,

Meh. Causality is not found in formal logic.

Certainly not in modal logic.

A first cause is not logically necessary.

With , we are just back to the beginning, playing with essences again.

Anyway, I'm happy. Essences are decided more than discovered.

Ok. So we have an end to this part of the discussion?

Relating this back to the topic, If someone is identical to their genetics, then (arguably) they are necessarily identical to their genetics.

If.

The same answer the Spartans gave Athens

This is like puling teeth. Let's see if I can articulate your argument for you. Your intuition is that there is a problem with the symmetry of belief and truth against is and ought.

It is not true that John can walk through walls.

Even if John believes that he can walk through walls, he will not be able to. Regardless of John's belief, he will not be able to walk through walls.

The broken symmetry in your intuition is something like this:

Grant me for the sake of the discussion that it is true that we ought not eat meat. Put this in the place of "John can walk through walls" above.

It is not true that John ought eat meat.

The intuition is something like that if John believes he ought eat meat, he will still be able to - unlike walking through the wall. The symmetry is supposedly broken, and hence your claim that it's the belief, not the truth, that makes the difference.

I hope you can see that the substitution here is incomplete. It's not "if John believes he ought eat meat, he will be able to" that results, but "If John believes he ought eat meat, he still ought not"

Anyway, that's were charity leads me in attempting to understand you.

All good questions. I think we are getting into accessibility relations. So in our natural language we would like to say that it's possible that water is not H₂O, and hence in some possible worlds water is not H₂O, and this does not seem outlandish. We can picture these possible worlds as related to the actual world.

But now we find that water is H₂O, and we decide to only call things "water" if they have the atomic structure H₂O. So we decide that "water = H₂O" is true, and add that ☐water = H₂O. In doing this we remove access to those possible worlds in which water is not H₂O, effectively pruning the tree of possible worlds.

But only if.

So I don't see a problem with your syllogism as such; it's just that if we take water = H₂O, the second premise is false, and if not, it isn't.

I think you need to fill the question out. That's why I returned it to you. Generally, I don't see that your last few posts show much at all. It looks to me like you are fishing. So I've thrown it back to you, to see if you have a point to make.

What do you think?

...if it can be shown that "H₂O" and "water" have different extensions then you'd accept that they are different individuals? — Moliere

Well, the contention is that if water = H₂O then ☐water =H₂O.

I wouldn't characterise what you said as a misuse. There is a difference in sense between "water" and "H₂O". John can believe that liquid water is wet but not that liquid H₂O is wet... Or protest against those evil moguls who put dihydrogen monoxide in his drinking water.

So I'm saying the extensional case is consistent. I suspect we can also deal with any intensional case without inconsistency. That is, I do not think there is an inconsistency in the modal account.

I think I can rest my case here. There's no need for you to repeat yourself yet again. — Banno

It matters that you have performed an immoral act because the act was immoral.

That's what "immoral" does.

The outcome of the action performed in both (1) and (2) is the same: my hunger is sated. — Michael

But there is a difference. In one you have performed an immoral act.

Whether I ought or ought not eat meat does not affect the choice — Michael

Well, yes, it does. That's the point.

it just doesn't matter. — Michael

...because you refuse to recognise the ethical import of "ought".

That you ought not eat meat does have a direct consequence on the outcome of your eating meat. You have done something you ought not have.

I think I can rest my case here. There's no need for you to repeat yourself yet again.

Duelling dictionaries? Really?

Of, relating to practice or action, as opposed to speculation or theory. — OED

My bolding. One ought not do what one ought not do.

You've lost me.

(a)s have no practical relevance. — Michael

Yes, they do. In the first one, eating meat is immoral. In the second, it isn't. What more practical difference could there be?

But this has been pointed out previously, by several folk including myself.

As I said above,

You are simply playing on the word "practical" by limiting it to what "is" the case, and excluding what "ought" be the case. — Banno

What's that about? Who is Calum? What do you think this shows?

I haven't said that. — Michael

The world is what it is and will be what it will be and that's that. — Michael

Hmm. Then this might need clearing up.

Can a choice make the world other than it will be?

You see, that we must make choices is what ethics is about. On your account, either we do not make choices, doing only what we would always have done, or the choice makes no difference to the world - has no practical significance.

What I think is going on here - a point I have made repeatedly - is that you are treating our choices as if they were observations about the world - treating our "ought" as "is".

In order to understand ethics, one has to admit to a different approach to the world, one not of passive observation but of active engagement.

At its heart, this is what I think your account misses.

That facts about how the world ought to be have no practical relevance... — Michael

That you ought not eat meat does have practical relevance. You are simply playing on the word "practical" by limiting it to what "is" the case, and excluding what "ought" be the case.

Do I? I thought I was agreeing with Michael — bert1

It seems you can agree with Michael while not disagreeing with me.

What process (if not obeservation) do we come to apprehend moral truths? — bert1

Notice that this is a quite different question to whether there are moral truths. Indeed, "apprehend" still carries the sense of perception over from the way the world is. I hope Michael is carrying over our previous discussion and still maintains that moral statements are truth apt; here he seems to be saying that they are all false. Yet in the main there is agreement that "One ought not kick puppies for fun" is true.

But he seems now to be mixing in some sort of determinism:

The world is what it is and will be what it will be and that's that. — Michael

Indeed, that appears to be a consequence of the path he is adopting in this thread: that we never make choices.

That alone might be taken to show the account to be in error.

Can you define, "What counts"? — schopenhauer1

John Searle gives the most complete explanation. I think I;ve already pointed you to the thread on Institutional Facts.

That's ok so far as it goes. — Ludwig V

Yes, individuation is a social activity. Language is not private. And yes, there are differing, and even inconsistent ways of individuating the things around us.

My thought here is that in common usage we don't distinguish between the elements that are within a glass of water. — Moliere

The advantage of possible world semantics is that it provides a way of talking about counterfactuals that we know to be consistent. It is important to note that possible world semantics is extensional. There will be intensional word uses not captured by an extensional system.

Superman is Clark Kent, and extensionally Superman sometimes wears glasses - when he is dressed as Clark Kent.

A glass of pure H₂O just is a glass of pure water, and an impure glass of water just is an impure glass of H₂O. The lone water molecule floating through space is not wet. Moliere, you are drawing out intensional differences, and so far as they go that is fine, but extensionally these differences are simply dropped. already made this point. B ut I can see no reason to supose that there are not free individual water molecules.

...biological organisms can generally be identified by their DNA — Janus

Yep, we may well choose to do that. I\'m just pointing out that doing so is making a choice, not just making an observation. Moliere, ice is also water, but not wet.

I don't think people necessarily really mean h2O when they say water. — Apustimelogist

Here again is the common distinction between sense and reference, between extension and intension. Possible World Semantics is extensional.

It should by now be clear that moral truths do not tell us about how the world is, but about how the world ought be. How the world ought be is not somethign found by observation.

agrees.

seems to think there is something more here.

I am working at getting a grounding on the metaphysics of an individual by way of thinking about it causally. — schopenhauer1

And I'm pointing out that what counts as an individual is nothing to do with substance, but with how we choose to use names.

You are using a screw driver as a hammer.

it seems there's a causal connection that makes sense of the position. — Moliere

As if cause were easier to understand than how to use a proper name.

The twin example simply shows that personhood is far more complicated than could be captured by a simple algorithmic definition such as has been proposed.

Why folk insist on trying to make use of the anachronistic notion of substance is beyond me.

I think it's just the case that some people aren't actually reading what I'm writing. — Michael

Perhaps; or perhaps your argument is not as clear as you suppose.

It seems that the topic has been lost - unless @Frank is arguing that since @Hanover's actions are sometimes dubious, we should not pay attention to his opinions concerning ethics. The problem is obvious.

This is the perfect, absolute way one would use if one wants to become "superliterate". — Alkis Piskas

Perhaps you missed the pivotal point. One cannot learn one's first language from a dictionary. Therefore there is a way of understanding the meanings of words that is not found in their lexical definitions.

Hence there is a sense of "meaning" that is not found in a dictionary.

Wittgenstein characterised this as the way we use words.

It would be an error, then, to think that dictionaries provide the whole of meaning.

Hence, giving some sort of primacy to dictionary definitions would be placing a covert restriction on our use of words.

Hence starting a philosophical thread by stipulating definitions stifles thinking.

And again, doing philosophy very often - if not always - consists in working through the meanings of the terms involved. If dictionaries gave the whole of the meaning of our lexicon, there might be no philosophical disagreements.

I'm not so certain that the account of a posteriori necessity works very well for water, though. Even the water in my cup right now. This is because I tend to agree with Hume on causation -- that it is a habit of ours as creatures who look for patterns, and that tomorrow water could turn out to be something aside from what we thought it was by exploring those patterns. This is a feature of most scientific knowledge: the knowledge is always provisional, and built around technical problems of a particular group of knowledge-producers. If water is H2O, then water is necessarily H2O -- of course! But is it actually H2O? — Moliere

What is happening here is a bit more than just an observation. No number of observations could show that in every case, what we would call water is what we would call H₂O. The problem of induction intervenes. What happens is more akin to an act of fiat, a decision on our part to only call stuff mad of "H₂O" water. So we look around and see that every sample of water we check is made of H₂O, and so decide that thenceforth if some sample of what we thought was water turns out not to be H₂O, we were mistaken, and it's not water.

Logically, as it points out in the article cites, "What is not being claimed is that water is necessarily H2O, but conditionally, if water is H2O then water is necessarily H2O." The antecedent is not proven on empirical grounds so much as taken as a definition of water - it;'s decided by fiat that we will only use the word "water" for stuff that is made of H₂O.

This is the point made earlier, that if @schopenhauer1 decides that schopenhauer1 has by fiat some specific genetic code, then in any possible world in which someone has that genetic code, that someone is schopenhauer1; and further, if in some possible world there is a person with all the attributes of schopenhauer1, but with a different genetic code, then that is not schopenhauer1 .

What it is important to note here is that this is a choice about how we use the names "water" and "schopenhauer1"; not solely an issue of empirical observation.

Maybe I've taken your point further than you intend, Banno — 180 Proof

Not too far, perhaps. Talk of virtues and vices, dealing with here and now, ad hoc rather than programatic decision making, allowing for review of the outcomes, heuristics over algorithms; sounds about right.

Yep.

In so far as there is much of interest in this thread, it's about how not to talk about morality and ethics. It's all a bit of a mess.

Morality is mostly about looking backward, not forward. — frank

Perhaps. But what about ethics? It's about what to do, and so faces forward.

Every person starts out innocent and covers themselves with wrongdoing as they grow and learn. — frank

Sounds like you really bought in to the Garden of Eden stuff.

Hello, Bert. What's new?

What do you want to talk about?

Well as I've made clear several times I am considering the implications of ethical non-naturalism. — Michael

Yeah, you introduced that only after folk showed the OP wasn't working. And now, after all the hard work of pulling the "isms" off your account to see what was being said, you have reverted to them again.

I was wondering if @Frank was going to show something of his thoughts about propositional attitudes. They still underpin these posts.

Thanks for the chat.

Is this even cognitivism? — Michael

No, not even that, not yet.

Here's the poverty of empiricism, naturalism and so on, when it comes to ethics: in looking at how the world is, nothing is said about what to do about it.

Yes, so as the OP asks, why consider morality when choosing how to act? Why not consider wants and desires and pragmatism? — Michael

I'm no fan of the word "morality'.

But choosing expediency is as much a choice as choosing @Bob Ross's latest grand ethical scheme.

Why not choose expediency? Now you are making an ethical decision.

The fact of having to choose remains, and it remains precisely because of the change in direction of fit. We not only observe, we act.

So here's the foundation of ethics: "What to do?"

Crickey, it took a long time to get your exposition clear.

And yet we each must act, and hence each must choose what to do.

So your thread argues that apart from the moral reasons for being moral, there are no other reasons to be moral.

:roll:

I didn't say nothing morally bad will happen. I said that nothing non-morally bad will happen. — Michael

Yes. Nothing non-morally bad will happen.

But you have only ruled out moral deficiency by fiat.

It remains that if vegetarianism is true, then eating meat is bad.

I didn't mean "bad" in the moral sense. — Michael

Ok, so except for all the morally bad things, nothing morally bad will happen...

Not such a profound observation.

If I eat meat then it doesn't matter if I ought not eat meat. Nothing bad will happen if I disobey an obligation and nothing good will happen if I obey an obligation. So why should I care about such an obligation? — Michael

Clear as mud. "Nothing bad will happen if I disobey an obligation" - the "bad" thing that will have happened is that you will have disobeyed an obligation.

Yes, I read that. Very odd. As if someone could have a moral belief that they ought not eat meat without believing that "I ought not eat meat" is true.

If eating meat is immoral, then "eating meat is immoral" is true, and the direct practical implication is that one ought not eat meaty.

Yes, a very odd post, in which you claim that there are no "practical implications" for vegetarianism while pointing out that the vegetarian will probably not eat meat.

What more practical an implication could you find?