John Page

Agreed, all I'm saying is that A must have knowledge of P in order to have a desire about it.

Maybe we're at cross purposes, I am not differentiating between conscious and subconscious knowledge. I would agree that A need not have conscous knowledge of P in order to desire P.
I'm thinking about this. I was addressing your statement regarding knowledge and desire, whereas belief is a different thing (in that the objects of belief are unsubstantiated).

At first pass I would agree that beliefs (as per definition above) about the world external to the mind cannot tell us anything about desires in relation to that outside world. However, a person can have an inner desire (e.g. "I long to believe in god") that becomes self-fulfilling.

Interesting.....

Cheers, John

The AntiChris

Alonzo Fyfe

This is all perfectly reasonable and a sound argument for the non-existence of intrinsic value. However, I fail to see what it has to do with justifying the "argument from disagreement of moral principles"?

Do I detect grudging agreement here?

All I'm arguing is that moral disagreement is an effect one would expect in the absence of intrinsic moral value, but it is not in any sense a proof (as Koy seems to think).

I think you may be making mistaken assumptions about my beliefs.

Chris

Alonzo Fyfe

John Page:

Agreed, all I'm saying is that A must have knowledge of P in order to have a desire about it.

There is a sense in which I would accept this, and another sense in which I would not.

Using the classic definition of knowledge as justified true belief...

(Note: Which relates to your statement, I was addressing your statement regarding knowledge and desire, whereas belief is a different thing -- the following answers this concern as well.)

A desires that P
A knows that P (A has a justified, true belief that P)

The fact that a person can desire that P without knowing that P comes from the possibility of desiring something that does not exist. A person can desire to please God, even though he knows nothing about God, because all of his beliefs are false (which counts rather decidedly against the possibility of a 'justified true belief').

Does a person have to believe that P in order to desire that P?

Again, clearly not. I can desire that I win a game of chess game without believing that I will win a chess game. Indeed, I can know with great certainty that I am going to lose, but still desire that I win.

(Which, again, speaks against the claim that one cannot desire that P without knowing that P because, in this case, the agent clearly knows that he will not win the chess game, but still desires to win anyway.)

However, there is a sense in which what you say is true.

A person who desires that P, but does not believe that P is true of S, will express no interest in S. In order for the person to express an interest in S it must be the case that he at least believe that P is true of S.

Better yet is knowing that P is true of S. If the agent merely believes that P is true of S, that belief may be false -- in which case the agent only things she is getting what she wants.

For example, let's say that a widow wants to keep her husband's ashes. If she does not believe that this urn holds her husband's ashes, she risks throwing the urn away. If she believes it but it is not true, she keeps the urn, even though in fact it does not have anything that she values. If she knows that it contains her husband's ashes, then she knows to keep the urn.

But (and this is important) in all cases we must presume the desire to keep her husband's ashes.


Ultimately, both beliefs and desires are necessary for action -- neither is sufficient.

Beliefs are motivationally neutral (they simply make up a database about the external world -- where some of this data is incorrect -- but they do nothing but sit there on their own.

Desires motivate us to particular ends (a desire that P motivates us to make it the case that "P" is true). But if we have no beliefs (e.g., we do not know if P is true or false, or how to make P true, or how to keep it true if it is true), then we sit as a lump of flesh wanting but never doing (or even knowing that there is something to do).

So, yes, in addition to a desire that P, you must have certain beliefs about P in order to act. And, hopefully, those beliefs are true. Else, your quest to fulfill your desire that P has some significant risks.


In summary,

Even though beliefs are essential to helping us to fulfill (and to measure the fulfillment) of the desires we have, no set of even justified true beliefs (a.k.a., knowledge) implies, infers, or adduces a new desire. The leap from knowledge and understanding to empathy is without merit.

[ July 14, 2002: Message edited by: Alonzo Fyfe ]</p>

dk

dk: - To wantonly construct and activate a doomsday device intentionally eliminates being human. The proposition changes reality in ways well beyond the scope of human experiences hence any possible entailment of K&U, the former(experience) being the source of the latter (K&U). Clearly moral philosophy (theoretical and practical) ceases to exist absent its subject and object source. The reality is people have constructed several doomsday devices, so humanity objectively exists (and have always existed) with a potential for apocalypse. Moral philosophy asks the rational question, “Is apocalypse a suitable determination of human being?” The question is not relative but quintessentially metaphysical because the inquiry is contingent upon reality absent human experience. Yet secular philosophy categorically eliminates metaphysical dialogue, and in doing so detaches itself from reality to become surreal. How can modern and post modern philosophy reject metaphysics as transcendental moonshine? The only rational response defines immorality as a falsification of reality.
dk: Yeh, and Typhoid Mary agreed to be quarantined. .
dk: - I don’t want to change topic. The topic is non-theistic objective morality.
dk: - In the course of this discussion we perpetually butt up against the metaphysical wall separating the past and present from the future, or as AF implied the gap between “ought” and “is” contrasted by a “rationality of means” verses “rationality of ends”. The wall is impenetrable upon the precept, “K&U follows from experience alone”. Every human being [pro][re]gresses as an “ends unto themselves” [ill]suited with a uniquely complex identity (personage) of matter, will (volition), potential and act. A person is self-determined by means of their own volition that manifests a person with will and act to participate in a reality pregnant with progeny. The doomsday scenario is important for three reasons <ol type="1">[*] apocalypse exists by human design, volition and potential[*] a manmade apocalyptical event is objectively metaphysical[*] the reality of a manmade apocalyptic event assigns to humanity an objective open ended mandate for good (life) or evil (destruction).[/list=a]Philosophy objectively falsifies its subject and object matter by denying the metaphysical reality that is essential and apparent to human being. When philosophy (especially moral philosophy) denies what is essentially human, then what philosophy purports becomes inhuman.

[ July 14, 2002: Message edited by: dk ]</p>

bd-from-kg

John Page:

Oh, please. No one - the ancient Hebrews, or Jesus, or His early followers, or present-day Christians or Jews, has ever interpreted “love thy neighbor” as meaning that one should befriend a homicidal maniac who kills anyone who tries to befriend him.

I’m quite familiar with the Prisoner’s Dilemma, but I don’t see the relevance here. It certainly doesn’t show that my theory doesn’t satisfy the first criterion.

I have no idea what you’re trying to get at here. Taken literally, my claim is obviously correct.

But theism is objective! Theism asserts that a god objectively exists, whether anyone believes it or not. This is clearly an objective theory. Whether it’s true is another matter.

Anyway, my point here was that typical subjectivist “moral theories” cannot plausibly claim to be attempts to interpret ordinary moral language. Instead, they are merely proposals to use moral language in a way that is completely different and unrelated to the way people have traditionally used it. In my opinion, this means that they are not really “moral theories” at all, any more than a proposal to make “X should do Y” mean that X’s doing Y can be described in fewer syllables than any alternative, or that X’s doing Y will increase entropy less than any alternative, are “moral theories”. (This is the point of my third criterion: “theories” that do not even purport to be attempts to interpret ordinary moral language don’t even qualify as “moral theories”, objective or otherwise.)

Note that the theory that the way moral language has traditionally been used is logically incoherent is a perfectly good moral theory. It is called moral nihilism.

Again I have no idea what point you’re trying to make. Since we’re talking about what “objective” means in the context of moral philosophy, the question of how competent moral philosophers use the term is certainly relevant. Words don’t have “objective” meanings; they mean whatever people choose to mean by them. In this sense moral philosophers do have “power over reality”. That is, they control how certain words are generally understood in the context of moral philosophy. In the same way, the fact (if it is a fact) that your parents named you “John” means that your name is “John”. They were not merely expressing an opinion; they were creating a fact.

Again, if you’ve invented your own personal, private language, that’s your prerogative, but it won’t do to criticize the rest of us for sticking with standard usage, much less to suggest that we are being “ridiculous” for doing so.

I completely fail to follow you here. At this point I can only repeat what I said to Koy: Perhaps if you would clarify what you think statements like “X should do Y” mean, it would be clear why you say that “objective morality” is an oxymoron. It would also help if you would explain what you think “objective” means in this context. In other words, when you say that morality cannot be objective, what proposition are you saying is false?

Again I am baffled. What, in your mind, is the distinction between “moral behavior” and other behavior?

You assume wrong. In the second post on this thread, Alonzo explained why this is a poor definition. By this definition it is not an objective fact that I have a headache, or that I believe that I live in Virginia, which is absurd. He suggested a better alternative: "An objective truth is one in which the truth or falsity of a claim is independent of whether a person believes it to be true or false." This is a big improvement, but it doesn’t really capture what moral philosophers generally mean by an “objective moral theory”. For example, the theory that to say that an act is “morally right” means that the speaker approves of it is generally considered a subjective moral theory even though the question of whether the speaker does in fact approve of it is one of objective fact.

In my June 23 post I offered a definition that I think is much closer to representing what moral philosophers generally have in mind when they distinguish between objective and subjective moral theories:

If you believe that my theory fails to meet either or both of these criteria, please explain your reasons for thinking so.

Once again I have to ask: are you saying that there is no objective difference between being rational and being irrational? Do you believe that the difference between a sane person and a madman is merely a matter of social convention?

Supposing that humans were “intrinsically good” (whatever that means) would you then say that there are objective moral truths? If not, how is this relevant?

For that matter, what does it mean to say that humans are or are not “intrinsically good”? Is there some objective standard of “goodness” that we can measure them against? If so, we have some objective moral truths after all. If not, you would seem to be speaking gibberish.

Once again I have no idea what you’re trying to say here or how it’s supposed to be relevant. It isn’t that what you say is meaningless or nonsensical, but that it could mean any of a thousand different things.

But no one is trying to do that here. It seems that you are being misled by your false assumption about what is meant by an “objective moral truth”.

At any rate nearly all of your comments are directed at the question of whether my moral theory is “objective”. Since you clearly don’t mean anything like what I mean by “objective” in this context, this is a rather sterile, boring argument about language. If you have some substantive comments about my moral theory, I’ll be glad to respond. But if all you want to argue about is how “objective” should be defined in this context, I’m not interested.

John Page

bd:

Thanks for the post. While I can understand that it is possible to study morality objectively, and I don't mind being wrong because that usually means I've learned something, I still have some serious reservations about your objective moral theory:

What is theism objective with respect to when you make this statement? Reality, logic, the theist?

My follow on question is how how you would expect to judge the truth of the moral matter, i.e. what is truth objective with respect to?

I guess I may be failing to understand why you feel it necessary to use the qualifier "objective" in front of "theory".

Morally, no difference. Absolutely, social convention - I'm trying to remember the anthropological example of a tribe that worshipped individuals with some defect (small head I think) who were mentally deficient. You might scientifically come up with objective measures to determine who falls within the class labelled "madman" but use of this term implies a moral judgement as to fitness in society.

Again, moral theory can be analyzed from an objective standpoint and if you wish to term this "objective moral theory" I have no quarrel except for its being a misnomer.

Well, determining that latter will be easy once we understand how the mind works and what it really thinks.

I mentioned this because modeling behavior in the Prisoner's Dilemma shows that given circumstances, individuals moral behavior is subject to constant modification according to their belief of others' beliefs. I think this casts doubt on the tenets of objective moral theory you put forward - i.e. fine as a theory but that's not really what is going on.

Quoting the kind of standards applied in your own post, your claim would seem to require objective verification in order to participate in a valid theory - bd:"For example, the theory that to say that an act is “morally right” means that the speaker approves of it is generally considered a subjective moral theory even though the question of whether the speaker does in fact approve of it is one of objective fact."

This is very helpful in differentiation between what you label and subjective and objective moral theories.

No comment!
Moral behavior as distincy from mechanical deterministic behaviour, i.e. no reflection within a mind.
I just don't think this is how morality works in reality. We treat almost everyone in our lives differently, our behavior in a particular situation varies - our performance as individuals is not constant. I hark back to my earlier claim that arriving at an objective morality (or objective moral theory, if you prefer) will require that we understand how the mind works to make its moral judgements.

I do not suppose that they are, I was seeking to determine whether you believed so.
What I'm poking at is the subjective nature of seeking any objective truth.
Thanks for making it clear what you intend by objective morality, my understanding is its a theory of moral behavior that seeks to analyze from the truth of a person's belief rather than what they say they believe.

I think I made my main points above but in summary IMO:
a) objectively establishing a person's belief will be very difficult. Some people act hypocritically or inconsistently so how can you tell?
b) aside from the issue in point a), the moral process within human individuals will prove impenetrable to a theory that assumes the definition of "right" you propose.
c) claims of objectivity must always be limited by the scope of data and assumptions used. While I can understand your approach overcomes deficiences in the "subjective" moral theories you describe, I'm still unclear exactly what you think you're being objective wrt - especially given your statement that theism is objective.

Cheers, John

dk

dk: - Let me start by saying I presented an ethical not a moral hypothetical. Cheating is immoral because the score pins the subject with a duplicitous act as an addendum to identity. No matter how beautiful the badge may appear, the essence has a corrosive effect on the object whatever opportunities, gratuities or rewards it garnishes the subject. The reality is independent of K&U and consequences, hence an objective fact. People rationalize duplicitous acts but in doing so denigrate themselves.
dk: - Seems to me you’re confusing intimacy with [in]formality. My relationship with my son is hierarchical laden with duties, obligations and responsibilities. Though I may have the same empathy for Frank as my son, we are peers and any obligation from either party is voluntary. My course of actions was dictated by objective relationships not empathy or intimacy.
dk: Empathy projects oneself into the shoes of another, and can manifest itself in multitude of emotions, relationships and motivations, from hero worship to betrayal. For example, its empathy that makes role models and media images a potent social force. Projecting myself into another person’s shoes may cause sorrows like disgust & envy; or inspirations like charity & hope. A few years ago a kid murdered his playmate for Michael Jordan tennis shoes. The kid had so much empathy for his playmate he literally put himself into his shoes. How do you differentiate Hume’s sympathy from BG’s empathy?

[ July 15, 2002: Message edited by: dk ]</p>

bd-from-kg

Alonzo Fyfe:

I was intending to answer your earlier posts, but the issue that has been raised in your debate with John Page is so relevant that it really needs to be dealt with first.

You say:

Later you clarify this by saying:

While this sounds reasonable in some cases, it is unintelligible in others. For example, suppose that I have never heard of milk, or chocolate, or malt, and one day am offered a chocolate malt. I find it delicious, and from then on I have a desire to drink a chocolate malt from time to time. Surely this is a desire derived from knowledge?

You distinguish between having a desire and knowing that one has a desire, saying:

I’m sure this makes sense in terms of some definitions of “desire”, but I don’t understand what it could mean in terms of yours. Some time ago you said:

But what exactly does it mean to say that one has an “attitude that P is to be made true” but that one does not know that one has such an attitude? If this is possible, is it possible that you or I have an attitude that all Jews are to be exterminated without being aware that we have this attitude? Is it possible to be a Nazi without knowing it? If so, what sort of operational procedure do you propose for testing whether this is so? I don’t think I’m a Nazi. In fact, I’m under the impression that I rather like Jewish people. But maybe I’m wrong; maybe I “really” hate them and want to kill them all. Or maybe you’re talking nonsense here.

It seems to me to be even more absurd to say that I had an “attitude that the proposition that I an enjoying a chocolate malt was to be made true” before being offered the chocolate malt, considering that I did not have the concept of milk, or of chocolate, or of malt, much less of a chocolate malt. And of course, I had no idea that I would enjoy a chocolate malt even if I had been able by some miracle to imagine such a thing. Under these conditions how could I possibly desire a chocolate malt? What would such a desire consist of; what would be its content?

Your example of desiring to win a chess game is another good illustration. Certainly one can desire to win a game of chess without knowing that one will win. But one cannot desire to win a game of chess if one does not have the concept of a “game” or of “winning” a game, and hasn’t the slightest clue that there is such a game as chess.

John Page has already made this point:

But your reply seems to have completely missed the point. By “knowing about” P I’m sure that John meant “having the concept of P”, not knowing that P exists. If one does not have the concept of P, one cannot desire it.

The other part of your argument is that, even if new K&U somehow causes new desires, there is no reason to take this into account in one’s “moral calculus” because any such causation is fundamentally nonrational. As you put it:

But this argument is highly misleading at best. Although it is true that new K&U cannot logically entail a new desire, new desires can be a rational consequence of new K&U. To see this, let’s turn once again to the example of a chocolate malt. I taste a chocolate malt for the first time, find it delicious, and thus find the experience of drinking it delightful, and therefore form a desire to drink chocolate malts from time to time. To argue that this process is “nonrational” is rather absurd. To say that I find the experience of drinking a chocolate malt is delightful is to say that I find it desirable. What could be more rational than to desire to have experience that one has rational reasons to expect one will find desirable?

The fact that this does not involve a rigorous logical argument is beside the point. It is perfectly normal, natural, and rational for certain “propositional attitudes,” as you call them, to result from certain experiences even though they are not logically entailed by them. For example, if my optical processing circuits report a round red field, I may form a hypothesis that there is a red ball in front of me. If I then feel what appears to be a spherical object in the place that I hypothesize the ball to be, and if scientific instruments give readings typical of a red object, I may well form a belief that there is a red ball there. But none of this information logically entails that there is a red ball there, or even that there is probably a red ball there. This belief goes far beyond anything entailed by the evidence. Similarly, if I remember eating a ham sandwich a minute ago, I will probably believe that I ate a ham sandwich a minute ago. but this belief is by no means logically entailed by the existence of a “memory” of having done so.

The most that can be said is that experiences of these sorts appear, in most cases, to cause beliefs of the sort described. I challenge you to give any logical justification for these beliefs that does not involve assumptions for which there is no evidence whatsoever. The plain fact is that there is an unbridgeable gap between experiences of any kind and beliefs. You mention induction and abduction as possible ways (besides deduction) to “infer” conclusions. But there is not, and cannot possibly be, any evidence that the Principle of Induction is valid. And abduction must necessarily appeal to Occam’s Razor, and again there is not, and cannot possibly be, any evidence that it is valid. Moreover, beliefs based on memory do not seem to be justified by either of these principles; belief that one’s memory is a reasonably reliable guide to what happened in the past seems to be yet another “article of faith”.

In the final analysis all that one can say is that in all of these cases (i.e., in forming these beliefs) we are following what seem to be valid principles of rational action. But then, isn’t acting in such a way as to have an experience which one believes one will find desirable an equally valid principle of rational action? And what better reason could there be to believe that one will find an experience desirable than the fact that one has found similar experiences desirable in the past? And clearly, to say that one acts in a way calculated to produce a certain kind of experience is to say that one has the purpose of having it, which in turn is to say that one desires to have it.

Thus, there is a very clear, natural sense in which desires can be a rational consequence of experiences, just as there is a clear, natural sense in which beliefs can be a rational consequence of experiences. In both cases they are not logically implied by the experiences, but are the result of adhering to the principles of rational action relating to the formation of the propositional attitude in question.

But if new desires can be a rational consequence of increased K&U, there would seem to be no reason to exclude such desires from consideration in determining what one “ought” to do in an “all-things-considered” sense.

[ July 15, 2002: Message edited by: bd-from-kg ]</p>

John Page

Actually, I did mean knowing about P. Of course, how we come to be in posession of such knowledge is an additional matter.

Without verification of P's existence in the world outside the mind we cannot know whether our knowledge is of, say, a completely imaginary P or of a physcial P apprehended through sense data.

It may be that a "concept of P" is necessary for P to be apprehended but IMO the mind synthesizes the concept P based on experience. This being that case, (that the concept of P doesn't magically appear from nowhere), it can be argued that apriori knowledge of P is required for the mind to later synthesize the concept P.

To avoid unnecessary debate about perception the form of a concept etc, of which our knowledge is incomplete, perhaps it would be better if I had said P must experience S before having a desire about it. We could then proceed to investigate how experience gets translated into desire.

Cheers, John

bd-from-kg

The AntiChris:

First off, it should be noted that much of the disagreement about such questions is based on disagreements about factual issues. For example, how effective is charity? Does it have some negative consequences which might outweigh the positive ones (especially if it were to become too widespread or readily available to people who could cope for themselves). It also depends on what responsibilities we have toward our own family, our own community, our own country. To the extent that the disagreement has a factual basis, it can be resolved in principle. But of course it is impossible at present to resolve these factual disputes. That doesn’t mean that they aren’t factual - i.e., that they are not disputes about objective questions of fact.

But it’s quite possible that even if all of the relevant factual issues were resolved, fully rational people would continue to disagree about this question. As you may recall, I anticipated this kind of situation. My theory says that in such cases there is no objectively “right” thing to do. Of course, it’s possible that fully rational people would agree that you should give at least a certain amount to charity and that you should not give more than a certain upper limit. In other words, there might be a partial objectively correct answer: at least this, but not more than that.

In any case, the fact that it is impossible in practice to answer this question (i.e., the question of what policy, if any, a perfectly rational person with sufficient K&U would approve of) with any confidence doesn’t mean that it’s meaningless. There are lots of such questions that are clearly meaningful. For example, what will the weather be right here at 4 PM one year from now? Chaos theory tells us that this question is inherently unanswerable, yet it is clearly a meaningful question with an objectively correct answer.

My theory does no aim to provide helpful guidelines for answering questions of the form “Should X do Y?” This is the job of practical ethics. It is a metaethical theory; that is, it is concerned with what such questions mean. The fact that, according to my theory, the correct answer to many “Should X do Y?” questions is very difficult to determine in practice is not really an argument against the theory. The answer to many such questions is very difficult to determine according to almost any nontrivial ethical theory – even subjective ones. For example, if you say that as far as you’re concerned the “right” thing to do is whatever is in your enlightened self-interest, I could easily come up with cases in which it is clearly impossible in practice to determine what’s “right” – i.e., what’s in your enlightened self-interest. Human life is incredibly complex; deciding what to do is extremely difficult and fraught with error no matter what your goals or purposes are.