You think that he is just an idiosyncratic contrarian — DingoJones

The way to test that is to say things I normally agree with and see if I disagree with them just to disagree with them. :wink:

Articulate response. :up:

Easily, through relativism. Relativism doesn't have to be exclusively relative to the views of a single subject. Surely you get that. So just because I might be disregarding your personal view, that doesn't mean that I'm therefore adopting an objectivist stance. That's a complete non sequitur. — S

But relativism doesn't imply subjectivism. The objective world is relative. It's not subjective.

I find it hard to believe you dont understand how the way you choose to engage could be frustrating to people.. — DingoJones

Did I say that? (I seriously don't recall saying that, but maybe I did.)

That stuff can still be subjective, even of it's independent of one particular subject. — S

How would that work?

Maybe I think too highly of you. — S

If you think that I'm not being forthright re whether I know what you're claiming (for example, re thinking I stated an argument earlier), then you probably are.

Obviously I don't think that's a problem. What I wrote is why I don't think it's a problem.

Thinking that there are things one should or shouldn't care about, independent of whether one does care about them, is the opposite of subjectivism.

I'm a subjectivist on this stuff.

With S it's frustrating because he doesn't want to straightforwardly articulate stuff. He often resorts to saying that you should simply know what he has in mind. He often thinks that you do know, but you're just being disingenuous by saying you don't. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

So, the real you, now, with your free speech absolutism: you see no problem if free speech didn't in fact matter to you, and other people were trying to explain the merits of free speech absolutism, and why free speech matters, and why it should matter, and you were just not getting it at all, and were in fact boasting about how consistent you are in not getting it? You hadn't got it for decades, in fact. — S

It's not a fact that it matters or should matter.

It's not a fact that it doesn't matter or shouldn't matter.

We're talking about ways that people feel, dispositions they have.

If you feel that everyone should feel the same way, okay, but I don't feel that everyone should feel the same way.

Right. This is as good a definition as any of what I'm talking about. The consequences matter to you. The consequences are an empirical question. It is possible to be wrong about them. That is what ethical arguments are about. — Isaac

Sure, it's possible to be wrong about them, although basically we have to argue counterfactuals and counterfactual truth values are close to impossible.

Of course the consequences aren't the same thing as the ethical stances, but sure, someone might change their ethical stance given different consequences of it.

In the cases at hand, it's not an issue of disagreeing over what the consequences would be, but feeling differently about the consequences regarding whether they're acceptable/desirable or not.

Imagine if free speech mattered to other people, but not to you. Now do you see a problem? — S

No. What do you see as the problem that different things matter to different people? Apparently you're thinking that the same things should matter to everyone? Why?

How do you view operating from axioms? — DingoJones

Do you mean for ethics? Or in general?

For ethics, I see it as a principle-based approach (unless you're talking about relatively arbitrary, regularly-changeable axioms . . . that would be pretty unusual, though), and I think that principle-based approaches tend to lead to what I consider to be draconian overreactions to things that should be basically written-off or treated with kid gloves. I hate invoking "common sense," but basically I think that principle-based approaches tend to ignore common sense. We should wind up saying, "Hold on a minute. We're advocating doing such and such to person A just because they did that? Are you crazy?"

At any rate, sure, something can be in line with an axiom or not, but I wouldn't say that it's "correct" just because it's in line with some axiom.

You are extremely predictable. And a dead end. — S

Well, consistent. I've had the same view literally for decades. You'd need a pretty good argument that I've not heard hundreds of times before for me to be persuaded that my view of what ethics, what normatives, etc. are ontologically is incorrect.

Yes, because this is ethics, and you have the wrong ethics, meaning that some things, like free speech, matter to you too much than they should, and other things, like the welfare of others, don't matter to you enough as they should.

Ideally, we'd get to a point where you'd realise this. — S

How much anything should matter to anyone is a matter of individual opinion. There is no correct answer.

It's no different than saying, "You don't like Yngwie Malmsteen's guitar playing as much as you should, but you like Neil Young's guitar playing more than you should."

According to whom? People have no requirement to feel the same way that you do about it.

I'm talking about the consequences which matter, generally (yes, to people, obviously), but which don't matter to you. Do you see any problem at all with that? — S

Do I see any problem with something mattering to other people but not to me? No.

Do other people have a problem with things that matter to me but not to them? Why?

Let's cut right to the chase. Are you a human being or a brick wall? Because I'm talking to you as though you are the former, when perhaps you are in fact the latter. The test would be that s human being would be capable of understanding why the consequences matter, but a brick wall would not. Do you at least understand why the consequences matter? — S

Well, things mattering are to an individual, and it's because the individual cares about it/is concerned with it/feels it should be taken into consideration. That's what "mattering" is.

In this case, sure, the consequences matter to me. I wouldn't have preferences for things like this where I'm not thinking about practical upshots of them.

Okay, so there's one "because" in that post: "because they don't matter to you." Your "they" stands for "consequences which do matter." So you're saying that the argument I forwarded was:

<statement of what I'd do policy-wise>
because consequences which do matter don't matter to me.

Is that right?

You're not just born with an opinion on prison sentences, one does not just pop into your head spontaneously, yet you claim that no other principle or objective connects your view on the matter (such that you could be wrong about the logic of that connection). — Isaac

Re the prisoner treatment example, my view was influenced by experiencing the way we treat prisoners, the sorts of sentences we give, and intuiting whether I feel that's a just way to treat people. That's not a view I'm born with, and it's not principle-oriented, but it's something that thought goes into, too.

I'm struggling to see any other way in which these very specific policy choices you have come about. They're all very libertarian, for example. But you'd have me believe that libertarian values are not in any way foundational. That the strong libertarian bent to all of your policy preferences is what...coincidence?

My disposition is very libertarian on a lot of things, sure. That's a way that I naturally am. When I first discovered libertarianism when I was in my later teens or early 20s (I don't recall exactly when I learned about it, but it was around that time), I thought, "Holy cow! There actually are some other people who feel the same way I do about this stuff!"

But my disposition isn't just libertarian. I have a lot of dispositions that are socialist, too. So that's why I consider myself a "libertarian socialist," although I'm a very idiosyncratic sort of libertarian socialist. Re my views about how the economy should work, how social assistance should work, etc., I've yet to run into anyone where I've said, "Holy cow! There actually are some other people who feel the same way I do about this stuff!"

So you can't read? — S

I suppose not. I sure can't figure out what you're saying the "because" would be. Can't you just straightforwardly tell me rather than having to play a game about it? I feel like I'm taking crazy stabs at what you might think it would be, because you don't seem to be plainly stating it.

Let's start with psychological abuse. You can basically verbally abuse your kids because protected by free speech and child protection services can't intervene. — Benkei

I'd not have any laws based on psychological effects period.

Just out of curiosity, how would you enforce any laws against psychological abuse? How would you establish that there has even been psychological abuse against kids?

So you'd say that the argument is "My policy would be such and such because I'd prefer this to be implemented"?

The answers to your questions in your first and second paragraphs were apparent from my previous reply: no, minimally, an argument is of the form "X because Y", and yours was of that form. — S

With respect to my "criminal threatening" policy? I suppose the policy was x, but what was y?

Suggestions that I feel are sensible, sure. Whether you'll agree, I have no idea. We could tackle one thing at a time. Which one do you want to start with re "these problems given the 'nature of reality'"?

Let us suppose that society never spoke of abstract pain, and that it instead invented a unique "pain designation" term for each and every person, that applied only to that particular person. E.g, "Bartrick-ouch", "MadFool-ouch" etc. In such a community, would it make sense to classify utterances of "Bartrick-ouch" as being subjective/objective ? — sime

We have to get a lot more persnickety than that about what we're referring to.

First, re propositions as the meaning of statements like that, are we saying that the proposition itself is objective? That would amount to saying that meaning is objective (which I don't agree with).

If we're instead talking about "what we're referring to," then it would depend on whether we're referring to a mental state that Barticks, etc. has, or whether we're referring to observable aspects of their behavior and not their mental state.

Okay, so necessarily if you want a preference to be implemented, that's an argument for that preference in your view? (So an argument doesn't have to be anything in the vicinity of a support why the preference is right, correct, etc.?)

And then does the part about feeling that different things do/don't matter automatically make something an argument, too?

At any rate, yeah, I'd prefer that my preferences be implemented, and yeah, part of it is that I'd prefer the consequences my preferences would result in. If that's what Isaac had in mind by his comments about arguments, how would you say that assuming a widespread consensus about ethical normatives would be useful in the discussion?

No, I'm only calling arguments "arguments". — S

So could you state how you consider me stating what my policy would be on what I'd call "criminal threatening" to be an argument?

I've already acknowledged that you don't accept that your argument is an argument. That doesn't make it not an argument. — S

Can you answer if you're calling any statement anyone makes "an argument"? Is the example about liking Aaron Copland an argument in your view?

What about defamation?

What about spreading lies about a competitor causing him to lose money?

What about copyright infringement?

What about psychological abuse?

What about leaking military plans causing a lot of deaths?

What about leaking company secrets to competitors causing loss of income? — Benkei

First, if I were king, the economy would not be capitalist. There wouldn't be private companies. We wouldn't have an economy based on money in any traditional sense.

I also don't agree with copyright law as it's currently instantiated. I'd have a copyright law of sorts, but it would be very different than current copyright law (and far less restrictive--it would basically be limited to (a) needing to credit sources, and (b) in the case of material benefits from borrowed materials (the equivalent of monetary benefits in a money-based system), a percentage of those benefits would need to be shared--and that's it).

Re defamation, one of my goals is to get people to put far less weight on speech acts than they do presently.

At any rate, I'd still have contractual law, and I'd still have laws against fraud. I talked about that on page 1 of the thread.

From the start of this particular nonsense, I said, "His comment was in the context of someone stating an argument. I didn't state any arguments, a fortiori because I don't even believe there are true or false ethical utterances."

Then I said in the next response to you, "If you're not going to state what the supposed argument is . . ."

And then in the next one, "The problem is that I didn't state an argument. I simply stated what my policy would be. What my policy would be isn't an argument for the policy."

Etc.

OK, so what I'm asking, with reference to the above, is whether it's your view that these preferences and limits (what is/isn't OK) just pop into your head without any consideration. — Isaac

I'm considering the specific situation at hand.

Were you born thinking that way, — Isaac

I don't think we're born thinking much at all. We're certainly not thinking about speech etc. per se. I'm not sure why that's relevant, though. Do you have a view that's something like "Either you're born thinking x, or x is necessarily built on foundational moral principles?"

have you ever changed your mind about them — Isaac

Is "them" just a way to refer to all moral dilemmas? If so, sure, I've changed my mind about some. An example would be that I didn't used to be against how we treat prisoners in general. Now I am.

(if so what was the experience like of suddenly finding yourself feeling differently about what it is OK to do to others without having given the matter any thought). — Isaac

In the case I just mentioned, it was due to becoming more aware of how we treat prisoners, seeing sentences that seemed like ridiculous overreactions, etc.--just being more aware of the circumstances, the existential situation, and it not seeming like a justified way to control other persons' lives to me.

Are no ethical stances based on anything, or just some/most of them? — Isaac

It's not that they're "based on nothing." It's that I don't take a principle-based approach. "Either 'Based on nothing' or 'principle-based approach'" is a false dichotomy.

You do know what it is that I'm considering to be an argument. — S

Hence why I'm asking. If it's that you consider any content whatsoever to be an argument, then okay, that makes sense. Again, if someone says "I like Aaron Copland. I'd listen to him every day," is that an argument in your view?

If so, then at least that makes sense. You consider anything anyone says (at least aside from questions, exclamations, etc. maybe) to be an argument.

You would have to explain why you supposedly don't understand what I'm referring to when I've made incredibly obvious through multiple explicit references. — S

I know the content you're referring to.

What I don't know is what you're considering to be an argument, since I didn't state an argument. Is it that you consider any stance an "argument"?

If someone says "I like Aaron Copland. I'd listen to him every day." Is that an argument?

bring back the anti-blasphemy laws — Hassiar

Part of the problem might be that I really do not do "(foundational) principle-based ethics." I think that approach is a bad idea.

But maybe you're assuming that I would be doing some sort of (foundational) principle-based ethics?

What I typically do when ethical dilemmas arise is think something like, "We could do or allow x versus not doing/not allowing x. Which option do I prefer? Which do I think is okay/not okay to do to other people?" Where I'm very situational/specific about that, where it's not principle-oriented but just practical for the situation at hand . . . and where lately, it seems like I'm usually having to stress that a lot of things people want to do seem like overreactions to me.

Given that the evidence is stacked against you, you have a burden to justify your suggestion that you have no idea what I'm referring to. — S

How would someone "justify their suggestion" that they weren't forwarding an argument and that they don't know what one is talking about re the claim that they were?

How would one even begin doing that?

If you're simply not going to believe me and insist that I know what you're talking about, there's not much I can do.

Yes, but you're using this fact to justify a position about harms. — Isaac

If you're reading this as being anything other than me explaining why I don't use something as broad as "I care about the welfare of others" as an ethical basis, you're making a mistake. That's all I was commenting on. I was explaining why that's too broad in my view.

Why are you pretending to be incapable? — S

It's as if you can't comprehend that I'm saying that at least on my view, I didn't forward any sort of argument.

Yet, despite that fact, you think it's "immoral" for me to not tell you what my argument was. lol

I understand you. You stated an argument that you refuse to admit is an argument, — S

Maybe I'd agree with you if you could tell me what the argument was.