Philosophy Discussion Forums

Sculptor1 wrote: ↑April 17th, 2022, 9:32 am

psyreporter wrote: ↑April 17th, 2022, 5:14 am
"A brain is a posteriori in the face of the senses and the senses are a posteriori in the face of the potential required for sensing, which is moral valuing which itself derives its potential from what can be indicated as pure meaning or 'good per se'."

I am sad to have to tell you that this is not even wrong. It is not logical. It is not correct. The only phrase that makes sense is the first nine words, it then breaks down into incoherence.

I also found this hard to grasp.

My computer has a microphone attachment. It therefore senses sound. The microphone is the electronic equivalent of an ear. So you could say that my computer has the potential for sensing all the time, and the actual ability to sense sounds when it's switched on.

But it lacks the software to interpret whether the sounds it is sensing comprise music. And even if it had such software it lacks the capability to make a judgment as to what constitutes good music. Which would be a value judgment.

So sensing and value judgment appear to me to be less connected than you seem to be suggesting.

Good_Egg wrote: ↑April 17th, 2022, 4:35 pm

Sculptor1 wrote: ↑April 17th, 2022, 9:32 am

psyreporter wrote: ↑April 17th, 2022, 5:14 am
"A brain is a posteriori in the face of the senses and the senses are a posteriori in the face of the potential required for sensing, which is moral valuing which itself derives its potential from what can be indicated as pure meaning or 'good per se'."

I am sad to have to tell you that this is not even wrong. It is not logical. It is not correct. The only phrase that makes sense is the first nine words, it then breaks down into incoherence.

I also found this hard to grasp.

Agreed.

Leontiskos wrote: ↑April 10th, 2022, 4:16 pm

CIN wrote: ↑April 7th, 2022, 6:17 pm The surgeon treats all six individuals alike, as individuals, not as a set. He assigns just the same moral consideration to the healthy patient as he does to each of the five unhealthy ones. At no stage is he thinking that the patients constitute a collective which has interests over and above the individual interests of the six patients; he merely calculates that by killing the healthy patient and giving his organs to the five unhealthy ones, he alters the outcome from one living person with a life assumed to be pleasant to five such living persons.

To me this is the same as saying that the healthy individual is being sacrificed for the sake of collective pleasure, which is a collective end. Morally speaking collective pleasure is the end, and until other axioms are introduced all means are justified in reaching this end. In this case the individual is not an end in themselves, but is rather a necessary node in calculating the collective end.

This is plainly incorrect. It is precisely because we are regarding the individuals as ends in themselves that we are aggregating the effect of our actions on them, rather than on, say, tables and chairs. If we weren't regarding them as ends in themselves, we wouldn't bother including them in the calculation.

Clearly if individuals can be sacrificed for the sake of some greater end, then there must be some greater end beyond the individual. This is much different from a system where individuals are ends in themselves and cannot be sacrificed for the sake of collective ends.

'Sacrificed' implies that someone is not being treated as an end in themselves, and as I have just pointed out, no-one is.

I would say that societal justice is a subset of justice, but that it represents the central principles of justice in a paradigmatic way which can be more clearly seen and then applied to justice simpliciter.

If you remove the societal assumptions that underpin a system of societal justice, you are left with nothing to underpin your suggested system of justice simpliciter. What obligates anyone to obey the prescriptions of your moral system? What is the path from 'is' to the 'ought' of 'we ought not to punish the innocent'?

I would say that justice and morality are not coterminous, and that justice is a subset of morality.

The key, though, is that injury pertains to justice, so when you inquire about harming the innocent you are within that subset of morality that pertains to justice. Further, you are talking about justifying harm to innocents on the basis of a supra-individual order, namely a governmental or pseudo-governmental body acting for the sake of your collective end. This is societal justice.

There is nothing at all in my moral system about any kind of governmental or pseudo-governmental body. The moral imperatives in my system are not societal, they come from facts of nature alone.

Finally I think it comes back to my point about the bee hive. If the individual is the ultimate end then the individual cannot be sacrificed for the sake of some other end, such as the end of collective pleasure.

As I have explained, what you misleadingly refer to in my theory as a 'collective end' is merely the aggregate of the interests of all affected beings considered as moral ends in themselves; so when, in the context of my theory, you talk of a collective end which is other than the aggregate of such interests, your term 'collective end' fails to denote anything.

Harming an individual who is innocent (and therefore does not merit harm) is an act of injustice, and is precisely the sort of act that the just moral order is meant to prevent.

But as i have pointed out, if you remove the societal foundation for this kind of justice system, there is nothing to justify the idea that we ought to obey the rules of such a system.

If, as you seem to believe, the individual is not the end of morality, but instead collective pleasure is,

As I have said, I believe in no collective end distinct from the aggregated interests of all affected beings as ends in themselves.

then I suppose innocent individuals can be harmed in any way we like if this serves our end.

No individuals, innocent or otherwise, may be harmed 'in any way we like', they may only be harmed if it conduces to the overall moral objective of serving the aggregated interests of all sentient beings as ends in themselves.

In that case harming the innocent is justified as a means to an end, which is very close to the definition of immorality.

Your definition, perhaps. But you give no reason why your definition should also be my definition.

(I should add that red flags should go off in our heads when folks start questioning such basic moral principles as "do not harm the innocent,"

Such red flags are mere facts of individual psychology, not rational grounds for belief.

Your entire moral system appears to be subjective. As far as I can tell, you are simply explaining your own personal moral opinions. If you want your system to be accepted as in any way objective, you need to explain what features of reality underpin it and oblige us to follow its prescriptions.

and at some point your practice and your theory will have to confront one another.)

Unlikely, given my advanced age and the fact that I have no role at all in any judicial system. But if it happens, and my practice does not conform to my theory, that will not tend to undermine my theory, it will merely mean that I have not followed its prescriptions.

CIN wrote: ↑April 7th, 2022, 6:17 pm

Leontiskos wrote: ↑April 3rd, 2022, 8:31 pmI can't help but wonder if you are here reintroducing classical moral reasoning in an ad hoc way. Everything will depend on how powerful Hitler is perceived to be. For example, if Hitler is strong and the war looks unwinnable, then clearly the consequentialist should surrender to Hitler and let the Jews die.

Well, okay, let's go along with this. Hitler is bound to win. The world population in 1939 is 2300 million. If we surrender, then once the 6 million Jews are out of the way, the other 2294 million people in the world are going to have reasonably pleasant lives. But if we fight on, 70 million, let's say, will die, not just 6 million. So these are the guaranteed outcomes, and it's a clear binary choice - 2294 million reasonably happy people and 6 million dead, or 2230 million reasonably happy people and 70 million dead. As a hedonistic consequentialist, I say we should surrender and accept the loss of the 6 million, as the lesser of two evils. What do you, as a non-consequentialist, think we should do, and why?

The difference is that the non-consequentialist can conceive of Hitler's act as evil in a non-relative way. That is, he can think of the act as something that is impermissible and can never be countenanced, regardless of the good consequences that Hitler envisioned. He can then say that Hitler ought to be justly punished for his evil act, and he can go on to wage war against Hitler with a righteousness that is not possible for the consequentialist. For the non-consequentialist Hitler cannot tip the moral scales by sheer power. Further, the non-consequentialist can defend against attacks on innocent life as attacks which are intrinsically evil. That is, he can both fight Hitler and defend the innocent with a strength and conviction that the consequentialist cannot.

Strongly held beliefs do have this effect, but that is no evidence for their truth. Consider the Islamist terrorists who blow themselves and others up in order to get to a paradise they strongly believe they will thereby be entitled to.

Practically this means that retributive or vengeful responses--words which are now sadly pejorative, but which regain their meaning in light of Adolf Hitler--are available only to the non-consequentialist. The same is true of his defense of victims of intrinsic evil: acts which are intrinsically evil regardless of the consequences. These sorts of considerations will also mean that he can still fight battles, even if there is no hope of winning, for his moral code does not reduce to mere pleasure or winning.

You are attempting to justify your moral opinions by appealing to those same moral opinions, and that is circular. When you talk of the non-consequentialist's warring as 'righteous', and attacks on innocent life as 'intrinsically evil', and acts which are 'intrinsically evil regardless of the consequences', you provide no reason to accept these judgments, and thus you are doing no more than give your own subjective moral opinions.

CIN wrote: ↑April 7th, 2022, 6:17 pm

Leontiskos wrote: ↑April 3rd, 2022, 8:31 pm

CIN wrote: ↑March 22nd, 2022, 7:46 pm I don’t see this. If, as I hold, ‘good’ means ‘merits a positive attitude’, then surely there are attitudes appropriate to sensate objects just as there are for intellectual objects. In the case of the ice cream, an appropriate attitude is appreciation of the sensory experience of eating the ice cream – of its taste and texture.

I don't deny that such an attitude is appropriate and merited by the ice cream. What I deny is that when we say, "This ice cream is good," we are talking about how one ought to relate to the ice cream.

I deny that too. Saying that something merits a positive attitude is evaluative, but attributing a value to something is not the same as prescribing any attitude or action relating to it. We are saying that the ice cream merits a positive attitude, but we are not making the further assertion that it is incumbent on anyone to adopt that attitude.

I would claim that you are here moving into some direct self-contradictions. You are waffling on your earlier claims that your system is normative and involves 'oughts', and you are involving yourself in the contradiction that to say that X merits an attitude does not prescribe a normative attitude with respect to X. This is a fairly straightforward contradiction given the meaning of "merit."

The 'oughts' in my system do not arise from the meaning of 'merit', they arise from the fact that if something is good, we ought to pursue it, on the grounds that not to pursue it would create a debit or debt of goodness as compared with what would have been the case if we had pursued it. This being so, there is no contradiction between saying that something merits an attitude but there is no attendant obligation. Beethoven's 6th symphony merits listening to, but it does not follow that anyone actually ought to listen to it.

CIN wrote: ↑April 7th, 2022, 6:17 pm

Leontiskos wrote: ↑April 3rd, 2022, 8:31 pm In that case we are saying something much more immanent and 'sensate', "I am enjoying this ice cream," "This ice cream delights me," "This ice cream brings me pleasure." I suppose, riffing on your pleasure-end, we would say that pleasure is a positive attitude/experience, not that pleasure merits a positive attitude.

But you are now conflating three distinct things - pleasure, attitude, and experience. Pleasure is neither an attitude nor an experience, it is a property of an experience, which is why we talk of the pleasure of eating ice cream, the pleasure of listening to Bach, etc., and which is why I prefer to call it pleasantness; and an attitude is neither pleasure not an experience.

You're losing sight of my point with unnecessary distinctions.

I'm not losing sight of it, I disagree with it.

To say that some thing is currently bringing me pleasure is not the same as making the broader, more abstract claim that the thing merits a positive attitude.

I do not say that something that brings pleasure merits a positive attitude - in fact I absolutely deny it; I say that the pleasantness that the thing brings merits a positive attitude.

Nothing in your response touches on what I was saying. I don't really agree with your definitions, but they don't affect my point. I could therefore rephrase that last sentence according to your own terms, "I suppose, riffing on your pleasure-end, we would say that pleasure is a positive property of an experience, not that pleasure merits a positive attitude."

You might say that. I would not.

Is it possible on your system to talk about the experience of pleasure (or an experience which includes the property of pleasure) without at the same time making a normative merit-claim? Because we do that all the time.

Yes, because the fact that the pleasantness of an experience merits a positive attitude is a fact about pleasantness, not about the meanings of words.

CIN wrote: ↑April 7th, 2022, 6:17 pm

Leontiskos wrote: ↑April 3rd, 2022, 8:31 pm

CIN wrote: ↑March 22nd, 2022, 7:46 pm I think the current orthodox view is that ‘good’ is a ‘thin’ evaluative term without descriptive content, rather than a ‘thick’ term such as ‘courageous’ or ‘generous’, which both evaluates and describes (https://iep.utm.edu/thick-co/). This sounds right to me. If you can think of an example of ‘good’ being used not merely to evaluate but also to describe, perhaps you could post it, together with an explanation of what you consider the descriptive content to be.

This sort of contemporary philosophy strikes me as an inheritance from Hume, and I doubt I will agree with much of it. I see the difference between 'good' and 'courageous' as a matter of degree and abstraction, but not kind. As an example, a civil engineer might go around the country inspecting bridges for possible repairs. He may well call the bridges that require no repairs "good bridges." It seems to me that such a use is descriptive (as well as evaluative). To give a parallel, an army recruiter might go around the country searching for courageous men and women, and he would be wielding that quality in much the same way that the civil engineer wields 'good'.

On reflection, I am going to distance myself from the thin/thick distinction, but in the opposite direction from you. I now think that 'courageous' is not evaluative, but merely descriptive; any evaluative content it may seem to have is the result of a shared background assumption by the speaker and his audience that courage is good, an assumption which does not find its way into the words uttered.

Again, I don't think these Humean inheritances are helpful or accurate, but courage is good qua military and structurally sound bridges are good qua the definition of bridge.

These are not extrinsic considerations, they are built into the nature of a military or the nature of a bridge. And again I would say that good is an abstract concept insofar as one must designate the object of goodness before knowing the precise meaning of goodness in some particular utterance, but there is also a common meaning across objects.

So you are claiming that 'good' has two parts to its meaning, a part that is common to all objects, and a part that is different for every different object? So when we say 'that is a good bridge', part of the meaning of 'good' is 'carries you from one side to the other without collapsing'? Then what is the corresponding part of the meaning of 'good' in 'this is a good ice cream', or 'Gandhi was a good man'? There are millions of objects to which 'good' can be applied; are you really claiming that 'good' has a different meaning for every one of these million objects? Is there any other word in the English language that has millions of shades of meaning?

CIN wrote: ↑April 7th, 2022, 6:17 pmThat is the problem with your examples: both the civil engineer and the army recruiter are making incomplete statements which are completed by unstated assumptions they share with their audience. When the civil engineer says 'this is a good bridge' to another civil engineer, they share an idea of the properties a bridge must have for them both to call it 'good'; it is that unstated idea that has the descriptive content, not the phrase 'good bridges'.

Er, no. Everyone knows what a good bridge is. It is the sort of bridge that does its job. It is the sort of bridge that carries you from one side to the other without collapsing. Civil engineers just have more intimate knowledge of how good bridges come into being and persist in being.

So the Millennium Bridge, which carried people from one side to the other without collapsing, but wobbled alarmingly, was a good bridge? I think the people who were unfortunate enough to walk across it might disagree.

CIN wrote: ↑April 7th, 2022, 6:17 pm'Good bridges' tells you nothing about the bridges except that they merit a positive attitude (which is always false, for the same reason as the ice cream; bridges are just lumps of concrete or stone, which don't in themselves merit any kind of attitude).

I skipped over your ice cream claim since this is getting so long, but it is also mistaken. You attempt to claim that ice cream is not good or bad, it's just the sensation that ice cream causes that it good or bad. But this is deceptive, because the pleasurable sensation is caused by nothing other than the ice cream, which is why we call ice cream sweet. There is nothing wrong with the colloquial usage of calling ice cream sweet. It is much more accurate than your implicit claim that ice cream and sweetness have no intrinsic connection.

I'm sorry, but there is everything wrong with calling an ice cream 'sweet' here in this forum. Colloquial usage is good enough for everyday use, but we're doing philosophical analysis here, and we're supposed to try and get things like this right. Sweetness is not a property of ice creams; their only properties are chemical ones which cause a tasting-sweet sensation to be experienced by beings with certain types of brains connected to certain types of taste buds. The connection between ice cream and the sensation of sweetness is mediated via anatomy: it is indirect, and therefore not intrinsic.

Regarding bridges, your claim that "bridges are just lumps of concrete or stone," is simply false. Go grab a dictionary if you want to know what a bridge is. It is much more than a lump of stone.

Fine, I will substitute 'constructions' for 'lumps'. My point remains valid.

Note that these self-contradictions and straightforwardly false definitions are signs that your consequentialist theory is breaking down, and I welcome them as a good thing and as progress in the conversation.

LOL. Reports of the death of my theory have been greatly exaggerated.

CIN wrote: ↑April 7th, 2022, 6:17 pm

Leontiskos wrote: ↑April 3rd, 2022, 8:31 pm

CIN wrote: ↑March 22nd, 2022, 7:46 pm I don’t see why people should not sometimes deliberately do things they think will have more bad consequences than good. In fact I should think it’s pretty common, because people often give their own interests far greater weight than the interests of others. Anyone who beats an animal must be aware that the animal’s pain outweighs their own pleasure, but they don’t care because at that moment the only being they care about is themselves.

But you've more or less conceded my point when you say, "...because people often give their own interests far greater weight than the interests of others." If their weighting were correct their act would be good.

It would; but I'm suggesting that people can sometimes choose evil knowing it's evil, because they want to do evil, as Satan does in Paradise Lost:
"Farewell remorse! All good to me is lost;
Evil, be thou my Good: by thee at least
Divided empire with Heaven’s King I hold."
Satan knows the difference between good and evil, but chooses evil anyway.

No, I don't think so, and I think Milton better captured the truth when he placed these words in Satan's mouth, "Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav'n." Satan makes his choice because he sees service as evil and kingship/reigning as good.

Satan sees reigning as better for himself than serving, but that is not the moral choice he makes. His moral choice is deliberately to do evil.

Even on your theory no one chooses something which they believe merits a negative attitude.

News to me. Perhaps you would like to tell me where my theory says or implies this.

CIN wrote: ↑April 7th, 2022, 6:17 pm

Leontiskos wrote: ↑April 3rd, 2022, 8:39 pm

The precise target that pi approximates is not a numerical quantity, it is a ratio, namely the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. Pi is the numerical quantity that approximates this ratio.

Well, no, pi is not an approximation to the ratio, pi is the ratio, though it is equivalently expressed as a number by taking the diameter to be 1 and then not bothering to mention it:

"The number π (/paɪ/; spelled out as "pi") is a mathematical constant, approximately equal to 3.14159. It is defined in Euclidean geometry as the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter... As an irrational number, π cannot be expressed as a common fraction, although fractions such as 22/7 are commonly used to approximate it." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi)

And the point here is that the ratio is unknowable even in principle:

"We have known since the 18th century that we will never be able to calculate all the digits of pi because it is an irrational number, one that continues forever without any repeating pattern." (https://www.ncl.ac.uk/press/articles/ar ... enpatterns)

Thus when we use 22/7 or 3.1459 or somesuch as an approximation for the ratio of circumference to diameter, we are using a rule of thumb to approximate something unknowable in principle, which makes it a counter-example to Good Egg's thesis.

Even if we want to call the thing approximated "pi", my point is still decisive. The ratio is not unknowable, it is merely unable to be represented by rational numbers. Again the thing approximated is well-known: it is the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter.

That is not the value of pi, it is merely its definition.

This is altogether different from Good Egg's hypothetical of an approximation without a thing approximated. The thing approximated with respect to pi is the ratio. Just because it cannot be known in the medium of rational numbers does not mean that it cannot be known.

Actually it does.

It's very simple. Pi = c/d, where c is the circumference and d is the diameter. If d is a rational number (conventionally 1), it is impossible to accurately calculate the value of c. Therefore c is unknowable. And since it is to c that we approximate, we are approximating to something unknowable. QED.

By denying this, you are implicitly denying that there is anything unknowable about pi. This is an untenable position, given that it is universally acknowledged that pi can never be calculated exactly.

CIN wrote: ↑April 9th, 2022, 12:38 pmHere's how I reason:
a. Morality is about how we treat beings to whom it matters how they are treated.
b. It matters to a being how we treat it iff that being is capable of experiencing un/pleasantness.
c. Therefore morality is about how we treat beings that are capable of experiencing un/pleasantness. In effect, it is about treating each such being as a moral end.
d. To treat one such being A better than another such being B without good reason would be to treat B as less of a moral end than A, which would be ex hypothesi immoral.
e. Therefore, unless there is good reason to do otherwise, all such beings should be treated equally.

The problem is that the bolded presupposition carries your entire argument, and you don't justify it in any way. You admit that this 'moral equality principle' does not follow from consequentialism. Where, then, does it come from?

I explain where the equality principle comes from in d. and e.. The emboldened passage isn't the equality principle, it's just summarising a. to c. using the 'ends' terminology popularised by Kant.

Good_Egg wrote: ↑April 10th, 2022, 6:25 pm

Ecurb wrote: ↑April 10th, 2022, 11:15 am One should try to treat everyone equally as a moral end;

I struggle to make sense of this..

Almost nobody these days is self-sufficient. We work for money and then exchange money for the goods and services we want. Many of our encounters with other people are purely transactional; our purpose in these encounters is to get what we want - the money or the goods - and we use the other party to the transaction as a means to that end. And that may be the whole purpose and extent of the relationship.

So the notion that morality demands that we treat others as an end seems to me inaccurately-formulated.

Treat as a human being, yes. What morality does demand is that trade is between consenting participants.

So if I consent to sell you my belongings for far less than they are worth because I'm starving and that's the only way I can get food, your behaviour in buying them at that price is morally okay because I consented?

And "equally" doesn't really come into it. Treating all people as well as you should is what morality demands (by definition - this is what "should" means).

And how do you work out how well you should treat them?

If you choose to treat some better than that, to go the extra mile for somebody in a moment of altruism, then well done you.

And suppose you try to be altruistic to me, and I reject your altruism and try to be altruistic to you, how do you resolve that? If there is only one ticket to go to the concert and I try to give it to you and you try to give it to me, how do we decide? Altruism looks very moral, but only when viewed from the side of the aspiring altruist; viewed objectively, it is not.

Good_Egg wrote: ↑April 12th, 2022, 4:55 am

CIN wrote: ↑April 11th, 2022, 1:22 pm If Bill likes chocolate cake and Fred doesn't, it wouldn't be treating them equally, on my definition, to give them both chocolate cake. If Fred likes jam sponge, you can get closer to equality by giving him jam sponge and saving the chocolate cake for Bill.

What do you say to the sort of person who insists that if they're dishing out the cake then it's their sense of justice that should prevail ? (Which might mean that everyone gets flapjack which nobody likes much ?)

What would you expect me to say? That they are wrong, obviously. The moral facts are the moral facts, and people's false beliefs about them are beside the point.

The more general issue is when there's one portion of jam sponge and one of chocolate cake, and both Fred and Bill prefer chocolate cake. (In this example you can cut both portions in half and let both of them share both, but some experiences are not divisible in this way). How do you avoid giving the chocolate cake to whoever most exaggerates their preference for it ?

'Ought' implies 'can', so if I can't avoid falling into this trap, I'm under no obligation to do so.

Ecurb wrote: ↑April 11th, 2022, 3:02 pm

CIN wrote: ↑April 11th, 2022, 1:22 pm

I don't know much about joy or ecstasy, but I assume that they are both states of mind that are extremely pleasant, and that this is why they are valued more than less intense forms of pleasantness, which fits in very well with my theory. I think the mistake you are making is to suppose that joy and ecstasy are qualitatively different or different in kind from e.g. the pleasantness of eating an ice cream or listening to Bach. But this doesn't seem to me to make sense: there can only be one kind of pleasantness, and only one kind of unpleasantness, and the difference between the pleasantness of eating an ice cream and the pleasantness of joy or ecctasy is merely quantitative, not qualitative.

Incorrect. Eating ice cream is a minor, sensual pleasure. Joy and ecstacy involve spiritual pleasures.

To establish this you need to give reason to believe that there is such a thing as spirit. Good luck with that. And even if you did, that would not justify your dividing pleasures into major and minor.

Indeed, joy and ecstacy are often unpleasant.

In which case they merit a negative attitude, and are to be avoided.

They can be disturbing. St. Francis's stigmata was decidedly "unpleasant".

Dear me. Poor old Franny.

If his supposed stigimata were caused by God (supposing such a being to exist), then the fact that God caused him that pain counts against God's supposed moral virtue. God does not get a free pass in moral matters just because he is an omnipotent creator: his actions are to be evaluated by the same moral standards as everyone else's. And since he is omniscient, he cannot exculpate himself by claiming ignorance of the consequences of his actions.

Watching TV or eating ice cream is "pleasant". Falling in love is ecstatic, but often unpleasant, especially if the love is unrequited. The much discussed "human condition" is such that ecstacy is often (always?) a prelude to tragedy, which is unpleasant.

Which only goes to show that falling in love is sometimes a bad thing.

Your philosophy of pleasantness is plodding and dull. I disavow it utterly.

Oh, the agony of rejection! How will I bear it?

Honor (as I was using the word) involves (among other things) keeping promises, however much such promise-keeping may be "unpleasant".

Promise-keeping is neither good nor bad in itself, it takes its morality from the nature and circumstances of the promise. If Putin promises to invade Ukraine and then keeps his promise, his promise-keeping is bad because invading Ukraine is bad. As for the unpleasantness of keeping the promise, that needs to be included in the felicific calculation when deciding whether or not the promise should be kept.

Good_Egg wrote: ↑April 17th, 2022, 4:35 pm

psyreporter wrote: ↑April 17th, 2022, 5:14 am
"A brain is a posteriori in the face of the senses and the senses are a posteriori in the face of the potential required for sensing, which is moral valuing which itself derives its potential from what can be indicated as pure meaning or 'good per se'."

I also found this hard to grasp.

My computer has a microphone attachment. It therefore senses sound. The microphone is the electronic equivalent of an ear. So you could say that my computer has the potential for sensing all the time, and the actual ability to sense sounds when it's switched on.

But it lacks the software to interpret whether the sounds it is sensing comprise music. And even if it had such software it lacks the capability to make a judgment as to what constitutes good music. Which would be a value judgment.

So sensing and value judgment appear to me to be less connected than you seem to be suggesting.

You are forgetting that a microphone and a computer are an extension of human consciousness (meaningful experience) and that they merely perform a function on behalf of a life form. It cannot be said that a microphones predetermined functionality can be compared to the sensing-ability of a life form.

A microphone doesn't have moral valuing embedded. The life form on behalf of which it operates would perform that.

For sensing-ability to have come into existence without predetermination or design by a being (e.g. an alien or 'God'), an explanation is required that addresses that most basic aspect required for sensing-ability to be possible, which is moral valuing of which by simple logic it can be said that it's origin is necessarily pure meaning or 'good per se' (the origin of moral valuing cannot be valued itself therefore the primary characteristic 'meaning' can be said to be pure).

The brain in a vat idea is based on a belief in determinism or the idea that the Universe is physically finite, which is absurd. With such an idea, one could equally pose a theory such as the block Universe, which is equally nonsensical, despite that it is taken serious in 2022.


The brain in a vat idea abuses the inability to capture meaningful experience (conscious experience) within the scope of empirical value (the foundation of scientific evidence) so that any argument by which it can be said that the idea is to be considered absurd would originate from one's assignment of value to one's own meaningful experience (one's conscious experience or it's moral valuing ability). Such value would not be empirical value which causes incompatibility with what science deems valid so that one is obligated to either neglect it or to pose arguments for which scientific evidence is not possible.

My argument: neglect is not justified as foundation for a belief in determinism. Logic indicates that there is more than what can be explained within the scope of empirical value (the foundation of scientific evidence).

The philosophical zombie theory illustrates the problem and shows that science cannot explain consciousness (meaningful experience).

(2022) The philosopher’s zombie: What can the zombie argument say about human consciousness?
The infamous thought experiment, flawed as it is, does demonstrate one thing: science can’t explain consciousness.
Source: https://aeon.co/essays/what-can-the-zom ... sciousness

Scientific evidence for moral valuing (in specific it's origin) is impossible, which results in an ideal to abolish morality.

(2018) Immoral advances: Is science out of control?
To many scientists, moral objections to their work are not valid: science, by definition, is morally neutral, so any moral judgement on it simply reflects scientific illiteracy.
Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg ... f-control/

In summary: morality cannot be subjective or objective. Morality is found in addressing the question 'What is good?' as an infinite philosophical exploration with 'good' being of substance (i.e. to be respected and considered as a factor) without being able to grasp or understand it empirically.

Pattern-chaser wrote: ↑April 17th, 2022, 8:53 am

psyreporter wrote: ↑April 17th, 2022, 5:14 am Did you consider my logic?

"A brain is a posteriori in the face of the senses and the senses are a posteriori in the face of the potential required for sensing, which is moral valuing which itself derives its potential from what can be indicated as pure meaning or 'good per se'."

Is it not magical to believe that a brain could just lay there in a vat operating out of itself relative to an 'outside world', e.g. connected to a VR machine?

??? The brain-in-a-vat thought experiment assumes that the brain is connected to a bio-electro-chemical 'data-stream', indistinguishable from the data a brain would receive if it was housed in a body, walking a real, physical, world. In modern parlance, it is a fully-immersive virtual reality. And no, it is not "magical" to think so. It is beyond our current capability, but that could change, in time...

I was just reading Reality+ by David Chalmers and he makes a case for plausibility of the brain in a vat idea as following:

The safest way to become a simulated brain is to become one in stages. This is the process sometimes called gradual uploading. To do this, we can simulate your brain one cell at a time (or one area at a time). We'll build a simulation of each cell and arrange for it to interact, via receptors and effectors, with neighbouring biological cells. At first, just a few or the original cells will be replaced by simulated cells. After a while, many will be replaced, and neighbouring cells can interact in a fully simulated way. Eventually a quarter of your brain will be simulated, then three-quarters, until the result is a fully simulated brain. Perhaps the simulation will be connected by effectors to the original physical body, or perhaps the body will be simulated, too.
...
Finally, at the last stage, your brain will have been entirely replaced by a simulation.
...
We can raise some uncomfortable questions for sceptics.... If gradual uploading preserves your behaviour but eliminates your consciousness , we can ask: What happens to consciousness along the way? Presumably, after only a few biological neurons were replaced by simulations, you are still fully conscious. What about after a quarter of your brain was replaced, or half? Does your consciousness gradually fade away? Or does it disappear all of a sudden?
...
There is a third hypotheses, which is far more plausible: Your consciousness stays intact at every stage and is present at the end of the process. This hypothesis avoids the implausibility of fading or suddenly disappearing of consciousness and it is not subject to objections like those the other hypotheses encounter. This hypotheses has the consequence that simulated brains can be conscious. At least in the special case in which you become a simulated brain by gradual uploading, the simulation will be fully conscious.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58085215-reality

A topic about the book:

From Dualism to Deism
A philsopher comes full circle
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=17829

My logic indicates that the brain in a vat idea or a purely physical simulation of a brain cannot provide the foundation for consciousness (meaningful experience), which would include (the potential for) moral valuing.

My argument is that moral valuing underlays consciousness and that by simple logic it is obvious that the origin of moral valuing cannot be valued itself, thereby explaining that it cannot be grasped or explained by empirical science.

Good_Egg wrote: ↑April 17th, 2022, 4:35 pm

Sculptor1 wrote: ↑April 17th, 2022, 9:32 am

psyreporter wrote: ↑April 17th, 2022, 5:14 am
"A brain is a posteriori in the face of the senses and the senses are a posteriori in the face of the potential required for sensing, which is moral valuing which itself derives its potential from what can be indicated as pure meaning or 'good per se'."

I am sad to have to tell you that this is not even wrong. It is not logical. It is not correct. The only phrase that makes sense is the first nine words, it then breaks down into incoherence.

I also found this hard to grasp.

My computer has a microphone attachment. It therefore senses sound. The microphone is the electronic equivalent of an ear. So you could say that my computer has the potential for sensing all the time, and the actual ability to sense sounds when it's switched on.

But it lacks the software to interpret whether the sounds it is sensing comprise music. And even if it had such software it lacks the capability to make a judgment as to what constitutes good music. Which would be a value judgment.

So sensing and value judgment appear to me to be less connected than you seem to be suggesting.

Except that "I" am not suggesting anything. I am just reacting that the passage upon which Psy's whole thread contribution is based is meaningless.

CIN wrote: ↑April 17th, 2022, 7:04 pm
To establish this you need to give reason to believe that there is such a thing as spirit. Good luck with that. And even if you did, that would not justify your dividing pleasures into major and minor.

"Spiritual pleasures" are pleasures that are incorporeal -- pleasures of the mind, or emotions. This is the standard meaing of the phrase. Love instead of sex. A good dinner converstation, instead of merely good food. I think most people agree that emotions and the mind "exist" -- although, of course, they do not exist in the same corporeal sense in which the body exists.

Promise-keeping is neither good nor bad in itself, it takes its morality from the nature and circumstances of the promise. If Putin promises to invade Ukraine and then keeps his promise, his promise-keeping is bad because invading Ukraine is bad. As for the unpleasantness of keeping the promise, that needs to be included in the felicific calculation when deciding whether or not the promise should be kept.

That's where we disagree. Breaking promises is dishonorable, and honor is good ipso facto. Of course there are some times when one SHOULD break promises because keeping them is even more evil than breaking them. But promise breaking is at best the lesser of two evils.

Indeed, joy and ecstacy are often unpleasant.

In which case they merit a negative attitude, and are to be avoided.

Again, this is where I disagree, and this is what I find "dull and plodding". As Tennyson opined:

I hold it true, whate'er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.

As I wrote to Leon: Fīat jūstitia ruat cælum. "Let justice be done though the heavens fall."

Justice is a spiritual (incorporeal) value. One reason to convict criminals is to deter crime. People are loathe to commit crimes for fear of punishment. Preventing crime is probably "good" according to your philosophy: it makes life more pleasant for most people. However, if we convict an innocent person (assuing that the public believes he is a criminal), that provides the same deterrent as convicting a guilty person. So convicting the innocent may very well lead to a more pleasant (on the whole) society. Although you appear to approve of such a conviction, I do not. Justice is just one of the values that trumps "pleasantness". Fīat jūstitia ruat cælum.

CIN wrote: ↑April 17th, 2022, 6:55 pm

Leontiskos wrote: ↑April 10th, 2022, 4:16 pm

CIN wrote: ↑April 7th, 2022, 6:17 pm The surgeon treats all six individuals alike, as individuals, not as a set. He assigns just the same moral consideration to the healthy patient as he does to each of the five unhealthy ones. At no stage is he thinking that the patients constitute a collective which has interests over and above the individual interests of the six patients; he merely calculates that by killing the healthy patient and giving his organs to the five unhealthy ones, he alters the outcome from one living person with a life assumed to be pleasant to five such living persons.

To me this is the same as saying that the healthy individual is being sacrificed for the sake of collective pleasure, which is a collective end. Morally speaking collective pleasure is the end, and until other axioms are introduced all means are justified in reaching this end. In this case the individual is not an end in themselves, but is rather a necessary node in calculating the collective end.

This is plainly incorrect. It is precisely because we are regarding the individuals as ends in themselves that we are aggregating the effect of our actions on them, rather than on, say, tables and chairs. If we weren't regarding them as ends in themselves, we wouldn't bother including them in the calculation.

Leontiskos wrote: ↑April 10th, 2022, 4:16 pmClearly if individuals can be sacrificed for the sake of some greater end, then there must be some greater end beyond the individual. This is much different from a system where individuals are ends in themselves and cannot be sacrificed for the sake of collective ends.

'Sacrificed' implies that someone is not being treated as an end in themselves, and as I have just pointed out, no-one is.

Er, you’re just asserting your conclusion without providing any argument, and it would seem that your position is plainly incorrect. If the aggregation is the end then the things being aggregated are not. It’s that simple, and on your view the aggregation is the end. I gave a specific argument which you did not acknowledge:

“If individuals can be sacrificed for the sake of some greater end, then there must be some greater end beyond the individual.”


Instead of answering you quibbled with the word “sacrifice,” which is odd since it is obvious that the person being murdered for his organs is being sacrificed. But if you like we can say that the individual is not being sacrificed, but is instead being murdered for his organs, which are a means to the end of collective pleasure.

I’m not sure what your definition of a “collective end” is, but it is apparently strawman-esque. If the individual is the end in themselves, then why are you willing to murder individuals as a means to another end? You can’t keep dodging this question.

CIN wrote: ↑April 17th, 2022, 6:55 pm

Leontiskos wrote: ↑April 10th, 2022, 4:16 pmFinally I think it comes back to my point about the bee hive. If the individual is the ultimate end then the individual cannot be sacrificed for the sake of some other end, such as the end of collective pleasure.

As I have explained, what you misleadingly refer to in my theory as a 'collective end' is merely the aggregate of the interests of all affected beings considered as moral ends in themselves; so when, in the context of my theory, you talk of a collective end which is other than the aggregate of such interests, your term 'collective end' fails to denote anything.

And as I have explained, you are just dodging. I have explained several times that the collective end I am referring to is precisely aggregate pleasure. The idea that I am talking about “a collective end which is other than the aggregate [pleasure]” is a straightforward misrepresentation.

CIN wrote: ↑April 17th, 2022, 6:55 pm

Leontiskos wrote: ↑April 10th, 2022, 4:16 pmHarming an individual who is innocent (and therefore does not merit harm) is an act of injustice, and is precisely the sort of act that the just moral order is meant to prevent.

But as i have pointed out, if you remove the societal foundation for this kind of justice system, there is nothing to justify the idea that we ought to obey the rules of such a system.

Here is the same argument in a more obvious form: Justified harm must be deserved; The innocent are not deserving of harm; Therefore it is not justifiable to harm the innocent.

Now you have two options: contest a premise of the argument or contest its validity. Assertions about societal assumptions are not arguments.

CIN wrote: ↑April 17th, 2022, 6:55 pm

Leontiskos wrote: ↑April 10th, 2022, 4:16 pmthen I suppose innocent individuals can be harmed in any way we like if this serves our end.

No individuals, innocent or otherwise, may be harmed 'in any way we like', they may only be harmed if it conduces to the overall moral objective of serving the aggregated interests of all sentient beings as ends in themselves.

…Which is exactly what I said, “if this serves our end [of aggregate pleasure].”

Note, too, that your phrase, “ends in themselves,” is just a carry-over platitude that isn’t even true. On your scheme individuals are not ends in themselves; their collective pleasure is the sole end. The fellow you murdered for his organs cannot be said to be an “end in himself.” You believe it is justifiable to murder him as a means to an end other than himself.

CIN wrote: ↑April 17th, 2022, 6:55 pm

Leontiskos wrote: ↑April 10th, 2022, 4:16 pmIn that case harming the innocent is justified as a means to an end, which is very close to the definition of immorality.

Your definition, perhaps. But you give no reason why your definition should also be my definition.

Note, though, that the platitude you have retained is part and parcel of classical morality, and is incompatible with your system. Why do we say that harming innocent individuals as a means to an end is unjustifiable? Because “individuals are ends in themselves.”

CIN wrote: ↑April 17th, 2022, 6:55 pm

Leontiskos wrote: ↑April 10th, 2022, 4:16 pm (I should add that red flags should go off in our heads when folks start questioning such basic moral principles as "do not harm the innocent,"

Such red flags are mere facts of individual psychology, not rational grounds for belief.

That’s exactly what Hitler and Stalin said.

CIN wrote: ↑April 17th, 2022, 6:55 pm

Leontiskos wrote: ↑April 10th, 2022, 4:16 pmand at some point your practice and your theory will have to confront one another.)

Unlikely, given my advanced age and the fact that I have no role at all in any judicial system. But if it happens, and my practice does not conform to my theory, that will not tend to undermine my theory, it will merely mean that I have not followed its prescriptions.

You yourself are the one who has assured us that your practice does not follow your theory, and that you would never condone surgeons murdering for organs.

CIN wrote: ↑April 17th, 2022, 6:55 pm

Leontiskos wrote: ↑April 10th, 2022, 4:16 pm…Practically this means that retributive or vengeful responses--words which are now sadly pejorative, but which regain their meaning in light of Adolf Hitler--are available only to the non-consequentialist. The same is true of his defense of victims of intrinsic evil: acts which are intrinsically evil regardless of the consequences. These sorts of considerations will also mean that he can still fight battles, even if there is no hope of winning, for his moral code does not reduce to mere pleasure or winning.

You are attempting to justify your moral opinions by appealing to those same moral opinions, and that is circular. When you talk of the non-consequentialist's warring as 'righteous', and attacks on innocent life as 'intrinsically evil', and acts which are 'intrinsically evil regardless of the consequences', you provide no reason to accept these judgments, and thus you are doing no more than give your own subjective moral opinions.

No, you’re simply not following. You asked me what practical difference my theory would make with Hitler. I told you. It was not an argument for the truth of the theory, for your question was not about truth.

CIN wrote: ↑April 17th, 2022, 6:55 pm

Leontiskos wrote: ↑April 10th, 2022, 4:16 pm

CIN wrote: ↑April 7th, 2022, 6:17 pm I deny that too. Saying that something merits a positive attitude is evaluative, but attributing a value to something is not the same as prescribing any attitude or action relating to it. We are saying that the ice cream merits a positive attitude, but we are not making the further assertion that it is incumbent on anyone to adopt that attitude.

I would claim that you are here moving into some direct self-contradictions. You are waffling on your earlier claims that your system is normative and involves 'oughts', and you are involving yourself in the contradiction that to say that X merits an attitude does not prescribe a normative attitude with respect to X. This is a fairly straightforward contradiction given the meaning of "merit."

The 'oughts' in my system do not arise from the meaning of 'merit', they arise from the fact that if something is good, we ought to pursue it, on the grounds that not to pursue it would create a debit or debt of goodness as compared with what would have been the case if we had pursued it. This being so, there is no contradiction between saying that something merits an attitude but there is no attendant obligation. Beethoven's 6th symphony merits listening to, but it does not follow that anyone actually ought to listen to it.

CIN, you are all over the place. Look at that first sentence. It makes no sense given your definition of “good” (which is precisely about merit) and now you are introducing new and strange notions of “debts of goodness” which we have a duty to avoid. Where did that come from? How does it fit into your theory? Are you going to provide an entirely new definition of “good” to try to salvage that first sentence and your claims here?

CIN wrote: ↑April 17th, 2022, 6:55 pm

Leontiskos wrote: ↑April 10th, 2022, 4:16 pm

CIN wrote: ↑April 7th, 2022, 6:17 pm

Leontiskos wrote: ↑April 3rd, 2022, 8:31 pm In that case we are saying something much more immanent and 'sensate', "I am enjoying this ice cream," "This ice cream delights me," "This ice cream brings me pleasure." I suppose, riffing on your pleasure-end, we would say that pleasure is a positive attitude/experience, not that pleasure merits a positive attitude.

But you are now conflating three distinct things - pleasure, attitude, and experience. Pleasure is neither an attitude nor an experience, it is a property of an experience, which is why we talk of the pleasure of eating ice cream, the pleasure of listening to Bach, etc., and which is why I prefer to call it pleasantness; and an attitude is neither pleasure not an experience.

You're losing sight of my point with unnecessary distinctions. To say that some thing is currently bringing me pleasure is not the same as making the broader, more abstract claim that the thing merits a positive attitude.

I do not say that something that brings pleasure merits a positive attitude - in fact I absolutely deny it; I say that the pleasantness that the thing brings merits a positive attitude.

Yikes. So you would affirm that the pleasure that the ice cream brings is good, but you would absolutely deny that the ice cream is good? (Note that your definition of good up until now has been, “That which merits a positive attitude.”)

Leontiskos wrote: ↑April 10th, 2022, 4:16 pm

CIN wrote: ↑April 7th, 2022, 6:17 pm I think any moral system has to be centrally concerned with 'oughts', and since 'ought' implies 'can', a denial of moral responsibility undermines my consequentialism just as much as any other moral system. I keep my thinking about morality and freewill in separate compartments; when thinking about morality I assume that we have freewill, otherwise there is no point thinking about morality at all; when I think about freewill I ignore the fact that my belief that we have no freewill destroys morality except as a metaphysical fantasy. In reality, one or other of these has to go, but I pretend that this isn't the case in order to be able to talk about both of them.

That is a rather significant inconsistency.

I should point you to the place where I addressed your argument against free will, which is invalid and fails to understand the meaning of a contradiction (link).

CIN wrote: ↑April 17th, 2022, 6:55 pm

Leontiskos wrote: ↑April 10th, 2022, 4:16 pmIs it possible on your system to talk about the experience of pleasure (or an experience which includes the property of pleasure) without at the same time making a normative merit-claim? Because we do that all the time.

Yes, because the fact that the pleasantness of an experience merits a positive attitude is a fact about pleasantness, not about the meanings of words.

You’re not answering the question. I have explained in some detail how we often refer to pleasures as good without invoking the concept of merit, and yet your definition fails to account for this. It fails to account for it whether or not we are talking about the pleasantness or the words (of course this is just another strawman, for we have been talking about the pleasantness all along).

CIN wrote: ↑April 17th, 2022, 6:55 pm

Leontiskos wrote: ↑April 10th, 2022, 4:16 pm

CIN wrote: ↑April 7th, 2022, 6:17 pm On reflection, I am going to distance myself from the thin/thick distinction, but in the opposite direction from you. I now think that 'courageous' is not evaluative, but merely descriptive; any evaluative content it may seem to have is the result of a shared background assumption by the speaker and his audience that courage is good, an assumption which does not find its way into the words uttered.

Again, I don't think these Humean inheritances are helpful or accurate, but courage is good qua military and structurally sound bridges are good qua the definition of bridge.

These are not extrinsic considerations, they are built into the nature of a military or the nature of a bridge. And again I would say that good is an abstract concept insofar as one must designate the object of goodness before knowing the precise meaning of goodness in some particular utterance, but there is also a common meaning across objects.

So you are claiming that 'good' has two parts to its meaning, a part that is common to all objects, and a part that is different for every different object? So when we say 'that is a good bridge', part of the meaning of 'good' is 'carries you from one side to the other without collapsing'? Then what is the corresponding part of the meaning of 'good' in 'this is a good ice cream', or 'Gandhi was a good man'? There are millions of objects to which 'good' can be applied; are you really claiming that 'good' has a different meaning for every one of these million objects?

I am claiming that good is an analogical term, and this has been the common opinion since at least Aristotle. When we predicate goodness of a bridge, or ice cream, or Gandhi, there is both a sense in which the predicate is univocal and a sense in which it is equivocal, or rather, the predicate sits somewhere in the middle (i.e. ‘analogical’).

Do you propose a different understanding? Are you claiming that ‘good’ means either something exactly the same or something entirely different in each of those three examples?

CIN wrote: ↑April 17th, 2022, 6:55 pm

Leontiskos wrote: ↑April 10th, 2022, 4:16 pm

CIN wrote: ↑April 7th, 2022, 6:17 pmThat is the problem with your examples: both the civil engineer and the army recruiter are making incomplete statements which are completed by unstated assumptions they share with their audience. When the civil engineer says 'this is a good bridge' to another civil engineer, they share an idea of the properties a bridge must have for them both to call it 'good'; it is that unstated idea that has the descriptive content, not the phrase 'good bridges'.

Er, no. Everyone knows what a good bridge is. It is the sort of bridge that does its job. It is the sort of bridge that carries you from one side to the other without collapsing. Civil engineers just have more intimate knowledge of how good bridges come into being and persist in being.

So the Millennium Bridge, which carried people from one side to the other without collapsing, but wobbled alarmingly, was a good bridge? I think the people who were unfortunate enough to walk across it might disagree.

The bridge was closed and reconstructed because the instability of the bridge was a sign that it would eventually break down under such stress.

But I was just giving a simple definition of “good bridge” to rebut your bizarre claim that only civil engineers understand what a good bridge is. We could refine the definition in various ways. We could say that the purpose of a bridge is to transport certain kinds of things across, and that if those kinds of things are not able to cross (due to collapse or swaying) then it is not a good bridge.

CIN wrote: ↑April 17th, 2022, 6:55 pm

Leontiskos wrote: ↑April 10th, 2022, 4:16 pmI skipped over your ice cream claim since this is getting so long, but it is also mistaken. You attempt to claim that ice cream is not good or bad, it's just the sensation that ice cream causes that it good or bad. But this is deceptive, because the pleasurable sensation is caused by nothing other than the ice cream, which is why we call ice cream sweet. There is nothing wrong with the colloquial usage of calling ice cream sweet. It is much more accurate than your implicit claim that ice cream and sweetness have no intrinsic connection.

Sweetness is not a property of ice creams; their only properties are chemical ones which cause a tasting-sweet sensation to be experienced by beings with certain types of brains connected to certain types of taste buds. The connection between ice cream and the sensation of sweetness is mediated via anatomy: it is indirect, and therefore not intrinsic.

Your implicit claim that the person who calls ice cream sweet thinks its sweetness has nothing to do with taste buds is another of your strawmen.

Note, CIN, that your very definition of ‘good’ is intrinsically related to anatomies capable of pleasure, and in almost every case that pleasure will have a cause. Your move to critique my position on the basis of “intrinsic good” (or intrinsic pleasure) is self-defeating, for everything which causes pleasure is “indirect, and therefore not intrinsic.”

The application of the predicate “good” becomes absurdly limited if we carry your claims to their logical conclusion. If you were right then basically nothing that we call ‘good’ can be said to be good, nothing that we call ‘sweet’ can be said to be sweet, etc. Common sense and real philosophy is perfectly content to observe the simple truth that the effect exists in the cause (either actually or virtually). So yes, ice cream produces a sweet sensation, and that is precisely why we call it sweet. If you can’t recognize the intrinsic causal relation between ice cream and the sensation of sweetness then you are caught up in Humean delusions, and your whole definition of ‘good’ will collapse into absurdity.

To be clear let's quote your previous claim:

CIN wrote: ↑April 7th, 2022, 6:17 pm(In any case, 'this ice cream is good' is always false, because it is not the ice cream that merits the positive attitude, it's the pleasant experience I'm having while eating it. Everyone always gets this wrong, but what can you do?)

Clearly both the ice cream and the sensation it elicits merit a positive attitude, for the sensation would not exist without the ice cream.

CIN wrote: ↑April 17th, 2022, 6:55 pm

Leontiskos wrote: ↑April 10th, 2022, 4:16 pmRegarding bridges, your claim that "bridges are just lumps of concrete or stone," is simply false. Go grab a dictionary if you want to know what a bridge is. It is much more than a lump of stone.

Fine, I will substitute 'constructions' for 'lumps'. My point remains valid.

No, it remains invalid. This is the implicit syllogism you gave in <this post>:

• Bridges are lumps of concrete or stone
• Lumps of concrete or stone do not merit a positive attitude
• Therefore, bridges do not merit a positive attitude (and cannot be good)

I pointed out that the first premise is factually incorrect. You respond with a new syllogism:

• Bridges are constructions of concrete or stone
• Constructions of concrete or stone do not merit a positive attitude
• Therefore, bridges do not merit a positive attitude (and cannot be good)

The new problem is that the second premise is not even plausible. Lots of constructions of concrete or stone merit positive attitudes. Bridges are one of them. Others include roads, sidewalks, statues, cathedrals, bomb shelters, building foundations, etc.

CIN wrote: ↑April 17th, 2022, 6:55 pm

Leontiskos wrote: ↑April 10th, 2022, 4:16 pmEven on your theory no one chooses something which they believe merits a negative attitude.

News to me. Perhaps you would like to tell me where my theory says or implies this.

You implicitly admitted it when you said, "...because people often give their own interests far greater weight than the interests of others." Then you started making up all sorts of assertions about Satan from a fictional work to defend your claim that some choose evil qua evil. You haven't provided any actual rationale for how that would happen.

CIN wrote: ↑April 17th, 2022, 6:55 pm

Leontiskos wrote: ↑April 10th, 2022, 4:16 pmEven if we want to call the thing approximated "pi", my point is still decisive. The ratio is not unknowable, it is merely unable to be represented by rational numbers. Again the thing approximated is well-known: it is the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter.

That is not the value of pi, it is merely its definition.

Your posts are devolving into nothing more than quibbles and assertions.

CIN wrote: ↑April 17th, 2022, 6:55 pm

Leontiskos wrote: ↑April 10th, 2022, 4:16 pmThis is altogether different from Good Egg's hypothetical of an approximation without a thing approximated. The thing approximated with respect to pi is the ratio. Just because it cannot be known in the medium of rational numbers does not mean that it cannot be known.

Actually it does.

It's very simple. Pi = c/d, where c is the circumference and d is the diameter. If d is a rational number (conventionally 1), it is impossible to accurately calculate the value of c. Therefore c is unknowable. And since it is to c that we approximate, we are approximating to something unknowable. QED.

"If d is a rational number..." Why think that d must be a rational number? I already told you that, "The ratio is not unknowable, it is merely unable to be represented by rational numbers." As usual, you attempt to deny what I am saying while at the same time repeating it.

CIN wrote: ↑April 17th, 2022, 6:55 pmBy denying this, you are implicitly denying that there is anything unknowable about pi. This is an untenable position, given that it is universally acknowledged that pi can never be calculated exactly.

Nonsense. I already implied that there is something unknowable about pi when I said, "The ratio is not unknowable, it is merely unable to be represented by rational numbers." Namely, it is unknowable qua rational number.

CIN wrote: ↑April 17th, 2022, 6:55 pm

Leontiskos wrote: ↑April 10th, 2022, 4:16 pm

CIN wrote: ↑April 9th, 2022, 12:38 pmHere's how I reason:
a. Morality is about how we treat beings to whom it matters how they are treated.
b. It matters to a being how we treat it iff that being is capable of experiencing un/pleasantness.
c. Therefore morality is about how we treat beings that are capable of experiencing un/pleasantness. In effect, it is about treating each such being as a moral end.
d. To treat one such being A better than another such being B without good reason would be to treat B as less of a moral end than A, which would be ex hypothesi immoral.
e. Therefore, unless there is good reason to do otherwise, all such beings should be treated equally.

The problem is that the bolded presupposition carries your entire argument, and you don't justify it in any way. You admit that this 'moral equality principle' does not follow from consequentialism. Where, then, does it come from?

I explain where the equality principle comes from in d. and e.

No you don't. In (d) you define what it means to treat a being as a moral end, but you don't explain why they must be treated that way. You say it is "ex hypothesi immoral." But according to what hypothesis? The only candidate is that rider at the end of (c), which I already identified as something which has no rational justification in your system. Circular logic abounds.

Good_Egg, CIN, and Ecurb: Note that I started a new thread on this topic: "Is Justice based on Equality?"

Leontiskos wrote: ↑April 10th, 2022, 6:40 pm

Good_Egg wrote: ↑April 10th, 2022, 6:25 pm

CIN wrote: ↑April 9th, 2022, 7:36 pmOne should try to treat everyone equally as a moral end;

...And "equally" doesn't really come into it. Treating all people as well as you should is what morality demands (by definition - this is what "should" means). If you choose to treat some better than that, to go the extra mile for somebody in a moment of altruism, then well done you.

How does one go about determining how well people should be treated?

CIN wrote: ↑April 17th, 2022, 7:00 pm

Good_Egg wrote: ↑April 10th, 2022, 6:25 pm

CIN wrote: ↑April 9th, 2022, 7:36 pmOne should try to treat everyone equally as a moral end;

And "equally" doesn't really come into it. Treating all people as well as you should is what morality demands (by definition - this is what "should" means).

And how do you work out how well you should treat them?

psyreporter wrote: ↑April 17th, 2022, 5:14 am"The 'brain in a vat' idea is nonsensical. A brain is a posteriori in the face of the senses and the senses are a posteriori in the face of the potential required for sensing, which is moral valuing which itself derives its potential from what can be indicated as pure meaning or 'good per se'."

Sculptor1 wrote: ↑April 18th, 2022, 7:12 am Except that "I" am not suggesting anything. I am just reacting that the passage upon which Psy's whole thread contribution is based is meaningless.

It cannot be said that it is meaningless for the topic. The logic indicates that morality cannot be subjective or objective but is still to be respected and considered as a factor.

The logic indicates that humans are naturally equipped with a moral compass (moral sense) and that morality is to be found in an eternal philosophical exploration on behalf of the simple question "What is 'good'?". Further, the logic indicates that moral valuing underlays conscious experience as an a priori intelligence factor.

What do you think of the provided thought experiment?

Thought experiment: "What can possibly 'say' (figuratively speaking) that it has sensed when it had never sensed?"

psyreporter wrote: ↑April 19th, 2022, 2:27 am

psyreporter wrote: ↑April 17th, 2022, 5:14 am"The 'brain in a vat' idea is nonsensical. A brain is a posteriori in the face of the senses and the senses are a posteriori in the face of the potential required for sensing, which is moral valuing which itself derives its potential from what can be indicated as pure meaning or 'good per se'."

Sculptor1 wrote: ↑April 18th, 2022, 7:12 am Except that "I" am not suggesting anything. I am just reacting that the passage upon which Psy's whole thread contribution is based is meaningless.

It cannot be said that it is meaningless for the topic. The logic indicates that morality cannot be subjective or objective but is still to be respected and considered as a factor.

If that is what you think the passage means, then you should say so . Because there is no way you can squeeze this out of the word salad that was stated.
You are now saying that morality can be neither objective nor subjective.
... SO, considered a "factor" for what, for whom?

The logic indicates that humans are naturally equipped with a moral compass (moral sense) and that morality is to be found in an eternal philosophical exploration on behalf of the simple question "What is 'good'?". Further, the logic indicates that moral valuing underlays conscious experience as an a priori intelligence factor.

What do you think of the provided thought experiment?

Thought experiment: "What can possibly 'say' (figuratively speaking) that it has sensed when it had never sensed?"

"Whats" cannot not say. "Whats" cannot sense. "Who" can say and sense, so..
This is not a thought experiment since it does not make sense. Would you care to restate the problem?

Sculptor1 wrote: ↑April 19th, 2022, 5:23 amYou are now saying that morality can be neither objective nor subjective.
... SO, considered a "factor" for what, for whom?

Yes, that is an interesting question. Can it be said that morality can be ignored when it's origin cannot be grasped or explained within the scope of empirical value (the foundation of scientific evidence)?

Sculptor1 wrote: ↑April 19th, 2022, 5:23 am

What do you think of the provided thought experiment?

Thought experiment: "What can possibly 'say' (figuratively speaking) that it has sensed when it had never sensed?"

"Whats" cannot not say. "Whats" cannot sense. "Who" can say and sense, so..
This is not a thought experiment since it does not make sense. Would you care to restate the problem?

'What' could be a type or group of person(s), or a 'brain in a vat'. From a philosophical outside perspective a human can be considered a 'what' (socially neutral).

To restate the problem:

How can it be perceived that a 'brain in a vat' would provide a causal foundation for consciousness (meaningful experience) in the face of the senses?

The question asks: how can it be perceived that a living creature can make a subjective moral judgement before it had ever sensed?

Conclusion: the senses demand an a priori potential for moral valuing and must precede (underlay) conscious experience.

psyreporter wrote: ↑April 19th, 2022, 6:08 pm

Sculptor1 wrote: ↑April 19th, 2022, 5:23 amYou are now saying that morality can be neither objective nor subjective.
... SO, considered a "factor" for what, for whom?

Yes, that is an interesting question. Can it be said that morality can be ignored when it's origin cannot be grasped or explained within the scope of empirical value (the foundation of scientific evidence)?

Nope. That is not what I meant.

Sculptor1 wrote: ↑April 19th, 2022, 5:23 am

What do you think of the provided thought experiment?

Thought experiment: "What can possibly 'say' (figuratively speaking) that it has sensed when it had never sensed?"

"Whats" cannot not say. "Whats" cannot sense. "Who" can say and sense, so..
This is not a thought experiment since it does not make sense. Would you care to restate the problem?

'What' could be a type or group of person(s), or a 'brain in a vat'. From a philosophical outside perspective a human can be considered a 'what' (socially neutral).

To restate the problem:

How can it be perceived that a 'brain in a vat' would provide a causal foundation for consciousness (meaningful experience) in the face of the senses?

The question asks: how can it be perceived that a living creature can make a subjective moral judgement before it had ever sensed?

Conclusion: the senses demand an a priori potential for moral valuing and must precede (underlay) conscious experience.

Once again you are not making sense.