars" exists, even if everyone is a Buick Pastafarian" who uses the word to refer to an entirely different concept, such as "filling cars with pasta."

Likewise, the concept I refer to when I use the word "morality" exists, even if everyone is a Moral Pastafarian who uses the word "moral" to refer to an entirely different concept, such as "whether or not you eat pasta."

I agree with this entirely. My beliefs about the answer to a question do not change the answer to that question.

LudicSavant
2016-09-16, 06:06 PM
For some reason I am hungry for pasta now.

OldTrees1
2016-09-16, 06:10 PM
For some reason I am hungry for pasta now.

I know right! I mean, I try to have pasta almost every day so it is not so surprising. But I really want some spaghetti right now.

Thrudd
2016-09-16, 06:16 PM
I have to fundamentally disagree with your definition, then.

Moral Truth says nothing about the goal you ought to have. I know of no moral system which actually declares you must desire the reward and fear the punishment. It simply assumes you do.

Moral Truth is of the form, "Follow these commandments to go to heaven; avoid these sins or go to hell." It is Objective Moral Truth if it is actually right about it.

(Substitute "build a healthy and thriving society" or "live a life of satisfaction and joy" or whatever you like for "go to heaven," and similar alternative "bad things" for "go to hell" if you want to avoid consideration of the afterlife.)

The problem with this is, how do we define a "healthy thriving culture"? Or a "successful society"? Have we ever seen one before? Are we just assuming our culture, and therefore our own society's morals, are the most thriving and successful in history? What if we collapse and dramatically change in the next couple hundred years? Would they still look back and say "that society was the best one, why aren't we like them anymore?"(That's kind of what people have been doing as long as there has been society. The golden age was always in the past.)

How long must a society last before it is considered success? How do we even delineate the end of one society and the beginning of the next?

The entire premise can be nothing but abstract philosophy at this point. There is no way to answer these questions at this time, from our position as limited temporally bound beings with a scant ten thousand years of historical evidence (much of which is still quite shaky). Even if your proposition is possible, it would require a much larger data set to make any definitive claims about the specifics of what is and isn't objectively moral. We simply don't have the data to make such judgements.

The best we can do is look at those rules and morals which seem to be common across cultures and history (the knowledge of which is still growing and evolving). We can derive theories about how and why such rules may have emerged based on our study of human and animal behavior and evolution. But I think making the leap to saying that those observations indicate a proscription for future success (however you define that), let alone a universally objective morality, is making far too many presumptions.

LudicSavant
2016-09-16, 06:21 PM
The problem with this is, how do we define a "healthy thriving culture"? Or a "successful society"?

This is not as much of a problem as it is sometimes made out to be. See again the health example.


It is indeed difficult to articulate a simple definition or measurement of health; modern physicians still haven't settled on one. Moreover, every person's body is different. And you can even talk about how one person's health can diminish another person's when you're talking about group health (such as with a Typhoid Mary), which leads to some pretty complex questions which we totally handle in fields like epidemiology. And yet it would be a fool's errand to boldly claim that because of this, the study of medicine or biology or epidemiology was illogical, arbitrary, beyond objectivity, and couldn't be furthered by empirical research.


Have we ever seen one before?

Back to the health example. Have we ever seen a healthy person before? Well, by modern standards of health, some past societies have never seen a healthy person before. By future standards of health, we may well have not seen a healthy person before (pfft, you guys can get tired? And you only live about a century before dying of age? You poor people!)

Again, this poses no problem to the objectivity of medical science.

Max_Killjoy
2016-09-16, 06:41 PM
The problem with this is, how do we define a "healthy thriving culture"? Or a "successful society"? Have we ever seen one before? Are we just assuming our culture, and therefore our own society's morals, are the most thriving and successful in history? What if we collapse and dramatically change in the next couple hundred years? Would they still look back and say "that society was the best one, why aren't we like them anymore?"(That's kind of what people have been doing as long as there has been society. The golden age was always in the past.)

How long must a society last before it is considered success? How do we even delineate the end of one society and the beginning of the next?

The entire premise can be nothing but abstract philosophy at this point. There is no way to answer these questions at this time, from our position as limited temporally bound beings with a scant ten thousand years of historical evidence (much of which is still quite shaky). Even if your proposition is possible, it would require a much larger data set to make any definitive claims about the specifics of what is and isn't objectively moral. We simply don't have the data to make such judgements.

The best we can do is look at those rules and morals which seem to be common across cultures and history (the knowledge of which is still growing and evolving). We can derive theories about how and why such rules may have emerged based on our study of human and animal behavior and evolution. But I think making the leap to saying that those observations indicate a proscription for future success (however you define that), let alone a universally objective morality, is making far too many presumptions.

We've also seen a lot of "thriving bastards" across history, so to speak.

If success defines what's "moral", then "moral" means something entirely different than what I've always taken it to mean.

Thrudd
2016-09-16, 06:42 PM
This is not as much of a problem as it is sometimes made out to be. See again the health example.





Back to the health example. Have we ever seen a healthy person before? Well, by modern standards of health, some past societies have never seen a healthy person before. By future standards of health, we may well have not seen a healthy person before (pfft, you guys can get tired? And you only live about a century before dying of age? You poor people!)

Again, this poses no problem to the objectivity of medical science.

Not really the same, because we definitely know what a human being is. Here we have a distinct body/object to study, composed of material parts that we can observe under many conditions. We have billions of discrete examples of them to look at, and there's no question about where each one begins and ends. This is not so with such nebulous things as "culture" and "society". Where does one society begin and another end? Before you can define and study what makes a society successful, we need to know exactly what a society is, and the parameters for one's success. I don't think those things are as obvious or simple as is being implied by segev's objective morality theory.

LudicSavant
2016-09-16, 06:51 PM
I'll note that I disagree with Segev on some points he has expressed about morality (such as some of the things he said about natural selection, which I believe may represent certain common misconceptions (http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/misconceptions_faq.php#a3) about the subject), but that doesn't really change whether the subject itself is objective or not. Indeed, the reason I feel I can disagree meaningfully with Segev on points of morality as he has defined it is because it is objective and subject to falsifiability. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability) That is, I believe I can evaluate his claims about natural selection as correct or incorrect and gather evidence for my conclusions by investigating the natural world.

For example, I could investigate the natural world and find a society where persistence via natural selection did not actually prepare it to survive in the long term (such as cases where developing a useful adaptation to one environment caused it to die when the environment changed).


Not really the same, because we definitely know what a human being is. Here we have a distinct body/object to study, composed of material parts that we can observe under many conditions. We have billions of discrete examples of them to look at, and there's no question about where each one begins and ends. This is not so with such nebulous things as "culture" and "society". Where does one society begin and another end? Before you can define and study what makes a society successful, we need to know exactly what a society is, and the parameters for one's success. I don't think those things are as obvious or simple as is being implied by segev's objective morality theory.

Let's take another of the given examples and say the standard is "live a life of satisfaction and joy." Are you saying that there is no way for you to identify whether or not something causes satisfaction and joy? It may be difficult to measure precisely with modern tools, but it's not unmeasurable. Satisfaction and joy are real things. If you stopped believing in satisfaction and joy, there would still be creatures out there in the world experiencing them and I could still make objective statements about the neuroscience of joy.

Or are you only objecting to the society example? I can think of disciplines which deal with those concepts as well, such as epidemiology or anthropology.

Max_Killjoy
2016-09-16, 07:15 PM
I'll note that I disagree with Segev on various points he has expressed about morality (such as some of the things he said about natural selection, which I believe represent certain common misconceptions (http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/misconceptions_faq.php#a3) about the subject), but that doesn't really change whether the subject itself is objective or not. Indeed, the reason I feel I can disagree meaningfully with Segev on points of morality as he has defined it is because it is objective and subject to falsifiability. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability) That is, I believe I can evaluate his claims about natural selection as correct or incorrect and gather evidence for my conclusions by investigating the natural world.

For example, I could investigate the natural world and find a society where persistence via natural select did not actually prepare it to survive in the long term (such as cases where developing a useful adaptation to one environment caused it to die when the environment changed).



Let's take another of the given examples and say the standard is "live a life of satisfaction and joy." Are you saying that there is no way for you to identify whether or not something causes satisfaction and joy? It may be difficult to measure precisely with modern tools, but it's not unmeasurable. Satisfaction and joy are real things. If you stopped believing in satisfaction and joy, there would still be creatures out there in the world experiencing them and I could still make objective statements about the neuroscience of joy.

Or are you only objecting to the society example? I can think of disciplines which deal with those concepts as well, such as epidemiology or anthropology.


In my experience anthropology has a very hard time "agreeing" on where one culture/society ends, and another begins, in many cases.

(Just look at all the blurriness where "Greek" and "Celtic" and other cultures make contact during the 1st to 4th centuries BCE. )

LudicSavant
2016-09-16, 07:17 PM
In my experience anthropology has a very hard time "agreeing" on where one culture/society ends, and another begins, in many cases.

Yes. But I wouldn't say that anthropology is subjective as a result of this.

Likewise, I wouldn't stop considering biology objective even though biologists often quibble over the definition of life and whether viruses count etc etc. While the exact point where the line for "alive" is drawn can sometimes be blurry, we can still make objective statements about life and study the subject matter objectively.

Quibbling over definitions is not that big a deal... or at least not a big enough deal to render an entire field "merely subjective." It's often more a problem of articulation than a problem of content.

Max_Killjoy
2016-09-16, 07:51 PM
Yes. But I wouldn't say that anthropology is subjective as a result of this.

Likewise, I wouldn't stop considering biology objective even though biologists often quibble over the definition of life and whether viruses count etc etc. Some even argue about whether or not computers count as alive! (and are doing so more and more now that we have things like computers passing Turing tests) While the exact point where the line for "alive" is drawn can sometimes be blurry, we can still make objective statements about life and study the subject matter objectively.

Quibbling over definitions is not that big a deal. It's often more a problem of articulation than a problem of content.


I don't think it makes anthropology subjective.

I do think it makes the idea of deriving objective "moral truths" from cultural/social "success" all the more suspect.

LudicSavant
2016-09-16, 07:53 PM
I don't think it makes anthropology subjective.

Ah, okay then.

Thrudd
2016-09-16, 08:40 PM
I'll note that I disagree with Segev on some points he has expressed about morality (such as some of the bits about natural selection), but that doesn't really change whether it's objective or not. Indeed, the reason I feel I can disagree meaningfully with Segev on points of morality is because it is objective and subject to falsifiability. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability)



Let's take another of the given examples and say the standard is "live a life of satisfaction and joy." Are you saying that there is no way for you to identify whether or not something causes satisfaction and joy? It may be difficult to measure precisely with modern tools, but it's not unmeasurable. Satisfaction and joy are real things. If you stopped believing in satisfaction and joy, there would still be creatures out there in the world experiencing them and I could still make objective statements about the neuroscience of joy.

Or are you only objecting to the society example? I can think of disciplines which deal with those concepts as well, such as epidemiology or anthropology.

"Live a life of satisfaction and joy" is a thing which can be measured only subjectively. It will vary from person to person and would be defined, in part, by the temporal and cultural environment of that person. Even if neuroscience discovers a biologically objective form of "joy", since we have no way to know how many people in the past were in that state we can only judge the present and very recent past. Again, not a sufficient data set to make any claims about morality.

Anthropologists study human cultures and evolution. Historically, you tend to label societies based on their material culture. That doesn't seem an adequate definition for the study of morality. One might study life in a village or with a specific primitive tribe. Is that what a society is? So morality is the study of what makes one village successful? You could break society down into its smallest components: relations between individual humans and families. Take the mother, father, and children as the smallest unit and study what makes a family successful and what doesn't. Then move up to extended family and village dynamics. Do the same rules apply at this level, for the success of the small village? Then go up to clan or tribe level, town, city, country, language group, religious group, agricultural society, hunter gatherer society, industrial society, or the entirety of known human civilization. Does each have its own objectively optimal morality? It seems like the success of one type of society will depend on much different morality than on another level, perhaps even such that, were it to be applied on another level, would be disastrous rather than successful.

I am not just objecting to the society definition, however. I am also objecting to the idea of an objective definition of "success" that would apply at all levels of society. Since the current human civilization, which is the only one we have any knowledge of, has been ongoing for the last ten thousand years or so, we can only speculate about what might have helped or hindered its progress. There's nothing else to compare it to, unlike the study of human health with its billions of examples. It hasn't yet ended, therefore we must have done something right. But how do we know how much longer this will be sustained? Is ten thousand years a good run, or would it be considered a failure if it ended tomorrow? And how do we tell what was good or bad, in terms of civilization's survival?

I'm not objecting to the possibility that there could be a set of behaviors/rules that are objectively optimal for promoting the evolution of a collective of sapient beings toward greater success as a species. I am objecting to the idea that we are in any position to make any claims about what such behaviors and rules might be, or even to claim for sure that there are such objective "morals". Such a thing might exist, we haven't the data to determine whether it does or what it might be comprised of.

Max_Killjoy
2016-09-16, 08:53 PM
"Live a life of satisfaction and joy" is a thing which can be measured only subjectively. It will vary from person to person and would be defined, in part, by the temporal and cultural environment of that person.


There's also the uncomfortable fact that more than a few people will seize their "satisfaction and joy" from other people, in spite of other people, or even from the suffering of other people.

LudicSavant
2016-09-16, 09:00 PM
"Live a life of satisfaction and joy" is a thing which can be measured only subjectively. It will vary from person to person

This is yet another of those spurious objections that falls into the category "if you actually think this is a valid argument against something being objective, it would knock down medical science as being an objective pursuit."

Bodies vary from person to person, too. For example, one person may have an allergy to a particular medication. This fails to prevent medical science from being considered objective. Why does it make some other subject subjective?


A practical moral system is an optimization system; it differentiates "better" and "worse" choices. And that's just covered by instrumental rationality (https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Rationality#Instrumental_rationality).

Differentiating choices that will improve the well-being of creatures is no more or less objective than differentiating choices that will optimize health, or optimize maintenance of electronics, or... pretty much any other question where there are right and wrong answers.

"Health" faces many of the same challenges that "morality" does. It is indeed difficult to articulate a simple definition or measurement of health; modern physicians still haven't settled on one. Moreover, every person's body is different. And you can even talk about how one person's health can diminish another person's when you're talking about group health (such as with a Typhoid Mary), which leads to some pretty complex questions which we totally handle in fields like epidemiology. And yet it would be a fool's errand to boldly claim that because of this, the study of medicine or biology or epidemiology was illogical, arbitrary, beyond objectivity, and couldn't be furthered by empirical research.

And that's pretty much the only challenges I've seen people bring up. My suggestion? When making an objection to the idea of objective morality, make sure your goalpost isn't one that also invalidates medical science as being objective.

"Different people use different definitions" :: Physicians do not agree on a definition of "health."
"Different people want to be treated differently" :: Different human bodies need to be treated differently in medicine.
"But sometimes the well-being of the individual is not the well-being of the group!" :: The same applies in medical sciences, such as in epidemiology.
"I haven't seen anyone give a 100% accurate knockdown answer to all moral questions!" :: Uhm, yeah, and you won't see that in any scientific discipline.


It seems like the success of one type of society will depend on much different morality than on another level, perhaps even such that, were it to be applied on another level, would be disastrous rather than successful.

Let's see how this one works when applied to any other subject generally agreed to be objective.

"It seems like the success of an operation on one type of body will depend on much different medicine than on another body, perhaps even such that, were it to be applied on another body, would be disastrous rather than successful."

Giving antibiotics to one person will cure them. Giving it to another might kill them. This fails to prevent medical science from being considered objective. Why does it make some other subject subjective?


Even if neuroscience discovers a biologically objective form of "joy" If? :smallconfused: (http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Biological+basis+for+joy)


I am objecting to the idea that we are in any position to make any claims about what such behaviors and rules might be

Oh really? So, would you walk up to a person claiming that this "chattel slavery" thing is preventing his patient from living a life of satisfaction and joy, and say "you don't have enough evidence to say that! How do you know this chattel slave is not perfectly happy? You're not being objective, sir! Such bias is unbecoming!"

Or, perhaps you might walk up to a person claiming that detonating 3000 nuclear missiles around the planet to bring about nuclear winter would not be a good way to help their society thrive, and tell them "Pffft, that's just subjective. I mean, there might be some alien society which feeds on radiation, and that rule wouldn't apply to them!"

If that sounds ridiculous, it's because it is. If one can solve for X for "will detonating 3000 nuclear missiles around the planet help this population thrive or not?" or "does chattel slavery actually tend to make people unhappy," then these moral questions are objective, by the formulation we've been discussing.

(this one)


In fact I would simplify a statement of Subjective versus Objective Morality in this fashion:
In objective morality the equation Good = X is solvable for some value of X - though that value may not be discernible by any observer within the universe and may in fact be a highly complex field.
In subjective morality the equation Good = X is not solvable because X has all possible values. You may chose any value you wish from which to found a moral system, but anyone else can choose any other value to do the same thing and that would be equally valid.

I think I am in fact in a very fine position to make the claim that chattel slavery will tend to decrease the victim's ability to live a life of joy and satisfaction, and also in a very fine position to make the claim that detonating 3000 nuclear missiles around the planet will be deleterious to any human society's ability to thrive.

I may not be in a great position to make claims based on precise minutiae (our tools are not so precise), but I can totally make claims about the broad strokes even while our science of morality (https://www.edge.org/event/the-new-science-of-morality) remains primitive.

I believe I can make these judgments objectively, by several definitions of the word. Most pertinently, I can come to these conclusions independently of my personal feelings, and these conclusions are of or relating to something that can be known.

Thrudd
2016-09-16, 10:15 PM
Bodies vary from person to person, too. For example, one person may have an allergy to a particular medication. Again, you are not drawing any distinctions between this field and any other scientific field (such as biology).

If? :smallconfused:

You need to catch up on your neuroscience, sir. We've been able to detect joy in brains for a while now.

We detect chemicals and brain processes associated with what are reported as pleasant feelings. "Joy" is a subjective experience, which has not definitively been associated with any specific physical phenomenon (or else the field of philosophy of mind would not have a lot to talk about anymore). Joy is not solely defined by brain processes, although the two may be observed to coincide.
Even if the level and frequency of dopamine release or activity in the amigdala or some other brain activity among the people is the measure of a successful society, as we equate this with likely occurrence of joyful feelings, this still would seem to be conditional upon that people's environment and experiences. And how will we possibly be measuring these things for people long dead? The entire suggestion might as well be science fiction.

All human bodies are fundamentally identical, and we can study the ways that they differ from one another. Society and culture do not have a definite baseline, like a human body does, from which we can compare them.

We do study human social structures of all levels and human behavior, and there are objective observations we can make in those fields. I am not denying that. I am saying that "success" in these fields is not an objective measurement. The level of success of a society being necessary to the theory of an objective morality, we can't have one without defining the other.

It isn't the same as saying "A successful organism is one which survives and propagates". To apply this to human society, we would have to conclude that our society is a success, since it began and has not yet ended. But that would be a meaningless observation, because it is also the only one that we know of that has ever existed. We might as well try to judge whether or not the universe has been successful, and to what degree. It's the most successful universe we've ever seen, and therefore the laws which govern it at this point must be the optimal laws for universes.
Equally meaningless is to say that obviously the current state of society is the most optimal one, because it is the one still existing. That's like claiming that a particular extant organism is better or more successful than were the ones that are extinct. There is no sense or basis for such a value judgment.

This whole concept is necessarily based on an oversimplified and cursory view of history and culture. We can study history and cultures and find evidence for how people lived and died and how and why their social structures changed over time. I don't think any of that study could lead a person to conclude that there is an objective morality. That idea comes from someplace else.

Let me try to catch up:
No, of course chattel slaves won't be as happy as someone else, at least not today or in recent times. Of course, society without chattel slavery is a relatively new thing. So we'll see how that goes, right? I am not willing to make any claim about the happiness of chattel slaves in the remote past, nor of anyone else. I can imagine it would be horrible, but I can only imagine based on my own experiences drawn from a particular environment, so my imagination is not a reliable measure of anything.

The point is, we don't know what society will be like if it follows all the morals and ideals commonly held today (and we hold a wide variety of sometimes conflicting values and morals). It would be new. There is no old example to go by. It's not a thing we can study from the past or any examples in nature. All we can say is: "these are our values, today, and this is what we'd like society to look like." Would this society be better than all the ones that came before it?

For the nuclear bomb thing - "Don't kill everyone on the planet" seems like a no brainer, I suppose. We'll agree on that. There is at least one objective moral law in the universe for all beings - "Don't kill every member of our species." - and applied on a wider scale "Don't destroy all life in the universe' :smalltongue:

Yes, there are many moral rules almost all of us hold in common. I never claimed otherwise, and I mentioned at one point that we can study what those are and how and why they might have developed. I don't see how that study could lead us to determine that our particular course of evolution is objectively the best or most optimal way we could have developed, however. We can only say that it is what happened, due to factors. Maybe there are other morals we never adopted that would make a much more efficient and sustainable social structure, that are in contradiction with our own. Maybe joy isn't a good measure of the success of a society or a species at all. We're just making a lot of leaps to get to "objective morality".

LudicSavant
2016-09-16, 10:49 PM
Note: I added a bit more to my previous post, apparently while you were simultaneously writing a response... so you might have missed it.


Joy is not solely defined by brain processes, although the two may be observed to coincide. I believe I possess sufficient evidence to claim that joy emerges from physical and natural processes. Therefore, it is objective by the most relevant definition (of or relating to something that can be known, existing as part of reality, aka Mechalich's "can solve for X").


And how will we possibly be measuring these things for people long dead? The very same way that we study scientific subjects such as history, archaeology, etc. Indeed, we already comment on the emotions and cultures of people in the past in these subjects.


All human bodies are fundamentally identical, and we can study the ways that they differ from one another. This very same reasoning can be applied to human minds as well. Unless you believe that minds are magically separate from bodies, in which case... I will get up and walk away from the discussion in disgust. :smalltongue:


Equally meaningless is to say that obviously the current state of society is the most optimal one, because it is the one still existing.
Agreed 100% on this particular line. I consider such claims wrongheaded and erroneous.

I suspect you are addressing a different poster's argument. Could you make it clear that you're responding to them instead of putting that response under quoting my text?

Thrudd
2016-09-16, 11:26 PM
Note: I added a bit more to my previous post, apparently while you were simultaneously writing a response... so you might have missed it.

I believe I possess sufficient evidence to claim that joy emerges from physical and natural processes. Therefore, it is objective by the most relevant definition (of or relating to something that can be known, existing as part of reality, aka Mechalich's "can solve for X").

The very same way that we study scientific subjects such as history, archaeology, etc. Indeed, we already comment on the emotions and cultures of people in the past in these subjects.

This very same reasoning can be applied to human minds as well. Unless you believe that minds are magically separate from bodies, in which case... I will get up and walk away from the discussion in disgust. :smalltongue:


Agreed 100% on this particular line. I consider such claims wrongheaded and erroneous.

I suspect you are addressing a different poster's argument. Could you make it clear that you're responding to them instead of putting that response under quoting my text?

I added more to my response after I saw your additions. :smalltongue:
I am really addressing the whole assertion that there is an objective morality, mainly made by segev. I'm trying to get how, exactly, society is being defined and what the measure of success is that has led him to the conclusion. I'm trying to follow the logic and guess at what someone thinking in this way might say. So it isn't particularly addressed to you, but to anyone reading. I guess I consider this open for anyone to address, it isn't just addressed at you.

We only speculate on what we imagine people's feelings and states of mind might have been from the past, based on material physical objects and often a mere handful of written documents from which we piece together their ways of life. The farther back you go, the less possible it is to know anything, certainly about anyone's emotions. For the last few hundred years, we can make pretty good guesses. Before that, increasingly less so. We know their minds were much like ours, but in many cases their world and experiences were so unimaginably different that it makes relating difficult. People have trouble relating to people of other cultures still alive today, on other parts of the globe. How much more so when those cultures are also separated by centuries, millennia?

Yes, human minds are more similar than not, like bodies, and we can study them. But there is a lot more going on in terms of the mind that is still being explored. The science is in its infancy. And the matter of subjective experience and feelings is not completely resolved. Even if materialists are sure that all the answers to where everything comes from will be found in our biology (and it very well may be), the answers haven't all yet been found.

LudicSavant
2016-09-17, 12:13 AM
Playing catchup to the catchup :smalltongue:



Let me try to catch up:
No, of course chattel slaves won't be as happy as someone else, at least not today or in recent times. Of course, society without chattel slavery is a relatively new thing. So we'll see how that goes, right? I am not willing to make any claim about the happiness of chattel slaves in the remote past, nor of anyone else. I can imagine it would be horrible, but I can only imagine based on my own experiences drawn from a particular environment, so my imagination is not a reliable measure of anything.

I have two major quibbles.

1) Society without chattel slavery is actually a very old thing, and has existed at various places and times throughout history. Our modern society is not uniquely enlightened for denouncing and prohibiting chattel slavery, many other societies have done so before us.

2) I believe that I have sufficient historical and archaeological evidence to conclude that I can reasonably, objectively make the claim that chattel slaves in the past tended to be unhappy on the basis of being chattel slaves. There is even more evidence of this than, say, that a faction of colonial Americans were rather upset with the British at some point in the 1700s.

There is a mountain of historical evidence regarding outrage and agony both by the slaves themselves and others in the society, whether we're talking about colonial America, Rome, whatever. I have observed all kinds of physical evidence gathered from scenes of overt cruelties committed in the past (such as implements of torturous discipline, or the weaponry of slave rebellions, or even gut-churning visual records of chattel slavery via media ranging from paintings to photography to videotapes). I have examined a preponderance of primary sources and the pain and suffering is as overwhelmingly apparent as anything can be in the study of history. I can start pulling up piles of ancient letters going on and on in no uncertain terms about the depravity they saw in slavery, or discussing how the treatment of slaves incited rebellion or other forms of revenge and outrage, or accounts of people just curling up and dying of despair, or records of mass suicides by slaves, or people struggling to prevent other people (the free as well as the slaves) defecting en masse to cultures that do not practice slavery, and so on and so forth. I take this as evidence that these people did not like it much.

To even suggest that my notion that chattel slavery causes human suffering is merely subjective? That it is not observable in reality and knowable as a feature of that reality? That I cannot claim to make true and false statements about it? That I can "only imagine?" It just... it belittles all of that evidence as if it were nothing.


The point is, we don't know what society will be like if it follows all the morals and ideals commonly held today (and we hold a wide variety of sometimes conflicting values and morals). It would be new.

Do not make the mistake of thinking that science requires perfect proof or hyperprecise evidence. It simply must be able to rationally constrain anticipation. For example, I can use available evidence to rationally anticipate that if a future society treated humans like chattel, many humans would suffer for it.


For the nuclear bomb thing - "Don't kill everyone on the planet" seems like a no brainer, I suppose. We'll agree on that. There is at least one objective moral law in the universe

Well that's a start. :smallsmile:


I'm trying to follow the logic and guess at what someone thinking in this way might say. If you want to see someone incredibly intelligent really thoroughly break down the logic of why they believe in this sort of thing, AI researcher Eliezer Yudkowsky does so in great detail here (https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Metaethics_sequence)).

Max_Killjoy
2016-09-17, 01:51 AM
Playing catchup to the catchup :smalltongue:



I have two major quibbles.

1) Society without chattel slavery is actually a very old thing, and has existed at various places and times throughout history. Our modern society is not uniquely enlightened for denouncing and prohibiting chattel slavery, many other societies have done so before us.

2) I believe that I have sufficient historical and archaeological evidence to conclude that I can reasonably, objectively make the claim that chattel slaves in the past tended to be unhappy on the basis of being chattel slaves. There is even more evidence of this than, say, that a faction of colonial Americans were rather upset with the British at some point in the 1700s.

There is a mountain of historical evidence regarding outrage and agony both by the slaves themselves and others in the society, whether we're talking about colonial America, Rome, whatever. I have observed all kinds of physical evidence gathered from scenes of overt cruelties committed in the past (such as implements of torturous discipline, or the weaponry of slave rebellions, or even gut-churning visual records of chattel slavery via media ranging from paintings to photography to videotapes). I have examined a preponderance of primary sources and the pain and suffering is as overwhelmingly apparent as anything can be in the study of history. I can start pulling up piles of ancient letters going on and on in no uncertain terms about the depravity they saw in slavery, or discussing how the treatment of slaves incited rebellion or other forms of revenge and outrage, or accounts of people just curling up and dying of despair, or records of mass suicides by slaves, or people struggling to prevent other people (the free as well as the slaves) defecting en masse to cultures that do not practice slavery, and so on and so forth. I take this as evidence that these people did not like it much.

To even suggest that my notion that chattel slavery causes human suffering is merely subjective? That it is not observable in reality and knowable as a feature of that reality? That I cannot claim to make true and false statements about it? That I can "only imagine?" It just... it belittles all of that evidence as if it were nothing.



Do not make the mistake of thinking that science requires perfect proof or hyperprecise evidence. It simply must be able to rationally constrain anticipation. For example, I can use available evidence to rationally anticipate that if a future society treated humans like chattel, many humans would suffer for it.



Well that's a start. :smallsmile:

If you want to see someone incredibly intelligent really thoroughly break down the logic of why they believe in this sort of thing, AI researcher Eliezer Yudkowsky does so in great detail here (https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Metaethics_sequence).


And yet some societies that practiced this sort of thing were able to become the territorial and economic powerhouse of their day, and last for centuries.

That would see to put a giant fork in the idea that morality can be judged by a society's success. Alternatively, measuring "morality" by success results in objectively horrible things being qualified as "moral". Third possibility, the word "success" is being used in a way that leads more to confusion than to clarity.

Thrudd
2016-09-17, 01:53 AM
Playing catchup to the catchup :smalltongue:



I have two major quibbles.

1) Society without chattel slavery is actually a very old thing, and has existed at various places and times throughout history. Our modern society is not uniquely enlightened for denouncing and prohibiting chattel slavery, many other societies have done so before us.

2) I believe that I have sufficient historical and archaeological evidence to conclude that I can reasonably, objectively make the claim that chattel slaves in the remote past tended to be unhappy on the basis of being chattel slaves. There is even more evidence of this than, say, that a faction of colonial Americans were rather upset with the British at some point in the 1700s.

There is a mountain of historical evidence regarding outrage and agony both by the slaves themselves and others in the society, whether we're talking about colonial America, Rome, whatever. I have observed all kinds of physical evidence gathered from scenes of overt cruelties committed in the past (such as implements of torturous discipline, or the weaponry of slave rebellions, or even gut-churning visual records of chattel slavery via media ranging from paintings to photography to videotapes). I have examined a preponderance of primary sources and the pain and suffering is as overwhelmingly apparent as anything can be in the study of history. I can start pulling up piles of ancient letters going on and on in no uncertain terms about the depravity they saw in slavery, or discussing how the treatment of slaves incited rebellion or other forms of revenge and outrage, or accounts of people just curling up and dying of despair, or people struggling to prevent other people (the free as well as the slaves) defecting en masse to cultures that do not practice slavery, and so on and so forth. I take this as evidence that these people did not like it much.

To even suggest that my notion that chattel slavery causes human suffering is merely subjective? That it is not observable in reality and knowable as a feature of that reality? That I cannot claim to make true and false statements about it? It just... it belittles all of that evidence as if it were nothing.



Do not make the mistake of thinking that science requires perfect proof or hyperprecise evidence. It simply must be able to rationally constrain anticipation. For example, I can use available evidence to rationally anticipate that if a future society treated humans like chattel, many humans would suffer for it.

I'm not denying all the evidence for the suffering caused to slaves in the societies that we have evidence for, and I know that chattel slavery has not been universal to all human culture.
However, the objectivity of its ability to cause suffering doesn't deny the fact that societies which were "successful" by many measures used it at one period or another. Can a society be built without it? Of course. Will such a society be objectively more successful than one that uses slavery? Unknown. Therefore, by the definition that morality is connected to a successful society, we can't say slavery is objectively morally wrong. By the definition that morality is determined by what allows people to be happiest, it would be immoral. But also immoral would be much of the way every society, including its current state, has functioned. Is happiness really the measure of what makes a great society, or that helps a society function or sustain itself? It may be the measure of what we want and hope for in a society.
This seems more of an experiment still taking shape, rather than a subject that can be studied from historical data.

That it is "right" to bring happiness and "wrong" to cause unhappiness/suffering is an idea that comes naturally to us, today. But was that always the case and will it always be the case? Will our definitions of happiness and suffering always be the same as they are now? Will we one day associate happiness only with internal states known to cause it, completely dissociated from external behavior and conditions? If happiness is a neurological state that can be controlled and created by discipline or chemical, then it might be possible for people to be engaged in all manner of activity and still be happy. Theoretically, the suffering of a slave would be eliminated, right? We could be happy all the time, because we have evolved brains or developed technology to keep us in our optimal state at all times. If what makes people most happy is what is moral, then giving them drugs should be commandment number 1.

LudicSavant
2016-09-17, 11:47 AM
Is happiness really the measure of what makes a great society, or that helps a society function or sustain itself? It may be the measure of what we want and hope for in a society.

IIRC (could be mistaken), both the "happiness" (actually the words were "life of joy and satisfaction") and "success" (actually the words were "healthy and thriving society") examples were proposed as separate examples by Segev (alongside a couple of other options) in post #162 simply to demonstrate the potential for objectivity. I suspect those examples were oversimplified for that express purpose (and even further oversimplified by later responses. For example, the drugs you suggest might make someone feel pleasure, but might not maximize life satisfaction, which doesn't mean exactly the same thing).

The point to take away, then, isn't "you should reduce all moral questions to happiness" or something like that. Instead, the point I hope people will take away is that it is the case that you can gather evidence which rationally constrains your anticipations for what actions lead to various human conditions (not just happiness, but any given human condition; happiness was merely a simplified, demonstrative example), and thus such pursuits should not be dismissed as "merely subjective" (at least, for the definition of subjective that means that something doesn't exist as part of reality and cannot be known... the definition generally relevant to dismissing something as illogical or unscientific).

As far as the "you can solve metaethics (http://lesswrong.com/lw/54p/heading_toward_nononsense_metaethics/)" crowd goes their definitions of morality are rarely so simplified as the examples that have been discussed in this thread. For instance... http://lesswrong.com/lw/lb/not_for_the_sake_of_happiness_alone/. Also https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Complexity_of_value

Edit: Yes, and creature conditions as well as human ones.

Edit2: And in case anyone reading is still wondering "why is it relevant that I can rationally constrain my anticipations for what actions lead to various human/creature conditions, what do such conditions have to do with morality?" well... if you can grant even the seemingly trivial point that "the worst possible suffering for everything is bad" or "blowing up the planet is bad" then the condition of conscious creatures is relevant to right and wrong, and thus questions of the condition of creatures are moral questions, and that if those questions can be answered, that you can objectively answer at least some moral questions.

And if anyone doesn't think that the worst possible suffering for everything is bad... well, I'm not sure what that person would be using the word morality to mean in the first place. I'd start wondering whether that person is just expressing a null pointer error (https://www.google.com/search?q=null+pointer+error&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8).

OldTrees1
2016-09-17, 12:42 PM
IIRC (could be mistaken), both the "happiness" (actually the words were "life of joy and satisfaction") and "success" (actually the words were "healthy and thriving society") examples were proposed as separate examples by Segev (alongside a couple of other options) simply to demonstrate the potential for objectivity. I suspect those examples were oversimplified for that express purpose (and even further oversimplified by later responses. For example, the drugs you suggest might make someone feel happiness, but might not maximize life satisfaction, which doesn't mean exactly the same thing).
As the person Segev was directly replying to, I think that is a fair description.

They were both clearly separate examples of ends I could substitute in place of heaven in his argument so as to ensure the meaning of the argument reached more people (rather than being stopped by nitpicking).

Were the initial example substitutions intentionally oversimplified? I don't know but their role was as substitutions so if one feels they were oversimplified then one would substitute in a less simplified version in place of them.


http://lesswrong.com/lw/54p/heading_toward_nononsense_metaethics/
Bookmarked for later reading. LessWrong has blindspots and cognitive biases but his approach to ethics is very akin to Kant's in that they both strove to derive from logic rather than premises. While I have been convinced this is impossible to succeed at, attempts in that area are the most promising path forward.

LudicSavant
2016-09-17, 12:49 PM
Bookmarked for later reading. LessWrong has blindspots and cognitive biases but his approach

Note: I actually linked to multiple different folks taking different tacks arguing for solvable metaethics on LessWrong. "His" suggests a reaction to a singular person. LessWrong is a community, not one guy.

Max_Killjoy
2016-09-17, 12:53 PM
Some thoughts:

* Perhaps it could be said that choosing a metric is the more subjective part.

* It's not unusual that the right thing to do is NOT the thing that would make one happy, or successful, or satisfied.

* Morality is not collective

* Sometimes one only has bad options, and is left to take the least-bad.

LudicSavant
2016-09-17, 12:59 PM
* Perhaps it could be said that choosing a metric is the more subjective part.

It just seems to me like this is how all language works. For any given statement, the important thing isn't the symbols used, it's the meaning the symbols are meant to represent. So, whenever someone says "morality" they are actually referring to a metric they have in mind, and that metric can be addressed. If someone is using the word and not referring to any metric by it, that's just a null pointer exception (https://www.google.com/search?q=null+pointer+exception&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8).


* Morality is not collective
What do you mean by that?


* Sometimes one only has bad options, and is left to take the least-bad.

I agree with this one. Like I said, practical moral systems are optimization systems, sorting "better option" from "worse option."


* It's not unusual that the right thing to do is NOT the thing that would make one happy, or successful, or satisfied.

I agree with this one too. The most obvious example would be cases where the well-being of one creature is deleterious to the well-being of another.


As the person Segev was directly replying to, I think that is a fair description.

They were both clearly separate examples of ends I could substitute in place of heaven in his argument so as to ensure the meaning of the argument reached more people (rather than being stopped by nitpicking).

Were the initial example substitutions intentionally oversimplified? I don't know but their role was as substitutions so if one feels they were oversimplified then one would substitute in a less simplified version in place of them.

Exactly.

OldTrees1
2016-09-17, 01:34 PM
It just seems to me like this is how all language works. For any given statement, the important thing isn't the symbols used, it's the meaning the symbols are meant to represent. So, whenever someone says "morality" they are actually referring to a metric they have in mind, and that metric can be addressed. If someone is using the word and not referring to any metric by it, that's just a null pointer exception (https://www.google.com/search?q=null+pointer+exception&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8).
I have never heard someone not referring to any metric.
I have heard someone referring to a metric without knowing what that metric is.
I have also heard someone arbitrarily pick a metric and then refer to that metric.

LudicSavant
2016-09-17, 02:28 PM
Basically, I just don't see the point of quibbling over conceptual analysis (http://lesswrong.com/lw/5kn/conceptual_analysis_and_moral_theory/).

Segev
2016-09-18, 12:53 PM
There are almost no moral systems that rely on reward and punishment in their definition of what is moral. Even most religions have the reward as a consequence of right action rather than part of the definition of what makes an action right.That's...kind of my point. You ought to do things because the consequences of doing them is [reward], and the consequences of doing what you ought not (or failing to do what you ought) is [punishment].


Also who said "must desire the reward"? I said the end that is 1:1 with what makes something what one ought to do is the end that we ought to follow. Any coincidental rewards are not part of my claim.I don't know what you're saying, here.


When we are being logically rigorous there is no reason to assume any of those goals (go to heaven, a healthy and thriving society, life of satisfaction and joy, ...) are 1:1 with what we ought to do because we have no reason to presume that goal/end is the end we ought to follow.So...your definition of "morality" is a tautology. "You ought to do X because you ought to do X. The consequences of doing X don't determine whether you ought to do it; rewards and punishments are inducements but not the reason, and you ought to do it even if you hate every possible outcome of doing it." Is that accurate?


I fundamentally disagree with your definition because your definition is useless to me. Your definition is an algorithm at outputs an action best suited to the goal that was given as an input. Such an algorithm only works if I have the hubris to presume a goal is correct. So I would continue to sit there thinking about the question "what I ought to do" for your algorithm does not answer the question.It is not hubris to presume a goal is correct. Even Greek morality plays showing hubris in its original form demonstrated that hubris was bad because it was self-destructive and led to undesirable results.

If I am understanding what you define "morality" to be, then I find your definition equally useless. It undermines the very notion that you can have a discussion of it. "My morals say that you ought to do whatever you want whenever you want and forget about the consequences" becomes justification to do anything, and if it's all subjective then you have no grounds on which to judge that I'm in the wrong. This is patently silly. Even those who tend to argue that morality is subjective will not usually start at such an absurd position.

Again: tautological definitions are trivially true, but ultimately useless to any sort of discussion. They invalidate discussion and make "no true Scottsman" the ONLY valid argument.


But on the question of subjective vs objective. If you define your answer as the algorithm then it is objective (it will always function the same no matter who uses it). But if you define your answer as the output then it is subjective(it will vary with each person based upon their input).I agree with your first sentence, here. I still do'nt follow your second. What "output" are you talking about?


Ah, but what about the question "What ought one do?"? If I understand correctly segev was taking the commonly held beliefs as to the answer to that question and then using that set to judge the results of actions by their consequences. If Segev is correct that that derivation reaches the correct answer, then changing the answers to the question "What ought one do?" that people commonly believe would change Segev's answer. I have not touched the question people are asking, merely changed people's beliefs as to the answer to their question."Commonly held beliefs" are only relevant in that you can use "what have survived as common beliefs across cultures through time" as a measure for what truths have been discovered. The more commonly-held something is for a longer period throughout more surviving cultures, the more likely it is to be a true moral rule (rather than just something they made up), because objectively things which lead to success will be held in common.

Think of it as the memetic equivalent to genetics: traits which lead to survival will, themselves, tend to survive.


Sidenote: Perhaps this is because "What ought one do?" is placed before a definition of "What makes something moral?" which is backwards of the maintenance and health questions (health is defined before the person asks "what should they do to improve their health?").I think, instead, it reveals that you're the one getting the question on morality backwards. What good are morals if you start by saying, "I define stabbing people in the eyes as what one ought to do," and then you become baffled as your moral system's consequences are entirely to your detriment and the detriment of all around you? When you don't even define a goal, aside from "stabbing people in the eyes?"

If you literally define morality as so subjective that you start by saying "anything I call my moral code makes itself inherently right because I say it's my moral code," there's no morality to discuss. And I believe that the evidence of the world as it is shows that, if you define "morality" that subjectively, there still exists an objective measure as to which of these subjective moralities is actually good/worthy/successful/useful/positive. It requires retreat to full tautology to argue otherwise. "No, see, it's good that my moral system is self-destructive, because my moral system says it ought to be!" Well, good for it. It won't last long and will not plague a universe of objective reality for very long.



Didn't Segev say he was using the commonly held answers to "What ought one do" as a basis for his answer to "What ought one do"? If so then changing what answer is popular would change Segev's answer.No. You're again reversing cause and effect. I'm using commonly held beliefs (in the literal sense of beliefs which are common across multiple cultures) as a map to DETECT the true objective moral rules. By my thesis, you can't magically shift the majority of the world to share common beliefs that are not true, for the same reason you couldn't magically shift modern species into creatures that could never have survived the environments in which they live.

If you want to find out what physical phenotypes are successful, study the commonalities amongst creatures of an environment. Gills, for instance, would seem to be a successful phenotype. It isn't "gills work because lots of creatures have them." It's "lots of creatures have gills because they work."

Similarly, I'm not saying commonly-held moral stricture X is objectively good because many cultures hold it. I'm saying that many cultures hold commonly-held moral stricture X because it is objectively good.

We're using the fact that an objectively-good moral stricture is more likely to be held by more cultures to detect probably-objectively-true moral rules.


Does that make sense? Does it help clarify what I mean? Because your attempts to create counter-examples to prove me wrong are confusing to me precisely because I think you're arguing against a point I'm not making.

Segev
2016-09-18, 01:06 PM
Basically, I just don't see the point of quibbling over conceptual analysis (http://lesswrong.com/lw/5kn/conceptual_analysis_and_moral_theory/).

That's an interesting article, and at least covers what is a significant portion of why I'm trying to nail down "what is morality?" insofar as we're discussing it.

I argue that there are more and less useful definitions of it. I argue further that, unless morality points you towards consequences you desire and away from consequences you do not, it is wholly useless. I don't care of God Himself appears before the world and declares His moral law; if He lays out consequences for it (perhaps that we will all suffer for His amusement) that we find repugnant, it is not useful for us to follow His "moral law." The notion that we "ought" to deliberately drive ourselves into misery and suffering is ludicrous. And I would posit that any God which demanded such was not worth worshipping. (Besides, if He's going to torment us for disobedience AND for obedience, what's the use of obedience...unless you somehow like the obedience-based-torment better?)

In D&D, the moral axis measures things on how well all who adhere to it will generally perceive their existence. And on how well their influence on those around them, regardless of their adherence to it, will make their existence more or less desirable. Good, in D&D, will tend to make everybody happier. Evil, in D&D, will tend to make only those who come out on top happier (at best). I say "tend" because I am trying to avoid the "but what about this contrived situation!?" counterarguments.

In this, D&D is fairly consequentialist. Even if you assume the objective morality of D&D is "these rules are what make something Good/Evil," you can recognize a pattern in them whereby the intent is to point towards "happy people in general" for Good and "misery except for the successful few" for Evil. That the writers oft made some...controversial...calls as to the rules, such that specific rules seem to fly in the face of these desired consequences, is more evidence of the imperfection of the writing than anything else. D&D's authors were clearly trying to use recognizable notions of "good v. evil" when designing the alignment grid; it's only when they get to the fine detail that things get weird.

OldTrees1
2016-09-18, 03:12 PM
So...your definition of "morality" is a tautology. "You ought to do X because you ought to do X. The consequences of doing X don't determine whether you ought to do it; rewards and punishments are inducements but not the reason, and you ought to do it even if you hate every possible outcome of doing it." Is that accurate?
Have you ever examined a moral theory down to the root of its premises? All moral theories have at thier root "X is what determines if something is moral because X determines it determines if something is moral". This should be obvious because morality is used as the deciding metric, any metric proposed to be 1:1 with morality would have to claim it was 1:1 with reality otherwise you get something like "This is false".

However since every proposable moral theory claims itself to be correct, the only description one can give of morality is to describe the requisite tautology or to beg the question by presuming an answer.

And yes, Begging the Question is a logicial fallacy that is more than enough to qualify as hubris by modern, medieval, or even ancient meanings of the term.


-snip-

No. You're again reversing cause and effect. I'm using commonly held beliefs (in the literal sense of beliefs which are common across multiple cultures) as a map to DETECT the true objective moral rules. By my thesis, you can't magically shift the majority of the world to share common beliefs that are not true, for the same reason you couldn't magically shift modern species into creatures that could never have survived the environments in which they live.

As I have said I have been asking questions trying to understand your position. So I am going to throw my previous image out the window and try again from this response.

You are taking the most popular moral intuitions that people currently hold and are using those to try to detect Moral Truth. (This is a better position that my last misunderstanding of your position)

To do this you are presuming that Moral Intuitions necessarily have a relationship with Moral Truth. I do not share this premise and thus can easily imagine other Earths where the most popular Moral Intuitions differ from ours here. Those other Earths would still be self consistent because proposed moral theories all root themselves in arbitrary assignments of concept X to morality.


However I don't think either of us would care to dig into the epistemological debate about whether your moral intuitions can be trusted as informative.


Sidenote: Also it is very confusing that you are presuming that morality is such that for all possible formulations of morality and for all possible moral agents, the consequences of moral behaviors will be desired by that moral agent.

It kinda sounds like you are using some kind of personal preference to place artificial restrictions on what kinds of reality you might be in. Heh, I did the same when in college when I presumed "Morality cannot be such that it would demand a moral agent to cease to exist for that moral agent coming into existence with some immoral characteristic inherent to that moral agent". Of course I later realized that I had no reason to presume reality would be fair and thus I discarded all artificial restrictions like "All proposed moralities must be false if they are unpleasant".

Segev
2016-09-18, 04:29 PM
Have you ever examined a moral theory down to the root of its premises? All moral theories have at thier root "X is what determines if something is moral because X determines it determines if something is moral". This should be obvious because morality is used as the deciding metric, any metric proposed to be 1:1 with morality would have to claim it was 1:1 with reality otherwise you get something like "This is false".

However since every proposable moral theory claims itself to be correct, the only description one can give of morality is to describe the requisite tautology or to beg the question by presuming an answer.

And yes, Begging the Question is a logicial fallacy that is more than enough to qualify as hubris by modern, medieval, or even ancient meanings of the term.Actually, when I examine moral theories down to their root premises, they tend to point to a certain assumption of consequentialism. "God said this is the right thing to do, and doing what God says gets you to Heaven." "The Buddha teaches that you should learn to view life in this way, and learning to view life in this way improves your next life, until you reach Nirvana." "Respect for these rituals and locations pleases the spirits, and pleased spirits bring you fortune while angry ones curse you." "Honoring your ancestors keeps them with you and keeps their blessings and wisdom protecting you." "Helping others improves everybody's life; hurting others tears apart society and brings it down."

At their core, you don't "not murder" people because it's right independent of anything else. You refrain from murder because you want to go to heaven or you want to avoid staining your karma or you don't want to bring their ancestors' curses upon you or you don't want to live in a society where murder happens since societies with less murder are happier and more comfortable.

I think that any examination of a moral system which seems to come down to "because the moral system says so" is deliberately ignoring the consequentialism in the moral code. I can't think of any that aren't trivially silly examples which fail to meet that criterion.



You are taking the most popular moral intuitions that people currently hold and are using those to try to detect Moral Truth. (This is a better position that my last misunderstanding of your position)That's more accurate. Just as one might examine successful businesses to determine what makes a business successful, or buildings which stand for centuries to see what building practices make a building endure. Or a mathematical proof to see how one solves mathematical problems of a similar nature.


To do this you are presuming that Moral Intuitions necessarily have a relationship with Moral Truth.They must. It isn't "intuitions" unless you're defining "intuition" to mean "things we've so internalized from experience that we know the answer before we analyze how we know it." The simple fact is that moral systems have consequences. Adhering to them has consequences. Rejecting them has consequences. These consequences have, at the least, a trend.

You don't look at "business intuitions" of people who run successful entrepreneurial enterprises and say, "These have no bearing on Business Truth." They absolutely do. If you examine 1000 successful enterprises, you'll find common themes in how they are run. Those common themes are pretty safe to suggest are, in fact, Business Truths you have discovered.

My own background is in Computational Intelligence; one branch of that is Swarm Intelligence. The whole idea behind Swarm Intelligence is to have lots and lots of agents swarming the concept space and trying various solutions; the ones which are most successful at achieving your goal will reveal in their approach to the problem at least an optimal way to go about it - a working solution. There will be common elements, and those common elements are demonstrated to work.


I do not share this premise and thus can easily imagine other Earths where the most popular Moral Intuitions differ from ours here.You can imagine them, but you probably haven't examined them in depth. Think about these alternate moral theories and examine what makes them "work." What sort of societies do your fantasy Earths have? How do the people of those Earths live in them? How do they shape their lives, their behaviors?

If you don't assume that all Mankind started in one place and had his moral codes set from the get-go, but instead assume that, at the least, as Man drifted apart to other parts of the world, he forgot many things and started up anew....then you can look at the similarities between, say, ancient Chinese moral codes and the moral codes of the American Indians and the moral codes of aboriginal tribes in Australia, etc. etc., and still find core similarities. And as you look at the ones which have varying levels of success at certain things, you can also examine them for similarities to each other and contrasting differences with those which do not meet the standards/goals you want for your own society. (Personally, I don't want to live in a society of tribal warfare and living "close to the earth," as I like my high tech comforts and rather safe and peaceful lifestyle.)


Those other Earths would still be self consistent because proposed moral theories all root themselves in arbitrary assignments of concept X to morality.You make that claim, but I do not think it bears out. Like I said, examine your imagined Earths carefully. Build your hypothetical societies, and then dig into them from the bottom upwards. Look at how individuals in that society live. Think how the worst examples of humanity would exploit the systems and moral codes developed for their own gain.

I contend that, if you don't make your "humans" of these worlds quite alien in outlook and needs, you will find that the moral codes aren't so different. Remember that human outlook is motivated by our survival instincts and our reward-function analysis. For instance, if "people are motivated by rewards for their behavior" is something you're changing in your hypothetical humans...you've made them alien. (And you don't have "moral codes" to blame for that; look at how children are motivated most successfully.) It's core to how neural networks function, and neural networks are highly simplified constructs modeled on living brains.


However I don't think either of us would care to dig into the epistemological debate about whether your moral intuitions can be trusted as informative.Given that that's exactly what I'm doing here... >_> <_<


Sidenote: Also it is very confusing that you are presuming that morality is such that for all possible formulations of morality and for all possible moral agents, the consequences of moral behaviors will be desired by that moral agent.I'm presuming that the moral agents desire what they believe the consequences of their moral code will be. I posit that the objectiveness of morality is evidenced by the fact that you can compare those expectations to the actual results of following that code; if they do not yield the consequences expected, the code is probably flawed.

If you believe that filling your Buick with pasta will lead to gold pouring out of the tail pipe, the fact that you're wrong just shows that your "moral code" is flawed because it doesn't do what it purports to.


It kinda sounds like you are using some kind of personal preference to place artificial restrictions on what kinds of reality you might be in. Heh, I did the same when in college when I presumed "Morality cannot be such that it would demand a moral agent to cease to exist for that moral agent coming into existence with some immoral characteristic inherent to that moral agent". Of course I later realized that I had no reason to presume reality would be fair and thus I discarded all artificial restrictions like "All proposed moralities must be false if they are unpleasant".
Still having trouble following this, but if I am parsing it correctly...

Reality isn't "fair," but it doesn't have to be. A moral code which requires its holders to cease to be will fail as fast as it is pure. Impurities to it - providing excuses as to why you can delay your own self-destruction in order to give you time to indoctrinate others into your poisonous morality - will extend its life by giving more time to spread before it kills its current hosts, but its destructive and consumptive tendencies will prevent any culture dominated by it from thriving for long without cultures which do NOT hold to it to cannibalize and force into it, spreading in a ring of destruction until there is nothing more to consume.

Moral codes can either be symbiotes or parasites. Parasitic ones behave like diseases. The less malignant they are, the slower they preach self-destruction, the more they can spread because they'll leave their host cultures alive long enough to do so. The more rapid their self-destructive endgame, the less chance they have to spread. A disease which kills within hours of catching it will not likely spread far beyond one city, because a quarantine is easy to establish once the pattern is recognized, and there isn't time for victims to come into contact with more victims to spread it. One with a slow onset that kills over days, on the other hand, is much, much more dangerous.

OldTrees1
2016-09-18, 05:15 PM
Moral codes can either be symbiotes or parasites.

And now we are back to the start again with you talking about multiple moral codes as if you were talking about it from a biologist/anthropologist rather than someone investigating ethics.

I'm done. If trying to understand your position leads me in circles then it is not worth my time.

I hope you have a fruitful discussion with someone else in this thread.


Scientific theories do not claim that they are correct; in fact it is the general expectation that they will eventually be falsified and replaced with a better theory. Instead, they claim to present an increasingly accurate and increasingly useful model of the universe.

Newton was wrong about many things, which were corrected by Einstein. Einstein was wrong about many things, which were corrected by later physicists. But that's not to say that Newton's work was worthless... quite to the contrary, it is incredibly valuable. This is because the goal of science isn't to provide answers which are pefectly correct. It simply proposes to offer answers which are less wrong.

Edit:This post of your disappeared so your reply obviously changed. I am leaving my clarifying statement below.

I am talking about judgmental metrics and specifically about a judgmental metric that also judges itself. Most of science does not fall in the former category and I don't know of an example that falls into the latter subcategory.

Reading Instructions: Read as a dialogue between an annoyed professor and slow student

How should one measure the velocity of a falling object? The right way which is the way that matches with reality. Yeah, but which way? Velocity is displacement / time, just take the two measurements and divide.

How should one measure the impact of a specific monetary policy? Keynesian economics or are Hayek's criticism correct? Whichever one fits reality better, obviously. But both theories interpret the data of the past slightly differently and consider themselves validated. Well then set up some experiments to test which ones fits reality better.

Everyone knows what metric to judge Physics measuring devices by and we easily agree about which devices are correctly calibrated (Until another refinement like Newton -> Einstein). Everyone knows what metric to judge Economic models by, but some of the time it is not easy to agree on which model is correct since each one claims to be correct via its premises about how to interpret the past data. Morality is one set further removed in that we do not agree on what metric to judge the metric by. How can we when "What moral system ought one follow?" is a question answered by every moral system?


As for "claim to be correct", yes models and theories do claim to be correct. It is scientists that remember that models can be wrong/incomplete/imperfect and thus might receive refinement later. Are we actually in disagreement?

Edit: Your post disappeared.

LudicSavant
2016-09-18, 05:27 PM
Sorry, I had removed my last post because I realized I wouldn't have time to get into a conversation about it today, so I figured it'd just be easier to delete it (didn't realize someone was already replying to it).

Here it is again, just to erase any ambiguity:




Analysis [had] one of two reputations. On the one hand, there was sterile cataloging of pointless folk wisdom - such as articles analyzing the concept VEHICLE, wondering whether something could be a vehicle without wheels. This seemed like trivial lexicography. On the other hand, there was metaphysically loaded analysis, in which ontological conclusions were established by holding fixed pieces of folk wisdom - such as attempts to refute general relativity by holding fixed allegedly conceptual truths, such as the idea that motion is intrinsic to moving things, or that there is an objective present.3

______


However since every proposable moral theory claims itself to be correct

Scientific theories do not claim that they are correct; in fact it is the general expectation that they will eventually be falsified and replaced with a better theory. Instead, they claim to present an increasingly accurate and increasingly useful model of the universe.

Newton was wrong about many things, which were corrected by Einstein. Einstein was wrong about many things, which were corrected by later physicists. But that's not to say that Newton's work was worthless... quite to the contrary, it is incredibly valuable. This is because the goal of science isn't to provide answers which are pefectly correct. It simply proposes to offer answers which are less wrong.

Segev
2016-09-18, 08:31 PM
And now we are back to the start again with you talking about multiple moral codes as if you were talking about it from a biologist/anthropologist rather than someone investigating ethics.

I'm done. If trying to understand your position leads me in circles then it is not worth my time.

I hope you have a fruitful discussion with someone else in this thread.

Except that I am investigating ethics. I am investigating them as a functional thing which has effects in the real world. If they are not to have effects in the real world, and they are not to have any metric for measuring them, what makes them morals rather than just random statements?

OldTrees1
2016-09-18, 10:14 PM
Except that I am investigating ethics.

Are you? If so then take note that your position is unreadable to some of your audience. LudicSavant and I differ greatly in our metaethical positions and yet I know that because I can read his position. After pages of questions I have given up on reading your position.

Segev
2016-09-19, 10:32 AM
Are you? If so then take note that your position is unreadable to some of your audience. LudicSavant and I differ greatly in our metaethical positions and yet I know that because I can read his position. After pages of questions I have given up on reading your position.

I'm having similar trouble parsing yours, honestly. You say you're going in circles trying to understand me, but I feel the same. Every time we address something, it feels like you move to another point to say "but it can't be, because this other thing..." which wraps back around on itself.

The best I've been able to discern is that you're defining morality as "what one ought to do" with no basis nor connection between the act and its effect. There is no "why" other than "the moral code says so," and that there's not even a motive to follow that code...at all...that is relevant to the code itself. (This I gather from your rejection of the notion of "reward" or "punishment" or even consequence being relevant to the morality of the action.)


I will try one more time, veering into dangerous waters by quoting a specific scripture from a particular moral philosophy: "By their fruits shall ye know them."

This scripture indicates, indeed, that you are to be able to judge the goodness or evil of a moral code or moral agent by what their guidance and actions ultimately yield. Admittedly, it is only one religion (though it's one of the largest in the world), but it is discussing moral philosophy in exactly the terms I'm suggesting are useful.


Again, my problem is that I can't grasp what you're defining as "morality," if what I have ascribed to you is inaccurate. If it is, please try again to explain what it is you're discussing.

For clarity, what I perceive your definition to be is: A morality defines what you ought to do, and any consideration of the consequences, rewards, punishments, or desirability thereof are irrelevant. The only reason why you ought to do it is the morality says so.

OldTrees1
2016-09-19, 12:44 PM
I'm having similar trouble parsing yours, honestly. You say you're going in circles trying to understand me, but I feel the same.

Again, my problem is that I can't grasp what you're defining as "morality," if what I have ascribed to you is inaccurate. If it is, please try again to explain what it is you're discussing.

For clarity, what I perceive your definition to be is: A morality defines what you ought to do, and any consideration of the consequences, rewards, punishments, or desirability thereof are irrelevant. The only reason why you ought to do it is the morality says so.

Let's take an arbitrary moral agent in an arbitrary circumstance. This moral agent wants to know what they ought to do in that circumstance. I can propose countless Moral Theories. A Moral Theory is complete and consistent if it has at least 1 answer per circumstance and does not contradict itself. However the moral agent would merely turn to me and ask which one they ought to follow. I could consider all the complete Moral Theories (because they all have an answer to the question of which moral theory to follow) but each is only going to either say follow themselves or contradict themselves. However my inability to answer the question does not negate the question. There is a moral theory one ought to follow despite my inability to know which of the countless moral theories it is.

So by "morality" I mean the correct complete consistent answer to "What ought one do?".
I have no justified excuse to go with "I desire this moral theory and thus will assume it is the one I ought to follow" or any variation thereof.
Nor do I have an excuse to go with "This moral theory, like countless others, says I ought to follow it, thus I will assume it is the one I ought to follow" or any variation thereof.

So we are back to that arbitrary moral agent in that arbitrary circumstance that wants to know what they ought to do. That is the question I pursue and Moral Truth is the name I have given to the answer I seek for in vain. That is morality.

Segev
2016-09-19, 12:55 PM
If "an arbitrary moral agent in an arbitrary situation" - i.e. a person faced with a choice - were to ask me (perhaps he sees me as his "moral advisor" for some tragic reason) what he ought to do, the first thing I would ask him (assuming I did not already know) is: what outcome(s) do you want?

Because what one ought to do in any situation is entirely dependent on what one wants to result from one's choice.

Faced with the choice to kill the Joker or to turn him over - alive - to the justice system, the question of whether Batman's most desired outcome is to serve the law and legal system or to prevent the Joker from killing more people is relevant.


Does that make sense?

OldTrees1
2016-09-19, 05:12 PM
If "an arbitrary moral agent in an arbitrary situation" - i.e. a person faced with a choice - were to ask me (perhaps he sees me as his "moral advisor" for some tragic reason) what he ought to do, the first thing I would ask him (assuming I did not already know) is: what outcome(s) do you want?

Because what one ought to do in any situation is entirely dependent on what one wants to result from one's choice.

Faced with the choice to kill the Joker or to turn him over - alive - to the justice system, the question of whether Batman's most desired outcome is to serve the law and legal system or to prevent the Joker from killing more people is relevant.


Does that make sense?

If you asked "what outcome(s) do you want?" they would ask "why do you presume their wants are relevant to their question?" and say "I want to want what I ought to want, I want to do as I ought to do, I want to happen what ought to happen, etc" before going back to ponder their question.

Does that make sense?

Segev
2016-09-20, 12:27 AM
If you asked "what outcome(s) do you want?" they would ask "why do you presume their wants are relevant to their question?" and say "I want to want what I ought to want, I want to do as I ought to do, I want to happen what ought to happen, etc" before going back to ponder their question.

Does that make sense?

No, I'm afraid it doesn't. There is no purpose to a moral code whose sole existence is "because the moral code said so." If it tells you you ought to want to suffer for all eternity and bring misery to all you encounter, for no reason other than it says you ought to want it, are you going to accept that it is right and that's what you ought to do?

You have the one way to possibly argue for subjective morality, but then you render the whole topic useless by removing any means of picking which "subjective morality" to which you will subscribe.

Or, to put it another way... Why do you want "to want what you ought to want?" What's the point of wanting that? Why ought you to want it? What makes wanting what you ought to want better than wanting what you do want? You're essentially asking for a moral code to abrogate your status as a moral agent, rather than to affirm it. With no purpose to the code, what good is it? Even if you accept that there exist "subjective moral codes" in infinite variety as you describe them, the moment you re-introduce the notion that you can choose between them (which is inherent to them being subjective; if you can't pick whatever one you want, then they're NOT subjective as you're declaring some less worthy/right/valuable than others), you again introduce "why should I choose this one?"

Which removes "I want to want what I ought to want" as the acceptable statement, since HOW YOU CHOOSE your "subjective moral system" must be based on something.

So, let's assume you're right, and there exist an infinite variety of subjective moralities, all equally valid, worthy, rightful, and unable to be judged. How do you pick which one to which you'll subscribe, based on your desire to "want to want what you ought to want?"

Frozen_Feet
2016-09-20, 04:34 AM
What to base that choice on is both variable and arbitrary. More, whatever arbitrary personal reasons a moral agent might have to prefer a certain system of ethics, is not guarangeefd to be in line with a hypothetical objective & correct system of ethics.

I'd say you're both falling prey to a trick of language. Just like a child can keep asking "But why?" even after the question has ceased to be meaningful, you keep asking each other questions despite it already having been established that neither of you can answer them.

Segev
2016-09-20, 07:26 AM
What to base that choice on is both variable and arbitrary. More, whatever arbitrary personal reasons a moral agent might have to prefer a certain system of ethics, is not guarangeefd to be in line with a hypothetical objective & correct system of ethics.As soon as somebody declares a desired outcome, I can point to objective morality. What he chooses as his morality is objectively correct or incorrect, in that it will either bring him closer to the "why" he's established as to the reason he's taking this morality as his own, and, if it's objectively correct, it is part of the same overall objective morality I've been positing. Because while most people probably don't CARE about "what happens if you fill your Buick with pasta noodles," it is objective what happens, and nothing about what happens contradicts nor disproves the more typical concerns of "what makes a car run."


I'd say you're both falling prey to a trick of language. Just like a child can keep asking "But why?" even after the question has ceased to be meaningful, you keep asking each other questions despite it already having been established that neither of you can answer them.I would say that OldTrees1 is the one saying "but why?" and then insisting there is no answer. I have demonstrated that I can answer the question as to whether morality is objective or not.

Again: presume he's right. Morality is subjective.

There are therefore an infinite variety of arbitrary moralities.

Which one ought he follow?

By his premise that they're all subjective (and thus equally valid), there literally can be no "ought" inherently. They each say you ought to follow them (except the self-contradictory ones which say you ought not do what they say your ought, and...well, I hope we can exclude those from consideration on the face of their paradoxical pointlessness).

So he has to pick one. The whole notion of subjective morality is rooted in the notion that no morality may be judged outside of another moral framework, so as long as you pick one, you're moral if you follow it (by its own standards).

But how does he pick?

Clearly, even if morality is subjective, people DO pick moralities to adopt. How?

My proof by contradiction is that in order to define why one chooses one subjective morality over another, one must define a reason to do so. The moment you define a reason, you've defined a goal, and the question as to whether your moral code brings you nearer or further from it is possible to evaluate. Thus, morality becomes objective.

I build further from this, but I'll stop here for now, because I'm waiting to see if OldTrees1 has a means of selecting a morality out of the infinity of subjective ones, and if so, what that means is.

All moral agents must, somehow. Or they're not moral agents.

OldTrees1
2016-09-20, 08:00 AM
Some parts of my latest post that you might want to reference

I can propose Moral Theories. However the moral agent would ask which one they ought to follow.
Yes there are countless proposedable moral theories, this raises the question of which one ought one use. A complete moral theory would have an answer for that question but ...


Nor do I have an excuse to go with "This moral theory, like countless others, says I ought to follow it, thus I will assume it is the one I ought to follow" or any variation thereof.
But a moral theory saying I ought to pick it is no reason to pick it from the countless other theories that also claim the same thing.


No, I'm afraid it doesn't. There is no purpose to a moral code whose sole existence is "because the moral code said so." If it tells you you ought to want to suffer for all eternity and bring misery to all you encounter, for no reason other than it says you ought to want it, are you going to accept that it is right and that's what you ought to do?

Refer back to what I said. The purpose of the correct moral theory is that it is the answer to the question "Which moral theory ought I follow?" however a moral theory claiming one ought to follow it is no reason to follow that theory (because that trait is held by countless mutually contradicting theories and thus they can't all be right).



You have the one way to possibly argue for subjective morality, but then you render the whole topic useless by removing any means of picking which "subjective morality" to which you will subscribe.

Or, to put it another way... Why do you want "to want what you ought to want?" What's the point of wanting that? Why ought you to want it? What makes wanting what you ought to want better than wanting what you do want? You're essentially asking for a moral code to abrogate your status as a moral agent, rather than to affirm it. With no purpose to the code, what good is it? Even if you accept that there exist "subjective moral codes" in infinite variety as you describe them, the moment you re-introduce the notion that you can choose between them (which is inherent to them being subjective; if you can't pick whatever one you want, then they're NOT subjective as you're declaring some less worthy/right/valuable than others), you again introduce "why should I choose this one?"

Which removes "I want to want what I ought to want" as the acceptable statement, since HOW YOU CHOOSE your "subjective moral system" must be based on something.

So, let's assume you're right, and there exist an infinite variety of subjective moralities, all equally valid, worthy, rightful, and unable to be judged. How do you pick which one to which you'll subscribe, based on your desire to "want to want what you ought to want?"
I already addressed purpose.

The duty of a moral agent is to do as they ought. This duty is inherent in the status as a moral agent. I seek to knowingly fulfill my duty.

I have not proposed an answer to "What ought I do?" and its subset "What moral theory ought one follow?".

Finally to clarify about subjective:
You have moral intuitions.
You have a moral theory you ascribe to. By ascribing to it you have a Moral Belief.
The moral theory stands alone beyond your belief in it.
Finally a moral theory could be correct (what I term Moral Truth).


Your moral intuitions are subjective. Others have different moral intuitions. This is known as cultural relativism (which is the founded data used to derive the unfounded moral relativism theory)
Any Moral Belief you form based on those moral intuitions inherits the subjective nature.
In contrast: (Please study this distinction until you understand it well enough that your understanding becomes apparent in your replies)
Moral Theories when judged alone are objective. They can be true or false.
Moral Truth is when a Moral Theory is true.




What to base that choice on is both variable and arbitrary. More, whatever arbitrary personal reasons a moral agent might have to prefer a certain system of ethics, is not guaranteed to be in line with a hypothetical objective & correct system of ethics.
Looks like Frozen_Feet understands the dilemma. There are many ways to answer the question but I have not found a valid one yet (valid being one that guarantees the answer to be the hypothetical objective & correct system of ethics).



I'd say you're both falling prey to a trick of language. Just like a child can keep asking "But why?" even after the question has ceased to be meaningful, you keep asking each other questions despite it already having been established that neither of you can answer them.

I have stopped asking Segev questions about his position for precisely this reason and am no longer invested in his comprehension of my position.

Max_Killjoy
2016-09-20, 08:00 AM
My proof by contradiction is that in order to define why one chooses one subjective morality over another, one must define a reason to do so. The moment you define a reason, you've defined a goal, and the question as to whether your moral code brings you nearer or further from it is possible to evaluate. Thus, morality becomes objective.


No, it doesn't. The evaluation of whether the moral code and the goal are well-matched becomes objective. The goal itself and the code itself could both still be entirely subjective beliefs.

To be objectively true, something must be true regardless of who or how many believe it to be true. The earth orbiting the sun was objectively true even when no one believed it to be true (leaving aside all the stupid tangential unrelated quibbles anyone might have on that as an example please). No matter how much some people believed that the stars and planets were attached to crystal spheres, it was never objectively true.

That a claim can be objectively evaluated, does not make it objectively factual. Even if a moral claim can be objectively evaluated against the stated goal, that doesn't make the claim or the goal themselves objective.

Segev
2016-09-20, 08:32 AM
Yes there are countless proposedable moral theories, this raises the question of which one ought one use. A complete moral theory would have an answer for that question but ...


But a moral theory saying I ought to pick it is no reason to pick it from the countless other theories that also claim the same thing.



Refer back to what I said. The purpose of the correct moral theory is that it is the answer to the question "Which moral theory ought I follow?" however a moral theory claiming one ought to follow it is no reason to follow that theory (because that trait is held by countless mutually contradicting theories and thus they can't all be right).Hm. Okay. So you're position seems to be stemming from a place of inherent contradiction. "There can be no complete moral theory, because a complete moral theory would say which moral theory I ought to follow, but if a moral theory says I ought to follow it, that isn't enough to determine that I ought to do it."





The duty of a moral agent is to do as they ought. This duty is inherent in the status as a moral agent. I seek to knowingly fulfill my duty.Why?

Not a facetious question. Given what you've outlined, why do you wish to do what you ought? Why do you care about this duty? What is the purpose of fulfilling it? To what do you owe this duty? By what is it assigned? Towards what end does following it bring you?

"It's my duty" is not an answer. It is an abrogation of your status as a moral agent. How do you know that you ought to do your moral duty? That, itself, is a moral statement, and you have as your premise that you cannot know what you ought to do because you cannot know which morality you ought to follow without having a complete morality which tells you so.

You've achieved reductio ad infinitum. You are hung up on saying you ought to do your moral duty, but that is, itself, a choice of a morality. You're in the same trap as anybody trying to break the third law of Entropy: "You can't leave the game."

The third law of entropy is often phrased in a tongue in cheek fashion of "you can't leave the game." All this means is that you can't pull energy from outside the system in order to break the first two laws of entropy; any time you do, you've merely expanded your system to include the energy source, and the total energy between the new source and your existing system still obeys the first two laws.

1) You can't win: you can't create energy; you can only perform processes which, at their most efficient, have the same net energy output as was put into them.

2) You can't break even: no process is 100% efficient, so the net energy output of any process will always result in at least some energy lost.

You've tried to "leave the game" by saying your duty as a moral agent is to do what you ought to do while claiming there is no complete moral theory. But "I have a duty to..." means "I ought to..." So when you say you have a duty as a moral agent to do what you ought to do, you're just saying "I ought to do what I ought to do."

At best, this is a tautology, as meaningful as "I am the President of the Tautology Club because I am the President of the Tautology Club." Like all tautologies, it is meaningless on its own, except as a self-assurance that you're not inherently contradicting your very being (i.e. A is not not A).



I have not proposed an answer to "What ought I do?" and its subset "What moral theory ought one follow?".I accept that you have not proposed this answer, as you perceive it. But that proposition is implicit in the definition of a moral agent you've given: that a moral agent has a duty to do what he ought to do.

If he ought to do what he ought to do, you have defined a priori a morality for him.


Finally to clarify about subjective:
You have moral intuitions.
You have a moral theory you ascribe to. By ascribing to it you have a Moral Belief.
The moral theory stands alone beyond your belief in it.
Finally a moral theory could be correct (what I term Moral Truth).


Your moral intuitions are subjective. Others have different moral intuitions. This is known as cultural relativism (which is the founded data used to derive the unfounded moral relativism theory)
Any Moral Belief you form based on those moral intuitions inherits the subjective nature.


Moral intuitions are no more subjective than intuitions about the laws of nature. The Greeks intuited that heavier objects fall faster than lighter objects, and that there were four elements of which all things were made. There are people who believe the Earth to be a flat disk surrounded by the Antarctic Ice Wall (and there were other cultures throughout history which believed that the Earth was likewise flat, and that there was an edge to it one could reach by travelling far enough along its surface). So if you wish to define these as "subjective" intuitions, it doesn't change that some are objectively wrong, and others objectively right.
Any scientific theory of nature which inherits your intuitions about the laws of nature will inherit - to the extent that your theory aligns with your intuition - your intuition's objective correctness.
In contrast: (Please study this distinction until you understand it well enough that your understanding becomes apparent in your replies)

Moral Theories when judged alone are objective. They can be true or false.
Moral Truth is when a Moral Theory is true.
Now my confusion is simply where you disagree with me. :smallconfused:

Objective morality is the objectively true moral theory. i.e., it is moral truth. That there exists moral truth is why morality is objective.



No, it doesn't. The evaluation of whether the moral code and the goal are well-matched becomes objective. The goal itself and the code itself could both still be entirely subjective beliefs.

To be objectively true, something must be true regardless of who or how many believe it to be true. The earth orbiting the sun was objectively true even when no one believed it to be true (leaving aside all the stupid tangential unrelated quibbles anyone might have on that as an example please). No matter how much some people believed that the stars and planets were attached to crystal spheres, it was never objectively true.

That a claim can be objectively evaluated, does not make it objectively factual. Even if a moral claim can be objectively evaluated against the stated goal, that doesn't make the claim or the goal themselves objective.

Er... yes?

Morality is objective because it can be measured. What your goals are is subjective in the sense that they're your goals and the only "test" for the truth of it is whether you really believe it or not...and only you know what you believe.

But morality is objective for the same reason that the theory of gravity is objective: it tells you what is, and you can use it to determine what to do about it.

You can't pick your morality. You can pick your goals, but you can't pick whether a particular set of behaviors will or won't lead to them.

You can pick what "morality" you choose to believe in. But that doesn't make it subjective, any more than choosing to believe in a Flat Earth makes the flatness or roundness of the Earth subjective.

You can choose whether your goal is to get to the moon or achieve geostationary "flight" (or orbit), and your choice of scientific theory of the nature of the Earth's shape and how gravity works will influence how you try to achieve those goals. One will prove more useful than the other, as following one will help you get there, while following the other will not.

Frozen_Feet
2016-09-20, 08:46 AM
@Segev:

An innocent person would tell you they're innocent if interrogated.

Does this mean a person telling they're innocent is sufficient answer to the question "are they innocent?"?

Likewise: a law, by definition, tells what one is allowed or not allowed to do. If I do not know the law, am I at fault for saying I have a legal duty to follow it?

Segev
2016-09-20, 09:09 AM
@Segev:

An innocent person would tell you they're innocent if interrogated.

Does this mean a person telling they're innocent is sufficient answer to the question "are they innocent?"?Of course not. I feel like you're arguing against the same position I am with this example, however. So perhaps you should elaborate on the point you're trying to make, please?


Likewise: a law, by definition, tells what one is allowed or not allowed to do. If I do not know the law, am I at fault for saying I have a legal duty to follow it?
You acknowledge in this premise and your question that there is an objective law. Just because you don't know it doesn't make the law subjective.

Not knowing what the objectively true morality is doesn't make morality subjective, any more than not knowing the Earth is round makes whether it's round or flat subjective.

Max_Killjoy
2016-09-20, 10:26 AM
Er... yes?

Morality is objective because it can be measured. What your goals are is subjective in the sense that they're your goals and the only "test" for the truth of it is whether you really believe it or not...and only you know what you believe.

But morality is objective for the same reason that the theory of gravity is objective: it tells you what is, and you can use it to determine what to do about it.

You can't pick your morality. You can pick your goals, but you can't pick whether a particular set of behaviors will or won't lead to them.

You can pick what "morality" you choose to believe in. But that doesn't make it subjective, any more than choosing to believe in a Flat Earth makes the flatness or roundness of the Earth subjective.

You can choose whether your goal is to get to the moon or achieve geostationary "flight" (or orbit), and your choice of scientific theory of the nature of the Earth's shape and how gravity works will influence how you try to achieve those goals. One will prove more useful than the other, as following one will help you get there, while following the other will not.[/spoiler]


"Getting to the moon" is an objective goal, physically achievable, and without value judgement or subjective interpretation. One's space program either gets to the moon, or does not, and (outside of conspiracy wingnuts and morons) there's little doubt as to success or failure. The steps can be traced, and the utility of each claim as to the nature of the universe can be observed.

The same simply is not true of moral claims.

Two people can have different "moral goals" that are mutually exclusive, and both can have a different set of "rules" that appears to give positive results in achieving their respective goals. How does one establish which goal is the more objectively accurate standard against which to evaluate which "rules" are closer to objective, universal morality?

Additionally, there's rarely if ever a clear and traceable set of linkages from adherence to a specific "code" and achievement of one's stated moral goal -- and quite often, adherence to the same rule will result in wildly different outcomes in relation to that goal in different situations.

To be clear -- one cannot measure morality in the same way that one can test a scientific hypothesis.



One thing to note here is that some of your examples of "theories" are not -- they're observed physical phenomena. Gravity isn't a theory, it's an observable phenomenon -- mass moves towards mass -- about which there have been theories, one of which is now predominantly accepted. "Flat earth" isn't a theory as such, it's a claim which easily be observed to be false, going back to the 3rd century BCE if not earlier. Theory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_theory).

Segev
2016-09-20, 10:44 AM
"Getting to the moon" is an objective goal, physically achievable, and without value judgement or subjective interpretation. One's space program either gets to the moon, or does not, and (outside of conspiracy wingnuts and morons) there's little doubt as to success or failure. The steps can be traced, and the utility of each claim as to the nature of the universe can be observed. True.


The same simply is not true of moral claims. False. I will elaborate below.


Two people can have different "moral goals" that are mutually exclusive, and both can have a different set of "rules" that appears to give positive results in achieving their respective goals. How does one establish which goal is the more objectively accurate standard against which to evaluate which "rules" are closer to objective, universal morality?If their goals are mutually exclusive, then they will make different choices about morality. That doesn't change that the morality itself is objective.

If my goal is to get into orbit, and your goal is to build an awesome roller-coaster that goes up and then comes back down, the choices we make in how we pursue those goals will be different, because the goals are different. How do you establish which goal is the more objectively accurate standard against which to evaluate which "rules" are closer to objective, universal physics?

Easily: if we're using different rules (not merely applying them differently), whichever of us achieves our goal was closer to objective reality.

But mutually distinct goals don't have to use different moralities. To borrow an overly-simplistic example again, if both of us are using Christian morality, and my goal is to go to hell, and your goal is to go to heaven, we will behave quite differently...but we're both applying the same morality. The measure of whether we wind up where we predicted we would based on the moral codes we utilized will determine how objectively true those codes were.


Additionally, there's rarely if ever a clear and traceable set of linkages from adherence to a specific "code" and achievement of one's stated moral goal -- and quite often, adherence to the same rule will result in wildly different outcomes in relation to that goal in different situations.

To be clear -- one cannot measure morality in the same way that one can test a scientific hypothesis. This is due to a large amount of noise in the experiments. You cannot measure morality with a single experiment as easily as you can most scientific theories, but you can in the aggregate. Just as you cannot evaluate a single phenotypic trait in a single experiment and determine whether it is overall good for a species, but must do so in the aggregate.

Just as a "good phenotypic trait" will show up repeatedly in many individuals (and, in some cases of particularly strongly-favored traits, in different species via convergent evolution), an "accurate moral rule" will show up in aggregate across multiple cultures and moral codes which share at least related/similar end goals.

I would further posit that the survivability of a GOAL would help identify goals worth having vs. goals which are "bad." Which helps hone the definition of objective morality still further in the same way that the "goal" of evolution is survival, even though it's arguable that there is no real reason to say that survival is preferable to extinction (if we get down to the same level of argument we've hit in this thread over morality).


One thing to note here is that some of your examples of "theories" are not -- they're observed physical phenomena. Gravity isn't a theory, it's an observable phenomenon -- mass moves towards mass -- about which there have been theories, one of which is now predominantly accepted. "Flat earth" isn't a theory as such, it's a claim which easily be observed to be false, going back to the 3rd century BCE if not earlier. Theory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_theory).

"Observed physical phenomena" then have theories associated with them.

The theory of gravity isn't that things fall on Earth - that things fall on Earth is an observed physical phenomenon.

One theory of gravity is that things simply fall because down is down. There is a fundamental force pushing in that direction (or pulling in that direction, or whatever).

Another theory of gravity (which, through more observation and experimentation, we've observed to be more objectively accurate) is that mass is drawn towards other mass with a force proportional to the masses involved (and inversely proportional to the square of the distances involved).

OldTrees1
2016-09-20, 10:53 AM
Now my confusion is simply where you disagree with me. :smallconfused:

Objective morality is the objectively true moral theory. i.e., it is moral truth. That there exists moral truth is why morality is objective.
I have given up trying to understand your position. Therefore your position is no longer relevant to my posts.

Moral Truth is objectively true
Moral Theories are objectively true or false (depending on if they are or are not 1:1 with Moral Truth)
Moral Beliefs (a person's belief in a particular moral theory) are subjective


Hm. Okay. So you're position seems to be stemming from a place of inherent contradiction. "There can be no complete moral theory, because a complete moral theory would say which moral theory I ought to follow, but if a moral theory says I ought to follow it, that isn't enough to determine that I ought to do it."
1) Saying there exist countless complete moral theories =/= Saying there can be no complete moral theory
2) If a moral theory says one ought to follow a different moral theory, that moral theory is self contradicting. So discard all of those self contradicting moral theories
3) Since there are countless complete moral theories that are not discarded by step 2, the fact a moral theory says it is correct is insufficient to know if it is correct or not.



Why?

Not a facetious question. Given what you've outlined, why do you wish to do what you ought? Why do you care about this duty? What is the purpose of fulfilling it? To what do you owe this duty? By what is it assigned? Towards what end does following it bring you?

-snip-


At best, this is a tautology, as meaningful as "I am the President of the Tautology Club because I am the President of the Tautology Club." Like all tautologies, it is meaningless on its own, except as a self-assurance that you're not inherently contradicting your very being (i.e. A is not not A).

I want to do as I ought because I ought to do as I ought. Repeating a, frankly irrelevant, question because you fail to understand the answer will not change the answer.


I accept that you have not proposed this answer, as you perceive it. But that proposition is implicit in the definition of a moral agent you've given: that a moral agent has a duty to do what he ought to do.

If he ought to do what he ought to do, you have defined a priori a morality for him.

Interesting. If you think you can derive a complete answer to my question "What ought one do?" merely from the tautology "One ought to do what one ought", then please go right ahead. Personally I don't see enough information there to make a complete answer (despite seeing it as a complete question).

Reminder: A complete answer will take in any possible circumstance as an input and give out a list (length 1 or greater) of which of the available options one ought to take/choose from.



Moral intuitions are no more subjective than intuitions about the laws of nature. The Greeks intuited that heavier objects fall faster than lighter objects, and that there were four elements of which all things were made. There are people who believe the Earth to be a flat disk surrounded by the Antarctic Ice Wall (and there were other cultures throughout history which believed that the Earth was likewise flat, and that there was an edge to it one could reach by travelling far enough along its surface). So if you wish to define these as "subjective" intuitions, it doesn't change that some are objectively wrong, and others objectively right.
Any scientific theory of nature which inherits your intuitions about the laws of nature will inherit - to the extent that your theory aligns with your intuition - your intuition's objective correctness.
It is obvious you did not notice that I contrasted between subject dependent and subject independent categories.

Your belief in X is subjective, whether X is true independent of you is objective. Moral intuitions, like all intuitions, are subjective because they can change from person to person. The statements, when judged independently can be true or false. Your belief the Earth is round is subjective. The statement "the Earth is a round" is objectively true.

I honestly expected you to notice the contrast.

Max_Killjoy
2016-09-20, 10:58 AM
Given the rules of the forums, one hand is tied behind my back here. I can't give the obvious examples of inherently, mutually exclusive and contradictory moral goals that exist in the real world at present without dancing down the line we can't cross. They are legion, however, and obvious the moment one starts looking.

In contrast, a manned moon mission and a roller coaster are not inherently contradictory and exclusive goals.


This idea that "beneficial moral traits" are more common than "non-beneficial moral traits" is trivially dismissed by any observation of human history -- from the oldest evidence to the present day, we see examples that appear over and over.

Segev
2016-09-20, 11:48 AM
I want to do as I ought because I ought to do as I ought. Repeating a, frankly irrelevant, question because you fail to understand the answer will not change the answer.But why? Your subjective morality says so, but you just said you can't pick a subjective morality as superior to any other. So why have you subscribed to this one?

Let me posit an alternative, equally subjective morality: "One ought to do as one wants."

Why is that inferior to the one you have claimed is the duty of all moral agents?

In case I'm unclear, I am stating that, by the theory that all morality is subjective, the morality that says "One ought to do as one ought to do" is no better or worse than the morality that says "One ought to do as one wants to do." Since one cannot assert goals as a reason one ought to do anything, there is no way to distinguish which of the two is right.

Therefore, by your formulation, it is impossible to even state that "one ought to do as one ought to do." Because that, in itself, is a morality.


Interesting. If you think you can derive a complete answer to my question "What ought one do?" merely from the tautology "One ought to do what one ought", then please go right ahead. Personally I don't see enough information there to make a complete answer (despite seeing it as a complete question).

Reminder: A complete answer will take in any possible circumstance as an input and give out a list (length 1 or greater) of which of the available options one ought to take/choose from. Interesting challenge. I will look at it again in a minute, but I want to start by saying that you've already declared a morality as the objective one. You've declared your goal: to do what you ought. Any attempt to backtrack and claim that's not a goal puts us back to where I outlined above: you cannot even make the claim that one ought to do what one ought because it is just another morality out of the sea of possible moralities and you cannot choose it above the others without giving reason why it is more superior to the others.

Let me try to get back to the challenge you've set after addressing the rest of your post, or I'll forget to do so. Forgive me if I forget to come back to this; it might stand better as its own post, anyway.


It is obvious you did not notice that I contrasted between subject dependent and subject independent categories.

Your belief in X is subjective, whether X is true independent of you is objective. Moral intuitions, like all intuitions, are subjective because they can change from person to person. The statements, when judged independently can be true or false. Your belief the Earth is round is subjective. The statement "the Earth is a round" is objectively true.

I honestly expected you to notice the contrast.I think we inherently disagree on what "subjective" means. A subjective experience is something which inherently cannot be measured independently of the subject experiencing it. "The earth is round" is objective.

"I perceive the earth to be flat" is subjective. But my perceptions are provably false. You can't prove that I'm not perceiving what I say I am, but one can test my perceptions independent of my experience of them.

"I believe it is a moral imperative to eat puppies until I'm sick every Tuesday" could be considered subjective. But that is not the same as morality being subjective; that is a BELIEF being subjective.

A belief about something is not that thing, itself. A belief, like a theory, can be right or wrong, unless there is no objective thing about which that belief is. (Man, that's a confusing sentence.)

I am asserting that there is what you call Moral Truth. That morality is objective because one can identify where beliefs about morality are true or false, because the truth that exists is independent of anybody's belief about that truth.



Let's establish the two ways of following this exhortation: through action, or through inaction/refrain.

As an example, if 'what one ought to do' is to plant trees, then that requires action. A moral agent must plant trees. He needs to get seeds, he needs to find ground to put them in, and he must do his best to ensure that they are placed in ground which has a reasonable expectation of letting them grow (or he hasn't really "planted" them).

If 'what one ought to do' is 'remain sober,' however, then that requires refraining from particular action. Specifically, from imbibing alcohol (and, if we take the broadest definition of 'sober,' other mind-altering substances). In fact, he could even be said to be required to refrain from laughter and jocularity. All of these are specific inactions.

Case 1: "What one ought to do" consists solely of inactions/prohibitions
If this is the case, then a moral agent can fulfill this duty most easily by doing absolutely nothing. So long as there are no active things he ought to do, he is guaranteed to fulfill his moral obligation by doing nothing at all. In fact, so long as one of the things he is forbidden from doing isn't "kill yourself," he could most easily accomplish his moral duty by killing himself. Once dead, there is no longer even a chance that he might accidentally do something he ought not do.

If there exist other moral agents, then they share this duty, because they also ought not do certain things, with nothing proactive that they ought to do.

Case 2: "What one ought to do" consists of at least one active behavior.
In this case, there is something proactive which the moral agent ought to do. He must go out and do it.

It is impossible for him to do it if he is dead. Therefore, he should act to preserve his life so that he can continue to do what he ought to do. Preserving his life becomes at least a secondary concern to doing what he ought to do, and no longer is self-destruction an option in a vacuum. Because by self-destructing, he ceases to be able to do what he ought to do, and that would be a moral failure.

If there are other moral agents, they, too, share in this duty to do what they ought to do. Generally speaking, if there is aught that they ought to do, then the moral agents should promote each other's doing of that which they ought to do. Why? Because it will increase their own ability to do that which they ought to do (since they now are also getting help doing it). This means they now have at least as a tertiary concern keeping their fellow moral agents alive and able to help, lest they diminish their ability to meet their moral obligation to do what they ought to do.

If it should become impossible for them to do what they ought to do, then the sub-obligation to aid other moral agents in doing what they ought to do becomes the most they can do towards their moral obligation. Thus, with a finite lifespan, it becomes a moral obligation to aid other moral agents who will live beyond their time in being able to do what they ought to do.

There are a number of sub-cases and such which we could discuss, but in the interests of brevity I will assert that they can all be shown to boil down to there being a superogatory requirement of a moral agent who has an active thing they ought to do to act to preserve the society which does what it ought to do by facilitating the members' ability to do what they ought to do for all time (or at least to the ultimate completion of that goal, at which point we get back to the question of whether there is anything they ought to do at all, bringing us back to the start of this analysis).

Inherently, then, if "one ought to do what one ought to do," either one ought to do nothing (or destroy oneself), thus avoiding violating any of what they ought not to do, or they ought to act to preserve their morality.

So, either the continued existence (and worse, propagation) of moral agents is evidence that they are all supremely failing in their duties to do what they ought to do (because they're taking great risk of propagating violations of what the ought not to do), or "what they ought to do" includes at least some pro-active behavior which requires moral agents' continued existence to enact.

The most moral societies will be the ones which most successfully promote the performance of their member moral agents doing their duties as to that pro-active thing they ought to be doing, by definition. These societies have, as part of their purpose, self-propagation and the promotion of the capacity of their member agents to do what they ought.

Thus, if there is anything proactive that a moral agent ought to do, then that which preserves the ability for him and his society to do it is also what he ought to do.

We have not yet identified any specific thing that we ought to do, but it is safe to say that if any of those things are counter to the function and thriving of a society which promotes the ability for its moral agents and their posterity to do it, it is inherently self-contradictory. And - while I didn't state this premise - OldTrees1 has already commented that we can reject the self-contradictory hypothetical moralities as paradoxical and impossible.


So, objectively, we now have two possible cases: Either moral agents have completely, utterly and continuously failed to do their moral duty by propagating a morally-self-negating ability for themselves and other moral agents to violate their moral obligations not to do what they ought not do, or there exists at least one pro-active behavior in which moral agents ought to engage.

We can objectively identify significant portions of the second case's moral code by examining those societies which are most successful in promoting their member agents' ability to do what they ought. They each have a high individual probability of their beliefs about morality being objectively accurate, and by taking the intersection of their beliefs about morality, we can to a high degree of fidelity identify at least parts of what is objectively moral.

Even if we as of yet do not know the "root" thing we ought to be doing, we can identify that there is an objective morality against which beliefs about morality can be measured. There is an objective Moral Truth.

I can try for more specificity if there remain objections to this analysis, but I fear I've already gone on so long that it's hard to follow, and that trying to get more specific will muddy the point. But we have established that there exist only two possibilities for Moral Truth, and that they lead to sufficiently opposite requirements and corollary moral beliefs that we are back to, practically, the same Moral Truth for each, just with opposite "goals."

We're left only to wonder if we ought to want to preserve our societies so that pro-active behaviors which we ought to perform might continue to be performed, or if we ought to want to destroy our societies so that they stop propagating the number of moral agents out there who could possibly do what they ought not.

And either way, there exists an objective morality. The question is only whether our choices are directly in alignment or directly out of alignment with the ultimate question of what we "ought" to (not) do.

And I'd even go a step further, and posit that it is highly unlikely that "what we ought to do" is strictly a list of prohibitions.

Oof. that was long, even for me. I hope it's at least an interesting read.

OldTrees1
2016-09-20, 02:08 PM
But why? Your subjective morality says so, but you just said you can't pick a subjective morality as superior to any other. So why have you subscribed to this one?

Let me posit an alternative, equally subjective morality: "One ought to do as one wants."

Why is that inferior to the one you have claimed is the duty of all moral agents?

In case I'm unclear, I am stating that, by the theory that all morality is subjective, the morality that says "One ought to do as one ought to do" is no better or worse than the morality that says "One ought to do as one wants to do." Since one cannot assert goals as a reason one ought to do anything, there is no way to distinguish which of the two is right.

Therefore, by your formulation, it is impossible to even state that "one ought to do as one ought to do." Because that, in itself, is a morality.
1) Who said morality was subjective? I have repeated made a contrast between the subjective(intuitions & beliefs) and the objective (theories & truth). So what theory "that all morality is subjective" are you referring to?

2) I don't see a way to compare "One ought to do what one ought to do", "I want to do what I ought to do", and "One ought to do what one wants to do" at a scope relevant to the conversation. They are different kinds of statements.





"I believe it is a moral imperative to eat puppies until I'm sick every Tuesday" could be considered subjective. But that is not the same as morality being subjective; that is a BELIEF being subjective.

A belief about something is not that thing, itself. A belief, like a theory, can be right or wrong, unless there is no objective thing about which that belief is. (Man, that's a confusing sentence.)

I am asserting that there is what you call Moral Truth. That morality is objective because one can identify where beliefs about morality are true or false, because the truth that exists is independent of anybody's belief about that truth.
How is this anything other than a verbose way of repeating what I have said:
"Moral Beliefs are subjective.

Moral Theories are objectively true or false.

Moral Truth is objectively true."



Let's establish the two ways of following this exhortation: through action, or through inaction/refrain.

As an example, if 'what one ought to do' is to plant trees, then that requires action. A moral agent must plant trees. He needs to get seeds, he needs to find ground to put them in, and he must do his best to ensure that they are placed in ground which has a reasonable expectation of letting them grow (or he hasn't really "planted" them).

If 'what one ought to do' is 'remain sober,' however, then that requires refraining from particular action. Specifically, from imbibing alcohol (and, if we take the broadest definition of 'sober,' other mind-altering substances). In fact, he could even be said to be required to refrain from laughter and jocularity. All of these are specific inactions.

Case 1: "What one ought to do" consists solely of inactions/prohibitions
If this is the case, then a moral agent can fulfill this duty most easily by doing absolutely nothing. So long as there are no active things he ought to do, he is guaranteed to fulfill his moral obligation by doing nothing at all. In fact, so long as one of the things he is forbidden from doing isn't "kill yourself," he could most easily accomplish his moral duty by killing himself. Once dead, there is no longer even a chance that he might accidentally do something he ought not do.

If there exist other moral agents, then they share this duty, because they also ought not do certain things, with nothing proactive that they ought to do.

Case 2: "What one ought to do" consists of at least one active behavior.
In this case, there is something proactive which the moral agent ought to do. He must go out and do it.

It is impossible for him to do it if he is dead. Therefore, he should act to preserve his life so that he can continue to do what he ought to do. Preserving his life becomes at least a secondary concern to doing what he ought to do, and no longer is self-destruction an option in a vacuum. Because by self-destructing, he ceases to be able to do what he ought to do, and that would be a moral failure.

If there are other moral agents, they, too, share in this duty to do what they ought to do. Generally speaking, if there is aught that they ought to do, then the moral agents should promote each other's doing of that which they ought to do. Why? Because it will increase their own ability to do that which they ought to do (since they now are also getting help doing it). This means they now have at least as a tertiary concern keeping their fellow moral agents alive and able to help, lest they diminish their ability to meet their moral obligation to do what they ought to do.

If it should become impossible for them to do what they ought to do, then the sub-obligation to aid other moral agents in doing what they ought to do becomes the most they can do towards their moral obligation. Thus, with a finite lifespan, it becomes a moral obligation to aid other moral agents who will live beyond their time in being able to do what they ought to do.

There are a number of sub-cases and such which we could discuss, but in the interests of brevity I will assert that they can all be shown to boil down to there being a superogatory requirement of a moral agent who has an active thing they ought to do to act to preserve the society which does what it ought to do by facilitating the members' ability to do what they ought to do for all time (or at least to the ultimate completion of that goal, at which point we get back to the question of whether there is anything they ought to do at all, bringing us back to the start of this analysis).

Inherently, then, if "one ought to do what one ought to do," either one ought to do nothing (or destroy oneself), thus avoiding violating any of what they ought not to do, or they ought to act to preserve their morality.

So, either the continued existence (and worse, propagation) of moral agents is evidence that they are all supremely failing in their duties to do what they ought to do (because they're taking great risk of propagating violations of what the ought not to do), or "what they ought to do" includes at least some pro-active behavior which requires moral agents' continued existence to enact.

The most moral societies will be the ones which most successfully promote the performance of their member moral agents doing their duties as to that pro-active thing they ought to be doing, by definition. These societies have, as part of their purpose, self-propagation and the promotion of the capacity of their member agents to do what they ought.

Thus, if there is anything proactive that a moral agent ought to do, then that which preserves the ability for him and his society to do it is also what he ought to do.

We have not yet identified any specific thing that we ought to do, but it is safe to say that if any of those things are counter to the function and thriving of a society which promotes the ability for its moral agents and their posterity to do it, it is inherently self-contradictory. And - while I didn't state this premise - OldTrees1 has already commented that we can reject the self-contradictory hypothetical moralities as paradoxical and impossible.


So, objectively, we now have two possible cases: Either moral agents have completely, utterly and continuously failed to do their moral duty by propagating a morally-self-negating ability for themselves and other moral agents to violate their moral obligations not to do what they ought not do, or there exists at least one pro-active behavior in which moral agents ought to engage.

We can objectively identify significant portions of the second case's moral code by examining those societies which are most successful in promoting their member agents' ability to do what they ought. They each have a high individual probability of their beliefs about morality being objectively accurate, and by taking the intersection of their beliefs about morality, we can to a high degree of fidelity identify at least parts of what is objectively moral.

Even if we as of yet do not know the "root" thing we ought to be doing, we can identify that there is an objective morality against which beliefs about morality can be measured. There is an objective Moral Truth.

I can try for more specificity if there remain objections to this analysis, but I fear I've already gone on so long that it's hard to follow, and that trying to get more specific will muddy the point. But we have established that there exist only two possibilities for Moral Truth, and that they lead to sufficiently opposite requirements and corollary moral beliefs that we are back to, practically, the same Moral Truth for each, just with opposite "goals."

We're left only to wonder if we ought to want to preserve our societies so that pro-active behaviors which we ought to perform might continue to be performed, or if we ought to want to destroy our societies so that they stop propagating the number of moral agents out there who could possibly do what they ought not.

And either way, there exists an objective morality. The question is only whether our choices are directly in alignment or directly out of alignment with the ultimate question of what we "ought" to (not) do.

And I'd even go a step further, and posit that it is highly unlikely that "what we ought to do" is strictly a list of prohibitions.

Oof. that was long, even for me. I hope it's at least an interesting read.
That was an interesting read. It was also an decent attempt at a priori morality. In my first read I identified some spots that look shaky or unsupported. However something like this deserves more than just 1 read. I will be rereading it several times in the future to get a better idea of its strengths, insights, weaknesses, and presumptions.

Something I noticed was you added an instrumental end you found related to the final end and then slowly increased the weight you were giving to the instrumental end.

Segev
2016-09-20, 02:29 PM
1) Who said morality was subjective? I have repeated made a contrast between the subjective(intuitions & beliefs) and the objective (theories & truth). So what theory "that all morality is subjective" are you referring to? Then, again, I'm really not sure where we're disagreeing.

Let me try this. I think these are points on which we agree:

A) Beliefs are subjective. Their accuracy is objective iff they are beliefs regarding a thing which is independently true or not.
B) People can have beliefs about morality. The beliefs are subjective, but if there exists an objective Moral Truth, these beliefs can be objectively true or false.
C) There exists an objective Moral Truth.

Am I right? If so, I don't think we actually disagree, or I'm really, really missing something.


2) I don't see a way to compare "One ought to do what one ought to do", "I want to do what I ought to do", and "One ought to do what one wants to do" at a scope relevant to the conversation. They are different kinds of statements.
My point here was that "One ought to do what one ought to do" is, itself, a moral belief. One which you seem to be implicitly accepting as Moral Truth (though not, so far as you establish, a "complete" one, since you find the definition of what one ought to do lacking).





How is this anything other than a verbose way of repeating what I have said:
"Moral Beliefs are subjective.

Moral Theories are objectively true or false.

Moral Truth is objectively true."It might not be. We may not be disagreeing.



That was an interesting read. It was also an decent attempt at a priori morality. In my first read I identified some spots that look shaky or unsupported. However something like this deserves more than just 1 read. I will be rereading it several times in the future to get a better idea of its strengths, insights, weaknesses, and presumptions.Thanks. I know it has several weaknesses, because I deleted lengthy examinations which attempted to shore them up (because I think they're only weaknesses due to the imprecision of my wording for brevity), but I do think it holds up and look forward to discussing it in more detail.

I really wish I had the wit to be both brief and accurate.


Something I noticed was you added an instrumental end you found related to the final end and then slowly increased the weight you were giving to the instrumental end.
I know to what you refer, and it's actually rather deliberate. I don't think it quite qualifies as proof by induction, but it's modeled on the same...family of proof techniques.

Essentially, there is, by assumption, some unspecified "thing" a moral agent "ought to do." By examining the imperative and expanding upon what is required to support it, one can come to, at least, ancillary conclusions about parts of what one ought to do in pursuit of that directive.

It won't necessarily define the fullness of that pro-active behavior, but it will identify a means of recognizing moral theories (by their results when implemented) which would be in line with objective moral truth.

i.e., if there is a thing which moral agents objectively ought to do, then there is an objective moral truth, and we have the means to identify at least parts of it accurately.

That is an "if," but I believe I'm drawing that premise from your definition, not injecting it, myself.

OldTrees1
2016-09-20, 07:40 PM
Then, again, I'm really not sure where we're disagreeing.

Let me try this. I think these are points on which we agree:

A) Beliefs are subjective. Their accuracy is objective iff they are beliefs regarding a thing which is independently true or not.
B) People can have beliefs about morality. The beliefs are subjective, but if there exists an objective Moral Truth, these beliefs can be objectively true or false.
C) There exists an objective Moral Truth.

Am I right? If so, I don't think we actually disagree, or I'm really, really missing something.

Yes, I agree with those points.


My point here was that "One ought to do what one ought to do" is, itself, a moral belief. One which you seem to be implicitly accepting as Moral Truth (though not, so far as you establish, a "complete" one, since you find the definition of what one ought to do lacking).
The alternative of "One always ought to do as one ought to do" is "One sometimes ought to do as one ought not do" which is self contradicting. Since all the alternatives are self contradicting I consider "One ought to do as one ought to do" to be part of the definition of "Ought" rather than as a fragment of a moral belief.



Thanks. I know it has several weaknesses, because I deleted lengthy examinations which attempted to shore them up (because I think they're only weaknesses due to the imprecision of my wording for brevity), but I do think it holds up and look forward to discussing it in more detail.

I really wish I had the wit to be both brief and accurate.


I know to what you refer, and it's actually rather deliberate. I don't think it quite qualifies as proof by induction, but it's modeled on the same...family of proof techniques.

Essentially, there is, by assumption, some unspecified "thing" a moral agent "ought to do." By examining the imperative and expanding upon what is required to support it, one can come to, at least, ancillary conclusions about parts of what one ought to do in pursuit of that directive.

It won't necessarily define the fullness of that pro-active behavior, but it will identify a means of recognizing moral theories (by their results when implemented) which would be in line with objective moral truth.

i.e., if there is a thing which moral agents objectively ought to do, then there is an objective moral truth, and we have the means to identify at least parts of it accurately.

That is an "if," but I believe I'm drawing that premise from your definition, not injecting it, myself.
My definition does not presume there is a thing which moral agents ought to do/ought to not do because it is broad enough to catch the null set case(there is nothing one ought to do/ought to not do). However the null set case is trivially shown to be objective (all moral claims have truth values of "false").

Max_Killjoy
2016-09-20, 09:11 PM
1) Who said morality was subjective? I have repeated made a contrast between the subjective(intuitions & beliefs) and the objective (theories & truth). So what theory "that all morality is subjective" are you referring to?


I have questioned the claim that moral systems can be objectively evaluated, because so far no one has offered up an objective standard against which they can be evaluated. All such standards offered up have been subjective themselves.

E: whether or not the moral system tends to be positive or negative in relation to a stated goal can be evaluated, yes. However, that is not a measure of the objective trueness of either the goal or the system. Contrast with a claim about the physical world, which can be value-neutral, and can be tested empirically, against objective evidence; its predictive power examined; and possibly falsified.


Furthermore, some of the standards offered up can clearly lead to contradictory and/or plainly repugnant outcomes as to whether an action is "moral". (And some examples so repugnant that I'm sure I'd get a warning for posting them.)

OldTrees1
2016-09-20, 10:36 PM
I have questioned the claim that moral systems can be objectively evaluated, because so far no one has offered up an objective standard against which they can be evaluated. All such standards offered up have been subjective themselves.
In the context, my statement is better read as "No Segev, I am not and was not saying ____" than read as a legitimate question.


Sidenote: I would suggest ignoring Moral Disgust when thinking about questions of morality. How morally repugnant something is/is not is a subjective standard and is linked closer to normal disgust than to other moral concepts.

Max_Killjoy
2016-09-20, 10:51 PM
In the context, my statement is better read as "No Segev, I am not and was not saying ____" than read as a legitimate question.


Sidenote: I would suggest ignoring Moral Disgust when thinking about questions of morality. How morally repugnant something is/is not is a subjective standard and is linked closer to normal disgust than to other moral concepts.


I can't think of a better word for some of the situations that come out as "moral" depending on "the goal" set down.

OldTrees1
2016-09-21, 12:22 AM
I can't think of a better word for some of the situations that come out as "moral" depending on "the goal" set down.
Oh I agree with you on that. Just as I can imagine alien moral systems, so too can I see moral systems that I find repugnant. However my finding a moral theory repugnant does not inform me about if that moral theory is correct or not. It merely informs me that I can understand things I find repugnant.

Frozen_Feet
2016-09-21, 05:49 AM
Of course not. I feel like you're arguing against the same position I am with this example, however. So perhaps you should elaborate on the point you're trying to make, please?

You claimed OldTrees' position stemmed from inherent contradiction.

But it doesn't. His statement that a moral theory telling you ought to follow it is insufficient reason to follow it, is homologous to a statement that a person telling you they're innocent is insufficient reason to believe they're innocent.

You created the contradiction by adding a step I've yet to see OldTrees make.


You acknowledge in this premise and your question that there is an objective law. Just because you don't know it doesn't make the law subjective.

Not knowing what the objectively true morality is doesn't make morality subjective, any more than not knowing the Earth is round makes whether it's round or flat subjective.

And this doesn't answer the question, which can be paraphrased "can you say you have a duty to follow the law even if you don't know the law?"

It has nothing at all to do with objectivity nor subjectivity and your reply does not answer my question.

I asked it, because OldTrees' reasoning can be paraphrased as: "a moral agent has duty to follow universal ethics, but absent knowledge of what it actually is, we can't tell what this entails". This is homologous to statement "a legal agent has duty to follow the laws they operate under, but absent knowledge of law, we can't tell what this entails".

I consider these both trivially true statements. I fail to see how reasoning like this abrogates a person's status as a moral agent. Likewise your criticism of OldTrees for presuming too much falls flat, because like he himself just pointed out, the statement is broad enough to cover a nullset, where there are zero moral truths and hence zero duties to follow.

It also explains why you asking "but why does moral agent have a duty to...?" is pointless. Like OldTrees has said, that question would be answered by universal ethics. But absent of knowledge of what it is, the answer cannot be given.

It is you who keeps presuming too much, because it's you who argued "what a person wants" is workable basis for objective morality, but as Killjoy and OldTrees have both explained, it does not create sufficient grounds for universal ethics. There are complete systems of ethics (or at least close approximations of them) as OldTrees sees them that reject wanting as a basis for moral behaviour, which means your stance cannot be right absent of other proof.

Again: this is not about objectivity nor subjectivity. There is no disagreement about the objective or subjective nature of morals between you and OldTrees. The actual point of contention is nature of knowledge and evidence. OldTrees has been listing criteria which are insufficient to prove a moral theory correct, while Killjoy has argued that you've not proved moral beliefs themselves objective and that moral beliefs occupy a different category from normal facts.

Segev
2016-09-21, 08:02 AM
Honestly, I am not 100% convinced that "moral duty" is objective. I was accepting the premise as a basis for demonstrating how it leads to a proof that there exists a Moral Truth/objective morality.

Max_Killjoy is, I'm afraid, simply stating his conclusion as his premise. I believe I've demonstrated through proof by contradiction that he's wrong, anyway, but I could be misremembering.

I will focus, however, on his claim that goals are subjective. This is false. Whether a goal is worthy or not can be said to be subjective (at least, at the level of examination we're at; I would posit it's possible that there are objectively better goals and objectively worse goals, but we're not to a stage where I'm comfortable arguing and analyzing that right now). But many, many goals are objective.

I find it harder to come up with subjective goals than objective ones, though "I want to be happy" is, perhaps, such a goal. It's hard to claim that somebody is or is not experiencing "happiness" without simply asking them. We have clues, and it's possible for somebody to lie to themselves about it, but it's really hard to objectively (dis)prove.

Most goals are objective, especially since we tend to deliberately focus on goals that are, to some degree, measurable. "I want to retire with a billion dollars in my portfolio" is inherently an objective goal. You can tell if you've met it or not, and you can even tell if you're on a path towards it or not. Even "I want to spread happiness and joy" can be objectively measured, if we assume that we can take people's word for their subjective emotions. (Let's not divert ourselves on to corner case tangents where we deliberately distort our ability to trust this. i.e. no, I'm not suggesting a brutal tyrant who murders any of his subjects that doesn't tell him they're happier under his rule than any other condition is objectively achieving the stated goal.)


The reason I keep coming back to the biological comparison is that any self-defeating system seems almost tautologically to be inferior to a self-perpetuating or self-preserving system. This is why it generally goes by unspoken assumption that survival of life is "good" and that adaptation and propagation is "good." And that we can thus use evolutionary algorithms as a means of optimizing to solve problems. (Which, again, carries the implicit assumption that solving problems is a good, desirable thing.)

Hence, I suppose a less-controversial claim I could make is that there exist moral beliefs which are objectively self-perpetuating, and within that set are subsets which are objectively better at this than others.

As anything can be objectively judged on its usefulness to the beings/entities/systems which have/use/are afflicted with it, we can thus judge these moral beliefs, as well, on how well they objectively improve the performance of moral agents in that same self-perpetuation and -propagation game.

So, for now, I'll concede that self-perpetuation is only a "subjectively good" thing. But objectively, that which perpetuates by definition survives, and survival means continued relevance.

So, perhaps it is possible to say that there are moral beliefs which are objectively more correct about moral relevance.

Max_Killjoy
2016-09-21, 11:48 AM
Just one example of how complicated morality is -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_foundations_theory -- not endorsing or rejecting the idea linked, just using it as an example of all the overlapping/conflicting/complementing metrics involved. Further, each of those axes is an abstraction of far more complicated ideas, and requires a massive amount of definition and clarification, even before any of them conflict or complement each other.

The idea of a simple "goal" to act as a straightforward objective evaluation metric is... to be blunt... silly.

OldTrees1
2016-09-21, 12:27 PM
OldTrees'
OldTrees
OldTrees'
OldTrees
OldTrees
OldTrees
OldTrees
OldTrees
-snipped for brevity-

Frozen_Feet is accurate in his portrayal of OldTrees.

Segev
2016-09-21, 12:55 PM
It occurred to me that I didn't respond adequately to this yet, so I quote it now to try to do so more directly. Forgive me if, in attempts to be brief (which likely will fail anyway), I fail to cover everything.

And this doesn't answer the question, which can be paraphrased "can you say you have a duty to follow the law even if you don't know the law?"

It has nothing at all to do with objectivity nor subjectivity and your reply does not answer my question.You can say you have a duty to do anything, regardless of knowledge of anything.

Heck, one of the more offensive - to my own moral and ethical standards - things that pops up in anime a fair bit is the notion that a person has a duty to accept abuse or even to die, kill themselves, or allow themselves to be killed simply because their birth in some way offended a subset of society (often 'the nobility' or some other elite). It is treated in such works as, at least by the perceptions of the societies involved, as moral truth. To the point that the one said to have this "duty" often feels guilty for their unwillingness to carry it out.

So the question of what gives you this duty is not without point.


I asked it, because OldTrees' reasoning can be paraphrased as: "a moral agent has duty to follow universal ethics, but absent knowledge of what it actually is, we can't tell what this entails". This is homologous to statement "a legal agent has duty to follow the laws they operate under, but absent knowledge of law, we can't tell what this entails".I still am not convinced I accept the onus of "duty" being inherent, here. To any statement of, "You have a duty to ____," one can reply, "No, I don't."

I would argue that one only has a duty when one accepts it in the first place. Others are, of course, free to judge that one however they like for accepting, rejecting, or abrogating any particular duty, but "duty" cannot be externally applied.

...though perhaps I'm too hung up on the word's connotations. I believe OldTrees1 is using it as another way to say "one should." Which is a weaker term, to me, than "duty," as duty implies an onus, where as "should" is a guiding term. "You should wash your glasses if you want to see more clearly," is not the same as "you have a duty to wash your glasses."


Likewise your criticism of OldTrees for presuming too much falls flat, because like he himself just pointed out, the statement is broad enough to cover a nullset, where there are zero moral truths and hence zero duties to follow.Covering the null set is an interesting note. My overly-long logical analysis of his core statement didn't quite cover that part, since the null case is trivial, but perhaps it bears a little bit of mention. Though the null case runs into a paradox in a similar manner to the question, "Does the set of all sets which do not contain themselves contain itself?"

The very statement, "one ought to do what one ought to do," indicates that there's one thing one ought to do: what one ought to do. If there is nothing one ought to do, then it cannot be said "one ought to do" anything. Even "what one ought to do."

Which is why, in building the analysis I did, I accepted his premise as given rather than deconstructing it to use the null case against it. I have rejected the null case as trivial (possibly without giving it sufficient thought).


It also explains why you asking "but why does moral agent have a duty to...?" is pointless. Like OldTrees has said, that question would be answered by universal ethics. But absent of knowledge of what it is, the answer cannot be given. Well, actually, I think I have one, but it lies in my last post and stems from the notion of moral relevance.

Without belaboring it with an extended discussion, I will say that my reasoning rests at least in part on the idea that any objectively true morality - any objective Moral Truth - must, inherently, be relevant.


It is you who keeps presuming too much, because it's you who argued "what a person wants" is workable basis for objective morality, but as Killjoy and OldTrees have both explained, it does not create sufficient grounds for universal ethics. There are complete systems of ethics (or at least close approximations of them) as OldTrees sees them that reject wanting as a basis for moral behaviour, which means your stance cannot be right absent of other proof.I hesitate to discuss this part because I confess that I would begin to be discussing real-world moral codes and religions in a manner which could be considered judgmental.

Suffice it to say that there is an inherent contradiction in a moral system which calls upon moral agents who make free choices to "give up desire," because of the paradox that they would have to want to give up desire to choose to do so, and wanting to give up desire is, itself, a desire. (I am given to understand that this is considered one of the mysteries that resolving grants wisdom according to at least a few of these systems of belief.)


Again: this is not about objectivity nor subjectivity. There is no disagreement about the objective or subjective nature of morals between you and OldTrees. The actual point of contention is nature of knowledge and evidence. OldTrees has been listing criteria which are insufficient to prove a moral theory correct, while Killjoy has argued that you've not proved moral beliefs themselves objective and that moral beliefs occupy a different category from normal facts.
I think you're right about my discussion with OldTrees1.

As for beliefs being distinct from facts, I think that's...almost inherent to the definition of the words. A belief can be held regardless of facts. Ideally, beliefs align with facts, but they needn't.

So of course moral beliefs held by any individual, group, or philosophical construct (real or hypothetical) could align with or be completely contrary to objective moral truth (assuming there is objective moral truth).

This is no different than beliefs about quantum physics as held by any individual, group, or scientific theory (real or hypothetical), which could align with or be completely contrary to objective reality on a physically quantum level (assuming there is objective reality that lies at a physically quantum level).

In fact, I would posit that most moral belief sets that have traction in the real world would partially align with objective moral truth, and partially misalign.

Kaiu Keiichi
2016-09-21, 01:21 PM
The reason I prefer settings like Glorantha, Earthdawn and other fantasy settings that use culture to measure morality is that these settings use culture to measure subjective "good" and "evil". Trying to define "good" and "evil" from outside the narrative and the culture is a fool's errand. The only place from which good and evil can be seen is from the in-character perspective.

To put it another way - would Asmodeus or Orcus call themselves "evil"? Most certainly not! They view themselves as being entirely justified in what they do!

Max_Killjoy
2016-09-21, 01:30 PM
The reason I prefer settings like Glorantha, Earthdawn and other fantasy settings that use culture to measure morality is that these settings use culture to measure subjective "good" and "evil". Trying to define "good" and "evil" from outside the narrative and the culture is a fool's errand. The only place from which good and evil can be seen is from the in-character perspective.

To put it another way - would Asmodeus or Orcus call themselves "evil"? Most certainly not! They view themselves as being entirely justified in what they do!

By putting the moral questions entirely within the realm of the characters and setting, it also neatly avoids these OOC "debates" about morality.

Segev
2016-09-21, 02:20 PM
By putting the moral questions entirely within the realm of the characters and setting, it also neatly avoids these OOC "debates" about morality.

Not entirely. If the cultures as depicted by the writers come off as "good" when they're supposed to be "evil," for whatever reason, it will still spark these debates. (The same is true for the reverse, which is often more common, now that I think about it.) "From this culture's standpoint, slavery is good and women wielding weapons is evil!" is going to be...jarring...to a modern western audience, especially if the overtone of the narrative suggests that the reader is meant to agree that this culture is correct on these points.

Frozen_Feet
2016-09-21, 02:59 PM
@Segev: I disagree with you on there being a paradox. I do not consider "one ought to do nothing" qualitatively different from "one ought to do something", just like I do not consider an equation which returns 0 for X to be qualitatively different from one that returns some other number.

Your similar point about "acting without desire" is more interesting, but I feel it's result of similar pointless semantic shenanigans some people engage in to prove "altruism is selfish" or some such. "Acting without desire" involves no paradox if you see "desire" as meaning something more than impulse to act. F.ex. if I instinctively block an attack in a sparring match, that's factually not the same process as when I consciously think "I do not want to be hurt". To a degree, the difference between a skilled martial artist and a beginner is that the former can act without thinking about being hurt all that much. I see this as analogous to acting ethically without desire as opposed to with desire.

Segev
2016-09-21, 03:23 PM
To engage in voluntary action requires desire. I'm not going to discuss reflex (which "blocking in a sparring match" amounts to). But the choice to participate in the sparring match was made based upon a desire. Whether it was a desire to spar, a desire to practice, a desire to teach, a desire to demonstrate, a desire to show off, a desire to please your teacher, a desire to avoid ridicule... you sparred because you had something you wanted out of it.

If you didn't, you wouldn't have chosen to spar.

I don't have time right now to properly go further into the other paradox, sorry. Gotta go teach data mining to grad students. (Which, at least, is usually a better-defined subject!)

OldTrees1
2016-09-21, 03:31 PM
It is you who keeps presuming too much, because it's you who argued "what a person wants" is workable basis for objective morality, but as Killjoy and OldTrees have both explained, it does not create sufficient grounds for universal ethics. There are complete systems of ethics (or at least close approximations of them) as OldTrees sees them that reject wanting as a basis for moral behaviour, which means your stance cannot be right absent of other proof.

Suffice it to say that there is an inherent contradiction in a moral system which calls upon moral agents who make free choices to "give up desire," because of the paradox that they would have to want to give up desire to choose to do so, and wanting to give up desire is, itself, a desire. (I am given to understand that this is considered one of the mysteries that resolving grants wisdom according to at least a few of these systems of belief.)
Your similar point about "acting without desire" is more interesting, but I feel it's result of similar pointless semantic shenanigans some people engage in to prove "altruism is selfish" or some such. "Acting without desire" involves no paradox if you see "desire" as meaning something more than impulse to act. F.ex. if I instinctively block an attack in a sparring match, that's factually not the same process as when I consciously think "I do not want to be hurt". To a degree, the difference between a skilled martial artist and a beginner is that the former can act without thinking about being hurt all that much. I see this as analogous to acting ethically without desire as opposed to with desire.

Your reply here is here is weaker than your initial statement on the topic.

"Rejecting wanting as a basis for moral behavior" is not the same as "give up desire". Instead it is closer to a statement that "desires are irrelevant to what one ought do" (such a statement does not contain the contradiction Segev talks about). There are still differences between the 1st and 3rd statements (the 1st is a less extreme form of the 3rd)

Frozen_Feet
2016-09-21, 03:51 PM
@Segev: I know precisely what paradox you mean, I just don't think it applies. There's no paradox in "a set of baskets which may contain apples" including a basket with no apples in it, and that's what the proposed set of system of ethics is homologous to.

As far as desire goes, I'm still leaning towards your argument being philosophically and potentially neuropsychologically equivocational; that is, I think many of the things you describe as "desiring" are distinct processes and some of the fail to qualify as "desire" in the sense of how "acting without desire" is invoked in context of certain classical systems of ethics. Getting hung up on reflex versus conscious action is not the point, the point is that two actions can serve the same goal but be results of distinct mental processes.

Or to turn it around, it is possible to say, using equivocational language, that a reflexive block and a conscious block are both born from "desire to avert harm", and it would be easy to convince a lot (perhaps most?) people that this is trivially true. The mental processes remain factually distinct regardless.

Segev
2016-09-22, 10:00 AM
See, I hold forth that the paradox is there because it isn't "a set of baskets which might contain apples." It's "every empty basket that contains apples." Though coming back into this cold right now has me forgetting some of the nuance we'd gotten down to, so my apologies for having a lackluster reply.

Regarding "act without desire," except for literally involuntary actions (which include reflexive ones), people don't act without desire. It's literally impossible. Perhaps I'm fundamentally missing something in what you're saying, but I can't see a system which says to give up all desire as anything but either a) nihilistic (give up even your desire to live, and just sit there and rot) or b) an exhortation to give up your moral agency.

(b) is a little extreme-sounding, I admit. But it's the sole remaining conclusion. To make a choice, one must desire an outcome. Even if that outcome is just "having made this choice." To give up desire means giving up volitional action.

In a shallow way, this can be a useful philosophy towards teaching people to act quickly and decisively, especially where reflex is important (as in martial arts), but it is only useful in the same way that the lies we tell students about physics in earlier years of their study are useful: they're simplifications or omissions that let them grasp a basic concept, but which have to later be abandoned because they're false. Understanding the basic concept allows you to transcend the lie that helped you learn it, because you're then ready to put the next lie (which is closer to the truth) into context.

But a teaching tool that relies on simplifications and easy-to-grasp falsehoods is not a moral truth. Nor does it abrogate the existence of objective moral truth.

One must learn Newtonian physics before one is able to understand the modifications to its false model required for relativity. But that doesn't change that neither are subjective; one is just more true than the other.