The ‘traditional’ objections to a wholly naturalistic metaphysics, within the modern Western philosophical tradition, involve the vexed notions of freedom and consciousness. But there is, I think, a much deeper and more interesting line of criticism to naturalism, and that involves the notion of intentionality and its closely correlated notion of normativity.
What is involved in my belief that I’m drinking a beer as I type this? Well, my belief is about something — namely, the beer that I’m drinking. But what does this “aboutness” consist of? It requires, among other things, a commitment that I have undertaken — that I am prepared to respond to the appropriate sorts of challenges and criticisms of my belief. I’m willing to play the game of giving and asking for reasons, and my willingness to be so treated is central to how others regard me as their epistemic peer. But there doesn’t seem to be any way that the reason-giving game can be explained entirely in terms of the neurophysiological story of what’s going on inside my cranium. That neurophysiological story is a story of is the case, and the reason-giving story is essentially a normative story — of what ought to be the case.
And if Hume is right — as he certainly seems to be! — in saying that one cannot derive an ought-statement from an is-statement,and if naturalism is an entirely descriptive/explanatory story that has no room for norms, then in light of the central role that norms play in human life (including their role in belief, desire, perception, and action), it is reasonable to conclude that naturalism cannot be right.
(Of course, it does not follow from this that any version of theism or ‘supernaturalism’ must be right, either.)
I’m not fragile. I don’t request diplomacy. I have been orthogonal to everyone else for more than 50 years. It’s not that I think everyone else is wrong; just that I don’t see traditional approaches to values questions going anywhere. I’m afraid I see philosophy in the same boat as astrology and alchemy.
I think AI has a long and difficult road to travel, but I also think that as we learn to mimic human thinking we will reach understandings that are simply not available to introspection and philosophizing.
petrushka,
I didn’t mean you 😉
petrushka,
As I said, data first.
I think philosophy and science are both iterative and self-correcting processes.
I just think science is rapidly gaining the upper hand in the areas traditionally covered by philosophy and theology. Philosophers would be wise to study neuroscience and address findings as they arise.
William, I’m wondering. Are you a fan of Eddington? I think you’d find his books very congenial.
I think you have used an “ought” there. According to SEP, Richard Rorty wrote:
link
That sounds like a shift from introspection to “data first”.
Socle said:
I’m sure it does to someone that hasn’t read all the posts I made prior addressing at considerable length that very thing.
keiths said:
I’ll take that to mean that you don’t know how gravity pushes atoms around, revealing the fact that you cannot answer the “interaction problem” when it comes to the natural world. Insisting that non-materialists answer the “interaction problem” between supernatural and natural when you cannot even explain the interaction of physical phenomena demonstrates it is not a real issue at all.
As I say, I am an evilutionist in all things.
I personally hope for a future in which politics replaces war and violence. I do not expect an easy or endlessly happy future, but I hope for a sustainable one.
I don’t believe there are any free-floating oughts. All oughts spring from wants and aversions. Politics is the business of negotiating conflicting wants.
To the extent that philosophy will participate, it will be akin to the role of mathematics in business and economics. Unfortunately, I think that will make philosophy a servant of law. And law appears to be a way of inflicting pain without bodily harm.
I am joking, but perhaps not.
The trouble is some politicians find war-mongering and demonizing a productive route to power. I don’t know how genuine democracy can begin to get a toehold in history.
I think it already has. I was born at the end of the last world war. In my lifetime the percentage of people dying by violence has steadily declined. This is not perceived, because the number of news outlets has steadily increased. But the constant barrage of bad news is misleading.
I am aware that I have a minority opinion of the direction of history.
We certainly experience gravity, observe it, measure it, predict it’s effects with incredible accuracy. The current partial theory most widely accepted is that massive objects distort the surrounding space, causing other objects to move in geodesics which I think has something to do with the shortest distance between two points on a curved surface. I’d consult a physics book or google for better answers.
OT Google.france today features Mary Anning, an English paleontologist. Encroyable!
I did in fact read your posts. I’m actually on your side, at least the side you were on when you posted this:
The thing is, you decided this event was supernatural because the thing you lifted was too heavy for your group to lift “under naturalism”.
If you let me weigh the object and count the number of people doing the lifting, I could make that decision as well. If I decide that this was a superhuman feat of strength, then I would consider a supernatural explanation.
It could also be a reference to the fact that gravity is always an attractive “force”*, so it doesn’t “push” things around. 🙂
* Yes, I know.
Alan said:
Alan has described a model (curved space-time) that describes a pattern of behavior. Alan apparently doesn’t realize that even if we assume that what the model describes is true (and won’t be replaced later with another model that doesn’t involve curved space-time), he has only begged the question, which becomes: how does curved space-time push atoms around? What makes something move in straight lines?
I don’t want models of the effect, Alan. I don’t want descriptions of patterns. I want to know how physical X interacts with physical Y and how it “pushes atoms around”. That’s the question. You gave me the latest model of the resulting pattern, not an explanation of how it occurs.
socle said:
That’s not what I said. It was far to heavy for us to lift without doing the ritual first. We tried it out several different ways with several different sets of people. It’s not just first not being able to lift the thing (not even being able to budge it) as a coordinated group w/o the ritual; it’s the fact that when we did the ritual we were able to lift it without any effort, and without a feeling of significant weight on our fingers.
This is what gets me about the Michael Shermer video; he himself did what he knew he couldn’t physically accomplish when he bent that heavy, silver-plated spoon, but he has to chalk it up to “adrenaline”. Wow. I guess the children bending the fork tines and saying it felt like “putty” were just experiencing adrenaline rushes, too. If nothing else, the guy running the party should get a Nobel for being able to induce super-strength adrenaline rushes at will.
But for some, nothing is enough – not even when you yourself perform such a thing; it still must be dismissed via naturalist apologetics.
Ok, that’s fine, but even if I can’t test your subjective feeling of how much effort was required, this object was extremely heavy. If I got together with a group of friends and we tried to lift it with our fingertips with no preparation or ritual, it wouldn’t budge, correct?
Just the fact that you were able to lift it at all would count as evidence for the supernatural for me.
I’m still waiting for some discussion of the spoons.
And William hasn’t said how much each person had to lift.
keiths:
BruceS:
Yes, that’s what I mean by ‘”free-floating”. Walto thinks that free-floating oughts exist, but you and I do not.
But no one is saying that you ought to want to accomplish X. It’s just that if you do happen to want to accomplish X, then you ought to do Y. Since “you want to accomplish X” is a fact that can be explained in physical terms, I see no problem for naturalism. This kind of an ought can be derived from an is.
keiths:
BruceS:
If they’re physically realized, why do you think that science cannot explain them?
What do you mean by “knowledge of norms”? For example, I believe that same-sex marriage is perfectly moral, and that banning it is immoral. I also know that I believe this. In other words, I know what the norm is, and I also know that I accept it as a norm — though, importantly, not as an objective norm. All of that can be explained in terms of the physical. What further knowledge of this norm do I need?
keiths:
BruceS:
I meant indefinitely, though even then there are exceptions (like hunger strikes). But you’re actually helping to make my point, which is that it isn’t morally right or wrong to want to remain hungry, nor morally right or wrong not to want to remain hungry.
At any given time, we either do or don’t want to remain hungry — and if we don’t, then we ought to eat. We go from an is — “I don’t want to remain hungry” — to an ought — “I ought to eat”. Hume’s Guillotine doesn’t apply, because we are not talking about objective, free-floating oughts.
P.S. I read the Julia Galef and Massimo Pigliucci posts, and I side with Galef.
But reading Galef’s post, I spotted something that might be relevant to our disagreement. She points out that we don’t (and can’t) get our moral axioms from science, and I agree. Is that what you meant by writing “even though they [norms] are realized by physical configurations, and we have knowledge of them, we cannot gain that knowledge by science”?
“I believe that same-sex marriage is perfectly moral”
So you say, but IMO you don’t really believe that at all. What you believe is that you don’t have any feelings of disapproval of the institution of same sex marriage. The problem is that that isn’t the same thing as believing it’s moral. Because, of course, someone could believe both that he didn’t personally have any feelings of disapproval of same-sex marriage but that it’s immoral anyhow.
Bruce: ” If it means “not supervening on physical world” then I agree there are no such oughts.”
“Yes, that’s what I mean by ‘”free-floating”. Walto thinks that free-floating oughts exist, but you and I do not.”
There are a lot of different ways to define “supervenience.” I think it’s more likely (or at least equally likely) that I agree with Bruce and we both disagree with you on this “free floating” biz. The devil is in the details. Do you think you can make a savings bank by distributing particles? How about an upset World Cup winner? Maybe Bruce agrees with me that same-sex marriage REALLY is morally acceptable, though he has no opinions whatever about his, yours or my own personal feelings of approbation.
William,
What is the point of your gravity question? Do you think that the existence of gravity is a threat to naturalism?
We have a model of gravitation that is massively supported by the evidence. We explain gravitational interactions using that model.
We don’t have a massively supported model of interactions between the physical and the non-physical. We don’t even have a marginally supported version of such a model.
Walto can’t present a model of how his mysterious, objective, nonphysical values alter the behavior of particles in his brain. Can you?
walto,
It would be much better if you would support your claims by briefly stating your reasons and making an argument, as most of us do, expanding on them as necessary in the course of the discussion.
The question I’m asking you isn’t that complicated:
If you don’t know of a mechanism, that’s fine. Just say so, and readers will judge your hypothesis accordingly.
William,
I repeat:
Please answer the questions.
It makes sense for me to ask questions like this because unlike you, I care whether my beliefs are true. I don’t want to believe that the finger lifting is paranormal or supernatural if it really isn’t; and I also don’t want to believe it is ordinary or natural if it it is actually supernatural or paranormal.
My questions are designed to help uncover the truth about the phenomenon. They aren’t unfair questions; in fact, they’re the kind of questions a disinterested, impartial observer would ask in order to determine whether something remarkable was happening.
walto,
To me, someone who has thinks that same-sex marriage is immoral has “feelings of disapproval” of it, even if they judge its immorality via an external source, like the Bible. How often do you hear people saying “I approve of immorality?”
Did you mean something else, like feelings of disgust, for example?
I can imagine someone who isn’t disgusted by the thought of same-sex marriage but nevertheless feels that it’s immoral because the Bible condemns homosexuality. Is that the kind of thing you’re getting at?
No, I’m just repeating that feelings of approval or disapproval are no more values than perceptual experiences of tables are tables. Feelings are promptings–if there are no such things as values then they are promptings of nothing. But it’s just a category mistake to confuse feelings with values (or appearances with tables).
walto,
I agree that feelings are not the same thing as objective values. That should be obvious, since I’ve said that moral feelings exist but objective values don’t.
To me, our moral feelings are our values. They’re instantiated in our physical brains, and they do not correspond to free-floating oughts outside of us.
You could change my mind by providing good evidence that objective values exist and by coming up with a solution to the interaction problem. So far, what you’ve offered is described here:
I have, keiths. Your denial isn’t my responsibility.
I agree that feelings are not the same thing as objective values. That should be obvious, since I’ve said that moral feelings exist but objective values don’t.
To me, our moral feelings are our values. They’re instantiated in our physical brains, and they do not correspond to free-floating oughts outside of us.
You could change my mind by providing good evidence that objective values exist and by coming up with a solution to the interaction problem.
See, you’re not getting what I’m saying at all. It doesn’t matter whether objective values exist or not. My point was not that there are objective values. It was that whether there are objective values or not, feelings are not values (objective or otherwise), and it’s a simple category mistake to claim that they are. Your translations are no good. The moral is that either there are objective values or people are mostly wrong in their constant daily ascriptions of them. You’ll have to have the cake or eat it. Feelings of approval may prompt the view that something is (objectively) moral but it is not the same as its being moral. So if you are right that there are no objective values, then you do not actually believe that anything (including single-sex marriage) is morally good. Man up and admit it.
[Edit: That isn’t quite right. It should read that if you are right that there are no objective values, then anyone who believes that anything is is morally good is mistaken. And it is an error for anyone who claims that there are no objective values to also claim that this or that is morally good. Such a person should [not in any moral sense, but to avoid error] come to realize that holding both that there are no objective values and that this or that is morally good is self-contradictory.]
keiths asks:
To point out that (1) you don’t know what causes gravity effects in the first place, and (2) you don’t know how those effects are achieved. You only know that something, somehow, is pushing atoms around. Scientists make models that describe and predict these behaviors. They do not know what is causing it; they do not know how it is accomplished, they only know that it happens.
Ultimately, science is a practice of making models that describe behaviors of phenomena. It doesn’t explain why any of the “fundamental forces” are what they, or even how they do what they do.
So, why should any non-materialist feel compelled to try to answer the “interaction problem” between the supernatural and the natural, when you can’t even answer the “interaction problem” between the natural and the natural?
It’s a red herring.
You haven’t established there is an interaction problem in the first place. That we don’t know how it does so is no more a problem than the fact that we don’t know how whatever causes gravity effects does so.
Not sure if you noticed my question before, William: are you familiar with Eddington? And, if so, do you like him>
socle,
The fact that others refuse to read what I’ve already exhaustively explained doesn’t obligate me to repeat myself for their convenience. Everything you need to parse your answer has already been repeated several times in this thread.
But, just to respond: try it for yourself, socle. You’ll either succeed and find out what I’m talking about, or you won’t. Either way, it doesn’t change the fact of what I’ve experienced.
No, Walto. I heard of the name before, but never read anything of his that I’m aware of.
keiths:
William:
Link, please.
William,
The model (general relativity) is the solution to the gravitational interaction problem. The fact that you can keep asking “Why?” at each stage doesn’t negate that. If it did, then no scientific problem would ever have a solution, because you can always keep asking “Why?”
Where is your model for the interaction of the nonphysical with the physical? (Same question for you, Walt). Let’s compare it to general relativity and quantum mechanics and see how well it stacks up — that is, how well it solves the interaction problem.
walto:
Walt, under what definition of supervenience do you agree with Bruce, who writes that
…and:
walto:
And energy? Yes — in principle. What specifically do you think would be lacking if we “constructed” a savings bank that way?
Keep in mind that since a savings bank is an institution, with employees and customers and relationships with other banks and the government, a lot of redistribution of particles and energy would be necessary outside the bank proper. Depositors’ brains would have to be modified to “remember” their accounts at the bank, for example, and information stored in computer systems all over the world would have to be rejiggered to account for the banks existence. It would be extremely complicated, but no, I see no evidence that anything nonphysical would have to take place. Do you?
walto,
No, it means that anyone who believes that anything is objectively morally good is mistaken.
It’s only an error if they claim that it is objectively morally good.
Ditto. Insert ‘objectively’ in front of ‘morally good’.
I’ll give you two answers.
First, I think I have almost consistently said that scientific endeavour only provides partial and provisional answers to real elements of the observable universe, and the list of known things that I don’t know personally is very long. How long the list is of things that nobody knows is something I don’t know, which makes the list of things I don’t know that I don’t know even longer. So don’t ask me; ask an expert on whichever bit of reality you want to find out about. Or do your own experiment: carry out your own observation. On the other hand, I admit to sometimes filling in the odd gap in my knowledge in idle moments with a bit of imagination but ultimately “what if…” games aren’t very satisfying. However, if you think about it, maybe Newton was right, things will move in straight lines – or follow the shortest route between two point, unless acted upon by some force. In which case there is no question to answer.
Second, try the “Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything”
42
I believe that you believe you have experienced talking to the dead etc. I don’t however believe it had any reality outside of your personal experience.
Let’s face it, if you could bend reality to your will with your mind you’d not be in the situation you are currently in.
OMagain,
Indeed. The ability to deform metal by force of will has huge potential economically and scientifically. Yet it remains a parlour trick.
Contacting the dead? Remains a parlour trick.
Faith healing? Remains a parlour trick.
Keith:
I read this as practical reasoning which I don’t think addresses moral statements as I understand them.
How do you analyse the moral statement “You ought not to own slaves”. (“Slavery is wrong” is a better statement to me, but I wanted to use an explicit ought)
I left something very important out of the problem I posed for myself.
I believe in moral progress, both within a society through time and between societies. So I believe it is possible to say “the US of the 2000s is morally superior to the US of the 1800s”. And I mean that to be objective or at least inter-subjective, NOT just “according to my morality, the US is better now, although someone from the 1800s could believe differently and also be correct in some sense”.
So how can I justify this objective knowledge?
Axioms can be viewed as assumptions, so in that sense they would be like antecedents to ifs. So it might work to say that any axioms for a moral system must include oughts. I have to admit, I have not thought about that deeply.
The Kitcher books includes a chapter about why his pragmatic approach avoids the Humean is/ought gap. If the thread is still going, I’ll post what he says to the issue in a day or two.
Keith:
I think you can take this position and be consistent: I read it as a non-cognivist form of subjective relativism based on this and some of your other posts.
I personally cannot accept an approach to morals that does not include the idea of moral progress between and within societies.
Kitcher is a follower of Dewey (and he is John Dewey Professor of Philosphy at Columbia ). His book on ethics that I am reading is called the Ethical Project.
I believe it is possible for a non-cognitivist to consistently maintain that, metaphysically, values are feelings, (possibly combined with imperatives)..
I am not comfortable with non-cognitivism because some form of relativism seems a natural consequence of it. I don’t want to be logically forced into relativism. I want to be able to preserve the idea of moral progress.
However, I understand it is possible to put forward a version of non-cognitivism which adds that, to be values, feelings must be “apt” in some sense. Since I don’t want to be forced into relativism, I would say that even if non-cognitivism is true, only “apt” feelings are values. But it is not something I have looked into in any detail.
keiths,
Here’s one for which such agreement might be possible (I’m guessing there are many):
Moral characteristics (M) supervene on physical characteristics (P) if and only if, necessarily, for any change in some M property, there must be a change in some P property.
What’s a definition of “supervenience” according to which Bruce must agree with you and cannot agree with me?
Just to relate to previous discussions, I agree with the above, with the proviso that the entity doing the arranging somehow knows which arrangements constitute a bank.
But is what makes that knowledge apply to arrangements specific to a savings bank? Is it something that is “expressible as a scientific explanation”. Can that knowledge be gained solely by doing science? I am not sure of the answer to those questions.
Part of the reason I am not sure is “expressible by a scientific explanation” has a lot of wiggle room when you want to say what it means.
Part of the reason is there are norms involved in knowledge about what constitues a savings bank.
And part of the reason is that no one else seems to know either, at least in a way that convinces people the way a math proof or science does.
Downloadable at this apparently reputable site:
Fact and Value
I didn’t ask “why”, keiths. I asked how,. Apparently, it’s okay for you to demand an answer from non-materialists that you yourself are refusing to answer. A description of the interaction is not a solution to how that interaction is accomplished. You are conflating a description of interactive patterns for an explanation of how those interactions occur.
This is a fundamental conceptual error naturalists like you make – and, to be fair, most people seem to make: you have reified a descriptive model, which in science often uses the term “force” (and less often, “attribute” or “characteristic”), as a “thing” or “commodity” in the real world. You are comfortable saying things like “gravity causes X to occur”, never even comprehending your fundamental error; gravity doesn’t cause anything to occur, because gravity is a model of the occurrence, not an explanation or the cause of the occurrence.
Now, having been caught unable to tell us what causes the effect known as gravity or how it pushes atoms around (giving us instead only a model that describes the pattern of atoms being pushed around) – you seek to (1) move the goal posts, and (2) shift the burden.
You haven’t demonstrated that there is a supernatural-natural “interaction problem” in the first place; in the second place, you cannot answer your own interaction problem of how natural things interact with each other, mis-identifying a description of the pattern of that interaction as an explanation for how the interaction occurs. Thirdly,whether or not I have a model that describes the pattern of supernatural-natural interaction is irrelevant to the question of if a supernatural-natural interaction problem has been shown to exist at all.
It’s not my job, nor walto’s, to solve a problem that (1) you have not demonstrated even exists, and (2) you cannot even answer for natural interactions.
The question “Can supernatural-natural interactions be modeled” is an entirely different question than “how does the supernatural interact with the natural?”
For all you know and can show, keiths, something supernatural causes the effect known as gravity, because you don’t know what causes gravity and you don’t know how it accomplishes the job.
I cannot imagine the term “inter-subjective” to be satisfying for any rational adult that is not satisfied with the term “subjective” and finds it to be an unacceptable characteristic for morality.
What possible difference does it make if a few other people agree with your subjective feelings? That your moral feelings are inter-subjective (happen to be shared by others, like a preference for cherry pie) doesn’t make them any less subjective. Why bother making such a distinction?