Oh look, more name calling. What a surprise. There is no universally agreed upon. Do you even know what that means? And your criticism of the thought experiment completely misses the point. You would probably struggle with the trolley problem, the pleasure machine, Mary's room, p-zombies, brain in a vat, and any other thought experiment at all that differs in any way from the popular or predominant view of reality.

It's rather rich that you, of all people, complain about others delivering insults! In any case, by all means carry on with your idiocy; don't let me stop you, I don't care either way.

Don't worry, I'll be the better person and refuse to resort to name calling. On second thought, fuck it, it turns out that you're a bigger fool than I ever could have imagined. But it was good while it lasted.

I'm glad we ended this on an amicable note. :up:

I think you just won.

I'm glad we ended this on an amicable note. :up: — S

Yeah, why not; I'm not personally invested in what you do or don't think.

I think you just won. — Brett

Maybe, but I'm not sure what the prize is. :roll:

Never mind, you did well.

Logical possibility alone is insufficient for belief/assent.

Yes, you did very, very well. Have a giant pat on the back. Your prize is mindless praise from everyone who is biased against me. Enjoy. Drink it up. But be careful not to choke.

Well yes, of course everyone who disagrees with you must necessarily be both biased against you and mindless, even though the whole morality thing is nothing to do with reason but is merely a matter of personal preference. :rofl:

It is widely known that the word "mere" carries a negative connotation. With Tim at least, that is but one article of potential evidence out of a whole catalogue of evidence upon which I've made my case that he is deliberately appealing to emotion through the exploitation of language. And also, when "mere" preference in moral matters is idiotically or deceptively compared with preferences relating to foodstuffs, then the fallacy is clear enough. It's right out of the sophist strategy manual: if you can't argue against a position properly, then try to make it superficially appear trivial.

No wonder you're so confused. The allegation of bias and of mindlessness was not a moral judgement, it was an intellectual judgement. And I have very clearly said on multiple occasions that I don't think that morality has nothing to do with reason. What's worse is that you're not the only one to make that error. The problem is that it goes in one ear and right out the other.

The allegation of bias is a moral judgement, but obviously the allegation of mindlessness is not unless you mean that the other is not using, as opposed to not having, a mind in which case it is a moral judgement. In any case, I don't believe it was an intellectually motivated judgement, but an emotionally motivated one.

If you want to claim it was an intellectual judgement, then set out your reasoning. What, according to you, does morality have to do with reason beyond giving reasons after the fact for your emotional preferences?

I mean, if your emotional responses are all that is required to justify your moral beliefs, why do you need to give reasons for them at all? And how, without appealing to inter-subjectively shared values could you possibly rationally justify your emotional responses?

Your arguments constantly take the form of more or less veiled insults and bare assertions; which makes you look very uncertain of your position, bombastic bluster notwithstanding.

Anyway, I'm probably wasting my time responding to you, because I have little confidence that you will engage in any discussion in good faith, but today it's not so bad since it rained here and I was not able to work on the current landscaping project. :smile:

if your emotional responses are all that is required to justify your moral beliefs, why do you need to give reasons for them at all? — Janus

I don't understand what you're getting at here. I'd have thought a moral stance requires explanation (reasons) regardless of what they're based on.

Why would my moral stance on something not require explanation if it were based on an emotional response?

It was obviously a judgement relating to the intellect, rather than to morality, even if I allowed my emotions to cloud my judgement, as you suggest. Why should I have to defend the obvious? Clearly, given my wording, I wasn't judging him to be immoral. I made a judgement about bias and about mindlessness, and obviously the latter wasn't intended to be taken literally, which would be a silly way to interpret it.

If you want to know what I think about the role that reason has to play, then you should review what I've said already about that, rather than expecting me to repeat myself. I stand by my objection that I didn't claim, as you said, that reason has nothing to do with morality. The irony of your moving the goalposts, in spite of accusing me of doing that, has not been lost on me. Nor has your projection about insults, bombastic bluster, bare assertions and the like.

You believe it was true, but you could be mistaken. Obviously consensus can have no purchase in regard to some matters than can only be known to the individual. But again, this is a red herring in the context of discussing moral truth, and it is typical of you to introduce such weak analogies when you cannot come up with any cogent response. — Janus

I just want to address one thing first: I wasn't introducing an analogy. I was explaining a common way that true/false are used that the consensus theory of truth can't make sense of. It's an objection to the consensus theory of truth based on there being phenomena that the theory is supposed to address that the theory can't make sense of.

You believe it was true, but you could be mistaken — Janus

I know I shouldn't address more than one thing because the other will be overlooked, but I can't bypass this. As a response to my example of a common way to use the concept of truth, your response shows that even you, as someone forwarding a consensus theory of truth, do not actually use the word "true" to refer to a consensus.

How do we know this? Well, because saying "You believe it was true," in response to the example, would make absolutely no sense if you were referring to something that a consensus of people are doing. If the scenario is to write down whether something is true or false that only that individual can know, then obviously it's not a question of whether a consensus of people is doing/saying something.

The whole point of the example is to show that if "true" refers to something that a consensus is doing, then no sense can be made of "true" in the context I presented. But you seem to have made sense of it just fine. So you're not actually using "true," intuitively, to refer to something a consensus is doing.

Now maybe you're not actually forwarding a consensus theory of truth, but you're doing the old "A consensus that P is true makes it more likely that P is true," but in that case a consensus that P is true isn't identical to what it is for P to be true, so the fact that there's a consensus about some moral stance wouldn't amount to that moral stance being true by virtue of the consensus. In other words, what it would "mean" for a moral stance to be true wouldn't be identical to there being a consensus on the stance. What it would "mean" for a consensus to be true would have to be something aside from that. Well, what would it be aside from that?

All truths are only such insofar as they are based on inter-subjective agreement; and that goes for both scientific truths and moral truths. — Janus

If it be granted scientific truths, not as such but in themselves, are empirical, and moral truths, not as such but in themselves, are thought, we arrive at a distinction between the former truth as sufficient and the latter truth as necessary. The former from the principle of induction which can never suffice for a totality of possible conditions, any one un-met of which is possibly capable of falsifying a truth, and the latter from the principle of deduction which has the power of proof but not the availability of verifying a truth. Induction starts with observation and expands its conclusions into the world of objects in general; deduction starts with observation and reduces its conclusions into a singular object of the objects of the world in general.

A truth as such as it relates to inter-subjective agreement has to do with the direction of its dissemination, which is the opposite of its origination. Empirical truths are already extant in the world, merely being discovered, hence disseminated inward to the subjects, moral truths are extant in the subject, being determinations of will, and disseminated outward to like subjects. It follows that empirical truths are objective and the agreement with them is a condition of agreement with the state of affairs of the real world, and moral truths are subjective and agreeing with them is a condition of the state of affairs of the moral world, the qualitative difference being disagreement with the former is necessarily irrational because this kind of truth represents a fact, but disagreement with the latter is not necessarily irrational because this kind of truth merely represents an interest.

Therefore, a truth in itself has no need of inter-subjective agreement, whereas a truth as such, does.

I for one appreciate the inclusion of the qualifier “as such”, but you are aware of the catastrophic flaw in both our comments, right?

He only calls matters which can only be known to the individual a red herring in the context of moral truth because he defines moral truth in accordance with herd-morality. But of course, morality isn't herd-morality. Herd-morality is just a morality, and it has no authority over my morality. I know my own moral truths.

In the thought experiment, I am white, and so is everyone else in my village. I've never even seen anyone of a different skin colour in person. My culture is very much racist. My parents are racist. But I am not. — S

Impossible.

The Oracle has spoken. The Oracle has said that it's impossible. Therefore, it must be.

I'm a monkey in a jungle. I've been raised by other monkeys just like me. I'm taught all about the others who are not like us. I learn how to talk and think about us and them. They are not to be admired. None of them. We do not like and/or respect others who are not like us. We do not know any of them either.

I am not us.

The Oracle has spoken. The Oracle is a monkey in a jungle. Therefore, 'tis true!

Where did the hypothetical person's worldview come from Sapientia?

No, wrong question. Off topic. Where did their moral judgement come from? From them. From their feelings. It is obviously not impossible to be a black sheep. It is obviously not impossible to have a different judgement from your parents or the prevailing judgement of the time and place.

Silly monkey.

For those capable...

Here we have yet again another position based upon a sore lack of understanding what thought/belief is and how it all works.

All world-views are adopted via language acquisition. Those include morality. Racist morality is adopted. During the initial adoption process(language acquisition), one cannot doubt what they're being taught. Doubt is belief based, and one's first worldview is the ground of doubt. A child borne into a village/culture where everyone is racist cannot doubt what they're being taught.

Doubting that requires being exposed to something different. Sapientia's hypothetical is impossible, despite his certainty.

For a start, they're two different things: thought and belief. But no one really cares about your pet tangent. Most of us are sick to death of it by now.

And no, it isn't impossible, and the thought experiment doesn't preclude something as vague and infinitely broad as exposure to "something different", anyway. As usual, you're criticising something you don't properly understand.

Empirical truths are already extant in the world, merely being discovered, hence disseminated inward to the subjects, moral truths are extant in the subject, being determinations of will, and disseminated outward to like subjects. — Mww

I would not put it quite like that. I would say that empirical truths are real relational potentialities that become actualized (discovered) in our embedded experience within the world. Likewise moral truths are real relational potentialities that become actualized in our embedded experience within community.

Neither, as truths, are merely matters of personal opinion or preference.

disagreement with the latter is not necessarily irrational because this kind of truth merely represents an interest. — Mww

When it comes to the universal moral truths, I think disagreement is irrational. For example I don't believe it is possible to rationally disagree with the moral truths that murder, rape, torture and so on are wrong. Can you think of any examples of disagreements with those moral truths that you would consider to be rational?

Therefore, a truth in itself has no need of inter-subjective agreement, whereas a truth as such, does.

I for one appreciate the inclusion of the qualifier “as such”, but you are aware of the catastrophic flaw in both our comments, right? — Mww

We have a notion of truth in itself, just as we have notions of actuality in itself, things in themselves, and so on: basically noumena, but these 'truths' cannot be anything for us, all our truths are relative to our own experience; they are relational, not absolute.

I'm interested to hear more about the 'catastrophic flaw" though.

"When it comes to universal moral truths...". But none have been demonstrated.

I don't understand what you're getting at here. I'd have thought a moral stance requires explanation (reasons) regardless of what they're based on.

Why would my moral stance on something not require explanation if it were based on an emotional response? — ChrisH

If moral stances are merely personal emotional responses then they would have no need of inter-subjective justification, and if they are in no need of inter-subjective justification then they are in no need of explanation.

Of course I don't believe moral stances are merely personal emotional responses or preferences. They are inter-subjectively acquired, sustained and justified, so they are relative not merely to individual subjects.

All world-views are adopted via language acquisition. — creativesoul

Objectively, language is only sounds, marks, gestures, etc.