Of course, if we view "objective" as only a process or a quality that can be said of objects, measurable things, then we avoid all such confusions. If we're not using "objective" in anyway apart from saying "it's true" then it's just a confusing extra emblem that contains no meaning, as it then takes time to determine that nothing is meant more than "it's true"; but then, of course, everyone will claim to be objective in this way, including moral relativist (they are just "being objective" that no moral truths are universally true; i.e. everyone is objectivist). — boethius

"Objective morality" is often used interchangeably with "moral realism," but that doesn't clarify things much. As Crispin Wright quipped, "a philosopher who asserts that she is a realist about theoretical science, for example, or ethics, has probably, for most philosophical audiences, accomplished little more than to clear her throat." (But the same can be said about many philosophical terms of art.)

Conclusion:

Equating "objective" with "reasonable" is a Randian invention — boethius

I don't know why you make so much of this. I am obviously not well-read in this area, but even a cursory search shows that the word "objective" and its forms are routinely used in relation to ethics in philosophy and psychology literature, with no reference to Rand, e.g.

Moral realism and the foundations of ethics
Moral realism: A defence (36 uses of 'objectivist,' 'objective,' etc. in just the first two chapters)
Ethical intuitionism

AFAIK the Schrodinger equation's time evolution is deterministic, but that doesn't make the states deterministic. The states are samples from probability distributions (generalisations of probability distributions I guess? I vaguely recall that they break a few rules). It might be that someone can declare some aspect of the randomness "unphysical" and salvage a global determinism (if only we had (blah) we'd determine the output states!). I don't really know enough about it. — fdrake

The more traditional interpretations treat the equation as only one component that is needed to determine the actual physical state - position, momentum. Everett just reads it literally as the equation of state, sacrificing some of our traditional notions of what a physical state is.

I'm reading this as a claim that there's some source that determines the observed quantum states deterministically, it's simply that we don't (or cannot) know the behaviour of the source? Analogously, Pi's digits pass tests for statistical randomness, but they're determined given a way to arbitrarily accurately evaluate Pi. — fdrake

With some effort we could interpret, for example, the spigot algorithm for calculating the digits of pi as some exotic physical process. Looking at it from the other end, if we were performing physical measurements, would we be able to figure out the underlying mechanism? Not without more context; taken on their own, measurements would appear quite random. Or take a chaotic Newtonian system: an observation that is limited to setting up the system, letting it run and then performing a measurement would lead us to conclude that it is aleatory. My point is that we need to probe nature not just many times, but in many different ways, in order to establish the causal mechanism with reasonable confidence (and always with the assumption that nature is not much trickier than we think it is, but that assumption is part of what goes into "reasonable confidence").

Thanks for the context and clarification.

I would also like to emphasize what other's have pointed out, that we have "universalism" and "absolutism" to refer to ideas of the "true-true" about ethical principles, and that using the word "objectivism" is simply associating oneself with Randianism — boethius

I was leery about going along with "objectivist," but I thought Randianism was obscure and disreputable enough that there would be little chance of confusion. But yes, if there are well-established terms, it's better to use those.

No philosopher posits that moral truths, if they exist, are the same kind of thing as physical objects of which it makes sense to be "objective" about (that we can simply go and measure a moral truth as 5kg, 50cm tall and 40cm wide); indeed, the whole point of the word "objective" is in the context that we have different values, goals, and experience but can still agree on some physical facts about the real world (if we both make a good faith attempt at "being objective" and collaborate on at least this issue to start as common ground); so, as it is normally used it's simply a self contradiction to be "objective" about said values and goals (which remain, in essentially any philosophy, subjective things that we cannot observe in the same way as a chair, regardless of what justifications we have for said values and goals). — boethius

I think @Pfhorrest is apt to treat moral propositions much like a physicalist would treat propositions about the physical world, and he believes that we can use something like a scientific method for discovering moral truths. In any case "objective morality" is a term of art, though I wouldn't have a use for it.

Yees. I am assuming the things accurately described as random are random. Do any of the interpretations you referenced remove the distribution from the theory? — fdrake

Well, I have a mostly pop-sci "knowledge" of QM, my college physics being too rusty to be of much use, but as far as I know the "pilot wave" of Bohmian mechanics would make measurements deterministic - except, of course, being hidden, it is not part of the measurement. And MWI says that the full wavefunction evolution is deterministic (as the Schrodinger equation shows), but we can only measure one of its eigenvalues at a time, since our subjective state in which the measurement outcome is recorded doesn't encompass the full quantum state. If you perform successive measurements on identically prepared systems, the branching wavefunction will leave a trail of random results in each individual branch, even though across all of the branches every set of measurement outcomes will be the same.

I quite don't understand the relevance of this. Can you elaborate? Are you saying that the real world might have a hidden number that removes all the randomness associated with quantum variables? — fdrake

I am saying that if it did, we wouldn't know it just from this one sampling. We might guess that it looks suspiciously like the digits of pi, for example (if we were lucky to sample from the already calculated range), but such numerology is perilous. For example, in the past there were a number of attempts to "derive" the empirically measured fine structure constant of particle physics from the ratios of integers and important transcendent numbers like e and pi. Nothing came out of it, as more accurate measurements successively falsified all such hypotheses. (Perhaps we shouldn't retrospectively dismiss these exercises as unscientific numerology, but instead look at them as failed heuristics that once in a blue moon do lead to discoveries.) But the moral is that we usually require more context to establish a causal mechanism behind a phenomenon than a single sampling, which may not reveal a regularity behind it, or conversely may trick us with an appearance of regularity that is not actually there (like in the case of the fine structure constant). Quantum mechanics is, of course, an example of a theory that was developed, first of all, on the shoulders of previous successful theories, and second, with the help of numerous independent lines of evidence, so we should feel pretty safe here.

More like subjectivist. — SophistiCat

Is that not a kind of relativist? — Pfhorrest

Relativism is most commonly associated with the view that what is moral is defined by the moral standards of one's culture. In that sense it still has an objective component - it just makes morality more granular and more entangled with human subjectivity than a thoroughgoing objectivist like Kant or Mill might like.

In a more general sense, relativism can collapse into subjectivism when the granularity of the group that is setting the moral standards is increased to the limit of a single individual. But there is a qualitative jump that occurs at that point, in that much of moral metaphysics becomes redundant. It is no longer necessary to ask oneself whether X is actually right, as opposed to just right, because there is no contrast to be drawn here. An extreme relativist might say that there are as many moral truths as there are people. I would just find it odd and unnecessary to qualify a moral attitude as "true" when all I want to say is that I regard X as right and Smith regards X as wrong (which means that Smith is wrong by my lights - but that is redundant to say).

Then are you a nihilist? — Pfhorrest

More like subjectivist.

I mean only what's also called "moral universalism", which is just the claim that, for any particular event, in its full context, there is some moral evaluation of that event in that context that it is correct for everyone to make, i.e. that the correct moral evaluation doesn't change depending on who is making it.

Are you a moral objectivist? (see above for clarification) — Pfhorrest

I don't much care for forum polls, but I thought that this was pretty clear formulation of the question.

No, I don't think I am a moral objectivist (which does not make me a "relativist" in the usual sense - see Pfhorrest's explanations).

I certainly hope there are more moral objectivists than relativists here, since moral relativism effectively means the belief there is no morality. — Congau

Way to beg the question!

The way to defeat this argument is not by changing my constant into a variable. It would be by proving that the intention of Divine Command Theory is not actually to serve human flourishing. — Thomas Quine

Of course the intention of Divine Command Theory is not to serve human flourishing. You might instead try to argue that the intension of DCT includes human flourishing. But your methodology is so flaky that the whole exercise is pretty meaningless.

Here is the question: "Is there a universal grounding for morality?"

I look at the things that most people consider immoral:

Theft; murder; sexual abuse; pedophilia; breaking contracts; lying; corruption; slavery; you name it.

I ask, "What do all these have in common?" My answer is, they all are detrimental to human flourishing. Who am I to say? How do I know this? I consult the evidence from the available science. — Thomas Quine

Here you are asking the question: "What is common to all moral imperatives?" If there were such a common feature, I would not call it grounding, much less the grounding of morality, just on that basis. (All cats have claws... you get the point.)

Anyway, this is an empirical question about the practice morality - an is question. Your answer is not a good one, and the way you go about establishing it is not scientific (which probably explains the result). For one thing, you haven't actually done or referred to any science to support your main thesis (as far as I can see).

Of course people disagree about what best serves human flourishing, and therefore different cultures and subcultures have different moral standards. Some cultures and subcultures have believed or do believe things like racism, human sacrifice, killing infidels, acts of terror against innocent civilians, praying to your favorite God, etc are moral because they are in the best interests of human flourishing.

How can we tell who is right? Consult the available science. — Thomas Quine

So when you approve of a moral precept, you count it as evidence for your thesis (never mind how you figured out that it does in fact promote human flourishing). Otherwise you just flip the argument around and say that the precept does not promote human flourishing (never mind how you you figured that out) because people have a different idea of flourishing, or they just go about it in an unscientific way. Heads - I win, tails - you lose. (Which @Janus says is OK, but I don't think he agrees with you that you are doing science. I am not sure what he thinks you are doing though.)

But this is all beside the point, because even if you produced a good empirical theory that describes common patterns in moral behavior, it would not tell you what you should do - not without a bridge principle: something like "Thou shall do as most people do." That would be the real meat of your ethical system, and it would not be derived from science.

(A4) If something is epistemically random, the uncertainty associated with that randomness can be arbitrarily reduced by sufficient sampling. — fdrake

This is only assuming that all of the relevant data is being sampled. Assuming Bohm's interpretation, for example, you can never sample the value of the hidden variable, no matter how good your sample is. In the Everett interpretation, your sample does not include all branches of the wavefunction. Both interpretations are metaphysically deterministic, but both predict epistemically random measurement outcomes.

On the other hand, if you were sampling digits of pi, for example, then unless you already knew what you were sampling, you would never see that it is non-random from your sample, even if you were getting every digit with perfect accuracy. And if you knew what you were sampling, then the question would not arise.

Kant's ideas are not obscure. Or not as dark as they seem at first glance. The proof is that they have not provoked great disputes about their primary meaning — David Mo

You can't be serious!

Although to say that Kant scholars dispute the meaning of what he wrote isn't saying much. Even Hume scholars advocate radically different interpretations (there is a revisionist strain known as The New Hume), and Hume is supposed to be one of the clearest writers among famous philosophers.

I dislike the current state of ethical theory and I want to kick over the whole gameboard. — Thomas Quine

But the implications are huge, because they mean science can tell us what is moral and what is not. — Thomas Quine

You are kind of all over the place in terms of posing the question, which is the single most important thing in philosophy.

At times you seem to be arguing that morality - in the minds and actions of all people, as well as in all moral theories - comes down to the imperative of flourishing. This addresses the question of what moral behavior and moral thought looks like to an observer. (As I have pointed out, it takes only a minimal attention to contemporary and historical moral attitudes and moral theories to see that this is not the case; it is at best only one facet.)

You also put forward a more plausible thesis, which sees that same imperative as an emergent feature of our evolved psychology. This is still an empirical question, but this time concerning the origins and the natural explanation of morality. (I think there is some truth to it, but this is still an oversimplified, one-sided and overconfident narrative.)

Through all this you also seem to be advancing a normative thesis, which is that morality should serve the purpose of human flourishing. And the justification for this thesis somehow relies on the claim that that is what moral attitudes amount to anyway, and/or that this is what has in fact emerged from the biological evolution of human psychology. (The logic of this justification escapes me.)

Finally, when it comes to the concrete solutions, you give us astonishingly banal pronouncements:
- If we want something, we should make our best effort to achieve it!
- Oh! Oh! I know! Let's use Science!
- What a wonderfully refreshing thought!

Really?

“If someone tells me there is a horse in the field behind their house, I won’t need any more evidence to believe them than their word… but, if they tell me there is a unicorn, I wouldn’t believe it even if they showed me photographs”. — Ed Davis

I had to read this a couple of times: at first I thought that your colleague was responding to a different question. I can kind of see some connection to what you were asking, but only by a loose association.

If the work was poorly done, what does it matter whether what it sought to establish was plausible or not? If it doesn't meet the standards for publication, it shouldn't be published. If you think it's a borderline case, and perhaps there were objective limitations that accounted for its methodological weakness, then look at other factors.

Ordinary claims are ordinary because they fit in with things that are already backed by strong evidence. If the study confirms something that is already well-established (as your colleague seemed to imply), then what's the point of adding a poor quality study to the mix? (Unless perhaps it develops an original, independent line of evidence.) But if it is something rare or unexpected, meaning that there probably hasn't been any better evidence, that might actually actually make even a weak study more valuable, especially if the conclusion would be significant, if true.

From your title I assumed you meant 'gloomy' or even 'malevolent' philosophers, rather than simply obscure.

Anyway, as someone wisely noted, "unclear writing is a sign of unclear thinking."

The IS-OUGHT distinction is important, we want to avoid the naturalistic fallacy, but it is also important to keep in mind that all moral claims ultimately derive their "ought" from an "is". — Thomas Quine

It almost seems like you've heard about the "naturalistic fallacy" and about the "is-ought gap," and that the former is to be avoided and the latter is to be mindful of, but you don't really understand what those words mean. Because you manage to contradict yourself about the is-ought gap in the same sentence, and then (and throughout this discussion) wade neck-deep into the naturalistic fallacy.

Let's explore the implications of your position a bit. You say that biological evolution promotes flourishing (from which you conclude that promotion of human flourishing must be the foundation of morality - classic naturalistic fallacy; but I'll hold my nose for a while). Generally speaking, evolution by natural selection just tends to propagate and multiply our genes, which is a far cry from what we usually understand by flourishing.

Now, you say that in our particular situation (as opposed to, say, yeast) actual flourishing is generally conducive to successful replication. But how are you so sure? makes a good point about us having a very limited and biased perspective on which cultural attitudes promote flourishing on a large scale. Even if you could make an accurate universal observation about our moral attitudes, it is not a given that they are adaptive now, much less in the long term. Being innate is no guarantee of being adaptive either, because not every innate feature is adaptive. And even if it was adaptive for much of our existence as small bands of hunter-gatherers, that doesn't imply that it is still adaptive now that we have radically transformed our lifestyle and our environment. And even if it was and is adaptive, that doesn't mean that it's the best adaptation there can be. Evolution, powerful as it is, is a blind satisficing process, not an omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent creator.

Just how well-adapted are we, anyway? Our Homo genus is pretty young, and almost entirely extinct. Our species is younger still, very nearly went extinct at some point not long ago, and has been going through rapid lifestyle changes since then. That doesn't exactly instill confidence that it will end up being as plentiful and long-lived as even a typical mouse species from the fossil record (a few million years). And keep in mind that the fossil record mostly yields species that "flourished" (in the technical sense), not those that went extinct before leaving much of a trace, like our Homo cousins.

Which brings me to the next point. Wind back the evolutionary clock ten minutes or so (i.e. a few tens of million years) and you will find that pretty much all animal species that existed up to that point have since gone the way of the dinosaurs. If you are going to derive an imperative from that fact, shouldn't it be that we are destined to go extinct and make room for whatever comes next? And while we are at it, why should we even be one of the long-lived, "flourishing" species, as opposed to evolution's many little blind alleys? Perhaps we are "meant" to drive ourselves (literally) into the ground, or let some plucky germ or a fortuitous geological calamity wipe us out?

I hope that the point that emerges from the foregoing exploration is that the maxim "let us do what nature does anyway, but more so" makes no sense. The way that you actually derive your oughts from your ises (including the examples in the post to which I am responding) is by smuggling in normativity and then ladling it out. It's the ultimate stone soup.

Are you arguing that "it is nowhere in evidence" that human beings and the societies they create do not seek to flourish and prosper? As a human motivation, it hardly seems "hidden"... — Thomas Quine

No. First, let's make a distinction between human beings and societies: the former are moral agents, the latter are not. Second, let's make a distinction between what one may wish for oneself or for people one cares about and what one may wish for "humanity." Third, the desire for flourishing does not analytically entail the adoption of certain moral norms (not without begging the question), and what I was pointing out was that you have not made a convincing argument that links the two.

Genes propagate when the carriers survive, merely. — praxis

Or more precisely, when the carriers produce viable offspring. Quality of life, which is what we usually associate with "flourishing," does not enter the equation.

most people in most cultures, without being familiar with the philosophical arguments, know that it's the right thing to do, period, but the grounding for this claim is that love and respect for others is essential to human flourishing. — Thomas Quine

See, you are doing precisely what I suspected you of doing: you are working backwards from your thesis (that the foundation of morality is 'human flourishing') to retrospectively rationalize people's moral attitudes. But you also hold up people's moral attitudes as evidence for your thesis! This is a perfectly circular reasoning. (Alleging Confucius's justification as support is neither here nor there, because most people who believe they ought to honor their parents do not adopt that attitude for that reason, as you yourself admit.)

That's my next step but don't want to get ahead of myself... — Thomas Quine

Don't worry, you are telegraphing the standard is-ought move loud and clear.

My next point is that we can actually determine what best serves human flourishing through science and reason. This means if we can agree on the common goal, we have an objective starting point for ethical considerations. — Thomas Quine

Yup...

I don’t mean to present any ethical norm, but to offer what seems to me to be a simple description of human reality: all moral precepts are an attempt to answer the question, “What best serves human flourishing?” — Thomas Quine

Note that I am not of course arguing that all morals past and present actually did serve human flourishing, only that those who adhered to them believed them to do so. — Thomas Quine

That's just manifestly not true. I think you would be hard-pressed to come up with more than a few and recent literary or documentary examples of such reasoning behind moral attitudes. No one thinks about "human flourishing" when they demonstrate a proper filial attitude towards their parents, for example - they do it because it's the right thing to do, period.

Of course, in the absence of firm criteria of how such beliefs should manifest, you could interpret just about any moral attitude to be a confirmation of your thesis. You could assert that human flourishing is the hidden motive, even when it is nowhere in evidence. (I think I see you already engaging in such creative interpretation in this discussion.) But then if anything fits your thesis, your thesis is vacuous.

Does this observation apply exclusively to TheMadFool or does it also range over others? — TheMadFool

Does it matter? Do you hold your intelligence contintgent on the intelligence of people you are arguing with?

Also, proof of a proposition is necessary to claim that that proposition is true. — TheMadFool

You keep saying this as if it was self-evident. Now, if you'd never before encountered this problematic, never had anyone contradict you, it wouldn't be unreasonable to say this. But after ten months and four pages of discussion a thinking person would begin to suspect that the question might not be so straightforward...

So it avoids retorts of the sort "but we just prove [whatever] in a higher system". — Nagase

It's not an interesting retort anyway, because if a formula is true but not provable, we can just make it an axiom in a higher system, so it would be trivially provable.

I don't think you can accurately construe a soul-based theory as reductionism about the self. In what I've read, these types of theories don't say that the self is "reducible to" the soul, rather, it just IS the soul. — Tarrasque

Well, that would mean that the self is a hidden essence. But what we are inquiring about and trying to explain is the manifest self as it is perceived by us via self-reflection. We don't perceive hidden metaphysical essences as such (that is why they are hidden and "metaphysical"). But some would say that they manifest themselves as our sense of self, the integrity of our experiences, the continuity of our memories, the coherence of our thoughts and volitions. (Similarly, God is said to be manifest in his creation, and therefore being in general and some of its specific features are said to be explained by a divine creation "theory.")

I agree with you to some extent. Our society places a lot of importance on personal identity, and this leads us to form the conceptions about it that we do. I believe many people hold false beliefs about the nature of themselves, due in large part to this sort of conditioning. — Tarrasque

It's not just a social construct; I think that much of our sense of self is an innate psychological mechanism. But culture and socialization shape it as well.

I would disagree about social conditioning producing false beliefs about self though. If self just is (partly) a result of conditioning, then how can it be false? I suppose our innate psychology and social conditioning can come into tension, but how is one to say which one of these is truer? How is it even possible to discover the fact of the matter?

And since there is neither a prevailing philosophy nor a prevailing intuition or convention that would apply to such cases, answers vary. — SophistiCat

Which is why it is so interesting to ask the questions! — Tarrasque

It would be interesting if there was a possibility of finding the correct answer. But I don't think that there is one. On my metaphysically thin concept of self, the self just is what we perceive as our personal identity. There isn't any true self lurking behind its outward manifestations. And therefore if you are not sure whether your personal identity would survive teleportation, for example, then there is no fact of the matter to be discovered. At least not at this time; I suppose if teleportation were to become as common as air travel, or at least as common as space flight, we would develop intuitions about it.

I don't think there is a significant difference, as I am a reductionist about personal identity. Many people are not, and would believe that there is a meaningful distinction to be drawn between the "real them" and a copy of them. They might account for this difference as:

1. The real me is the body that contains my soul, essence, or ego, while the copy does not.
2. The real me is that body from which an unbroken spatio-temporal line can be drawn from it to my origin(in a copy's case, one cannot).
3. In the case of a copy and an original, there is some special property that is only attributable to the original. This special property is what we should be concerned with in preserving our consciousness. — Tarrasque

All of these positions can be seen as reductionist, in that they treat personal identity as a product or manifestation of something more real or fundamental:

• Psychological continuity
• Physical (worldline) continuity
• Structural similarity
• Hidden essence (soul, etc.)

I rather think that personal identity is a psychosocial construct. Consequently, it doesn't have a strict definition and delineation, but rather relies on intuitions and conventions that are to some degree fluid and diverse. This is why even those people who don't already have a favorite philosophical theory of self never seem to have a common opinion on such esoteric thought experiments as Davidson's Swampman, teleportation, duplication, etc. Our intuitions and conventions range over common experiences, which do not cover such imaginary scenarios. When answering these hypothetical questions, people either work out the answer from a prior philosophical commitment, or else answer intuitively/conventionally. And since there is neither a prevailing philosophy nor a prevailing intuition or convention that would apply to such cases, answers vary.

Conceptually, anything can be broken down into smaller pieces. — Olivier5

"Breaking things down into smaller pieces" is not a good way of describing fundamental physics research. Simple mereology works decently well with everyday objects and materials: if you know that something is made of wood, for example, then you know a lot of things about it, such as its hardness, heat capacity, conductivity, etc. So when we want to know more about a thing, we naturally tend to ask: "What is it made of?" If object O is made of A, B and C, and we know some properties of A, B and C, then we will add A, B and C properties together (perhaps accounting for some minimal interaction) and have O properties as a result.

This doesn't work perfectly even with everyday objects, because isolated objects often behave very differently than when they are part of some whole. And when physics goes beyond everyday size and energy scales, the very notion of an "object" with a boundary and and a set of properties that are all its own begins to break down. Subatomic particles behave like "particles" only in a very limited sense. By the time you get to quarks, saying that something is "made of" quarks means very little.

The important difference between what you’re picturing and what I’m actually saying is that on my account we are not merely to base moral reasoning on people’s self-descriptions of their hedonism experiences. Just like we don’t base science on people’s self-descriptions of their empirical experiences, but rather we replicate those circumstances first-hand for ourselves and see if we ourselves experience the same thing. Likewise on my account of morality, we are to replicate others’ hedonic “observations” to confirm for ourselves that it actually does seem bad. So we’re never starting with a description and getting to a prescriptive conclusion. We’re always starting with a prescriptivists experience (an experience of something seeming good or bad), and getting to a prescriptive conclusion.

Of course even in science we don’t all always replicate every observation everyone reports (apparently there’s a bit of a crisis of nobody doing nearby enough replication), and I’m not suggesting we have to do that with mora reasoning either. But in the case of science, when we don’t replicate, we take the (descriptive) conclusion at its word, rather than taking a description of the empirical experiences someone had at someone‘s word and then coming to the same conclusion ourselves on the ground that someone has some experience. Likewise, if we don’t replicate a hedonic experience, we’re just taking the prescriptive conclusion of the person who had it at their word — trusting them that such-and-such does actually seem good or bad — and using that in our further moral reasoning. We’re never taking a description of an experience that someone had and reaching a prescriptive conclusion from it, and so not violating the is-ought gap. We’re just trusting someone’s prescriptive claim, and drawing further prescriptive conclusions from it; or else verifying that claim with our own prescriptive (hedonic) experiences and drawing prescriptive conclusions from them. — Pfhorrest

I don't see how this gets you away from the is/ought gap. If the criterion of moral evaluation of something is whether it seems right or wrong, then you haven't said or proposed anything at all, you've just stated a tautology. However, as soon as you substitute some pseudo-scientific procedure of data collection and calculation for a moral judgement, Hume shows up with his guillotine and demands to know what this procedure has to do with the rightness or wrongness of the thing. The data that you collect is not an ought; it is a record of observations or reports - an is.

Put differently, we've pretty much concluded that events in the future are not fixed by the state of the universe now. Does that invalidate the notion of block time? — Banno

Depends on what you mean.

1. Events in the future are (not) fixed by the state of the universe now. I read this as implying that there is a uniquely correct theory (not necessarily known to us) that describes events in the past and in the future, and that the theory is (in)deterministic.

2. Block time. This is often taken to mean that events in the past and the future exist in some sense.

Setting aside the truth of (1) and the meaningfulness of (2), it is clear that (1) has no implication on (2). One can be a determinist and a presentist, i.e. believe that although future events are fixed by the present, they do not have the same ontological status. Or one can be indeterminist and yet subscribe to block time. The fact that no correct theory fixes the future given the present does not imply anything about the future's ontological status.

Note that I only talk about these positions as actual positions that some people hold. Personally I am very skeptical about the meaningfulness of presentism/eternalism debate, and somewhat skeptical about determinism/indeterminism.

The way to show an intention to be bad, besides simple contradiction, is to show it fails to satisfy some hedonic experience, an experience of something seeming good or bad (phenomenalism about morality) — Pfhorrest

If this statement referred only to your own instantaneous "hedonic experience" then depending on details your theory might be something like emotivism (or a tautology.) But your theory involves some kind of integration over the experiences of all people in all circumstances. At which point those experiences become data and you are squarely in the is-ought transmutation business.

If you’re thinking of the most recent thread where Kenosha, Isaac, and I were discussing my views — Pfhorrest

No, I haven't seen that thread.

Your facts are what you like to call "hedonic" whatsit, which you are supposed to collect, optimize and process and in some way as part of your moral recipe. They are still matters of fact that can be obtained with a sociological survey or something like that.

What is curious about yours and @Pfhorrest's approaches is not their differences but their similarity. Both of them blithely skip over the is-ought gap without even noticing:

Morality [cannot be this way] because that is not what morality really is. — Kenosha Kid

(Emphasis and ellipses mine.) That is, after giving us a quick tour of the natural history, anthropology and sociology of morality - what is - you skip to the conclusion - not about any matters of fact - but about matters of ought.

Except that it is never entirely clear which part of the equation you are addressing. Pfhorrest operates in a more traditional moral philosopher mode in producing a recipe with statements of fact as inputs statements of ought as outputs. With you I cannot tell whether you are even making a distinction between the two.

At first there appears to be a clear exception to the pattern: the injunction against a hypocrisy that is stated as a purely moral rule. But then you hasten to disclaim that that is just a matter of "statistics," that is that too is a matter of fact.

I see quite a lot of people not having issue with infinite regress as objection to the argument. I know very little but WLC seems to argue that ockhams razor would shave off unnecessary causes? — DoppyTheElv

By this logic, Last Thursdayism is the most parsimonious explanation!

Time and causality are some of the most involved topics in philosophy, if nothing else then because they have received a lot of attention from philosophers. So don't be surprised that in response to what seemed like a simple question you got truckload of abstruse concepts dumped on you :) But this just goes to show how naive and superficial typical apologetic arguments are.

Name one truth which isn't mathematical but is absolute. — Gurgeh

Again, you are quoting something but not addressing what you quote.

And again, it is unclear what you are aiming at with your posts. If you are just stating your beliefs, then whatever. If you made a case for or against something, then there would be something to discuss - otherwise we are done.

Empiricism is always to be refined. Every part of empiricism is temporary. Every part of maths is absolute truth. And if it's not empirical, as in theories which you don't test, then you haven't supplied evidence for it. — Gurgeh

I don't see how this is addresses the part of the discussion that you quoted. Also I am not sure what "it" refers to in the last sentence.

Finding out things about the world isn't as important as finding out about structure. — Gurgeh

Finding the structure of what?

With "math is about finding out things about the world" I was referring to the fact that everything in the world is modellable, simulatable and many things are formalisable. — Gurgeh

That is the responsibility of science though. Mathematics in this case is only a tool and a language of science.

moreover anything in maths is applicable to the real world and tells you absolute truths about the real world, and there is no other source of absolute truth. — Gurgeh

Well, that is a very strange thing to say. If this is a personal belief, fine. But if (in the spirit of the OP) this is intended to express a generally accepted idea, then definitely no.

Right, the one is descriptive and the other normative.... which would mean the argument still would apply to talking about what functions the justice system should serve for example, assuming we would want to take into account how people actually act when deciding that. — ChatteringMonkey

Both morality and law are normative. The difference is only in that (in some places) the latter is more institutionalized. But this is a distinction in degree, not principle. To anticipate objections, I don't mean to say that legal and moral are synonymous or coextensive; only that both are normative, and both have axiological origin. Laws can be more or less equitable and inclusive, but they are always intended to be the expression of someone's values, even if it is just the values of the powerful group in control.

Depending on the situation, the law's normative intent may conflict with an individual's wishes; sometimes it may even conflict with the wishes of the majority. This can mean that the law is not performing as intended, or it can mean that the law does not serve the interests of the majority by design.

Now as to the legal principle that retribution is not a function of justice (I am not actually sure that this is exactly so, but I am not a legal expert), either it harmonizes with what most people believe or it doesn't, but if it doesn't, there isn't an inherent contradiction in that. Unlike an economic model, the justice system is not necessarily intended to conform to the actual beliefs of the populace at all times. It is the populace that is supposed to conform to the justice system in the first place. Whether the populace likes the system and how much influence it has on the system is another question.

Doesn't some philosophy often make a similar mistake, especially in morality and justice to name a few... where we expect people to behave like rational (moral) actors. — ChatteringMonkey

I think you are mixing up two senses of expectation. There is expectation as a plausible anticipation, a forward model. We may reasonably expect people act on their strong desires. And then there is expectation as a moral obligation: you are expected to behave morally, even if it goes against your (amoral or immoral) desires.

then maths became a subbranch of science, which is about finding out things about the world from first principles — Gurgeh

Math as such is not about finding out things about the world. Math is about finding out things about math, nothing more, nothing less.

Sure, the direction in which we take mathematical research can be motivated by our desire to find things out about the world by applying mathematics to science. (It can also be influenced by psychology, social pressures, esthetics, or whatever else.) But in that instance mathematics is just a tool of science. Science is still ultimately responsible for what we take to be our findings.