- Which is where Banno almost always ends up within a thread. :up:

Scientific theories can only be falsified insofar as their predictions fail to account for observed facts. — Janus

We are talking about falsifiability, not falsification. Scientific theories can be falsifiable even if they are not falsified.

I'm saying the claim that some races are inferior certainly seems to be unsupportable on the grounds that no one has been able to show any cogent evidence for it, and it seems impossible to imagine what cogent evidence would even look like. — Janus

Again, in that case it sounds like both you and your interlocutor are making unfalsifiable claims.

Again, "No one has been able to show evidence for it," is not a real argument. It is a kind of burden of proof claim. You and your interlocutor can keep telling each other that for all eternity. It goes nowhere. It is not a rational justification in any substantial sense. A good rule of thumb is to note that if your interlocutor can justly mirror back to you your "argument," then it isn't a substantial argument. See also:

(Note too that one could choose to question the racist's claim without asserting the contradictory claim. They would do this by saying, "What you say lacks coherence," or, "I don't know what you mean by tout court." If one wanted to take a "burden of proof" stance, that would be the way to do it, but I think that approach will fail. In short, it fails because the anti-racist is more committed to the tout court claim than the racist is. For example, a strong Darwinian could be a racist without a care in the world about any tout court claims.) — Leontiskos

In other words, if you really wanted to limit yourself to burden of proof jockeying then you would need to give up your claim, "No race is, tout court, inferior to another" (paraphrased). You would need to stop asserting it, believing it, thinking it, defending it, etc. But I think the most honest way forward is to simply admit that you/we do believe that claim, and then to ask whether we have any rational justification for the belief (and burden of proof jockeying does not really count as rational justification).

To see how weak the burden of proof claim is, one can simply place it in a syllogism and recognize the logical invalidity: <No one has been able to show me evidence for X; therefore X is false>. The only time that first premise has any bite is when the person is sincerely and even desperately seeking evidence for X, which is the exact opposite of what tends to happen. E.g. "I was raised Mormon. I really wanted it to be true. But I couldn't find any good evidence for it, and this threw me into depression."

Yes. Minor quibble: "inadmissible" shouldn't be taken to mean "unmentionable" or "intellectually disreputable." The point is that they can't play a deliberative role, other than as a statement of what the person believes. — J

How does this add anything to the conversation whatsoever? Did you think Wayfarer was using "inadmissible" in some other way? That's what the word means, after all. And clearly if something cannot play a deliberative role, then it is unmentionable and intellectually disreputable within deliberative contexts, which is precisely what we are talking about.

- Right, and if Simpson is right then Rawls himself admits that he has no non-subjective basis for the intuitions that ground his theory. The reasoning is very circular.

Scientific theories are falsifiable only insofar as their predictions fail to account for observed facts. — Janus

I don't think this is right at all. I think the word "falsified" would make your claim true. It is not only inaccurate theories that are falsifiable. The very best scientific theories are also supposed to be falsifiable.

My claim is that racists cannot come up with definitive empirical proof that supports their case, and that their case is not logically self-evident. — Janus

That's just a burden of proof claim, as I mentioned <here>. And again, if one is banking on the burden of proof, then they cannot make the claim that you have made about no races being inferior. said that it is irrational to "give air to assertions which are not rationally justifiable."

That claim is falsifiable — Janus

It is only falsifiable in the sense that the , "If someone falsified it then it would be falsified," shows something to be falsifiable. But this is a vacuous sense of falsifiability, as I explained. The racist could say the exact same thing to you, "My claim is that Janus cannot come up with definitive empirical proof that supports their case, and that their case is not logically self-evident."

This is good progress, though. First, note that no one else even tried to rationally defend their opposition to things like racism. Everyone else said that is has nothing to do with rationality. So I think your attempt is more than anyone else has done. But you've run up against a wall. You aren't giving legitimate reasons for why your claim is falsifiable, or rationally justified. I think that's normal, namely that we forget how to rationally justify our societal taboos. It is much harder to remember how to justify something that has come to be taken for granted, than something which is an object of discourse.

My suggestion would be to think about a vegetarian who confronts you, "No species is, tout court, inferior to another." Do you have to stop eating meat? Is their claim falsifiable? Does "tout court" have a discernible meaning in that context? If we cannot enslave those of a certain race, can we enslave those of a certain species?

(Of course it is possible that this suggestion will only confuse you - haha. Still, if natural reason can make these sorts of judgments about species, then at least some "tout court inferior" claims are not nonsensical or unfalsifiable. Note too that racism only came to an end with substantive answers to the falsifiability question. Racism would never have come to an end if we just claimed that the racist had the burden of proof (because the burden of proof is culture- and time-relative).)

So how do bedrock disputes about the ontology of values get settled, if not by rational argument? Well, as I was saying before . . . this calls for metanoia, not dialectics. — J

It is worth noting that this is your whole project: Pyrrhonian skepticism in the service of non-rational "metanoia" towards some end. You are saying, I think, "No moral position is any more rational than any other moral position, so let's all stop arguing and just work on ...metanoia." Supposing we stopped with the dialectics, how would we go about the metanoia?

(The curiosity here is that if you go tell a Greek speaker that metanoia has nothing to do with rational argument and dialogue, they would look at you like you're from Mars. I suspect you are anachronistically infusing Protestant fideism into a Greek term.)

These look like thoughtful posts. I am aware of many exceedingly able-minded theists who are capable of defending the traditional doctrine of Hell, but don't spend a lot of time on it because of its negative nature. It would be like if someone claimed that murder never happens, and then in order to refute them you had to engage in the dark business of investigating and presenting cases of murder. C. S. Lewis actually said that writing The Screwtape Letters was very taxing for this same reason.

With that in mind, I am going to postpone a response until at least Easter Monday.

- That's an excellent argument, possessing power to convince even those who would tend to follow Singer. I've never heard that one before. :up:

Of course, a simple claim about the form or other characteristics of an object, in your example, the Earth, can be falsified by an irrefutable observation. Scientific theories are a different kettle of fish. There are those who claim that just as scientific theories can never be definitively confirmed as true, they can never be definitively confirmed as false. — Janus

So your response is to say that scientific theories don't need to be falsifiable? That doesn't seem like a promising route.

It is true that my claim that such is the case is also not falsifiable — Janus

If you are making an unfalsifiable claim, then I would say that is a problem. On your view such a claim would seem to be "metaphysics."

If the racist mirrors your claim then this is what they would say:

• Janus: "No race is, tout court, inferior to another."
• Racist: "Some race is, tout court, inferior to another."

Is the racist's claim falsifiable? Here is what a historical U.S. racist might have argued:

1. Black people are not intellectually capable
2. Those who are not intellectually capable are, tout court, inferior to those who are intellectually capable
3. Therefore, Some race is, tout court, inferior to another

Now even if this is invalid it still looks to be falsifiable. Specifically, (1) could be falsified by producing evidence of black people who are intellectually capable (and this is precisely how opponents answered and eventually persuaded many of these racists or their progeny).

But the invalidity issue is the crux, and it is what makes your claim unfalsifiable.* The invalidity issue arises from the ambiguity of the qualification "tout court." If you don't know what it means for some race to be tout court inferior to another, then the reason the claim is unfalsifiable is because it lacks a real sense or meaning. In order to claim that such an assertion is falsifiable one must explain what it would mean for one race to be tout court inferior to another, and how we could ever come to know such a thing.

(Note too that one could choose to question the racist's claim without asserting the contradictory claim. They would do this by saying, "What you say lacks coherence," or, "I don't know what you mean by tout court." If one wanted to take a "burden of proof" stance, that would be the way to do it, but I think that approach will fail. In short, it fails because the anti-racist is more committed to the tout court claim than the racist is. For example, a strong Darwinian could be a racist without a care in the world about any tout court claims.)


* At least given secular premises.

But you seem to just be using loose synonyms for good here, and having your anti-realist appeal to those. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yep. It is swapping out "good" for "harmonious" and ignoring the fact that you have the exact same problem that you began with.

This is of course because "harmonious" connotes goodness. It's like saying, "Oh, I would never serve you peanuts. Here is a Thai noodle dish." "But this Thai noodle dish has peanuts in it!" "Well yes, but the name of the dish isn't 'peanuts', so it shouldn't affect your allergy."

Note that this is yet another case in which @J takes exception at the way in which some other group is being represented and then purports to be representing that group. But we have logically consistent moral anti-realists on the forum, such as Michael, and they wouldn't touch the words 'bad' and 'good' with a ten foot pole, nor would they claim that things like pain or harmony have any force in justifying practical syllogisms. They would not claim to have any rational justification for preventing animal suffering. So I don't see that @J's logically inconsistent portrayal is even an accurate representation of moral anti-realism.

- I think you actually did fairly well in this exchange. But here is the error:

How come something that's worthy of choice therefore ought to be chosen? Don't we need an additional factor to take us over the bridge between "worthy" and "obligatory"? — J

"Ought to be chosen" != "Obligatory"

If it did, your argument would be sound. Your own example illustrates the same fact:

Or we might say, "You betrayed your partner. That was not a worthy choice, and you shouldn't have made it." — J

If "worthy" meant "obligatory," then you would be saying, "You betrayed your partner. That was not an obligatory choice,..."

(As an aside, "choice-worthy" != "ought to be chosen." We know this given the fact that we can identify multiple options as choice-worthy, even if we cannot choose them all. Semantic equivalence is not as common as your approach presupposes.)

@Count Timothy von Icarus

Consider a list of concepts:

• Bad
• Truly bad
• Actually bad
• Bad as a matter of fact

It looks to me that these all say the same thing, and they are distinctions without a difference. Someone like @J will claim that, for the moral anti-realist, animal suffering is bad but not truly bad. What is that supposed to mean? After the hundreds of posts I have read, it really looks like he has no idea what he means by that.

This is why these conversations tend to lack rigor. Unless someone can spell out the difference between 'bad' and 'truly bad', they need to stop making the distinction while pretending that they have done something substantive.

I would contend that the moral anti-realist cannot say that animal suffering is truly bad; that 'truly bad' adds nothing at all to 'bad'; and therefore that the moral anti-realist cannot say that animal suffering is bad. Of course, they can redefine 'bad' to mean something that it does not mean, but in that case they have not said that animal suffering is bad. They have only said that animal suffering is "bad."

What is "truly bad" supposed to mean?

there are particular facts about what is bad or good for X in the sense specified above — J

In what sense? You haven't truly specified a sense at all. What is occurring is hand-waving.

The anti-realist is happy to acknowledge the fact that suffering is bad for the beings concerned, in the sense that it's painful, undesirable, etc., but only in that sense. — J

If the anti-realist wants to actually abandon the concept of 'bad', then they should abandon the word. And the fact that you depend on the word proves that you haven't abandoned the concept. What you are saying is, "I am going to use the word 'bad' but I am not going to mean bad by it." That's nonsense. 'Bad' cannot be used without meaning bad, and if someone does not want to mean badness then they should not use the word 'bad'. Else we are just equivocating between a private language and a public language.

Or, "I will not say that X is bad, only that it is painful. And by 'painful' I am not connoting, in any way, 'bad'." Again, quite nonsensical. If one truly wanted to stop denoting or connoting badness, then they would use words that do not denote or connote badness. But if they do that then Count's point is even more obviously true, namely:

Sure. They just deny that the suffering of people or animals can actually be bad for them as a matter of fact — Count Timothy von Icarus

And if we are honest, this entails that they are unconcerned with the suffering of people and animals. If you cannot say that suffering is bad then you are not "concerned" with it in the relevant way.

I didn't, but reading back I can see exactly hot it comes across that way. Just had more to say about it, because a rejection would intimate i accepted the premise. Which was a bit shaky. Sorry for that. Should've been much clearer in what I was tryign to convey. I reject it. — AmadeusD

Okay, understood. I think I see what you are saying.

I think I'm judging myself in making that decision. What do my values purport to press me into? If I value the Hard Problem over the problem of Infinite Regress, I may go to speaker 2's lecture because I think my existing levels of value are secure and worth maintaining (i'm sure the implicature is clear here). That's a judgement on my own notions of what's worth my time.
Lecture 1 may have pushed me out of that, by being more interesting that my existing judgement and thus creating a new judgement about only that speaker (well, their speaking rather than the speaker). I'm not convinced this is right. But it gets me around the idea that I actually care what either speaker is doing in their respective rooms. I already care about X or Y in varying degrees. The efficient cause might be the literal speaking, but the final cause of any decision of that kind is one about myself, I think. Where I want to be, and what do I want to be doing? — AmadeusD

But when you say that the efficient cause is their speaking, you are getting at my point. Namely:

So if we consider both speakers as causes, then you judged the two causes and judged one better than the other (i.e. more interesting or time-worthy). I am not here supposing that you have morally judged either of the speakers. — Leontiskos

If you were merely "judging yourself" while making the decision, then you would have made the same decision even if you were entirely deaf. But that can't be right, and this is because you are also judging the audible content coming from the speakers' mouths (and this audible content is not coming from yourself). That is what I mean when I say that you judged the two causes (e.g. causes of sound waves) and judged one to be better than the other. Your own predilections also come into play, but they are not sufficient for the decision apart from the speakers.

I'm not gaining any new position on either comedian in making that decision. — AmadeusD

I agree, and I am not claiming that you are gaining new positions with the comedians or with the philosophy lecturers.

Whether or not I like Comedian A better than Comedian B is not moral.

Now you've entered the issue of conflicting elements of these comedians. Interesting... — AmadeusD

But why isn't it moral? Why is it not a moral judgment to judge someone's ability to read the room and reflexively adapt their comedy routine? I am thinking specifically of the definition of "moral judgment" that we earlier agreed to.

It's based on an assessment as against a rubric, and so I'm not actually making any judgement. Just looking at whether it fits the rubric. A does, B doesn't. — AmadeusD

I think assessing against a rubric requires judgment. If you need a 10-foot pipe and you examine two possible candidates, you are inevitably involved in judgments, no?

I get the distinct feeling this is missing your point though. Either way, I agree its less clear. I currently am comfortable with the above, but its an immature response to your TE so I might realise its nonsense. — AmadeusD

Okay.

I suspect that what you are really doing is trying to deny that such a moral judgment is objective. I have said that when you decide between the two philosophers you have judged them, but perhaps not morally (we could investigate whether that judgment is moral). And I have said that when you decide between the two comedians you have morally judged them. But I haven't said that either of the two judgments is objective.

I am married. — AmadeusD

Okay, good work. :smile:

It's possible I am somewhat unique in not using the phrase that way. — AmadeusD

I certainly agree that the phrase can be used/intended in different ways.

Therefore, the moral judgement (which seems to be there, i admit) is certainly not about it being a waste of time. — AmadeusD

Good - I agree.

The moral judgement you're talking about I think is just misplaced but it is moral.

...

Again, not entirely sure here but it looks like there is a moral judgement which is not about time-wasting. — AmadeusD

Let me expand on this idea of morally judging another:

It seems that to morally judge someone else is really just to judge their culpability. I would say that judgments of culpability are eminently rational—at least some of the time. If these three jointly sufficient conditions are fulfilled then a person is culpable:

1. They were able to act otherwise (and better) than they did act
2. They should have acted better
3. They know that they should have acted better

Similarly, for a praiseworthy or morally appropriate act:

1p. They were able to act otherwise (and worse) than they did act
2p. They should have acted as they did
3p. They know that they should have acted as they did

If it ever happens that 1, 2, and 3 are all true at the same time, then at least one culpable act has occurred. Do you agree with this, and if so, do you think it ever happens that all three are true at the same time?

It seems to me that sometimes when a spouse tells their partner that the partner is not listening, it is a moral judgment, and therefore the spouse holds 1, 2, and 3. Your suggestion of "willful misinterpretation" is a great example. We could substitute that term into the three conditions: <You were able to not willfully misinterpret me; you should not have willfully misinterpreted me; you know that you should not have willfully misinterpreted me>. When these three conditions are met then the complaint is just.

(On my view in order to say that (some) moral judgments are rational, we need only say that this sort of common and mundane phenomenon is rational.)

This is also why, for example, the comedian who can read the room is better and more praiseworthy (ceteris paribus). He knows that he ought to be reflexively attentive to his audience, he has developed the capabilities to be reflexively attentive to his audience, and he fulfills the requirement when necessary.

If this were true one would discover what a good therapy for liver cancer is solely by investigating people's opinions instead of by studying livers. The Wright Brothers would have had to develop a successful, good flying machine by studying people's opinions instead of aerodynamics. Farmers would likewise learn their trade by studying opinions about wheat instead of wheat. One would learn that wet, mossy logs are bad for starting fires and that dry tinder and kindling is good only though talking, not through the practice of starting fires. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yep. :up:

I tried to get at the same idea . @AmadeusD claimed that food isn't good, it's just necessary for survival. I pointed out that a primary reason people call food "good" is because it is necessary for survival. The ability of food to nourish our bodies is not "arbitrary opinion," and I think someone would be hard pressed to argue that the desire to be alive rather than to be dead is just "arbitrary opinion."

@Count Timothy von Icarus

It looks as though everyone in the thread is in at least general agreement on the nature of X (whether it is good or bad). By ‘X’ I am thinking of something like capitalism.

The disagreements come when one must decide whether X is attached to liberalism, and this is where the interminable question-begging arises. So if there isn’t some accepted to way determine whether X is attached to liberalism, and therefore some accepted way to determine what liberalism is, then there will be no way out of the question-begging.

(With that said, it seems to me that the folks who say that something like capitalism is not attached to liberalism simply lack historical and political knowledge, and are therefore unqualified to really weigh in on this sort of question.)

If one person holds a view that everybody else thinks is wrong and false, we will dismiss him either being a troll or some crackpot. Yet if there are many people who hold this view, then comes issues like is it a proper thing to say, is it acceptable in the Overton window of our society. If it's something that millions of people hold a similar view in our society, then we will likely give respect to the view, even if we personally oppose it. — ssu

Sure, but that's just a societal observation. It avoids all of the crucial questions of the OP. My post <here> addresses the things you are talking about, in a thread where they are relevant.

Check out <this post>. You are focused on what people, or majorities, or societies, deem to be beneficial or pathogenic. All you are really saying is, "If the society thinks the virus is pathogenic, then the virus will be treated as pathogenic in that society. And if the society thinks the virus is beneficial, then the virus will be treated as beneficial in that society." Of course. This is obvious. It sheds no light at all on the question of whether or why the individual or the society composed of individuals has formed a correct judgment about the virus. This form of circular reasoning has been very common in this thread, as if no appeal to the rationality of the virus-judgments is necessary. That sort of circular reasoning is just a recipe for societal tyranny, where everyone apes the societal trends and no one is able to think through the societal judgments rationally.

I think this is the right way to think of a 'moral' judgement in this context. — AmadeusD

Okay, great.

This probably happens, but in terms of habit, no, this isn't the case. What I'm thinking internally is "I have other things to be getting on with, and this is not satisfying enough to overturn my commitment to the other things" or something similar. I often engage in hilariously dumb conversations when I have the time (I find it relaxing, in some way, so there's no sort of sacrifice happening there). — AmadeusD

Okay, fair enough. :grin:

This one is a bit more complicated. — AmadeusD

I think you may have misread the sentence, or that instead of "reject" you read "accept."

Let me press you from two angles, first analytically and then experientially.

Suppose you are standing in the hall at a philosophy conference and you can hear two speakers giving two different lectures in two different rooms. You are listening to what each speaker is saying, trying to decide which lecture to attend. You can either go into the first speaker's room and listen to them, go into the second speaker's room and listen to them, or do something else entirely. Suppose you go into the second speaker's room, and let's call this the effect. On my view, a necessary cause of this effect is that you found the second speaker more interesting or time-worthy than the first speaker. So if we consider both speakers as causes, then you judged the two causes and judged one better than the other (i.e. more interesting or time-worthy). I am not here supposing that you have morally judged either of the speakers.

This is meant to demonstrate that even if we are concerned with our time, we are still judging others as causes and deciding which causes of dialogue or information are time-worthy. So far, so good? But now consider that people such as these speakers are often aware that others are judging them for time-worthiness. Switching now to comedians rather than philosophy lecturers, a comedian might think to himself, "This is going poorly; the audience is getting restless; therefore I am going to switch over to some of my older, tried-and-true jokes." He does this because he is aware of the fact that the audience is judging whether he is time-worthy, and he is adjusting his comedy routine in light of his interpretation of the audience's judgment.

Now suppose that two comedians are performing tonight in different locations but at the exact same time. You like both of them, but one of them is much better at this sort of reflexive adjusting of his comedy routine depending on the audience's reaction. He knows how to "read the room" better. Because of this, you decide to see him instead of the other comedian. At this point I think it is much less clear whether you have morally judged the two comedians. This is because you are judging the comedian's behavior, habits, abilities, and particularly his ability to be self-conscious and conscientious. At this point has your "time-worthiness" judgment of the "cause" become moral without ceasing in any way to be a judgment of time-worthiness? If not, then what would you actually have to do in order to morally judge a comedian or some other person?

(For Aristotle this is surely 'moral' (although that word is anachronistic), and there is no reason why a time-worthiness judgment must be a non-moral judgment.)


Now the experiential angle. Have you ever had a significant other? Because it is fairly common for a woman to say to her boyfriend, "You aren't listening to me!" Usually moral judgment is involved. Do you see that as irrational, given that it doesn't really seem to be a matter of time-worthiness? Could she ever be rationally justified in morally judging her boyfriend in this way?

As someone else's savior once said — Hanover

That's actually from Paul. :razz:

In my opinion what is so admirable about @Jamal's post is the courage it takes to admit a deep mistake. Namely, to reconsider a foundational presupposition that has shaped your life for a very long time, and on which you took strong stands. It is incredibly difficult to do that. So yes, it's a lot like Paul, namely his conversion in which he turned around in an entirely different direction and joined the group he had long been laboring to eradicate.

I'm merely discussing the uses of the word faith and my belief that theists often use it indiscriminately when comparing their religious faith to a non faith based confidence in something demonstrable. — Tom Storm

But I don't recognize your usage. As I said, it cannot be found in dictionaries, among philosophers of religion, or within religious bodies. So it seems to be a kind of pejorative derived from interpreting religious believers against their own testimony.

In other words, if you start the discussion by defining "faith" as "Belief without (or despite) evidence," then my response is simple: I am not familiar with this term "faith," I have never encountered this term, "faith,"* and I don't know any religious believers or philosophers of religion who use this term "faith." What dictionaries, religious people, and generally non-biased people mean by 'faith' is not "Belief without (or despite) evidence."

But I'll mull over your reasoning. I am open to changing my thinking on most things. Perhaps I am wrong on this and if I am I'll change my mind. — Tom Storm

Okay, sounds good. Pieper's treatment is very good. He also has a book-length treatment. All of the work I did in <this post> is based on Pieper's definition, which is empirically derived via actual usage. Pejorative definitions preclude true philosophical work like that.

* I have never encountered it in the wild; only in the mouths of a subset of atheists and unbelievers.

What could falsify our claim? If someone could come up with a logical proof or irrefutable empirical evidence for a racist claim. — Janus

See, but that's just not how an argument for falsifiability works. Suppose a scientist comes up with a theory that seems unfalsifiable and you ask him how his theory could be falsified. He responds to you, "If someone could come up with a logical proof or irrefutable empirical evidence for a claim that contradicts my theory." Of course, if someone could do that, then it would be falsified. But we are asking him to provide evidence that it is falsifiable. We are asking, "Can someone do that?" To ask the scientist the question is just to ask him, "How could someone, in principle, come up with a logical proof or irrefutable empirical evidence for a claim that contradicts your theory?" His answer is really nothing more than, "If someone falsified it then it would be falsified." Of course. But we are asking how that might be done in principle.

For example, suppose someone proposes the thesis, "The Earth is flat." I then ask, "What could falsify your thesis?" Now consider two answers to that question:

• Answer 1: "Go into orbit, take a photograph of the Earth, and if the photograph reveals a sphere then my thesis has been falsified."
• Answer 2: "If someone could come up with a logical proof or irrefutable empirical evidence for a non-flat Earth claim."

Do you see how Answer 2 is not an answer to the question at all?

I think the claim is supported logically by the fact that no purely logical reason for considering races to be inferior or superior seem to be possible. If they were possible, it should be easy enough to find them, or they certainly should have been found by now, and yet they have not been, and seemingly cannot be, found, hence the conclusion that they at least do not seem to be possible. — Janus

This is sort of like saying, "The racist has the burden of proof, not me." We've agreed that it is probably right, but it's not a very rigorous argument, and its conclusion is not very strong. The racist would just tell you that it has been found and you're not paying attention.

I think this sentence is really the important one to answer:

Specifically I want to explore the question of whether this claim is empirically or logically falsifiable. — Leontiskos

What could falsify our claim?

- Yes, good points. :up:

(And thanks for responding. I am falling behind on TPF.)

lol, the word I was searching for was "opprobrium." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Haha, that makes more sense. :smile:

I agree with you, and we could stretch the analogy to say that overly aggressive conservatism is like an autoimmune disease that attacks the proper ordering of the body. It's like anaphylaxis. Perfectly healthy food sources become downright fatal, depriving the organism of what would otherwise be healthy food. Whereas the liberal pathology might be something more akin to AIDS, an inability of the immune system to recognize pathology, or in the more advanced forms of Wokism that lead to Cultural Revolution style struggle sessions and the destruction of institutions and history, it becomes like MS, the immune system actually attacking the body because it sees it, and not the pathogens as threats. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, those are good analogies.

The problem is that the disease can also involve efforts at intentional training (e.g., some tolerance and DEI trainings have been shown to have the opposite of the results they are intended to have, or to be supported by pseudoscience, and yet they remain common practices because to challenge them is seen as being against "diversity, equity, and inclusion," and who would want to be against that?) — Count Timothy von Icarus

Right, and thus some are intentionally creating bad habits of mind and society. That's where I think the OP and a focus on discerning pathogenic from beneficial viruses is helpful. We have to get down to giving actual reasons for moral opprobrium (including ).

Let me try to preempt something before addressing such posts.

If we are going to do real philosophical work then we have to have real definitions. What almost always happens in these discussions is that the atheist builds their petitio principii right into their definition of faith. This is how the atheist ends up defining faith:

• Faith_ath: "Irrational assent"

This goes back to what I said:

Note that the pejorative argument looks like this:

1. Religious faith is irrational
2. Faith in airplanes is not irrational
3. Therefore, faith in airplanes is not religious faith – there is an equivocation occurring

That’s all these atheists are doing in their head to draw the conclusion about an equivocation, and this argument is the foundation of any argument that is built atop it. — Leontiskos

We can literally see this within this thread. I will limit myself to your definition and avoid drawing in other atheists or unbelievers:

Religious faith: Belief without (or despite) evidence. — Tom Storm

This is just another form of "irrational assent." To believe something without (or despite) evidence is irrational. So it's no wonder that you come to the conclusion that believers are irrational. It is built into your very definition of faith.

But this is not how dictionaries, philosophers, or religious traditions define faith. It is a false definition. More to the point, it is a pejorative/biased definition, and without real definitions we cannot do real philosophical work. The essay by Joseph Pieper that I referenced gets to the heart of this.

So before any real philosophical work can be done, you need to find a definition of faith that isn't reducible to irrational assent. Along the same lines, atheists are not allowed to make ad hoc distinctions between religious faith and non-religious faith (because this depends on the same exact petitio principii). made a similar point very succinctly.

(If it makes it easier to understand, think about the fact that if we are to conduct an investigation into the question of whether believers are rational, we cannot begin by assuming our conclusion. Our starting point must be neutral.)

Yes, and I love those images, particularly project/invention vs. garden.

Another image here is Martin Buber's I and Thou. A Baconian mindset tends to treat as "it" what should be treated as "thou," i.e. persons. This is most evident in politics.

(It also bears on Orthodox vs. Catholic ecclesiology, but I doubt too many here care about that! :smile:)

Fair enough. I saw you as trying to pose a dilemma between evil and monstrosity, but I thought the tenor of your posts favored the monstrosity route over the evil route.

The answer might be something boring like finding a middle way. — Jamal

Yes. As an Aristotelian I think that's right. :smile:

And maybe that middle way necessitates the relinquishing of the ideal — Jamal

I don't think it requires a relinquishing of the ideal. I was just pushing back against what I saw as @fdrake's excessive promotion of the ideal, which seemed tantamount to justifying "monstrosities."

But it is hard to understand how to navigate the middle way. It's hard to understand how to hold the principle of conservatism and the principle of progress in tension.

To my mind an illustration of that navigation is when the father and mother of a large household decide to make a substantial change in the way the household is run. As Lent is now coming to an end, an example of that might be, "We are no longer going to eat candy in this household." In order for this rule to be implemented properly, there must be a respect for the children's habits and desires alongside the parents' desire for a more healthy environment. The parents must have patience with their plan, move slowly, and be open to the possibility that their proposed change might not work at all. A parallel here would be a government that wants to prohibit, say, alcohol. Or the recent Australian case of prohibiting social media for youth. These simplistic cases can help illustrate more general principles.

For me, it's probably because God/the Bible/the universal lawgiver says so. I'm inclined toward divine command theory... — BitconnectCarlos

Let’s use your notion of divine commands to take a step back. Why does the OP care about rationality in the first place?

The OP is thinking of cases where we invoke some rule or law that binds both of us, for the sake of dismissing someone who has transgressed that binding rule. What this requires is something that has binding force, whether we like it or not.

1. He did X
2. X is beyond the pale
3. Therefore, I dismiss him

Note that dismissing someone (i.e., 3) is not generally permissible or justifiable. We can’t just go around dismissing people for no reason at all. We must have a good reason to do so. Now the reason given must be something which binds them (and also us, of course). The ‘X’ in (1) must be sufficient to justify (3), and the justification must be something that the dismissed can themselves recognize. If they cannot recognize it, then morally judging their action to be culpably wrong is irrational.

4. The transgression of a law is only applicable if the transgressor is accountable to the law
5. Everyone is accountable to reason and rationality
6. Therefore, if a law is derived from reason, then it will be generally applicable

The OP cares about reason because reason provides a binding law or norm. If there is no binding norm then, “I dismiss you because you are guilty of pedophilia,” is no more justifiable than, “I dismiss you because you breathed on my goldfish.” If there is no binding norm then we have no reason to tell others not to kill innocents. In that case everything is just a power game.

The trouble with divine commands is that they are local to a subset of people. A divine command can be used to dismiss someone who accepts the divine command, but it has no force over someone who does not accept the divine command. It does no good to tell a would-be murderer about God’s command against murder if he doesn’t believe in God.

This may all be obvious, but I think it bears mentioning. If there is no binding norm which undergirds our dismissals then, on pains of irrationality, I think we simply have to stop accusing people of racism, pedophilia, murder, dishonesty, unkindness, etc. If there is no binding norm then the accused murderer should say something similar to the accused goldfish-breather, “What’s at all wrong with breathing on goldfish!?”

It's not failing; it's being beaten down by more aggressive forces. — Vera Mont

I was actually making an empirical observation. Is it being beaten down? Perhaps, much like when the aging lion can no longer defend his territory, and hungry competitors spring up like grass, ready to devour him. That's what I meant by "failing," and it seems that you may even agree.

But in any case, this notion that liberalism is the nice guy with a pressed shirt and a friendly smile who would do no evil, and who is being oppressed by savages, is only part of "the mythical character of this story":

...The liberal state has proved itself as ruthless against its opponents as any illiberal state is supposed to have done... — Peter L. P. Simpson, Policital Illiberalism: A Defense of Freedom, 3

I'm not sure what "intersubjectively irrational" could mean regarding racism. In the case of something like murder, it seems to work insofar as virtually no one would think murder is a good thing. But perhaps you are working with a different idea about what "Intersubjectively irrational" should be understood to mean. — Janus

I actually don't know what it means either. I was just trying to throw a bone to the people around here who talk that way. :sweat:

I think this is more along the lines I was thinking. There simply are no sound criteria for considering one race to be, tout court, inferior to another. And since such a claim could be the only justifiable premise for a rational defense of racism, it would seem to be objectively indefensible. — Janus

Okay, good. I agree.

But here's a question. Let's suppose—as you seem to imply—that claims must be susceptible to empirical data or logic. With that in mind, consider our claim, "There simply are no sound criteria for considering one race to be, tout court, inferior to another." What justifies this claim empirically or logically? Specifically I want to explore the question of whether this claim is empirically or logically falsifiable. If it isn't empirically or logically falsifiable, then must we say that it is a kind of nonsense?

I don't want to take the thread off-course, but I just want to say that I cannot see how metaphysical speculations can be either empirically or logically confirmed or disconfirmed. — Janus

I suppose the easiest answer is that metaphysical speculations could be logically disconfirmed by the principle of non-contradiction, no? Beyond that, I will leave the topic to the many other threads that cover it. (Although I suppose it is worth noticing that my question above is asking whether our claim is "metaphysical" in your sense of the word.)

Really cool thread. — AmadeusD

Thanks! I wrote the OP late at night when I was tired and it has gone in all different directions, which is great.

I don't think there's a good answer other than "I have limited time" for non-theists. — AmadeusD

Okay. I think limited time is an important non-moral means of dismissal (in the sense that we are at least not making a moral judgment about our interlocutor). As you imply, the word "dismissal" may not even be the right word for this sort of thing.

Therefore, most people interpret their dismissiveness/discontinuance in such circumstances as morally justified. — AmadeusD

I agree. I was going to ask if you ever feel this way, but you yourself provide one exception:

For me, the only time I genuinely feel justified in dismissing someone is when they clearly are not listening. — AmadeusD

First, I agree that one's own morals are implicated in the judgment that, "I have limited time; I must depart." In that sense this is a moral dismissal. Nevertheless, let's save the term "moral dismissal" for the situation where you dismiss someone based on a moral judgment of their own actions or behavior. Ergo: "I am dismissing you because of such-and-such an action of yours, or such-and-such a behavior of yours, and I would do so even if I had ample time to engage you."

With that groundwork laid, when you dismiss someone who is not listening are you engaged in a moral dismissal? In your head are you saying to them, "I am dismissing you because you are clearly not listening, and I would do so even if I had ample time to engage you"?

"Not listening" can seem like a small exception to the rule—in this case the rule that dismissals pertain to time constraints. Nevertheless, I think "not listening" dismissals are actually very substantial, important, and common. I think it would be worthwhile to explore the idea that we dismiss someone who is clearly not listening to us.

Their views never make me feel justified in shutting them down. — AmadeusD

From this it sounds like you would reject the idea that a material position is sufficient grounds for dismissal.

This principle laid the groundwork for later developments in human rights and liberal individualism. — Wayfarer

Yep, and it's also pretty potent in Judaism, for example in their focus on hospitality.

But modern liberalism, particularly in its more recent identity-based forms, wants to retain the moral affirmation of each individual’s worth without the spiritual or metaphysical justification that originally gave it weight. What we end up with is the form of moral dignity, but cut off from the demanding ethical path that once accompanied it—self-abnegation, service, humility. It becomes, in a sense, dignity without discipline.

In this vacuum, conscience becomes sacrosanct, but no longer oriented toward anything higher than the self: nihil ultra ego. — Wayfarer

Yeah, that's really well said. :up:
It also occasions some of the recent discussion on what dignity is even supposed to mean in a secular context. Alasdair MacIntyre was one of the recent initiators of this debate.

I had the impression that Hadot sees Christianity as having appropriated the spiritual practices of 'pagan' philosophy and redirected them into a theological framework—ultimately subordinating philosophy to dogma. While Hadot respects many Christian thinkers, he is critical of the loss of philosophy’s independent role as a transformative way of life with its own internal plurality. — Wayfarer

Yes, and remember too that Hadot was ordained a Catholic priest but left the priesthood when he married. He probably also left Catholicism, but I don't know that for sure. So he is familiar with the Christian tradition and moved from that starting point towards the philosophical communities of antiquity. Or rather, towards a study of them, since they no longer exist as functioning communities in the concrete way they once did. I think you are generally right that he is trying to open up and renew a sense of philosophical praxis, which he sees to be lacking.

(I am not gainsaying Count Timothy's claim that he misses a transition in late antiquity. That could be true at the same time.)

My mind implodes thinking through this because "progressive" is not "communism" to my mind. — Moliere

They don't consider themselves communists, but they are flirting with the idea. So the question is sincere, "I'm not sure if there is anything wrong with communism after all... What do you have against it?" I don't find it strange that those on the far left are flirting with communism.

Your aversion to perceived dogma becomes a dogma in its own right. — Wayfarer

Yes, and we could apply this to liberalism itself.

What is often meant superficially by liberalism is something like, "A tolerance for different ideas." For such a person this is a dogma of liberalism. But the interesting thing about a dogma is that it isn't self-supporting. The liberal wants to retain that dogma, but even if we ignore the paradox of a toleration dogma, they have no way to support the dogma. It is a free-floating, untethered norm.

That dogma in fact arises out of the Judeo-Christian premise that every human being is created in the image of God. This was an anthropological premise which logically grounded what has now become the liberal dogma. The liberal wants to retain the dogma while dispensing with the Judeo-Christian support.

Note too that the liberal is incapable of substituting a different support-premise in place of the Judeo-Christian premise. This is because to do so would be anti-liberal. It would be to impose a truth on the society, in this case for the sake of the liberal dogma. Thus as the liberal state moves away from its founding religion and culture, the dogmas which once had support are now left hanging in midair, ready to collapse. "Honor your father and mother, and you will have a long life in the land." Liberalism's current demise is seen by many as a result of failing to honor that which nourished it, of cutting off the branch on which it sits. Hence:

Liberalism is failing, and I think it is now important to have proper alternatives so that we don't fall into something worse. — Leontiskos

It functions fine as a general rule — BitconnectCarlos

Okay, so it sounds like you now think there is something other than divine commands which support this prohibition.

Sure, we could say that - it would be true as a general rule. Perhaps there are some hardened killers out there to whom one more death would mean nothing. — BitconnectCarlos

That something is morally wrong does not mean no one would ever do it.

It functions fine as a general rule, but it's unserious when said to, e.g., a navy captain preparing to attack a port or a bomber pilot preparing for war. — BitconnectCarlos

...Continuing, we might say, "It functions fine as a general rule, but it's unserious when said to, e.g., Hitler preparing to exterminate the Jews." Hitler killed innocents, but it does not follow from this that it is not wrong to kill innocents. Whether or not the navy captain is right is not determined by what he does, as if the killing is made right by his doing it.

Bombing ports or weapons factories is necessary for war, and Anscombe holds that what is necessary cannot be evil. — BitconnectCarlos

Anscombe does not hold that everything which is necessary for war is permissible. That is in fact her broader point regarding the nuclear bomb.

There's a previous thread that takes this argument and applies it to the ethics of believers: The moral character of Christians — Banno

You are sort of the king of ad hominem, no? If there is insufficient ad hominem on TPF, you show up and remedy the problem. :roll:

Clicking on the reply button places the reply in the third person. — Banno

No, it doesn't. Go read any post on TPF. 99.9% of them engage the person they are responding to, rather than talking about them in the third person.

↪Count Timothy von Icarus collapses liberalism into capitalism, but that’s a mistake—one Lefebvre might help us avoid. — Banno

It's interesting that you continue to speak about the Original Poster in the third person as you face your audience. That sort of tactic reads a lot like propaganda, or advertising. Maybe it would be better if we actually addressed the people we disagree with, instead of giving speeches about them.

I am reminded of some psychology/neuroscience research that showed similarities between moral approbation and disgust/fear of contagion. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think that's right, as long as you meant something like "disapprobation" rather than approbation.

You could probably go deeper with that thought using the idea of memes as being akin to viruses. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think what you say is exactly right, but I think the explanation needs to be taken a bit farther.

Not all viruses are pathogens.* Some are in fact beneficial. Therefore we are not actually concerned with virus contamination per se, but rather with pathogenic virus contamination. What this means is that we need a way to determine whether a virus is pathogenic or beneficial, otherwise the disgust/disapprobation phenomenon can never get off the ground in the first place.

The term "social norms" has the same bivalent nature as "virus." To merely pass on norms for the sake of passing on norms, or to merely avoid virus contamination for the sake of avoiding virus contamination, is not rational (at least unless we have reason to believe that norms/viruses are good/bad either per se or at least on the whole). So someone who has no justification for determining whether a virus is pathogenic or beneficial is not rational in trying to avoid contamination; and someone who has no justification for determining whether a moral norm is true or false is not rational in propagating that moral norm within society. If we can't assess the particular then we can't assess the aggregate, and pointing to the aggregate is not a real solution until we can also point to the particular (translated into virus language: "If we can't assess the virus then we can't assess the question of contamination, and pointing to the disgust/disapprobation phenomenon is not a real solution until we can also decide whether the virus is pathogenic or beneficial"). This is precisely the same problem that runs up when he leans so heavily on faith that he falls into a vicious circle—as fideists are also wont to do—for faith in a scientist who cannot discern a beneficial virus from a pathogenic virus is otiose.

In other words, it seems to me that what basically happens in these cases is that we forget to distinguish viruses from pathogenic viruses, or matter from form. For example:

• Moral proposition: "Attend to the victim"
• Virus: "Inattentiveness to the victim"
• Social norm: "Attention to the victim"

But when you run this algorithm day and night without keeping Aristotle's mean in mind, what you end up with is the excesses of intersectionality and a culture where victimization (or its appearance) is the ultimate prize. When the culture reaches that extreme everything flips, and the virus becomes beneficial whereas the social norm becomes pathogenic.

Jonathan Haidt follows some of the disgust research. His conclusion is that conservatives tend to avoid contamination whereas liberals tend to seek contamination (or cross-pollination). The societal pendulum swings to the left when excessive conservatism pathologizes good viruses, and it swings to the right when excessive liberalism greenlights pathogenic viruses. Nevertheless, the point I want to emphasize is that we must be able to determine which viruses are beneficial or pathogenic and why. This is the task set before us by the OP, at least insofar as social norms are concerned.

* I realize that I am here altering your negatively connoted sense of 'virus', but bear with me...