Longbow

Well, obviously, I qualified my statements with "unless your a cultural anthropologist...." Sure, if you are taking a specific interest in human behavior such as you describe, then that is one thing. If discussing how someone forms moral beliefs is just a part of this broader subject you are pursuing, then that is one thing. But, that is not what is generally going on and certainly not the "water cooler debate" that started this thread.

The point is to be able to settle philosophical debates either by producing conclusive science that does the trick or in some other fashion.

K

Longbow:

I think that the problem is that I definitely disagree with statements 2 and 3. Not every declarative statement is "true" or "false". There are declarative statements that are nonsensical. There are declarative statements that may be true in some contexts and false in others - thus shattering the objectivity claim.

"God does not approve of X." Does this prove the existence of God? Statements of God's laws are all declarative sentences. According to your premises 2 and 3 above, they therefore must be true or false and therefore must have an objective basis.

"I am taller." Does this declarative statement prove that my height isn't relative?

As for the burden of proof, what exactly would you like me to prove? I can't prove that there is no objective truth that drives morality any more than I can prove that there is no God driving that same morality. Or that leprechauns don't exist. Since we both seem to agree that evolution is sufficient to explain all of human behavior, it would seem to me that you are the one positing the existence of something additional. Hence, the burden of proof would be yours.

K

Longbow:

To be fair, I should also be required to list my premises so that you can point out the ones you disagree with. My list is pretty short, I'll add to it if I think of anything else.

1. All human behavior is derived through evolution.

2. Humans labelling actions as moral or immoral is a human behavior.

Helmling

Longbow

["X is wrong," is a sentence containing moral content, is it not? But, "X is wrong," is a delcarative sentence. Supposing you have no idea what this sentence means, then, you must assume that it is attempting to communicate an assertion. If you say otherwise, then it is you that must have some idea of what this statement does or does not mean.]

I fail to see the relevance. That you and I can communicate using the word “wrong” hardly demonstrates the existence of an objective standard for all morality. Frankly, I don’t see where you’re going with this, and from the rest of your post, I don’t know where you’re coming from either.

Can we backtrack a second? I entered the discussion when someone said that standards for morality, like Kant’s categorical imperative, were essentially arbitrary. I agreed, you disagreed. Now you’re saying that you believe (I don’t doubt you’ve said this before, I’m simply not familiar with everything you’ve said) that all behavior is ultimately the product of evolutionary processes. To me, these two statements seem incompatible. Unless you are arguing that Kant’s explanation is an evolutionary one?

Fred Flintstonensis

Quote from Longbow

If this is what you got out of what I posted you are far more dense and impervious to reason than I ever could have imagined. You just tried and and convicted your reading comprehension skills.

No one (least of all me) ever suggested that morals were akin to hair color. I never said that and I certainly never took it for granted. Read all of my posts on this matter, you will see an inquiring personality, not a know-it-all.

This is all aside from the fact that the people who think that morals are simply ideas are called 'subjectivists'. You claim to be an objectivist and yet your basic ideas on the matter of morals involve the exact opposite of objectivism. Furthermore, people who think that mathematical absolutes are simply ideas are called 'morons'.

I do not know why you think that you have to repeat that you do not think that morals are physical things as I have never given an indication that I think you do. You didn't have to even state it, much less restate it twice.

[ October 25, 2002: Message edited by: Fred Flintstonensis ]</p>

Kharakov

Assume that one of the requirements for an action to be moral is that the action does not cause unnecessary suffering to the parties involved. This is a basic principle of morality.

Why is it immoral to cause someone to suffer? First someone has to know what it is to suffer, before they can understand why it is wrong to cause unnecessary suffering (therefore everyone must suffer so they realize why they should not cause unnecessary suffering). I am not going to get into a long description of what suffering is, because I cannot describe it to you if you have not suffered.

Once someone has suffered, they might come to the realization that other people can suffer too. This might make them change the way they behave so that they do not cause as much suffering. They would begin to consider their actions to see if they will inflict unnecessary suffering on their fellow man. In other words, they would way their actions to see if they were moral or not.

The actions that they take might not always be the same. Sometimes, killing someone might be immoral (it might cause unnecessary pain and suffering). Sometimes, killing someone might be necessary. There are many other actions that are moral in some situations, but not in others.

Knowledge of what is moral is subjective. A masochist probably would not think inflicting physical pain is immoral.

Morality as an objective law is something that has to be learned. Someone needs to suffer, to know that it is wrong for someone to inflict needless suffering upon them. That someone then needs to realise that it is wrong for them to inflict needless suffering on others. Someone who finally learns that inflicting needless suffering is wrong has learned something a universal truth.

Have fun tearing apart what I said. &lt;sigh&gt;

Kharakov

Longbow

Give me a break. There are plenty of well known examples of meaningless declarative sentences such as "Quadruplicity drinks procrastination" or "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously." That you can construct such a sentence is a nice start. But, that a constructing a meaningless sentence doesn't show that common declarative sentences are meaningless.

You must deal directly with the sentence you claim is meaningless. The simple fact is that if the burden of proof was on the person making the sentence to prove their sentence was meaningful, then communication would be impossible. At some point I can just utter sentences and you will know well enough what they mean without me having to explain them.

So, again, we have common declarative sentences that are intended to be assertions by those that state them and that are communicative. That is people exchange these sentences and seem to understand one another. Now, if you think that "X is wrong" is meaningless, you must prove it.

Certainly not the physical existence of god. But then, we are not discussing a metaphysical question, are we? We are debating an epistemological one (really a semantic one). So, there is no issue of existence. The question is whether or not a statement like "X is wrong" has propositional content. You say it doesn't. I say it does. At this poitn the burden of proof is squarely on you to show that a common, communicative, declarative sentence that is intended as an assertion actually isn't one.


I don't know where you're going with that. Such a sentence certainly contains a proposition that is either true or false. It may not be very easy to figure out what that proposition is exactly, but it is there.

Nope. You certainly can "prove a negative" if that is what you are getting at. Not only is it possible to prove that something doesn't or cannot exist, but it is certainly possible to prove that a proposition is false. You are making a very "positive" epistemological assertion. You have the burden of proof with regard to that assertion. You cannot treat this as a metaphysical discussion about what types of physical objects exist especially since I have reaffirmed time and again that I am not "positing" a "new" kind of physical object or any such thing. And even if I was (which I most definitely am not), the fact is that the point fo contention is epistemological not metaphysical. So, just give that up.

Longbow

Okay, I agree with both of those and yet I am telling you that this has nothing to do with what morality is. So, now what?

K

Longbow:

I never claimed that it did. I was simply refuting your claim that declarative sentences proved an underlying objectivity by providing a counter-example.

Again, I never claimed that "X is wrong" was meaningless. I only claimed that it didn't prove objective morality. "X is funny" doesn't prove an objective humor. "X stinks" doesn't prove an objective smell. "X is ugly" doesn't prove an objective beauty. Simply being able to make a declarative, communicative statement about something does not prove an objective foundation. Do you still insist that it does? Do you support the idea that there is an objective humor, beauty, etc?

K

OK, I should have asked whether it proved the objective foundation of God's law.