Morality for dummies

Premise:

  • A “bad state” is a state that an organism would want to change.
  • A “good state” is a state that an organism seeks to achieve.

Therefore:

  • A “bad action” is causing an organism to enter a state that they would want to change.
  • A “good action” is helping an organism achieve a state that they don’t want to change.

Unfortunately, sometimes the good state of one organism depends on the bad state of another (or of the same organism at a different time). So for any organism (and we are probably the only ones on this planet at this time) with the capacity to weigh up actions on the basis of cui bono? (and when?), there will be frequent tension between competing claims.  I suggest that our methodology for resolving these claims are what constitutes what we call our “morality”, and that our methods of agreeing on this methodology are what constitutes our justice systems.  I also suggest that both arise directly from of our capacity to weigh up alternative courses of action on the basis of competing claims to the right to a “good state”, and need have nothing to do with whether or not there is a God or gods who care either.

Man of all creatures
Is superlative
(Away melancholy)
He of all creatures alone
Raiseth a stone
(Away melancholy)
Into the stone, the god
Pours what he knows of good
Calling, good, God.
Away melancholy, let it go.

Speak not to me of tears,
Tyranny, pox, wars,
Saying, Can God
Stone of man’s thoughts, be good?
Say rather it is enough
That the stuffed
Stone of man’s good, growing,
By man’s called God.
Away, melancholy, let it go

Stevie Smith, “Away Melancholy

Although of course, if there is such a God, and that God is good, she might care very deeply.

 

 

375 thoughts on “Morality for dummies

  1. phoodoo,

    Alan, it doesn’t really matter if you think they don’t have the real answer, shouldn’t the point be that they are acting with a valid logic, that is if they are right, they very well must do what they believe moral, whereas the atheist is being a hypocrite, if they are right, they need not follow their sense of morality, because logically they know their sense of morality could be a mistake.

    So I’m a hypocrite. Yawn. Although I’m hardly pretending one thing and doing another.

    The first thing I think when contemplating a jihadist beheading someone is not “hmmm … that’s certainly the logical thing to do”. But they are, according to you, acting with a valid logic, even if they reach the ‘wrong’ conclusion. But we aren’t Mr Spock.

    What you seem to miss is that I don’t actually believe in God. Believing in an entity just to salvage a logical conundrum seems … stupid. But since I don’t even perceive the logical conundrum – it is entirely logical and consistent to judge moral matters myself – the problem doesn’t arise. It’s the tired old ‘someone-else’ approach. My morality is ‘illogical’ because … boogeymen! Well, boogeymen exist. Some are objectivists, some subjectivists. Their existence and actions do not guide my moral choices, nor affect the logic of them one bit. I don’t know why they ‘should’.

    I’ve asked WJM and others to formulate this in some kind of formal propositional manner, and they have so far not. Which leads me to think that the invocation of ‘logic’ is rather empty.

  2. Allan Miller: I don’t like killing people so I don’t.

    I’m hoping that you didn’t find out that you don’t like killing people until after you actually tried it out.

  3. Kantian Naturalist: Whatever reasons there are for believing in culture-transcendent norms — and I think there are! — strike me as logically distinct from “the God question”. I’m deeply puzzled by why the non-theists here agree with our resident theists that there is such logical dependence.

    Right. I don’t believe that a person has to believe in God in order to do what is morally good and right. That means I think that atheists can do what is morally good and right. I think most of the time, they probably do what is morally good and right.

    My questions are:

    1.) is this perspective you mention one of moral realism?

    2.) what’s wrong with ascribing to these “culture-transcendent norms” the status of being objective moral values (objective morality)?

  4. Allan Miller: I don’t accept the assumption. I argue, for example, that common genetics may well explain certain ‘universals’.

    So they would be objective facts about the world? What makes them moral/immoral?

  5. phoodoo: Allan Miller,

    You keep coming up with this “saying a God did it is no better than..whatever.” I think its a ridiculous point you keep trying to make.

    Saying we have morals because it is a disposition that our creator wanted us to have, is an alternative explanation to, well, its an accident, but we might breed better because of it. They are two DIFFERENT explanations for why we have this feeling of universal morality.

    But it makes no practical difference. Despite theists truly believing their god has given them objective moral commandments, they still have extra-marital sex, rape, commit murder, steal, lie and are violent and abuse just as much as atheists.

    So whatever problem there supposedly is with naturalistic “subjective” morality, the theistic “objective” morality doesn’t solve in practice.

  6. Allan Miller:
    If we really had a feeling of ‘universal morality’, there would be no debate.

    You have a feeling that evolution is right, right? How is it possible then that there are debates about it? I suggest that the issue is that you think it’s a “feeling”. People fight over their “feelings” all the time. “Feeling” doesn’t solve anything.

    Allan Miller:
    I have a feeling of morality – that is, certain actions strike me as ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, which I can introspectively distinguish from other sensations. But it is clear that the things that strike me as ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ differ even from those of relatives and others in my culture, let alone between cultures.

    Are you saying that since those feelings differ, therefore there is no truth to the matter? And no way to find it out?

    Let’s say one person has a five-grader’s understanding of physics, but another is an academically renowned expert on the field. When they have different opinions on an issue of physics and they judge each other as wrong, is this a difference of “feeling” that can be ultimately disregarded or is there an actual right or wrong that can be definitively determined?

  7. I’m inclined to think that our species evolved in small (less than 200 individuals) cooperative tribes. Certain patterns of behavior approach optimum for the success and survival of such tribes. Those whose behavior were harmful to the tribe were likely exiled, if not killed outright.

    It’s not a stretch to think that an orientation toward appropriate social behaviors shaped the species, as a sort of feedback process. The nature of the species shaping the appropriate behaviors, which in turn shape the nature of the species (determining who survived).

    This suggests several speculations: that human morality evolved biologically as appropriate for small groups, that this morality may not be appropriate for large groups where the individuals seldom know one another, and that human morality is not necessarily appropriate for any other species.

  8. Mung: Allan, to whom phoodoo was responding, seems to think it is. So why not direct your argument to Allan?

    I think the capacity to categorise actions as right or wrong is “in the DNA”. I could probably even pull up some candidate genes.

    I don’t think that means that “morality is in the DNA”. I think morality is the methodology we collectively construct to resolve the tensions between competing claims by different actors.

  9. Elizabeth: I think morality is the methodology we collectively construct to resolve the tensions between competing claims by different actors.

    Morality is political. Absolute morality is delusional.

  10. Mung,

    I’m hoping that you didn’t find out that you don’t like killing people until after you actually tried it out.

    I already don’t like it, so you’re fine.

  11. Mung,

    2.) what’s wrong with ascribing to these “culture-transcendent norms” the status of being objective moral values (objective morality)?

    Absolutely nothing. I have advanced this in the past, but people arguing the ‘objectivist’ side have been talking about something else.

  12. Mung,

    So they would be objective facts about the world? What makes them moral/immoral?

    Those are labels ascribed by people, along with ‘right/wrong’, ‘true/false’, ‘good/bad’. Some things we (almost) universally agree on. Others we don’t.

  13. Mung,

    Allan, to whom phoodoo was responding, seems to think it is. So why not direct your argument to Allan?

    Morality is a combination of the genetic and the cultural. It is not just ‘one thing’.

  14. Mung: I’m hoping that you didn’t find out that you don’t like killing people until after you actually tried it out.

    I hope god doesn’t tell you to kill someone.

  15. Rumraket: I hope god doesn’t tell you to kill someone.

    God and the Greater Good are the dangerous delusions.

    Beware of Followers and Omelet Makers.

  16. Erik,

    Me: If we really had a feeling of ‘universal morality’, there would be no debate.

    Erik: You have a feeling that evolution is right, right?

    No. That’s just equivocation. My feeling that honesty is ‘right’ is of a completely different character from my ‘feeling’ that evolution is correct. The former is more akin to my feeling that girls are attractive, the latter more akin to my feeling that the speed of stellar recession is proportional to distance.

    Allan Miller:
    I have a feeling of morality – that is, certain actions strike me as ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, which I can introspectively distinguish from other sensations. But it is clear that the things that strike me as ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ differ even from those of relatives and others in my culture, let alone between cultures.

    Erik: Are you saying that since those feelings differ, therefore there is no truth to the matter? And no way to find it out?

    I don’t think there is an external truth to the matter, so there is nothing to ‘find out’. But people can be persuaded – in either direction. Morality is part-learnt, and that learning does not stop at age 5. It is a curious thing – we can learn to be annoyed by something. Pictures of Mohammed is a classic example. People can learn to be very annoyed indeed.

  17. Of course, I could just keep my gob shut. After all, my main interest is actually science – I get sucked into these debates because I’m argumentative by nature.

    But … the proposal seems to be that in discussing my lack of faith and its implications, I am actually promoting harm. If I don’t believe in ‘ultimate consequences’ for actions, I’m hypocritical in saying someone else’s actions are ‘wrong’. Presumably, and ironically, I’d be less hypocritical if I pretended to believe in ultimate consequences!

  18. Allan Miller: My feeling that honesty is ‘right’ is of a completely different character from my ‘feeling’ that evolution is correct. The former is more akin to my feeling that girls are attractive, the latter more akin to my feeling that the speed of stellar recession is proportional to distance.

    This is a nice distinction between a feeling of attractive girls and a feeling of the speed of stars, but the relevant distinction that you should be able to make in this discussion is between moral right/wrong and non-moral right/wrong. Not seeing this yet. By the way, how would you argue that it’s a “feeling” at all rather than a rational determination?

  19. Mung: My questions are:

    1.) is this perspective you mention one of moral realism?

    For all intents and purposes at TSZ, I’m a moral realist. What follows are some technical details of interest only to analytic philosophers, aka Jargon Alert.

    My considered view is probably closer to what Simon Blackburn calls “quasi-realism” and which Huw Price has defended as “global quasi-realism”. I have severe qualms about moral realism that turn on the implicit semantics on which moral realism depends. Moral realism assumes a picture of language according to which judgments are true or false depending on whether they correspond to the facts that make them true (or false). I think that’s a really problematic view about how meaning and truth actually function.

    2.) what’s wrong with ascribing to these “culture-transcendent norms” the status of being objective moral values (objective morality)?

    Apart from my worry that objectivity is a feature of descriptive discourse, and doesn’t apply to prescriptive discourse, nothing at all.

    I also would not want to dismiss the historicity of moral norms — how the scope of the moral community evolves over time — or the ways in which morality is inextricable from culture, language, and technology. I think that we have actually made some real moral progress in terms of being more aware of how unearned privilege for a few leads to immense suffering for those who have been traditionally excluded from having a voice in the moral community.

    Earlier above the thought was scouted that morality involves genetics and culture. I’m a bit unhappy about the use of “genetics” there, because I think that’s too much even in animal behavior that isn’t genetic in the strict sense.

    I think the role of culture in human evolution should not be underestimated (Not By Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution and The Evolved Apprentice: How Evolution Made Humans Unique. And I also think that there is a dimension of morality that predates and exceeds the domain of culture per se (Can Animals Be Moral?).

    Based on the arguments of Rowlands, de Waal, Sterelny, Tomasello, and a few others, I would say that what we call ‘morality’ involves at least two distinct dimensions: a dimension of animal sociality that involves being motivated by concern for the suffering and well-being of others, and a dimension of linguistic culture that enables us to reflect on and revise our reasons for acting.

  20. Absolute morality is delusional.

    At least someone here is willing to be explicit about what they believe! 🙂

    PS

    As with ethics, there is a parallel issue with aesthetics. What is absolutely beautiful? Some people think the music of Prokofiev and Stravinsky is beautiful. When I heard their music as a child, the image their music inspired in my head was something like this:

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/61/ChuckyDoll.jpg

    I wanted to vomit when I saw Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet. Khatchaturian’s Spartacus and Phrygia were more lovely than anything to my taste than all the works of Stravinsky and Prokofiev.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLOcVuGdjG8&feature=player_detailpage

    There are so many versions of Romeo and Juliet. None seem so well done as Tchaikovsky’s. Here is the piano reduction:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=X-NOQOKYzMs

    Without a lawgiver for ethics, the question of ethics is analogous to questions of aesthetics.

  21. stcordova: Without a lawgiver for ethics, the question of ethics is analogous to questions of aesthetics.

    Or even with a lawgiver, it’s still analagous, when the putative lawgiver can not/will not communicate its laws with sufficient clarity to actual living humans.

    Every human has to use his/her own “moral-esthetics” to pick the actions he/she feels/thinks are best, and to avoid those which seem worse.

    Knowing (or believing) that there is an ultimate lawgiver somewhere somehow is no help at all.

    God told me out loud in a voice from the heavens that I was doing great, to keep on doing what I was doing. That still didn’t help! Because I still didn’t know which of the nearly-infinite list of actions which I was NOT performing at that moment would be things to avoid — and the specific actions I was involved in at that moment could not literally be kept up forever, so what else was I positively supposed to do next … What’s a poor girl to do!

    And we all know what a shit job god did with those alleged tablets and those unclear 10 commandments. THe most observant Orthodox Jews – with their 613 commandments – still find a need to argue about whether it’s permissible to take the elevator on the Sabbath.

    It may not be merely a question of esthetics, but you’re right, it’s certainly analogous.

  22. stcordova: Without a lawgiver for ethics, the question of ethics is analogous to questions of aesthetics.

    Yes and no. There is still plenty of room for reasoned discourse about aesthetic judgments. One can give reasons as to why Whitman is a better poet than Blake, why Tupac is a great hip-hop artist, what makes Tarantino a great director (if he is one), or whether any video games count as art. There’s a back-and-forth constrained by evidence and reasoning — it’s not wholly arbitrary and not wholly subjective.

  23. stcordova: Without a lawgiver for ethics, the question of ethics is analogous to questions of aesthetics.

    So how does this apply to putative divine law?

    ETA: i.e. what hotshoe said.

  24. Erik,

    This is a nice distinction between a feeling of attractive girls and a feeling of the speed of stars, but the relevant distinction that you should be able to make in this discussion is between moral right/wrong and non-moral right/wrong. Not seeing this yet. By the way, how would you argue that it’s a “feeling” at all rather than a rational determination?

    It’s a bit o’both. Much of the derailment and talking-past that dogs these conversations is because ‘morality’ is something of a grab-bag term for a whole bunch of behaviours, perceptions and prejudices – but it only includes some, but not others. Murder, theft and honesty are within the generally-agreed ambit of the term ’ morality’, the rules of a game not (although no-one likes a cheat), etiquette not … so the set of ‘moral’ behaviours is itself fuzzy. Like many linguistic categories.

    Nonetheless, I describe it as ‘feeling’ because behavioural approval and disapproval are internal responses, not entirely reducible to the rational. I experience feelings of distaste, annoyance, revulsion, at ‘bad’ behaviour, and pride, approval, even a slight lump in the throat, at ‘good’ behaviour. This is basic human stuff, not the sole preserve of the theist. It is exploited in just about every piece of popular fiction. We want the ‘bad guy’ to get his come-uppance, and the ‘good guys’ to win through, and we experience a sense of pleasure, like the return of a melody to the tonic, when this occurs. And we learn from parents and wider group the kind of qualities that ‘good guy’ and ‘bad guy’ actually refer to.

    The origin of this sense is held by theists to be X and atheists to be Y. But regardless of the origin, we all experience it. It is not strictly a rational calculus – but nor is it strictly ‘all emotion’ either. Like many things in people, it is at the interface between nature and nurture. We have predispositions, and we learn local norms, and we can rationalise.

  25. Allan Miller: Much of the derailment and talking-past that dogs these conversations is because ‘morality’ is something of a grab-bag term for a whole bunch of behaviours, perceptions and prejudices – but it only includes some, but not others. Murder, theft and honesty are within the generally-agreed ambit of the term ’ morality’, the rules of a game not (although no-one likes a cheat), etiquette not … so the set of ‘moral’ behaviours is itself fuzzy. Like many linguistic categories.

    Murder, theft and honesty are clearly an issue of morality, but so are rules of a game (it concerns honesty) and etiquette (it concerns hospitality). And linguistic categories are not fuzzy. They are as clear as logical and mathematical categories.

    You lack categories for this discussion. That’s where derailment and talking-past comes from in your case.

  26. EL said:

    So, Erik, what is your view? Do you think that there is something irrational about an atheist expressing “moral outrage”?

    Of course it’s irrational. What logic is there behind feeling “morally outraged” at whatever haphazard physico-chemical processes produce? Once one realizes (if proxy-atheism is true) that humans are simply complex physico-chemical processes playing out in whatever haphazard way physics and chance cause, what is there to possibly be morally outraged about? The universe and everything in it is just going to play out however it plays out.

    When I realized this back when I was an atheist, I realized I didn’t like feeling morally outraged. I also didn’t like feeling contempt for the theists around me. I realized that, under my own paradigm, there was no rational reason for me to feel those things. That they were caused by haphazard physico-chemical processes didn’t make them rational; it just made them brute facts. I felt those things because I was wired to feel those things. Logic had nothing to do with it, under my atheistic paradigm.

    Since I didn’t like feeling those things, I did what I could to stop feeling those things. Long story short, I figured out how to stop feeling morally outraged about the actions or views of others, and how to stop feeling contempt for theists. After all, we’re all just physico-chemically produced and guided matter, doing and thinking whatever physics and random forces dictate. All of us, even me. I might as well be morally outraged that it rains on a day I wanted to mow the yard, or morally outraged that an earthquake killed a thousand people. It’s all just physico-chemical processes interacting to cause things to happen, and even moral outrage, in the end, is just another haphazardly-caused event in the universe.

  27. hotshoe said:

    Or even with a lawgiver, it’s still analagous, when the putative lawgiver can not/will not communicate its laws with sufficient clarity to actual living humans.

    Given that we also have free will, there is no clarity that is sufficient to penetrate denial.

  28. EL said:

    I think morality is the methodology we collectively construct to resolve the tensions between competing claims by different actors.

    And thus, simply killing off the minority view or the weaker claimant becomes a moral solution by definition as long as it is collectively constructed. Might makes right – because we say so, because we can.

  29. William J. Murray: Might makes right – because we say so, because we can.

    Which is in essence how your god does it. What is right is right because your god thinks it is right and no other reason.

    If you’d read the bible you’d know one popular god can change what is right depending on the circumstance.

  30. OMagain: But I guess the enemy of your enemy is your friend, huh?

    Not sure what that is about and I have no idea what he believes.
    An insightful comment is an insightful comment regardless of the source.

    peace

  31. Erik,

    You lack categories for this discussion. That’s where derailment and talking-past comes from in your case.

    Hmmm. I find placing the blame for those things on my shoulders alone to be somewhat … unfair. Unless I already see things your way, I am not a fit discussant, you seem to be saying. Please yourself.

  32. William J. Murray: Of course it’s irrational. What logic is there behind feeling “morally outraged” at whatever haphazard physico-chemical processes produce?

    Even if no such qualities actually exist outside of ourselves, we are nonetheless driven to ensure or family group survives, our society prospers. Even if at the end of it there is nothing but dust.

    Those who were not so driven are no longer with us.

    William J. Murray: Once one realizes (if proxy-atheism is true) that humans are simply complex physico-chemical processes playing out in whatever haphazard way physics and chance cause, what is there to possibly be morally outraged about?

    What was the reason you did not commit suicide, as an atheist?

  33. Allan Miller said:

    Everything you write portrays me as a relativist.

    Everything I write is about moral subjectivism.

    http://www.philosophybasics.com/branch_ethical_subjectivism.htm

    Moral subjectivism:

    Ethical Subjectivism holds that there are no objective moral properties and that ethical statements are in fact arbitrary because they do not express immutable truths. Instead, moral statements are made true or false by the attitudes and/or conventions of the observers, and any ethical sentence just implies an attitude, opinion, personal preference or feeling held by someone.

    I am arguing about moral subjectivism and its logical consequences. If you are going to engage me in that argument, then I am going to use the term “you” as a debate device to address you as if you were a moral subjectivist because that is what you must be defending if you are challenging me on the points I make about moral subjectivism. Whether or not you personally are **actually** a moral subjectivist is irrelevant.

    You argue that, if my moral principles derive from anything other than an assumption of God/Divine Command, I must accept that the Jihadist/Baby-Torturer/Hitler has the same ‘right’ to consider themselves moral as me. Well … whatever ‘right’ they may have, they DO consider themselves as (or more) moral. So what?

    The “so what” is that under the principle of moral subjectivism, they logically must be as moral as you, and their actions must logically be as moral as yours. This would just be a logical consequence under moral subjectivism.

    I think they are wrong.

    Then you are being irrational. They cannot be wrong under moral subjectivism, as long as they are acting according to their moral views. It’s okay – I mean, lots of people have irrational views. I’m just pointing yours out to you. I’m not saying they are wrong views, I’m just pointing out that they are irrational and thus the correlation of your worldview to your thoughts/behavior is not rational.

    It’s really not difficult. I am the Ultimate Arbiter of all moral questions. Anything you’d like cleared up, while I’m on?

    Irrationality is easy. It’s logic and reason that are often quite difficult.

  34. fifthmonarchyman,

    WJM: there is no clarity that is sufficient to penetrate denial.

    fmm: Pure Gold. This one belongs on a tee shirt.

    You can wear it to your next Cladistics conference.

  35. Allan Miller,

    So you do in fact think that morality comes from genetics. And genetics is just dna copying errors (i.e. accidents), right?

    So I don’t see how you can object to calling morality the result of accidents. But ok fine, the result of errors?

  36. OMagain: Even if no such qualities actually exist outside of ourselves, we are nonetheless driven to ensure or family group survives, our society prospers. Even if at the end of it there is nothing but dust.

    That’s a nice sentiment, but no, “we” do not all have that drive.

    Those who were not so driven are no longer with us.

    That’s a nice faith to have, even if it cannot be supported.

    What was the reason you did not commit suicide, as an atheist?

    I realized that if atheism was true, I could do, think and believe whatever the hell I wanted, unlimited by social conventions, conscience, spiritual laws, morality, ethics, and presuppositions about likely consequences, and that seemed like a very interesting experiment to conduct.

  37. William J. Murray,

    The “so what” is that under the principle of moral subjectivism, they logically must be as moral as you, and their actions must logically be as moral as yours. This would just be a logical consequence under moral subjectivism.

    No, it is only a consequence under (certain forms of) moral relativism. I consider my morals superior to theirs. This is perfectly rational. They consider theirs superior to mine. This is also perfectly rational. One of us is ‘really right’, you claim. Since we have no way of deciding that, it is rather useless, and anyway adds nothing in the way of ‘logic’.

    Once again, since you trumpet ‘logic’, can you represent your argument in a formal-propositional manner?

  38. OMagain said:

    Which is in essence how your god does it. What is right is right because your god thinks it is right and no other reason.

    Nope. Try again. In my worldview, good is an innate quality of existence itself. It is immutable. God cannot change what is good.

    If you’d read the bible you’d know one popular god can change what is right depending on the circumstance.

    I never claimed all forms of theism entailed rational moral systems – in fact, I’ve said exactly the opposite of that.

  39. William J. Murray,

    So your own ‘journey’ required you to stop being an atheist in order to stop feeling moral outrage? That is, you now have a ‘logical reason’ (you claim) to feel moral outrage but because of that very thing, you no longer do?

  40. William J. Murray,

    Of course it’s irrational.

    Over many, many threads, you have failed to take this beyond assertion, nor to explain why something being ‘Really Truly Wrong’, or having Dark Consequences, makes it rational to get upset about it.

  41. Allan Miller: Over many, many threads, you have failed to take this beyond assertion, nor to explain why something being ‘Really Truly Wrong’, or having Dark Consequences, makes it rational to get upset about it.

    It is self-evident that atheists are irrational for not believing what WJM believed when he was an atheist. Hence no argument is required.

  42. No, it is only a consequence under (certain forms of) moral relativism.

    No, it is a logical consequence of moral subjectivism, period.

    I consider my morals superior to theirs.

    You have no objective, external basis for such a comparison, which makes that view necessarily subjective.

    This is perfectly rational.

    Saying it doesn’t make it so.

    They consider theirs superior to mine. This is also perfectly rational.

    It’s rational for them if they hold their morality to have an objective basis.

    One of us is ‘really right’, you claim. Since we have no way of deciding that, it is rather useless, and anyway adds nothing in the way of ‘logic’.

    You may have no way of “deciding that”, but others do. It is only with the premise of some objective arbiter of what is moral that any morality can rationally be considered “superior” in any meaningful way to any other.

    Once again, since you trumpet ‘logic’, can you represent your argument in a formal-propositional manner?

    There’s no need for me to. It’s all pretty simple and largely obvious for anyone not committed to denying the basic qualities of what it means for a feeling to be subjective in nature.

    Because one person likes vanilla and another person prefers chocolate, no rational person would claim that the preference for vanilla makes their taste superior to the other person’s preference. They are just personal preferences.

    No amount of clarity can penetrate denial.

  43. Kantian Naturalist: It is self-evident that atheists are irrational for not believing what WJM believed when he was an atheist. Hence no argument is required.

    That was some pretty petty sniping, KN. Not something you usually do. Am I hitting a sore spot?

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