But I agree, and I don't think we would want to say that praxis removes the need for discourse or reason. Indeed, discourse can be seen as a sort of praxis. Praxis is rather an aid to reason, not a replacement. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I didn't want to ignore your other reply here. I certainly agree. We can imagine -- perhaps with difficulty! -- a kind of ideal human in whom rationality and praxis achieve a balance, revealing that the activity of philosophy (i.e., rational discourse) is indeed a praxis as well, moreover a praxis of a particular kind that is self-implementing. Philosophy doesn't merely lead to or delineate a praxis, but is itself that praxis, at least in part.

Goodness is a general principle, so we shouldn't expect that it can be reduced to health. But nor is health, or facts about what promotes or hinders health, unrelated to the "good of man" or "living a good life" (the proper study of ethics IMO, nor "moral goodness" as something discrete). Facts about health do not fail to have any ethical valance.

That "some facts about the human good fall under the preview of established empirical sciences," would also not imply, "all facts about ethics reduce to facts about established empirical sciences."

At any rate, I think this distinction is only threatening to what I'm saying if one already assumes the premise: "ethical good is a sui generis sort of goodness discrete from other goods sought by man." I'd rather say that health, psychological health, etc., are principles, facets of the good life.

I think health is a good analogy because there are very many components and causes of health, and we would hardly want to reduce health itself to any one of them. Health is not just avoiding heavy metal poisoning, but certainly the effects of ingesting heavy metals (facts) bear of health. So too health and the good life.

Facts about health do not fail to have any ethical valance. — Count Timothy von Icarus

At any rate, I think this distinction is only threatening to what I'm saying if one already assumes the premise: "ethical good is a sui generis sort of goodness discrete from other goods sought by man." I'd rather say that health, psychological health, etc., are principles, facets of the good life. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes to both of these, and I think this points a way forward. Our Smoker has, I'm assuming, taken into account the facts about health in arriving at their decision. Had they not, they'd merely be an idiot. And yet we find that the Smoker has made a life/best interest decision (i.e., an ethical decision) in contravention of the health facts. How is this possible?

It's just as you say: Health facts, and probably any other facts as well, are facets or factors that must be weighed in making ethical decisions -- or at least, that's how I'll interpret your term "ethical valance." But they do not, in and of themselves, determine the outcome. What you call "the good life" (which is as good a term as any) is more than this, broader than this.

So what we really want to know is how to make these decisions correctly. That's what I've been holding out for in this whole discussion -- we need to start by recognizing the gap between knowledge and value as a problem, not something that can be leapt over with false equations. Only then can we begin to ask what I think are the right questions: How do we come to understand ethical values (informed, to be sure, with practical knowledge such as medicine) and apply them to our own lives?

:up:

Yes, there is a great deal of uncertainty here, in part because man, as a social and cultural animal, always has his good filtered through social and historical context. Often, the people we might expect to be the happiest: celebrities, sports stars, wealthy heirs, etc., are, by their own admission, completely miserable. And often, what we think will make us happy fails to do so, or things we greatly fear and strive to avoid lead to our happiness.

I think this is actually the knock-down argument against strict forms of emotivism. If statements about the human good and human flourishing were just statements of current emotion, then it should be impossible for us to ever be wrong about such non-factual declarations. They would be "true for us" so long as they accurately reflect our emotions. Yet I think the experience of regret, of "being wrong about what is good for us," is a ubiquitous human experience we grapple with throughout our lives (the "extra shots of tequila" late in the party just being a common short-term example here). The idea that "I am always right about what is good for me or others," or that there is no right or wrong here, seems very implausible, although it is certainly aided by positing an "ethical good" distinct from all other goods (I think this is because such an "ethical good" is incoherent, since it is divorced from our lives).

Now, if an "emotivist" replies: "that is no issue, because I allow that we can be wrong about how our acts will shape our future emotional states," I think they are actually no longer an emotivist. They are something more like a utilitarian. They think that different "emotional states" are preferable to others and that the good reduces to promoting "good states" and reducing the risk of "bad ones." I think this latter view is overly reductive, but it's better than emotivism.

What you call "the good life" (which is as good a term as any)

Well, given the original topic of this thread, I think it's worth noting that the reception of Aristotle in later antiquity, Stoicism, Platonism, Christianity, and much Islamic thought tended to instead center on the idea that the real goal of ethics is to "become like onto God" (as much as is possible for man).

Perhaps this end does more to answer the emotivists' likely question of "but why is happiness or flourishing good?" Yet, I think this sort of consideration is not what one starts with in ethics. Ethics is better thought of as the study of human flourishing or happiness. Consideration of the summum bonum, if it exists, must come later, as an end and not the starting point (and certainly not something that all goods are reduced to). If the summum bonum did not involve happiness, it is hard to see why it is the summum bonum. For instance, Hegel puts freedom above happiness, but he can do so because someone who is truly free will also obviously choose what makes them happy, so the latter goal is inclusive of the former (and indeed acts to assure its attainment).

Is medicine not a science? What about botany, zoology, or biology more generally, which have notions of health, harm, goal-directedness, function, etc. that all involve value? What about all the social sciences? Psychology, economics, criminology, political science, etc.? These often deal with values rather explicitly. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'm a sociologist by formal training, though I never went down that path professionally and it's now a few decades in the past, but I'm quite familiar with the value discussion, and the funny thing is that my personal position on this topic is that value free science is an unreachable ideal that nevertheless may have some function when you strive for it, though you have to stay vigilant and not pat yourself on the back for being all-out unbiased (you're not). Writing this post was a little weird in that respect; I was trying to put on an emotivist hat while wondering to what degree I am one. As I said before, I'm not that familiar with emotivism.

That's a huge topic, though, and not all of it is relevant here. The scientist should be disintered (i.e. not take sides when different factions want different outcomes). The question of positivism (e.g. Popper vs. Habermas for the social sciences). And so on. What I was going for:

"Stomping babies is bad for them," may be a medical fact based on the medical ethos. The associated scientific facts need to be phrased quite differently: the not yet hardened skull is more vulnerable to boots, for example. (I'm hardly an expert.) But more than that, the appeal to "facts of science" looks like an appeal to either authority or objectivity. It's also unneccessary: common-sense "knowledge" will tell you everything relevant here, and science doesn't contradict it. And the value judgement "bad" in "stomping babies is bad for them," is used to fudge over the actual facts - and this works partly because of the ethos inherent in medicine.

In sociologogy, for example, you come across studies that are arranged in a way that they just echo common sense knowledge without adding anything of value. I wish I had examples, but it's too long ago. People get away with this because, as one of my professors said, more papers are written than read these days. A lot of market research works that way. I've worked in market research, and my impression is that a lot of the clients demand suggestive phrasing (or presence in group discussions, etc.) - methodology that will render the results useless. I suspect at least some know and don't care; they're after legitimisation rather than knowledge.

In most contexts, saying "stomping babies is bad for them," is a scientific fact is perfectly fine. Here, I think it fudges the topic (if the topic is emotivism). When you're doing science, you need to be very clear about the facts: define you terms, provide the data, etc. When you do that for above sentence you'll likely lose the point your trying to make.

Whereas, IMO, if we go in the direction of "science says the universe is meaningless and valueless" we have left science for the realm of (often quite dogmatic) philosophy, and at any rate "emotivism must be true because 'science says' goodness doesn't exist," seems to be a pretty hard case to make, no? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Eh, first there's methodological naturalism, which is useful or not, depending on the science. As for "goodness", the most central related sociological concepts would be norms and sanctions, no? (I might be forgetting something obvious.) Rival theories often won't accept each other's set-ups - and that's part of the conversation. It's, IMO, necessary, as sociological knowledge always involves man-made meanings. You can't expect the one true way, here. And that's why how we look at social facts must always be carefully contextualised.

So for example, I might say "Stomping babies is bad," is a fact within the institution of medicine, as practised in predictable roles. So if I were interested in how the "goodness/badness of baby stomping" plays out here, I could. But what I pay attention to and how I approach the matter requires some theoretic background, and that could include emotivist influence if I were so inclined. I've always felt that, in the social sciences, you shouldn't suppress your bias - you should lay it open.

Of course, here I'm talking about a "social fact" (a topic for sociology, not medicine). The medical facts are about young bodies and what stomping does to them. The social facts are about... what? How we treat wounded bodies? How we react emotionally to the source of the wound, and we allow ourselves the luxury (not that often during an operation, I'd say). Values frame other values; it's complex.

So, then, what's the purpose of "stomping babies is bad"? To prevent as many babies from being hurt? To legitimise your anger? To explain your sadness? As I said above: it's a bundle. And it's a bundle you can tie up in very many different ways.

This doesn't seem like emotivism anymore though. In this case, moral statements wouldn't just be expressions of emotion or sentiment ("boo-hoo" or "hoorah.") — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yeah, I've taken off my emotivist hat here. This is where I'd need to read up on emotivism more. What I'd want to know is how they deal with these topics:

The emotivist thesis is that there is nothing else, no facts, to moral statements, just expressions of sentiments. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That's their way of expressing themselves. But just like, as you say, other people recognise the role of emotion, I would imagine emotivists have their own way to handle things like habits, norms, legitimisation rhetoric, etc. I expect them to unravel the threads starting with emotion, here, of course, so that everything follows from there. (Stevenson's first/second pattern analysis seems to hint at that, from my limited skimming of wikipedia so far.) When you come from sociology and develop an affinity for the hermeneutic approaches, you're kind of used to navigate and translate between theories. No two sociologists see eye to eye, in my experience. There was a running joke at the institute I studied at: Two sociologists, four opinions.

Smoking is an interesting case because neither I, nor any of the people I know who have quit, particularly miss it (maybe some social elements of it), but perhaps some people really do enjoy it immensely. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yeah, I've never smoked, but I've encountered plenty of smokers who knew smoking was bad for them but smoked anyway. They weren't the ones who thought they should quite either. What role does "bad" play here I wonder? I amost addressed this, but decided against this. My post was long and unfocussed enough, as it is.

Well, let me just start by asking, can people ever be wrong about their own choices? Or are we always infallible as to our own choices as respects what is best for us, and if we later regret our choices they are only bad choices for some "future us" but not bad choices for the "us" when we decided to make them? — Count Timothy von Icarus

I have no real way to approach this question. My intuitive response is a joke: "Can anyone ever be right about their own choices? Being wrong is easy." I don't mean it like that, but this is underscored by my intuition. I think I might think of "right" as "provisionally unproblematic" or something? Not really saying much here; just trying to uncover my bias here - unsystematically.

If we can never be wrong about what is good for us, I don't think there can be any value in philosophy or introspection. Whatever we choose is right because we currently desire to choose it (so long as we always do only what we want). — Count Timothy von Icarus

Does emotivism say whatever we choose is right? Surely they're aware of conflicting emotions? In some ways, "right" seems like a magic spell to quiet that inner war. We want decision making to be easier than it is.

I'm a sociologist by formal training, though I never went down that path professionally and it's now a few decades in the past, but I'm quite familiar with the value discussion, and the funny thing is that my personal position on this topic is that value free science is an unreachable ideal that nevertheless may have some function when you strive for it, though you have to stay vigilant and not pat yourself on the back for being all-out unbiased (you're not). Writing this post was a little weird in that respect; I was trying to put on an emotivist hat while wondering to what degree I am one. As I said before, I'm not that familiar with emotivism.

I think it's worth separating out the goal of avoiding bias (attaining objectivity) and the idea that "real/proper" science involves excluding value and goal-directedness from the considerations of science. The latter obviously is not a norm of the social sciences (else concepts like "utility" in economics would be total nonstarters) nor is it a norm in the life sciences. The demand that the goal-directedness of life, or consciousness (which is value-laden) be somehow "outside the realm of 'real' science," seems philosophically loaded to me, perhaps in a problematic way for our discussion if it presupposes moral anti-realism

Do you think one has to adopt a position like eliminitive materialism or epiphenomenalism in order to being doing proper objective science? Or is it allowable for consciousness and intentionality (and thus value judgements) to be part of an explanation of natural phenomena, without these being presumed to be fully reducible to "mindless mechanism?"

"Methodological naturalism," is one of those very fuzzy terms that means very different things to different people, but I think it is very fair to say that it is often used as a way to say "this preferred metaphysics must be treated as 'scientific.'" I think the overwhelming majority of life scientists would accept the label, but they obviously have differing views about teleonomy, reductionism, and the role of consciousness in explanations of biology.

And the value judgement "bad" in "stomping babies is bad for them," is used to fudge over the actual facts - and this works partly because of the ethos inherent in medicine.

IDK, if I am reading this correctly, then it seems like the presupposition that "real facts don't include value" is doing the heavy lifting here. It seems like you're saying that an explanation from the medical sciences (involving value) is "fudging over the (real) facts" and is not "real science" precisely because "real facts cannot involve values in this way." Do I have that right?

If so, isn't that just assuming the very thing is question? I don't think it works to support emotivism by starting with the premise that "real facts" don't involve value without begging the question. Not only that, but such a presupposition would mean that an opponent can never offer any empirical data to the contrary, since to be a real empirical fact simply is to exclude reference to values. Hence, to be compelling, I think a defense of emotivism would need to find a way to disallow medical science, psychology , parts of neuroscience, etc. as "real science" on some grounds other than "they include value."

I'd agree that we don't really need to appeal to science here though, I just used it as an example arbiter of empirically accessible facts. Nor do we need to look at the sociology of science. Things like "it is bad to have your hand slammed in a car door," or "it is bad for a fox to have its leg ripped off by a trap," etc. seem obvious enough. "There are no facts about what is good or bad for people," is something that even people who express this belief do not seem to actually believe with any conviction (sort of like radical skepticism). They do not act as if they believe it is true (IMO, because it is too implausible to actually commit to).

Does emotivism say whatever we choose is right? Surely they're aware of conflicting emotions? In some ways, "right" seems like a magic spell to quiet that inner war. We want decision making to be easier than it is.

How can one be wrong when making a judgement about something which has no truth value, where there is no fact in play? For instance, how can one "buy a bad car," if cars are never really good or bad? One can certainly say "boohoo to my past purchasing decisions," but you cannot have been wrong about a goodness that doesn't exist.

Do you think one has to adopt a position like eliminitive materialism or epiphenomenalism in order to being doing proper objective science? Or is it allowable for consciousness and intentionality (and thus value judgements) to be part of an explanation of natural phenomena, without these being presumed to be fully reducible to "mindless mechanism?" — Count Timothy von Icarus

I actually think that eliminitave realism is of very limited use in social siences. Take sociology: the discipline was established by Emile Durkheim with an eye to Comtean positivism. The methodology was pretty much all about statistics (e.g. the suicide rate). And the intent was to proof that social facts exist, so to establish the discipline in academia. Later, we have Max Weber introduce the concept of "verstehen" (via a methodoly of "ideal types"). This put the knolwedgable agent on the table and would set off the interpretative branch of sociology: sociologists were very much aware that to understand action is to use their own intuition. Alfred Schütz would update Weber's approach with Husserl's phenomenology, and that is where I directed most of my attention. However, I was always aware of an unfortunate split of macro and micro sociology; either big systems (developed mostly in America by Merton and Parsons; also setting off from Weber, but in a different direction) or situational interaction. So I eventually stumbled on Anthony Giddens' theory of structuration, which attempted to unify the strands by rooting both in spacetime via input from geography. I really liked that.

All that to say: I'm very firmly on the side of intentionality here. I'd say ignoring this isn't an option in the social sciences at the very least, though it might be useful elsewhere (not an expert).

IDK, if I am reading this correctly, then it seems like the presupposition that "real facts don't include value" is doing the heavy lifting here. It seems like you're saying that an explanation from the medical sciences (involving value) is "fudging over the (real) facts" and is not "real science" precisely because "real facts cannot involve values in this way." Do I have that right? — Count Timothy von Icarus

It's probably due to the way I put things, but, no, I don't actually even care much about what "real science" is supposed to be. What facts need above all is a modicum of precision, and that's something that words like "bad" almost never allow. What I'm saying is that the scientific facts tell you nothing that your fussy-wussy intuition doesn't also tell you, so there's little point in appealing to the facts. It doesn't really matter how much damage a boot at a certain velocity can do. You can appeal to facts, but you gain nothing by appealing to science here.

And medicine isn't only science; it's also applied technology. Biology itself, for example, is more about basic research. In its application it has to feed into stuff like medicine, farming, breeding... even outdated stuff like, say, phrenology. So when you present "stomping baby is bad for them," as a fact here, it's ambiguous between the precise effect on the body, the ethical environment of treatment, and so on. But if you were to resolve those ambiguities it gets harder to see the point.

I'm not really 100 % sure what I mean myself. Maybe I was saying that science is red herring here?

I'd just point out that sometimes it is extremely obvious that natural selection has been shaped by intentionality and goals, the most obvious cases being domestication, dog breeding, etc.— unless we want to somehow say that this is not "real natural selection" (but then what is it, supernatural selection?) This seems problematic for accounts that want to exclude consciousness from biology, unless there is an appeal to something like epiphenomenalism (which has its own plausibility issues). But I digress. I think it proves quite difficult to allow for goal-directedness and not to allow for values related to the completion or failure to complete goals. — Count Timothy von Icarus

You're addressing something here that's always been bothering me. I certainly think breeding should fall under natural selection, but I see it as problematic to incorporate it easily. For example, what little experience I have with evolutionary psychology didn't impress me too much. Douglas Adam's puddle analogy comes to mind here.

How can one be wrong when making a judgement about something which has no truth value, where there is no fact in play? For instance, how can one "buy a bad car," if cars are never really good or bad? One can certainly say "boohoo to my past purchasing decisions," but you cannot have been wrong about a goodness that doesn't exist. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'm honestly quite confused right now. A car that doesn't move is a bad car, but if we didn't want the car to be a car then it could be something else, which it always is - beyond the judging. I think what I'm going for is insconsistence-despite-continuity or something? If I ever figure this out and have the time (not likely today or tommorrow - depending on your timezone maybe even the day after tommorrow) I'll be back - unless someone else says it better (which has preamted quite a lot of posts from me).

Your posts are well-informed and thought-provoking, thank you.

Out of tune notes can be detected by electronic devices. We all think some music is better (aesthetically) than other music, but it remains that there is no objective measure. — Janus

The catch is in "objective". We all think we know what it means. Can we say that electronic devices provide a bridge between the objective and the subjective in this case? Or do they supersede the subjective opinions? Who's to say?

So, again there is no absolute measure. We can identify someone's state off mind, but there is always the possibility of convincing fakery. Same for identifying enlightenment. Also, it's not clear exactly what the purported enlightened state consists in. — Janus

This time the catch is in "absolute". It looks as iif you are looking for a measure that cannot be "faked", or perhaps a measure that cannot be wrong. The only measure that cannot be wrong is one that is true by definition. But since anyone can make a definition, could that not be considered at best arbitrary and very likely subjective.

So, I would say there is no way of definitively identifying whether someone is enlightened or even what enlightenment is. That's not so different from identifying whether something really is the word of god as far as I can tell. — Janus

My problem here is "definitively". But there's a deeper problem, that being unenlightended and incompetent, I don't see any basis for over-ruling the practices of those who are enlightened and competent.

I remember reading a quote from a famous poet. I can't remember who it was, but he was addressing a question from one of his students: 'How can I tell whether my poetry is any good?". The answer was, "If you need to know that then being a poet is not for you". — Janus

That's a good start to a philosophical discussion about the question. Whether that was the poet's intention is unanswerable without more information.

My intuition tells me there must be (sc. moral facts). It is not an easy thing to have both of these things floating around. — AmadeusD

But don't we at least know that if there are moral facts, they must be a different kind/category/language game from factual/scientific facts? That would be a possible basis for making progress with this.

First, that stomping babies is bad for them is not a scientific fact; it's probably a medical one. Science is to some degree at least supposed to be as value neutral as possible,

Yes. But that value neautrality has moral implications. So it might well lead people to think that describing animals that are screaming in pain as "vocalizing" is more objective because morally neutral. But being morally neutral about that fact has moral implications, because it implies indifference.

I would need to be convinced that a study of the human good cannot involve empirical facts. You seem to be taking "there are no facts about (ethical) values" as a starting point." But that seems just be assuming the very thing in question. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes. It does seem to be a fact that human beings evaluate (attribute values to) certain objective facts. But they do select which facts to attribute moral values to, and so distinguish within the domain in ways that are not defined within the domain.

Ethics is better thought of as the study of human flourishing or happiness. — Count Timothy von Icarus

As you know, this is the "virtue ethics" side of the coin -- the "good life for me" side -- while the "deontological ethics" side emphasizes the good for others. I'm assuming you agree that these really are two sides of the same coin -- that is, they don't actually represent two different conceptions of how to think about right and wrong. They are merely two different emphases, two different ways of describing the same project. And yet it is quite difficult to explain in a systematic way how the two descriptions complement each other. We want to say that there is no flourishing without altruism, and no altruism that doesn't result in flourishing. But why?

The question of ethical motivation looms large here: Which conception of ethics is more likely to motivate me to pursue the good life? Should I see it as an opportunity to do good for my fellow beings, leading to my own flourishing, or should I see it as an opportunity to flourish and be happy, which of course, on this theory, is impossible without doing good for my fellow beings? Selfish or altruistic -- which is the better motivator? I think a completely satisfactory ethics will be able to show how this apparent antinomy is dissolved. Perhaps we'll need to separate motivation as mere efficacy from correct motivation, i.e. the right reasons, the right sentiments.

Out of tune notes can be detected by electronic devices. We all think some music is better (aesthetically) than other music, but it remains that there is no objective measure.
— Janus
The catch is in "objective". We all think we know what it means. Can we say that electronic devices provide a bridge between the objective and the subjective in this case? Or do they supersede the subjective opinions? Who's to say? — Ludwig V

Couple of things: Within a given practice or style, there are indeed objective measures of whether a piece of music is aesthetically better. But no doubt you mean aesthetic comparisons in which the stylistic "rules" differ.

Electronic devices can tell you whether a note is in tune. They can't tell you whether some degree of out-of-tuneness is desirable or not, aesthetically. So yes, a tuner can overrule a subjective judgment like "that passage was played in tune," but not a subjective aesthetic judgment. That requires some stylistic agreement about tuning in a particular genre.

BTW -- if you ever heard a piece of music, in any genre, played constantly and strictly in tune, you'd hate it! Robot music.

Couple of things: Within a given practice or style, there are indeed objective measures of whether a piece of music is aesthetically better. But no doubt you mean aesthetic comparisons in which the stylistic "rules" differ. — J

I didn't write what I said accurately enough. I was thinking only of judgements within an established practice, not of comparisons between styles.

Electronic devices can tell you whether a note is in tune. They can't tell you whether some degree of out-of-tuneness is desirable or not, aesthetically. So yes, a tuner can overrule a subjective judgment like "that passage was played in tune," but not a subjective aesthetic judgment. That requires some stylistic agreement about tuning in a particular genre. — J

I agree with that. Just to cover some other possible comments, disagreements within a style are not impossible, indeed, they are likely common place, but they require agreements in the background. This is was distinguishes aesthetics and ethics from questions of taste. About those, it has been know for at least two thousand years, there is no disputing. (Normally). This is why I think that to classify these judgements as subjective just because they don't conform to the paradigms of objectivity just confuses them with questions of taste.

BTW -- if you ever heard a piece of music, in any genre, played constantly and strictly in tune, you'd hate it! Robot music. — J

I'm pretty sure I have, although it can be hard to be sure. The same is true for a robotic beat. Yet that can be used for effect, as well. People are work so hard to keep the beat and keep the tuning and yet we find that we relish those tiny irregularities that give life to the music.

This is more or less the same point I was making. "Being against my best interest" is an ethical term; "being medically bad for me" is a scientific term. The two almost always coincide. — J

Counter-examples:

Tattoos, breast augmentation, SRS.

Might be in your best interest and might be medically harmful.

This is why I think that to classify these judgements as subjective just because they don't conform to the paradigms of objectivity just confuses them with questions of taste. — Ludwig V

Yes, that's a useful distinction. We've all run into the individual who seems to believe that their taste is the automatic arbiter of what counts as good. (Or, even less plausibly, that they like everything that is good!).

Right. Or, in the opposite direction, aggressive cancer treatments might not be in your best interest (as you conceive it) but be medically helpful.

My apologies, as you can see, I removed a large portion of my post because I had written it on my phone in a very broken up manner and I realized the whole part about evolution, etc., wasn't even responding to your position. This is the problem when you can only see the last two paragraphs you wrote :rofl:, I guess my mind just kept going in one direction.

I don't have time for a detailed response now, but I just wanted to comment on two things:

It's probably due to the way I put things, but, no, I don't actually even care much about what "real science" is supposed to be. What facts need above all is a modicum of precision, and that's something that words like "bad" almost never allow. What I'm saying is that the scientific facts tell you nothing that your fussy-wussy intuition doesn't also tell you, so there's little point in appealing to the facts. It doesn't really matter how much damage a boot at a certain velocity can do. You can appeal to facts, but you gain nothing by appealing to science here.

I agree with this one some things. I don't think this is always true though. Just for example, health is at least part of the human good and living a good life. I think that part is obvious. What promotes good health is often not that obvious, and we rely on the medical sciences, neuroscience, biology, etc. to inform our opinions here. Isaac Newton's consumption of mercury to boost his health is probably a fine example; it wasn't obvious what a an absolutely terrible idea this was, even to a genius like Newton. Other examples, like the existence of externalities in economics, or the pernicious effects of price floors and price ceilings abound. Having basic access to food is part of the human good and early price ceiling schemes, e.g. during the French Revolution, led directly to massive food scarcity, having the opposite of the intended effect.

I'm honestly quite confused right now. A car that doesn't move is a bad car, but if we didn't want the car to be a car then it could be something else, which it always is - beyond the judging. I think what I'm going for is insconsistence-despite-continuity or something? If I ever figure this out and have the time (not likely today or tommorrow - depending on your timezone maybe even the day after tommorrow) I'll be back - unless someone else says it better (which has preamted quite a lot of posts from me).

Yes, there is context dependence. St. Thomas uses the example of walking. Walking is generally good for health. Walking is not good for the health of a man with with a broken leg. Lentils are generally healthy. They are not healthy if you are allergic to lentils.

A good car runs, as you say. This context sensitivity doesn't make ethics impossible. It only makes it impossible to reduce to a moral calculus. This is why, IMHO, the ethics of the Enlightenment and afterwards are deeply flawed. They demand that, for there to be any ethics at all, it must be formulated in universal maxims, or that goodness be univocal, such that we can have a "moral calculus" whereby we assign some discrete amount of "goodness points" to different acts or things.

Indeed, the focus on acts is also part of the problem. People are primarily good or free, not acts. Just as there is never motion with nothing (no thing) moving, human acts are parasitic for their existence on men. Hence, while it is sometimes useful to speak of the freedom or goodness of acts, desires, appetites, etc., I think it is better to speak of men, lives, and societies.

Your posts are well-informed and thought-provoking, thank you. — Wayfarer

Thanks; confidence isn't my strong suit. For every post I finish, there are probably two I don't, and for every three posts I finish and post there's probably one I don't post. That might motivate me to post more... or not. Time will tell. But this cheered me up.

I agree with this one some things. I don't think this is always true though. Just for example, health is at least part of the human good and living a good life. I think that part is obvious. What promotes good health is often not that obvious, and we rely on the medical sciences, neuroscience, biology, etc. to inform our opinions here. Isaac Newton's consumption of mercury to boost his health is probably a fine example; it wasn't obvious what a an absolutely terrible idea this was, even to a genius like Newton. Other examples, like the existence of externalities in economics, or the pernicious effects of price floors and price ceilings abound. Having basic access to food is part of the human good and early price ceiling schemes, e.g. during the French Revolution, led directly to massive food scarcity, having the opposite of the intended effect. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yeah, I agree. I think I was focussed on baby stomping here.

Yes, there is context dependence. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Actually, after some thinking, I think I was "barking up the wrong tree".

You were asking how one can be "wrong when making a judgement about something which has no truth value, where there is no fact in play?" (Last post I was replying to.) And that's a good question.

A question of my own: would an emotivist agree that you could derive a fact about value from a fact about emotion? For example, if I said "boo to baby stomping," would it be a fact that "Dawnstorm feels negatively about baby stomping"? If so, there's plenty to be wrong about when you consider the path from internalised attitudes to aquired social values as instantiated in a specific situation and actualised in the decision-making process: you can be wrong about the item in question (e.g. the car), about the social value attached (e.g. I thought cars were supposed to be faster), about my attitude (e.g. I though I want a fast car, but I really just want to outdo my neighbour), about my projection (e.g. I thought going really fast with a car would be fun, but it's scary), and so on. And then you can be wrong how any of that inter-relates (e.g. I knew going really fast would be scary but I thought I'd get a kick out of being scared).

Even apparently simple things are pretty complex if you drill down.

As for this:

Indeed, the focus on acts is also part of the problem. People are primarily good or free, not acts. Just as there is never motion with nothing (no thing) moving, human acts are parasitic for their existence on men. Hence, while it is sometimes useful to speak of the freedom or goodness of acts, desires, appetites, etc., I think it is better to speak of men, lives, and societies. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'm a relativist, so yeah, I agree pretty much. Who in this thread is likely going to disagree that "baby stomping is bad"? The force of the rhetoric derives in part of the extremety of the act. The variance in reaction is fairly low. What underlies this? An absolute moral principle? An anthropological constant (we're a social species)? A social contract of some sort? And off we go in abstract land.

But this type of rhetoric is also a good example of how morals proliferate. The target here is not the protection of babies: it's a meta ethical stance, with the problem being that some people want there to be a right and a wrong, a good and a bad, etc. more than others. Part of this thread is ritualistic: we affirm our stances and solve little. That's not all there is, but it's certainly there. We're topicalising a well-known divide and portraying our stances. Little will change. We re-iterate the moral landscape.

This, I think, is what it would mean for "people" to matter: we stop talking and take a long, hard look at us right now. But then I would think this; I'm a relativist after all.

In the end, I'm fine talking acts.

1) is faith an emotion or a thought? What if it is neither — Gregory

Religious and Political Faith is both an Idea and a Feeling that motivates people to do what is not necessarily in their own self-interest, but in the interest of the Faith Community. The FC typically divides society into US vs THEM (e.g. Jews vs Gentiles, or Aryans vs Jews, or Catholics vs Heretics). Military and Religious "soldiers" are indoctrinated into an in-group vs out-group mentality, which allows them to treat outsiders without fellow-feeling. :sad:

Yes. But that value neautrality has moral implications. So it might well lead people to think that describing animals that are screaming in pain as "vocalizing" is more objective because morally neutral. But being morally neutral about that fact has moral implications, because it implies indifference.

That wasn't actually my post, but I'll still respond: The Oxford Very Short Introductions are sort of hit or miss, but the one on "Objectivity" is quite good. One of the points the author makes is that it is far from obvious that the most accurate and true way to describe something like the Holocaust or American slavery would be to "pump out all considerations of subjectivity." Similarly, is the reality and truth of World War II most fully and accurately covered in a "map of all the particles involved, their positions, trajectories, and velocities?" Even ignoring the dubious reductionist premises that would support such a claim, it would seem that even if consciousness were merely "epiphenomenal" (a position I think is very difficult to defend), such a description would still miss very much indeed. The premises that "objectivity approaches truth at the limit," and that "objectivity and truth exclude value" are ones I think we have good reason to be skeptical of at any rate.

If the truth is properly absolute, then it is not simply "the objective." The absolute, to be truly absolute, must encompass both reality and appearances, for appearances are part of reality, they are "really" appearances. The absolute includes all perspectives, not a privileged perspective. Absolute good then, must include and be present in all relative good, or even what merely appears to be good (a point Plato makes, and whereof St. Thomas says that all good things, or even what only seems good, is good through the Good, for him, the Triune God).

Yes. It does seem to be a fact that human beings evaluate (attribute values to) certain objective facts. But they do select which facts to attribute moral values to, and so distinguish within the domain in ways that are not defined within the domain.

I am a big believer in human's potential for freedom as self-determination. However, I do also think that it is tricky to speak of us "selecting" value, if this is to imply that this is wholly a matter of choice, or that goodness is primarily always "in us" (in our selections) and not "in things." This would be to agree with Protagoras, that "man is the measure of all things," at least where value is concerned. But I would maintain that it is bad for a fox to have a limb torn off by a trap regardless of what people think.

Likewise, that being burned alive is, in general, bad for man, is not a value judgement me "come to decide upon." It is a value enforced on us anytime we stick our hand in a flame. We might be strong of will, like Gaius Mucius Cordus, and stick our hand in a fire and let it burn as a means of securing some greater good, but this doesn't negate the way in which "what man is" and "what things are" (e.g. fire) play a determinant role in values. And if "being like God" is the limit of conceivable goodness, then this limit case is not something man chooses.

This question reminds me of a quote I really like and I'll tag because it is a response to emotivism:

In their second chapter [of their grammar textbook for young children] Gaius and Titius quote the well-known story of Coleridge at the waterfall. You remember that there were two tourists present: that one called it 'sublime' and the other 'pretty'; and that Coleridge mentally endorsed the first judgement and rejected the second with disgust. Gaius and Titius comment as follows: 'When the man said This is sublime, he appeared to be making a remark about the waterfall... Actually ... he was not making a remark about the waterfall, but a remark about his own feelings. What he was saying was really I have feelings associated in my mind with the word "Sublime", or shortly, I have sublime feelings' Here are a good many deep questions settled in a pretty summary fashion. But the authors are not yet finished. They add: 'This confusion is continually present in language as we use it. We appear to be saying something very important about something: and actually we are only saying something about our own feelings.'

Before considering the issues really raised by this momentous little paragraph (designed, you will remember, for 'the upper forms of schools') we must eliminate one mere confusion into which Gaius and Titius have fallen. Even on their own view—on any conceivable view—the man who says This is sublime cannot mean I have sublime feelings. Even if it were granted that such qualities as sublimity were simply and solely projected into things from our own emotions, yet the emotions which prompt the projection are the correlatives, and therefore almost the opposites, of the qualities projected. The feelings which make a man call an object sublime are not sublime feelings but feelings of veneration. If This is sublime is to be reduced at all to a statement about the speaker's feelings, the proper translation would be I have humble feelings. If the view held by Gaius and Titius were consistently applied it would lead to obvious absurdities. It would force them to maintain that You are contemptible means I have contemptible feelings', in fact that Your feelings are contemptible means My feelings are contemptible...

...until quite modern times all teachers and even all men believed the universe to be such that certain emotional reactions on our part could be either congruous or incongruous to it—believed, in fact, that objects did not merely receive, but could merit, our approval or disapproval, our reverence or our contempt. The reason why Coleridge agreed with the tourist who called the cataract sublime and disagreed with the one who called it pretty was of course that he believed inanimate nature to be such that certain responses could be more 'just' or 'ordinate' or 'appropriate 'to it than others. And he believed (correctly) that the tourists thought the same. The man who called the cataract sublime was not intending simply to describe his own emotions about it: he was also claiming that the object was one which merited those emotions. But for this claim there would be nothing to agree or disagree about.

To disagree with "This is pretty" if those words simply described the lady's feelings, would be absurd: if she had said "I feel sick" Coleridge would hardly have replied "No; I feel quite well." When Shelley, having compared the human sensibility to an Aeolian lyre, goes on to add that it differs from a lyre in having a power of 'internal adjustment' whereby it can 'accommodate its chords to the motions of that which strikes them', 9 he is assuming the same belief. 'Can you be righteous', asks Traherne, 'unless you be just in rendering to things their due esteem? All things were made to be yours and you were made to prize them according to their value.'

C.S. Lewis - The Abolition of Man

Another thing that occurred to me is that the case for emotivism often relies heavily on debunking arguments rather than positive arguments. That is, rather than show that emotivism must be true,emotivist arguments tend to proceed by attempting to show that no value judgement can be correct. Sometimes such arguments can be quite nuanced. Sometimes they seem quite facile, e.g. the claim that there can be no such thing as a "good artifact" simply because people sometimes want an artifact for something other than its intended purpose, or that catching a gazelle cannot be "good for a lion" because it is "bad for the gazelle."

I think a very common assumption at work in such debunking arguments (the nuanced and the simple) is that "goodness" must be predicated univocally and not analogically—that for goodness to exist at all, it must exist according to some sort of fixed scale of magnitude.

But I think it's obvious that "good can be said in many ways." In the same way, we might say that "tuna is healthy" because it is a food that promotes human health (an analogy of attribution, where health is most properly predicated of the living human, and the "healthyness" of related things is parasitic on this health). "Healthy bloodwork" works in the same way. Bloodwork is not healthy per se, it is a symptom of health. Yet clearly, the prepared tuna, being dead, is not healthy as respects the health of the tuna. We cannot use the terms "healthy" or "good" univocally, yet neither does that mean that each use of "good" is entirely equivocal.

I'm inclined to think that faith in institutions or people is trusting that they are doing the right or appropriate institutions thing. — Ludwig V

I don't think this is quite right. Our faith in institutions and privileged people is in the belief that their powers are legitimate. "Doing the wrong thing" might call that legitimacy into question. But the faith is in legitimacy, and moreover in how that legitimacy was granted.

If we believe in the legitimate authority of a king or president, the fact that this individual is the legitimate king or president may or may not be a matter of faith. But the fact that royal succession or winning a fair election bestows kingly or presidential powers must be an article of faith.

C.S. Lewis - The Abolition of Man

I used to be quite fond of that passage too, and while I still think there's a lot of truth in it (equating "it's sublime" with "I have sublime feelings" is clearly wrong), I have to ask: Exactly how does Coleridge know that the waterfall is sublime rather than pretty? By what faculty do we "render things their due esteem?" I don't remember Lewis trying to answer that, other than reasserting the tradition that claims to be able to do so.

Right. Or, in the opposite direction, aggressive cancer treatments might not be in your best interest (as you conceive it) but be medically helpful. — J

That's a good example. Medically assisted suicide is an even better one. It is (normally regarded as) medically unhelpful (even in contradiction with) standard medical ethics. nevertheless, it may be in one's best interests, IMO.

Further to our exchange about music, you may or may not have encountered the classic piece in traditional philosophy for this - Hume - Standard of Taste. It puts his analysis into a different context from the usual subjectivist interpretation. On the other hand, it is based on a naive empiricism that doesn't attend to the extent to which social and cultural context affects these questions.

We cannot use the terms "healthy" or "good" univocally, yet neither does that mean that each use of "good" is entirely equivocal. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Thanks for this reply. I must apologize that I don't have time to do it justice right now. But this is true. In fact, I would say that in order to ensure clarity of use, "good" should always be thought of in its context - especially the context of the noun to which the adjective is attached.

Further to our exchange about music, you may or may not have encountered the classic piece in traditional philosophy for this - Hume - Standard of Taste. — Ludwig V

I don't remember reading this, thanks.

No, not at all as I see

IMHO, this is a grave mistake that leads to emotivism. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is nice. Very clear key to your thinking.

But to return to medicine, are the value statements of medicine just statements of emotion? — Count Timothy von Icarus

. The statements of medicine are simply not ethical statements (unless you mean the specific domain of medical ethics, which is not facts about injury and damage, but guidelines informing action.. which is the proper domain of ethics, as I understand). They have truth aptness and they're interesting, and often dynamic, but they do not seem to be ethical unless you constrain 'ethical' to whatever specific superficial goal is in mind... "stem the loss of blood", "don't induce diabetes" etc. in which case, obviously you can derive an ought from an is, but that's cheating.

Medicine certainly seems to tell us something about the human good and human happiness. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I am unsure what, though, and it's certainly not a roadmap by any means. There always remains some X factor of 'wisdom' involved in delivering medicine, and more thoroughly in attempting to live a happy life (as you've used that concept, I'll address it) viz. most often people are happiest not doing what is medically optimal. Or even expressly doing what is not medically optimal.

My challenge would be: what makes medical facts about the human good "non-ethical?" — Count Timothy von Icarus

Would it be non-ethical to serve alcohol? Some say so, but thats an extreme position that I think misunderstands ethics. I'm sure you'd agree, that such extreme principle is probably not teh best way to go - bu it would be a fairly logical resutl of understanding medical facts as ethical. They can be informative, and they can bear weight, I should think, on ethical reasoning but I can't see how they could arbitrate much of anything. If someone wants their leg broke, they want it broke.

Does an emotivist even recognize the question? — Ludwig V

Enjoying red wine isn't an ethical question. This truly strikes me a bizarre objection. The entire point of ethics is that it delineates actions which effect other people from actions which don't, either do much of anyhing, or have any tangible externalities.
I'd be happy to consider and see if I have an intuition about a like example that might seem like a bullet to bite, but here the domain of discussion answers the issue.

He just refers to past tradition, but I think this is a fair move because the essay is focused on ethics rather than aesthetics, and more so on following out some of the conclusions that the denial of goodness and beauty (and truth) leads to. I think the introductory section is there just to shed light on what a consequential move it is to simply presuppose emotivism and the Anglo-empiricist view of goodness, love, and beauty as wholly internal, "subjective" states related to inchoate feeling/sentiment.

I think it's worth noting though that attacks on the reality of beauty, like those on goodness and truth, tend to also largely rely on debunking arguments. This also often involves shifting the burden of proof entirely onto the other side, demanding that the existence of the contents of consciousness be demonstrated within the confines of what are generally strict "empiricist" premises if these are to be considered fully real. Whereas, one could just as well say: "if your epistemic premises make it impossible to account for goodness, beauty, and truth, or consciousness itself, then they are clearly deficient, and they are self-undermining to the extent that they cannot represent themselves as being "true" or "truly good" premises to begin with."

I know you're plenty aware of the history here. Lewis is responding more to the earlier, Victorian paradigm, already in stark decline when he is writing, which had a strong faith in "natural science" as the ultimate arbiter of truth. Such a paradigm is still popular (e.g. in some of the "New Atheists") and, through inertia, might be even remain the dominant paradigm in secular K-12 education, but it has long been abandoned by the empiricist intellectuals themselves, who moved on to positivism, and from there into deflationary views of truth, more "post-modern" directions, etc. The fact is that "truth" found itself every bit as liable to failing to "cash out" in radical empiricist terms as goodness and beauty.

But truth lives on as "prediction." A theory is "useful" a proxy for the old "truth" so long as it is predictive. Of course, prediction needs to be defined in terms of mathematics, but mathematics and logic are now themselves a great multiplicity of "systems" which can only be selected for on the grounds of "usefulness." One certainly cannot answer the question of logical nihilism using strictly empiricist restrictions on evidence for instance.

Given the empiricist premises, it would seem the goodness, beauty, and the existence of consciousness can only be "justified" if they can be "usefully predictive." I don't know what that means for beauty if it is "sought for its own sake." Yet even the all-pervasive appeals to "pragmatism" and "use" presuppose some good by which "usefulness" is measured, and that things might really be "truly more or less useful" compared to one another. However, barring any "real good," these pragmatic standards ultimately have to be defined in terms of "use" themselves, bottoming out somewhere in an unjustified assertion of usefulness.

Anyhow, I would just ask: are the empiricists' premises inviolable? They certainty aren't justified by empiricism themselves. Second, is the burden of proof shifting fair?

When the eliminitivist says, "give me a complete theory explaining consciousness or I am justified in denying it," is this a fair move? Is it fair that they demand that any such "complete theory" be given in terms of their own reductive assumptions, and explained in terms that would seem to make such an explanation impossible from the outset?

The emotivist is normally doing something very similar. "Show me the empiricist explanation of beauty, ideally reducing it to mathematics or prediction, or it is illusory." Yet if beauty, truth, and goodness are "illusory" they certainly aren't illusory in the way a stick appears bent in water, and it seems fair turn around and demand an account of how such an "illusion" occurs.

The interminable debates between eliminativists/behaviorists and panpsychists are perhaps instructive here, in that their empiricists presuppositions seem to make the debate irresolvable, despite both positions being prima facie absurd. "Show you are 'conscious' and that everything you do cannot be reduced to empirical observations of behavior (but also the only evidence we will allow is empirical observations of behavior)," says the eliminativist. The pansychists says, "what do you mean its 'implausible' that each half of your skull is its own mind, or that a room with five people is its own mind? Just look at the empirical data, tell me where it shows any delineation between discrete private minds! The idea that 'our thoughts are our own,' is just superstition that relies on beetle boxes!"

I suppose the topic of beauty is also deeply tied to views of nature. D.T. Suzuki writes:

There is something rejuvenating in the possession of Zen. The spring flowers look prettier, and the mountain stream runs cooler and more transparent. The subjective revolution that brings about this state of things cannot be called abnormal. When life becomes more enjoyable and its expanse broadens to include the universe itself, there must be something in satori [the potential for enlightenment] that is quite precious and well-worth striving after.

Wordsworth writes in Expostulation and Reply

And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man.
A motion and a spirit that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.

Dante claims of nature at the beginning of the Paradiso that:

The glory of the One Who moves all things
penetrates all the universe, reflecting
in one part more and in another less.

These are all "empirical reports" in the broadest sense, in that they deal with sensuous experience. And they're clearly relevant to conceptions of beauty and nature. Yet the debunking arguments tend to demand that passages like these be translated into "predictive hypotheses" or mathematics to "demonstrate a real beauty."

Yet any strong notion of "truth" itself is subject to such debunking, given the empiricist starting premises. The empiricist premises are also what allow Hume's Problem of Induction to be a real problem (he was not the first person to think of the ramifications of underdetermination, just the first to do so in a context where presupposing nominalism, a deflated notion of cause, and a denial of any human capacity for real abstraction or noesis could fly under the radar as implicit assumptions). Yet with this, and related arguments, hardly anything can be said to be "known." Given this context, it can hardly be a particularly strong argument against beauty that it cannot be "known" according to the empiricists criteria, this problem ends up being true for virtually everything and anything. Using these same criteria, we might very well argue that the difference between a dedicated eliminitivist, a panpsychist, a positivist, a post-modern, etc. is itself just emotion.

Anyhow, one recent treatment of the aesthetical question I like is D.C. Schindler's Love and the Postmodern Predicament

Schindler first diagnoses why our modern condition is so poisonous. “[E]ncountering reality is a basic part of the meaning of human existence.” And, moreover, “there is something fundamentally good about this encounter with the world.” “Modern culture,” however, “is largely a conspiracy to protect us from the real.” Our “encounter” with reality, with everyday life, is increasingly mediated by technology, buffered by layers and layers of devices, screens, “social” media, and various other contrivances. Schindler writes that “the energies of the modern world are largely devoted to keeping reality at bay, monitoring any encounter with what is genuinely other than ourselves, and protecting us from possible consequences, intended or otherwise.”

In response to this, Schindler proposes his creative retrieval of the transcendentals. In the transcendentals—beauty, goodness, and truth—man participates in and, in a real sense, “becomes what he knows.” Schindler maintains that rejecting the notion that the cosmos is true, good, and beautiful, “in its very being,” we are actually committing a gravely dehumanizing move. We are cutting ourselves off from the ability to experience reality at its deepest level. This means that the study and understanding of the transcendentals is not some abstraction, disconnected from everyday life. Rather, a proper understanding of the transcendentals allows one the deepest and most concrete access to the real...

Beauty

Schindler first tackles the transcendental of beauty. This is contrary to the order most frequently employed by the tradition. There are both philosophical and practical reasons for this, however. With respect to the latter, Schindler notes that if “our primary . . . access to reality comes through the windows or doors of our senses” this means that the “way we interpret beauty bears in a literally foundational way on our relationship to reality simply.”

Schindler rejects the notion that beauty is just in the eye of the beholder, that is has no connection to objective reality. Rather, “beauty is an encounter between the human soul and reality, which takes place in the ‘meeting ground,’ so to speak, of appearance.” And beauty is a privileged ground of encounter because it “involves our spirit and so our sense of transcendence, our sense of being elevated to something beyond ourselves—and at the very same time it appeals to our flesh, and so our most basic, natural instincts and drives.” By placing beauty first, one establishes the proper conditions for the “flourishing” of goodness and truth.

https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2019/05/08/the-intelligibility-of-reality-and-the-priority-to-love/

Or a longer, in-depth review: https://lonergan.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/LoveModernpredicamentSummary.pdf

Lots to chew on here, thanks. I'm mostly in agreement, though less concerned than you are with science/empiricism as a foe of other modes of cognition.

When the eliminativist says, "give me a complete theory explaining consciousness or I am justified in denying it," is this a fair move? — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'll take this as a proxy for several of the arguments you make, and reply, "No, it isn't a fair move." I believe the eliminativist is thinking something like this: "Well, it's very unlikely, according to me, that consciousness 'exists' in the way that non-eliminativists believe it does, so I'd need a complete scientific explanation of consciousness as that kind of existing thing before I could even entertain the idea. And in the absence of such a theory, my agnosticism turns to outright denial." So the reply should be: "Open your mind. We know just about nothing, scientifically, concerning the phenomenon of consciousness. A 'compete theory' may be a long way away. In the meantime, just say you don't know -- neither do I!"

I think it's worth noting though that attacks on the reality of beauty, like those on goodness and truth, tend to also largely rely on debunking arguments. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes. For instance, I could have phrased my question about Coleridge and the waterfall in a much more hostile way, implying, "Obviously, a non-emotivist account of 'sublimity' isn't available; Coleridge was merely reflecting the beliefs of his time; so when I challenge you to explain the 'faculty' by which he recognized sublimity, my tongue is firmly in my cheek. Obviously there is no such faculty." Whereas, as I hope was clear, my question was a genuine one: It's very important that we understand how values like beauty and moral goodness are recognized -- and very difficult to give a good account of this. I think you're overestimating the power of the "give me a predictive hypothesis" request, but yes, we do want to be able to say more than "Tradition says so" or "it's empirical too."

On that question . . . is it empirical? You say of Wordsworth, Dante, and Suzuki, "These are all 'empirical reports' in the broadest sense, in that they deal with sensuous experience." Perhaps in a very broad sense -- they are reports concerning things outside our own mind -- but not in a way that's going to help us. If Wordsworth's "a motion and a spirit" is "out there" in the same way that the color of his famous daffodils is, then a number of tough questions are raised. Most of them reduce to the one I posed: We know, more or less, what faculty allows us to see daffodils as yellow. What is the faculty that allows us to see the waterfall as sublime? To ask this question is not to defer to scientism. There's nothing wrong with asking for a reasonable explanation here, as long as we don't pre-certify what sorts of entities and processes will count, as scientism does. In fact, a close reading of the Suzuki passage suggests a possible line of inquiry. Satori and enlightenment may be the highest development of the very faculty we're asking about.

I'll take this as a proxy for several of the arguments you make, and reply, "No, it isn't a fair move." I believe the eliminativist is thinking something like this: "Well, it's very unlikely, according to me, that consciousness 'exists' in the way that non-eliminativists believe it does, so I'd need a complete scientific explanation of consciousness as that kind of existing thing before I could even entertain the idea. And in the absence of such a theory, my agnosticism turns to outright denial." So the reply should be: "Open your mind. We know just about nothing, scientifically, concerning the phenomenon of consciousness. A 'compete theory' may be a long way away. In the meantime, just say you don't know -- neither do I!"

Isn't this conclusion you're suggesting, that we allow that we all know almost nothing of consciousness, or some of its most obvious contents (e.g., goodness, beauty, etc.), only reached by granting the eliminitivist his (radical) empiricist premises as inviolable? For instance, the phenomenologist thinks she can say something about consciousness. This skeptical resolution would require that, in disputes between the phenomenologist and the eliminitivist, we must presuppose that the eliminitivist's definition of what constitutes "good evidence" and epistemic warrant are correct and the phenomenologist's are somehow deficient. That is, if we are to know anything about consciousness, it must proceed according to the radical empiricist's premises.

Yet as noted above, I think the past century of philosophy demonstrates pretty well that, if one starts with the radical empiricists' premises, essentially nothing can be known, including the validity/choice-worthiness of those same premises. So, why exactly am I going to want to grant epistemic premises that have proven to be self-refuting?

I focus on science because the common response here is that: "these are the premises required for science." I don't think that's true though. There are many conceptualizations of the sciences that allow for the same methodology and don't need to make the radical empiricists' assumptions.

What is the faculty that allows us to see the waterfall as sublime? To ask this question is not to defer to scientism. There's nothing wrong with asking for a reasonable explanation here, as long as we don't pre-certify what sorts of entities and processes will count, as scientism does. In fact, a close reading of the Suzuki passage suggests a possible line of inquiry. Satori and enlightenment may be the highest development of the very faculty we're asking about.

On traditional accounts, the intellect, by which we are capable of abstraction and an understanding of principles (Goodness and Beauty being the most general principles). The denial of universals (nominalism), and thus of any such faculty, is of course a metaphysical position, but it is also certainly something that tends to be assumed in the Anglo-empiricist tradition (particularly by "anti-metaphysical" thinkers).

So, the reasoning goes: "We won't deal in metaphysics. We will just be properly skeptical, which means we start our work without any assumption that universals exist, that there is any 'first-philosophy,' that there is an intellect, etc." But I think it's pretty obvious that, in practice, this "initial skepticism" just amounts to assuming nominalism, etc. Moreover, the methodological tools developed are based on these assumption, so that even when realist theories are taken up by analytic/empiricist thought, they face a rather significant problem of "hostile translation" and "conceptual blindness," (e.g., this is something Klima's paper on the butchering of Aristotelian essences in some formats is good on.)

But the "traditional accounts" have hardly been dormant, and they've been continually updated according to what the sciences can tell us about our perceptual and intellectual faculties. It's just that engagement between this area of philosophy and the multiple offshoots of the Anglo-empiricist tradition is generally one-way.

I think you're overestimating the power of the "give me a predictive hypothesis" request

Perhaps, although my "apologetic" approach is based on interchanges here and similar venues, where the demand that values (aesthetic or otherwise) be shoehorned into something like a "predictive model" or "testable hypothesis" in order to be justified seems quite common. This is why I like Sam Harris's The Moral Landscape so much as an entry point, despite my disagreements with its core assumptions. Harris at least underscores how it is prima facie implausible that the sciences don't tell us anything about "what is good for man" or "what is good for horses," etc.

Isn't this conclusion you're suggesting, that we allow that we all know almost nothing of consciousness, or some of its most obvious contents (e.g., goodness, beauty, etc.), only reached by granting the eliminitivist his (radical) empiricist premises as inviolable? — Count Timothy von Icarus

I don't think so. I deliberately said that we know "just about nothing, scientifically, concerning the phenomenon of consciousness" because a) I believe it's true, and b) there's no reason we can't meet the eliminativist somewhat on their own ground. Really, my suggested reply amounts to "You're not being scientific, by your own lights." I'm not sure it would do much good to start laying out a phenomenology of consciousness for them, in this context. . . though as you note, we can say a great deal about consciousness phenomenologically, and many believe (as I think you and I do) that the evidence is overwhelmingly on the side of consciousness' not being eliminable.

On traditional accounts, the intellect — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yeah, I know. But does that really satisfy you as an explanation? It doesn't me. As a (very) short cut to what I mean, imagine that we accept the idea of a faculty called intellect which is cognitively able to do all the things we'd like it to do -- recognize values, identify universals, uncover logical principles, whatever you'd like to add to the list. Does this get us one step closer to answering our question? What is this faculty, and how does it do what it does? Just giving it a name doesn't help. Moreover, we can't just say, "Well, you're asking for a scientific explanation and that's not appropriate." What we lack is any real explanation at all, if we try to go beyond mere assertions that "since we do recognize values et al., then there must be a faculty that allows us to do so," which is question-begging.

I think you're overestimating the power of the "give me a predictive hypothesis" request, but yes, we do want to be able to say more than "Tradition says so" or "it's empirical too." — J

Wanted to add that focus on “a hypothesis’ ability to predict” is, to my mind unfortunately, too often prioritized over “a hypothesis’ explanatory power” – this especially in philosophy.

The first strictly addresses techne (i.e., the making or doing something (namely, that of a valid prediction)), whereas the second is about episteme (i.e., the understanding of what is) – and to me it seems obvious that there can be no techne in the absence of episteme, such that episteme is of paramount importance, with techne being only secondary..

For example, in this context it can be asked, "Does the phenomenologist or the eliminativist provide more explanatory power as regards the totality of what is?" While I'm sure that argument galore as to this question's answer could ensue, to my best understanding it remains the case that the eliminativist will not be able to explain most anything as regards awareness per se. And without awareness, there cannot be any form of empiricism.

The emotivist is normally doing something very similar. "Show me the empiricist explanation of beauty, ideally reducing it to mathematics or prediction, or it is illusory." Yet if beauty, truth, and goodness are "illusory" they certainly aren't illusory in the way a stick appears bent in water, and it seems fair turn around and demand an account of how such an "illusion" occurs. — Count Timothy von Icarus

False.