yguy

It is, in the same way that every calculation about the flight of a projectile is different, but the underlying principles are the same.

For instance, if a financially destitute woman prostitutes herself to feed her child, she can hardly be justly condemned for that.

You are trying to fit the idea into a container which will not accept it.

J: How would the world be different if all aesthetic differences were totally objective, or if all aesthetic differences were a matter of personal taste?

y: If we drew such distinctions on an objective rather than an egotistical basis, we'd have Heaven on Earth, I believe.

Yes, he could. Being different from others, he would be more predisposed to see certain aspects of beauty than others.

Maybe not, but the disagreement would be of no consequence.

Making a mistake doesn't necessarily mean a judgment has been made. If I say today is Tuesday it may be merely a mistake. OTOH, if I make the pronouncement that the Gregorian calendar is faulty in such a way that an extra day has been added, therefore today is actually Tuesday, I've made a judgment.

Because they are blind men touching different parts of the elephant.

Because most people don't need to know answers to mathematical questions. Most of the time, they don't need to know answers to moral questions either; it is only in the moment of temptation that they need to know.

Not sometimes. All times. How could it possibly do otherwise?

Technically yes, but perhaps none would ever fully comprehend it, having no particular need for such information.

Yes, but that doesn't mean that truth would be apparent to many or few sentient beings.

Your questions are mostly theoretical, and I'm telling you what I think. That's all.

Correct.

Sure you can. It's done all the time - but for what purpose?

You're kidding, right?

Yes.

I imagine He would. It's just that we don't need to know all that stuff.

Let's just say I don't see any meaning in it.

You might as well ask if He created Himself. He is not a creation.

Obviously. The trick would be knowing which codified laws coincide with preexisting truths and which are corruptions of such truths, or merely contrivances.

Jesse

Jesse
If an aesthetic judgement can be both "objectively true" but also depend on your "point of reference", would the same be true of a moral judgement. Is it possible that "action X is morally wrong" could be objectively true for me but not for you? To me, it seems like the very definition of the word "objective" should mean the truth should be the same for everyone.

yguy:
It is, in the same way that every calculation about the flight of a projectile is different, but the underlying principles are the same.

For instance, if a financially destitute woman prostitutes herself to feed her child, she can hardly be justly condemned for that.

You're confusing different issues here. It's true that if all moral questions had objectively true answers, that wouldn't mean that morality could be codified into some simple set of universally-valid principles, like "prostitution is wrong." But for every specific scenario, there should be a single right answer. For that specific woman, becoming a prostitute is either the right choice or the wrong one--if some observers could say "she made the right choice" while others could say "she made the wrong choice", and both were equally correct, then that would mean morality is not really objective.

Similarly, for any specific problem involving a flying projectile, there is a single right answer to questions like "where will it land" and so forth. And in the same way, even if questions of beauty couldn't be codified into a simple set of principles like "blondes are more beautiful than brunettes", it seems to me that for any specific aesthetic comparison (Nicole Kidman vs. Molly Yard) there should be a single right answer to the question of which is more beautiful. If you say, "well, the truth for me is that Nicole Kidman is more beautiful, but the truth for Molly Yard's husband is that she's more beautiful", then it's pretty clear to me that this aesthetic question has no objective right answer, just as the moral question of whether Sue the destitute mother was right to become a prostitute would have no objective right answer if the truth could be different for me than it was for you (assuming that neither you nor me is simply making a mistake about what the objective right answer really is).

Do you disagree? Do you think moral questions about specific scenarios could have different "objectively true" answers depending on your point of view?

Jesse:
How would the world be different if all aesthetic differences were totally objective, or if all aesthetic differences were a matter of personal taste?

yguy:
If we drew such distinctions on an objective rather than an egotistical basis, we'd have Heaven on Earth, I believe.

I wasn't asking what the world would be like if we could recognize objective truths about aesthetic issues without fail. I was asking what the world would be like if there was a single objective truth about every aesthetic question whatsoever (including, say, Dickens vs. Herbert), regardless of whether people were always capable of recognizing this truth. Likewise, my second question was about what the world would be like if there were no objective truths in aesthetics at all, just like you apparently think there are no objective truths about which of two animals (kittens vs. worms, say) is "really" cuter.

Jesse:
Would an egoless human and an egoless alien agree on which is more beautiful, a human female or an alien female?

yguy:
Maybe not, but the disagreement would be of no consequence.

Would it also be of no consequence if egoless person A thought Sue the destitute mother was wrong to become a prostitute, while egoless person B thought she was right to do so? Remember, they are dealing with the exact same person in the exact same situation, and let's assume they know all the same information about her. If there is disagreement about specific moral choices, doesn't that necessarily mean either 1) there is no objectively right answer or 2) one of the two people is objectively wrong?

Jesse:
Do you think an egoless person would also always know the right answer to a mathematical question at the moment it was presented to him? If not, how can you be so sure that an egoless person would always know the right moral decision?

yguy:
Because most people don't need to know answers to mathematical questions. Most of the time, they don't need to know answers to moral questions either; it is only in the moment of temptation that they need to know.

Let's say they really do need to know the answer. Maybe a mad mathematician is saying "tell me whether Fermat's last theorem is true or false in the next hour or I'll kill a bunch of innocent people". Would the person's lack of ego insure he'd just "see" the right answer, even with no knowledge of the relevant areas of mathematics?

Jesse:
You're making a huge leap here, from "ego sometimes interferes with being able to see the best answer to a moral question"

yguy:
Not sometimes. All times. How could it possibly do otherwise?

Still a huge leap. Being unconscious will at all times interfere with your ability to ace a difficult test, but it doesn't follow that anyone who is not unconscious will automatically get 100%.

Jesse:
So you agree that any aesthetic truth which is really "objective" must be true for all egoless sentient beings in the universe?

yguy:
Technically yes, but perhaps none would ever fully comprehend it, having no particular need for such information.

Doesn't matter, as long as the "truth is out there." Presumably you'd say God would know it, at least. But it follows, for example, that there would be only a single right answer about whether the alien or the human was more beautiful, or about whether one of a pair of human faces was more beautiful.

Jesse:
Is there an objective truth about whether a human would be more beautiful than an alien, when it is in the genes of all humans to find the human more beautiful and in the genes of all the alien's species to find the alien more beautiful?

yguy:
Yes, but that doesn't mean that truth would be apparent to many or few sentient beings.

You're hung up on epistemology, what people would know, but I don't care about that, I'm only interested in what really is the truth of the matter. If there's only a single right answer, it follows that either the humans who think the human is more beautiful or the aliens who think the alien is more beautiful are objectively wrong while the other group is objectively right, whether or not this would be "apparent" to anyone but God.

Jesse:
Just get someone with perfect insight into aesthetic truth--whether an egoless person, an angel, God, whoever--to tell you, for every possible pair of people, which one is more beautiful, or if they're equally beautiful. Then, assuming objective beauty is commutative (ie if A is more beautiful than B, and B is more beautiful than C, then A is more beautiful then C) then all humans can be placed into groups of "equally beautiful" people, and the groups can be ordered according to beauty (the group that includes the people or person who have no one more beautiful than them can be given the beauty rating 1, the group that is less beautiful than group 1 but more beautiful than all other groups can be given the beauty rating 2, etc., all the way down to the ugliest group).

yguy:
You're kidding, right?

Of course I think this is absurd, but then I think the idea of objective truth in the aesthetic realm is absurd too. I'm just showing you a logical consequence of the idea that there is a single objective truth about which of any pair of people is more beautiful (or if they're equally beautiful). Regardless of whether anyone but God would actually know this truth and be able to group people like this, a logical consequence of your idea that beauty is objective is that such a grouping would be possible for someone (God?) who has perfect knowledge of this objective truth. If you think the conclusion is silly, perhaps you should reexamine your premises.

Jesse:
So if someone said, "God had no choice in making the earth round, it would not have been within His power to have made the earth flat" you would not say this statement is wrong, just that it's meaningless?

yguy:
Yes.

It seems you have changed your position then:

Jesse:
Even God wouldn't have a definite answer to the question of whether it's true, any more than He would for some other meaningless statement like "green ideas sleep furiously?"

yguy:
I imagine He would. It's just that we don't need to know all that stuff.

If a question has a definite answer it's not "meaningless", even if no one besides God "needs to know it." Again, I don't care about epistemology, just what's really true.

Jesse:
So it's not in God's nature to contradict them, even though you think it's possible that He might have the power to contradict them? Well, where did God's nature come from? Did He create it Himself?

yguy:
You might as well ask if He created Himself. He is not a creation.

So then God had no choice in the matter of what his nature was like? If it is in God's nature not to violate certain rules of morality, logic, etc., that would imply He didn't really create those rules any more than we did, and that these rules were "preexisting truths" as you put it below.

Jesse:
I think your statement that the laws of logic were "codified by humans" is a little unclear--it's not as if the laws of logic themselves were created by humans, even though humans wrote them down at some point. If you accept that the human mind is structured in such a way that we have some kind of a priori insight into preexisting moral truths, can't the same be true of preexisting logical truths?

yguy:
Obviously. The trick would be knowing which codified laws coincide with preexisting truths and which are corruptions of such truths, or merely contrivances.

Fair enough, but isn't it reasonable to have a fairly high degree of confidence that basic logical rules like "an unambiguous statement cannot be simultaneously true and false" are preexisting truths rather than corruptions?

yguy

It's a bad comparison, because any man who would find Molly Yard attractive has a tenuous connection to reality, to say the least. If you make the choice between Kidman and Sandra Bullock, your argument holds up better, but I don't see how it changes anything. There is an objective truth about the beauty of each. Whether it can be quantified so as to call one more beautiful than the other I have no idea, nor do I care.

If I understand you correctly, no.

No.

Since I believe that is the case now, I would have to say it wouldn't be any different on that account.

In that case, Molly would be as attractive as Nicole would be as attractive as a blood-filled tick, I guess.

No, because neither of them would do anything consequential until they KNEW.

There is an objective right answer, but neither of the two may know it.

You are confusing need with want. No "egoless" person would even think of killing anybody for such an idiotic reason.

In this test, which is pass/fail, being conscious IS passing the test.

I can't imagine why. Do you even know yourself?

Fine. So what?

This is a technique I often use myself. The problem I have is that while one COULD draw such inferences, I don't see the value in them. I mean, I don't suppose there is any proposition that you could draw silly inferences from given the desire to do so, without regard to that proposition's validity. It's done on this board every day.

It may not be silly in the sense that it is false, but it certainly seems so in the sense that it is useless. What do you care whether or not God desires to or can make such categorizations? If you think He would be stupid to do so, why do you assume that He would just because He can?

The contradiction escapes me.

It's meaningless to anyone who doesn't need to know it.

I don't know.

No, they could easily be expressions of His nature, just as societal laws are expressions of the nature of the populace. Islamic society has laws which express a much greater contempt for women than ours do, for example.

To some degree, all codifications are corruptions - or at least they can be made so by the human mind. Anything believed dogmatically is suspect, whether it is the Bible or some philosophical axiom. If we place inordinate value in words, we tend to look for some rule that we can anchor ourselves to, forgetting that words are only words.

paul30

Quantum mechanics deals primarily with things on a very small scale.

It states that things are only STATISTICALLY likely to happen.

On the large scale it still applies, but the probablity is so large that no one ever sees exceptions. For example, it is statistically possible that I can walk through a wall without destroying myself or it, but the probability is vanishingly small.

The fact that we cannot predict outcomes with absolute certainty at the quantum level does not mean they are random; just that we cannot be sure in advance. Some have taken this as evidence for God; but I guess it depends on what you mean by God.

Kimpatsu

Quantum fluctuations are not evidence for god; they are evidenec of quantum fluctuations, nothing more. And to use "god" to mean something other than the anthropomorphic deity in the sky is a cop-out.

JGL53

I see quantum fluctuations as implying an infinite number of separate universes (within a multiverse), wherein everything that can happen must happen, making a god superfluous, i.e., cut out by Occam's Razor. Or even better yet, if time is an illusion, everything that can exist, must exist. See:

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?art...mber=1&catID=2

((I think I'll start a new thread on this topic.))