the imperatives and moral sentences are all pushing or at least nudging the listener to do something, directly — Pfhorrest

How? That's the question I don't seem to be able to get a clear answer to. What is the neurological ( or psychological if you prefer) mechanism by which one supposes this push to take place?

I tell you just "X is the case", I must expect that there's some chance you will believe me at my word. — Pfhorrest

Why would I? I don't mean this as a rhetorical question, I mean it literally by way of hopefully getting at the difference here. What thought process would lead me to believe X is the case directly as a result of you saying "X is the case"?

I tell you "you should do X", or "do X", or "O would that you did X", or anything like that, I must expect that there's some chance that you would do as I say just because I said it. — Pfhorrest

Again, why? Same as above. What is the thought process you image taking place between my hearing your words "Do X" and my forming an intent to do X?

there's is no meaningful, pragmatic difference between indicative and imperative sentences — Pfhorrest

I didn't claim there was no difference, only that the difference was not categorical, but one of degree, or of conveying additional information (such as urgency, or the authority of the speaker). I thought I'd made that fairly clear.

You seem to live in a different world than I do. — Pfhorrest

That much has been evident right from the start, but that's the very reason why I continue. I want to know how you construct and defend these positions you proclaim.

I said "there is a kind of speech act" as in there is a kind of thing that we could want to do with our words, not that any particular words are meant by any particular person to do that. — Pfhorrest

Yes, I get that. My point was unless you're just making stuff u[ out of thin air you wouldn't be able to say that such speech acts exists without saying that the actual words (the ones you must have heard being used as your empirical evidence for this claim) have that meaning. Thus you're making a claim about the meaning of certain words - the one you heard such as to give you this impression of certain speech acts existing.

“Yes, I get that it’s widely believed, and its negation would imply things that I find counter-intuitive, etc, but is it actually true or not? — Pfhorrest

No one could answer that question with the meaning of 'true' you're implying. The only way they could possibly answer it is with the meaning of 'true' as in "I believe it strongly". If they were to answer it using the meaning of 'true' as in 'actually is the case', they'd have to say "I don't know". Again you're failing to see how the different meaning of words in different contexts affect what is meant.

it would be weirdly evasive to never just straightforwardly say anything to the effect of "X is the case", but rather only talk peripherally about people's thoughts on or the implications of X. — Pfhorrest

Again, these are just expressions, they don't literally mean the words used, any more than "That's not my cup of tea" literally means anything about tea.

What is meant by a speech act is determined by what the speech act does, not the words or the grammar constituting it. To claim the latter has the tail wagging the dog (and I don't mean anything about tails or dogs here).

So a command is no different in type to a statement of fact. "I'd like you to turn around" and "Turn around!" are both just ways of getting a person to turn around by giving them facts about your state of mind, your preferences toward their actions. The latter is simply communicating a change in either degree, or authority, or urgency depending on the context.

You can't tell someone when to intend something. — Isaac


You can -- that's what commands do -- it just won't necessarily be effective. — Pfhorrest

It won't ever be effective. It literally cannot be done. There's zero neurological support for a direct connection between speech interpretation and intent. You can only provide data which is modelled and used to inform intent.

If you want to construct an entirely new model of his intent works then by all means do so, but don't expect anyone to take it seriously unless you submit it to the same empirical challenge that all the other competing models have submitted themselves to.

And so is making direct prescriptive / normative / moral / ethical assertions, to the effect of "make this so", rather than anything like "this is unpopular" or such. — Pfhorrest

Notwithstanding all the above, let's assume there's at least a form of speech act where "X is good" means to get one's audience directly to will X. How does that make "X is good" anything like an objective statement. If anything it detracts from objectivity. "X is the case" is less persuasive of objective truth than "lots of very clever scientists believe X is the case after having tested the matter thoroughly".

Would you agree that Clark and Barrett are on the same page concerning Bayesian theory and predictive processing? — Joshs

Broadly, yes. I'm sure there are nuances of difference, bur Clarke references Barrett's work favourably, so I expect they're roughly in agreement.

For Kelly the construct system is functionally integral , operating at all times holistically as a gestalt. — Joshs

I'm not sure how you see this as being any different from the active inference concept. Have you read something suggesting proponents of active inference consider it to act non-holistically, or only at some times?

The second crucial point is that construing is not pattern matching. Pattern matching or predictive processing suggests that one’s system first apprehends at some incipient or peripheral level a bottom up environmental pattern , and then makes a decision concerning its fit or lack of fit with an internally generated pattern.
But for Kelly as far as the construct system is concerned there is no external world ( no botto
up) that can be isolated from the construct system’s expectations. — Joshs

Then what is it we're predicting? IF there are no states outside of our Markov blanket then we need not predict the causes of the internal states, we simply know them? In order for prediction to have any meaning we have to have hidden states.

Even though a construed event is my own personal ‘invention’ it is designed to anticipate as effectively as possible what is to come next.
So even though the very definition of what an event is is unique to the organizational aspects of my own system , that event can surprise , disappoint my expectations. — Joshs

I don't see how this would be possible without an external source of surprise.

A event that cannot be effectively assimilated is essentially the impoverishment of meaning , not simply an extant externally defined pattern that my system doesn’t ‘march itself to’, but a chaos of near meaninglessness. For Kelly affects like fear and threat are my awareness that an impending event lies partly outside the range of my system. Anxiety is the current experience of chaos and confusion due to the impermeability of my construct system to experience confronting me. — Joshs

I think this is good. I don't see it contradicting active inference approaches though. This may well be one of the responses to sensory data which doesn't match any model we have of it. But 'fear' and 'anxiety' are constructed emotions, the actual source affects are before those interpreted labels and they vary quite a lot - this much can be proven empirically - so whilst I think this is a really good way of describing many of our experiences of fear and anxiety, it's doubtful that this represents a definition of those states.

The kicker here is that validation or invalidation , the experience of coherence or chaos , fulfillment or disappointment, doesn’t have to be filtered and processed through some bodily mechanics in order to arrive at ‘feeling’, ‘affect’ and ‘ emotion’. — Joshs

This you'd have to support with some neurological evidence because as it stands it flies in the face of everything we've seen so far which indicates that these 'emotions' are 100% associated with endocrine activity.

I get the sense that for Barrett , one could hypothetically( or at least imagine doing so ) sever the communication between regions of the brain-body dealing with feeling and those which purportedly don’t , and still be able to talk coherently about a cognitive system. — Joshs

Not just hypothetically, no. We can literally sever certain connections between brain and body and get pretty much the results we'd expect from our model of hidden state prediction. If you're interested I can drag out some papers on experiments of exactly that sort come Monday, but basically we've already thought that this would need to be done to prove the model, we've done it, and the model works as expected.

To describe us as rule following beings is a faulty and misleading description, derived from a determinist perspective, which is a misunderstanding of human activity. — Metaphysician Undercover

Ah, I see. Everyone should stop using it because you personally don't happen to agree with one of its possible uses. Sounds about par for one of your arguments. As you were then.

Fact is, nothing can justify our existence. Existence of any flavor is not only unjustified, it is useless, malignantly so, and has nothing to recommend it over nonexistence. A person’s addiction to existence is understandable as a telltale of the fear of nonexistence, but one’s psychology as a being that already exists does not justify existence as a condition to be perpetuated but only explains why someone would want to perpetuate it. For the same reason, even eternal bliss in a holy hereafter is unjustified, since it is just another form of existence, another instance in which the unjustifiable is perpetuated.

What could possibly be meant by 'justified' here. Justification is a human activity embedded in our relationship with our desires. Absent of that it seems a nonsensical throw-away word devoid of meaning.

He's just saying a king can't be 'castled' outside of chess. Well duh!

acting sometimes within the bounds of a rule, and sometimes outside the bounds, does not constitute (fulfill the requirements of) following the rule, as defined by the first premise. — Metaphysician Undercover

Then how would you ever know if someone were following a rule? Any observation that they appeared to be might at any future time be undermined by an observation that they fail to. You could never say "X is following a rule" if the criteria for that assessment were that they continue to do so forever".

It seems rather pointless to me define away an otherwise perfectly useful term by creating a definition for it which we can never actually use.

Where I live, a torch is a piece of wood with oily rags tied on one end. The peasants use them to burn down the governor's mansion. — frank

Yes, but have you tried the i-torch 8, with new splinter-free wood and lavender-scented oily rags (all emblazoned with your favourite Disney character)? It shines 10% brighter (in tests carried out by independent firm 'i-testing ltd') and it really tackles all 7 scientifically-proven signs of being under the yoke of an oppressive governor, which other torches just can't reach.

I'm not looking to assess what any particular words "really mean" — Pfhorrest

Seems in contradiction to

there is an important kind of speech-act — Pfhorrest

Claiming that there is a certain speech act is the same thing as making a claim about the meaning of a word. Speech acts are what words mean, there's nothing more to meaning that the act associated with utterance.

that function of impressing an intention that moral language in the way you would account for it would utterly fail to do — Pfhorrest

I gave an account of how it might impress an intention.

Saying that, for example, X is considered unacceptable by one's community might be a causal factor in the development of an intention in another person to avoid or proscribe X.

Saying that I intend X might be a causal factor in the development of an intention in another person to do X if they, for whatever reason, want to emulate or ingratiate themselves with me.

Saying that X will cause harm to some other might result in the development of an intention in another person to avoid X so that they avoid the empathetic pain associated with knowing about the pain of another.

All these are ways in which moral language, exactly as I described it, can result in intentions in another. I'm not seeing the distinction you're trying to make. It sounds like you're invoking some kind of mind-melding woo whereby intentions can get directly transferred without having to go through the beliefs and goals of the person listening. Elsewise any language is simply saying "I'm in this state of mind (fact about the world)", and the listener does with that what they will.

If you tell someone that something or another fits into the purely descriptive category "good", you're telling them to believe that the thing is in a category of things called "good things", but you're not at all telling them whether or not to intend for those things to be the case. If all you're doing is describing, then that always remains an open question: "am I to intend that this be the case, or not?" — Pfhorrest

Yes you are. We usually intend for the things in the category 'good'. If I say my local is a 'great pub with a really warm and friendly atmosphere, welcoming staff and an excellent range of ales" are you seriously telling me that because what I've provided is merely a 'description' you remain confused as to whether you should go there or avoid it like the plague. We're social creature who share a world and a response to it, usually, we all hate getting hurt, we all dislike being abused, we all think Justin Bieber is shit... I only need to make a descriptive statement "Touching that hotplate hurts" and I can reasonably expect to have communicated the proscription "Don't touch that hotplate".

Consider, although we can in a way impress intentions via commands, how would you ask a question to which the answer is to be a command, other than moral language? — Pfhorrest

"What are my orders?", "What are the rules of this game?", "What is the man with the big gun telling me to do?"

my hedonic altruism you're always criticising is put forth as answer to that question of what the truth-makers of prescriptive claims are, i.e. when to intend the intentions that other people push at you (via moral assertions) — Pfhorrest

You can't tell someone when to intend something. No facts or reasoning can get someone to intend something from scratch. People respond to affects (leaving aside the predictive feedback loops for a minute) by altering their environment to raise/lower the perceived source of the affect to a more tolerable level. People in turn respond to their environment by raising or lowering the their tolerable levels of affect to more closely match those which are available. You cannot simply tell someone that they ought to desire a certain target tolerable level and expect it to cause such a change. It won't. Tolerable levels of affect are not decided by the rational brain (in that instance), they are a biological consequence of the endocrine system. So all you're left with is the method by which they meet those target levels (and changes to the environment to encourage new target levels in the long term, which may include speech acts). Making a case that behaviour X will not meet those targets in the way the person thinks is a moral argument, but it remains a descriptive one (about the processes of the world consequent to behaviour X). Implying that there's a type of language which somehow directly impresses an intention on another is just woo, there's no support for such a notion in any of the literature I've read.

Ah, defending your abuser... interesting. — Banno

You should see some of the people mum sold me out to.

Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.

How is this not unquestioning obedience to authority?
Gen 22:12 — Banno

I'm never going to live that down am I? Look, he was very drunk at the time and the guy can throw fucking thunderbolts!. Have you ever been hit by a thunderbolt? It fucking hurts!

I thought it was just richer people who buy lots of crap. — frank

Well yeah, that too, to a point. At a certain level, richer people can afford to make larger single investments of higher quality items, so they end up buying less (only paying more for it). The poor buy more because they can't afford to make more robust long-term investments. You pay £1.50 for a torch how long do you expect it to last?

That presumes that they care to avoid behavior that's labelled that way, which in turn is to assume that they are a relativist, who already thinks that whatever other people approve of is the thing they ought to do. — Pfhorrest

Why on earth would that be the case? If suggest to my colleague that we go to the cafe after work and he says "Yes", does that prove that my colleague only ever does things because I suggest them to him? Of course not, what a ridiculous thing to say - just when I though we were starting to have a decent conversation about your ideas you go and throw in this kind of rubbish. People take into account all sorts of factors in determining what they 'ought' to do, one of which might be whether that action is sanctioned or proscribed by the community one is acting in.

we're now off the topic of which states of affairs are good, and on to what it means to say that something is or isn't good — Pfhorrest

Those are the same thing. The meaning of a word is the use it is put to. In this case labelling certain behaviours or states of affairs. If you, alternatively, have some God-given source for the 'proper' meaning of words I'm sure we'd all be keen to know it.

You never actually say anything about what you think actually ought to (or ought not) be, you only ever inform your interlocutor of what you think that thing is — Pfhorrest

Informing someone of what 'is' can imply that it 'ought' to be depending on the context. again, you're importing your own very specific definition of 'ought' and assuming it applies to all contexts. If I say "Swearing in front of children is bad" I mean that you ought not do it, but the 'ought' in that case might mean any one of three different things depending on the context.

It might reflect my personal preference that you don't. That I would be happier without you doing so.

It might reflect my assumption that you want roughly the same ends as me and this behaviour is contrary to those ends. A purely pragmatic 'ought', like "You ought to use the right size spanner if you don't want to round the bolt heads".

It might reflect a warning that the society you're in does not condone that behaviour - given either out of kindness (to help them avoid recriminations) or as a method of correction (to make them fear recriminations).

you only ever inform your interlocutor of what you think that thing is, and let them do with that information whatever they will. — Pfhorrest

This would be no different in any case if you informed them of your state of mind. That I have a state of mind wherein I think X is a state of affairs that would satisfy all our hedonic appetites is still an 'is'. It's making a declaration about my state of mind which is simply a fact about reality. They still then do whatever they will with that information.

The general rebuttal to all accounts of this type is G.E. Moore's Open Question Argument. — Pfhorrest

I don't see how that's at all relevant here. Notwithstanding the sense/reference objection, I've just outlined how at least three different interpretations can be shown to the use of words like 'good' and 'ought', thus making any and all propositions of the form X is Good, merely translational between senses.

Would you say that Barrett’s
model is consistent with Aaron Beck's cognitive therapy or Albert Ellis' rational emotive therapy, in that each of these involves a predictive processing in which
interpretive schemes attempt to anticipate environmental-social events ? — Joshs

Yes, definitely. As Feldman Barrett says...

In a Bayesian sense, the effects of CBT may reflect changes in the way that precision-weighting pyramidal cells in the viscerosensory cortex adjust the weight of prediction-error signals that are communicated to agranular cortices, thus altering the sampling of inputs that become the ‘empirical priors’ in subsequent predictions.

CBT may have its effects by helping a person construct new concepts that, as prediction signals, modify the gain on prediction errors via the salience network. Over time,this process may alter the sample of inputs that eventually become the ‘empirical priors’ that agranular limbic cortices use to initiate subsequent predictions

Basically, she's suggesting almost exactly what you posit, that CBT may have an effect on our priors in such a way as to make alternative predictive models more available in response to the usual interoceptive triggers. She goes on to demonstrate some confirmatory evidence for this...

CBT is very effective in treating depression in individuals with low activity in the anterior insula before treatment (presumably because CBT helps them to change their predictions, potentially by improving their processing of prediction errors and corresponding concept learning via salience network changes); alternatively, CBT is largely ineffective and medications are more effective in treating depression in individuals with high anterior insula activity before treatment

So it seem likely that not only does the interoceptive inference approach predict the effectiveness of CBT, but it even predicts the situations in which it is less effective.

That may well be, but ambitious optimists don't make good consumers. Miserable, passive, idiots with negligible self-esteem generally buy more crap.

now that I know you're an ethical naturalist, — Pfhorrest

I'm not an ethical naturalist. You didn't ask me what my own meta-ethical position was. I'm simply presenting challenges to yours in order to draw out aspects of it that I can't make sense of.

I think the whole problem with ethical naturalism or any kind of ethical descriptivism is that it ends up not saying anything at all about what is or isn't moral in the sense I'm talking about, instead talking entirely about a specific subquestion of what is or isn't real, and merely labeling that fact about reality "morality", while entirely missing out on the function that distinguishes prescriptive, moral language from descriptive language. — Pfhorrest

This doesn't make sense. It seems to presume that 'labelling' behaviour has no consequences. Labelling behaviour has a function. It's not just a tourettes-like exclamation. People apply labels for reasons, the same as any other speech act. With moral language, that reason is mainly to try and persuade the other person to act how you want them to act. Implying social pressure, by giving their behaviour it's label is one way to do that. Basically, if someone's acting in a way I don't like, and that behaviour happens to be behaviour which is publicly defined as 'morally bad' then one speech act I have at my disposal to get them to stop is to label their behaviour as such. If, on the other hand, their behaviour is not so classed, I'll have to think of some other speech act to get them to stop. In neither case does the speech act have no functional element. It's all functional element. there's nothing else to language apart from its function.

That would be a society where the words "morally wrong" didn't function the way they do in our society, where they didn't have any imperative, normative, prescriptive force, where something being "morally wrong" was as dry a fact as something being red or triangular or, closer to the point, unpopular. — Pfhorrest

As above, it's demonstrably wrong to assert that labelling something has no normative force.

if "ought" meant what it does in our society -- i.e. if using it demonstrated a specific attitude of the speaker approving of the action, such that thinking something ought to happen entailed intending for it to happen — Pfhorrest

I don't agree that that's what 'ought' generally means. We have many uses of 'ought' where we're referring to social conventions, for example, that the speaker might have no intention of causing to happen. "I ought to help, but I can't be bothered" is a perfectly understandable sentence.

that would not constitute an objective morality, in the sense of that word used in our society, because it would not constitute any commentary on morality at all. People calling things "morally wrong" in that society would not be performing the prescriptive kinds of speech-acts typical of moral language in our society. — Pfhorrest

You're begging the question. You claimed to be investigating moral language whilst having a premise which assumes all along what moral language is. What evidence do you have that moral language is universally (or even majoritatively) used this way?

"I intend to do something I shouldn't do" seem somehow contradictory in our language that shows that a purely descriptive account of moral language is insufficient. — Pfhorrest

I don't find that sentence remotely contradictory.

It's a kind of performative contradiction to say something like "that behavior is morally wrong, but that's perfectly okay", or "that is good but I don't intend it", in exactly the same way that "that is true but I don't believe it" is a performative contradiction. It's certainly possible for people to believe things that are false, or disbelieve things that are true, or to intend things that are bad, or not to intend things that are good, but in saying that something is true/false or good/bad you're demonstrating something about your own attitude toward that state of affairs, so if you also say something contrary about your attitude toward that state of affairs, you're saying something about yourself contrary to what you're demonstrating about yourself. — Pfhorrest

I'm going to start with this because I get the feeling it might be central to the disagreement, but I need some clarity first on what you mean. By introducing someone saying the opposite in the same sentence you've added an element to my scenario which was not there in the original and I'm not sure why, so I want to explore that before answering the rest.

My scenario was one where 'morally right' is a public definition which encompasses certain behaviours, such even if a person thought they ought to do X, if X is termed 'morally wrong' they'd be objectively mistaken to label such behaviour 'morally right'. You added that they would verbalise this state as "X is something I ought to do, but it's morally wrong", which would indeed be a contradiction. I, however, was referring to someone who intended to do X, and saw no morally relevant problem with that intent, in a society where the correct label for X is 'morally wrong'.

I think it's probably best if I very briefly outline my preferred models as they seem to be crucial to answering your questions.

Firstly, my preferred model of cognition in general is the active inference model (or you might have heard it referred to as the Bayesian Brain theory). Basically that the brain is a system for minimising the free energy associated with surprise, it is trying to make ever more surprise-minimising models of the hidden states which cause sensation. This models the brain as a set of hierarchically related areas each of which filters and modulates the signals from the areas below it using a a model of the signals it is expecting them to deliver, then feeding back to our interaction with those hidden states with actions aimed at reducing the surprise in the models. Basically we and the world (including our sensory organs as 'the world' here, are in a constant dynamic relationship whereby we interpret it according to prior models, manipulate it to match those models and it passively resists those attempts where those models are too inaccurate. Something like that anyway. Here's the seminal paper on the approach which explains it much better.

https://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/~karl/Active%20Inference%20A%20Process%20Theory.pdf

As far as affect goes, I'm broadly in line with Lisa Feldman-Barrett's integration of active inference with affect. She treats our interocepted sensations as hidden states in a Bayesian model and emotions as the interpretive model attempting to minimise surprise in those states. The main paper is here.

https://www.affective-science.org/pubs/2017/barrett-tce-scan-2017.pdf

Both of these approaches integrate conscious thought in the modelling process, but without giving it any authoritative position. It's a modelling tool, used as an when it's pragmatic to do so.#

So, your questions

I agree with Kuhn and there are no such universally justifiable standards, so that scientific change has much in common with changes in political culture and developments in the humanities. How does this relate to your psychological model? — Joshs

Yes. I don't think scientific theories have any privileged place over any other models, they are just highly formalised versions of predictive models with resultant actions aimed at confirming them. Popper was mistaken, I think, in that he assumed it was possible to simultaneously hold a model to be true and yet attempt to falsify it. I don't believe that to be psychologically possible. The state of holding a model to be true integrates it into our perceptive process in such a way as to direct our interpretations of hidden states in favour of that model to the extent that is possible. Hence Kuhnian paradigm shifts.

I notice you referring in a previous post to stimuli that are received by a cognitive system. So I’m wondering what your understanding of perceptual process is. Do you take a representationalist view of perception and cognition, wherein we encounter ‘raw’ stimuli that we then process? — Joshs

No. The active inference model was actually developed initially using perception. Anil Seth at Sussex has really carried the torch on this now though and his papers are well worth a read (if you haven't already). I broadly follow a 'Controlled Hallucination' approach to perception where we see what we expect to see according to our priors and seek only that information which could confirm it, or, in the case of catastrophic failure of that model, that information which caused the failure. The stimuli are from our sensory organs, but the brain has to interpret those, those the 'raw' signals are hidden states, we do not have access to them to interpret, we can only infer from them, but we do so not from a 'raw' data set, but from a filtered and even, at times, downright fabricated data set.

This connects with another debate within psychology between those who advocate theory of mind models
to explain empathy with other minds, and those who embrace interactionism.
These differences with the field are reflective of metatheorical , philosophical differences. On the one side are realistic positions(Dennett) and on the other postmodern accounts(Rorty, Shaun Gallagher) — Joshs

I do think Theory of Mind models have an important place in psychological modelling of empathy. I have some sympathy with interactionist approaches but I don't think they can replace theory of mind, only add another mechanism. I see the two as overlapping systems, not as one replacing the other.

we're asking what exactly we are trying to do with an answer to the question "what is moral?" — Pfhorrest

Good question, but since you've used 'we' not 'I', the answer would seem to be an empirical one, no?

what we need to know the answer for, narrows in on which of the possible meanings of the question matters to us in that context — Pfhorrest

I agree, but again 'us' not 'me'. I'm not seeing how you answer these questions for 'us' only by introspection of 'you'.

the "want" part basically gets you the hedonistic aspect, the satisfaction of... I don't know what best to call them, maybe "imperative" states of mind, the umbrella category including intentions, desires, and appetites. — Pfhorrest

You've jumped here from the way we want the world to be (independent of any other people's wants) to the way we want the world to be (including other people). We're social beings, no? Why would you separate out our affects and those of others and then seek to reconcile them rationally. Would you not expect evolution to have had at least a significant impact on social cohesion by those very affects? Is not the seeking of a compromise solution (rather than bashing one's opponent's brains out) already the satisfaction of a affect valence embedded by evolution to help us co-operate. It seems somewhat superfluous to convince people of a met-ethical position by arguing that it provides us with a toll that only people of a certain ethical position would even want. It's a done deal by then.

I'm affirming that such claims are capable of being correct and incorrect (rather than just expressions of emotions), and elaborating on what criteria by which to judge them thus. — Pfhorrest

I thought that's how it seemed. But affirming something is a propositional claim, not an exhortative one.

If, therefore, an account of moral language can be given according to which moral claims can be true or false in a way that doesn't violate either of those other principles, that particular argument against moral universalism bites the dust. So to say that such an account is then problematic because it would imply moral universalism... yeah, that's what it's for. It's a way of enabling a universalist account of morality without running into these particular semantic problems. — Pfhorrest

That's not what I'm arguing. I'm saying that you've failed to cross the is-ought divide in your account. You've declared that there is a state of affairs which represents the best fit for all appetites. You've told us that this is what you mean by moral, you've told us that it is what you think would make a trouble-free meaning for moral. None of this has yet approached an 'ought'. Why ought we seek that state of affairs? Why ought we have trouble-free meanings? Why ought we even have only one meaning for morally right?

To answer any of these questions you have to assume an audience who have a natural understanding of what 'ought' means. Thus rendering an account of it rather useless.

That approach runs into the is-ought problem that I detailed in my previous post, along with how that then runs into either relativism or transcendentalism(/dogmatism). — Pfhorrest

That depends on what you take 'ought' to mean.

I'm aware that there are other ethical theories like that that claim to wiggle out of this trilemma (of universalist phenomenalism else relativism or transcendentalism), but I'm arguing that they actually cannot do so. — Pfhorrest

I don't see such an argument.

Let's say actions which are virtuous cause neurological effects which attract us toward them and repel us from their antipode. Let's say that as our language developed we came to use 'morally right', in some contexts, to refer to such behaviours. In such a case, a person using the term 'morally right' to refer to some other behaviour would be objectively wrong. Even if they themselves (perhaps due to some genetic flaw) found themselves attracted to some unseemly activity, the term 'morally right' doesn't refer to their private feelings but the the general case.

How would you oppose such a position?

Again, if “I am morally responsible” was as clear an intuition as “2+2=4” you wouldn’t have so many people making the argument that people aren’t morally responsible. — khaled

Exactly.

@Bartricks the vast majority of your inane posts could be avoided if you could just grasp the very simple concept that what seems to you to be the case does not necessarily seem so to others. What seems to any current culture to be the case does not necessarily seems so to other cultures. Even what seems to entire populations to be the case does not necessarily seems so to previous populations.

It's really not that difficult a concept to get your head around, I can't see why you're having such trouble with it.

My argument was that elimination is possible (i.e., what could be achieved at larger scales of infection) as against your claim that "zero cases is literally impossible to achieve". — Andrew M

Right, but we've just established that you didn't really mean 'elimination' in the sense of zero cases, so we're on the same page there. Your remaining argument hinges entirely on the means and the size of the small-but-non-zero target we both agree on.

The choice though is not between lockdown and no lockdown. It's between targeted, quick lockdowns (used in conjunction with other measures including border controls and contact tracing)... — Andrew M

As I've said, it's yet to be demonstrated that such quick lockdowns can be effective in countries where the endemic load is as high as it is in the UK, US and most of Europe.

But endemic status is neither desirable nor inevitable. — Andrew M

Again, the later is yet to be demonstrated. We can hope, but hope is not an empirical observation.

The coronavirus pandemic is a systemic risk - unchecked, it grows rapidly, mutates and is highly unpredictable in terms of eventual deaths — Andrew M

It's neither. It's highly predictable in the wider scheme. As @frank has already mentioned, communicable viruses cannot really maintain high fatality and longevity, it's one or the other. Hosts need to be mobile and even relatively active in order to spread the virus to new hosts. It's been the fate of all such viruses that they eventually become something widespread an mild. covid-19 may well buck that trend somehow, but that;s far from a claim that it's 'highly unpredictable'.

There's no comparable risk with motor vehicle accidents. Outcomes are fairly predictable. — Andrew M

Yes. Predictably one of the single largest causes of death, next to suicide usually. So if it's " eventual deaths" you're concerned to act against, then what is your policy towards these issues -all of which kill many more people than Covid-19 many times over and have done for decades if not hundreds of years. Why the focus on eliminating this particular risk?


Edit - Let me give you a couple of examples.

1.35 million people a year are killed in road accidents. Modern cars are 25% safer than older cars (according to NHTSA data), so a massive investment to allow poorer people to upgrade to more modern cars could save something like a third of a million deaths every single year.

According to the UN just two days of US military spending could save 2.3 million lives through poverty reduction.

Air pollution, vaccine programmes, safety measures, hospital building, affordable care, social housing, geriatric services...do I really need to list the number of issues where massive investment of money and will power could save millions of lives?

This particular one (Covid-19) just happens to be in the media at a time where social media polarizes issues making extreme responses more attractive. It's the effect of this we're seeing here, nothing more.

Philosophical claims are logically prior to either of those kinds of claims; they're a mix of analytic claims, which superficially seem descriptive but don't actually tell us anything about reality, and pragmatic claims, which superficially seem prescriptive but don't actually tell us anything about morality. — Pfhorrest

OK, so could you describe how those elements apply to you 'philosophical claim' that we ought to see morality as a sort of matching of affect to world (or vice versa). What part of that claim is analytic and what part pragmatic?

moral language proposes that something be, not that it is, and such propositions can still be the correct or incorrect ones to make, though they of course must be made correct or incorrect by a different kind of criteria than indicative ones are. — Pfhorrest

But surely the key element is such a claim is it's correctness. The implication is "it is correct that such-and-such ought to be the case..." otherwise it's nothing but an emotional exclamation.

It's a kind of non-descriptive cognitivism, which I've tried to go into much detail on before (and is not my original invention even), but you just got hung up on the universalist implications of it and derailed that whole thread. — Pfhorrest

Surely the implications of it are the only relevant factor? That it is at least plausible is a given from the start (intelligent people have thought it through enough to publish papers on it, we can assume it's at least plausible).

It's not at all clear to me what you mean by this, but the best sense I can make out of it is that "following one's sense of virtue" means doing what you think is the characteristic behavior of a good person, which then raises the immediate question of what to do when someone else thinks something different is the characteristic behavior of a good person. — Pfhorrest

What I'm saying is that for an ethical naturalist, something like that certain characteristics are virtuous is a fact about the physical state of our brains and the consequences thereof on our beliefs. A sort of 'evolutionary encoding of morality' approach could quite easily make claims about what is and is not moral as cognitive claims without reference to affect valence. Equally, a purely linguistic approach can make objective, factual claims about what is 'virtuous' or 'morally right' based on how we use those terms and still not reference affect. The re are numerous versions of ethical realism which are neither subjective, nor related to affect. It is not a matter of having to choose the latter by eliminating the former, they're not exhaustive.

so there's some way I can eat all I want and not suffer any negative consequences from it? Do tell! — Pfhorrest

Yes, in theory. There are medicines which interfere with the absorption of fat, there's bariatric surgery...

you eventually end up either (A) not getting it, or (B) getting it. Are you saying that wanting for things and then having yours wants dissatisfied is observably more pleasurable than wanting for things and then having them satisfied? Granted that in either case the main pleasure comes from the wanting, from the pursuit of the thing. But that ends eventually. The question is which way of it ending is more enjoyable. — Pfhorrest

It depends. Pleasure is largely generated by the same system (unlike displeasure which is very widely distributed across the endocrine response), it's may well be that some reward stimulates this system, it may be that it doesn't. That you interpret your current state as desiring something is not a reliable measure of how the receipt of that reward is going to affect your pleasure generating systems. Not only are these systems complex even unilaterally, but they are exposed to several suppressive and inhibitory feedback loops from higher cortices which may cut off an initially pleasurable response before we're even consciously aware of it. The question of which way of ending the wanting is more pleasurable is one which is highly dependant on both circumstance and upbringing, let alone biological underpinnings.

Here's a very short (and so necessarily incomplete) overview of my answers to the whole stack of ethical questions: — Pfhorrest

I appreciate that, but obviously it would be outside of the scope of this thread for me to respond to them all. Nice to know though.

Yes, so it's totally doable. — frank

Yes. I would have thought that much was pretty unarguable because it's been done. It's also not been done with Influenza, HIV, Malaria, Dengue, Tuberculosis... Demonstrating that some viruses/bacterial infections have been effectively eradicated is irrelevant here. Demonstrating that Covid-19 is in the list of ones which can be and not in the list of ones which can't be is the relevant point. At the moment, the opinion of a large majority of virologists and epidemiologist, including the WHO is that it is most probably in the list of ones which can't be, so treating it as if it wasn't is potentially risky.

It's a matter of will and means. — frank

No, It's a matter of will, means and the absence of severe disadvantageous risks which outweigh the chances of success. As I said to Andrew, if you only look at the advantages, everything is going to look like an attractive course of action. Unfortunately, in a complex world, most courses of action have a wide-reaching set of consequences, the risks from which may well outweigh the chances of success.

I gather that Knutson analyzes affect in terms of arousal and valence within a cognitive-behavioral paradigm. This kind of model tends to be reductive in the way it treats both affect and cognition. Affect functions as a reinforcement shaping behavior in ways that are mostly unintegrated with cognition and intention. — Joshs

No, that's not Knutson's model, the experiment is just isolating one element in a wider system in order to inform that system, not replace it. If you can track it down, you might be interested to read his 2007 paper "Affective Influence on Judgments and Decisions: Moving Towards Core Mechanisms" (I only have a paper copy). I don't personally agree with all of his conclusions there, but it's basically a really thorough outline of his approach and the way in which he sees affect integrating with cognition and intention.

For Ratcliffe , the central role of affect is not that of blind arousal or pleasure-pain , but of semantic meaningfulness. The affective aspect of experiencing deals with how things matter to us, how they are relevant and
significant to us, how salient they are for us. For instance , severe depression isn’t marked by affective ‘pain’ so much as a deprivation of relevance and meaning in the world. — Joshs

The trouble with this is that it is so vague as to be difficult to find anything to either affirm or deny in it. No-one is suggesting that the consequences of changes in affect valence do not pass through areas of the brain responsible for conscious semantics. I don't think you'd find a single neuroscientists making such a claim. Nor would you find any (nowadays) who deny the feedback, inference and suppressive roles that these higher conscious cortices can have on signals from cortices below them in the hierarchy.

If Ratcliffe is making a unique claim, then it would have to be accompanied by a good deal more specificity as to what constituted 'central', and how that differed from the integral role everyone already agrees semantics plays.

I don't know of anything in Damasio's or Panksepp's work which contradicts Knutson's work, nor that supports the assertion of yours I was commenting on, nor can i see how your quote relates to either. Perhaps you could cite some of Damasio's or Panksepp's work, or explain how the quote relates.

I f we don’t it’s only because we sacrifice a particular longing for the sake of a richer and more fulfilling longing. — Joshs

No, it's not. It's because our limbic system responds to anticipation of potential reward more strongly than the receipt of it. You can't just make this stuff up, it's a biological mechanism you're talking about here. It behaves the way it behaves regardless of what you think about it.

We actually did eliminate smallpox, polio, in some places, cholera, measles, mumps, almost pertussis except it's trying to make a comeback.

Were these measures mistaken? — frank

I don't see any reason to think they were, no.

I take all moral language, including my use of it there, to be essentially exhortative in function, so in saying that that kind of state of affairs 'should' be, I'm saying something to the effect of "let it be the case that [that state of affairs]". — Pfhorrest

How can moral language be exhortative if the meaning of moral terms is objective. Moral language must surely be propositional in that case?

what it is that I take a morally right state of affairs to be, which is to say, what state of affairs I would exhort to be. — Pfhorrest

I've perhaps not made myself clear. You seem to be saying that we 'should' take 'morally right' to be that which maximises appetite satisfaction. It's like you're imploring us to accept that something ought to be the case on rational grounds, but then saying that something is that things ought to be the case on hedonic grounds. It's not the case that we we consider maximising hedonic values to be our utmost objective. Some people are more about maximising the virtues, others obedience to God etc. so you're not describing what is the case, you're describing what ought to be the case - which sounds like you've already got a system in place for deciding what ought to be the case.

Notwithstanding that, your actual rational argument falls short. Firstly...

On the one hand, the position that what is good or bad can be wholly unrelated to what what feels good or bad in our experiences — Pfhorrest

On the other hand, the position that what actually is good or bad can differ between different parties — Pfhorrest

These are not the only two options. For example following one's sense of virtue (for, say and ethical naturalist) would be an option which neither satisfied hedonic values nor differed between people.

If it were possible to avoid that consequent suffering, or if there just wasn't consequent suffering at all, then those behaviors being unusual (abnormal) wouldn't be any reason for concern. — Pfhorrest

It is possible to treat the consequences of obesity. It's also possible to manage drug use without resort to weaning. We don't partly because of a presumption in favour of normality.

it feels good to want things, to strive for them, to work up an appetite for a good meal, to look forward to an adventure, or a piece of entertainment, or to your favorite hobby, to get horny and want to fuck your significant other, etc.

But then if you are denied those things you were longing for, it feels bad. — Pfhorrest

This is what I'm telling you is not true. We do not gain maximum happiness by any measure from the obtaining of that for which we're longing. It's just not the case.

there is a "rest of it", I just never get to move on to that because you get all hung up on disputing the basic groundwork. — Pfhorrest

Then I'll take your word for that.

That's the negation of my principle of objectivism/universalism, and you keep objecting to that principle, which makes it sound like you favor its negation. — Pfhorrest

As I said above, I don't believe it's the only remaining option.

So here's the argument.... — Andrew M

There's no mention of the disadvantages of lockdowns. One cannot make an argument in favour of an approach by only looking at the advantages of it. It's obviously going to look like the best option that way.

If a fire is spreading, you don't mitigate it, you put it out. That's the precautionary approach. — Andrew M

I'm not fond of arguing by analogy, but even this doesn't work. we fight factory fires by showering them with water. When we meet something on the scale of a bushfire, we change tactics. It's too big to fight by showering it with water and it would be dangerous to rely on that. We cut firebreaks, make strategic burn, evacuate people from areas that we've lost...

You're just presuming one factor and so obviously 'precautionary' seems to be limiting that factor, but human systems are complex and focussing only on one factor is never an appropriate precautionary approach.

I'm not dismissing what the WHO says. I'm making the case for an alternative strategy. — Andrew M

That's the same thing. The WHO are advising we prepare for endemic status, you're advising otherwise. That's about as close to 'dismissing' as one can get.

But I'm not here to dissuade you, that boat's clearly sailed, I want to know what attracts you to the position.

Up until last year, what was your position on the world's response to TB? HIV/AIDS? Poverty related food shortages? Suicide? Motor vehicle safety? Were they all similarly single-issue, elimination-focussed?

It would be rational to aim for their appetites to be sated, whether that would be by changing the world to sate their appetites or by changing their appetites to be satiable by the world. I'm not saying that people should never change and the world must bend to them exactly as they are now, just that somehow or another (within deontological limits beyond the scope of this teleological part of the conversation) the two should be brought together into alignment. — Pfhorrest

I've no qualm with this as an aim, but you used the word 'should'. What do you think 'should' means here? It can't mean 'it would be morally right too...' because what is morally right is what you're trying to establish, so an argument assuming it would be begging the question. What is the normative force of the above argument - we certainly could think of 'morally right' as being synonymous with matching the world to it's current and future population's appetites... but why should we?

But that part aside, the only reason why the drug addictions and overeating disorders are bad are because they lead to other suffering, i.e. the dissatisfaction of other appetites, like from health problems, withdrawals, etc. "Normalcy" should have nothing to do with it. — Pfhorrest

We could instead see that consequent suffering as the problem, that's the point I was making (as you later allude to). So normalcy does have something to do with it, it's partly how we choose which suffering to treat.

wanting something and not getting it, wanting something and getting it is better (more enjoyment) still. — Pfhorrest

Not really. It depends how you define 'enjoyment'. Both neurologically and phenomenologically, maximum enjoyment is not obtained by getting things you want. Gamblers aren't addicted to the payoff, they're addicted to the chance of a payoff. Even in mice, maximum dopamine response is achieved at the anticipation of a reward (of which there's a just above 50% chance of achieving), not the reward, or even the certainty of it. The human brain is extremely complex and this disneyfied 'eliminate the bad things and make all the good things' version of the way the world should be may well not match the actual neurological mechanisms behind our subjective judgements of state.

To take the example above, the theory is that this particular dopamine system is evolved to sustain striving, to reward risk-taking (in a limited fashion). But we don't necessarily recognise that phenomenologically, nor did we know it neurologically until about a decade ago. But we did know it intuitively (if we didn't the evolutionary advantage would not have manifested. One of the reason I'm so opposed to any systematising of morality is that it's like tinkering with Formula One engine based on a superficial knowledge of how lawnmowers work. I know you're only advocating a meta-ethic here, and the actual ethic might well be 'don't do anything until we know more', but the advocacy of a rational (as opposed to naturalistic) meta-ethic has such implications whether you intend them or not.

My ontology pretty much only rules out the utterly supernatural, and there being different actual realities for people who believe different things. Within that, anything goes, and it's beyond philosophy's scope to figure it out; that's for physics to do. Likewise, this teleological aspect of my ethics is only meant to be whatever is left after you rule out two things: — Pfhorrest

Yes, I understand that. I come from a very different environment I suppose. I do regularly forget the efforts some people go to to try and rationally disprove positions which were never rationally arrived at in the first place. It's not something that's even on my radar. If you want to construct a rational argument that says one shouldn't follow the instructions in a 2000 year old book as one's sole moral guide then be my guest.

that who or how many people are of what ethical opinion or another has any bearing on what the correct ethical opinion is (e.g. that slavery was actually morally okay in societies where 'enough' of 'the right' people approved of it, and only became not-okay after they changed their minds).

The deontological aspect of my ethics (about the methods of applying those criteria to the justification of particular intentions) is more useful for resolving ethical dilemmas between people who're already on board with that kind of thing, — Pfhorrest

You see, there's that duplicity again - when pushed on the problem of under-determination, you admit that it only eliminates extremes and that outside of those physiological limits your system offers no guide (should we match the data points to the preferred line, or match the line to the data points). Then you keep coming back to "my ethics ... is more useful for resolving ethical dilemmas". It's not. We've just established that. It provides nothing whatsoever by way of guidance in the resolution of such ethical dilemmas. Don't be a psychopath, and don't be a religious fanatic are the only positions your ethical system advises. Everything in between is arguable on the basis of being some form of matching world to appetites.

But there's no point even getting into that methodological aspect with people who can't even agree on those two very broad limits on what makes for a good end, or state of affairs. And you've generally sounded like someone who's strongly attached to that second broad class of views that I would categorically exclude. — Pfhorrest

I'm not sure what's given you that impression, but that's not my meta-ethical position.

I think it's only saying that that is pretty much definitionally a good state of affairs that's at all controversial here -- that a wholly good state of affairs is necessarily and sufficiently one where everyone is pleased and not pained, enjoying rather than suffering, etc. — Pfhorrest

I think this is where you're going wrong. pleasure and pain, enjoyment and suffering are not appetites in the sense you're trying to suggest. They're already interpreted. This is why the incorrectness of the causal chain you're implying matters. A feeling like 'pleasure' is not an interocepted state, it is an interpreted state, the interocepted states of various neural circuits massively under-determine the phenomenological feeling of pleasure. What happens is that these states are compared to expected states which are themselves influenced by our culture/upbringing/experiences and are not only interpreted in that light, but actually filtered and suppressed in that light. thus what makes a person feel 'pleasure, or 'pain' is to a very great extent, a product of their upbringing and the culture in which they live.

Drug addiction is a good example. For a drug addict, the taking of a drug dose is not merely an intention (as you put it, a plan to achieve a desire which is formed from an appetite being unfulfilled). The drug actually initiates changes in the amygdala and hippocampus which trigger negative valences in internal states which simply did not exist prior to the exposure to that drug. Hunger is another example, mediated, in part, by pro-opiomelanocortin neurons. Individuals with genetic disfunctions limiting the production of pro-opiomelanocortin neurons become very obese and they do so because they are less satiated, their raw sensation, not their desire or their intention.

It wouldn't be a rational target to satisfy the hedonic levels of the drug addict of the the POMC deficient patient would it? Yet these are not 'desires', or 'intentions' as you describe them, they are raw appetites, no less than the pain I experience when I stub my toe (which itself is already interpreted by sub-conscious cortices before I'm even aware of the pain).

So why do we treat the drug addict or the POMC deficient patient? Only because we recognise that their target valences are not normal. That taking action (even temporarily harmful action) to bring those target valences down to normal levels is overall a better course of action than trying to re-arrange the world in such a way as to meet them (together with everyone else's, of course). But we'd have absolutely no reason at all not to take these target valences seriously unless we used 'normality' as a baseline.

It would be perfectly possible to satisfy everyone's target satiety by exposing them to less food in childhood, thus reducing the sensitivity to Agouti-related protein neurons and so promoting the interpretation of their action as more pleasurable than otherwise. Similarly, we could change our culture to be more rewarding of pain experiences, which would give a dopamine counterpart to pain nociception promoting the interpretation of pain experiences as more positive.

As I know you're fond of linking your ethical approach with your epistemological one, it will perhaps please you that the problems here are similar to the ones I (and others) had with that. You've underestimated the reach of the underdermination, you limit it to the matching of data points (which you admit is underdetermined), but it actually extends to the ability to manipulate, in predictable ways, the valence of those data point in future. We can match a curve to data points as they are, or we can deliberately manipulate data point to match a chosen curve. The second is the option we take with drug addicts and POMC deficient patients.

We end up with such enormously wide parameters as to be virtually useless as a moral aim. Basically we're limited to saying that we should not bring about a world which is so utterly unbearable that it is outside of the neurological limits of our brain to cope with it. I just don't think that helps at all with any actual real-world moral dilemmas.

I'm going to forgo any critique for a minute because we keep losing what you're claiming in all your analogies (which I don't find helpful) and I want to see if I can clarify it. alone (un-analogised!) My understanding so far is that...

1. There may possibly exist some state of affairs, dynamic rather than static, which would most equitably promote every human's (and all future human's) appetites toward their current target valences, at any given time.

2. This state of affairs my well not be the desire or the intention of any individual (or even all individuals) and so it's possible for everyone to be wrong about what they desire or intend - hence the 'objective' bit. Relativism, when it comes to what we desire or intend, is thus dismissed.

3. An intention which is more 'good', morally, is an intention to make the world match more closely this state of affairs.

Is that right?

The results achieved in Australia and NZ are successful tests of it at that scale, and so are instructive for what could be achieved in other regions. — Andrew M

No they're not. They're examples of success in regions with a low community infection source, which is the one type of environment we already know these approaches work well in (why we all should have done them to start with). Neither give an example of the approach working in an environment with a high seroprevalence.

You were earlier advocating a 'precautionary approach', now you're suggesting we dismiss the view of the World Health Organisation and instead pursue a policy devised by some fringe data scientists? Why the change of tune?

Indeed. I think there's a deeper neurological basis for this. A lot of what happens in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex seems to be to act like a filter for actions (and onward signals), so it's not taking in data and then deciding what to do, it's more like what to do has already been decided and it's just trying to catch anything that doesn't make sense. So we end up, at a phenomenological level, experiencing this activity post hoc as arbitrary (which I suppose it is, to our conscious selves - who knows what models in the deeper brain came up with the unfiltered behaviour though, and by what heuristic).

What's interesting is why we ever do act altruistically when on each individual occasion we could, quite reasonably say "I'll do it next time". Personally, I think it has to do with bandwidth - the idea that there's a limit to the number of processes the brain can simultaneously engage in. I think each opportunity for (evolutionary/culturally appropriate) altruism is assessed as viable, goes through the early motions, but gets filtered out and eventually dissipated by the 'first-come-first-served' (or possibly loudest-first served) filter of our limited bandwidth.

(Reference to some subtext that all six people are the same person here.) — Kenosha Kid

Chaucer then...?

I like this metaphor, not least for having a Beckettian vibe. — Kenosha Kid

Cool, then I'll pretend that was what I was going for!

It's interesting to think through the possible configurations of individuals and how they'd handle the situation. It seems clear enough to me that there's not always a right answer, and that the situation will play out according to the particular configuration of individuals. — Kenosha Kid

Yes, I suppose it would. It's something that would be interesting to study (damn ethics committees, with their "you can't tie a load of people together and abandon them in the woods"...). I do think there'd always be a 'right' answer though, but that's perhaps because of the way I'm using 'right'. I'm using it more like in game theory, than in ethics. The 'right' play for everyone is the perfect move in the game.

Exactly what is or isn't going on in the underlying mechanisms that give rise to experience and thought doesn't change anything at all about the ability to categorize kinds of experiences and thoughts in this way. — Pfhorrest

That would be entirely fine if all you were doing was categorising, but that's not all you're doing. You go on to treat appetites, desires and intentions as a components in a causal chain. To do that you need more than just conceptual categorisation, you need evidence that these things are actually causally related in the way you suggest.

What I am proposing to model is precisely what states of affairs cause all of our appetites to be satisfied, — Pfhorrest

When? Since it is absolutely demonstrably true that the target valences of our apettites change both with time and with cultures, exactly what point in time would your model address? Now?...or now?....or now?

an objective morality is one that takes into account all such feelings (all appetites). — Pfhorrest

What about future generations? Do their appetites not get a look in?

Are you familiar with Principled Negotiation? The distinction I'm on about here is basically synonymous with that method's principle to "focus on interests, not positions". — Pfhorrest

I'm passing familiar, yes, but the situation you describe here would require us first to establish those interests, which is an empirical matter. The interests of human beings, in terms of ideal valence of certain appetites, is something which is the case about the world. Even if I were to accept your jump from the existence of this fact to the maxim that we 'ought' to seek to attain it (which I don't) then discovering it would be a matter of biology and neuroscience - since, as you've already admitted, introspection, and subsequent discussion, cannot provide a faithful account of either the appropriate target valence, nor the method by which it is best attained.

I'm left here wondering what the heck you could mean by "we morally ought to do" if not "would consistently please everybody", — Pfhorrest

What we 'morally ought to do' is an expression in our language - it's used for several purposes. One is to express a social convention which is considered more important than mere etiquette, another is often to push a set of behaviours which would benefit the person using it, another is simply to ostracise people who aren't conforming to social mores. "Would consistently please everyone" is certainly one way it's used, but not the most common by far. Again, who is 'everyone' in this? All future generations?

I'm not proposing we should. I'm only proposing that we model what states of affairs simultaneously match all such valences — Pfhorrest

You've misunderstood my use of the term 'valence' here. The target valence of interocepted sensations is the point at which the feedback systems in the endocrine network kick in to act to reduce then or increase them. It's different in different people for different sensations and it's highly susceptible to environmental factors, particularly in childhood. So why would we build a model of a target world based on the target valences we know for a fact have been generated by the world we happen to have been brought up in? All we're going to end up doing is replicating those conditions.

You've either misunderstood those papers or misunderstood my comment. It's not clear which. Neither of those papers are suggesting we will end up in a situation where it is no longer necessary to respond to outbreaks of covid-19. The green zone type responses are about local elimination - shutting down outbreaks quickly and decisively, not about creating a world in which there are no such outbreaks.

As Professor Heymann said in the last WHO briefing...

It appears the destiny of SARS-CoV-2 [Covid-19] is to become endemic, as have four other human coronaviruses, and that it will continue to mutate as it reproduces in human cells, especially in areas of more intense admission.

Fortunately, we have tools to save lives, and these in combination with good public health will permit us to learn to live with Covid-19. — Professor Heymann chair of the WHO’s strategic and technical advisory group for infectious hazards

Or Dr Ryan

The likely scenario is the virus will become another endemic virus that will remain somewhat of a threat, but a very low-level threat in the context of an effective global vaccination program.

It remains to be seen how well the vaccines are taken up, how close we get to a coverage level that might allow us the opportunity to go for elimination,

The existence of a vaccine, even at high efficacy, is no guarantee of eliminating or eradicating an infectious disease. That is a very high bar for us to be able to get over. — Dr Ryan The head of the WHO emergencies program

I admire some of the work coming out of the New England Complex Systems Institute, but you have to recognise that this is a cutting edge application of novel statistical models to an emerging situation. Taleb and co are pushing a very new and untested methodology. I think it's got a tremendous amount of potential, but we should not be treating it as if it were rock solid evidence.

I've been saying this from the start and I seem to remember you criticising me for it. Am I confused or have you changed your mind or what? — Baden

Yes. I've always been in favour of early decisive lockdowns.

"Lock down hard and early" is a future principle that I don't think anyone sensible could now deny. — Isaac

The effectiveness of some kind of lockdown is, I think, beyond question. — Isaac

What I took issue with earlier, with you, was the assumption as to the causal relationship between lockdown strategies and death rates in two countries (Ireland and Sweden). Effective response to emerging viruses is complex and multi-faceted, it's an oversimplification to assume all progress is made by lockdowns alone. The 'anti-lockdown' crowd are as much to blame for this as anyone else, but It is an all too common trend in the face of conspiratorial scepticism of any government or scientific intervention to respond by painting it instead as a panacea sine qua non, without appurtenant effects.

consider Australia's and New Zealand's COVID strategies. Those countries had a clear objective, which was zero community transmission. People understand the strategies needed to get there, and it has been demonstrated to work.

These countries adopted a precautionary strategy from the start, versus a "let's try what we think might work and see what happens" strategy. The latter is fine when people's lives and well-being don't depend on the plan working. But a precautionary strategy is necessary when they do. — Andrew M

This may be true, but the situation in the US and the UK is not like that in Australia and New Zealand (largely because of gross negligence in the early stages). We now have a much larger community source and that changes the variables considerably. Lockdowns would have to be much longer to work (months not days), and lockdowns will be less effective (zero cases is literally impossible to achieve, the target is lower hospital admissions).

So rather than comparing days of disruption to avoiding a local epidemic, we're comparing months of disruption to avoiding potential hospital over burdening. Considering the serious consequences of lockdowns, this is no easy decision. The consequences are much higher (I've already cited the papers on this) and the achievements much smaller and more unpredictable.

I think Australia and New Zealand are excellent examples of what we should have done. They're of much less help now we are where we are.

Someone doesn't just have reason to do something because they exist with a related objective. It would make as much sense, in terms of existence, for them to fail. They actions to success only make sense if their is an ought.

Otherwise, it makes as much sense for them to fail in respect to their objective as succeed — TheWillowOfDarkness

This is literally just a repeat of what you said before without any attempt to address the issues I raised with it. As I'm having great trouble making sense of your cryptic grammar, and you seem entirely unmoved by anything I have to say in response anyway, I think we'll leave it there.