I haven't brought the government into this. In fact, all I suggested was that there is indeed a correct answer to the question of whether or not vaccines are harmful/worth the risk. At first I didn't even give an explicit answer to the question, although I did allude to my own position. I was just using it as an example to make the point that some courses of action are objectively morally superior/inferior to others per our values, and that sometimes when we disagree about matters of fact, we disagree about which choices are best as a result. — VagabondSpectre
Cauliflower is good either is a fact in respect of some criteria, — tim wood
It’s true or false that cauliflower is good for nutrition, just as it’s true or false that boiling babies is good for society. A psychopath might enjoy boiling babies, but it is still morally wrong. — Noah Te Stroete
How would it make sense to say that anything is good in respect to some criterion/criteria? — Terrapin Station
then it doesn't at all capture the conventional sense of "good." — Terrapin Station
Why is it morally wrong?A psychopath might enjoy boiling babies, but it is still morally wrong. — Noah Te Stroete
The sense in which you are correct is a narrow one. When it is said (by anyone) that something is good, the word "good" is a shorthand, a code, that the speaker presumably supposes that his auditor will understand, that if understood saves much periphrasis. But this same thing is true of all language acts meant as communication. — tim wood
It seems to me, reading your various posts, that you're caught in a whirlpool of destructive relativism — tim wood
Meaning is a community project. — tim wood
How do you define “good”? Is something good merely in the capacity of someone approving of it? — Noah Te Stroete
Say, someone says the brakes on that car are good or the bones of that house are good. Does that simply mean that that person approves of them? — Noah Te Stroete
Say, someone says the brakes on that car are good or the bones of that house are good. Does that simply mean that that person approves of them?
— Noah Te Stroete
Yes, it's a term of approval or preference. "Yaying," accepting, sanctioning, etc. the thing in question. — Terrapin Station
If the bones of the house are “good”, then they are also in a state that tends toward structural integrity. — Noah Te Stroete
If one wants a sturdy structure, then one would want it to have “good bones”. — Noah Te Stroete
So, in order for society to continue (something that’s objectively in our biological and cultural DNA) — Noah Te Stroete
Do I understand you correctly as saying that "good" is explicitly itself not to be understood with respect to, or by, some standard or standards?Let's stick to how it would make sense to link "good" to some criterion or other. — Terrapin Station
Statements like, "this orange is good," or "that is a good pocket-knife," are ordinary and meaningful. Criteria, such as they are, are implied, and it's assumed the hearer or reader knows what they are. Do you disagree? Do you deny this? — tim wood
When I say that morality is mere preference, what I'm saying is that "x is good" and the like are mental phenomena and do not occur elsewhere. That's all that I'm saying. I'm not ignoring anything, I'm simply focusing on a very specific ontological claim.
Some people believe that "x is good" occurs in the world extramentally. It does not. — Terrapin Station
I should add, however, that even on the understanding that you are not claiming we have a moral duty to trust some particular data source over another, I'm still not quite following how you got from the valuing of children's health to there being a fact of the matter about whether vaccines are 'good'. — Isaac
Others might object on religious grounds such as the Amish, having their ethics based on the divine command. — Isaac
People might hold strongly a virtue of 'do no harm' which would prevent them from ethically giving any kind of prophylactic drug, not because of a utilitarian calculation of harm, but on a principle designed to accommodate uncertainty. — Isaac
As I keep stating, the values component is subjective, but the way they relate to others and the world is not subjective. Once we've settled on a definition of exactly what morality is supposed to do, we can assess whether or not the actions we propose will actually achieve our individual or communal moral goals.Values (by which you seem to mean objectives) and facts together still are not enough to make a moral path objectively true, we're not all utilitarians. — Isaac
Obviously I disagree, because I just said that it's not possible to make any sense of that.
The challenge I proposed to you was to make sense of it.
So what criteria, for example, would you say "This orange is good" refers to? — Terrapin Station
I didn't expect any push back about the effectiveness of vaccines, so perhaps we could substitute the example for something else: — VagabondSpectre
it objectively undermines the preferences of victims, — VagabondSpectre
Such people are confused, but thankfully these types of beliefs are assailable by science, logic, and an appeal to their human values. — VagabondSpectre
There's really not much difference between virtue ethics and utilitarian generalizations. What do you think causes such moral maxims as "do no harm" to evolve? Because they're useful. — VagabondSpectre
Once we've settled on a definition of exactly what morality is supposed to do, we can assess whether or not the actions we propose will actually achieve our individual or communal moral goals. — VagabondSpectre
How do you define "morality" exactly? — VagabondSpectre
It doesn't matter in the sense that morality would be no less important. The problem is getting the other side to see it that way. I see the same errors repeated over and again. They seem to see preference as some kind of affront... It's a quite ridiculous and unproductive way to react. — S
Will this truth stand against the destructive tendencies of relativism? I do not think so, but neither will anything else. — tim wood
Can a society function well if its inexpert members do not trust the most expert available opinion when it comes to scientific, medical, ecological and economical matters? — Janus
If morality is based on doing what promotes the flourishing (health and happiness) of a society and all its members, and the basic requirements for such flourishing are established and universally acknowledged, then morality as an "if, then" set of principles can be established and universally acknowledged, and the problems with the "is, ought" divide circumvented. — Janus
The more morally bankrupt, the more corrupt, a society is, the more laws will be required to protect each citizen from the predatory behaviors of the others. — Janus
So again, the actual single individual carrying out this violence is not 'mistakenly' doing so for the woman's well-being, they very likely actually are doing so for the woman's well-being. They basically have a choice between complete social ostracisation and being mutilated. A brutal choice, but not one we 'enlightened' westerners can just sweep in and point out how the idiot natives are getting it wrong as if they'd made a mistake in their maths. — Isaac
It is arrogant beyond belief to suggest that the calculus that those in cultures practicing FGM can be mistaken, but our knowledge is so exhaustive and accurate that we can have this level of certainty about whether certain actions will achieve our goals in the long term. We can't even predict our own ecomony, let alone the long term consequences of every cultural and personal change in behaviour. — Isaac
You're basically saying that it is very possible for ethnic cultures to have made a clear mistake in their calculus (which, just for the record, I agree they have, in case that's not clear), but that we in the 'enlightened' West are so unlikely to make a mistake in ours that we can claim our choices are practically 'objective fact'. You realise how that sounds? — Isaac
The Amish believe in God and that certain practices here on earth (which may include the refusal vaccines) are necessary to ensure a good afterlife for the rest of eternity. How exactly do you propose to assail that belief with "science, logic, and an appeal to their human values."? Have scientists recently visited the afterlife and I missed the story? Has CETI just picked up some communication from God saying its OK? — Isaac
There's a massive difference between virtue ethics and utilitarian generalisations. It's just not one you can see because of your blind faith in the 'truth' of modern Western culture. — Isaac
The difference is in how they deal with uncertainty. Utilitarian calculus (or more properly consequensialist), no matter how complex, takes all the 'known' facts about a matter and uses them to work out the best strategy to achieve a goal. — Isaac
Virtue ethics, by contrast, presumes (in some manifestations at least), that such calculations are so fraught with error, that it makes more sense to focus on doing what feels right, given that we will never fully establish whether it actually was right in the long term. — Isaac
Personally, I think of morality as that particular collection of subjective feelings about one's actions which relate to a potential negative effect on others. I'm not a moral relativist though, because I don't believe the subjective mental realm is a mystical, or supernatural place. It is amenable to science, it is subject to natural selection, sexual selection (and all manner of other selection pressures) and it responds in an (at least theoretically) predictable manner to environmental stimuli. All this put together makes these subjective feelings very homogeneous in large part and practically universal in some cases. These I take to be moral facts — Isaac
Our starting moral values are not extramental, but they can be inter-mental and intra-mental. Even from an individually subjective starting point, one's value hierarchy can be more or less internally consistent. Objectivity is quite useful when we negotiate our own hierarchy of starting values. The fact humans tend to share so many fundamental starting values also adds a layer of cooperative opportunity that would not be there otherwise, and navigating these opportunities for mutual benefit is the bulk of the ethical work that lays before us. — VagabondSpectre
"this orange is good," or, "that is a good pocket-knife," not only do not make any sense, but that "it's not possible to make any sense" of them. Tell us, do you ever yourself engage in this nonsense? — tim wood
The orange in question might taste good, look good, be good. — tim wood
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