Moral good is not its own sort of good here, distinct from the good of a "good car" or "good food." All related to flourishing. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I was listening to Edward Feser recently, and he argued that the modern abandonment of teleology left morality in a lurch. Severed from its teleological foundation, morality became inscrutable, as it is in both Hume and Kant.

The Dark Knight was Batman right to hide (to lie about) the fact that Harvey Dent degenerated into the monstrous Two Face? That seems to be what the film would lead us to believe. — Count Timothy von Icarus

And yet the sequel takes that in a different direction, where the lie about justice erupts into full scale anarchy.

Are the theorems of geometry vacuous because they are already contained in Euclid's postulates? Are syllogisms vacuous because all conclusions are contained in the premises? Is deterministic computation vacuous because its results always follow from the inputs with a probability of 100%?

We might think "2+2" is just another way to say "4," and "1 ÷ 3" just another way to say "1/3," but "179 ÷ 3 " is "59 and 2/3rds" seems genuinely informative unless you're an arithmetic prodigy.

Plus, not all circles are viscous circles. I would say "it's good (truly better) for you to be good—to be a good person and live a good life," is circular in a sense, but the way an ascending spiral is circular. It loops back around on itself at higher levels, with greater depths beneath it, in a sort of fractal recurrence. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, good points. It is curious how little folks around here understand logic, argument, and how knowledge is created. In the air is the vaguely Wittengenstenian idea that a good argument is nothing more than a tautology.

I know of no similar move in the Eastern tradition or among the Islamic scholars, — Count Timothy von Icarus

Perhaps not in the East, but Islam provides an antecedent for Hume in its late-Medieval forms of Voluntarism and Occasionalism. I believe Alfred Freddoso has written on this.

I think that, like so much of Hume's thought, the Guillotine relies on question begging. Hume is a diagnostician, seeing what follows from the assumptions and prejudices of his era. But ask most people "why is it bad for you if I burn out your eyes, or if I burn out your sons eyes," and the responses will be something like:

"If you burn out my eyes it would be incredibly painful and then I would be blind, so of course it wouldn't be good." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yep. :lol:

You only get to a position where it possible for it to be "choiceworthy" to prefer "what is truly worse," is if you have already assumed that what is "truly worse" is in some way arbitrary or inscrutable in the first place. — Count Timothy von Icarus

And as far as I can tell the people who go around spouting Hume's arguments are usually lying, saying things they don't believe to be true. Hume himself was more interesting insofar as he recognized that he could not uphold strong skepticism while keeping a straight face:

And though a Pyrrhonian may throw himself or others into a momentary amazement and confusion by his profound reasonings; the first and most trivial event in life will put to flight all his doubts and scruples, and leave him the same, in every point of action and speculation, with the philosophers of every other sect, or with those who never concerned themselves in any philosophical researches. When he awakes from his dream, he will be the first to join in the laugh against himself, and to confess, that all his objections are mere amusement, and can have no other tendency than to show the whimsical condition of mankind... — David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, § xii, 128

I don't quite grant your premise, anyway. [...] This is not particularly predictable as between groups, or across time. — AmadeusD

So are you saying that you do not grant the first premise? You think the argument is valid but the first premise is false?

Better to give a precise critique than to attempt to throw the kitchen sink at my short post.

because they desire the bread — Moliere

To place bread in front of someone who is hungry does not involve me in any "oughts", just "is's," and yet we know exactly what the person will do. The common person knows why: you ought to eat when you are hungry.

Again, fabricating stuff. Try reading. — Banno

Fortunately at this point in the thread everyone is simply ignoring your plea to "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!" Such is always only a matter of time.

So I'm asking:
1 ) Take the world without humans.
2 ) Imagine that nevertheless one human existed.
3 ) Get that human to look at Boorara.
4 ) Imagine that human asserts "There is gold in Boorara".

The assertion in ( 4 ) would then be a true assertion, right? But there were no asserters in ( 1 ), so no assertions, so no true assertions. But that process still gives you a roundabout way of mapping a state of affairs (the gold being in Boorara) to an assertion ("There is gold in Boorara"), albeit now through modal contexts. — fdrake

But what is continually happening is that folks are sneaking in (2) despite (1). So there is a human in a world without humans, and there is language in a world without language, etc.

For example:

But gold does exist in the absence of language. It's very straightforward. — Michael

Michael is here trying to use language in the absence of language. He thinks it is straightforward to achieve the effect of language even in the absence of language.

-

Again, the issue here is about how truth relates to minds. Those who want minds to be accidental and unnecessary for truths are doing things like focusing on language or propositions or concepts, and saying that because such things do not cause what they describe to exist, therefore it is true that such-and-such exists even if propositions or language or concepts do not. This is a failure to grapple with the issue at hand. It is a superficial approach to truth, apparently common among Analytics. It is the idea that free-floating truths exist, even when minds do not.

@Janus, here is a different but related idea that Paine cited two years ago:

It is also worth considering how time can be related to the soul; and why time is thought to be in everything, both in earth and in sea and in heaven. It is because it is an attribute, or state, of movement (since it is the number of movement) and all these things are movable (for they are all in place), and time and movement are together, both in respect of potentiality and in respect of actuality?

Whether if soul did not exist time would exist or not, is a question that may fairly be asked; for if there cannot be some one to count there cannot be anything that can be counted either, so that evidently there cannot be number; for number is either what has been, or what can be, counted. But if nothing but soul, or in soul reason, is qualified to count, it is impossible for there to be time unless there is soul, but only that of which time is an attribute, i.e. if movement can exist without soul. The before and after are attributes of movement, and time is these qua countable. — Aristotle, Physics, 223a15, translated by R. P. Hardie and R. K. Gaye

Because it's the herd that I'm most concerned with. — Moliere

Basically Hume's guillotine still chops. — Moliere

I don't think Hume's guillotine ever chopped, and it certainly doesn't chop for the herd. If you place food in front of a poor starving person, they will eat it. If you try to argue that 'is' does not imply 'ought' before allowing them to eat it, they will still eat it, but will also think you are crazy. :smile:

Lets grant the proposition.

How would that connect with any extrinsic facts? — AmadeusD

1. What people deem to be good is predictable.
2. What is predictable is not arbitrary.
3. Therefore what people deem to be good is not arbitrary.

So as a first step we should be able to say that it is not arbitrary, as you have claimed.

But you can't split them. You're trying to divide or separate knowledge from what is real. I say it's because you're taking a view above or outside both the subject (you) and the object (world) - or trying to (cf Nagel's 'view from nowhere'). — Wayfarer

It is interesting that Banno looks like a Platonist, with self-subsistent truths floating independently of any minds. There is something about this that is resonant with analytic philosophy, and in particular its pre-critically scientistic metaphysics. This is curiously on-point for your project.

But I am saying that. — Wayfarer

Sorry, I committed and then fixed a bad typo, but apparently not quickly enough. Cannot can.

- Nah, you are just begging the question again. That "truth" is a meta-truth of the possible world space that we are conceptualizing, not necessarily a truth internal to that world.

If you think that a world without any minds has the truth that there are no minds, then we have another example where you hold that there can be truths without minds. This is the overstepping of transcendence that I spoke of earlier.

That I take as the point at issue. — Wayfarer

If that is the point at issue then presumably you disagree with what I take to be uncontroversial, no? In that case you would claim that <existence can be meaningfully affirmed or denied even without the involvement of mind>, which does not seem like something you would say.

You guys seem not to understand the difference between affirming that something is true and it's being true. — Banno

So are you are saying that a world without any minds still has truths, just not affirmations?

None of which is to deny the empirical fact that boulders will roll over cracks and into canyons — Wayfarer

Okay, and do you also agree with this:

The second point, regarding shape, is that if a boulder rolls over a small crack it will continue rolling, but if it rolls into a "large crack" (a canyon) then it will fall, decreasing in altitude. This will occur whether or not a mind witnesses it, and this is because shape is a "primary quality." A boulder and a crack need not be perceived by a mind to possess shape. — Leontiskos

You cite Schopenhauer and Berkeley. Are you agreeing with them in toto?

This is the same point we debated in the mind-created world thread, about the objective properties of boulders. — Wayfarer

There I believe we argued over whether the shape of a boulder is mind-dependent in the sense that it relies upon perception.

We can't really know whether an unseen object exists or not... — Wayfarer

We can infer that balls keep rolling and that boulders retain shape even when they are not perceived.

The key issue is not whether unseen objects exist but whether their existence can be meaningfully affirmed or denied without the involvement of mind. That is where metaphysical realism and idealism differ. The former assumes that unseen objects exist in a way that is entirely independent of any observer or consciousness - although that is a presumption. Idealism emphasizes that to consider or speak of existence, we must already bring mind to bear on it. — Wayfarer

I am not familiar with these uses of "metaphysical realism" and "idealism." It strikes me as uncontroversial that existence cannot "be meaningfully affirmed or denied without the involvement of mind."

There may be gold in the hills, even if no one knows. — Banno

Sure, but that does not commit me to your claim that there are truths about the existence of gold even if there are no minds.

But in any case, our usual way of speaking about it suffices. So, pedantic concerns aside, does it really matter whether it is said that when humans disappear it will still be true that there is gold or that when humans disappear there will still be gold? Surely the salient point is that there will still be gold. — Janus

My point applies either way. None of the alternative phrasings evade the fact that you are positing truths without minds. "Whatever the case, there will still be gold," is just another way of saying that it will be true that gold exists even when there are no minds, and that truth therefore does not require any mind.

For the proximate argument, supposing that the only minds that exist are human, and all (human) minds cease to exist, it does not follow that the existence of other objects is necessarily altered. But the question of whether they truly exist at least becomes moot.

But isn't the fundamental problem or challenge that all of this speaks to the fact that it appears possible for propositions to be true in the absence of any minds, which is inconsistent with the idea that truth requires minds? — Clearbury

Yes, and we are slowly getting at the transcendent quality of truth, namely the idea that truth transcends the thinking subject. Classically we would say that truth transcends the thinking subject without transcending mind itself, but that over-stepping of transcendence is understandable, especially in a post-theistic culture.

Do you think that, that there is gold in the ground at Boorara is dependent on there being someone around who knows or sees or believes that there is gold at Boorara? Or do you think that there will be gold in the ground at Boorara despite anyone knowing or seeing or believing it? — Banno

This is basically the original error coming up again: conflating the presence of perceptions or beliefs with the existence of minds. One need not say that truth exists where there are no minds in order to say that a ball continues to roll when you look away from it.

I would say instead:If all life disappeared from the universe, but everything else is undisturbed, then there would still be gold in Boorara. — Janus

But you already said that <here>, and we already went on to talk about it.

With your statement about the gold in Boorara you have with our condition "if everything else is undisturbed" guaranteed that it is true that there will be gold. — Janus

Yes, it begs the question as to whether truth is undisturbed when minds disappear. This was of course pointed out to Banno.

Apparently the relationship between truth and actuality is a weird and tricky business. — Janus

Yep.

These are meant to be devil's-advocate questions, but they do demand answers. — J

Do any devil's advocate questions demand answers?

On a philosophy forum the question of the OP should probably be phrased, "Why ought one do anything at all?" Or, "Why ought one do any one thing rather than any other thing?"

At that point we can whittle the contributors down to two groups: those who recognize that some things ought to be done, and those who won't. I'd say that only the first group is worth hearing. (And we could have another thread for the second group, which shows that anyone who does things believes that things should be done.)

At that point everyone in the first group can contribute to a productive conversation given the common premise that some things ought be done.

If something is Good, it's because you have personally understood/decided it is good. You couldn't support that with any extrinsic facts.

The 'right' action is to do with achieving something. That something must be arbitrary, at base. — AmadeusD

Is one able to predict with some level of accuracy what others will deem good? If so, how could the good be arbitrary or disconnected from "extrinsic facts"?

@Janus has tried a few different tacks, but one of them is that a claim about the future can be true now even if it is not true in the future. I don't see him trying to parse out sentences/propositions in the way that you and Banno are prone to.

But note that Janus has agreed with Banno and tried to defend his claims, even if not his exact wording.

Janus and Banno seem to believe that (2) means the exact same thing as (1), and so that (2) is true only if the proposition “it is raining” exists tomorrow. — Michael

No, I don't think so:

If all life disappeared from the universe, but everything else is undisturbed, then it would still be true that there is gold in Boorara. — Banno

This is a clear affirmation of truth where there is no proposition, and it is the basis of the discussion.

So I assume you disagree with the claim that truth is a property of sentences? — Michael

It depends what you mean by a sentence or a proposition. If I say, "It is true that it is raining," I am not talking about a sentence, I am talking about the truth of the presence of rain. Or else I am using a sentence to predicate a truth.

If truth is a property of sentences in a simplistic sense, then it is uncontroversial that where there are no sentences there is no truth. But we are talking primarily about minds, not sentences.

See also:

But what is at stake here is not reified and accidental propositions as you conceive them. We are asking about the relation between truths and minds. Either you think that there can be truths without minds or you don't. Either you think that there can be truths-about-what-exists without minds or you don't. — Leontiskos

Second, I don't think anyone wants to claim that "most people" had bought into the ethics that flow from "classical metaphysics," even when it was dominant. Due to the technological, political, and economic realities of the time "most people" were illiterate serfs. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think the key here is that in Plato's time a selfish doctrine was generally recognized as being unvirtuous and immoral. With Machiavelli we begin to see a societal shift towards embracing doctrines of selfishness.* So @J is right that the doctrine is represented in Plato, but the context surrounding that doctrine was quite different. Homer and Machiavelli represent different epochs. Ancient Athenians respected the individual, but they were not individualists.

Do we see the difference? It’s direction of motivation. Even though both persons’ actions have exactly the same consequences, one proceeds toward eudaemonia, the other proceeds toward right action. Kant thought this made all the ethical difference. I don’t completely agree, but laying it out in these terms is helpful, I hope. — J

This is a consequentialist reading of virtue ethics which is not at all in accord with actual, historical virtue ethics. It reads virtue as a means to happiness. It is the modern attempt at recovering virtue ethics that never actually overcame consequentialism.


* See Simpson's, "Autonomous Morality and the Idea of the Noble."

I think he's saying that the sentence "X will exist" is true but the sentence "X exists" will not be true. — Michael

I think that's the same problem. It would seem that to say, "Tomorrow X will exist," involves saying, "Tomorrow it will be true that X exists."

Similarly:

You are trying to say something like, "X will exist but it will not be true that X will exist." — Leontiskos

Do you want to say that, "X will be true tomorrow," is different from, "Tomorrow, X will be true"? I don't see a proper distinction between the two. — Leontiskos

-

As an example of this, the sentence "language will die out" is true but the sentence "language has died out" can never be true. — Michael

This is commendably clear, but it comes up against the same problem. "Language will die out," implies that there will come a day when it is true that language has died out. Or to put it differently, you are presupposing that language is in some way transcendent; that it can make claims about what is beyond it.

Yet that does seem to be metaphysically possible. — Clearbury

Why does it seem that way to you?

I think, maybe, the problem is the naturalist assumption that the world is inherently intelligible, when it's actually not, because the principle of intelligibility is not internal to it. — Wayfarer

Yes, I think that's a fairly important point. :up:
This is also why a firm grounding for knowledge tends to escape naturalists (and especially materialists).

- Yes, that is a fair way to put it. We also want to ask whether it makes sense for someone to say that X will exist while simultaneously denying that it is true that X will exist. That move highlights the deep end of the truth pool.

As a classical theist I don't think things do exist in the absence of any minds (and particularly in the absence of the mind of God). I think the truth of creation is bound up in its intelligibility, which flows from its creator.

The atheist perhaps wants to say that truth emerges with the emergence of minds and disappears with the disappearance of minds, such that mind is accidental vis-a-vis the natural, as is truth.

So discussions such as this are often veiled theology. — Banno

Discussions in the religion forum are only "veiled" theology for those who don't know where they are.

It is worthwhile to ask whether free will is coherent on a naturalistic view. Approaches like Chomsky's "Mysterianism" are pulling on the same thread.

Philosophers tend to avoid use of ["good"]... — Outlander

Or maybe just Humeans avoid it. Ethicists who do not use the word or concept 'good' are probably not doing ethics at all.

The only way I can think of for “the good you do will also be good for you” to make sense with a single meaning for “good” is simply to stipulate an arbitrary meaning for “good”... — J

Have you noticed that you haven't produced an actual argument for your claim that the sentence is vacuous? You just keep asserting that it is so, without argument.* Timothy follows Aristotle and Aquinas in speaking about health:

When we speak of what health is for organisms generally and what health is "for you," why it is "healthy (for you) to be healthy," we are not speaking of two totally equivocal concepts, nor do I see how this analagous relationship would render "health" conceptually vacuous. — Count Timothy von Icarus

"Doing healthy things makes you healthy."

From memory, Aristotle will talk about at least three senses of health:

• Walking is healthy / broccoli is healthy [Cause of health]
• J's urine is healthy / J's bloodwork is healthy [Sign of health]
• J is healthy [Subsistent health or state of health]

Given that these are three different but interrelated senses, a claim like, "Healthy food will make you healthy," need not be vacuous. Do you have an argument for why you think any of the claims in question are vacuous?

If "healthy" is the same in both instances then the claim is vacuous; if "healthy" is different then the claim is equivocal. That is the argument that seems to underlie your thinking. And the answer is analogical predication: the two terms are neither univocal nor equivocal.

(Note that health is one kind of goodness.)

* Edit: I now see that you did give a Kantian argument here: .

Why do you think the truth is owed in the first place? Even moralists who prohibit lying seldom say such a thing. It's not at all clear what "eroding free will" means, but we very often omit the utterance of truthful statements for the sake of prudence.

- The contradiction is very much present in your posts. For example:

We can say it is true now or we can now say it is true that the planet will still exist when humanity is gone. There will be nobody to speak the truth when humanity is gone. There will be no truth or falsity then if truth is a property of propositions or judgements and there is then no mind to propose or judge.

Existence on the other hand does not depend on minds, propositions or judgements. — Janus

1. "We can say it is true now or we can now say it is true that the planet will still exist when humanity is gone."
   
   • "We can say it?" That is a very weak claim, given the way you are distinguishing between what can be said, what is true, and what exists. I am talking about truth, not what we can say.
2. "There will be nobody to speak the truth when humanity is gone."
   
   • Here you imply that there are truths where there are no human minds.
3. "There will be no truth or falsity then if truth is a property of propositions or judgements and there is then no mind to propose or judge."
   
   • Well are truth and falsity dependent on minds or not? You need to commit to a position.
4. "Existence on the other hand does not depend on minds, propositions or judgements."
   
   • Existence is only knowable via truth. We can't magically speak about existence apart from truth.

If we rely on common intuitions then of course we can talk about truths apart from human minds. But if we consider the matter carefully and think about what we mean by truth, then at least atheists should begin to question themselves. That's to say that the intuition you are pre-critically submitting yourself to is not an atheistic intuition (unless you have some theory about how truth exists apart from minds).

We would paraphrase the statement, and commonly understand it, as saying, "It will turn out to be a good thing for you if you do good things." — J

And you could paraphrase the health statement as, "Your health will improve* if you engage in healthy activities." I don't see any difference.

The point is that we don't say such a thing — J

Rather, the point is that we do. Trying to convince someone to engage in healthy behavior is just an extrapolation of that basic claim, and we do that sort of thing constantly.

If there were no akrasia and we were purely intellectual creatures then perhaps such statements would be useless, but as it happens we are not. As it happens we engage in unhealthy behaviors even though we desire health.

* Or else, "Your health will be robust/optimal if..."

- :up:

A few days ago Peter Singer did an informal interview where he defends moral realism, which is helpful given his atheism:

There is a difference between something's being the case and something being said to be the case. Pretty simple, but apparently not for you. — Banno

You are running in the same circles as Janus. The point has nothing to do with speech. It has to do with truth. You want something to "be the case" where no truth exists, which is incoherent.

No I'm not. I'll try one last time. We can say it is true now or we can now say it is true that the planet will still exist when humanity is gone. There will be nobody to speak the truth when humanity is gone. There will be no truth or falsity then if truth is a property of propositions or judgements and there is then no mind to propose or judge.

Existence on the other hand does not depend on minds, propositions or judgements. — Janus

But we've already been over this. To predicate existence of something is to predicate a truth. Is your claim about existence supposed to have nothing to do with truth? You're not thinking very deeply about this at all, and that's common and even to be expected. You are trying to say something like, "X will exist but it will not be true that X will exist." If we are careful then we cannot set truth to the side before going on to make ostensibly true statements.

- You and @Banno are simply contradicting yourselves. You think truth is and is not dependent on minds. I'm not sure what else there is to say here.

It's coherent to say 'it is true that the planet will still exist when humanity has become extinct'. — Janus

Then you're saying that there will be a truth without minds, if you think there are no non-human minds.

They are not saying the same thing; one says it is true now and the other says it will br true then. — Janus

You still haven't given any explanation of how one can make true statements about the future without claiming that something will be true in the future. These are the same unaddressed issues we faced at the very beginning of the conversation.

Right, the theist might say that God's will and God's judgement are all of a piece. — Janus

The theist need only say that God is or has a mind. Not hard.

- Maybe you should make a new movie where humans are enslaved, and then the protagonist comes along, and instead of trying to free them, merely tries to give them a choice as to whether or not they want to be enslaved. It seems like what you're after. It will be a terrible movie and no one will watch it. :kiss: