- See this exchange and following:

Just as a sentence being true (or false) before it is said makes no sense. — Michael

What are the chances that anyone has ever said that 799168003115 + 193637359638 = 992805362753? — Srap Tasmaner

Something cannot be true and false because nothing can both be and not be anything, in the same way, at the same time, without qualification. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Right.

When it comes to logic, our predicates should be univocal, and this sort of ambiguity should be ruled out. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, on pain of equivocation.

But even for propositions like: "you had a good day," the truth of this is not reducible to a binary. Sometimes, if asked if we had a good day, we don't really know. Does this mean that there is no truth as to whether or not anyone ever has a good day? That the sentence is not truth-apt? I don't think so. — Count Timothy von Icarus

But is this a matter of the univocity of truth or of the ambiguity of language? And is the LEM being rejected if the truth-value is not binary?

Usually the non-binary response will be an attempt to distinguish different parts of the day instead of collecting it into a single whole.

Well, the problem that I think is most acute is ascribing truth and falsity primarily to propositions. Actually, it seems that in a lot of philosophy they are the only bearers of truth. That's what leads to, IMO, bad conceptualizations of knowledge. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, I agree. This is happening a lot in that thread I referenced in my first post.

But I suppose my point is that contradiction in this case is used as the lens through which truth as a whole is analyzed. This leads to concepts like "the one true canonical database of all true propositions" and when concepts like this are shown to be flawed, there is a crash into deflation. Truth ends up being either univocal, and contained in "the one true set of propositions," or else entirely relativized (with some appeals to "pragmatism" as a backstop). — Count Timothy von Icarus

Okay, I sort of see that. I do think discursive/propositional knowledge needs to be grounded in something more, but I don't see the critiques of classical notions of truth as a great threat.

• "I took a magnifying glass to every part of your vehicle and found a squeaky axle. Therefore I will not drive or trust it."
• "Do you have some alternative vehicle to propose?"

...That's about how I view the attack on classical notions of truth. The naysayers look like contrarian novelty-seekers who are unwilling to engage in the foundational philosophical act of providing constructive alternatives. They take any imperfection to be a fatal flaw, and end in some variety of skepticism.

-

The second, no. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Okay, so how would you characterize the view you take exception to?

However, we can have propositions that make statements about how true something is to some ideal. "This is a good car." Does this reduce to a binary? I don't think so. Is it simply not truth-apt? I don't think this works either, because a car that won't start is in an important sense not a good car. It isn't true to its purpose. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Regarding an ideal, the nurse might ask, "On a scale of 1 to 10, how much pain are you in?" This obviously requires something other than a binary answer.

When I imagine a conversation beginning with, "This is a good car," I don't foresee non-binary truth values. The interlocutor might say any number of things:

• Damn right it is!
• It is a good car, but the rust is just beginning to set in.
• I wouldn't call a car that cannot idle without killing "a good car."

I haven't read much on this specific subject, but I am not aware of anti-univocalists who think truth is not predicated univocally. And even if we are talking about truth as conformity to an ideal, this does introduce degrees of truth but it does not necessarily introduce equivocity.

What objectionable thesis does your opponent hold? — Leontiskos

So:

The Univocity and Binary Nature of Truth

...

I'm going to make a case against both of these assumptions. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Let me try to do what I want you to do. I will try to capture each position you oppose with a thesis:

• The univocity of truth: "Truth" means only and precisely one thing.
• The binary nature of truth and falsity: Propositions which are true and propositions which are false are qualitatively different, and have no mediating degrees between them.

Are these the positions you are opposing? Or is it something else?

What about the quote from the OP? — Count Timothy von Icarus

I don't see it. A good entry point into Aquinas' topic is to read the objections, and none of the objections are claiming that true/false are contradictory. He is in large part asking whether they belong to a common genus, i.e. assertion. His answer is, "Yes, they belong to the common genus of assertion."

Yes, something cannot be black and not-black — Count Timothy von Icarus

And to say that something is not-black is to say that it is false that it is black. Something cannot be true and false, therefore the true and the false are contradictory:

Edit: For Aristotle contraries allow for an unexcluded middle, but true/false do not, therefore true/false are not contraries. Cf. Metaphysics IV.7 - 1011b23. — Leontiskos

Truth and falsity are mutually exclusive in cases where... — Count Timothy von Icarus

I would challenge you to give a case where truth and falsity are not mutually exclusive.

I always assumed Thomas's point here was pointing back to Avicenna and ontological truth. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Okay, that's fair, but ontological truth/falsity as they exist primarily in the intellect. I guess I didn't realize that in the OP you were talking about true/false as states of the intellect. For example, you critique a thesis regarding propositions, and seem to in some way question the LEM:

Such propositions are true or false (there is no gradation) simpliciter. Such a view seems to require some dubious assumptions... — Count Timothy von Icarus

Maybe it would be helpful to circle back and simplify the position you are challenging in the OP. What objectionable thesis does your opponent hold?

I can see that Aquinas would agree that the intellect which is true does not contradict the intellect which is false, in the ontological sense. But in this case we are not talking about predications or assertions of falsity. Surely we agree that "p is false" contradicts "p is true."

Truth represents a perfect adequacy between the intellect and being. Falsity is the absence of this adequacy. If any inadequacy makes a belief or statement false, that seems to be quite problematic. For one, it would mean that all or almost all of the "laws" of the natural sciences are false, along with our scientific claims.

A theory or hypothesis might not perfectly conform to reality, but this doesn't make it completely inadequate either. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Okay, that is helpful. But remember that falsity is a privation, not an absence. If the intellect has no truth it cannot have falsity.

- :up:

, I think you are saying that because knowledge can be more or less, therefore propositions about knowledge can be more or less true. For example, "I know how to build a bridge." That is a claim that could be true in degrees, so to speak, spanning from the child with his Erector set to the engineer building a suspension bridge. But I don't see how we go from this idea to the claim that true/false are contraries and not contradictories. Perhaps you need to define what you mean by "contrary."

Seconds, for the term "true" to have any content, it must not to apply equally to all things; falsity must be at least a possibility. For my part, it's unclear to me how we can have falseness without an intellect. For instance, stars, rocks, numbers, and trees are not true or false, but rather beliefs and statements about them are. Nor will it do to have truth and falsity be properties of "language," as isolated from any consideration of language users. Rocks do not come to know things by having truths carved into them, and in a lifeless universe of random shifting sands, a proposition that happens to be spelled out in English by pure chance means nothing to anyone. — Count Timothy von Icarus

There is a rather long ongoing discussion on this topic beginning on page 12 of another thread.

the idea that all knowledge and belief is reducible to atomic propositions, that knowledge is the type of thing that can be atomized or is a whole that is merely the sum of its parts. — Count Timothy von Icarus

See:

At the end of the day it is not merely sentential. Knowledge/truth is more than a set of sentences. — Leontiskos

-

St. Thomas makes the case for this — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is interesting insofar as Thomas delineates an assertion of falsehood from a negation, which we came up against in the threads on Kimhi.

But I don't see Thomas saying that the true and the false are not contradictories, nor do I see Aristotle saying that. Classically, true/false are contradictories:

“opposite assertions cannot be true at the same time” (Metaph IV 6 1011b13–20) — SEP on Aristotle and Non-Contradiction

(The law of the excluded middle must also be mixed in.)

Edit: For Aristotle contraries allow for an unexcluded middle, but true/false do not, therefore true/false are not contraries. Cf. Metaphysics IV.7 - 1011b23.

- Yep.

It treats the universe as sort of flat and so it tells a story that is sort of flat.

...

But I don't always want a framework that doesn't distinguish eating from dancing from speaking, or leaves those distinctions optional, or builds up to them in a similarly generic way (apo). — Srap Tasmaner

I got a degree in computer science a few years before formally studying philosophy. Some years later as I was reading Plato I finally popped out of the flat paradigm, and it was a bizarre experience.

For the computer scientist (and the analytic philosopher) everything is computer- and computation-centric. The computer is the operating element, and it is just doing things with inputs. Labeling them, classifying them, ordering and combining them in different ways. This looks to be a consequence of the Kantian shift, where everything began to orbit around anthropos. On my view the flatness of such a conception lies in the idea that all inputs are prima facie equivalent (e.g. eating, dancing, speaking, thinking, classifying...). It presupposes the autonomous subject freely interacting with static and rationally manipulable inputs. The knowledge does not go beyond these rational manipulations and comparisons.

While reading Plato that day I finally understood the pre-Kantian and pre-modern view, which is dynamic through and through (in subject and object). Eating, dancing, speaking, and everything else that we encounter are ineliminably distinct and unique. It's a bit like when a psychologist has a tidy personality theory that is supposed to encapsulate all persons. But then they may encounter a string of people who do not at all fit their schema, and come to recognize that the schema is highly artificial. The attempt to make all objects commensurable vis-a-vis the computational motherboard now strikes me as a highly artificial endeavor. It can be done to one limited extent or another, but in the end it is in vain.

This Kantian shift gobbles up conceptions of correspondence, even before pragmatism hits the scene. An Analytic thinks of correspondence between sentence and reality, and looks for some corresponding content. For the pre-modern correspondence of the intellect is something like a shapeshifter taking on the form of different species. To be/know a giraffe is much different than to be/know a woman, or an Indian, or a river. It is not a static relationship between mind/computer and object/input. At the end of the day it is not merely sentential. Knowledge/truth is more than a set of sentences. There is a very important sense in which substances are incommensurably different, and they dynamically interact with us in ways that we cannot anticipate or control. But the solipsistic tendency to take a static-computational paradigm for granted is very natural in our time. In always holding substances at arm's length and requiring them to be commensurable and static we limit our knowledge of them, and we limit our conception of knowledge (indeed, even to speak of substances rather than objects is to shift).

Yep, great illustrations. I like the way you pressed that line.

(Coming back to this thread when I have more time...)

I am not just speaking about war, but also diplomacy. — Bob Ross

Okay, but in your OP you talk about "forcible imposition" and "taking over North Korea," which look like warlike acts (i.e. imposing some value on a country by taking it over).

I think we have a duty to help humans qua Justice. Our rational capacities mark us out, teleologically, as requiring of ourselves, among many other things, to be impartial, objective, and to bestow demerit and merit where it is deserved (objectively). Under my view, a human has a duty to be Just merely in virtue of being a person; and basic human rights are grounded in one’s nature as a person, and so, yes, a rational alien species would have those same basic rights. — Bob Ross

So is your answer, "We must help the guy on the other side of the world because justice?" I don't see a concrete argument here. Why does justice require it?

Note how clear my argument was when I spoke of justice:

"Suppose I see a source of mercury polluting the water supply. I should remove it, because as a member of the community I should value the health of the community and the cleanliness of its water. My good is bound up in the community's good, just as its good is bound up in my good."

This was based on what Aquinas says, "it belongs to general justice to do good in relation to the community..."

I am not arguing that we have a responsibility to take care of other nations; but we do have a responsibility to stop immoralities when they are grave enough. — Bob Ross

Why wouldn't you be? Why don't you require that we have a responsibility to take care of other nations? And isn't that precisely what we are doing when we intervene to prevent them from engaging in immoralities?

Under your view, I am not following why one would be obligated to even do this; as it is not their community. — Bob Ross

We are not obligated in a natural sense.

Under your view, is it not a just war to invade Nazi Germany? Is it not an obligation other nations would have because they have no duty to victims of another nation? — Bob Ross

You are mixing together the notions of obligatory and permissible. What by natural virtue is supererogatory is neither impermissible nor obligatory.

Well, that’s my point: the whole of humanity is a para-community no differently. So if a person must be concerned about the pollution in their nation, then they should be concerned about it every else on planet earth. — Bob Ross

Well the point is that a para-community does not possess obligations. The U.S. is so large, diverse, and diffuse, that what is at stake is more like an alliance than the natural obligations of a community.

But they would still have moral obligations—no? One such obligation would be to use their excess of resources to help other persons (and then other non-person animals). No? — Bob Ross

No, I don't think so. Not on natural premises. Else, what is the argument for why a person with abundant resources is obligated to help others?

Ultimately, your teleology as a human. You are a rational animal, which is a person. Persons must pursue truth, knowledge, honesty, open-mindness, justice, impartiality, objectivity, etc. in order to fulfill their rational telos. — Bob Ross

The first problem is the idea that I have a duty to be virtuous. To whom is this duty owed? Strictly speaking, one does not owe oneself anything, because they are but one agent, not two.

The second problem is the idea that justice requires us to fulfill the things you want us to fulfill. How does it do that? I am not aware of any kind of justice that obliges me to help people on the other side of the world.

Yes, but I don’t think the lion is ignorant just because it lacks the sufficient ability to will in accordance with reason. My dog, e.g., wills in accordance with its own knowledge and conative dispositions all the time. — Bob Ross

For Aristotle your dog does not have knowledge, and it therefore does not have volition.

So is a human bound by nature to care for its young, does that mean that a woman who takes care of her babies is not dutiful to her maternal duties? — Bob Ross

A human is bound by reason to care for its young, unlike a lion.

Or, perhaps, do you mean by “bound by nature” that it wills it not in accordance with its own will, but some other biological underpinning? — Bob Ross

Yes, biological instinct dictates that lions care for their young. They do not engage in knowledge, volition, choices, etc.

Let’s take the most famous example of moral relativism that is a form of moral realism: Aristotelian Ethics. — Bob Ross

I don't take Aristotle to be a moral relativist.

E.g., I would consider “I should live a virtuous life” to be a categorical imperative that is derivable from Aristotelian Ethics even though it is true relative to the Telos of living creatures. — Bob Ross

Sure, so to speak.

but I'm interested in why you think an atheist would need there to be UFOs to impart meaning on their lives and why you think theists would lose something if they accepted that UFOs existed. — Hanover

I added a sentence for that:

Neither one really believes that we are all alone. — Leontiskos

For atheists it is statistically improbable that we are all alone, therefore there must be alien intelligence. If you follow the actual reasoning this is what you will find.

Edit: There is also the narrative that solves the abiogenesis question by appealing to extra terrestrials.

UFOs and bigfoot could exist under our current concept of physics and scientific reality. Gods and angels, not so much. — Hanover

Except that scientific atheists do not limit their conception of extraterrestrials to our current concept of physics, and smart atheists know that God and angels do not contradict science.

I think that's probably why atheists can better accept UFOs and fundamentalists cannot. — Hanover

But haven't you equivocated between fundamentalists and believers? Was your study about fundamentalists?

I wondered about that, but this article says religious people are less likely to believe in UFOs than are atheists. — Hanover

Atheists believe in UFOs because they don't believe in God. Theists don't need to believe in UFOs because they believe in God. Neither one really believes that we are all alone.

Michael says no or "mu" or "cannot compute" — fdrake

I think Michael is driving in the direction of the kind of consistency I was gesturing towards at the very beginning of this discussion, and I maintain that the best entry point is to ask about whether there can be truths absent minds (rather than talking about sentences or utterances).

I think Nietzsche would have us be nominalists after killing God. At the outset Banno implied that there is gold in Boorara absent minds. The view that we imbibed with our mother's milk is that there is gold in Boorara, and that this is true independent of human utterances and human minds. That makes sense for a Platonist, or an Aristotelian, or a Stoic, or a Christian, or a Muslim. It therefore makes intuitive sense for the Western mind. But it no longer makes sense if we move into a principled atheism.

Largely pointless pseudoproblem conjured by insisting upon the meaning of sentences being separate from but mirroring the world they engage with. It's ye olde how does the representation correspond to the represented but with sentences. IMO there isn't a correspondence or symmetry of content, there's mutual constraints of word and world, so I don't care much. — fdrake

Does that really address any of the issues? For example, how is the question about the metaphysical status of truth the same as the debates of representationalism? They seem quite distinct, although not entirely unrelated. And I don't see anyone disputing the idea that "there are mutual constraints of world and word."

I heard that Australia is in the process of implementing a law that prohibits anyone under 16 from using social media.

Meanwhile, drones fly over NJ and no one is entitled to an explanation. — Hanover

Shoot them down and wait to see who sues you. Problem solved.

I don't care too much about which account is true, they both seem like cromulent ways of doing business. It's just two ways of answering "If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it does it make a sound...", Michael says no or "mu" or "cannot compute", Banno says yes, in ye olde page 2-10 @Leontiskos sort of says "yes, because God hears it" and @Wayfarer sort of says "no, because what it means to be a sound is to be heard". — fdrake

What do you say? There is a problem on TPF of criticizing views without giving one's own view. You pointed it up in Michael quite well, but to be complete you should also be willing to give your own view.

- :up:

I mean, I know such arguments are unfavored here, but you don't actually know anything about what does or does not happen after death minus what a 2 year old can observe and comment on. — Outlander

Yes, we do not know that at all, despite the fact that seculars today pretend to.

Harming oneself is bad. ...That's a sound principle that does not require pretending to know that there is nothing after death. Things are not at bleak as they seem. Reality has a way of surprising our simplistic and short-sighted fears and expectations.

I see what you are saying, but if Aquinas is just noting that no man can punish another who is not in their jurisdiction (to do so) but that they can restrain or stop a person from doing wrong; then this does not, per se, negate my point since invading a nation like North Korea is done primarily for stopping them—not punishing them. — Bob Ross

Well, to occupy a country militarily seems quite different from, "to restrain a man for a time from doing some unlawful deed there and then." I think you're really talking about an act of war, and I don't think just war theory would permit initiating a war or a war-like act simply for the sake of preventing some country from engaging in immorality. Some immoralities may justify wars, but certainly not all.

I thought you were saying, by way of Aquinas, that a nation cannot invade another nation to stop them from doing immoral things to their own people because that nation has no jurisdiction over the other one (and thusly no duty to do it). That’s inherently about the legal system: the jurisdiction that they don’t have is purely legal—no?

Likewise, the polis is about legal jurisdiction: it is the city-state. — Bob Ross

My point is that, just as there is legal jurisdiction, so too is there moral jurisdiction. One is not morally justified in preventing every act of immorality, just as one is not legally justified in preventing every act of illegality. It is an analogy. I am not saying the moral and the legal are identical.

And no, the polis is not about legal jurisdiction. It is about mutual interdependence.

It arises out of the roles an agent has within that teleological structure—e.g., a good dad, a good son, a good mother, a good police officer, a good firefighter, a good judge, etc. — Bob Ross

Okay.

...I should care about the cleanliness of the water on the whole planet for the sake of the entire moral project (which is to properly respect life in a nutshell).

I don’t just have a duty to clean the water for my own ‘community’ (as you mean it) but, rather, to preserve the human good and the good of all life—don’t you agree? If you see a polluted stream that you knew with 100% certainty wouldn’t pose any threat to your community but would to another, then you think you have no moral obligation, ceteris paribus, to do something about it? The human good (in terms of as a whole) doesn’t bind you at all—just the communal good? — Bob Ross

I think we have a Christian duty to help humans qua human, but not a natural duty. Kant is attempting to rationalize Christian morality, and I don't think he succeeds. For example, what is your rationale? What does it mean that we have a duty "for the sake of the entire moral project?"

Presumably you would say we also have a duty to rational aliens on other planets, if they exist?

If I am traveling in China and I notice a source of water pollution, I do not think I am bound in natural justice to address it.

The reason the average Western citizen thinks he has duties to random strangers on the other side of the world is because he was reared in a Christian culture.

Not quite, this is, again, the straw man that I am arguing that every human is obligated to do the impossible; but I am saying that human’s have duties to the human race—not just their own nation. — Bob Ross

I know, and again, "The bee would have no reason to believe you." Do you offer any reason for why we are responsible to people on the other side of the world?

A nation wouldn’t be a community then: they aren’t self-sufficient. They have to trade with other nations. — Bob Ross

For wealth, but usually not for necessity. But a nation would generally be seen as a kind of para-community.

I don’t think so. For you, would you say that if you didn’t require the resources of anyone else in your nation (and thereby were living completely self-sufficiently), then you have no obligations to help other people? What if you are filthy rich and completely self-sufficient and there are people that are starving? It seems like under your view there would be no duty or obligation to help them because there is no interdependence. — Bob Ross

Humans are pretty much always dependent, but if there were a non-social species then yes, it would not have communal obligations. One does not have communal obligations if one does not belong to a community.

I don’t remember how I initially presented the principle, but it might have been. What I am saying is that there are duties which arise out of the roles one has in a teleological structure, some of which can be morally relevant, and that those duties do extend to the entirety of the moral project [of respecting life—Justice and Fairness]. — Bob Ross

Supposing I have duties to random strangers on the other side of the world, in virtue of what teleological reality do I have those duties?

I used that example of purpose in anticipation (;

If I am right that duties arise out of the roles derived from the teleological structure and duty is living in proper agreement with those roles and being dutiful is fulfilling one’s duties, then a lion is dutiful if the lion is fulfilling its roles within the teleological structure of being a lion—e.g., a good father lion, etc.

Voluntariness and choice are not the same thing—given that I take the Aristotelian approach here—and duty is just acting in alignment with one’s obligations; which can be done voluntarily without choice. — Bob Ross

A lion is bound by nature to care for its young, but not by reason. I don't see that Aristotle would attribute volition to lions. He says, "a voluntary act is one which is originated by the doer with knowledge of the particular circumstances of the act" (Nicomachean Ethics, III.i).

If they are a chess player, then they are bound to follow the rules. Sure, they can decide to become a chess player or not, but that doesn’t make the goodness, badness, and dutifulness which is relative to that teleological structure a hypothetical imperative for a chess player. — Bob Ross

Your point looks tautological, "If he wants to play the game of chess, then he must follow the rules of chess, because in order to play the game one must follow the rules." But you are trying to say that chess duties are not moral duties. I would say that if one breaks their promise to play chess then they are acting immorally, which can be done by cheating. I don't recognize non-moral duties.

If I take your argument seriously, then it sounds like all forms of moral relativism must express merely hypothetical imperatives. — Bob Ross

Sure, that sounds right to me.

Who says it has to be unconditional? — Vera Mont

:up:

1. One cannot reprimand a person which one has no jurisdiction over.
2. One can reprimand a person which is doing something unlawful. — Bob Ross

The word "reprimand" does not appear at all in the passages you quote, which hinders your argument for equivocation.

Then we are not restricting ‘duty’ to its strict meaning as it relates to law — Bob Ross

What do you think it would mean to restrict duty to that which relates to law? Are you thinking of positive law or something?

The question, then, becomes: “what kinds of teleological structures can support duties?” — Bob Ross

How do you suppose a teleological structure would support a duty?

If I were to grant that one such set of moral duties relates to the teleological structure of ‘community’, then it seems to plainly follow that the entire human species, as a whole, is the highest of this type of structure as it relates to humans — Bob Ross

Suppose I see a source of mercury polluting the water supply. I should remove it, because as a member of the community I should value the health of the community and the cleanliness of its water. My good is bound up in the community's good, just as its good is bound up in my good. But the human race is not a community in any obvious sense. For the ancients the largest community would have been the polis, the city-state. Telling a human that they are responsible for every human would be like telling a bee that it is responsible for every bee, as opposed to the bees of its hive and especially its queen. The bee would have no reason to believe you.

Perhaps the argument is not that because they are so distant to each other that they are not proper communities but, rather,... — Bob Ross

What is a community? It is something like a group of mutually self-sufficient people. Communal obligations arise in virtue of that interdependence. The parties to a war would be an example of separate communities.

I wouldn’t say that one must oppose all the immorality that they can per se: one should oppose all immorality that they can as it relates to their duties. — Bob Ross

But that's circular, for you are appealing to your principle in order to establish duties.

The difference between us, is that I think of duties as relating to many teleological structures, whereas yours seems to be limited to legal structures. — Bob Ross

I don't know where you are getting these ideas, but I don't think you will find them in my posts.

So, what teleological structures can support duties? I would argue: all of them! Just as all teleological structures can and do support objective, internal goods to and for the given structure; so, too, does it house duties which relate to the preservation and realization of the purposes in those structures. E.g., just as there is such a thing as a good lion, there is such a thing as a dutiful lion. — Bob Ross

I was about to make a joke about the animal kingdom, and then you went on to talk about dutiful lions. So you think that teleology entails duties and lions have duties?

Surely, e.g., a dutiful lion is not morally relevant, for the lion cannot rationally deliberate (in any meaningful sense). — Bob Ross

If lions cannot deliberate then I'm not sure what a dutiful lion is.

Doesn’t, e.g., a chess player have certain chess duties (such as not cheating to win) even though they are not directly morally relevant duties? — Bob Ross

The chess player has a hypothetical imperative to follow the rules of chess, but unless he has a duty to play chess he has no duty to follow the rules of chess. Yet if he promises someone to play chess with them, then he has a duty to follow the rules in virtue of his promise. In any case, hypothetical imperatives are not duties.

I didn't say it. — Michael

Heaven forbid that you would say something. :wink:

Yes, I saw you nudging in that direction. I don't know. I think things get tricky once we realize how important the predispositions of philosophical inquiry are, and then try to manage them. It is there, in the heart of the jungle, where you encounter the most danger and require the most care, and yet after the long and taxing journey care and attention is often lacking when it is most needed. A text like Przywara's Analogia Entis is an attempt to plumb those depths, and the success is always only partial.

Traditionally the difficult question and the cleft/alienation doesn't appear with truth, but rather with falsity and error (and the threads on Kimhi danced around this). We can debate the relation between truth and falsity, but it looks to me that in the long history of epistemology the conundrum is, "What is falsity?" "What is error?" And if the false cannot be known then how can the ship be righted?

(Michael was poking around in this when he earlier said that realism inevitably courts skepticism. The problem is that his idiosyncratically defined "anti-realism" doesn't seem to offer a substantive alternative. The problems posed by skepticism aren't so easily evaded, at least at the theoretical level.)

Yes, that is an interesting idea. It also seems to me that there's a kind of pre-reflexive movement—something like faith or trust—that determines the outcome in a curious way. If you trust him then he turns out to be trustworthy, and if you don't trust him then he turns out to be untrustworthy, and there is no middle ground.

I see this a lot in the analytical stance of trying to achieve that neutral middle ground, a stance which carries within itself commitments that are unseen.

:up:

This is the classical problem of "realism," namely the debate between those espousing some account of universals and those espousing nominalism. Usually on TPF we read about a philosophical issue on SEP like someone who reads about the wetness of water. The benefit of real argument, such as this thread represents, is the same as the benefit of familiarity with water itself, as opposed to encyclopedia descriptions.

Dare We Say, ‘Thanks for Nothing’? — FrankGSterleJr

Sure, if you have nothing. But it's mostly not the people with nothing saying such things.

- Good posts. :up:

Sure, I just think the extreme cases are useful to demonstrate how it is implausible, from the perspective of almost any ethics, that we always benefit most from extending our own lives. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That's fair.

The drive of beings to maintain their own form is absolute nowhere in nature. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think self-preservation is a drive of nature.

Nor is the case of dying in this way really sui generis. We often take on all sorts of risk and suffering to accomplish goals. The duties that come with being a parent, learning to ride a bike, learning to read, starting an exercise regime or diet, etc. can all be unpleasant and risky, and yet it seems hard to claim that this entails that they cannot be to our benefit. The daily self-reported "happiness" of parents of young children is significantly lower on average, for years out, but I don't think this makes having children necessarily not to one's benefit. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Isn't is sui generis in the sense that it forces us to conceive of "our benefit" in a non-egoistic manner? After all, egoists don't balk at dieting to lose weight in the way they balk at martyrdom.

I agree that we are mistaken in thinking that egoism is the default or natural position, but it does have a basis in human experience.

It's the demand for a univocal measure of the good that leads towards such rigid pronouncements as "it is never to our benefit to do something that kills us." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, but the univocity is determined by egoism and the attendant interpretation of "our benefit." For Peter L. P. Simpson this is perhaps the characteristic moral marker of modernity. It is certainly the prima facie position for 21st century folk.

Kant is an inheritor of that modern way of thinking. He does not challenge it in any significant way. And his fideistic solution is characteristically Protestant.

Well, again, I think the question has to do with cases of heroic virtue. If a 110 year-old sacrifices their life there will almost certainly be less heroic virtue involved than if a 30 year-old sacrifices their life. It is one thing to be willing to accept a mortal cost for the sake of a virtuous act, and another to be circumstantially indifferent to death. So I would want to keep our eyes on cases where the person stands to lose something. You are giving cases where, for one reason or another, the person does not stand to lose much in dying.

- So you won't give an honest answer to the question. Noted.

I wonder however you arrived at this? Name calling too. That's called strange. — Tom Storm

No, it's called true. Saying things you don't believe is lying, whether you like it or not.

You're engaged in a lot of sophistry in this thread. Here's the question:

For example, why do we prohibit cocaine as a society? — Leontiskos

Do you have an honest answer?

- So you're just saying things you don't believe to be true. That's called lying.

- Do you really think cocaine should be legal and prostitution leads to happiness? Or are you just saying things you don't believe to be true?

Because it's generally bad to have one's grandchildren die. The one act, saving the kids, might entail dying. Which is to be preferred? The claim that it is simply impossible to rightly prize any goals more than temporarily extending one's (necessarily finite) mortal life seems like one that it will be very hard to justify. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, that is a good argument. :up:
The virtuous person does not value their own life above every other thing.

- The text has a cultural context. It does no good to read "just the text" while ignoring that context.

People ask not to receive medical treatment all the time. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Okay, but this isn't really relevant to an argument regarding courage or virtue. The question here is, "Should we be virtuous, even if means dying?" When death is preferable to a burdensome life we are talking about something quite different.

If a grandmother attempts to save her grandchildren, and will die in the process of successfully rescuing them, it hardly seems clear that this cannot be to her benefit either. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Okay, but why? How is it to her benefit? J is obviously going to respond by pointing out that one who ceases to exist can no longer positively benefit.

And this might well be true, but it shows that life is not ultimately sought for its own sake, but rather as a prerequisite for other goods. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think that life is intrinsically good. It's just not unconditionally good. It does not trump every other consideration. And this is where I would go with Socrates. Indeed, it is where Socrates goes himself.

"They conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; love for life did not deter them from death" (Revelation 12:11).

If J told his followers to go out among the gentiles/the nations and eat what they serve you then I cannot view that as anything other than permission to break Torah law regarding diet. — BitconnectCarlos

Scholars see other possibilities, some of which I already gave:

It could be that, but there are alternative interpretations, namely the avoidance of being fussy when receiving hospitality, and ignoring the additional food laws imposed by the "traditions of the elders." — Leontiskos

But as Count Timothy von Icarus notes by gJohn we have J instructing his followers to dine on his blood and flesh -- clearly prohibited by the Torah. — BitconnectCarlos

Sure, but this goes back to my point about an elevation of the core of the Law. It is also tied up with his divinity. If he isn't divine, then when he says this he is breaking the Law tout court.

Sure, the distinction between pleasure and happiness is alive and relatively well presently, insofar as pleasure is the primary conception of the singular positive feeling, happiness being one of many subsumed under it. Right? Is that what you’re getting at? — Mww

No, I don't think happiness is one species of pleasure. Think of an exchange like this:

• Son: Having sex with prostitutes whenever I please gives me great pleasure.
• Father: But what about happiness? Will it make you happy?

That exchange is as meaningful now as it was 2500 years ago. This constant claim that our word "happiness" primarily means something superficial looks to be simply wrong.

This is a very interesting take, that I would like to explore more. — Bob Ross

:up:

I think you are right here: the firefighter’s duty would be to help put out fires and help people vacant the premises—not necessarily to save everyone. — Bob Ross

Yes, and that seems in line with what I found when looking at firefighter's oaths, i.e. "Protecting people."

So what about the man that watched that woman get kidnapped? It seems like your view leaves no room for moral obligation to help people outside of the strict, institutionalized sense of duty. — Bob Ross

• We must oppose all the immorality that we can.
• We must oppose all the immorality that we should.

On your "can" formulation we must help the woman being raped. What about on my "should" formulation? Is there a reason why we should help her aside from the simple fact that we can? I think so.

Aquinas addresses some of this in the complicated Question 79 of the Secunda Secundae, particularly in Article 1 (on the quasi-integral parts of justice) and Article 3 (on omission).

First:

In fact, wouldn’t it follow that—not only was the man permitted to just stand there and watch but—he was not permitted to stop it since, according to your Thomistic take, he has no jurisdiction to reprimand a fellow unwilling citizen? — Bob Ross

See, in the same Question:

Reply to Objection 3. It is lawful for anyone to restrain a man for a time from doing some unlawful deed there and then: as when a man prevents another from throwing himself over a precipice, or from striking another. — Aquinas, ST II-II.65.3.ad3

How does this pertain to justice, given that Aquinas is speaking in the context of a section of the Secunda Secundae devoted to justice?

I would point to this:

If we speak of good and evil in general, it belongs to every virtue to do good and to avoid evil: and in this sense they cannot be reckoned parts of justice, except justice be taken in the sense of "all virtue" [Cf. II-II:58:5]. And yet even if justice be taken in this sense it regards a certain special aspect of good; namely, the good as due in respect of Divine or human law.

On the other hand justice considered as a special virtue regards good as due to one's neighbor. And in this sense it belongs to special justice to do good considered as due to one's neighbor, and to avoid the opposite evil, that, namely, which is hurtful to one's neighbor; while it belongs to general justice to do good in relation to the community or in relation to God, and to avoid the opposite evil. — Aquinas, ST II-II.79.1 - Whether to decline from evil and to do good are parts of justice?

Given that an omission, strictly speaking, is a matter of justice and due (cf. ST II-II.79.3), and omitting aid to the rape victim is an omission of justice in this strict sense, then how is it that the victim is due aid? (If they are not due aid then helping them might be a nice thing to do, but it is not due to them as a kind of duty.)

For Aquinas there are two options. The aid could be due qua the specific virtue of justice, or it could be due according to justice taken in the general sense. If we want to go the route of the specific virtue of justice, then the good of aid must be due to them qua individual (e.g. commutatively). I wouldn't take that route. If we want to go the route of justice taken in a general sense, then the good of aid must be due to them in virtue of their relation to the community or God. I think we could go the route of the community and say that one is acting as a kind of unofficial police officer who has care of the common good. Similar to the way we might pick up litter for the sake of the community, we should also prevent overt injustices such as rape for the sake of the community. This is to assess the person's private good qua common good.

So the rape victim has a right which we must honor in view of their inclusion within our community. Is a person on the other side of the world a member of our community? Classically the answer is 'no', and to say 'yes' is to stretch the meaning of "community" unduly. But if one wants to say that they are a member of the human community and we have a duty to all members of the human community, then it could be said that a duty is owed to them, albeit the thinnest kind of duty.

And then there is the question of their relation to God, especially if we take a revealed aspect of God. This is where it gets tricky, because the Christian has a duty to the victim via God, and our society is by and large a Christian society (and therefore many of the cultural intuitions are Christian intuitions). Thus Aquinas speaks of mercy and beneficence in the context of supernatural charity (ST II-II.30 and II-II.31). For example:

Objection 1. It would seem that we are not bound to do good to all. For Augustine says (De Doctr. Christ. i, 28) that we "are unable to do good to everyone." Now virtue does not incline one to the impossible. Therefore it is not necessary to do good to all.

Reply to Objection 1. Absolutely speaking it is impossible to do good to every single one: yet it is true of each individual that one may be bound to do good to him in some particular case. Hence charity binds us, though not actually doing good to someone, to be prepared in mind to do good to anyone if we have time to spare. There is however a good that we can do to all, if not to each individual, at least to all in general, as when we pray for all, for unbelievers as well as for the faithful. — Aquinas ST II-II.31.2.ad1 - Whether we ought to do good to all?

(Note that for Aristotle this is more straightforward, as we should be beneficent but beneficence is not due in justice.)

And:

I answer that, Grace and virtue imitate the order of nature, which is established by Divine wisdom. Now the order of nature is such that every natural agent pours forth its activity first and most of all on the things which are nearest to it: thus fire heats most what is next to it. In like manner God pours forth the gifts of His goodness first and most plentifully on the substances which are nearest to Him, as Dionysius declares (Coel. Hier. vii). But the bestowal of benefits is an act of charity towards others. Therefore we ought to be most beneficent towards those who are most closely connected with us.

Now one man's connection with another may be measured in reference to the various matters in which men are engaged together; (thus the intercourse of kinsmen is in natural matters, that of fellow-citizens is in civic matters, that of the faithful is in spiritual matters, and so forth): and various benefits should be conferred in various ways according to these various connections, because we ought in preference to bestow on each one such benefits as pertain to the matter in which, speaking simply, he is most closely connected with us. And yet this may vary according to the various requirements of time, place, or matter in hand: because in certain cases one ought, for instance, to succor a stranger, in extreme necessity, rather than one's own father, if he is not in such urgent need. — Aquinas II-II.31.3 - Whether we ought to do good to those rather who are more closely united to us?

And on this principle it should be seen that, in effect, we have no real duties to random strangers on the other side of the world.

True enough. ↪Bob Ross and I understand the symbiosis on the one hand and the conceptual evolution on the other. — Mww

Or devolution? Either way, I think the distinction between pleasure and happiness is still alive in our contemporary lexicon, and it avoids these arguments about happiness vs. happiness.