> Morals can still exist without the principle of free will
Not really, because you've just done away with moral blame. If there can be no moral blame, then the moral classification of actions has no meaning.
Not really, because you've just done away with moral blame. If there can be no moral blame, then the moral classification of actions has no meaning.
As social animals, we have an intrinsic interest in preserving social harmony, in as much as the reproductive success of any individual is contingent on the success of the group as a whole. Morality is just the game theory element of this being played out.
I could make reasoned moral arguments on behalf of the well being of chickens or why we shouldn't destroy the planet, and you may nod and agree, but without a strong emotional impulse to attach to these moral causes, it's hard to get people to take these things very seriously. It's too much of an abstraction.
In other words, you acknowledge that you have no moral justification for assigning blame, you simply do it out of convenience. That's weak sauce IMO.
Giving up cognitivism and moral realism is very problematic on multiple levels, and your response hand waves away these other problems IMO [1]. You just end up reinventing free will and calling it something different.
For people that accept that moral propositions actually have truth values (most people), assigning blame requires free will, and ultimately, we end up in the same place anyway, just with a bunch more people being confused about why we have new jargon that serves the exact same function as the old jargon.
[1] Edit: for instance, life no longer has any intrinsic value, so you can justify all sorts of morally repugnant conclusions, like that totalitarian regimes are justifiable, or that a government should only care about the death rate of its citizens in order to keep it low enough to prevent widespread revolt.
The whole notion of free will is a cultural construct. There are societies that have no perception of it, they believe that their actions are guided by spirits.
Western concepts of justice are founded on the idea of free will, so of course you need it for western rationalizations of how to apply justice, but arguing that we need free will for justice to work is putting the cart before the horse. We just need it for our version of justice. My cat doesn't need it to take a swipe at the dog when it goes for the cat's food.
It is in my interest to argue that life has intrinsic value because if I don't I risk being considered a threat by people who happen to value their own lives quite a bit. It's just simple game theory. I don't see how free will, either real or imagined, is necessary to value the lives of others.
And of course, there are no consequences for killing a chicken, so there are no strong moral impulses against it. By our own rationalizations, life doesn't have any intrinsic value unless it is a life that serves us, or has power over us, and the value of a chicken's life extends only as far as it is tasty to us.
Causally, sure. Morally, I disagree. You've just justified mob rule and the tyranny of the majority.
> there are societies that have no perception of it, they believe that their actions are guided by spirits.
Sure, and what do those societies do when someone kills their neighbour and claims the spirits said their neighbour had to die?
> Western concepts of justice are founded on the idea of free will, so of course you need it for western rationalizations of how to apply justice, but arguing that we need free will for justice to work is putting the cart before the horse.
Western justice is founded on free will because it's a logical necessity for coherently assigning blame.
> It is in my interest to argue that life has intrinsic value because if I don't I risk being considered a threat by people who happen to value their own lives quite a bit.
No, it's actually in your interest to argue that your life has intrinsic value, and that anyone else's life is of lesser value.
So here we arrive at the morally repugnant conclusions I mentioned: if you can effectively argue this point, as they did with the divine right of kings, there is no logical basis upon which you can dispute this conclusion.
Moral progress has been marked by eliminating such artificial distinctions, not justifying them.
> By our own rationalizations, life doesn't have any intrinsic value unless it is a life that serves us, or has power over us, and the value of a chicken's life extends only as far as it is tasty to us.
Please explain how this follows from anything I've said in this thread.
Subjectivisms (both individualist and things like cultural relativism) and error theory are perfectly compatible with determinism. I personally ascribe to and argue for error theory which essentially leads to moral psychology actually dictating what ethics are. Based on that, it's quite easy to get to "murder is bad" via human traits like empathy and our social nature.
No argument here, but knowing them still seems useful to humans. So in relation to humans, those terms and ideas are 100% needed. You're taking moral nihilism and jumping straight to general nihilism without any steps.
> Arguments for determinism always have these "answers" to morality, but the only convincing one is moral nihilism.
Error theory is a form of moral nihilism - what are you exactly disagreeing with here?
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The bigger question is where you go from that moral nihilism. There is nothing that says just because our formal definitions of morality are false that the entire world doesn't matter. I still care for my happiness and life. So do many others. We need both this idea and these further terms and ideas in order to be able to answer the questions we were originally attempting to answer with objective morality because those problems did not magically go away.
Caring about happiness and life, to the point they have value is objective
Do you have any other way to distinguish between moral and general nihilism? -- surely such a thing would need to be objective
But you make a good point in that if there is no objective morality, there may still be some other way to make a value statement. But how could such a thing give value to moral nihilism, and still maintain the nihilism??
To be honest, I don't understand these HN comments any better than the original article -- but I do greatly appreciate them for their importance
The latter comes from the realization that some things (ie actions based only on gaining money/power/fame, knowingly taking advantage of people, needlessly killing, laziness, cheating for gain, not helping the poor, not forgiving people).
This arises from nihilism because some believe that it can't be possible that nothing matters when these values are "beyond our earthly realm" in that it often requires seeing things on a more spiritual level, and thinking beyond immediate gratification.
It is then that one may see nihilistic people as those feeding their temptations as these are often the easiest things to do (running vs. sitting and getting fat).
So while one can think nothing matters, some may then see that indeed some actions "retard" not just ourselves but all, and others are a net benefit for society.
Though believing that such actions are actually a net benefit may be considered "faith" because I can't know for sure.
Just my thoughts.
Yeah, to accept nihilism seems very destructive. Ultimately, to me, like you; it seems to equate to accepting zero value for others and ourselves
Yet life burns to exist. We are desperate to live and to have meaning. It is no proof, but every fiber of our being cries out for a value beyond zero
> Though believing that such actions are actually a net benefit may be considered "faith" because I can't know for sure.
Nice. Personally, and from personal experience, I would base "faith" on concrete facts, and this provides a safe foundation for logic, etc -- I think you can know for sure
Thanks for sharing
This comes down to philosophical definitions. We are both using the word "objective" differently here. In the philosophical world, this is what moral objectivism means:
> The view that what is right or wrong doesn’t depend on what anyone thinks is right or wrong. That is, the view that the 'moral facts' are like 'physical' facts in that what the facts are does not depend on what anyone thinks they are. [1]
What you appear to be using objective as here as to mean "it's the physical state of the world, no matter who sees it". And that's true, but it doesn't have inherent moral usefulness as a statement, we have to show that it means something, which is where my argument from determinism leads.
> But you make a good point in that if there is no objective morality, there may still be some other way to make a value statement. But how could such a thing give value to moral nihilism, and still maintain the nihilism??
The "how" comes from a phrase I've used in other posts, but essentially, moral psychology and psychology generally.
Think of it this way: Nothing has inherent moral meaning. Really technically meaning generally, things just are. So does anything have more value than anything else, inherently? Not really. It's an interestingly odd base of equality in fact. So we all still exist and have desires and wants and needs, but none are any more worthy than others. We also have the notable traits of empathy and social desire. There's much more nuance and detail there, but essentially, if I or you as a single individual want to satisfy my desires, my makeup as a creature that cares about others dictates that I balance all of our desires together into what we would generally refer to as "ethics", even if no such objective truth exists. Indeed, if you change what a human is, you change morality itself.
[1] http://www.ucs.mun.ca/~alatus/phil1200/RelativismObjectivism...
> [objectivity] doesn't have inherent moral usefulness
Agreed. But I take it as a required pre-cursor, and that was implicit, so you are right to check definitions. I go something like
Nihilism: an absence. A zero
Objective: a difference beyond zero. A value
So "physical state", and "facts not depending on what anyone thinks" both have value -- they are objective realities. Yes some people say physical state and facts are meaningless and so nihilistically ascribe them zero value. But you have not done that
I think you are saying the universe definitively exists -- it has value. Morality does not exist (in that it has no predefined value, it is a zero). And from there, you take emergent properties of life, the mind, and psychology, to create a new morality -- one which does have value, but as defined in an emergent property of humanity
> even if no such objective truth exists
Now I understand you (I think). You are after a different objectivity
By my personal definition, your second morality must be objective -- you've given it a value, and said it is different to the previous morality -- a fact
As far as I understand things, to have any meaning, there must be objectivity -- otherwise everything is an effective zero, and there is no valid way to say any one thing is better than another. For instance to say something is good rather than bad
So what you have done... Please correct me... is say there is no morality, but there is humanity, psychology, physics, desires, etc. You are saying these are objective facts people agree on, and from there you will build an objective morality that people can also agree on
If so, three comments:
1) Emergent properties and psychology are fascinating, you can build an objectively interesting morality on these. I appreciate your work and your clarity so far. Sorry, your link didn't open for me
2) How would this morality differ from the current morality -- or, to what extent is the current morality not based on emergent properties of psychology and human behavior?
3) Ah, you are cutting God out of the loop. I don't think this objectively (pun) succeeds...
But would love to hear more and any corrections
At this point we're talking definitions, yes. IMO this is a subjective morality because it is only valid when you value what humans value - it comes from our perspective. Without looking at it through our perspective and values, it has no meaning. Repeat for every individual human and combine to get that more or less "objective/existant" rule set.
> You are saying these are objective facts people agree on
Yes, but stronger. Agreement is not needed. I don't personally find use diving into metaphysical brain in vat scenarios, so I choose to philosophically work under that we can observe the universe, and either it's real or its fake and still matters, for similar reasons of "we still exist and feel" invoked before.
> you will build an objective morality that people can also agree on
Theoretically, but good luck getting that agreement, lol. As to "objective" see above. I think the distinction of "shared subjective" is important here.
> How would this morality differ from the current morality -- or, to what extent is the current morality not based on emergent properties of psychology and human behavior?
It really depends on what morality you ascribe to. This view for example is highly supportive of consequentialism in my experience, while pretty clearly kills deontology where it stands. Generally I think the end results in full won't be all that different, though I will say, politically in the US, lack of responsibility via determinism makes strong arguments for things like socialist and egalitarian policies. Of course, psychological factors can offset those, which is why things like full equality a la communism get so much pushback. I think Rawls and the veil of ignorance become pretty useful ideas as a starting point to figure out the details. [1] Our imperfect knowledge will always make this stuff an estimation at best in practicality though.
> Ah, you are cutting God out of the loop. I don't think this objectively (pun) succeeds...
I've heard enough god arguments that I effectively cut that out of the equation, yes. Similar logic to brain in vat - either its false and we move on, or its true and we can't do anything about it anyways. At the end of the day, there is no god proof that I have seen that justifies a meta-ethical underpinning having to do with god or DCT [2] or the like. Basically, evidence strongly points one direction, and we will never have proof one way or the other, so we do our best, make a choice, and move on.
[1] https://ethicsunwrapped.utexas.edu/glossary/veil-of-ignoranc... [2] https://www.iep.utm.edu/divine-c/
Ha, yes :)
> As to "objective" see above. I think the distinction of "shared subjective" is important here
So my objective is the "facts irrespective of opinion", but your objective is a subjectivity summed together from many points of view
I suggest my 'objectivity' agrees with what you quoted from the dictionary, but your objectivity (more importantly :o) agrees with the zeitgeist -- in that easily the majority of comments here take your view
-- a rejection of objectivity
I agree this universe is not objective, and I agree shared subjectives exist. So how to make that jump? -- from no fixed point from which to measure true/false -- to a world we can at least have a shared fixed point from which to measure
From an external stand point X varies around zero (or there is no zero). From an internal stand point, everyone can measure from X
So externally we can make no meaningful statement, but internally we can generate a whole microcosm. So shared subjectivity is the internal view?
So is the external an effective zero from a meaning standpoint. Then internal+0 = internal. What meaningfully separates the internal from the external?
Is the external meaningfully non zero. Then internal+external > internal. Good. But then we have external meaning. I think you are also saying shared_subjective > external. So internal > external
I realize you solve this. You say the universe contains something, but not meaning. From electricity, behold, I create light -- a shared subjectivity
If I join you -- I agree, the external world makes no moral sense. I step inside and look from your perspective -- a shared subjectivity. So now I see and make statements about morality based on X -- so to agree with you means to take the perspective that I have objectivity?
I think your answer is yes -- I want you to base your life on X
> I think Rawls and the veil of ignorance become pretty useful ideas as a starting point to figure out the details
So this X is a point from which you can measure decisions and the details of morality? What is the quantitative difference between that and the gods of DCT (thanks for the links) -- haven't you recreated god by a different name?
I suppose you might say: Yes, but my God is from electricity. Theirs is from the unknown
I think we can prove such a statement as partly right, and partly wrong
----
I think:
Either nothing is knowable as true or false, and we move on
Or, we know something is true, and then we have a foundation to build on
Maybe this is shared subjective. But we are not able to fully prove it. For instance mathematical proof is based on axioms. Axioms are unproven assumptions. So even the most basic things are unproven in anything beyond the subjective. We are like finite beings trying to reach outside the realm of finite observations. How can we we make categorical statements when we will never be able to fully check them?
Famously: "We hold these truths to be self-evident..."
But I would like to suggest a way, and the only way I can imagine
We need evidence that
1) Makes categorical statements
2) Makes them within our observation
3) Gives proof not derivable from observation
4) Does that as a unified package
Some kind of object from beyond our finite realm, stepping in, acting in a finite way (so we can understand it), and also acting in a non-finite way (otherwise ignore it); and doing this as a unified package, so we can connect the two together (finite and non-finite, inside and outside observation)
Notes:
Proof would have to be things we consider impossible -- outside of anything we have observed, and not baseable on anything we have observed
Categorical statements should be things we don't agree with, otherwise (If we already agree with them, then they're probably not based on evidence we don't already have)
I suppose we'd also need reason to trust. Aliens can step onto our television screens and make categorical statements, but they also tend to have the goal of blowing us up and lying -- also they tend to make much lower than categorical claims -- "I can tell you the answers of infinity", or "this is a universal truth" is too wild even for aliens
Such claims are necessarily stupendous, and we'd maybe want equivalently stupendous proof before getting off our backsides
---
So can I say...?
Nothing is knowably true or false, or, evidence exists
Which is tantamount to saying:
Nothing exists, or, evidence exists
I think for a nihilist, I would also add
If nothing exists, then at the very least, evidence also equivalently exists
-- Which I think is as far as anything can be proved
If this is as far as anything can be proved, then is this not effective proof that such evidence exists??
In a deterministic universe, I probably _cannot_ say: "Every action and statement you make is a decision between two options. You are saying one is better, one is worse. You are deciding truth and falsity. Ergo you agree such things exist"
But I probably _can_ say: "At the point all your decisions are not between a better and worse option, then truth and falsity are not relevant, and you at the least, do not disagree with anything I'm saying"
Please do correct me!!! It is now your turn to question my inconsistencies :)
Final point (if you are still with me, and not laughing your head off). I agree: Laughing is a good response
An objective truth -- a truth no matter what perspective necessarily makes a statement beyond observation: Infinity beside the finite is always the ratio 1:0. How can the effective 0 make any statement about the effective 1?
It cannot
The effective 1 is always going to be completely outside the expectations and sensibilities of the 0
I think your electricity giving a shared subjective has been placed in the 1
Someone sent me a link just now -- two subjective realities meeting for a shared experience. Sorry not philosophy in the dry sense. But still asking a good existential question, and disagreeing
Personally I think evidence is a necessity. A summation of all, or enough POVs, we must hope contains this evidence, or an indication of
I give you, a music video(!) https://youtu.be/lynwOb2ZiIo
Try like 1:10min -- 5min. Philosophy more properly starts at about 8:30
Nothing published yet but I have many smaller academic writings that are building the pieces of this, and currently have a master outline that basically looks like this:
(1) Hard Determinism
(2) Ethics/Morality under (1)
(3) Social/Political Organization under (2)
(4) Personal/Useful/Practical/Life Philosophy under (1)/(2)/(3)
I started (1) when I was 18 and have many different forms at this point. Recently I have spent a good deal of time on (2) in the past couple years. (3) I have worked on independent of these ideas and am still linking up once I sure up and reflect on (2) more. (4) I'd argue is basically a WIP experiment of my own life since I was 17/18 and will be the last to be completed, probably not for a good deal of time.
Basically if this is a checklist representative of how developed/ready these ideas are, (1) is done, (2) is 75% of the way there and my main focus currently, (3) is up next, and 4 requires all the others and of course much lived experience.
As to when/how I want to publish, right now my plan is to have three forms for each - an accessible article (think 10-30 minute read), a short accessible book form that elaborates, and the formal philosophy for the academic/formal community to pick apart. Right now I essentially am working on the articles and planning to expand out. I'm not sure if I want to publish the articles without the books though, so it could be a long time.
However, given that philosophy benefits from discussion and debate, I think there seems to be a good case for publishing the articles. I might try to stand up my website/blog I've been putting off forever once I finish two and start making progress on three. I'd really love to have all four articles published at the same time as a set though, so I might have to figure out a compromise there.
> Error theory is a form of moral nihilism - what are you exactly disagreeing with here?
More the relativistic morality and psychological morality.
> There is nothing that says just because our formal definitions of morality are false that the entire world doesn't matter. I still care for my happiness and life.
Moral nihilism doesn't mean that they're false - it means moral truths don't exist, there is no right and wrong. You were predetermined to care for your happiness - but your happiness is already determined. There is nothing you can do to increase or decrease it, it will be what it will be based on the initial conditions.
It seems, in general, that you need to cling to ethics as a way to convince your belief in determinism - to cover up for its deficiencies, you have to find a way to convince people that ethics still matter, despite continual argument that it doesn't.
I agree 100%. However, you are mismatching objective moral truth with subjective moral truth. I am saying that once you realize the lack of objective moral truth/existence, all that is left is the subjective. Human nature then essentially requires it to become a collective subjective. Subjective preferences of all being essentially become the practical "morality". That's what I am referring to here, not the objective morality that does not and cannot logically exist.
Morality is derived not from the physical world but from our own moral psychology. If we change humans in any way, we change morality. And thus morality is also different for every human. Traits like our social nature, empathy, and equal lack of inherent meaning then morph the problem into a collective/intertwined singular subjective morality based on the world state itself.
> - but your happiness is already determined. There is nothing you can do to increase or decrease it, it will be what it will be based on the initial conditions.
This is where you conflate determinism / free will with agency / choice, which are not the same thing. We do not have the ability to see our future choices and path, so we still have to "function" through it, even if it's a set path. And the questions we have to answer along the way are the reason we looked into morality in the first place, and are no less important or worth of time and effort.
> It seems, in general, that you need to cling to ethics as a way to convince your belief in determinism - to cover up for its deficiencies, you have to find a way to convince people that ethics still matter, despite continual argument that it doesn't.
You've got the wrong direction of how philosophy works - I started with determinism at the base, I'm simply asking what it leads to. You're only disagreeing with what comes after moral nihilism, but you've made no actual argument other than "no it's not that way". I'd truly love to understand more what your critique of my steps after is.
I don't see how that follows. Compatibilism is perfectly compatible with moral realism.
As a hard determinist, you'll have to re-invent concepts of pseudo-moral blame in order to justify rehabilitation for those who break the law rather than simply changing the law itself to accomodate rule breakers, at which point you've just reinvented free will and called it something else.
Moral error theory has problems of its own, so I don't think these all hang together very nicely.
"Practical" free will, as described by both of us:
> When people say that free will exists, they're saying that there is coherent notion of control over one's actions
> When humans say "free will", they are referring IMO in actuality to a real thing - a combination of many things, but basically agency + lack of prediction powers
You added a very specific phrase outside of the definition though, with no justification: "that grounds moral responsibility". That both implicitly implies moral responsibility, and also claims that it is grounded by this particular definition of free will. I'd be interested in how you got to those conclusions.
The "stricter/formal/whatever label you add here" version, that some try to argue for, including some compatibilists, goes more or less like this:
> Humans have the power to change the state/future of the universe and the universe is not "set" in any way
This feels a bit logically impossible to me, and it may also be something you don't agree with either, but it is still a definition that people use to mean free will, I have seen it way too often. However, the lack of this type of thing still has meaning is what I am trying to say. It is what leads to error theory for me, and then effectively what leads away from it. I wonder if that "away from" part might also solve some of your qualms with error theory.
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In terms of hard determinism, it seems to me you only listed off reasons that hard determinism doesn't sound easy, but made no argument against it itself. Just because an idea invalidates many ones that were previously popular does not make it any less true/false, nor does it prevent it from establishing new and helpful ideas on top of it, even if they do not really exist currently.
> you'll have to re-invent concepts of pseudo-moral blame
This is exactly where I think hard determinism has its value. There is no moral blame - hard determinism requires a morality without it, and that's okay. It simply is new because people have focused so hard on blame, but I think that "formal" definition of free will is useful to show precisely that blame is not in play.
> at which point you've just reinvented free will and called it something else
I do think much of this will happen, but the distinction between the definitions has consequences. I already argued about for blame, but I think there is much more to explore there.
> Moral error theory has problems of its own, so I don't think these all hang together very nicely.
Again, I'd love to hear the argument rather than a simple refutation, truly, in a non attacking or confrontational way. At this point I think the HN format is hurting more than it's helping, so if you're interested in talking more feel free to shoot me an email, @gmail.com. You seem well versed in this area and I've love to hear more details on your perspective and reasoning/principles.
I always qualify my use of free will as being specific to the philosophical use in ethics because there's so much conflation around the term [1]. I hold that the term "free will" as used in various contexts are not necessarily the same, and that conflating them or trying to define a more general notion of free will that encompasses them all obscures more than it helps.
Per [2], I then conceive of free will in this context as "moral responsibility as accountability". I am not referring to free will as used in any other context, and I hope I've been strict about preserving that distinction.
> > Humans have the power to change the state/future of the universe and the universe is not "set" in any way
This definition compounds exactly the conflation that I think hurts progress in this debate. People often want more general abstractions to think about entire classes of problems rather than specific instances, but in this context, I think it obscures more than it clarifies.
> This feels a bit logically impossible to me, and it may also be something you don't agree with either, but it is still a definition that people use to mean free will, I have seen it way too often.
Compatibilism is necessarily compatible with determinism in which the universe is "set" in a specific way, that's the whole point. So I disagree with the definition. That said, just because it's "set" doesn't make it predictable, in which case it's outcome is not "set" in a way that can be known in advance.
So I would revise the clause "the universe is not 'set' in any way" to read, "the universe is not 'set' in a way that's relevant to responsibility", or something along those lines. But again, maybe you're thinking along more general lines that conflate the ethical properties with properties needed for other purposes (like an experimenters' freedom in science).
> Just because an idea invalidates many ones that were previously popular does not make it any less true/false, nor does it prevent it from establishing new and helpful ideas on top of it, even if they do not really exist currently.
I agree. I don't see anything in hard determinism which doesn't already have a satisfactory answer in Compatibilism though. The only quality which people seem to find appealing is a lack of blame, but as you later say, pseudo-blame will also likely be a feature of hard determinism in order to make it workable.
In the hundreds of debates I've had on this topic, pretty much the only reason people have used to justify hard determinism is that they don't think punishment is justified, and they see eliminating blame as a way to avoid punishment. This conflates justice with the simpler question of moral responsibility, and as a result, they erroneously believe that free will and Compatibilism necessarily entail punishment.
> Again, I'd love to hear the argument [refuting error theory] rather than a simple refutation, truly, in a non attacking or confrontational way.
Here's a rough summary of my thoughts when I first read it:
1. The Argument from Relativity: we're apparently not troubled at all by disagreement over natural facts (see: flat earthers), but disagreement over moral facts is somehow more problematic? We distinguish "fact" from "belief" for exactly this reason. I don't see any motivation for error theory here.
2. The Argument from Metaphysical Queerness, aka, moral properties are "qualities or relations of a very strange sort, utterly different from anything else in the universe", aka are moral prescriptions categorical or hypothetical imperatives: this appears to be the most subtle and misunderstood part of error theory, so maybe I'll delve in deeper at some point.
3. The Argument from Epistemic Queerness, aka, we would need "some special faculty of moral perception or intuition, utterly different from our ordinary ways of knowing everything else": the epistemic "strangeness" of moral properties partly follows from the strangeness of qualia. For instance, we have moral prescriptions around causing pain. I'm an eliminativist about qualia, so I think the apparent strangeness are cognitive tricks that we will unpack in time. The only other faculty needed is reason.
Bambrough addressed most of these [3] almost a decade before Mackie's paper on error theory. Bambrough's working example of a child undergoing surgery is precisely an example of a logical argument depending on qualia (epistemic queerness), to establish a moral fact. I'm sure Mackie would find that result very queer indeed!
Which isn't to say that error theory wasn't a valuable contribution, because it's absolutely true that most alleged moral prescriptions have been false. I simply don't think there's any conclusive reason to think they're all false, and per Bambrough, I think there are reasons to think we already know some moral facts.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23480626
[2] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freewill/#FreeWillMoraRes...
[3] A Proof of the Objectivity of Morals - Bambrough (1969), https://www.reddit.com/r/philosophy/comments/3etl9b/a_proof_...
1. I feel like we keep talking in circles on the definitional aspect. I'm with you on the many definitions causing confusion and I would love to see expanded vocabulary around this. But you haven't said anything to convince me against the idea that all three have moral relevancy in various ways.
2. To be clear, I do not believe hard determinism needs any sort of pseudo-blame to be workable, at least how I understand you are using that term. The only thing needed is causality in order in order to find the ideal "organization" of the world to optimize for whatever factors are settled on by other parts of the argument.
3. I actually agree with you on the lack of convincing of 1 and 3 for error theory (slightly different reasons but details not needed), but the argument from queerness seems to fit quite well. I'm not sure what part you're claiming is misunderstood.
4. The mentioned "justifications" on hard determinism are going the wrong way logically - you don't decide if something is true by if you need it to make morals that look nice, you follow what is true and see the results, and only then can you "check your work" with a sanity test. You've seem to cut off your thoughts on determinism before ever getting to a point where it actually produced a full set of moral ideas to check in favor of compatabilism simply because it produced something that passed said check, but if the underlying principle is false that's simply a coincidental state. Obviously you've also personally eliminated error theory, which is the core of our disagreement.
As to justice, I fully agree on that being way oversimplified. For context, looking ahead, my theories on morality out of error theory basically lead to a consequentialist version of Rawls, so that's about where I stand re justice, with some nuance.
> I think there are reasons to think we already know some moral facts.
Can you give examples? Single or multiple, whatever you think is more useful in this context. I don't see how we get to moral facts without them being tied back subjectively to humans, which either invalidates the objectivism tract (now we're back at arguing metaethics fully) or you'd have to get there from the error theory route I've been talking about.
To Bambrough's child surgery example, I think that only shows that that moral fact is true only subjectively to humans - it's not an "objective" moral truth. It is derived from the traits of a human, and the example generally works because it takes a clear cut case we can all agree on.
All of this reasoning is still useful to an error theorist, but it is laid on the groundwork that morality is subjective to the state of humans/beings. If you mean to say that this is objective, then there is basically infinite moral facts in existence, we just debate them because humans and society are complex. That is to me the precise meaning of that "optimal organization" I reference, which is essentially that collection of all true moral facts, which I would argue are always subjective to the deterministic state of the world. Change anything about the world, and you likely change ethics itself. The argument from queerness highlights that without our perspective and values, objective morality wouldn't exist at all.
I suspect definition will be the issue here again - are "moral facts" derived from the combination of human traits and our perspective considered objective or subjective? To me, that is subjective and then the combinations of subjectiveness along with the lack of inherent meaning or value produces a single objective level practical morality. I can understand the argument to classify that set of things itself as objective morality, but I think that weakens the base of the argument needlessly.
Because I think only one has moral relevancy, not all three. I've been saying it's a mistake to conflate the others with the one specific to moral responsibility.
> The only thing needed [in hard determinism] is causality in order to find the ideal "organization" of the world to optimize for whatever factors are settled on by other parts of the argument.
The "ideal organization" necessarily designate faulty parts which don't conform to the ideal, and so the parts that require rehabilitation. That's blame however you want to spin it.
> To Bambrough's child surgery example, I think that only shows that that moral fact is true only subjectively to humans - it's not an "objective" moral truth. It is derived from the traits of a human, and the example generally works because it takes a clear cut case we can all agree on.
I think you're missing the forest for the trees by mistaking an existential claim for a universal claim. Suppose we swap out the human child with an alien that doesn't feel pain as we do, but has an adverse reaction to some other stimulus. The same argument applies by parity of reasoning. You're focused on the specifics of the human case, but the moral fact in that case is just an instance of a more general principle from which this fact derives.
It's like I'm pointing out 1+2=3, that's a fact, an instance of the general rule of addition. You then agree that 1+2=3, but gotcha, 1+3!=3, therefore 1+2=3 is not a general fact applicable to all numbers. No argument there, but it was never suggested as such.
> I suspect definition will be the issue here again - are "moral facts" derived from the combination of human traits and our perspective considered objective or subjective?
"Objective" means "mind independent", which is to say, that any form of intelligence will reach the same conclusions given the same understanding.
Any intelligence will reach the same conclusion that a human child undergoing a painful surgery ought to be given anesthetic, all else being equal, assuming they fully understand the meaning of every word in that sentence.
And that's exactly where we're stuck, which is all I'm saying. I think all three affect moral responsibility.
> 1+2=3, etc
> Any intelligence will reach the same conclusion that a human child undergoing a painful surgery ought to be given anesthetic, all else being equal, assuming they fully understand the meaning of every word in that sentence.
There's another assumed aspect though that you have not separated, which is that the judging intelligence has empathy if it agrees. You're claiming only using pure logic, but you're using aspects of that subjective human perspective to imply that the reduction of pain/whatever stimuli. Without the human perspective, the example fails to be a "moral" fact. It's just a configuration that raises x, lowers some y maybe, and the beings prefer more x and less y. But without value being projected on x and y, it is not inherently "good". We require the human perspective to create human morality. What if the intelligence viewing this entire scenario loves to see pain/y? Would it not rationally conclude the anesthesia is bad? Only if it assumes or judges based on the values of a human does it get the same conclusion. Yes, within that, it's objective.
I find that distinction is key in how we approach the derivation later. A lack of such distinction can, for one example, enable using the idea of objectivity here to assign value to the entities (more ideal = more value), which then can shift practical effects possibly. And maybe you disagree with this specific example on deriving value from objective nature, but that is one of the many doors the lack of distinction opens. I'm sure if we went far enough down the road, there is likely an argument that you do agree with that comes from the lack of distinction.
You say I'm missing the forest, but I think you are minimizing the importance of the trees through all of this and disagreeing that the trees can be important, even if you zoom out and the forest is the same. You're saying that the rule in play here is "addition", but I'm saying I think you're missing some rules/definition/workings of the "operator" in this metaphor that lead to different results later down the line, even if it works in this case.
> The "ideal organization" necessarily designate faulty parts which don't conform to the ideal, and so the parts that require rehabilitation. That's blame however you want to spin it.
I typed up a longer distinction here, but again this seems to come down to distinguishing between two definitions and if that distinction means something. See importance of trees. In this case, blame being the tree.
At the risk of mirroring Fricken's reply, this isn't so. Suppose a brain tumour drives someone to commit murder, as may have been the case with Charles Whitman. The act remains morally atrocious even if the individual's culpability is doubtful.
Same goes for a killer animal, or natural disaster, or even disease.
Moral blame is discounted entirely in pure utilitarianism (which is of course deeply flawed, but I think it's still illustrative here).
And why is his culpability doubtful? I think you'll find his lack of free will implicit in your argument.