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[Tegularius]

NOPE!

[LuckyR]

Thus while two individuals can express two different opinions on the shape, that shape has an objectively correct answer, the two opinions notwithstanding.

OTOH, I am unaware of an objective method to determine which of two individual's opinions on "objective" moral truths is correct (if either). Though I await your elucidation.

If two people express different opinions on the height of a mountain, then the way you find out which one is closest to being right is to get a whole lot of other people to measure the height of the mountain, and take some sort of average of their answers as being a good estimate. In other words, consensus.

And in practice if the level of disagreement between them is small then you chalk it up to measurement imprecision. And if the level of disagreement is large enough, you begin to suspect that they went out and measured different mountains.

Nobody doubts that the height of a mountain is an objective fact. But consensus plays a role in how we know that fact. And if there's enough lack of consensus, we should admit that we don't know.

So, by analogy, to the extent that there is consensus on morality, that points to people perceiving the same thing, but imprecisely.

And to the extent that there is major lack of consensus, that points to absence of knowledge.

And while absence of knowledge is not knowledge of absence, the possibility of a perfect moral code undiscoverable by humans seems like one of those philosophical dead-ends. Like solipsism. You know - ideas that can't be disproven but aren't really worth your attention because nothing constructive can come of them.

So I maintain that consensus is a valid indicator that falls short of proof.

I don't disagree that folks do exactly what you describe. Though that doesn't meet my definition of objective. CIN perhaps can come up with an actual objective technique. Let's see.

[Good_Egg]

@Gertie , apologies for misunderstanding you.

The view I'm arguing for is what you might call naive realism. So I'd agree that pain is bad and death is bad, meaning that other things being equal it is morally better not to cause either. (Whilst not ruling out that in the situational choices we face, these considerations may get traded-off against others or against each other or against other instances of the same principle).

I'm not yet convinced by an ethic that takes suffering as fundamental. Three reasons:

One is the point about not taking life not being reducible to minimising pain.

One is that I suspect it may be morally bad to destroy a work of art, irrespective of whether anyone who's alive today likes it. Art or beauty may have an innate value that is not reducible to minimising pain.

And one concerns rights of property. I see a moral difference between me eating your goldfish and me eating my own goldfish. Which isn't reducible to your level of emotional attachment to it.

I think I do you wrong if I take your goldfish without your consent (whether for culinary or other purposes), even if you're (unknown to me) fed up with it and planning to get rid of it. And conversely, that I do you no wrong if I eat my own goldfish, even if you'll really miss seeing it when you walk past my window each day.

[CIN]

I think people frequently assume that something is good or bad in itself when in fact it is only good or bad insofar as it leads to more or less pain or pleasure. For example, I would suggest that neither freedom nor health is good in itself, though people often assume that they are; they are good only insofar as they make it possible for people to avoid pain and experience pleasure.

I think you started off talking about literal physical pain. As a good example of how we're not actually free to decide what doing good to others will consist of from now on.

But you're now talking about pain and its assumed opposite, pleasure, as shorthand for all positive and negative experiences. Which is also relevant. But possibly a slight shift of the goalposts ?

Apologies for being unclear. I probably do use the words 'pleasure' and 'pain' inconsistently. This doesn't indicate a shift in my philosophical position, it's just me being rather careless about the scope of these terms. Let me be clear: I believe that all pleasant experience (physical enjoyment, mental anguish, unhappiness) is good, and all unpleasant experience (physical pain, unhappiness, misery) is bad.

I think you should take the precaution of asking me just how bad I'm finding the pains of growing old. I'm nearly 70, and so far the pains are irritating but not intolerable. But If you could be reasonably sure that the rest of my life would be more painful than pleasurable, and if no-one else is given pain by my death, and if you can be sure that you won't start a fashion of copycat killings done for less justification, then yes, I think you should do it. In practice we don't generally know all these things.

To decide for you would be to treat you as something less than fully human.

So if someone is threatening to shoot themselves, and you have a chance to take the gun from them, would you refrain from taking it on the ground that you would then be deciding for them whether to commit suicide, and that would be treating them as less than fully human?

I suggest that a doctor might well be in a position to have reasonable certainty about how much physical pain there will be if he doesn't give you a life-ending dose. But whether you find in life sufficient positive experiences to outweigh the physical pain in your scale of values is a decision for you. Not for the doctor, and not for any politically-minded person driven more by their own ideas of how things should be rather than by concern for your welfare.

That's correct, but all it shows is that I'm generally in a better position to predict my future pleasantness/unpleasantness balance than anyone else. If the doctor could predict with certainty that I would be more miserable than happy, then he should euthanase me. The reason we think doctors shouldn't make these decisions for their patients is that we know that they never have enough information on which to make the correct decision.

Again, you should probably ask me how necessary it is to my happiness that I do these things. As I'm probably the best judge, if I say I need to do them to be happy, you should probably let me get on with it.

Not disagreeing at all. Just seems to me that your conclusion is more consistent with a morality that values freedom/agency than with the pain-minimisation morality that I thought you were arguing for.

I don't think so, and I hope I've made that clearer.

[Gertie]

Good Egg

apologies for misunderstanding you.

no prob

The view I'm arguing for is what you might call naive realism. So I'd agree that pain is bad and death is bad, meaning that other things being equal it is morally better not to cause either. (Whilst not ruling out that in the situational choices we face, these considerations may get traded-off against others or against each other or against other instances of the same principle).

OK, can you explain how naive realism re morality would work? What's your thinking behind it about the moral nature of real the world you're perceiving, and so on?

The only way I can conceptualise that is via a 'minded' creator instilling something of its own experiential sense of right and wrong into the fabric of its creation, or somesuch, but as I recall you reject that. So how does it work in your view?

I'm not yet convinced by an ethic that takes suffering as fundamental. Three reasons:
One is the point about not taking life not being reducible to minimising pain.

To clarify, my moral foundation is a little different to CIN's, in a nutshell it's ''Promoting the Wellbeing of Conscious Creatures'' (borrowed from Harris). Wellbeing is about more than pain and suffering, and can come in many forms. Think of it as about the Quality of Life, and my contention is that only conscious beings can have a Quality of Life.

And one concerns rights of property. I see a moral difference between me eating your goldfish and me eating my own goldfish. Which isn't reducible to your level of emotional attachment to it. I think I do you wrong if I take your goldfish without your consent (whether for culinary or other purposes), even if you're (unknown to me) fed up with it and planning to get rid of it.

I'd contextualise property rights this way - In a moral society we create rules (rights, laws, etc) and mores about our interactions with each other which hopefully overall promote the quality of life of the members. If we didn't have rules about property and theft for example, that society would be fractious, chaotic and unstable. Unless that society agreed on organised ways of pooling some/all resources. Most societies do choose to effectively pool some resources for 'the common good', while individuals own some resources, like goldfish. At the other extreme a society might decide that pooling all resources in an effective and organised way promotes the common good (and for them ''property is theft'').

The point is there's nothing intrinsically im/moral about having exclusive access to property, it's the effects which can be harmful or beneficial. The example of slavery (directly affecting the wellbeing of a conscious being in an obviously egregious way) illustrates there's nothing innately moral about owning property, rather that it's the effects that matter.

And conversely, that I do you no wrong if I eat my own goldfish, even if you'll really miss seeing it when you walk past my window each day.

Me missing seeing your goldfish is no big deal, but if your goldfish is conscious, would you agree you're harming your goldfish and that's wrong?

One is that I suspect it may be morally bad to destroy a work of art, irrespective of whether anyone who's alive today likes it. Art or beauty may have an innate value that is not reducible to minimising pain.

This is a foundational disagreement. I get the intuition, but I'd say value, meaning, purpose and mattering only come into the universe with the arrival of experiencing Subjects. That non-conscious Objects can't have such innate essentially experiential properties. This goes back to my question above, what's your source of moral properties like the innate value of beauty in objects, and presumably is the source of all your perceptual intuitions about right and wrong?

[CIN]

I find the objective vs subjective debate re morality a stale and pointless red herring. It can be argued this way and that relying on definitions trying to make it fit.

A definition may be a recognition of a fact. The definition of gravity is 'the force that attracts a body towards the centre of the earth, or towards any other physical body having mass.' That's a recognition of a fact, not something arbitrary. The definitions of subjectivism and objectivism are also recognitions of facts. Of course, some definitions come closer to the facts than others, but a definition such as this is a recognition of a fact:
'Ethical subjectivism or moral non-objectivism is the meta-ethical view which claims that: Ethical sentences express propositions. Some such propositions are true. The truth or falsity of such propositions is ineliminably dependent on the attitudes of people.' (Wikipedia)

If you find the debate stale and pointless, perhaps what that really indicates is that you're more interested in normative ethics than meta-ethics. Nothing wrong with that, but if so, that's a fact about you, not about the objective/subjective debate.

Who cares, the point is that it's the capacity of conscious beings to flourish or suffer which matters, is appropriate, as regards right and wrong and oughts.
Mattering, interests, a stake in the state of affairs - that's the territory morality operates in, the appropriate way to think about it. This stake in what happens to you is what what bridges the Is-Ought divide. And without qualiative conscious experience, it doesn't exist.

Pretty much, yes, but I think you're not quite hitting the nail on the head. The crucial point is that it's not simply consciousness, but the pleasantness and unpleasantness of their experiences, that gives conscious beings their stake in the state of affairs, and that, therefore, is the place where the Is-Ought divide is crossed.

This might not be a perfect fit with reason, logic and objectivity, it's not observable and quantifiable, because experiencing subjects aren't like billiard balls colliding. But it's not just opinion or consensus either. Morality has to be addressed on its own terms.

I think I'm doing reasonably well addressing it on the same terms as any other philosophical question, using evidence and reasoned argument.

I don't know why some people find that so hard to grasp, when nearly everybody acts in ways which show they really do understand it at some level, even if they don't articulate it or think it through this way.

Is there such a thing as an understanding that can't be articulated? Aren't you really just pointing to the fact that people have learned certain opinions and behaviours and you agree with some of them?

The pain-pleasure dichotomy puts it in sharp focus as you say, though of course life is more complicated than that, as is conscious experience. Well-being and suffering can manifest in myriad, sometimes idiosyncratic ways.

They can, but I don't think that alters the fact that it's their pleasantness and unpleasantness that counts morally, not their individual idiosyncrasies.

[CIN]

I'm glad you accept that all creatures consider pain a negative experience. I agree. I can see only three ways of explaining this: either all animals are suffering from a kind of universal subjective delusion, a belief that pain is a negative experience when in fact it is not; this seems unlikely, because it looks very unlikely that many animal species would actually be capable of having such a belief. Or, without actually holding any beliefs, animals are nevertheless universally reacting negatively to something that is not in fact negative (but why would they do this?). Or pain actually is a negative experience, i.e. this negativity is an intrinsic property of pain. I take this third view, as it seems to offer the most straightforward explanation of the way animals (including ourselves) behave. The important point to note about this is that 'negative' is a value term. If we accept that pain is intrinsically negative, then we have bridged the supposed gap between fact and value. We have a natural fact, that animals feel pain, which is also an evaluative fact, that animals feel something that is intrinsically negative. It's because I think pain bridges the supposed fact-value gap in this way that I am an ethical naturalist.

But you are right, of course, in saying that this does not in itself deliver objective morality. To get there takes a bit more work.

What does 'bad' actually mean? I think we need a plausible theory about this, because without one, we don't really know what we're talking about. My own theory is that 'good' and 'bad' are used to attribute properties of goodness and badness (i.e. they're not just approving or disapproving noises), and that these properties are, respectively, the properties of meriting a positive attitude and meriting a negative attitude. 'Pain is bad' means 'pain merits a negative attitude', and pain does indeed merit a negative attitude, the reason being that, as you've already said, pain is a negative experience. The specific negative attitude may be different depending on whose attitude it is and in what relation they stand to the pain. So, for example, my dog's negative attitude to his pain may be to try and escape from it, while someone else's negative attitude may be to feel an empathic dislike for the pain and a corresponding empathic pity for the dog.

Now, if an action causes a negative experience such as pain, then since the consequence of the action merits a negative attitude, it seems reasonable to infer that the action itself, insofar as it causes a negative result, must itself also merit a negative attitude. This attitude again may be different depending on the relation of the individual to the action: for example, if I am the cause of my dog's pain because I am beating my dog, my dog's negative attitude to my action may be to run away from me, while someone else's negative attitude may be to feel and express disapproval of my action.

I wonder if 'pain' is not so complicated as this? I read, years ago, that pain just alerts us to the fact that we are injured or damaged, and that we need to tend the wound, or otherwise take care of it, to prevent infection, etc. So, since pain indicates injury, and this impacts on our survival, it is a negative experience. After all, if we enjoyed pain, we wouldn't survive as well as if we try to avoid/minimise it.

I'm not sure we're disagreeing. I think it's the negativity of pain - its unpleasantness - that makes us withdraw from or avoid the thing that caused it. What then happens is that animals that experience pain when they injure themselves avoid the source of the injury, while those that don't, don't. The former are more likely to survive than the latter, and so the genes that make animals feel pain when injured are passed on and spread through the population. Does that fit with what you were saying?

And then, since my action in giving pain to the dog merits a negative response, by my theory of what 'bad' means, not only is the pain bad, but my action is also bad (and throughout all of this we don't need the scare quotes round 'bad' that you put there). And it seems to me reasonable to say that if an action is bad, then that is a reason, other things being equal, why we ought not to perform it. And there is your objective morality.

That's my theory. I'd be interested to know what you think.

You say that we should not perform bad actions, but how does that impact with the pain (?) we inflict when we kill other creatures for food? This embraces all the other carnivorous creatures too, of course. Is a cat bad for killing mice? I can see no "objectivity" emerging from this train of thought?

Well, I'm afraid you're talking to a vegetarian! I gave up eating meat over 40 years ago precisely because I decided it was wrong to deprive a happy animal of its happy life. As for the cat, it doesn't know any better, so unlike a human being, you can't hold it morally to account. Does that answer your point?

[CIN]

They're features of the natural world. As Gertie has already said, morality comes along with consciousness. Specifically, it comes along with pleasure and pain. Pain is an evil, as anyone who has had severe pain knows. To knowingly and deliberately create an evil is morally wrong. So once you have pain, and beings capable of deliberately causing it, you have the moral truth that deliberately causing pain without good reason is wrong.

The problem is that in this picture, there is always an organism in pain. But what if we remove all parts of the organism except the pain? Can that remaining pain in itself, be called a moral feature of the natural world? I don't think so. For there to be eternal moral truths more would be needed.

Do you mean actually remove all parts of the organism except the pain? How could you have a pain without there being something that is experiencing the pain? I don't think that is possible.

Or do you mean conceptually remove all parts of the organism except the pain, i.e. think about the question while only considering the pain and not also the organism experiencing it? I think that would be an error. Pain in itself is not morally significant, it's the beings who experience the pain who are morally significant, i.e. who matter from a moral perspective.

Actually remove all the other parts. I think the pain would still remain, just as I think the quale of red would remain if we removed everything else around it.

I don't accept that qualia can have a real existence, so I don't accept that such a thing is possible. A quale is 'a property (such as redness) considered apart from things having the property' (Merriam-Webster). The fact that we can consider a property apart from the things that have it does not mean that the property can have real existence.

But without an organism to be in pain, the pain in itelf is just another quale that means nothing.

Again, I don't accept that this is possible.

It's just the quale of inherent bad, but it's not bad for anyone becuse there's no organism. That's why I don't think that the natural world has any moral features.

If bad could indeed exist independently of organisms then there might be some merit in the idea that there was no morality involved, because morality only enters into things when there are sentient beings; but in fact it is not possible.

Unless we want to say that the inherent bad in itself, is a moral feature. But then the natural world also has a redness feature. And a yellow feature. And a bitter feature. And a million other features humans can name.

I do want to say that badness is a moral feature of the world. How does that make it impossible for there to be eternal moral truths? Twoness and fourness are frequently features of the world, because you can have objects grouped in twos and fours; and two plus two is four is an eternal truth. How then does badness being a feature of the world prevent there being moral truths that involve badness?

[CIN]

Thus while two individuals can express two different opinions on the shape, that shape has an objectively correct answer, the two opinions notwithstanding.

OTOH, I am unaware of an objective method to determine which of two individual's opinions on "objective" moral truths is correct (if either). Though I await your elucidation.

If two people express different opinions on the height of a mountain, then the way you find out which one is closest to being right is to get a whole lot of other people to measure the height of the mountain, and take some sort of average of their answers as being a good estimate. In other words, consensus.

And in practice if the level of disagreement between them is small then you chalk it up to measurement imprecision. And if the level of disagreement is large enough, you begin to suspect that they went out and measured different mountains.

Nobody doubts that the height of a mountain is an objective fact. But consensus plays a role in how we know that fact. And if there's enough lack of consensus, we should admit that we don't know.

So, by analogy, to the extent that there is consensus on morality, that points to people perceiving the same thing, but imprecisely.

And to the extent that there is major lack of consensus, that points to absence of knowledge.

And while absence of knowledge is not knowledge of absence, the possibility of a perfect moral code undiscoverable by humans seems like one of those philosophical dead-ends. Like solipsism. You know - ideas that can't be disproven but aren't really worth your attention because nothing constructive can come of them.

So I maintain that consensus is a valid indicator that falls short of proof.

I don't disagree that folks do exactly what you describe. Though that doesn't meet my definition of objective. CIN perhaps can come up with an actual objective technique. Let's see.

CIN is flattered that you think he can do such a thing. Sadly, he can't. We do not have access to objective truth. We only have our own subjective ideas about what that truth is, and beyond that, as Good Egg rightly observes, consensus. I don't quite like the word 'valid' in his statement that 'consensus is a valid indicator that falls short of proof', because how are you to check this validity? I think it's more that this is the best we can hope for.

Actually it's a bit worse than this. Proofs are, in any case, only feasible in maths and logic, not in empirical investigation. The question whether there are objective moral truths is an empirical one, like the question 'where did man come from?' The old answer was 'he was created by the gods'. Then Darwin came up with a better theory - man evolved from earlier organisms. It was better because it fitted the evidence better. That's what we should be looking for in morality - a theory that's the best explanation we can come up with for why we think we shouldn't do certain things but we think it's okay to do other things.

I think my theory may form part of that best theory. My theory explains why we think it's bad to torture (it's because torture causes pain, and pain is bad, and bad means 'merits a negative attitude', and pain does indeed merit such an attitude). It explains why we think murder is wrong (it's because pleasure is a good, meaning it merits a positive attitude, and murder is the deliberate ending of something that is good, and that must be a bad thing to do). Subjectivists are fond of pointing to the differences in moral opinions in history and around the world, but I think they may have overlooked the similarities. Most cultures disapprove of murder. Most cultures, I believe, disapprove of deliberate torture; at any rate they seem to very rarely practise it. Where do these ideas come from? Maybe they come from a widespread recognition that pleasant experience is good and unpleasant experience is bad.

[CIN]

The view I'm arguing for is what you might call naive realism.

I'm not keen on naive realism as a theory of perception, because it seems to me to be an opting out from trying to explain rather than an attempt at explanation. I feel the same about naive realism as a theory of ethics.

I'm not yet convinced by an ethic that takes suffering as fundamental. Three reasons:

One is the point about not taking life not being reducible to minimising pain.

It could be about minimising pain in the case of bereaved relatives, but obviously that doesn't apply to the person who is killed. In their case, I think it's reducible to the harm of erasing pleasant experience. Since pleasant experience is a good, the premature termination of pleasant experience must, other things being equal, be an evil. So I think taking life is a secondary or instrumental evil, the primary or intrinsic evil being the ending of pleasant experience. Conversely, if an animal's life is mostly painful, we're doing a good thing by killing it, which of course everyone recognises in the case of pets.

One is that I suspect it may be morally bad to destroy a work of art, irrespective of whether anyone who's alive today likes it. Art or beauty may have an innate value that is not reducible to minimising pain.

I suppose this is naive realism in the context of aesthetics. Again I reject it because it seems unexplanatory. I also find it hard to believe that mere physical objects can have properties that are undetectable by scientific instruments, particularly when the explanation that the experience of beauty is something that goes on in our minds when we look at them seems perfectly adequate.

And one concerns rights of property. I see a moral difference between me eating your goldfish and me eating my own goldfish. Which isn't reducible to your level of emotional attachment to it.

I think I do you wrong if I take your goldfish without your consent (whether for culinary or other purposes), even if you're (unknown to me) fed up with it and planning to get rid of it. And conversely, that I do you no wrong if I eat my own goldfish, even if you'll really miss seeing it when you walk past my window each day.

But again, where is the explanation for why you feel like this? A theory which can explain why you hold this view must surely, other things being equal, be preferable to one that can't. My explanation would be that society has created property rights because life is more orderly and peaceful, and therefore generally pleasant, with them than without them; so the explanation again comes down to pleasantness and unpleasantness. Do you have an explanation that doesn't boil down to these two things?

[Atla]

Actually remove all the other parts. I think the pain would still remain, just as I think the quale of red would remain if we removed everything else around it.

I don't accept that qualia can have a real existence, so I don't accept that such a thing is possible. A quale is 'a property (such as redness) considered apart from things having the property' (Merriam-Webster). The fact that we can consider a property apart from the things that have it does not mean that the property can have real existence.

But without an organism to be in pain, the pain in itelf is just another quale that means nothing.

Again, I don't accept that this is possible.

Qualia don't necessarily have independent existence from other things, we just considered them apart from those things in order to talk about them. Like the redness of a red apple. I'd say qualia may be seen as independent, when we remove every other part of those things, like remove every part of the apple except redness.

It's just the quale of inherent bad, but it's not bad for anyone becuse there's no organism. That's why I don't think that the natural world has any moral features.

If bad could indeed exist independently of organisms then there might be some merit in the idea that there was no morality involved, because morality only enters into things when there are sentient beings; but in fact it is not possible.

I'd say sentient beings aren't a fundamental feature of reality, so again that would mean that morality isn't a fundamental feature.

Unless we want to say that the inherent bad in itself, is a moral feature. But then the natural world also has a redness feature. And a yellow feature. And a bitter feature. And a million other features humans can name.

I do want to say that badness is a moral feature of the world. How does that make it impossible for there to be eternal moral truths? Twoness and fourness are frequently features of the world, because you can have objects grouped in twos and fours; and two plus two is four is an eternal truth. How then does badness being a feature of the world prevent there being moral truths that involve badness?

Twoness and fourness are not objective features of the world, numbers don't exist in nature. Mathemathics is a human-made map and the world is the territory. You decide where objects begin and end.

[Good_Egg]

...the explanation again comes down to pleasantness and unpleasantness. Do you have an explanation that doesn't boil down to these two things?

What sort of ethic do you get from "explaining" morality as no more than increasing positive experiences and reducing negative experiences ?

One in which it is moral to painlessly kill an old person without family and use their organs to save the life of a younger person with family ? Because that increases the total of human positive experience ?

One in which rape of a virgin is justified by the belief that she'll be glad of it in the long term because the total of positive experience in her life will be increased ?

One in which joyriding in someone else's car is morally good if you return it to them before they've missed it, because the total of positive experience is thereby increased ?

Arguably any of those examples is indeed moral if and only if the victim consents.

So what makes them evil is presuming upon such consent.

So what's wrong with your explanation is the omission of free will.

Not sure whether you're asserting that we can dispense with seeking consent because it's possible to know what people will choose, or because it's possible to say what they should choose.

But morality doesn't boil down quite as far as you suggest.

In the view of this egg...

[Gertie]

CIN

Gertie wrote: ↑Yesterday, 9:40 am I find the objective vs subjective debate re morality a stale and pointless red herring. It can be argued this way and that relying on definitions trying to make it fit.

A definition may be a recognition of a fact. The definition of gravity is 'the force that attracts a body towards the centre of the earth, or towards any other physical body having mass.' That's a recognition of a fact, not something arbitrary. The definitions of subjectivism and objectivism are also recognitions of facts. Of course, some definitions come closer to the facts than others, but a definition such as this is a recognition of a fact:
'Ethical subjectivism or moral non-objectivism is the meta-ethical view which claims that: Ethical sentences express propositions. Some such propositions are true. The truth or falsity of such propositions is ineliminably dependent on the attitudes of people.' (Wikipedia)

If you find the debate stale and pointless, perhaps what that really indicates is that you're more interested in normative ethics than meta-ethics. Nothing wrong with that, but if so, that's a fact about you, not about the objective/subjective debate.

My approach is that philosophy ought to think about morality in the appropriate terms. The starting place is how do we derive Oughts from the inter-subjectively falsifiable facts of the world we call 'objective'. Those facts are generally established inter-subjectively through observation and measurement. I point and say there's a red apple over there. Everybody else who looks agrees. We also agree that apples always fall downwards, according to specific, lawlike equationss which can be checked, and we agree gravity exists. Conscious experience isn't observable and measurable in that way, and neither are the concepts of right and wrong. And deriving an ought from an is isn't observable or measurable or falsifiable in that way either. It's simply not the appropriate way to think about morality. You might be able to come up with some form of words where morality can be defined as objective, but morality is still all about the nature of being an experiencing Subject. About meaning, mattering, value, purpose, needs and desires, feelings, flourishing and suffering.


But as I said, that doesn't make morality just a matter of subjective opinion either. Rather it means we need to give the existence of subjective experience its proper due when thinking about morality. In terms of interests in the state of affairs. That's the reason it matters how we treat each other. Hence Oughts.

Gertie wrote: ↑Yesterday, 9:40 amWho cares, the point is that it's the capacity of conscious beings to flourish or suffer which matters, is appropriate, as regards right and wrong and oughts.
Mattering, interests, a stake in the state of affairs - that's the territory morality operates in, the appropriate way to think about it. This stake in what happens to you is what what bridges the Is-Ought divide. And without qualiative conscious experience, it doesn't exist.

Pretty much, yes, but I think you're not quite hitting the nail on the head. The crucial point is that it's not simply consciousness, but the pleasantness and unpleasantness of their experiences, that gives conscious beings their stake in the state of affairs, and that, therefore, is the place where the Is-Ought divide is crossed.

Right. But wellbeing doesn't boil down to only pain-pleasure.

Gertie wrote: ↑Yesterday, 9:40 am This might not be a perfect fit with reason, logic and objectivity, it's not observable and quantifiable, because experiencing subjects aren't like billiard balls colliding. But it's not just opinion or consensus either. Morality has to be addressed on its own terms.

I think I'm doing reasonably well addressing it on the same terms as any other philosophical question, using evidence and reasoned argument.

OK. I don't always read the posts which aren't addressed to me. So what line of argument gets a moral foundation based on subjective experience to be considered objective, in that you can point it out and every reasonable person will agree, like when I point to an apple every observer will agree there's an apple? And why not just say this is the appropriate way to think about morality, rather than try to force it into the apple box?

Gertie wrote: ↑Yesterday, 9:40 am I don't know why some people find that so hard to grasp, when nearly everybody acts in ways which show they really do understand it at some level, even if they don't articulate it or think it through this way.

Is there such a thing as an understanding that can't be articulated? Aren't you really just pointing to the fact that people have learned certain opinions and behaviours and you agree with some of them?

No. I'm saying most people generally behave in a way which suggests they understand that hurting conscious beings unnecessarily is wrong. Other people at least. We get it, we know what makes us feel good or bad and generally feel it's right to be kind, and wrong to be cruel. Where-as few people have such qualms about toasters or daffodils or rocks. They might not articulate it in terms of 'the qualiative nature of conscious experience grounds Oughts', but they get it. You can even ask a self-proclaimed moral subjectivist if they act as if being kind is good and being cruel bad in their own lives, and unless they're a sociopath they'll probably try to live their lives according to the foundation you and I roughly agree on. Again re other humans at least.

Gertie wrote: ↑Yesterday, 9:40 am The pain-pleasure dichotomy puts it in sharp focus as you say, though of course life is more complicated than that, as is conscious experience. Well-being and suffering can manifest in myriad, sometimes idiosyncratic ways.

They can, but I don't think that alters the fact that it's their pleasantness and unpleasantness that counts morally, not their individual idiosyncrasies.

As I said, wellbeing and suffering can manifest in lots of different ways, aside from pain-pleasure. Often overall wellbeing depends on some suffering. Wellbeing can mean different things for different people, at different times (and differ radically for different species). This means individual freedom has to be a moral consideration too. It's right for people to pursue their own harmless goals and desires, just as it's right for people to play a role in the common good. And sometimes the two will conflict which creates a moral dilemma.

[CIN]

Actually remove all the other parts. I think the pain would still remain, just as I think the quale of red would remain if we removed everything else around it.

I don't accept that qualia can have a real existence, so I don't accept that such a thing is possible. A quale is 'a property (such as redness) considered apart from things having the property' (Merriam-Webster). The fact that we can consider a property apart from the things that have it does not mean that the property can have real existence.

But without an organism to be in pain, the pain in itelf is just another quale that means nothing.

Again, I don't accept that this is possible.

Qualia don't necessarily have independent existence from other things, we just considered them apart from those things in order to talk about them. Like the redness of a red apple. I'd say qualia may be seen as independent, when we remove every other part of those things, like remove every part of the apple except redness.

I think you are contradicting yourself. In one breath you say 'Actually remove all the other parts', and in the next you say 'Qualia don't necessarily have independent existence from other things, we just considered them apart from those things in order to talk about them,' which means that you have not actually removed the other parts, you have merely considered them removed. You also say 'Qualia don't necessarily have independent existence', and then you say 'qualia may be seen as independent': what does the second 'independent ' mean if it doesn't mean independent existence?

I'd say sentient beings aren't a fundamental feature of reality, so again that would mean that morality isn't a fundamental feature..

I'd say that sentience is a fundamental feature, which is why morality is also a fundamental feature.

Twoness and fourness are not objective features of the world, numbers don't exist in nature. Mathemathics is a human-made map and the world is the territory. You decide where objects begin and end.

Twoness is 'the quality or state of being two : duality' (Merriam-Webster) The number 2 does not have duality, duality is the property of two objects occurring together. The electrons in a helium atom possess twoness, and their being all of and the only electrons in a helium atom is an objective feature of the world, not a human invention. Nor is it true that mathematics is a human-made map, it's the recognition of objective features of the world. The fact that a triangle has three sides and not four or two is part of mathematics, and is an objective feature of the world.

[Atla]

I think you are contradicting yourself. In one breath you say 'Actually remove all the other parts', and in the next you say 'Qualia don't necessarily have independent existence from other things, we just considered them apart from those things in order to talk about them,' which means that you have not actually removed the other parts, you have merely considered them removed. You also say 'Qualia don't necessarily have independent existence', and then you say 'qualia may be seen as independent': what does the second 'independent ' mean if it doesn't mean independent existence?

Guess my first sentence was an absolute statement and the second one a relative statement. Nothing is every truly independent, but we can regard things as independent for practical purpose.
I'm not sure what you're saying. Why can't redness be considered apart from things, when redness is simply there, in our direct experience? How can sentience be fundamental, when it's a complex thing only known to be associated with complex nervous systems? Or what do you mean by sentience?

Twoness is 'the quality or state of being two : duality' (Merriam-Webster) The number 2 does not have duality, duality is the property of two objects occurring together. The electrons in a helium atom possess twoness, and their being all of and the only electrons in a helium atom is an objective feature of the world, not a human invention. Nor is it true that mathematics is a human-made map, it's the recognition of objective features of the world. The fact that a triangle has three sides and not four or two is part of mathematics, and is an objective feature of the world.

Numbers and triangles don't exist in reality. It's simply the most useful approach to ascribe numbers to reality, like assigning the number 2 to Helium atom electrons. Whether we consider an electron to be one object, or infinitely many, or all the electrons in the universe to be one object, or the entire Helium atom to be one object, or the entire universe to be one object etc. depends more on our map. But it's most useful to consider there to be 2 electrons in He where they are different objects.