Longbow

"Don't cause needless suffering" is vague. So, liek I said, it is possibel to construe a lot of things from it. So is "treat everyone with respect". But, if you take these two statements at face value, then it is conceivable to treat someone with respect but to actively undermine their desired ends just because you don't like them (say). This would be "causing needless suffering". Also, you can treat people with respect but callously ignore their plight (such as not saving a drowning man when you could with little or no effort on your part). Generally, the two ideas are independent of each other. If you start with one as the "basis of morality" you usually end up at very different conclusions than the other.

If you restate these maxims into more formal and precise laws, it would seem likely that you would end up with two different and independent principles.

Longbow

No, you are changing the issue. The issue is "Do I mean that this art is objectively good," not "Is this art objectively good?" If you think the discussion becomes the latter, then I have already made my point because you have just conceded that I do mean to say that the art is objectively good. You are just sayign that that statement is false. I am not saying that every moral statement is true. I'm saying that every moral statement has propositional content, that is that it is true or false. Proving that something is a proposition is not supposed to automatically show that it is a true proposition by any means.

The point that I am making is not that one does not have the burden of proving the assertiosn they make. It is that they do not have the burden of proving that the assertions they make are, in fact, assertions in the first place. That, you can pretty much take for granted unless someone else proves that you aren't making any sense. So, there is no shifting going on -- you always would have had the burden of proving that the art is objectively good based on what you mean by "objectively good". And it is based on what you mean by it. And what you have to mean by it is at least partially based on the context it is stated in. So, it is possible to show that what you are saying turns out to be incoherent -- that something like "art" cannot be something like "objectively good", but you cannot just make up your own defintions of "art", "good", and "objective" to do this. You have to apply the principle of charity as I discussed in another post.

K

Longbow:

Once again you throw out the word physical and claim that I have asserted it. Why do magic or God have to be any more physical than morality?

You claimed that your demostration disproves that morality is relative, but you refuse to accept the same proof that beauty is not relative.

Your position seems to shift so much I'm not even sure what you are claiming anymore. Are you saying that there is an objective standard by which actions can be measured in order to determine if they are good or bad? That, as far as I have ever heard it phrased, is what one means by moral objectivity. If that's what you are claiming, then your claim falls apart as shown in the discussion above. If you are only claiming that objective morality means that humans can communicate words like "right" and "wrong", I'll definitely grant you that trivial point. However, calling that objective is the same as calling beauty, humor, and flying reindeer objective.

K

Longbow:

I'll lay out my argument and let you tear it apart. You've already agreed to the premises. You can point out what you don't like about the rest. We might be able to make some headway in this discussion if you'll lay out your argument for objective morality in a similar fashion.

Assertion:

A1. Human morals are derived through evolution.

Premises:

P1. All human behavior is derived through evolution.

P2. Humans labelling actions as moral or immoral is a human behavior.


1. All human labelling of actions as moral or immoral is derived through evolution (P1 and P2)

2. Humans labelling actions as moral or immoral is refered to as making moral evalutions of those actions (definition)

3. Human morals consist of actions and the moral evaluations of those actions. (definition)

4. Human morals are derived through evolution. (1, 2, 3)

K

Longbow:

Could you please provide an definition of SUBJECTIVE? How many OBJECTIVE things are based on what an INDIVIDUAL means?

[ October 26, 2002: Message edited by: K ]</p>

Kharakov

Sounds good, but it seems to me that you are throwing out a red herring by changing the subject of discussion from objective morality (objective good, beauty or whatever) to whether or not someone means what they mean, which is irrelevant as to whether or not there is an actual objective morality.

Our understanding of language is purely a subjective experience.

When someone makes a statement, they are making it based upon their subjective experience of language. Your interpretation of that statement is based upon your subjective experience of language. Conscious thought is subjective (if you want to debate this, start a thread).

In addition, I would like to point out that the subjective/objective distinction in science is between easily obtained observations and critically obtained observations.

Helmling

Longbow


I feel badly because you’ve gone to a great length to try and establish that the burden of proof is on me. I appreciate your effort, but I’m sorry to say your argument strikes me as irrelevant. Deconstructing the semantics of a statement as a route to working with the ideas behind it seems like a game to me, and an elaborate one that does not really address the central issue. In all you said, the only statement that bore on the issue from my point of view was this one: “Perhaps it is worth noting that when I say "true", I mean it. I don't mean some flakey "true" for one person but "false" for another or anything like that.”

You are here asserting that something can be universally, and presumably, objectively “true.” I suspect, from experience in other discussions, that we could talk in circles about morality for weeks but ultimately find that the disagreement is this fundamental one. As I said, to me, Kant’s imperative is an assumption. Not a valueless one, but one—in true Existentialist fashion—that is chosen by the proponent and has no inherent objective “truth” to it. And I have yet to find anyone with a system of morality that is not—at its core—founded on an ultimately arbitrary assumption.

As for the compatibility of “free will” and determinism, this does not strike me as problematic. I too believe in determinism, but I also believe in “free will.” For me it is an abstraction, a metaphor, for the condition in which our choices are being determined by a system of biology and its various complex influences that are far too inscrutable for us to regard as deterministic—though ultimately, with perfect knowledge, they would be.

[What is true is that moral behavior is a kind of behavior. But morals aren't a behvior, and how moral behavior comes to be moral is not by how such behavior happened to come to pass. It is intrinsic to the nature of the behavior, itself, regardless of how such behavior arose (Kant and I would claim, at any rate).]

And I would be forced to disagree. The question was “did morals evolve.” In terms of a discussion anchored in evolutionary theory, morals ARE behaviors. They are cognitive behaviors, some might like to call them meme patterns adapted by the organism through his environment. But they are patterns of behavior—specifically those we consider to be “moral” or acceptable. If we are discussing whether these standards for behavior (i.e. the cognitions and emotional states that dictate which behaviors are “moral”) then we are conceding that there is nothing intrinsic to the nature of the behavior itself. If morals evolved then they are the product of the simple logic of natural selection, the same as anything else. Those morals that aided a cultural group in survival persisted. Those moral standards which were maladaptive to that group’s survival, would not have.

If I might cite an example, a society that deemed it immoral to practice birth control would be likely to spawn new adherents to this system of morality. A society which deemed all sexual behavior immoral, for any reason, would become extinct. Now, obviously this example is only illustrative in the crudest sense. It is not even an example of biological evolution, but the principle has some bearing on cultural evolution as well, though obviously there are many more variables than in the case of pure Darwinism. Either way, there is nothing intrinsic in a behavior, or in a belief, that would lead evolution to select it as a successful moral value. Under different circumstances or in different environments (be they physical or sociological) the same behavior may become moral or immoral. The moral then that evolves from this process is being applied to the behavior based on factors intrinsic—not to the behavior—but to the interaction of that behavior and its consequences with the social and physical environment of the individual organism. In short, what evolved to be considered moral was dependent on the context of that evolution—be it biological or cultural.

Kharakov

I freely admit that 'not causing needless suffering' covers a lot of ground, but it is very specific as to what ground it covers. Judging whether or not suffering is needless is more complicated. This is one of the reasons that we have moral dilemnas.

Then "treating everyone with respect" is not moral behavior.


Is 'not causing needless suffering' a component of causing the greatest good? Is it the only component?

[ October 26, 2002: Message edited by: Kharakov ]</p>

Longbow

Because that is the contention that is being made with regard to God and magic. If you do not require that God exists or that magic exists, if all you are asking me is if that siply by discussing them one makes these concepts objective, then the answer is yes. If all you are asking is whether the the theists can make up an idea, then the answer is obviously yes.

The point is that just making up the idea doesn't prove that something physically exists. However, I am just making up the idea, not trying to prove the physical existence of something. And that is why bringin up something like that is a straw man.

I do not. Again, if you are indeed discussing soething that is supposed to be objective, then I will accept that aesthetics, for instance, is objective. If you are just talking about what you like, then that is not part of my refutation of the subjectivity of morality.

Bull shit

No, I am saying that there is an objective standard by which actions are evaluated as right or wrong.

You mean your straw men?

That is clearly false since what you are referring to is clearly does not pruport to be objective. This is all just one big effort to shift the burden of proof.

You cannot claim that objective morality implies the existence of physical objects so any of your retorts about God or magic are bull shit. You cannot claim that moral statements are like statements about your personal values because that clearly is not the convention. You are just defining your burden of proof away. You are claiming that when a Fundamentalist Christian says you are being immoral forbeing an atheist, he really just means that he doesn't like atheism. That is clearly not what he means. Maybe that's what he has to mean, but somethign liek that requires proof on your part.

Longbow

This is not the definition of morality or of morals. If you are using this definition, then you are not talking about morality or morals. Instead what you are talking about is behavior. If I interpret what you are getting at charitably, what you are talking about is mores which might include moral beliefs.

Simply believing something is moral required of you or acting in a way consistent with something being moral required does not make it morally required. It is even possible to speak loosely about "morals" as in "the moral of the story" and use the term interchangeably with moral beliefs. But, that is clearly inappropriate in this discussion. People that believe that something is a moral do not have as part and parcel with that belief that other people need not recognize it like they usually do when they say, for instance, that something is beautiful.

My refutation of merely interpretting or defining "morality" so that it is necessarily subjective is that it doesn't apply to moral discourse.

1) Moral statements are communicative, delcarative sentences that are held to contain propositions.

2) Since there is no reason to think they cannot be, we must assume that what their author is saying with them is either true or false -- that they are supposed to convey an assertion of some sort.