K

Longbow:

So now the proof includes the intentions of the person making the statement? Come on. You're trying to defend the indefensible. If a person claiming something was ugly intends ot mean it in an absolute sense, then that is sufficient to prove objective beauty?

I don't know how to debate something like that. It lacks any kind of foundation in reason or logic. I think I'll head back over to E/C and listen to the young earth creationist for a while.

Longbow

You asked me if simply talking about God implied an objective foundation for God's law. It doesn't because the objective foundation for God's law would be predicated on the physical existence of god.

So, your little "come back" has nothing to do with my position. Your accusing me of a straw man is bit of the pot callign the kettle black. I rebutted your straw man in a straightforward fashion.

Longbow

Treat everyone with respect. This is actually neutral to suffering. It is certainly possible to construe it as fundamentally the same. It is also possible to argue that this isn't really a moral. But, generally speaking this is one example of a moral that someone might have but that is not generally the same as "Don't cause needless suffering."

Longbow

Yes -- duh! Of course it does. How you interpret a statement absolutely must account for how that statement was intended to be used. And, sure enough, unless you can show that there is no sense in which their assertion can be taken as such, then it is one. This really could be covered in an introductory linguistics class. Seriously -- go check it out.

So, if I say "This is objectively good art," then the burden of proof is on you to show that I cannot possibly mean that. Your argument would no doubt end in interpretting this statement as merely meaning that I like it. On the other hand, if I was saying something about the skill with which it had to have been created, or something like that, then it is entirely possible that I could have meant something objective.

Go take a course in linguistics, then. You really don't know what you are talking about.

K

Longbow:

Not according to your proof for the objective foundation of moratity. According to your proof of the objective foundation of morality, all that is needed are declarative, communacative statements that are intended by the speaker to be objective. Clearly the list of God's laws meets every one of the criteria which you, yourself, established. I don't see how that could be construed as a strawman.

K

Longbow:

I'm saying that it doesn't matter if the speaker intended the declaration to be objective or not. If it truly is objective, then it is independent of the speaker or his/her intentions. Maybe you could use something from your introductory linguistics class to explain precisely how you got from a speaker intending a statement as an objective evaluation to it actually being an objective evaluation. I can certainly intend a statement of mine to be a magic spell, that doesn't make it one. Or does it? (Abracadabra )

Are you honestly arguing that someone merely claiming (or even just intending) that his/her evaluation of something is objective automatically makes it so? If so, it would certainly help me if you go through the proof step by step.

Kharakov

Your going to have to explain "treating everyone with respect". I do not see the neutrality in it. I get "don't cause needless suffering" out of it.

'Treat everyone with repect' could be a sub-category of 'don't cause needless suffering.

Kharakov

Kharakov

One problem with that is I can say "This is objectively bad art" about the same piece.

The burden of proof isn't on him to show that you don't mean what you say- it's on you to prove what you say. shifty

Longbow

For starters it is not a "proof that there is an objective foundation to morality" but rather a refutation of the idea that morality might be subjective. Secondly, your response is a straw man because it provides an irrelevant "counter example" to the refutation. The refutation is not that because of the existence of some physical object, then the arguments for the subjectivity of morality are false. Your "counter example" refutation is precisely that contention.

If you are asking a relevant question like whether or not someone talking about a particular god establishes an objective foundation for what religion would follow from that, then the answer to that is obviously yes.

Longbow

Once again that's a straw man. Your intending to have your ideas have a physical counter part is a completely different thing than that your intending that your statements have a certain meaning and epistemological property. Yes, it may be hard to believe this (I guess) but the intended meaning of statements is where statements get their meaning from.

Now who is positing some nether realm of "meaning" out there like ghosts that inhabit statements. This would be on par with thinking that the written word had magical powers. All it is is a convention. If you use the convention, then you are necessarilly referring to what all people that use that covnention have intended by it. You, personally, cannot change the convention or render he convention nonexistent just by shutting it out of your mind or excluding it from your world view. The convention for moral statements is that they are objective assertions. The way that you know that this is the convention is because they are ordinary declarative sentences. You know that there is a convention because they are commonly used to communicate. And, you know that they are ordinary declarative sentences (i.e. that they have propositional content) because that is how people use them. It is still possible to dispute all of this, but you now have a very heavy burden of proof in that you must show that it is impossible to interpret them this way even though this is the convention.

(see above)

The Principle of Charity in Philosophical Inquiry and How it Relates to Communication:

There is a common practice in philosophy called "applying the principle of charity" to an argument. Whenever you read a famous author, you should try to make their argument as strong as possible. In the Demon Haunted World, I believe Sagan made a reference to being able to rephrase your opponents position to their satisfaction. There used to be a discussion of this on the University of Cambridge's Philosophy Department website. Basically, the point is that you must make an active effort to understand and interpret what the author is saying.

What are the consequences of not doing this? You end up making straw men rebuttals to their argument because you do not understand what their point is. So, you can avoid this by being able to consistently state their position to their satisfaction, for instance. But, that is a bit formal and subject to gaming -- it just doesn't always work out. People will try to get someone to concede things that they don't necessarily adhere to or that aren't really essential to their position and then refute them this way, essentially with a straw man. The more general and robust principle is to not try to get some sort of formal "buy in" (especially if you are reading a dead author) but to just "be nice" -- be charitable -- when interpretting their position.

Believe it or not, you everybody does this all the time. It is actually crucial to being able to carry on a discussion at all. If you do nto actively seek out the meaning of an authors statement or of the sentences you read, then you will not be able to even make a coherent idea out of what you are reading at all. You would be illiterate. So, for instance, when it comes down to a dispute over what the languistic convention is over some class of sentences you have to essentially apply the principle of charity to it. You have to assume that the author of the sentence is attempting to communicate something and develop the best interpretation based on the form of the sentence, the context it appears in, etc. Figuring out what the sentence means is all about figuring out what its author is trying to convey with it. And figuring out what a class of sentences used in a convention such as a particular language is supposed to literally mean is all about looking at the usage and the intent of such statements by speakers of that langauge. While it is true that peopls can and often do say things or use linguistic constructions in inconsitent ways, and so do not or cannot really mean what they are trying to (because it is incoherent), the burden of proof is on you to show that if you think it is true.

***

In short, you cannot just arbitrarily interpret moral sentences the way you are. You have to show that they must be interpretted this way or that it is impossible to interpret them the way people commonly use them. If you cannot, then you should drop the pretense that you are talking about morality.