The difference is, as I said, between the ideas of eternal flourishing and temporal flourishing. So all moral systems are concerned with flourishing, but the two conceptions of what constitutes flourishing are very different from one another. — Janus

I agree, but I'm trying to understand what @Thomas Quine is presenting here and it appears that he thinks they do not differ, but are rather a "a constant". It seemed for a minute that you might have some insight into this position, but it seems not.

he can get around this by saying that science, although it obviously cannot determine the nature of eternal flourishing, can determine that the notion of eternal flourishing has no grounds and is hence not a valid model. — Janus

Can it? How would it go about doing that?

"Good" and "bad" aren't magic words, we use them all the time in everyday activity as a shorthand for evaluating our actions, and whether or not those actions take us towards or away from our goals, ideals, objectives, ends, etc — Xtrix

But moral "good" and "bad" are about judging other people's actions also. They act like instructions or categorical claims. The claim is that science can tell us what is morally right, not just how to achieve it once we've decided what it is. If I had a goal of becoming a ruthless tyrant with hundreds of slaves, science could tell me how best to achieve that too. Science makes models which have good predictive success, that means that if you want to do something to the world, you'd be advised to consult the latest scientific model to find out how. None of this has anything to do with determining what your objective should be in the first place.

If we want to make everyone happy we could (theoretically) consult science on how best to do so. If we want society to flourish (whatever that means) we could theoretically consult science on how best to do so. But if we wanted everyone else to suffer horribly, we could also consult science on how best to do so. Nothing in science tells us which of these objectives to choose.

A "moral" action, according to this perspective, is one that aligns with one's values and goals -- be it health or happiness. — Xtrix

So why take that perspective? That's what I'm asking. What is it that appeals to you about it, or are you just offering it as an option?

If one wants to be healthy, then you do xyz. If one wants to be happy (depending on what we mean by this), you do xyz. — Xtrix

Right. Why do we need any more than this? Why associate either of those things with a universal concept, they work perfectly well as modalities.

Which is more effective, religion or science? — Thomas Quine

Science. What's that got to do with morality?

Yes, but you said...

If we say happiness (in terms of flourishing or well-being) is "good," then — Xtrix

I'm asking why we would do that 'if'. To say 'if' implies we have a choice (ie we might not make that association), I just don't understand why you think we would choose to make that association, what does it gain us?

Islam is the main proponent of Divine Command Theory. — Thomas Quine

Did you read the article I linked? I think you've misunderstood Divine Command Theory. It's not about rewards and punishments, it's about the source of moral goodness.

If we say happiness (in terms of flourishing or well-being) is "good," then science can certainly help us discern "right" from "wrong." — Xtrix

Right. Now do that without the morality. Science can tell us what produces happiness (I don't really agree with this, but for the sake of argument...). If we want happiness we can consult science to find out how to get it.

Why have we gone through the additional stage of equating happiness with "good", what purpose did that bit serve?

I then argue that if this is what we actually are seeking to do, then science can help us find the best way. — Thomas Quine

Just to get off DCT for a minute. How far into the future does your "All moral theories are an attempt to answer the question, "What best serves human flourishing?" go, and is there an equally constant degree of hyperbolic discounting?

Say science tells us an action could benefit a thousand people now, but carries a 60% risk of harming 10,000 people in 100 year's time. Science can't tell us what weighting to give to the risk. Are you suggesting that all moral theories apply the same risk weighting? If not, then aren't we just back to square one with irresolvable disputes over all the really complicated questions?

My argument is that Divine Command Theory is one of many moral theories that attempt to lay down sets of rules that the proponents believe will help humanity to flourish. — Thomas Quine

Well then that's wrong from the outset. Divine command theory aims to obey God. If God aimed to make humanity miserable, then that would be the morally right thing to aim for because God said so. It has nothing ti do with human flourishing in the sense you've been using.

Those who promote Divine Command Theory say explicitly, over and over, that if we only follow God's law, humanity will flourish — Thomas Quine

Who says this?

Divine Command Theory is a moral theory that aims at obedience to God's Will, and is an attempt to answer the question, "What best serves human flourishing?" — Thomas Quine

No it doesn't.if God demanded something which caused humanity to suffer, that would still be morally right according to divine command theorists.

The way to defeat this argument is not by changing my constant into a variable. It would be by proving that the intention of Divine Command Theory is not actually to serve human flourishing. — Thomas Quine

https://iep.utm.edu/divine-c/

"Correct" according to what/whom? — ChrisH

@Pfhorrest

Moral realists do not cite these things as arguments in favor of moral realism, but as a reminder to anyone who thinks that mere disagreement entails relativism. — Tarrasque

it does not defeat relativism. But neither does
"(there's nothing about something 'seeming' to one person to be the case, even on reflection, that makes it more likely to actually be the case)"
imply relativism. — Tarrasque

While relativism is not "proven" wrong, many realists find that they have just as much justification to believe that slavery is wrong as they do anything else they believe. — Tarrasque

Right. Which is pretty much where we get to.

Moral realists (or 'objectivists') have nothing more to support their claim than "it is not ruled out as an option".

I think parsimony (a principle I find mostly useful), would suggest relativism, as realism needs some objective truth-maker and we don't seem to be able to reach any kind of idea of what that might be. All that happens is the can gets kicked further down the subjective road.

A moral claim is taken to be correct if it somehow 'accounts for' everyone's intuitions - how do we judge if it's 'accounted' for them? Turns out that's just a subjective 'feeling' that it has.

the two Xs, different ideas of flourishing, are not the same. — Janus

all moral thought is concerned with flourishing. — Janus

How can you reconcile both these statements? If the two Xs (that which moral systems aim at) are not the same, then it is de facto false that "all moral thought is concerned with flourishing". It can't be, we've just established that the two Xs are different.

One cannot sustain both claims (that all moral systems are concerned with flourishing and that science tells us about flourishing) without equivocating over the term 'flourishing'. I the first claim it's taken to mean something wide enough to include eternal afterlife, yet the second claim is only true if it's taken in a much narrower sense.

There have been a lot of threads here lately touching on topics of moral objectivism, relativism, nihilism, etc. I don't mean to rehash them all again here, but I'm getting a distinct impression that most people at this forum are moral relativists or nihilists — Pfhorrest

Hopefully this won't feel like too much of a breach of your request that I don't respond to any of your discussions, but I'm curious as to who these people are. I've got the distinct opposite impression such that I can't think, off the top of my head, of a single contributor here who's a moral relativist apart from myself. Who else are you thinking of?

Whether God is real or not has no bearing on my argument. Even if a moral system aimed at something which was not real, that still defeats your claim that all moral systems aim at some constant. They don't. They aim at different things. Divine command theory aims at obedience to god which is a different thing from maximal happiness (ordinary utilitarianism) which is a different thing to rationally universalisable maxims (Kantian deontology), which is a different thing to lack of harm (negative utilitarianism)...

Well-being usually refers to a brain state and thus is a subjective measure and a measure of how well an individual is doing. Morality operates at a societal scale and is concerned with not only what is good for the individual but for society and for all humanity. — Thomas Quine

We can already study which societies flourish, or even how well humanity is doing by whatever measures we like. Still not seeing the link to 'morality'.

The problem with your argument here is that it fails to recognize that the Christian notion of flourishing is an eternalist, not a temporalist, one. Obviously science can tell us nothing about that. — Janus

That's exactly what I just said. I don't understand how that's a problem with my argument, it sounds like just a repeat of it.

The fact that a crude evaluative mechanism for some subject has arisen biologically within us does not mean that there is no truth to be found in that subject. — Tarrasque

Depends what you mean by 'truth'. A whole other argument.

If he replied that he was killing people purely because he felt like it, for no reason other than his own pleasure, who among the spectators would not judge him as wrong automatically? In such a case, I believe the consensus would be as good as unanimous. Do you think it'd be a less certain consensus than those about physical intuitions? — Tarrasque

I think most people would (quite rightly) judge him 'ill', not 'wrong'. That's the point I was making about intuitive feelings of morally apt behaviour. They're just not relevant to actual moral dilemmas about which there's disagreement. The kind these 'moral systems' are aimed at. People supporting moral realism always seem to cite the agreement that would be had over some over-the-top act of evil, but ask yourself why have you had to choose such an example, and when was the last time you faced such a moral dilemma ("should I bash the people's skulls in or not?")? The answer to both will come down to the fact that real moral dilemmas are not solvable by relation to the instincts that we all share about empathy, care, and cooperation.

How do you imagine that "judging" the quality of reasoning works? Would you say it's just looking at how it worked out for you after the fact? — Tarrasque

Yes, in the long term. I think (after Ramsey) that reasoning is just a mental habit that turns out to be useful.

Imagine someone who regularly takes unfavorable risks, is inconsistent, and barely thinks about anything at all before he does it. When he achieves his aims, it's pure luck. But, as it turns out, he gets lucky a lot. Is a person like this a good decision-maker? Should he be in a leadership role, or working as a consultant? — Tarrasque

Possibly, yes. If it works I cannot see any reason why not. If he gets lucky a lot how are we calculating that it is just luck. If a coin lands on heads most of the time we presume a biased coin, not a lucky one.

Couldn't you say the same about math, or logic? At the end of the day, we only believe that the Law of Non-Contradiction is true because we really, deep down, feel like it's true. Are we just post-hoc rationalizing our gut feeling? Perhaps, but this isn't obvious.
We could even say the same about our physical intuitions. Deep down, I feel like it's true that larger objects can't fit inside smaller ones. But how do I know? I haven't tried to fit every object in the universe inside every other. What if I met someone who claimed otherwise? — Tarrasque

Yes, I suppose you could claim that, but it gets very difficult when it comes to the more advanced areas of maths, logic, and science. You could well argue that assuming the stone follows some physical law when it drops to the ground is just a post hoc rationalisation for my gut feeling that it would, but I don't see how you could argue that the energy level predicted of the Higgs Boson being found where the theory expected it to be was just a post hoc rationalisation of our gut feeling that it would be there.

I'd like to introduce you to the concept of "reflective equilibrium." This is the idea that the beliefs we are most justified in holding are the ones that have, upon the most reflection, remained consistent. Reasoning is done by comparing "seemings," or "things that seem to be the case." These seemings are defeasible: a less convincing seeming is often discarded in favor of a more convincing one.
The bedrock of this system are those seemings which, after the most reflection(which consists in examining seemings and comparing seemings), are the most stable. Take your example that larger objects cannot fit inside smaller ones. This seeming has been consistent with everything you have ever experienced in your life. Not only this, but it seems intuitively true based on what "larger" and "smaller" mean. I'm sure that the more you consider it, the more sure you are of it. What would it take to defeat this seeming?
The more we consider our seemings, the more we approach reflective equilibrium. We do this in our own minds, and we do it with other people dialogically. The most important thing to remember is that we could always be wrong. As you rightly point out, reasoning is fallible. It falls back on judgment. — Tarrasque

I don't have any disagreement with all this. It's not far off the way I imagine our judgements to be made. None of this defeats relativism (there's nothing about something 'seeming' to one person to be the case, even on reflection, that makes it more likely to actually be the case). Nor does anything here prevent judgements from being post hoc rationalisations (again things will 'seem to be the case' that suit a rational explanation for the actions we've already committed to)

By "it" I was there referring to morality. The argument is that there is no fact/value or is/ought distinction, and that morality can be based in science if we simply accept a concept of "well-being" as we accept "health" in medicine. — Xtrix

Yes, I understood that, I was wondering why you'd want to do that. We can already study human well-being and carry out any activities that such a study might reveal as benefitting human well-being. What's the advantage in equating such behaviours with 'morality'?

Trying to link morality to human well-being, in the same sense as "health" in medicine, thus being able to open up a field in which we can study it scientifically. All interesting stuff. — Xtrix

Why would we need to link morality to human well-being in order to open up a field in which we can study it scientifically? Why don't we just study human well-being?

Not sure why you believe this, Isaac — Thomas Quine

Your claim.

1. All moral systems aim to achieve X.
2. Science informs us about X.

A necessary corollary of your claim, therefore is that science informs us about that which all moral systems aim to achieve.

Divine command theory is a moral system.

Divine command theory aims at obedience to God's will.

Science cannot tell us about God's will.

Therefore some element if your claim is wrong.

"Flourishing" is the constant, not the variable. — Thomas Quine

Then you should be able to substitute it for a synonymous sentence in all cases. So in all cases of moral systems what is a sentence we can use in place of the constant 'flourishing'?

There seems to be a need for killing to be reasonably justified in a way that we don't need to justify, say, going for a walk. — Tarrasque

I see what you mean. I wouldn't call that moral agreement because I'm seeing the justification to be the meat of any moral dilemma, not the need for it. I don't know if I've mentioned it here or in another thread (there's a few 'morality' threads on the go at once), but I think it's quite irrefutable that most people are either born with, or are predisposed to develop, a basic set of what we might call moral imperatives. We sense other's pain and try to minimise it, we sense other's intentions a try to help and we are drawn to to other people who appear to act the same. The problem I have with deriving any moral realism from these facts is that it ends up saying nothing at all about actual moral dilemmas as they appear to us. To me, a moral dilemma is only a dilemma because the answer is not delivered to us automatically by those same set of basic instincts.

"The success of the outcome causing us to review our assessment of the decision" is reasoning. — Tarrasque

Yes, but we were talking about prior reasoning - determining the 'best' decision prior to being apprised of the outcome.

I might make a well-reasoned decision to go to the bank today, and then get struck by lightning the moment I step out the door. This would be a terrible outcome, but this doesn't mean my decision to go to the bank was not likely to have a good outcome. Its likelihood to have a good outcome was probably a large part of what made it seem to be a good decision. — Tarrasque

Right. So how is reasoning delivering us probabilities? If, as you say "past probabilities do not affect future probabilities" then we're not simply using frequentist probabilities, we must be using Bayes. How do you imagine reasoning actually working here - step-by-step what does it do, do you think? Say I'm trying to decide whether to wear my coat The weather report says it's going to rain, but the sky looks clear and blue. I decide not to wear my coat and enjoy a sunny day without the extra burden. Was my decision right or wrong? How do I judge the quality of my reasoning prior to knowing the outcome?

I don't think human beings are flawless automatons of reason. People often take themselves to have a reason to do or believe something, and then later realize they were mistaken. Sometimes, they never realize they were mistaken at all. — Tarrasque

So, the point here is that we'd never know. A moral system based on reasoning would be completely indistinguishable from one based on gut feeling because we'd have absolutely no way of telling if the reasoning is post hoc rationalisation of what we we're going to do anyway, or genuine reasoning. what I find disturbing about all these "I've worked out how to decide what's moral or not" type of models (we seem to get a half dozen of them every week) is that they try to add a gloss of authority to moral resolutions which we have absolutely no way of distinguishing from gut feeling (or worse, political ideology). The mere fact that they can be parsed into some rational algorithm doesn't distinguish them because the real meat of moral dilemmas are sufficiently complex that any decision could be similarly parsed.

The judges don't agree they're influenced by hunger by the way, they all think they're the exception.

But some people keep on insisting that the mind "person" can and does exist without the brain. To do so it would need to have a location. — Sir2u

I see. I guess if people are just going to make stuff up off the top if their heads then they could just make up a thing which exists but doesn't have a location.

I thought I made it pretty clear that there are many different, even contradictory views about what best serves human flourishing. — Thomas Quine

So if we take 'flourishing' to be a variable x (some thing), then your statement "all moral systems aim at human flourishing" becomes "all moral systems aim at something", which seems just trivially true - hence the confusion.

If you don't agree with my system, then I would love to hear why not. — Thomas Quine

The most straightforward answer - the vast majority of moral decisions are either simple enough that we already know the answer (and so don't need a system), or sufficiently complex that linear univariate systems cannot consider all the implications of any choice to a degree significantly better than chance. Like the stock exchange, there's all manner of very detailed systems for working out investment strategies, but economics is sufficiently complicated that none of them perfom better than chance over the long run.

But that's the boring answer. The much more controversial one is James Blair. In 1995 he studied some of the world's most vicious psychopaths. Among other fascinating discoveries (I strongly recommended his work), was this gem - psychopaths can behave incredibly morally in many situations. What differentiates them from normal folk is that they don't distinguish between breaking a rule and doing something morally wrong. I seriously worry about any attempt to turn the whole of morality into a series of rules and calculations.

If we accept that the mind is nothing more than electro-chemical processes then yes, that would the space the mind occupies. If not then we are still stuck without a space. — Sir2u

Right. As I said, special pleading. Why in earth would we start out believing the mind is something other than that which it is alley comprised of? When you smash a teacup, its no longer a cup, do you question whether the cup really exists still, but kn some other realm? It might, but why would you even think it? All the activity we associate with our minds appears to stop when the brain is destroyed. Manipulation of the brain changes associated thoughts in the mind. What possible reason would we have for believing there's anything more to it than that?

Why should my definition of flourishing align with those of religious people, as you suggest? — Thomas Quine

Because if it doesn't then your claim that "alk moral systems are about human flourishing" is flat out wrong. Some moral systems are clearly aimed at achieving something which you would not define as 'flourishing'.

It may be that all moral systems are aimed at what they themselves consider 'flourishing', but this is barely more than tautology.

If we agree that the problem morality is trying to solve is how best to flourish, my position is that learning from science is your best bet. — Thomas Quine

If we agree with your system, then your system is the best? OK.

Are you suggesting the majority of people think in terms of virtue? — Janus

I think it's common, but only with the caveat I introduced earlier (that we're talking about complex moral decisions, not whether to beat a child).

If so then how do think they represent virtue to themselves? Are you suggesting that most people just visualize Aragorn or some other persona they have adopted as a hero, or something like that? I guess, if they have never reflected on the question then they must have idea of, image of, or feeling for what virtue is. — Janus

Yes, something like that. A huge amount of behaviour is dictated by social norms for particular groups, but these need not be a group one actually belongs to, but could be a group one wishes to belong to (reasons for which are varied, as I mentioned above). The point is that these behaviours are not copied blindly, it's an adaptive inference about some 'generalised trend' not literal copying. Even babies do this. I think 'virtue' is a good way of talking about what's going on here, but if you want to delve deeper into what it constitutes I think you're getting straight into sub-concious neural activity, not anything we could talk about phenomenologically.

Maybe, but I didn't say virtue ethics was the 'right' model, and I don't think Banno did either. Not with 'right' being used in a normative sense. — Isaac


"Best model" then or "preferable model"? — Janus

The common model.

Yes, but the question then is 'what is it about the way Aragorn is that makes you want to be like him?". It's no good just saying "His being virtuous", because that perhaps begs the question, but it certainly tells us nothing. — Janus

It seems to be a range of factors for different people. Some might want to be like him simply because others want to be like him, or because he seems well-respected by his peers. Others might have a more aesthetic attachment... The majority, I suspect simply want to be in his gang, and the membership of that gang has certain characteristics.

We could go further and ask why we want to be in his gang, I suspect then you'd get to something about markers of success (for the gang as a whole) - both biological and cultural, but I don't think anyone actually thinks that far.

I'm looking at morality as consisting in caring for others; which just is to say to care about their flourishing. — Janus

I see that, but this just examines it at one level of causation. The answer to the question "why do we behave that (moral) way?" might be "because we want to be like Aragorn". The answer to the question "why do we want to be like Aragorn?" might be "because his gang seems the nicest/most successful", or it might be "because I feel inexplicably drawn to that kind of character" (cultural/biological). We could answer the "whys" to each of those by saying that those groups care about each other's flourishing (your level). But then we could ask "why do we want to care about each other's flourishing?" and get one level deeper. The answer to that would be a lot of pre-engineered neurology, a big dose of cultural indoctrination and some guesswork. Then you could ask the "why" of all that - evolution and randomness.

So your particular level of analysis might not be wrong (I think it is, a bit wrong, but that's not relevant right now), it's just that it has no special claim to be the level at which we should look at moral issues, it's neither the foundational, nor the pragmatic end - just somewhere in between.

Shit. Are we agreeing? I thought we couldn't do that... — Banno

Yes, it seems so. Quick, mention 'truth' or something...the audience are getting restless.

Did anyone read Lord of the Rings and think Aragon the bad guy? — Isaac


The Orcs. — Banno

Whoa...meta...

To say that virtue ethics is the right model for moral thought and action is the same as to say that we should be virtuous, no? — Janus

Maybe, but I didn't say virtue ethics was the 'right' model, and I don't think @Banno did either. Not with 'right' being used in a normative sense.

For me, it just best describes what's going on in moral thought a good deal of the time. We're trying to be like Aragorn. We employ a range of techniques to do so, but it's toward the same ends.

The exceptions I'd cite are basic biological responses - caring for a child, being sociable, cooperating. These may well be why Aragorn is the hero, but we needn't think about them all the time in complex situations, and I think it's only the complex situations where moral theory even matters. A moral system which deduces that we shouldn't beat a defenseless child has, in my opinion, been a monumental waste of time. We all knew that. What we want to know is what to do with the homeless, how much to give to charity, whether to buy fairtrade...

These are questions too complex to be solved algorithmically, they can only be approximated, and I think a general sense of 'character' is the way we mostly deal with these complexities.

I find myself moving away from duty and happiness, towards virtue. It cuts out so much philosophical crap. That is also a move away from "the mental capacity to calculate the correct 'caring-for-others' action to take". — Banno

Absolutely. Couldn't agree more.

I still think that duty has a place in morality, as does simple rule-following, social norms, empathy. .. I don't think one approach covers it. But if I had to pick one, then virtue would definitely be it.

the injunction to be virtuous. — Janus

Need there be an injunction? Did anyone read Lord of the Rings and think Aragon the bad guy?

there are moral facts that enjoy the agreement of a vast majority: that torturing someone for absolutely no reason other than personal pleasure is wrong, for instance, or that committing genocide is worse than donating to charity. — Tarrasque

I don't see any widespread agreement on those matters. Torturing someone for no reason, is just definitional,what distinguishes actions (the things to which the term 'moral' applies) are those reasons,and it's that matter over which there's so little agreement. The question we actually have to answer is "is torturing this person in this circumstance, moral". The answer to that question will not yield much agreement and disagreement will hinge on those 'reasons'.

What are some arguments against, say, cognitivism, that you'd like to see me respond to? — Tarrasque

I think im going through some of them already, so I'm already getting the answers I'm looking for, thanks.

Funnily enough, I don't think that quality of reasoning is subjective. — Tarrasque

No, I suspected not. Perhaps that's for another day though.

Evaluating the outcome of a decision is reasoning about it. — Tarrasque

It is, but the evaluation includes the outcome in a way that evaluation of arguments doesn't.

To take your lottery example. Imagine you bought those thousand rickets and won a thousand times, you do the same next week and again the week after, the same thing happens. Is it still a bad decision, simply because it 'ought to be' on the basis of the evidence? Clearly the success of the outcome must cause us to review our assessment of the decision, we must have got something wrong somewhere.

In addition, what we believe are reasoned decisions are very often not. Even High Court Judges hand down longer sentences when they're hungry than they do when they're not. 'Reasoning' is often used just to bolster the authority of a decision made with very little prior thought.

You will doubtless agree that there is a difference between doing something because it makes you happy and doing it because it is the right things to do.

That is, the happiness is incidental to the morality of the act... no? — Banno

Maybe. It depends his you want to define it. Take Aragorn for example (out of Lord of the Rings). He undoubtedly does some stuff which is 'moral'. I grew up on those books and he's pretty much who I imagine when someone asks me to imagine a hero (a noble one, anyway). Even now, as an adult, those early impressions are ingrained in my mind. If I had cause to act in a way that reminds me of such a hero in any sense, it would make me very happy. It's likely all you'd see going on in my brain is the reward centres involved in the satisfaction of a personal goal. Yet the behaviour would be moral.

We could say (as I suspect you'd like to) that here 'moral' applies to Aragorn's fictional behaviour and thereby only incidentally to my copying it. That's fine, but it limits our understanding of moral decision-making because it eliminates a motive in those who may not have the mental capacity to calculate the correct 'caring-for-others' action to take, but who have been brought up to know who to imitate.

Likewise with rule-following.

I'm not opposed to your project of distinguishing the motive behind moral decision-making from the property of 'being moral' (which I suppose would attach to a behaviour or character, not a type of decision), but 'morality' the topic needs to cover both, I think.

Then the brain science seems to me to be irrelevant. Your argument amounts to "people use 'moral' to mean other things besides caring for each other - see, that's what these folk are doing..." — Banno

Yes. To a great extent, that's it. The reason I mentioned the neuroscience is to fend off what seemed to me (I think perhaps incorrectly now) an attempt to define what morality 'really' is by reference to what is actually happening, even in the widest sense of the term. There it would be relevant to point out that, no, in some senses of the word 'morality' we are thinking of rules or happiness as evidenced by those brain regions being active when engaged in a 'moral' decisions in that sense.

If the discussion is about constraining the meaning of 'moral' such that it might not include the senses involved in those particular experiments, then, yes, the neuroscience is irrelevant. I just don't understand the motivation behind constraining the use of a term to some specific subset of its current use.

Defend that things can exist as properties of physical objects or defend that properties of physical objects do not occupy space? — Francis

I was asking about both.

There must, therefore, be a way of understanding a word that is not given by providing its definition.

Now this seems quite obvious; and yet so many begin their discussion with "let's first define our terms". — Banno

Undoubtedly there are, several, but that doesn't mean that such methods would be applicable to all words. Maybe some words remain misunderstood by both parties. Philosophy is quite unique in that much of the time no action results from the adoption of one position or another in a debate - there's no behavioural instantiation of the concept being adopted. The only thing we'd have to go on to demonstrate a shared understanding of terms in these cases would be their mutually understood application to other verbal exchanges, but if all verbal exchange carried on in this way without ever resulting in some behavioural consequence then it's perfectly possible for an entire edifice of terminology to built the correct use of which could seem completely different to each user.

The only way we'd ever know if this was the case would be if there were some subject matter in which everyone continued to disagree wildly despite thousands of years of discussion and in which terms took on ever more obscure and opaque niche uses, which yielded nothing but further disagreement about their correct application... Now, can anyone think of such a subject?

there are things which exist as properties of objects but not as objects themselves. If I got rid of all the particles in a region of space I would get rid of all the mass, but that doesn't mean an objects mass has a location. — Francis

Isn't that the question being asked? What would you offer by way of justification for those assertions?

By the same method I can delete all humans from the earth, and there will be no minds. But that does not answer the question that was posed in the OP. Does the mind occupy a space. If it does, then the kind of space needs to be defined. — Sir2u

Doesn't it? If, by deleting all humans physically, you delete all minds, then without special pleading, that does, on the face of it, suggest very strongly that minds are physically located. Why would it not?

Many cultures believe that the way to flourish is to follow God's commands. I think we stand a better chance by basing our decisions, including our moral decisions, on the available science. — Thomas Quine

And well you might, but your original claim was

So my thesis is that all moral systems are an attempt to answer the question, "What best serves human flourishing?" (I look forward eagerly to a refutation of this empirical observation.) And if it IS the case that humanity seeks to flourish as a species, then we OUGHT to use science to tell us how best to achieve that. There should be nothing controversial about this claim. — Thomas Quine

Divine command theory is a moral systems, so it must be included in your set {all moral systems}, thus your definition of 'flourishing' must included the type of flourishing envisioned in divine command theory (otherwise your first statement is false). The type of flourishing envisioned by divine command theory is a long and blissful afterlife. Which makes your second statement false "it IS the case that humanity seeks to flourish as a species, then we OUGHT to use science to tell us how best to achieve that." substituting the meaning of 'flourish' intended by divine command theorists, it is definitely not the case that they ought to use science to tell them how best to achieve that. Science knows nothing about the afterlife, nor how to ensure a happy one.

You are equivocating over the meaning of 'flourishing' in your two propositions. In the first you have it mean whatever the ethical theorists involved consider it to mean, in the second you reduce it to your particular meaning (having the properties you think right here on earth). Sticking to the same meaning, it must either be the case that not all moral systems are concerned with human flourishing, or that science is not the default method for establishing how.

I'm wondering how you used it in your supposition. You're not keen on clarifying? That's why I asked you to explain the difference between a part of the brain that is involved in decision making per se, and these twelve parts of the brain that are involved in moral decision making. — Banno

It's not my supposition. Looking at the file from which I plucked that number, I have about 20 experiments, each involving say and average of three experimenters (a few research assistants and lab technicians thrown in, not to mention the peer review board). In all, I reckon we're looking at about 100 or so people, all of whom are competent speakers of English, all of whom are experienced experimental neuroscientists or cognitive psychologists. So when they say they're identifying parts of the brain involved in moral decision-making, I take for granted two things - 1) they know how to distinguish 'moral' decisions from ordinary decisions to no lesser an extent than any other user of the language, that they're unlikely to be using some special definition of moral the rest of us would find odd; and 2) they've taken at least some pains to control for blindingly obvious confounding factors like the possibility that such brain regions might be involved in all decision-making and so have no specific relevance to moral decisions.

Now, unless you're just after a lesson in neuroscience (which you've already deemed irrelevant, so I doubt it), you're after something more than just a simple list of those brain regions involved in decision-making per se which the scientists involved in these experiments will have ruled out testing for in the first minute of their methodology discussion. Hence my reluctance to answer the question in it's simplest format. I'm trying to understand first what you mean by asking it.

Since that's not forthcoming, however, I'll do my best. Just about every brain region is involved in decision-making because in its widest sense making decisions is all our brain does. There are several regions involved in different types of decision. For example deciding which turn to take in a maze utilises a recognisable pattern of activity in the hippocampus, striatum and orbitofrontal cortex. The experimenters in that particular case did not consider the decision about which route the rat should take in the maze to be a moral one. So the answer to that bit of the question (about the use of the term) is that I'm using it in exactly the manner in which the experimenters in each case jointly decided it should be used.

Does that answer your question?

I should have said moral disagreement is not at more of an impasse than disagreement about things we all agree are matters of fact. — Tarrasque

Really? If that's how you see it I'm not going to argue with you about it, but it seems odd to me. I can't think if a single moral fact that everyone agrees on, and not many that are agreed even by a large majority. I can say, however, that virtually everyone in the world agrees on the physical properties of tables, or the physical functioning of a cup. That solid things cannot pass through other solid things, that large objects do not fit inside smaller ones...etc.

views on issues like abortion are changed. — Tarrasque

Indeed, a fact that in no way tells us the method by which they are changed.

There are also people at metaethical impasses, but this alone does not push us to conclude that discussion about metaethics is noncognitive. If you thought this, you wouldn't talk about "reasons for believing expressivism" at all. "There are pages full of reasons for expressivism" would just be you expressing "Woo, expressivism!" — Tarrasque

You're mistaking "pages full of reasons" with "pages full of reasons which I agree with". That's the entire point I'm making. Both you (and Pfhorrest earlier) seemed to be implying that reasons (the mere existence of them) could be somehow put into some global accounting system and out pops the 'right' way of looking at things. By saying that expressivist philosophers have "pages of reasons" I'm just trying to show that their mere existence doesn't get us anywhere.

All of our epistemic peers have reasons which seem coherent and logical to them. The activity we're involved in is choosing between them. We can't cite the existence of reasons as an explanation of our choice (all options have those). That's all I meant. I'm not advocating expressivism.

You're asking me, right now, to consider my reasons for a belief. You think I've reached the wrong conclusion about what the most reasonable thing to believe is, right? You implore me to review my beliefs by exposing them to compelling arguments. Are more well-reasoned arguments likely better arguments? Are well-reasoned positions often better positions? — Tarrasque

I'm not imploring you to think anything, nor do I think you've reached the wrong conclusion about what the most reasonable thing to believe is. I'm interested in how you come to believe (and defend) whatever it is you believe. To answer your question though - I think more well-reasoned arguments are better arguments by definition. The measure we usually use to determine 'better' when it come to arguments is the the quality of the reasoning (a subjective judgement, I might add, but nonetheless the case). Decisions, however, are not usually judged 'better' on the strength of their reasons, they're usually judged on the evaluation of their outcome, so the two are different. It's like saying "tasty cakes are usually better cakes, so why not believe tasty computers are better computers".