The outcome of this tension is a life of voluntary deception. It’s hopeless to try to universally logically justify our values, attachments, or actions with any consistency. Logic and emotion are apples and oranges. — Pinprick

I don't follow your conclusion. If it's hopeless to try to universally justify our values, doesn't the nihilist escape tension by rejecting universal values?

So the nihilist experiences preferences, which you may call values, without falling back on some rational or logical meaning for those values.

You seem to be supporting the nihilist's position.

But what good is a theory of rationality if any account of so-called inner logic leads to the same observable outcome. From the consequential perspective, rationality becomes an empty variable. Better discarded for parsimony..

At the end of the day the theistic moral realist has a God to answer to and believes he will be judged by actual, objective standards. He has skin in the game. Bad actions have consequences in the next life.

A moral nihilist may be a good person. Plenty of people just have naturally good dispositions or are responsive to positive social pressures, but others don't. — BitconnectCarlos

But if we only observe human behavior in this life, the sentences you have written above don't necessarily translate to better predictions of what action any given individual will take.

A theist may engage in "good" behavior.
A theist may engage in "bad" behavior.
A nihilist may engage in "good" behavior.
A nihilist may engage in "bad" behavior.

That a person says "I believe in consequences in the next life" does not tell us to what standard the theist holds himself culpable. This is doubly complicated by a Christian belief that God may absolve the sinner of their guilt, detaching the consequences of the afterlife from the causal effects of actions taken in this life. A Christian may fully believe in an afterlife, perpetually behave like a bad nihilist, and still anticipate a fruitful afterlife as a result of the grace of a forgiving God. The only thing that distinguishes him from the bad nihilist, in this life, is "I believe in God."

But even stating, "I believe in God" is no indicator of the disposition. A nihilist would be perfectly consistent in stating "I believe in God" and anticipating no consequences for the lie. Such a lying nihilist may find himself conforming with all other social expectations, getting labeled a good theist, and being otherwise indistinguishable as a good person.

I don't see how the label of nihilist informs any discussion on good or evil, from an ethical or philosophical perspective.

I agree with everything you wrote here. A nihilist could be a perfectly moral person. I just think that an intellectually honest nihilist should have very little if any resistance to engaging in depravity if social conditions were to make it advantageous or if the moral nihilist were just curious for any reason and he knew he could get away with it. — BitconnectCarlos

So social constructs keep the nihilist's behavior in check with regards to the continuing "success" of the society. How is that any different from the moral realist who ascribes to a theistic religion and also considers themselves a sinner?

For example, I don't see how the label of nihilist or Christian are particularly helpful in predicting a person's so called "moral" behavior at a personal level. What I do find, however, is that the Christian is more likely to pass judgement on others' behavior.

Compared to having a 9-5 job?

Entrepreneurship only takes more time as you're setting up the business but not after.. After they get more time — Gitonga

In my experience, entrepreneurs who continue to own successful businesses also continue to spend 50, 60, 70+ hours a week nurturing their business.

The nihilist has basically no real reasons for complying with morality in general since doesn't exist/have any real grounding. The nihilist might comply with conventional morality for social appearances or because it personally makes him feel good but outside of that there's no real backing to it. — BitconnectCarlos

It's still likely that a nihilist will have preferences that translate into what is considered moral behavior, partly due to the nature of human biology. The nihilist will also likely have been conditioned to certain behaviors that are morally repeatable in a societal sense, due to their upbringing within a society.

It's just unlikely that a nihilist will point to some external or objective purpose to justify his actions.

A nihilist may still contribute to a sense of happiness, both personal and shared with other people.

Entrepreneurship consumes an incredible amount of time. Philosophy can consume a large amount of time. The two pursuits don't directly contribute to breakthroughs in the other.

However there are some philosophers who have made some of the crossover. Donald Davidson attended Harvard Business School. Wittgenstein studied engineering.

I may be wrong but I think I remember Socrates studied at the London School of Economics. It's where he came up with the lyrics to "You can't always get what you want."

I read two words in the OP, happiness and meaning.

Is happiness a feeling you pursue? Then why does it require meaning or purpose. Happiness, it seems, is its own reward.

There are some connections/conclusions I see the OP is concerned with, but I don't see the logic.

"Without purpose, I can experience no happiness." If it is true that your happiness has no external purpose, just engage with happiness for its own sake. Don't tack it to someone else's need for purpose.

"I will someday cease to exist. Humanity will cease to exist. Therefore happiness should be discarded?" There is no reason to conclude happiness ought be discarded. If you observe that happiness is impermanent, then enjoy happiness as fleeting. If you want happiness, have it. There is no meaningfulness that says you shouldn't.

Could you walk through the logic that helped you reject non-cognitive approaches? It seems you take the Wikipedia article as an exhaustive list of non-cognitive approaches. Personally I have found more nuance in this space.

You also seem eager to reject all forms of moral nihilism. Is that a logical approach or a reflection of your sentimentality?

I don't think one of them must be right. It's possibly they're both wrong. But at least one of them must be wrong, if they think they're speaking the same language. — Pfhorrest

I like your version better than mine. If I were to re-write the bullets, I would include your version instead. (Though I would still find myself not going along with the bullet.)

↪Adam's Off Ox Wow okay, that's not even "descriptivism" as I've ever seen it, and I have no idea how you can manage to communicate on a first-order level much less communicate about communication while rejecting all of those things. — Pfhorrest

What you say here identify some very important aspects (concerns) about what I am saying, or how I say it. First, I would not describe my approach as descriptivism. I would agree with you that it does not fit under that label. Descriptivism still assumes that words have some kind of meaning, but falls back on an idea that definitions or dictionary definitions can only describe the meanings of words in the context of what they mean to a body of language users. The concept of language is still treated as an existing thing, and descriptivists want to capture the meanings of words as they show up in language use.

I take an alternative approach. Words get used to do something. What that something is only works within the language game in which it occurs. (The effectiveness of using a word as a behavior is relevant only within the context the behavior is observed.) I don't view there to be one overarching context for English, for example, so no single definition or sense of a word captures its use under one umbrella of an English context. Since the way words get used show up in an unlimited number of situations, and some unique situations allow for unique uses of pre-established words (not taken as definitions), a dictionary definition that attempts to capture a singular objective sense of a word, or even attempts to enumerate a finite set of valid senses of a word, cannot describe all cromulent senses for a word. Nor can any English dictionary capture all cromulent words. So descriptivism gets rejected in that it appeals to some objectively ascertainable sense or set of senses for any given word.

As for first-order communication, I can interact with people who assume a first-order framework. I can play by their rules to accomplish speech acts that get at desired outcomes. That doesn't mean that I believe first-order rules are true, or knowable with a sense of certainty. Rather that I can interact with some others and their sense of true-ness. I am not autistic when it comes to the sensibilities of a first-order logician or mathematician. I just happen to believe I have a wider set of tools available to analyze language behaviors besides what are found in the logician's toolbox.

I am working on a project that is trying to look into what concepts or awareness is required to even understand first-order principles. To that degree first-order gets treated as a poor name as it would imply some primitiveness to laws of thought, while I believe there are concepts that come prior to even first-order. I have in the past used terms like partial-order, zeroeth-order, or negative-order, but generally find those names equally distasteful as they still imply some hierarchy of concepts.

The project that explores prior to first-order concepts is slow moving. It's hard to access writing on those concepts. It's hard to make explicit what those concepts are in a way that is appealing to someone who already intuits first-order principles. It's even harder to make explicit what those concepts represent to someone who has little or no understanding of logic. I haven't accomplished much in this way so far.

At this point, I have to go several days without access to internet. I won't be able to reply to any further responses to my comments. I apologize if it seems like I'm making some statement and "dropping the mike." That is not my intention. This has been an interesting discussion. I hope we can pick up and continue discussion on these themes at some future time.

I think where we differ in opinion is that you seem to believe at least some of the bullets below.

• Words have meanings
• A definition is a word's meaning
• A word can be used wrongly
• A speaker and listener must agree on meaning for the speaker to make an effective language move
• If two people think each other are using a word wrongly, one of them must be right and the issue must be reconciled

Since I reject all of the above, if you agree with any one of them, we will find ourselves in disagreement.

Thank you for the explanation, and in the end, I believe we don't disagree on that much. I may continue to avoid words like objective or reality, maybe for different motivations, but I don't completely agree with all the principles you mention.

I may end up getting more wordy in my descriptions in the future, where "apple" is a complex model made up of many submodels which each predict some particular phenomena.

I don't disagree that there is something that persists that drives the phenomena I experience. And that something drives my experience in a way that is independent of my will. It's not like we disagree with that sense of objective or putative. I do see from what you are describing that I have become less averse to a putative aspect of a model, although I believe I will still tend to focus my language on the consistency of observed phenomena.

I still have some objections to the concept of "objective reality", but that has more to do with rejecting an authoritarian approach to language than an actual interpretation of model.

Thank you for the discussion. I feel I learned something and was guided to a change in view, even if it doesn't do much to change my behavior.

So just to refine the names of these different classes if models, we have: deterministic (billiards), statistical (gases), probabilistic (quantum). In the first, the element behaves deterministically and we can know it. In the second, each element behaves deterministically, but we can't know it and instead treat a statistical ensemble. And in the third, a single element has to be treated statistically.

These are three levels of approximation at modelling the putative objective reality. The first works well at the macroscopic scale, but breaks down when describing macroscopic ensembles of molecular-scale objects. For this, statistical mechanics works fine, so long as we don't wish to model the element itself or it is is sufficiently large. For smaller elements, you need a more thorough treatment.

The putative objective reality remains the same, and the trend of more exact treatment is precisely the trend discussed above, that toward a best model of this reality. That is, we don't think there's a part of reality specifically dealing with things like apples and billiard balls, another part specifically dealing with fluids, etc.

My statistical mechanics lecturer actually took the approach of deriving the entirety of statistical mechanics from quantum mechanics, where entropy is essentially the number of states explored by a system. Similarly, we derived all of the classical mechanics of billiard balls from quantum mechanics.

So we'd say QM is a better, rather than different, model of the objective reality we wish to explain. — Kenosha Kid

Thank you for explaining. While I'm not trying to disagree, I believe I still don't fully understand. It may come off as a disagreement.

Are the objects at each level of inquiry the same kind of existing objects? Or rather, the words that make up an ontology of things of the same dimension (not just scale)?

I get that apples and oranges are things. They are objects we may say exist. (I'll remain silent as to their putative-ness.) I would say they are constituents of reality. Is work a real thing too? Does work exist? Exist as a putative object? How about fields? Charges? I'm wondering if the objectively real things in a quantum model are of the same order of things in the realm of apples and oranges?

It may seem like I am arguing frame or mereology or substance as opposed to putativity, but I wonder at what order are our concepts just ideas, and at what order do they become real, putative things?

Is a dollar a real thing? Not the dollar bill, but the value I own? How about Germany, is that a real thing? Is democracy or justice a real thing? Which are puttative and which are ideal?

Which are phenomena and which are the real and underlying things?

Phenomena seem knowable ot me. What phenomena are about seems more vague.

I still haven't been talked off the perch of "phenomena and model" which it seems I can know.

Likewise, words can vary based on context. I said in the very same post you responded to, "the same word can have multiple meanings, so long as the uses of the word in those multiple meanings do not conflict in context". But if multiple parties disagree about what a given word means in a given context, then you settle that by looking back to see who kept with the most recent linguistic community agreement on that, vs who broke with that agreement. — Pfhorrest

So you are saying words have objective meanings, in a given context, and those meanings are determined democratically or by consensus? And if two people disagree on the meaning of a word in a given context, they should appeal to some broader community to decide the difference? (sounds like a moral appeal)

Who determines which broader community arbitrates the decision? Within the English speaking community, there are many linguistic traditions and schools of thought. When two schools have different opinions, what objective authority do we appeal to solve further disagreements about linguistic community?

I agree you have suggested one solution that appeals to objectivity. I'm just not sure you have arrived at the only or even best solution, or that it should be determined by an objective appeal.

I'll tell you what though, I'll agree with you to always appeal to an authority when we disagree on a word as long as you agree to let me choose the authoritative source to settle the dispute.

But if no such cooperative resolution is to be found, and an answer must be found as to which party to the conflict actually has the correct definition of the word in question, I propose that that answer be found by looking back through the history of the word's usage until the most recent uncontested usage can be found: the most recent definition of the word that was accepted by the entire linguistic community. That is then to be held as the correct definition of the word, the analytic a posteriori fact of its meaning, in much the same way that observations common to the experience of all observers constitute the synthetic a posteriori facts of the concrete world. — Pfhorrest

I will contest every single definition you come up with for any given word as the universal and objective definition for that word. You may consider me incorrigible in that way. But I will assert that a word always gets its meaning from context.

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."

"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."

"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master—that's all."

-- written by some Logician somewhere

It depends on if you are looking to describe how you choose to use a word, or if you are trying to define a new concept. For the former, a style of saying " this is how I intend to use 'x'" followed by some examples in context may be sufficient. You may explain what you intend to happen when you say the word. For the latter, the way you provide a definition of the concept will depend on what you plan to do with that concept in your disourse.

If I am trying to define a class of star for an astronomical model, I would probably go about listing the properties that are shared by stars I would like to include in that group.

If I am interested in talking about the Morning Star, I may focus on the phenomenon of the brightest object in the sky during early morning hours. However, if I want to talk about the atmosphere of Venus (a.k.a. the Morning Star) I may focus on other aspects of the planetary object other than the phenomenon of being seen pre-dawn.

On another angle, if I were giving a discussion on GDP of a nation, I may focus on how the GDP number gets calculated, as opposed to trying to explain some essence or substance of the concept.

Then why use the word "horse" at all? If you dont use the word horse because you know that others apply it to the same object then how would you ever be sure you are even communicating at all? For all you know horse means nothing to anyone except you. So, It's less of a hypothesis and more of an observable, repeatable phenomenon amongst people with your language. — Benj96

When I say "horse" I don't refer to the thing-as-it-is as some object nature has prepared for my consumption whole-hog. Rather I say "horse" in conjunction with the phenomena as I experience them and hope that the utterance will produce a desired outcome from my audience. I don't need for my audience to have the exact same concept of "horse" that I do to get by in a specific language game.

If I want "that set of legs" to stop "plodding on my daisies" and you are willing to take your "thing that I saddle and ride" out of the "garden" the language game is successful, even if we operate with different ontologies, logics, or grammars. The objects don't have to be the same for me as they are for you, or even the same as nature intends them, for me to get my desired outcomes met. If saying "gavagai" gets me fed, I don't have to care what it means to you, or means objectively, or even if "a language" exists.

That is where the assumption of an objective reality which is partly and approximately reflected in the general model simplifies matters. If billiards has an objectively real counterpart which itself obeys something like the general law of billiards, then the success of the general law is explained.

Without this, it is a mystery why merely noting down observations should ever lead to a predictive theory. The model in question cannot account for the success of the model. An objective reality can, by having something similar to the model in its aspect. — Kenosha Kid

If all that we were saying reduced to the same outcomes (which is not what you are saying, I know) this discussion would be pointless. You and I would be simply arguing over semantics and syntax. But I believe you and I agree, this is not a to-may-to vs. to-mah-to issue.

The reason I am less eager to conform the language to one of objective reality focuses on the use of a single ontology to underlie all phenomena. From what I understand, (and admittedly I may be in waters over my head,) the way apples and oranges exist in some objective reality are different than the constituents of a Standard Model. On one level, apples and oranges are things I can see, touch, feel, and taste while quantum particles do not obtain of the same phenomena. On a different level, but no less relevant, the way we model things like billiard balls, apples, and oranges (deterministically) differs from the way we model gas in a chamber and work (dynamically), which also differs from the way we model quantum mechanics (WTF?). Using the same kind of ontology for all these models seems misplaced considering there are different philosophies in place (indicated by the different mathematics) in the modeling. We no longer have one objective reality defined by all of science, but rather many kinds of realities all taking place at once. And we've only discussed some domains of physics, the queen of science, without getting into different structures that exist in chemistry, biology, and medical science. And then even more when we get to social sciences.

By divorcing the ontology that informs our grammar into seeming things (phenomena) and existing things (objective reality as noumena) we find that modeling only requires phenomena. That our minds gravitate toward persistent objects (an instinct maybe – perhaps misguided) does not mean that the naive understanding of things-as-real best describes the world as it is, fundamentally and metaphysically. I advocate a departure from this common sense approach in order to gain better understanding of phenomena as not-guided by intuitions of substance or essence. I may be speaking above my pay grade, but I understand that at least some physicists agree with my interpretation.

That we use the mathematical models to perform an induction from observation set to general is already somewhat problematic for me, but I am able to go along with that approach insofar as it works (or has worked in the past) to predict future phenomena when constrained by the same data gathering techniques that were used to develop the model. I am reticent to make an additional leap that such predicted phenomena tell us more than that — some expectation about the world as a whole or reality beyond phenomena, which becomes a second level of induction.

Can you tell me, do you know of any fellow physicists who may advocate a similar philosophical or linguistic approach that I do? Or in your experience have all physicists come to consensus against me?

And in order to make boundaries and discriminate between things one must assume such boundaries are true and not manufactured by the mind. — Benj96

I don't go along with this sentence.

When I use the word "horse", I don't assume my audience has the same exact intuition about horse-ness that I do. Rather, I only hypothesize that my audience will use the word "horse" in similar sentences, or will utter sentences with "horse" in similar situations that I do.

I would say that my motivation to post the question might rely, psychologically, on these assumptions.
— Welkin Rogue

...that is, you rely on not doubting them, or in other words you treat them as certain.

Of course you might bring one or two into doubt; but in order to do so, you must hold firm to other beliefs. — Banno

I'm not sure you've refuted the method of global skepticism here, though. One could take the approach that the assumptions Welkin Rogue mentions are treated like axioms in a kind of logical proof. The approach goes along the lines, "If A, B, and C are assumed, and question Q is asked, what subsequent statements are consistent with the model", where A, B, and C are not known for certain by the skeptic, but only posed as hypotheses.

You haven't necessarily pinned the skeptic down to a conviction, yet. At least you haven't explicitly stated what conviction the skeptic must hold in order to perform the language move of presenting a sentence that begins with "who", "what", "when", "where", or "why".

A skeptic could be performing an experiment, with all the underlying assumptions still "in play", so to speak, and still treat all the underlying assumptions as probable, not certain.

What assumption am I making when I ask 'do trees exist?' — Welkin Rogue

The asking of the question presupposes that some answer will satisfy the inquiry. But it does even more than that. It not only assumes that an appropriate response, such as "Trees exist", can be articulated by the interrogated, but that it sets itself apart from some other meaningful response, such as "Trees don't exist."

If for example, the interrogator does not accept any alternative response like "Trees don't exist" (by say, making some argument about the predicate '___exists' violating the square of opposition) then the formulation of the question that can only accept one answer becomes a rhetorical language move, and gets convicted of assuming its own answer.

Yes, a physicist. Or rather a lapsed physicist. I was active in research until a couple of years ago but sold out mwahahahaaaa! I worked in many-body quantum mechanics. — Kenosha Kid

Fair enough. I've never worked in a quantum-physics lab, so I fear I'd get in over my head if I got into the hairy details of everything that goes into developing the Standard Model, how observations get made, and how you would interpret the data. I would be at a disadvantage if we were to discuss details of that particular science.

Could I ask we move the example of science under discussion to something more tangible and less reliant on complex formulas, building sized machinery, detailed computer algorithms, various interpretive frameworks, uncertainty principle, relativity, and interactions between fields and forces. I fear we may get bogged down in discussions about how that science gets performed, instead of science as a general theme.

Could I propose we move the discussion to something more tangible, say billiard balls, which operates on the scale of medium-sized dry goods? The application of Philosophy of Science should remain the same without loss of generality. At any point, please let me know if the simplification dismisses something important to the discussion.

For this discussion, I even propose we make the greatest number of simplifications possible to only keep "Science" as a field as the topic under consideration. Let's assume no friction, sin x = x, no uncertainty comes into play in the measurement of mass and velocity, etc.

In the discussion of billiard balls, an interesting finding may be the conservation of momentum when two balls collide. To model this, all we need to know are the masses of the balls, their locations, and their velocities. The variables we model are m: mass, x_1_i and x_2_i: the initial positions of the balls, v_1_i and v_2_i: the initial velocities of the balls, t: time elapsed, and some formula preserving momentum.

From the phenomena that are measured for the variables, the model predicts the observed velocities of the billiard balls after a collision. The mathematics is agnostic to any putative existence of billiard balls as things, but only addresses the variables at hand.

We may come to test the model by making a large number of observations of pairs of billiard balls and recording their initial and ending velocities. But the accuracy of the model does not tell us about it's accuracy with respect to some putative reality. Instead, the only measure we have available for the accuracy of the model is a measure of error as it relates the sample to the model. I restate, the only features available to the science are phenomena (sample data) and model (formula relating the conservation of momentum). Even the assertion that momentum is a putative thing is questionable. Momentum, designated by the variable p, can be said to be another mathematical construct (an emanation of the model).

Maybe I'm missing something when you talk about a throw-away model. But I'll have to ask you to explain further if I am going to understand what you are saying about Science.

That doesn't seem right to me either. The Standard Model, for instance, is not focused "only on the variables under consideration": it is a reference point for what is under consideration and exists (after consideration) whether we are considering something or not. "According to the Standard Model, the hypercharge is conserved under decay of blah blah blah." That is a reference to a model. The model itself is not defined by that reference. Not does the Standard Model go away when we stop considering the hypercharge under decay of blah.

What the Standard Model is is the best model of the elementary contents and interactions of a putative objective reality consistent with the totality of empirical facts. — Kenosha Kid

... where hypercharge and decay are both model representations of other phenomena or data points. When we look at hypercharge and decay, we find they are mathematically defined relationships between other phenomena. What is preserved in the discussion is the math, not putative reality.

What the Standard Model does, the "why it works", is convert observable data (phenomena) into predicted phenomena.

Do you consider yourself a physicist, by chance? Or perhaps a scientist in another field?

I disagree with that. The putative reality is put in by hand in the act of modelling. What is a model a model of if not a putative reality? That is not to say that they believe their models are accurate representations of objective reality, but that, over time, if objective reality does exist, those models should increasingly reflect that objective reality that seems to exist (the putative objective reality). — Kenosha Kid

But that's not how I model. That's also not what the mathematical methods I employ do. If anything, mathematical modeling works to reduce the expectation of putative objective reality. It may come to be recognized in terms of parsimony or Occam's razor.

A "good mathematical model" focuses only on the variables under consideration, and takes into account that an induction (not deductively logical) process is taking place in order to move from call to response. An account of an underlying putative objective reality does not get mathematically defined. Instead, a "good mathematical model", includes only data and formulas to translate call to response. Existence of any other kind is not philosophically covered — either in the science or the math.

When I've been saying 'objective reality', I've tried to distinguish between the putative reality supposed by scientists, i.e. that which models tend toward, and an empiricism-independent objective reality that is the simplest and best explanation for the former. — Kenosha Kid

But I fear you are treating "scientists" as too broad a class. Sure, there are some scientists who still employ the variable of "putative reality" in their interpretations, but I believe for most scientists who are philosophically inclined, that interpretation is not the norm.

In my opinion, what "good science" does involves making observations of phenomena and then predicting additional phenomena. The concept of "putative reality" drops out from the process (as an empty variable) so that all the science is left with are phenomena and model.

I do mean it in the same sense it is used in calculus, something that a series asymptotically approaches, but I don’t mean it to be the exact sense of the limit of a numerical series. I guess you could call it a qualitative rather than necessarily quantitative version of a limit. Though in cases where it is possible to quantify the thing in question, I guess such a qualitative limit becomes the same thing as the ordinary quantitative limit, making the former concept perhaps a conservative extension of the latter. — Pfhorrest

What differs between your concept and the mathematical concept is seriously important though. In mathematics, the quantitative nature of the concept of limit allows it to get defined formally. There is a clear method in mathematics for testing if a limit exists, or calculating said limit if a series converges.

I am asking if you would be willing to formalize your concept of limit, as it pertains to objective morality, so that given moral claims do lend themselves to analysis. Without this formal definition of concept and a subsequent proposition that extends the concept of limit, I'm afraid you haven't carved out grounds for your case for objective morality, yet.

What you are saying so far is that an understanding of objective morality can be formulated. That is an interesting claim, but it has no teeth until you actually demonstrate such a formulation. I'm alright with you describing a concept of limit that relies on a qualitative rather than quantitative approach. However, I would like to have more discussion on the qualities then. I get a sense that you have a strong intuition on which what you are saying is based. I'm interested in how you would nail down your intuition into sentences that would allow me to interact with the same intuition and make it my own. I would be interested in making sentences of a kind that are consistent with your approach, where we would both go along with some sentences and also mutually agree on which sentences get categorized as errors or wrong.

If your hypothesis about objective morality is correct, then at the very least, there must be some set of sentences which you and I can identify and label as "correct" through some method as well as some other set of sentences which get labeled "incorrect" by the same method. If the method you choose to employ hinges on the concept of limit, then we should both also be able to evaluate the degree of incorrectness in some statements and come to consensus on that degree.

Admittedly, I'm skeptical we will arrive at a formal method and even more skeptical that we will arrive at consensus on how we evaluate the incorrectness of sentences. I'm willing to go along with you as long as you are willing to contribute to the discussion. I will try to be charitable to your side, and not just argue for the sake of promoting my counter-narrative. However, my commitment to charity does not restrict me from employing all means of reasonable critique to analyze the foundations of your argument.

Objective reality/morality is the limit of a series of increasingly improved subjective opinions on what is real/moral. There being such a thing as "improvement" in subjective opinion is the only practical consequence of there being such a thing as objectively correct, since as it is a limit it can never actually be reached. There being something objective in principle just means that differing subjective opinions are commensurable: one can be less wrong than another, rather than all being equally (or at least incomparably) wrong. — Pfhorrest

It is interesting you bring up the idea of limit. I'm not sure if you mean this as a metaphor, or as a literal model of what you are trying to convey. From what you say, I gather that objectivity is binary. I also gather that an objective claim can either be correct or incorrect. While no idea can be more correct than correct, I gather you are saying some ideas can be more incorrect than others.

I appreciate that you put your model in terms of limits. That is a language I can follow. In analysis, limit is understood with a very formal definition. The concept gets described in terms of number, with deltas and epsilons. There is a very precise and formal way to test for a limit.

Would you be willing to share a formal definition of limit as you apply it to objective morality? I'm trying to gauge if you are trying to convey something you intuitively understand, or if your idea can withstand the scrutiny of logical analysis.

The limit of the series of models come up with by the physical sciences done in such a way, as we take into account more and more empirical experiences (observations) by more different kinds of observers in more different contexts, just is what objective reality is. Likewise, the limit of the series of models come up with by comparable "ethical sciences" done in that analogous way, as we take into account more and more hedonic experiences by more different kinds of people in more different contexts, just is what objective morality is. — Pfhorrest

This is an interesting description of what we do with science. I would have described the method differently. Could I ask you, do you have hands on experience with science? Have you done lab work in a university setting or been paid for scientific research? I ask because my experience has been different.

We can never fully account for all of that, in either descriptive or prescriptive matters, but that gives us the direction to move toward more objectivity. — Pfhorrest

So do you take objectivity to be a scale as opposed to binary — in that a claim can be more or less objective than another claim? Does it become more objective when more people share the experience? Are moral claims more-objective democratically? Then does that same democratic approach have any relationship to the true-ness of an objective moral claim?

I apologize if it seems like I am grilling you. I really do have an interest in establishing what would make an objective moral claim, or what would make a moral claim true. It's just that as I ran up against these same questions for myself, I did not arrive at a satisfying answer.

The reason I appeal to non-objective senses for sentences has come from hard lost battles with skepticism. Over time I have come to relate to a kind of skepticism which leans toward moral nihilism, not out of desire, but rather lack of certainty.

It’s perfectly analogous to the difference between “I see a lake” and “everyone ought to agree that there is a lake there” (which is a weird way of saying “there is really a lake there”). The latter is a claim of objectivity just because it’s not couched in any particular perspective. It may or may not be correct, depending on whether it really does pan out in every perspective or not. — Pfhorrest

So is the claim, "Everyone ought to agree that there is a lake there," also an objective moral claim, since it includes an ought (and you have already established you believe it is an objective claim).

I'm wondering how you propose we verify the correctness of an objective moral claim. I have some sense of how to cash out a descriptive claim (though I may even deny that treating a description as an "objective truth" is problematic). I don't have the same understanding of what makes an ought statement true. If a claim with ought is treated as an imperative, it doesn't seem to lend itself to being true. Saying, "Stop!" or, "Disavow killing for sport!" doesn't seem like the type of language move that gets dubbed 'true' or 'false.'

↪Adam's Off Ox I don't really know what 'postmodern philosophical approaches' are, and neither do most people who use that phrase. It's a reference without a referent. 'Subjective truth' is a phrase and concept far more associated with Kierkegaard and other existentialist thinkers, and its association with postmodernity is arbitrary and largely mythical, employed by people who largely don't know what they are talking about. — StreetlightX

When I think of postmodern philosophical approaches, I consider deconstruction and the moving away from a meta-narrative. While deconstruction may be understood without taking a 'subjective' approach, the process by which a meta-narrative gets dissolved often appeals to subjectivity (as in, differences in how different subjects come to understand a text).

While I don't find the phrase 'subjective truth' to be an aid to the postmodernist, I find that subjectivity plays an indirect role in their discussions. Especially since many postmodern writers seem eager to slip out of the label of 'relativist' while still maintaining that perspective (as a concept) plays a role in disestablishing the notion of facts.

It's not about what it should be. It's about what it is - and that people need to understand what they are talking about before blabbing on about 'subjective truth' or whatever other wrongheaded trash they associate with postmodernism. — StreetlightX

You reference postmodernism with respect to aesthetics and culture. You speak of an association with 'subjective truth' as wrongheaded trash. Do you find postmodern philosophical approaches eschew discussions about subjective understanding? Or do you only speak pejoratively about the phrase 'subjective truth' ?

What you say is interesting. Personally I find the philosophies of Pyrrho and Hume to be appealing. I even follow what Sextus Empiricus says.

I suspect you do not believe all doubt is unhealthy. You point out a few examples of what you find to be unhealthy traditions, but I wonder what you believe makes them unhealthy. Is there some boundary, where a philosopher may remain confident that their question is in the healthy realm, without engaging in the sins of the unhealthy traditions?

Also, what are the consequences of engaging in an unhealthy skeptical tradition?

An important outcome is Wittgenstein's claim that all doubt is embedded in underlying beliefs and therefore the most radical forms of doubt must be rejected since they form a contradiction within the system that expressed them. — Wheatley

In your opinion, what is the demarcation between healthy doubt and the kind of most radical forms of doubt that must be rejected? Do you find my question meaningful?

Everything is linked to economics and resources in my opinion. — tilda-psychist

Would you be willing to expand on this? Specifically could you explain what 'everything' refers to? Also can you explain how you use the phrase "everything is linked" ?

Questions of norms, which is to say, prescriptive questions, questions about morality, are a fundamentally different kind of question to questions of fact, to which a descriptive statement gives no answer; something David Hume called the "is-ought problem". If someone asks whether something ought to happen, a statement to the effect that something does (or does not) happen gives no answer at all to that question. — Pfhorrest

I agree that the lines of inquiry you mention lead to moral nihilism. Without some initial assumption of at least one kind of claim "I ought _____," or, "People in my society ought _____," or especially, "All people ought ______," there is no way to arrive at a moral answer simply by making descriptive observations. I understand the is/ought problem. But then I fail to understand how you intend to make work the pairing of the words "objective morality." What transcends the phrase "I don't approve of murder," (1) and leads to the logical conclusion "All people should disavow murder" (2). I think we would agree, statement 1 expresses a personally held (subjective?) value. What makes statement 2 objective, in that it states anything other than the personally held value of the speaker? Does statement 2 become objective because it has the word 'all' in it, or is there something else going on here?

You mention there are questions of norms. What kind of question leads to an answer of the "objective morality" kind? Why do you pursue such questions? What is the value for me to pursue such questions? Ought I? But then what leads me to believe "I ought to pursue moral questions" without simply assuming I should from the get-go?

Perhaps you would prefer to answer a different set of questions from me. Are there competing objective moralities which each lead to their own conclusions, equally defensible, but mutually cancelling? For example, are both statements, "Killing humans is always wrong," and, "Killing is permissible by some class of humans," morally objective but incompatible? If not, what makes one statement objective and the other not objective? And how would you label non objective-moral statements when they appear to have a moral flavor?

The best question to ask would be one that does not assume anything about existence. Perhaps the best question is the one that does not assume the need to question in the first place?
Because to posit a question is to create a void in answers. To not question at all is to not require answers. — Benj96

I don't understand what you are saying in this paragraph. What makes a question best versus worst?

I understand what you are saying about a question contradicting its very nature. For example "Is there existence?" seems to undermine itself.

But asking a person to explain the nature of existence, or define what constituents make up an ontology, while certainly making an assumption, does not seem limited or vacated by its own scope.

Or for example, a question about what an individual believes makes up "truth", may not assume that "truth" somehow exists, but could rather be inviting the subject of interrogation to explain how they use the word when they include it in their speech. In that way, asking about a word, or how it gets used, does not necessarily make an assumption about the nature of what is signified by the word in question.

Moral law isn't supposed to be explanatory. It's not descriptive, but prescriptive. — Pfhorrest

If moral law does not reflect something that can be observed or described, then how is it any different than rules for the sake of rules?

Every experiment is physical. It involves physical humans handling physical apparatus. — Kenosha Kid

Why is physicality a requirement of an experiment. Why don't mental phenomena constitute that which can be studied by science?

An appeal to the things we have in common between such experiences and a commitment to sorting out why we sometimes have different ones would enable an approach to morality just as objective as a scientific approach to morality. — Pfhorrest

That statement assumes, with the verb "would enable", that the reason we have different experiences of moral claims have similar attributes with why one person sees a thing as a different color as another. You have an embedded assumption that the causes of the differences are of a like kind. You assume that because differences in some reports of phenomena have been reconciled by a deeper explanation that is agreeable to both parties, that differences in all sorts of phenomena can be reconciled in that way. The way you move from some to all in your analysis does not follow a deductive path. It is a product of an induction, and not strictly logical.

Do you agree with the way I differentiated between deductive and inductive as applying to your argument?

I see you write about objective reality. Could you comment on what part of reality gets described as objective? Are you referring to the physical objects, the mathematics that describes them, the observations that are purportedly shared between observers, or the predictions made by scientific models.

If two scientists disagree on a conclusion drawn from a set of observations, is that conclusion still objective?

If different sets of data lead to different coefficients in a linear regression, are the coefficients objective?

If every data point has some error with respect to the model that is based on that data, is the error objective?

Besides that, would you be willing to describe what make up the constituents of reality? It seems like a term that gets itself used in many different ways by as many speakers.

Is reality made up of physical objects? What about the mathematical formulas that describe those objects? Then, what again about the perceptions of those objects?

Can you provide a demarcation between what is real and unreal, besides the distinction you make between the objectively real and subjectively real?