There was probably some miscommunication, perhaps because when people talk about things they have certain interests. This can happen in a completely non-truth related way, as e.g. a website like Answers in Genesis is not interested in discovering the truth, but in arguing for creationism without any regard for reality. However, even when people want to know or discuss the truth they still have particular motivations which affect the discussion. So for example if someone is interested at the moment in thinking about one particular aspect of reality, he is more likely to interpret other people’s statements as being relevant to that consideration, even if they are in fact irrelevant or less relevant than he would like.
But I’m not sure it’s completely an issue of miscommunication because I’m not very comfortable with your explanation here either. Let me try to summarize your comment before I try to explain why I have a problem with it:
The laws of physics that we know and use are mathematical laws about mass and force and so on. It is obvious that these do not contain anything about justice etc.
It turns out that these laws have various consequences which have moral importance for us, some good and some bad.
But the laws “don’t operate at the same level,” even if someone might suppose that the above good or bad consequences are the result of someone’s good or bad intentions. If they are an argument for such good or bad intentions, they are a fairly weak argument for it.
(I realize that there is more here than you said in the comment I’m replying to, but I’m summarizing also based on our previous discussion.)
I agree with all three of these points. However, I still have a problem with your comment as a whole, probably because of this: “you might think that some of these consequences are actually ‘design features’ rather than emergent coincidences.”
It is perfectly obvious that mathematical laws as such are not about morality, and in that sense it is not an interesting question. But it seems unlikely that mathematical laws are the most fundamental causes of the world, because they are abstractions, not realities. So the more interesting question is, if the mathematical laws have other causes, what is the relationship of those causes to morality?
Your statement seems to suggest that either those causes designed morality and human life, or morality is an “emergent coincidence” relative to them, as it is relative to the mathematical laws in themselves. I think this is a false dichotomy. For example, fire makes things hot, and this is neither by design on the part of the fire, nor by emergent coincidence. Of course, you could say that this is because fire is “about” heat, while the laws of physics (and consequently their causes) are presumably not about morality. So if it isn’t by design, it seems to be by coincidence.
I disagree with this conclusion, but there is no way to explain this disagreement without reopening the can of worms I was planning to keep closed. So instead of making that argument as a whole, I’ll do it by talking about a question.
I think that dualism about experience is probably false. For example, some things look orange to me, and some things look blue. I don’t think that it is possible to change that fact without either changing those objects physically, or changing me physically. With the appropriate physical changes on either side, however, it would be possible to make those orange things look blue, and the blue things look orange.
But despite this belief, I think it is a meaningful question to ask, “Why do oranges look orange to me, instead of blue?”, and one that cannot be answered in an explanatory way by reference to those physical causes that would in fact change things so that oranges look blue.
I think it is a meaningful question, one that currently no one can answer. It is possible that no one will ever be able to answer it. And it is possible even that no one can answer it in principle, in the sense that the “answer” is not something intelligible to a human mind.
I do not think that answers that have to do with the structure of the human brain and the mathematical laws of physics do or can answer this question.
I do not think that it is a meaningless question, like “Why I am myself instead of being gjm?” This question is meaningless, not only in the sense that we cannot answer it, but in the sense that there is nothing that is being asked. There is no “I” who had the possibility of being either myself or someone else. It is clear to me that the question about orange and blue is quite different. A world where oranges look blue is a quite different world (unlike the world where I am gjm), and so it is meaningful to ask why we are not in that different world.
I could also make the question into “Why am I conscious at all, instead of being a philosophical zombie?”, even though that might make the opening in the can of worms too wide. Note that saying that philosophical zombies are impossible does not answer the question. I agree that they are impossible, given the brute fact that we are actually conscious. The question is why they are impossible, and something being impossible is not always self-explanatory, and no one has yet explained this particular case. Nor does it explain it to give a lengthy explanation of physical causes which would lead to someone saying words like “I am conscious,” even if he were a philosophical zombie.
The existence of this kind of question, and the impossibility of answering it in any standard way, suggests to me that there is something in the basic causes of laws of physics which has a stronger relationship with consciousness (and probably also good and evil, given how fundamental these are in our experience) than emergent coincidence, but different from design. Thus more like the relationship between fire and heat, although not exactly this relationship either.
It is by no means obvious that the laws of physics could not be about morality or humans. A law to prevent human beings from losing all of their limbs would, if expressed in the same ‘language’ as the other laws, be absurdly long—but any being we could reasonably describe as “omnipotent and omniscient” would have no trouble creating it.
I don’t know if I understand the rest of the parent. Would you like to replace “oranges” with “dresses” and try again? If Martha’s perceptions consisted entirely of connections, - let’s say she could only register differences between the photons arriving from different areas and compare these mathematical differences with other patterns of difference, which may activate other nodes in her network—would she describe anything differently?
I didn’t say it is obvious that there couldn’t be laws of physics about morality or about humans. I said it is obvious that the ones we actually know and use are not about those things.
As for the rest, I’ll adopt the style that Socrates calls “polemical,” and say that “I have given my argument, if you disagree it is up to you to refute it.” Mostly because I didn’t want to get involved in that discussion in the first place.
There was probably some miscommunication, perhaps because when people talk about things they have certain interests. This can happen in a completely non-truth related way, as e.g. a website like Answers in Genesis is not interested in discovering the truth, but in arguing for creationism without any regard for reality. However, even when people want to know or discuss the truth they still have particular motivations which affect the discussion. So for example if someone is interested at the moment in thinking about one particular aspect of reality, he is more likely to interpret other people’s statements as being relevant to that consideration, even if they are in fact irrelevant or less relevant than he would like.
But I’m not sure it’s completely an issue of miscommunication because I’m not very comfortable with your explanation here either. Let me try to summarize your comment before I try to explain why I have a problem with it:
The laws of physics that we know and use are mathematical laws about mass and force and so on. It is obvious that these do not contain anything about justice etc.
It turns out that these laws have various consequences which have moral importance for us, some good and some bad.
But the laws “don’t operate at the same level,” even if someone might suppose that the above good or bad consequences are the result of someone’s good or bad intentions. If they are an argument for such good or bad intentions, they are a fairly weak argument for it.
(I realize that there is more here than you said in the comment I’m replying to, but I’m summarizing also based on our previous discussion.)
I agree with all three of these points. However, I still have a problem with your comment as a whole, probably because of this: “you might think that some of these consequences are actually ‘design features’ rather than emergent coincidences.”
It is perfectly obvious that mathematical laws as such are not about morality, and in that sense it is not an interesting question. But it seems unlikely that mathematical laws are the most fundamental causes of the world, because they are abstractions, not realities. So the more interesting question is, if the mathematical laws have other causes, what is the relationship of those causes to morality?
Your statement seems to suggest that either those causes designed morality and human life, or morality is an “emergent coincidence” relative to them, as it is relative to the mathematical laws in themselves. I think this is a false dichotomy. For example, fire makes things hot, and this is neither by design on the part of the fire, nor by emergent coincidence. Of course, you could say that this is because fire is “about” heat, while the laws of physics (and consequently their causes) are presumably not about morality. So if it isn’t by design, it seems to be by coincidence.
I disagree with this conclusion, but there is no way to explain this disagreement without reopening the can of worms I was planning to keep closed. So instead of making that argument as a whole, I’ll do it by talking about a question.
I think that dualism about experience is probably false. For example, some things look orange to me, and some things look blue. I don’t think that it is possible to change that fact without either changing those objects physically, or changing me physically. With the appropriate physical changes on either side, however, it would be possible to make those orange things look blue, and the blue things look orange.
But despite this belief, I think it is a meaningful question to ask, “Why do oranges look orange to me, instead of blue?”, and one that cannot be answered in an explanatory way by reference to those physical causes that would in fact change things so that oranges look blue.
I think it is a meaningful question, one that currently no one can answer. It is possible that no one will ever be able to answer it. And it is possible even that no one can answer it in principle, in the sense that the “answer” is not something intelligible to a human mind.
I do not think that answers that have to do with the structure of the human brain and the mathematical laws of physics do or can answer this question.
I do not think that it is a meaningless question, like “Why I am myself instead of being gjm?” This question is meaningless, not only in the sense that we cannot answer it, but in the sense that there is nothing that is being asked. There is no “I” who had the possibility of being either myself or someone else. It is clear to me that the question about orange and blue is quite different. A world where oranges look blue is a quite different world (unlike the world where I am gjm), and so it is meaningful to ask why we are not in that different world.
I could also make the question into “Why am I conscious at all, instead of being a philosophical zombie?”, even though that might make the opening in the can of worms too wide. Note that saying that philosophical zombies are impossible does not answer the question. I agree that they are impossible, given the brute fact that we are actually conscious. The question is why they are impossible, and something being impossible is not always self-explanatory, and no one has yet explained this particular case. Nor does it explain it to give a lengthy explanation of physical causes which would lead to someone saying words like “I am conscious,” even if he were a philosophical zombie.
The existence of this kind of question, and the impossibility of answering it in any standard way, suggests to me that there is something in the basic causes of laws of physics which has a stronger relationship with consciousness (and probably also good and evil, given how fundamental these are in our experience) than emergent coincidence, but different from design. Thus more like the relationship between fire and heat, although not exactly this relationship either.
It is by no means obvious that the laws of physics could not be about morality or humans. A law to prevent human beings from losing all of their limbs would, if expressed in the same ‘language’ as the other laws, be absurdly long—but any being we could reasonably describe as “omnipotent and omniscient” would have no trouble creating it.
I don’t know if I understand the rest of the parent. Would you like to replace “oranges” with “dresses” and try again? If Martha’s perceptions consisted entirely of connections, - let’s say she could only register differences between the photons arriving from different areas and compare these mathematical differences with other patterns of difference, which may activate other nodes in her network—would she describe anything differently?
I didn’t say it is obvious that there couldn’t be laws of physics about morality or about humans. I said it is obvious that the ones we actually know and use are not about those things.
As for the rest, I’ll adopt the style that Socrates calls “polemical,” and say that “I have given my argument, if you disagree it is up to you to refute it.” Mostly because I didn’t want to get involved in that discussion in the first place.