bd-from-kg

Pompous Bastard:

Thanks. I've now also fixed the link in my own post.

Dr. Retard

Here's my (honest) question:
Suppose that PompousBastard believed that this complex property being-conducive-to-the-ability-of-individuals-to-lead-happy-lives was a pretty good rational reconstruction of "right" and "good". That is, he thought that uses of those evaluative terms could often be replaced by reference to that property, enough so that the property suffices as an eliminative analysis of those terms.

Now consider someone else: an externalist moral realist who believes that being-conducive-to-the-ability-of-individuals-to-lead-happy-lives is an intrinsically good property. They think that the real value property "goodness" logically supervenes on the complex descriptive property.

Then what is the difference between these two people? Is there one? Or is this a case of competing linguistic descriptions masquerading as real difference (six of one, half a dozen of the other)?

bd-from-kg

Tom Piper:

Since you think my opinions are just silly, and that they are of no philosophical interest if not downright incoherent, I’m sure that you'll agree that there is no point in continuing our discussion.

bd-from-kg

Pompous Bastard:

I have to admit that I didn’t read that paragraph careful enough to realize that you were claiming to have derived an “ought” from an “is”. But of course you’ve done no such thing. What the premises actually imply (if we take “not wanting X” to mean the same as “wanting not-X”) is something like “Eating will get Johnny what he wants”. To get to “Johnny should eat” you need another premise, such as “Other things being equal, you should do what gets you what you want”. Now it’s not clear whether the “should” here (in the missing premise and the conclusion) is meant in a moral sense or in a purely “advisory” sense. In the latter case the missing premise is not prescriptive, but neither is the conclusion. In the former case the conclusion is prescriptive, but so is the missing premise.

Actually that’s not how I’ve used it. Leaving aside the “perfectly rational” proviso in my definition, you left out the “U” part of “K&U”. It is necessary not only to have enough knowledge, but to have enough understanding. And a very important part of the understanding that’s needed is the kind that I call “empathy”. Without enough empathy it is highly unlikely that one would make the “right” choice no matter how much abstract knowledge one might have.

But the other crucial condition that you omitted is that “X should do Y” is true in the moral sense only if any rational person with sufficient K&U would prefer for X to do Y.

I think what you may be trying to get at here is that using my definition of “should”, one can derive an “ought” from an “is”. That isn’t true. According to my theory, to get a prescriptive conclusion you need a premise of the form “Any perfectly rational person with sufficient K&U would prefer...”, and I don’t consider this a factual statement. But even if you regard it as factual in some sense, it’s still true that a premise of this kind is required to derive a “prescriptive” statement, and your argument doesn’t have one. (The missing premise can be restated in this form, of course.)

If you mean “conducive of the ability of the agent to lead a happy life”, I pity you. But in any case, the thing that is fundamentally wrong with forming beliefs on an irrational basis is that it interferes with one’s being able to predict that consequences of one’s actions, and is therefore likely to lead to “wrong” results no matter what one means by “wrong”. So on any consequentialist view of ethics (i.e., one that holds that the rightness or wrongness of an act depends ultimately on its consequences) forming beliefs on an irrational basis is immoral. (I tend to neglect to include the “consequentialist” proviso because I simply do not understand deontological moral theories.)

Absolutely not. False factual beliefs (as Plantinga is fond of pointing out) can sometimes lead to “right” (in the sense of survival-enhancing) actions, but true ones are much more likely to. The same goes for the relative likelihood of true vs. false beliefs producing “right” actions in a moral sense (no matter what you mean by “right in the moral sense”). And of course forming beliefs on a rational basis is much more likely to produce true beliefs than forming them on an irrational basis. (Or at any rate, as a rational being I believe that, though I can’t prove it.)

bd-from-kg

Dr. Retard:

Although the people in your hypothetical scenario would “agree” perfectly about what actions are “good”, they would mean entirely different things by calling an action “good”, so they wouldn’t really be agreeing at all.

To save typing, let’s call the property in question CH (for “conducive to happiness”), and I’ll refer to the person holding the position you attribute to PompousBastard as “PB” with the understanding that this may or may not be PompousBastard’s position.

If I understand you correctly, PB’s position would be that “action Y is good” can be correctly construed as meaning that Y has the property CH, whereas the “other person” would be claiming that actions with the property CH are “good”, but that this is not true by definition – that is, to say that an act is “good” does not mean that it has property CH. In that case, PB would be guilty of the naturalistic fallacy, but the other person would not. The difference is that PB would say that the question “Is it possible for an action to have property CH but not be good?” is meaningless in the same sense that the question “Is it possible for a triangle not to have three sides?” is meaningless. To put it another way, to PB the statement “Actions with property CH are good” is empty of content; it means exactly the same thing as “Actions with property CH have property CH.”

Now of course, PB is free to define “good” however he likes, but it should be obvious at this point that this is not a correct construction of what virtually anyone else means by “good”. Most people regard the question “Is it possible for an action to have property CH but not be good?” to be meaningful in a sense in which “Is it possible for a triangle not to have three sides?” is not.

And now I’ll have to leave this thread until tomorrow. See you all then.

excreationist

Dr. Retard:
So you are talking about some people that believe that "good" involves whatever is necessary for others to lead happy lives... and "bad" would be the opposite.

Even if people agree on this general principle, they can still disagree on specific issues. e.g. the latest time when abortion is still ok.
e.g. some might think that people's happiness is maximized when this time is kept as early on as possible - others might think that the parents should just decide - even if they decide to have an abortion when the kid is one year old.

So if people disagree on any moral issue, then those moral systems aren't identical, and what is "good" and "bad" in specific instances isn't always the same.

Pomp

Dr. Retard,

Suppose that PompousBastard believed that this complex property being-conducive-to-the-ability-of-individuals-to-lead-happy-lives was a pretty good rational reconstruction of "right" and "good". That is, he thought that uses of those evaluative terms could often be replaced by reference to that property, enough so that the property suffices as an eliminative analysis of those terms.

That's pretty close to my position, with a few caveats:

1) CH (to borrow bd's terminology) is not a property intrinsic to "things in the world" but rather to the relationships between particular states of affairs and particular agents. The CH potential of each such state has to be evaluated separately for each agent to which it relates. This, of course, is just a long winded way of saying that different people value different things.

2) I think this is a pretty fair eliminative analysis of "good" but not of "right." IOW, what we might call CH Theory describes values, not normative principles.

Now consider someone else: an externalist moral realist who believes that being-conducive-to-the-ability-of-individuals-to-lead-happy-lives is an intrinsically good property. They think that the real value property "goodness" logically supervenes on the complex descriptive property.

To clarify, and to assure that I understand you, I'm going to rephrase that:

This person (EMR) believes that there is some real (non-subjective) property called "goodness" that is intrinsic to various things and/or actions in the world? EMR further believes that "goodness" supervenes on (IOW, is dependent on) CH. All good things, therefore, possess CH.

Is this close?

Then what is the difference between these two people? Is there one? Or is this a case of competing linguistic descriptions masquerading as real difference (six of one, half a dozen of the other)?

Assuming that I have the EMR position right, I think there are two major differences:

1) The EMR would say that certain things or actions themselves possess CH, while I would say that those things or actions, by existing, create states of affairs that particular agents may relate to, and those relationships may possess negative or positive CH. For example, if Jones murders my brother, the EMR might say that the act of murder had a negative CH, while I would say that it created a state of affairs (a world without my brother) to which I related and that that relationship possessed negative CH.

Does that make sense? Note that I haven't even addressed the question of whether or not Jones's action was "wrong." That is a question about normative principles, not about values, and somewhat beyond the scope of this response.

2) The EMR, I think, would hold that any CH involved would be static. That is, any agents involved would judge the CH identically. As I see CH as a property of relationships, the CH involved must be measured independantly for each agent. If my brother happened to be an abusive husband, to extend the example, then his wife's relationship to the new state of affairs might possess positive CH.

I want to be careful to reiterate that this "CH" isn't anything more than a theoretical measurement of how much "happiness" agents derive from states of affairs. I'm not claiming that there is any free-floating CH out there...it's subjective for each agent involved.

I hope that cleared things up a bit.

[ February 20, 2002: Message edited by: Pompous Bastard ]</p>

Pomp

bd-from-kg,

Now of course, PB is free to define “good” however he likes, but it should be obvious at this point that this is not a correct construction of what virtually anyone else means by “good”.

You're really hung up on what you think "virtually anyone else" means by various terms, aren't you? You went through a similar argument with SingleDad on the How Can Morailty Be Objective? thread. Has it ever occurred to you that "virtually anyone else" might possibly have an incoherent notion of what it means to call something "good?" What's the point of even doing philosophy is all we're doing is developing ad hoc justifications of what "virtually anyone else" thinks?

End of rant.

Note that I do find your philosophy interesting and a challenge to grapple with, I'm just annoyed by your continual reference to what you think a majority of human beings believe as if that could settle an issue.

Pomp

bd,

I have to admit that I didn’t read that paragraph careful enough to realize that you were claiming to have derived an “ought” from an “is”. But of course you’ve done no such thing. What the premises actually imply (if we take “not wanting X” to mean the same as “wanting not-X”) is something like “Eating will get Johnny what he wants”.

You're right. I have an unstated premise in there. I thought I made it reasonably clear what that premise would be in my caveat about how I was defining "should," but I guess I didn't.

To get to “Johnny should eat” you need another premise, such as “Other things being equal, you should do what gets you what you want”.

The unstated premise I actually had in mind was "All else being equal, agents will act so as to further their own values." Bear in mind that I am using "should" in the sense that an agent should do whatever he or she would do with adequate information. Refer to your own example in the previous thread about when an agent "should" change his or her oil, and to my correction of your example to include the caveat that the agent must value the proper fuctioning of his or her car.

We now have:

P1) Johnny is hungry.
P2) Johnny desires not to be hungry (or: Johnyy values satiation of hunger) (or: JOhnny's relationship with his hunger posseses negative CH)
P3) Eating satiates hunger.
P4) All else being equal, agents will act so as to further their own values.

C1) All else being equal, Johnny would eat. (From P1-4)

P5) To say that an agent should do something is to say that that agent would do that something, given adequate information.

C2) All else being equal, Johnny should eat. (From C1 and P5)

"Ought" from "is" in seven easy steps. Of course, the controversy is going to be that...

Now it’s not clear whether the “should” here (in the missing premise and the conclusion) is meant in a moral sense or in a purely “advisory” sense. In the latter case the missing premise is not prescriptive, but neither is the conclusion. In the former case the conclusion is prescriptive, but so is the missing premise.

I don't see a problem here. If I define "should" in the manner that I have, a manner you seem to agree with for non-moral usages (in fact, a usage you suggested to me for non-moral usages!), and stipulate that the situation would lead Johnny to a certain outcome, it seems logical to conclude that Johnny should pursue that outcome.

Where we are going to disagree, of course, is that I don't draw a distinction between moral and non-moral prescriptive statements and you do. In fact, you seem to be saying, in the bold section right above this, that non-moral statements are not even prescriptive! How does that work?

Actually that’s not how I’ve used it. Leaving aside the “perfectly rational” proviso in my definition, you left out the “U” part of “K&U”. It is necessary not only to have enough knowledge, but to have enough understanding. And a very important part of the understanding that’s needed is the kind that I call “empathy”. Without enough empathy it is highly unlikely that one would make the “right” choice no matter how much abstract knowledge one might have.

I know, which is why I said "roughly" as you have used it. As I noted in one of my earliest responses in the old thread, I found your analysis of prescriptive statements to be very thought-provoking. I've taken the portions of it prior to its departure from what I believe you can justify and incorporated it into my own philosophical language.

“Any perfectly rational person with sufficient K&U would prefer...”, and I don’t consider this a factual statement.

Out of curiosity, what sort of statement do you consider it?

If you mean “conducive of the ability of the agent to lead a happy life”, I pity you.

&lt;Insert Mr. T joke here.&gt;

Isn't this sort of arrogant? If you really think that it is irrational to prefer the satisfaction of your own values over the satisfaction of someone else's values, then I pity you. Now that we're even, let's move on.

But in any case, the thing that is fundamentally wrong with forming beliefs on an irrational basis is that it interferes with one’s being able to predict that consequences of one’s actions, and is therefore likely to lead to “wrong” results no matter what one means by “wrong”. So on any consequentialist view of ethics (i.e., one that holds that the rightness or wrongness of an act depends ultimately on its consequences) forming beliefs on an irrational basis is immoral. (I tend to neglect to include the “consequentialist” proviso because I simply do not understand deontological moral theories.)

I tend to agree with you, even if I wouldn't express it in the same terms.

Tom Piper

bd-from-kg,

You said, I did not say this. But if this is what you got out of what I did say, you might be right in thinking that there is no point in continuing.

Tom