That's the question asked by the OP. — Michael

Well, no, it isn't - not in so many words. From here it just looks as if you slide the goal post.

...obligations have no practical import... — Michael

I don't understand this phrase. If one is under an obligation to act in a certain way, then one ought act in that way - that's what an obligation is. That is the "practical import" of the obligation.

Hence the answer I gave previously - that it makes no sense to ask why we ought do what we ought do.

So whatever it is you think you are claiming remains quite obscure to me.

Am I right to suppose that what makes a rigid designator rigid is our decision to keep it rigid — Ludwig V

This is to my eye the best way to understand rigidity - as a rule of grammar. It sets out a way of talking about counterfactuals that inherits the coherence of Kripke's formal treatment, while avoidingthe ontological complications of Lewis' account.

My suspicion is that Wittgenstein would agree that whether @schopenhauer1 is essentially his genetics is an issue of how we choose to talk about schopenhauer1, and not an issue of empirical observation, as some seem to think.

I'm asking why there is a motivation to be moral if moral facts have no practical implications. — Michael

How is this not a slide from obligation to motivation? Sure, there are issues of weakness of the will. But they presume an obligation avoided, and hence an obligation.

What you are doing here is indeed incomprehensible.

, I think your take here quite weird.

Edit: it's as if you have not understood the difference between "is" and "ought", and so can only formulate your ethical considerations in terms appropriate to "is", hence entirely missing the whole field of human action.

I don't think that eating meat being immoral has any practical implications — Michael

:rofl:

I'm not sure what attitudes and intent have to do with moral truth — Michael

How could they not?

I'm still interested - working through IV. It's a time of year that is full of distractions.

Thanks, .

Firstly, just to be sure, what I am suggesting here is that your approach of introducing modalities into the discussion serves not to clarify but to further complicate the issues around morality.

I'll illustrate his with a few examples from your post.

That's because "H2O" and "water" are rigid designators that refer to the same thing. — Michael

Rigid designation works primarily with individuals. "Michael" refers to Michael in every possible world in which Michael exists. But H₂O and water are kinds, not individuals. Whether "H₂O" and "water" rigidly refer to H₂O and water is a contentious issue. This is leaving aside the problem of whether to differentiate kinds such as these from predicates such as green, or whether green should be considered a kind and ...is green a predicate, and so on. On top of that we have the problem that "immoral" ranges over actions, and it is not entirely uncontroversial that actions are individuals of the sort that can be referred to rigidly. is perhaps saying something along these lines.

If ethical non-naturalism is true then "immoral" and "harmful" are not rigid designators that refer to the same thing. — Michael

This doesn't quite follow, both because "immoral" and "harmful" might be neither individuals nor kinds, and because as mentioned in previous posts "immoral" and "harmful" might well be set up as extensionally equivalent - for example, consequentialists might well do this. It's one way they try to negate the open question.

Considering deontic logic, is OA → ◻OA an axiom?

If it is, is it an axiom by choice or by necessity? — Michael

Neither: p⊃☐p not even valid. That's why it was interesting and controversial. That water is always H₂O was found to be true by observation, but thereafter, after Kripke, seen as a necessary truth - necessary a posteriori...

Again, there is a lot more going on here than one might suppose, and introducing alethic modality doesn't help.



Secondly, the presumption that differences must be observable has been addressed elsewhere, with Anscombe's shopping list. The list complied by the cash register as it rings off your items may well be identical to the shopping list in your hand, of items you intended to purchase. While there may be no observable difference between the two lists, there is a profound difference in terms of what we do with each.

Hence,

I believe that it is immoral to eat meat. I eat meat. If my belief is true then... what? If my belief is false then... what? In either case I just eat meat. — Michael

is in a sense numb to the issue. There is a profound difference, for the vegetarian.

That numbness apparently extends to your general approach here. You are asking for an observable difference where the difference at hand is on of attitude, of intent. Making observations is using the wrong tool.


Thirdly, your strategy of asking for motivation is... problematic. At some stage, ratiocination must be replaced by action. And this will happen even if there is no reasoned account for the action. Buridan's Ass will not starve, it will eat.

It's not an answerable question.

How does the Holocaust being inherently evil show up in something I can sense? — frank

Well, talk of experience is different again. A third layer, so we have alethic, deontic and now epistemic modalities.

And so back to my point: the framework being used here is far from clear.

Is the suggestion that these two worlds might be identical? But there is a difference - in one the holocaust is inherently evil (whatever that might mean) but in the other it is evil by...what, popular vote?

Again, the structure of these relations is not as clear as might be supposed.

I don't quite follow. — frank

Well, I'm not sure I do, either.

From the OP:

Let us imagine that the concept of categorical/unconditional imperatives/obligations was sensible. Let us also imagine that these are true. What then? How would this world differ from one without objective/inherent/intrinsic/absolute/universal morality (henceforth simply referred to as "morality")? — Michael

The difference would be exactly the truth of the obligation...

Michael seems to imply that there might be no other difference. First, the existence of the obligation is sufficient to differentiate the two words; second, the assumption is that obligations exist only within worlds and not between them; that obligations are not transworld. Hence the argument that an obligation may be necessarily true - true in all possible worlds.

All this is by way of pointing out that the structure of these relations is not as clear as might be supposed.

Yep - for the longest time infanticide was considered an acceptable expediency. Now, not so much. Pederasty has a similar history.

There's something specious in the question Michael asks about how worlds differ given moral truths. they differ specifically in the truth of those moral statements...

There's this SEP article about deontic logic. — frank

Yes, that gives some indication of the issues involved. I think @Michael skates over too much.

If water is H₂O, then necessarily water is H₂O. There is no prima facie contradiction in water being made of other stuff, but once it is found to be made of H₂O, the alternatives are pruned from the tree of possibilities.

Perhaps, If one ought not murder babies, then necessarily one ought not murder babies. There is no prima facie contradiction in murder babies, but once it is found that one ought not murder babies, the alternatives are pruned from the tree of possibilities.

@Michael has not shown this not to be the case.

...injury... — frank

Debatable as to whether that counts as "injury" - to pick an example, scarring as a ritual in transitioning to adulthood. But yes, I agree. Part of the trouble here is that possible world semantics is extensional, so it perhaps is not able to pick up on such nuance.

Forgive what was said late on Christmas night. What I would take issue with is the ambiguity of @Michael mixing two modal contexts - possible and ought. What's unclear is how we work simultaneously with both modalities. So, by way of an example, if one ought do some thing, does it follow that one ought do that thing in every world in which it is possible? Note that here we are treating actions as individuals, which may itself be problematic, and the issue seems to be one of accessibility between possible worlds - the possible worlds that are accessible may be only the ones in which doing that things is possible.

All of which is to point out that Michael's treatment might be far less clear than he seems to suppose.


Edit: By way of an example,

In one possible world babies suffer if they're murdered and it's immoral to murder babies.

In another possible world babies suffer if they're murdered but it's not immoral to murder babies. — Michael

Perhaps the way to pars this is that, if the first world is accessible, then the second world isn't. At the very least, it remains to be shown that the second is accessible from the first. That is, if in some world it is immoral to murder babies, then maybe in no possible world accessible from that world is it moral to murder babies.

But my point here is that without the formal background it is not obvious how we can do what Michael wants to do here.

Or is there a way to introduce the modality of "ought" into a possible world semantics, other than using accessibility?

Hmm.
Might come back to this later. Looks like word play. As if "physical or emotional injury" were not evil.

Well, no, it isn't. It's defining "harm" as doing evil. The reverse.

Not seeing why this is significant.

That’s ethical naturalism — Michael

Sorry - the OED is ethically naturalist? Can you explain that?

harm, n.
Evil (physical or otherwise) as done to or suffered by some person or thing; hurt, injury, damage, mischief. Often in the set phrase ‘to do more harm… — OED

:wink: My bolding.

Again, "Why be moral?" is an infelicitous question - being moral is what you ought to do. Hence the answer to "ought you be moral?" is "yes!"

Assuming ethical non-naturalism, whatever "immoral" means the sentence "it is not immoral to harm others" is not a logical contradiction, — Michael

That's just reasserting that it's not a contradiction. Presumably a harm is immoral regardless of where it takes place - in any possible world.

Again, that's what harm is.

1. No morality.
2. It is immoral to kill babies.
3. It is moral to kill babies. — Michael

I hadn't paid this much attention.

Why not insist that if one ought not kill babies, then one ought not kill babies in every possible world? That such moral truth is necessarily true.

Can you rule this out, @Michael? That world 3 is impossible.

Would you agree with my saying that we need no 'rule giver', 'enforcer', and/or judge aside from ourselves if for no other reason than strictly because we are all we have? — creativesoul

Given any rule, there remains the choice whether to follow it or go against it.

Will you decide by looking to another rule? Then for that rule, will you follow it or go against it? And so on. If it is to be rules all the way, no decision can be reached. At some point you have to act. So at some point you have to choose. That includes the choice to follow a faith or an authority.

This is the core of Existentialism. One's acts are one's own. After all the ratiocination what remains is the choice of what to do.

So again we are at Philosophical Investigations §201.

I'll read the article you linked — Janus

Ok.

You don't see the relevance of counterfactuals to questions of possibility and necessity. Ok, then.

I gather this doesn't help... Counterfactuals?

I don't see a way to proceed until you express whatever it is you are supposing.

Yep. That's one approach, there are others.

Social Institutions
Collective Intentionality

Well, you don't have to be on this thread. What do you want?

These are social realities — hypericin

Now you are starting to get it.

on what grounds, other than sharing the same genome, would any entity in an imagined universe count as being schopenhauer1? — Janus

Taking "imaginary" to mean "possible"...

Simply by specifying the identity. That's how counterfactuals are usually understood: "Janus might have been wearing green shoes" is about Janus, in a possible world in which Janus is wearing green shoes.

No mention of genome.
But this has been explained to you previously.

1) How did they get to know about the meaning of words and esp. terms and even more esp. of abstract ideas (concepts) in the first place? — Alkis Piskas

Look up the definition of a word in the dictionary. Then look up the definition of each of the words in that definition. Then look up the definition of each of those words. Iterate. Given that there are a finite number of words in the dictionary, the process will eventually lead to repetition. If one's goal were to understand a word, one might suppose that one must first understand the words in its definition. But this process is circular. There must, therefore, be a way of understanding a word that is not given by providing its definition.

Most folk can use the word "tree"; and tell a tree from a shrub, or a bush. But setting that out in words, to the exclusion of shrubs and bushes - that would require some effort. We do not need to be able to give the definition in order to use the word. A babe understands the meaning of "Mom" but cannot provide a definition.

These two arguments derive from J. L. Austin, who amongst philosophers is more associated with dictionary use than any other. He did not advocate using dictionary definitions as an ending, but as a beginning, as the place to start in order to understand how a group of words function and how they relate to each other. They provide us not with answers, but with more questions.

There will be amongst us those who hold that there is such a thing as the meaning of a word; and that any worthwhile theory of language must set out, preferably in an algorithmic fashion, how that meaning is to be determined. There will be others, amongst whom I count myself, who think

Success in communication is judged by smoothness of conversation, by frequent predictability of verbal and nonverbal reactions, and by coherence and plausibility of native testimony. — Willard Van Orman Quine, SEP

Much of philosophy consists in working through the way words function. Beginning with a definition is in such cases petītiō principiī.

Is there a process that can be used to achieve, perhaps asymptotically, the goal of ensuring that you and I agree as to the meaning of some utterance? I've consistently argued that there is not a single thing that might be called the meaning of an utterance, but instead we should look at what is being done with the utterance. Hence, if there is not a thing that is the meaning of an utterance, there cannot be a method that will help us work towards understanding what that meaning is. Even using a dictionary.

But there are ways to achieve agreement, cooperation, or even progress. Chief amongst these we might place the Principle of Charity, which says that you and I and old Fred over there have pretty much the same beliefs. That is, while there are a few statements on which we will disagree, overwhelmingly we agree as to the position of the chairs in the room, the state of the weather, the agreeable nature of vanilla ice cream, and so on. Now Old Fred might be a raving, unmasked flat earther, but despite this he and you and I will agree as to what is the case far more often than we will disagree.

While you may be right about the impracticalities involved, we have little choice but to make charitable assumptions about those with whom we chat. The alternative is to deny any form of agreement, and hence any form of conversation.

Anyways, the above is cobbled together from posts of mine spanning three or four years.

A promise is just as imaginary as that monster. — hypericin

And your marriage? Is it imaginary too?

A "promissory note" – that's imaginary? Money - imaginary?

Along with Amazon and The Conservative Party - these are imaginary, as well?

And your property deeds - also imaginary?

Meh.

I am familiar with that case. What do you see as its relevance?

Fine.

Since you offer no significant alternative, I'll repeat that it is a commissive, a choice about the use of "schopenhauer1" specifying that "any posited schopenhauer1 with a different genome is not a schopenhauer1". That

(schopenhauer1 has genome G) ⊃ ☐(schopenhauer1 has genome G)

and so is of the form Kripke discuses.

It alludes to reasonable expectations we could have based on a wide range of empirical observations which have been made regardless of not in itself stating an empirical observation. — wonderer1

Hand waving. Are you saying it is an induction, like "all swans are black"? If not, what?

Yeah. My only purpose here was to try to make the nuance clear.

Cool. That's closer to Kripke than to Lewis. I think this the best way for you to defend your account. I wasn't expecting you to take that option.

I don't quite agree, but it's now a fairly trivial point. If someone were to ask "What if schopenhauer1 had had a different genetics", your answer is that the question cannot be asked, that a schopenhauer1 with a different genetics is a different being, not a schopenhauer1, but something else which still might have the name "schopenhauer1".

I'd say that the question can be sensibly asked, and that if it is, it is a question about schopenhauer1.

Thus.

On what grounds would any entity in some imagined universe count as being schopenhauer1? — Janus

Yes, that's what I'm asking you.

Too far off point. If you won't play neither will I. It's not an observation; so in what way could it be considered empirical?

Because I'm suggesting it is not empirical, but a choice about how you would use the name "schopenhauer1".

, , So have you looked into every possible universe and seen that all the schopenhauer1's have the same genome?

Or is it rather that you have specified that any posited schopenhauer1 with a different genome is not a schopenhauer1?

I'll try again from another direction. When you say that schopenhauer1 necessarily has genome G, are you making a discovery about how things are, or are you telling us how you intend to use the name "schopenhauer1"?