No, not objective. But real! — Wayfarer

Ah! I see a cause for potential confusion between us (not that I think resolving it will get us far, but we might as well). There's 'objective' as in 'true for everyone' and there's 'objective' as in true in the absence of a subject. For me they're indistinguishable because anything which requires a subject to be true by definition is not necessarily true for everyone (we can't discount the possibility of a subject coming into existence for whom it's not true). Saying a claim is objective is saying that it's true for everyone, not that it doesn't require a subject to hold it. So "not objective. But real" doesn't make any sense as a claim. If something is real (to you) then it is 'not objective but realm, but that's the claim I'm making which you're refuting. If it's 'real for everyone', then it's either objective (doesn't require a subject to think it), or you'd need to defend the additional claim that despite it being a subjective truth it is impossible for a subject to exist for whom it isn't true.

If that necessity is not a fact about the world then what is it a fact about? — Isaac


Something you're obviously having a great deal of trouble seeing. That is what this Aeon essay is about. As said, it's the substance of Descartes' famous argument, 'cogito ergo sum'. — Wayfarer

None of that answers the question. If it's not a fact about the world then what is it a fact about? Shouldn't require an essay to answer.

I think that's very true. Like the fox in the hen house, it never evolved an off switch because it never faced a room full of trapped prey, it never needed one.

The point I was trying to make is that whilst this makes us vulnerable, it does not, in theory, prevent there from being a set of circumstances which suit our nature sufficiently to prevent such catastrophic failures to adapt.

I'm generally distrustful of any evolutionary psychology, we're really quite a malleable species in terms of our cultural adaptation to new circumstances, but that doesn't mean we don't have our limits, nor that solutions which work with those tendencies won't work a good deal better than those trying to work against them.

What I find unhelpful about any "it's in our nature" type of arguments is the defeatism which inevitably plays into the hands of those who prefer to maintain the status quo.

So yeah, I agree - "we're not very well adapted psychologically to handle the technology" is a much better way of talking about the role of 'human nature' than to resign on the clichéd "'twas ever thus". It clearly wasn't.

Our moral intuitions aren't developed to take into account far off risks or other people in the abstract. We pursue impartiality and abstraction by expressing everything in terms of money, which becomes a self perpetuating beast mostly out of our control (the Market) so that we don't have to feel anything about a decision, further divorcing it from morality. — Benkei

This is a very interesting take, one I've not heard before. It seems related to Millgram's work on social roles (his work on obedience gets all the limelight, but in my opinion his work on social roles is much better). He talks about the psychological limits of being part of a large system (such as a corporation) and how we responded to that by limiting the nodes in our 'Markov Blanket' of knowledge about the system. We know what our boss wants us to do, we know what we want our staff to do, but we neither know nor understand what our boss's boss wants, nor what our staff's staff should do. It seems as though you're saying a similar thing could happen with spending. We cannot manage the chain of consequences more than a few steps so we end consideration there. Or have I misunderstood completely, perhaps?

when human culture evolution really started is a bit in contention I'd say. — ChatteringMonkey

That it started some huge multiple of 2000 years is not 'in contention', it's a fact. The contention is only over the exactness of that multiple. That we lived without noticeably impacting the global ecosystem for the overwhelming majority of our existence is just not a thing you can reasonably question.

In the video Boethius linked to, Dr Suzuki compares economic growth with bacteria in a test tube that grow exponentially every minute. — ChatteringMonkey

Indeed. And it applies admirably to economic growth. The imact we had on the global ecosystem as a species is not exponential. It was practically zero for hundreds of thousands of years and then grew exponentially from the birth of agriculture, ramping up a significant notch after the industrial revolution. There's been nothing remotely steady or progressive about it, it's been clearly triggered by significant changes in technology.

the point at which we started spreading across the globe, a lot of megafauna did become extinct, and we did reshape whole ecosystems as we progressed into agriculture, domesticated species etc etc... — ChatteringMonkey

The megafauna issue is contested (funny how you so easily raise the uncertainty of something opposing your view yet treat speculative theories as fact when they support it). Notwithstanding, the progress to agriculture is exactly what I'm talking about. It happened about 200,000 years into our existence as a species, prior to which no appreciable effect on the global ecosystem was detectable, rendering your "we're naturally inclined this way" theory complete nonsense.

Surely there is a subject of experience. The brain doesn't experience anything, unless it is embodied. The reality of the subject of experience is what is at issue. — Wayfarer

Putting the word 'surely' in front of your assumptions doesn't magically make them more persuasive you know.

the being, the subject of experience, doesn't have a referent *because* it's not objectively describable — Wayfarer

Yet...

It's what must first exist in order for there to be any facts about the world. — Wayfarer

...sounds exactly like a description of it which is purporting to be objective.

Notice that when you say 'it seems to you that ...', this statement assumes there must be a subject to whom something 'seems' to be the case. There can't be a seeming, without someone to whom it seems. — Wayfarer

Yep.

That's the fatal flaw in all Dennett's blatherings about 'unconscious competence'. — Wayfarer

Not even vaguely related.

the first-person perspective is dismissed as being 'just a story', even though that perspective is required for there to be a story in the first place. Again, a glaring contradiction. — Wayfarer

It's not a contradiction in any sense. One is saying that your subjective feeling about the way things are might contradict the hidden causes of those feelings in some way. The second is saying that such a perspective is nonetheless necessary. Something can be necessary without it being accurate. Necessity and accuracy are not the same properties.

it is an obvious mistake is to classify your first-person existence as 'a fact about the world'. It is not 'a fact about the world' at all. It's what must first exist in order for there to be any facts about the world. — Wayfarer

If that necessity is not a fact about the world then what is it a fact about?

I wanna say part of the problem is inherent in human beings... it's evolutions fault that we will destroy us. — ChatteringMonkey

And yet we lived for 192,000 years with virtually no measurable impact on the climate or global ecosystem, and in the last few thousand are in a position to make the earth uninhabitable.

If your computer worked without fault for 192 years and then in the last year started to go wrong are you seriously telling me your first port of call for blame would be that there's something fundamentally wrong with the way the computer was made and not "oh no, I must have picked up a virus, or dropped it, or something"?

If forced to choose one institution, which would you choose as the most powerful in the world today? — Xtrix

Depends on which metric of 'Power' you're using. There's two poles; the number of people you can influence, and the strength of that influence. Is an institution which can make a handful of people into slaves more powerful than an institution which can only have a weak influence on what car people drive, but does so to half a billion people? A pop singer can make billions wear a certain brand of shoe, but it's doubtful that they could make billions clean toilets. A government can make people clean toilets, but only the much smaller number of people in its prison population.

Do we just multiply strength of influence by size of influence, or is one a more important measure for you than another?

are you claiming "what is it like to go sky-diving?" is something that needs to be eliminated? Or is nonsensical? — RogueAI

No. As Peter Hacker says

it is misconceived to suppose that one can circumscribe, let alone define, conscious experience in terms of there being something which it is like for a subject to have it. It does not matter whether ‘conscious experience’ is understood as ‘experience had while conscious’ or as ‘experience of which one is conscious’. The very expression ‘There is something it is like for a person to have it’ is malconstructed. The question from which it is derived ‘What is (or was) it like for you (or for A) to V?’ is a perfectly licit request for specification of one’s affective attitude at the time to the experience undergone, a specification of ‘how it is (or was) for one’. If there is an answer, then there is something which it is (or was) for you (or A) to V —namely ... (and here comes a specification of the attitudinal attribute). — Hacker

Asking what it's like to sky dive is asking for my affect at the time, the answer is "It was great", or "it was really scary". Asking what it's like to be a bat is not intending such an answer. Nagel would not be satisfied with "it'd be fun", or "it'd be boring".

The idea of consciousness as 'something it's like', is the notion that there's an existent thing (what it's like) on top of the goings on in the brain that constitute the experience of doing something. It's that notion that I'm eliminativist about. I don't think it has any proper referent. The experience of skydiving just is the affect, the memories, the anticipations, the self-narrative etc, all of which have a clear neural basis (in that damage to parts of the brain can remove them). There's no additional thing on top of that.

Seems contradictory. If anything can be framed by how much suffering it causes, then it seems to follow that every metric can be converted. All that's required is to measure the suffering caused by it's valence. — Isaac

The OP is available for confounding this demonstration. — Cheshire

I don't see how. Smashing the painting would be morally wrong. It would be wrong because doing so would make you the kind of person who could destroy beautiful things without revulsion and removing that revulsion which prevents you from doing so could lead to suffering in future as you're no longer held back when feeling the urge to destroy something. Many beautiful things give value to society and cause suffering when they're lost. It's the same argument against things like torturing androids, or showing violent films to children. No one is harmed, at the time but the consequences of removing the barriers to such behaviour present a risk of harm in the future.

I'm not saying this is necessarily an absolute truth, with regards to the painting. I'm just showing how your instincts about moral actions can be framed in terms of suffering even when there's no subject to suffer at the time. Many moral duties are about cultivating good moral sense to protect people from harm later on, they're not necessarily about harm at the time.

So where does that even leave us? — ToothyMaw

I think those who're concerned about moral systems are really concerned about influence, not rightness, They already seem to have a pretty robust (if net even a little dogmatic) opinion about what's right, what they're looking for is a stick with which to beat their opponents. The hope is that absolute morality will be such a stick. If saying "you shouldn't walk past the homeless" isn't working, maybe "you absolutely shouldn't walk past the homeless, I proved it" will. At the end of the day, they just don't want people walking past the homeless.

The trouble is that people don't make their decisions on the basis of what some philosopher says (even 'philosopher' with a small 'p', and even when that philosopher is themselves). Most rationalisations are post hoc, the decision's already been made and the rational argument is engaged to try and support it. Moral decisions are at the most extreme end. The gut feelings which viscerally repulse us from harming the innocent child aren't going to be overridden any time soon by the results of a parlour game like philosophy.

It's easy enough to get people to behave more morally - make sure they feel welcomed and valued in some social group and then set the membership criteria of that group as consistent moral behaviour (whatever your chosen brand of 'moral' is). It doesn't matter that you can't work out exactly what is right in certain edge cases because their being edge cases precisely means that there's no clear right or wrong. The problem is not the unresolved dilemmas, it's the inability to live with them.

Yes, that's right. I want to ban tastes and emotions. I don't know why I didn't think of putting it that simply in the first place.

What a waste of time.

if the dilemma is merely that which course of action causes less suffering then it isn't really a moral dilemma; it is a disagreement about facts about which course of action will cause less suffering. — ToothyMaw

Yes, thats right, and if the dilemma were previously framed as which course of action caused most happiness, changing it to which causes least suffering won't change the disagreement because lack of happiness can be framed as a type of suffering.

Do you mean they disagree about the amount of suffering caused or whether or not minimizing suffering is a good objective? — ToothyMaw

The former. They may talk as if they disagreed about the latter, but my argument is that such disagreements are superficial whether it's least suffering, or most happiness, or most virtuous, or most culturally acceptable, or most pleasing to God... The main thrust of the disagreement in moral dilemmas is not the objective, it's the means of getting there.

If you define suffering as exclusively being an undesirable state of mind then it seems to me that not every metric can be converted to suffering, although almost anything could be seen to cause suffering. — ToothyMaw

Seems contradictory. If anything can be framed by how much suffering it causes, then it seems to follow that every metric can be converted. All that's required is to measure the suffering caused by it's valence.

That is how many moral dilemmas could be solved: choose the option that causes less suffering — ToothyMaw

If we could choose the option which causes less suffering it wouldn't be an extant moral dilemma, it would already be solved (like no-one is wondering whether we should torture children for fun). Moral dilemmas are dilemmas because it is undecidable which course of action causes the least (or most) of whatever metric you're using to determine 'right'. Since every metric can be 'converted' to suffering, changing the metric doesn't resolve the fact that the measurement of it is unresolvable.

Try it, by all means. Take a moral dilemma where people disagree with you about the 'right' course of action. Tell them how much 'suffering' you think the 'wrong' option causes and see if they disagree. If they do, where do you go next? To what higher authority do you appeal to judge the correct amount of 'suffering' in cases of disagreement?

What exactly do you attempt to eliminate in your "eliminative materialism"? — Olivier5

We've been through this - things like qualia, consciousness (in the sense of 'what it's like'), emotions as natural kinds, essences and forms (in the Platonic sense). I bolded it in the quote right at the beginning of our discussion - eliminative materialism includes the claim that some mental terms have no proper referent, I subscribe to that view. I don't subscribe to the view that no mental terms have proper referents, but I do think those referents are the same thing as neural states. That's not the same as saying the things don't exist. Denying them a separate existence from their material substrate is not denying them an existence tout court.

Why, the human mind gets eliminated, but not the productions of the human mind? — Olivier5

Who said anything about eliminating the human mind?

Isn't the entire canon of cognitive science part of what gets eliminated — Olivier5

What? I've absolutely no idea what's lead you to that conclusion so I can't even begin to answer the question. Eliminated how? It's a canon - a body of work - the only way it could be eliminated is by destroying all the copies.

That reads like mumbo-jumbo. I miss the part where anything mental gets "eliminated". Who are "we", if not some selves? — Olivier5

The part where certain mental notions get eliminated is the entire canon of cognitive science for the last few decades, do you expect me to reproduce it all here?

That it might read like mumbo-jumbo to you is not something I'm responsible for is it?

my intuition-based model of myself and my non-eliminated mind works really well. Why should I adopt another? — Olivier5

Read back through our exchange. Who initiated, who questioned the reasonableness of whose position? It's not I trying to get you to reject your model, it's you trying to claim mine is unreasonable. You asked about my model and three short posts in launched in with...

your eliminative materialist model is generated by neurons in your brain, like some sort of 'woo'? — Olivier5

...and likening my work to...

running around like materialist chicken — Olivier5

...Don't now try to pretend it's me attacking your position. I really could not care less what position you hold, it's your claim that mine is unreasonable that I responded to. If you don't understand the arguments supporting it then your general derisive antagonism toward materialist positions gives me no incentive at all to resolve that.

Wherein I take my first exception to your comments: — Mww

I was doing so well...

I submit for your esteemed consideration, that that which could be cognized a priori, in constructing your “ready other parts of the mind in anticipation”.....is none other than an image we insert into the process, that serves as a rule to which the anticipated, must conform.

The stereotypical physicalist will adamantly decry the notion of images, maintaining instead the factual reality of enabled neural pathways, which translates to memory recall. Which is fine, might actually be the case, but I still “see” my memories, and science can do nothing whatsoever to convince me I don’t. — Mww

Actually, I get what you're saying here. I think rejecting pictures wholesale might have been a little too extreme on my part. Just as your motor cortices might ready themselves to run, your visual centres arranging themselves as they would in response to a tiger is, for all intents an purposes, an image of a tiger. I suppose what I was trying to say, if I dial back the superlatives, is just that it's not only an image. That when we say "I'm imagining a cat" there's not just an image of a cat in neural form, there's a whole readiness for 'cat' at least some of which helps us fill in the blanks where the image bit is not so clear. If I ask how many legs your imagined cat had, do you count them in the image, or do you just know that cats have four legs...? That sort of thing might be more what I'm working toward.

I would, in turn though, take issue with "...to which the anticipated, must conform". I'm not sure I see the justification for such a hierarchy. Often, maybe, the picture takes precedent, but the olfactory process is shorter than the visual one, stimuli from there will reach the working memory before signals from the visual centres (which have a lot more work to do) so in a situation where imagining a scene might be olfactory and visual, the olfactory state is going to set the priors for the visual (by which I mean it will determine which model the visual centres will try to fit their data to first, discarding it only on utter failure). We are strongly visual thinkers, but our biology betrays us as mammals wired for scent and sound foremost. Humans, like Microsoft, have simply patched on some new programming over the old code without actually doing the rebuilding required to house it.

Lots of good stuff in your post, so thanks for all that. — Mww

Likewise - always good to have someone coming from a different perspective to digest one's thoughts on a matter.

He might have no particular problem with the default definition of truth, as the adequacy between a representation (or model) and what it attempts to represent (or model). But if he says something like that:

[My] model is just a relation between the data from sensory receptors and the behaviour appropriate to it to reduce the uncertainty involved in any interaction — Isaac


... I might start to enquire. — Olivier5

What I said is basically the same as what you claim the 'default' definition is.

A 'true' model is one whose outputs (in terms of predictions usually) yield the expected results from assuming the model is true. My model of the pub being at the end of the road is 'true' if, when wanting to go to the pub, I walk to the end of the road and find it to be there as I would expect if my model were true.

I'm not going to rehash the entire debate about qualia, perception, awareness, etc. Suffice to say I consider them to have presented a number of situations in which assuming a neural-based model of models has yielded the results we'd expect if that model were true.

Not everyone prefers models which do this in a wide range of inter-subjective circumstances. Many people prefer familiarity to inter-subjective agreement, so, as long as the model works for them, they'd rather keep it even if people like scientists are finding the model doesn't work in the very specific circumstances they arrange for their experiments. Such a preference is less likely to yield a true model because it fits fewer data points.

It does, if it pretends to be possibly true. — Olivier5

Do you require this of all models then? If a physicist comes up with a new model of atomic decay do you say "that's all very interesting, but what is truth?"

For one, there's no reason to assume any particular truth because truth remains undefined in your model. — Olivier5

I haven't even mentioned truth. Why would a model of how the mind works need to first define what 'truth' is? Di you ask all propositions to include a definition of what makes them true at the beginning. That's quite a ridiculous way to proceed.

whatever attracts me to particular models might draw me more toward ones which offer better fit than whatever attracts you to models. — Olivier5

It might, we've not talked about that yet. Any two possibilities are equally likely prior to having any information about either, but we're not in that situation with the appeal of different models, they can certainly be analysed to give some probabilities, we just haven't done so. You were asking about the model, not the factors which attract me to it.

It has the exact same chances of being true than any other neuronal noise, like Wayfarer's or mine... — Olivier5

Well

a) that undermines what you said "eliminative materialism fails at this challenge because it literally ELIMINATES its own emergence as a possibly true model". It obviously doesn't eliminate it if it has the same chance as any other model.

b) why would it have the same chance? That assumes the processes you, I and Wayfarer are using to determine our preferences have equal chance of yielding a true result. Whatever attracts me to particular models might draw me more toward ones which are true than whatever attracts you to models. There's no reason at all to assume an equivalence.


If you've got any clear line of argument, I'm happy to pursue it, but I'm not going to continue with this vague fishing exercise where you just spew out some half-baked critique hoping it'll get a few jeers from the back row.

The best shot you can arrive at is (in summary): "my neurons made some model of neuronal operation (eg Matter did it), which they kinda liked, and others will make other models (eg God did it) which their neurons will kinda like". — Olivier5

How does that mean it couldn't possibly be true?

You explained that your neurons created an eliminative materialist model that looked good to your neurons, but that other neurons, e.g. mine, might create other models, which would not look good to your neurons. — Olivier5

Yep.

So your model is some kind of noise generated by your neurons, which sounded good to your neurons. — Olivier5

If by 'noise' you mean something initially random that gets honed by selective pressure, then yes, it's possible.

I'm not seeing the purpose of your line of enquiry. Are you just confirming your understanding of my position, or do you actually have a point? If the latter, could you just get on and make it.

Why, your eliminative materialist model generated by neurons in your brain. — Olivier5

So "it {your eliminative materialist model generated by neurons in your brain} all depends on what looks good to you"? Depends for what? the sentence doesn't even seem to make sense.

If someone thought something harmful was actually good for them — schopenhauer1

Woah, your usual project this has taken a rather dark turn. Now not only should we end the human race because too many people suffer too much, but now we should do so because you think they'd suffer too much even if existing examples say they're not. Nicely self-immunised argument. Now no matter what the human race achieves it's doomed.

"Right everyone... time to turn off the music and go home, I know you all think you're having a great time, but you're just kidding yourselves and are all miserable really, best stop now rather than waste any more time on this charade!"

Okay, so it all depends on what looks good to you. — Olivier5

What's 'it' in that sentence?

I disagree; just because suffering is subjective doesn't mean we can't observe people's suffering; they can often times explain, quite explicitly, how they are suffering and how intensely; it really isn't nearly that nebulous. — ToothyMaw

I didn't say you couln't measure it, I said it was nebulous and everything can be framed in those terms. Take any existing moral dilemma, then say 'we should look at this in terms of how much each option would cause suffering'. What is achieved by framing it that way. All the factors being considered (tradition, God's will, personal preferences, in-group bias...) can be framed as types of 'suffering', so no factors are being filtered or highlighted for consideration. The dilemma is exactly as it was.

But suffering can, in some ways, be quantified, because we all (usually) do not suffer in ways entirely unique; we can get a general idea of what it is like to lose a loved one even if we haven't. Like I said - people can report on what causes them suffering, and how intensely they are suffering, even if there are no strict units. — ToothyMaw

As is often the case with arguments about moral calculus, you select a clear case with which no one would disagree and imply that the same calculus could be used to work out real dilemmas. Consider it like simple maths. I say to you "take a handful of ball bearings and then six handfuls of marbles and add them to a bucket" without accuracy, we can say a lot about the bucket, it's not going to contain a million items (that'd be obviously too many), it's going to contain more marbles than ball bearing (six is way more than one even though ball bearings are smaller). But this success doesn't mean we can apply the technique universally. Comparing two buckets filled this way we wouldn't have a clue which one might have more marbles in it, make it 27 and 32 handfuls respectively and we're lost as to whether there'd be more marbles or ball bearings.

The reason why most real moral dilemmas remain dilemmas is because they are of the latter sort. The values on each side are close, difficult to put a number to. That's why I say couching it in terms of 'suffering' doesn't help, because the problem is the closeness of the estimated values on either side of the balance, not the units in which those values are measured.

So how is following what 'seems best to me' not precisely relativism? — Isaac

It's not relativism if the person is a narcissist, or, specifically, an epistemic narcissist or egotist — baker

No, but it's not morality either, which involves how we ought to act toward each other. If there's no other (either in one's reality, or in one's calculus) then there's no moral question to answer.

1. I present a moral theory.
2. You demonstrate that it can produce a permittable immoral act.
3. We agree the theory is flawed; but based on a shared theory that is unstated but seemingly understood. — Cheshire

This would be treating ethics as if it were trying to describe what we consider moral rather than trying to determine it, which would make it a science, not a philosophical practice. I think that's a valid aspect , but it sidesteps the question of what I 'ought' to do.

Maybe, morality is too broad or nuanced to be decided by axioms; we might be making a type of grammar by pretending patterns are rules. — Cheshire

Yes, that's my view. Morality is a complex and dynamic collection of decision-making tools and no one rule-set captures it.

I have a preference to not suffer, and so does everyone else, so it should be avoided whenever possible — ToothyMaw

Do you have no other preferences? What gives your preference to not suffer it's superlative status?

I can't think of any circumstances under which I would permit suffering if it could be avoided — ToothyMaw

What constitutes it not being avoidable? If you had to give up all your money to prevent someone stubbing their toe would you do so? The trouble with balancing something as nebulous as 'suffering' is that virtually everything can be framed in those terms. Do I 'suffer' when I have to give a pound to the homeless? Of course. Does god 'suffer' when we don't do as he asks? Maybe. Do people 'suffer' when we don't act virtuously. Arguably, yes. So deciding to measure 'suffering' doesn't answer any questions because the questions aren't about the measurement unit, they're about the relative quantity of it.

What's the difference between a person who looks around and concludes God must have made it happen, and a guy who looks around and concludes matter must have made it happen? Both develop a model, right? — Olivier5

Yes. The difference is in the quality of the model. If you have different criteria for what makes a good model, then different models are going to seem good to you. For many reasons, "God did it", seems useless to me - mainly because it doesn't give me anything by way of prediction and doesn't tie in with any other models (did God cause the pen to drop when I let go of it too?) - but others might like it.

I'm not part of a team nor do I agree with Wayfarer on everything. — Manuel

I know, I was just being facetious, my apologies.

I've got to give you credit for being so tenacious and articulate in the way you think about this topic. — Manuel

Cheers.

I suppose I could arbitrarily specify that suffering is inherently bad, and then adopt a negative utilitarian position. That would lead to an absolute morality I think, even if not objective. — ToothyMaw

Can you foresee any circumstance where the negative utilitarian position on an issue might, nonetheless feel wrong? If no, then no need for any moral thought at all, you already know what's right in any situation just by gut instinct. If yes, then what do you do? You only came up with negative utilitarianism because it's how you feel, so when it advises some course of action which clashes with how you feel in some other way, it has no greater claim to rightness.

Pedagogue or ideologue are not "roles" for philosophers (sophists, clergy) to play? Your examples mostly belong to pedagogy. — 180 Proof

Then I'm afraid I've completely missed the point of your...

Pedagogy and ideology – as I've pointed out as the business of philosophers, et al – are, in fact, significant elements of "enculturation" — 180 Proof

...any chance of an elucidation for the slow ones at the back?

I just assume that minimizing suffering is pretty much indisputably right, because that is how I and many people other feel — ToothyMaw

Yep. That's moral relativism.

the few theists I've proposed it to just claimed the dilemma was "ridiculous" and rejected it. — ToothyMaw

Indeed. Discussions about morality often end that way too.

Pedagogy and ideology – asa I've pointed out as the business of philosophers, et al – are, in fact, significant elements of "enculturation". — 180 Proof

True, yes, but also products of it, no? It's not clear what role you think philosophers et al might have here. I can only think of two, each with their problems.

1. Sorting and clarifying. What is the underlying essence of what's moral, what are we talking about, the common thread? Problem being, if some moral approach 'in the wild' doesn't fit, is it the descriptive clarification that's wrong, or the aberrant moral approach that's wrong?

2. Determining what 'should' be moral. Morality, being about what we 'ought' do would seem to need to be already determined before anyone could commence working out what anything 'ought' to be.

Do you have some other role in mind?

when we test all our moral theories it's by demonstrating they produce a judgement that is inconsistent with some intuitive moral theory that takes precedent. — Cheshire

So what gives in the cade of inconsistency here, the premise or the conclusion? One of the two has to be wrong, but it's not given which. Either the moral theory is wrong because it produces a judgement that's inconsistent with some intuitive moral theory, or the intuitive moral theory is shown to be wrong because it's inconsistent with the rationally worked out answer. Doesn't seem like we've got any closer to knowing what's right. If some moral theory proved that killing some small child was the 'right' thing to do would you do it, or would you question the theory?

I corrected myself. Sorry. — ToothyMaw

Understood.

The one that causes less suffering seems best to me. — ToothyMaw

So how is following what 'seems best to me' not precisely relativism?

Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think I've shown any inconsistencies in my position. We just have different ethical foundations. — Down The Rabbit Hole

I don't think so no. You want to reduce suffering down to zero, killing everyone will do that because there's no on left to suffer. I'm just not sure that reducing suffering to zero regardless of the consequences counts as an 'ethical' foundation, just a foundation perhaps. If I said that my ethical foundation were to increase my personal wealth as much as possible regardless of the consequences, you'd just say that I'd misunderstood what the word 'ethical' means.

Ethics has to do with people. No ethical strategy can remove people and yet remain an ethical strategy, its just a plain strategy then, not an ethical one.

If they believe in absolute morality then they won't simply posit that ethics is relative - which is often equivalent to permitting just about anything within the scope of different cultures having different ethical beliefs. — ToothyMaw

Really? It's not something I've ever encountered. I've sat on an ethics committee for a short while, permitting just about anything didn't come up, and absolute moral rightness wasn't even mentioned. The entire talk is about what people consider moral from different perspectives. What ethical committees are you thinking of where relativists say "anything goes!"?

It seems to me that unless the application of the absolute morality posited caused more net suffering - assuming a negative utilitarian stance - advising a company to do what is absolutely right would cause less suffering. — ToothyMaw

Indeed, tautologically so. And assuming a divine command theory stance - advising a company to do what is absolutely right would result in a happier God... Assuming a virtue ethical stance - advising a company to do what is more virtuous would lead to a more virtuous acting company...

But also, advising a company to do what most people think is right would result in a company doing what most people think is right...

You've not given any reason why we'd prefer either of these outcomes.

you have worked in a field for which as a whole, diagnosing people is an important activity, both theoretically and practically. You belong to that field. What applies to that field, directly or indirectly applies to you. — baker

How so? I have no more influence over the way diagnosing psychologists do their work than you do. It's like saying that engineers are at least partly responsible for the arms trade because some of their number design weapons. It's ridiculous. The whole tone of this thread has been "yeah, but psychology is basically about diagnosing people" despite me posting quite a clear set of links to exactly what places like Cambridge University and the Royal Society consider to be covered by Psychology. It's sadly typical of the responses here that they fall so lazily into "yeah, but...".

you were the one bringing up the issue of wanting to reduce the stigma of psychiatric diagnosis, and asked for suggestions on how to do this. — baker

It was a rhetorical question, as in "how on earth am I supposed to do anything about that!", but more conciliatory. Should have stuck with the cantankerous version.

my not so favorable opinion about psychologists is based primarily on knowing the laws of the land that give psychologists the power they have — baker

We're responsible for the law now? The sheer number of things psychologists are responsible for is mounting rapidly, I can't keep track. I'd better keep a weather eye on the situation in Syria lest it transpire that's my fault too.

take the standard interpretation of the Milgram Experiment, namely, that people will go to great lengths because they obey authority. To me, this is an interpretation entirely foreign to life. — baker

Okaaay... so because you've had a little think of your own about Milgram's experiments, and have decided he's wrong that means the...

interpretation of psychological experiments and psychological phenomena. — baker

...is mistaken globally? Should we be consulting you directly from now on?

ethicists/bio-ethicists contribute disproportionately to the policies of organizations/corporations/government, and it matters whether or not they believe in an absolute morality. — ToothyMaw

I'm sounding like a stuck record, but... why? If a firm has gone to the trouble of consulting an ethicist what difference is it going to make to the outcome whether that ethicist believes in absolute morality?

They say "most people think x is immoral", or they say "x is really, truly immoral (but most people don't think it is)".

Which do you think is going to have the most normative force with the company?

So your eliminative materialist model is generated by neurons in your brain, like some sort of 'woo'? — Olivier5

Yes, that's right. The explanation I just wrote is like 'woo'. It's actually magic given only to humans by the great god Vishnu via the medium of dance, only known to those who''ve performed several rituals involving pentagrams and incense. Now that you've seen through it all, I'm really wishing I'd spent the last couple of decades of research siting in my armchair and having 'a bit of a think about it' so that I can really get down to the truth of the matter and brush all this 'woo' aside.

Wouldn’t that depend on what one deems authoritative? If science cannot tell me I’m “deeply wrong**” about some mental state, because it is “far too under-informed”, merely from some “ordinary common sense understanding**” of my mind, why can I not then say I am authorized, if my understanding of my mind is substantially more than ordinary? — Mww

Ah. I personally wouldn't go as far as to say science can't tell you you're deeply wrong. I think there are places it can do that. If you were to suggest that you recognise your cup because it's 'essence' is detected by your brain directly, we can come up with a whole slew of experiments to show that you're 'deeply wrong' about that (by which I mean that you'd have to do an awful lot of wriggling to keep that model alongside a whole bunch of other models I'm betting you rely on). There's also a load of stages in between (which is where you and I seem to sit) where I think science strongly suggests things to be otherwise, but nonetheless, alternative models are still workable. Call it shallowly wrong. The only measure we have of anything being 'right' is the degree to which it hangs together with other things we believe. The main advantage science has is that it uses a lot of empirical data which is the sort of data we build our most treasured models about (mummy, food, tigers - you get the picture). The sort of system I think you use is also strongly based on hanging together, but perhaps only with itself, so great for you, but perhaps less useful for understanding others?

what are some but not all of the specific mental states the existence of which are said to be denied by modern E.M. advocates? — Mww

I wouldn't want to speak for E.M advovates (sounds like a firm of solicitors), but for me things like qualia and 'experience'. I don't think there's anything it's 'like' to be me. Emotions as natural kinds (like anger and guilt) would also be on that list. But I think when we say we're 'remembering' something, for example, something is happening in the brain that answers to that general picture.

how does that refutation make the mental state of thinking demons, non-existent? It seems the only reconciliation is to say thinking demons is not a mental state, which appears altogether quite contradictory, insofar as to refute a thing presupposes the thought of it. — Mww

Yes. 'Thinking of...' is a tricky one. I'm comfortable with saying there's a mental state that could be called 'Thinking of ...', but it would have to be loose affiliation of states. I bet if you were 'thinking of' a daemon, you couldn't necessarily tell me how many toes it had, yet you'd surely say it had toes. One might be of the impression that when we 'think of' something we bring a picture of it to mind. That would be wrong, I think. Rather, we ready other parts of our mind in anticipation, we know the word for it, should we be called upon to speak it, we know the action for it (run, fight) should it actually appear, we know the things it's associated with... etc. I think it's more a linguistic problem than a psychological one. What answers to the word 'daemon' is just that which my use of the word will be understood in reference to, and that's a social enterprise, not an internal one.

it seems pretty hard to deny that all mental states have a definitive role to play in human activities generally. — Mww

Yeah, definitely. But note the complete absence of talk about qualia in normal life. It's an artefact of philosophers. The all too frequent framing of the debate about such things as being 'common sense' vs. 'science' is nonsense, common sense wouldn't touch qualia with a bargepole either.