The most common argument against the existence of objective morality and moral facts besides moral differences between societies is that they aren’t tangible objects found in the universe and can’t be measured scientifically. Are there any refutations or arguments against this?- — Captain Homicide
The most common argument against the existence of objective morality and moral facts besides moral differences between societies is that they aren’t tangible objects found in the universe and can’t be measured scientifically. Are there any refutations or arguments against this? — Captain Homicide
Morals can't be universal since they're essentially tied to the being of humans.
But an indifferent, meaningless existence in a deterministic universe creates problems for any objective morals to be found, because they cannot be found.
How does this work? We can have a universal definition of "life" right? But life is tied to the being of living organisms. Or a universal definition of parasitism, yet that too is tied to the existence of organisms.
Is the problem that "good and bad" are part of first person experience? Or is it that they are only relative to living things? — Count Timothy von Icarus
Sure, but likewise, if universal morals can be found, then the universe isn't meaningless. Which one are we in? — Count Timothy von Icarus
I'm not sure what determinism has to do with it. It seems to me that, for a universe to embody meaning and values, it must be determined to do so in some ways. Else how is the meaning in the universe instantiated except by chance? But I can't think of any reason why determinism should preclude universal values. We can imagine a mad scientist who spawns a toy universe that starts off chaotic yet which has a universal tendencies that will cause it to spawn life and then maximize the well being of those life forms. That would seem to be a case of values being instantiated through determinism. — Count Timothy von Icarus
The most common argument against the existence of objective morality and moral facts besides moral differences between societies is that they aren’t tangible objects found in the universe and can’t be measured scientifically. Are there any refutations or arguments against this?- — Captain Homicide
The most common argument against the existence of objective morality and moral facts besides moral differences between societies is that they aren’t tangible objects found in the universe and can’t be measured scientifically. Are there any refutations or arguments against this?- — Captain Homicide
Determinism makes our sense of justice problematic. Much our moral thinking relies on ideas of free will. But without free will we have to understand that no one acts without a previous cause, that many people are set on rails towards immoral actions due to reasons of nature and nurture. So without free will we end up with a moral system that relies and focuses on preventing people from doing immoral actions rather than punishment for their actions.
When it comes to universal ideas of meaning, there's nothing that points to any meaning in the universe
To form a moral system that can be universalized between humans, we need to look at our actual experience and lives that we have, all that we are right now, nothing else. And through that we can extrapolate biological hints towards a functioning moral system for all humans.
somehow, the term "objective" has morphed from being the opposite of "subjective," into meaning "in itself," "noumenal," or "true." But "objective" just means "the view with biases removed." It makes no sense to talk about objectivity in a context where subjectivity is impossible or irrelevant. An objective moral statement is just one made without the biases relative to a given subject or set of subjects. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Why not say that ‘objective’ is the view with biases more or less shared among a normative community? — Joshs
The most common argument against the existence of objective morality and moral facts besides moral differences between societies is that they aren’t tangible objects found in the universe and can’t be measured scientifically. — Captain Homicide
Why not say that ‘objective’ is the view with biases more or less shared among a normative community? — Joshs
noun BIAS: inclination or prejudice for or against one person or group, especially in a way considered to be unfair.
"there was evidence of bias against foreign applicants"
...
2. STATISTICS: a systematic distortion of a statistical result due to a factor not allowed for in its derivation.
verb
1. cause to feel or show inclination or prejudice for or against someone or something.
"the search results are biased by the specific queries used"
Similar:
prejudice
influence
colour
sway
....
2. STATISTICS
distort (a statistical result); introduce bias into (a method of sampling, measurement, analysis, etc.)
Sure, there is obviously some bracketing here. The "closed" sign on a store objectively means "the store isn't open for business," but that doesn't mean that such a meaning is accessible from the viewpoint of a passing cat or dog. There is a context that is relevant. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Getting back to what Joshs was saying about objectivity being intersubjective, hypothesize there being a reality which affects all coexistent psyches equally - this in principle at least - this irrespective of species of life or of the life addressed being earthbound. This I would term objective physical reality — javra
Because this won’t work for almost all of our uses of “objective”. It’s objectively true, I presume, that water is composed of H2O. Do we want to describe this statement as a “bias shared among a normative community” -- of scientists, presumably? What would motivate us to call this a bias? — J
“Realism is the view that science aims to provide theories that truthfully represent how the world is--independent of human categories, capacities, and interventions. Both realists and antirealists propose to explain the content of scientific knowledge, either by its causal connections to real objects, or by the social interactions that fix its content; the shared presumption here is that there is a fixed "content" to be explained. Both scientific realists and antirealists presume semantic realism--that is, that there is an already determinate fact of the matter about what our theories, conceptual schemes, or forms of life "say" about the world. Interpretation must come to an end somewhere, they insist, if not in a world of independently real objects, then in a language, conceptual scheme, social context, or culture.”
By contrast, a postmodern view of science rejects “the dualism of scheme and content, or context and content, altogether. There is no determinate scheme or context that can fix the content of utterances, and hence no way to get outside of language. How a theory or practice interprets the world is itself inescapably open to further interpretation, with no authority beyond what gets said by whom, when…. we can never get outside our language, experience, or methods to assess how well they correspond to a transcendent reality.
By contrast, a postmodern view of science rejects “the dualism of scheme and content, or context and content, altogether. There is no determinate scheme or context that can fix the content of utterances, and hence no way to get outside of language. How a theory or practice interprets the world is itself inescapably open to further interpretation, with no authority beyond what gets said by whom, when…. we can never get outside our language, experience, or methods to assess how well they correspond to a transcendent reality.
Yet an objective rock will hold the same spatiotemporal properties to all humans, cats, and dogs; to all coexistent beings that happen upon the same rock in practice.
Yet it is still "that actuality which, in being equally actual to all, is perfectly impartial to any one psyche or grouping of these", in this sense being (individual) mind independent. An objective reality we as individual minds perceive intra-subjectively via our inter-subjective filters of interpretation. Physical objects as those physically objective givens that invariable stand before us as subjects irrespective of our wants and desires as individual minds or collections of these.
The resulting abstraction, born out of intersubjective consensus then becomes the empirically real object, the identical one affecting all of us equally ( even though the phenomena we constitute into what we call the object is never given identically to all of us, nor to any one of us).
Does this give us any reason to suppose that "perspective" of some sort is relative to all physical interactions? — Count Timothy von Icarus
His point was that the information content of things varies by context, even at a very basic level. The relevance here is that discoveries about the natural world sometimes require looking into interactions that only a handful of individuals are ever going to see, because they only occur in contrived lab settings, so they won't be part of most people's experiences. — Count Timothy von Icarus
I'm not sure if that becomes a problem or not, but it does seem like advanced instrumentation can help create a more authoritative view on "what there is," even if most people aren't privy to using or understanding it. — Count Timothy von Icarus
The other problem is that the majority of any sort of "community" can obviously be wrong about facts, which gets at the idea of "justification" of claims. So maybe "everyone would agree on x if given the same data," not "everyone agrees about x." Historically, there are well accepted "objective facts," that it has nonetheless taken time to discover and satisfactorily demonstrate. — Count Timothy von Icarus
we can never get outside our language, experience, or methods to assess how well they correspond to a transcendent reality.
Because this won’t work for almost all of our uses of “objective”. It’s objectively true, I presume, that water is composed of H2O. Do we want to describe this statement as a “bias shared among a normative community” -- of scientists, presumably? What would motivate us to call this a bias?
What we want in moral realism, then, is a sense of “objective” that at least resembles what we find in science – or daily life, for that matter. And those who deny moral facts are indeed saying that the best we can do is “biases more or less shared.” But I don’t think that’s a reasonable synonym for “objective.” — J
But this would lead into supposing some form of animism/panpsychism, which I so far can’t make sense of. To accept? I’d so far say “no”
I'm curious. If you have an ontological understanding of what physical objectivity consists of, as I presume you do, how do you go about demarcating the notion of "the objective world"?
Because this won’t work for almost all of our uses of “objective”. It’s objectively true, I presume, that water is composed of H2O. Do we want to describe this statement as a “bias shared among a normative community” -- of scientists, presumably? What would motivate us to call this a bias?
What we want in moral realism, then, is a sense of “objective” that at least resembles what we find in science – or daily life, for that matter. And those who deny moral facts are indeed saying that the best we can do is “biases more or less shared.” But I don’t think that’s a reasonable synonym for “objective.”
— J
Quite right and well said! :up: — Leontiskos
In an agential realist account, matter does not refer to a fixed substance; rather, matter is substance in its intra-active becoming—not a thing but a doing, a congealing of agency. Matter is a stabilizing and destabilizing process of iterative intra-activity. Phenomena—the smallest material units (relational “atoms”)—come to matter through this process of ongoing intra-activity. “Matter” does not refer to an inherent, fixed property of abstract, independently existing objects; rather, “matter” refers to phenomena in their ongoing materialization.On my agential realist elaboration, phenomena do not merely mark the epistemological inseparability of “observer” and “observed”; rather, phenomena are the ontological inseparability of agentially intra-acting “components.” That is, phenomena are ontologically primitive relations—relations without preexisting relata. The notion of intra-action (in contrast to the usual “interaction,” which presumes the prior existence of independent entities/relata) represents a profound conceptual shift. It is through specific agential intra-actions that the boundaries and properties of the “components” of phenomena become determinate and that particular embodied concepts become meaningful.”
“In my agential realist account, scientific practices do not reveal what is already there; rather, what is ‘‘disclosed’’ is the effect of the intra-active engagements of our participation with/in and as part of the world’s differential becoming. Which is not to say that humans are the condition of possibility for the existence of phenomena. Phenomena do not require cognizing minds for their existence; on the contrary, ‘‘minds’’ are themselves material phenomena that emerge through specific intra-actions. Phenomena are real material beings. What is made manifest through technoscientific practices is an expression of the objective existence of particular material phenomena. This is, after all, a realist conception of scientific practices. But unlike in traditional conceptions of realism, ‘‘objectivity’’ is not preexistence (in the ontological sense) or the preexistent made manifest to the cognitive mind (in the epistemological sense). Objectivity is a matter of accountability for what materializes, for what comes to be. It matters which cuts are enacted: different cuts enact different materialized becomings….” ( Meeting the Universe Halfway)
↪Joshs I've read Kuhn but not Rouse. I think Kuhn is wrong in his understanding of the scientific project -- see Donald Davidson, "On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme". — J
This only seems to be a problem if we assume:
A. "Uncaused" libertarian free will is the only type of freedom that can make justice coherent; and
B. Punishment can't function as primarily a means of "restoring right," by taking away the benefits of immoral action (deterrence can be important too).
I don't see any problem here as far as compatibalist free will is concerned though. I don't even think "uncaused" free will ends up being coherent. If we're "freely choosing" an act then who we are "determines our action." — Count Timothy von Icarus
But there is no evidence of any meaning in the universe? Surely this has to be qualified. I find things meaningful all the time. I assume other people do to. I am in the universe; so are other people. Thus, the universe seems to produce heaps of meaning and values. The fact that an idea of some sort of universal, Platonic meaning that floats free of the world doesn't cash out doesn't mean the universe lacks meaning.
Nor is meaning precluded from being objective. A sign on a store that says "closed" objectively means the store isn't open. That is, the sign has the same meaning to anyone who can read it, even when correcting for differences between multiple perspectives. — Count Timothy von Icarus
I just don't agree that the parts above preclude "objective" moral standards. Somehow, the term "objective" has morphed from being the opposite of "subjective," into meaning "in itself," "noumenal," or "true." But "objective" just means "the view with biases removed." It makes no sense to talk about objectivity in a context where subjectivity is impossible or irrelevant. An objective moral statement is just one made without the biases relative to a given subject or set of subjects. — Count Timothy von Icarus
An objective moral statement is just one made without the biases relative to a given subject or set of subjects. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Socially constructed things can be observed objectively. Good and bad are no more amorphous than terms like "Japanese" or "punk rock," and we can certainly talk about the extent to which a piece of furniture or a TV show shows "Japanese-style/influence," or which rock bands are "more punk." Is it hard to operationalize such measurements? Sure. But objective facts remain, e.g. "the Moody Blues are less punk than the Ramones or the Clash." People can disagree with that statement; that doesn't make it not objective. People can also disagree about the atomic weight of lithium or the shape of the Earth. — Count Timothy von Icarus
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