The dispute between Einstein’s physics and Newton’s physics is an example of a difficult factual matter. Said dispute has had drastic implications for modern technology.
I am not discussing the ordinary definition of what “sane” means but the ordinary definition of what “rational” means. I then appealed to the case of the psycopath who discerns matters of fact better than an ordinary person to argue that they give a better impression of rational.
On matters of particulars, I am a Nominalist which is why I discuss the popularity issue. The example I think Yvain gave when he considered an economics lecture and concluded by stating it was his theory of the atom illustrates why you should not stray too far from ordinary definitions of the word.
I’ve already given reasons for why it’s pragmatic to classify “rational” and” moral” seperately from most purposes, and an epistemic argument. Perhaps I edited them in too late and you missed them, in which case I apologise.
I’m not sure I can extract anything from your post that looks like a pragmatic argument. An epistemic argument is presumably one which maintains that we should not believe in objective morality because we know of no knowledge-producing mechanism which would give us access to objective moral facts. I may have misinterpreted you in thinking that your epistemic argument was based on the argument from disagreement, that you thought there couldn’t be any such mechanism because if there were it wouldn’t produce such conflicting results in different people. If you intended that, I think I’ve explained above why I think that’s unconvincing. The Einstein/Newton case is once again not an especially helpful analogy; one thing which stands out about that case is just how much evidence is relevant. Again, even among uncontroversially objective facts, many are not like that.
But I can see signs that you might have instead, or perhaps additionally, wished to argue that there is no means of generating moral knowledge just because we don’t know the details of how any such means would operate. In that case again worrisome analogies are plentiful; there are few cases of objective knowledge where we have a really detailed story to tell about how that knowledge is acquired, and the cases where we don’t seem to have much to say at all include logic and mathematics. So the fact that we don’t know how we could acquire a certain kind of knowledge does not seem a decisive reason for denying that we have it.
By pragmatic, I meant pragmatic in the ordinary sense of the word. Since the meaning of a word is not set in stone, it should be made to effectively serve a purpose-hence why I appeal to that sort of pragmatism.
As for my epistemic argument, see The Moral Void. Any rational argument to demonstrate something is the “right” thing to do is comparable to Eliezer’s argument for killing babies if it feels like a moral wrong to do the ” right” thing emotive lot. This is a new clarification of what I was trying to say earlier.
For the Einstein/Newton case you can substitute any case where there is a scientific test which could, in principle, determine a result one way or the other. This is not true in ethics- although Moore’s Open Question argument is flawed, it does demonstrate that determining a proper philosophical criterion of what “should” is is necessary to discuss it. Any means of doing so must be philosophical by nature.
Just as the absence of evidence means that we assume unicorns don’t exist by default, so the absence of evidence means we assume a way to establish ought from is does not exist by default.
The dispute between Einstein’s physics and Newton’s physics is an example of a difficult factual matter. Said dispute has had drastic implications for modern technology.
I am not discussing the ordinary definition of what “sane” means but the ordinary definition of what “rational” means. I then appealed to the case of the psycopath who discerns matters of fact better than an ordinary person to argue that they give a better impression of rational.
On matters of particulars, I am a Nominalist which is why I discuss the popularity issue. The example I think Yvain gave when he considered an economics lecture and concluded by stating it was his theory of the atom illustrates why you should not stray too far from ordinary definitions of the word.
I’ve already given reasons for why it’s pragmatic to classify “rational” and” moral” seperately from most purposes, and an epistemic argument. Perhaps I edited them in too late and you missed them, in which case I apologise.
I’m not sure I can extract anything from your post that looks like a pragmatic argument. An epistemic argument is presumably one which maintains that we should not believe in objective morality because we know of no knowledge-producing mechanism which would give us access to objective moral facts. I may have misinterpreted you in thinking that your epistemic argument was based on the argument from disagreement, that you thought there couldn’t be any such mechanism because if there were it wouldn’t produce such conflicting results in different people. If you intended that, I think I’ve explained above why I think that’s unconvincing. The Einstein/Newton case is once again not an especially helpful analogy; one thing which stands out about that case is just how much evidence is relevant. Again, even among uncontroversially objective facts, many are not like that.
But I can see signs that you might have instead, or perhaps additionally, wished to argue that there is no means of generating moral knowledge just because we don’t know the details of how any such means would operate. In that case again worrisome analogies are plentiful; there are few cases of objective knowledge where we have a really detailed story to tell about how that knowledge is acquired, and the cases where we don’t seem to have much to say at all include logic and mathematics. So the fact that we don’t know how we could acquire a certain kind of knowledge does not seem a decisive reason for denying that we have it.
By pragmatic, I meant pragmatic in the ordinary sense of the word. Since the meaning of a word is not set in stone, it should be made to effectively serve a purpose-hence why I appeal to that sort of pragmatism.
As for my epistemic argument, see The Moral Void. Any rational argument to demonstrate something is the “right” thing to do is comparable to Eliezer’s argument for killing babies if it feels like a moral wrong to do the ” right” thing emotive lot. This is a new clarification of what I was trying to say earlier.
For the Einstein/Newton case you can substitute any case where there is a scientific test which could, in principle, determine a result one way or the other. This is not true in ethics- although Moore’s Open Question argument is flawed, it does demonstrate that determining a proper philosophical criterion of what “should” is is necessary to discuss it. Any means of doing so must be philosophical by nature.
Just as the absence of evidence means that we assume unicorns don’t exist by default, so the absence of evidence means we assume a way to establish ought from is does not exist by default.