There seems to be some confusion—when I say “an objective morality capable of being scientifically investigated (a la Sam Harris or others)”—I do NOT mean something like a “one true, universal, metaphysical morality for all mind-designs” like the Socratic/Platonic Form of Good or any such nonsense. I just mean something in reality that’s mind-independent—in the sense that it is hard-wired, e.g. by evolution, and thus independent/prior to any later knowledge or cognitive content—and thus can be investigated scientifically. It is a definite “is” from which we can make true “ought” statements relative to that “is”. See drethelin’s comment and my analysis of Clippy.
So first of all, that’s not what Sam Harris means so stop invoking him. Second of all, give an example of what kind of facts you would refer to in order to decide whether or not murder is immoral.
If you are referring to facts about your brain/mind then your account is subjectivist. Nothing about subjectivism says we can’t investigate people’s moral beliefs scientifically.
Now it is the case that if you define morality as “whatever that thing in my brain that tells me what is right and wrong says” there is in some sense an “is from which you can get an ought”. But this is not at all what Hume is talking about. Hume is talking about argument and justification. His point is that an argument with only descriptive premises can’t take you to a normative conclusion. But note that your “is” potentially differs from individual to individual. I suppose you could use it to justify your own moral beliefs to your self but that does not moral realism make. What you can’t do is use it to convince anyone else.
This discussion is getting rather frustrating because I don’t think your beliefs are actually wrong. You’re just a) refusing to use or learn standard terminology that can be quickly picked up by glancing at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and b) thinking that whether or not we can learn about evolved or programmed utility function-like things is a question related to the whether or not moral realism is true. I’m a very typical moral anti-realist but I still think humans have lots of values in common, that there are scientific ways to learn about those values, and that this is a worthy pursuit.
If you still disagree I’d like to hear what you think people in my camp are supposed to believe.
I’m a very typical moral anti-realist but I still think humans have lots of values in common, that there are scientific ways to learn about those values, and that this is a worthy pursuit.
Me too. We’re not identical, but we have similarities, and understanding them will likely allow us to better achieve mutual satisfaction.
This is my disappointment with Harris. He ran a fundamentally sound project into the ditch by claiming, entirely unscientifically, that his utilitarian ideal was the one word of moral truth—Thou shalt serve the well being of all conscious creatures—that is the whole of law!
So first of all, that’s not what Sam Harris means so stop invoking him.
I’m not sure what you’re referring to here, but here’s my comment explaining how this relates to Sam Harris.
If you are referring to facts about your brain/mind then your account is subjectivist. Nothing about subjectivism says we can’t investigate people’s moral beliefs scientifically.
I addressed this previously, explaining that I am using ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ in the common sense way of ‘mind-independent’ or ‘mind-dependent’ and explained in what specific way I’m doing that (that is, the proper basis of terminal values, and thus the rational basis for moral judgments, are hard-wired facts of reality that exist prior to, and independent of, the rest of our knowledge and cognition—and that the proper basis of terminal values is not something that is invented later, as a product of, and dependent on, later acquired/invented knowledge and chains of cognition). You just went on insisting that I’m using the terminology wrong purely as a matter of the meaning in technical philosophy.
This discussion is getting rather frustrating because I don’t think your beliefs are actually wrong. You’re just a) refusing to use or learn standard terminology that can be quickly picked up by glancing at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and b) thinking that whether or not we can learn about evolved or programmed utility function-like things is a question related to the whether or not moral realism is true. I’m a very typical moral anti-realist but I still think humans have lots of values in common, that there are scientific ways to learn about those values, and that this is a worthy pursuit.
You do not have to demand, as you’ve been doing throughout this thread, that I only use words to refer to things that you want them to mean, when I am explicitly disclaiming any intimacy with the terms as they are used in technical philosophy and making a real effort to taboo my words in order to explain what I actually mean. Read the article on Better Disagreement and try to respond to what I’m actually saying instead of trying to argue over definitions.
Now it is the case that if you define morality as “whatever that thing in my brain that tells me what is right and wrong says” there is in some sense an “is from which you can get an ought”.
Ok, great. That’s kind of what I mean, but it’s more complicated than that. What I’m referring to here are actual terminal values written down in reality, which is different from 1) our knowledge of what we think our terminal values are, and 2) our instrumental values, rationally derived from (1), and 3) our faculty for moral intuition, which is not necessarily related to any of the above.
To answer your previous question,
Second of all, give an example of what kind of facts you would refer to in order to decide whether or not murder is immoral.
One must, 1) scientifically investigate the nature of their terminal values, 2) rationally derive their instrumental values as a relation between (1) and the context of their current situation, and 3) Either arrive at a general principle or to an answer to the specific instance of murder in question based on (1) and (2), and act accordingly.
But this is not at all what Hume is talking about. Hume is talking about argument and justification. His point is that an argument with only descriptive premises can’t take you to a normative conclusion. But note that your “is” potentially differs from individual to individual. I suppose you could use it to justify your own moral beliefs to your self but that does not moral realism make. What you can’t do is use it to convince anyone else.
I don’t understand why people insist on equating ‘objective morality’ with something magically universal. We do not have a faculty of divination with which to perceive the Form of the Good existing out there in another dimension. If that’s what Hume is arguing against, then his argument is against a straw man as far as I’m concerned. Just because I’m pointing out an idea for an objective morality that differs from individual to individual doesn’t make it any less ‘objective’ or ‘real’ - unless you’re using those terms specifically to mean to some stupid, mystical ‘universal morality’ - instead of the terms just meaning objective and real in common sense. Trying to find a morality that is universal among all people or all mind designs is impossible (unless you’re just looking at stuff like this which could be useful), and if that’s what you’re doing, or that’s what you’re taking up a position against, then either you’re working on the wrong problem, or you’re arguing against a stupid straw man position.
What you can’t do is use it to convince anyone else.
For the particular idea I’ve been putting forward here, people’s terminal values relate to one other through the following kinds of ways:
1) Between normal humans there is a lot in common
2) You could theoretically reach into their brain and mess with the hardware in which their terminal values are encoded
3) You can still convince and trade based on instrumental values, of course
4) Humans seem to have terminal values which actually refer to other people, whether it’s simply finding value in the perception of another human’s face, various kinds of bonding, pleasurable feelings following acts of altruism, etc.
You do not have to demand, as you’ve been doing throughout this thread, that I only use words to refer to things that you want them to mean, when I am explicitly disclaiming any intimacy with the terms as they are used in technical philosophy and making a real effort to taboo my words in order to explain what I actually mean. Read the article on Better Disagreement and try to respond to what I’m actually saying instead of trying to argue over definitions.
Hank,
If you don’t use the technical jargon, it is not clear what you mean, or if you are using the same meaning every time you use a term, or whether your meaning captures what it gestures at in a meaningful, non-contradictory way.
To give a historical example, thinkers once thought they knew what infinity meant. Then different infinite sets that were “obviously” different in size were show to be the same size. But not all infinite sets were the same size. Now, we know that the former usage of infinity was confused and precise references to infinite sets need some discussion of cardinality.
In short, you can’t deviate from a common jargon and also complain that people are misunderstanding you—particularly when your deviations sometimes appeal to connotations of the terms that your particular usages do not justify.
In short, you can’t deviate from a common jargon and also complain that people are misunderstanding you
Yes I can—if 1) I use the word in it’s basic common sense way, and then, as a bonus in case people are confusing the common sense usage with some other technical meaning, 2) I specifically say “I’m not intimately familiar with the technical jargon, so here is what I mean by this”, and then I explain specifically what I mean.
Hank, I’m sorry—I was a little too harsh. My general difficulty is that I don’t think you endorse what Jack calleduniversal relativism. If you don’t, then
I addressed this previously, explaining that I am using ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ in the common sense way of ‘mind-independent’ or ‘mind-dependent’
and
I don’t understand why people insist on equating ‘objective morality’ with something magically universal.
don’t go well together.
It is the case that objective != universal, but objective things tend to cause universality. If you have a reason why universality isn’t caused by objective fact in this case, you should state it.
I don’t understand why people insist on equating ‘objective morality’ with something magically universal.
I would not equate it with anything magical or universal. Certainly people have tried to ground morality in natural facts, though it is another question whether or not any has succeeded. And certainly it is logically possible to have a morality that is objective, but relative, though few find that avenue plausible. What proponents of objective morality (save you) all agree about is that moral facts are made true by things other than people’s attitudes. This does not mean that they don’t think people’s attitudes are relevant for moral judgments. For instance, there are moral objectivists who are preference utilitarians (probably most preference utilitarians are moral objectivists actually) they think there is one objective moral obligation: Maximize preference satisfaction (with what ever alterations they favor). In order to satisfy that obligation one then has to learn about the mental states of people. But they are moral objectivists because they think that what renders “Maximizing preference satisfaction is morally obligatory” true is that it is a brute fact about the natural world (or dictated by reason, or the Platonic Form of Good etc.).
This is the path Sam Harris takes. He takes as an objective moral fact that human well-being is what we should promote and then examines how to do that through neuroscience. He isn’t arguing that we should care about human well-being because there is a module in our brains for doing so. If he were his argument would be subjectivist under the usage of analytic philosophy, even though he is characterized correctly by reviewers as an objectivist.
This is part of why your position was so confusing to me. You were waving the banner of someone who makes the classic objectivist mistake and calling yourself an objectivist while denying that you were making the mistake.
Since you keep bringing up things like “Form of the Good” I assume you can see how hard it would be to justify objective moral judgments (in the way I’m using the term) naturalisticaly and Hume certainly is taking aim at both naturalistic and supernaturalistic (or Platonic/Kantian w/e) justifications for objective morality.
If that’s what Hume is arguing against, then his argument is against a straw man as far as I’m concerned. Just because I’m pointing out an idea for an objective morality that differs from individual to individual doesn’t make it any less ‘objective’ or ‘real’ - unless you’re using those terms specifically to mean to some stupid, mystical ’universal morality
Well his argument isn’t a strawman, it’s just an argument against actual moral objectivists, not you. You’ll encounter a lot of apparent strawmen if you go around taking labels of philosophical positions you don’t actually agree with. No offense.
1) Between normal humans there is a lot in common 2) You could theoretically reach into their brain and mess with the hardware in which their terminal values are encoded 3) You can still convince and trade based on instrumental values, of course 4) Humans seem to have terminal values which actually refer to other people, whether it’s simply finding value in the perception of another human’s face, various kinds of bonding, pleasurable feelings following acts of altruism, etc.
My point isn’t that the situation is hopeless, just that people’s moral beliefs are different from beliefs about other aspects of reality. You can’t present arguments or evidence to change people’s minds and resolve moral disagreements the way, at least in principle, one does with objective facts like in the natural sciences. That’s because those facts are personal. The reason I say “x is moral” has to do with my brain and the reason you say “x is immoral” has to do with your brain. Subjectivist philosophers say the question “is x moral?” is subjective because it depends on the brain you ask.
Treating morality as if it were no different from the typical examples of “objective facts” obscures this crucial difference and that’s why traditional terminology is the way it is. Tabooing words is often helpful but in this case you’re collapsing subjectivism into objectivism and obscuring the crucial conceptual differences (so much so that you’re affiliating with writers you actually disagree with). Most professional analytic philosophers are moral objectivists of the kind I’ve described. It isn’t some kind of obscure, monastic position I’m trying to shoe-horn you into. Most people, even professionals, make the mistake I’m talking about. And it’s a dangerous one. So dealing with the problem by using terms that dissolve differences on this question seems like a bad idea. And I’m not trying to be a semantic totalitarian here but it seems natural that someone interested in these questions would want to be able to understand how most people talk about the question and how their own views would be described. I wasn’t asking you to take a college course, just read the basic encyclopedia entries to the subject you started a post about. I don’t think that is unreasonable. In any case, I’ve tried to structure the above responses in a way that takes into account our differing usage. Hopefully, I brought some clarity and flexibility to the task.
I am using ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ in the common sense way of ‘mind-independent’ or ‘mind-dependent’ and explained in what specific way I’m doing that (that is, the proper basis of terminal values, and thus the rational basis for moral judgments, are hard-wired facts of reality that exist prior to, and independent of, the rest of our knowledge and cognition—and that the proper basis of terminal values is not something that is invented later, as a product of, and dependent on, later acquired/invented knowledge and chains of cognition).
For what it’s worth, not only is your usage a common one, I think it is consistent with the way some philosophers have discussed meta-ethics. Also, I particularly like the narrow way you construct ‘mind-dependent’. It seems to me that the facts that I am capable of reason, that I understand English, and that I am not blind are all “objective” in common sense speak, even though they are, in the broadest possible sense of the phrase, mind-dependent. This illustrates the need for care about what kind of mind-dependence makes for subjectivity.
So first of all, that’s not what Sam Harris means so stop invoking him. Second of all, give an example of what kind of facts you would refer to in order to decide whether or not murder is immoral.
If you are referring to facts about your brain/mind then your account is subjectivist. Nothing about subjectivism says we can’t investigate people’s moral beliefs scientifically.
Now it is the case that if you define morality as “whatever that thing in my brain that tells me what is right and wrong says” there is in some sense an “is from which you can get an ought”. But this is not at all what Hume is talking about. Hume is talking about argument and justification. His point is that an argument with only descriptive premises can’t take you to a normative conclusion. But note that your “is” potentially differs from individual to individual. I suppose you could use it to justify your own moral beliefs to your self but that does not moral realism make. What you can’t do is use it to convince anyone else.
This discussion is getting rather frustrating because I don’t think your beliefs are actually wrong. You’re just a) refusing to use or learn standard terminology that can be quickly picked up by glancing at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and b) thinking that whether or not we can learn about evolved or programmed utility function-like things is a question related to the whether or not moral realism is true. I’m a very typical moral anti-realist but I still think humans have lots of values in common, that there are scientific ways to learn about those values, and that this is a worthy pursuit.
If you still disagree I’d like to hear what you think people in my camp are supposed to believe.
Me too. We’re not identical, but we have similarities, and understanding them will likely allow us to better achieve mutual satisfaction.
This is my disappointment with Harris. He ran a fundamentally sound project into the ditch by claiming, entirely unscientifically, that his utilitarian ideal was the one word of moral truth—Thou shalt serve the well being of all conscious creatures—that is the whole of law!
I’m not sure what you’re referring to here, but here’s my comment explaining how this relates to Sam Harris.
I addressed this previously, explaining that I am using ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ in the common sense way of ‘mind-independent’ or ‘mind-dependent’ and explained in what specific way I’m doing that (that is, the proper basis of terminal values, and thus the rational basis for moral judgments, are hard-wired facts of reality that exist prior to, and independent of, the rest of our knowledge and cognition—and that the proper basis of terminal values is not something that is invented later, as a product of, and dependent on, later acquired/invented knowledge and chains of cognition). You just went on insisting that I’m using the terminology wrong purely as a matter of the meaning in technical philosophy.
You do not have to demand, as you’ve been doing throughout this thread, that I only use words to refer to things that you want them to mean, when I am explicitly disclaiming any intimacy with the terms as they are used in technical philosophy and making a real effort to taboo my words in order to explain what I actually mean. Read the article on Better Disagreement and try to respond to what I’m actually saying instead of trying to argue over definitions.
Ok, great. That’s kind of what I mean, but it’s more complicated than that. What I’m referring to here are actual terminal values written down in reality, which is different from 1) our knowledge of what we think our terminal values are, and 2) our instrumental values, rationally derived from (1), and 3) our faculty for moral intuition, which is not necessarily related to any of the above.
To answer your previous question,
One must, 1) scientifically investigate the nature of their terminal values, 2) rationally derive their instrumental values as a relation between (1) and the context of their current situation, and 3) Either arrive at a general principle or to an answer to the specific instance of murder in question based on (1) and (2), and act accordingly.
I don’t understand why people insist on equating ‘objective morality’ with something magically universal. We do not have a faculty of divination with which to perceive the Form of the Good existing out there in another dimension. If that’s what Hume is arguing against, then his argument is against a straw man as far as I’m concerned. Just because I’m pointing out an idea for an objective morality that differs from individual to individual doesn’t make it any less ‘objective’ or ‘real’ - unless you’re using those terms specifically to mean to some stupid, mystical ‘universal morality’ - instead of the terms just meaning objective and real in common sense. Trying to find a morality that is universal among all people or all mind designs is impossible (unless you’re just looking at stuff like this which could be useful), and if that’s what you’re doing, or that’s what you’re taking up a position against, then either you’re working on the wrong problem, or you’re arguing against a stupid straw man position.
For the particular idea I’ve been putting forward here, people’s terminal values relate to one other through the following kinds of ways:
1) Between normal humans there is a lot in common 2) You could theoretically reach into their brain and mess with the hardware in which their terminal values are encoded 3) You can still convince and trade based on instrumental values, of course 4) Humans seem to have terminal values which actually refer to other people, whether it’s simply finding value in the perception of another human’s face, various kinds of bonding, pleasurable feelings following acts of altruism, etc.
Hank,
If you don’t use the technical jargon, it is not clear what you mean, or if you are using the same meaning every time you use a term, or whether your meaning captures what it gestures at in a meaningful, non-contradictory way.
To give a historical example, thinkers once thought they knew what infinity meant. Then different infinite sets that were “obviously” different in size were show to be the same size. But not all infinite sets were the same size. Now, we know that the former usage of infinity was confused and precise references to infinite sets need some discussion of cardinality.
In short, you can’t deviate from a common jargon and also complain that people are misunderstanding you—particularly when your deviations sometimes appeal to connotations of the terms that your particular usages do not justify.
Edit: Remove comment re: editting
Yes I can—if 1) I use the word in it’s basic common sense way, and then, as a bonus in case people are confusing the common sense usage with some other technical meaning, 2) I specifically say “I’m not intimately familiar with the technical jargon, so here is what I mean by this”, and then I explain specifically what I mean.
Hank, I’m sorry—I was a little too harsh. My general difficulty is that I don’t think you endorse what Jack called universal relativism. If you don’t, then
and
don’t go well together.
It is the case that objective != universal, but objective things tend to cause universality. If you have a reason why universality isn’t caused by objective fact in this case, you should state it.
I would not equate it with anything magical or universal. Certainly people have tried to ground morality in natural facts, though it is another question whether or not any has succeeded. And certainly it is logically possible to have a morality that is objective, but relative, though few find that avenue plausible. What proponents of objective morality (save you) all agree about is that moral facts are made true by things other than people’s attitudes. This does not mean that they don’t think people’s attitudes are relevant for moral judgments. For instance, there are moral objectivists who are preference utilitarians (probably most preference utilitarians are moral objectivists actually) they think there is one objective moral obligation: Maximize preference satisfaction (with what ever alterations they favor). In order to satisfy that obligation one then has to learn about the mental states of people. But they are moral objectivists because they think that what renders “Maximizing preference satisfaction is morally obligatory” true is that it is a brute fact about the natural world (or dictated by reason, or the Platonic Form of Good etc.).
This is the path Sam Harris takes. He takes as an objective moral fact that human well-being is what we should promote and then examines how to do that through neuroscience. He isn’t arguing that we should care about human well-being because there is a module in our brains for doing so. If he were his argument would be subjectivist under the usage of analytic philosophy, even though he is characterized correctly by reviewers as an objectivist.
This is part of why your position was so confusing to me. You were waving the banner of someone who makes the classic objectivist mistake and calling yourself an objectivist while denying that you were making the mistake.
Since you keep bringing up things like “Form of the Good” I assume you can see how hard it would be to justify objective moral judgments (in the way I’m using the term) naturalisticaly and Hume certainly is taking aim at both naturalistic and supernaturalistic (or Platonic/Kantian w/e) justifications for objective morality.
Well his argument isn’t a strawman, it’s just an argument against actual moral objectivists, not you. You’ll encounter a lot of apparent strawmen if you go around taking labels of philosophical positions you don’t actually agree with. No offense.
My point isn’t that the situation is hopeless, just that people’s moral beliefs are different from beliefs about other aspects of reality. You can’t present arguments or evidence to change people’s minds and resolve moral disagreements the way, at least in principle, one does with objective facts like in the natural sciences. That’s because those facts are personal. The reason I say “x is moral” has to do with my brain and the reason you say “x is immoral” has to do with your brain. Subjectivist philosophers say the question “is x moral?” is subjective because it depends on the brain you ask.
Treating morality as if it were no different from the typical examples of “objective facts” obscures this crucial difference and that’s why traditional terminology is the way it is. Tabooing words is often helpful but in this case you’re collapsing subjectivism into objectivism and obscuring the crucial conceptual differences (so much so that you’re affiliating with writers you actually disagree with). Most professional analytic philosophers are moral objectivists of the kind I’ve described. It isn’t some kind of obscure, monastic position I’m trying to shoe-horn you into. Most people, even professionals, make the mistake I’m talking about. And it’s a dangerous one. So dealing with the problem by using terms that dissolve differences on this question seems like a bad idea. And I’m not trying to be a semantic totalitarian here but it seems natural that someone interested in these questions would want to be able to understand how most people talk about the question and how their own views would be described. I wasn’t asking you to take a college course, just read the basic encyclopedia entries to the subject you started a post about. I don’t think that is unreasonable. In any case, I’ve tried to structure the above responses in a way that takes into account our differing usage. Hopefully, I brought some clarity and flexibility to the task.
For what it’s worth, not only is your usage a common one, I think it is consistent with the way some philosophers have discussed meta-ethics. Also, I particularly like the narrow way you construct ‘mind-dependent’. It seems to me that the facts that I am capable of reason, that I understand English, and that I am not blind are all “objective” in common sense speak, even though they are, in the broadest possible sense of the phrase, mind-dependent. This illustrates the need for care about what kind of mind-dependence makes for subjectivity.
Why is this obvious? After all we do have a faculty of divination with which to perceive the Form of Truth.