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.)
Hi William:
I am not sure if this was meant to be addressed to me; it does mention some concepts in my recent posts.
As I mentioned, I have followed your conversations with KN on this and I don’t think I have much to add to the exchange.
I agree that subjectivity and hence relativism is a challenge. Many secular philosophers are like me and want to avoid it.
Some try to do so by postulating that there are objective moral truths and that these can be gained by scientific study of human nature. (There are other approaches, just to make that clear).
However, I am not convinced that scientifically-discoverable truth is the right approach to avoiding relativism. (nor am I convinced that it is not).
But it seems to me that theology has basically the same dilemma: one can assume there exists a moral truth for human beings due to God’s design in our creation, but it still seems to me that you need human reasoning to discover that truth. So how can we know it except by a method like intersubjective reasoning?
As evidence for this, I’d offer that most religions have a tradition of human dispute and interpretation about proper doctrine and the details of morality. Further, these interpretations change over time.
I guess you could avoid this by assuming a direct, personal access to such moral truths as created by God’s design for humanity. But that direct access seems to me to be just another form of subjectivity. I understand you to have said that you can test this empirically but I also understand you to say that these empirical tests are personal, not intersubjective. So if I understand that correctly, it still seems to be subjectivity to me.
I see “intersubjective” as the best we can ever have. And I am not restricting this to moral issues. For example, “objective fact” cannot mean anything more than “intersubjective fact”.
I think anyone unable to bend spoons by mind power is disqualified as a moral philosopher.
Yeah, baby! IMHO, that book, along with Witt’s _Investigations_, Quine’s _Word and Object_, and Strawson’s _Individuals_ is among the greatest of mid-20th Century analytic philosophy books.
Also, I’ve downloaded tons of stuff from the internet archive with no problems. It’s a treasure trove!
BruceS said:
Neil Rickert has a similar view:
First, even if theism “has the same dilemma”, that doesn’t change the point I made that the term “intersubjective” doesn’t improve on “subjective” as a characteristic for moraity other than just adding other people who agree with you. That makes anything moral as long as more than one person agrees that it is moral. The problem with this is if you’re the only person you know that thinks slavery is immoral; since it is not an intersubjective view (in our hypothetical case), then you need to change your view, and trying to free the slaves is an immoral act by virtue of it not being intersubjectively held.
But, that’s not how we act in real life; even if we’re the only person we know that thinks a thing is wrong, we will often act on it even if nobody else agrees with us. IMO, then, the term “intersubjective” is really nothing more than an attempt to placate one’s knowledge that morality cannot be subjective with their ideological position that it cannot be objective. “Intersubjective” is not an intermediary position – it’s still subjectivism. You can’t have your cake and eat it, too.
Second, the argument that all we can do, regardless of what morality actually is, is subjectively (or intersubjectively) interpret it so there’s no reason to consider it as objectively existent ignores the profoundly important and hugely different ramifications generated by which assumption we adopt (that what morality refers to is subjective or objective in nature).
How we act when we believe we are experiencing a subjective phenomena, and how we act when we believe we are experiencing an objectively existent phenomena, are two entirely different things. We cannot act as if our morals are subjective in nature any more than we can act as if a brick wall we observe in front of our car is subjective in nature.
We cannot “drive through” the wrongness of someone torturing a child without changing course and emerge on the other side unscathed; we must change our path and stop that person and attempt to save the child in the same sense that we must divert our car from colliding with the brick wall or else we know we will be harmed.
Whether or not we “know” the brick wall objectively exists, we behave as if it does because we believe it does – we assume it is real and not just our imagination or a trick of our mind. Regardless of protestations otherwise, all sane people act as if certain moral situations are the same as a brick wall. To deny this because of an a priori intellectual commitment to subjective morality is – IMO – ideological denialism.
IMO, the intellectually honest will just admit that if (1) subjective morality is unacceptable, then (2) “intersubjective” morality as a concept of morality offers no significant relief from subjectivism even if it’s the “best we can do” in practice (which my hypothetical about slavery contradicts), and (3) the only rational assumption that validates our actual behavior wrt morality is if we consider what morality refers to as an objectively existent commodity (brick wall analogy).
The intellectually honest, IMO, will then let the chips fall where they may, even if they don’t like where they fall.
Did you flub your quotes?
ETA: Thanks for fixing.
For the curious, he repeated the same quote. It was probably copy/paste, but he forgot to do a new copy.
William, I suspect slaves think slavery is wrong.
Morality is always founded on the perspective of someone who is harmed or benefitted.
Yes. Thanks.Fixed.
Spoon Bending, and other Geller-eqsue tricks have been shown to be just that, mere tricks.
It seems you don’t like where *those* chips have fallen eh?
Spoon bending needs to be explained, William. You said you and your acquaintances could do it.
Then I take it your answer to my question is “yes”. It certainly could have been, anyway, but it is difficult to tell without some estimate of the object’s weight.
Suppose a slight, 45-kg woman finds that she can deadlift 1000 kg after performing a brief ritual. Otherwise she is of average strength. Not surprisingly, she claims that these lifts are supernatural events.
If you and I were allowed to observe these lifts and examine the barbell, we too might both conclude that this was supernatural.
Documentation/proof/testing is not especially problematic here, at least no more problematic than when dealing with ordinary events.
That’s why you don’t see such clear-cut supernatural events demonstrated on youtube (or anywhere else). Nobody can actually do them. What you do see are people doing things like bending thin metal objects or lifting normal amounts of weight, where the alleged supernatural component is (deliberately) made hard to test.
petrushka said:
That’s an interesting question. Do they think it is wrong, or would they rather be slave holders than slaves? There’s a difference between not wanting to be a slave and thinking that slavery is itself immoral. Contrary to subjectivist opinion, not liking something is not the same as thinking it is immoral.
More evidence that you simply refuse to read the back-posts which fully address this.
It’s not really an interesting question, William.
Here, socle. One of many back-posts in this thread that address your questions and challenges. I suggest you actually go back and read them so that you can raise challenges that have not already been answered several times in this very thread.
Did you think I meant it was interesting to you? Or to anyone else other than me?
I let the chips fall where they may. And it turns out that where they fall, intersubjectivity is the best that we can have.
In a world where there was a real metaphysical objectivity, there would be no William J. Murray, and there would be no consciousness. There would only be arrangements of objective matter.
William J. Murray,
‘The brick wall’ is one’s reluctance to follow a particular course of action. It could simply be genetic or cultural programming, without that making it irrational to avoid it. It is the same for ‘baby-rape’ as it is for (say) suicide – one has a subjective sense (what other kind is there?) that this is not what one ‘ought’ to do. There is no need to invoke an entity or force that governs this sense to make it rational. Nor is there any formal need that others should share this sense, although we frequently find (on discussion) that indeed they do. Being the same species and all.
What about the evidence, that you refuse to even admit exists, that demonstrates that when people who have claimed to be able to bend spoons with their mind invariably fail when they are not allowed to access the spoons in advance?
Oh, that’s right, you “addressed” that by saying that people like James Randi are lying about and suppressing those who they come across with real powers.
Seems to me the only evidence you are interested in is evidence that supports your pre-existing viewpoint.
Allan Miller said:
First, using the term “intersubjective” purchases no significant variance from “subjective”. Second, if you are satisfied with subjective morality that can justify anything as moral based on feelings, and are willing to force what you consider your personal feelings (or your group’s collective interpersonal feelings) on others because you can, I can’t argue with that kind of moral pathology. All of my moral argument hinge on the other person knowing it is wrong to force their personal preferences and subjective feelings on others because they can (either individually or as a group).
Neil Rickert said:
You are ignoring the fact that “intersubjectivity” as a practice (as you say, the best we can “do”) doesn’t exist in a conceptual vacuum; one either holds that what they are intersubjectively sensing, examining and interpreting is something that objectively exists, or is subjective in nature. When you sense something is moral or immoral, it is not an “intersubjective” sensation; it is subjective – like all sensations, whether of a brick wall or the wrongness of something.
You either react to that sensation as if it is a personal, subjective feeling, or as if it is an objectively existent commodity. You don’t refer to “other people and how they feel about it” to determine if it is right or wrong. If you see someone mutilating the genitalia of a child, do you stop and ask others, check the social norms, discuss the pros and cons? When a woman is being stoned for being raped, do we need some kind of council to express and acquire the intersubjective views on the matter to make up our mind if it is wrong or not?
“Intersubjectivity” is load of self-deceiving horseshit. Either you hold that stoning a woman for being raped is moral as long as the local consensus agrees, or you hold that it is wrong regardless of what the local consensus agrees.
I hold that it is wrong even if every other person on the planet thinks otherwise and feels otherwise. Intellectually, that means I must accept that morality refers to an objectively existent commodity or else my view is the subjective equivalent of theirs, and by the “intersubjectivity” standard, I’m in the wrong.
Except I know I’m not.
William J. Murray,
Your subjective opinions are leading you astray.
OMagain said:
I don’t remember ever saying that. But in one sense you’re right – I dismiss all evidence that is outside of my own personal experience – however, I dismiss all evidence pro or con. Whether or not those that Randi “exposes” are fakes, or if Randi is the fake, is entirely irrelevant to my views, because my views are not based on external claims and testimony.
If everyone else in the world is faking or misunderstanding the “bending spoons” or “two-finger lift” phenomena (or any other supposed paranormal, psychic or supernatural event), I still know what I’ve personally experienced,, and my views are based on that and how well those views work for me.
Neil Rickert said:
“Astray” from what?
You, as it turns out, are the easest person to fool.
You specifically indicated that you would trust nothing Randi said because you did not trust him to honestly report the true facts due to his (imagined by you) agenda, rather you expected him to lie even if he did find a true psychic.
I will quote you later on this.
This spoon you bent “with your mind”. What was the maximum pressure you applied with your hands?
As far as the people doing it are concerned, it would be immoral not to do it.
And in any case, circumcision also fits that description. Is that objectively immoral?
BruceS,
I believe it is possible for a non-cognitivist to consistently maintain that, metaphysically, values are feelings, (possibly combined with imperatives).
As I’ve indicated several times on this thread, I take the (no doubt fartier) position that that’s it’s a category mistake to identify values with feelings about what’s valuable.
Can someone give me an example of a moral value not based on harm or benefit to some living thing and not based on the perspective of the individual affected?
William J. Murray,
I never said it did. But if we are looking at the separate things what ought ‘I’ to do and what moral values would I like to see adopted more generally, the existence of others with similar predispositions is kind of assumed in the second case.
Your apparent inability to separate individual and collective-individual moral rationales is the stuff of legend hereabouts. Morality begins with the self, not with what one can use as a rationale to foist one’s morality (even if second-hand derived from The Objective) on others.
I cannot justify anything as moral simply because I consider its basis subjective, any more than I can stick my hand in the fire (because only I experience the pain), starve myself, purposely shit my bed or whatever else I may not really ‘feel’ like doing. If I happened to feel like torturing babies, and it pleased me to consider it a moral duty, and I tried to force others to do this as their moral duty … well, it doesn’t actually happen, does it? Not as a moral (as opposed to amoral: not governed by any sense of right and wrong) construct. Such ridiculous caricatures of the consequences of subjective morality exist only in your increasingly desperate attempts to undermine the subjectivist position. God wants me to torture babies. Happy now?
Bully for you. You seem to think that is the only basis by which anyone could have a rational morality. Again, morality for you appears to be about what others should do, and superficially legitimising your grounds for getting them to. Why are you such a control freak?
Allan Miller said:
Sounds like guano to me. Or has that line that’s been drawn lost its resolution?
Isn’t that what I just said? How is circumcision not the mutilation of the genitalia of a child?
OMagain said:
Randi’s agenda is hardly “imagined” by me; he’s a professional psychic debunker. It’s how he makes his living. I would certainly not trust a person who made their living and enjoyed fame and fortune and had a million dollars at stake disproving X to be forthcoming about information that would cost him all that. That you are apparently trusting of someone with so much at stake seems to me to not be a very skeptical position at all.
But, that’s hardly meaningful. As I’ve said several times, my views are entirely based on my personal empirical experience and whether or not those views work for me. Reports, research, testimony, etc. from any exterior sources – pro or con – are not the basis of my worldviews.
Thanks, but I already did read that post. And this has already been discussed in the thread, so I don’t want to just rehash all those responses. What I’m saying is that your lifting exercise is neither in category A nor B. At least one of its aspects can be studied using category A methods (the weight of the table), and this aspect also contradicts any natural explanation for the phenomenon (it’s too heavy to lift).
Isn’t that how you determined the event was supernatural?
It makes me wonder: What if someone had actually showed up with a scale and weighed the object you had (supernaturally) lifted afterward. Turns out it weighs 10 tonnes! Would your lifting exercise then become not-supernatural?
Reading and reading comprehension are two different things.
Until William elaborates on his personal experience with spoon-bending, I am taking a time-out from considering his posts worthy of serious consideration.,
Over the years William has made several claims of fact for which he is the only witness (only witness posting here).
One of them is remission of cancer (for which there are ample well attested witnesses).
One of them is supernatural lifting, which is a common party game. Any claim of anything unusual going on would require some numbers and some experimental controls.
One of them is spoon bending. This is also a party game, and all efforts to replicate it with reasonable controls fail.
Claims two and three would be sufficient to claim the Randi prize. I wonder why William has not claimed it. And why no one has claimed it.
I don’t think I’ve ever said that I’ve ever “determined” that an event was supernatural. What I was talking about was the difference between personally trying something out that doesn’t conform with one’s concept of reality expectations then exploring and testing any positive results, and just accepting what some exterior source claims because it dovetails with one’s views. This was after I pointed out the catch-22 nature of expecting category B phenomena to be “provable” via category A methodology.
Category B phenomena, if it exists, cannot be demonstrated via category A techniques – IOW, they are not universally repeatable. There may not be one “physical” world where different experiences (even of how much a thing weighs) can be truly arbited by someone coming in with a scale.
You haven’t grokked that part of my argument yet, or you wouldn’t counter with someone coming over with scale, because such a test would be entirely irrelevant. You’re not fully comprehending what it would mean if reality was not Category A at all, but rather only some of the experience in reality was amenable to Category A (universally repeatable) testing and modeling. Anyone who says “make a video of it” or “weigh it” or “produce the records” or “publish the research” or “this is why there is no clear-cut video” is not understanding the nature of the catch-22 argument.
As I said before, the best general description of the difference between A and B is that category A is what you can prove to everyone else. Category B is what you can only prove to yourself.
petrushka said:
Sounds like guano to me.
Omagain said:
Looks like guano to me.
Alan Miller said:
Why would I be happy? As I’ve explained several times, Divine Command morality is no better that subject morality.
William, you made claims that you have participated in “supernatural” events and have personally done things that ordinary science would say are impossible.
One of them — spoon bending — is pretty clearly impossible.
The other — lifting heavy weights — requires some actual numbers before its impossibility can be judged.
William, if we are allowed to post undocumented claims of being miracle workers, rational discourse is impossible.
Now, I call upon you to provide some actual numbers for your lifting claim and to provide a description of the spoon bending.
Edited for typos.
Perhaps, perhaps not.
So, to be clear, bending a spoon with your mind using your hands is some kind of magic?
Hmm.
William J. Murray,
No, that’s not guano, it is a quote from Richard Feynman, who makes a KEY point about confirmation bias, something that you have apparently not ‘grokked’.
I am not asking for spoon-bending to be universally repeatable; just one unadulterated video would be nice. Given the ubiquity of cell-phones, not too much to ask. Same thing goes with ghosts, really.
The problem with your Category B’s is that their selective shyness is so convenient.
eta: OM beat me to it.
It applies to me as much as you, but it seems I guard against being fooled much more then you….
I agree. My purpose in raising this was only to make the point that asserting objective values derived from theism does not help solve the problems you raise.
My concept of intersubjectivity includes (among other things) a process for individuals to engage their communities and try to change the intersubjective consensus. In fact, if we look at recent changes like the abandonment of slavery in English speaking countries or the emancipation of women, we find that sort of engagement was part of the process of change.
I don’t think i ever said that the current intersubjective consensus is the “best”morality. I have only said that intersubjectivity is involved in making moral progress.
Fallibility is not eliminated by intersubjectivity. It helps though.
How we act and how we ought to act are two different things.
I am trying to make points about how intersubjectivity can help to justify the concept of moral progress.
I understand you to say that moral attitudes should compel one to act — one should act in accordance with what one believes is right. OK. But my points are not about this, I believe. They are about what moral values are and how societies can make moral progress even if there is no objective moral truth.
How those moral values are transferred to individual members, and how/why people choose (and should choose) to act on them are different questions.
You have asserted those points on many occasions. But there are many people who are smarter than I and who I consider intellectually honest who are pursuing the goals you assert are impossible. So I am keeping an open mind and exploring the possibilities.
BruceS,
…how societies can make moral progress even if there is no objective moral truth.
I don’t understand that, Bruce. Progress toward what?
I wonder if the machines will have what we would consider morals?
😛
Asimov thought so. Absolute ones.
If we’ve had to evolve them to raise them up and therefore had no (or less, or just some) say it in, then I would hope they’d be more Culturelike then like Skynet…