99Percent

Agreed.

As you can clearly see, science is not philosophy. Science is a tool for gaining knowledge, an epistemological tool that falls under philosophical considerations. Mathematics rely on symbolic interpretations. These symbols cannot and never will express any implicit morality.Well, cultism is another matter entirely. It denies reason itself, reason that by definition always reserves a healthy degree of skepticism.Again you need to reconsider in the philosophical sense just what science is. Science cannot and will never tell you what good and bad is. That falls under the dominion of philosophy as a I have told you again and again yet you refuse to understand this. And no, no mathematician has explored the morality of his logical equations. It would in fact be contrary to his mathematical principles to do so. Typical of you. You keep distorting my arguments to fit your own definitions of circularity instead of making an honest and reasoned approach and discuss just exactly what might be wrong with them.

Gurdur

Wrong.

For a start, a potential is not a realization.
Secondly, you are merely issuing an unsupported proclamation; again you miss out on a possible option, that "is" and "can be" and "ought" can all be subsets of a greater set, rather than being subsets of "is".

Also, I'm interested why you make no reference at all to the work of others; Quine and Putnam especially.

Gurdur

Ah, personal attacks.
Since I myself have made a honest and well-reasoned approach to discussing what is wrong with your arguments, possibly you might deign to answer me ?

tk

I was right: mathematicians have studied the logic of morals before. Here's a nice reference on Deontic Logic.

Now if you can just show everyone at exactly which points your arguments were distorted, and how... or are you just going to keep insisting vacuously that I'm making strawmen of your arguments?

In an age where even the laws of logic have been formalized into mathematical notations, I find it surprising that people still insist that science can never be used for the exploration of philosophy.

And you just successfully made another circular argument. Science is not philosophy, because science is a strict subset of philosophy, because science can never answer questions about morality, because science is not philosophy.

This shows just how little you know about cultism. Read the 4th last paragraph of the Xenu Leaflet ("Well so do we. ..."). "Reason", "common sense" and "good judgement" are exactly what cults leverage. Cults keep playing on your "common sense" to a point where you start taking on beliefs which other people will consider nonsensical.

Also, try to read the first few chapters of the Neo-Tech Advantages, including the part in Chapter 1 where it specifically exhorts you to "Do your own thinking; make your own judgements". Next, jump directly to the last chapter. Then you'll know why people willingly buy lots of useless Neo-Tech literature and give lots of money to Wallace Ward.

I wasn't talking about morality of equations, but rather equations of morality.

Alonzo Fyfe

No, it is not. But it is still within the realm of science, and thus it still falls in category 3.


Funny, I have distinct memories of mentioning Ayn Rand, Hume, and Aristotle so far.

As for others, I haven't gotten there yet.

It appears to me that you are working under the assumption that anybody who talks about a science of value must be talking about intrinsic or absolute value. Thus, you are taking your objections to intrinsic value and applying them to the science of value.

I do not believe in intrinsic or absolute values. But I do not take the view that science is limited only to the study of these types of properties. For example, we have a science of color, even though color is not an intrinsic property.

My main point remains, whatever we use 'ought' statement to refer to, they must be something capable of influencing the movement of physical matter -- namely, the physical matter that makes up the human body and the type of movement that we call 'action'.

If 'ought' refers to something that cannot influence the movement of matter in the real world, it is quite useless and should be eliminated.

Leaving only the question, 'What types of things can influence the movement of matter in the real world?'

Alonzo Fyfe

Anybody interested in reading the essay at the start of this thread in context, that contect can be found here.

Ethics Without God: A Personal Journey, Part III

Alonzo Fyfe

Actually, I am dealing with man as a thing of flesh and blood in the real world.

And I hold that there is no justification for simply defining the term 'man' as something that entails a value judgment.

Now, it is quite legitimate to simply stipulate, 'when I use the term 'man' I use the term in such a way that it infers a value judgment'.

And it is also quite legitimate to say 'when I use the term 'man' I use it to refer to these things in the real world.'

But it is not legitimate to do both at the same time -- to simply stipulate that a thing in the real world has a particular property.

If it was legitimate, then we could simply stipulate that "God exists, because when I use the term God I am dealing with a concept that automatically entails existence."

The Ontological Fallacy

Alonzo Fyfe

In graduate school, I studied under Patricia Greenspan, who has written heavily in the field of deontic logic. And I even have a footnote in a few of her books where I offered alternatives to some of her views.

Unfortunately, I think that deontic logic -- or, most of what was going on in the field of deontic logic at the time, could not make sense independent of some sort of metaphysical dualism about values. I saw too many principles where I thought, "Yes, if we accept metaphysical dualism about values, that makes sense. But, abandon dualism, and that principle falls apart."

And since I am not an is-ought dualist (ought must either be reducible to is or eliminated or -- what is most likely -- a little of both), I had serious problems with the work being done in that field. I fear it is only going to produce ought-conclusions that would be valid if is-ought dualism were real, ought-conclusions that have no place in the real world, yet conclusions that too many people are going to try to use in real-world situations, making us all worse off than we would have been.

More on that issue to come.

99Percent

tk: I hate to hijack Alonzo's thread so I will just deal with you here once. Yes, but here they don't discuss morality (ie what is good or bad). They describe them and then make logical formulations from then.How about this:You are inventing a circularity I didn't make: That man is conscious because he is moral being. Or this:There is no circularity here. Unless you want to claim that saying A=A is a circular reference ("A is A because if A is not A then A is not A").Or this:Which is the same. You are trying to make a parody of my arguments instead of attacking their logic.You have NO idea. And please reread what I said about reason:If you don't have reason to gain knowledge including moral knowledge, then what can you have? A God?

99Percent

Alonzo Fyfe: But that is not valid. You must deal as man as concept in a meaningful way. There are other beings that are things of flesh and blood in the real world that are not human.And what I am claiming is that any concept automatically entails a value judgement, because it has to be meaningful.Yes on the former statement but false on the latter statement, because if you say that man are flesh and blood then when you say these men in the real world, you might be reffering to all the mammals of the world too.No because God as concept is meaningless as it is a logical impossibility. For example there can be no "ought" for God because God has contradicting definitions. But man as concept has a meaning. When someone tells you that in such island there lives man, you can immediately assume some things about how the island is populated - it contains houses, families, society, language, there are expressions of art and culture, etc. However if someone says that there is God living in that island you have no clue as to what that could really mean in reality.