Well, it seems to me that there is public evidence to support various value claims. For example, when I try to argue for a value claim, I usually make an argument using something like an analogy or a thought experiment or just provide an example. — TheHedoMinimalist

I agree with you that we publicly express value claims and, what is more, I would even grant the notion that there are evaluative components entangled within all of a language (as Putnam argues), but I don't think we can safely say that the available evidence for both evaluative statements and non-evaluative statements carry the same force. I think we both agree and can easily draw a distinction between the two based on this. Whenever we argue a value claim, we do provide anecdotal evidence that appeals to our attitudes toward such a value by describing how it personally or mutually impacts our emotional and physical states.

Such arguments only go so far, though. The cultural components that have been evolving, at least, since the emergence of the genus Homo has been the influential force that molds us from our natural, savage proclivities. These forces are learned mostly through empathy and are universal as they appeal to basic instincts such as self-preservation and both fosters and facilitates our desires for well-being in a way that is now functionally dependant upon the social dynamics of the group. In order to enjoy the benefits of society we must participate in the effort to maximize the prevailing values of the society; which means sacrificing a portion of ourselves toward whatever ends are most socially desired. Although, given the random nature in which our environment shapes us, both physiologically and psychologically, and that this process has continued across generations for billions of year's, even the most ubiquitous of human values could easily have evolved quite differently from what they are now.

What we value as a group, culture, society (especially at the level of developed National and Global interaction) has progressed in a very deterministic way. What we value today stems from the imposition, for better or worse, of a history of ancestral values that have, through conflict, been forced into convergence by virtue of a groups evolutionary fitness and influential force. As ancestral groups organized into hierarchical power structures, the cultural components and particular value systems of the dominant groups had a prevailing influence over others. Human populations that developed traits such as: a prominent social cohesion, social efficacy, larger bandwidth and efficiency for social networking, and relative population densities, etc, seemed to be better equipped, and not only to merely survive, but to become a cultural force by influencing the values of other developing groups, as well.

The difference may just come from the lack of knowledge with regard to the human mind relative to our knowledge of the human brain. While we can empirically dissect, explore, and model the brain through interaction with the physical material therein, we do not have such experiential access when it comes to studying the mind. We can analyze the brains structure through a bottom-up perspective that breaks the entire system down to it's individual parts thereby deducing the role of each particular neurological constituent. We cannot however apply such reductive methodologies when it comes to exploring the mind. We are left in the dark, so to speak, to the point where many (especially materialists) refuse to acknowledge such philosophical mysteries as Chalmers, "Hard Problem" because they view the descriptions of science either to encompass all possible knowledge or all relevant knowledge. Values exist in the same way that phenomenal experiences do but by no means do they have the same existence as something empirically accessible or conceptually tethered to physical reality—and that is the meaningful difference that distinguishes language that is concrete and empirically-based from language that is abstract and phenomenologically-based.

I can provide you a philosophical argument that could be used to support the existence of an afterlife and I can provide you a philosophical argument against the existence of an afterlife. While we can never truly know who’s right, it would quite silly nonetheless for me to say that nobody is objectively right regarding this issue just because the evidence for both sides is highly speculative. I think philosophers shouldn’t be afraid to provide speculative reasons or speculative arguments in an attempt to resolve a philosophical issue because a philosophical issue wouldn’t be much of a philosophical issue if all philosophers just thought that the correct answer was obvious. — TheHedoMinimalist

I think my language has mislead you, I apologize for my imprecision here. My position regarding both facts and values and the level of epistemic uncertainty between grounding evaluative arguments and non-evaluative arguments is not as strong or explicit as you seem to believe. I hold a more agnostic position. Although, I do undoubtedly lean one way or another between every issue im consciously aware of, I am not necessarily committed either way. I am not convinced that value statements carry the same logical weight as non-value statements. I lean in the direction that they don't, but im not quite ready to commit to that because, though I can articulate an argument supporting the fact/value distinction and the is-ought problem, l cannot derive a contradiction on your view that can, to my satisfaction, avoid some degree of reduction to absurdity. Your points, though speculative, and, IMO, tentative, are not necessarily false, but they are appeals to possibility (essentially, you argument draws an inference between a possibility and a probability). My arguments, on the other hand, seem to fail either by appealing to ignorance (we know of no moral facts therefore moral facts don't exist), or by appealing to personal incredulity (value statements are subjective, thus unfalsifiable, and unfalsifiable statements cannot be factual).

Just as with your example of an afterlife, though I may hastily make a negative claim in such regards, the position I find most convincing would be an agnostic one. I have seen no evidence to suggest an afterlife. This is a true statement regarding my understanding of the matter, however, if I were to use such a premise to infer the conclusion that, therefore, there is no afterlife, it would be fallacious.

With this in mind, would you consider your position to affirm or deny the proposition "Values cannot be empirically proven true or false"? And, just to be clear, the propositions "Scientific methodology cannot prove anything true or false with absolute certainty" as well as "Empirical evidence is not free of evaluative components" do not provide a valid inference for the negation of the proposition in question.

Well, I think there are other reasons why courts would find fingerprint evidence more reliable; the evidence is meant to support a non-evaluative claim that a person performed a particular action like murder. After the non-evaluative evidence gets collected, it then gets evaluated and that’s when the courtroom does start making lots of evaluative claims. — TheHedoMinimalist

But the courts do, in fact, treat evaluative claims differently from non-evaluative claims, right? That is my point. There is a distinction between the two and it has to do with the extent to which we attach cognitive success to them and how they rank amongst our epistemic states. Which of the following statements would rank highest among your various epistemic states? Statement a) "Plants release oxygen" or, statement b) "Plants are pretty"...do you hold a belief, do you know, are you unsure, or do possess a complete understanding that the latter claim is true or false—and, what is the justification to hold such an epistemic state?

The cultural components that have been evolving, at least, since the emergence of the genus Homo has been the influential force that molds us from our natural, savage proclivities. These forces are learned mostly through empathy and are universal as they appeal to basic instincts such as self-preservation and both fosters and facilitates our desires for well-being in a way that is now functionally dependant upon the social dynamics of the group. In order to enjoy the benefits of society we must participate in the effort to maximize the prevailing values of the society; which means sacrificing a portion of ourselves toward whatever ends are most socially desired. Although, given the random nature in which our environment shapes us, both physiologically and psychologically, and that this process has continued across generations for billions of year's, even the most ubiquitous of human values could easily have evolved quite differently from what they are now. — Cartesian trigger-puppets

Well, that seems to be a description of how the currently popular moral values have come about. I agree with you that objective moral values probably do not exist but I think that are probably objective prudential values. I’m talking about things like the value of making yourself have experiences that feel better in the long run by doing things like saving money, eating healthy, brushing your teeth, and shutting toxic people out of your life. I don’t see how your point about human evolution influencing human values can help explain why my kind of values are just a by-product of evolution. They seem to be values that even an intelligent savage can have and I don’t see how humans could have evolved without the proclivity to value making themselves feel better in the long run. Even if the human race evolves for a billion generations, I doubt that people will stop caring about their own pleasure and suffering(assuming that they would still be capable of experiencing pleasure and suffering.).

Values exist in the same way that phenomenal experiences do but by no means do they have the same existence as something empirically accessible or conceptually tethered to physical reality—and that is the meaningful difference that distinguishes language that is concrete and empirically-based from language that is abstract and phenomenologically-based. — Cartesian trigger-puppets

I mostly agree with you there. I do think there is a distinction between the concrete and the abstract. Though, I don’t think that abstract understanding is always phenomenological in nature. The issue that I have with the fact value distinction is that it seemed to single out value claims as though they are especially dubious compared to many other kinds of non-value claims. This is why I like the way you framed a more relevant distinction here because there are plenty of non-value claims that are also abstract and non-empirical like mathematical claims for example. There are also non-value claims that are phenomenological and non-empirical like most claims about the dreams that a particular person might be having at night. I was never trying to suggest that value claims are usually just as reliable as empirical claims. I was just trying to suggest that value claims can sometimes be objectively true just like claims about the dreams that someone had at night can sometimes be objectively true.

With this in mind, would you consider your position to affirm or deny the proposition "Values cannot be empirically proven true or false"? — Cartesian trigger-puppets

Well, my understanding of the word “proven” is that something must be true with 100% certainty in order to be proven. This is why I always try to avoid using that word because it seems to set the bar too high for what I consider to be enough evidence for a belief to be reasonable. You have instructed me not to understand the word “proven” as something shown to be definitely true. So, I think I’d have to ask you how you understand the word “proven” and what would suffice as enough evidence to prove something.

On a final note, I should mention that I think empirical evidence can only support certain kinds of value claims.
For example, the claim that brushing your teeth is good at avoiding cavities is empirical in nature and it’s also something I would call a value claim. In addition, a claim that one singer is better than another singer at belting notes in the 5th octave is kinda empirical as you would have to listen to the singer before you can adequately judge her abilities to belt in the 5th octave. Sometimes these sorts of claims about the competence of a singer can actually be objectively true or false. For example, I think it’s objectively true that Celine Dion is better at belting 5th octave notes than Frank Sinatra is. Why? Because Sinatra can’t belt 5th octave notes while Dion obviously can. It’s still kinda like a value claim though as if I was comparing the 5th octave belting abilities of 2 singers that can belt 5th octave notes roughly to an equal degree then the value judgement wouldn’t be so obvious to make anymore.

But the courts do, in fact, treat evaluative claims differently from non-evaluative claims, right? — Cartesian trigger-puppets

I’m not sure if they do actually. There is a point that I forgot to make about the alleged facts of value that you mentioned in an earlier post. That point is that it seems to me that many of the facts of value that you mentioned as facts of value are not actually evaluative claims. For example, the claim that the suspect says that he didn’t commit the murder doesn’t claim that anything is better or worse. Rather, it’s just testimonial evidence. You can have testimonial evidence that doesn’t make a value claim and I don’t think value claims are always predicated on testimonial evidence. So, I’m not actually sure how much our legal system treats evaluative claims differently as it is perfectly ok with placing a heavy emphasis on subject matter that is just riddled with value claims like the subject matter regarding what is an appropriate punishment for a particular crime.

Which of the following statements would rank highest among your various epistemic states? Statement a) "Plants release oxygen" or, statement b) "Plants are pretty"...do you hold a belief, do you know, are you unsure, or do possess a complete understanding that the latter claim is true or false—and, what is the justification to hold such an epistemic state? — Cartesian trigger-puppets

Well, I agree with you that Statement A is about as reliable as any kind of statement that a person can make and I think that Statement B is probably completely subjective. I never said that I was a realist about aesthetics after all. Also, I think it’s worth mentioning that I don’t think that Statement B is a value claim. This is because I think you can believe that plants are pretty without believing that this makes them better or worse than other things in any way. There are some people that seem to hold a somewhat unusual opinion that certain kinds of ugly things are better than certain kinds of pretty things. For example, many people who enjoy listening to death metal say that it is the ugliness of death metal that gives the genre it’s emotional significance. I personally have a hard time understanding how ugly music can be better than pretty music but I kinda take their word for it.

I agree with you that objective moral values probably do not exist but I think that are probably objective prudential values. I’m talking about things like the value of making yourself have experiences that feel better in the long run by doing things like saving money, eating healthy, brushing your teeth, and shutting toxic people out of your life. — TheHedoMinimalist

I think I may agree with you. A prudential value is a kind of value which is always relative to someone or something. I do think that moral statements are truth-apt in a subjectivist construal. That is, that moral statements are truth-apt, but their truth values are dependent upon the subject they are indexed next to. What this means is that if you were make a value statement or moral statement such as "Apples taste better than oranges" or "Rape is wrong" what you really seem to be expressing is a personal preference for a particular experience or a personal attitude towards a particular behavior. What you are actually saying is "I have a preference for the taste of apples over the taste of oranges" and "I hold a negative attitude towards the act of rape". It is objectively true, it seems, that your subjective states have come to value certain aesthetic preferences and emotional attitudes towards certain behaviors.

We can objectively state that you hold a particular subjective belief insofar as the content of the belief is a property of you, the thinking subject, and not a property of the object of thought. The problem with grounding such statements still remains though. For example, I can make a hedonistic argument for my desire of pleasure "I desire pleasure" (an objectively true subjective statement), "Acting in accordance with x results in the satisfaction of my desire for pleasure" and then a conditional "If I wish to satisfy my desire for pleasure, then I ought to act in accordance with x" then affirm the antecedent "I do wish to satisfy my desire for pleasure" and, finally, the conclusion "Therefore, I ought to act in accordance with x". Everything seems valid and deductively sound, right? Well, there is a problem. Just because we desire something doesn't mean that we ought to act in accordance with our desires. Perhaps we could eliminate the component of free will to support the premises "We have no control over our desires" and "What we desire is pleasure" but the problem remains with how to generate a prescriptive "ought" from all of this. Just because something is out of our control does not mean that it is morally right or ought to happen. We cannot avoid our death. So, does this mean that our death is a morally good thing? Is it a moral obligation to die?

Well, my understanding of the word “proven” is that something must be true with 100% certainty in order to be proven. This is why I always try to avoid using that word because it seems to set the bar too high for what I consider to be enough evidence for a belief to be reasonable. You have instructed me not to understand the word “proven” as something shown to be definitely true. So, I think I’d have to ask you how you understand the word “proven” and what would suffice as enough evidence to prove something. — TheHedoMinimalist

What I mean by 'proven' is that a claim is demonstrable or verifiable through empirical evidence or logical necessity. Absolute, 100% knowledge is something only the most naive of people would consider possible. We have systems of knowledge built through rigorous methodologies that get pretty close to certain—that is, insofar as they predict future phenomena and overlap with multiple fields of research. If you can provide me with testable evidence or a logical entailment, that would suffice for me.

That point is that it seems to me that many of the facts of value that you mentioned as facts of value are not actually evaluative claims. For example, the claim that the suspect says that he didn’t commit the murder doesn’t claim that anything is better or worse. Rather, it’s just testimonial evidence — TheHedoMinimalist

That is actually not an accurate representation of what I said. My exact words were, "The suspect says that he did nothing wrong that day" which means that he believes his actions were either moral or amoral, but not immoral. This means little since many people recognize that an act is illegal or socially unacceptable, and yet do not see it as immoral.

Also, I think it’s worth mentioning that I don’t think that Statement B is a value claim. This is because I think you can believe that plants are pretty without believing that this makes them better or worse than other things in any way. — TheHedoMinimalist

It is making a value judgment that expresses an approval. To say something is "pretty" is only meaningful because it draws a distinction between other objects with comparable properties. It is to say that, when it comes to visual appeal, object x is more desirable than. If you are speaking to the general view of a thing, of which you feel otherwise towards, then you are making a non-evaluative statement. But not if you are literally expressing your own honest opinions about the thing.

There are some people that seem to hold a somewhat unusual opinion that certain kinds of ugly things are better than certain kinds of pretty things. — TheHedoMinimalist

No. There are people who see beauty in what to them is beautiful, notwithstanding the popular appeal to the contrary. They don't approve of something because of the disapproval they have of it, but rather they have developed an appreciation for something that commonly is not appreciated. It feels as if you are appealing to some external property that objectively has value, which would make you a Realist.

We can objectively state that you hold a particular subjective belief insofar as the content of the belief is a property of you, the thinking subject, and not a property of the object of thought. The problem with grounding such statements still remains though. For example, I can make a hedonistic argument for my desire of pleasure "I desire pleasure" (an objectively true subjective statement), "Acting in accordance with x results in the satisfaction of my desire for pleasure" and then a conditional "If I wish to satisfy my desire for pleasure, then I ought to act in accordance with x" then affirm the antecedent "I do wish to satisfy my desire for pleasure" and, finally, the conclusion "Therefore, I ought to act in accordance with x". Everything seems valid and deductively sound, right? Well, there is a problem. Just because we desire something doesn't mean that we ought to act in accordance with our desires. Perhaps we could eliminate the component of free will to support the premises "We have no control over our desires" and "What we desire is pleasure" but the problem remains with how to generate a prescriptive "ought" from all of this. Just because something is out of our control does not mean that it is morally right or ought to happen. We cannot avoid our death. So, does this mean that our death is a morally good thing? Is it a moral obligation to die? — Cartesian trigger-puppets

The reason that I think that pleasure is valuable actually has nothing to do with people desiring pleasure. I just think that it’s simply the case that it is better for one to have more pleasure in their lives(all other things being equal.). I agree with you that we have no reason to act on our desires but I do think that we have reason to act on opportunities for hedonistic improvement in our own lives. I think that pleasure and suffering go beyond mere desire in this way. As I have stated earlier, I think that ought statements are indistinguishable from normal value statements. Given this, I don’t think there needs to be this extra step of deriving ought claims from value claims because I think ought claims are value claims. I can reiterate the argument that I gave for that earlier if you want me to but I will assume that you understood the reason that I have for believing this but I can state those reasons in a different way and try to explain them again if you wish me to do that.

What I mean by 'proven' is that a claim is demonstrable or verifiable through empirical evidence or logical necessity. Absolute, 100% knowledge is something only the most naive of people would consider possible. We have systems of knowledge built through rigorous methodologies that get pretty close to certain—that is, insofar as they predict future phenomena and overlap with multiple fields of research. If you can provide me with testable evidence or a logical entailment, that would suffice for me. — Cartesian trigger-puppets

Well, I’m not as much of an empiricist as you are. I think that empirical evidence is only slightly better than other forms of evidence. I think this because of the mad scientist dilemma that I had mentioned previously. I don’t think it’s that crazy to think that our sensory capacities might not be as reliable at arriving at truth as we may think that they are. Another problem that I have with radical empiricism is that it seems to be self-defeating in a way since it seems that you can’t defend the Epistemic doctrine of empiricism with empirical evidence. Thus, I think you would have to use other types of evidence to argue that empirical evidence is the only credible form of evidence.

No. There are people who see beauty in what to them is beautiful, notwithstanding the popular appeal to the contrary. They don't approve of something because of the disapproval they have of it, but rather they have developed an appreciation for something that commonly is not appreciated. It feels as if you are appealing to some external property that objectively has value, which would make you a Realist. — Cartesian trigger-puppets

No, I’m trying to point out that there are some people who say that they subjectively feel as though something is ugly and yet they enjoy that thing because of its ugliness. For example, someone can think that death metal sounds ugly but say that they enjoy the music because it sounds ugly. Given this, I would say that prettiness is kinda similar to something like sweetness. It’s completely subjective and phenomenal and yet it doesn’t necessarily imply a value judgement. I think it’s also kinda hard to define what prettiness is kinda how it’s hard to define what sweetness is.

I agree with you that we have no reason to act on our desires but I do think that we have reason to act on opportunities for hedonistic improvement in our own lives. — TheHedoMinimalist

This sounds like Hedonistic Utilitarianism, which assumes an act is moral based entirely on a net gain of positive utility (pleasure it produces) or on a net drain of negative utility (pain it prevents). To put it in simple terms, it Is a view that considers pleasure to be the measure of the Good and, conversely, that considers pain to be the measure of what is not the Good. The problem entailed by such logic is that it suggests that we have a justified reason to act so long as the act is of the Good, and that which makes an act an act of the Good is an overall increase of relative pleasure that the act derives; or, to quote you, that we have reason to act on opportunities for hedonistic improvement, is that it provides a justification for acts that, im sure, you would not find just. For example, if a rapist derives a sufficient amount of pleasure from the act of rapping a victim, that it offsets the overall suffering the victim endured, thereby resulting in an overall net gain in hedonic utility, then, on this view, the rape is justified. That is quite a reduction to absurdity, and a bullet that im not willing to bite in order to hold that view consistently.

I think that ought statements are indistinguishable from normal value statements. — TheHedoMinimalist

Ought statements are a derivative of normative value statements. Every ought statement is also a normative statement but not every normative statement is an ought statement. A normative statement is one that proffers a subjective opinion that can, for instance, be only aesthetic in nature, whereas an ought statement contains a prescriptive component that suggests a course of action, which makes it deontological. If you wish to reference a dictionary, I would suggest either considering the OED or the SEP in order to disambiguate from the more colloquial meanings of such terms for their standard meanings within philosophical contexts.

I think that empirical evidence is only slightly better than other forms of evidence. — TheHedoMinimalist

I agree, and would go further still, to say that empiricism utterly fails at capturing a closer truth about reality in many cases. For example, the wave function in quantum physics represents a mathematical description of quantum systems (everything is a quantum system) that predicts future phenomena with extreme accuracy (up to ten decimal places), and yet, it describes the kind of physical phenomena that empiricism cannot (which is why quantum mechanics has been so open to different interpretations).

I don’t think it’s that crazy to think that our sensory capacities might not be as reliable at arriving at truth as we may think that they are. — TheHedoMinimalist

You are quite right. It seems that our senses evolved for reproduction and genetic survival rather than for truth. As an example, consider grabbing an apple. As we observe the apple in our hand, we do not see what the apple truly is (as revealed by the most rigorous scientific research). We do not have access to it as a complex biological system of eukaryotic cells; of which consists of nucleic acids, proteins, lipids, sugars, etc; of which consists of a complex organic chemical system of amino acids; of which contains a complex chemical system, or network of interacting molecules such as carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, etc; of which each of these elements contain a complex physical, or quantum mechanical system of stable sub atomic particles such as protons, neutron, electrons—including a zoo of elementary particles such as quarks, leptons, antiquarks, etc, that goes on perhaps infinitely. We see the apple as a tasty looking object that produces sensory pleasures and this correlation has to do with the nutritional requisites for our survival so as to increase the capacity to pass on our genes.

Im no radical empiricist.

No, I’m trying to point out that there are some people who say that they subjectively feel as though something is ugly and yet they enjoy that thing because of its ugliness. For example, someone can think that death metal sounds ugly but say that they enjoy the music because it sounds ugly. — TheHedoMinimalist

That is not the same as saying something is pretty. To say that evaluating a thing as pretty is the same as to say it is enjoyable because it is ugly is not only an equivocation but a logical contradiction, too. It is to say a thing is P and not P, that it both is and is not the case that the object in question is pretty. Saying that you enjoy something is not analytically equivalent to saying something is pretty because you can enjoy something that is not pretty and not enjoy something that is pretty. I agree with you that we can enjoy something we feel is subjectively ugly, however, that was not my point. My point was that the statement "Plants are pretty" is subjective and is a value claim because it is to say of a thing that it is pretty (sensually appealing relative to other things), which implies that its prettiness is a thing of value. It may, nevertheless, have other properties of which we evaluate as unappealing to us that makes us feel that the thing is, overall, unenjoyable.

I think it’s also kinda hard to define what prettiness is kinda how it’s hard to define what sweetness is. — TheHedoMinimalist

It is quite difficult to define such terms in a way that is completely objective, that is to say, in a way that is independent of the subjective opinion of a conscious agent. It is quite simple to define such terms in an otherwise subjective context. You can do so tautologically with the statement "Plants are pretty because they are pretty" if we interpret the meaning implied through the lens of a subjectivist construal, as to say "To me, plants are pretty because that is how I feel about them" since, if nothing else, our current subjective attitude towards a thing is axiomatic.

The problem entailed by such logic is that it suggests that we have a justified reason to act so long as the act is of the Good, and that which makes an act an act of the Good is an overall increase of relative pleasure that the act derives; or, to quote you, that we have reason to act on opportunities for hedonistic improvement, is that it provides a justification for acts that, im sure, you would not find just. For example, if a rapist derives a sufficient amount of pleasure from the act of rapping a victim, that it offsets the overall suffering the victim endured, thereby resulting in an overall net gain in hedonic utility, then, on this view, the rape is justified. That is quite a reduction to absurdity, and a bullet that im not willing to bite in order to hold that view consistently. — Cartesian trigger-puppets

I want to point out that I’m egoistic hedonistic utilitarian which means that I’m not even sure if the suffering of the rape victim would actually give you any reason not to rape that person. Rather, I would say that almost nobody should ever rape because almost nobody derives pleasure from rape and almost nobody could get away with rape in the long term. You might think this implication is unacceptable but I don’t see why you aren’t more bothered by the bullets that you have to bite as an anti-realist about ought claims. Under your view, it seems that nobody ever has more reason to choose not to rape someone over choosing to rape someone. This is because you don’t seem to think that anything gives people reason to choose any decision option(even a decision option to avoid raping someone). By contrast, I think the vast majority of people have very good reason to avoid raping someone and almost nobody has reason to rape someone. In addition, I can provide a deeper explanation for why raping is bad which seems like a pretty good upside to my view as well. Given this, I must ask you a question. Why do you find your own opinion that raping is not better or worse than not raping more acceptable than my view that raping is almost always worse than not raping.

My point was that the statement "Plants are pretty" is subjective and is a value claim because it is to say of a thing that it is pretty (sensually appealing relative to other things), which implies that its prettiness is a thing of value. It may, nevertheless, have other properties of which we evaluate as unappealing to us that makes us feel that the thing is, overall, unenjoyable. — Cartesian trigger-puppets

Ok, I don’t have an issue with your view here. I’m still kinda inclined of thinking of prettiness as a value free description of something but I can understand that maybe some people can’t think of prettiness in that kind of value neutral way.

whereas an ought statement contains a prescriptive component that suggests a course of action, which makes it deontological. — Cartesian trigger-puppets

I don’t think it makes it deontological because that seems to imply that all ought statements are duties(at least I have always thought that deontological refers duty oriented stuff.). It seems like ought statements as colloquially understood do not imply a duty to do something. Rather, it is just a recommendation for the selection of a particular decision option. I think that those Recommendations are basically just normal value judgements though.

I would say that almost nobody should ever rape because almost nobody derives pleasure from rape and almost nobody could get away with rape in the long term. — TheHedoMinimalist

Your argument is something like this?

P1. You should rape if, and only if, you both derive pleasure from it and think you can get away with it

P2. Most people neither derive pleasure from rape nor think they could get away with it.

Therefore, C. Most people should not rape.

I believe that accurately captures what your saying. If so, then I would challenge premise 1, because it is not clear to me how the derivation of pleasure combined with the belief that one can escape any negative consequences necessarily entails that one should rape. When you say that almost no one should ever rape, it is as if you are saying that the act of rape is sometimes just and sometimes not just, which is contradictory. Is there some kind of deontological threshold that makes some rapes justified and others not? That was my critique of hedonic utilitarianism.

Also, getting away from the legal consequences seems to imply that rape is not bad, but just happens to entail the risk of some negative impact on ones life.

Under your view, it seems that nobody ever has more reason to choose not to rape someone over choosing to rape someone. — TheHedoMinimalist

Quite the contrary, there are many reasons, but they are dependent upon the agents current preference and attitude toward a thing. Many of us have empathy towards one another and can relate to the suffering others feel. On my view, there is no external reference whereby the moral status of an act can be determined objectively right or wrong. We can, however, reason internally based on how we feel towards an act. In fact, many do and reach similar enough conclusions to legislate against such things as rape.

Why do you find your own opinion that raping is not better or worse than not raping more acceptable than my view that raping is almost always worse than not raping. — TheHedoMinimalist

First of all, your question is loaded with a false premise, as I do not hold that view. I hold the view that moral or aesthetic evaluations are dependent upon the individual subject who is reflecting upon them. I think that raping is almost always considered worse by many and since there is such a majority view, then the act of rape has been institutionalized as a bad thing and this is usually a dogmatically held belief indoctrinated upon us through society (which I think at least brings favorable consequences).

I think that in order to maintain a consistent philosophical view of ethics you must ground moral principles in subjectivity rather than objectivity. I think it is silly to say that something out in the universe informs us as to how we should behave. I think most people do not hold philosophical principles but instead take whatever is normalized for granted. Some, in fact most, who do adopt philosophical principles seem to be struggling with a cognitive hangover left by religious influence that they tend to view morality though an objective lens. I have my reasons for why I view rape as wrong but they do not necessarily make rape wrong for you, though they certainly could persuade you.

I’m still kinda inclined of thinking of prettiness as a value free description of something but I can understand that maybe some people can’t think of prettiness in that kind of value neutral way. — TheHedoMinimalist

I don't think you are appreciating the context of my example. The statement is "Plants are pretty" with the noun "Plants" being the subject of the sentence and "are pretty" being the predicate verb attaching the subject of the sentence to the adjective describing the noun. The statement is talking about plants. (What about plants?) That they are pretty. Now, if you want to express the fact that plants have prettiness attributed to them by others from a third party perspective, then we could say something like "Plants have been considered pretty by many" since otherwise we are describing the plant through our perspective.

I don’t think it makes it deontological because that seems to imply that all ought statements are duties(at least I have always thought that deontological refers duty oriented stuff.). It seems like ought statements as colloquially understood do not imply a duty to do something. — TheHedoMinimalist

Deontology is a normative, rule-based ethic wherein an act, such as rape, is considered wrong by virtue of the character of the act itself and does not factor in the outcome of the act. It is the contrast to consequentialism, which includes theories such as utilitarianism. People who say they would divert the runaway trolley from the track inevitably killing 5 workers, to the track inevitably killing one worker (in the popular dilemma), are taking a consequentialist view, whereas, those who refuse to harvest the organs of one healthy person so to save five in need of organ transplants, on the converse, are taking a deontological view.

With that in mind, consider the statement "You ought not rape" and think if what is being said is "You ought not rape if it results in less than a good outcome" or if what is being said is "You ought not rape because the act of rape is always wrong". I do not view the two as being mutually exclusive. This is where the threshold comes into play. I am deontic when it comes to most cases of rape but do admit that there must be a threshold where the consequences of rape, or the omitting to rape, based on the overall utility, must be justified. For example, if you had to choose between either raping one woman, or, as a consequence of not raping the one woman, all women would be raped, then I would say that you are justified, obligated even, to perform the rape. It is either that or bite the bullet and say that one must never rape even if the consequence of not raping is billions to be raped.

If you expressed the ought as a conditional statement, then yes, of course, it would not be deontological. Such as with the statement "If x threshold is not met, then you ought not rape".

I believe that accurately captures what your saying. If so, then I would challenge premise 1, because it is not clear to me how the derivation of pleasure combined with the belief that one can escape any negative consequences necessarily entails that one should rape. When you say that almost no one should ever rape, it is as if you are saying that the act of rape is sometimes just and sometimes not just, which is contradictory. Is there some kind of deontological threshold that makes some rapes justified and others not? That was my critique of hedonic utilitarianism. — Cartesian trigger-puppets

I don’t see anything contradictory about it. In fact, when it comes to the normal and mundane decisions that we make in our life, we pretty much always think that it is conditional whether or not we should do something. For example, I believe that sometimes someone should invest in the stock market and sometimes they shouldn’t. I think deciding whether or not you should rape someone is like deciding whether or not you should invest in the stock market(except choosing to rape isn’t nearly as reasonable of a decision option under the overwhelmingly vast majority of circumstances). I also want to point out that I think it’s not enough for someone to believe that they will get away with rape in order for a rape to be the wiser decision option. People can be highly irrational at evaluating their own odds regarding what they can get away with. Also, getting away with rape isn’t limited to avoiding getting arrested. The consequences of rape extend far beyond that. You can get punished by the victim of rape or the family of the victim as well. In addition, most people would feel guilty or ashamed about raping someone even if they think they are the kinds of people who wouldn’t be guilty or ashamed. This causes suffering and that is hedonistically bad. Also, even a mere accusation of rape could completely destroy your social reputation and future career prospects. Finally, I believe that people who would derive pleasure from rape would only do so if they value having power over another person for its own sake. I think the vast majority of hedonists would probably be really confused about why someone would choose to rape if they could have sex with a partner in relationship or a friends with benefits or a prostitute. Rape just doesn’t make sense if someone is looking for the most efficient way to receive sexual pleasure.

Also, getting away from the legal consequences seems to imply that rape is not bad, but just happens to entail the risk of some negative impact on ones life. — Cartesian trigger-puppets

Ok, so how would you classify an action that should pretty much always be avoided because it pretty much always causes a negative consequence in your life? Bad seems like a pretty good word to describe it to me.

Quite the contrary, there are many reasons, but they are dependent upon the agents current preference and attitude toward a thing. Many of us have empathy towards one another and can relate to the suffering others feel. On my view, there is no external reference whereby the moral status of an act can be determined objectively right or wrong. We can, however, reason internally based on how we feel towards an act. In fact, many do and reach similar enough conclusions to legislate against such things as rape. — Cartesian trigger-puppets

Well, I would say that you do believe in at least one objective ought claim then. You seem to think that you have objective reasons to act in accordance to your own preferences. I personally do not understand why I have any more reason to act in accordance to my own preferences than I do to act on the preferences of other people(aside from the fact that acting on my preferences would be more likely to produce hedonistic improvement.). I think a true anti-realist wouldn’t even grant that we have reason to act based on our preferences or attitudes. So, I must ask you, do you believe that we have objective reasons to act on our own preferences or do you think that’s just subjective as well?

I will respond to the rest of your comment sometime later this week .

I don’t see anything contradictory about it. — TheHedoMinimalist

The contradiction would form when the principles with which we construct a framework for our moral system contains both of the following propositions. 1) Rape is wrong; and 2) Rape is not wrong. You either must (a) concede that your moral system produces a contradiction when it comes to evaluating rape; or that (b) it contains some level of arbitrariness by viewing rape as deontologically wrong, even if it produces positive consequences, but nonetheless can be morally justified if the positive consequences it produces surpass a given threshold; or that (c) a rape is justified so long as the rape results in a positive net gain in hedonic utility. I bite the bullet with arbitrariness.

Consider the following statements as they capture a reductio entailed by each.

(a) On pain of contradiction (that you both should and should not rape), according to the principle of explosion, from a contradiction anything follows. In other words, on this view, anything can be justified–including rape.

(b) Rape is wrong in itself, and even if the rape results in positive utility (say the victim was payed royalty that derived sufficient hedonic utility to outweigh the negative hedonic disutility) gained, it remains wrong, but however there must exist some threshold of hedonic utility gained as a result that would thereby justify the rape (if the rape resulted in a galaxy of people being able to avoid infinite suffering for an infinite amount of time).

(c) Rape is justified so long as the pleasure derived from it outweighs the suffering inflicted by it (if the rapist feels more pleasure than the victim feels suffering).

I also want to point out that I think it’s not enough for someone to believe that they will get away with rape in order for a rape to be the wiser decision option. — TheHedoMinimalist

Then why list it as a reason? You said that most people should not rape (a concluding statement) because (introducing supporting statement 1) almost nobody derives pleasure from rape and (introducing supporting statement 2) almost nobody could get away with rape. I formalized your argument as a biconditional statement, so yes, the 2nd conditional is not sufficient for the entailment alone, since the conclusion is true if and only if both conditionals are true. Are you no longer holding that view? The view that most people should not rape because almost nobody derives pleasure from rape and almost nobody could get away with rape?

People can be highly irrational at evaluating their own odds regarding what they can get away with. — TheHedoMinimalist

We aren't talking about the evaluations of other people, we are talking about your position on rape. You said, "I would say that almost nobody should ever rape..." then went on to list the reasons why as both because nobody derives pleasure from rape and nobody could get away with it. Also, as a tangential point, a persons belief that they will get away with something must necessarily mean that they, at least on their rationality, think they have overcome the barrier which prevents most people from raping on your view. People are not omniscient, but they do become certain of things no matter how false they actually are. People are limited by their beliefs and cannot avoid acting on said beliefs while still holding to them.

Ok, so how would you classify an action that should pretty much always be avoided because it pretty much always causes a negative consequence in your life? Bad seems like a pretty good word to describe it to me. — TheHedoMinimalist

What is the argument that the consequence is bad? Let's say prison time is the consequence: what makes a prison bad? Besides, you are naming the consequences of an act that you say is morally bad. This would imply that it is bad even if there are no consequences involved at all. Is rape bad even in the absence of any such consequences one would worry about? If so, how is it bad? What property of badness can we find of it? Because an act has negative consequences does not mean that the act is necessarily bad. For example, is falling in love bad? It can result in very negative consequences. Or, as another example, is driving a car bad? Plenty of negative consequences result from such an action. We must separate the consequences of an act from the moral status of the act itself. If rape is only bad when it results in negative consequences, then we are utilitarian on the matter. If rape is bad in itself no matter what the context may be, then we are deontologically entrenched and would act in accordance with such a rule no matter what the costs may be. If rape is always bad, but certain exceptions can be made in order to avoid results that are far worse, then we are taking the view from threshold deontology.

To answer your question, I would classify the act as bad or undesirable, but only when whichever concepts you are referring to as negative consequences that should almost always be avoided are indexed next to you as the subject of the statement. To you, an action should always be avoided because, to you, it always causes, what you see as, negative consequence in your life. It is completely coherent and easy to defend from the view that considers such evaluative statements to be relative,
thus only be applicable to, the individual subject in which it is indexed beside within the structure of the proposition.

Well, I would say that you do believe in at least one objective ought claim then. You seem to think that you have objective reasons to act in accordance to your own preferences. — TheHedoMinimalist

I would say that it is objectively true that I hold a subjective preference towards one thing or another, but not that I should act in accordance with my preferences. It is true that I hold the belief that my pleasure is good, however this does not mean that I can justify an act based on my pleasure, or that my pleasure is necessarily good. I would say that it is a psychological fact that I desire my own pleasure and that I helplessly act towards that goal because my actions are so determined by them and not by my own free will. I may seem to act in accordance with my preferences but such preferences stem from my desires and I am never free to choose that which I desire. Even if I resist my desire to eat a lot of sweets, it is not a product of my free will, but rather the pull of a stronger will, perhaps one of health or fitness, that moves me from a weaker desire—none of which am I the author of. I never choose what I will desire. It emerges seemingly at random and to be undergoing constant fluctuations that I am unconscious of.

I must ask you, do you believe that we have objective reasons to act on our own preferences or do you think that’s just subjective as well? — TheHedoMinimalist

Not objective reasons, no. It is an objective fact that we have and experience such preferences, but there is nothing to ground that in other than a subjective tautology. I have a preference for pleasure because I desire pleasure. I can subjectively ground such an axiom, as, "To me, my pleasure is good, therefore, I should act in accordance with that which derives me pleasure and avoids pain." Notice that I can't reason that you should act in accordance with my own pleasure, but we will all nonetheless do so relentlessly if you think about it. It is objectively true that I desire my own pleasure, and from this it is objectively true that if I wish to satisfy my desire for pleasure then I should act in accordance with that which gives me pleasure. I cannot objectively state that my pleasure is good by any measure besides my own preferences for it.

First of all, your question is loaded with a false premise, as I do not hold that view. I hold the view that moral or aesthetic evaluations are dependent upon the individual subject who is reflecting upon them. I think that raping is almost always considered worse by many and since there is such a majority view, then the act of rape has been institutionalized as a bad thing and this is usually a dogmatically held belief indoctrinated upon us through society (which I think at least brings favorable consequences). — Cartesian trigger-puppets

I was referring to your view of ought claims rather than your view on moral and aesthetic evaluations. I’m arguing that it is prudential considerations rather moral or aesthetic considerations that are most relevant to the question regarding whether or not you should rape.

I think that in order to maintain a consistent philosophical view of ethics you must ground moral principles in subjectivity rather than objectivity. I think it is silly to say that something out in the universe informs us as to how we should behave. — Cartesian trigger-puppets

I agree, it’s silly to say that the universe informs us as to how we should behave. Rather, I think there are conceptual truths about how we should behave that go beyond the universe and do not exist in space or time. I think those conceptual truths are objective in the same way that mathematical truths are objective.

I don't think you are appreciating the context of my example. The statement is "Plants are pretty" with the noun "Plants" being the subject of the sentence and "are pretty" being the predicate verb attaching the subject of the sentence to the adjective describing the noun. The statement is talking about plants. (What about plants?) That they are pretty. Now, if you want to express the fact that plants have prettiness attributed to them by others from a third party perspective, then we could say something like "Plants have been considered pretty by many" since otherwise we are describing the plant through our perspective. — Cartesian trigger-puppets

I think that the statement “Plants are pretty” is similar to the statement “Cookies are sweet”. The adjective “sweet” doesn’t imply a value judgement and thus the statement
“Cookies are sweet” is value neutral. I also think that the adjective “pretty” doesn’t imply a value judgement in the same sort of way. Thus, just like the phrase “Cookies are sweet” is value neutral, I think the phrase “Plants are pretty” is as well.

The contradiction would form when the principles with which we construct a framework for our moral system contains both of the following propositions. 1) Rape is wrong; and 2) Rape is not wrong. You either must (a) concede that your moral system produces a contradiction when it comes to evaluating rape; or that (b) it contains some level of arbitrariness by viewing rape as deontologically wrong, even if it produces positive consequences, but nonetheless can be morally justified if the positive consequences it produces surpass a given threshold; or that (c) a rape is justified so long as the rape results in a positive net gain in hedonic utility. I bite the bullet with arbitrariness. — Cartesian trigger-puppets

Umm.... I don’t think that rape is wrong or “not wrong” in a moral or universalist sort of way. I think it’s incoherent to classify actions is being morally right or wrong because I think moral realism is false. Given this, I don’t have a “moral” system. I consider myself to be a value realist and a realist about ought claims because I think that for any given individual decision that one makes to rape or not to rape, the decision that the person chooses is either objectively right or objectively wrong(but not in a moral sense). The only reason it can be considered right or wrong is because we are dealing with a decision with only 2 possible decision options. I wouldn’t classify decisions as right or wrong if we were talking about a decision making dilemma with more than 2 decision options. Rather, I would say that the decision options have relationships of betterness or worseness towards one another.

Also, I don’t think that you can evaluate the goodness or badness of an action outside of the specific scenario under which the action is performed. For example, it would be silly for me to suggest that either everyone should learn to dance or nobody should learn to dance. Nobody would ever be a deontologist about the act of learning how to dance and you wouldn’t think that it’s contradictory for me to suggest that some people should learn to dance and some people shouldn’t. So, why do you think that it’s contradictory for me to say that some people should rape and some people shouldn’t? Note that I’m not thinking about rape in moral terms here. I’m thinking about rape like I would think about mundane actions like washing the dishes or learning how to dance.

We aren't talking about the evaluations of other people, we are talking about your position on rape. You said, "I would say that almost nobody should ever rape..." then went on to list the reasons why as both because nobody derives pleasure from rape and nobody could get away with it. Also, as a tangential point, a persons belief that they will get away with something must necessarily mean that they, at least on their rationality, think they have overcome the barrier which prevents most people from raping on your view. People are not omniscient, but they do become certain of things no matter how false they actually are. People are limited by their beliefs and cannot avoid acting on said beliefs while still holding to them. — Cartesian trigger-puppets

I never said that "nobody derives pleasure from rape and nobody could get away with it”. There are some rare cases where people derive pleasure from rape and some rare cases where they get away with it. It’s true that people are limited by their beliefs regarding how they act but I don’t think that means that people ought to act on their beliefs. Sometimes the decision that you ought to make is the decision that you will psychologically never be compelled to make. For example, suppose that someone is planning on raping someone else. He believes that his victim will be by herself in a secluded cabin on a deserted island with no government or police to protect her. But, you know that her house has an underground police station and he is guaranteed to be arrested. Wouldn’t it make sense to say that he made a mistake and that he should have acted against his beliefs here?

I will respond to more of your comments tomorrow.

What is the argument that the consequence is bad? Let's say prison time is the consequence: what makes a prison bad? — Cartesian trigger-puppets

I think that going to prison is bad for the same sort of reason that you think that it would be bad for every woman in the world to get raped. Both outcomes seem to be outcomes that lead to lots of suffering. The only difference is that I think we have more reason to avoid things that would cause us to suffer while you seem to think that the suffering of others is often just as relevant to decision making. I do actually think that we should give some credence to the suffering of others as well because I technically hold a more complicated and probabilistic view of ethics and decision making(I try to simplify my views on this in the beginning of the discussion as I don’t want to be too off putting). The most specific description of my view is that I think any sort of final aim in ethics has some probability of being worth pursuing but the job of an ethicist is to create a hierarchy of final aims based on the plausibility of those aims. I can go into more detail about my theories about good decision making if you want me to do that but it will be quite long so I want to respect your time.

Besides, you are naming the consequences of an act that you say is morally bad. This would imply that it is bad even if there are no consequences involved at all. Is rape bad even in the absence of any such consequences one would worry about? If so, how is it bad? What property of badness can we find of it? Because an act has negative consequences does not mean that the act is necessarily bad. — Cartesian trigger-puppets

I never said that rape is morally bad. I just said it was usually a bad action but more precisely I think it is a bad decision option. I don’t think that rape is bad outside of a particular context but rape can be objectively bad in a context dependent sort of way. Also, trying to look for the property of badness in rape is as silly as trying to look for the property of truthfulness in the Epistemic theory of empiricism. Both of these are conceptual truths that don’t exist in space and time. Nonetheless, if it makes sense to say that the Epistemic theory of empiricism is objectively true then I don’t see why it doesn’t make sense to say that rape is sometimes objectively bad.

Because an act has negative consequences does not mean that the act is necessarily bad. For example, is falling in love bad? It can result in very negative consequences. Or, as another example, is driving a car bad? Plenty of negative consequences result from such an action. We must separate the consequences of an act from the moral status of the act itself. If rape is only bad when it results in negative consequences, then we are utilitarian on the matter. If rape is bad in itself no matter what the context may be, then we are deontologically entrenched and would act in accordance with such a rule no matter what the costs may be. If rape is always bad, but certain exceptions can be made in order to avoid results that are far worse, then we are taking the view from threshold deontology. — Cartesian trigger-puppets

Falling in love or driving a car can actually be objectively bad within certain contexts. For example, I think it would be bad for me to fall in love because I think it will make my life more difficult and that would lead to me having more suffering and less pleasure. Of course, I could be wrong about my hedonistic evaluation of the scenario under which I fall in love but I think I’m making a reasonable educated guess. Of course, I should clarify also that what I mean by objectively bad is that anything that is objectively worse than choosing the opposite decision option. This only applies to decisions where you either choose to do something or choose not to do something. It doesn’t apply to more complex decision-making dilemmas where you are choosing between a myriad of options.

To you, an action should always be avoided because, to you, it always causes, what you see as, negative consequence in your life. It is completely coherent and easy to defend from the view that considers such evaluative statements to be relative,
thus only be applicable to, the individual subject in which it is indexed beside within the structure of the proposition. — Cartesian trigger-puppets

I think there is a difference between relativism about value and anti-realism about value. Everybody could be called a relativist in some sense. Even a philosopher like Kant thought that whether or not an act is bad is relative to whether or not it violates a categorical imperative. Oftentimes, he seemed to define something like murder as “the bad kind of killing” which implies that he didn’t think it was always wrong to kill but he just chose to call any kind of killing that he thought was bad as murder which gave the illusion that he thought some action was universally wrong. I could do the same sort of thing technically. I could say that forced intercourse is not always bad but rape is always bad. I could then clarify that what I call rape is any kind of forced intercourse that produces a negative consequence for the agent that commits the act. This would be a pretty silly way in avoiding being a relativist though.

I would say that it is objectively true that I hold a subjective preference towards one thing or another, but not that I should act in accordance with my preferences. It is true that I hold the belief that my pleasure is good, however this does not mean that I can justify an act based on my pleasure, or that my pleasure is necessarily good. I would say that it is a psychological fact that I desire my own pleasure and that I helplessly act towards that goal because my actions are so determined by them and not by my own free will. I may seem to act in accordance with my preferences but such preferences stem from my desires and I am never free to choose that which I desire. Even if I resist my desire to eat a lot of sweets, it is not a product of my free will, but rather the pull of a stronger will, perhaps one of health or fitness, that moves me from a weaker desire—none of which am I the author of. I never choose what I will desire. It emerges seemingly at random and to be undergoing constant fluctuations that I am unconscious of. — Cartesian trigger-puppets

Ok, so it seems to me that you don’t really think that you have any more reason to not rape any particular person than you do to rape that person. You are just not motivated to rape anyone. This is why I think you are biting a much bigger bullet with your anti-realism about ought claims than the bullet that I’m biting with my egoistic hedonism. Ultimately, you don’t seem to think that you have any reason to act on your preferences. You just think that you are psychologically compelled to do so. I do think that you have reason to not rape someone though because I believe the felt quality of your everyday experience is something that has objective value to you and it objectively determines the betterness or worseness of the decisions that you make in your life.

I was referring to your view of ought claims rather than your view on moral and aesthetic evaluations. I’m arguing that it is prudential considerations rather moral or aesthetic considerations that are most relevant to the question regarding whether or not you should rape. — TheHedoMinimalist

I view ought claims, in ethics, as statements that prescribe (or proscribe for oughtn't claims) a given action; that it should be done. An ought claim is a statement used to express that an agent has a moral obligation to perform a certain action. It is an authoritative statement for a course of action to be followed, however, this authority is based on (as you argue for) the consideration of prudential values relative, and subsequently applicable, to an individual subject.

For sake of clarity, I'll break what I mean by this down into three points. First, allow me to explain what I mean by an ought claim being a statement that prescribes a given action. Secondly, I'll explain what i mean by the authority based on an individual subject. Lastly, I'll explain what I take you to mean by "prudential value" and "prudential considerations" because if what you understand these phrases to mean is as I understand them to mean, then I believe we have found some convergence herein.

The first point, how an ought claim is necessarily prescriptive. An ought claim is a statement that prescribes a given action either because the given action is, in itself, when considered in isolation from the actions surrounding context or the contribution the actions causal influence has towards a resulting effect, morally right to do; or, as an alternative, that a given action should be done because a particular state of affairs is morally right to exist and what gives rise to the existence of such a state of affairs, as an effect thereby produced, is causally dependent upon the influential contribution of the given action thereof.

The second point, how ought claims express a moral authority that is based on an individual subject. An ought claim is an authoritative statement that expresses a demand for a specific way to behave or for a course of action to be followed. An ought claim captures an agent's motivations, which are influenced by the agents values as the agent reflects upon the behaviors or decisions that are consistent with them. An agents values are a unique manifestation that arise and develope as a result of the complex, dynamic interactions between the agents subjective states and how the agent experiences the surrounding physical and social environments.

Though many external factors influence what an agent values and such factors influence populations of beings who share genetic, cultural, and geographic predispositions in very similar ways, there are reasons to view values that are mutually compatible yet individually unique and relative to the agent. If we imagine the sequence of experiences that uniquely unfold throughout the life of each being and consider how each experience influences the beings agency (how agency conforms to structure) which uniquely molds them in a way that gives rise to subjective variation, it becomes clear that every evaluation is dependent upon the authority of the subject.

In other words, an agent evaluates the world through a scope that is constantly developing under the influence and pressure of structures within their environment. The only common denominator between a constantly changing environment and the constantly adapting being occupying it, is the current sum between the external environmental force's actions upon the subject and the internal environmental opposing force's reactions upon the environment. This is realized in every moment by everything and is expressed in way that we, as individual subjective agents, can relate to and interact with. However, we can only do so on the surface level and only seem to understand that whatever lies between our conscious awareness gives rise to compulsive reactionary thought.

Every conscious agent is ultimately motivated to act by compulsive reactionary thoughts. These are the must-thoughts or should-thoughts that an agent is psychologically compelled to act on that manifest through both a conscious intrasubjective reflection and a social intersubjective communication. The former emerges from an underlying awareness of self-desire with egoistic motivations informing us of who we must be and what we should do, whereas the latter emerges from the stress and anxiety imposed by our perception of what the members of our social groups expect us to be and demand of us to do.

In considering this holistically, every evaluation is necessarily an expression of the subjects values and every ought claim represents an agents compulsive motivations towards fulfilling their must-thoughts. The agent is ultimately the authority, though restricted by structures of the environment, of what is of value, what is moral, and what ought to be—in a subjective context that is ascribed by the agent, by their own subjective authority, that is limited to the subjective states of the agent themselves and not to be dictated as objectively the case for others.

Finally, the third point, which will hopefully tie everything else together, what I take prudential value and prudential considerations to mean. A prudential value is a type of value that is only relevant alongside other values and is always relative to a person, a culture, a society, a point in history, etc, and generally refers to the well-being or welfare of a person or group. Prudential reasoning considers values based on calculated gains or losses relative to an individual or a group. For example, the calculated increase or decrease in overall person health resulting from careful dieting; or the calculated increase or decrease in social conflict between two groups resulting from a violation of trade agreements.

Hedonistic and subjectivistic accounts of prudential values are favored by many utilitarian philosophers and calculated as units of pleasure or preference satisfaction. Prudential values are calculated differently within a socio-politico-economic framework of ethics than they are within the framework of ethics as a moral philosophy. While the ethical framework of moral philosophy remains a controversial subject which diverges on many issues such as cognitivism or non-cognitivism, realism and non-realism, metaphysical objectivism or relativism, etc; a socio-politico-economic framework of ethics takes a pragmatic approach that mostly ignores any meta-ethical roadblocks and operates under the same assumptions as normative ethics (that there is only one criterion of moral conduct) for the purpose of establishing moral standards in order to regulate conduct of society.

While few philosophers believe there is any single principle against which all actions can be judged, by instead focusing on the idiosyncrasies, inconsistencies or redundancies entailed by other rival moral theories; a socio-politico-economic take, such as those ascribed to by the social sciences, doesn't focus so heavily on the problem of divergent human values and instead focuses on the few ubiquitous, prudential values that humans share to construct a set of foundational principles of ethics. As a result, such prudential values become institutionalized as a part of the structure of a society (such as culture) that influences the belief systems and value systems of the members therein.

The members of a society who are most motivated are those who share similar prudential values as those that are a part of the structure of society because the majority of people are heavily influenced by the structures of society and will subsequently organize so that what they work towards results in the production of that which is mutually valuable to them. Societal structures reinforce themselves intergenerationally but also evolve over time as values between branching social classes influence one another with the most deviation taking place between generational classes.

Some of the most well-known prudential values to be built into social structures or give rise to the social principles underpinning a society include: the prudential value of personal autonomy, built into the structure of society as the sacred concept of freedom, which gave rise to the principle of liberty; the prudential value of self preservation, built into the structure of society as the belief that life is sacred, which gave rise to the principle of the right to life; and the prudential value of fairness, built into the structure of society the sacred concept of justice, which gave rise to the principles of equality adopted by the Civil Rights Act.

It seems apparent, at least on the surface, that these prudential values universally enhance the well-being of human beings and welfare status of the society's they inhabit. Prudential values can be installed into a socio-politico-economic system of ethics through three different normative strategies. First, as a virtue, or the social proclivity for developing good habits of character. Examples of such virtues include wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice. Secondly, as an obligation that comes with being human. This deontological strategy takes prudential values and constructs a system of duties whereby prudential values are held as fundamental principles of obligation. Such obligations include: "Do not kill," "Treat others as you wish others to treat you," and "Take care of your family". Thirdly, a strategy based on the overall outcome that weighs the good and bad consequences of an action. This consequencialist approach uses prudential values as the basis to determine whether or not the consequence of an action is bad or good. Examples of prudential values used to weigh the consequences of an action include following three.

First, egotistic prudential values, which are values that reflect an action is good if it resulted in a more favorable than unfavorable consequences for the agent performing the action. Second, altruistic prudential values, which are values that reflect an action is good if it resulted in a more favorable than unfavorable consequence for everyone except the agent performing the action. Thirsd, utilitarian prudential values, which are values that reflect an action is good if it resulted in a consequence that is more favorable than unfavorable for everyone.

Hopefully this exhaustive explanation at last provides some elucidation of my position with regard to ought claims. Also, just to be clear, I was responding to the view you expressed in the quote below where you explicitly take a consequencialist stance, then flesh out your particular view on rape. You then provide two reasons to support your view, followed by an assumption that I would not accept the implications of your reasoning, subsequently followed by calling into question the level of concern I hold over the implication thereof, in contrast with the anti-realist view I hold of ought claims. You then proceed to flesh out my view, with a caricaturing misrepresentation, by saying that, on my view, people have no reasons one way or another when it comes to choosing whether or not to rape. You further caricature my position as you go on to say that, on my view, there isn't anything that gives people a reason to choose one way or another of any decision option.

On my view, ought statements cannot be logically grounded in facts about the world and thus what is right or wrong cannot be objectively derived from a property of the external world. Ought statements can, however, be logically grounded, though with substantially less persuasive force, in the private facts about our subjective states, which thereby gives us a reason to choose and make decisions. Also, it is important to note that, given that such reasons are predicated on a subjective frame of reference, it followes, then, that such reasons should not be considered or expected to apply to other subjects as if to satisfy an objective path for others to follow. It is subjectively grounded, subjectively limited, and is subjectively applicable within the confines of the individual subject.

I want to point out that I’m egoistic hedonistic utilitarian which means that I’m not even sure if the suffering of the rape victim would actually give you any reason not to rape that person. Rather, I would say that almost nobody should ever rape because almost nobody derives pleasure from rape and almost nobody could get away with rape in the long term. You might think this implication is unacceptable but I don’t see why you aren’t more bothered by the bullets that you have to bite as an anti-realist about ought claims. Under your view, it seems that nobody ever has more reason to choose not to rape someone over choosing to rape someone. This is because you don’t seem to think that anything gives people reason to choose any decision option(even a decision option to avoid raping someone). — TheHedoMinimalist

I meant to post this earlier today and failed to do so, I apologize for the time delay and will consider you more recent post another time.

An ought claim is a statement used to express that an agent has a moral obligation to perform a certain action. It is an authoritative statement for a course of action to be followed, however, this authority is based on (as you argue for) the consideration of prudential values relative, and subsequently applicable, to an individual subject. — Cartesian trigger-puppets

It seems to me that I can provide you with plenty of examples of ought claims that are not expressing authoritative statement that an agent has a moral obligation to perform a certain action. For example, suppose that someone were to tell you that you ought to invest in the company Tesla. Would you interpret that person as saying that you have a moral obligation to invest in Tesla? That seems to me like a very silly interpretation of that statement.

An ought claim captures an agent's motivations, which are influenced by the agents values as the agent reflects upon the behaviors or decisions that are consistent with them. — Cartesian trigger-puppets

Once again, I think I can list several examples of ought claims that do not seem to capture an agent’s motivations. For example, if I was to say that you ought to invest in Tesla, in what way would I be capturing your motivations or my own motivations with that statement?

An ought claim is a statement that prescribes a given action either because the given action is, in itself, when considered in isolation from the actions surrounding context or the contribution the actions causal influence has towards a resulting effect, morally right to do; or, as an alternative, that a given action should be done because a particular state of affairs is morally right to exist and what gives rise to the existence of such a state of affairs, as an effect thereby produced, is causally dependent upon the influential contribution of the given action thereof. — Cartesian trigger-puppets

Once again, I think there are plenty of ought claims that produce a good consequence but that consequence is good in a non-moral sort of way. I’m sorry to use the exact same example again but it really seems to apply to every kind of claim that you are making here. The example that I’m going to use is of course that of the ought claim regarding investing in Tesla. It seems that one can argue that one ought to invest in Tesla because it will produce a good consequence but it isn’t necessarily morally right to invest in Tesla. There’s actually an entire philosophical debate devoted to the question of whether or not we ought to behave morally. Just Google the phrase “Why be moral” and you will find lots of philosophy articles that try to answer the question regarding whether or not we ought to strive to do the morally good or the morally right thing. This question seems to imply that ought claims are not necessarily connected to moral claims.

An agents values are a unique manifestation that arise and develope as a result of the complex, dynamic interactions between the agents subjective states and how the agent experiences the surrounding physical and social environments. — Cartesian trigger-puppets

I think that might be a good psychological explanation of how the agent comes to value what they value but I don’t think that this gives us any reason to think that the values are subjective rather than objective. In fact, I think this same psychological explanation could be given regarding why agents have any sort of beliefs that they have. For example, I could say that your belief that the Earth revolves around the sun is a unique manifestation that arose and developed as a result of the complex, dynamic interactions between your subjective states and how you experienced the surrounding physical and social environments. After all, you mostly believe that the Earth revolved around the Sun because you were taught that in school and you haven’t actually seen the empirical evidence for this view as this evidence could only be accessed by certain scientists and other such people. You believe that the testimony of those experts is reliable because you experience an intuition in your mind that you can trust those experts but your environment also played a very important role in putting that intuition into your mind. The point that I’m trying to make with this example is that we are pretty much always are influenced solely by our subjective experiences and our environment in literarily every belief that we hold. So, what you are saying about value here literally seems to apply to everything else as well.

If we imagine the sequence of experiences that uniquely unfold throughout the life of each being and consider how each experience influences the beings agency (how agency conforms to structure) which uniquely molds them in a way that gives rise to subjective variation, it becomes clear that every evaluation is dependent upon the authority of the subject. — Cartesian trigger-puppets

I agree but I think evaluations are just educated guesses regarding what are actually better or worse decision options or what are better or worse state of affairs. Given this, I think someone can be wrong regarding how they evaluate a given decision option or state of affairs. For example, suppose that someone evaluated that being a professional boxer would be valuable for them because it would bring about meaningful achievement in their life which they think is valuable in a non-instrumental sort of way in the same way that a hedonist would think that pleasure is valuable. I tend to think that this person would be wrong in their evaluation because I don’t agree that there are objectively meaningful achievements that have value that go beyond the hedonistic improvement that those achievements bring. Given this, I wonder what you think about evaluations that people make which involve them making metaphysical claims about the objective existence of something weird and magical like “meaningful achievements”. It seems to me that you couldn’t believe that evaluations are completely subjective and yet also believe that they are sometimes objectively false because of the metaphysical foundation on which these evaluations rely on is false. I think you either have to claim that everyone is right regarding their evaluations or that evaluations are sometimes objectively false. If evaluations can be objectively false if they are based on a wrong metaphysical claim then it’s not clear to me why they also couldn’t be objectively true if they are based on a correct metaphysical claim.

I will respond to more of your comment later.

I think there are conceptual truths about how we should behave that go beyond the universe and do not exist in space or time. I think those conceptual truths are objective in the same way that mathematical truths are objective. — TheHedoMinimalist

So your basically a platonist when it comes values and morals? I get lost when you say that values exist and are objective. I can agree with you that values exist if I understand what you mean by "exist" to be the same thing as thoughts, language and mathematics, but I would not be able to use the term "exist" in the same way I would use it to describe physical objects without committing an equivocation, and this would require me to define a special kind of existence wherein such entities can be ontologically categorized.

When you describe values that objectivity exist is when my intuitions and understands hit a metaphysical wall. Objectivity requires an existence without minds. Without human minds there can be no conceptualization of mathematical sets. Mathematical sets are defined through human interpretations of objects in space, and thus cannot exist in the absence of our existence. For example, consider an centimeter. The centimeter is a human invention based on how we interpret objects in space, however, a centimeter in and of itself does not exist, although the symmetry of the objects it corresponds with can be said to exist. I have not explored deep enough into the philosophy of mathematics to confidently to make strong claims here. I am operating on a fairly reliable mathematical intuition though.

I would need you to provide an argument to support the claim that certain abstractions such as values or mathematical sets are ontologically mind-independent.

I think that the statement “Plants are pretty” is similar to the statement “Cookies are sweet”. The adjective “sweet” doesn’t imply a value judgement and thus the statement “Cookies are sweet” is value neutral. I also think that the adjective “pretty” doesn’t imply a value judgement in the same sort of way. Thus, just like the phrase “Cookies are sweet” is value neutral, I think the phrase “Plants are pretty” is as well. — TheHedoMinimalist

Value judgments such as those of heaviness, loudness, and brightness clearly are dependent upon a particular frame of reference, a context, or a background of information that against which such value judgments can be made. A stimulus that produces "sweetness" as a taste perception does not necessarily mean that the stimulus also produces "pleasantness" as a value judgement. Sweetness depends upon a context against which a value judgment can be made. Sweetness may imply a positive, negative or neutral value judgement all depending on the context of the taste perception. Sweetness corresponds with the relative concentration of sucrose a food contains and while a positive value judgement may coincide with the taste perception of sweetness within a range of varying contexts of modest sucrose concentrations, maximal sucrose concentrations necessarily correspond with maximal taste perceptions of sweetness, whereas neither maximal sucrose concentrations nor the corresponding maximal taste perceptions of sweetness correspond with the value judgement of pleasantness.

Sensory adaptation such as fatigue or adaptation of taste receptors also produce contextual effects with variations in value judgements reported by the same subject rating the pleasantness produced by the same concentrations of sucrose. The term "pretty" implies a positive value judgement that generally refers to the pleasantness experienced by visual perceptions. Brightness is a visual perception, but the relative brightness of a visual perception does not necessarily correspond with the pleasantness produced by the visual perception. Things can clearly be too bright or not bright enough, as well as, unpleasantly bright or pleasantly bright. Similarly, taste perceptions can be too sweet or unpleasantly sweet depending on the context of the stimulus effects on our nervous system.

Words such as "beautiful", "pretty", and "handsome" all describe something which looks good, and are therefore expressing a positive value judgement.

Nobody would ever be a deontologist about the act of learning how to dance and you wouldn’t think that it’s contradictory for me to suggest that some people should learn to dance and some people shouldn’t. So, why do you think that it’s contradictory for me to say that some people should rape and some people shouldn’t? — TheHedoMinimalist

It is contradictory for you to say that the act of rape, in and of itself, is deontologically wrong and right, immoral and moral, or as a decision option, has a relative worseness and betterness compared with the decision option to not rape. I already illustrated a reductio entailed by deontological logic (that an act, such as killing, is morally wrong no matter what the context or consequences of the act may be. It is immoral to kill one person and we oughtn't kill them, even if the consequence of not killing them means that every person, including the individual we oughtn't kill, will be killed and the consequence of killing the individual results in everyone else being spared of such a death.

It is not contradictory if we make it clear that there is a deontological threshold, even if we are unsure about the precise point at which the threshold is located, and that the moral status of the act depends upon whether or not this threshold is met. For example, I don't think it is morally right to kill one person to save five, such as in the trolley problem, because this logic leads to scenarios such as justified organ theft, and I think it would be immoral to kill a healthy person so to save five lives of people in need of an emergency organ transplant. However, if asked if it is morally right to kill one person in order to save ten, or twenty, or hundreds, or thousands, or millions of people, then, at some point, I would have to change my mind based on consequencialist terms because of the severity of the outcome. I don't know exactly where this threshold is between the range of killing one in order to save four and killing one in order to save a million—but there is definitely a threshold for me between four and a million.

With regards to the rest of what you said in this same post, what do you mean when you say you don't have a moral system? Are you morally indifferent to rape? How would a rape affect you if it resulted in having positive effects for you? What if a rape had a positive effect for everyone? What if a rape had a positive effect for everyone except you? What if a rape had a negative effect for you—or for everyone, or for everyone except you? Would you be indifferent to a rape in every imaginable context? Saying that rape can relate to betterness or worstness is a normative statement that nonetheless makes a value judgement since better implies more good and worse implies more bad. In order to evaluate that something is better, it necessarily must be contrasted against something else and that something else is a standard of goodness in cases where you express something is better than, and conversely, a standard of badness in cases where you express that something is worse than.

What do you mean by an act or a consequence related to "betterness" or "worseness"? How do you hold a system of values if such values do not motivate you towards or against a given action in any context? Are you a non-cognitivist and a value realist? How does egoistic hedonic utilitarianism not factor in such values and calculate a moral perspective for you? If you could destroy a hypothetical box containing the universe (thereby destroying everything in the universe) and by doing so increase your own hedonic utility, would you?

It seems to me that I can provide you with plenty of examples of ought claims that are not expressing authoritative statement that an agent has a moral obligation to perform a certain action. For example, suppose that someone were to tell you that you ought to invest in the company Tesla. Would you interpret that person as saying that you have a moral obligation to invest in Tesla? That seems to me like a very silly interpretation of that statement. — TheHedoMinimalist

I am referring to moral ought claims, which it is not apparently clear that your example is expressing without additional context. Nonetheless, whether it expresses a moral ought or not, I have already explained that it is a subjective authority which gives rise to a compulsive motivation to perform a certain action that is only necessarily applicable to the agent themselves. Not to deny that similar values coincide between agents, or that the values that one agent has can be expressed in such a way that compells another agent to perform an action. Such interactions can be common, even ubiquitous, between multiple agents, just not logically necessitated to based of an objective standard that lies outside the agent's subjective states.

I think there are plenty of ought claims that produce a good consequence but that consequence is good in a non-moral sort of way. — TheHedoMinimalist

This is incoherent to me. How can a consequence be evaluated as good through your perspective but good in a non-moral sort of way? I can think of nothing other than a play, or misuse of words, removing any meaning assigned to them by anyone other than yourself. The example that you repetitively offer is an example where you, a separate agent, expresses a vague ought claim that may or may not be moral in context, as if the subjective force compelling you to act or to hold such a belief, is necessarily applicable to compell me. I have said many times that this is possible but not necessary and utterly dependent upon the subjective states of the agents in question. We do not have the the ability to compell every other person to be motivated towards a particular means based on an ends that we value.

I think that might be a good psychological explanation of how the agent comes to value what they value but I don’t think that this gives us any reason to think that the values are subjective rather than objective. In fact, I think this same psychological explanation could be given regarding why agents have any sort of beliefs that they have. For example, I could say that your belief that the Earth revolves around the sun is a unique manifestation that arose and developed as a result of the complex, dynamic interactions between your subjective states and how you experienced the surrounding physical and social environments. After all, you mostly believe that the Earth revolved around the Sun because you were taught that in school and you haven’t actually seen the empirical evidence for this view as this evidence could only be accessed by certain scientists and other such people. — TheHedoMinimalist

Your example is a claim that is objectively tethered to objects of our observable reality, thus it has empirical force which is much more compelling than the emotive or subjective force behind evaluative claims that express an attitude towards a thing, and one that is not necessarily mutually compatible with the values of others. If construct a geometrical model with the sun at the center, and the planets rotating around it, the model will make an empirical prediction that as Earth travels around the sun it would overtake the more distant plants and this would be an observable phenomenon from earth of a retrograde motions of the planets. Later, more empirical evidence was gathered with a new understanding of motion (known as Newtons laws of motion), that made precise empirical predictions for the positions of the planets as they orbit the sun. As we came to realize the vastness of the distance between us and the stars, we came to realize that there was indeed an observable parallax effect seen in the stars, however tiny due to the much greater distance between us and them than that which was previously calculated.

I agree but I think evaluations are just educated guesses regarding what are actually better or worse decision options or what are better or worse state of affairs. Given this, I think someone can be wrong regarding how they evaluate a given decision option or state of affairs. For example, suppose that someone evaluated that being a professional boxer would be valuable for them because it would bring about meaningful achievement in their life which they think is valuable in a non-instrumental sort of way in the same way that a hedonist would think that pleasure is valuable. I tend to think that this person would be wrong in their evaluation because I don’t agree that there are objectively meaningful achievements that have value that go beyond the hedonistic improvement that those achievements bring. — TheHedoMinimalist

An untested evaluation of where your physical limitations lie, or what you can physically endure most certainly can be right or wrong because it depends upon the information gained through actual experience. This however does not contradict the feelings towards meaningful achievement that the subject attaches to the feat of overcoming yet untested challenges that very few have overcome. The subject will evaluate what it would be like to be a professional boxer from a perspective that values what can be seen from an external point of view, of which such value are merely reflections of the social values that are attributes to certain characteristics of a professional boxer that makes them so attractive for so many. Be it fearlessness, intimidation, physical ability, mental and physical endurance, fame, life-styles, etc, all of which would remain attractive features leading up to the realization of the sacrifices required gained through actual experience. These values may slowly fade or reverse over time as new information comes in to inform us of other potentially valuable things, or even much more quickly as a result of a realization to the extreme demands required for what was viewed as modest values. For example, many young boys hold an untested evaluation that values what it would be like to be a police officer, though as experience and additional information come in, the value many boys once held becomes disillusioned and with the possibility of reversing such a value.

If someone says "I think boxers are cool" and you think that they are objectively wrong in their evaluation, then offer proof beyond the fact that such a view is likely to change over time as new information from new experiences come in. The evaluation is temporally bound to a specific time and place where the totality of experiences that informed and values that influenced the subject were in a certain order and arrangement specific to that moment and the series of moments that lead to it. You cannot prove an evaluation wrong by removing it from its appropriate contexts such as the time or the configuration of values that influence such things at a specific moment in time.

I wonder what you think about evaluations that people make which involve them making metaphysical claims about the objective existence of something weird and magical like “meaningful achievements”. It seems to me that you couldn’t believe that evaluations are completely subjective and yet also believe that they are sometimes objectively false because of the metaphysical foundation on which these evaluations rely on is false. I think you either have to claim that everyone is right regarding their evaluations or that evaluations are sometimes objectively false. If evaluations can be objectively false if they are based on a wrong metaphysical claim then it’s not clear to me why they also couldn’t be objectively true if they are based on a correct metaphysical claim. — TheHedoMinimalist

I'm happy to share my thoughts here as that is a very interesting question to think about, but the example of "meaningful achievements" doesn't quite capture the essence of what it is you are asking about. I think people who make evaluative judgements of a metaphysical existence about something they believe to be objective and magical is completely and transparently true if the express themselves sincerely and there is usually little reason to doubt that they are.

As a case in point, consider the Christian God. This is a belief of many that is metaphysical, objective and magical in nature. The fact that the Christian God almost certainly doesn't exist, or the fact that there is little reason to hold such a belief, for some, does not mean that the subjects who hold the metaphysical belief that the Christian God does exist cannot value such beliefs. Likewise, if someone truly believed that they could have control over future events, and they truly valued this belief, then their evaluative judgment would be true despite how erroneous the belief is.

The value is a property that resides within the subjective states of the agent and is not a property of some external source. The value is attached to the belief that the subject holds and thus is not dependent upon the metaphysical truth that the belief expresses. If you believe you have a guardian angel protecting you, then you likely value the comfort and ease of mind that such a belief is likely to bring. The fact that you feel comfort and ease of mind by virtue of holding this belief is an objectively true assessment of your subjective states.

So, yes, it is possible to have an objectively true evaluation of a belief that is metaphysically false. Of course everyone is right regarding their evaluations, as long as you keep in mind that their evaluations are based in subjectivity, contextually bound to a moment in time and the set of values which arose as a result of the one's totality of experiences that lead up to the moment, is not necessarily compatible with others, and is not applicable outside of the subjective state of an agent—though it may be similar enough to be compatible between any number of agents that hold similar values.

Some of the most well-known prudential values to be built into social structures or give rise to the social principles underpinning a society include: the prudential value of personal autonomy, built into the structure of society as the sacred concept of freedom, which gave rise to the principle of liberty; the prudential value of self preservation, built into the structure of society as the belief that life is sacred, which gave rise to the principle of the right to life; and the prudential value of fairness, built into the structure of society the sacred concept of justice, which gave rise to the principles of equality adopted by the Civil Rights Act. — Cartesian trigger-puppets

I think you misunderstood what I meant when I was talking about prudential values. Prudential values are often an umbrella term that is used in philosophy to describe values regarding mundane and non-moral decisions that we make in our life. For example, there are financial decisions that we make in our life like the decision that we might make to invest into Tesla. It doesn’t seem to be a moral decision because it is outside of the scope of what is considered to be moral philosophy. For example, if I was to write an article about why you should invest into Tesla, it would very likely get rejected by a journal that deals with moral philosophy because they would tell me that it’s not moral philosophy. Rather, they would tell me that this article belongs in the personal finance journal or an investment journal. Another type of prudential and non-moral category of ethics is self-help ethics. Self-help philosophers give advice on how you should improve your life and the advice is often similar to the advice that a therapist might give. Epicurus was an Ancient Greek self-help philosopher. He made lots of ought claims and claims about how you ought to behave. Nonetheless, he wasn’t really a moral philosopher as what we might call moral philosophy seemed to have been popularized and started by medieval Christian philosophers like St Augustine. Ethicists before then were mostly just prudential and self-help kinds of ethicists.

So your basically a platonist when it comes values and morals? I get lost when you say that values exist and are objective. I can agree with you that values exist if I understand what you mean by "exist" to be the same thing as thoughts, language and mathematics, but I would not be able to use the term "exist" in the same way I would use it to describe physical objects without committing an equivocation, and this would require me to define a special kind of existence wherein such entities can be ontologically categorized. — Cartesian trigger-puppets

No, I wouldn’t say that I’m a Platonist about when it comes to value. I don’t believe that there is an actual world of concepts where all concepts are located. Rather, I think that truthfulness of concepts exists without a location because I don’t think things need to necessarily have a location in order to exist. You expressed your belief that even mathematical claims are not objectively true so I will provide you with another example that I think it will be more difficult for you to bite the bullet on. Take the Epistemic claim that our sensory organs give us access to objective truth. You seem to believe that it is objectively the case that our sensory organs give us access to objective truth. But, the truthfulness of the Epistemic claim couldn’t be found anywhere in the Universe and the universe doesn’t inform us that our sensory organs give us access to objective truth. So, if it’s objectively the case that our sensory organs give us access to objective truth then the objective truthfulness of that claim has to exist outside of space and time.

The term "pretty" implies a positive value judgement that generally refers to the pleasantness experienced by visual perceptions. — Cartesian trigger-puppets

This is the part that I disagree with. I think most people do derive positive experiences from looking at something pretty but I don’t think that it is necessarily the case and thus I wouldn’t say that prettiness implies a positive value judgement. For example, I think it makes sense to say that a particular house is too pretty and that it would be better if it had more blemishes.

With regards to the rest of what you said in this same post, what do you mean when you say you don't have a moral system? Are you morally indifferent to rape? — Cartesian trigger-puppets

What you do you mean by “morally” in the last sentence of your post? The way that I understand what people mean when they say that something is moral or immoral is that they are talking about the kinds of considerations that a typical moral philosopher would wish to discuss. I’m not emotionally indifferent to rape as rape makes me upset but that doesn’t mean that I like to talk about ought claims like a typical moral philosopher would want to talk about ought claims. If someone were to ask me for advice regarding whether or not they should rape someone, I would probably just call the police on them but if I wasn’t able to call the police on them for some reason then my instinct would be to persuade them not to rape like a self-help philosopher would try to persuade someone to do something rather than trying to persuade them like a moral philosopher normally tries to persuade someone.

What if a rape had a positive effect for everyone? — Cartesian trigger-puppets

Then that rape would be good because it wouldn’t even have a victim. I don’t know if you could even call it rape anymore.

What if a rape had a positive effect for everyone except you? — Cartesian trigger-puppets

Then, that rape would constitute a bad state of affairs for me and a good state of affairs for everyone else. I would probably have reason to prevent that rape from happening but I think there’s some probability that the positive effect that the rape has on everyone else would give me enough reason to decide to allow the rape to happen. As I have mentioned earlier, I subscribe to a probabilistic theory of truth so I tend to think that each value claim has a certain probability of being true and a certain probability of being false. My job as a decision making philosopher is to create a hierarchy of plausibility regarding a given decision making dilemma. The judgement call that I would make is that I should probably prevent this rape from occurring because I’m the one that would have to endure the suffering of that rape and I wouldn’t get to enjoy the pleasure that others receive from the rape. I think whether or not we have reason to pursue pleasure or suffering is probably dependent on who is the person that gets to experience that pleasure or suffering. I also recognize the possibility of me being wrong about that and this is why I’m at least a little tempted to think that maybe if there is enough hedonistic benefit for others then maybe it’s worth a little hedonistic harm for myself.

Would you be indifferent to a rape in every imaginable context? — Cartesian trigger-puppets

No, I never said that I was indifferent to rape.

What do you mean by an act or a consequence related to "betterness" or "worseness"? — Cartesian trigger-puppets

I think decision options exist on a hierarchy by which each particular decision option is in relation with all the other possible decision options. Those relations are that of betterness and worseness. Let suppose that you are deciding whether or not you should date your friend named Sue. You have the decision option of dating Sue and you have all the other things that you might be thinking about doing instead of dating Sue. Let’s suppose that you figure that if you don’t date Sue, then you will decide to go the bar with your friends instead during the time that you would have spent dating Sue. Or, you figure maybe you would spend that time on this philosophy forum instead. So, there are 3 decision options that you are considering here.

I think that how you ought to evaluate those decision options will depend on what final aims you think are most likely to be objectively true. So, now I think it makes sense for you to create a hierarchy of plausibility regarding all the possible final aims that you can pursue. Final aims are things that you pursue for their own sake with no deeper instrumental explanation for why that thing is worth pursuing. It seems to me that the most reasonable candidate for a final aim worth pursuing is the final aim of minimizing suffering in your life. There doesn’t seem to be any deeper instrumental explanation for why minimizing suffering in your own life is good and it seems most obvious that it’s better to have less suffering than more suffering and this is obvious to most people because they know what suffering is and what it feels like so they have a kind of introspective evidence for their own suffering being something that is worth avoiding. The 2nd most plausible candidate for a final aim is pursuing pleasure in your own life and it seems to be a plausible candidate for much of the same reasons that suffering is a plausible candidate. I think it’s slightly less plausible and less important as a final aim as I think it’s easier for us to be indifferent about pleasure than it is for us to be indifferent about suffering. Then, there are myriad of other possible final aims further down the plausibility hierarchy of final aims. I don’t think we have to go any further down that hierarchy to resolve this particular decision making dilemma.

Now, it is time to evaluate how each of the decision options that we have considered will help us minimize suffering and maximize pleasure in our own life. Let’s start with how each decision option will impact the amount of suffering in our own lives. Dating Sue might cause suffering because there seems to be a decent chance that you might get rejected after a few dates and you might get heartbroken. There’s also a small but realistic chance that you might get her pregnant after having sex with her a few times after dates. Having children seems very likely to cause quite a great degree of suffering especially if it’s with a partner who you have only dated briefly(though, that might depend on your psychology). There are also other ways that dating Sue could cause you to suffer like maybe the dates will be boring or paying for those dates will require to work more in the future. There is also some suffering that could be caused by choosing to go to the bar with your friends. There’s probably a high probability that you will get hungover. There might be a small chance that you will get arrested for drunk driving or accidentally get a girl that you met at a bar pregnant. The “sit at home and go to philosophy forum” option also has some potential for suffering. You might get frustrated while trying to explain a point to someone or you might get stuck talking to a rude asshole. Also, you might feel loneliness or despair from not having a social life depending on your psychology. Then, you would do the same sort of analysis regarding what kind of pleasure you might receive from all three decision options. I personally think that avoiding suffering is quite a bit more important than getting pleasure so I would really just end my analysis here.

I would then open up a document program on my phone and assign what I call a significance factor to each consideration. This is basically meant to be an educated guess regarding how much weight you should assign each consideration. For example, let’s say you think that the probability of you getting rejected by Sue and you suffering as a result of that is something like 3% and we will assign the significance factor of 10 to the total unpleasantness of that suffering. We then follow the same process with each consideration that we have listed. We make an educated guess about the probability of each event happening and we assign a significance factor. The first significance factor that we have assigned is meant to be the comparison point that we should use to determine the significance factor for the other considerations. So, we might say that getting Sue pregnant would be roughly 10 times worse than getting rejected by Sue would be. So, the significance factor of getting Sue pregnant will be 100. After we figure out the probability of each consideration occurring and the significance factor of each consideration, we then multiply those 2 variables together to get what I call the “probability-adjusted significance factor”. We then add up all the probability-adjusted significance factor scores and we get a pretty good educated guess regarding how each decision option will contribute to suffering in our own lives. We can then put these 3 decision options in a hierarchy of betterness and worseness.

Of course, there’s still a pretty much guaranteed chance that the hierarchy that we have constructed here isn’t the best possible hierarchy regarding this decision dilemma. There are so many additional factors that we haven’t analyzed and it’s possible that some of our probabilities were way off or that the significance factors that we have assigned underestimated or overestimated the badness of certain experiences. Nonetheless, I think it’s more likely than not that we end up making better decisions if we take the time to do a thorough analysis of each decision option rather than just rely on our desires and emotions to make the decision for us. I think there is theoretically a perfect analysis of that decision dilemma that could be made and that there are different levels of plausibility to each given approach to this decision making dilemma. This is why I would consider myself to be a value realist

Prudential values are often an umbrella term that is used in philosophy to describe values regarding mundane and non-moral decisions that we make in our life. For example, there are financial decisions that we make in our life like the decision that we might make to invest into Tesla. It doesn’t seem to be a moral decision because it is outside of the scope of what is considered to be moral philosophy. — TheHedoMinimalist

I'm not as familiar with that particular term. I think we need to do some semantic unpacking because we seem to be arguing past one another. First, let's agree upon a definition for what makes a statement moral. Would you agree that the essence of morality lies in it's connection to action? For example, when making a moral judgment, it seems we are fundamentally concerned with an evaluation of an action. Every moral philosopher considers morality in terms of what you 'should' do or how things 'should' be. What most compells us to explore morality comes as we reflect upon our actions, asking ourselves, "What should I do?" or "What is the right thing to do?". As a result of such questions, what we are motivated towards achieving in ethics is to provide ourselves with answers. So, when making a moral claim, we are actually providing an answer, such as "You ought to do this," or "You should do what you ought to do", that, if true, establishes that someone has a reason to act or be a certain way.

Even with your statement, though I agree it is does not seem to be, there are moral underpinnings and presuppositions embedded in our meaning. Any statement that prescribes an action (or suggests an action) be taken, if called into question, will reveal moral assumptions. A Socratic approach would elucidate this, but that requires you to follow line of questioning and that is not easy done through text. But, i could give it a go, I suppose.

1. Why should I invest in Tesla?

I appreciate the effort of explaining how you approach decision options and analyzing future outcomes, but that is a bit too much for me, and a bit of a stretch for you too, I think. I mean, we can't foresee the future and there are way too many variables to speculate that far. I would much rather like to understand your view rather than your assessment regarding the views of others. In your example, both dating Sue, going to the bar with my friends, and interacting on the philosophy forum, all seem to be too vague to evaluate, but nonetheless, the acts in and of themselves seem to be, at best, moral, and morally neutral, at worst. Instead of analyzing the unforeseeable future, we should of analyzed the broader context of each scenario. For example, what are my intentions for going on a date with Sue? What are her expectations? What kind of girl is she? What is the context of her life? And the same with the bar of philosophy forum, a broader context is needed in order to evaluate one action to another and weigh outcomes and reasons for each action, in order, and within a more cognitively accessible duration whereby this sequence of events takes place.

All this is further complicating things. I still don't understand your position on matters such as rape, or killing, or how you lack a moral system, etc, and I understand that you need more context, but a general take would actually quite well inform me. I just want to ask you a few questions to fill in the gaps for myself.

What is your view on rape, in general?

If you had the ability to stop a typical rape from occurring, without risking any personal harm, would you stop it? If so, why? If not, why?

If you had an opportunity to save five women from getting raped, by taking action with no risk to yourself, but at the cost of another woman getting raped, a woman who would have otherwise not been had it been for your involvement, would you?

Please answer from your point of view, what you would say and what you think the right thing to do would be.

Would you agree that the essence of morality lies in it's connection to action? — Cartesian trigger-puppets

I actually wouldn’t agree with that because it seems that there are plenty of moral philosophers that focus more on consequences or personality traits when thinking about what constitutes moral behavior. For example, Jeremy Bentham was a moral philosopher and he didn’t believe that actions were universally right or wrong and he also didn’t necessarily think that we had moral duties. He instead thought that we should try to maximize happiness and that constituted moral behavior. In addition, many religious thinkers would morally judge someone based on how much their personality is characterized by virtue rather than sin. Sin would often be understood by the intentions and desires of the person rather than the actual actions performed by the person. Intuitively, it seems possible for someone to believe that they ought to act immorally. For example, imagine a scammer that scams people to make money. They believe that they ought to scam people but they also probably believe that what they are doing is immoral. Those people just don’t care about morality and they care about their financial welfare more. Their financial welfare falls under the umbrella of what academic philosophers call “prudential values”. I would recommend searching for the term “prudential” on a website called philarchive.org if you want to get a verification that this is a legit term that gets used by academic philosophers. You will find some academic essays that are written regarding things related to the concept of prudential values. Also, you can search for the term “prudential” into the Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy and you will see how it usually gets used in the many articles that are written with this concept in mind.

For example, what are my intentions for going on a date with Sue? What are her expectations? What kind of girl is she? What is the context of her life? And the same with the bar of philosophy forum, a broader context is needed in order to evaluate one action to another and weigh outcomes and reasons for each action, in order, and within a more cognitively accessible duration whereby this sequence of events takes place. — Cartesian trigger-puppets

I agree that a broader context will be ideal and that would help us create a better analysis. My whole point is that I think that taking the time to analyze each decision option will generally lead to better decision making. Obviously, having more information about each decision option leads to a more accurate analysis and better decision making as well. I’m arguing that we can’t just reduce decision making down to people’s desires and the social influence that they receive. We also have to take into account the amount of time that they spend analyzing their decision options and how competent they are at analyzing their decision options.

What is your view on rape, in general?

If you had the ability to stop a typical rape from occurring, without risking any personal harm, would you stop it? If so, why? If not, why? — Cartesian trigger-puppets

I find the idea of raping someone to be repugnant on a personal level because I don’t understand why someone would prefer non-consensual sex over consensual sex. It seems that it feels so much better to have sex with someone that is enthusiastic about having sex with you and actually tries to make you feel good. I don’t understand why some people would want to have sex with someone that doesn’t want to have sex with them if it would actually be always easier to find someone that does want to have sex with you. Also, I find the idea of forcing someone to have sex with you to be disgusting. It causes me suffering to think about such stuff.

If I could stop a typical rape then I obviously would since this would likely get me to viewed as a hero and it would be quite likely that I would get a financial reward for it as well. Though, even if I don’t get a financial reward, I would still want to stop the rape because it would give me pleasure to help someone who is being raped and I wouldn’t feel guilty about harming a rapist.

If you had an opportunity to save five women from getting raped, by taking action with no risk to yourself, but at the cost of another woman getting raped, a woman who would have otherwise not been had it been for your involvement, would you? — Cartesian trigger-puppets

It depends on what would give me the most pleasure and the least amount of suffering. Which decision option would make me look more heroic in the eyes of my family and society? What reward or punishment would I receive for choosing either decision option? I would have to know the specific scenario to answer this question most accurately. If all those other considerations were equal, then I think it would be better to prevent the 5 women from being raped at the expense of the single woman who does get raped. It seems to me that this is the prima facie better outcome.

The value is attached to the belief that the subject holds and thus is not dependent upon the metaphysical truth that the belief expresses. If you believe you have a guardian angel protecting you, then you likely value the comfort and ease of mind that such a belief is likely to bring. The fact that you feel comfort and ease of mind by virtue of holding this belief is an objectively true assessment of your subjective states. So, yes, it is possible to have an objectively true evaluation of a belief
that is metaphysically false. Of course everyone is right regarding their evaluations, as long as you keep in mind that their evaluations are based in subjectivity, contextually bound to a moment in time and the set of values which arose as a result of the one's totality of experiences that lead up to the moment, is not necessarily compatible with others, and is not applicable outside of the subjective state of an agent—though it may be similar enough to be compatible between any number of agents that hold similar values. — Cartesian trigger-puppets

I want to point out that it seems that people would abandon many of their evaluative beliefs if they abandoned the metaphysical beliefs that are grounding those evaluative beliefs. For example, it seems to me that I don’t value having “meaningful” achievements because I think the concept of meaningful achievements is incoherent and I think believing in the existence of objectively meaningful achievements is like believing in unicorns. So, I don’t think it has anything to do with my emotional predispositions or my desires. Rather, it is because I lack the cognitive intuition that would allow me to believe in meaningful achievements that makes it impossible for me to value meaningful achievements. Also, most people who do value having meaningful achievements value having those achievements because they believe those achievements have a metaphysical existence. If they didn’t believe those achievements had a solid metaphysical basis to them then they would probably not value those achievements because they wouldn’t even understand what people are referring to when they speak of meaningful achievements.

Now, my question was very specific and I don't believe that your objection accurately represents what it is that I'm trying to get you to concede to. Here is my exact statement:

Would you agree that the essence of morality lies in it's connection to action? — Cartesian trigger-puppets

Take notice of what it is that im specifically suggesting to be the primary focus of morality. I'm saying that the focus of moral philosophy is, in essence, centered around human activities; the focus is upon an intimate connection to actions or behaviors. This connection to action is best captured by the ethical modalities represented by each of the three normative approaches: consequentialism, virtue ethics, and deontology.

There is a particular mode of action, a mechanism, or a means whereby the ethical framework of each of these three normative approaches is either focused upon, or is making a fundamental connection to, actions or behaviors. For example, within a deontological framework (i.e., a duty framework), the focus is on moral duties and obligations with the ethical modality towards performing the correct action. You appear to concede to this point within the language used to express the reasons supporting your very objection—as seen in the following.

I actually wouldn’t agree with that because it seems that there are plenty of moral philosophers that focus more on consequences or personality traits when thinking about what constitutes moral behavior. — TheHedoMinimalist

"...many moral philosophers that focus more on consequences or personality traits **when thinking about what constitutes moral BEHAVIOR**."

Your argument implies that much of the attention of moral philosophy is either focused through the lense of consequential ethics, or focused otherwise through the lense of virtue ethics. I would agree, however, only upon the inclusion of the omitted lense of deontological ethics. Your statement appeals to a proportion of moral philosophers represented by two of the three classes of normative ethical theories.

First, the consequencialist (i.e., outcome-based) approach, wherein philosophers pay particular attention to the results of an action or a behavior in order to make a moral judgment. As you might put it, the proponents of consequentialism represent many moral philosophers who focus more on consequences when thinking about what constitutes moral behavior.

Second, the personality trait-based or character-based approach of virtue ethics, wherein virtue ethicists assume that we acquire virtue through practice. That an action is moral if, and only if, it is an action which moral exemplars (i.e., a virtuous person) would carry out in an identical scenario. Virtue ethics is agent-based rather than action-based (i.e., focusing on the person rather than the action), but it nonetheless focuses on the virtues possessed by an agent (i.e., the moral character—which includes personality traits—of a person) based upon the type of actions an agent is carrying out. In other words, and in anticipation of the foreseeable objections to a connection between virtue ethics and action: though virtue ethics focuses on a virtuous person, a virtuous person, as defined by virtue ethics, is a person who ACTS virtuously.

Virtue ethics, in contrast with deontology or consequentialism—that otherwise focus on the ethical duties of the agent; the rules to guide the agents behavior (as with the former), or (as with the latter) that focus on the consequences of the agents particular actions; the outcomes subsequently produced by an agents particular behavior—may, initially, be seen as the exception to my universally stated proposition ("the essence of morality lies in it's connection to action"), and thus form its negation on pain of contradiction (e.g., "All moral theories are connected to action" and "There exists a moral theory that isn't connected to action"). This is not necessarily the case.

Upon further inspection, it becomes clear that, while virtue ethics is a normative ethic that emphasizes the moral character of an agent, rather than emphasizing the duties (deontology) or the consequences (consequentialism) that either dictate or result from our actions or behaviors, virtue ethics nonetheless remains intimately connected to action. Virtue ethics, the agent-based rebuttal notwithstanding, remains a normative ethic that despite lacking an emphasis with regard to action, as is the case with action-based theories, is nonetheless connected to action, and thus represents a normative ethic that is consistent with the view that morality is *CONNECTED to action*. Virtue ethics is connected to action because a moral exemplar, or virtuous person, is defined as such by practicing such acts as being honest, being just, being benevolent, being generous, being wise, etc, thereby developing the requisite behavior and moral character necessary to be a virtuous person.

For example, Jeremy Bentham was a moral philosopher and he didn’t believe that actions were universally right or wrong and he also didn’t necessarily think that we had moral duties. — TheHedoMinimalist

Bentham was a consequencialist moral philosopher, as a hedonic utilitarian who evaluated actions based upon their consequences. Bentham regarded the morality status of actions as 'good' based on their tendency to promote happiness or pleasure and 'bad' based on their tendency to promote unhappiness or suffering. Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill are the quintessential developers of the principle of utility and the consequencialist derivative of utilitarianism as a normative ethical theory. Utilitarianism is necessarily connected to action because measures various actions based on their outcomes with imaginary units known as utils—representing the amount of utility an action provided.

(Unrelated)
I appreciate your references to sources that can better educate me with regard to terms such as 'prudential' and phrases such as 'prudential values' for their meanings within the lexicon of philosophy or as philosophical nomenclatures.

I would like to emphasize that my question which shortly follows this statement is a meta-ethical one and as such I will point out the problems I have with your answer.

What is your view on rape, in general?

If you had the ability to stop a typical rape from occurring, without risking any personal harm, would you stop it? If so, why? If not, why? — Cartesian trigger-puppets

As a meta-ethical question, we cannot properly answer it with such terms as "Repugnant" as you did here:

I find the idea of raping someone to be repugnant — TheHedoMinimalist

We cannot appeal to such normatively-loaded terms because in doing so we are begging the question. If I ask what makes rape immoral on your view and you reply thereafter with something along the lines of, "Rape is immoral because rape is repugnant", then you are simply assuming the immorality of rape by using a term that is synonymous with 'Bad' within your premise. It is reducible to a tautology since the term 'Repugnant' can easily be defined as: "Unpleasant or disgusting" and thus to say something is repugnant is to describe something with an adjective that is synonymous to 'Bad' or similar adjectives that likewise evaluate a noun in negative or otherwise implicitly immoral terms. It is analytically equivalent to the argument "Rape is bad because rape is bad".

Your reasoning, as shown by the following, exhibits another problem that I would like to point out.

I don’t understand why someone would prefer non-consensual sex over consensual sex. — TheHedoMinimalist

If asked for reasons to support your view that rape is immoral, the above premise represents an error in your reasoning. It is a fallacy in informal logic known as, Argument from incredulity, because what you are asserting is, essentially, that the proposition "Rape is moral", or in other words, "Rape is good", must be false because you cannot understand how it could be true since it goes against your personal expectations or beliefs (that someone would prefer non-consensual sex over consensual sex).

(Brief digression)
On a separate note, whether or not someone prefers non-consensual sex over consensual sex has nothing to do with the issue of whether rape is good or bad. One could prefer consensual sex over non-consensual sex and still perform the act of rape. Furthermore, such a preference one way or the other doesn't provide us any information about whether rape is good or bad.
(End of digression)

This way of reasoning is fallacious because your inability to understand how a statement such as, "Rape is good" can possibly be true gives us no further information about whether the statement is actually true or false. For example, if a fundamentalist Christian asserts the proposition, "God exists" predicated on their inability to understand or imagine a world wherein God doesn't exist, provides no additional information other than appealing to their own ignorance and obstinacy.

I don’t understand why some people would want to have sex with someone that doesn’t want to have sex with them if it would actually be always easier to find someone that does want to have sex with you. — TheHedoMinimalist

To make another tangential point, this is a very naive understanding of why people sometimes rape. It fails to consider the perspectives of those unfortunate individuals who are extremely unattractive in either physical appearance, social demeanor, or both. Also, people who suffer from pathological afflictions that prevent them from participating in otherwise normal social interactions necessary for sexual relationships, yet experience normal, or even hyperactive sexual drives. It also fails to consider rape through a psychopathic perspective or a sadistic personality or under the influence of schizophrenic delusion, etc. Please prioritize my main points over my tangential ones.

I find the idea of forcing someone to have sex with you to be disgusting. It causes me suffering to think about such stuff. — TheHedoMinimalist

This is another instance of begging the question with the term "Disgusting" followed by an emotive response in place of actual reasoning.

If all those other considerations were equal, then I think it would be better to prevent the 5 women from being raped at the expense of the single woman who does get raped. — TheHedoMinimalist

This commits you to a consequencialist position with regard to this scenario. It also commits you to hold the position that a rape can be justified so long as it results in an approximately more favorable outcome of at least one order of magnitude or greater. We can imagine a scenario such as human organ trafficking or the forced organ harvests of humans where one human is sacrificed in order to save five or more other humans who would otherwise die without acquiring the organs of the human who is being sacrificed. Since according to such consequentialist logic, one such reductio that would be necessarily entailed would be the view that such actions are justified so long as it results in favorable results (such as sacrificing one to save five). Such logic promotes the notion that some humans are worth less than others and that human life is just another commodity with a price.

This commits you to support forms of slavery and forms of genocide so long as the end results in a net positive gain that measures at least in a 5:1 ratio. So, it follows, then, that a majority of a society's population consisting of at least 80 percent of the society's members could justifiably enslave the remaining 20 percent of the society's members who make up a sufficient minority of the society's population, so long as there are favorable results gained by the 80 percent thereby compensating for the unfavorable results endured by the 20 percent. Moreover, it additionally follows, then, that an entire nation or ethnic group could justifiably be completely exterminated, holocausted, or genocided, so long as the unfavorable outcome endured by the single group also resulted in favorable outcomes for at least five other nations or ethnic groups with a relatively equivalent number of individuals contained within or with a relatively equivalent capacities to experience suffering or pleasure in totality.

Putting these normative ethical dilemmas aside, I want to know what your answer is with regards to the meta-ethical question: is rape moral, immoral, or amoral—or otherwise under your evaluations considered to be good, bad, or neutral? For context, consider the previous ethical dilemma of causing the rape of 1 woman in order to prevent the rape of 5 women—with just that information to work with. What is your decision? Why is rape, in general, moral—otherwise considered good or immoral—otherwise considered bad on your view alone?

I apologize for the lapse in time between my responses, but my intellectual resources were entirely needed elsewhere in my personal life.

For context, consider the previous ethical dilemma of causing the rape of 1 woman in order to prevent the rape of 5 women — Cartesian trigger-puppets

What on Earth are you even trying to begin to talk about? Cool name btw, was wondering where it came from/what it meant to you?

A criminal action is a criminal action and will be neutralized and/or punished to the fullest extent of the law. Any person who does not believe this is a savage and will be punished.. heh, even if they try to duck out and think death will save them.. I am proud to say, this is not so.

What on Earth are you even trying to begin to talk about? — Outlander

This is a variation of a series of popular thought experiments known as "The trolley problem". It illustrates a hypothetical scenario that presents an ethical dilemma that has become a common exercise in moral philosophy. I used a similar thought experiment here but instead of illustrating a classical variation of the hypothetical scenario, I framed a nuanced variation based on the contexts of examples both @TheHedoMinimalist and myself have presented to one another in our attempt to understand and represent each others, as well as our own, positions and disagreements with regard to normative and meta-ethical beliefs. Excuse the provocative nature of such illustrations as they are merely rhetorical devises intended to tease out emotive responses underlying ethical presuppositions.

Cool name btw, was wondering where it came from/what it meant to you? — Outlander

In reading "Neurology and the Soul" by Oliver Sacks, wherein he mentions that "Even in the work of C. S. Sherrington, the founder of modern neurophysiology, we find an explicitly Cartesian viewpoint: thus Sherrington regarded his decerebrate dogs as "Cartesian trigger-puppets" deprived of mind; he felt that physiology—at least the sort of reflex physiology he set himself to study—needed to be free of any "interference" by will or mind; and he wondered whether these, in some sense, did not transcend physiology and might not form a separate principle in human nature."

http://danbhai.com/rsns/sacks_neurology_and_the_soul.htm

A criminal action is a criminal act and will be neutralized and/or punished to the fullest extent of the law. Any person who does not believe this is a savage and will be punished.. heh, even if they try to duck out and think death will save them. I am proud to say, this is not so. — Outlander

This is a discussion in normative ethical theories and a meta-ethical analysis of the semantic content of moral language as well as the logical force behind normative, moral, and prescriptive statements in comparison with the logical force exerted by positive, or non-evaluative descriptive statements when inserted into the framework of an argument as the constituents (premises and conclusion) therein.

Law is what a society creates for a basic system of governance in order to enforce some standard of behaviour necessary for the success of the community. There is very little attention to detail in law which is very sloppy and prone to make mistakes. You seem as if you represent a judge, jury and executioner in your statements. A lack in belief makes someone a savage in need of punishment? Laws are under construction and destruction all the time and this is a result of fluctuations in what we believe in as a society. Does this make every well organized body pushing for legislative change savages?

On your view, is an act such as murder always wrong? This would be a deontological view on normative ethics, but deontology alone takes us to absurd conclusions on its own. Consider the famous trolley problem. Imagine yourself near a train station wherefrom you are observing two sets of workers on two divergent tracks; five working on the main track and one working on a side track nearby.

Suddenly, you notice a runaway trolley barreling down the main track towards the five workers who are unaware and busy with their work. The trolley is sure to kill all five of them in seconds, this you are certain of. However, you then just happen to notice that you are standing by a lever that if pulled would divert the trolley away from the main set of tracks, thus saving the five workers, but the one worker on the side track would then be killed instead. Do you pull the lever?

You have two options:

1. Do nothing and allow the trolley to kill the five workers on the main track.

2. Pull the lever, thus diverting the trolley onto the side track where it will kill the one worker.

Murder is murder right? If you pull the lever you are committing a murder. A person who would have otherwise had been just fine will die as a direct result of your actions if you pull the lever.

Do you pull it?

First, the consequencialist (i.e., outcome-based) approach, wherein philosophers pay particular attention to the results of an action or a behavior in order to make a moral judgment. As you might put it, the proponents of consequentialism represent many moral philosophers who focus more on consequences when thinking about what constitutes moral behavior. — Cartesian trigger-puppets

Earlier in our discussion, I believe that you have stated that you think someone has to think that rape is always wrong or rape is always not wrong. This is confusing to me because pretty much every consequentialist thinks that rape is usually bad but it can sometimes be good if it produces a good consequence. My whole point is that it’s perfectly common for moral philosophers to say that the wrongness of a particular act like rape is dependent on something else that is entirely separate from the action itself.

There is a particular mode of action, a mechanism, or a means whereby the ethical framework of each of these three normative approaches is either focused upon, or is making a fundamental connection to, actions or behaviors. For example, within a deontological framework (i.e., a duty framework), the focus is on moral duties and obligations with the ethical modality towards performing the correct action. — Cartesian trigger-puppets

I want to point out that I think there is an important distinction between actions and behaviors and you asked me earlier if I agreed that morality was based on actions. Well, I think it’s a lot more plausible to think that it might be based on something more broad like behaviors. But, I don’t think that means that morality is based on actions. Also, I’m not understanding how you are able to smuggle the concept of moral duties into your understanding of morality if there are plenty of moral realist philosophers that don’t believe in the existence of moral duties. They think that an act can be morally wrong but you don’t have a duty to avoid performing that act. Rather, performing the act is bad in a supererogatory sort of way. This is kinda similar to how most people think that it is moral to donate to charity but you are not morally obligated to donate to charity.

Virtue ethics is connected to action because a moral exemplar, or virtuous person, is defined as such by practicing such acts as being honest, being just, being benevolent, being generous, being wise, etc, thereby developing the requisite behavior and moral character necessary to be a virtuous person. — Cartesian trigger-puppets

I wouldn’t call being honest or being benevolent an act. Rather, I think it’s more like a behavior pattern or even something like a thought process as I think these characteristics do not always even need to manifested in behavior. For example, “being benevolent” might be understood as having compassion for others and wishing others the best. I don’t think this requires you to do anything as I think a person can be compassionate with their thoughts alone. In addition, I must ask you. Do you think that believing something or desiring something is an act also? You seem to be defining acts in a very broad way that is counterintuitive to me. Like, there are Epistemic ought claims that could be made like the claim that “you ought to believe that the Earth is round”. Believing that the Earth is round isn’t an act and yet there are actually academic philosophers out there that would go as far as saying that it’s immoral to believe that the Earth is flat. I’ve actually just looked through a collection of titles of academic essays about the topic of duties and I found quite a bit of essays that talked about the possibility of there even being Epistemic duties. Epistemic duties are basically duties that you might have to believe certain things and avoid believing other things. You actually find something like this in most mainstream religions like Christianity it seems. For example, most Christians seem to believe that you have something akin to a duty to believe that Jesus was the son of God who died for your sins. But, that seems to imply that they believe that you have a duty to hold a particular mindset rather than perform an action(at least based on my understanding of what actions are).

It is reducible to a tautology since the term 'Repugnant' can easily be defined as: "Unpleasant or disgusting" and thus to say something is repugnant is to describe something with an adjective that is synonymous to 'Bad' or similar adjectives that likewise evaluate a noun in negative or otherwise implicitly immoral terms. It is analytically equivalent to the argument "Rape is bad because rape is bad". — Cartesian trigger-puppets

I wasn’t trying to use this as a reason for thinking that rape is bad universally. Rather, it is just a psychological description of how I feel about rape. That psychological fact about me influences whether or not I experience pleasure or suffering from watching a rape take place.

On a separate note, whether or not someone prefers non-consensual sex over consensual sex has nothing to do with the issue of whether rape is good or bad. One could prefer consensual sex over non-consensual sex and still perform the act of rape. Furthermore, such a preference one way or the other doesn't provide us any information about whether rape is good or bad. — Cartesian trigger-puppets

Whether or not I prefer consensual sex or non-consensual sex effects whether or not I would take pleasure watching a rape and whether or not I would take pleasure in rescuing someone from being rape. Once again, I think that whether or not a particular rape is bad is determined by a myriad of factors and it seems that we can’t just say that rape is always bad. That’s not what I was trying to say. I was trying to tell you that I would stop the average rape because I think that stopping that rape would cause a hedonistic improvement in my own life.

To make another tangential point, this is a very naive understanding of why people sometimes rape. It fails to consider the perspectives of those unfortunate individuals who are extremely unattractive in either physical appearance, social demeanor, or both. — Cartesian trigger-puppets

Well, those people could get a prostitute or an escort it seems. That seems to be a way better option for them than trying to rape someone. Also, there’s plenty of really good pornography on the Internet and plenty of great ways to experiment with masturbation. Also, they could experiment with buying women’s dirty underwear and that could also add an important olfactory dimension which I think can greatly enhance one’s sexual satisfaction.

Also, people who suffer from pathological afflictions that prevent them from participating in otherwise normal social interactions necessary for sexual relationships, yet experience normal, or even hyperactive sexual drives. It also fails to consider rape through a psychopathic perspective or a sadistic personality or under the influence of schizophrenic delusion, etc. Please prioritize my main points over my tangential ones. — Cartesian trigger-puppets

Well, I would just say that you ought not have any of those personality traits either. I think that sadistic and psychopathic individuals do not have a very good hedonistic welfare. Rather, I think a person with a personality similar to someone like Epicurus would likely find the best success at having a high degree of hedonistic welfare.

This commits you to a consequencialist position with regard to this scenario. It also commits you to hold the position that a rape can be justified so long as it results in an approximately more favorable outcome of at least one order of magnitude or greater. — Cartesian trigger-puppets

No, I don’t think that it does because I think that the first thing that I need to analyze before deciding whether or not I should prevent the rape of the 5 women is which decision option would be hedonistically better for me. You seemed to have asked me to set those considerations aside and because of this I chose to answer the dilemma with consideration that I ultimately consider to be of secondary importance.

We can imagine a scenario such as human organ trafficking or the forced organ harvests of humans where one human is sacrificed in order to save five or more other humans who would otherwise die without acquiring the organs of the human who is being sacrificed. Since according to such consequentialist logic, one such reductio that would be necessarily entailed would be the view that such actions are justified so long as it results in favorable results (such as sacrificing one to save five). — Cartesian trigger-puppets

Well, I would first want to consider how this organ harvest would effect my own hedonistic welfare but if you are asking me to set those considerations aside then I must point out that I actually don’t think that saving the lives of 5 would necessarily produce a good consequence. This is because I have a much more positive opinion of death than most other people do mainly because if I allow the 5 people to die then I might actually be preventing those individuals from having to undergo the potentially painful organ transplant and any suffering that might come afterwards. In addition, I think allowing the 5 people to die would pretty much ensure that nothing in life can make them suffer again if we assume that they wouldn’t be suffering in an afterlife or something like that. So, I think this case is quite different from the rape case because the badness of death seems to be much more speculative than the badness of the suffering that will very likely be caused by rape.

Such logic promotes the notion that some humans are worth less than others and that human life is just another commodity with a price. — Cartesian trigger-puppets

I don’t think that it does. I think it actually supports the logic that all human lives are pretty equal as you wouldn’t allow the 5 people to die just because you have to keep that one person alive. I actually think it’s kinda discriminatory to value the life of this single person over the life of the 5 people.

This commits you to support forms of slavery and forms of genocide so long as the end results in a net positive gain that measures at least in a 5:1 ratio. So, it follows, then, that a majority of a society's population consisting of at least 80 percent of the society's members could justifiably enslave the remaining 20 percent of the society's members who make up a sufficient minority of the society's population, so long as there are favorable results gained by the 80 percent thereby compensating for the unfavorable results endured by the 20 percent. Moreover, it additionally follows, then, that an entire nation or ethnic group could justifiably be completely exterminated, holocausted, or genocided, so long as the unfavorable outcome endured by the single group also resulted in favorable outcomes for at least five other nations or ethnic groups with a relatively equivalent number of individuals contained within or with a relatively equivalent capacities to experience suffering or pleasure in totality. — Cartesian trigger-puppets

Well, I don’t think there could ever realistically be a genocide that would be beneficial to a majority of people. At the very least, there would be probably be a more efficient way of benefitting a majority of people than a genocide. Which kinda brings up another problem that I have with these sorts of trolley problem scenarios. I think they leave out an important 3rd option that people have to just say “I don’t have time to resolve this moral dilemma, I need to spend my time helping a world in a more significant way”. This would basically translate to the person not committing the genocide only because that person determined that the time and effort that it would take to commit
the genocide could be spend helping the overall population in a better way.

I’m assuming that you’re going to want me to assume that the hypothetical genocide in question is the absolute best way to help the world(which is extremely unlikely I must add). If there really was some kind of a super magical genocide that is the absolute best way to help the world, then why wouldn’t I support such an amazingly supernatural genocide(assuming that it also doesn’t harm me)? This case would seem to bypass every reasonable explanation that one could give for a genocide being bad. I think you might as well talk about a hypothetical genocide that doesn’t violate a categorical imperative or talk about a hypothetical genocide that happens to be virtuous for some reason. I think every ethical theory has these cases where you can posit an extreme hypothetical to say that something like genocide is acceptable. Unless you think that genocide is bad by definition like some sort of analytic truth like the analytic truth of bachelors being unmarried men, I don’t see how being a deontologist necessitates that genocide is always wrong because it wouldn’t be wrong presumably if a hypothetical genocide is such that you don’t have a duty to avoid performing it. Such hypothetical genocides does not seem to me to be as far fetched as the hypothetical genocide that happens to produce the best consequence possible.

Putting these normative ethical dilemmas aside, I want to know what your answer is with regards to the meta-ethical question: is rape moral, immoral, or amoral—or otherwise under your evaluations considered to be good, bad, or neutral? — Cartesian trigger-puppets

I guess I would say that rape is amoral because I’m not a moral realist but I think it’s almost always bad from the standpoint of general decision theory.

For context, consider the previous ethical dilemma of causing the rape of 1 woman in order to prevent the rape of 5 women—with just that information to work with. What is your decision? Why is rape, in general, moral—otherwise considered good or immoral—otherwise considered bad on your view alone? — Cartesian trigger-puppets

My first consideration is how each decision option would impact my own hedonistic welfare. If all things are completely equal by that criteria(and they probably won’t be), then I would choose to save the 5 women from being raped. Though, I suspect that if allow that one woman to get raped then I would get condemned by my loved ones and society and this would make my life hedonistically worse. Given this, I would probably realistically choose to just do nothing.

Earlier in our discussion, I believe that you have stated that you think someone has to think that rape is always wrong or rape is always not wrong. This is confusing to me because pretty much every consequentialist thinks that rape is usually bad but it can sometimes be good if it produces a good consequence. — TheHedoMinimalist

Actually, I was describing the moral perspectives of a strict deontologist, not what I, myself, think, but a particular view in normative ethics. A consequencialist, as the name implies, focuses on the outcomes that occur as a result of an action when it comes to moral evaluations, whereas the evaluations of a strict deontologist would only focus on the action itself. I was trying to explain how making statements such as "Rape is bad" or "One should never rape", while pragmatically advantageous (many would assume—myself included) as a general heuristic for a society, it presents a problem in the much less practical field of meta-ethics when we analyze the syntactic and semantic relationship between the subject and the predicate of such statements. It both yields logical contradictions when making such a universally generalized claim "Rape is wrong" followed by a particular claim "Rape is almost always wrong" whereby the latter claim stands as the negation of the former. This can be worked around however as I tried to explain by establishing consequencialist thresholds surrounding the deontological framework. Threshold deontology.

I want to point out that I think there is an important distinction between actions and behaviors and you asked me earlier if I agreed that morality was based on actions. Well, I think it’s a lot more plausible to think that it might be based on something more broad like behaviors. But, I don’t think that means that morality is based on actions. — TheHedoMinimalist

There is a difference but I'm not sure that it matters too much. I'm not sure if behaviors are broader than actions—I guess it depends on the particular context and frame of reference. The way I distinguish actions from behaviors is that an action is singular either in response or by initiation, and furthermore an action that is repeated over a prolonged period of time would then be considered an activity; whereas, a behavior can likewise be described as repeated actions, it otherwise has to do with a particular pattern in which a collection of such actions seems to possess. For example, if someone burps at the table that would be a single action (that may or may not have a behavioral contexts depending upon the way in which the act was done), one of many one will inevitably make upon a dinner table, but the overall pattern in which their collective actions is what makes up their behavior which could be otherwise proper table etiquette.

I think nonetheless that you are correct since these terms are not entirely interchangeable, but for the sake of progress, could we not be a bit more charitable, please?

Also, I’m not understanding how you are able to smuggle the concept of moral duties into your understanding of morality if there are plenty of moral realist philosophers that don’t believe in the existence of moral duties. — TheHedoMinimalist

Again, I am not describing my understandings of morality but rather providing examples of normative ethical approaches that are "Duty-centered". Would you not agree that deontology is a duty-based ethic?

I don’t think that means that morality is based on actions. — TheHedoMinimalist

Not based, in essence intimately connected to actions.

I wouldn’t call being honest or being benevolent an act. — TheHedoMinimalist

No, it would be a character trait, which is earned through repetitive behavior, which is based on specific patterns of activity, which is entirely based on sequences of actions. This is where my confusion comes in with your framing of behavior as more broad. Broader in overall complexity, perhaps, but that would be a top-down perspective and I'm more of a reductionist so I prefer breaking it down bottom-up.

I actually don’t think that saving the lives of 5 would necessarily produce a good consequence. This is because I have a much more positive opinion of death than most other people do mainly because if I allow the 5 people to die then I might actually be preventing those individuals from having to undergo the potentially painful organ transplant and any suffering that might come afterwards. — TheHedoMinimalist

You appear to be waffling a bit here. So, you take the view that we should deny people with an immediate need for organ transplantation? Or do you just emergency transplants as not worth the risk? The patients will certainly die without them and your positive opinions of death will likely offer them little comfort. I think that you are probably right about egoistic hedonic utilitarianism being likely what best describes you. You just don't seem to know that you are.

I don’t think that it does. I think it actually supports the logic that all human lives are pretty equal as you wouldn’t allow the 5 people to die just because you have to keep that one person alive. I actually think it’s kinda discriminatory to value the life of this single person over the life of the 5 people. — TheHedoMinimalist

And exactly how do we select which ones get to live and which ones get to die? The five people are unfortunately in bad shape but that doesn't mean that a completely healthy individual should therefore die in an effort to save them. The logic is clear in the act itself.

P1. If we kill the one individual, then five individuals will survive.

P2. Five lives are more valuable than one life.

C. Therefore, we should kill the one individual.

How is this not placing a value upon the fives lives over the one? Also notice that the argument is not crossing the is-ought divide by assuming an evaluative statement in P2, which is unfounded in my opinion.

Well, I don’t think there could ever realistically be a genocide that would be beneficial to a majority of people. — TheHedoMinimalist

Then you haven’t studied history.

At the very least, there would be probably be a more efficient way of benefitting a majority of people than a genocide. Which kinda brings up another problem that I have with these sorts of trolley problem scenarios. I think they leave out an important 3rd option that people have to just say “I don’t have time to resolve this moral dilemma, I need to spend my time helping a world in a more significant way”. — TheHedoMinimalist

Again, your waffling. You don't get to defeat the thought experiment by manipulating it based on practicality—it is a thought experiment and not limited to practicality. You also cannot hand wave away the dilemma without appreciating, first, the fact that it is a genuine problem in philosophy, and through conceding that, second, you don't know how to interact with it. At least you cannot do such things and still consider yourself a philosopher. Be a volunteer or whatever it is that your implying to be more significant (which sounds a lot like a meaningful achievement, btw), as you are free to do so if you please and I certainly have nothing but admiration for such self sacrifice.

This would basically translate to the person not committing the genocide only because that person determined that the time and effort that it would take to commit the genocide could be spend helping the overall population in a better way. — TheHedoMinimalist

You don't get to alter the thought experiment. This is not how philosophy works.

I’m assuming that you’re going to want me to assume that the hypothetical genocide in question is the absolute best way to help the world(which is extremely unlikely I must add). If there really was some kind of a super magical genocide that is the absolute best way to help the world, then why wouldn’t I support such an amazingly supernatural genocide(assuming that it also doesn’t harm me)? — TheHedoMinimalist

No. It only has to benefit five groups per each group that is being genocided in order to remain consistent with the logic. Again, the unlikely nature not withstanding, it is a hypothetical thought experiment and can be as absurd as we can imagine. It just can't be impossible, which means it cannot contain a logical contradiction. And it doesn't. Also if you were apart of the five beneficiary groups, then you would almost certainly be a part of the necessary majority that committed the lesser whole to take part in this. You would, not because I assume to know you or because it fits your moral system that you have offered me so far, but rather, and obviously so, you would as a sheer matter of probability. The five groups approve, thus the majority of each population would approve (assuming the groups are democratic) and you would most likely be a part of the majority in a matter of probability.

I think every ethical theory has these cases where you can posit an extreme hypothetical to say that something like genocide is acceptable. — TheHedoMinimalist

There are ethical theories that do a much better job than the ones that have been mentioned thus far. This is of course not a fact of the world but a fact of my attitude towards such, but I can offer quite compelling arguments for my moral system.

I don’t see how being a deontologist necessitates that genocide is always wrong because it wouldn’t be wrong presumably if a hypothetical genocide is such that you don’t have a duty to avoid performing it. — TheHedoMinimalist

This is where threshold deontology shines. Remember that i was referring to a strict form of deontological ethics.

I guess I would say that rape is amoral because I’m not a moral realist but I think it’s almost always bad from the standpoint of general decision theory. — TheHedoMinimalist

So, if you could have it your way, then I suppose that you would release all of the individual rapists that we have been unjustly detaining within our correctional systems and halt any further actions from taking place within our judicial systems? I mean, it cannot be just to punish people for committing an amoral act, can it? If you were to witness such a rape, then, of course, you would see nothing for better or worse?

My first consideration is how each decision option would impact my own hedonistic welfare. If all things are completely equal by that criteria(and they probably won’t be), then I would choose to save the 5 women from being raped. Though, I suspect that if allow that one woman to get raped then I would get condemned by my loved ones and society and this would make my life hedonistically worse. Given this, I would probably realistically choose to just do nothing. — TheHedoMinimalist

Well, luckily for you we are within the reality of the make-believe! I will propose a hypothetical scenario wherein only you and the six women exist (and I suppose some rapist but they disappear from existence shortly thereafter) and the only condemnation that could possibly exist would have to be that of your own conscience one. The women are real, their suffering or lack thereof is real in this thought experiment, but they are unable to gain any information about your involvement. Its you and them. One suffers or five suffers. The choice is your. Which choice seems best for you and why?

Why should one invest in Tesla?

We start with some basic axioms, and then to differing degrees of success, end up with intricate systems that we then apply to practical situations. But the axioms themselves are not susceptible to proof, it seems. — Philguy

:point:

Seems right, except I'm not sure we even apply such intricate systems to practical situations in our personal lives. Or I'd have to see it to believe it. I suspect that such systems are more like works of art.
BTW, Bentham seems to have been a fascinating chap.

In the case of ethical claims it is not so simple. There is nothing that is subject to direct observation and testing of predictions. Now I personally think it is true that almost everyone agrees that things like murder, rape, child abuse and even theft are wrong, and if almost everyone, cross-culturally, agrees about something then there is a great degree of normative force there. — Janus

Those moral standards are quite universal, I think. My own opinion is murder, rape and child abuse are very bad crimes. Theft is wrong also, but in my opinion there´s huge difference comparing for those forementioned crimes.

But others will argue flat out that not almost everyone does agree about such things or at least that we would have to do an empirical study to determine if they do or not (a difficult or even impossible task). — Janus

That is also true. But even so, that there is a situation where everybody totally agrees about ethical values (maybe there is also scientific empirical study that proves that all humankind agree with about every ethical value) it does not tell about values as such.

There could be naturalistic fallacy. Everybody could agree with the values, but that doesn´t prove them right.