Alonzo Fyfe

I think that some people tend to confuse the distinction between rationality and morality.

Rationality prescribes what we should do, given our desires.

Morality prescribes what we should desire given everybody else's desires.

The difference can be illustrated using long-winded fool's description above. Long-winded fool is describing objective rationality, not objective morality. What the agent should do is kill the child in a way that minimizes the chance of going to jail.

But, morally, the agent should not desire to kill the child at all. If he did not want to kill the child (or, better yet, if he wanted not to kill the child) he would not be in a position of making these types of decisions.

Rational and moral prescriptions follow relevantly similar models. Therefore, moral objectivity is no more of a mystery than rational objectivity.

DRFseven

Can't you tell that it's true, though? Feelings are subjective sensations that can't be described any other way. How can you tell something is red? If it looks red, it IS red.

You might attach all sorts of reasoning to "the right thing", but pleasant asked for "if, and only if...". Feelings are the one necessary ingredient for determining if something is right or not; that is how even young children distinguish between procedural, conventional, legal, and moral rights and wrongs. Incorrectly performing tasks, jay-walking, fashion faux pas, etc. may cause embarrassment, anger, frustration, etc., but they don't feel like moral wrongs. Moral wrongs are something we feel "in the heart" and, like love, one of our most powerful behavioral motivators.

pug846

I’m not sure what else to say. Your definition of what action is moral is meaningless. It’s a tautology. You might as well have said nothing at all. You aren’t describing anything.

Again, all you are saying is X is right if X is right.

In order to add any sort of content to your statement you need to explain what feelings are “right” and what feelings are “wrong.” If you feel happy about action X, does that mean action X is good? If actions are “right” if you get a happy feeling, then that would at least add some content to your statement and not make it a tautology.

pug846

The example you gave actually will help demonstrate my point. It’s only because we have an intersubjective agreement on what it means for an object to be red that gives your statement any content, otherwise it would also be a meaningless tautology. When you say something is red, you aren’t deciding that hey, this object is what I mean when I mean red. What you really mean is that given we all have agreed that color appearance can be called “red,” you see this object and it matches this definition that we have all agreed upon. If you see a fireman and say hey, the fireman wears an all-blue outfit, you aren’t defining that color as blue. More than likely, you see a subjectively different shade of color than I am. (What I would see would be what most people agree is “red.”) The feeling might be subjective, but the label you apply to it, “red” isn’t something you just make up. It’s external to you.

In the case of feeling, you aren’t providing us with any sort of external definition to what constitutes a “good” feeling. If you define a good feeling as a “happy” feeling, this would work. Every time you said, this action makes me feel good, I would know what you mean. You would really be saying, this action makes me feel happy.

DRFseven

I don't know why you say this; a feeling of "happy" is just as subjective as a feeling of "right." We know when we feel right about something, just as we know when we feel happy about something.

Alonzo Fyfe

I actually cannot tell for certain if this objection applies, but it seems to apply.

Question: Are you talking about the meaning of words, or their reference?

For example, it is only because we have an intersubjective agreement that a square is a four sided figure with equal-length sides meeting at their end points in right angles that gives our statement about squares have any content.

Does this mean that geometry is subjective?

Of course not. One cannot infer from the subjectivity of attaching definitions to certain words that subjects discussed by people using words are themselves subjective. Meaningful conversation is a two-step process. First, agree to an intersubjective meaning to the terms that will be used. Second, study the thing to which those terms refer and see if you can discover any objective facts about it.

Many subjectivists make this illegitimate shortcut. They get to step 1, the part about obtaining an intersubjective agreement to the meaning of words, and stop their mental processes there. SEE! SEE! MORALITY IS SUBJECTIVE.

Not necessarily.

The question, "what does X mean" is asking a sociological theory that says, "What theory of a word's meaning best accounts for the way that people use this word? What do they take themselves to be saying?" Yes, this is intersubjective. But the fact that the word's meaning is intersubjective does not mean that the subject in which the word is being used is intersubjective.

Alonzo Fyfe

The problem with this is that people debate issues of right and wrong, but not issues of sadness.

For example, a person who says, "there ought not to be separation between church and state" is taken to be contradicting the person who says "there ought to be separation between church and state."

Whereas a person who says "that makes me sad" is not taken to be contradicting a person who says "that does not make me sad."

Therefore, there must be some relevant way in which these two things are NOT alike.

tronvillain

An action (or inaction) is moral if and only if it does not bother me enough to want to prevent it.

Alonzo Fyfe:
Insanity. Perhaps you meant to say "Morality prescribes what we should do given everybody else's desires"? Or perhaps you did not, since that would leave you open to the observation that only those whose desires include the desires of everyone else will follow the prescriptions of "morality."

You know, you never did respond to my last post in that Subjective morality thread...

Alonzo Fyfe

Nope. I meant what I said.

There is a principle of morality that says that 'ought' implies 'can', and that 'cannot' implies 'it is not the case that one ought.'

There is no direct causal chain between other peoples' desires and the muscle contractions that are a part of one's own actions that allows for "do what fulfills other peoples' desires' to be causally possible.

"Not causally possible" implies "It is not the case that one ought."

Any link from the agent's actions and the desires of others must be linked through the agent's own desires. That is just a fact of the world. This is precisely why I say that morality prescribes what we should desire given everybody else's desires.

Morality prescribes the correct links between our actions and the desires of others.

pug846

My post should not be read to mean that because the meaning of a word is intersubjective, the subject that is referenced is also intersubjective.

I may be repeating myself, but I’ll try and be a little more clear.

If I say I feel sad, you understand what I mean. The term sad has a meaning to each of us that we both attach to it and that meaning is probably very close to the same. This allows us to communicate to each other.

On the other hand, if I were to say, what do you mean “you feel sad,” you couldn’t say, “I mean I feel sad.” I would look at you oddly since you’ve said, to feel sad is to feel sad. Clearly you feel something and you’ve labeled it “sad,” but you haven’t given any content to what it means to be sad and so to call something sad is to say nothing at all. I have no clue what you mean, although I have no doubt you feel something.

Clearly when DRFseven says she has this certain feeling and it’s labeled “feels right,” she has some sort of feeling in mind. But when I ask her, what does it mean to feel right, she can’t respond with “it means it feels right.” While she has a feeling, she hasn’t added any content to what she has said and therefore “feeling right,” while is associated with a certain feeling with her,” has no meaning. If she were to say, what you understand as feeling happy and anxious is what I label to feel right would be to say something.

So, to conclude, when someone asks DRFSeven to fill in the blank of “an action is right if and only if” and she finishes with “it feels right,” she hasn’t said anything at all:

An action is right if and only if it feels right. To be right is to feel right.

So, an action feels right if and only if it feels right. It’s just a tautology. She could say on the other hand:

“An action is right if and only if it makes me feel happy” because she has actually said something. Makes me feels happy is what it means to feel right.