We've already done a bunch of threads on meaning.

At any rate, so your interpretation of what people are doing with language--your beliefs about what they mean, without bothering to ask the people in question--doesn't determine what's the case with either how they're actually using language or with what's going on ontologically with utterances such as "x is good (morally)."

I understand your view, but you're arguing based on something that's wrong and very misconceived. (And it's also very simplistic, really.) I don't agree to disagree. I want you to not have views that are wrong.

that that meaning is derived from their form as a proposition, — Moliere

That part is wrong. Again, meaning is determined by what an individual has in mind.

Some people believe in a non natural realm so won't have ruled this out. — Andrew4Handel

Yeah, but those people are wrong.

Teleology is nonsense by the way. Just dump the Aristotle, really. He said a lot of stuff that was severely in error. If you keep deferring to Aristotle you're going to wind up making mistake after mistake and not really understanding anything.

Well, I've been restricting myself to the nature of moral language -- namely that moral statements are not special with respect to other statements. — Moliere

Even if you're doing that and you don't care about what's really going on ontologically, you can't just ignore meaning. Meaning is determined by how an individual thinks about the language in question.

Clarify then... what comes through a subject that is not subjective? — creativesoul

I'm not clear re what "comes through a subject" would refer to, so we'd have to clarify that.

I use "subjective" to refer to something occurring mentally. So re humans, for example, it's something that occurs in one's brain functioning in a mental capacity. Saying something, if we're literally talking about saying something, has a component that's clearly not just one's brain functioning in a mental capacity--among other things, it involves producing soundwaves with one's throat, mouth, etc. That's not just someone's brain functioning in a mental capacity.

That's false. Maybe you try should understand my views, then, before trying to criticize or even paraphrase them.

Under the definition I use, how are thought and belief not subjective? Not that the term matters, by the way. What matters are the upshots of what it's pointing out ontologically.

Thought and belief are neither objective nor subjective — creativesoul

What definition of "subjective" would you be using there? (Well, what definition of both terms I should ask)

and all thought/belief consists of that which is not existentially dependent upon the thinking/believing subject, as well as that which is, thought/belief is neither. — creativesoul

I haven't the faintest idea what that bit is saying.

So a convention re language-usage somehow determines what's the case ontologically? How?

. . .and given that there is no "supernatural realm" (unfortunately, because I like the idea of things like ghosts), then there is no objective property of "goodness."

I don't think you understood my comment, which is partially my fault for using the word "merit."

What I mean is that you're suggesting that just because it's strongly felt or widely held (assuming that's the case, of course) that moral utterances are expressing propositions in the sense of sentences that can be true or false, then there must be something to the idea that they are expressing propositions in the sense of sentences that can be true or false.

In other words, you're suggesting that the ubiquity or strength of a belief (that moral utterances are expressing something true or false) makes it more likely that the belief is acurrate rather than mistaken,

Because otherwise, the ubiquity and/or strength of the belief has nothing to do with what's really the case ontologically, which would make it a red herring to even mention.

They have to be zero in size, hence you are no longer dealing with the quantity in question. — albie

Say what?

Yes, so it is an empirical question. For one interesting piece of empirical research on what people believe, see https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/on-the-human/2010/12/objective-moral-truths/ . Also see Brian Leiter's comment which brings up relevant issues. — Andrew M

Oy vey re that paper. They say, "To get at people’s agreement with moral relativism, they told participants about two characters — John and Fred — who held opposite opinions about whether some given act was morally bad. Participants were then asked whether one of these two characters had to be wrong (the objectivist answer) or whether it could be that neither of them was wrong (the relativist answer)."

You can't determine whether someone is an objectivist or subjectivist by asking them the above. (And the opposite of objectivist can't be relativist--they're mixing up categories; you can think that moral stances are both objective and relative.) The reason you can't make that determination is that "wrong" can be used subjectively (and relatively). People who believe subjectivism don't necessarily refrain from saying "murder is wrong." The vast majority of them still say things like "murder is wrong." The difference is that they realize that they are essentially saying "Boo to murder."

In other words, a subjectivist uses ". . . is wrong" subjectively, which is what they can be doing when they say "John is wrong when he says that 'Murder is morally permissible'."

The only way to determine if someone is an objectivist or subjectivist on ethics is for them to understand the difference and then ask them which one they agree with.

One good thing about all of these comments from Andrew M lately is that it's clear that he's an objectivist (not in the Randian sense) on ethics, which is connected to it being clear that antinatalism doesn't make much sense from the standpoint of subjectivist ethics.

Science only analyzes existing concepts, and there is no scientific research before a concept is created. — bogdan9310

"Analyzes existing concepts," "creates concepts," and the word "only" in application to either claim about concepts makes no sense when in the same sentence we're admitting research.

It seems like not many places accept Bitcoin as payment yet, which doesn't help make the whole thing any less ridiculous.

Supposedly a local (to me) pizza place accepts bitcoin as payment . . . As long as you're willing to pay almost $12 for a slice.

The details of the experiment sound ridiculous. They based the results on the speed with which the test subjects pushed buttons (what sort of speed differences are we talking about anyway--I bet they were small), the experiment depends on how quickly the test subjects can make a determination that a name is "foreign," they changed the origin of the "foreign"-sounding names to a culture that's much closer to the non-foreign culture on the one side, and it sounds like maybe they did the reversal with the same test subjects--which would make sense in one regard, as it's controlling at least one variable, but on the other side, it adds the challenge of having to perform an inversion of what the test subjects had just been doing.

That's not to mention the huge assumptions they're making about what the speed difference amounts to in terms of much broader, much more general mental assessments, attitudes, etc.

A low quality pizza might have old ingredients and be partially cooked (or burnt), whereas a high quality pizza would have fresh ingredients and be properly cooked. Do you reject pizza quality as objective because it depends on facts about humans (e.g., what is edible, healthy, palatable, etc.)? — Andrew M

Yes. Quality in this sense, any judgment whatsoever that anything is better or worse than something else, is about persons' preferences. The world outside of minds couldn't care less what the ingredients are, how old the ingredients are, whether the ingredients are going to make us sick or not, it has no "proper" versus "improper," etc.

If so, does that then carry over to other properties as well such as an object's color? — Andrew M

Whatever else someone thinks about it, color is not at all similar to assessments/judgments like good/bad, better/worse, proper/improper, high quality/low quality, etc.

They either think/believe that something is unacceptable thought, belief, and/or behaviour or they do not. — creativesoul

Which doesn't tell you anything about whether in their view they're claiming something objective or not.

On your view, you have no grounds for believing there's anything but a map.

You're backing (at least epistemological) idealism via representationalism. I'm neither an idealist nor a representationalist. Again, I'm not claiming that the map is (at least the epistemological) territory. You are (well, or you are and you aren't alternately, seemingly rather arbitrarily, basically as if you don't seem to realize the implications of your own views).

Do you think people ordinarily intend objectivity when making moral claims? — Andrew M

I have no idea. We'd need to do the empirical research and do pretty extensive polls.

Do you think that well-being (and suffering) is something we can make objective claims about? — Andrew M

Only via saying things like "Joe considers x well-being," "Betty considers y suffering," "Chemical c statistically is correlated to feelings of well-being," "Most people consider z suffering," etc.

So if a system can work so that its thermal energy can be converted into mechanical work, then in what sense is the entropy "going backwards"--wouldn't that just be a "forwards" way that energy behaves, simply negating what we thought was the third law of thermodynamics?

Whereas if they say, "That pizza tastes good", they are likely commenting on the high quality of that particular pizza. So a use can be objective, even when discussing pizza. — Andrew M

No, it can't. There is no objective quality (in that sense of the word "quality," I'm not saying there are no objective properties.)

I'm not sure why you are bringing up this point. — TheWillowOfDarkness

The reason I brought it up is because you said this:

The problem is all our accounts we give are the way we think. — TheWillowOfDarkness

That's saying that the maps are the maps.

So we need to check if you think there are only maps.

You don't think that.

But now you seem to be saying that it's not possible to experience something that's not just our experience, or it's not possible to "put something in a map" that doesn't exist outside of the map?

So you believe that when we feel a particular emotion, for example, it's basically a perception of something that's not mental?

how you arrive at this conclusion when you only have a map in either case. — TheWillowOfDarkness

I asked you "I'm not claiming that the map is (necessarily) the territory. Are you?"

You didn't give a straight yes or no answer. So yes, you are claiming that?

He figured that we would look at those resources and divide them up in the best intrest of the state. — hachit

I'm not saying anything like this, though.

My system has competition for scarce(r) resources as a major feature of the system.

You said that my system is the same as Marx's.

So Marx must have competition for scarce(r) resources as a major feature of the system. I'm asking you how this is built into his system. Marx' system is set up to encourage competition from who/via what means, and to reward competitors with scarce(r) resources how?

that is the motivation behind all systems. Economics teaches that we have infinite wants and finite resources. The systems we invent are ways of seeing who gets what. — hachit

Sure, so how, exactly is this built into Marx's communism?

Just in case you don't know where I'm coming from, I'm a pretty hardcore atheist who isn't at all fond of the influence of mainstream religious beliefs in various cultures.

That doesn't make me not strongly disagree with your last three premises (and so your conclusion as well).

yes that is what I'm saying, don't worry I've met plenty of people that makes that mistake. Also socialism was developed as a way to transition to communism but it never could. — hachit

Sure. So for one, you'd say that Marx's system has competition for scarce resources as a major motivator?

Yes, I know about thermodynamics and entropy.

If you're saying something specifically about thermodynamics and entropy, you'd need to characterize it that way. (And then we can check if the better qualified characterization would work.)

Saying "the reversal of energy which left it" means that energy is being brought back to it, which is another way of saying that energy is being added to heat it up.

no it was communism as Karl Marx purpose. All the people would work for the benefit of the state. We never actually had a communist state. — hachit

You're saying that my system is communism a la Karl Marx? (and I'm just not aware of this?)

Do you add energy to the water and heat it up again? No, you travel back along the line of energy, backward thermodynamics. The water starts to heat itself up when the energy is coming back into the water. That is what happens if you turn the arrow of entropy. — Christoffer

If the water starts to heat itself up when the energy is coming back into the water, how is that not adding energy to the water to heat it up again?

That is communism, as I said it has motivation problems. When people do something they think they need to get something in return. The only way it could work is if we're all carbon copys of each other. — hachit

It might sound like communism but what I'm proposing is quite different. "Need to get something in return"--I specified that my system would be competition-oriented and it would give scarcer resources to certain people.

Have you ever been in a class or had a conversation with people about a book or paper and one person never bothered to read the material but still wants to talk? If so, then you know that it's just silly, because either they say things only tangentially related, or make points that would have been answered if they'd read the text. It derails the conversation and wastes everyone's time. — NKBJ

Are you saying that the text answers "If we can't conceive of an unexperienced or objective world, then what would we even be talking about in this discussion?"

If I heat up water, let it cool down and then travel back to when it was hot, my initial concept is that of traveling to another time, but essentially I traveled to when the energy was high in that water. If energy and mass create time as it's "byproduct" then we are generally traveling along the causality of energy distribution. — Christoffer

But how would we "travel back to when it was hot" rather than just heating it up again?

Time travel is essentially traveling between different points of energy distribution — Christoffer

What does that amount to in practical terms, exactly? "Different points of energy distribution"?

I'd replace it with a socialist system, not centered on money per se, geared towards providing both the essentials for everyone--food, housing, health care, education, transportation, etc.--and the things that people desire, which would be discovered via polling, and where the competition for scarce resources is centered on helping others, cooperating, providing things that people need/want. The more you do, via a combo of hard work and/or ingenuity, to provide things that people need/want, the more you have access to scarcer resources.

Well, the constructivist stance is that there is no objective truth outside the self, and the realist says there is. So as far as that goes, yes you have to choose one. It's A or not A.

Seems to me the constructivist has to deny all of realism, but the realist can allow some constructivism. So, the realist posits there is an objective reality, but humans may have imperfect access to it. — NKBJ

Also, it's important not to conflate truth and ontology in general.

For example, I'm a subjectivist on truth--in short, truth is a relation between propositions and other things, and in my view that relation amounts to a judgment that individuals make. But I'm a realist in general a la believing that tons of things exist independently of us. (And in fact I find it aggravating that so many people are so focused only on us in what's basically an extension of little kids thinking that "the world revolves around them.")