Hrmm... not can't. I wouldn't reach for necessity. More just noting that this is not how we normally use the word "fact", at least -- usually we mean word-to-world, where the words are meant to set out how the world is. But we can, of course, adopt other expressions -- just they become subtle or uncertain at some level when so doing. Immediately after what you quote I note how volitions and actions are clearly real, right? And I've also said that this could just be a feature of things now, that we may find some way of dealing with ethics in the same manner that we deal with other bodies of knowledge.

The closest to "can't" might be the argument from queerness, but I have to admit that I think that argument only follows with a greater degree of certainty about how the world is. Or, also, one might contend that "truths", in the above sense as distinct from facts, are queer, and so the argument is overcome.

Well, there's a subtly here that I'm now not certain about -- between truths and facts, to give a name to the distinction, where truths might include more than features of the world or how it is and so can include statements like "One ought such and such", which then can be true, and understanding the difference between them and facts is through its direction-of-fit. But that doesn't disqualify them from being real, per se, because surely our actions and volitions are real? It only disqualifies them from being facts to the extent that we understand facts to only include statements with word-to-world direction of fit.

Whereas before I think I've been treating these as lumped together in thinking through intractable problems in ethics, and wondering, in that ambiguity, if this is more a matter of faith than reason, or at least a kind of faith within the bounds of reason.

We might say that the hermit on the mountain tells the emporer a truth about the world at the end of the story of the Doestevsky'sDostoevsky'sTolstoy's three questions even though it does not rely upon facts. There's a sense in which the story gives credence to the notion through on over-arching providence, but I think that's understandable in the context of a story trying to deal with what seem like reasonable questions that don't have specific, factual answers.

That's a pretty cool map!

Oh. Well, now I see it.
 
Read this morning. It's definitely more soothing than the Dane's :D

It seems right, though.

Hrmm, I'd say we've already covered this point a bit, and the account laid by is sufficient for me to see a difference between claiming those as moral facts, and claiming Biblical moral facts as moral facts. I like the Book of Moral Propositions because I don't want to get sidetracked into discussions about why the Bible is true, given all the possible avenues that can go. Instead it's The Good Book because we defined it as so, in this thought experiment. In it the Book of Moral Propositions has one that you happen to disagree with. Do you change your mind?

But this is different from

...ethical truth does not set out how the world is, but how we are to act in the world. It's centrally about volition and action. SO it's not about how the world is, but what we might do in it.

So of course no fact about the world will demonstrate it's truth.

So we get a T-sentence such as
"one ought not kick puppies for fun" is true IFF one ought not kick puppies for fun
Now there are all sorts of ways to unpack this, or extend it...
"one ought not kick puppies for fun" is true IFF Kicking puppies for fun decreases the total happiness of the world
or
"one ought not kick puppies for fun" is true IFF one can will that puppies never get kicked for fun
or even
"one ought kick puppies for fun" is true IFF kicking puppies for fun increases my personal autonomy

And each of these the direction of fit is reversed by the antecedent. — Banno

Which puts volition and action at the center, rather than the propositions in a book.

I didn't make this connection, though I ought to have before -- but a reread of Fear and Trembling might be due.

Yes, there are nuances and flavours, but I do believe the essence of the reasoning holds. I agree, if you see your offspring as a continuation. I'd argue that is a form of transcendentalism. I think the only form of transcendentalism that would be responsibility-immune would be some kind of crazy-Calvinistic notion that salvation is pre-ordained. If you keep it simple, to the belief in an "ongoing," it is hard to escape the burdens and benefits of accepting full responsibility for the ultimate consequences of your behaviours. — Pantagruel

I can see how the story goes. That makes sense in a way, but let's consider another case of a materialist below.

From a practical perspective, whose ethic is the more trustworthy? Materialists seem to lose interest in the consequences of their actions, inasmuch as they will ultimately not be around to see them. So present measurability governs their imperatives. While Transcendentalists, who think of themselves as ongoing, commit to the idea of themselves as being around to reap the consequences of their actions. All things being equal, would you rather trust the ethic of someone whose actions are premised around the belief that, when you're dead you're gone. Or someone who believes in the idea of an ongoing responsibility for deeds? — Pantagruel

In answering the question directly I'm saying that I don't have a strong preference either way with respect to their metaphysical beliefs.

Some materialists are just naturally inclined towards doing good things because that's what you do -- it's simple. Some transcendentalists, in spite of believing in eternity, are fairly selfishly involved, as human beings tend to be, and the metaphysical beliefs don't matter too much to what they'll do.

So my preference has to do with the sort of person they are, ethically, and not the beliefs they hold about metaphysical reality, and having met too many good people on either side of that spectrum of belief, at least if self-report is to be believed. If transcendentalism gets a person to see the ethical then that's the belief for them, and if materialism gets a person to see the ethical then that's the belief for them, but it's the ethical that matters and is what I would base my preference on.

I realized this morning I kind of hijacked your thread @Bob Ross, so apologies for that. What can I say other than this has been something that's been bugging me and I've been thinking about, and none too clearly given how I'm jumping between points. Thanks for providing the opportunity to work out some thoughts, and forgive my excesses.

I think what you say here gets at the doubts that I'm trying to express in philosophical form:

P2-A*2*1: If one does not know something is true, then they have no reason to belief that something is true. — Bob Ross

It's whether or not we should call this knowledge that makes me doubt. In some sense if we don't have a knowledge of ethics then we are functionally nihilists, even if we believe there are true moral statements, because then what makes the decision is sentiment and attachment to this or that principle rather than a process of deliberation or a cadre of experts who know.

So the astrology analogue doesn't work.

That's a bit of a ramble, but it's after a heavy lunch. — Banno

Oh I've been rambling myself in trying to pick through the thoughts. I appreciate you taking the time to continue your side of the conversation. Perhaps I'll come to some better way of putting things through this talking.

Good points. I suppose the question would be is that if this difference is enough to warrant our belief in a knowledge of the ethical, since this is the doubt. Or, at least, is sometimes the doubt. Because you're right here:

But especially in this area, it's the disagreement that gets the attention. — Banno

I recognize there's agreement. But the depth of disagreement still gives rise to a belief that we're no longer talking about true things, at least sometimes, in spite of agreement. The desire is to avoid a conclusion like this:

Reject ethical truth values and all there is, is violence. — Banno

Because I certainly don't believe that all there is is violence. I want to say that even from an anti-realist perspective that wouldn't follow, else I wouldn't explore anti-realism! But that is certainly a belief we share that we ought to avoid in our reasoning that, at bottom, it's all violence.

I think we can use our words to come to resolutions without resorting to violence, and that this is a desirable thing. The appeal to heart is to note how there's no proof to be had, that is, no war to be fought in the name of a true cause. That is there's this use of moral realism which also yields the conclusion "it's all violence". This way of talking ethically where people want violence because they are in the right strikes me as a backwards ethics, but the language is the same. So we get some odd duck who persuades others

"one ought kick puppies for fun" is true IFF kicking puppies for fun increases my personal autonomy

And you begin to wonder where the truth in it all is when the odd duck is persuasive.
 

Is there really much disagreement on things like, "One should not kill their newborn infant," or, "One should not lie without reason"? — Leontiskos

I think there are times when such propositions come to seem empty or at least people begin to redefine who counts as a person and who doesn't. But since it's our actions, rather than the words, which matter to me this is the sort of thinking that seems to want truth and violence and goodness. Perhaps it's this trifecta that bugs me. I can't square away that we ought to kill and call this a good and say it is true that we ought to kill. I can understand living in a world where violence is necessary, but I cannot then say that this world is a good one because my sentiments are largely peace-loving. And I think it's this intuition which gets along with @Bob Ross's use of the Guillotine -- in some sense I am committed to non-violence, and that's the sentiment what underpins my reasoning here. But not everyone is, and some people even think this is a poor way to go about things because it's not realistic in our world. So which is right, in accord with ethical knowledge?

It seems like something of a judgment call to me that has no truth to it. In a way it's where my ability to reason on the situation breaks.

And I suppose this is why I find statements like ""One ought not kick puppies for fun" is true" as unpersuasive. Sure, but It's the hard questions that give me pause, not the points of agreement. And our love of puppies does nothing to speak to our, what appears to me, thirst for violence.

You seem to want to say, "Well, not enough people agree with me, so it probably isn't true." — Leontiskos

Heh. I think this is to be avoided. My doubt can be put in reverse form, for my purposes, because I'm doubtful of a knowledge, at least at times: I am unable to agree with others and so I wonder on what basis I have to think that this is a knowledge I possess at all? What could change my mind on the matter to conform with others? Perhaps this is also why I see it as faith -- it seems like I'm the odd man out, and yet I cannot change my belief in spite of this.

Now sometimes I have changed my mind. The question of violence is one I tend to go back and forth on, but the at-bottom sentiment is what drives me to think "No, it's pretty much wrong". One thing that moral realism explains is that people do, at times, change from one perspective to another because they think it's true. In fact I'd say this is why, early on, I had realist inclinations because I've changed over time in the same way I've changed my beliefs about facts in the world. It seemed to me that because I had changed my mind on this or that moral position that there must be some truth to the matter. But I notice many prefer to stay where they are -- so it does really seem to come to seem less like a knowledge than I had previously thought. I'm still open to looking at various articulations, but most of the time I see people setting up camps rather than exploring the various ways of thinking through the ethical.

Or, at least, the desire is to find a way to express ethics in a way that it's not just "Well, not enough people agree with me, so it probably isn't true" -- because that seems to be where we're at on some issues.

But I must admit that these desires and doubts are not arguments. The argument for me, more than the Guillotine (because I think sentiment is perfectly compatible with rationality, and there could be interesting ways of working sentiment into logical form) is from difference, in the form "If morals were real then we would agree to such and such a standard. We do not agree to that standard, therefore morals are not real" -- but I can see it needs delimiting from the way this expresses, and some of my doubt is based in an inability to articulate a standard. It's too broad and gives the impression that I'm arguing that morals are necessarily not real, where the actual doubt is: here are some issues where reasoning seems to stop working, and so I have some doubts about whether truth is part of our discussion here or whether this is a body of knowledge or whether it's an art, and how to go about thinking here.

We can write from the point of view of those who see the rabbit, or those who see the duck. That's being "situated" because we are able to contrast the two . But we can also from the view of those who see the duck-rabbit. With what is this to be contrasted?

Or if you prefer, being "situated" is always post-hoc. — Banno

Yes, I think that's the idea: that there's no real way to get around the post hoc choice of a situation to write a history from so the best one can do is specify it. You pick duck, you pick rabbit, or you pick duck-rabbit and organize the documents to tell your story accordingly. There's a pluralism here: they're all good for something, and a fuller understanding of history arises by including all of the perspectives. They're still bound by the documents and such to demonstrate their case, too: it can't just be making shit up.

Again, we cannot reason about ethics unless we acknowledge that ethical statements have truth values. — Banno

Right. We agree this far. The fear, let's say, is that they are all of them false.

We are repeating an argument that occurred after the war in Oxford and Cambridge, notably between Ayer and his intellectual children, and the "four women", Anscombe, Foot, Midgley and Murdoch. In the wake of the war, many philosophers could not accept the view that morals were no more than expressions of disquiet or preference. There was a renewed insistence on treating ethical themes rationally. This was part of the rejection of Positivism.

It's not so much a matter of faith as of grammar. — Banno

M'kay. Then all I can claim is it feels like faith because I'm uncertain, then.

But also I don't think I'd reduce ethics to expressions of disquiet or preference. Philosophy and rationality go hand in hand, and I think ethical philosophy a good thing to pursue, so I'm certainly not opposed to insisting on treating ethical themes rationally. I hold the same for the arts -- we can reason about the arts, but there even in our knowledge of these things we have to acknowledge it's not all truth and inference and deduction. But then I'm not sure what the role of truth is in evaluating art. I know it's important because this is how we think about things, but also there is something to be said for the performance or the heart in such matters too, and to note how artists have different movements which disagree with one another and we don't really think of Cubism, say, as true.

Ethics is the philosophy of the art of living, perhaps, though it covers more than that too in its course because we are concerned about many things as we deliberate on that question of how best to live or the right thing to do.

there are statements that we think of as true or as false, that say how folk ought behave; and we make use of these statements in deductions. — Banno

This is why astrology is a persuasive example to me. The astrologists think of the statements as true or false, and make use of the statements in deductions: it's at least possible for us to talk this way and believe it and it be false.

Now I believe astrology to have reasons for why it's false, and I think it differs from ethics so this is just to make the case against using arguments as a demonstration of truth.

It's just the sniggling suspicion that if there were real ethical principles then we'd probably agree a little more on some of the intractable problems. But that could just be a problem with us at the moment rather than something that will always be, so I don't argue to the point that there must not be moral facts or some such. Rather it's just that it seems like an art at this point.

So this might be the better way of putting things -- the anti-realist position sets doubts which a realist position may attempt to overcome, but I haven't been able to figure out how it is that you do that while accomplishing the goal of making a body of ethical knowledge (not producing it, just in a big-picture, philosophy kind of way). Rather it seems we have many different ways of life, many different possibilities which work for some and don't work for others. We can list a few things we agree upon but this agreement does not overcome the disagreement elsewhere. The direction of fit is important for the purposes of persuading people. Usually, by "fact", we mean world-to-word, rather than word-to-world. So how is it that the ought statements can be persuasive as they are in other disciplines which we count as knowledge?

I wouldn't want to foreclose the possibility of moral realism. I'm not so sure it's necessarily wrong. But I think it worthwhile to either accept that it's a matter of faith -- a faith which we can then reason about, and even seem to benefit some from doing that -- or be able to articulate how it isn't a matter of faith.

I think the important part you highlight is that we ought to take stewardship for future generations. I can imagine a Transcendentalist who doesn't care about the future because we reap our benefits in heaven, and a materialist who does because they realize that those are their family members and they are committed to family.

But the important part is whether or not they believe they are responsible for the future or not. The metaphysics is just a dressing to that.

Why pay this any heed, when it is clear that there are moral facts, and that we can and do use them to make inferences? Mackie's argument from queerness just confuses being objective and direction of fit. We all agree that one ought not kick puppies for fun, and so objectivity is irrelevant.
...we're not just asserting our convictions...
— Moliere
But isn't "asserting our convictions" what we do in physics as well as morality? We engineer planes from what we believe to be true. Why shouldn't we do the same thing in Ethics? — Banno

The argument from difference gets me more than the argument from queerness. It strikes me that there would be more agreement if ethics were real. (not scientific, here, or even empirical or anything of that sort -- I've been trying to be careful in laying out the case).

I don't think it's as much of a "shouldn't" as a suspicion that it's not going to work the same way. The direction of fit is what marks the difference between physics and ethics while still using facts in our reasoning. But how would you demonstrate to someone that "One ought not kick puppies for fun" is different from "One ought to take the sacrament"? Direction of fit takes care of ought-statements. Which of all the moral propositions are the ones which should be considered?

Suppose there was a book of all the moral propositions which disagrees with our commitment. I don't think any of us would change our minds on how we should treat puppies just because we have the book of moral propositions. In fact I'd say we already have such a book in our culture and we call it The Bible yet we clearly don't interact with that book in the same way. So given that how is it that we make ethics work as a discipline based in fact, or at least makes us able to make cases and demonstrate their truths?

It's in the weeds that my doubts grow. Error theory is just a challenge to the notion that because we make demonstrations we can conclude that there are facts to the matter since there are other such ways of talking which do the same but which we wouldn't say are really factual. We're able to fool ourselves into thinking we're speaking about real things. How is it that we know ethical talk isn't just an important game of astrology?

And this is important because it could be why it is we disagree so deeply on ethical matters: if it's not factual then we're not going to be able to prove to someone else that they are wrong. And here I just mean demonstrable in a way other than merely agreeing that something is true. This turns ethics into a kind of race for ears or as a kind of game where we can prove our point; but I'd suggest that reading all the viewpoints is what makes one more capable of judging ethically. It's not truth and agreement as much as being willing to listen to another's viewpoint and finding what works that marks the path to a working ethic -- but in so doing that, and seeing how much disagreement there is, I feel doubt that there are truths as much as we're emotionally connected to some propositions. It's a matter of heart, so it seems to me.

But what's more this actually makes room for philosophy. It's because we cannot form a discipline where we have experts which generate knowledge of the ethical that the practice of philosophy remains relevant. We care about ethics, and reason about it, and even more so I think we like to be able to reason about it. Why else would there be so many tracts on right living if it weren't a concern of ours? But philosophy is that discipline which allows us to reflect upon the complicated things in life, and train our judgment.

I know it's counter-intuitive, but in a lot of ways anti-realism actually seems better for ethical talk than realism. The path of realism just has people trying to prove to one another that they are the better ones, and they were right all along, and its this impulse which anti-realism is good at taking the wind out of.

What part of this did Nietzsche not understand? Was J. L. Mackie unfamiliar with the linguistic practices of his community? — J

:D

It's kind of funny to me because my interpretation of N is in conflict with Mackie. But they are also a bit disparate, in terms of time and place, so it's more notional. I'd say that N is the uber-anti-nihilist rather than a nihilist. The way I read him is as a heroic attempt to overcome nihilism in light of the death of God.

Moliere, I echo Banno's appreciation for your careful reading. — J

Thanks back :) It's always nice to feel appreciated.

About “phlogiston” and meaning change: Really? This is a rather eccentric use of “meaning,” isn’t it? I’ll grant you that phlogiston now has vastly different connotations and employments than it originally did, but has the meaning actually changed? Or perhaps I’m not understanding you deeply enough. — J

Perhaps my repeating the mantra "meaning is use" is obscuring my judgment. However, yes, really. I wouldn't have any idea how to tabulate how much phlogiston, and yet many practicing chemists in the past would have started with that tabulation. It's very easy to imagine that it was the same as we do it now but since we aren't there (or would it be better to say "since we aren't then"?) we don't know that simply, meaning we have to make inferences. Further we don't really use the same instruments that they used at that time, which to me is the most important part in thinking about meaning in science (I'm more on the experimental side than the theoretical side).

So while I accept it sounds weird I think the meaning of phlogiston has sufficiently changed to count as a kind of big change at least in terms of switching concepts. I'm still on the fence about radical, though.

I feel I should note that for me the loss doesn't need to be a net-loss for it to count -- it's not like we change concepts for no reason at all. The important part there is that there is a loss of knowledge in changing concepts. Some loss is common in revolutions that aren't scientific -- why wouldn't the same hold with the social organizations of scientists?

Why would different assignments of “either-true-or-false”, rather than different assignments of “true” and “false”, make any difference to the question of scheme-content dualism? — J

In thinking about sentences which are false, but in the form of the proposition, I always like to go to the example of astrology. If this is a bad example for you then I can find another one.

The difference is in the way I interpret people who speak about astrology -- I would say astrology is a language which people use to talk about their or other people's identities/feelings/histories/etc. and look for a reason why they are the way they are. Which is to say that while it uses the words of planets and positions it doesn't mean that. So if we are to interpret these speakers with respect to the usual meaning we'd be forced -- if we are improperly performing a rational, literal analysis -- to say "These sentences are false. When you speak them I'd use these other sentences", to which we'd surely receive frustration because while I don't believe in astrology, the astrologist-speaking person usually does. But what's important isn't the literal meanings -- it's the talk about who they are and such that's important.

I think that the WMT-person would be inclined to interpret the CMT-person in the same manner that I interpret astrology, and that is what makes communication at least difficult -- but here Davidson would note that since I've stated the case in words we aren't in principle incommensurable. In fact he'd use my example above in a similar manner that he uses the ketch example, I think. But note how this argument can be rendered in the transcendental form: the only possible way for us to disagree is if we agree. We disagree, and therefore we agree (at bottom) :D

But then I have to admit that there is a solid difference between meaningful disagreement, which does seem to need agreement to at least continue, and silence or absurdity. So Davidson still has a point to me, and I feel, in reading all this, that I'm even more uncertain than when I started in spite of spilling so many words.

One missed in your opening is Erich Fromm's notion of love as an art: Rather than an emotion Fromm thinks the various forms of love are actions we perform, and just as we can become better piano players so we can also become better lovers -- in all capacities of loving.

I wanted to ask: why is this question given such low priority? The arts are filled with references to love. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Naturally I'd say it's because of individualism :D -- it's considered a topic for an individual to "figure out", and it's generally thought to be understood so people don't believe there's a need to think about love. Rather than thinking about love many prefer to simply feel it and that's enough to count as an understanding.

Which, to be fair, sentiment is important in loving. Or at least emotion if not sentiment if we want to emphasize the active components of love.

But I do like that Fromm puts forward a notion of love as a practice that can be improved upon or diminished -- it makes a lot of sense of people who have no capacity for love, and how some people have a deep capacity for love. Rather than a character trait it's just something you learn how to do (or don't learn).

Perhaps another way of looking at it --

Sentences are not the bearers of moral worth. Actions are. Whether the sentence is true or false isn't important -- what we do is what's important, and actions are not truth-apt because they are not propositions.

If error theory is correct then moral language is a kind of important fiction. And I note faith because I'm wondering if it's similar to the important fiction, for some, of the belief in God. Isn't moral worth a common point for people who believe in God? Then in what way is our moral deliberations different?

It's important to me that they are different if we want to claim that they are real, because I'm an atheist. I simply cannot believe there is a God in the world I live in.

So I'm happy to entertain the notion of a non-scientific moral realism. But then I want to know what that theory is such that we're not just asserting our convictions.

I mean it sounds nice to me, but I don't think it makes sense to pursue it anxiously because that's counter-productive to the goal -- at least for me I have to accept who I am and live with that, and who I am is not that. I have my various anxieties and strange attachments and wanting to be content does not change this. But I still want to be happy and content with life. Why wouldn't I?

The problem, as you note, is that this can be harder to do than it seems.

But at the least I think that striving for contentment is counter-productive. Indeed, contentment strikes me as a lack of striving at all!

 

Many of us seem to be persecuted by the idea that we should be more serious, more transcendent, more ethical. I'm somewhat simplistic - I think we should just get on with living and try not to be a cunt. — Tom Storm

:D

It may be true that "phlogiston" doesn't have the same meaning now that it used to". If so, it is worth drawing attention to our realising that this is the case. We've moved beyond the incommensurability of the duck- people versus the rabbit-people to the "transcendental" realisation of the duck-rabbit.

This capacity for "transcendence" (I don't like that word...) permits one to take on an historicist approach. So either one is parochial in taking on the mantle of one conceptual scheme in order to asses other; or one takes a position outside of the various conceptual schemes in order to assess them - an impossibility; or one agrees with Davidson in rejecting the notion of conceptual schema.

If we adopt the historicist perspective, then we must look at the situation at the time Davidson was writing. Davidson's philosophically pretentious theory of meaning was necessary in order to break through the wall built by Feyerabend and Kuhn by providing a formal backbone to his argument.

Further, if we take an historicist approach we must deal with the differing situations not just of Kuhn and Davidson, but of Davidson and Wang. Wang will not be addressing the same paper that Davidson wrote. — Banno

Yes! And no! :D

Let's see... the historicist approach, as I understand the method, has no need for transcendence as much as situatedness. A historian is aware that they are coming from a perspective so much so that their are multiple theories of history and you choose one to write within. So rather than a transcendent view from outside of history the historian writes from where they are, at least in modern historiography. This is why multiple histories of the same event are important for understanding an event -- there are many points of view which must be elaborated upon in order to get a full sense of that event.

But, yes! I agree that in adopting the historicist perspective we must look at the situation at the time Davidson wrote, and I agree that Wang is not responding to the exact same paper which Davidson wrote -- the question I have is, why was it necessary to break through the wall of Feyerabend and Kuhn?

Nor does the idea have any credibility. "One ought not kick puppies for fun" is true; the remainder of your post shows that you agree that it is true. You sensibly wish ethics to work in a way quite different to science, but throw out the babe.

Indeed, adopting the proposal that ethical statements are not truth-apt is a way not of highlighting ethics but of reducing it so it may be thrown out of consideration. If ethical propositions are not truth apt, they cannot take a place in logic, and hence are outside of rational consideration.

So, please, reconsider. — Banno

Would that I could! These are genuine doubts on my part, though. I'd say that it's error theory which demonstrates how ethical propositions can be truth-apt, but false. So they can take on logical forms but they cannot form sound inferences. My thought is that if this were not so there'd be a way we could demonstrate moral truths -- but instead it seems to me that we're stuck with simply asserting them. This reminds me of declarations of faith in Christ more than it reminds me of logical inference.

But I'm not willing to let go of the importance of ethics -- in fact I think it's central. So a lot of my thinking in this area has been to attempt to understand how it is ethics is important, how it's still part of a rational inquiry, and yet does not rely upon truth -- or at least, if it does, attempting to understand the manner in which it does.

Further I think that by relying upon moral facts, in particular -- maybe truths is better -- we run the risk of scientism. Another part of my motivation is my doubt that a science of ethics is possible, and I think that talking of moral facts gives more credence to the idea of a science of ethics than it should.

I love that paper. It's so incredibly good.

But also note how in talking against incommensurability Rovelli does not shy from "conceptual structure" -- that's still a working metaphor in trying to describe knowledge. So he's not exactly a friend to Davidson either.

It's been a minute since I've read that Davidson paper, and I'm finding myself more able to respond this time around. So I'm going to post first my response to Davidson, then go through Wang as a way of participating.

Feyerabend is quoted by Davidson:

Our argument against meaning invariance is simple and clear. It proceeds from the fact that usually some of the principles involved in the determinations of the meanings of older theories or points of view are inconsistent with the new . . . theories. It points out that it is natural to resolve this contradiction by eliminating the troublesome . . . older principles, and to replace them
by principles, or theorems, of a new ... theory. And it concludes by showing that such a procedure will also lead to the elimination of the old meanings.

I'd say there is such a thing as Kuhnian loss through meaning change as the scientific practices change -- "phlogiston" doesn't have the same meaning now that it used to because we don't use it as a serious scientific concept, but rather we use it as an example of how science undergoes changes and abandons concepts. We don't need to go along with Davidson's rendition of conceptual schemes as intertranslatable languages, and treating language meaning as something an individual can "check" strikes me as the wrong way since language is a collective practice. But I can't help but note that this "wrong way" is a common way of thinking so there's still something good about the paper's argument -- it forces a person to make sense of conceptual relativism while making the distinction explicit (be it scheme-content, or something else).

I find historicism adequate to the task of understanding concepts -- it's the historical method, as applied to texts, which allows us to differentiate between concepts, at least (I'm less certain about "schemes", though -- I'd rather talk about the structure of an argument or a philosophy than a conceptual scheme). And rather than Saturnian and English I'd just note that even German and English have problems of intertranslatability, and that this is commonly known among translators as a kind of irresolvable problem. Against the extensional emphasis I put forward poetry translation as a case where we are able to differentiate meanings such that we can partially translate one language into another language, even if we don't know how it is we do this. But then if we have an example of partial translation (and so the case against partial meaning translation can be set aside as being factually wrong), and a method by which we can differentiate concepts, then the question of how it is we're able to make the claim for conceptual-relativism is made explicit and doesn't rely upon an implicit scheme-content dualism: Just as we can learn English and German and translate meanings between languages so we can learn concepts which differ, and it is through that knowledge, rather than a criterion or a duality, that we are able to judge the meanings of sentences. Then it's just a matter of being acquainted with more concepts -- having more knowledge -- which would allow one to make a judgment -- one that could be false! -- that scientists are at least using different concepts (if not inhabiting different worlds -- being-in-the-world, perhaps, but even that doesn't follow by necessity).

And if we can do that then it seems that Davidson's objections are addressed, albeit not with the conceptual tools he chose to set it out with. We abandon scheme-content, and make the heady and exotic doctrine explicit. The question for me would be whether this still counts as a conceptual relativism, or not? In addressing Davidson's concerns do I, by that addressing, make conceptual schemes and relativism to conceptual schemes moot, or at least reducible to the predicate "...is true"?

The problem I feel is that while I doubt schemes, I don't doubt it on the basis of a criteria for translation due to even mundane examples of translation being known to not be able to fully translate meaning. In a way I'm accusing Davidson of having a philosophically pretentious theory of meaning in relation to how we actually use these words.

But I also doubt our ability to tabulate schemes very effectively such that we can make the relations between the elements of a scheme explicit. It seems to me that each time we try to render such a scheme it comes out slightly different -- or, at least, the meanings of sentences we use in describing such a scheme changes with each iteration, and so the task of articulating a scheme becomes incompletable, or at least artificial as we decide to hold some meanings constant in order to specify relations between them. At which point I begin to wonder-- why even call it a scheme if we are unable to articulate a structure without fiat? Why not just "a set of concepts", rather than a scheme, with the attendant difficulty of specifying what "concepts" means?

***

But now onto Wang's paper, which I've never read until now. So it's fresh, and therefore more of a first reaction to the paper (but I didn't want to post before having read the paper, so here it is)

I'm pleased to find Wang's statement:

A radical conceptual relativist can respond to Davidson on two fronts: either to defend the translatability criterion or to separate conceptual relativism from the Quinean relativism as Davidson construes it by removing the translatability criterion out of the equation. The first route is a well-worn path that I will not belabor here. The second route, for me, is more effective and will be discussed in detail in section 3.

Mostly out of vanity as it gets along with how I've managed to think through relativism in light of Davidson, and we seem to agree that separating conceptual relativism from Quinean relativism is an effective strategy for making the case.

I found this paragraph to be similar to my strategy above talking about English and German:

However, neither natural languages per se nor scientific languages construed as sentential languages can be identical with conceptual schemes. A natural language per se such as English or Chinese is in no sense a conceptual scheme. Does any conceptual relativist really seriously think that all Chinese would inherit a unique conceptual scheme different from the scheme that all English speakers are supposed to possess simply because they speak different natural languages? A natural language is not a theory. A natural language like Chinese or English does not schematize experience, nor even metonymically predicts, fits, or faces reality. Although part of a natural language, i.e. its grammar, does in some sense determine the logical space of possibilities (Whorf, 1956), it is the theoretical assertions made in the language that predict and describe reality and in so doing assert that which logical spaces are occupied in the world. Furthermore, a natural language is not even a totality of beliefs. It is absurd to assume that people who speak the same natural language would have the same belief system.

And this line of argument to get along with my notion of historicism being adequate to the task of differentiating concepts:

My major reservation with the Quinean notion of conceptual schemes is not just about many theoretical difficulties it faces, but rather with its basic assumption QT; for it does not square with observations of many celebrated conceptual confrontations between opposing conceptual schemes revealed in the history of natural sciences and cultural studies, especially those under the name of incommensurability. Examples include: Ptolemaic astronomy versus Copernican astronomy; Newtonian mechanics versus Einsteinian relativistic mechanics; Lavoisier's oxygen theory versus Priestley's phlogiston theory of combustion; Galenic medical theory versus Pasteurian medical theory; and so on. These familiar conceptual confrontations are, to me, not confrontations between two conceptual schemes with different distributions of truth-values over their assertions, but rather confrontations between two scientific languages with different distributions of truth-value status13 over their sentences due to incompatible metaphysical presuppositions. The advocate of an alien conceptual scheme not only does not hold the same notion of truth as ours, but also does not agree with us on the truth-value status of the sentences in question. These scheme innovations, in the end, turn not on differences in truth-values (different truth-schemes), but on whether or not the sentences in the alternative conceptual scheme have truth-values (different truth-value schemes).

I'd say that these arguments highlighted here are well and good enough in that they highlight an underlying assumption which a relativist does not need to accept, which in turn gives room for the defender of conceptual schemes to come up with a different way to speak about conceptual relativism -- but Wang goes on to articulate a competitor all the same to give some credence to the idea that there are other ways of talking about conceptual schemes.

I found this potent:

. On the contrary, it is exactly due to the abandonment of the concept-neutral content and the denial of a fixed and absolute scheme-content distinction that turns Kantian conceptual absolutism upside down and thus makes conceptual relativism possible.

A good bit of philosophy is accepting the conclusions of another philosopher, but then working out a different or opposite set of implications for that conclusion. His use of a thick/thin-experience distinction is good in that it gives a believable basis for thinking through concepts as relative: it's our thick experience of the world, the very one Davidson seems to care about in his closing remarks, that gives rise to the belief we are "in different worlds" due to the beliefs or concepts which shape our thick experience.

And I found this insightful:

Although Davidson realizes correctly that scheme-content dualism could well survive after the fall of the analytic-synthetic distinction, he is wrong to allege, ‘giving up the analytic-synthetic distinction has not proven a help in making sense of conceptual relativism’ (1974, p. 189). On the contrary, it is exactly due to the denial of a fixed, absolute analytic-synthetic distinction that makes alternative conceptual schemes possible. Quine's rejection of the analytic-synthetic distinction (Quine, 1951) leads to abandoning the rigid distinction between concept, meaning, or language on the one hand and belief, thought, or theory on the other. It is no longer a novel idea today that all concepts themselves are empirical and none a priori; concepts we deploy upon experience are themselves the products of empirical inquires. In other words, concepts are theory-laden, fact committal, and change with theories. Accordingly, conceptual schemes change and evolve with corresponding theories. Thus, the Kantian absolute conceptual scheme gives away to relative, alternative conceptual schemes.

In that he's making way for a post-Kantian conceptual relativism that makes sense in light of Quine. That's a great way of rendering the very idea at least coherent.

... I find this bit at the end relying upon evolutionary theory odd:

We can safely assume, based on Darwinian evolution theory, that there are some basic experiential concepts shared by human cultures and societies.16 In this sense, they are global or universal.

Because I don't think we can safely assume that, nor should we assume it, and even more so I don't think we need this assumption to make the case for a fuzzy distinction between scheme-content. And, even more, it would seem we'd have less reason to believe in conceptual relativism if we had some basic experiential concepts which are shared! If, in articulating a relativism we end up saying there's something the same between us it almost sounds like we're conceding the point to Davidson, that we do share concepts, and its this basis of shared concepts which makes it possible for us to articulate difference? Perhaps the difference here is one of degree, though -- which shouldn't be downplayed because sometimes the degree can at least be intense, and perhaps intense enough to want to use the word "radical" -- but it's at least similar to the notion that we have some kind of agreement from which we can articulate disagreement, putting the conceptual relativist in a shakey position if we want to express ourselves in terms of criteria.

The section in Wang on WMT vs CMT is by far the weakest in the paper. We could exercise charity ourselves here and agree to ignore it! — J

I'm not so sure, here. One of the things that's nice is that it's an actual example. And differences or changes in meaning are frequently the way this thought works out, and here what's nice is that Wang points out that the difference of meaning isn't one of distributing "...is true" across sentences, but rather is a different kind of difference. Whether we ought to call this a radical or incommensurable difference I'm still on the fence about -- but I can at least recognize that the kind of meaning Wang is talking about isn't the same as Davidson's project of translation through truth. It's whether a sentence counts as truth-functional at all to a practice that marks the difference, rather than a distribution of truth-values.

Well, how is akrasia overcome? I would be surprised if the depraved Epicurean becomes upright without a significant expenditure of effort and will. For example, just because his master tells him to do something, it does not follow that that something will be easy to do. — Leontiskos

The cure!

The way I understand it -- if the Epicurean master had a brain surgery he could perform on people that would be effective that'd be acceptable. In a way this is, for the Epicurean, a question for medical science. It's not just telling people what to do, but more or less manipulating them for their own good. It's not just a spiritual practice, it's a cure that must be performed on the human soul for their benefit.

This is what I'd say is the most uncomfortable aspect of the philosophy from my perspective -- but we do practice like this in some circumstances in our society, we just limit it to whether a person can be rightly judged to have agency. The way I'd hodge-podge these two concepts would be to say from the perspective of the Epicurean doctor you don't have agency until you've been cured because people resist the cure. It's just not their will which is being taken into consideration, but rather their happiness. (at least, in accord with the Epicurean notion of happiness)

Okay, that makes sense. I think I associate Epicureanism with asceticism because Epicureans give up a great many things that most people take for granted. It is a minimalism, albeit not practiced for the sake of a religious end. — Leontiskos

That's true!

That one ought not kick puppies for fun is a moral statement.
It is a true statement that one ought not kick puppies for fun.
Facts are true statements.

Therefore there are moral facts. — Banno

If it is a true statement its truth does not share a sense with other uses of "truth". "One ought not kick puppies for fun" is false, in sense of the natural world. It fits the form of a proposition, but it doesn't rely upon any feature of the natural world for its truth. Rather we are using the word "true" in the place of the moral words "good" or "bad", which have no natural instantiations.

Now this would get along with the notion of non-natural moral facts. A more minimal anti-realist position is simply to note that there are no such facts.

For my part, though, I'd just say the significance of animal cruelty far outweighs whether there even is a fact to the matter. Animal cruelty is bad is enough for me; it need not be true. And stated like that could it even be true? ""Animal cruelty is bad" is true" -- what does that mean other than to simply assert the first sentence? Then aren't we actually talking in terms of goodness and badness, and not in terms of truth? So what is truth doing here anyways? Making our commitments Real, and thereby more important?

This is the line of questioning that begins me thinking towards anti-realism on ethics. It seems to me that the heart of the matter isn't the same as the way the sciences work, and so it worth noting that there is a distinction to be made between moral truths -- if we wish to speak that way -- and truths of the natural world. I have a deep doubt of any claim to a science of ethics.

Perhaps "fact" is the wrong word then. Maybe a better word would be "truth", Where there is a best or correct moral ideal, that may not have a burden of proof as high as "fact". Because while "fact" and "truth" may have different levels of burden of proof, they come to the same conclusion, being that there is a correct moral theory. — Lexa

Maybe there is. Changing whether we call it a fact or a truth, though, doesn't change my doubt.

I would say that the reason why there is so much disparity is because we don't have a language like mathematics to describe these situations. Mathematics is a language where its components always mean the same thing. 2 will always mean 2 no matter what mathematician you talk too, but you talk to two philosophers in your own department they may define things vastly different. So if we could create a language with concrete definitions we could perhaps come up with these truths. Obviously that begs the question of "what should be the concrete definitions be?" and "how do we find them?", but I feel that those questions also have truths to be found. — Lexa

So you would say that no one disagrees, but rather they misunderstand one another. Is that about right?

To be honest at the moment I do not have a concrete argument as to why we should believe in moral facts, which is why I am only arguing that the arguments for moral nihilism doesn't necessarily rule them out. So, the only argument I can posit for is that we should continue to try and uncover them. That argument being that since the arguments for moral nihilism don't necessarily mean that moral facts can't be real. — Lexa

Cool.

While I don't rule out moral facts by necessity, I remain uncertain of them in fact. I acknowledge that I may be wrong -- my belief is itself true or false, or so I contend -- but I don't believe there is a moral fact in this sense that I'm uncertain what such a fact would be or mean.

I don't believe in astrology lol, But I would differentiate claims like astrology and something factual by saying that things like astrology don't have any repeatable theories. A factual moral theory would have repeatable outcomes. For example, you would be able to know what is moral and immoral, and how to navigate moral situations. Astrology cannot make repeatable theories. For example, everyone who is a libra will not be extroverted, or possibly most of them will not be extroverted. Therefore, things like astrology cannot be facts. — Lexa

Also cool. We at least agree that astrology is not factual.

And we agree that mathematics is factual.

That means there is a question to be asked -- how do we make this judgment, and when? Sometimes we can speak factually, and sometimes we can speak in the same way that looks like it's factual but, as we agree, astrology doesn't quite hit the mark.

I find the argument from difference persuasive enough to need some kind of response. If morality is real why is the disagreement so disparate in relation to, say, mathematics? What are the conditions under which we should accept a moral proposition as a real one, and a moral proposition as a not-real one, given the disparity of disagreement?

What are the moral situations that a that we'd be able to navigate?

These seem like non-trivial, in the sense that they are also ethical, questions. But I don't know of any way to solve them by way of a math.

And if they're all false that would at least explain why people disagree.

So why does moral nihilism exclude moral facts? — Lexa

I want to focus on your second argument which you address first. (and if you're interested reading more...)

While I would agree that morality was created by humans and has no other concrete basis, I wouldn't say that morality has no facts. I wouldn't say that morality has the same type of facts that the natural world has, meaning that if intelligent life didn't exist, neither would morality. However, abstract human constructions often do have facts. For example, mathematics is a human construction with inherent facts. The infinite number of primes is an abstract fact of mathematics that has no basis outside of the intelligent mind. You could say that the way we describe a mathematical system is the reason that it can contain facts, meaning that since math as a language leaves little room for subjective interpretation of its findings means that it is an objective practice. However, I would say that is a fundamental problem with how we talk about morality rather than a stark difference between mathematics and morality. — Lexa

I grant the analogy between mathematics and morality. But notice how your argument simply means that moral facts are possible on the basis that we already believe in non-concrete facts, namely mathematical ones, so we can't rule them out just because they are not concrete. What it doesn't do is assert why we ought to believe in moral facts, though. The argument from difference gets along well here because it gives us a reason to believe that there are no moral facts. So I'll pivot to your first argument you address second:

Furthermore the argument that different cultures have different conceptions of morality doesn't mean that moral facts don't exist either. Just because a different conception exists doesn't mean that there is no facts about a certain subject. People disagree about every subject under the sun, even those that have a concrete basis under them. To say that just because there is different conceptions of an issue means that the issue is subjective would be to say that any metaphysical claim means nothing and the entire practice of reasoning about metaphysical claims would be utterly useless. — Lexa

I agree with your arguments here. But notice how these are reasons to accommodate difference while granting moral realism, and not reasons to believe that there are moral facts. These are addressing the arguments for moral anti-realism, rather than giving reasons for moral realism.

I swear it's related, even though it sounds like it's out of nowhere: do you believe that astrology is factual? Astrology is a body of sentences that people believe and utilize to understand the world around them, there are different conceptions of astrology and people disagree over what it means. Using your argument above this wouldn't be a reason to believe that astrology isn't factual, just that there are people who disagree on the factual basis -- but surely that's not right because astrology is not factual.

So the question then becomes: how to differentiate talk which is factual from talk which is not factual?

What the anti-realist asserts is that moral talk is more like astrology and less like math.

I still can't tell. Desire as described in Anti-Oedipus is one of the theories of desire that I have in mind, though. That intersection between Marx and Freud is perfect for the question of the relationship between desire and justice.

I think that it'd be possible to accept desire as productive and still articulate a difference, though I'm not sure how it'd work out. Like I already admitted I find myself going back to thinking about desire whenever I try to articulate a relationship between desire and justice, so in practice I'm basically in the same boat at the moment.

Well, that's kind of the question :D

If values are distinct from -- not identical to -- desire then it would still be possible to articulate a relationship between desire and at least injustice under the presumption that injustice is the way we talk about competing values within our partisan bubble. So for example if desire is a lack, and injustice is an articulation of competing values, then I think I'd say that the two are distinct such that a relationship could be articulated since at least the articulation of competing values is not obviously desire-as-lack.

But if desire just is the basis of competing values then the question of desire would "settle" the question of justice, which is as I understand the Epicurean account to be committed to.

In an attempt to classify the example within Epicurean desire you've driven me to the Vatican Sayings, which I haven't really braved before.

If sight, association, and intercourse are removed, the passion of love is ended. — Vatican Sayings 18

Let's presume she associates with the building, and that this is our maxim of love. Then the passion of love has not ended. The question would then turn to: how do you classify the passion of love? Is love a natural or groundless desire, and if it is natural is it necessary or unnecessary?

That the passion of love can include association seems to allow for a concept of love that would be natural, and so insofar that her passion is one of love then a case could be made that, though we find this a strange desire, it isn't a bad desire.

Now could the case be made that love is a good desire? That'd probably be where I'd mark a difference between Christianity and Epicureanism. I think the above quote is meant to point out that love consists of material relationships. So love is a good desire (insofar that it does not become groundless), but love is also "sight, association, and intercourse" -- which, given Paul, love is clearly at least not intercourse.

I always thought that injustice was just the way we talk about competing values from within our own partisan bubble. — Joshs

If so -- does this way of talking reduce to desire, or are the competing values from within our partisan bubble distinct from desire?

It seems to me that the deeper idea here is not that ethical homogeneity produces harmony, but rather that injustice is a consequence of unhappiness, and that if people were happy then the problem of injustice would solve itself. This is not such an uncommon idea, nor is it so implausible. Epicureanism always faintly reminds me of Indian religion, and I sometimes hear this idea from that subcontinent. — Leontiskos

That's a good rendition -- better than I've provided.

I feel doubt at the proposition that injustice would solve itself. Or maybe I just feel doubt in the Epicurean cure as a cure, rather than as a philosophy. As you say:

Mostly, I'm not sure if anyone—ancient or modern—really understands how to make people virtuous. It seems to always be a haphazard and uncertain endeavor. — Leontiskos

That makes sense to me. It does represent an important facet of desire, but I'm not sure it captures the whole picture. This is more or less why I said above that Aristotle would accept and incorporate Epicurean premises into his thought as a subset, but Epicurus would probably reject many of the Aristotelian add-ons. — Leontiskos

I think this would depend upon how we'd read the history, honestly. Which facts are we going to emphasize in telling the story of ancient philosophy? In thinking through desire I have reasons to want to find differences -- I'm not really settled on a theory of desire so the differences stand out as important to me as a basis for judgement.

I mean, this is why I emphasize that there's more than one way to read these texts -- my rendition of Epicurus and my rendition of Aristotle definitely disagree :D . Though that does make sense of some things like that they had different schools, rather than Epicurus attending the Lyceum. I had to look up dates on the Lyceum because I wasn't sure, so I thank you for the prodding. Another thing I completely missed is that Cicero's On the Ends features a peripatetic as distinct from both Epicureanism and Stoicism!

So there are some reasons aside from my emphasis to at least think they must be different in some ways.

Well, for Aristotle the incontinent man is "weak-willed" and the continent man could be considered "strong-willed," but the goal is to be temperate, and the temperate man is well-ordered, not strong-willed. A strong will is only necessary to overcome a disordered soul and disordered passions. — Leontiskos

Cool. So a point of agreement would be that the temperate man does not need a strong will.

But a strong will is not necessary to overcome a disordered soul in the Epicurean philosophy.

I think there are two distinctions at play, here. The first distinguishes between a focus on earthly life and a focus on the eschaton. The second distinguishes between a conception of human nature and a conception of fallen human nature. I think the second distinction is going to be a bit harsher for Epicureanism, although the first is also significant. — Leontiskos

That fits.

It strikes me that Epicureanism coincides to a large extent with the ascetic traditions of Christianity, particularly the tradition of the desert fathers and the monasticism that grew up out of that. In those traditions exists a Platonism that is agreeable to Epicureanism, whereas the later more Aristotelian strand of Christianity is in many ways more urban and cosmopolitan, and less agreeable to Epicureanism. The irony here is that Epicurean asceticism in certain ways coincides with the more extreme forms of Christian practice, despite lacking some of the motivations.

In part this is probably due to my emphasizing the concepts and how they fit together from the perspective of Epicurus himself; almost always the way ethical concepts fit together and the practices they inspire are not the same. I know there are more cosmopolitan Epicureans who lived after: Diogenes of Oenoanda was rich enough to have land and build an inscription which details the Epicurean philosophy because, so it claims, it lays the path to salvation. So the concepts would lead one to practice a certain way -- a way in which Epicurus did -- but later practitioners found benefit in the philosophy in spite of not following the ascetic way of life that the ideas clearly outline too. My thought on this is that there was a distinction between The Doctors -- like what Epicurus was -- and the people who learn and live the Epicurean philosophy, in a similar way that many religious communities have at least two social layers with different social rules depending upon how much influence you wield within the social organism.

EDIT: Although I should say -- yes! There are definitely resonances between this and other philosophies which aim at being a way of life, or in some sense are religious.

This is how Epicurus relates pleasure to justice:

"we cannot live pleasantly without living wisely, honorably, and justly; nor live wisely, honorably, and justly without living pleasantly" -- Letter to Menoeceus"

So pleasure requires justice and justice requires pleasure, but there are other factors at play as well, such as wise and honorable living. I myself am not really convinced that perverted desire is the cause of injustice, although it is surely one cause of injustice. For example, scarce resources can lead to injustice even apart from perverted desires. Have you thought any more about this question of justice? — Leontiskos

I've thought about it, but my thoughts aren't any deeper than what's been presented so far. The best interpretation of Epicurean justice I can muster is that it comes about because people are living happy and tranquil lives -- but that's a lot like an eschatology to my mind which amounts to the thought: if everyone just followed the same ethical creed then everyone would live in harmony and then justice would prevail! But it seems like a weak theory of justice to me because it sort of begs the question in its own way -- it's not exactly a surprising conclusion that if everyone agreed to what is ethical and lived ethically then they'd agree and continue to live a just life. That's pretty unsatisfactory.

Then there's the fact that while I think Epicurean desire is an interesting theory of desire I'm uncommitted to it as a universal theory of desire -- basically I'd say I'm still stuck on the structure of desire and describing desire, and anytime I try to think the relationship between desire and justice I find myself thinking about desire again.

But the second question is whether this really tracks Epicurus. Specifically, you seem to be positing that, for Epicurus, desire which is natural but unnecessary is only disreputable because it is more difficult to satisfy, and that if one were able to satisfy it reliably then there would not be anything problematic about it. If this is right, then it seems to throw a wrench into the Epicurean system, implying that some of the core claims are based on accidental factors. It would be something like, "Live simply, unless you have the means to live luxuriously." — Leontiskos

On whether it really does or not I'm happy to concede there are multiple ways to emphasize the text, especially with regards to Epicureanism. And truth be told in rethinking the example I'm finding myself going back on what I said before, but I think it's a better working of the example of the depraved soul:

The Epicurean would hold that it is better to have an ataraxic rather than depraved soul because the depraved soul, while able to satisfy perverted desires, they are still in an anxiety loop of a kind -- it's an exciting life where they are able to continually pursue and fulfill excitement rather than a tranquil life where one knows that their desires will be satisfied tomorrow.

I think the uncertainty of the world we inhabit also gives justification to pursue the ataraxic soul over the depraved soul with the means to satisfy them: only the ataraxic soul can say and mean "What is good in life is easy to obtain", where the depraved soul must strive to continue to satisfy their many desires. As you noted above about scarcity: if we lived in a world of infinite resources then perhaps the ataraxic soul would best be seen as a kind of quaint attachment to an ascetic existence, but given the vagaries of a world composed of nothing but atoms and void moving in accord to the swerve it makes sense to want the kind of soul which is happy with anything.

I found it sort of interesting that you would say this, as it rings of the idea that the akolastos is better than the akratēs (in <Aristotle's terms>). In some ways this is the crucial difference between ancient and modern ethics, and it might be called the question of the normativity of individual action. The modern idea is that the akolastos and the sophon are equally undivided, and therefore equally good.* I think Nietzsche plays a role in this modern conception. A basic counterargument here is that if the akolastos is to become a sophron then he must pass through the stage of akrasia, and therefore the akratēs is better than the akolastos. The analogy to Epicurus from Aristotle doesn't work perfectly, but it works to a point. — Leontiskos

I'd think that for the working Epicurean administering the cure they'd say that the incontinent man is on a path to the cure, but is still not tranquil and so needing the cure. But this brings out another point of contrast here between Aristotle and Epicurus: it's not willpower which brings about the continent man, but a master who prunes your desires such that you desire to and are able to live tranquilly.

The Greeks used the term phusis ('nature') to distinguish it from what is by convention or law or custom (nomos). When applied to ethics, what is by nature is universal, true for all human beings by virtue of human nature.

In Judaism, however, no appeal was made to nature but to God. Rather than a nature man has "ways". Some ways are straight, others crooked. Some God approves, others he does not. Some men are on the path, others stray.

Christianity inherits both opposing views. On the one hand God's Law, and on the other, through Paul, man is born in sin and powerlessness against it. Augustine goes further with the belief in original sin. What is most natural becomes the source of sin. — Fooloso4

That's how we get to a conceptual place where sex can be viewed as sinful, wrong, to be cast away. As Paul said:

Now for the matters you wrote about: “It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.” 2 But since sexual immorality is occurring, each man should have sexual relations with his own wife, and each woman with her own husband. 3 The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. 4 The wife does not have authority over her own body but yields it to her husband. In the same way, the husband does not have authority over his own body but yields it to his wife. 5 Do not deprive each other except perhaps by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. 6 I say this as a concession, not as a command. 7 I wish that all of you were as I am. But each of you has your own gift from God; one has this gift, another has that.

8 Now to the unmarried[a] and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I do.

Marriage is put towards the end of warding off sin so that you aren't tempted, but celibacy is given clear spiritual priority as the better path.

I hadn't thought of going that route, but actually this could prove quite fruitful. You reminded me of a paper I read forever ago -- Michael Levin's Why Homosexuality is Abnormal.

One of the reasons I think the appeal to nature within Epicurus or within Aristotle is at least interesting, rather than question begging is I think that the rest of the philosophy gives the concept boundaries to judgment -- there's the normative element, and the norm fits within a whole philosophy. With that come boundaries for proper judgment so you can at least get a feel for it as a concept rather than it just being an assertion or a negation of a particular belief, such as Levin's paper claiming that homosexuality is abnormal and leads to unhappiness.

What I'm thinking now is homosexuality would be a good case to explore a fallacious use of the appeal to nature, and now coming back to Levin's paper: it is full of the fallacious. His argument begins:

To bring into relief the point of the idea that homosexuality involves a misuse of bodily parts,
I will begin with an uncontroversial case of misuse, a case in which the clarity of our intuitions
is not obscured by the conviction that they are untrustworthy. Mr Jones pulls all his
teeth and strings them around his neck because he thinks his teeth look nice as a necklace. He
takes pureed liquids supplemented by intravenous solutions for nourishment. It is surely natural
to say that Jones is misusing his teeth, that he is not using them for what they are for, that
indeed the way he is using them is incompatible with what they are for. Pedants might argue that
Jones's teeth are no longer part of him and hence that he is not misusing any bodily parts.

To them I offer Mr Smith, who likes to play "Old MacDonald" on his teeth. So devoted is
he to this amusement, in fact, that he never uses his teeth for chewing - like Jones, he takes
nourishment intravenously. Now, not only do we find it perfectly plain that Smith and Jones
are misusing their teeth, we predict a dim future for them on purely physiological grounds; we
expect the muscles of Jones's jaw that are used for - that are for - chewing to lose their tone,
and we expect this to affect Jones's gums. Those parts of Jones's digestive tract that are for processing
solids will also suffer from disuse. The net result will be deteriorating health and perhaps
a shortened life. Nor is this all. Human beings enjoy chewing. Not only has natural
selection selected in muscles for chewing and favored creatures with such muscles, it has
selected in a tendency to find the use of those muscles reinforcing. Creatures who do not
enjoy using such parts of their bodies as deteriorate with disuse will tend to be selected out.

Jones, product of natural selection that he is, descended from creatures who at least tended to
enjoy the use of such parts. Competitors who didn't simply had fewer descendants. So we
expect Jones sooner or later to experience vague yearnings to chew something, just as we
find people who take no exercise to experience a general listlessness. Even waiving for now my
apparent reification of the evolutionary process, let me emphasize how little anyone is tempted
to say "each to his own" about Jones or to regard Jones's disposition of his teeth as simply
a deviation from a statistical norm.
****

The application of this general picture to homosexuality
should be obvious. There can be no reasonable doubt that one of the functions of the
penis is to introduce semen into the vagina. It does this, and it has been selected in because it
does this .... Nature has consequently made this use of the penis rewarding. It is clear enough
that any proto-human males who found unrewarding the insertion of penis into vagina have
left no descendants. In particular, proto-human males who enjoyed inserting their penises into
each other's anuses have left no descendants. This is why homosexuality is abnormal, and
why its abnormality counts prudentially against it. Homosexuality is likely to cause unhappiness
because it leaves unfulfilled an innate and innately rewarding desire. — Levin

Fulfilling sexuality has nothing to do with the "natural use" of a penis; people don't get horny or feel sexual satisfaction due to the proper-functioning of their bodies, just as they don't get hungry or full because their teeth have a theoretical proper-function. If what Levin says is true then people wouldn't masturbate their penis (or, at least, it would make them unhappy to do so), and the desire for oral sex would similarly lead one to an unhappy and unfulfilled life. This view on sexuality is so out of date that the Kinsey reports, published some 30 years prior to Levin's paper, refute it, which is why he's forced to generate imaginative counter-examples to demonstrate what he means by proper function.

But sexual research isn't his claimed theory -- he tries to draw conclusions from the theory of natural selection. They are not warranted, and the obvious point you've already pointed out @Fooloso4: animals besides humans engage in homosexual behavior, and so we ought to recognize that natural selection simply doesn't select for homo/hetero-sexual behavior in the manner described -- whatever the relationship between sexuality (however defined) and natural selection it is not one where it's excluded by natural selection -- at least if we look at the facts of animal behavior.

But we can go further than noting facts. His notion that natural selection would select for sexual behavior and desire, even if it were tied to genes, wouldn't lead to the conclusions he draws. Homosexuality could be a recessive trait, in the same way red hair is, and so even if -- though it is false -- sexuality were inherited due to natural selection, we already have the theoretical knowledge of traits being passed down which allows for deviations of expression -- if you have four kids, one of them genetically homosexual, then the other three who are heterosexual will still carry the homosexual genes. This knowledge predates even Darwin.

Given how incredibly false this paper is I'd suggest there's another reason for it. I think the real point of the paper is revealed in its suggestions:

I regard these matters as prolegomena to such policy issues as the rights of homosexuals, the
rights of those desiring not to associate with homosexuals, and legislation concerning homosexuality,
issues which I shall not discuss systematically here. — Levin

In particular "the rights of those desiring not to associate with homosexuals" -- the point of the paper is to give credence to the idea that persons who wish to use their freedom of association to not include homosexuals, and claim this is a rational position to hold. The claim to nature has, for its own end, the legal form as its sight, or at the very least the social power of exclusion for those judged abnormal and probably unhappy.

The paper was published in April of 1984. Given all the obviously erroneous inferences -- from sources which predate the publication -- my guess is Levin is responding to the AIDS crisis. I'm tempted to call this a perversion of philosophy because it's using the tools of philosophy to fashion a justification to exclude gay people in the midst of a health crisis that actually effects everyone, but was erroneously associated with -- and even desired for, among those who thought homosexuality its own perversion -- gay people.

But then there's another side to philosophy which isn't the demonstration of knowledge, but the demonstration of ignorance -- as I'm using the paper here.

****

Further steps on this path would be to follow up with the philosophy of John Corvino, and to go over -- one by one -- the various fallacious inferences people make about homosexuality in an effort to find some general pattern in the thinking rather than pointing out the obvious bigotry. But I thought this enough to at least put a post up. Thanks for the suggestion.

Would it be right to call Epicurus a psychologist? — Leontiskos

I think so. Though there's more to the philosophy as well, he certainly has a psychology. In some ways he's obviously a psychologist as we'd think of the term, but then in others he's less so because he's more of a religious leader than just a working professional, and he has an entire world of thought outside of the psychology that, at the same time, gets along with the psychology. So he's something of a mixture between a psychologist, a religious leader, a scientist, and a philosopher. The psychology fits within an entire worldview, though yes the practice of Epicurean philosophy relies upon a psychology.

I would be interested to know if Epicurus was responding to particular philosophers or schools or ideas. That seems like a fruitful avenue for investigation. — Leontiskos

Textually the easier school to contrast them to is the Stoics, because Cicero's On the Ends is that topic in dialogue form, albeit far after when these were first written. It contains the sorts of back-and-forth you'd expect to see between competing schools of thought.

Still, I can't help but see how much the Epicurean theory of the soul contrasts with the Aristotelian one. And he was very much a person of "the next generation" but still was alive at the time of Aristotle (just looking up dates on the 'net, the garden founded in 306, some odd 16 years after Aristotle's death), and one of the most common ways philosophers engage with one another is to disagree and disprove prior philosophers. Furthermore Aristotle was critical of Democritus' atomic theory, and Epicurus goes on to develop that theory further so we have another point within his philosophy that marks a definite contrast.

But I admit that while these are plausible reasons for the reading I'd have to go to a library and begin digging through literature to dis/confirm the thought, or find the contours of history where that's a better or worse way to read with respect to the history -- still, I hope the ideas serve as enough of a contrast here.

I’ve always struggled to understand the appeal for mind altering substances. Whenever I tried it, it just felt like a dream where I wasn’t fully in control of my thoughts, and I never liked it. Why do humans want to escape their mind and avoid reality? How is it an advantage?
Even when reality triggers negative feelings, it’s more efficient to be sober and think about a solution rather than choosing denial by getting drunk, so why do 99% of humans long for that state at least once in their life? Why haven’t we evolved out of this? — Skalidris

One thing about evolution is that it doesn't care about some sort of idealized end-goal -- insofar that the species manages to reproduce well enough that the next generation also reproduces well enough that the next iteration will do the same then the demands of evolution are met. And we see that alcohol consumption is very common among each generation so we shouldn't expect evolution to have an effect on this behavior.

Alcohol consumption is common throughout social organisms, so I'd suggest you've got it the wrong way about -- the interesting thing is that these rituals are actually quite common, and so you've got to ask "What is this doing for the social organism?" -- or is it doing anything at all, or is it just a free-rider that happens to come along because it's not a detriment?

One thing drinking rituals do is help stabilize social organisms in light of hierarchies that demand we act in certain ways that will become exhausting, or at least this is a function of these rituals in our culture. We work hard all day and find it hard to stop working hard when the job is finished, so a drink helps one to stop working hard for a moment. What you find unattractive, losing control of ones' thoughts, is the actual attraction.

Also, the practical reality of regulating alcohol makes it a messy business for social hierarchies to police even if it wants to -- all you need is sugar and water, and what's in the air will take care of the rest if you want to ferment some alcohol. So there's the other side where there are people who will easily make a profit off of the desire for alcohol even if you make it illegal and try to sanitize humanity towards sobriety given how easy it is to produce at home.

I voted for '1' as the closest fit. I'm not too sure about the "epiphenomenal" part, though. I think all causes are physical and I think consciousness both evolved and is causal (or at least the neuronal processes associated with consciousness are). — Janus

At least to my understanding, and forgive me if I'm overexplaining:

The difference here would be that the neuronal processes associated with consciousness are causal, but the actual feeliness of the world is not. That's epiphenomenalism: experience is a real, but an after-affect of the causal network. Else, the feeliness is in some sense causal upon the neuronal processes -- so that what we feel will effect neurons in some capacity that's functionally measurable. So if an experience of a movie then has effects upon the neuronal activity at some later point, rather than the movie encoding itself into the neurons in some "deep"* way and then that pattern re-emerging due to this deeper pattern and thus we have a memory of a movie (but the causal pattern is at the level of neurons rather than experience), then we'd infer epiphenomenalism is not the case with respect to this particular experience-event. But if our experiences are in some way only coming from the neuronal events, and that feeliness never effects neurons, then we'd be epiphenomenalists.

(I should say the reason I think the question unanswerable at this time -- we simply don't know enough about consciousness to even start making headway on its relationship to natural selection. It could very well be a conceptual mistake, which is my favored approach to the problem of consciousness, or even a phenotypic accident that's in no way related to natural selection)

*deep meaning, something other than what we presently measure

Heh. I voted for that as the closest option, but more because of annoying meta-beliefs. I have a perspective on the world, I experience the world, maybe we could call this first-person experience -- but relating the problem of consciousness to the theory of evolution is such a large question that I'd rather judge "no relationship exists" than take on the other four on option. I'd have voted "I don't know", if that option existed.

Suppose I define a desire as "identification with a personal judgement of an imagined future", I think this suggests that a perverse desire is one that is either incompatible with the desires of others, or that is incompatible with reality(they amount to the same thing, because others are always part of reality). The former case demands a meta judgement of 'our' desires that is the province of ethics, and that means that perversity can be personal or social.

If I want of you, that which is incompatible with your desires, then a social judgement can be made as to which of our desires is perverse. But the case of global warming is the paradigm of collective social desires incompatible with reality:— to have an energy rich and wasteful economy, and a stable and productive environment. The personal equivalent would be things like wanting to be a concert pianist, but not wanting to practice for several hours every day, or wanting to give up an addiction but not wanting to go through any withdrawal process.

The perversity of pornography is the perversity of advertising, that it deliberately sets out to stimulate desires that it cannot fulfil. The sexual desires of the innocent adolescent (as was), are incoherent urges towards an unclear and unimaginable intimacy. Porn provides cartoon images of a fabricated unreal intimacy that is never mutual, because it is only an image; but the unreal image attaches to the primitive urge and thus develops a perverse desire that can never be fulfilled in reality, but becomes an unsatisfying addiction. Fast food and beauty products work in a similar way. This is the building up of desire, as unreachable because unrealistic images. Compare this with the job of the architect, planner, or engineer which is to make images of realisable ideas, that might be desired. — unenlightened

No objections here. The stimulation of desires that cannot be satisfied such that you keep coming back for more -- a deeper, more intense, more exciting whatever that leaves you wanting an even deeper, even more intense, even more exciting whatever is a great way to make money off of the innocent. You're giving a good list of examples and I believe I can get along with your definition of desire and its perversion.

I can say two places where I think controversy will arise though: "Identification-with", in a description, and the judgment of compatibility with reality, which actually gets at something similar to the appeal to nature (since appeals to our own nature are themselves appeals to what we are in reality). But even so I think this makes sense -- I'm not seeing any obvious contradictions here between this and what I've said so far.

Okay, I definitely agree that it gets more complicated when claims about human nature meet the moral sphere. Maybe I haven't been properly contextualizing the "nature" idea within the context of your thread on perversions. But I do think we have both agreed that perversions presuppose natures, and Epicurus is very much situated within that ancient nature-paradigm. — Leontiskos

We've agreed that perversion in general presupposes nature -- or at least that I can't think of another way of talking about perversion in general. And, yes, I still include the appeal to nature because that's what Epicurus does, and it's from this ancient nature-paradigm. But I wanted to explain why I prefer to avoid explanations from a things nature (not that it's forbidden, only preferable to avoid to the extent possible)

Fair enough. But to be precise, I don't think there is anything strange or controversial about the idea that a shark has a nature (a determinate form). — Leontiskos

I'd say that this is precisely what is controversial about interpreting Darwin in philosphical terms: creatures don't have an innate, fixed nature that makes them what they are, and in fact they are always morphing and changing and responding to the environment they find themselves within. The reduction of life to mechanism rather than teleology is a very strange and controversial, but rariefied, thought in the background for me.

Still, I'd say that it's a different sort of controversy from:

The controversy only arises when it comes to human nature and moral claims. I don't think we should throw out the idea that sharks have a determinate form because of that controversy.

So while I've gone some way to explain why hesitancy with respect to the justification by appeal to a things nature, I think we agree that these are two different controversies -- one deals with how to describe sharks and the other deals with how we should judge ourselves and others.

I think that's a good description of the problem. :up: — Leontiskos

Cool. :)

Right, there is a disagreement about human nature occurring here. Granted, Aristotle does not think that flourishing is impossible for a slave, but rather that they flourish in a different and inferior way. For Epicurus the goal of life is (more or less) equally accessible to all. In our modern day we would prefer Epicurus to Aristotle on the basis of egalitarianism, yet Epicurus' own account is presumably not based on a desire for egalitarianism. Presumably egalitarianism is just a happy accident of the theory which he sees to be true on independent grounds. — Leontiskos

Oh, certainly -- I don't want to contend that egalitarianism is the goal of Epicurus' philosophy at all (for one, note how his allowance of masters already offends our egalitarian notions that we're all special in our own way). Here my comparison is to ideas, and so there's historical work I'd need to do to further up this point, but at least with respect to the ideas: notice how the art of philosophy is not for the slave in Aristotle. It's for the master who will take care of the slave so that the slavish souls flourish within the social order. But for Epicurus even the philosopher is only a doctor, rather than at the height of the social ladder influencing the leaders of tomorrow such that society is good. Epicurus takes on the slavish souls and turns them into master souls, thereby directly countering Aristotle's theory that there are slavish souls by nature.

So, yes, Epicurus is more attractive to me due to various aesthetic attachments on my part. But in saying that Epicurus is responding to Aristotle I hope that there is something more substantive to that assertion than the mere things I find pretty. It's in the ideas that I mean (though there'd be more historical work that needs to be done if I were to make a factual demonstration between the person's Aristotle and Epicurus, or the institutions that competed for students)

You keep saying interesting incomprehensible things: Explain yourself! — unenlightened

Sorry about that. There's a thought I want to put down and it's raw enough that I'm not aware of all the holes in my thinking, or where I'm making an assumption or where I'm simply wrong. I appreciate your goading. And in truth I was wrong to use "...the usual way", because upon thinking through I'm not so certain that there's anything usual -- but the short summary of what I have in mind is the underlying assumption that we know what we're talking about when it comes to what is good.

As a meta-theory [anti-realism] forces the ethicist to evaluate ethics on something other than the usual.
— Moliere

What is the usual, and what is the other? I can guess on behalf of the realist that their usual basis for judging an ethical theory is whether or not it is true, absolutely or approximately.

When we know what we're talking about and we disagree we explain our beliefs and use cases to demonstrate why we believe what we believe is true. So in that manner I wish to use a case to demonstrate that we don't know what we're talking about when it comes to what is good.

Kant's moral theory and the axe murderer is a good case for what I mean: we have the Categorical Imperative, but we demonstrate that the CI is false because it forces one to tell the truth to the axe murderer. In response others have tried to modify the theory to a point that Kant had to come out and say you tell the truth to the axe murderer. So here's two interpretations of the exact same moral philosophy that derived from Kant's CI which allowed for lying in some circumstances and Kant's interpretation of the CI which doesn't. In this light people will say the act of lying/truth-telling to an axe murderer is the counter-example which demonstrates that one or the other theory is true or false and so you choose a normative theory on this basis, or they'll agree with Kant. (also worth noting that the form of the argument is the same when debating deontology vs. consequentialism, or other comparisons of normative theories on the basis of their truth)

The argument seems to consist in whether or not a moral theory can tell what action is the right one for all possible circumstances, much like we treat hypothetical scientific statements. For it to get off the ground we presume that we already know what is true with respect to the good; it's the theory which we judge to be true or false based on whether it accords with some examples which we judge by that basis of knowledge, which is whatever our intuitions are on what's right and wrong. The normative theory is supposed to make what is implicitly already known to everyone explicitly stated in philosophical terms. Then the process is one of generating examples that provide plausible reductios of the explicit to what is already known to be wrong. (side note: and note how easy this example could be dismissed by pointing out that Benjamin Constant was simply wrong, and Kant was right, so here we have an example of mundane human frailty to understand the moral Truth) 

For the anti-realist I think we have to find any other thing which is valuable about a system of ethical thought, but most importantly, an anti-realist will want to know what all normative theories would have one do in spite of them telling one to do different things. But the reason for this knowledge is not to demonstrate how one's version of right and wrong is true and the other's is false for this or that reason: having deontic inclinations doesn't mean reading Hume like some kind of scout from an enemy camp looking for points of entry because there's no hill, Truth, to die upon. Rather than there being a truth which justifies the explicit, the explicit is valued for itself as revealing a way people make these decisions in spite of the lack of a truth. What is it that Kant's CI values, other than truth? Individual choice, for one -- but also individual choice, writ large. How is it that a society is supposed to arise out of a large group of individuals who are each following their own maxims? Only if the individual maxims are harmonizable over the whole social sphere could that be possible, and so it is the foundation of his ethic -- individuals may choose between harmonizable maxims, and over time they'll come to choose the same harmonizable maxims (without the aid of his philosophy -- he's pretty explicit that he believes that the common man already knows what's good, and this is just a philosopher's toy). And that is the Kingdom of Ends, at least as I understand the theory. But for purposes of my demonstration I want to say I view these as attractive features of his moral philosophy, but not really true. Similarly the consequentialist has attractive features, such as its appeal to the sentiments and its caring about what our ethical beliefs result in. But on the whole I find it difficult to explain how the seemingly brightest minds of a society disagree on something so basic unless there was no truth to be found in the first place; then it makes perfect sense why such brilliant people would disagree on the matter. And given their habit to frame things in terms of truth the appeal to moral truth is understandable as just another habit of philosophers who like to frame things like this.

And if that's the case then it seems quite reasonable to believe that we know nothing when it comes to ethical matters. Does that mean we ought to throw out these claims to truth, then? Well, no and we do not know -- that'd be an ought, right? So maybe we should, maybe we shouldn't -- but either way, we are at least acting from ignorance, and "the usual way" seems to assume that we're not.