Oh very witty.
Well that at least has the merit of being valid. But it isn't sound. It does, however, accurately express how you think.

Either argue something or go away. Your contributions lack both insight and wit, so they're just an annoying distraction. Go and find another thread to derail while I wait for someone worthy to address my argument. I'm tired of steamrollering kittens.

my argument refutes all rival positions. You genuinely don't have the first idea how arguments work, do you? Yet you're confident you do, and confident I'm wrong. It's an all too common combination.

Thank you, Hugh. Insightful as ever. I am having a bit of trouble with your simile though. I am like a troll in a cave who, even without looking, is successfully deflecting all the missiles and sword thrusts that come his way. Okay. I know it is meant to be insulting in some way, but it sounds impressive. I mean this: "yeah, well, you're really good at what you do - so there!" is a really incompetent insult.

Perhaps this is because it's rather obvious you desperately want someone to play along so you can display your superior resoning some more. — Echarmion

Well, obviously I'm confident I can deal with it. But I'm also interested in what's true and so want to test my argument against a rival reasoner. That's what philosophers do, right?

But it would be a bit silly to suppose that anyone suggested that everything one ever observed was oneself — unenlightened

Yes, so "the observer is the observed" is false. I am observing a cat. Yet I am not a cat.

Let's replace it, then, with 'the observer can be observed".

Okay, as I said right at the outset, that is not as obviously false as what he actually said, but it is still false.

You have said that you can observe your self - that you are aware of your self via an act of observation.

I do not think that is true. I have asked you what your self looks like. I have asked you what colour and shape it is.

You have answered that it is the colour of the void. What colour is that please? Puce?

No, I am my self just as you are your self.

But, like I say, tell me more about this self that you say you can observe. Does it have a colour?

For instance, I am observing a cat. Am I the cat I am observing? no.
I am now observing a table. Am I the table I am observing. No. I am observing a computer monitor with the inchoate spewings of an ignoramus all over it - am I that computer monitor? No. And so on.

Anyway, tell me about this self that you say you observe. Does it have a shape?

No, you mean "I observe my self" not "The observer is the observed".

Plus you don't. But Meh. Let's just be clear though "The observer is the observed" doesn't mean "I observe the observer"

Julian Baggini, Susan Blackmore, Sam Harris, Thomas Metzinger, obviously haven't read Descartes, or didn't understand him, or are trying to sell some horrible mystical bullshit. PhDs and professorships mean nothing these days — unenlightened

Yes, I'd say there's a very decent chance of that. But prove me wrong - use what you've gleaned from these hacks and show me where I've gone wrong.

Water balloons of ignorance against my machete of truth more like. Have you ever considered that perhaps the reason no-one can dent the argument is that it is sound? I mean, that's a pretty straightforward explanation.
Why can no-one show it to be invalid despite trying every dirty trick in the book? Because it is valid, that's why.
Why can no-one raise a reasonable doubt about a premise? Because they're all true, or at least far better supported by reason than their opposites.

I have actually mentioned the only hope for defeating it - this argument:

1. If I am morally valuable, I am morally valuable even if no subject values me
2. I am morally valuable
3. Therefore, I am morally valuable even if no subject values me

So I have actually put a machete on the table for anyone to pick up and have a go if they think they're hard enough. But no, you stick to your water balloons. Odd.

Hot air. Address the argument. Maybe put to use something you've read in the literature - for you're quite right, I haven't read any of it. Just Descartes. Take me to school.

No, I have only read the Discourse on the method and the Meditations, and his correspondence with Princess Elizabeth. Nothing else.

The hammered is the hammer.

But a being who could create a rock too heavy to lift, and lift it, is even more powerful than one who could only do the former.

Oh, well thanks for that total waste of time. I thought you were laying some big trap for me - laying a trail of little question bread crumbs all the way into the, er, oven of contradiction. But no - nothing. Up. Your. Game.

Yes, that's what I said. Do you have a lift, or are you still using stairs like a rookie.

I am not sure what your point is. Maybe you could furnish me with some more Krishnamurti wisdom and we'll take it from there.

Have you read the OP? It tells you.

For something to be morally valuable it must be being valued by someone.

But evidently not your or I.

So, for something to be morally valuable is for it be being valued by someone, but the someone in question is not you or I, or any of the rest of us.

What's distinctive about moral value, then, is that it is a kind of valuing that we are aware of, but is not done by any of us.

Who is it done by? Well, by Reason. Again, that's what the argument uncovers. We don't start out by stipulating what moral values are, we discover it by consulting our reason about them - the same faculty that brings them to our awareness in the first place.

All moral value is value.
Not all value is moral value.

Agree? — creativesoul

Yes = all moral value is a kind of value, yes.

Er, I am the OP.

So, are you now rejecting the original argument? This one is new. — creativesoul

What on earth are you on about? Look, this exchange is going to get mighty rude mighty fast unless you up your game and start making sense.

Er, what? Premise 1 says something about what it takes for something to be morally valuable. For something to be morally valuable, it needs to be being valued.

That is consistent with - consistent with - it also being the case that if I value something it is not thereby made morally valuable.

I really don't see how you can't see that - no wonder you're having trouble with the argument as a whole!

Here: only a person can be president of America. I am a person, but I am not the president of America. Those are not contradictory statements.

Likewise, only something that is being valued is morally valuable. I am a valuer, but if I value something it is not thereby morally valuable.

Sheesh.

You can't follow a valid argument - as you've just demonstrated.

Where is the contradiction? Those two claims are consistent. Together they 'entail' that for something to be morally valuable is for it to be being valued by someone, just not me.

So you're patently not very good at following arguments.

And the first premise is not false. This is a philosophy forum - how about arguing something rather than just pronouncing? I have explained why the burden of proof is squarely on the shoulders of anyone who wants to deny 1. if you disagree about that, 'argue' that I am wrong. Don't just declare it. I mean, how arrogant are you that you think if you disagree with something that's sufficient to demonstrate its falsity. Show your reasoning!

You're just making rookie mistakes. That is, you're conflating experiences with that which they are experiences of.

Imagine that I read a book about Caesar. I have not, and will never meet Caesar in person. All I can do is read about him. Does that licence me to conclude that Caesar is a book? That as, because all I have experience of where Caesar is concerned is so much ink and paper, then Caesar himself is just so much ink and paper?

No, only a fool would draw such a conclusion. The book is indeed made of ink and paper, but what it is 'about' - Caesar - is not.

We have experiences. But that does not licence the conclusion that everything is an experience or that all we can know are experiences.

By that logic I can never know about Caesar, only ink and paper. Yet I know a lot about Caesar, including that he is not made of ink and paper.

Of course, if I expressed that in broken English and contradicted myself a few times you'd consider it profound.

If you start from the premise that an observer is a physical body in the world that you observe, you're not gonna understand him. You're an observer, your thoughts/feelings/perceptions are part of the observation, you can see them metaphorically as a window to yourself, or even as defining yourself. — leo

Note too that I did not start from that premise - I mean, where do I make such an assumption? I assume that only that what reason represents to be the case should be default trusted, and that reason represents any thought to have a bearer. That's a truth of reason that, in practice, you recognise and act on. But that leaves open exactly what kind of a thing the bearer is - it certainly does not amount to assuming that the bearer is a physical thing.

Er, yes. Yes, yes, yes. Blimey - have you been paying attention at all to anything?
I have been arguing that my values - that is, my valuings of things - do not constitute moral values (same goes for yours). That is, if I value something it is not necessarily morally good.

Note, 'moral goodness' and 'moral value' are interchangeable. I am talking about - this entire thread is about - moral value, that is, morally goodness.

But anyway you have demonstrated time and time again that you cannot follow an argument, not one that has any degree of subtlety whatsoever, so I am not surprised that you have to keep asking these inane questions.

But that's the opposite of what I said. Omnipotence does mean being able to do anything. I mean, it doesn't get more powerful than that. And being able to do things that logic says cannot be done is not an inability at all - it is an ability (quite an impressive one!). So I am confused by the 'yes'.

As to the quote "The observer is the observed", it can be read metaphorically rather than literally. Hopefully you do not dissect that way every metaphor you encounter, for instance if I talk of a white blanket of snow covering a field, you don't need to tell me that I talk nonsense because a blanket isn't made of snow and because what's covering the field isn't a blanket. — leo

No, I don't take everything literally. But nor do I take everything to be a metaphor. Now, what evidence do you have that "the observer is the observed" should be taken metaphorically?

Is it because taken literally it is false? I mean, obviously - patently obviously - false?

Well, I agree that if someone says something that, taken literally, would appear to be nonsense then charity invites us to try and interpret them in some other way - a way would not convict them of rank stupidity.

But if someone says something patently false, and virtually everything else they say seems patently false too, then don't discount the possibility that you are just dealing with an idiot.

The fact is there is no good reason to interpret that utterance metaphorically. And your attempt to do so fails, for how can 'the observer is the observed' plausibly be taken as a metaphor for the idea that observations require observers?? I mean, that's not a metaphorical interpretation but an act of substituting what he has said for the exact opposite.

It's as if I've said "the walker is the walk" and you've interpreted me as meaning "an act of walking has a walker" - I mean, that's just not what "the walker is the walk" means. What it means is that the walker is made of the walk - which is obviously false.

Likewise, what "the observer is the observed" means is not - not by anyone's wildest dreams - "acts of observation have observers". It means what it means, namely that the observer is no more or less than the observations - which is obviously false.

Like virtually everything else he said.

It isn't. One could very well define the mind as precisely the thoughts/desires/observations/... that are experienced, rather than as some separate thing that bears them. — leo

Well, you can 'define' a mind as 'a peach', but that won't make it one.

If there is a thought, there must be a mind to bear it - yes? Doesn't your reason tell you that loud and clear?

If you are your experiences, then you're a different person moment to moment. Yet you're not, are you?

When you go into restaurant and eat some food do you refuse to pay the bill because you - this current bundle of experiences - are not the same person who ate the food minutes earlier?

No, because that thesis is obviously false, as we all know. You are not your experiences, but an object who has experiences.

This is manifest to the reason of virtually everyone. But Buddhists and other charlatans need you to quiet the voice of reason - which is what meditation is all about - so that they can fill your mind with their patently false bullshit instead. It helps, of course, if you're feeble minded already or deeply unhappy.

But consult your reason: does it not say, clearly and distinctly, that experiences cannot exist absent an experiencer?

If it does - and it does, because otherwise you don't think you exist and that's just a big lie, isn't it - then listen to your reason and believe in what it says. Or don't and become the victim of the bullshitters and live in a fantasy world of their making.

When people say 'murder is wrong,' they don't mean 'I feel that murder is wrong' or even that 'we feel murder is wrong.' They are generally aiming at something beyond mere feeling. — joshua

Yes, I know. That's what I too have argued. When I judge an act to be morally bad I am clearly not judging that I myself disvalue it, or that you do. But I am still judging that it is disvalued. So, moral value is radically external. Our reason tells us this: it tells us that some things are disvalued, full stop. Not disvalued if and only if we happen to disvalue it, but disvalued independently of our disvaluing of it.

That is partly what's distinctive about moral value. But people - in particular, contemporary philosophers - go wrong in concluding too hastily that therefore moral value is 'objective'. No, it is not objective; that thesis makes no real sense at all. Nothing apart from a mind can value things, as is clear upon a moment's reflection. So moral value remains subjective, it is just that the subject is not any one of us, but someone else. Reason. Reason is a subject. So a subject like us, but not one of us. The conclusion is, I am finding, completely unavoidable. Though of course, only those who undertake to listen to reason will reach it. But that's to be expected - if you don't listen to Reason how can Reason tell you who she is?

Premise 1 does, however, cast the morality in terms of 'subjective' experience (the experience of value) to begin with. In others words, you are perhaps assuming what you'd like to prove. — joshua

No, premise 1 says nothing about our 'experience' of moral value. Rather, it says something about what it is to be morally valuable - it says that to be morally valuable is at least to be featuring as the object of a valuing relation.

The basis for it is that we are already familiar with valuing: we ourselves value things, and when we value something we say of it that it is 'valuable to us'. When we talk of non-moral value, then, we are talking of things featuring as objects of our attitudes - our valuing attitudes. What is it for something to be valuable to me? It is for me to be valuing it.

So, when it comes to moral value it is reasonable to assume that being morally valuable also involves featuring as the object of a valuing relation. If someone thinks that is not so - that is, if someone thinks the word 'value' as it features in the expression 'moral value' has a quite different meaning to what it does when it features in 'what I value' then they have the burden of proof.

I do not think that burden can be discharged, for it seems to me that anyone who rejects premise 1 is going to be doing so on no better basis than that accepting it is incompatible with their favourite theory about the nature of morality.

That's the wrong way of doing things. It is, unfortunately, the way most people do things - they start out with a theory, whichever one got into their head first, and they then interpret the data in light of it and will only be persuaded by arguments that support it, or something close to it. When in fact that is quite perverse and is to set oneself up as the source of insight into reality. But we're the ignorant ones otherwise we wouldn't be asking questions and wondering about what morality is. So it is important, then, that we not allow ourselves to intrude and instead just follow reason. Not someone else, not ourselves, but Reason.

Premise 1 together with premise 2 entail moral subjectivism. I have yet to have any evidence presented to me that implies either one of those premises is false, and in the face of it they appear to be true.
But as it appears every bit as obvious - every bit as manifest to reason - that our own values and prescriptions do not constitute moral values and prescriptions, I reach the conclusion that moral values and prescriptions are the values and prescriptions of a single subject who is not me, or you, or anyone apart from herself.

Again, I have yet to be presented with any evidence to the contrary. I do not see how to avoid drawing that conclusion. For the argument is valid - the conclusion really is entailed by those premises - and the premises seem undeniable.

I think it would help if you answered my more abstract questions about your motivations. Are you trying to show that a 'true' or 'absolute' morality depends on something like a god? — joshua

I am just trying to figure out what's what. I am not sure what you mean by a 'true' or 'absolute' morality - it implies right at the get go that there are 'moralities'. But there is morality, not moralities. And it is morality that I am interested in understanding.

What makes you think that subjectivity/objectivity isn't also a property of propositions? — sime

In the OP I explained how I am using the terms 'subjective' and 'objective'. To say that something is 'subjective' is to say something about what it is made of.

To say that a proposition is 'subjective' is therefore to say something about what it is made of. It is not to say anything about its content - what it is 'about' - but about what it, the proposition itself, is composed of.

Now, I actually agree that one can say, perfectly sensibly -and I would say, truthfully - that a proposition is subjective. For I think all propositions are subjective as all propositions are kinds of thought, and thoughts are subjective states.

But propositions have content - that is, they represent something to be the case. And in virtue of this, they can be true or false.

So of any proposition we can ask two quite different questions: what does the proposition say? And what is the proposition made of?

Completely. Different. Questions.

For an analogy: what does the book say? What is the book made of? The answer to the first question is "It says that Napoleon lost Waterloo". The answer to the second is "paper".

Likewise then, in respect of the proposition "I am in pain" we can ask "what does the proposition represent to be the case?" and "what is it made of ?" The answer to the first is obviously "that I am in a certain subjective state - the state constitutive of pain" and the answer to the second is "a thought".

Because propositions represent things to be the case, they can be true or false. Take the proposition "I am in pain". That proposition is true: I just burnt the roof of my mouth because I misjudged the temperature of the coffee. But, given my usage, it is nonsensical to say that it is "subjectively true" or 'objectively true". No, it is just "true".

Note, I am not denying that one can meaningfully ask whether truth is objective or subjective. But that is different from saying of a proposition that it is 'objectively true' or 'subjectively true'.

So, given how I have stipulated these terms are to be used here, a proposition can be true or false, and a proposition can be subjective or objective, but a proposition cannot be subjective true, or objectively true.

I think that in general usage the terms 'subjective' and 'objective' often function expressively, and for the most part when someone says that something is 'objectively true' the word 'objective' is just there to express confidence or something like that.

But anyway, this is all beside the point. Here 'subjective' means 'made of subjective states' and 'objective' means 'not made of subjective states'.

Well that's something we can agree on.

I don't need my rational intuitions checked by you. That's like an ethics review from Bill Cosby.

Because they have the same meaning. I assume basic comprehension skills on the part of others. They all mean exactly the same thing.

Like I say, I am no longer willing to argue with someone who thinks that premise 1 is false or that the argument is invalid, because that's just not going to be worth any of my time or theirs, is it?

exactly - exactly - the same meaning. Stop being tedious.

No, I am not 'deciding it', I am judging it. And you can judge it too.

So, take Superman and Clark Kent. They're one and the same person. Consequently, anywhere Superman is, Clark Kent is, and vice versa. Given that they're one and the same person it is obviously impossible for Superman to be somewhere and Clark Kent not.

Now, imagine someone denies this. I would not 'decide' that the person in question was a total idiot. Rather, I would judge that they were. As, surely, would you - yes? I mean, something has either gone seriously wrong with their ability to reason, or they just don't grasp concepts like 'one and the same'.

If you agree - if you agree that in the above case I would not just be dismissing the critic, but justly deeming them an idiot and their criticism misguided - then consider identical argument.

If being morally valuable and being valued by me are one and the same property, then if I value something it must be morally valuable. Forget the fact they're obviously not the same property - that would be like getting hung up on the fact Superman doesn't actually exist. 'If' they are one and the same property, then obviously anything I value will be morally valuable - why? Because - by hypothesis - that's just what being morally valuable involves. Nothing more, nothing less.

So, now consider this premise:

1. If being morally valuable and being valued by me are one and the same, then if I value something necessarily it is morally valuable.

That's obviously true. Someone who didn't see that it was true is literally as idiotic as someone who doesn't see that this is true:

1. if Superman and Clark Kent are one and the same person, then if Superman is in Texas, necessarily Clark Kent is in Texas.

Yet if you go through the thread above you will find several people - one in our immediate vicinity - denying that this premise is true. And these people have the cheek to represent themselves as knowledgeable about logic and keep telling me I don't know enough of it.

Just consult your own reason though and tell me if you agree with me, or with them. Do you agree with me that if I am the pope, then if the pope is in a brothel I am in a brothel? Or do you agree with them and think that if I am the pope then if the pope is in a brothel I might not be?

Am I just 'deciding' that they are mistaken? Or am I entirely reasonably judging that they are mistaken?

Or take this argument:

1. If P, then Q
2. Not Q
3 Therefore not P.

is that valid or invalid? Well, it is obviously valid. Someone who kept insisting that it was invalid is just a berk, plain and simple. And yet there are many above who have denied that my argument is valid despite it having precisely that form.

Am I just 'deciding' that they are wrong? Doesn't your reason confirm that the above argument is valid?

Hm, I would say that premise 2 is false.

It seems to me that what you're doing is treating the idea of 'logical impossibility' as synonymous with the idea of 'something no-one can do'. However, for something to be 'logically impossible' is for it to be inconsistent with the laws of logic. My point is that those are not equivalent - that being an act that is inconsistent with the laws of logic is not one and the same as it being an act that no-one can do.

For example, as you yourself note, it is a basic law of logic that no proposition can be true and false at the same time (the law of non-contradiction). And thus making a proposition true and false at the same time is logically impossible, but that does not necessarily mean that it is not possible for someone to do it. If they did it, their act would violate the laws of logic. But it would still be something they did.

To illustrate, consider this proposition: "What I am saying now is false". Well, that proposition is true if it is false, and false if it is true. In creating that proposition, then, I seem to have done something that violates the law of non-contradiction. Creating that proposition was something I did. Yet what I did - if I did what I seem to have done - violates the law of non-contradiction because the proposition I created is both true and false at the same time (precisely what the law forbids).

I myself seem to be a counter-example to 2, then. And as what I just did anyone can do, we can all violate the laws of logic - we can all do something that is logically impossible, namely create propositions that are true and false at the same time.

Now, perhaps I did not violate a basic law of logic in creating that proposition. There's a debate to be had about that. The point is just that being logically impossible does not seem to be one and the same as being something no-one can do.

As I have explained numerous times, it is valid. Premise 1 says that if moral valuings and my valuings are one and the same. Sheesh. I am not going through this again. If you genuinely can't see why, if being morally valuable and being valued by me are one and the same property, then anything I value must be morally valuable (because, by hypothesis, that's what being morally valuable involves) then I can't continue arguing with you. Premise 1 is not false and the argument is valid and this is completely pointless. I must await a more intelligent opponent.

You can't have your cake and eat it too. — joshua

You can. Buy a cake. Eat it. Who's telling you these things?

Much of our sense of right and wrong is inherited from the community. There are things that 'one' does not do. But in highly complex and pluralistic cultures like ours, one of the things we do is ...question the things that one does. — joshua

I think that's false, but even if it was true it wouldn't challenge anything in my argument. My argument is not about where our 'sense' of right and wrong, good and bad comes from, but about what it would take for anything actually to be right or wrong, good or bad.

So, take the belief that there is a god. Now, perhaps the full explanation of why some people have that belief is that having a disposition to form it meant their ancestors had more babies than those who lacked this disposition. Okay, fine. But what would it take for that belief to be true? Well, there would need to be a god, wouldn't there?

Now take the belief that some things are morally good. Once more, perhaps the full explanation of why so many of us have this belief is that a disposition to form it meant our ancestors had more babies than those humans who lacked such a disposition. Okay, fine. But what would it take for that belief to be true? That is, what would it take for anything actually to be morally good?

That's the question I am answering. You don't answer it by looking into the history of the belief, but rather by looking at what the belief is 'about'.

I've noticed that you, like others, are getting hung up on God and keep mentioning him - I have not, except to point out to people like you that I have not mentioned him. God is not mentioned in any premise in my argument or in the conclusion.

Again, I am like a detective who says that "someone has killed Janet" and you - and lots of others - are hearing "Mr Someone killed Janet". No, not "Mr Someone" - although if Mr Someone exists, let's not rule him out - but 'someone'.