1.) Whatever does not help increase the species' survival is unnatural
2.) Homosexuality does not help increase the species' survival
3.) Homosexuality is therefore unnatural
4.) Homosexuality is therefore wrong

BREACH! This argument does not work without an added premise:

*.) What is unnatural is what is wrong. — darthbarracuda

Or perhaps this entire pattern of reductionist reasoning is wrong when dealing with holistic realities?

So yes, one can "construct an argument" in good old reductionist predicate logic fashion. And that is a very useful tool for certain purposes. But it utterly fails when it comes to the kind of holistic thinking that answering questions at a metaphysically general level entail.

So for example, from my Peircean organic point of view, sure one can construct an argument based on this kind of hierarchical organisation of cascading constraints, but the irreducible vagueness of logic means there will always be "suppressed premises" at every point. An unlimited supply of them in fact. We can model reality as if it has this kind of propositional closure and get all syntatic on its arse, but reality itself is semantically open ... or at least that is my particular holistic model of the situation. ;)

Then taking this particular premise - 2.) Homosexuality does not help increase the species' survival - it is obvious that evolutionary psychology does apply an is-ought argument on convincing grounds. The natural assumption is that homosexuality must in fact help increase a species' survival. Or at least, make no difference.

Well actually, it is not about the species as a whole, but the genes floating around the gene pool. Yet still, if the choice for genes is either to be favoured or disfavoured, then "homosexual genes" (whatever the heck those really are in terms of the massive complexity of neurodevelopment) should either come to completely dominate or be completely eliminated.

Or wait. Maybe gene pools permit homeostatic equilibrium of traits. Perhaps "homosexual genes" are part of maintaining the "requisite variety" that is the other side of the coin to the winnowing sythe of natural selection that is forever removing variety. Etc, etc.

So take any premise and already it dissolves into a mass of uncertainties and qualifications. It ceases to seem so reasonable as a standalone claim.

This is why so little progress has ever been made with "ontological arguments". Even if the syntactic structure is not a problem, they simply can't prove anything about reality because of the irreducibility of semantic vagueness.

And this is where is-ought arguments fall down - in that general fashion where ontological arguments can't be constructed using a propositional form. To talk about the big picture, you need a big picture mode of thought. Hence why the history of metaphysics has been a fruitful conversation based on dialectical or systematic reasoning.

This is why so little progress has ever been made with "ontological arguments". Even if the syntactic structure is not a problem, they simply can't prove anything about reality because of the irreducibility of semantic vagueness. — apokrisis

Isn't this, though, an ontological claim about ontological arguments?

Or wait. Maybe gene pools permit homeostatic equilibrium of traits. Perhaps "homosexual genes" are part of maintaining the "requisite variety" that is the other side of the coin to the winnowing sythe of natural selection that is forever removing variety. Etc, etc. — apokrisis

Right, so like I said in the OP, we just have to question the premises. These sorts of "ontological arguments" as you call them aren't the only thing ethicists use. I prefer counterfactuals myself because I consider myself a constructivist of sorts and counterfactuals force us to consider consistency and universality.

So yes, one can "construct an argument" in good old reductionist predicate logic fashion. And that is a very useful tool for certain purposes. But it utterly fails when it comes to the kind of holistic thinking that answering questions at a metaphysically general level entail. — apokrisis

Perhaps the most striking problem with natural laws theories (including the rehashed naturalists) is that they have trouble prescribing specific action. How does "acting virtuously" help us in scenarios in which we're not clear which route of action we ought to take? How does "going with the flow of entropy" actually realize itself in everyday, common-sense action?

Reductionism cannot answer everything, but it's important for things like this, so important that I think it takes precedence over your holism. If you go to far in lofty abstract holism, you lose footing in the real world of everyday actions. Do you kill one person or five people? Was Hiroshima and Nagasaki ethical? Is the death penalty immoral? I don't see how metaphysics is supposed to help us determine the answers to these questions in a satisfactory manner.

And I would also argue that morality, and value, is a sui generis sort of thing, something that only exists within communities of rational agents. It's an isolated phenomenon and not something to be found elsewhere in the cosmos. Morality begins and ends with people and the basic interactions they have with each other and their phenomenological environment. Nothing more, and so it's just plain wrong to look to the stars for moral answers.

It's not a bigger deal than his other dictum: you can't get a will-be from an is.

"One ought to do good and one ought not do evil."

I take this to be a priori - a definition of 'ought'.

Then one needs in one's premises, an assertion of what is good, or what is evil, in order to make an argument.

What is unnatural is what is wrong. — darthbarracuda

This is pretty clearly a totally inadequate assertion. Aside from the ambiguity, it is obviously denied by any poster of good will, since the internet is unnatural by any conceivable interpretation. One might try the inverse - what is natural is right, but even then, I'm not sure that tape worms are good. Finding the right moral premises is problematic, but attempts have been made, from the ten commandments, to the golden rule. Some variation on "play nice" ...

Hume's articulation of the 'is-ought' problem was situated within his broader examination of the 'nature of the understanding'.

In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remarked, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary way of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when of a sudden I am surprised to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is however, of the last consequence [i.e 'highly significant']. For as this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation, it is necessary that it should be observed and explained; and at the same time that a reason should be given, for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it. But as authors do not commonly use this precaution, I shall presume to recommend it to the readers; and am persuaded, that this small attention would subvert all the vulgar systems of morality, and let us see, that the distinction of vice and virtue is not founded merely on the relations of objects, nor is perceived by reason.

Hume is arguing that judgements about what is the case, can be supported by reasoning from direct perception (in accordance with the empiricist principles that underlie his book); whereas reasoning from what ought to be the case, appears similar in terms of conjunctions of terms, however 'ought' propositions are in fact completely different to 'is' propositions, and authors using this term make the mistake of assuming that they support logical necessity, in the way that 'is/is not' statements do, when this assumption is unwarranted.

Kant answers the challenge by arguing that the assumption of moral probity is a foundation of practical ethics; that we have no choice but to proceed on the basis that moral decisions are grounded in practical reason.

Both in his normative works and in his foundational work, the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant makes explicit that the supreme moral principle itself must be discovered a priori, through a method of pure moral philosophy. By “pure” or “a priori” moral philosophy, Kant has in mind a philosophy grounded exclusively on principles that are inherent in and revealed through the operations of reason. This sort of moral philosophy contrasts with empirical moral philosophy [e.g. of Hume] which is grounded in a posteriori principles, principles inferred through observation or experience. While empirical moral philosophy, which Kant calls moral anthropology, can tell us how people do act, it cannot, Kant claims, tell us how we ought to act. — SEP, Kant and Hume on Morality

It's also worth reflecting on the famous conclusion of Hume's book, which I think has a bearing on the question as well - that passage where he says:

If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.

The point being, that if these questions are asked of Hume's Treatise, the answers are, likewise, negative!

The point being, that if these questions are asked of Hume's Treatise, the answers are, likewise, negative! — Wayfarer

The point being that if all are consigned to the flames, then Hume's job is done and his treatise is not needed. But you appear to want to follow his dictum for his work, but not for those others. Which is a bit contradictory.

It's simply that those criticisms he levels at 'volumes of divinity or school metaphysics' also apply to his work.

Hume's work is the only one that offers the critique, though; and assuming that the critique is correct, then his book has a value, on those grounds, that the critiqued works do not. If Hume's critique is incorrect, then his work is simply irrelevant and not inconsistent. So, there is no inconsistency there, as you seem to suggest there is.

Isn't this, though, an ontological claim about ontological arguments? — darthbarracuda

Yep. And being consistent, I argue for it holistically. And I argue that holism is just an ontic modelling relation, so that is then argued on epistemic grounds. Then to complete the Peircean circle of affirmation, that model of the epistemology is found to look just like the ontic model. So there is a demonstrable unity of thought ... whichever way you look at it.

So right there you can see why I'm never bothered by accusations of natural fallacies or transgressing the boundary between transcendent unknowns and pragmatic realities (as in your usual claim that I am leaving out the subjective first person point of view on moral questions).

A reductionist can only see circularity or tautology as a logical singularity - red alert, general systems failure!!! Self-reference causes arguments to collapse because ends can't shape their means.

But a holist - of the thorough going kind - starts from the other end and has a model based on the constraint of freedom. Wholes do shape their parts in developmental fashion.

So as usual, you latch on to the self-referential bootstrap nature of my position (or Peirce's and systems science in general) as if it is just an obvious bug - the first thing anyone schooled in reductionist thinking is going to see. But it is that generalised demand for holistic self-consistency which is in fact the feature of my brand of metaphysics. A holistic argument is a generalised constraint on our state of mental uncertainty, not a construction built out off already certain premises or elements of thought.

That doesn't make ordinary logic unreasonable, any more than Newtonian physics is unreasonable, or materialism is unreasonable. They are great tools for thinking within a world already concretely given. Assume your axioms, and syntactically you're good to go.

But when you do want to step up to the metaphysical whole of things - questions about fundamental being - now a holistic logic is required. And regular metaphysics has a proud tradition of doing that (one not employing simplistic deduction but the full Peircean arc of abduction/deduction/induction).

These sorts of "ontological arguments" as you call them aren't the only thing ethicists use. I prefer counterfactuals myself because I consider myself a constructivist of sorts and counterfactuals force us to consider consistency and universality. — darthbarracuda

So then you agree that the whole natural fallacy/is-ought line of attack is pretty irrelevant to metaphysical strength thinking?

If our goal is to recover the fundamental symmetries of existence, we have to go at it dialectically - identifying the local symmetry-breakings and then generalising our way back to their global origin?

Perhaps the most striking problem with natural laws theories (including the rehashed naturalists) is that they have trouble prescribing specific action. — darthbarracuda

Again, you are back to thinking as a reductionist. A constraints-based holism says that the specific is going to be just accidental or contingent "in the end". That is why atomism eventually fails. It can only arrive at the contingent when pursued to the limit.

Again, I have explained this many times. Constraints encode a telos or purpose (they must do to persist and thus "exist"). A purpose is then itself self-limiting because it doesn't care about differences that don't make a difference. It only constrains or shapes the differences that do. Thus eventually at the limit of constraint, things become completely accidental, uncontrolled, contingent. It is all just noise - fluctuations, variation, pure meaningless difference.

Now apply that to morality. The natural philosopher says the existence has its general constraints or habits - like the laws of thermodynamics and dissipative structure. The Universe exists because what it is doing makes some generally coherent evolutionary sense. That sets a backdrop within which there is a broad kind of telos - and also a considerable degree of indifference to how its general purposes are being achieve at any particular locality, like down here on planet earth.

Then human history is another much more local story of the development of some set of constraints or purposes. There are ways of doing things which are habits that work for reasons that are fixed as local structure. Yet then again, in the end, there is always a practical limit to that constraint and so a starting point where it all starts to become pure contingency - differences that don't make a difference (at least right now and not yet - although maybe later if enough others start to join in and something collective starts to build to "change history" and construct revised global constraints).

So a natural philosopher would view morality in this fashion - a cascade of constraints that encode the pragmatic habits that enable "existence", yet which at the same time eventually fritter out at some point in a bunch of difference that doesn't make a difference (except that it then represents a storehouse of potential - the requisite variety - that stops a system from freezing senescently and allows it to continue adapting and learning).

Thus again, as ever, your bug is my feature. If you think "law" should prescribe every specific, then that is the mechanical state of complete constraint with no freedom. Such a system is brittle and not fit for survival as it has no organic store of creative potential from which it could learn.

From the organic point of view, your demand for mechanical determinism is patently "immoral" in being against nature. It is wrong because it is too rigid. And yet also - dialectically - things have to have some structure or rigidity. Thus as usual, the moral debate becomes about the productive balance. Which in turn is going to be historically conditioned - like are we talking about what's best for human organisation living within the ecological constraints of the solar flux, or what's best for human organisation predicated on the combustion of free shit-load of fossil fuel?

Reductionism cannot answer everything, but it's important for things like this, so important that I think it takes precedence over your holism. — darthbarracuda

Sure its a balance. But you want to invert the natural order of that balance. I talk about the dialectics of constraint and freedom. You talk about atomistic construction - and live with its thousand paradoxes, like is the world random or deterministic, competitive or co-operative, subjective or objective, etc, etc.

Reductionism is fine as a tool for the everyday scale of reasoning, where all the holism required to keep it sensible can be provide intuitively as "commonsense". But it just fails when it comes to the big picture level questioning. But hey, if you're not actually interested in metaphysics, just your own state of mind, what the heck?

Morality begins and ends with people and the basic interactions they have with each other and their phenomenological environment. Nothing more — darthbarracuda

Just because it is that way for you personally doesn't mean it ought to be that way for serious metaphysics.

Just because it is that way for you personally doesn't mean it ought to be that way for serious metaphysics. — apokrisis

I would agree with darhbarracuda if the suggestion is that morality and ethics can only be grounded in understandings of human subjectivity; and not in 'objective' (scientific) understandings of human biology, anatomy or physiology.

Some variation on "play nice" ... — unenlightened

Yep. Some balance of competition (play) and co-operation (nice) that is in generally conducive to the persistence of the state of being which is the author of that balance .

Yep, hence why I said looking to the stars for moral answers is wrong-headed.

Reductionism is fine as a tool for the everyday scale of reasoning, where all the holism required to keep it sensible can be provide intuitively as "commonsense". But it just fails when it comes to the big picture level questioning. But hey, if you're not actually interested in metaphysics, just your own state of mind, what the heck? — apokrisis

My stance here is that reductionism inevitably gives us stronger reasons for action than holism, as holism inevitably comes into conflict with individuality, and we inherently value individuality, freedom, and subjective experience more than any holistic framework that sees individuals as mere constituents of a larger organic population. Holism may be true in a descriptive sense but as far as I'm concerned it's irrelevant to any serious moral inquiry, i.e. the universe as a whole is not capable of supporting the imaginative depth of human morality. It's not compassionate enough.

But my own argument doesn't deny the observer. It explictly includes observers along with observables. That is why it is properly holistic.

Where I depart from your (theistic? dualistic? transcendental?) POV is that I naturalise the observer too. The obsever is no longer modelled as "a mind" (with all its theistic, dualistic, transcendental baggage) but as "a Peircean sign relation".

So yes. This is essentially scientific in that you take the particular phenomenon and then generalise the hell out of it. But that's not a problem. Its the nature of explanation. Its the way we go about structuring our phenomenological experience so it honestly becomes a map of the territory. We make peace with Kant and stop pretending that even our perceptions are anything greater than habits of sign.

We don't see the noumenal directly. We only ever form a phenomenal relation with the noumenal. And what we all agree is that this relation is "good" when it has a productive balance for us. If seeing reds and greens is a wonderfully efficient way to carve our world at its joints, then just do that. But also don't confuse the modelling with the modelled. And don't believe there can be the modeller or the phenomenal beyond the holistic ambit of the modelling relation itself. Actual transcendence doesn't make sense.

For me, though, it is not merely a matter of the observer and the observed. The essence of subjective experience is participation, and all the dynamic affective states that go with that. I don't believe that the essence of subjective experience can productively be objectified as a mere "sign relation", any more than I believe it should be understood as being (somehow?) merely material. I don't think such propositions are even adequately intelligible; despite a long history of promissory notes.

My stance here is that reductionism inevitably gives us stronger reasons for action than holism, as holism inevitably comes into conflict with individuality, — darthbarracuda

So when I argue the exact opposite - that only my holism foundationally requires the irreducible freedom or spontaneity that your reductionism is so focused on denying - you simply pretend I said what you would need me to say so as to make what you say sound the more coherent option?

Champion.

Holism may be true in a descriptive sense but as far as I'm concerned it's irrelevant to any serious moral inquiry. — darthbarracuda

Of course. Your arguments collapse as soon as anyone opens the window and lets any air and sunlight in. So why would you want your right to a completely subjective view on any issue central to your self-esteem publicly challenged?

I don't believe that the essence of subjective experience can productively be objectified as a mere "sign relation", any more than I believe it should be understood as being (somehow?) merely material. I don't think such propositions are even adequately intelligible; despite a long history of promissory notes. — John

Everyone has an opinion. Some of us also have the science. From the point of view of Peircean semiosis, that's moving along really nicely.

OK, you seem to be valorizing science over 'mere' philosophy; an attitude which I would count as an expression of scientism. But philosophy, and specifically here, ethics, is not science. If the purported relation between ethics and semiotics cannot be explained adequately in purely philosophical or ethical terms, then I can't see how it could be genuinely relevant to philosophy or ethics.

I've seen you many times assert that the science of semiotics can ground philosophy, but I have never seen a straightforward 'key idea' explanation from you that adequately and convincingly justifies such an assertion.

OK, you seem to be valorizing science over 'mere' philosophy; an attitude which I would count as an expression of scientism. — John

Of course. If you can frame me in this fashion, its a TKO right?

So ignore the fact that I'm not playing the philosophy vs science game. Ignore that I am instead arguing for a natural philosophy metaphysics that you can go read about any time you choose if you pick up a copy of Peirce and check how his ethics was cashed out as the universal growth of concrete reasonableness. Ignore my actual argument and just pretend I believe things I don't. Then TKO!

If the purported relation between ethics and semiotics cannot be explained adequately in purely philosophical or ethical terms, then I can't see how it could be genuinely relevant to philosophy or ethics. — John

Pick any of the many papers on Peircean ethics at random.... http://lnx.journalofpragmatism.eu/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Herdy.pdf

Peirce’s “second mind” about ethics (or better, Pure Ethics) appears to be related to his category of Thirdness. Roughly, the Third category includes everything that is of the nature of a law and involves the ideas of generality and continuity. It requires the human mind as a “subject foreign to mere individual action” where cognition takes place (CP 1.420, 1896).

In the logic of relations, the idea of a law presents itself as a triad, since it involves a third element that mediates between two other elements, a first and a second; and its mode of being, “consists in the Secondness that it determines” (CP 1.536, 1903). Thirdness belongs to a world of necessity; it is “how
an endless future must continue to be” (CP 1.536, 1903). Pure Ethics is related to the category of Thirdness because it is not concerned with individuality, understood as concrete ideals of conduct (morality), but with generality, understood as habits of conduct. Peirce is not interested in action per se, which belongs to the domain of Secondness, as explained in the previous section, but rather in the “governing”, “mediation”, or “self-control” of human action:

[The] pragmaticist does not make the summum bonum to consist in action, but makes it to consist in that process of evolution whereby the existent comes more and more to embody those generals [...]. In its higher stages, evolution takes place more and more largely through self-control, and this gives the pragmaticist a sort of justification for making the rational purport to be general. (CP 5, 433, 1905)

The point here, which Peirce advanced in the 1903 Lowell Lectures and after, is that the ultimate ideal lies in the process of self-control, the development of what he called“concrete reasonableness” (CP 5.3, 1902)22. Peirce can now see beyond the dualisms that characterize positive morality – they are mere fragments of the process of self-control. Continuity is the key notion in his procedural picture of Pure Ethics.

Peirce now sees an element of generality in ideals of conduct because he does not take them to be a fragment of a continuous process, but the continuous process itself; i.e. ideals of conduct are seen as relations of ideals of conduct. When Pure Ethics is procedurally understood in light of Peirce’s idea of continuity, the role of generality becomes clearer.

To sum up, I recall again Peirce’s words:

I have advanced my understanding of these categories much since Cambridge days; and can now put them in a much clearer light and more convincingly. The true nature of pragmatism cannot be understood without them. It does not, as I seem to have thought at first, take Reaction as the be-all, but it takes the end-all as the be-all, and the End is something that gives its sanction to action. It is of the third category. (CP 8.256, 1902;

Hume's work is the only one that offers the critique, though — John

Not at all. He set the template for much of later positivism, and also the emotive theory of ethics (a.k.a. 'boo/hurrah' theory.)

The point is that like much of positivism, Hume essentially says that moral reasoning is vacuous, that declarations of what one ought or ought not to do are specious. He then declares the sources of such reasoning, i.e. books on divinity and metaphysics, ought to be committed to the flames.

"Ought to be...", note. So this goes the way of all positivism - it declares what is taken to be philosophy to be otiose, but itself is also presented as 'philosophy', so is hoist by its own petard.

My old teacher, David Stove, pointed this out. He said it was like the mythical snake the consumes itself, the Uroborous:



'The hardest part', he would say, with a wink, 'is the last bite'.

[The] pragmaticist does not make the summum bonum to consist in action, but makes it to consist in that process of evolution whereby the existent comes more and more to embody those generals [...]. — apokrisis

where 'what is latent becomes patent', right? It is like the process of latent capabilities being actualised, which is the 'growth of reasonableness'? Because that is very much in keeping with the mainstream of Western philosophy, I would have thought.

Because that is very much in keeping with the mainstream of Western philosophy, I would have thought. — Wayfarer

Yeah. The young are clever, but the old are wise. The specific action becomes absorbed into the general habit and loses it contingency in the process.

The difference with Peirce of course is that he saw the Universe or existence itself manifesting as the result of generalised reasoning (of the semiotic/sign relation variety). So reality is intelligible to us because intelligibility is how existence happens to be the case itself. Physical laws are habits of generalisation - the development of concrete constraints on undirected or spontaneous freedoms.

But Hegel and German Idealism and naturphilosophie were hardly a million miles away from that either. The difference there was they were theist or transcendental in then invoking spirit or God's design for the world. Peirce certainly flirted with the transcendental "get out of jail card", but on the whole thought about this as a scientist looking for a bootstrap story of immanent self-design.

My old teacher, David Stove, pointed this out. He said it was like the mythical snake the consumes itself, the Uroborous: — Wayfarer

What would a fractal Uroboros look like? What if while eating its tail, it was spawning smaller urobori, each of which in turn produced urobori still smaller?

There would be an infinity of urobori just as the mother uroborous took its own last bite.

The young are clever, but the old are wise. — apokrisis

The latter also hold the former hostage...

Of course. Your arguments collapse as soon as anyone opens the window and lets any air and sunlight in. So why would you want your right to a completely subjective view on any issue central to your self-esteem publicly challenged? — apokrisis

It doesn't collapse at all. Your holism is unnecessary at best, and gets in the way most of the time. If we already both agree that individualism is important, there's no need to pretend we're getting justification from the cosmos for this. Adding whatever it is your advocating here is just redundant.

Not at all. He set the template for much of later positivism, and also the emotive theory of ethics (a.k.a. 'boo/hurrah' theory.) — Wayfarer

I would have thought it is obvious that I was referring to the time of its writing. :s

So this goes the way of all positivism - it declares what is taken to be philosophy to be otiose, but itself is also presented as 'philosophy', so is hoist by its own petard. — Wayfarer

The critiques of traditional philosophy offered by Hume and by positivism are not necessarily offered as philosophy (whatever 'philosphy' might be taken to mean), at least not of the kind they are critiquing, because their grounding presuppositions make them very different beasts. They are offered, rather, simply as thinking, as critiques. Kant does the same with his critique of traditional metaphysics. In fact Kant may rightly be seen as the heir to Hume, and the grandfather of positivism (apart from the 'practical reason' dimension of his philosophy, of course).

In any case philosophy cannot rightly be seen as some monolithic thing, all of which is subject to the same principles; to do that would be tendentious. I didn't say that I think Hume's critique is correct; I said that regardless of whether it is correct or not; there is no inconsistency in the act of offering it. Hume is merely saying that it is a matter of fact that some works of metaphysics do not contain "any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence", and that they should on that account be thought to be useless. He does present "a reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence" about those very works, and an opinion about their consequent worth. There is no inconsistency in that, however wrong it might be thought to be, as far as I can see.

It doesn't collapse at all. Your holism is unnecessary at best, and gets in the way most of the time. If we already both agree that individualism is important, there's no need to pretend we're getting justification from the cosmos for this. Adding whatever it is your advocating here is just redundant. — darthbarracuda

You keep skipping the part where I say it is about a balance. And so that balance does have a cosmic backdrop if you are a natural philosopher who doesn't want to introduce artificial boundaries around what counts as the individual or personal.

Naturalism is a science of boundary making. It accounts for why constraints are placed hierarchically at the positions they are. As I said, in being able to talk about the maximally general constraints like the laws of thermodynamics, already that is also talking of their natural local limits. We can define the point at which differences that make a difference then become differences that don't make a difference. We literally have the mathematics in statistical mechanics and other information theoretic tools, like notions of mutual information or free energy, to do that.

So what irks you is the suggestion that balance is precisely what always goes missing in your highly subjective approach to metaphysical questions.

So what irks you is the suggestion that balance is precisely what always goes missing in your highly subjective approach to metaphysical questions. — apokrisis

How many times do I have to tell you, I don't consider your type of metaphysics to be sufficient or adequate for ethical discourse. You say things like "balance" but never justify WHY we need to give a damn about the rest of the universe.

We're not doing metaphysics here.

We're not doing metaphysics here — darthbarracuda

Of course not. To deny metaphysics is not to do metaphysics. That sounds totally legit.

[Sound of window being slammed, shutters closed, shade wrenched down.]

OK, thanks for making the effort, but I'm afraid that after reading what you have cited I still have no idea how pragmatism relates to ethics other perhaps than by saying that ethical behavior would be thought to more likely to lead to social harmony than unethical behavior, that the former works better than the latter, in other words. I would have no argument with that, either, but I cannot see how such principles necessarily rely on a scientific theory of semiotics or how the latter could even have any bearing on them, is all.

And, hey, you were the one who said "Some people have the science", so I am not accusing you of anything you have not proclaimed yourself.

Moore restated Hume's guillotine as the naturalistic fallacy. That was actually the main basis of most discussion of ethics in the logical schools of the 20th century.

I would have no argument with that, either, but I cannot see how such principles necessarily rely on a scientific theory of semiotics or how the latter could even have any bearing on them, is all. — John

In Uroboros fashion, semiotics claims to be a theory of scientific reasoning as well as a science of signs generally. So it explains itself. The ontic is the epistemic, and vice versa. How minds understand the world is based on a triadic modelling relation. And how the world becomes organised is via said triadic modelling relation.

So yes, part of the picture is that semiotics is a science. It is the natural culmination of a history of intellectual endeavour which includes all that good stuff like holism, organicism, general systems theory, cybernetics, self-organising complexity and hierarchy theory - the study of how complexity develops in some completely generalised sense.

But then semiotics is also Peirce's account of the scientific reasoning process by which any model or sign relation gets pragmatically created. Peirce's triad is the cycle of abduction, deduction and induction - the process of creative guess, logical consequences, empirical validation.

Peirce of course really struggled to take ethics or aesthetics that seriously because it was obvious that naturalism makes most of what might be said rather redundant. The problematics that motivate traditional ethics are all focused on the ridiculously specific - the hunt for deterministic specifics when it comes to human behaviour.

Should I eat pork, should I not eat pork? Should I be vegetarian or vegan? On and on with the splitting of hairs - the differences that don't make a difference (or only a tiny difference).

It's just the wrong way to think about moral issues. The whole damn point at the end of the day is to create people with a balanced view of their lives who thus can act wisely pretty much out of unthinking habit. You can't argue people into a state of good sense by ticking off some vast list of commandments they must obey. You want creative thinkers who can make personal choices within a clear framework of constraints.

And that for Peirce was Thirdness or a state of continuity where a fruitful balance between constraints and freedoms has been struck. Morality will manifest given these proper conditions. And it will be flexibly adaptive. Morality doesn't have to be discovered. We have to pay attention to fostering the generalised conditions from which a concrete reasonableness is just the way of our world.