Keith Russell

Greetings:

I believe in objective morality, but I'm still a bit confused by all this talk of punishment.

Should one define what he or she believes the objective of 'punishment' should be, before advocating 'punishment'? There are numerous possible outcomes that could be desired to result from 'punishment'.

Personally, I'm not terribly concerned with 'punishment'.

A person who is found to have committed a crime should be separated from the rest of society, so that she cannot commit a second crime. Depending on the severity of the crime, it may be that the person could be released back into society after some time apart, and given another chance.

If the crime is again committed, the person should be separated for a longer period of time.

For more severe crimes, of course, no 'second chance' is warranted, and the person should be permanently removed from society, so there is no chance that the crime will be committed again.

This permanent separation should take the form of life imprisonment; I am opposed to the death penalty.

Keith.

K

Keith:

What do you believe is the foundation for the objectivity of morality? What measures morality outside of the minds of human beings? When two people or groups disagree about a moral question, what is the objective yardstick can be used to determine who is right?

I contend that there is no moral objectivity. Morality is a term we use to decribe evolved drives that allow us to cooperate in a social evironment. The desire to hold an individual morally responsible is also a drive in individuals that evolved in successful societies. It isn't predicated on an objective morality, it is simply a pragmatic solution that nature has found to create societies of animals. Wild dogs and primates hold members of their societies "morally responible" for certain actions. Are they able to see objective morality as we do?

bd-from-kg

K:

I’m really stunned that so many people here don’t understand the distinction between punishing someone who is morally responsible and punishing someone who isn’t. Do you folks (other than Kip) really think that it is appropriate to treat small children and puppies the same way we treat normal adults for the same behavior? I should think that the answer is obvious: of course not! It would be idiotic to do so, for purely practical reasons. No one with an ounce of sense would punish a toddler for, e.g., setting a house on fire or letting it slip that his family is hiding Jews in the attic (in occupied France) in the same way that he would punish a normal adult for doing the same thing. We wouldn’t do so even if he had been repeatedly warned in the strongest terms not to do the very thing he did. Surely the reasons for this are not complete mystery to all of you?

There’s obviously a difference between normal adults and toddlers (or anyone else whose mental development is far short of a normal adult’s) which is relevant to how they should be dealt with for similar actions. And this distinction is normally described by saying that normal adults are (usually) morally responsible for their actions whereas toddlers aren’t.

When one society treats killing certain kinds of cows as a serious offense while others treat it as a matter of moral indifference, or when one society forbids gathering sticks on Saturday on penalty of death while others take no interest in such activities, we are justified in dismissing these as the product of local superstitions. But when every society ever known has followed a particular moral practice we may be sure that it reflects a fundamental human reality. Thus, since every society treats offenses by young children differently than similar offenses by competent adults, we can be sure without even inquiring into the matter further that there are very important practical reasons for doing so. But in fact we need not rely solely on the universality of this practice; we can discover at least some of the reasons for it.

I’ve already mentioned one important relevant difference between toddlers and adults which accounts (at least in large part) for why we regard the latter as “morally responsible” for violating moral rules in a sense in which toddlers aren’t: adults normally understand the reasons for the rules, whereas toddlers normally don’t.

Now the reasons for moral rules generally involve serious harmful effects that breaking them would have either on specific individuals or on society as a whole. When a person who understands that an act will have such consequences and does it anyway, he displays a callous disregard for the welfare of others, which is a character trait (i.e., a persistent aspect of his nature) likely to lead anyone who has it to do similarly harmful things in the future. But if someone (like a toddler) understands only that an action is forbidden and does it anyway, this does not necessarily reflect any such undesirable character trait. Punishment is aimed at modifying behavior, and the effect of punishment on behavior depends on the psychological source of the behavior. thus it is useful to distinguish between actions that derive in part from a persistent callous disregard for the interests of others and ones that don’t, and to treat them differently. This is at least one of the justifications for distinguishing between actions for which the agent is morally responsible and those for which he is not.

This is not to say that actions for which the agent is not morally responsible should always be dealt with more “leniently” that those for which he is. If a person (or animal) appears to have no understanding of the effects of his actions on others, but persistently does things that harm others, he certainly needs to be stopped (perhaps by incarceration). And it is very possible that he can be deterred by appropriate threats, in which case such actions can properly be considered punishment. (By way of contrast, we might kill a homicidal maniac, but we do not regard this as a “punishment” since we do not expect it to deter other homicidal maniacs.) Such punishments can be just as severe (or even more so) than they would be for someone who is morally responsible. Thus the distinction is useful for determining the appropriate way to deal with the agent because it goes to motive and intent. But, as is often true of practical judgments about human affairs, the relationship between being morally responsible and the appropriate punishment is not straightforward; it cannot be reduced to a simple formula.

The main point is that the distinction between being merely “responsible” and being “morally responsible” is a practical one. It is justified by its usefulness, not by some imaginary transcendent “moral reality”.

K

bd-from-kg:

I think we agree except for a small bit of semantics. We do punish a toddler and an adult differently - and you alluded to why in your post. There are reasons of practicality. While the actions of the toddler and the adult may be similar, the toddler may be held responsible for disobeying a command while the adult may be held responsible for a depraved indifference to the fate of others. The punishment (or action taken if you'd like to include non-punishment cases) for each is designed to prevent future problems.

I think if we drop the term "morally responsible" and just use responsible, things make much more sense. Just because the corrective action taken may be different between two individuals, that doesn't mean that one is not being held responsible - morally or otherwise.

Like I said earlier, I think our positions are really fairly close. I just don't believe there is a fundamental difference between moral responsibility and responsibility.

bd-from-kg

Kip:

First off, God is not responsible for the pin or anything else, because He does not exist.

Second, you’re using the term “responsible” in the sense of “is the cause of,” which is not what “morally responsible” means. The pin is not morally responsible for anything. Indeed, it’s notable that virtually all of your examples involve entities which are clearly not moral agents, which do not choose to do anything, whose so-called “actions” are entirely caused by external forces. You claim to understand that compatibilism assigns responsibility to an agent only if the act in question had an internal cause – if it traces back to his nature and character – yet you stubbornly insist on giving examples that ignore this crucial condition. Perhaps this is because you recognize that such examples are (to say the least) less clear-cut than examples of falling dominos?

Third, you assume that only one agent can meaningfully be said to be responsible for an act. But this is false. Suppose that I offer you a million dollars to kill someone, and you kill him. Who’s responsible. One can argue that you are, because you killed him. But it can also be argued that I am, because I caused you to kill him by giving you a powerful incentive to do so. So who’s responsible – me or you? Why, both of us, of course. The fact that I induced you to do it doesn’t absolve you of responsibility. The fact that my act was further back in the causal chain, and that it caused yours, is irrelevant. You are also responsible regardless of this fact.

You quote me as saying

But I made it very clear that I was not saying that this implies that no one is morally responsible for anything from a human point of view. On the contrary, I pointed out at length that “being morally responsible” is not a property of the agent. Thus it makes perfectly good sense to say that one can be responsible (i.e., answerable; properly subject to punishment) to men but responsible – i.e., properly subject to punishment - to God. The difference is that God has effective alternatives to punishment which are not available to us mere mortals. It has nothing to do with whether one is “really” responsible in some supposed “ultimate” or “metaphysical” sense.

Again, all this assumes FTSOA that God exists. The point was that whether one is “responsible” for an act depends on in part on what alternatives are available, not just on the nature of the agent or of the act, or even of the consequences.

As to the second point, as the context made clear, at this point I was stating the additional condition for being morally responsible beyond the general conditions for being responsible (i.e., properly subject to punishment). “Being able to do otherwise” is a condition for being responsible at all, not only for being morally responsible.

As for why these conditions are relevant, see my reply to K.

From your comments it appears that you still don’t understand. If you did, you wouldn’t fail to understand the reason why “understanding the reasons” is relevant.

No, I don’t understand that at all. I understand that you consider being “ultimately responsible” to be a necessary condition of moral responsibility, but I don’t understand what this “moral responsibility” is that you consider it a to be a necessary condition for. Evidently you do not consider being morally responsible to consist of being responsible (i.e., of being properly subject to punishment) plus being capable of understanding moral reasoning. So what do you mean by being morally responsible?

This is directly connected to the first point. In my reply to K I explained why I consider “being capable of understanding moral reasoning” to be a condition for being morally responsible according to my understanding of the meaning of “morally responsible”. But no doubt your reaction will be, “That’s all very well for your compatibilist definition of moral responsibility, but it is completely irrelevant to my concept of moral responsibility”. And I’ll have no idea how to respond to this, because I won’t know what you’re talking about. So until you give me at least a vague idea of what you mean by being “morally responsible,” we’ll just be talking past one another. I’ve laid my cards on the table; now it’s time for you to do the same.

It seems to me that you refuse to accept any meaningful definition of morality. You seem to conceive of morality as a mystical set of transcendent truths that exists independently of all human emotions and desires. This may make sense for a theist, but it is incompatible with a naturalistic viewpoint. Once you reject God, this conception of morality becomes unintelligible.

Not necessarily. Other conditions would also have to be met, namely:

(1) There would have to be no more effective means available for influencing their behavior. For example, if the robots could be reprogrammed, or if a defective one could simply be shut off and replaced, punishment would be unjustified.

(2) The prospect of being punished (or rewarded) would have to be meaningful to them; i.e., it would influence their behavior. Obviously, what would constitute reward or punishment might be quite different for robots and humans, or even for different robots.

(3) To be morally responsible, they would have to understand (at least in general terms) not only what the consequences of their actions would be, but why the consequences would be less desirable than the consequences of other options.

If the first two conditions held, I see no reason why robots should not be held responsible. If all of them held, they would be morally responsible. In that case they would be influenced in the desired way by the prospect of rewards and punishments, they would be capable of deciding on the basis of moral considerations (not just by the prospect of being punished for breaking a rule), and no better means of influencing their behavior would be available. Why should they not be held morally responsible under these conditions?

I tried to word my argument in such a way as to make it clear that it is valid regardless of the relationship between mind and body. If you don’t believe that there are such things as “mental events” or “mental causes” strictly speaking, just interpret such phrases as referring to the corresponding physical events. It makes no difference to the argument (aside from making some phrases redundant).

Not at all. To say that an event is caused entails that that event is “determined” by what came before (in the sense that I explained carefully earlier), but that’s a far cry from saying that it entails determinism. Do you really have trouble understanding the distinction between saying that this particular event is caused and saying that all events are caused?

Bingo. Your “libertarian” typically does not have a clear concept of what he means by “choose” and therefore does not realize that it entails “cause”. Or he has no clear concept of what he means by “cause” and therefore does not realize that “cause” entails “determine” (again, in the sense that I laid out earlier). The libertarian position rests entirely on confusion. When the confusion is cleared up by careful analysis, the libertarian position collapses into incoherence.

Yes. Metaphysics (in this sense) is generally the last resort of those whose opinions rest on notions that are unintelligible in the final analysis. That’s pretty much what Hume was saying. There is no “metaphysical domain” where things are logically possible that are not logically possible in the domain of “reality”. There is only clear thinking and confusion.

No, the libertarian is defying the laws of logic, not physics. That’s what my whole analysis was about. There is nothing illogical about supposing the laws of physics to be violated, even very frequently. But the laws of logic cannot be violated, even by God.

No. But if you say that a “gurbar” is a married bachelor, your definition is logically incoherent. One cannot even conceive of a married bachelor. Thus, if someone says that there are no gurbars, he is not saying anything, because the word “gurbar” doesn’t refer to any intelligible concept. It isn’t true that there are no gurbars, because the statement “There are no gurbars” does not express a proposition. Similarly, the statement “One is only morally responsible if one has LFW” does not express a proposition. It is unintelligible.

Anyway, this is purely a verbal quibble and not worth discussing further.

No, I’m saying, “Are you crazy? You claim to have a moral intuition that says that there is no such thing as morality. But in order for something to be an intuition, it has to be about something. Thus a claim that one has an intuition to the effect that the thing it is an intuition about doesn’t exist is nonsensical.”

I know of some people who think “X should do Y” means that doing Y is “good in itself” or “virtuous” regardless of consequences, and others who think it means that the consequences are better than those of the available alternatives. But you’re the only person I’ve ever encountered who thought that it carried any implication or connotation that the consequences of Y are desirable in themselves, as opposed to being preferable to the alternatives.

But to say that a certain state of affairs is “objectively desirable” can be construed in an understandable way. It might mean for example, that a completely rational person who has a complete knowledge and understanding of it might desire that it exist for its own sake. I can understand how such a person might have such a desire. But I do not see how any such person could desire that someone perform a particular act for its own sake, quite apart from either its effects or the enjoyment inherent in the act itself. To me this is as incomprehensible as desiring that a certain star in a distant galaxy should have fifteen planets even though no sentient being will ever be aware of it. It seems to be completely pointless, and therefore not something that a fully rational being could ever desire.

The original question was “How can we be morally responsible in a deterministic world?” (Odd that you, of all people, should have forgotten this.) The real point was, how can we be morally responsible without LFW? My point was that the distinction between being “morally responsible” and being “responsible” that you insist on is irrelevant to this question, because even being responsible (i.e., properly subject to punishment) requires that one “could have done otherwise” in the same sense (whatever it is) that is required to be morally responsible. Just as a competent adult should not be punished if he could not have done otherwise, so a toddler should not be punished if he could not have done otherwise.

No, this was not the original argument. You made the original argument; you should be able to remember what it was. But it appears that you became so intent on “refuting” the “seven points” that you forgot what the original point of the thread was. If you no longer consider either the PAP or the PUR to be valid moral principles, what’s the point of continuing this thread? It appears that you now want to discuss moral philosophy proper, which really belongs in a different forum.

With regard to the relationship between points 5 and 6, your point was that toddlers, for example, are not generally considered morally responsible, which is correct. You concluded from this that being “responsible” is not, in most people’s minds, the same thing as being “morally responsible”, which is also correct. But you seem determined to overlook the obvious: that normal adults are generally considered to be morally responsible. If you’re going to consider “what most people think” to be a guide to the conditions under which someone is morally responsible, this latter fact is at least as relevant as the first. The fact that people make exceptions to the rule proves that they accept the rule, not that they don’t. It doesn’t make sense to use the fact that people generally exempt those whose minds are not sufficiently developed from being morally responsible as an argument that no one is ever morally responsible. The logical thing to do is to enquire into just what the relevant difference between toddlers and adults is that makes the latter, but not the former, morally responsible, and why it matters.

Since I’ve already discussed what this difference is and why it matters in my reply to K, I won’t repeat it here. I will note only that, like all moral distinctions, this one is justified ultimately by the desirable practical effects of making it.

Not really. As soon as one can conceive of doing two different things, and is able to deliberate as to which to choose, one has “free will” in the sense required for being responsible for one’s actions. Of course, the other conditions required for being responsible may not be met. The mental development needed to be capable of meeting these other conditions does indeed develop gradually. The conditions for being morally responsible develop even later.

Fine. What labels would you give them? More importantly, to what concept would you attach the label “morally responsible”?

What would constitute “establishing” a “system” for moral responsibility in your mind? Unless what you mean by “moral responsibility” is such that it is possible in principle to “establish” a “system” for it, you can hardly complain that I have failed to do so.

Need I remind you that your statement was “I do not subscribe to any system for moral responsibility”? Or that you described yourself as an “amoralist”? That seems to pretty well cover all the bases.

Well, that seems to me to be a pretty good reason!

Look. You have a choice. You can use moral terms in a way that is meaningless. Or you can use them in a way that is meaningful. Or you can choose not to use them at all. The first choice is absurd, the last impossible. You will use moral language whether you intend it or not; all that will have happened is that you will have deprived yourself of the use of the standard vocabulary, and thus will be obliged to invent a new one. As Stephen Toulmin points out in Reason in Ethics (chap. 10.2):

Not so. My moral “system” (which is remarkably similar to popular notions of “right”, “wrong”, “moral responsibility”, etc.) is based on the actual purpose and function of morality, which is to influence behavior; to bring people’s actions into better harmony by persuading them to take other people’s interests into account more than they do “naturally”. But while “my” system serves this purpose tolerably well, I have no idea what purpose you imagine that your system (or lack of system) serves. Apparently you conceive of morality as a system that exists in splendid isolation from all human concerns. For example, you seem to think that a demonstration that holding people responsible under certain conditions and morally responsible under somewhat different conditions is useful – i.e., produces desirable results for society as a whole – is irrelevant to the question of whether people “really are” responsible or morally responsible under these conditions. At this point I’m left in complete bafflement. If such considerations are irrelevant, what, pray tell, is relevant? What criterion distinguishes “legitimate” moral concepts from “illegitimate” ones?

This isn’t an assumption; it’s axiomatic. There is no point in using words in such a way that they cannot possibly, even in principle, apply to anything.

What question? If I insist on using words in such a way that they actually mean something - if I require that terms have actual referents - what question am I begging? The question of whether language should be useful rather than useless?

Really? Perhaps you missed this:

This work is chock-full of passages that make it crystal clear that (as the title clearly implies) Hume is talking about what people ought to do, not what people think people ought to do. To interpret it otherwise requires one to interpret hundreds of passages as “meaning” the opposite of what Hume actually wrote. This is literary deconstruction with a vengeance.

Well, if the “one, legitimate morality” is so far removed from the “moralities of the world” that it entails, contrary to what practically everyone believes, that no one is responsible for anything he does, it must be completely unknowable to human beings. If so, why bother talking, or even speculating, about it? One might just as well dispute whether the most intelligent species on the sixth planet of Sirius has three eyes or four.

[ September 24, 2002: Message edited by: bd-from-kg ]</p>

Primal

Bd:

1. Morality and emotional reactions

Is that not the very issue under question though? I think when a Christian says "cloning is immoral" he is in effect describing his emotional state based in part, on his preconceptions about the nature of reality and the imagined consequences of cloning.

I would say that this is a case of mixed emotions, nothing unheard of in humans.

These very debates extend to the very definition of morals, where agreement is nowhere near unanimous to put it lightly, hence you cannot deny my own as if it was officially unacceptable.


No, I am not saying this. The moral is still an emotional reaction, the reaction may be based on mistaken conceptions is all I'm saying though. In which case one can say the moral was innacurate or inappropriate. For example: Lets say Frank Loves July. Frank believes the person in front of him is July and hence Frank loves the person in front of him. Now Frank may be wrong about loving the person in front of him if that person is, say, Julie's twin sister. Frank may feel differently when he discovers this. However that does not mean, that since love can be mistaken based on incorrect assumptions, that love is not an emotional response or that Frank does not love July. Frank's emotions would just have been inapropriate when he was wrong in the epistemic sense.

I fail to see the inconsistency, just because my judgement may be based on mistaken beleifs and hence may change in light of new evidence, it does not follow that my judgement was not emotional.

How do you know? If their support for the death penalty was based on mistaken beliefs, then they may change their minds and begin to experience different emotional reactions upon hearing about executions. If new evidence for example reveals that an executed man was innocent, their feelings towards the execution of the said man are likely to change.


Question begging.


Not necessarily, a statement doesn't have to be as meaningless as the denial of a mathematical law to be meaningless in fact. For example the statement "evolutionary theory is not scientific" is meaningful to creationists but only at face value, when one looks at the underlying assumptions of such a statement in comparison to science, then one sees how senseless it really is. Likewise is the claim "it feels morally wrong but is moral", is meaningless when one examines the underlying assumptions of such a statement.

2. Science and moral judgments.

Well as of now that's true. I never claimed otherwise so I don't know what your point is. However if science completely understood the nature of brain chemistry and understood that all things seen as immoral were accompanied by a certain chemical reaction in the brain, then science would have a lot to say about moral foundations.

Yes, and my comments were relavent both because it established the idea that rape could be seen as immoral, and showed conditions in which raping all in sight would be of disadvantage.These conditions(conquering a village) are likewise very rare nowadays. So since they seem situation, and at odds with one's empathetic traits, the case for rape you propose is, shall we say, less then air-tight. Also, even if tribes did rape, that is a far cry from saying the tribes experienced moral emotions when commiting the act.


Well how do you know its immoral first off? And second, do not societies allow immoral acts at times if their moral emotions are overwhelmed by conflicting drives? Isn't that why people in general behave in an immoral manner? Not because they feel the act was moral but because a stronger desire overpowered their moral sense. The argument you make for rape=evolved morals is rather faulty.

Also you keep bringing up how you consider rape to be something sanctioned or something that should be seen as moral given my theory, while at the same time positing that rape is immoral, so in essence my theory is wrong because it does not fit the facts. But on what basis can rape said to be immoral then? Basically, that sort of argument only works because people have an emotional reaction upon hearing of rape and any code that sanctions rape: an emotional reaction of moral indignity. But you cannot have it both ways: either you must say emotional condemnations of rape equate to moral facts or not, in which case the allowance of rape cannot be used as a criticism of my theory, not that the criticism was valid, I am merely pointing out an inconsistency in your line of criticism.

Tp play on the emotional reaction while not aknowledging only strenghtens my own case.


That statement is merely an inconsistency hastily disproven by question begging.

You admit that certain emotional reactions evolved that can be seen as "morals" but they aren't "true morals" according to you. This ignores the fact that the question of what constitutes "true morals" is the very issue under debate and that mere incredulity alone is not enough to refute my equation of the evolved morality with "true morals".

Why not? You have failed to establish a basis for dividing morality with preference and have merely resorted to circular refutations, "it does not follow....because it just does not".

I would say slavery was wrong, not because morals are not based on emotion. But because other values I adhere to, those of legal equality, freedom, empathy and being humane. Even if slavery is preferable in some manner, I prefer that other values be honored more so. It is in that manner that I denounce slavery.

Likewise I believe that many others, during the pre-abolitionist days thought in a similiar manner, human nature is not so radically different after all. This is why slave owners made arguments about blacks not being fully human, or blacks being better off as slaves then free men, why they would try to switch the subject in point towards the factory worker's lot in the North etc. None of which was factual or made a difference on the matter other then the to confuse the matter. Most likely because they new that all things being equal, slavery would be evaluated as morally reprihensible and applicable to all humans, not just blacks, if it was a legitimate practice because blacks are not radically different from other humans.

Similiar reasoning can be applied to all the above examples, which hardly count as refutations. The value of fairness can overcome tribalism, the value of peace,life and such can overcome the instinct to fight.

Again you have merely repeated your position instead of making a valid refutation. Why exactly can't sociobiology be used to draw moral conclusions?


Yes it is actually:

dictionary.com

I see evaluations as often times emotional.

just so you don't nickpick this:

I think ascertaining value and worth of as emotional. This works because the nature of "values" is exactly what's under scrutiny. Rejecting my definitions simply because you do not like them makes for a very weak case.

And you need to stop being so presumptuous.

See above.

Which is what one is supposed to do.

I see the question as meaningful at face value but not when one explores the underlying definitions though, to maintain that the question is meaningful even in the face of how it makes little sense given the definitions I'm working with: is to presuppose exactly what one is arguing about. That is, it already presupposes a definition of morals that throws out my own definition 'a priori' and amounts to question begging.

Ah, but you are using the word 'judge' in two different senses, the conceptual and emotional. I am saying that a moral is an emotional reaction, that is the definition. Now how you tell whether something is immoral or not is not by definition at this point but by emotion. The definition or nature of morality in general, is not determined by preference, its expression is. The same applies to other emotions as well, if I say "love is an emotion" does that automatically then equate to me saying that the definition of "love" is arbitrary and meaningless? No, all I'm saying is that the definition is derrived from basic experience.

The term morality is also a basic definition in many ways and cannot be properly defined by underlying words like other definitions. Many of these are common in the dictionary, for example look up the word "real" or "sight" and you will go in circles. Does that mean nobody knows what is meant by the words "real" or "sight"? Does that mean there is absolute uniformity in what people consider "real"? Does that mean the definitions of "real" and "sight" are a matter of arbitrary perference?

This is a false analogy because the term "decidulous" cannot be reduced to anything experienced, whereas morals; defined as emotions are reducable to certain types of experience.I have not defined morals as , that which one says is moral, but as a certain type of emotion that most have experienced.

Yes, that is possible but the issue is not that simple. One cannot say that just because the act occured in the past it was seen as moral or was not based on misconceptions that lead to inappropriate reactions.


Again you are using the term "judge" in two different senses; the sense involving definitions itself and the sense involving what can be labeled as moral.

Also again, the issue is not that simple. Such acts are likely to have mixed reactions from different people, morals are not always uniform. Such an act is also likely to be based in miconception. I also do not see any contradiction between saying the act *was* moral then but is no longer moral now.


So because you have already said "it doesn't make sense" without offering good evidence that blows my theory out of the water?

Creationists by the dozens thought the idea of the eye being designed just "didn't make sense"; however they were just being stubborn. Not to compare my idea to evolution in order to give it merit. I am merely showing the flaws of your own reasoning.

It takes more to counter a position then to declare that it "just doesn't make sense", one has to give reasons why. Otherwise your failure to accept the position can be just as easiliy be attributed to stubborness or bias as it can my positions lack of validity.

Also think of this; given that standard the statement "horse riding in the 16th century was the fastest way to travel". But "is no longer the fastest way to travel now". Given that idea, how could one in the same thing be so different? I am not saying they were3 judged the fastest, they *were* the fastest ways to travel. Using your reasoning though, both claims should be rejected because they "just don't make sense".

Or to put it this way, eating large quantities of salt used to be pleasurable for me, doing that is not pleasurable anymore. I am not saying the acts were/are judged as pleasurable or not, I am saying they were and are pleasureable/painful. Does that "just not make sense"? Do not confuse change with contradiction.

Again don't be so presumptuous. Your suspicions in this area lead you astray. I very much think moral propositions can be true or false given the right context. But then again all truth claims demand context, especially those involving organisms.

Well then it seems as if you are saying: adhere to my definition, or the popular definition, without reason: or you're just wrong. First off its based on a very innacurrate presumption: secondly your generalization of what people "usually say when they make claims involving morality" is unwarranted. For all you know they may mean it is a "boo" and "yay" type sense, which is what I supsect and has been my experience. Also, to say that my definitions are wrong, merely because they do not make sense when other use the term inappropriately only works if one presupposes your definitions are right. In which case you are again question begging, not refuting.

Also it is very, very, presumptious of you to suggest that my position is meaningless to bring up in a discusion involving determinism and its standing to morality. Even if you disagree with me, and my definition, that gives you no basis on which to say there is little point in me bringing up my position in this discussion. Only pure arrogance can lead to that sort of utterly unwarranted claim. I may disagree with existentialist position on morals for example, but the position is still relevant to discussing determinism and how it relates to morality. Only the most disingenuine investigator would say otherwise. Hence even if you do not accept my moral theory, you still have no right to take that disagreement out of its appropriate place and say " it "serves little point in showing how determinism and morality can be combined" especially when the disagreement is over definitions. Please realize that putting down my system does not make you right and that when:

Or the arrogant in your case.

[ September 24, 2002: Message edited by: Primal ]</p>

Kip

Bd:

This discussion is rapidly approaching an end, I feel. The heart of my last post was the conclusion that we are not really arguing about anything except words and I still feel that way (nor do I intend to argue words). The rest of my post were trivial objections about the rest of our dialogue (all of which was besides the point). You objected, however, to even this distinction and said:

“No, I don’t understand that at all. [what Kip means by moral responsibility]”

This statement surprised me because I offered the description of God (whose existence I also assume FTSOTA) setting the universe so that dominoes fall over and because you mentioned “ultimate responsibility” so often. This is what I meant by moral responsibility. This idea is related to:

metaphysical freedom
freedom of spontaneity (in contrast to freedom of action)
choice without desire
radical freedom
the existence of alternative possibilities

If after so much discussion, you still do not understand what I mean by ultimate responsibility, I am afraid that explaining the idea to you is probably an impossible task for me.

That said, I will address a few other comments from your post.

I must admit, that upon reading your message I was very afraid that I had misrepresented Hume, whom I respect so much. However, upon reading the Hume I soon discovered that there was no reference whatsoever to what people ought to believe about morality. Indeed, the theme of the passage is that everyone does have feelings about morality and that anyone who denies such feelings is talking nonsense. Nowhere does Hume grant that any one person’s morality is more legitimate than that of another.

I feel confident in my position that Hume would abolish the idea of what people ought believe about morality because of Hume’s famous dictum “Ought cannot be derived from is”. Hume is only describing, like a moral scientist, what people feel is right or wrong and why the people feel that. He is not, indeed cannot, grant any one system any more authority than any other. So please forgive me if I have committed “literary deconstruction with a vengeance” but I feel that my position is well supported.

To answer this, I am afraid we may have to delve into the controversy again, including a discussion of what personal identity and moral responsibility exactly are. However, we can say that one necessary condition for moral responsibility is the ability to do otherwise but no one maintains that a robot could do otherwise than the robot did. If a robot were sufficiently complex, any reasonable person would admit, upon inspection, that although the robot’s behavior was too complex to be predictable, he nevertheless could only have done as he did.
The standard compatibilist reply to this objection is:

The first thing to note about this defense (other than the feeling that such a reply is all too quick and easy) is that the hypothetical never occurs. The person “had chosen to do” otherwise happens as often as a river begins to flow backwards. Indeed, by inserting this clause into the statement, the compatibilist puts the image of the person choosing to do otherwise in the reader’s mind, which deceptively conveys a sense of real possibility. This image, however, is as meaningful as a brick going through a window without breaking glass, because the person never actually does choose so. The statement is conceivable but impossible.

The second thing to note about this defense is that this hypothetical person cannot be the same person as the original. The compatibilist says “IF he had chosen to do so” as if this hypothetical were perfectly coherent. However, the compatibilist position implies a hidden premise (as Schopenhauer beautiful illustrates). To say “if he had chosen to do so” IMPLIES that something must have been different. Either the person’s constitution was different or the environment was different. But these implied premises, which the compatibilist implies and requires (because we are not discussing what was possible in a different world but rather what was possible in THIS world), are precisely what the situation denies! According to the situation, everything was exactly the same, and yet the person hypothetically chose to do otherwise despite the laws of physics. However, this statement is either referring to some different person, or some other world, or the hypothetical is nonsense.

In other words, the problem with holding robots responsible (and by extension humans) is that, so long as human behavior is a function of constitution and environment (which strong determinism implies FTSOFTA), the two are necessarily related, and holding a person responsible for his actions would therefore be to also hold him responsible for his constitution and environment, which is nonsense.

So, upon inspection, the compatibilist definition of “could” is as incoherent as the definition of free will he accuses the libertarian of maintaining. The reason for this incoherence is that exactly this ability to choose otherwise (even if only a hypothetical) is what is truly required for moral responsibility.

I am confused. You admit that the statement “if 2 + 2 = 5 you may have a cookie” is coherent. But you deny that “One is only morally responsible if one has LFW” is coherent. What is the relevant distinction between these two propositions? For surely, we cannot imagine “people possess LFW” as much as we can “2 + 2 = 5”, and yet we know in both cases that neither statement is true. We can evaluate the truth of either statement without needing to conceive either hypothetical (which would be impossible). It is sufficient to note that 2 + 2 can only = 4 and that humans only make choices with desires. So, both statements seem to me at least coherent, and I suspect that you deny the one but admit the other because of pure convenience.

Quite simply, I would use labels such as “cause, deterrent, prevention, bad” to refer to your idea of “morally responsible”. The concept I would attach to “morally responsible” is metaphysical freedom (discussed at the top).

Yes, by establish I mean demonstrate that a proposition is true. For example, we can agree that we can establish that “2 + 2 = 4”, perhaps by taking two and two of something, putting them together, and counting the sum. We could likewise establish that my name is Kip and that I am typing at a computer right now, perhaps by checking my birth certificate or watching me type now. When we discuss moral philosophy, however (some would say all philosophy!), this familiar task of establishing what is truth becomes quite difficult, if not foreign. To establish that something is moral (or “ought” to be) we would either need an empirical discovery, however, as Hume noted “you cannot derive ought from is”, or you need some a priori reasoning about the universe (as we establish that 2 + 2 = 4), and yet that a priori truth is denied us. For, while we can convince any reasonable man that 2 + 2 = 4, there are many reasonable men who maintain quite contrary ideas about morality. There remains no method of deciding the dispute and thus no method of deciding what is truly moral (this is the standard argument for subjectivism with which I am sure you are familiar).

You said that I do not accept “the” concept of moral responsibility and I asked you what this concept (singular) of morality is. But instead of one concept you have given me a multitude and “covered all the bases”. All I can do is repeat my question and ask you “what concept of moral responsibility” I so mistakenly deny? Yours?

I said previously that you beg the question. You continue to do so.

The question is “in principle, can people ever satisfy the conditions for moral responsibility”? In the course of the discussion I say that, according to the PAP, no one would be morally responsible. You “refute” the PAP by saying that if no one can ever satisfy the conditions for moral responsibility, those conditions must be false. In other words, whatever moral responsibility is, people must be able to satisfy the conditions at least in principle. However, if you will note, you have simply begged the question. You assume the very conclusion I ask you to establish.

The argument that people will eventually lapse into doing anything is no argument that they should. This is only an argument that people will eventually use moral language to describe how they feel.

If your system of moral responsibility only serves to influence other people’s behavior, that is not morality so much as manipulation. The ideas of deterrents and rewards exist quite independent of the idea “moral responsibility” which carries thousands of years of religious baggage (and doing acts “for their own sake”) with them. There is no need to dress them up in moral language. Of course, as I said earlier, we are only arguing words.

Indeed, why talk about that at all?

Welcome to amoralism.

[ September 28, 2002: Message edited by: Kip ]</p>

AnthonyAdams45

I'll try this again. To be responsible for some action is to cause that action. To be morally responsible for some action is to have been the cause of some action which is assessed as moral or immoral under some moral theory. Thus, to be morally responsible is not incompatible with determinism under any moral theory which assesses only outcomes, not motives.

bd-from-kg

Kip:

You’re right; this discussion is near its end. In fact, barring something very unexpected, this will be my last post to you. The reasons for this will be clear soon enough if they aren’t already.

But before getting into this, let’s clear up some side issues.

First, you comment:

You’re right. The two statements are both logically coherent. What I should have said is that the second is obviously (one might almost say tautologically) false. Any concept that can reasonably be given the name “moral responsibility” must have some actual referents – that is, there must be some acts for which agents are morally responsible.

Second, there is the matter of your, shall we say, eccentric interpretation of Hume:

Of course not. He doesn’t talk about what people “ought to believe” about what they ought to do; he simply talks about what they ought to do.

Of course not. He never says anything about “one person’s morality” as opposed to another’s. In fact, it’s clear from the quoted passage and others that he would have found this notion absurd if not altogether unintelligible.

Your description of what Hume says bears no recognizable resemblance to what he actually says. Thus, when he says that it is not “conceivable that any human creature could ever seriously believe, that all characters and actions [are] alike entitled to the affection and regard of everyone”, he is plainly talking about beliefs about what feelings various people are entitled to, and states plainly that these beliefs are so reasonable that it is inconceivable that anyone would have any real doubts about them. But you insist on representing this as a statement about the feelings that people actually have about various characters and actions. When he says, “Let a man's insensibility be ever so great, he must often be touched with the images of Right and Wrong”, you interpret “images of Right and Wrong” as feelings even though he does not give the slightest hint that this is what he means, and the actual words pretty much rule out this interpretation: feelings are not “images”. When he says that if we simply leave anyone who is inclined to dispute such obvious facts to himself, “finding that nobody keeps up the controversy with him, it is probable he will, at last, of himself, from mere weariness, come over to the side of common sense and reason,” you interpret this as meaning that eventually he will admit that he feels the same way that we do. But this flatly contradicts the plain sense of the passage, which speaks of “common sense and reason”. Feelings cannot be said to be contrary to, or in accordance with, reason, as Hume understood very well. As I said before, to maintain your interpretation you have to mangle Hume’s plain meaning again and again.

Now as to the reasons why I think that continuing this discussion would be pointless.

I have been totally frustrated by your complete unwillingness or inability to examine or define the fundamental concepts that we’ve been talking about. For example, you have been totally unwilling to engage in, or even consider, any serious attempt to analyze the meaning of counterfactual conditionals. Since the PAP and the PUR, and indeed the concept of free will itself (in any sense) all involve counterfactual conditionals, the result has been an aura of unreality surrounding the whole discussion.

Thus in criticizing the definition of “could” as “would, if one so chose”, you said:

Well, of course the hypothetical never occurs! This is just as true no matter what you mean by “could”. It is always true that the agent chose to do what he did, not the hypothetical alternative indicated by the “otherwise”. This is the problem with all counterfactual conditionals, and why a serious analysis of them is essential to any meaningful discussion of these questions.

Absolutely. As soon as you talk about what could have happened or what might have happened (or what could or might happen), you are talking about different possible worlds. The person (if any) who “corresponds” to you in another possible world is not strictly “you”, but only someone like you in many ways. That’s why we must be careful to be clear about which possible worlds we have in mind when we make “counterfactual conditional” statements.

This “refutation” applies to all counterfactual conditionals. So what you’re really arguing here is that all counterfactual conditionals are logically incoherent. Since I’ve already devoted thousands upon thousands of words to an analysis of the meaning of counterfactual conditionals, all of which have apparently gone right past you without making the slightest impact, there is no point in continuing.

But the most important concept that you have refused to analyze is that of moral responsibility. In your last post you replied to my comment that I still don’t understand what you mean by this term by saying:

This is badly confused. The term “ultimate responsibility” refers solely to a factual state of affairs: the “causal pedigree” of an act, as it were. The term “moral responsibility” refers to a moral relationship of the agent to an act. To say that an agent must be “ultimately responsible” for an act in order to be “morally responsible” for it is to say that this factual state of affairs must obtain in order for the agent to have this moral relationship to the act.

I understand perfectly well what you mean by “ultimate responsibility”. What I don’t understand is what you mean by “moral responsibility”. It seems perfectly obvious to me that ultimate responsibility is not a necessary condition for moral responsibility, whereas it seems perfectly obvious to you that it is. This difference is almost certainly related to our different conceptions of what it means to be morally responsible. But frankly, I have no idea what you think it means to be morally responsible. If you were a theist, I’d have some idea of what you mean – namely, that there is a transcendent moral reality, independent of what any human being might thinks or feel, unrelated to any human purpose or end, and unknowable to humans except through divine revelation because it is ultimately dependent on the divine will; and that it is an integral part of this transcendent moral reality that people are morally responsible for their actions under certain more or less definable conditions. But the whole idea of such a transcendent moral reality makes no sense in a world without God. Frankly, it seems to me that you have simply not thought through the implications of this fact. You cling to the idea of a “transcendent moral reality” and insist that any other conception of morality is an imposter – a fraud – while at the same time apparently recognizing that a naturalistic worldview removes the underpinnings of this conception, rendering it logically incoherent. This is why I want you to explain what you mean by “moral responsibility”. I think that if you make a serious attempt to do so you will discover that you don’t have a coherent concept of moral responsibility. But once you recognize this, you’ll see that you have no reason whatsoever to suppose that ultimate responsibility is a necessary condition of moral responsibility; in fact, that this statement makes no sense at all – it says that [meaningless term 1] is a necessary condition for [meaningless term 2].

Later you say:

But this has the same problem that I explained above with respect to identifying “ultimate responsibility” with “moral responsibility”. Metaphysical freedom regarding a given act is (or at least is meant to be) a description of a possible state of affairs, whereas moral responsibility is a moral relationship between the agent and the act. That someone can only be morally responsible for an act if he “chooses freely” to do it is supposed to be a substantive statement about the relationship between metaphysical freedom and moral responsibility. But if the two meant the same thing it would be a mere tautology.

Also, once again, identifying moral responsibility with a logically incoherent concept is not helpful. You might as well say “What I mean by moral responsibility is grafpinality.” How am I supposed to make sense out of a meaningless definition?

Your treatment of the PAP displays this same tendency. Instead of beginning by trying to understand the point of the PAP and the reasons, if any, for supposing it to be true, as a basis for understanding its true meaning, you just jump in and assume that it must be interpreted in one particular way no matter how absurd the implications of this interpretation are. This is illustrated by you curt dismissal of any meaningful definition of “could”. Your SOP is to observe that any such definition is not your definition – i.e., it does not require LFW – and “therefore” is logically incoherent. Since the libertarian interpretation of “could” really is logically incoherent, you are effectively arguing that the use of a logically incoherent definition is necessary in order to be logically coherent.

The correct approach to the question of how “could” should be interpreted in the context of the PAP is to start by noting that, like many other words, “could” has many meanings. Since the PAP is a statement of a condition of moral responsibility, it is appropriate to select a meaning that has an intelligible relationship to moral responsibility while remaining consistent with ordinary usage of the word.

Thus one (but not the only) reasonable interpretation is that “could” here means that if the agent had a different character, and was presented with a different incentive structure, he would do otherwise. But this isn’t sufficiently concrete to capture the real spirit of the thing, so let’s assume that the action in question was “wrong”. Then we can word it in a more illuminating way: the agent “could” have acted rightly if, given a sufficiently virtuous character, and if presented with sufficiently strong incentives for “doing the right thing”, he would have acted rightly. And what does “sufficiently” mean here? Well, it doesn’t have an exact meaning. But assuming that the agent is a normal, competent adult, he would be considered less blameworthy just to the degree that his character would have had to be extraordinarily virtuous, or the incentives extraordinarily strong, to induce him to “do the right thing”. Thus we might say that a person who refuses to go into a burning building to rescue a child is doing the wrong thing (depending on the risk involved). And he would be held morally responsible for his act. (This is clear from the fact that he would certainly be considered morally responsible if he had chosen to try to save the child, and it doesn’t make sense to say that he would be morally responsible for his choice if he made one choice, but not if he had made another.) But in view of the risk to his own life we would not generally consider him to be especially deserving of blame (much less punishment) because it would have taken extraordinary virtue (in this case courage), or an extraordinary incentive (perhaps having a death sentence lifted, or being threatened with being shot summarily for refusing) to induce him to do otherwise.

[Note: Not everyone who “could” have acted otherwise in this sense is morally responsible; the PAP is only a necessary condition for moral responsibility, not a sufficient one.]

This definition has an actual point, namely that holding a person morally responsible if he could have acted differently in this sense is useful: it can be expected to motivate people to develop good characters and to “do the right thing” when the occasion arises. You, on the other hand, insist dogmatically that the only possible sense of “could” in this context is one that turns the PAP into complete nonsense and spells the end of anything that can meaningfully be called morality. This again reflects your concept of morality as an attempt to describe a supposed transcendental moral reality that bears no relationship to anything human. If this transcendent moral reality says that no one is ever morally responsible for anything he does, why then no one is ever morally responsible for anything he does, and that’s that. There’s nothing to be done. We’re only mortals, after all, what can we do about it if the mysterious dictates of “moral reality” don’t make any sense to us?

Still another illustration of this mindset is found later in your post:

I have not begged the question. The whole point of the concept of moral responsibility is that it is useful. To define it in such a way that it has no referents is to render it useless. This is an absolutely decisive reason for not defining it that way.

Once again your whole argument assumes that “moral responsibility” has some transcendent meaning that was “defined from on high”; that it just means what it means, regardless of any use or purpose that it might have for actual human beings. Thus to you, demonstrating that this meaning renders the concept useless is irrelevant, while to me it is a decisive reason for rejecting it.

And we find this same mindset yet again in your comments about the passage I quoted from Toulmin:

No, it’s a demonstration that moral concepts and language are indispensable. Once you finally discard your “transcendent moral reality” conception of morality, which makes no sense from a naturalistic perspective, you will develop a different concept of morality rather than discard the concept of morality altogether, because you will quickly find that you can’t get along without it. You will distinguish between cases in which a person should be held responsible from those in which he should not, cases in which a person should be praised or blamed from those in which he should not, and so on. You will learn to make a distinction between people of exceptional moral integrity, basically virtuous people who occasionally yield to temptation, and people who are essentially immoral – who do whatever they see as being in their interest regardless of the effect on others. And you will teach these concepts to your children if you have any. But once again, you would no doubt say that none of this has anything to do with “real” morality – i.e., that transcendental moral reality that you have your heart set on, but which is a mirage.

In the end you seem to have recognized this. but instead of deciding that your concept of moral responsibility needs to be rethought, you concluded that the whole idea of moral responsibility (and of morality itself) have to be discarded.. Thus:

In other words, it’s “my way or the highway”. You’ll excuse the rest of us if we leave you here rather than get out ourselves.

In an attempt to justify this dismissive attitude you argue:

This is a pretty pure statement of the principles of logical positivism. Logical positivism does not mix very well (to put it mildly) with your notion of a transcendent moral reality; it’s well known that it leads unavoidably the conclusion that moral statements do not express propositions. There are moral theories (including mine) that are compatible with it, but you’ve made it clear that you don’t consider them to be “real” moral theories. The only kind of moral theory that qualifies as “real”, according to your way of thinking, is one that purports to be a description of the transcendent moral reality; that identifies “ought” with the pure, objective “metaought” that exists independently of what anyone thinks, believes or feels, and has nothing to do with any human desires or purposes. And it’s certainly true that logical positivism rules out anything of this kind.

You also argue:

It’s open to question whether reasonable men do in fact have fundamentally different concepts of morality (although they clearly interpret these concepts differently in concrete cases). Interestingly enough, Hume agrees with me on this point:

More importantly, it’s open to question whether there is really no way in principle of resolving moral disputes. Such disputes are often resolved through increased knowledge and understanding. But given that even the most complete knowledge and understanding that actually occur in the “real world” are radically imperfect, it is possible that all such disputes could in principle be resolved in this way. In fact, I believe that this is true at least of most cases. But you will not doubt point out that even if I’m right, that wouldn’t “prove” that the moral principles and conclusions that everyone would agree on if they were perfectly rational and had enough K&U are “true”. And in fact, according to my theory they aren’t true, for the simple reason that moral statements do not express propositions. But again, no doubt this idea will be anathema to you, because it conflicts with your “transcendent moral reality” conception of morality.

Next you attack morality from an altogether different direction:

This is nonsense. You’re just abusing a term loaded with emotional baggage. The Cambridge International Dictionary defines “manipulate” as follows: “to control (something or someone) to your advantage, often unfairly or dishonestly”. Praising or rewarding someone for sacrificing his own self-interest to help others is not manipulative. Blaming or punishing someone for selfishly pursuing his own gain at the expense of other people is not manipulative.

But while simply influencing behavior through a system of rewards and punishments is not manipulative, it’s not really what morality is about either, which is why we make a distinction between being “responsible” and being “morally responsible”. The distinctive feature of morality proper is that it tries to influence behavior by producing a more lively, vivid awareness of the effects that one’s actions will have on other people, and on society as a whole. True morality appeals to our “better nature”; it attempts to persuade us to “do the right thing” because it’s the right thing – i.e., because it does more good than harm, all things considered. If this is what you mean by “manipulation”, I’m all for it.

Another attempt to justify discarding moral concepts was:

Yes, and the ideas of “love thy neighbor” and “do unto others” also carry thousands of years of religious baggage. Shall we therefore discard them too while we’re at it?

In case you’re not aware of it, these and all of the other standard moral concepts can be found in Plato and Aristotle. They are also an integral part of the teachings of Confucius, who was not religious in any serious sense.

What actually happened historically is that moral concepts, which developed independently of religion, were in almost every culture clothed in religious garb to give them an aura of authority. It’s much easier to induce the masses to act in ways that allow them to get along with one another and live in a reasonably peaceful, stable society, by persuading them that there are transcendent “laws” violations of which will be met with an awful punishment by an angry, vengeful god or gods, than to make them understand the real nature of morality. Just as you don’t waste time explaining to a child exactly why he shouldn’t try to cross the street by himself; you just make it clear that this is a “bad” thing and mommy will get mad if he does. It would be foolish to conclude that these moral concepts are meaningless, and that we can now disregard them, just as it would be foolish to conclude that there is really no good reason why the child should not cross the street by himself since mommy won’t really get mad.

You then continue with your quixotic campaign to abolish morality by saying:

In other words, since you’re confused, everyone should discard a set of terms and concepts that have proven extremely useful – in fact, indispensable. While we can get along without religion, we cannot get along without morality. In fact, what you really seem to be proposing is to abandon the use of the standard, established moral terminology, replace it with some new terms, and then pretend that we’re not “really” talking about morality any more. This is exactly the maneuver that Toulmin was talking about.

You conclude with this exchange:

Well, the original question, which you posed, was a moral question. But now {after six long pages) you get around to telling us that you dismiss morality as sophistry and illusion and see no point in talking about it at all.

I don’t appreciate having my time wasted by elaborate practical jokes. Goodbye.

bd-from-kg

Primal:

A full reply to your last post would be ridiculously long, and would probably prompt an even longer reply, so I won’t try. But I will try to respond to claims that I was guilty of logical fallacies, or that I was presumptuous or arrogant or abusive.

I can’t possibly be begging the question here, because the term is applicable only to deductive arguments, and this argument doesn’t even pretend to be deductive. This is the famous “open question” argument. The Encyclopedia Britannica explains it as follows:

Now of course it can’t be proved that questions of the sort posed by the open question argument are meaningful; after all, anyone can simply define “good” to mean such-and-such and say that the question whether such-and-such is “really” good is indeed meaningless. But the point is to get the person who has proposed the definition to consider seriously whether that’s really what he has in mind when he says that something is good. Does the utilitarian really mean to say that “good” means “leading to the greatest happiness”, or does he mean to make a substantive statement when he says that whatever leads to the greatest happiness is good? Almost everyone, when they reflect seriously on this kind of question, realizes that he really intended to make a substantive statement about what things are good, rather than to define what “good” means. The same goes, of course, for other moral terms such as “right”, “wrong”, and “should”.

As to the first question, anyone is free to use any term however he likes. So if you choose to use “moral” and “immoral” in a way that has nothing to do with common usage, rape might well be “moral” according to the way you use the term. But using such personal, private definitions is rather pointless. The purpose of language is to communicate. Using words in ways that bear little or no resemblance to the way they’re ordinarily used does not facilitate communication; it impedes it. And if you use the terms “moral and “immoral” in anything like the way it is ordinarily used, the question answers itself.

Anyway, in the final analysis my argument doesn’t depend on agreement that any particular kind of act is immoral. If there is any kind of act that you consider to be clearly immoral, but which is such that you find it conceivable that a predisposition to act that way might have been produced by natural selection, the argument goes through.

Finally, far from “playing on an emotional reaction”, the argument that predispositions produced by natural selection are not a guide to what is moral (much less define it) rests on the fact that, as rational beings, our moral beliefs or attitudes are based to a large extent on reasoning. It’s true that this reasoning is ultimately grounded in the fact that we consider some states of affairs to be “intrinsically good” and others “intrinsically bad”, and that these judgments are not based on reason. But basing one’s attitude toward a certain type of behavior based on careful consideration of all of the consequences likely to flow from it is a far cry from simply having an emotional reaction to it based on predispositions produced by natural selection. For example, moral disapproval of rape based on a clear recognition that it does far more harm than good is a vastly different thing from basing it on an emotional reaction that one might have on hearing of (or witnessing) a rape.

[Note: This sentence is completely garbled. The only part of it that I can make out at all is the reference to “question begging”. Do you bother to proofread your stuff before you post it?]

Since this was a summary of the conclusion of an argument that had just been presented (as you might have figured out from the introductory “so”) it’s ridiculous to call it “question begging”. A summary cannot be expected to repeat the argument itself.

When one is trying to persuade people of something, it’s a basic principle that you don’t waste time arguing for things they are already very likely to agree with. I assumed that very few if any of the target audience would need to be persuaded that slavery, racism, or unnecessary wars are wrong. If you feel otherwise, I guess I miscalculated. Which of these things do you approve of?

In any case, I was not attempting to ”divide morality from preference”, but only to show that there is a difference between behavior that is moral and behavior that people are predisposed to engage in or approve of as a result of natural selection.

Again you have treated a summary of an argument as if it were an argument in its own right.

Am I being presumptuous? You say yourself that:

That’s exactly the point I’ve been trying to make. Attempts to define morality by simplistic statements like “I define morals as certain types of emotional reactions to given information.” and “In the case that humans evolved to judge certain actions as moral, then the action would be moral by definition” are misguided. The meaning of terms like “moral”, “right”, “wrong”, and “should” cannot be captured so easily.

This is the “open question” argument again. It doesn’t “presuppose” anything.

What doesn’t make sense is saying that one and the same act was right at one time but wrong at another. It is an integral part of the logic of moral discourse that the rightness of an act is not time-dependent. This isn’t to say that there is necessarily an absolute right and wrong of things; it’s simply a matter of how moral terms “operate”. If I say, for example, that Smith should spend $50 for a nice birthday present for his wife tonight, and then say tomorrow that he shouldn’t have done it because the money was needed to pay for groceries, I have contradicted myself. It won’t do to say that I was right last night when I said that he should buy the gift, and am also right today when I say that he shouldn’t have. It’s perfectly OK to say that I changed my mind – that I now think I was wrong when I said last night that he should spend the money. But it is not OK to say that I was right both times. Thus any moral theory that entails that it is possible that I was right both times is immediately out of court.

Well, if it is “presumptuous” to suspect that you meant something that wasn’t exactly what you said, but is perfectly reasonable, then I’m guilty as charged. But it was a reasonable guess. Saying that a moral is an emotional reaction is just a whisker away (if that) from saying that moral statements are just expressions of emotional reactions, which is to say that they do not express propositions. In fact, the latter is a very popular theory among moral philosophers nowadays, whereas there are virtually no moral philosophers who say that calling an act right or wrong means that one is having, or did have, or will have, or would have, some kind of emotional reaction. So in suggesting that you might have meant that moral statements do not express propositions I was simply suggesting that perhaps you had intended to espouse a perfectly respectable theory. But since you say that this is not what you meant, the rest of what I had to say about this kind of theory doesn’t apply to you.

No, no, no. In this passage I was simply outlining the logical possibilities open to anyone who takes the position that moral statements do not express propositions. Most moral philosophers who say that moral statements do not express propositions still regard moral language as meaningful, but a few argue that it is meaningless. That doesn’t make what they say meaningless!

I never suggested that anyone’s position was meaningless.

Please read this paragraph again. I said that if you dismiss moral language as meaningless, there is little point in discussing moral questions. In the same way, if you don’t believe in the volcano god, it’s pointless to offer an opinion about which virgin to sacrifice to him this year. But since you have now made it clear that you don’t believe that moral statements do not express propositions, much less that they are meaningless, none of this has much of anything to do with you anyway.

[ October 03, 2002: Message edited by: bd-from-kg ]</p>