Haha I'm quite comfortable with saying you are completely wrong about this. Not sure where u pulled it from.other words, it's unbearable to think that someone else might actually be wrong about something. We can only get along if we're all equally right - at least in our own minds. Thus is born Political Correctness. — Wayfarer
Something like this. I think morality as commitment is also a bit of an abstraction. I don't think the morality as part of your experience is a set of rules, just the way you are compelled to act. Once we move from moral experience to moral sentences we drastically change what we are referring to.is, again, 'subjectivism' - that is, morality is effective because it's 'part of your experience', it is under-written by individual commitment. So, you will respect that, because it represents the right of an individual to hold a view - but at the same time, you don't believe it amounts to anything 'objectively true'. — Wayfarer
Not really asking for it. There are plenty people that are moral realist that don't believe there is 'an objective domain of values' - sounds very platonic. I'm mostly interested in arguments for realism which don't require this 'objective domain' or something similar.I think what you're actually asking for is an 'objective domain of values' - which is a perfectly reasonable thing to ask for - but in the context of a culture within which the traditional means of providing that, is absent — Wayfarer
It is as if you are a limb that is numb to me, and I am a limb that is numb to you, and morality is the truth that if you damage a limb, you are damaging yourself, for all that you do not feel anything. — unenlightened
Because I don't actually feel your pain, I don't tend to care about it as much as my own, but this is merely a limitation of my senses - shortsightedness. Morality simply reminds me that you are sensitive too. — unenlightened
It's the 'is/ought' problem again. What is the warrant for 'it is wrong' beyond subjective opinion? This is what religion and social mores used to underwrite, but now they've either been 'internalised', 'relativized' or 'subjectivised'.
I think it is quite permissible to believe that stealing anything whatever is wrong. It doesn't mean you have to perform a citizens arrest over someone shoplifting, but if I noticed it I think I would tell the shopkeeper. — Wayfarer
I was addressing this sentence.Perhaps you are looking at the horizon, while I am looking at a bird, which is looking for grubs, and a cat which is looking at the bird with a view to lunch. Four very different views and significances. Each significance is a relation of a pov to a view. The horizon has no pov. — unenlightened
I don't see how you can be definite about what you are not conscious of. But of course there is much one is not conscious of that varies from person to person, habit, neurology, the state of their gut bacteria. There is much of the world one is not conscious of too. I don't think we disagree about that.
Don't get hung up about 'container'. It is just a convenient shorthand. Shall we say that to be conscious is to be the 'centre' of an 'experiential world? If that is an acceptable locution, then we can replace 'container' with 'centrality' and 'contents of consciousness' with 'experiential world'. — unenlightened
I'd be grateful if you could explain the gap, because I don't see it. The nearest I can get is that morality as pontificated in prescriptions and proscriptions is a poor substitute for the weakness of caring about others. Because I don't actually feel your pain, I don't tend to care about it as much as my own, but this is merely a limitation of my senses - shortsightedness. Morality simply reminds me that you are sensitive too. — unenlightened
It looks like we have a vastly different view of some of these issues.If one can speak objectively of human subjectivity, then it seems to follow that there is something generic about it. One might say that the contents of awareness are always unique, such contents including a sense of self and personal preferences, yet the container is everywhere the same -awareness is the same whether it is yours or mine.
If such is the truth, it is not directly experienced, but inferred; I do not feel your pain, but your pain is as real as mine. I do not need to be told that I ought to avoid my own pain, because it is within my direct awareness, but the need to avoid your pain emerges indirectly from the understanding that we are not as separate as immediate experience suggests.
If your point of view is as real and as significant as my point of view, for all that I have no access to yours, then my obligation to you is equal to my obligation to myself. Of course it is unnatural to talk about obligation to oneself, because it is automatic - 'when hungry I eat, when thirsty I drink'. The understanding that your hunger and thirst are just as significant as mine is the foundation of obligation to another.
It is as if you are a limb that is numb to me, and I am a limb that is numb to you, and morality is the truth that if you damage a limb, you are damaging yourself, for all that you do not feel anything. — unenlightened
Do all statements of fact require a 'because?' — The Great Whatever
Sorry, did an edit to try to make my point more clear.So let's say you have a specific belief - maybe torturing children is wrong - then you find out that it isn't true. Is that a possibility
— shmik
Sure, but I don't think it's likely.
Haven't you ever changed your mind about something? — The Great Whatever
I get that anti-realism isn't the norm, but so what? I don't go along with every position that is intuitively compelling if I think it's flawed.Wouldn't a more reasonable response be to say, 'you're right?' — The Great Whatever
So let's say you have a specific belief - maybe torturing children is wrong - then you find out that it isn't true although you still feel that torturing children is wrong. Is that a possibility or are your moral convictions such that they are entirely based on their own self evidence such that to find out one of your beliefs is untrue is the same as finding it self evidently untrue.Yes, but only because I generally believe in my own epistemic faultiness. Because of the nature of belief, I can't pick out any single moral belief I have that's wrong (else I wouldn't believe it). — The Great Whatever
To me this conversation is similar to if you said to me, 'torturing children is wrong because it's against the bible'. When I respond that I don't believe in the bible's authority you think its strange that I'm OK with torturing children.So when people say torturing children is wrong, you don't agree with them? — The Great Whatever
People usually ain't as ambivalent about moral right and wrongness when it's about them and people they care about. Someone who's faculties are fully functional cannot witness pain and distress and not feel pain and distress themselves.
Of course it's wrong... wake up. To witness such a thing, or be subject to it, you'd not only realize it to be wrong, but trauma inducing, haunting -- effecting you the rest of your life.
Morality is inherently about subjects that can be harmed, so that it is dependent in some way on subjects that can be harmed is no problem, or drawback. The scope need not be wider, and it need not account for anything beyond this. Living things are a certain ways, and share certain interests which make some things objectively better and worse for them.
The only problem is why one ought to care at all in the first place, not whether moral statements can be justified or not. This is a nonsense question though, because we always already do. The only real problem is on the finer details where moral disputes lie, where it isn't obvious what's right and wrong. That's where the adults play. This is baby games. — Wosret
When you say 'statically xxx' you are saying that some situations/events/etc are more likely than others. Also it's a description not a normative statement. It's weird to hypostatize statistics as if there is some statistical force acting on the marbles.That means that by the time that the marbles fall out of the funnel located at the bottom of the vat statistically they HAVE to already be distributed by statistical laws. — Ergo
But does the maths say this?Although the math says that infinite jars and infinite chances will "almost certainly" result in a jar filled with only one color of marbles eventually the math that tells us this is not taking into account the inherent nature of the mechanism in question.
Actually I can often get on board with people on the left. Do you have any recommendations of someone similar on the right. It would be really interesting to hear, especially if they didn't just repeat the arguments which have been made by members of the liberal party over the years but provided more insight.or some reason I seem to think you're Australian - perhaps something you wrote once at the old place.
If you are, then what do you think of Philip Adams as an example of someone of the Left that is very friendly, open-minded and non-abusive to those with whom he disagrees, often having them as guests on his late night talk show on Radio National. He seeks to engage with and understand them rather than shouting at or accusing them.
Is he a model of what we need more of on the Left? Or do you think that he also suffers from too many of the flaws that concern you? — andrewk
I think this has a descent amount to do with being Australian. The pro life movement is often viewed as a largely American thing. Also it is associated with Christianity. I don't think I have ever met an atheist that was pro life (or at least one that mentioned they were).You say that you had had discussions about abortions for years. What did those discussions entail if no one ever brought up considerations regarding the fetus? To me it seems like anywhere one goes to participate in discussion about a controversial topic like that, there's always someone who brings up the so-called pro-life side of the argument — zookeeper
Do you have any recommendations of things to read to get a balanced idea of the other side (the right)?increasing exposure to and agreement with the other side, and a reconsideration of how the metaphysical and ethical principles I hold to apply to various political issues. — Thorongil
I don't think this is particularly accurate. At least in my case it's more about allowing the other side to have a voice and bothering to listen to what they are saying.I find it odd how so often I see people describing how they're disillusioned by their current or former political in-group, as if they suddenly see the motivations and shortcomings of other people on their side more clearly and realize that they're on average not that much smarter or nicer than anyone else. Or rather, I don't find it odd that people do come to those sort of realizations, but rather the fact that it often seems to be a bit of a shock to them because they so strongly identified with that group. Doesn't that just mean that they primarily identified with the people, and that the actual issues and arguments behind them were secondary? — zookeeper
(There was some salon or slate article about how it's insensitive to discuss the reasons for Hillary's loss beyond sexism at least until female hillary supporters have time to grieve...that's insane but I've seen people in my fb circle say similar things) — csalisbury
Haha, I'm still in my 20s.Well, of course you're drifting right. You're growing old. Change is painful (the music these kids listen to these days, jeez), and to stave off your impending mortality, you try to grab and hang onto as much stuff as you can. — Real Gone Cat
I wander what's actually at stake here, suppose we confirm that they have an extensive language, does that impact any of your philosophical (or non-philosophical) views?All the same...how about that? The supposed uniqueness of human (capacity for) language is the cornerstone of many a debate. As I was only saying to my local feral geese this afternoon down by the canal. (The crows listened, but only cawed cautiously) — mcdoodle
Yeh, one of the reasons that I was thinking specifically about condemnation is that people are often not trying to convince anyone of anything at all. It's not as if people are constantly arguing with those who don't think Nazis were that bad. It seems like they lose something even if they cannot (objectively) condemn the Nazi's privately.Maybe there's more to it than that... — Baden
But the real world is conceptually articulated through and through; so why would we need to "make our way there"? On the contrary, it cannot be escaped... — John