Such an account, I think, would threaten to make assertions of the form: "I very strongly believe that P; I'm pretty sure you are wrong to deny it" or "I don't merely believe it strongly, I know it for sure" pragmatically defective, if not outright inconsistent. On Brandom's account, they're not problematic at all. — Pierre-Normand

I don’t see any pragmatic defect on the part of those by my account. The extra bits besides just “I believe P” are adding back in (some of) the impressive force that the “I believe” took away from just “P”.

Indeed, as I was saying it's as always subjective. — Olivier5

The existence of disagreement doesn’t make something subjective.

Physicists disagree about whether M-theory or loop quantum gravity is a better theory of quantum gravity, but that doesn’t mean there is no objective answer, just that it hasn’t been determined yet.

Mathematicians disagree about whether the Hodge conjecture is true, but that doesn’t mean there is no objective answer, just that it hasn’t been determined yet.

That's Chinese to me. — Olivier5

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altruism
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonism
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilitarianism
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consequentialism

we also have a theoretically just process to set the law and apply it, called democracy. — Olivier5

Except even the theoretical justice of democracy (in one form or another; that’s a broad umbrella there) is not a settled matter. Political philosophy is a thing, there are views all over the board on what would or would not be a just way of setting laws.


I have no major objections to your historical account of the corruption of the west, other than to note that its roots go back much farther than Reagan and Thatcher and are inherent in the very theoretical foundation of the state and capitalism, but that’s not the point here... well that last part kind of is.

So if you ask me what we need to do now, I would say reclaim democracy, rebuild it without this corruption, rejuvenate it with better rules, etc. — Olivier5

That’s the first step in the right direction, sure.

We don't need your mysterious new process for adjudicating moral claims. — Olivier5

Very little of my process is entirely new, and none of it mysterious. It’s just the big picture of putting all the pieces together this way, a bunch of tiny details, and my arguments for why to accept these positions, that are new.

My meta-ethics is closely inspired by Hare’s and I recently learned of a more recent paper (from 2000) that puts forth something almost identical to mine and was also inspired be Hare.

My altruistic hedonism is basically just utilitarianism.

Except I reject consequentialism per se, and propose a deontological means for reaching those “utilitarian” ends.

Those means entail basically libertarianism, but with a small tweak that undermines the foundations of capitalism. Libertarian socialism is already a thing though, I just give it a different foundation.

Philosophical anarchism is already a thing too, founded largely in libertarian deontological principles already. And anarchism generally is already mostly synonymous with libertarian socialism.

I give a new (to my knowledge) account of how a stateless (anarchic) government could function stably, inspired by scientific peer review, which basically ends up being a form of consensus “democracy“ (but not majoritarianism).

The biggest novelty is just noting that this whole stack of mostly pre-existing positions parallels the stack of semantic, ontological, epistemological, and educational positions that make up a common account of the scientific method — verificationist semantics, empirical realist ontology, critical rationalist epistemology, and the peer review process — and that arguments can be made that support both stacks at the same time for the same reasons.

I’m just polishing up these pieces and fitting them together into a bigger picture.

being happy for real is better than crocodile tears. — TheMadFool

Those aren't contrary things.

The crocodile tears are a behavior, and so part of others' experiences. They can improve others' experiences, if they feel understood and sympathized with. And it is good if you genuinely care about their suffering, and aim to mitigate or prevent it. The crocodile tears emotionally convey that genuine caring, by mirroring their own sadness back at them.

But your happiness is your own experience. You can be perfectly contented yourself, and yet also show sympathy to others, show that you understand that they hurt and the reasons why they hurt, so as to improve their own emotional state, even though yours is fine and needs no improvement.

I suspect that the negative light on "crocodile tears" is because of an implied deception, an attempt at manipulation -- making someone think you're sad so that they will respond in some way that would be appropriate if you were, but isn't when you aren't.

Aside from that though, I agree completely. If someone has it in their power to not experience actual suffering, but to still behave in a comforting and sympathetic way to people who are, that is the best of both worlds.

It's much like my take on existential angst, and how I escaped from the vicious cycle thereof last year. Yes, dying is bad, and one should do everything they can to prevent that. But constant, paralyzing fear of death is also bad. Best if one can not experience fear of death, yet still behave in ways to avoid it.

In general, it's best if one can not experience the suffering associated with bad things that do occur, yet still behave in a way to mitigate and prevent them from occurring in the first place.

:up:

So I don't find your logic vs rhetoric dichotomy accurate as it leaves out the third thing of semantics. — apokrisis

I never said that logic and rhetoric are the entirety of communication, just that they are different and opposite aspects of it. Semantics is, as you say, the meat of all communication. In that analogy, one might say is the bread (structures the sandwich) and rhetoric is the sauce (adds flavor). Abstract mathematics is, like you say, meatless, just dry bread. Abstract art is, on the other hand, pure sauce. (I don't mean abstract painting here specifically, but all forms of art that aren't representational; instrumental music, for instance).

What strikes me now is that logic as syntactic structure is a constraint that the audience - a community of thinkers - would want to impose on the speaker. A discipline to ensure something concrete and measurable, so potentially meaningful, just got claimed.

Rhetoric - as pragmatics - is the attempt by a speaker to constrain the audience in an inverse fashion. It boils down to loosening their determination to doubt by signalling all the ways they must be really already on the same page. A context that grounds the semantics is shared. This being so, there is no need to speak of x, y and z.

So that is how the game of communication gets played generally. The speaker is constrained by a set of grammatical habits. But an audience also needs to be on the same page in terms a semantic common ground. Otherwise a speech act can never touch bottom in terms of an endless capacity to doubt the semantic validity of everything that we hear said. — apokrisis

That is an interesting symmetry. Thanks for noting that. I'll mull it over.

Have you said anything so far in response to my point that art relies on plugging into the inherent cognitive biases of humans? — apokrisis

I thought that was just you agreeing with my general thesis here, that rhetoric and the arts more generally both trade in the appeal to those kinds of things. I would frame it more as "evoking feelings" than "plugging into biases" but I think that amounts to the same thing, inasmuch as I construe "feelings" as unreflective, automatic interpretations of experiences, in contrast to "thoughts" which I construe as more reflective, deliberate judgements.

I can totally believe that X is true but that you don't believe X.

That's the whole thing that makes this a paradox. There's nothing inconsistent about you disbelieving something true. But it sure somehow sounds inconsistent for you to say that that is the case.

Could an enlightenment experience as described by various wisdom traditions not be considered as a form of heaven? And those are available to us while we are still on Earth. — Tzeentch

As someone who has had them, :100: :up: :clap:

What you had termed "expression" is similar to the act of incurring a commitment by making an assertion. — Pierre-Normand

I meant (and thought I said) for impression to be the speech-act equivalent to ordinary full assertions, and expression to be something less than that. On this account you’re describing, what is the practical difference between saying “X” and saying “I think that X”?

On my account, the former is an ordinary assertion that X, which impresses an opinion, pushes it at others in a way that isn’t welcoming of disagreement; while the latter is merely expressing the speaker’s opinion, showing us what they think without any pressure to agree.

If we assume a speaker is honest, we assume the ordinary assertion with its impressive force to also imply an expression of the speaker’s own mind. But just that expressing function doesn’t seem to capture the usual function of assertions, which seem to do more than just show us what their speakers think, they seem to tell us what to think. Which is what makes “I think that X” a more timid, less forceful thing to say than just plain “X”: you’re withdrawing the impressive force that would come with an ordinary full assertion.

But you were trying to contrast logic and rhetoric. And that then doesn’t work if you also want rhetoric to bridge the division of rational or scientific exposition and artistic or social audience connection. — apokrisis

It sounds like you are confused about the way in which I'm contrasting logic and rhetoric. I'm not saying that you can do only one or the other. Only that they are concerned with different, complementary aspects of communication. We can do one without the other, but most often we are doing both simultaneously.

We can do pure applied logic, and just be doing abstract mathematics. (Empirical science is something else beyond mere logic and math). We can do pure applied "rhetoric", in the sense of playing to people's psychology, and that would be doing abstract art, just evoking feelings in people for the sake of feeling them.

That relationship between rhetoric and art was the main point of this thread. The similar relationship between logic and math was for analogical illumination, as that relationship is generally much more widely understood. The point wasn't to pit logic and rhetoric in competition with each other. Because most of the time, we're using at least a little of both at once.

the speaker's intention to induce ("impress") a belief in the recipient of her language act. It replaces this intention with incurred commitments within the language game. While asserting Moore's proposition, those incurred commitments are inconsistent regardless of the speaker's hopefulness in inducing a belief in her interlocutor. — Pierre-Normand

What is a "commitment within the language game" other than the same thing as what I've termed "impression"? When you take a stance, commit yourself to that stance, on affirming or denying some statement, what exactly are you doing, other than endorsing that affirmation or denial of that statement as the thing to be done?

It's like a political bumper sticker: when you put "TRUMP 2020" on your truck, the point of that is to take a stance of support in for Trump, and in doing so, hopefully induce others to do likewise. Moore's Paradox, in that analogy, is like having both "TRUMP 2020" and "I GO FOR JOE" bumper stickers: "so... you want me to vote for Trump, even though you're voting for Biden? Huh? Why would you encourage me to vote opposite of you? Who do you actually want to win?"

My guess is that there were some quite wise people in ancient times, and they tried to share what they saw in the cultural medium of their time. That cultural medium is now very out of date, but that doesn't automatically equal their insights being useless. — Hippyhead

That's what I'm saying is fine with me. Taken as allegories, metaphors, teaching stories, I have no problem with these kinds of myths. There's a whole modern "religion" of "Jedi" who aspire to embody the values depicted by the fictional heroes of the Star Wars movies, but don't think that those movies actually depict a true history of something that happened a long time ago in a galaxy far far away. That kind of thing is fine with me. Tell a story about a really nice guy named Jesus and say we should all be like that? That's great! No problem! But say that there really is what is in effect a superpowerful benevolent alien being who created the planet and all life on it and actively intervenes to guide history toward some planned outcome where the people he approves of will live happily ever after? That... is going to take some major evidence, and lacking that I'm going to doubt the sanity of the people who honestly believe it.

Ok, please understand that I'm not trying to convert you to anything, and if you prefer to believe you know what is fact and fiction on issues the scale addressed by god concepts, ok, go for it. Personally, I don't see that as being much different from the religious claims, but that's just somebody's opinion. — Hippyhead

I don't think you're trying to convert me, but I don't get why you think the scale of the claims somehow makes them more plausible? If you told me your sister ate Cheerios for breakfast yesterday, I'd probably just take your word on that, because that's a small detail that's totally within the realm of what I already know to be quite plausible. But if you told me some tall tale about beings with fantastic powers doing things I've never credibly heard of anybody or anything doing, especially if those tales run counter to things I otherwise have good reasons to believe, then I'm going to want to know why you believe that, and "I read about it in an old story" won't be a very convincing reason.

Welp, I voted No instead of Yes because I just skimmed through what your definition of objectivism was. — ep3265

Were you going to vote "yes" before that, because you are an "objectivist" in some other sense ruled out by that definition? If so, what sense of "objectivist" do you mean?

Some are realists and materialist when it comes to the origin of awareness while others prefer panpsychism — Benj96

Porque no los dos?

is all matter conscious and it is simply the arrangement of molecules that establishes awareness. — Benj96

Yes.

And if you were to propose a process to transparent adjudicate moral claims and if it was ever adopted, it would soon get corrupted by the people who don't like the idea or the result. — Olivier5

In the process abandoning my process.

What we should do and how to get people to do that are different things.

Are you just saying it’s impossible and hopeless and we shouldn’t even try to improve? Because if not, I don’t see where you’re in disagreement. I’m taking about what direction would be an improvement. How to get people to go there is another question. And saying “it’s not possible to get people to go anywhere” sure isn’t going to help get anyone to go anywhere.

So the second weakness is that your analogy ignores the inherent subjectivity of moral questions and agents. — Olivier5

The “subjectivity” you describe is only a problem for descriptive sciences about humanity. I don’t think moral questions are grounded in those descriptive sciences. And prescription generally need not be any more subjective than descriptive generally.

I’m not ignoring any “inherent subjectivity”, I’m explicitly denying that there is any.

If people treated religion as just illustrative fictional stories and not as though it was conveying objective facts, I wouldn’t object to that at all.

But when people talk like God is a real being who actually does stuff that makes a difference in the world, rather than as an ideal to aspire to or a comforting thing to imagine or a metaphor or something, then they’ve lost track of the difference between fact and fiction.

You either have the power to influence them in this way (in which case you are the one in power, not them) — Isaac

We all have power to influence who is in power. Follow along in the other subthread with Oliver: every power structure depends ultimately on enough people supporting and not opposing it. In arguing for one moral this or that or another, we are all using what little share of that power we have to try to persuade other people to align their power together with us so that eventually the prevailing norms that get enforced will be one way or another. I’m pushing for those norms to be unbiased (“objective”), liberal (anti-authoritarian), critical (not just anything goes; some things are wrong), and concerned with actual experiences of things feeling good rather than bad (instead of ritual purity or something like that), because that seems like the only practical way we could all get along together.

If you’re objecting to the “objective” part, you’re just saying that bias is perfectly fine. If you’re not saying bias is fine, just that people are in fact biased, then you’re not actually objecting to what I’m saying at all. This is what I mean about “is” statements not answering “ought” questions at all, and you giving non-sequiturs.

If I had a choice (ie had the option of not 'letting' them) then I would be the one with power, not them, wouldn't I? That's the meaning of the word 'power' in this context. The ability to control something. — Isaac

You do have a choice. A small part of one, but still. They only have power because we all collectively let them.

Anyone not with the program is ignored. — Isaac

Anyone who doesn’t want there to be any conversation is excluded from the conversation. Can you not see how that is different from arbitrarily excluding people just because we disagree with them?

Anything who has any reasons to think one way or another is welcome to share them. Anyone who thinks there cannot be any reasons to think any way or other, or who insists that everyone think this way or that for no reason, is excluding themselves from the reasoned discussion of why to think this or that, and those who want to keep having that reasoned discussion are well justified in not letting the others just shut it down.

Authoritarianism is a 'bad' thing. It's one of the things that humans don't like — Isaac

Then why do humans tend to default to authoritarian social structures? Why is maintaining liberty a constant vigil, if humans are all so inclined against authority? There are usually some
big chink of people who are against whoever currently holds authority, but it’s rare that entire societies are against all authority across the board. “Libertine” is still to this day, to the extent it’s used at all, a pejorative.

I think that tendency toward authoritarianism is bad. If you think whatever people tend toward like that is definitionally good, then it seems you’d have to conclude that authoritarianism is definitionally good.

Michael Jackson coined the term 'bad' to mean things which he (and his culture) approved of. For that time 'bad' was used in this way. everyone within that culture understood what the term meant. — Isaac

They also understood that they were using it in a different sense than usual, and still had language to mean “bad” in our ordinary sense; I would be surprised if they didn’t also continue using a sense of “bad” that meant bad, alongside the new slang sense.

You’re mixing up the general process of defining words with some notion of words being circularly defined as whatever people use them to mean. If people generally say X to mean Y, then the definition of X is Y. But if you say “X is defined as whatever people call X”, you’re giving a circular and so ultimately empty definition, effectively saying that X is meaningless.

Consider for comparison money. Something being money is a social fact. Something is money just if it’s accepted by people as money, sure. But what does it MEAN to “accept as money”? What social function does something have to play to be in fact “accepted as money”?

Likewise, “good” means whatever people use it to mean, but WHAT do they use it to mean? Not examples of things that they use it toward; that would be like saying that money is stuff like gold and paper. Being gold or paper isn’t what makes it money, those are just things that go into the social function of “being treated as money”. What is the function that “good” conveys, that all of these examples of good things are being put through?

Prescription, is my answer. When someone says something is good, they’re prescribing that it be, recommending it, exhorting people to make it so. Anything can in principle have that function applied to it, just like anything in principle can be treated as money.

It’s a separate question as to whether something thus prescribed is well fit for prescription, just like there’s a separate question as to whether a particular token fits well as money. Tree leaves probably don’t. But that doesn’t have anything to do with what “money” MEANS.

:up:

You set up your method as an alternative to moral 'right's being determined by whomever has the most power. I'm saying that a direct consequence of them having the most power is that they get to do that. — Isaac

Whoever has the most power is inevitably going to get to say what is right, and have people do what they say, because that's what having power is. That's not the same as it being right.

My method is an alternative to whoever has that power just saying that whatever they want is right. Instead, it says it's better if those in power pay attention to what actually brings the phenomenal experiences of suffering or enjoyment to people, without bias toward or against anyone, and then say that the things that preserve or create enjoyment while suppressing or eliminating suffering are good, or at least, better than the alternatives. And, as I've said many times before, my method for doing that involves letting people mostly do what they want to do with themselves (preserving and creating enjoyment), and only saying it's wrong when they hurt other people (suppressing and eliminating suffering); i.e., libertarianism. Your suggestion instead seems to be that it doesn't matter what they say at all; which is tantamount to letting them say whatever they want, tell whoever to do whatever, which is authoritarianism.

You've dodged the argument again by just diverting it. The point was that you said certain people were to be excluded from your "let's not give up discussing the issue" approach on the grounds of your judgement about their open-mindedness — Isaac

The only people to be excluded from the "let's not give up" conversation are the people who say "let's stop talking about it", either because they insist that they just have the right answer and you have to trust them on it no questions asked, or because they insist that it's impossible for anyone to ever have the right answer.

You seem to be in the latter camp. You think there can't be a right answer, and want everyone else to stop trying to figure out what it is. That just means everyone else gets to ignore you, until you decide you want to join in again and actually consider the possibility of there being an answer, and figure out what it is with them.

Who said anything about nothing being actually good or bad? — Isaac

You, this entire time? That's the entire point of disagreement. I say some things are actually good or bad -- not just baseless opinions, but things that we can be correct or incorrect about. You, by all lights, seem to vehemently disagree with that.

I think loads of things are good and loads of thing are bad, What's bad about authoritarianism is that it denies people a liberty which I think is a good thing to have. — Isaac

And if a majority of people disagreed with you that liberty is good and authoritarianism consequently bad, do you think that that would make you definitionally wrong, because all that makes them good or bad is majority of the linguistic community using the words "good" and "bad" to apply to them that way?

Or is it possible that a majority of people would say liberty is bad and authoritarianism good, but they would nevertheless be wrong?

But many people, even those who know something about rhetoric, still do not keep the distinction between them and their respective purposes in mind, and also confuse rhetoric with sophistry. That is, confuse the reputable and useful with the contemptible and hateful. — tim wood

That's what I was looking for, thanks :-)

(I disagree with the characterization of rhetoric as being entirely about prescriptive persuasion about contingent futures, but I'll circle back around to that in a different thread later).

If that were all that you claimed, there would be far less to discuss. That counts as the bleeding obvious. — apokrisis

Well the main topic of this thread isn't about that claim, it's about my proposed relationship between rhetoric and the arts. You responded with an attack on rhetoric generally though, and didn't like me trying to sidestep that to get on with the main point, which is not about whether rhetoric is good or bad, but how it relates to the arts. So to try to wrap that tangent up, I'm replied with my explanation of why rhetoric can also be used for good, and isn't the same as sophistry, which I agree is always bad. In that context, all I'm saying (the conclusion I'm giving reasons for) is that rhetoric can also be used for good. If you think that's bleeding obvious then I don't know why it seemed like you disagreed with that until now.

Aside from that tangential context, I have other claims, about the relationship of rhetoric to the arts, yes.

I think I was ending up talking about that fit as well. Scientific ideas need to be communicated in their certain way - explicit logical theory, concrete objective measurements - to persuade their audience. That defines a good fit.

But rhetoric - in its ancient Aristotelean sense - is about powerful oratory. And to move crowds, you have to plug into ordinary human psychology. That would define its good fit. — apokrisis

You seem to be conflating content with audience here.

If you're trying to convince scientists of a theory about reality (say, anthropogenic global warming), you need to show them explicit logical theory and concrete objective measurements, yes. And for that audience you can mostly assume they're already interested in hearing what logic and measurements you have to present, so you don't need to wrap it up in a bow, you just need to put it out there and then get out of the way.

But if you're trying to convince the general populace of that same theory of reality -- same content, different audience -- you need to be aware that often they're not just going to zero in on your logic and facts and brush any rhetorical flourishes away as distractions. They're going to be loaded up with biases that will make them inclined to either trust you or distrust you, either because they think you really do or don't know what you're talking about, or because they think you really are or aren't concerned for the same interests as them; and even if they do perceive you as a sympathetic expert, if you talk too fast, or too slow, or otherwise don't spoon feed it to them at their pace in their way, you're still going to lose them. If you think you have an important, true message that you need to communicate to them, it's thus important that you do everything you can to encourage them to trust your expertise, trust your sympathy for them, and follow along with what you're trying to tell them until the conclusion.

You could also use those same tools to feed them lies, but that's not the fault of the tools, that's the fault of the user -- and of the audience they're used on, for paying more attention to the packaging than the content in the first place. Someone who rightly zeroes in on the content won't care how it's packaged. So you can ignore them for rhetorical purposes. And they're a tiny minority of the populace. It's everyone else you need to hone your communication skills (i.e. rhetoric) for.

So the big flip in Ancient Greece was in accepting the principle of a dialectical inquiry as the royal road to arriving at truth. That is what you really get from Plato as the reason to engage in something more ambitious than sophistry. — apokrisis

Getting someone to walk that road together with you is itself a rhetorical feat. If your interlocutor thinks that you're going to be playing some kind of duplicitous tricky mind games, they're not going to be open-minded enough to follow the logic in the dialectic. They'll put up their defenses and be ever on the lookout for the way to "win" the argument they think they're having with you. To get someone to engage in a dialectic, they have to believe you are an honest truth-seeker too, who isn't looking to brainwash them but to go on a journey of exploration with them, and someone who's not going to get them lost on that journey, i.e. a smart and honest truth-seeker. Convincing them of that is a work of rhetoric. It's easiest to do if it's actually true, but while you could convince them of it even if it were false, it just being true isn't enough unto itself, you also have to convince them of it, or they'll never engage in the dialectic with you.

You’re just re-emphasizing that this power can be used for bad, which I’m not contesting at all. I’m only saying it can also be used for good. Communicating effectively in any way requires the use of rhetoric, guiding people's attention to the important parts. (Like the analogy with building design or interface design earlier). Teaching effectively requires the use of rhetoric like that. The Socratic method is itself a rhetorical device to do just that. I'd almost say that rhetoric used for good just is synonymous with effective teaching, maybe.

I was going to have yet another later thread about this too, but maybe it would help to clarify this issue (which is already a thread-swallowing tangent) if I give my interpretations of the traditional rhetorical "modes of persuasion", in terms of speech-act theory, specifically direction of fit.

In order to communicate effectively, a speaker must convey to their audience:

- The speaker's "fit to the world": their expertise on the subject matter. Emphasizing this is the essence of the "ethos" mode of persuasion. As a "speaker-to-world" fit, so to speak, this may superficially seem like it is entirely about descriptive truth, with a mind-to-world direction of fit, but the subject matter about which the speaker conveys their expertise may just as well be a prescriptive one, with a world-to-mind direction of fit.

- The speaker's "fit to the (audience's) mind": their sympathy with the perspective of the audience, being on their side, trying to help them, rather than being against them, attacking them. Emphasizing this is the essence of the "pathos" mode of persuasion. As a "speaker-to-mind" fit, so to speak, this may superficially seem like it is entirely about prescriptive good, with a world-to-mind direction of fit, showing the audience that the speaker is normatively acceptable, but it can be just as important to convey a factual understandability (with a mind-to-world fit), that the speaker understands the perspective from which the audience sees the world, and can translate a view of the the subject matter in question to that audience's perspective.

- The speaker's ability to feed their expertise on the world sympathetically into the audience's mind at an appropriate pace for the audience to digest it. This has much in common with the showmanship that is most important in the ceremonial or epideictic type of rhetoric, because it requires the speaker to convey the subject in an entertaining manner, in the literal sense of "entertaining" as in holding the audience's attention, leaving them neither bored nor overwhelmed.

Contrary to the Sophists, and concurring with Plato and his portrayal of Socrates, I think it is very important that the speaker actually be all of these things they are conveying to their audience. They really should actually know the topic they are talking about. They really should care to actually help their audience by conveying it to them. And they really should have the patience to pace it out in the way that most effectively bridges that gap between the two. But unlike Plato and his portrayal of Socrates, and concurring with Aristotle, I think it is also important that the speaker demonstrate such expertise, sympathy, and patience to their audience.

That demonstration of ethos and pathos, expertise and sympathy, is the essence of rhetoric, in the sense that I mean it here as something separate from logic, logos being the traditional third mode of persuasion. Just dryly hitting someone with a book of hard logic isn't going to effectively communicate anything to them. It has to be delivered in a way that will actually get through to them.

@tim wood maybe you would like to tell @apokrisis about your distinction between rhetoric and sophistry that you mentioned to me before, since it sounds like that's basically the same thing I would say in response to the negative light apo casts on rhetoric. Sophistry sucks, yes, but not all rhetoric is sophistry. (Though sometimes people do use the word "rhetoric" to mean something more like sophistry, sure; and "logic" to mean the opposite; but IMO those are themselves rhetorical, technically inaccurate uses of the words).

What does this mean? If rhetoric is about the arts of persuasion, then either side could be true — tim wood

Yes, I was saying that good rhetoric is not determined by the truth of its contents, but by its effectiveness at delivering them.

Should I apply for this job or that? Logic cannot tell me. It goes to rhetoric, even if self-applied, to persuade me as to the better course of action. That is, in brief, the true is not the business of rhetoric, the business of rhetoric is the better - or best. — tim wood

Rhetoric isn't entirely about prescriptive matters. You can use rhetoric to convince someone that something is the case just as much as you can use it to convince them that it ought to be the case. That was the point of that bit I quoted earlier about even people as old as the Sophists using rhetoric for purposes other than convincing someone to do something, which of course was its origins, but rather for convincing anyone of anything.

I'm actually planning yet another future thread about adapting Aristotle's breakdown of rhetoric into three kinds, all prescriptive, divided by their temporal relations, into instead a descriptive, prescriptive, and dual-direction-of-fit breakdown that ends up remarkably similar to his original triad.

The bad thing is when rhetoric of this "artful" kind then gets applied back where it shouldn't be - where we are supposed to be rational thinkers making evidence-based claims. — apokrisis

I don't think it's bad for rhetoric to get used in those circumstances entirely, only for it to be used against logical thinking in those circumstances. But it can also be used for encouraging logical thinking in them as well.

Since this thread is already going off the rails into this other topic, I may as well just say what I was saving for another thread now.

Some philosophers such as Plato were vehemently opposed to rhetoric, seeing it as manipulative sophistry without regard for truth, in contrast with the logical, rational dialectic that he and his teacher Socrates advocated. His student Aristotle, on the other hand, had a less negative opinion of rhetoric, viewing it as neither inherently good nor bad but as useful toward either end, and holding that because many people sadly do not think in perfectly rational ways, rhetorical appeals to emotion and character and such are often necessary to get such people to accept truths that they might otherwise irrationally reject.

I side much more with Aristotle's view on this matter, viewing logic and rhetoric as complimentary to each other, not in competition. I like to use an analogy of prescribing someone medicine: the actual medicinal content is most important of course, but you stand a much better chance of getting someone to actually swallow that content if it's packaged in a small, smooth, sweet-tasting pill than if it's packaged in a big, jagged, bitter pill. In this analogy, the medicinal content of the pill is the logical, rational content of a speech-act, while the size, texture, and flavor of the pill is the rhetorical packaging and delivery of the speech-act. It is of course important that the "medicine" (logic) be right, but it's just as important that the "pill" (rhetoric) be such that people will actually swallow it.

Rhetoric would be logic misapplied in the sense that it is argumentation intended to bypass objective empirical validation and instead plug directly into the various cognitive biases of humans. That is, all the standard kinds of "irrationalities", such as the recency effect or groupthink. — apokrisis

I'm not sure if you took me to be saying that rhetoric is a kind of logic. I wasn't; I was separating them as different aspects of communication, "structure" and "presentation" basically, and relating rhetoric to the arts in the same way that logic is usually related to mathematics.

I have some other stuff to say in response to the negative view of rhetoric you go on to state, but I intended to do a different thread all about that later. Another thread about the merits or faults of rhetoric, rather than this thread which is just supposed to be about the relationship of rhetoric to art.

The “art” part in the “art of rhetoric” probably serves the same function as in “the art of building”, “the art of war”, “the art of the deal” which has less to do with the modern meaning of the word as it stands alone then with the more ancient meaning as in the Greek “techne” which rather means “skill”, but is still translated as “art”. — Congau

Yeah, I meant that to be a bit of artful rhetoric on my own art there, segueing into the relationship between art (in the modern sense) and rhetoric by using the phrase "the art of rhetoric", which I'm sure is usually meant in the way you say here.

one could argue that we all use rhetoric whenever we try to persuade anyone of anything without thereby having any reasonable right to call ourselves artists. But I think it’s important to retain a difference between good art and bad art. If I draw a stickman on a scrap of paper I am strictly speaking an artist, although a horribly bad one. Art as such is nothing rare and special and we all engage in it whenever we do anything that is slightly creative, for example when we try to persuade. — Congau

Yes, I agree completely. Art is involved to some degree or another in basically all communication, different art forms depending on the medium of communication. My thesis here is that rhetoric is really more about that, the artistic side of communication, than it is about persuasive communication specifically, and that the thing that makes any kind of art art at all is a certain feature it has in common with rhetoric, that feature being precisely what it is that makes them both good or bad in their respective ways. (Continued below...)

Rhetoric a (usually auditory) taking-counsel-with leading to a decision concerning an action to be taken or not taken. — tim wood

The historical origins of rhetoric are in recommending or discommending actions in the course of politics, sure, but even back in ancient Greece, many rhetoricians like the Sophists argued that, to quote Wikipedia here, "a successful rhetorician could speak convincingly on any topic, regardless of his experience in that field. This method suggested rhetoric could be a means of communicating any expertise, not just politics."

Rhetoric is an art, sure. It's not foundational to art generally, though. If I enjoy some music, am I really a victim of rhetoric? — bert1

Leaving aside the "victim" language which again paints rhetoric as an entirely bad thing: yes in a way, if you enjoy some music, the musician has successfully used some broadly-speaking rhetorical device on you to successfully evoke that reaction in you.

(...Continued from earlier). Good rhetoric is successful rhetoric, rhetoric whose style and presentation successfully delivers its content into the minds of the audience; not necessarily rhetoric whose content is true. Likewise, what makes something art at all, on my account (though by no means unique to me), is its being presented to an audience to evoke something in them, and good art is successful art, art that evokes the intended reaction in the audience.

It's in that sense that I mean that rhetoric is a foundational branch of the arts. It is purely and explicitly about getting someone to feel some way about something using our most basic communicative tools, our language. All of the other arts are about using various other media to get people to feel various ways about various things, and so are sort of "applied rhetoric", in the same way that mathematical fields that seem to have nothing to do with pure formal logic are all in a distant sense "applied logic".

Hmmm, I guess in a broad way a lot of our creative activity involves rhetoric, including music. — Bitter Crank

:up:

That sounds optimistic and doesn't concur with recent political evolution in the US and a number of other countries. It seems that someone far worse than Charlemagne is making a come-back. — Olivier5

My understanding of the causes behind that accords with those of thinkers like Chomsky: people with bad intentions have gotten very skilled at generating widespread popular support for things that are actually against the interests of the very people they're getting the support of, "manufacturing consent".

In other words, the recent political evolution you're talking about has happened because too many people support those changes and not enough people oppose them. That support and lack of opposition was created by the people it benefits, but they created it by manipulating the minds of the people at large. If we don't change those minds ourselves, just overthrowing the people in charge won't change anything: the manipulated people will just put someone else like that in charge again.

Even medieval monarchs held power in a formally similar, but much less subtle, way. Make a bunch of people afraid of an external threat and make them think that your leadership is the only thing that can protect them; and make anybody who might object to your leadership afraid that if they say anything about that they'll be killed for treason and nobody will come to their defense. Now you have the support and lack of opposition needed for a few people to rule in a way counter to the interests of many people who easily could overthrow them, if only they had the collective will to do so.

We don't have much time before the climate gets all wacko. Western civilisation as we know it is getting toast fast. — Olivier5

Maybe that might eventually get scary enough to motivate people to support and oppose the right groups to make it stop. Hopefully before it's too late.

Climate deniers certainly seem to think that the only reason "warmists" whip up such a big doom story about the future of the planet is to get people to accept "communism" as their only salvation. I think those deniers understand too well how manufacturing consent actually works, and are projecting their own intent to use it on others. But just because rhetoric can be used to deceive, doesn't mean it can't also be used to teach truths.

(Which reminds me, I meant to start a new thread about rhetoric soon...)

:up:

Except where there is a denial of democracy. — Olivier5

Whether a democracy is in effect or not is itself a product of people’s political views. You could plop Charlemagne down in modern France and he would have no power at all — unless so many people were so wowed by his historical fame or something that they abandoned the modern French republic to accept him as their emperor again. A monarchy or dictatorship can only exist so long as the people recognize and accept it. A dictator not recognized by the people as their dictator is at worst a mob
boss, to be squashed by the police and military forces that do actually have popular support.

And this a species of Realism v. Nominalism. — tim wood

Just to note, I am definitely not a Realist about abstract objects in the usual sense (a Platonist), and feel much more sympathy for nominalism among the two usual options.

My view is a third way, wherein there isn’t some realm of abstract forms wholly separate from the concrete realm, or just the concrete realm with no abstract, but rather everything is fundamentally of the same nature as the abstract, and “concrete” is just indexical: the abstract object we’re a part of. Every other abstract object is also concrete, relative to anything that’s a part of it.

Everyone is going to put up with that whatever happens, otherwise it wouldn't be 'power' would it? — Isaac

That’s exactly what I said. So advocating that those people in power use a particular method isn’t any more authoritarian than literally any other possibility, where no matter what someone is going to enforce something and everyone else ultimately has to deal with it.

For that matter, I actually have grounds to object to actual authoritarianism, which is a methodology completely counter to my principles. Fully half of the motivation behind my stance is the opposition to authoritarianism. But you have no grounds to object to anything at all; if nothing is actually good or bad, what could possibly be bad about authoritarianism?

How to deal with that dilemma is a large part of my political philosophy, which again is grounded in more fundamental ethics.

Setting aside my proposals for how to better balance power in a better political system so as to fight corruption better, on the issue of just getting something better in place in the first place, changing people’s minds is both necessary and sufficient.

If there was a violent revolution today, completely aside from the collateral damage, and even if the revolutionaries won, the resultant government would still be made up of the kind of people we have today with the kind of values they have. The people who are in power today only have any power inasmuch as enough other people support them and few enough other people oppose them, so without changing that support/opposition balance, the new government will end up with the same kind of people in power as the old government.

On the other hand, if you could somehow mind-control the people into supporting and opposing however you liked, then you could change the kind of people who get in power even within our current system, without any kind of violent revolution. Just make everyone go vote the fuckers out, none of this close election because half the country honestly loves fascism bullshit.

That’s a fantasy scenario for dramatic illustration, but the point is that changing people’s minds, even the old-fashioned way, would be enough to make significant political changes, and even more importantly, it must happen in order for any changes to actually stick past the revolution.

I don’t know how to effectively win it, but this is and always has been a war for the hearts and minds of our fellow citizens. So what we’re trying to convince those hearts and minds of — our ethics — matters immensely.

The rest have to what...? Just put up with whatever their philosopher-kings deem to be right? This here is exactly why I have such a big problem with moral universalism. When you dig into it it's always, without exception, an attempt at authoritarianism. — Isaac

As opposed to... everyone just putting up with whoever happens to have the power deems is right?

That’s what’s going to be the case one way or another, but what kind of decision-making would we like those in power to use? A rational one, or just whatever their gut tells them?

As long as you understand that this is a process, not a final destination, and that what is deemed moral in certain times can be seen as immoral in others and vice versa, you should be fine. — Olivier5

Yes, so long as it's understood that this change over time can embody genuine progress and not just be arbitrary change. It's not just that slavery is bad now but was fine 200 years ago; it was bad 200 years ago too, but we only have widespread social acknowledgement of that (such as it is) now.

Another caveat is that the laws are not just enforced: they are voted, adopted, interpreted and enforced. And there is often due process for that, in which ethical considerations crank in, as they should, but also politics. And in politics, individual morality doesn't quite work, as Macchiaveli showed us. — Olivier5

What is "politics" besides the process by which laws are legislated (voted on and adopted), interpreted, and enforced? I did list all three of those things before -- and analogized them to research, testing, and teaching in the descriptive discourse. I'm saying that a large point of doing ethics is to make sure that those processes are done in a way that results in good (or less bad) legislation being enforced, like a large point of doing ontology and epistemology is to make sure that academic processes are done in a way that results in true (or less false) research being taught. Ethics : ontology+epistemology:: legislation : research :: adjudication/interpretation : testing :: enforcement : teaching

Where reaching agreement is unimportant, I don’t preach that we ought to bang our heads against that wall in pursuit of it, to the detriment of other tasks. You and I can both go above our lives unchanged by whether or not we’ve convinced the other, so it’s not like we have no choice but to proceed as though one or the other is right and thus have to decide who that is.

I don’t think it’s impossible in principle to reach agreement with you, it’s just not worth my time trying instead of doing other things. More to the point though, I don’t think it’s always possible for two parties who disagree to actually in practice reach agreement. One or more of them could be irrationally unpersuadable, either too closed-minded or too uncritical. I claim only that there is always an answer that all rational (open-minded yet critical) people would agree on.

Any one person can often give up, and that’s not always wrong by me. Often it could be right. But ever saying that on some topic everyone should always give up? That I have a problem with.

Oh and since I suspect you're going to reply with something like "well this just pushes the argument back to what's rational or not", I mean this dual rejection of nihilism and fideism to be a definition of rationality, precisely because those are the two broad approaches that make bridging disagreements categorically impossible. The "open minded yet critical" description above is a gloss of that: open-minded as in not nihilistic (or solipsistic or egotistic or relativistic... willing to give things a chance that they might be correct), critical as in not fideistic. Taking no questions as unanswerable, and no answers as unquestionable.

Maybe "sure" was a bit too strong of language on my part, because I didn't actually mean to imply anything about certainty. I agree completely that both are all about being less wrong, not about being absolutely certainly right, which we can never be. Nevertheless, the point stands: a large point of doing ontology and epistemology is to make sure that the research we teach to everyone is as little false (as close to true) as we can manage, and likewise a large point of doing ethics is to make sure that the laws we enforce on everyone are as little bad (as close to good) as we can manage.

In most countries there is some due process to set the law, to interpret and to apply it, with parliaments, courts, etc. IMO, representative democracy provides an adequate framework for societies to make 'moral' (i.e. including legal, in your terminology) decisions. — Olivier5

I do think the political process is a major part of the social moral methodology, but what makes for a legitimate political process depends largely on the answers to more atomic moral questions. For my part, I don't think simple majoritarianism (the usual meaning of "democracy") validly produces moral output: it's entirely possible for the majority to be wrong.

The biggest practical upshot of all moral theorizing, IMO, is its implications on politics. I advocate a kind of anarcho-socialism precisely because of libertarian deontological principles applied as a method to sort through the possibilities of what is objectively morally right in a “material”, non-transcendental (i.e. phenomenal, hedonic) way.

And I see that whole stack of related prescriptive issues ("teleology" or ethics of ends, "deontology" or ethics of means, and political legislation / adjudication / corrections processes) as the analogue of the descriptive stack of ontology, epistemology, and academic research / testing / teaching processes.

Just as a large part of the point of getting ontological and epistemological issues like empirical realism and critical rationalism sorted out right is so we can be sure to teach things that are actually true, a very large point of getting straightened out about principles of altruism, hedonism, liberalism, etc, is so we can be sure to pass laws that are actually good.

Mathematical objects are all hypothetical objects, and the inferences about them are all hypothetical.

When we lay out some axioms, we're basically saying something like "Suppose there was a thing, let's call it a 'set', and it had these properties and behaved this way." Then we make inferences about what would be true of that hypothetical "set" object if it existed and had those properties / behaved that way. Likewise with "numbers", "triangles", etc: suppose there were these kinds of things and they were like this... what else would have to be true of them?

It doesn't matter if no such things are actually instantiated in the real world that we observe, since it's all hypothetical to begin with.

But if you're a certain kind of modal realist, like me, then all these hypotheticals necessarily do exist, in their own possible worlds of sorts, and our concrete world is just the mathematical structure of which we are a part.

Yeah, I suppose you have a point. Questions about free will seem to cause the same existential angst in people, too. But those, at least, are questions that (I think) can have answers, and it's only some answers (morality is subjective, nobody has free will, etc) that are existentially distressing. The "what is the meaning of life?" question is, IMO, malformed to begin with, and no supposed answer to it could possibly suffice to satisfy the angst.

what should be allowed or forbidden, what should be taxed to extinction, what should be made more accessible, etc. This the topic of those 'culture wars', not individual morality. — Olivier5

I think you're thinking of "morality" in a much narrower sense than I am. All of those "should" questions are moral questions in the sense I mean. You're not asking what is the law, but what ought to be the law, which is to say, what ought everyone be required to do. Of course nobody really argues about "ought" questions that don't involve them, but there are "ought" questions that do involve other people, like those you just listed, and those are the ones people argue about.

(If anything, more often people seem to think that questions that don't involve obligations on other people, just one's own decisions about their own lives, are non-moral questions. I don't agree with that either, I think those are just a subset of the broader moral questions about what ought to be).

Because that is just to summarily dismiss that x, y, and z are good reasons at all. If they both agree that they are good reasons, but they still don't agree with the conclusion, then there must be some other places where they disagree. — Pfhorrest

Why 'must' there? Why, contrary to all the psychological and neurological evidence, do you keep insisting that their feelings that these are good reasons is sufficient to believe that they are? — Isaac

The 'must' is just a matter of logical necessity, given their agreement that those are good reasons. In any argument, moral or otherwise, if everyone involved agrees on some premises and disagrees on the conclusions, they logically must disagree about some kind of inferences, or disagree about some unstated premises; otherwise, they would necessarily agree on the conclusion.

I'm not saying that all of their reasons necessarily are good reasons to reach their conclusions. I'm just looking at any argument, about moral matters or other matters, and looking at what is a pragmatically useful way of conducting that argument toward the end of reaching some agreement. If one side is putting forward premises that the other side thinks don't lead to the conclusions the first side says do, that's saying they're making an invalid inference. If one side is putting forward premises that would lead to the conclusion they're making, but the other side thinks those premises are false, then that pushes the argument back to an argument about those premises. And it can keep going on and on like that, as deep into their premises' premises' premises as need be, until they find some common ground to build up from.

All I'm saying is "don't ever give up on that process just because you haven't found common ground yet". I'm not saying that anything in particular definitely is the common ground, just to proceed as though you expect to find one eventually, and keep trying. On moral or non-moral issues both. You seem to be saying, if the question at hand is a moral one, "regard all supposed premises as false, and so stop trying to convince each other using them as reasons." Which leaves... what? Either not addressing the disagreement at all (which in many cases is not practically possible, if the disagreement is about what socially ought to be done or permitted etc), or else addressing it in completely non-rational ways, like indoctrination or threats of force. I presume, being charitable, that you are opposed to people imposing their views on what is or isn't moral on others by force etc. So when there's a disagreement that must be settled because we have to either allow something or not, oblige something or not, etc, how do you propose to settle it?

these feelings are generated by deep models in the brain and are not the result of the rationalisations that are attached to them when discussed — Isaac

The same is true of non-moral beliefs, but you're about to respond to that below...

No, absolutely not. Our non-moral physical beliefs are not most of the time the result of some combination of genetic and social factors. They are in vast part the result of interaction with an external world. It is far and away the most prevalent and most well-supported explanation for our beliefs about the physical world. — Isaac

So our physical intuitions that fly in the face of what we now understand to be the fundamental nature of reality (quantum and relativistic) aren't based on some non-rational inherited or cultural intuitions? (Probably more the former than the latter) And widespread belief in "Gods, creation myths, animism..." is based on interaction with an external world? An external world which you said before we have to have a prior agreement on the existence of? You wrote earlier:

When the 'accounting process' for physical reality was widely disputed, theories about physical reality were relativist too (Gods, creation myths, animism...), we only have such widespread agreement now because we also agree about the accounting method (science). We no longer just 'have a bit of think about' the opinions of everyone we happen to have spoken to about physical reality. We consult experts in the field using a (largely) agreed on method of trials, controls, statistical analysis and peer review. This 'method' is based on the prior belief that there is an external cause for the similarity in our observations. — Isaac

And I agree with that completely.

We cannot get from inside our phenomenal sense-experience to any proof that there is any objective reality. You can't show a solipsist or metaphysical nihilist evidence that they're wrong; anything you show them, they'll take as part of the illusion of so-called "reality" that they have a prior belief in. We can only assume one way or another, that either there is or isn't an objective reality. I said earlier that the reason to assume there is an objective reality is that it's "pragmatically useful -- it got results, it resolved disagreements, it built consensus", and you replied just "Agreed."

Then I said I'm just proposing we do that with moral questions too, and you started asking what color the unicorn's tail is.

Change the environment in which people are raised such as to generate the moral thought you think is best. — Isaac

While the others do the same, and in the mean time we just fight and yell at each other, and whoever stymies the other's progress and accomplishes a change in majority opinion most effectively was definitionally right all along, because majority opinion is all there is to being right?

Might makes right? That's your solution? Maybe I was too charitable earlier.

I'm going to try a new approach to getting you folks to leave this thread. — Avery

More effective would be to ask a mod to fork the off-topic discussion into another thread. But for my part I don't really want to continue this off-topic discussion anyway. I'm tired of going around and around the same circles over and over again with Isaac in thread after thread.

Someone with nihilistic convictions of any kind (or sufficiently close to it: solipsist, egotist, relativist or subjectivist of any kind) is as unconvinceable as someone with religious convictions. If you're explicitly rejecting the possibility of reasoning about a topic, of course there's no rational discourse that can happen there. I've tried the appeal to pragmatism instead of abstract reason, but apparently that's of no concern either since he seems fine with people just forcing change of opinion through non-rational means, and that's the main thing a pragmatic argument assumes we want to avoid, so I see no point continuing.

but for some some reason they must ignore the possibility the the reason they disagree is because x, y and z are post hoc rationalisations to justify feelings arising from a combination of biological and cultural influences — Isaac

Because that is just to summarily dismiss that x, y, and z are good reasons at all. If they both agree that they are good reasons, but they still don't agree with the conclusion, then there must be some other places where they disagree.

You've singled out moral thought to be immunised from scientific investigation. — Isaac

Not at all. What I want is exactly for us to treat moral questions with the same rigor as science treats factual questions.

The closest to anything like this I've said is that I don't think moral (prescriptive) questions should be dismissed entirely, and descriptive questions treated as though they were equivalent substitutions, when they clearly are not. "What should I do?" is not at all answered by "you are inclined to do X because of genetic and social factors Y and Z". No matter what X, Y, and Z you posit there, they can always respond "yes yes I get why I'm inclined to do X, but should I?" Telling someone what people think and why they think it doesn't answer any questions at all about what to think -- whether we're talking about what to think about moral topics, or any other topics.

You've said that no matter what, we should act as if the feelings some of us have about the categorical nature of moral imperatives must be considered genuine, this despite a mountain of evidence that they are mostly either primitive or deeply entrenched models of how to act resulting from either genetic or early cultural experiences, not from any collection of 'reasons'. — Isaac

This exact same psychologicization can be applied to all our non-moral beliefs. We just went over this a few posts ago, and you admitted as much. Most of the time our non-moral beliefs are also a result of something less than a perfectly rational process, some combination of genetic and social factors. The scientific method is an approach to answering questions about reality in a more rigorous, rational way. You have given no reason whatsoever why a similar approach cannot be taken to questions about morality. You've only given irrelevant non-sequiturs.

How on earth have you concluded that?. That if we don't take our post hoc rationalisations seriously there's absolutely no other way we can resolve disagreements? How do you think the disagreements arose in the first place? — Isaac

So you do think there is some way of resolving those disagreements?

I'm not saying anything at all about what is or isn't a post-hoc rationalization. I'm saying that if someone reaches some conclusion on the grounds of some premises, and someone else reaches a different conclusion while agreeing with all those premises, then at least one of them must have made an invalid inference, or they must be working from some different unstated premises, and the road to resolving their disagreement is sorting out those differences in premises and inferences. For moral questions and non-moral questions. I'm not treating them differently at all. You are.

A sure-fire way to not resolve the disagreement is to say "all of your premises are baseless illusions you only think of because of your genetics and upbringing". That leaves no grounds at all to answer the question from. Yet people still can't help but have opinions on what the answer is. Which leaves nothing but hopelessly shouting past each other in perpetual disagreement.

If we can't even establish if unicorns exist there's not much point discussing their tail colour. — Isaac

Then why are you asking me about the tail color as if you need to know that before you can entertain the possibility of their existence?

That's the method I'm talking about. You keep referring to this 'accounting for', or here 'appeal to' without specifying how such activities are supposed to produce any resolution. — Isaac

"OK... (long pause). I think abortion really is not wrong because I considered x, y and z and it seems to me that the best way to account for all those factors is if abortion were not wrong"

"Ahh...I also took account of factors x, y and z, but it seemed to me that the best way to account for all three would be if abortion was wrong" — Isaac

On that superficial a level, you'd think we would be unable to have a scientific method (the ordinary one about descriptive facts) too. These two people in your hypothetical argument need to figure out who is making invalid inferences where, if they all agree with premises x, y, and z, but still reach different conclusions. Maybe x, y, and z aren't enough to determine an answer, and there is some other hidden premise they disagree about that needs resolving in order to make progress. All I'm saying about them that's different from you is "don't give up there, figure out why you still disagree".

If all you're saying is that people should give their moral choices some prior thought then you really are as hubristic as you sound. Like people don't do that already. — Isaac

People do do that already. As I said, I think I'm defending common sense against bad philosophy. People ordinarily act like their moral disagreements are about things that there are correct answers to. I'm saying they're right to do so. They try to convince each other why their moral opinions are correct and the others' aren't. I'm saying that that's the right way to do things, instead of either appealing to authority/faith/popularity/etc, or else saying it's impossible to resolve. You seem to be saying it's impossible to resolve; if people disagree, tough, nothing to be done there. I say that that's just quitting. Resolution may be hard to find, but we can never know for certain that it's impossible. All we can do is either keep trying or give up.

There's plenty more detail to go into about how to try to resolve things. Epistemology is a big field, and I think there's an equally big moral equivalent to it to be explored (as I linked earlier). But if we can't even get past the groundwork of "yes there is something knowable out there to be known", there's no point in going into the details of how to sort it out yet.