Philosophy Discussion Forums

Leontiskos wrote: ↑March 12th, 2022, 5:23 pm But now you are making the same move as Gertie. You are claiming that scientific objectivity is more certain than moral objectivity, while at the same time refraining from circumscribing what kind of certainty scientific objectivity possesses. "Certain as far as we are able to tell" is incredibly vague, and says next to nothing. Science, like morality, has been wrong very often in the past, in very significant ways.

Before having a discussion about moral realism with someone I would want them to affirm 1) That guarantees of certitude are not possible in human knowledge, and 2) That consensus does not ground objectivity, and therefore I am only required to convince my interlocutor, and I am not required to establish a moral consensus.

A third condition is crucially important for those who labor under scientism or semi-scientism, which happens to be most people nowadays. These people would have to explain and justify the level of certitude that science possesses, the level of certitude that is generally acceptable, and the level of certitude that is acceptable for moral claims. Because of their scientism such people tend to misunderstand science and scientific certitude, which then leads them to hold other forms of knowledge to an impossible standard. Gertie and Peter Hunter are two prime examples.

Your third condition is false, the issue of levels of certitude is a red herring.

Scientific objectivity is the ideal of 100% certainty based on currently available evidence. We compare our predictions to our measurements of the natural world, and the natural world objectively exists. An ideal of 100% can arguably never be reached, but for example in physics the accuracy of most measurements is way over 99%.

Moral claims don't have any levels of certitude in the same sense, because there are no known objective moral truths to compare them to. Unless you can show that they exist. Until then, it's our choice which subjectively established moral truth we compare them to.

Atla wrote: ↑March 12th, 2022, 6:17 pm

Leontiskos wrote: ↑March 12th, 2022, 5:23 pm But now you are making the same move as Gertie. You are claiming that scientific objectivity is more certain than moral objectivity, while at the same time refraining from circumscribing what kind of certainty scientific objectivity possesses. "Certain as far as we are able to tell" is incredibly vague, and says next to nothing. Science, like morality, has been wrong very often in the past, in very significant ways.

Before having a discussion about moral realism with someone I would want them to affirm 1) That guarantees of certitude are not possible in human knowledge, and 2) That consensus does not ground objectivity, and therefore I am only required to convince my interlocutor, and I am not required to establish a moral consensus.

A third condition is crucially important for those who labor under scientism or semi-scientism, which happens to be most people nowadays. These people would have to explain and justify the level of certitude that science possesses, the level of certitude that is generally acceptable, and the level of certitude that is acceptable for moral claims. Because of their scientism such people tend to misunderstand science and scientific certitude, which then leads them to hold other forms of knowledge to an impossible standard. Gertie and Peter Hunter are two prime examples.

Your third condition is false, the issue of levels of certitude is a red herring.

Is it false or is it a red herring? Those are two very different things.

Scientific objectivity is the ideal of 100% certainty based on currently available evidence. We compare our predictions to our measurements of the natural world, and the natural world objectively exists. An ideal of 100% can arguably never be reached, but for example in physics the accuracy of most measurements is way over 99%.

Lol, k, good luck with that. Like I said, I am not really interested in discussions with those who hold to scientism and labor under the bizarre idea that science is magically 100% (or 99%) accurate.

Here's an article that might interest you: "Why Most Published Research Findings are False."

Leontiskos wrote: ↑March 12th, 2022, 6:40 pm Lol, k, good luck with that. Like I said, I am not really interested in discussions with those who hold to scientism and labor under the bizarre idea that science is magically 100% (or 99%) accurate.

Here's an article that might interest you: "Why Most Published Research Findings are False."

If physics wasn't way over 99% accurate, your computer and the internet wouldn't work and you wouldn't be reading this comment.

In the paper, Ioannidis argued that a large number, if not the majority, of published medical research papers contain results that cannot be replicated.

This says medical research papers, of course those studies are extremely unreliable. And often they "find" the results that they are paid to find.

And this is just the red herring, you aren't addressing the actual objectivity vs subjectivity issue, which isn't about accuracy.

Gertie wrote: ↑March 12th, 2022, 10:58 am
Here's Goldstein on mattering https://www.edge.org/conversation/rebec ... g-instinct

Seems to me that there's some equivocation going on here. In the article Goldstein explicitly denies that anyone's wellbeing matters to the universe (I.e. to God).

But then talks about "mattering" without being clear about which conscious mind something does or should matter to.

She says (paraphrased) that a person's wellbeing should matter to them, because if it doesn't then they're depressed (and thus self-evidently not a well-functioning mind).

She says that a person should recognise that other people's wellbeing should matter to them.

But as far as I can see makes no argument as to why and to what extent one person's wellbeing does or should matter to other people. Which seems like the heart of the issue. What is an ethic if not a codified belief in what moral claims the universe and particularly other people have on oneself ?

I've suggested that the extreme case - no aspect of any other person's wellbeing mattering to oneself at all - is the belief of a psychopath (and thus self-evidently not a well-functioning mind). But that doesn't get us much further....

Leontiskos objected to my proposition (March10);

Any dogmatic acceptance of a moral code from any source including The Bible might help to enthrone a fanatical dictator.
Anything that might help to enthrone a fanatical dictator is unkindness to individuals for the sake of an ideology.
All unkindness to individuals for the sake of an ideology is evil (or morally wrong).
Therefore, anyone who dogmatically accepts a moral code is committing an evil or a moral wrong.

The slippery slope comes in at premises (1) and (2), and I think those would be hard to defend. Usually something which may or may not cause an evil outcome is not said to be evil. If it could be shown that dogmatic acceptance leads to the bad outcome all or most of the time, then perhaps the argument would be sound. Or, the conclusion could be weakened to, "Therefore, Dogmatism increases the possibility of fanatical dictatorships and the evils that accompany them."

Can I avoid the slippery slope if I reformulate premises 1 and 2 to read "It is an eternal truth that the more that reason is focused on a problem the better the solution is likely to be therefore simplistic adherence to an ideology or religious dogma is less good than reason" ?

The implication that reason directly connects with eternity is a matter of faith that the way the universe, or 'nature', works is reason and is not randomness or chaos.

Atla wrote: ↑March 12th, 2022, 2:02 pm ...scientific objectivity doesn't work by consensus. It works by third-person proof/falsifiability. Anyone can make the same measurements and then arrive at the same results, irregardless of what that person thinks or what the consensus view is.

Objective morality would require the same thing: anyone should be able to show what is right and what is wrong, irregardless of what that person thinks or what the consensus view is.

Exactly. And that is a demonstration of why there are no eternal moral truths. There are no such truths, moral truths that are universally applicable. Empirical observation proves this without further discussion.

Pattern-chaser wrote: ↑March 13th, 2022, 7:16 am

Atla wrote: ↑March 12th, 2022, 2:02 pm ...scientific objectivity doesn't work by consensus. It works by third-person proof/falsifiability. Anyone can make the same measurements and then arrive at the same results, irregardless of what that person thinks or what the consensus view is.

Objective morality would require the same thing: anyone should be able to show what is right and what is wrong, irregardless of what that person thinks or what the consensus view is.

Exactly. And that is a demonstration of why there are no eternal moral truths. There are no such truths, moral truths that are universally applicable. Empirical observation proves this without further discussion.

This is a post full of fallacies. Empirical demonstration cannot demonstrate or prove that anything does not exist, much less non-empirical norms of behavior.

Further, we're again running up against scientism creating a false confidence in one's epistemology. Imagine the sentence, "Anyone should be able to show what is scientifically true or false, regardless of what that person thinks or what the consensus view is." This is quite obviously false, for not everyone is a competent scientist in every scientific field. As with other such claims being made, this claim doesn't even hold in the case of science.

Belindi wrote: ↑March 13th, 2022, 5:50 am Leontiskos objected to my proposition (March10);

Leontiskos wrote: ↑March 10th, 2022, 8:19 pmIn my opinion the slippery slope fallacy is going to bar your conclusion. Here is one way to put the argument:

1. Any dogmatic acceptance of a moral code from any source including The Bible might help to enthrone a fanatical dictator.
2. Anything that might help to enthrone a fanatical dictator is unkindness to individuals for the sake of an ideology.
3. All unkindness to individuals for the sake of an ideology is evil (or morally wrong).
4. Therefore, anyone who dogmatically accepts a moral code is committing an evil or a moral wrong.

The slippery slope comes in at premises (1) and (2), and I think those would be hard to defend. Usually something which may or may not cause an evil outcome is not said to be evil. If it could be shown that dogmatic acceptance leads to the bad outcome all or most of the time, then perhaps the argument would be sound. Or, the conclusion could be weakened to, "Therefore, Dogmatism increases the possibility of fanatical dictatorships and the evils that accompany them."

Can I avoid the slippery slope if I reformulate premises 1 and 2 to read "It is an eternal truth that the more that reason is focused on a problem the better the solution is likely to be therefore simplistic adherence to an ideology or religious dogma is less good than reason" ?

The implication that reason directly connects with eternity is a matter of faith that the way the universe, or 'nature', works is reason and is not randomness or chaos.

In my opinion this new argument is valid and probably sound. The idea is that dogmatism will result in lesser solutions, correct? This is an interesting topic in itself, but I would say that we have surely moved into the realm of valid arguments.

I would further add that one of the underlying reasons for this is that dogmatism works by special kinds of arguments from authority, and arguments from authority are weaker than direct, syllogistic arguments. Thomas Aquinas himself says that the argument from (human) authority is the weakest form of argument.

Leontiskos wrote: ↑March 8th, 2022, 9:32 pm

CIN wrote: ↑March 9th, 2022, 9:02 pmI'm only assuming that pleasantness and unpleasantness vary quantitatively (in intensity and duration). I am not making the further assumption that these quantities can be measured by anyone.

If they cannot be measured then no normative utilitarian theory is possible, correct?

I didn’t say they couldn’t be measured. I said I wasn’t assuming that they could, and my theory doesn’t depend on our being able to do that. However, as it happens, I think we can measure them very roughly and relative to one another. If you compare the unpleasantness of a broken leg with the unpleasantness of a long wait in the dentist’s waiting room, it’s obvious that the first merits a negative attitude to a greater degree than the second. That’s measurement, in a very rough way, and good enough to make a normative utilitarian theory not merely possible but of some practical use.

Leontiskos wrote: ↑March 8th, 2022, 9:32 pm My point is that there are many moral theories which not only account for societal disapproval of those acts, but which also account for the societal judgment that they are always impermissible. It strikes me as odd to boast about your theory's explanatory power when most of the other theories have more explanatory power.

If you want that criticism to stick, you’re going to have to name at least one of these theories and tell me why you think it has more explanatory power.

Leontiskos wrote: ↑March 8th, 2022, 9:32 pm

CIN wrote: ↑March 9th, 2022, 9:02 pmI think the view that murder and torture are intrinsically evil arises from the near-impossibility of tracing the long-term effects of an action. The immediate consequences of actions are very easy to see, whereas the longer term consequences are nearly always hidden, and people are unaware of them. This gives people the impression that only the immediate consequences matter, which hardens into the mistaken belief that actions whose immediate consequences are intrinsically bad are themselves intrinsically bad.

Wouldn't you agree that deontological moral systems are historically more robust than this?

No, but I’d be interested to know why you think that.

Leontiskos wrote: ↑March 8th, 2022, 9:32 pm

CIN wrote: ↑March 9th, 2022, 9:02 pm

Leontiskos wrote: ↑March 8th, 2022, 9:32 pmAnother crucial problem with your theory is that it is basically only fit for non-human animals, and describes their behavior. For rational beings like humans 'good' and 'bad' are not equivalent to 'pleasurable' and 'unpleasurable'.

I don't hold that 'good' is equivalent to 'pleasurable'. I hold that 'good' means 'merits a positive attitude', and that one thing (for all I know there may be others, though at present I'm unconvinced of that) that intrinsically merits a positive attitude is pleasantness of experience.

But this is why I said that your definition of "meriting a positive/negative attitude" immediately collapses back into pleasant and unpleasant experience. If you are not convinced that anything merits a positive/negative attitude except by virtue of pleasure/pain, then it would be more accurate to say that you believe 'good' and 'bad' are equivalent to 'pleasurable' and 'unpleasurable'.

No, it wouldn’t. My theory includes two distinct theses: that ‘good’ means ‘merits a positive attitude’ (a thesis about language), and that pleasantness merits a positive attitude (a thesis about a fact of nature). A theory that held that ‘good’ is equivalent to ‘pleasurable’ would contain only one thesis, about language, so the two theories cannot be the same.
]

Leontiskos wrote: ↑March 8th, 2022, 9:32 pm

CIN wrote: ↑March 9th, 2022, 9:02 pm

Leontiskos wrote: ↑March 8th, 2022, 9:32 pmThey are equivalent to 'desirable' and 'undesirable'.

I don't think 'good' can be equivalent to 'desirable'. Is a good woman the same thing as a desirable woman?

Yes, a good woman is a desirable woman. We are using 'desire' in the philosophical sense, not the sexual sense.

I’ll let that one go for the moment, even though I’m not sure that there really is such a thing as a philosophical sense of ‘desirable’, because I think there’s a more telling objection to ‘desirable’ as a synonym for ‘good’, which is that they take different tenses. ‘Peace in Ukraine is desirable’ may currently be true, but ‘peace in Ukraine is good’ cannot currently be true, because currently there isn’t peace in Ukraine; instead we have to say ‘peace in Ukraine would be (or, if we are optimistic, will be) good’. Conversely, if and when there is peace in Ukraine, ‘peace in Ukraine is good’ may then be true, but it will no longer be possible for ‘peace in Ukraine is desirable’ to be true, because there will already be peace in Ukraine; instead we will have to say ‘peace in Ukraine was desirable.’ Peace in Ukraine can be both good and desirable, but not at the same time. This shows that goodness and desirability can’t be the same property, and therefore ‘good’ and ‘desirable’ can’t mean the same.

Leontiskos wrote: ↑March 8th, 2022, 9:32 pm

CIN wrote: ↑March 9th, 2022, 9:02 pm

Leontiskos wrote: ↑March 8th, 2022, 9:32 pmIf we think that something ought to be done then we call it 'good'.

Even if that is true, it can't give us the meaning of 'good', because we use 'good' of many things that are not actions.

In this thread we are talking about morality, the realm of actions. Good in that sense has to do with what ought to be done. A good act is a desirable act, something which we think ought be done.

‘X is desirable’ does not mean the same as ‘X ought to be done’. ‘Ought’ expresses the fact that someone is obligated to do something; ‘desirable’ does not. It is no doubt desirable that someone washes my car, but that doesn’t mean that anyone ought to wash my car.

Leontiskos wrote: ↑March 8th, 2022, 9:32 pm

CIN wrote: ↑March 9th, 2022, 9:02 pm

Leontiskos wrote: ↑March 8th, 2022, 9:32 pmThis often maps to pleasure and pain, since pleasure is desirable and pain is undesirable, but there are many cases where we decide that an intellectual good or evil outweighs a sensate good or evil. To give one example, desire for honor or glory is a desire for status or power, not for experience. Not every desire for status is merely a desire for an experience of status.

You are now muddying your own thesis by confusing what is desirable with what is desired.

No, not unless there are things that are desired but not desirable, and there are not.

Of course there are. A heroin fix is desired by the junkie, but a heroin fix is not desirable.

Leontiskos wrote: ↑March 8th, 2022, 9:32 pmThe way I am defining good collects the various subjective and objective meanings of that concept, but the root begins in the subjective valuation of the agent.

It appears that that is what we’re arguing about, and you can’t win an argument by fiat.

Leontiskos wrote: ↑March 8th, 2022, 9:32 pmAs soon as and as far as an agent desires something, they hold it to be good.

No doubt, but that doesn't prove they're right.

Leontiskos wrote: ↑March 8th, 2022, 9:32 pm Your suggestion that I can desire something and take it to be undesirable involves a contradiction.

That is not what I suggest. I suggest that you can desire something and it be undesirable, not that you can take it to be undesirable.

Leontiskos wrote: ↑March 8th, 2022, 9:32 pm

CIN wrote: ↑March 9th, 2022, 9:02 pm

Leontiskos wrote: ↑March 8th, 2022, 9:32 pmIn <this post> when you spoke of "meriting a positive/negative attitude," you were much closer to the mark, but it seems that the abstract space you opened up was immediately collapsed back into pleasure and pain (or "pleasant and unpleasant experience").

I'm claiming that pleasantness and unpleasantness respectively merit positive and negative attitudes. I don't see any collapse here; I'm not substituting pleasantness and unpleasantness for what merits positive and negative attitudes, I'm saying that those are the things that merit those attitudes.

You're erecting a vacuous genus, because you don't believe that anything merits a positive attitude except in virtue of pleasure.

It would be vacuous if the genus and species definitions were the same, but as they’re different, it isn’t vacuous, it’s monotypic.

Leontiskos wrote: ↑March 8th, 2022, 9:32 pm Occam's Razor would shear away the bit about meriting attitudes, which adds nothing to your theory that good is associated with pleasure and bad is associated with pain.

I don’t say ‘good is associated with pleasure’. That’s too vague to be at all helpful. And I think William of Occam would have had more sense than to try and collapse ‘meriting a positive attitude’ into ‘pleasurable’, when clearly they don’t mean the same thing.

CIN wrote: ↑March 9th, 2022, 9:02 pm[Peace in Ukraine can be both good and desirable, but not at the same time.

I misspoke. It is not the case that peace in Ukraine can be desirable, because there is currently no such object as peace in Ukraine. What we mean when we say peace in Ukraine is desirable is that it is desirable that peace in Ukraine should exist (at some future date). This does not help Leontiskos, though, because it still means that goodness and desirability are not the same property.

Apologies to all for the abortion that was the preceding version of this post. I should not do these things in a hurry.

CIN wrote: ↑March 13th, 2022, 4:25 pm

Leontiskos wrote: ↑March 8th, 2022, 9:32 pm

CIN wrote: ↑March 9th, 2022, 9:02 pmI'm only assuming that pleasantness and unpleasantness vary quantitatively (in intensity and duration). I am not making the further assumption that these quantities can be measured by anyone.

If they cannot be measured then no normative utilitarian theory is possible, correct?

I didn’t say they couldn’t be measured. I said I wasn’t assuming that they could, and my theory doesn’t depend on our being able to do that. However, as it happens, I think we can measure them very roughly and relative to one another. If you compare the unpleasantness of a broken leg with the unpleasantness of a long wait in the dentist’s waiting room, it’s obvious that the first merits a negative attitude to a greater degree than the second. That’s measurement, in a very rough way, and good enough to make a normative utilitarian theory not merely possible but of some practical use.

Then you have changed your position and are now assuming that they can be measured, and this assumption is crucial to the possibility of utilitarianism.

Nevertheless, a utilitarian theory requires a measurement system that is capable of comparing experiences between different individuals, not merely the experiences of a single individual. That is the kind of measurement and weighting that is necessary for utilitarianism.

CIN wrote: ↑March 13th, 2022, 4:25 pm

Leontiskos wrote: ↑March 8th, 2022, 9:32 pm

CIN wrote: ↑March 9th, 2022, 9:02 pmI think the view that murder and torture are intrinsically evil arises from the near-impossibility of tracing the long-term effects of an action. The immediate consequences of actions are very easy to see, whereas the longer term consequences are nearly always hidden, and people are unaware of them. This gives people the impression that only the immediate consequences matter, which hardens into the mistaken belief that actions whose immediate consequences are intrinsically bad are themselves intrinsically bad.

Wouldn't you agree that deontological moral systems are historically more robust than this?

No, but I’d be interested to know why you think that.

Because I've actually read philosophers who have theories opposed to utilitarianism. Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Kant, and Locke, to name a few. Anyone who has read a serious non-utilitarian account of morality would know that the account you give is basically a strawman. None of these philosophers' moral theories are implicitly or explicitly a matter of compromising on the basis of epistemic limitations.

CIN wrote: ↑March 13th, 2022, 4:25 pm

Leontiskos wrote: ↑March 8th, 2022, 9:32 pm

CIN wrote: ↑March 9th, 2022, 9:02 pmI don't hold that 'good' is equivalent to 'pleasurable'. I hold that 'good' means 'merits a positive attitude', and that one thing (for all I know there may be others, though at present I'm unconvinced of that) that intrinsically merits a positive attitude is pleasantness of experience.

But this is why I said that your definition of "meriting a positive/negative attitude" immediately collapses back into pleasant and unpleasant experience. If you are not convinced that anything merits a positive/negative attitude except by virtue of pleasure/pain, then it would be more accurate to say that you believe 'good' and 'bad' are equivalent to 'pleasurable' and 'unpleasurable'.

No, it wouldn’t. My theory includes two distinct theses: that ‘good’ means ‘merits a positive attitude’ (a thesis about language), and that pleasantness merits a positive attitude (a thesis about a fact of nature). A theory that held that ‘good’ is equivalent to ‘pleasurable’ would contain only one thesis, about language, so the two theories cannot be the same.

Okay, this is fair.

CIN wrote: ↑March 13th, 2022, 4:25 pm

Leontiskos wrote: ↑March 8th, 2022, 9:32 pm

CIN wrote: ↑March 9th, 2022, 9:02 pmI don't think 'good' can be equivalent to 'desirable'. Is a good woman the same thing as a desirable woman?

Yes, a good woman is a desirable woman. We are using 'desire' in the philosophical sense, not the sexual sense.

I’ll let that one go for the moment, even though I’m not sure that there really is such a thing as a philosophical sense of ‘desirable’, because I think there’s a more telling objection to ‘desirable’ as a synonym for ‘good’, which is that they take different tenses. ‘Peace in Ukraine is desirable’ may currently be true, but ‘peace in Ukraine is good’ cannot currently be true, because currently there isn’t peace in Ukraine; instead we have to say ‘peace in Ukraine would be (or, if we are optimistic, will be) good’. Conversely, if and when there is peace in Ukraine, ‘peace in Ukraine is good’ may then be true, but it will no longer be possible for ‘peace in Ukraine is desirable’ to be true, because there will already be peace in Ukraine; instead we will have to say ‘peace in Ukraine was desirable.’ Peace in Ukraine can be both good and desirable, but not at the same time. This shows that goodness and desirability can’t be the same property, and therefore ‘good’ and ‘desirable’ can’t mean the same.

These are word games which don't really affect our topic. There is no reason why a current state of affairs cannot be desirable. There is no reason why a future state of affairs cannot be good. When we say that "Peace in Ukraine is desirable/good," we are predicating desirable/good of a possible state of affairs, namely peace in Ukraine. There is no temporal qualifier in the predication, and peace in Ukraine is therefore deemed to be desirable/good whether it occurs yesterday, today, or tomorrow. What is desired is precisely a good, and this underwrites my whole point.

CIN wrote: ↑March 13th, 2022, 4:25 pm

Leontiskos wrote: ↑March 8th, 2022, 9:32 pm

CIN wrote: ↑March 9th, 2022, 9:02 pm

Leontiskos wrote: ↑March 8th, 2022, 9:32 pmIf we think that something ought to be done then we call it 'good'.

Even if that is true, it can't give us the meaning of 'good', because we use 'good' of many things that are not actions.

In this thread we are talking about morality, the realm of actions. Good in that sense has to do with what ought to be done. A good act is a desirable act, something which we think ought be done.

‘X is desirable’ does not mean the same as ‘X ought to be done’. ‘Ought’ expresses the fact that someone is obligated to do something; ‘desirable’ does not. It is no doubt desirable that someone washes my car, but that doesn’t mean that anyone ought to wash my car.

No, 'ought' does not equate to obligation or duty. We ought to fulfill our obligations, but not everything that we ought to do is something we are obliged or duty-bound to do. "I ought to go to the dentist." "I ought to give my friend a call." "I ought to clip my toenails." All of these are things we believe we ought to do, and are desirable/good to do, but they do not involve any direct obligations or duties.

CIN wrote: ↑March 13th, 2022, 4:25 pm

Leontiskos wrote: ↑March 8th, 2022, 9:32 pm

CIN wrote: ↑March 9th, 2022, 9:02 pm You are now muddying your own thesis by confusing what is desirable with what is desired.

No, not unless there are things that are desired but not desirable, and there are not. The way I am defining good collects the various subjective and objective meanings of that concept, but the root begins in the subjective valuation of the agent. As soon as and as far as an agent desires something, they hold it to be good.

No doubt, but that doesn't prove they're right.

No one said it proves they're right. I defined good in terms of desirability. It holds at every level, including subjective and objective levels. If I subjectively hold something to be good then I subjectively hold it to be desirable. If I subjectively hold something to be desirable, then I subjectively hold it to be good. If I hold something to be objectively good then I hold it to be objectively desirable. If I hold something to be objectively desirable then I hold it to be objectively good. If something is, objectively, good, then it is desirable. If something is, objectively, desirable, then it is good. And on and on...

Now what you've done is said, "Well there might be a case where someone subjectively holds something to be good, when it is objectively bad." Sure, but all that proves is that people make mistakes. It's not an argument against my definition. The fellow who mistakenly believed something to be good and desirable will change his mind on both counts once he sees that he was mistaken. Or, the heroin addict who experiences an internal conflict simultaneously experiences heroin as good and bad, and desirable and undesirable, but in different ways. He doesn't think it is both bad and desirable in the same way, for that would be a contradiction.

See point #3 in <this post>, where the same idea is explained with a different example.

CIN wrote: ↑March 13th, 2022, 4:25 pm

Leontiskos wrote: ↑March 8th, 2022, 9:32 pm Your suggestion that I can desire something and take it to be undesirable involves a contradiction.

That is not what I suggest. I suggest that you can desire something and it be undesirable, not that you can take it to be undesirable.

But you are pointing to an error in knowledge, not in my definition.

I might define a bachelor as an unmarried man. You might tell me that Brad Pitt believes George Clooney is a bachelor. It may be true that Brad Pitt believes George Clooney is a bachelor, but this doesn't prove that my definition is mistaken. It only proves that Brad Pitt is mistaken, and may be unaware that George Clooney remarried.

CIN wrote: ↑March 13th, 2022, 4:25 pm

Leontiskos wrote: ↑March 8th, 2022, 9:32 pm

CIN wrote: ↑March 9th, 2022, 9:02 pm

Leontiskos wrote: ↑March 8th, 2022, 9:32 pmIn <this post> when you spoke of "meriting a positive/negative attitude," you were much closer to the mark, but it seems that the abstract space you opened up was immediately collapsed back into pleasure and pain (or "pleasant and unpleasant experience").

I'm claiming that pleasantness and unpleasantness respectively merit positive and negative attitudes. I don't see any collapse here; I'm not substituting pleasantness and unpleasantness for what merits positive and negative attitudes, I'm saying that those are the things that merit those attitudes.

You're erecting a vacuous genus, because you don't believe that anything merits a positive attitude except in virtue of pleasure.

It would be vacuous if the genus and species definitions were the same, but as they’re different, it isn’t vacuous, it’s monotypic.

It is explanatorily vacuous, and adds nothing to the theory. It also gives the false impression that you believe there are some things which merit a positive attitude and are unrelated to pleasure, for the common notion is that the species is a subset of the genus, and that a genus has more than one species.


Your follow-up post:

CIN wrote: ↑March 13th, 2022, 5:32 pm

CIN wrote: ↑March 9th, 2022, 9:02 pmPeace in Ukraine can be both good and desirable, but not at the same time.

I misspoke. It is not the case that peace in Ukraine can be desirable, because there is currently no such object as peace in Ukraine. What we mean when we say peace in Ukraine is desirable is that it is desirable that peace in Ukraine should exist (at some future date). This does not help Leontiskos, though, because it still means that goodness and desirability are not the same property.

I think what I said above is sufficient, but of course peace in Ukraine can be (and is) desirable, because we can desire things that don't currently exist. It doesn't matter that "there is currently no such object as peace in Ukraine." You seem to realize this.

Goodness and desire can both apply to past, present, and future. Maybe the war in Ukraine is over, and we just haven't received word yet. In that case, "I hope Russia did not win" involves the idea that the possible outcome of Russia's victory is bad and undesirable. If, on the other hand, we receive confirmation that Ukraine won, we might say, "Good, that is what I wanted/desired to happen." "Good" in this case means that the desirable possibility came to pass.

Again, these quibbles about the grammatical idiosyncrasies of informal English speech are not to the point. The person who thinks peace in Ukraine is desirable also counts that counterfactual--the object of desire--as good. It doesn't really matter whether it "is" good or "would be" good. Either way we call it good.

But I should say that I don't disagree with your idea of "Meriting a positive attitude," although I find it a bit wooden. For something to be desirable is more or less for it to merit a positive attitude.

Sorry - messed up the quotes. Try this version

CIN wrote: ↑March 9th, 2022, 9:02 pmI don't hold that 'good' is equivalent to 'pleasurable'. I hold that 'good' means 'merits a positive attitude', and that one thing (for all I know there may be others, though at present I'm unconvinced of that) that intrinsically merits a positive attitude is pleasantness of experience.

If you're leaving open the possibility that other aspects of a situation (e.g. other virtues such as keeping promises or acting courageously) merit a positive attitude, then I think you have to either
- withdraw the notion that the morality of an action is determined by the pleasantness of the consequences, or
- explain how all such apparently-competing considerations ultimately reduce to the pleasantness of the consequences.

I think there’s a more telling objection to ‘desirable’ as a synonym for ‘good’, which is that they take different tenses.

I think you're right to observe that we tend to use "good" for a state of affairs that exists and "desirable" for one that doesn't yet exist. But also that Leon is right to say that this reinforces the notion that they are the same thing.

My objection is that only conscious minds can seek or desire. So that following Aquinas leads to a human-centric notion of good. In order to say that Leo is a good lion, a Thomist has to invoke a human thinking about what sort of lion he'd like to be.

If a tree falls in the forest with nobody to hear it, it may be because it wasn't a healthy tree. I want to be able to say that healthy trees are good without meaning good-for-humans.

@Leontiskos said:

No, 'ought' does not equate to obligation or duty. We ought to fulfill our obligations, but not everything that we ought to do is something we are obliged or duty-bound to do. "I ought to go to the dentist." "I ought to give my friend a call." "I ought to clip my toenails." All of these are things we believe we ought to do, and are desirable/good to do, but they do not involve any direct obligations or duties.

Some writers distinguish two senses of "should". The moral should - "I should clip my toenails because I have a moral duty to look after my body" and a conditional or instrumental should - if I want to avoid holes in my socks I should clip my toenails".

On that basis there are ought-statements with a (possibly- implicit) condition ("if you want...") that are not moral duties. But I tend to the view that unconditional oughts do denote moral duties.

Good_Egg wrote: ↑March 13th, 2022, 4:51 am

Gertie wrote: ↑March 12th, 2022, 10:58 am
Here's Goldstein on mattering https://www.edge.org/conversation/rebec ... g-instinct

Seems to me that there's some equivocation going on here. In the article Goldstein explicitly denies that anyone's wellbeing matters to the universe (I.e. to God).

But then talks about "mattering" without being clear about which conscious mind something does or should matter to.

She says (paraphrased) that a person's wellbeing should matter to them, because if it doesn't then they're depressed (and thus self-evidently not a well-functioning mind).

She says that a person should recognise that other people's wellbeing should matter to them.

But as far as I can see makes no argument as to why and to what extent one person's wellbeing does or should matter to other people. Which seems like the heart of the issue. What is an ethic if not a codified belief in what moral claims the universe and particularly other people have on oneself ?

I've suggested that the extreme case - no aspect of any other person's wellbeing mattering to oneself at all - is the belief of a psychopath (and thus self-evidently not a well-functioning mind). But that doesn't get us much further....

My approach doesn't entirely align with Goldstein (or Harris), but the key thing I take from Goldstein is that she puts her finger on the mattering aspect of being an experiencing subject. I talk about this in terms of having a stake in the state of affairs, owing to the qualiative nature of conscious experience. The particulars of the state of affairs matter to experiencing subjects, in terms of quality of life, or wellbeing. This provides the appropriate bridge required to solve Hume's Is-Ought dilemma. Note it's not a natural fit with either objective or subjective ways of describing the state of affairs.

So I'd say it makes more sense to consider morality/oughts on its own terms of interests in the state of affairs. as a category of its own.

* There are objective facts about the state of affairs.

* There are subjective opinions about the state of affairs.

* And there is having a stake in the state of affairs (the basis for morality).

It matters how I treat experiencing subjects, therefore I ought to treat them well if I wish to behave morally.

I formulate this as morality foundationally being concerned with Promoting the Wellbeing of Conscious Creatures. This foundation is the basis for addressing specific moral questions, creating rule of thumb guidelines, and generally practicing morality.

My notion of objective here isn't perfect knowledge, all knowledge is experiential and humans have limited and flawed experiential access to the actual ontological state of affairs. We don't have a God's Eye pov, but we do have the ability to inter-subjectively third person falsify stuff which is publically/third person accessible to check. So I use 'objective fact' as rooted in third person falsifiability via observation and measurement (and reasoning grounded in this), because it captures the meaningful first person/third person distinction which we generally call ''objective''. I don't discount other definitions of ''objective'' which might fit morality, or that you could come up with a logical propositional form of words which in effect make morality objective by definition, but you'd need to say exactly what ''objective'' means and how it applies to morality in that case. Can you do that?

You seem to believe morality objectively exists as a feature of the universe to be discovered through our moral intuitions, so for example an object like a painting has value in and of itself, regardless of being valued by an experiencing subject. And is worthy of moral consideration in that it would be morally wrong to the painting, or in some other way, to destroy it. I asked you what your basis for this is, but you didn't answer?

Good_Egg wrote: ↑March 14th, 2022, 5:54 amMy objection is that only conscious minds can seek or desire. So that following Aquinas leads to a human-centric notion of good. In order to say that Leo is a good lion, a Thomist has to invoke a human thinking about what sort of lion he'd like to be.

Oh, this is a misunderstanding of Thomism. The first thing to note is that animals have desires and seek what is good for them, even though they do not have an intellectual conception of goodness. The lion will seek what is good for it by means of its instinctual desires whether or not there are any humans who are thinking about the lion.

My point to you about the lion was a response to the possible objection that, "We call the strength of a lion good, even though it is not desirable from a human vantage point." My point was precisely the opposite of what you inferred: it is that, when the intellectual concept of 'good' is employed in that way we are talking about what is desirable qua lion, or from the lion's vantage point. In a human-centric way we might rather call the lion's strength bad and undesirable when it is attacking us. I was just trying to explain the general idea of a "good lion."

Good_Egg wrote: ↑March 14th, 2022, 5:54 amIf a tree falls in the forest with nobody to hear it, it may be because it wasn't a healthy tree. I want to be able to say that healthy trees are good without meaning good-for-humans.

Following Aristotle and Aquinas, to say that a tree is good is to say that it fulfills the intrinsic purpose, end, or final cause of a tree. The most general term we have for something which exists in that state is "healthy."

Good_Egg wrote: ↑March 14th, 2022, 5:54 am@Leontiskos said:

Leontiskos wrote: ↑March 13th, 2022, 6:25 pm No, 'ought' does not equate to obligation or duty. We ought to fulfill our obligations, but not everything that we ought to do is something we are obliged or duty-bound to do. "I ought to go to the dentist." "I ought to give my friend a call." "I ought to clip my toenails." All of these are things we believe we ought to do, and are desirable/good to do, but they do not involve any direct obligations or duties.

Some writers distinguish two senses of "should". The moral should - "I should clip my toenails because I have a moral duty to look after my body" and a conditional or instrumental should - if I want to avoid holes in my socks I should clip my toenails".

On that basis there are ought-statements with a (possibly- implicit) condition ("if you want...") that are not moral duties. But I tend to the view that unconditional oughts do denote moral duties.

I think we are in agreement. I do not deny that there are different kinds of 'oughts', but they all exist under the aspect of good or desirability.

Good_Egg wrote: ↑Yesterday, 5:54 am

If a tree falls in the forest with nobody to hear it, it may be because it wasn't a healthy tree. I want to be able to say that healthy trees are good without meaning good-for-humans.

Leontiskos replied:

Following Aristotle and Aquinas, to say that a tree is good is to say that it fulfills the intrinsic purpose, end, or final cause of a tree. The most general term we have for something which exists in that state is "healthy."

Healthy ( or mature) can't be eternal moral truths because some individuals are what we call good, or mature, who are physically or mentally twisted and eccentric. Good exists despite lack of health, and despite lack of maturity.

Aristotle's idea of ideal form=goodness and that of Aquinas suits the breeder or farmer of livestock, but it doesn't suit loving parents or friends or anyone else who loves an individual for themself.

I wrote "good exists----" . Ontic existence is mental as well as physical/physical as well as mental. 'Good' is a shaky armature for the support of human behaviours and it's only when we see downright evil that we can get a glimpse of good. Thus Putin's aggression, and the Crucifixion, serve to highlight what good is.

apophatic
/ˌapəˈfatɪk/
adjectiveTHEOLOGY
(of knowledge of God) obtained through negating concepts that might be applied to him.

Apophatic applies also to Buddhism.


I am aware that "themself" is debatable. The moral focus of dasein is being addressed elsewhere.