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.)
Asimov used his laws of robotics in numerous stories to illustrate the difficulties of applying absolute moral rules to real situations. Most of the stories leaned toward comic.
I assume everyone knows all four of the three laws of robotics.
I understand that it’s important to test things and not to rely on authorities for one’s “beliefs”. I think we all do.
Agreed. No problem with that.
Yes I accept that the “real” world could be very different from what we perceive. Maybe weight is not actually well-defined. But you were the one who brought it up! You didn’t talk about lifting a paper plate, it was a very heavy object, much too heavy to lift (according to your perception). You can’t turn around and complain when I refer to weight myself.
Hmmm, just like the (perceived) weight of the object you lifted was irrelevant, eh?
It solves all the problems **I** raise wrt moral subjectivism and divine command morality. It doesn’t help solve the problems you and keiths raise, which is the same set of problems we face with every other experienced phenomena – the same “problem” that all we have when it comes to interpreting and categorizing any experienced phenomena, including brick walls. We experience everything subjectively, and must subjectively interpret and categorize that which we experience.
The problems I raise is not about whether or not we can determine what morality actually is – an objective or a subjective phenomena – the problems I raise is that moral subjectivists must act & argue as if morality is an objective commodity (unless they are sociopaths). For example, you say:
Why are they trying to change the consensus, if morality is determined by the intersubjective consensus? The only reasons I can think of that they would be trying to change the consensus if (1) it’s not what they would personally prefer (which is hardly an acceptable conceptual basis for attempting to change the moral consensus), or (2) because they think the moral consensus is wrong in a way that doesn’t refer to their personal preferences. But – what would that assessment be referring to, if not their personal preference (subjective commodity)?The only thing you have left is that the consensus is wrong by some objective commodity.
You go on:
Progress towards what? Towards a universal agreement about what morality is? As long as we all more or less agree on a morality, then that is the goal?
What does “fallibility” even mean in this context? What are you referring to? If a group of people all intersubjectively agree a thing is moral, how can whatever they have agreed upon be a moral failure? Failure by what means of arbiting success?
You see, the way you attempt to make your points here about “failure” and “making progress” and “best” morality only make sense if there is some objective arbiter through which such references make sense.
Let me ask you something; is it possible for you or anyone to be wrong about the morality of a behavior? If so, how so? In what sense can a person be wrong for thinking it is moral to stone a woman to death for being raped?
Incorrect.
keiths:
Bruce:
Yes, but I was replying to this statement of yours:
I don’t see a suppressed ought in the antecedent. The ought in the consequent derives from an is, and this is possible precisely because it is not a free-floating, objective ought.
I take it as deriving from moral axioms like “it is wrong to own other people”, but the moral axioms themselves are inevitably subjective.
The Taliban would probably not agree that “the US of the 2000s is morally superior to the US of the 1800s”. To them, we are an example of moral regress, not progress.
I think that moral progress is subjective, just as morality itself is subjective. That doesn’t mean that we can’t achieve broad agreement on what counts as (subjective) moral progress. Most of us here, for example, wouldn’t hesitate to say that the US of the 2000s is morally superior to the US of the 1800s, when slavery and prejudice were rampant.
I think that moral axioms have to include oughts, because Hume’s Guillotine shows that we can’t get oughts any other way. The difference between subjectivists and objectivists is that subjectivists (including me) don’t think that our moral axioms are derived from or reflective of objective, free-floating oughts.
keiths:
walto:
What physical characteristics do objective, free-floating oughts supervene on? Please be specific.
Are those physical characteristics necessarily static, or do they change over time? If they can change, then your objective, free-floating oughts might change too.
Who said that Bruce must agree with me?
walto:
And:
I answered your question here:
Do you think that the proper redistribution of particles and energy is enough to “make a savings bank”? If not, what specifically do you think would be lacking?
DNA-Jock said:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69GMr3RlpgU
I’m not claiming or arguing that the video isn’t faked – as I said before, only an idiot believes what they see on youtube. But, you asked for one video. I’m posting it for you.
At around the one minute mark he is touching the spoon. Yet again another example of somebody bending a spoon with their mind, with their hands.
If your objection to Randi is that he has a vested interest in denying real abilities, then logically you should have the same objection to such people – their vested interest is that people should believe they have such powers. Yet you seem to take their claims at face value, why?
Our subjective reasoning processes can and should include intersubjective exchanges. If there is established knowledge, we should make the effort to understand and apply it and so take advantage past intersubjective exchanges. If, after doing that, we disagree or find the knowledge incomplete, then part of claiming new or better knowledge must include an intersubjective process.
Please note that I am NOT saying that any intersubjective process works or that the same process works for all types of knowledge.
I do not believe that the consensus of a society by itself determines moral knowledge. How could I since I believe in moral progress (see my reply to Walt on his question about what that could mean)?
I am saying that moral knowledge is possible, that knowledge requires justification, and that such justification must include intersubjective exchanges appropriate to moral knowledge.
I have not said exactly what I think moral knowledge is nor have I provided details on what type of intersubjective exchanges are needed.
I don’t know.
But the fallibility of individuals and the success of intersubjective processes in science and in math in combating individual fallibility have convinced me that knowledge in morality cannot be gained without intersubjective processes. That and the fact that a lot of smart people who have studied these issues think that too.
You raise a valid point: what is the source of creativity in any field of knowledge, including morality? How can new knowledge arise?. I agree that new knowledge originates in people, possibly just in one person (eg, I think you could make a case that no one other than Einstein was thinking about the issues of GR when he created it).
I claim that new ideas do not constitute knowledge without the appropriate intersubjective process.
See my answer to Walt’s same query (which I have not yet written, in case you read this before I publish it).
I do not believe that morality is solely what a group of people all believe, as explained above.
I suspect I could agree with that general statement. Where we would then disagree is what constitutes “objective arbiter”. Does it have to be a divine source? Can it be a process, as in science or math? I think there are good reasons to think it can be. Simply asserting it is irrational to think that will not convince me otherwise. And I definitely am not interested in repeating the disputes you have had with KN and Dr Liddle about the meaning of “objective”.
I think there can be moral knowledge. So it is wrong to violate a correct, applicable moral code as given by that knowledge. I have already admitted I don’t know exactly how that knowledge is obtained or verified but I do believe, that whatever the process is, it must involve intersubjectivity.
keiths,
Anybody who has slogged through the muck that is this thread will have seen that keiths and I disagree about something. I think there are objective values (what he calls free-floating oughts), and he does not. keith believes that talk about such putative values are translatable into talk about feelings of approval or disapproval and I don’t think so. It’s an age-old dispute. I have conceded that I can’t prove that there are such values as I believe to exist, and have given only such “arguments” (if you can really call them that) as analogizing emotions with perceptual experiences (i.e., calling them intentional), and criticizing the translations keith has offered. As I said, it’s a hoary disagreement, so it’s no surprise to me if there’s no meeting of the minds.
Bruce has been an occasional third party to our talks. He has indicated that he’s torn as between the two pictures. If I can try to summarize his position, Bruce is attracted to the scientific simplicity and physicalism of keith’s picture, but he doesn’t see how to reconcile it with a belief in moral progress. He has said, quite explicitly, that if what keith calls free floating means “not supervening on physical world” he agrees with keith—“there are no such oughts.”
OK, that’s the background. To proceed.
Keith (naturally) takes this requirement of supervenience to mean that Bruce must agree with him. He writes, “Yes, that’s what I mean by ‘”free-floating”. Walto thinks that free-floating oughts exist, but you and I do not.”
So I respond to this (I think quite sensibly, but I’ll let all of you judge for yourself) that this depends on what is meant by “supervenience.” After all, I had never mentioned that relationship on this thread before and there are a zillion different definitions, strong, weak, global, local, etc. So many, that I was pretty sure that a requirement of supervenience would not require that Bruce must take keith’s side on the issue of “free-floating oughts.” To be specific, I wrote this:
“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.”
Keith (again, sensibly, I think, maybe thinking I was just bullshitting), requested that I put up or shut up: he wrote, “Walt, under what definition of supervenience do you agree with Bruce, who writes that
“If it [free-floating] means “not supervening on physical world” then I agree there are no such oughts….. [norms] accomplish their effects though their physical realization. Just like thoughts and brain states.”
I mean, there’s a little bit of a morph/cheat there, and maybe some have caught it: I actually hadn’t said there’s some definition of ‘supervenience’ in which I would agree with Bruce. What I’d actually said was that I believe there is some definition according to which it would be possible for Bruce to agree with me. That matters because, again, I haven’t suggested anything about the supervenience of the moral on the physical. It was (if anybody can still remember from a paragraph or two ago) actually keith and Bruce who could only abide by such values as I countenance if there were what they took to be appropriate supervience.
But I can live with such little morph/cheats from keith. He’s all about that kind of skill, and you have to put up with a little crap like that in every philosophical discussion–especially on the internet. Anyhow, where were we? Ah yes.
Walt, under what definition of supervenience do you agree with Bruce, who writes that
“If it [free-floating] means “not supervening on physical world” then I agree there are no such oughts… [norms] accomplish their effects though their physical realization. Just like thoughts and brain states.”
So, I give him one. I write,
“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.”
You may note that I did there try to undo keith’s morph/cheat. I said such agreement might be possible. After all, I don’t want to put words in Bruce’s mouth. Maybe he won’t agree with me anyhow. It was, after all, KEITH who said Bruce agrees with HIM. Certainly I can imagine, e.g., that maybe Bruce would prefer a stronger definition of “supervenience” or maybe he wants more than supervenience. Or maybe my position will turn out to be too stupid or farty for him even if it satisfies just the supervience requirement that he wants. But again, you have to let little stuff go, right?
Anyhow, as requested, I give a definition of supervenience that maybe would allow Bruce both the physicalism he wants and the “free floating oughts” that might be useful for his conception of moral progress. So then I ask keith to do the same for me as I’ve done for him:
“What’s a definition of “supervenience” according to which Bruce must agree with you and cannot agree with me?
OK, so now (finally!) we get to why I will not interact with this guy anymore. Here’s his (absolutely classic and extremely illustrative) response to my question:
What physical characteristics do objective, free-floating oughts supervene on? [and get this coda!] Please be specific. Are those physical characteristics necessarily static, or do they change over time? If they can change, then your objective, free-floating oughts might change too.
Now WAIT A MINUTE! *I* never argued for supervenice, did I? I don’t know if values supervene on physical properties. I mean, given some definition of “supervenience” they probably do, but maybe that’s not a good definition. How the hell do I know? It was, people probably don’t now remember (or care), not me, but keith and Bruce who pushed supervenience (of whatever the hell kind), but I am supposed to now say What physical characteristics do objective, free-floating oughts supervene on? How the fuck do I know? You tell me—(oh, and please be specific).
Finally, there’s this really perfectly keithian coup de gras: Who said that Bruce must agree with me? Um, you. You did. You said he agrees with you. so I tried to provide a definition of “supervenience” in which it might be possible for him to agree with me instead. For Christ’s sake, keith.
So. In my brief experience on this site, I’ve now I’ve had “discussions” with keith on, I believe, three different threads. They’ve all been precisely of this nature. I can learn (godammit!) I therefore leave his antics to whoever enjoys this kind of stuff.
And I again suggest to the moderators (i) that they put in an IGNORE function; and (ii) that they move this post from the bowels of this thread where it will likely never be seen again or do anybody any good to sandbox or guano or someplace where it can be pinned to the top in bold orange letters, so that others may see what kind of experience they’ll most certainly have if they engage with perhaps the most prolific member of this board.
I just mean that Keith’s position seemed to me to be a form of non-cognitivism which I understand is still a philosophically viable position, although probably in a more sophisticated version than simply morals=feelings.
It seems you may disagree with Keith on that, if that is a correct characterization of Keith’s opinion. That and a few other things. (Canadian humour there).
Is “fartier” a technical term in philosophy? I am more familiar with technical terms in IT and math, but none of them that I know of them originate in some reference to a digestive function (childish humour there).
I’ll just say in my defense (?) that I know supervenience has different definitions but I don’t know enough about them to try to be more specific at this time.
The reason I brought up supervenience was because I wanted to distinguish naturalism from physicalism. As far as I know, supervenience is part of what most philosophers accept as physicalism. Whereas I (and I think KN’s OP) wanted naturalism to mean “expressible in a scientific explanation”, which may or may not include moral knowledge (as far as I know.)
That is a good video, but it’s worth noting that Mr Rygh is a magician who doesn’t claim to be using paranormal powers for this feat.
ETA: In fact, look at the last post in this thread from a magic forum:
http://www.themagiccafe.com/forums/viewtopic.php?topic=119638&forum=15
Here Mr Rygh is giving performance advice to other magicians. He mentions the fact that he uses “Xpert”, which appears to be a device that magicians use for some of their tricks (including coin bending, I take it).
BruceS,
FWIW, I think getting a satisfactory definition of “supervenience” is really really hard. Again, I recommend Amie Thomasson’s book for discussions of all that kind of stuff.
Thank you for not mentioning “subservience” which was in the original version of the post (over-reliance on spell checker). At least not mentioning explicitly. Using the quotes instead is appreciated.
I’ve looked at the book’s summary on Amazon and would guess I don’t know enough to get much out of it.
Keith:
I think this depends on what it takes to be “objective”. If the only objective facts are scientific knowledge, then it would follow that moral axioms have to be a form of scientific facts to be objective.
I suspect objectivity is not limited to things discovered by science. Math would be a counter-example. I realize that math fails as a perfect analogy for morality.
It may also be the case that moral axioms, are, in fact an aspect of the natural world and Hume is not applicable.
As I said, Kitcher thinks his pragmatic approach avoids the naturalistic fallacy and the is/ought gap issue. So that would be another way, if it succeeds. But don’t ask me for more details yet.
As a subjectivist, do you also consider yourself a relativist? If so, do you think you are entitled to claim that “the Nazis were wrong to murder people” (Note: I don’t mean this to be interpreted as: according to my morality, the Nazis were wrong, although according to theirs, they were not).
I saw that, while browsing the comments page. I was wondering whether it was intended humor, or merely a typo.
Well, if there are objective facts (and hence truths), then progress would be measured with respect to those facts. Of course, that leaves open the question of how one can reliably ascertain such facts. But if you think there is moral knowledge, even if it is not scientific knowledge, then it seems to follow that some moral codes will incorporate more of that knowledge then others. So that might be one approach to defining progress.
Another approach: Kitcher wants to avoid having to assuming moral truths before defining progress, so, as I understand him, he starts by saying that one does not need to talk about “towards something” to talk about progress. One only needs the concept of “better than”. He then says that to define moral progress we first need to be able to be able to compare moral codes (not just single moral statements) and say one of:
(1) Code A is better than B.
(2) Code C comprises elements of A and B and is better than either of them.
(3) Neither (1) nor (2) applies. (I have not got to the point where he explains why he needs this and how it does not negate his approach; sorry).
So you need a notion of “ethically better than”. The parts of the book which I am still grappling with define a way to accomplish that pragmatically and also attempt to deal with objections that the approach commits the naturalistic fallacy.
You did not ask why moral progress is vital to me. One reason: I could not accept any approach to morality which did not allow me to conclude “the Nazis were wrong” Some people at this forum seem to think it is enough to be able to say “the Nazis were wrong according to my morality”. That qualified statement is not good enough for me..
For now, it is unlikely that I will read any of those; they tend to assume more knowledge than I have. I guess one could say that attitude is just intellectual laziness. But I’d rather spend my limited intellectual resources on newer books which explain both the ideas im these books and modern thinking about them.
But I did read the Wikipedia article on him. I see he is a color realist, rejecting (I believe) the scientific approach that colors are secondary qualities partly dependent on human sensory processing.
I first encountered that idea in John Campbell’s Berkeley course on Philosophy of Mind (available on YT). It was a WTF for me then and probably remains so.
So when ( 🙂 ) you do that post on direct perception, it would be great to cover color realism too.
It is considered unprofessional for a stage magician to assert that what they do is anything other than illusion. In fact, the point of stage magic is to play a game of catch me if you can with the audience.
If anyone believes a professional magician doing magic or miracles, that would be unintentional deception.
Socle,
The point in my offering the video is to demonstrate that the “one, clear video” challenge is nothing but a worthless semantic charade. People can fake this stuff. People can lie. People can be “tricksters” and frauds both on the psi/supernatural side **and** on the scientist/professional debunker/skeptic side. Who knows what is truth, and what is a disinformation campaign?
Which is why I advocate: try it for yourself. What’s it going to cost? Nothing. NOTHING. Yet, most here will not even give it a good faith, serious try. Won’t. Even. Try.
IMO, until you give it a serious, good faith effort, you have no room to even talk about this stuff, because all you can possibly be doing is reiterating a priori ideological bias. When all one has to do is get out a spoon and try it out, or get some friends together an try out a 2-finger lift or a Ouija board, or just perform some minor, 10-minute manifestation techniques for a few days … when that’s all one has to do and you won’t even do that, then you’re not true skeptics and you simply have closed minds. Period.
I don’t take any such claims at face value, and have consistently advocated against taking any claim from any source at face value. I have always advocated personal, empirical experimentation.
Lots of things I haven’t tried.
Breathing underwater, for example.
I would agree that one clear video is not a useful challenge.
More to the point is the fact that no one is making big bucks moving stuff around with magic. Harry Potter would explain this by saying that wizards conceal themselves from muggles.
How do you explain it?
I have tried these things. Spoon bending, ouija boards, the finger lift exercise, pendulums, remote viewing, guessing sequences of random card draws, etc. I would love for some of this stuff to actually work.
If you had posted a good quality video where the performer was not already known to be a magician who explains how he does these tricks, then I would be more interested. For whatever reason, they seem to be very scarce.
Evidence in the age of special effects is tricky. And stage magic is not evidence. I have seen Penn and Teller completely stumped by an “ordinary” card trick. Ordinary in the sense that the performer described it as sleight of hand, but nevertheless, unexplained.
This is among the reasons why science was invented. To remove the accumulation of evidence from the control of tricksters and self-deceivers. William inhabits a bronze-age world of his own making. He is correct not to try to convince anyone that it applies to anyone but himself.
In William’s defence, I think spending a bit of time in fantasy is a good thing. I do it. And I would agree that a bit of escapism enriches one’s life and lowers one’s blood pressure. So if William’s world makes him happy and productive, so be it.
BruceS,
So, I think our only issue is what “objective” means, and what constitutes moral “knowledge”. KN attempts to pass off “intersubjective” agreements as objective knowledge. I think we both agree that intersubjective agreements do not represent a means of developing knowledge unless those intersubjective agreements are about something we agree exists and has characteristics (moral/immoral) whether or not we agree on what they are.
This gives us the logical capacity to disagree with intersubjective agreements, and provides the room for an intersubjective agreement to be wrong. It provides the capacity for a moral “Einstien” to develop a better, more accurate model of morality, so to speak.
Something along the lines of “do unto others” or the categorical imperative, or “we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal …”
The question comes down to whether the objective commodity we refer to with moral statements exist objectively as a by-product of biological states (keiths’ position), or if it exists in a more fundamental way. Are moral values produced by biology, like say food preferences, or do biological entities discover moral values?
If biology produces moral values, then whatever moral value biology generates is moral by definition. Even though morality is thus an objectively existent feature in nature, it is still entirely subjective to the individual or group that share that particular biological configuration – like taste. In that sense, I think you and I agree that if morality supervenes on biology in a way that a change in the biological state changes the “trueness” of any moral statement, that kind of morality is unacceptable.
With all due respect, it seems to me that you are avoiding the obvious conclusion for no reason other than that you find it ideologically unpalatable. It seems to me that the obvious conclusion is the same one I admitted even when I was an atheistic materialist; morality makes no sense unless it is an objective value we discover about the nature of our existence (not our biology) – much like discovering the principles of logic or the principles of mathematics. A=A, 1+1=2, and “it’s immoral to torture children for personal pleasure” are all self-evidently true statements of the same caliber.
In all possible worlds, 1+1=2.
In all possible worlds, A=A.
In all possible worlds, torturing children for personal pleasure is immoral.
This is not a matter of biological configurations; it’s a matter of existential truths that we are able to locate and understand as true. This makes morality a necessary feature of existence, not just human biology.
Let the chips fall where they may.
**sincere applause** Good on you. Most materialists won’t even try.
Petrushka said:
Even though it looks like the “line” that Alan drew is no longer being enforced, which I expected to occur (at least for those not named WJM), this all looks like guano to me.
Right. If there are objective values, progress would involve getting closer to them. The question is what it means if there are no such values.
I’m not too sanguine about this hope myself, BWTHDIK.
I do think, though, that it’s important to clarify here an almost constant conflation keith has made on this thread with his “free floating oughts”. Many (maybe most?) philosophers supporting objective values that I know of, don’t have their oughts “free-floating.” Only deontologists like Kant and Ross do that kind of thing. Maybe natural rights guys like Nozick too. But those who lean toward consequentialism of some kind will have objective oughts that are not free floating, but are tied to some “goods” or other–maybe pleasure or happiness or liberty–so THE OUGHTs aren’t themselves free floating, though maybe the goodness of those goods (which are likely to be physical events, properties or objects), the maximization of which are claimed to produce these oughts, could be said to be free floating. They certainly will be on Moore’s view, anyhow, if one doesn’t commit the naturalist fallacy. So, it’s not really (or only) a concern about deriving ought from is that fuels this disagreement, it’s inferring values from non-value-laden things like pleasure.
So, what I’m saying here is that it seems to me that while Kitcher’s “ethically better than” might not imply any “free-floating oughts”, I believe it has to involve SOME free-floating (moral) goods or will involve the naturalist fallacy. If, as you continue reading you think he can avoid this dilemma, I hope you’ll tell us how!
I don’t accuse you of being insincere, just wrong.
You are wrong about faith healing, wrong about the lifting trick, wrong about spoon bending, You appear to be sincerely self-deceived. And a waste of time.
But there are lots of you, and you vote and make politics, so while it’s an intellectual waste of time, challenging you appears to be necessary.
Petrushka,
Assuming that others are posting in good faith is not the only rule supposedly being enforced here.
I don’t suppose it ever occurs to anyone that having values doesn’t automatically tell you how to behave.
One can value the well-being of all creatures without how best to advance this implied goal.
That is why I have made rude remarks about philosophy and philosophical discussion. It misses everything of importance.
We would not be here discussing values if we did not share a general concern for the well being of all people. What would be worth discussing is how that plays out in the real world.
Petrushka said:
Looks like guano to me.
And my point in asking for the video was to demonstrate your confirmation bias: you provided a video of a professional magician who bends the spoons with his hands at 1:27 and at 2:31, and then uses a change in viewing angle to make the bending appear magical.
Why is it that the supernatural effect invariably disappears under any form of scrutiny. Parsimony, man!
Well, I have tried the 2-finger lift, Ouija and spoon-bending. You said “Most materialists won’t even try”.
Can you support this statement?
Edited(by DNA_Jock) to delete text that belongs under ‘Moderation’. My apologies. Please move my subsequent post to ‘moderation’.
***sincere applause*** Good on you, then!
The Bronze age comment is factual. William believes in magic, which is one of the things we associate with a bronze age world view..
For the record, I made a serious foray into faith healing at age 10, before being contaminated with atheism and skepticism. I have participated in the lifting game. I have not tried spoon bending because some things are just too stupid to take seriously. If anyone could actually bend spoons, we would have heard about it.
Of course it is. It’s specifically about the poster – me – something expressly against the rules.
Petrushka said:
Where did I say I believe in magic?
Petrushka asks:
There is no explanation for it in terms that correspond to a naturalist/materialist/physicalist frame of reference.
I’ve actually already given my explanation for it in this thread, but I don’t think it made it through the quantum reality matrix to the others participating in this experiential locus.
8P
Err, no. It is about how you appear to others. You’re coming across as a little slow today…
DNA_Jock said:
Looks like guano to me.
petrushka,
Well, there’s ethics and meta-ethics. The annoying for me is that they’re both hard.
I mean, suppose you’ve settled on your ethical theory. Maybe you’ve decided that what people ought to do is maximize (with no side constraints) the production of free, satisfied human beings (and, I don’t know, maybe giving other mammals some love in there too–doesn’t matter). Now, that’s hard–you could have spent your whole life settling on that principle. But you’ve finally got it! You’re really sure this time!!
Now what do you do? Maybe you’ve got questions on your ballot about the death penalty or corporate taxes or abortion or carbon credits. Even if you’ve decided on the ideal good(s) you want to maximize, you have to cede pretty much everything to economists, prognosticators, meteorologists, sociologists, psychologists, actuaries, etc. And a lot of those guys don’t agree about much. Will executing murderers maximize what I say ought to be maximized? What if they’re not REALLY murderers but got convicted anyhow? And can my meta-ethics distinguish between first degree murder and manslaughter? Etc., etc., etc., etc……………………
My point is that even if you render unto philosophy that infinitesimal smidge that I think it deserves, empirical investigations are STILL going to have to decide all the important questions about how we should act. And these are empirical studies that are hard and controversial, and often involve assessments of probabilities of what will happen in the distant future on not very much solid evidence at all. Sadly, however, there’s no handy Benthamic calculating device we can turn to.
I happen to be fascinated by the philosophical questions myself, but there’s a sense in which, primary as they may be, you haven’t got a hell of a lot if even if you’ve answered them. Plus, the chance of anybody agreeing with you on any answer you come up with is extremely slim.
Bah. The whole thing makes me want to start drinking a little early this weekend.
Clarification on rules.
It is expressly forbidden to edit other people’s posts and I will not do it except on request from the author of the post.
So when someone put a lot of thought and effort into a post, most of which is perfectly fine but includes one rule-breaking phrase and I spot it in a reasonable time, then my only option is to move the whole comment. It is open to anyone to re-post minus the offending phrase as the comment is not lost or invisible and can be copied and pasted without too much trouble. Admins cannot be expected to manage 24-hour surveillance and it still beats me why anyone can’t review their own comments before posting.
I’ll have a look at comments above and move any that I consider outside the rules. Anyone with a moved comment is welcome to resubmit. After moving them, I’ll add a clarifying note in “guano” listing the remarks I think are rule-breaking.
Could we please use the appropriate thread (moderation issues) for discussion of the rules.
My theory of ethics is that theories of ethics don’t work.
OK, now on top of everything else, I’m dizzy too. Thanks a lot.
Here’s an example of what I mean. Allan Miller writes a cogent, sincere comment but it contains a mild insult. Do we need a list of acceptable and unacceptable terms. Is “control freak” a terrible thing to be called? I’m sure Allan will withdraw the insult the next time he pops in.
Not to me. Just a plain statement of fact. It might have been simpler to just act rather than announce but at least you know that Petrushka is suspending taking you seriously for the moment.
Not to me. Perhaps OM should not have assumed that everyone was familiar with Richard Feynman’s famous words and could have used the full quote:
It’s good advice.
Yeah. That’s what I thought, Alan. Thanks for not letting me down 🙂