Which morals could be considered universal and applicable? - Page 5 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#13813657
To deny they are meaningful is to deny a moral intuition that is epistemically on par with intuitions concerning the reality of the external world, or the reality of other minds, etc.

The argument is circular.

W.P. Alston, Epistemology and Metaphysics wrote:For if the reliability of rational intuition cannot be shown except by relying on premises we acquire from rational intuition we are depending on the reliability of rational intuition to support the claim that rational intuition is reliable.


Why is that?

I decided to pursue other interests.
#13813667
Ingliz wrote:Your argument is circular.


Not quite, I never made the claim that intuitions are reliable only that our intuitions are epistemically equivalent. To be rational, denying one would mean denying them all -- or else one's position is inconsistent. What I am claiming is this: If you deny moral intuitions then (assuming you are rational) you must also deny metaphysical intuitions (concerning the reality of the external world, time, other minds, etc.). Denying moral intuitions comes at heavy epistemic costs. This is what I am arguing. If you're just picking and choosing which intuition to deny, then it is merely an arbitrary fancy and is driven by ideological, not rational considerations. If you wish to deny moral intuitions then you must construct some argument (if in fact you retain metaphysical intuitions) to show that our moral intuitions are not epistemically on par with our metaphysical intuitions. Of course you could just deny all these intuitions altogether and be a good old-fashion solipsist (this, at least, would be a consistent position).

There is no circularity in my argument at all.
#13813672
ingliz wrote:It is possible that both moral and epistemic realisms are false.


;)



I know, I said that. In fact it is also possible that metaphysical realism is false and the external world is just an extension of Ingliz's imagination.

But this does not even graze the argument I put forward.
#13813684
This is irrelevant. Something can be morally wrong, consistent with many, most if not all people believing it is morally right. The moral properties of an action are independent from peoples' beliefs (this, in fact, is something our intuition tells us).


I find this contradictory Vera Politica. I would be interested in how you separate moral properties from people's beliefs? Morality exists in human societies due to human beings applying morals. That some individuals don't adhere to certain morals or actions that derive from morals, is irrelevant. My point is that morals are socially constructed and it varies from society to society. You think it is intuitive? That is interesting. Why do you think it is intuitive and not something socially taught? Or do you think it is socially taught? But that our internal moral intuition is innate and that the society just builds on what is already present in the individuals and how they interact with the society at large?
#13813691
Denying moral intuitions comes at heavy epistemic costs.

Why? When epistemically you haven't explained how such moral intuitions could ever be effectively knowable.

Epistemic inaccessibility:

Cuneo, The Normative Web wrote: . . we don’t have any explanatorily informative story about how we could gain epistemic access to moral facts. That is, we do not have any informative account of how facts about what morally ought to be the case impinge on our cognitive faculties so as to produce the corresponding states of knowledge. . . . In light of this failure, it is best to conclude that there is no explanation available. But on the assumption that, if moral facts were to exist, then some such explanation would be available, it follows that moral facts do not exist.

It has been argued by Heathwood in Moral and Epistemic Open-Question Arguments, and others, that "if epistemic facts are identical to non-moral facts, but moral facts are not, this has serious implications for the popular idea that we can argue for moral realism on analogy with epistemic realism. In particular, if epistemic descriptivism is true, then epistemic facts exhibit far fewer of the objectionable features that Cuneo and others claim will plague epistemic facts to whatever extent they plague moral facts".
Last edited by ingliz on 17 Oct 2011 17:14, edited 3 times in total.
#13813693
Tainari wrote:I find this contradictory Vera Politica. I would be interested in how you separate moral properties from people's beliefs? Morality exists in human societies due to human beings applying morals.


Science exists in human societies due to human beings applying the scientific method. Mathematics exists in human societies due to mathematicians applying deductive methods. That "2+2=4" is true, is true regardless if every human being suddenly stopped believing it was true or is true even if a child has not yet grasped its content and does not yet believe it. In the way that such statements are separated from peoples' beliefs, moral sentences are also separate from peoples' beliefs. There is nothing contradictory about this -- it is only in contradiction your your views on morality but is not self-contradictory.

My point is that morals are socially constructed and it varies from society to society.


And my point is that if this is your view, then standard moral sentences are meaningless. I submit that they are either true or false.
#13813702
Vera Politica wrote:
Science exists in human societies due to human beings applying the scientific method. Mathematics exists in human societies due to mathematicians applying deductive methods. That "2+2=4" is true, is true regardless if every human being suddenly stopped believing it was true or is true even if a child has not yet grasped its content and does not yet believe it.


Yes but the scientific method relies on natural occurring and testable and measurable methods of applying certitude or not to some thesis. It is based on observable phenomenon in nature and it has to be thoroughly consistent. It can't vary. You know this is true VP.

Human social science can have the scientific method applied to it, but still VP, the reason natural science and social sciences are separated is because one has to do with human beings socially constructed paradigms. Morals are a socially constructed paradigm. They vary enormously from society to society. That 2+2=4 and is consistent in all cases, regardless of language and culture and religious beliefs, etc. is what makes it scientific. Math is the universal language, and it is the language of science. Social stuff like morals? That is another hill of beans entirely. Morals and ethics are not math VP. They aren't consistent all the way across the board in all human societies.

El Nitido (I mean CounterChaos) quoted the part in which I stated human beings many times are irrational. They are VP. It would be wonderful to think we are as a species a completely rational species without irrationality present, but it is not true. Human society is not as black and white as mathematics is. In math especially the basic building blocks of math, adding, subtracting, dividing, multiplying, algebra, geometry, etc. it is all about CONSISTENCY. And the scientific method. Morals? Ethics? Religion? Emotional and intuitive things? Are they truly consistent in all societies and are universal? I don't think so. They are very mutable creations of a particular human society's historical, economic and social context. Irrational aspects of human beings do come out in their mores, their ethics and their value systems, and that also governs social interaction.

The point is VP that the scientific method is based on the external and consistent laws in nature. Human beings due to their 'irrationality' can and often do take actions and construct social and economic systems that can go against natural law. That is why the social sciences and the natural sciences are separated. The social sciences takes into consideration the symbolic, the artistic, the emotional and the irrational into consideration on what defines human societies. Science's beauty in my opinion is its ability to take that annoying human trait out of the equation. ;)

BTW, I never had the pleasure of engaging you before in debate VP. I find it quite absorbing. You make me think hard. That is good.
#13813840
VP specializes in prosaic philosophy.

Most people never get past some utterly impractical formulation of what's real, so that most times we talk about good and bad it comes out a parody of reality; sketchy parroting of second hand theories. Generally that there is a good and a bad and they oppose each other. I find it amazing how profound things when spoken become stupid and impractical.

While VP worries the joint between the proper use of words and the proper relation between truth and value I observe the whole matter by rolling my eyes. I am the Buddha of eye rolling today. Maybe I will segue into tired sighs and just let you guys paint nonsensically.
#13814025
I minored in philosophy because I wanted to figure this stuff out and I came out of it totally disillusioned with philosophy. If you can't even rigorously justify wheter your fireplace actually exists, whether anything you see informs moral judgments, that ethics is simply false, whatever the hell Wittgenstein was trying to say, or whether you are or are not living in the Matrix...I gave up.
#13814133
Ingliz wrote:Why? When epistemically you haven't explained how such moral intuitions could ever be effectively knowable.


I do not have to show this for my argument to go through.

The epistemic cost of denying moral intuitions is denying metaphysical intuitions (the reality of the external world and the reality of other minds). This is a heavy epistemic cost.


we don’t have any explanatorily informative story about how we could gain epistemic access to moral facts.


Two things here: (1) we do not have any explanatory story for how we gain access to metaphysical facts: that the external world is real and that there are other minds. We take these as true via intuition, and it is perfectly rational to say that we know such things (so long as we have a permissibly elastic definition of knowledge. If not, skepticism runs rampant). My point, again, is that denying our moral intuitions while remaining rationally consistent carries heavy costs, because it entails denying these metaphysical intuitions as well. You have said nothing on this point and it is the argument I've put forward for the last dozen posts or so.

(2) In fact, we can have an explanatory epistemic theory, via Frege, who claims that we can know of abstract objects by fixing the truth-conditions of statements in which terms denoting such objects occur. We can construct an analogous case for moral properties, and the challenge comes to fixing the truth-conditions of sentences involving moral properties. This linguistic solution to the traditional epistemic problem is known as the linguistic turn in philosophy.

Finally, there are formal languages expressing moral claims.

Tainari wrote:That 2+2=4 and is consistent in all cases, regardless of language and culture and religious beliefs, etc. is what makes it scientific


You are merely assuming that mathematical truths are independent from the formal languages in which they are expressed, only because you do not see variations among natural languages. Within mathematics there are very serious disagreements over what constitutes a mathematical proof. For example, Intuitionists disagree with any result that uses non-constructive existence proofs - so there are variations within mathematics (between classical mathematicians and intuitionists, for example) over what constitutes a mathematical proof and, thus, a mathematics truth.

I am in fact also (somewhat) of a realist about mathematical truth and objects, but I am just making this point to show that your argument is quite thin.

Morals and ethics are not math VP. They aren't consistent all the way across the board in all human societies.


This is somewhat disingenuous and my response is two-fold: (1) you are assuming there is agreement across mathematics (see above, this is not true). Moreover, you are assuming that mathematical truths are independent from the formal language in which they are expressed. All you need to do is make the same assumption for formal and natural languages making moral claims; (2) There actually is more universal agreement on moral principles that you are letting on. There is disagreement on the extent of their application, limitation and meta-ethical justification. For example, the claim that "do no harm" seem to hold good universally amongst pretty much every culture (maybe with a few exceptions, but I do not know about them). However, there is extensive disagreement over the limitations of this principle, when it is operative and non-operative and how it is justified (i.e. meta-ethical theories) - yet there is agreement that this is a sound and true ethical principle. The same is true for many ethical principles -- the disagreement is not on the principles themselves but, as I said, on meta-ethics, application, their limitations, etc. (i.e. the disagreement concerns extra-ethical considerations). Extensive variation on application, limitation and meta-ethics gives an exaggerated sense of the disagreement on ethical principles.

Lexington wrote:I minored in philosophy because I wanted to figure this stuff out and I came out of it totally disillusioned with philosophy. If you can't even rigorously justify wheter your fireplace actually exists, whether anything you see informs moral judgments, that ethics is simply false, whatever the hell Wittgenstein was trying to say, or whether you are or are not living in the Matrix...I gave up.


You should have probably done more contemporary, mainstream philosophy. Unfortunately, this is not always possible (esp. if you are minoring) which is why I always suggest formal logic courses, critical thinking, etc. for those minoring in philosophy -- the skills learned in this course are immensely useful and transferable.

Suska wrote:VP specializes in prosaic philosophy.


I specialize in philosophy.
#13814192
I do not have to show this for my argument to go through.

Moral facts are inaccessible and moral intuitions inconsistent.

Therefore, even if some moral intuitions are "true" many must be "false", and we have no way of knowing which is which.

Thus, it is impossible to attach a reliable truth value to any moral intuition, and any evaluation of a moral intuition must necessarily be subjective.

Given this, why not treat moral claims as scientists treat claims concerning unobservable entities? As not literally true or false, but instead merely useful devices.

denying our moral intuitions while remaining rationally consistent carries heavy costs

Rationality and consistency are important for subjectivists too. I do not believe I have denied our moral intuitions; I have argued that it is impossible to attach a reliable truth value to one.

there are formal languages expressing moral claims.

Deontic logic has a number of problems, and that number is large.
Last edited by ingliz on 18 Oct 2011 19:44, edited 1 time in total.
#13814220
Ingliz wrote:Rationality and consistency are important for subjectivists too. I do not believe I have denied our moral intuitions; I have argued that it is impossibe to attach a reliable truth value to one.



VP I was going to argue with you but Ingliz stole my argument. Lol. And he wrote it in a way that is a lot more succinct than I would have. I am in envy of his ability to that....makes me want to visit him in Malta and cook him some arroz con gandules with tostones fritos and ensalada de concha.

I have never studied prosaic philosophy before. But I loved philosophy in college and was tempted to major in it. I just took basic courses in philosophy. I also over the years did an A-Z on philosophers, and tried to cover all of them. I then went through comparative religions. But philosophy is a favorite of mine. Maybe I can persuade you VP to educate me on prosaic philosophy? I would love to explore that.

But first let us see how you reply to Ingliz?
#13814244
Lexington wrote:I minored in philosophy because I wanted to figure this stuff out and I came out of it totally disillusioned with philosophy. If you can't even rigorously justify wheter your fireplace actually exists, whether anything you see informs moral judgments, that ethics is simply false, whatever the hell Wittgenstein was trying to say, or whether you are or are not living in the Matrix...I gave up.


Wittgenstein was wired "physically" different.


@ VP - you are a product of his frustration. Actually - his frustration was a warning........ ;)


ingliz wrote:I still submit that moral claims need not be 'true' to be useful, and can be justified in ways that are independent of truth.


Sweet..... :D

Tainari  wrote:Yes but the scientific method relies on natural occurring and testable and measurable methods of applying certitude or not to some thesis. It is based on observable phenomenon in nature and it has to be thoroughly consistent. It can't vary. You know this is true VP.

Human social science can have the scientific method applied to it, but still VP, the reason natural science and social sciences are separated is because one has to do with human beings socially constructed paradigms. Morals are a socially constructed paradigm. They vary enormously from society to society. That 2+2=4 and is consistent in all cases, regardless of language and culture and religious beliefs, etc. is what makes it scientific. Math is the universal language, and it is the language of science. Social stuff like morals? That is another hill of beans entirely. Morals and ethics are not math VP. They aren't consistent all the way across the board in all human societies.

El Nitido (I mean CounterChaos) quoted the part in which I stated human beings many times are irrational. They are VP. It would be wonderful to think we are as a species a completely rational species without irrationality present, but it is not true. Human society is not as black and white as mathematics is. In math especially the basic building blocks of math, adding, subtracting, dividing, multiplying, algebra, geometry, etc. it is all about CONSISTENCY. And the scientific method. Morals? Ethics? Religion? Emotional and intuitive things? Are they truly consistent in all societies and are universal? I don't think so. They are very mutable creations of a particular human society's historical, economic and social context. Irrational aspects of human beings do come out in their mores, their ethics and their value systems, and that also governs social interaction.

The point is VP that the scientific method is based on the external and consistent laws in nature. Human beings due to their 'irrationality' can and often do take actions and construct social and economic systems that can go against natural law. That is why the social sciences and the natural sciences are separated. The social sciences takes into consideration the symbolic, the artistic, the emotional and the irrational into consideration on what defines human societies. Science's beauty in my opinion is its ability to take that annoying human trait out of the equation.


Wow! I wish I could write as elegant and express myself as clearly - I can't add anything to this except a note on the bold. I would add that we are born with some natural morals in my opinion.


VP  wrote:And my point is that if this is your view, then standard moral sentences are meaningless. I submit that they are either true or false.


I submit that they are meaningless and only given credence due to the power of manipulation over an empathetic being. Left alone - there is no true/false in any of it - save for what's in the mind of the manipulated beholder.

CounterChaos  wrote:Your empathy (all who possess it) makes you susceptible to influence and then firm in your established beliefs.


If I could somehow squeeze the Progressive Era out of you - I would do it - but, instead I must be content with current social morals. So, I'll just sit here and recite poetry and grumble................... :D
#13814304
Ingliz wrote:Moral facts are inaccessible and moral intuitions inconsistent.

Therefore, even if some moral intuitions are "true" many must be "false", and we have no way of knowing which is which.


This is true only if you extend moral intuitions to non-basic moral claims and it is a danger, in general, to extend intuitions to complex matters and I think this captures what you are getting at and where I agree (about the unreliability of intuitions). That being said, moral intuition is consistent with the most basic moral claims (i.e. it provides consistent answers) upon which complex super-structural morality is built. On this point I am in agreement with you -- I do not think, for example, that "everyone has a right to X" is a moral claim with an objective truth-value (in fact I do not think it is a moral claim at all, but a useful legal fiction).
Intuitions are consistent when it comes to certain basic beliefs: do no harm (for example) or the external world is real. Complex moral and scientific structures are an attempt to build from these basic beliefs.

One way out is to say that these basic beliefs were selected for because they are advantageous to an organism, like ourselves, capable of cognition. But this would only work if you see no necessary connection between selecting for these basic beliefs (which are generated by a cognitive process - intuition) and external reality. One could, in a sense, deny such a connection at all, but I do not think that this is all that helpful (and produces a pretty bizarre metaphysics). It is not necessary to have basic moral beliefs to have a functioning community - animals have no such cognitive processes to generate beliefs (maybe this is contentious) and can set up successful communities (successful in the evolutionary sense).

Finally, I have given an account of how we can have access to moral facts -- by fixing the truth-conditions of all statements involving moral assertions. I think your point is that we cannot fix these truth-conditions (if moral facts just are the truth-values of moral sentences. This is the Russell-Wittgenstein view of a 'fact' but I'm not sure you are using it in this way), but this can only be because they do not have truth-conditions (being possibly metaphysically true is not the same as saying they have a truth-value) so, on your view, you are committed to the positivist view that moral claims are meaningless (metaphysics cannot save you here). You may find Carnap's position on moral claims interesting since he believed that they are meaningful but have no truth-conditions. This is because he thought all moral sentences are masked commands. That it is "wrong to do harm" is, rather, a command "Do no harm" -- commands are neither true nor false but they are not meaningless but are pseudo-propositions (like mathematics - they assert nothing about the world, at least this was an early positivist view taken from Wittgenstein). We still cannot save ourselves from relativism here, and relativism is an ugly thing.

Ingliz wrote:Given this, why not treat moral claims as scientists treat claims concerning unobservable entities? As not literally true or false, but instead merely useful devices.


Indeed we can treat them as useful fictions, but more is at stake with a moral claim than there is with a claim about unobservable entities in science. So much is lost when abandoning moral realism, so much that I think it is irrational to do so.

Ingliz wrote:Deontic logic has a number of problems, and that number is large.


Indeed, but the number of problems with treating moral claims as useful fictions is sufficiently large as well. My point on deontic logic was only to show that morality can be captured formally, since this seemed to be a contentious point with Tainari (that there is something different between mathematics and morality only because they latter is expressed differently in different natural languages.) In fact, I just realized that when I edited back in my comment on deontic logic, I put it in the wrong place (it should follow Tainari's second quote).

Ingliz wrote:I have argued that it is impossible to attach a reliable truth value to one.


One could, in principle, verify the cognitive origins of basic beliefs and say that such a cognitive process is reliable (in fact many natural epistemologists and cognitive scientists give this kind of story to generate knowledge) - the question turns on whether basic moral claims are properly basic beliefs. I think they are, but this is certainly a contentious issue. Moreover there are problem with evolutionary psychology (as it is applied in philosophy -- it is not all too clear that it helps sort out philosophical problems).

Tainari wrote:I have never studied prosaic philosophy before. But I loved philosophy in college and was tempted to major in it. I just took basic courses in philosophy. I also over the years did an A-Z on philosophers, and tried to cover all of them. I then went through comparative religions. But philosophy is a favorite of mine. Maybe I can persuade you VP to educate me on prosaic philosophy? I would love to explore that.


Sure. First things first though, there is no such thing as prosaic philosophy. Philosophy just is prosaic. That other stuff is at best provoking poetry, at worse nonsense. Most continental philosophy is also prosaic, it is just that it has a very different technical jargon that may appear poetic on the surface. Did you study any analytic philosophy?
#13814358
Is there a musician who thinks music is sound?

There is a philosopher who thinks mind is calculation.

Ah, the muggles are wonderfully obsessive and serious about what were once intriguing riddles and good advice.
#13814396
I think your point is that we cannot fix these truth-conditions...if moral facts just are the truth-values of moral sentences.

It is.

(being possibly metaphysically true is not the same as saying they have a truth-value)

I agree.

you are committed to the positivist view

I am very much the positivist, but find post-posiitivism strangely beguiling.

Popper on 'the 'world of logical contents' wrote: knowledge is knowledge without a knower: it is knowledge without a knowing subject It is knowledge embedded in the objective reality created, the human artifact.
Last edited by ingliz on 19 Oct 2011 07:58, edited 2 times in total.
#13814494
Vera Politica wrote:You should have probably done more contemporary, mainstream philosophy. Unfortunately, this is not always possible (esp. if you are minoring) which is why I always suggest formal logic courses, critical thinking, etc. for those minoring in philosophy -- the skills learned in this course are immensely useful and transferable.


I was 2 courses short of a major - I would have had to take a course in postmodernism and a courses in analytic philosophy, so you're right, I was short on contemporary stuff. I'd basically seen enough (and I did study on my own time Derrida, Baudrillard...)

I had enough with Descartes, Hume, and Nietzsche, frankly. And then you add to that Chinese Rooms, brains in vats, Mary's room...I decided I was a confirmed nihilist.

And decided to study finance instead :)
#13814700
Lexington wrote:I was 2 courses short of a major -I was short on contemporary stuff.


All that means is you didn't learn Progressive Era manipulation - that's a good thing.......... :D


Lexington wrote:I decided I was a confirmed nihilist.


I like you Lexington. When you turn around and look at that diploma on the wall - you see you majored in integrity........ ;)

Finance not polluted by Progressive Era dogma - interesting and refreshing..... :)

Here - from me to you - it's morally good..... ;)

http://dieoff.org/
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