The AntiChris

wiploc
Would it necessarily be a contradiction? What if the potential rape victim had reason to suspect that the would-be rapist harboured the mistaken belief that women enjoyed being raped (appealing to his desires rather than her own)? BTW, what would constitute a violation of agent-subjectivism (as opposed to a contradiction)?
So, "contradicting her agent-subjectivist principles" can be morally admirable but at the same time logically inconsistent?

I must be misunderstanding this. I can't believe we're actually discussing such an apparently incoherent concept.

Chris

Wiploc

Hey, good point!

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BTW, what would constitute a violation of agent-subjectivism (as opposed to a contradiction)?

Yeah, I'm sorry I brought it up. Unnecessary convolution. But I'll try to straighten it out.

Well, if an agent subjectivist rape victim wants to hit her rapist with a bat, then, according to her theory (agent subjectivism) if she hits him with the bat then she's done good. And if she doesn't hit him with the bat, she has done bad, violated her principles.

If, on the other hand, she believed in her agent-subjectivism, but also believed that her rapist should hit himself with the bat because she wanted him to, then she would be guilty of a logical contradiction. (Stay focussed on that "because" in "because she wanted him to." I think quite a few of these posts would have been unnecessary if this had been done sooner. (That is, Alonzo says "'A because B' is illogical," and people respond, "Why are you saying that 'A and B' is illogical?))

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So, "contradicting her agent-subjectivist principles" can be morally admirable but at the same time logically inconsistent? I must be misunderstanding this. I can't believe we're actually discussing such an apparently incoherent concept. Chris

Picture Captain Kirk trying to foil the evil computer. He says something stupid like, "The next statement I make will be false. The last statement I made was true." That's a logical contradiction, which causes the computer to fry its tender circuitry. Thus, Captain Kirk wins.

Now, if we can agree for the sake of argument that Kirk winning is morally good, then we have an example of illogic being good.
crc

Alonzo Fyfe

I am not certain how seriously I should take this discussion, and I somewhat suspect that I should not take it seriously at all.

A scientist makes an error. He adds 1 + 1 and gets 3, so he adds three drops of a chemical to a test tube and ends up with a cure for cancer. A mistake leads to good results.

It doesn't make it the case that 1 + 1 actually equals 3. Nor does it make the case that everybody else who adds 1 + 1 and gets 3 are to be praised for their work as well. Nor can I say that "because somebody else who added 1 + 1 and got 3 and discovered the cure for cancer that my sum over here where I say that 1 + 1 = 3 should be taken as correct."

It is simply the case that under certain circumstances, a particular utterance even if illogical or false can have good consequences. It can't be used to make an illogical claim logical, or a false claim true.

Alonzo Fyfe

I am afraid that my first task will be to translate this into a language that I can understand.

"Rationally chosen by a deliberate act of will" I can only understand as a choice made as a consequence of the agent's desires and rational beliefs. It has everything to do with the movement of particles through space -- namely, the particles that make up the human body which perform movements that are called deliberate action.

It is true that morality may or may not be a part of the explanation for a specific action. A cause does not need to have an impact on every single effect to be a cause. But it does need to find expression in at least one effect. Otherwise, we should be done with it. The same is true with morality. Either it is a part of the explanation of some physical actions and itself is just as materially real as any other thing, or it is a part of the explanation of none and we should quit talking about it.

Now, I take a right action to be an action which a person of good motives (desires) would perform. And a good desire is that desire which is compatible with the fulfillment of other desires. The person in your example committed an evil act because he committed an act that a person with good desires would not have performed. Immorality does explain the action because, in this case, immorality consists in not having good desires. If the agent did have good desires, he would not have committed the immoral act.

DRFseven

That's because you've spent all those years in philosophy instead of studying evolutionary and cognitive psychology and looking at functional brain imaging! We've come a long way in understanding the limbic system and the critical role of emotion in decision-making. Alonzo, desire IS an emotion. How do we know that we desire something? Positive feedback from the limbic system incorporated into the memories of past events gives us a jolt (As Austin Powers says, "Yeah, baby!"). What actually causes us to choose that which we desire? Dopamine! Actually, it's not all dopamine, but dopamine'll do for now. Memory informs our decisions and emotions give us the go-ahead to actually make the choice.

What distinguishes moral value from "pizza topping" value is that we learn through displays of emotion and moral lessons that mistreating kitties is the wrong choice because it's bad and awful and horrible and shameful, but that there is no wrong choice in pizza topping, or if there is, it's of trivial importance in the emotional department. But pizza toppings COULD be transformed into moral issues if they were presented that way, just as other (to us) bizarre moral issues are accepted readily by those to whom they are presented (wearing certain colors, eating something on a certain day, drinking alcoholic beverages, dancing, etc.). We learn what to think we ought and ought not to do, and behaviors in those categories are considered moral behaviors by their practitioners.

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But the fact that a particular preference has an evolutionary history does not make it a moral preference. If it did, then every preference would be a moral preference because every preference has the relevant type of history.

You're right that being evolutionary doesn't make a process a moral process, but it does show that the process was conducive to survival, or it wouldn't have occured. And it did occur. Features already present in other species (who don't have a lot going on cognitively), such as imprinting and mimicry, operant conditioning and emotional weighting of memories, and goal-directed behavior were selected for in the evolution of complex behavioral restraints necessary for our highly socialized species. How much better for a social group is it for an individual to want to cooperate for its own satisfaction, than for a leader to have to force it? Much better. What motivates? The stab of emotion, which will move what nothing else will move.



That might be what seems to make them work toward a common goal, but the mechanism by which they operate in the individual is through feelings. We feel that things are right or wrong. If we don't feel them to be right or wrong, they are not considered moral issues; they are conventions or civil rules. As I've said before, people differentiate between moral rules and rules of convention, the distinguishing characteristic being the feeling generated. For instance, in studies, when asked to designate, people consider breaking traffic rules NOT to be a moral issue, while stealing always IS a moral issue. This is because of the way these two subjects are categorized, respectively, as legal and moral (though, of course, a subject could belong to both categories; something felt to be immoral could also be illegal, such as murder). On the other hand, some people have no scruples at all about either. This is due to absence of the requisite conditions (infant/parent attachment, parental moral-modeling with emotional affect) for moral acquisition. The word "scruple", itself, is derived from the Latin "scrupulus", referring to a small, sharp stone used as a unit of weight. The prick of conscience was likened to the discomfort of being jabbed by a small, sharp stone in the throat or heart.



No, we have other ways of acquiring scientific information. Our parents don't reprimand us and tell us in agonized voices that it's wrong to think water boils at 45 F degrees (most parents, that is; though some talk about the theory of evolution that way, and voila, it becomes immoral to believe in evolution).

Yes, and modeling and taking on of emotions is part of that socialization process.

Why are you talking about what makes moral beliefs justified? They are "justified" by evolution! We can't help having evolved them they way they are.



A value is a weight assigned by a valuer. The value is in the mind of the valuer, according to the valuer's opinion. The value is always assigned on the basis of the evaluator's brain state. There is a thing to be valued, and there is a brain in some kind of state. Which one places value?

Alonzo Fyfe

Oh, so YOU were the one who was following me around in college for 12 years, taking notes on what classes I took, what was covered in those classes, and what I was reading outside of class.

Please, cut the ad hominems about how what I write can be dismissed at the start because I am obviously so poorly educated and stick to the arguments.


We don't know, often. We have no special access even to our own mental states. There is a substantial body of literature where researchers ask subjects to make choices, where the researchers control for relevant variables and then ask the people why they made the choice they did, and that person gets it wrong.

For example, they place four identical dresses on a rack and ask women to select one. Just to make sure, they change the order of the dresses. Almost every time, the subjects select the last dress on the rack. But when asked why, they make something up about the feel of the cloth, the look of the dress, or the quality of the workmanship.

People do not KNOW what they desire, they guess, and often they guess wrong.


This account actually confuses the cause of a desire with the object of a desire. The question of what "causes" a desire is a question of what "causes" the brain to have a particular structure such that behavior B is associated with jolt J. Where jolt J is the "object" of the desire.

I will not deny that the desire for jolt J is an important desire, but it is not the only desire. Not only is this demonstrated by empirical evidence, but evolution suggests that a desire for jolt J cannot be the sole desire. A brain that goes: "Lion -> RUN!" is simply a lot more efficient than a brain that goes "Lion -> memory of lions causing pain -> memory of the unpleasantness of pain -> desire to avoid pain -> realization that by running one has an opportunity to avoid pain -> RUN!"


But what makes it the case that "mistreating kitties is . . . bad and awful and horrible and shameful," true, and that "there is no wrong choice in pizza toppings" also true?

Your accounts do not answer the question. They restate the question in new words. What is it that we are learning when we are learning that "mistreating kittens is horrible" and when we learn that "there is no wrong choice in pizza toppings?"

Yes, we COULD teach people to acquire the same emotional responses to pizza topping choices as we do to mistreating kitten choices. But why don't we? What makes associating these feelings with mistreating kittens BETTER THAN associating these feelings with pizza topping choices?


This is not true. But you know that -- I fully suspect that this comment came as a result of simply writing too fast.

A trait does not need to be "conducive to survival" to exist. A trait can be neutral, and simply ride along with a different trait that is conducive to survival. Or it can be neutral and simply, by chance, grew within a society (because of isolation of a population having this trait). Or a trait can even be harmful to survival, but ride along with a different trait which helps survival more than this trait harms survival. Or a trait can be conductive to survival under situation S1, but not under situations S2, and the species simply has not been in situation S2 long enough.

But all of this turns out to be irrelevant. My question is "what criteria must a desire have to be a moral desire?" not "what caused a particular moral desire to come into existence?"


Yes. And some people "feel" that there must be a God. It doesn't cause a God to spring into existence. I am not denying that we have these feelings. The question is not whether these feelings exist or not. The question is: What makes having one particular set of "feelings" better or more appropriate than a different set of "feelings"?



All of this misses the point, which is that the question of the GENESIS of a trait (a belief or a desire) is different from the question of the JUSTIFICATION of a belief or a desire.

All of these stories of the GENESIS of a particular trait, however important they may be in their own field, are irrelevant to the question of JUSTIFICATION.


Evolution cannot JUSTIFY, it can only EXPLAIN. A person who leaps from explanation to justification in this way is committing the naturalistic fallacy.

Let us look at the distinction between mental health and mental illness. In every case, with respect to every trait, there is assumed to be a history -- a way of explaining how a person acquired that trait. But nowhere is that explanation considered relevant to how that trait gets categorized. And with respect to evolution, it is readily agreed that even though a trait may have had some sort of evolutionary purpose for our ancestors, the relevant issue is how well it fits in society today, not how well it fit back then. Neither do these people justify their decisions based upon what contemporary evolutionary fitness -- what will promote the replication of the genes of the individual in today's society.

The explanation for the origins of an emotion, and the justification for putting it in one category or the other, are two separate questions, and no amount of information on the first question is relevant to how one answers the second.

dk

Posted by Alonzo Fyfe
(snip)
It is true that morality may or may not be a part of the explanation for a specific action. A cause does not need to have an impact on every single effect to be a cause. But it does need to find expression in at least one effect. Otherwise, we should be done with it.

dk:
This explanation raises a number of issues.
First you have purported to circumnavigate the “Is“ v. “ought” gap, but employed the terms in your explanation. To be consistent you shouldn’t do that.
Second: You’ve introduced the science of casuistry by using the word “effect”, implying a mental state alone serves as sufficient causation for a moral act.

Your explanation is inextricably in conflict with moral theory, therefore inadequate. It appears the only particles necessary to construct a moral act exist in the mind of the actor, which in any sense must be construed as intrinsic to the actor, not extrinsic. Can you please explain again.

Alonzo Fyfe

To say that there is a way across the is/ought gap does not mean that no matter where one seeks to cross it they may. I fully accept Hume's challenge that those who report to have a way across the gap have the obligation to show how it can be done and should not be taken at his word.

So, do not take me at my word until I have offered that explanation. Then, once I offered that explanation, you can see if rejecting the evolutionist's is/ought gap (X is an evolutionarily acquired trait, therefore X ought to be done) is consistent or inconsistent with that explanation.

In fact, given the philosophical history of the "is/ought" fallacy, it is far more likely that I, like so many others before me, am simply fooling myself into thinking that I see across than it is that I have actually found a way across.

No such implication was implied. Both beliefs and desires are necessary to cause action. Beliefs by themselves are motivationally innert, desires by themselves are unconnected from the real world (have no world in which to act).

In addition, it is also necessary that the neural connections be functioning properly. (A spinal injury can prevent a person from walking in spite of having all of the required beliefs and desires.)


You will need to explain this conflict to me again. I do not see what you are getting at. Particularly the part that says that the "only particles necessary to construct a moral act exist in the mind of the actor."

Beliefs and desires are both propositional attitudes -- as such they relate brain states to states in the world. A belief that P is a brain state that the proposition P is true in the world. A desire that P is a brain state that motivates the agent to make or to keep P true in the world.

The belief and the desire themselves exist in the brain. But they are brain states that are ABOUT the external world.

I am not at all sure that this has anything to do with your reported "conflict." It is a shot in the dark, really. I am in need of a clearer explanation.

[Note: And any inadequacy that may exist in the relationship between what I write here and "moral theory" is not necessarily a problem with what I write here. It remains a possibility that the problem exists with moral theory.]

DRFseven

You see, here I was thinking that you had understood the friendly, bantering tone that was meant to convey both that I am interested enough in what you have to say to read all your posts, not just the ones to me, as well as a little implied apology that I was probably wrong before in thinking that jokes always need to be labeled with a winky face and pointed out to you. I took this initial comment from you as being quite friendly. But, alas....

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Please, cut the ad hominems about how what I write can be dismissed at the start because I am obviously so poorly educated and stick to the arguments.

I assure you, being "poorly educated" was the last thing I was thinking. In fact, I was attempting through mild, dry humor, to show respect; a miserable failure on my part, I now see. I promise, if I ever get the urge to show some slight tongue-in-cheek humor, I'll label it, or better yet, kill it. Not to change the subject, but did you notice all the water we have on Earth? Of course, you probably noticed it on your way in. OK, back to the matter at hand, and no funny business.

In response to my question, "How do we know what we want?"

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We don't know, often. We have no special access even to our own mental states. There is a substantial body of literature where researchers ask subjects to make choices, where the researchers control for relevant variables and then ask the people why they made the choice they did, and that person gets it wrong. For example, they place four identical dresses on a rack and ask women to select one. Just to make sure, they change the order of the dresses. Almost every time, the subjects select the last dress on the rack. But when asked why, they make something up about the feel of the cloth, the look of the dress, or the quality of the workmanship. People do not KNOW what they desire, they guess, and often they guess wrong.

Yes, we confabulate. A man with a destroyed long-term memory was asked how many children he had; he replied that he had four. He was asked how long he'd been married; he responded that he'd been married four months. He then paused and added, "That's hard to do, having four children in four months. [another pause] They're adopted." In fact, he'd been married over thirty years and all his children were his biological children and were grown. Turns out we all confabulate all over the place, but nobody knows it; we don't even know it. But all this, though very interesting, is not what I'm talking about.

I'm talking about how, when we DO desire something, we know it. How do we find out that we want THAT particular dress, the blue one, the last one, whatever; what alerts us? A bell goes off via the dopaminergic system, due to neuron groups associated previously with reward and so coded. This bell goes off, we go "Yeah, baby", and point to the one we want.



If you say it's confusing, I can't very well say it's not, because if it seems confusing, it is. I agree with the above paragraph.



Other factors besides J are involved, and there are causes of J (learned association), but J is the proximal cause of our response. It is not as if sometimes J is the cause and sometimes something else is. J, itself, is determined by prior neural activity that activates dopamine. This is why studies show that people with Parkinson's, which is characterized by a shortage of dopamine, lose motor intent. Likewise, people suffering from depression have trouble finding motivation for choice (someone may stand in front of the closet crying, unable to choose a pair of shoes to wear to work); under severe depression, they lose the will to do anything at all.



Mommy saying so.

We are learning that some things get a special categorization of right or wrong. Before we learn, we don't know, of course; putting the kitty in the toilet might be just like putting Rubber Ducky in the bathtub or the pool, or like putting potato chips on pizza. Later we learn that some people don't agree with Mommy about some things, but Mommy explains to us that she's right because of certain reasons.



Because it seems to us that behaviors that have to do with fairness and cooperation facilitate survival and that behaviors that have to do with pizza toppings don't. And survival seems positive to us.

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This is not true. But you know that -- I fully suspect that this comment came as a result of simply writing too fast. A trait does not need to be "conducive to survival" to exist. A trait can be neutral, and simply ride along with a different trait that is conducive to survival. Or it can be neutral and simply, by chance, grew within a society (because of isolation of a population having this trait). Or a trait can even be harmful to survival, but ride along with a different trait which helps survival more than this trait harms survival. Or a trait can be conductive to survival under situation S1, but not under situations S2, and the species simply has not been in situation S2 long enough.

Yes, for some types of traits that is true, such as a species of mouse happening to grow large ears that they don't need, but that don't hurt. But systems of behavioral constraints are of critical importance, and are composed of constellations of traits. If any part doesn't work well, it gets replaced by necessity with something that does. So the system is constantly being tuned up.

It must be associated with a feeling of rightness or wrongness. Whether it actually works toward something like survival doesn't matter. If it feels like a moral value it IS a moral value.



But all a value judgement requires to pop into existence is for someone to judge something and assign a value. Alleged gods aren't value judgements; they are things in their own right (the "godness" is in the god, while the value is in the evaluator).

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I am not denying that we have these feelings. The question is not whether these feelings exist or not. The question is: What makes having one particular set of "feelings" better or more appropriate than a different set of "feelings"?

Better or more appropriate for what? Having one set of feelings over another is better for certain outcomes. For instance, I think that a society that generally refrains from murder is better off, as far as optimizing survival goes, than a society that says murder is ok. I could always be wrong, but that is what I think.



But I'm not attempting to "justify"; why should I? I'm only explaining how moral systems work and that doesn't include justification. There is no justification for survival; we can't say it is any more appropriate to survive than to die. All we can say is that MOST of us seem to WANT to survive and it seems to us that certain of our moral opinions facilitate that. Our opinions are all different, according to personal experience, so we argue it out and vote, etc. We're all rationalizing and confabulating, but we do the best we can, and, so far, we're still here.



Are you suggesting that there is some other way for a moral system to be, other than the way it is? And that we could somehow decide to have morality be that way?

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Neither do these people justify their decisions based upon what contemporary evolutionary fitness -- what will promote the replication of the genes of the individual in today's society.

It doesn't matter how people justify their decisions; they're full of baloney, anyway (and I mean that in a good way). It only matters that they take some kind of moral stance that works to regulate behavior in some way. If it is perceived by enough people to be beneficial it stays; if not it goes.

dk

Posted by Alonzo Fyfe:
(snip)
It is true that morality may or may not be a part of the explanation for a specific action. A cause does not need to have an impact on every single effect to be a cause. But it does need to find expression in at least one effect. Otherwise, [color=brown]we should be done with it.
dk:
So, if I shoot the messenger, then did the message cause me to kill the messenger? In the sense that I associated/confused the messenger with the message, yes/no. A moral theory has got to focus on the “act of judgment” that orders the external reality. You can argue that A) the physical universe is closed, B) mental states produce physical acts, therefore... C) mental states must have a physical basis. But, mental states are blue sky without an explanation of the mental properties that have a causal role, and next, you’ve still got to assume the physical universe is closed, and the assumption in itself, being true, becomes un-testable. The question remains open. What we know is that human potential and many possible contingent futures remain unknowable, untreatable and unreliable. So the question refocuses upon what can be reliably known with a healthy respect for potential and the future that is unknowable.

Posted by Alonzo Fyfe:
You will need to explain this conflict to me again. I do not see what you are getting at. Particularly the part that says that the "only particles necessary to construct a moral act exist in the mind of the actor."
dk: I’m saying an “Act of judgment” orders some aspects of an external reality to suit itself, but not necessarily for itself, by itself or in a manner suitable to itself. If a great work of art (like the pyramids) were built with forced labor, torture and murder, then would the means of construction detract from its value. There exists no simple set of propositions to answer the question because value of something in the future is incalcuable. Morality as a practical matter can only consider the future as a set of unknowable contingencies based upon a system of historical outcomes. The gap between “is” and “ought” if it can be imagined might be analogous to the instantaneous momentum of human effort summarized on a gradient, reconstituted from moment to moment as one thing, creature and possibility leads to another. Ironically, abstract Ideas, concepts and forms being timeless and without mass transcend temporal and physical finalities with a sense of well being (life is good) or apprehension (life is senseless). For a rational creature desire absent an ordered purpose only leads to anxiety as satisfaction yields to hunger. People need more.

Posted by Alonzo Fyfe:
Beliefs and desires are both propositional attitudes -- as such they relate brain states to states in the world. A belief that P is a brain state that the proposition P is true in the world. A desire that P is a brain state that motivates the agent to make or to keep P true in the world.
dk: If you say so, but since the physical value/existence/validity of P(now) in a week will become P(wk1), then in a year P(yr1) or a decade(Pyr10) is indeterminable, it doesn’t make any difference. Morality on the hand follows from judgments made by the active intellect that bridge the gap between one moment and the next moment. For example the value of 1 GHZ computer with 256 MBytes of RAM in 1970 was several million dollars, and today <$700. Obviously morality is based upon principles that contain nothing physical, so morality doesn’t change therefore governs how rational creatures participate in a meaningful life, a good life.

Posted by Alonzo Fyfe:
The belief and the desire themselves exist in the brain. But they are brain states that are ABOUT the external world.
I am not at all sure that this has anything to do with your reported "conflict." It is a shot in the dark, really. I am in need of a clearer explanation.
[Note: And any inadequacy that may exist in the relationship between what I write here and "moral theory" is not necessarily a problem with what I write here. It remains a possibility that the problem exists with moral theory.]
dk: No, from my perspective morality governs the present with respect for the future, and therein lies the gap between is and ought. The best physical analogy I have for objective morality is a catalyst. Morality doesn’t make the future, it makes a suitable future possible. Any system of moral propositions hard wired to physical realities comes into conflict with the future we become, or aspects of the future we become. The focus therefore has got to be on judgments of the active intellect guided by principles and applied by the science of ethics.