In addition to religion, you're outright dismissing entire fields of study, philosophy, ethics, law etc... that are extremely relevant to all of our lives. Whether you believe the "why" questions can every be answered is one thing, but dismissing them as nonsense without even trying to support your argument is extremely arrogant.
I'm asking why should one person's suffering or one person's life be intrinsically important to another---not why it often is.
To get to the point another way. To decide how to act you need some kind of ethical system. Let's say you pick utilitarianism.
Utilitarianism says that the suffering and happiness of each individual counts equally.
The obvious question is: "Why is that so?"
A possible answer is that, this is the premise that leads to the optimal outcome of maximum total happiness.
Which leads to the next question: "Why is maximum total happiness the optimal outcome?"
It's never ending. There is always another why question. Going deeper and deeper into that rabbit hole can be maddening and it's not always useful, but sometime it is. Ands it's almost always useful to ask a few whys.
Without asking the whys, you have no justification for any of your beliefs, and thus no way of knowing which beliefs to hold on to.
I suspect that you are ... or you are indeed asking a nonsense question. But let's see ...
> I'm asking why should one person's suffering or one person's life be intrinsically important to another---not why it often is.
OK. I'm still not sure what exactly you mean by that question, though.
> To get to the point another way. To decide how to act you need some kind of ethical system.
Sure, that seems sensible to me.
> Let's say you pick utilitarianism.
OK.
> Utilitarianism says that the suffering and happiness of each individual counts equally.
I am not sure it necessarily does, but I guess that doesn't matter for the point that you are trying to make, so let's assume it does ...
> The obvious question is: "Why is that so?"
Which is a "how" question in disguise, isn't it? "How did it come that philosophers chose to define utilitarianism this way?" That certainly sounds like a very much empirical question to me!?
> A possible answer is that, this is the premise that leads to the optimal outcome of maximum total happiness.
That might well be a justification given by some philosopher, sure!?
> Which leads to the next question: "Why is maximum total happiness the optimal outcome?"
Which is another "how" question in disguise, isn't it? It's again asking for how it came to be that this was considered the optimal outcome, isn't it?
> It's never ending. There is always another why question. Going deeper and deeper into that rabbit hole can be maddening and it's not always useful, but sometime it is. Ands it's almost always useful to ask a few whys.
Well, if they are "how" questions in disguise, yeah, sure ... but you might as well directly ask the "how" questions in order to avoid the confusion? If you really don't mean a "how" question by those (be it exactly the ones I suggested above, or possibly slightly different ones), though, I don't really understand what your question is here either.
> Without asking the whys, you have no justification for any of your beliefs, and thus no way of knowing which beliefs to hold on to.
Well, yes, again, if you actually mean disguised "how" questions. I mean, just asking the question doesn't give you a justification, right? Rather, it's the first step towards potentially finding an answer, which then can serve as a justification. It's just that "why" questions that are not "how" questions in disguise don't have answers, which is why they are useless for the purpose, or if they have "answers", then that's only because the answer is assumed in the question, which obviously doesn't make for a good justification for anything.
I am still curious though what exactly it is that you mean by "I'm asking why should one person's suffering or one person's life be intrinsically important to another"!
If you reject that belief and don't believe it is justifiable, why is that the case. Either way it doesn't really matter to my point.
If you arbitrarily decide that all why questions are how questions, then you can't really ask a why question can you?
>if they have "answers", then that's only because the answer is assumed in the question,
Many ethical systems make the assumption that human happiness has intrinsic value--that it is an inherently good thing.
They work backwards from that because what is "good" can't be discovered from observation and experimentation.
>I am not sure it necessarily does
It's definitely one of the basic tenets of Utilitarianism.
OK--and that's rather obviously a nonsensical question, because "intrinsic value" is a vacuous phrase. Value is by definition a subjective property assigned by a "valuer", while "intrinsic" is by definition a property that is independent of other entities. So, you are asking for a justification for the belief that a person has a value assigned to it by a valuer, absent any valuer. Obviously, such a thing doesn't exist due to logical self-contradiction, and thus no justification for it can exist either.
> If you reject that belief and don't believe it is justifiable, why is that the case.
Because it is a logical impossibility.
> If you arbitrarily decide that all why questions are how questions, then you can't really ask a why question can you?
I didn't do that? There are "genuine" "why" questions, they just are nonsensical (when not asking about a demonstrated conscious entity). "Why" has two distinct meanings, one of which is asking for an underlying mechanism, which maps to what I am calling "how" questions (because questions using "why" in that sense can be rephrased using "how"), the other is asking for an underlying intention, those are the "genuine" "why" questions.
So, "Why does the sun rise in the east" is ambiguous. That question might be asking for the mechanism that makes the sun rise in the east, in which case it's a "how" question in disguise that is obviously one that can be examined empirically. Or it might be asking for the intention behind making the sun rise in the east--in which case it makes the unjustified assumption that there is some sort of consciousness behind it that had an intention when making the sun rise in the east, which is why it is a nonsensical question.
Obviously, it is perfectly sensible to ask genuine "why" questions about entities that are known to have intentions, like "Why did you leave the light on?".
> Many ethical systems make the assumption that human happiness has intrinsic value--that it is an inherently good thing.
Arguably, they don't. Obviously, it's difficult to say anything specific about some unspecified ethical systems, but are you sure that you are not confusing the assumption that human happiness has value with the assumption that human happiness has intrinsic value? The assumption that human happiness has value seems common, the assumption that that value is intrinsic, not so much, very much to the contrary: It would seem rather obvious that that assumption is based on the valuation by the philosopher who is making the assumption. Really, it is questionable whether it is even an assumption, given that there is pretty overwhelming and ubiquitous evidence that humans almost universally value their own happiness. While that might not always be discussed explicitly, that often seems more like a technicality to me than like an actual lack of justification.
> They work backwards from that because what is "good" can't be discovered from observation and experimentation.
How else would it possibly be discovered? Or maybe I should ask first: What do you mean by "good"?
> It's definitely one of the basic tenets of Utilitarianism.
Well, I don't necessarily agree, but I also don't think it matters for this discussion, as it's probably a good enough approximation for the purpose.
Also, if you are interested in a longer explanation of why the concept of "intrinsic value" doesn't make much sense, you might be interested in this video: https://youtu.be/2ASKV7Wg2jE
If you accept that why questions are only applicable in the context of a "demonstrated conscious entity", and you are a believer in strict determinism, then there are no genuine why questions.
>Also, if you are interested in a longer explanation of why the concept of "intrinsic value" doesn't make much sense, you might be interested in this video: https://youtu.be/2ASKV7Wg2jE
If you want to learn more about the concept of "intrinsic value" I suggest you start here for a history of the concept and a summary of current work on the subject-- https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/value-intrinsic-extrinsic..., and not on a popular speaker's YouTube channel.
Rejecting the concept of intrinsic value raises many problems for ethical frameworks--none of which have been adequately solved. Don't pretend that it's a settled topic because you said it is.
It's only during the last century or so that philosophers have even entertained the idea that it might be possible to have an ethical system without the concept of intrinsic value.
Your point being?
> If you want to learn more about the concept of "intrinsic value" I suggest you start here for a history of the concept and a summary of current work on the subject-- https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/value-intrinsic-extrinsic..., and not on a popular speaker's YouTube channel.
Haha, seriously? You think that reading all those pages would help me understand that there is such a thing as a valuer absent the valuer? Like, reading will help with accepting a logical contradiction as truth?
> Rejecting the concept of intrinsic value raises many problems for ethical frameworks--none of which have been adequately solved. Don't pretend that it's a settled topic because you said it is.
So? I am not pretending anything, it's just an obvious fact that "intrinsic value" is nonsense, and it doesn't become less nonsensical because rejecting the nonsense maybe raises problems for ethical frameworks.
Really, this not the difficult question that you make it out to be. You might as well argue that there is intrinsic taste and that it's an unsolved problem for culinary frameworks if we think that whether something tastes good or bad is not intrinsic in the thing we taste. Because, how do we know something really tastes good if it isn't intrinsic in the thing? You may be asking questions back and forth, but ultimately, you will end up with a non-self-evident assumption that a certain taste is a good taste. An axiom of taste that defines your way of eating. Yeah, that's all kinda, sorta true, but also completely missing the point.
All of that, both for taste and for ethics, simply comes down to consensus and individual preferences, which themselves are broadly based in evolution (as is the interest in consensus for a social species), which is based on natural selection according to the environment our ancestors lived in, which behaves according to some natural laws. It's "how" questions all the way down, some of them answered, many not, with no indication that "why" questions are anything but baseless speculation.
> It's only during the last century or so that philosophers have even entertained the idea that it might be possible to have an ethical system without the concept of intrinsic value.
So? It's only during the last century or so that scientists have entertained the idea that light is quantized and that there is an absolute speed limit to the universe, and marginally more than that that there are things like bacteria causing disease or that phlogiston is not a thing, or that biodiversity can be explained by mutation of DNA and natural selection. Yeah, people were ignorant in the past--fortunately, that's no reason to stay ignorant?
>fortunately, that's no reason to stay ignorant?
Do you see the irony?
You really need to read more about intrinsic value before you dismiss it. Your arguments have been made and debated in academia, some of them have been refuted, and some of them are still being argued.
Most of what you're saying is exactly as convincing as someone who argues that God must exist because nothing can exist without a cause.
Also given how grayed out most of your responses are, maybe consensus isn't self evidently preferable.
Nope, there isn't any.
> You really need to read more about intrinsic value before you dismiss it.
Nope, I don't think I do. But feel free to make a concise argument as to how I am wrong.
> Your arguments have been made and debated in academia, some of them have been refuted, and some of them are still being argued.
By anyone serious, or just theologians? The fact that something is "debated in academia" does not really mean anything, unfortunately.
> Most of what you're saying is exactly as convincing as someone who argues that God must exist because nothing can exist without a cause.
Well, except that the gap in that argument can trivially be shown in one sentence.
> Also given how grayed out most of your responses are, maybe consensus isn't self evidently preferable.
More importantly, it shows that consensus is all that ultimately matters, whether that is good or not, which was exactly my point.
Your entire argument is just a half formed version of metaethical moral relativism, which is a minority view among philosophers. Your views are demonstrably not self-evident.
So if you want a particular answer then you are asking "How can I make it so that people care?"
That's an acceptable answer. My next question is: "Why don't you believe it's wrong not to care about another's suffering?"
And you say: "There is no inherent right or wrong--self interest is the only arbiter of morality."
And we go back and forth until you get to a level where you've basically made an arbitrary assumption.
That assumption is an axiom that you base your world view on. The why that came before that discovery wasn't nonsense
First, that's a straw man. It's a straw man because they didn't say they didn't care about another's suffering, they said there might be no reason to care in that particular highly unrealistic scenario that you presented that was intentionally crafted so as to not have a reason to care.
Then, in so far as you refer only to your hypothetical scenario, the answer has already been given: Because there is no reason, or at least there is no reason that they are aware of. If you were asking them for justification as to why they aren't aware of any reasons, that's obviously a nonsensical question if you don't provide a reason for which they might be able to investigate how it came that they weren't aware of that reason.
> And we go back and forth until you get to a level where you've basically made an arbitrary assumption.
No, that's bullshit, and probably a whole load of equivocation to make the unreasonable seem equivalent to the reasonable.
It's not a strawman, it doesn't matter what the reason the person gave was. I'm not trying to make my hypothetical person supply the easiest answer to attack, I'm not even trying to attack their answer.
>No, that's bullshit, and probably a whole load of equivocation to make the unreasonable seem equivalent to the reasonable.
It's not possible to have beliefs that aren't based on assumptions. I guess you can think that's bullshit, but your belief doesn't make it so.
Well, maybe, that depends on which path of the equivocation we follow.
> It's not possible to have beliefs that aren't based on assumptions. I guess you can think that's bullshit, but your belief doesn't make it so.
Yeah, that's the equivocation I am talking about. You didn't say "you've made an assumption", you said "you've basically made an arbitrary assumption".
Let me guess what you are really trying to say:
"It is just an assumption that reality is real, therefore, if you think that that assumption is acceptable, you should also not have any objection to the assumption that god exists/gave us morals/some other unjustified supernatural claim."
Right?
It's not that there isn't an interpretation of what you wrote that is indeed true (kindof), it's just that that interpretation is irrelevant to the argument that you are trying to make, which relies on a different interpretation, which unfortunately is not true.
Arbitrary isn't the right word. Not self-evident is better.
>Right?
No, I'm not trying to prove to you that God exists.
>the argument that you are trying to make, which relies on a different interpretation, which unfortunately is not true.
You are having that argument with yourself, not me.
>unfortunately
I don't think I could write a more condescending, disingenuous statement if I tried.