Searle’s conditions 1-6 seem sufficient. But again, even 7 and 8 don’t entail the existence of an obligation. — Michael

Sorry - can you give an account of what making a promise is, that does not involve placing oneself under an obligation? Is it your contention that one ought not keep one's promises?

The problem with this claim is that I cannot make sense of the difference between “do this” and “you ought do this”. At best it just claims that “do this” entails “do this”. — Michael

Then perhaps you ought not get a job waiting on tables? It is beginning to look as if you are describing a peculiarity of your own psychology rather than something of general interest.

It appears we disagree as to the nature of "obligation".

I’m asking you to justify this claim. — Michael

Well, that's what promising is. I'm at a loss to explain it any further.

Can you offer an alternative meaning for "promise"

Here are two sentences:

1. You ought do this
2. Do this

The first appears to be a truth-apt proposition, whereas the second isn’t. But beyond this appearance I cannot make sense of a meaningful difference beyond them. The use of the term “ought” seems to do nothing more than make a command seem like a truth-apt proposition. — Michael

Oh, very nice. I like that.

As a first response, if you are given a command, by someone with the authority to command you, then "do this" does imply "you ought do this".

If your boss tells you to take the tray to table five, you ought take the tray to table five.

It does seem that you are ignoring an important social aspect of language: that we do things with words, including placing ourselves and others under certain obligations.

No, I don't. — Leontiskos

Then what is it you are suggesting?

Again, what is the problem?

Ok.

...directly from Latin obligationem (nominative obligatio) "an engaging or pledging," literally "a binding" (but rarely used in this sense), noun of action from past-participle stem of obligare "to bind, bind up, bandage," figuratively "put under obligation" (see oblige). The notion is of binding with promises or by law or duty. — Etymology online

Is this not correct?

My access to the OED is not functioning at present. I don't see what it is you are saying is problematic.

In your concision you conflated 'algorithmic' with 'principled'... — Leontiskos

They are not unrelated. One performs an algorithm by following set rules - principles.

You equate rational thought with following a principle. Yet there are rational choices that do not rely on principles, we do not always make use of principles when we solve problems, it is often the case that we must act despite not knowing which principles to apply, and counter-instances can be provided for any given principles. After Philosophical Investigations §201, any action can be made to conform to any principle by the ad hoc addition of suitable assumptions.

I offer coherence over obedience as a guide to rationality.


You are welcome.

Wiki might suffice to show you the difference between material implication and strict implication. That might be what you have in mind.

Tones is correct.

You seem to have missed the point. The utterance of T counts as placing S under an obligation to do A.

That is, promising counts as placing oneself under an obligation.

That is what making a promise consists in.

If you just happen to change your mind thereafter, that does not remove the obligation.

Your mention of Anscombe was interesting. Do you care to fill it out? I wouldn't have taken you as an advocate of divine command theory - are you going to claim we can only promise before god?

Anscombe talks of obligation as if it functions only under a law, citing medieval etymology. From what I understand the word derives from obligationem, "a binding". It's the "counts as" that is peculiar, binding and worthy of consideration.

Again, someone who places themselves under an obligation is, thereby, under an obligation.

Yep. A workable solution, but a bit convolute for my taste.

Again, a tool not unlike the tree proof generator, that produced a png or other image that could be inserted into a post, would be most helpful.

'tis a think of beauty, but cannot be used to show truth tables within posts in TPF.

Other methods are clumsy.

So a few conclusions.

(A implies B) and (A implies notB) do not contradict one another.

It would be useful to have a page that generates an image of a given truth table.

Around a third of folk hereabouts who have an interest in logical issues cannot do basic logic.

might note that 's testimony is reliable.

Oh, and , (A→B)∧(A→¬B)↔¬A.

- very clear.

OK. What do you mean by "materialist" or "materialism"? — Gnomon

Well, you might be disappointed. It's the view that the world is made only of particles, of bits of matter, bashing against each other. That's a view that went out of fashion with Newton's action at a distance. Matter is not "the sole fundamental substance".

There is a pop view that, speaking roughly, what science says there is, is all that there is. I think this view problematic. The implication is that there is one best way to talk about any issue, and that is from the point of view of science. The alternative, perhaps articulated most clearly by Mary Midgley, is that we can, do and indeed ought, make use of multiple ways of talking about issues.

Here's two descriptions:

Painted using a matte house paint with the least possible gloss, on stretched canvas, 3.5 meters tall and 7.8 meters wide, in the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid.

An anti-war statement displaying the terror and suffering of people and animals.

Both are of Picasso's Guernica. Somehow matte house paint on canvas is the very same thing as a powerful anti-war statement. Two quite different ways of talking about the very same thing.

If we try to shoehorn everything into one type of discussion, we are going to miss many very important distinctions.

Seems as my original point is being distorted here. That was that making decisions is not always algorithmic. The APS magazine provides a neat summation of the mechanics of making choices. This will not be new to you. It shows the sort of thing I have in mind, that decisions are often biased, or heuristic, or made under pressure, and not the result of optimal rational deliberation.

Much of your post simply twists this into something you can attack. I'm not interested in responding.

I find it hard to envision how a person could deliberately cultivate a character such that they are kind, if it were not for the fact that they knew that they generally or absolutely should be kind — Bob Ross

Well, the distinction between the various accounts is not so hard-and-fast. Deontologists will still act to produce the best consequences, other things being equal, while consequentialists will choose to do unto others if that produces the best outcome.

I supose the issue here is one of which is to be king. Deontology is about what we ought to do, while virtue ethics is about who we choose to be. I take it that we can maintain a distinction between being kind because it is the right thing to do, and being kind because one would be a kind person.

The difference is in background, in whether one is choosing one's actions because of a duty or because those actions make one a better person.

What distinguishes virtue ethics from consequentialism or deontology is the centrality of virtue within the theory (Watson 1990; Kawall 2009). Whereas consequentialists will define virtues as traits that yield good consequences and deontologists will define them as traits possessed by those who reliably fulfil their duties, virtue ethicists will resist the attempt to define virtues in terms of some other concept that is taken to be more fundamental. Rather, virtues and vices will be foundational for virtue ethical theories and other normative notions will be grounded in them. — SEP

@Michael, how odd.

So for you, someone who places themselves under an obligation is not, thereby, under an obligation.

Ok.

So does the sense of injustice include, or perhaps derive from, a desire to make things better? Then it makes not difference if the source of the injustice is a human or a cancer, the response is a desire to make things fair?

I think it a boxed beetle.

...it sounds like a reference to church dogma about such non-entities as The Trinity. You can't see it, or even understand it, you just have to believe it. Ironically, a three-flavored Quark is a sort of Trinity. — Gnomon

That's a bit of a misapprehension. Institutional facts are not mythical, transcendent or metaphorical. They are common everyday things like money, property, keeping promises and playing football.

This piece of paper counts as five dollars; this land counts as your property; this expression counts as undertaking an obligation; putting the ball in the goal counts as scoring a goal.

The physical thing has uses attached to it in accord with our shared intent.

There's a bunch of things in your post with which I disagree. So

Is that an indirect way of saying that you identify as a Materialist? — Gnomon

No, but it depends what you mean by "materialist".

ding an sich — Gnomon

I don't think this notion can be made coherent

...god's view of "how things are"... — Gnomon

I don't think science looks for the gods-eye view from nowhere, but the general view from anywhere - Einstein's Principle of Relativity.
But maybe in other threads?

Yep. In a perhaps counterintuitive sense, determinism and free will are irrelevant to ethics, if ethics is considered as the study of what we ought do.

Leontiskos is using a very Aristotelian concept of choice; whereas Banno is using it in the modern sense. — Bob Ross

Yep.

In recent work it is called Structural Rationality.

To some extent it underpins my preference for virtue ethics over deontology. Deontology concerns being rational by following rules, while there is virtue in attempting to achieve consistence in one's thoughts and acts. So there is more here than just semantics.

Again, I find your work most impressive.

So what will you do about it? What will you do next?

It remains that you must choose.

I am saying that a choice or a decision only properly exists when it is a consequence of deliberation or ratiocination. — Leontiskos

So if I've understood, what the ass does should not properly be called making a choice, because the ass does not indulge in ratiocination or deliberation.

And yet we would say that, for instance, the ass chose the trough on its left.

So I'm suspicious. It looks to me as if you are obliged to discount the ass's choice in order to avoid your thesis being falsified.

Suppose grandma asks me to pick one of two cookies that she offers, and they appear to me identical. I enter into deliberation or ratiocination for a number of seconds, trying to decide. In the end there is nothing to decide given that there is nothing to differentiate the two. I say, "Grandma, I can see no difference. Give me whichever one you like." I am letting grandma flip the coin in this case, but whatever form the coin flip takes, it is not a consequence of deliberation. The deliberation had no effect on the outcome (except perhaps in an indirect way, by failing as an exercise of deliberation). — Leontiskos

The suggestion that you must "enter into deliberation or ratiocination for a number of seconds, trying to decide" strikes me as contrived. I bet you just pick one of the cookies, without the "deliberation or ratiocination".

But maybe that's just me. Or just you.

I suggest that we do make decisions - even most of our decisions - without such "deliberation or ratiocination". Our justifications tend to be post hoc.

Moreover, I contend that rationality is less about following rules and more about seeking consistency.

Hence, making decisions is not always algorithmic.

Yep.

I might add that, even if determinism is true, what we do next is still undone... and so we do not know what we will do. The choice remains to be made.

And so, the need to examine what we ought do, remains.

Enough with the bully tactics — apokrisis

:rofl:

But also as previously mentioned, not even Searle's conditions (7) and (8) require one to actually be placed under an obligation; — Michael

So you think that S can intend that the utterance T will place him under an obligation, and utter T, but not thereby consider themself under an obligation.

How odd.

, , back to spitting.

You do not do yourself a service.

My own non-religious philosophical worldview is based on the notion of a "self-organizing logic" that serves as both Cause and Coordinator of the physical and meta-physical (e.g. mental) aspects of the world. For material objects, that "logic" can be summarized as the Laws of Thermodynamics : Energy ->->-> Entropy --- order always devolves into disorder. And yet, the Big Bang has somehow produced a marvelous complex cosmos instead of just a puff of smoke. — Gnomon

This is why I thought Apo's approach might appeal to you. I hope that I've shown that how things are is not sufficient to tell us how they might be, and that there are broader issues here.

I've already answered over a dozen posts this morning alone, and have five more in my "in tray", so please forgive my terseness... :wink:

So your claim is that things are thus-and-so and so must always be thus-and-so.

But that does not tell us what to choose. At best it is to pretend that we have no choices. And so it leaves the whole issue of what we ought do unaddressed.

And in the end, that is most unsatisfying.

Maybe what I was thinking of was the is/ought problem. — Tom Storm

They are not unrelated.

But "naturalistic fallacy" is headed the way of "begging the question", losing its original meaning and so reducing our capacity to express fine distinctions. A bit sad.

I, by contrast, have pointed out that an asymmetric distribution of boxes is what would constitute "fair and equal" as a powerlaw thermodynamic balance – the one of a growing system. While a symmetric distribution is "fair and equal" as the Gaussian balance of a no-growth system. — apokrisis

You've made the claim. You have not presented a case. Nor have you shown why we ought adopt - what is it, a "powerlaw thermodynamic balance" over a "Gaussian balance of a no-growth".

But this is tiresome.

So you will neither make sense of nor defend your claims? OK. — Michael

That's not what I said. If "...it isn't clear to (you) what obligations are" and you do not think there are such things as obligations, then you are not going to understand what is involved in making a promise.

"I did indeed promise to answer your question, but I am under no obligation to do so".

You don't see this as problematic? Then I need provide no answer.

Except we have to live together in the actual world — apokrisis

Sure.

So what does thermodynamics tell us about the distribution of boxes?

It seems to me that your description of how things are does not tell us how they ought be.

Unless you claim that how things are is how they must be, that we cannot change what we do. But that does not seem correct.

So this tells me only that you will not be held to your promises.

OK. You are not a man of your word.

Do you think that one can sincerely say "I promise to answer you but I intend not to answer you".

I'll let you work through it.

I drink Darjeeling, or Russian Caravan, ordered from my man in Melbourne.

The case was put. The burden is on you to explain how it does not. — apokrisis

I was waiting for that. The next rhetorical move, after abuse and ridicule, is to claim that you already answered the question.

You still have not shown how thermodynamics helps with ethical issues. How does thermodynamics tell us what we ought to do?

Ok. That's the pop understanding of "naturalistic fallacy".

I'm not enamoured with the description of "nature red in tooth and claw", with the emphasis on competition. I think it a culturally driven narrative. Studies of ecosystems also tell a story of cooperation. This is the bit of @apokrisis' account that perhaps has value.

The naturalistic fallacy in philosophy "is the claim that it is possible to define good in terms of natural entities, or properties". Saying that the good is what is pleasurable, or what makes the greatest number of folk happy, and so on.

Again, I'd analyses this in terms of direction of fit. Saying how things are - that they induce pleasure or happiness - is very different from saying how they ought to be.

I don't want to know.