None of that says anything about the equivalence between moral 'good/bad' and hedonic 'pleasure/pain'. That's the thing you said you could prove (or at least demonstrate to be less wrong). I'm trying here but you're being very evasive. The closest I can get from your quoted section is perhaps "if you are going to hold every opinion open to question, you have to consider only opinions that would make some experiential, phenomenal difference, where you could somehow tell if they were correct or incorrect." - but the best I can see this as an argument for would be that if morality is to be the sort of thing where opinions are held open to question, then it had better be measurable by some phenomenal difference. It makes no argument that we should take up this contingency.

It’s the chapter called “Commensurablism”. — Pfhorrest


I will have a read. — Isaac

I read it. I can't find anything in there answering the question about how you show someone is wrong if they do not equate moral 'good' and 'bad' to hedonic 'pleasure' and 'pain'. The section on commensurablism seems to just repeat what was said in your OP, so I read the linked section on The Metaphilosophy of Analytic Pragmatism, but that just declares it to be the case that there's an equivalence, whereas you claimed to be able to demonstrate that a person was wrong for thinking otherwise. I know it's difficult with the restrictions on self-publicising, but could you just paraphrase, or copy-paste the argument here for me?

Evolutionary psychology.. — Gitonga

(Deep breath...count to ten...)

Which particular work of psychology gave you that impression?

the kinds of things I’m thinking of (theists and other spiritualists, flat earthers, etc) often claim knowledge despite lack of or contrary empirical evidence. — Pfhorrest

Yes, but limiting your sample to those people does not then contradict the argument that the vast majority of people are empiricist about the vast majority of things.

Developing an intersubjective agreement on what is or isn’t real depends on caring about other people’s observation at least enough to go and see if you have the same observation in the same circumstances, and then on account of that confirmation agreeing that reality actually is such a way that it continues to appear that way to them, even if you’re not making that observation yourself right at this moment.

Likewise, my hedonic account of morality hinges on people confirming first hand as necessary that yes indeed it does hurt when someone does that, and then on account of that confirmation agreeing that it morally is wrong for people to do that, even if it’s not you experiencing the pain right at this moment. — Pfhorrest

In the first case the equivalence is between what is sensed and what is real. The consideration is of other's senses to inform your understanding of what is real. There is already a belief that senses relate to reality in some way, we check others to confirm our own.

In the second the equivalence would have to be between pain and 'badness' (as we've discussed this is nowhere near as certain as that between senses and reality). The consideration of other's pains would have to inform my understanding of 'badness' (there's even less certainty that there's any equivalence here, whereas there is with other's senses). There would have to be already a belief that pain relates to 'badness' (there isn't) and we'd have to be checking others to confirm our own (we're not).

So whilst the two cases look superficially similar, on analysis, they're not.

you could just care about your own hedonic experiences to the extent that you say so long as you’re not a actively experiencing the pain then it’s not bad, but that would be akin to taking a solipsistic view of reality that anything that you’re not currently observing isn’t real. — Pfhorrest

This only demonstrates that I should no more take a solipsistic approach to what is painful than I should to what is observable. I agree. A good way to find out if the thing I find painful really is painful is to see if others find it so, just like I do to check my vision. Where in any of that am I compelled not to cause that pain?

It’s the chapter called “Commensurablism”. — Pfhorrest

I will have a read.

You dismiss all the beliefs people have in things they can’t see, and disbeliefs people have about things they could see if they looked at the evidence, to say that empiricism is ubiquitous, when it’s really not. — Pfhorrest

Empiricism is about the source of knowledge, not the source of beliefs. Whatever measure you use to distinguish between the two (I prefer a fuzzy gradation, myself) there is a difference.

Likewise, most people consider people who say they like to be hurt to be as crazy as people who see hallucinations. — Pfhorrest

Firstly, that only works for personal hurt. Something which is morally bad is something which we ought not do. So all you get from this is a proscription against self-harm.

Secondly, this only covers physical avoidable harm. Most people would find heavy exercise painful, but they do not think that pain is bad. People are even more ambiguous about whether various types of emotional pain is good or bad in the long term.

’m not saying “Look how everyone accepts these things! They must be right!” You’re doing that, and I’m denying the validity of that inference. — Pfhorrest

Perhaps it would be quicker and easier if you simply tell me (or direct me to) your method for demonstrating that judging moral rights and wrongs using hedonistic variables is more right than other systems. That seems to be the sticking point and so it might be better to just jump to it.

And one would quickly die if they didn’t care about pain at all. — Pfhorrest

Again, it's caring about the pain of others which is required for your translation of hedonic values into moral ones. This is not equivalent to empiricism where it is my knowledge which is being sourced from my senses.

am absolutely not saying that hedonism can be empirically proven. Hedonic experiences are a KIND of phenomenal experience, the prescriptive analogue to the descriptive kind of experience we call empirical. I am saying that appeal to common (shared) experiences of that kind is how to settle normative questions — Pfhorrest

It's not about whether hedonic experiences are shared, it's about whether the feeling that they relate to 'goodness' and 'badness' is shared, which you skip over with...

Most people agree on some level that pain is bad, just like most people generally believe their eyes. — Pfhorrest

This is not in the least bit true. Virtually everyone in the world believes their eyes (especially if you take as I presume it was rhetorically meant to imply senses in general), only the insane don't. There's nowhere near this level of agreement that pain is bad.

Empiricism about the external world is indubitable because without it one would be unable to simply navigate 3D space. There was a good thread about this recently but I can't remember whose it was, but when you don't focus on the stuff we generally discuss (God, ghosts etc) we agree on the vast majority of stuff, and most of that agreement is about the qualities of what we sense (the other parts being things like the meaning of words and the rules of maths etc).

The relationship between pain and 'badness' does not enjoy anything like this level of agreement. The argument for empiricism is based on this indubitability. So no similar argument can be made for treating moral judgment as measured by hedonic variables.

So nobody has to persuade you? — ssu

I am, as has been pointed out, a 'batshit crazy leftist' and yet my government is lead by the political equivalent of Benny Hill, so no, nobody had to persuade me. They just had to use the usual tactics of lobbying, media dominance, bribery and lies.

You just go with the flock or what? — ssu

My views are a product of my mental activity and my environment. Why would it be either/or?

You want real change? That happens when there's a general consensus on what ought to be, what is wrong or right, when all those annoying people who otherwise don't agree with you do agree on a certain issue. — ssu

So are you suggesting that the media have no influence, that discernable structures of subjugation have no influence on children growing up, that existing laws don't affect how people behave, that social roles don't influence opinion...because otherwise it's evident that changing any number of those thing will have the requisite impact on opinion. There's simply no need to convince each person one-by-one using rational persuasion. They don't even need to agree mostly. Once you've set up more egalitarian structures the next generation will be more egalitarian.

democracy will ensure that there will be voices both on the left and the right always. — ssu

The left and the right of what? All you're saying here is that opinion won't ever be homogenous. The homogeneity of opinion isn't relevant, what's relevant is the qualities of the average around which it diverges.

Because if you can't recognise general forms, then you can't make general statements, which your statement 'we don't recognise general forms' is an example of. You have to know what a 'general statement' is, even to deny that you can make them; but if you know what it is, then you have to admit that such statements exist. — Wayfarer

I'm not seeing the necessary link between 'recignising' general forms and simply knowing how to use generalising terms in a language game. The fact that I know how to use general terms (like 'we' and 'general terms') does not necessitate, in any way I can see, that I 'recognise' anything at all. Not without begging the question (that there's something there to be recognised).

You can't say 'we don't recognise general forms'. it is one of those comments that blows itself up, like 'all generalisations are false'. — Wayfarer

Why?

the question ought to be asked, where do we acquire the ability to recognise general forms in the first place — Wayfarer

We don't. Mistakes are frequent, there's rarely agreement about edge cases and the boundaries (fuzzy as they are) are redrawn all the time in many cases. I can't think where you would get the impression from that there's some question to answer here. We learn that the word 'white' can be used in some range of cases, we certainly don't recognise some 'essence' of white because if we did we wouldn't be tempted to use the term in edge cases and find ourselves misunderstood, but we do.

Perhaps the most academic, high brow topics could be marked in some way, and more strictly controlled. Perhaps we could make a separate section of text discussions, with a link to an article or book as the op. — unenlightened

I suggested that a while back. The response, I think, was that it would best be done by the OP, as in "please keep responses related to the text", but I'm still broadly in favour of a more academic section, and I think using a text or paper would be a relatively impartial way of distinguishing such a section.

One of the best ways to raise quality is by not responding to rubbish. This is very hard these days, but worth trying. — unenlightened

Absolutely. I think a lot of engagement with the low quality posts starts out as an attempt to correct mistakes, but once one is hooked its difficult to let go even though it's become obvious the guy is a kook.

It seems to me that in the past year or so, there's been a more aggressive push from the mods to move intermediate level as well as theistic threads, as well as unorthodox and sometimes mystical (yet complex) threads to the Lounge — Noble Dust

When I first read this I actually thought you were joking. I can't believe you seriously think that current discussions are the result of an excessive amount of pruning. We still have one about whether bandanas are scary!

I agree with the other posters here that even more pruning is required, but unfortunately, it would be mostly pruning of posts, not topics and that's just too monumental a task for the size of moderation team we have, so we have to live with it.

As to your other point, I think you need to look at the self-fulfilling nature of your judgement. Why is The Lounge "the graveyard of the forum", "the trash compactor" if it's full of all the posts you're suggesting should be on the front page? Shouldn't it be a lively place for learning and discussion if all these threads were such good openers?

Why is it impossible to judge someone as an individual? ...There's literally video of Logan Paul, a multi-millionaire youtube personality, going through a mall in Phoenix with other rioters — BitconnectCarlos

OK, so that's Paul Logan judged...next. You've got another ten thousand or so to go.

Tell me how you justify empiricism without appeal to empiricism. — Pfhorrest

I don't think I would. I think empiricism about the external world is something which cannot really be doubted, so I don't think it requires a justification. But that's not the point. What you're doing with your meta-ethics is not merely advocating a method (though you phrase it that way), you are making a proposition about the shared world - that the moral sentiments 'good' and 'bad' equate to the physiological sensations 'pleasure' and 'pain' in some exhaustive way. This proposition itself is contrary to your empiricism with regards to facts about what is the case in the shared world. It does not itself form an opinion which can be resolved by reference to shared phenomenal experience, and yet it is a statement about what is the case. So I'm not saying that everything (including your foundational principles) must be justified - that would set up an impossible task. I'm saying that, at the very least, your foundational principles should not be built on a belief which itself contradicts one of those very principles.

Say if I was a radical Christian biblical literalist. It would be unreasonable for anyone to expect me to find proof in the bible that I ought to believe everything in the bible. The decision to believe everything in the bible must come first. But if I were to say "I believe everything in the bible because my version was published by Collins and they're the new Messiah", we could justifiably cry foul. The Bible - the very thing I believe every word of - says the opposite.

You're doing the same with your ethics. You're saying on the one hand that a core principle is that we should dismiss from discussion anything which cannot be adjudicated by reference to a common phenomenal experience, and then on the the other you're presenting something as the case (and claiming to be able to argue for it) that is absolutely not judicable by reference to common phenomenal experience.

it needs to be judged on an individual, case-by-case basis. — BitconnectCarlos

I don't see why, especially when that's not possible. There are some mitigating circumstances that can be said of virtually all the protestors. The biggest being that they are more likely to to be killed by their own police force than average. That they are more likely to experience poverty than average, that they have fewer opportunities than average, that they're more likely to be in poor quality housing than average, that they're more likely to be given long sentences than average...

I'm sure some of the protestors were allowed to watch more television than others, or whatever, but why do we need to even give a moment's thought to trivial intra-group differences when there are such glaring and abundant mitigating circumstances which affect virtually the whole group.

I'm happy to acknowledge mitigating circumstances. — BitconnectCarlos

Right, so in the case of victims of years of systemic racism, what does that acknowledgement consist of? It's not sufficient (having established mitigating circumstances are to be considered) to simply use that binomial decision to justify whatever level of mitigation you feel like. You must separately justify the degree to which you absolve, or even just sympathise with, people due to those mitigating circumstances. Having acknowledged mitigating circumstances you still have every choice available to you from "had a gun held to their head", to "had every opportunity in the world to do the right thing but still acted like a git".

Violence conducted by cops or whites towards blacks matters, but violence conducted by minorities towards business-owners or whatnot - is just a distraction — BitconnectCarlos

...in a discussion about massively fatal systemic racism.

Fixed it for you.

Are you compassionate towards Jeffrey Dahmer? Bundy? There are people who had compassion towards them - young women, mostly. They understood these men. — BitconnectCarlos

Are you suggesting that we have absolutely no means at our disposal to assess the degree to which someone's actions are constrained by their circumstances? That, when faced with the starving child stealing a loaf of bread and the bored celebrity shoplifting a pair of sunglasses, we have nothing to tell the difference in responsibility between the two?

No, my point is that it rationally grounds western civilization. You need to work on your reading comprehension, no offense. — BitconnectCarlos

You said it grounds western civilization, you neither mentioned, nor presented any argument that it did so rationally.

So another of your core principles is that there's a clandestine second way to resolve conflicts of opinion which you're going to leave out of your core principles because...

Because it's what grounds western civilization - it grounds our legal system and the entire notion of the individual in society. — BitconnectCarlos

Really? So your argument for why you think it should be that way is "that's the way it is". Conservative philosophy in a nutshell.

How are we suppose to judge someone if we don't believe in self-responsibility? — BitconnectCarlos

Oh, ...I don't, know...with an iota of compassion maybe?

Indeed, last time I got punched I took full responsibility for leaving my face in the way of his fist, I just don't know why these snowflakes don't just man up and pre-emptively barricade themselves!

I’m not saying that these principles can be used to prove themselves. — Pfhorrest

Of course people who disagree with those positions think differently. I think it can be shown that they are wrong. — Pfhorrest

Do you see where it's confusing?

I'm not sure why he's condemning or speaking out about any kind of violence, surely it's just the responsibility of the violent actor? We're all primarily responsible for our own actions, you know! Only to paraphrase Orwell, some are less responsible than others, apparently.

I meant that group as individuals. — BitconnectCarlos

Uh huh...

Responsibility primarily rests at the individual level. — BitconnectCarlos

Why? We've just established that there are external factors, so that the activities of some sub-group, result from a combination of the choices they're given, the resources they have to hand and the decisions they make. Why, apart from the fact that it conveniently fits your neoliberal mythology, have you then given primacy to just one of those factors?

that group remains accountable for its actions. — BitconnectCarlos

Why. Why the hell does 'that group' become accountable for its actions and not the whole of society? Are you suggesting they're a completely causally isolated group, because that would be an absurd claim.

you confirm a hedonic experience by standing in the same circumstance as someone who reported having it and seeing if you feel the same way in that circumstance. If so, then that's "ethical data" that needs to be accounted for. — Pfhorrest

Whether hedonic experience equates to moral 'good' and 'bad' is the matter in dispute. You cannot resolve that issue using the method you outlined because there is no shared phenomenal experience of hedonic experience equating to moral 'good' and 'bad'. The feeling that it does/doesn't varies widely.

If something doesn’t feel bad, how can it be called pain? Pain, or suffering more generally, is a bad-feeling experience. — Pfhorrest

Not in the sense 'bad' is used when talking about morals. In that sense, some people think pain is 'good' (retribution, just suffering, self-flagellation...).

people who think that things can be bad even though they hurt nobody reject hedonism, and I think they’re wrong. — Pfhorrest

Fine.

I think it can be shown that they are wrong. That’s how disagreement works. — Pfhorrest

That's circular. We're discussing whether these matters are amenable to judgement by measure against shared phenomenal experience (the measure you proposed for the resolution of conflicting arguments). So you can't then claim that people who have a different phenomenal experience are wrong, that just immunises your argument against any critique.

There are people whose phenomenal experience of what seems 'bad' does not equate with hedonic sensations. They feel (or see) pain and do not feel that it is 'bad', in a moral sense. That's their phenomenal experience. If you're going to start saying they're wrong then you're doing just that which you decried at the beginning.

1. The prior distribution is not evidence, it is the distribution in the absence of evidence, when no option is more likely than the other.

2. The second fact is the first piece of evidence. It shows us that the criminal is more likely to be innocent than guilty (75/25), those being the only two options.

3. We then adjust our prior estimate to take account of this new fact, so in this case we lower it to 25% because the only piece of evidence we have says the chance is 25%.


If all the evidence we have says the chance is 50%, all that does is provide more and more confirmation that the chance is 50%. It doesn't make it more and more likely each time, that's just not how probability works in any conception ever.

The universe must have had a beginning.
I just don't buy that it could be anything other than God who started it.
Therefore God exists. — Kenosha Kid

Basically sums it up nicely.

@Devans99, could you do me a favour and 'just not believe' there could be any less than ten grand in my savings account, there's a dear.

I ought to clarify ('ought'...se what I did there!) that I'm still using the very first constraint we put in place here (since we haven't mentioned it for a while) where we're trying to understand the meaning of claims already labelled as 'moral' ones. So when I say 'that which we ought not to do' we're already within the set of behaviours considered moral. We're obviously not talking about absolutely everything I ought not to do. I hope that was clear.

So are you saying that in a world without God then we can't have moral obligation? — Michael

No, only under your (2) and (3). Where 'evil' just is 'that which we ought not to do', your (1), we don't need an external reason to not do it, and so no external source of punishment is required.

So when we talk about morality/being obligated to do/not do something, we're just talking about hypothetical imperatives with a goal to better the group? — Michael

Yeah, to a large extent. I think we need this factor in the equation, we simply can't explain the astonishing correlation otherwise between most morals and group cooperation. But cultures can piggyback off this general picture to instill all sorts of off-message imperatives. Like a hammer is mainly for driving nails, but occasionally it's used to break a window. Doesn't mean it was ever designed to break windows.

By "why ought we not do evil?" I wasn't asking for a motivation to not do evil but asking how we get from "X is evil" to "therefore we ought not do X". — Michael

I'm not sure I understand the distinction you're drawing here. Some behaviour X is 'evil', but under your definition (2) our reason for labelling it thus cannot be because we ought not to do it. We cannot ignore the fact that we nonetheless ought not to do it, because that is a consistent property of things labelled 'evil'. So to make the possibility coherent, we must have some reason we ought not do X, other than simply that that's the definition of 'evil'.

Yet if we invoke something like 'it damages the welfare of your group', I think that would (in rational people) just constitue something one ought not to do anyway, regardless of the label 'evil'. So by this means we can't explain why we ought not to do evil, under (2). I can't make sense of 'ought not to do' without some negative consequence, I don't know what 'ought' would mean without some negative consequence should you do otherwise. So we're looking for a negative consequence that isn't already in your own best interests (because that would mean evil is just what one evidently ought not to do). Religious punishment is the only option I can think of. God decrees something is 'evil', but it's not something which you simply ought not to do anyway (that would make his decree pointless. Yet to answer your question there needs to be some reason why we care what God decrees. So punishment. Had God not declared it evil, X would have no negative consequences (hence 'evil' is not just that which we ought not to do anyway), but having declared it 'evil' we now, post hoc, ought not to do X because if we do we shall be punished.

All of which I think answers your last query too.

Can they not all be true? Does 'evil' have to pick out the same one thing each time it's used?

Notwithstanding, each one clearly still has questions, as your analysis shows. In each case I think both societal norms and personal feelings need to be invoked.

In (1), why ought we do/avoid certain actions without reference to evil, is best answered by some kind of 'prosperity of the group' metric. But where groups are aberrant to what we individually feel, we want to reserve the ability to cry foul, so it's a kind of negotiation between the individual and the culture they belong to. Very analogous to the way law works. We accept the judgement of past generations, but reserve the right to alter it.

In (2), we need a religion of sort (which I see as the same thing as culture, being an atheist). I can only see some form of disinterested punishment playing the role of the reason not to do evil. Anything more internal would count as a reason under (1). I can see a role for psychology here, if we still fear the punishment of our parents for our misdemeanours, we might have a reason not to do evil (even if there's no 'real' punishment looming).

(3) I see as only understandable as a kind of combination of (1) and (2),but maybe I've not quite understood what you're getting at.

So it seems morality is inextricably tied up with psychology and culture.

How would we approach it then? We look at what John says about morality and we look at what Mary says about morality, recognise that they're incompatible, and then what? — Michael

Well, for one we could do exactly the same work within those incompatible approaches as we were going to do inclusively. Divine command theorists, I presume, still have some job of work to do regarding exactly what God did or did not command.

Is there some meaning shared by both the divine command theorist and the "God-is-evil" proponent? Maybe the "one ought do this and not do this" notion that I brought up earlier? — Michael

Shared meaning, maybe, but I'm not so sure myself about "one ought do this and not do this". If 'evil' universally means "one ought do this and not do this", then how would one answer the question "why ought I not to do that?". One is now prevente, oon pain of circularity, from answering "because it's evil".

would seem to suggest that meta-ethics is a wasted endeavour. There is no one correct answer to what it means to be moral as we don't all mean the same thing when we talk about what is or isn't moral. — Michael

Not wasted necessarily, but at times misguided, like much of philosophy. I think there's a lot valuable met-ethical discussion about the kinds of things we mean by 'good' and 'evil', accepting a variety is not the same thing as throwing our hands up and saying "well it could mean anything!"... It could, but it doesn't, so there's still some value in the study.

Happiness is a reward mechanism for when we do something to aid our survival — Gitonga

What makes you think this is the case?

I don't think either work as a sufficient rebuttal. I could always invert this and say that Mary and the radical socialists must be wrong given what John and Gitonga say. — Michael

Yep, I think you could. We can't avoid the fact that Mary thinks John is wrong and John thinks Mary is wrong. That is a state of affairs which we have to account for. So either one of three thing must be the case, it seems...

1. There's some state whose referencial connection with the word 'evil' has been somehow set by an authority other than the language community.
2. The word 'evil' is used in only one correct sense and either John or Mary does not know what that sense is despite apparently being fluent in the language otherwise.
3. The word 'evil' is used in different senses within different language games and so, like applying the rules of chess to a game of draughts, a person is simply mistaken if they use it in the sense of one game whilst partaking in another.

I can't see what the authority would be in (1),nor how we'd assign it, (2) seems to leave us with no means of judging which is the correct sense, so that leaves us with (3),which make either John or Mary wrong, depending on the language game they're playing.

Can I really dismiss divine command theory by noting that there are people who claim that God is evil? — Michael

Yes I think you could, but @Banno beat me to the method. I think you'd be able to tell the divine command theorist that they're using the word 'evil' incorrectly in a language game which includes non-command-theorists.