There is no 'correct' process. How would you determine if it's correct or not? — ChatteringMonkey

By doing philosophy. That's what philosophy is all about: coming up with the correct processes by which to determine the correct answers to particular questions. How did we come up with the correct process for figuring out what is real, i.e. the scientific method? Philosophy.

Exactly how to do that philosophy is itself a philosophical question, but my approach is to rule out the approaches that can't work (can't result in a process of mediating disagreements and converging toward a common consensus) and run with whatever's left.

Two particular things that can't work out are:
- Just assuming nothing will possibly work, and so not trying at all.
- Just assuming some arbitrary person or group, including a majority, is automatically right.

Some immediate consequences of ruling those things out are:
- We can't demand that nobody hold any opinion until it's justified from the ground up, because the consequent infinite regress would be equivalent to assuming nothing will possibly work; so we have to let people hold their tentative opinions, agreeing to disagree, until they can be shown wrong.
- We can't accept appeals to things beyond our common, shared experiences, because if each person can't at least in principle verify for themselves what's being appealed to, we'd be asking them to just take the word of whoever is making that appeal, just assuming that they're right.

What's still left is assuming that something or another is the objectively correct answer, but not taking anybody's word for what in particular it is, instead letting people hold their own (different) tentative opinions about what it is, until they can be shown wrong by appeals to our common, shared experiences.

When applied to morality, this generally means letting people do what they want until it can be shown that they're hurting someone, but just as with the scientific method, there's a lot of nitty gritty details that matter in the edge cases.

If freedom of speech is a right in California, then you have the right to tell them anything you want, barring the usual exceptions like inciting violence. You probably also have the right to critique the mores and laws of California... and to convince and seek support to change those laws if you don't agree with them. But there's no guarantee it will work. And if it doesn't work you can allways disregard the law or mores, at your own peril. — ChatteringMonkey

You get that I'm not talking about my literal right to say words to him, but about the morally compulsory force of those words, right? It feels like you're being intentionally obtuse here and not engaging honestly and charitably.

But let me be more technical in case you really are just being accidentally obtuse:

- Are neighbors morally bound to the morals decreed by their neighbors?
- Are parts of the same country morally bound to the morals decreed by other parts?
- Are countries morally bound to the morals decreed by other countries?

Where are the boundaries of "the group" whose consensus is what matters?

If you keep going smaller and smaller, you get a group size of one, every individual their own "group", which is exactly the kind of individualist relativism, or egotism, equivalent to moral nihilism, that you say you're against. But if you keep going bigger and bigger, you get the group of everyone everywhere, which is getting awfully close to an objective morality.

All that's left is to sort out who in that group-of-all gets to make those decisions. Is it a simple majority? A plurality? A supermajority? Some special elite subgroup, or individual? (And if so, which?) Or only a unanimous consensus of everyone? (And what if that doesn't happen?) I expect you'll probably say "whatever the group decides is appropriate" but who in the group gets to decide which part of the group is the appropriate part to be making those decisions? It just pushes the question back further.

Who gets to make the decisions about what is moral is only one of several questions about morality that philosophy has to answer. Other important ones are about what criterion by which to judge whether something is moral, and what process whoever is supposed to use to apply whatever criterion that is. (A fourth is what constitutes a moral character of a person, but that's kinda separate from this chain of questions here). Hedonism is only my answer to the criterion question, and your objections to that don't really seem to be about that question but about the others. Liberalism or libertarianism (broadly speaking) is my answer to the process question. A kind of anarchism (detailed in that essay you haven't read yet) is my answer to the "who" question, which is what you seem more concerned with.

The way those disagreements get adjudicated is the group coming to an agreement, by whatever process that is. — ChatteringMonkey

The question at hand here is exactly what the correct such process is.

But that doesn't entail the normative sense that we should tolerate differences in behaviour. — ChatteringMonkey

Where are the boundaries between these groups? If my neighbor in contemporary California keeps a slave, do I and the rest of the neighborhood have the right to tell him he's not allowed to do that? If a whole state wants to allow slavery, do the rest of the states have a right to tell it that it's not allowed to do that? If another country has one caste that holds another caste in slavery, are other countries allowed to come in and tell them they're not allowed to do that? Would that be a righteous liberation of an oppressed people or an unjust invasion of a sovereign state?

This sounds like a great idea in theory, but I don't think it would work all that well in practice. Do you see how many qualifiers you had to get in to make it work, i.e. 'a person of a certain kind', 'in a certain context', ' experiencing a certain phenomenon' etc... Who other than maybe a philosopher has the time and ability to work out an equation with that many variables while going about his day? Utilitarism and consequentialism have the same issues... — ChatteringMonkey

The investigation of what is real is every bit as complex, but people don't generally have to do that complex investigation in their day to day lives. They can do a much simpler version of it for small particulars that matter just to them, and trust the results of people who do the much more in-depth investigation of more nuanced matters when it comes to those things. Those qualifiers are all there to cover my ass as to possible objections in tricky cases. In day to day life, just don't do things that hurt people. If you get into a really intractable fight about whether someone has really been hurt or not in a way that needs prohibiting... that's basically a legal case, and the laws should be formulated by legislators and executed by lawyers and judges that do this kind of deep thinking about the nuances, because that's their job. They are the "scientists" of "morals".

I go into this in much more depth in my essay On Politics, Governance, and the Institutes of Justice, which may be more on the level of abstraction you're concerned with, but rests ultimately on the building blocks you're contesting here.

But instead of the prescribed homework, I find faults in your reasoning.

I apologize for that. — god must be atheist

No problem, I'm glad that you're even reading it at all, and seeing people try to argue against it does at least give me an idea of how well they understood what they're trying to argue against.

IN (2) I think you failed to distinguish between who is right and who is wrong in a sense of what we KNOW and what is true or real outside our knowledge. What we know, nobody is more wrong or more right than anyone else. What coincides with the truth, only one is right (potentially) and differing opinions are wrong, or else everyone is wrong. BECAUSE WE CAN'T trust our perceptions enough to detect reality, all bets are off. — god must be atheist

I'm having a tough time following you, but the question at hand here is entirely about whether there is any "truth outside our knowledge" to coincide with, as you put it. (I would say "opinion" rather than "knowledge", because "knowledge" implies truth while "opinion" does not). The second kind of relativism, that I am against, says "no, there isn't any truth outside our opinions to potentially coincide with; there's just our opinions".

Both types say it is (1) impossible to get an objective opinion which is right.

You say this leads to (2) a group's consensus to accept what is right. — god must be atheist

I don't say that a group's consensus actually is what's objectively right, but that it's "the closest thing possible" in the view of the kind of relativists I'm talking about. The point that a group's consensus opinion isn't actually any substitute for objective truth is exactly why I think relativism collapses to nihilism, despite what the relativists themselves claim.

It actually does not deny there is objective reality. It just does not deal with it. It avoids the quesion of objective reality altogether, but that does not mean it denies it. — god must be atheist

Can you cite something from Berkeley to support this? Because from what I recall about him he denies that there is anything besides our perceptions; he even calls his view "immaterialism", because it's more about attacking the idea of there being anything beyond our perceptible ideas (like material substance) than anything else.

Your second part is even worse: you call the subjective approaching the objective. However, if the objective is non-existent, which the denial itself claims, then who or what can approach it? It's absurd to claim that any approaching is possible. — god must be atheist

This is the same thing as with relativism above. I'm not saying that any kind of agreed-upon opinion or experience is moving closer and closer in its contents to the contents of objective reality, but that, in these relativist or subjectivist views, which claim that there is no objectivity, agreement or consensus is the closest substitute to objectivity that their view has.

Well, there is a huge problem here that you created that renders your logic null and void: group opinions can be disagreed with, but when only one person is present, it can't have disagreement by a different person. — god must be atheist

The egotist doesn't deny that other people exist, only that their opinions on what is good or bad are irrelevant. Two people who are both egotists thus will have no way of coming to agreement on what is good or bad, if their initial opinions should happen to disagree, because nothing the other person says is relevant.

You have more of a point about solipsists: if solipsism really is true, then there is only one person who exists, and so nobody else to disagreement. But nevertheless, other people seem to exist, so if you should find yourself a solipsist who thinks everybody else is a figment of your imagination, and you run into one of those figments of your imagination who claims that he is the only real person and you're a figment of his imagination, there's no way that argument is getting resolved: you're not going to be able to convince the figment of your imagination that he is a figment of your imagination, because so far as he's concerned you're just a figment of his imagination.

I don't know about morality, but nihilism can't claim that there is no reality. It can assert as a belief and a possibly (but not likely) valid belief that nothing real exists in reality; but reality is still a reality, even if it contains nothing. — god must be atheist

That's a plausible point, so I'll just remove the last part of that sentence, because I only meant that bit to be exactly synonymous with the previous part that's immune to that point: nothing is real, nothing is moral.

You say empiricist and hedonist claims are how the true, the real, the good, and the moral (TRG&M) are to be judged. You also qualify "claims" as being (assuming they're not in themselves inaccurate) sufficient ground to determine the TRM&G. — tim wood

I feel like you're getting hung up on some kind of confusion about "claims" here. Any claim about anything, if it is correct, tells you about that thing itself -- that what it means for the claim to be correct, for it to successfully tell you about the thing it's about. So reality is however all the correct claims about it say it is like, and likewise morality is however all the correct claims about it say it is like. This seems like a really weird thing to have to say explicitly, this is just how language works.

Actually on topic, I say empirical and hedonic experiences are how to judge claims about both reality (what is true, in a narrow descriptive sense) and morality (what is good), and so how to assess what is real and what is moral.

The question, it seems to me, is that if you're going to base such things as TRM&G on subjective judgments, how can you universalize them? — tim wood

What is it that makes one able to say anything is right or wrong in some objective or universal sense, not just moral claims?

I say it is the ability to replicate the experiences of things seeming that way, controlling for differences in subjects and contexts. Descriptive claims about reality can be objectively true or false, despite disagreements between people or communities about what is true or false (different religions make differing factual claims too, not just moral ones), because we can each look at the world and see that it looks the same way, in the same contexts, for similar people, etc. And then say that reality is however it needs to be to look true to those people in those contexts etc (as well as all the other ways it looks to other people in other contexts etc).

I say prescriptive claims about morality can be objectively "true or false" in a different sense, a non-descriptive sense (because they're not trying to describe at all), despite similar disagreements between people or communities about what is good or bad, because we can likewise verify that when a person of a certain kind stands in a certain context and experiences a certain phenomenon it seems good or bad to them, like it feels good or bad to them, it hurts or pleases them. And then say that morality is however it needs to be to feel good to those people in those contexts etc (as well as all the other ways it feels to other people in other contexts etc). — Pfhorrest

Flying was possible, and birds already showed that to be the case, while living forever is not, and there is nothing immortal. — Marchesk

Tardigrades, immortal jellyfish, flatforms, possibly lobsters and turtles...

Also, just nothing had ever been to space (well... tardigrades again, maybe), but then we did that.

And of course Earth isn't immune to the sun expanding to a red giant, or someone dropping a big rock on it. — Marchesk

Someone dropping a big rock on the earth is far more survivable than living on another planet, and there doesn't seem to be a lot of doubt that the latter will eventually (if not soon) be possible.

And the Earth can be moved, and the sun can be changed. You're looking at things through the primitive lens of a Type 0 civilization.

At the every extreme end of what's possible, entropy and the heat death of the universe will make sure of it. — Marchesk

Heat death of the universe is not guaranteed if it is not a closed system, which dark energy suggests it is not. (The second law may be iron clad, but the first law apparently is not, as there is new energy being created all the time across the depths of space). Harnessing that to do anything useful may be tricky, but it's our current best explanation for how all the useful energy gradients we currently see came to be in the first place.

@god must be atheist Thank you for all the feedback despite how boring you found it, I'll have to reply to you in more detail later when I have some more time.

It's just seeing you write all these "against" essays, how many have you written so far, and how many more are there to write? You are like these warmongering "freedom fighters". Nihilism, on the other hand, is the most, if not the only, peaceful ideology, treating everything that has value of equal value, equal to zero, nihil, null. But of course it does not agree with warring human nature, and so it cannot be accepted, not on a wide scale at least. — Pussycat

I guess you missed the first thread in this series, the introduction page, which lays out the structure of the whole project. There are only four "against" essays just eliminating the broad kinds of views I don't support, and then seventeen more essays going into detail on what I do support out of the remaining possibilities.

And as you'll see in those later essays, I am totally a pacifist, and equating objecting to certain philosophical views with violence is pretty absurd.

On another note, you seem to be completely unaware of the so called fact/value distinction, treating, by analogy, matters of fact exactly the same as matters of value. You do this with no justification whatsoever. — Pussycat

I am very aware of it, and it forms a pivotal part of this entire project. Treating facts and values analogously is not treating them as the same kind of thing, and in the very next essay (Against Cynicism) I argue explicitly against treating them as the same kind of thing.

He may even enjoy educating the masses. — god must be atheist

I do, though the futility of it does get annoying sometimes. My patience really depends on how much else is stressing me out in life. If I'm relaxed and having a good time otherwise, carrying on an intractable philosophical argument is a fun way to pass the time. I'm stressed the fuck out by other stuff in life, banging my head against the same wall over and over again can start to piss me off.

Thanks for the words of support, BTW. :-)

Sure, you can call it meta-ethical moral relativism if you want. That's not relativism on a non-meta level though, if you are part of one of those communities there's nothing relative about it. — ChatteringMonkey

I think you might be misreading the phrase "meta-ethical moral relativism". It's not a meta level of "ethical moral relativism"; it's moral relativism, in the sense that applies in the field of meta-ethics, as distinct from normative ethics or descriptive ethics. The descriptive sense just says "people disagree". The meta-ethical sense says "there is no correct way to adjudicate those disagreements". The normative sense says "therefore we morally ought to tolerate differences of behavior".

It sounds like you are asserting the meta-ethical sense of it here, but...

Different communities have different morals, so it certainly seems to be an accurate description — ChatteringMonkey

...this just sounds like the descriptive sense, which doesn't have to entail the meta-ethical sense.

And furthermore I don't see how you can say one is wrong or right in some objective or universal sense, outside of their context — ChatteringMonkey

What is it that makes one able to say anything is right or wrong in some objective or universal sense, not just moral claims?

I say it is the ability to replicate the experiences of things seeming that way, controlling for differences in subjects and contexts. Descriptive claims about reality can be objectively true or false, despite disagreements between people or communities about what is true or false (different religions make differing factual claims too, not just moral ones), because we can each look at the world and see that it looks the same way, in the same contexts, for similar people, etc. And then say that reality is however it needs to be to look true to those people in those contexts etc (as well as all the other ways it looks to other people in other contexts etc).

I say prescriptive claims about morality can be objectively "true or false" in a different sense, a non-descriptive sense (because they're not trying to describe at all), despite similar disagreements between people or communities about what is good or bad, because we can likewise verify that when a person of a certain kind stands in a certain context and experiences a certain phenomenon it seems good or bad to them, like it feels good or bad to them, it hurts or pleases them. And then say that morality is however it needs to be to feel good to those people in those contexts etc (as well as all the other ways it feels to other people in other contexts etc).

Thank you for finally explaining what you mean, but I’m still not seeing any bearing on the topic under discussion. If your point is that we can’t observe the past, I argue that the only notion we have of the past at all is its ongoing effect on the present, including the memories we presently have, the records that are presently available, and other evidence that still lingers in the present: all of which is accessible via experience of one kind or another.

By positing this possibility of an absolute conceptual perspective to relate to, we can make more objective sense of our subjective relation to each distinction. — Possibility

I’m having a hard time following you, but this bit at least sound very similar to a point I make in this essay.

So it would seem you agree with me, is that right? So then the action isn't determined to be good or bad simply because it makes an individual feel good or bad, but it's rather about the bigger picture then, right? — BitconnectCarlos

The bigger picture of how good or bad everybody feels, yes.

I also consider justice part of "the good." Justice, in its truest sense, isn't about making people happy or ensuring that they thrive. Justice can actually hurt society sometimes. — BitconnectCarlos

I think the topic of justice is about the means, while the topic of morality is narrowly about the ends. I think they are analogous to the topics of reality and knowledge, respectively. And in later essays I go into much greater detail about the difference between them, and about the specifics of justice both of a personal and institutional character. I think the field that studies that is analogous to the field of epistemology, while what I’m discussing here is more analogous to ontology. Hedonism is just the criterion by which things are judged good, by which the objects of morality are assessed; the methods of pursuing them are something else I’ll get to later.

Since perception is interpretation, it's to you to make clear how any observation can be clear of interpretation. — tim wood

I clearly distinguished between perception and sensation, which is not even my original distinction; I only extended it to normative experiences (appetites) and feelings (desires) by analogy.

All facts are historical facts. To understand that, ask yourself what, exactly, a fact is. And if you disagree, try presenting one here that isn't. Btw, not my idea. My sympathy if it's not immediately obvious. — tim wood

I can’t do the opposite of something if I don’t know what you mean by that something. I’m not just going to guess what you mean so you can tell me I’m wrong, and it’s not my job to make your attempts at communication clear for you. If you want to make a point, make it better.

Oxymoron. No mind, no experience. — tim wood

I didn't say free from mind, I said free from its interpretation. This is the basic distinction between polling people about what they believe, and appealing to observation.

And you have not considered the historicity of fact(s), have you. — tim wood

You have not explained what you mean by that yet.

Why experience over reason? — tim wood

It's not one over the other. Experience is what to reason about.

The blind men and the elephant come to mind. — tim wood

I use exactly that analogy in the essay I linked earlier.... er sorry, confusing two different threads with ChatteringMonkey apparently, another essay related to the one I linked earlier:

This is where I come very close to agreeing with idealism in both of the senses described above, in holding that experience is the ultimate arbiter of judgement on both reality and morality. But rather than the perceptions and desires that underlie those views, which can contradict from person to person because they are constructed in the different minds of different people, I propose instead attending to the more fundamental underlying experiences that give rise to those perceptions and desires, free from the interpretation of the mind undergoing them. In psychology a distinction is made between perceptions, which are interpreted by the mind, and sensations, which are the raw experiences that get interpreted into perceptions, things such as colors of light and pitches of sound, as opposed to images or words. I make a similar distinction between desires, being the things that are interpreted by the mind, and what I call appetites, which are the raw experiences underlying them, things such as the feeling of pain or hunger, as opposed to wanting to do or have something.

And then I propose the construction of models of reality and morality that are consistent with all such experiences. An old parable nicely illustrates the principle I mean to employ here, wherein three blind men each feel different parts of an elephant (the trunk, a leg, the tail), and each concludes that he is feeling something different (a snake, a tree, a rope). All three of them are wrong about what they perceive, but the truth of the matter, that they are feeling parts of an elephant, is consistent with what all three of them sense, even though the perceptions they draw from those sensations are mutually contradictory. I propose always proceeding on the assumption that some such model is possible to construct, even if we don't know what it will be just yet; that assumption being the same one described above, that there is something real, something moral, simply because to assume otherwise would just be to give up for no reason. There always remains the possibility that we will fail to construct such models that can consistently account for all experiences, but we can never be sure that we have conclusively failed, rather than having just not succeeded yet. The only choice is between continuing to try despite the possibility of maybe never succeeding, or giving up — embracing nihilism — and definitely never succeeding. — The Codex Quaerentis: Against Nihilism

And you know that the claim "just states what is actually so" how? — tim wood

Because that's what it means for a claim to be correct?

all facts are historical facts. — tim wood

Elaborate?

In the essay Against Transcendentalism previously discussed I do go into exactly that kind of detail:

It is of course possible that individual experiences like these might not tell the whole story: something that at first looks true might be false, something that at first feels good might be bad, and so on. But we add caveats and qualifications to the opinions we form by accounting for further experiences. For example, something may look like a fire from one perspective but not from another, if it turns out to be some kind of illusion; but it's by accounting more thoroughly for how things look in other contexts that we find that out. Likewise, getting burned may feel bad in the moment but might circumvent even greater pain later, if for example the burn is medically necessary to cauterize a wound; and it is likewise by accounting more thoroughly for how things feel in other contexts that we find out about that. Our concepts of what it means for things to be true or be good are grounded in these experiences of things seeming true or seeming good, merely accounting for all such experiences of things seeming some way; so for something to be called "good" or "bad" even though it doesn't hedonistically seem that way (to anyone, ever) is as indefensible as supernaturalist claims that something is "true" or "false" even though it being that way would have never have any impact on how the world seemed to anyone. — The Codex Quaerentis: Against Transcendentalism

Maybe I'm missing it. Are claims to be judged, or are the true, real, good, moral to be judged? What is being judged? — tim wood

Claims about what is true or real, good or moral; though that's pretty much the same thing as judging what actually is true or real, good or moral, inasmuch as a correct claim just states what is actually so.

So did the prosecution fail because Trump was impeached using emotion rather than logic? :wink:

This is all just a distraction from the important work of figuring out whether chairs really exist.

It means that nobody gets a majority of delegates. Say Bernie gets 40% of them and Biden gets 30% and Bloomberg gets 20% and the last 10% are spread around the remaining candidates; nobody has a majority (>50%) of delegates in that case.

FiveThirtyEight has updated their predictions since yesterday, apparently. Bernie and "no one" are now about tied for most likely to get a majority of delegates (39% and 37% respectively), with Biden about a third as likely as either of them (at 12%), and Bloomberg about a fifth as likely (at 8%).

I think morality has the far less lofty goal of keeping people from seriously harming eachother. — ChatteringMonkey

That's still a hedonic criteron though, assuming by "harm" you mean something like "cause suffering".

I'm not saying that anyone has an obligation to positively generate flourishing, pleasure, etc (for themselves or for others), but that when we are judging something as good or bad, we do so on the basis of making people feel good or bad. You may not be obligated to give someone a back rub, but it's still a nice thing to do, right? We'd judge that action positively, even though we don't think it would be morally wrong in a blameworthy way to not do it. Why would we judge it positively? Well, because it made someone feel good. And punching random people on the streets is definitely morally forbidden, but by what criteria are we judging it to be so wrong? Well, that it hurt someone, inflicted suffering, made them feel bad.

There's lots and lots of details about the particulars of a complete moral system that I go into lots of detail about later. Hedonism is just the basic criterion to use for, essentially, "measuring" goodness and badness.

In any case, this is really more a topic for the earlier thread Against Transcendentailism. This essay against nihilism isn't arguing specifically for a hedonic morality, just some morality that isn't relative to what people subjectively intend or desire. I only mention appetites, and thus hedonism, in this essay to be clear that I'm not arguing against a view of morality (or reality) that's independent of experiences (like sensations and appetites), which are not irreconcilably subjective the way thoughts (like beliefs and intentions) and feelings (like perceptions and desires) are, even though they are subjective still in a different way.

Nihilism is the only hope humanity has for peace. — Pussycat

Would you care to elaborate, and possibly relate this to the essay under discussion?

I haven't really read much of the logical positivist, but weren't they saying that moral claims are meaningless, not just that truth doesn't apply to them. To me that's an entirely different thing, I don't think moral claims are meaningless, I think they have meaning in moral communities. — ChatteringMonkey

To the positivists "meaningless" and "not truth-apt" are basically the same thing, because their theory of meaning is basically entirely descriptivist (that's basically what "positivist" means; positive:normative::descriptive:prescriptive): the meaning of something lies in the empirical experience of the world that it tells you to expect, so something that is not trying to describe the world like that has no meaning, to them. (I disagree about that, to be clear, but I'm not sure you do).

Their various attempts at figuring out what moral claims are trying to do, if not making "meaningful" statements like that, include that they are references to the standards of moral communities.

Also, I don't see how you don't see your view like that as a form of relativism, since it sounds like you think different moral communities can come to different moral conclusions and they're all right within their communities (and, presumably, there's no sense in which they can be right or wrong between communities), which is just straightforward moral relativism.

I think morals originate in communities where dialogue, negotiation and agreements etc... are a vital part of how morals come to be. I don't think this proces can be replicated entirely from a research desk. The role of the philosopher IMO shouldn't be to devise morality like a scientists develops scientific theories... I think the philosopher can play an important role in the proces though, by facilitating and elucidating the dialogue in a community. — ChatteringMonkey

I'm not saying that philosophers should be devising morality like scientists devise scientific theories, and definitely not all alone from a research desk; but rather that the philosophical underpinning of how communities work out what is good is analogous to the philosophical underpinning of how communities work out what is true. I think that that work of figuring out what in particular is good is beyond the scope of philosophy: philosophy just provides a method by which to do so, like it provides the scientific method but doesn't actually do science. (I discuss this at length elsewhere in that essay I quoted from earlier). And science is a social endeavor too, comparing and contrasting different points of view: replication, making sure other people observe the same things in the same circumstances, is a very important part of the scientific method.

Perhaps, as an analogy, we might say that the scientific method uses what we observe in the present to predict the future. A moral system would use what we observe in the present to prescribe a future. — Echarmion

Exactly. (More or less).

Empiricism and hedonism? You're joking, yes? — tim wood

If there's a joke in there, I don't get it.

But what does God say and how do we know what God says and how are we to interpret it and what do we do to fill in the gaps on what things he hasn’t said anything about yet?

(Just playing Devil’s... er, God’s Advocate?)

Thank you for letting me know you found it insightful. :smile:

What this all means, I think, is that we need to bite the bullet, and reconcile with the fact that morality isn't and can't be true or false. — ChatteringMonkey

That sounds like the thing that the logical positivists claimed was necessary, basically creating the field of meta-ethics in the process. There has been a lot of argument about it since and it's far from a settled matter. I think the author with the closest to the correct solution is R.M. Hare, with his universal prescriptivism.

I have my own take on a solution to the problem, which I outline in my philosophy book, as you've already seen the beginnings of, and commented on. I agree that moral propositions are not truth-apt in the same way as non-moral propositions are, because they are not trying to describe reality in the way that other propositions are, so to say they're "true" as in a correct description of reality or not is besides the point. But I hold they they can be "true" in a different sense, in that they are correct instances of a different kind of speech, trying to do something else: to prescribe morality. Like Hare, I think they are more like imperative sentences than like indicative sentences, but that imperatives can be judged superior or inferior to each other just like indicatives can. And with that difference in direction of fit established, I think morality can be sussed out in a way completely analogous to, but separate and distinct from, the way we suss out the truth of non-moral proposition.

I summarize up that analogy in part of one of the essays of my Codex Quaerentis, where I first summarize how the scientific method works:

When it comes to tackling questions about reality, pursuing knowledge, we should not take some census or survey of people's beliefs or perceptions, and either try to figure out how all those could all be held at once without conflict, or else (because that likely will not be possible) just declare that whatever the majority, or some privileged authority, believes or perceives is true. Instead, we should appeal to everyone's direct sensations or observations, free from any interpretation into perceptions or beliefs yet, and compare and contrast the empirical experiences of different people in different circumstances to come to a common ground on what experiences there are that need satisfying in order for a belief to be true. Then we should devise models, or theories, that purport to satisfy all those experiences, and test them against further experiences, rejecting those that fail to satisfy any of them, and selecting the simplest, most efficient of those that remain as what we tentatively hold to be true. This entire process should be carried out in an organized, collaborative, but intrinsically non-authoritarian academic structure. — The Codex Quarentis: A Note On Ethics

And then give the moral analogue of that:

When it comes to tackling questions about morality, pursuing justice, we should not take some census or survey of people's intentions or desires, and either try to figure out how all those could all be held at once without conflict, or else (because that likely will not be possible) just declare that whatever the majority, or some privileged authority, intends or desires is good. Instead, we should appeal to everyone's direct appetites, free from any interpretation into desires or intentions yet, and compare and contrast the hedonic experiences of different people in different circumstances to come to a common ground on what experiences there are that need satisfying in order for an intention to be good. Then we should devise models, or strategies, that purport to satisfy all those experiences, and test them against further experiences, rejecting those that fail to satisfy any of them, and selecting the simplest, most efficient of those that remain as what we tentatively hold to be good. This entire process should be carried out in an organized, collaborative, but intrinsically non-authoritarian political structure. — The Codex Quarentis: A Note On Ethics

In short: Descriptive claims about what is true or real are to be judged by appeal to empirical experiences, things that seem true, with a whole bunch of important details on the procedure of which to appeal to and how and by whom, not just "whatever looks true to me right now".

Likewise, prescriptive claims about what is good or moral are to be judged by appeal to hedonic experiences, things that seem good, with all the same important details on the procedure of which to appeal to and how and by whom, not just "whatever feels good to me right now".

I do get into it later in the Codex, I’m just taking things one step at a time here. At this point I’m only arguing not to completely abandon even attempting to figure out an objective morality, and haven’t said much yet about how to go about doing that, but I will.

Also, while your fluid dynamics analogy seems alright to me and later essays will get more into the higher-level abstractions that are needed for practical use, I do wonder if perhaps you mean something different than I do by “hedonism”? Did you read the previous essay against transcendentalism where I explain what I don’t mean by that? It’s not egotism, or materialism, or rejecting more refined pleasures and the alleviation of more subtle pains through “spiritual” practices. It just means that the thing we ought to be concerned with when we’re caring for other people, as with ourselves, is that they’re flourishing rather than suffering.

FiveThirtyEight is now showing "one one" as the most likely to get a majority of pledged delegates, with Bernie shortly behind him, and Biden about half as likely as him, but given that a brokered nomination is unlikely to favor Bernie, I'm feeling sad that it's looking like Biden is probably going to end up with the nomination the way things are currently going.

I went to add something about that to the essay just now, and realized that the very next paragraph after the one you quoted contains something like that, and the paragraph after that ends with the rationale that I thought was contained in what you quote:

This is where I come very close to agreeing with idealism in both of the senses described above, in holding that experience is the ultimate arbiter of judgement on both reality and morality. But rather than the perceptions and desires that underlie those views, which can contradict from person to person because they are constructed in the different minds of different people, I propose instead attending to the more fundamental underlying experiences that give rise to those perceptions and desires, free from the interpretation of the mind undergoing them. In psychology a distinction is made between perceptions, which are interpreted by the mind, and sensations, which are the raw experiences that get interpreted into perceptions, things such as colors of light and pitches of sound, as opposed to images or words. I make a similar distinction between desires, being the things that are interpreted by the mind, and what I call appetites, which are the raw experiences underlying them, things such as the feeling of pain or hunger, as opposed to wanting to do or have something.

And then I propose the construction of models of reality and morality that are consistent with all such experiences. An old parable nicely illustrates the principle I mean to employ here, wherein three blind men each feel different parts of an elephant (the trunk, a leg, the tail), and each concludes that he is feeling something different (a snake, a tree, a rope). All three of them are wrong about what they perceive, but the truth of the matter, that they are feeling parts of an elephant, is consistent with what all three of them sense, even though the perceptions they draw from those sensations are mutually contradictory. I propose always proceeding on the assumption that some such model is possible to construct, even if we don't know what it will be just yet; that assumption being the same one described above, that there is something real, something moral, simply because to assume otherwise would just be to give up for no reason. There always remains the possibility that we will fail to construct such models that can consistently account for all experiences, but we can never be sure that we have conclusively failed, rather than having just not succeeded yet. The only choice is between continuing to try despite the possibility of maybe never succeeding, or giving up — embracing nihilism — and definitely never succeeding.

I realize now that a horizontal rule was placed between the wrong two paragraphs accidentally, interrupting the flow between the paragraph you quoted and those that followed after it. I've fixed that now.

Thanks for the feedback! At this point I am indeed treating both prescriptive and descriptive claims the same. In later essays I go into more detail on the differences between them and what different kinds of things make each of them true, but they are both treated as truth-apt enough, for exactly the reason you quote: if we don't know if any of them are true or not (because we don't even know if they are truth-apt), then our practical choices are to either carry on as though they are not, which is just to give up on trying to figure out what the answers are (in the case of prescriptive questions, that means figuring out what we ought to do), or to carry on as though some of them are, by trying to figure out which of them are.

The problem I have with this is that you seem to gloss over the difference between feeling and perception. I don't think we can feel what is morally true in that same way as we can see if something is true. — ChatteringMonkey

As already elaborated in the previous essay Against Transcendentalism, I pose hedonic experiences as the prescriptive equivalent of empirical experiences: we sort out what is good on the basis of what feels good hedonically (comparing what feels good to different people in different contexts to work out the full picture, not just what feels good to one person at one time), in the same way that we sort out what is true on the basis of what looks true (comparing what looks true to different people in different contexts to work out the full picture, not just what looks true to one person at one time).

I should maybe include a brief reminder of that in this essay too, especially since I am considering re-ordering these first four essays so that this one will be first and that one will be last.

(Because I think it might be better to start with attacking someone almost everyone is against, nihilism, rather than attacking something most people are for, fideism; also because anti-fideism and anti-nihlism are my core principles, so putting them first instead lays all the groundwork first before moving on to the consequences; and because the current last of these initial four essays, Against Cynicism, directly addresses a lot of the objections people usually raise in response to Against Fideism; and because Against Transcendentalism is kind of the most substantial of the topics, really getting into the practical "on what basis do we judge anything" aspect of things, after establishing in Against Nihilism that there are answers to be judged at all, in Against Fideism and Against Cynicism how to and not to sort through them).

Don't forget the big one: do you want to exist somewhere? Well unless your wealthy parents just gifted you a house the moment you became an adult, you have to exist somewhere owned by someone else indefinitely, paying them whatever they demand for the privilege, or else eventually borrow enough money from someone else to buy a place of your own and then spend your whole life paying that back, plus however much else they demand for that privilege.

No, my point is just that it’s not as mathematical as that. It’s not like good deeds add up and bad deeds subtract and that just gives you a score by which to judge a person. Past deeds are evidence of a person’s character, but it’s possible that someone could do many horrible deeds and then undergo something that changes their character going forward, and that should be accounted for even before they being doing good deeds. Or someone could cause horrendous harm as a consequence of a small character flaw and awful moral luck, in which case the amount of harm doesn’t reflect on their character. The point is just that judgements of actions don’t linearly add up to judgements of character, especially not in a way that someone can have moral credit that they are then permitted to spend. Past actions are just a part of the evidence by which to judge someone’s present character.

Actions are not people, and each category of things has its own kind of judgement. Actions tell you something about a person, but accumulated action-judgements don’t add up to a person-judgement.

Actions can be judged on their merits, people can be judged on their tendencies to behave a certain way, and their past actions can be evidence of their tendencies, but the merits of peoples past actions don’t directly accumulate in a way relevant to the judgement of a person. That that is a category error assumed by the OP was my point.

Yeah I don’t think blameworthiness and praiseworthiness work like that, for a practical morality. What matters is whether a person is likely to do more good or bad in the future. If blame or praise positively influence that, then they deserve it. If not, they don’t. If you could magically make Hitler into a good person (as in someone who will for sure do good going forward), his past misdeeds would not carry any weight on the appropriate moral judgement of him anymore.

Basically, imagine if you were a god of infinite mercy and forgiveness. You would still of course care that people do good things and not bad, but your focus would be on reforming people to best ensure that they do better in the future, not on passing pointless judgement on their past misdeeds. That is the kind of moral standard that humans should aspire to too. Forgive everyone on principle and just try to influence how they will behave in the future. Nobody has legitimate moral debts or credits, just evidence of past behavior that warrants rehabilitive action to change their future behavior.

Meaning is like love: there is nothing more to it that you could ask for than the feeling of it, and aside from asking if someone feels it, there is no question about whether it’s “real”.

Living a meaningful life is therefore identical to feeling like your life is meaningful. Feeling meaningless about the prospect of finite life or about the prospect of infinite life is either way a function of the mind. If the mind can be made to accept finite life, or to accept an infinity of existing, then either or both can be meaningful. If a mind just feels meaningless, then no facts about life can be meaningful to them either way. The key is in first making life feel meaningful, and then you will find things to pin that meaningfulness on, whether life is finite or infinite.

Apparently you call yourself an atheist. My guess is that YOU "believe" there are no gods...or you "believe" it is more likely that there are no gods than that there is at least one.

Are you saying I am wrong about that? — Frank Apisa

Not only saying so, I've easily demonstrated you're wrong several times already on this thread. — 180 Proof

All those words in answer to my question...and with no answer. — Frank Apisa

Its amazing how low his reading comprehension is. You answered his question in the first line of your response, but it just doesnt sink in. — DingoJones

He did NOT answer my question in the first line of his response... — Frank Apisa

...

Are you saying I am wrong about that? — Frank Apisa

Not only saying so, I've easily demonstrated you're wrong several times already on this thread. — 180 Proof

...

...and my reading comprehension and writing skills are way above average — Frank Apisa

:confused:

I am not a genius — Frank Apisa

:100:

The purported EFFECTS can be observed. But dark matter itself cannot be and hasn’t been observed. This is fact. — Wayfarer

Do you think black holes have never been observed too? Because we've observed them with the exact same methods as we've observed dark matter.



Anyway, how did we get stuck on this topic of dark matter, when the only thing even vaguely relevant to the OP is dark energy (as a possible source of continuous energy to combat the heat death of the universe, and an explanation for how that heat death hasn't already happened). And dark matter and dark energy, besides having "dark" in the name, have nothing to do with each other.

Except it can be observed. See the Bullet Cluster again.

How is "germs cause disease" not an abductive inference? You even reference instruments. "The instrument beeps, therefore it has detected a radiowave" is very clearly reasoning from effect to cause. — Echarmion

:clap: :up:

I'll let you take things from here, you've clearly got this and I'm tired of this shit.

What the hell are "direkt observations" anyways? It's not like the photons hitting your retina are a cat, a rock etc. Neither are the vibrations carried to your eardrums a guitar. — Echarmion

Yeah, and that's kind of my point. Indirect observations aren't really fundamentally different from direct ones. Everything is to some degree indirect, it's just a question of how much. All we directly see is patterns of light (if we can even take for granted that we actually have eyes attached to actual optical nerves attached to our brains... in an even more skeptical sense all we see is impressions of color in our minds, that we indirectly infer arise due to the impingement of colored light on the eyes we seem to have). The existence of permanent objects in three-dimensional space is indirectly inferred from those patterns of light. The specifics of what objects there are where and what they do is indirectly inferred by the behavior of other objects.

The placebo effect doesn't have a naturalistic explanation, or at least a physical explanation. — Wayfarer

We know that the brain controls many aspects of the body, and that mental states correlate to brain states. It's not at all spooky or paranormal or supernatural that someone's mental states would affect things about their body. We don't know the specific details involved, but that's a far cry from "naturalism and physicalism can't account for this!"

Just remember the meaning of 'phenomenon' - it's 'what appears'. And empiricism is always going to seek for explanations on the level of 'what appears', or extrapolations from 'what appears' on the basis of mathematical extrapolation. Empiricism excludes some kinds of explanatory models purely as a matter of principle, but then forgets that it's done so. — Wayfarer

What would a supernatural explanation even look like? A natural explanation is an account of one kind of phenomenon in terms of another kind of phenomenon: when you see this kind of thing happen you should expect to also see this kind of thing happening. But supernatural things aren't phenomena by definition; they're non-empirical. So "when you see this kind of thing happening you should expect to, er... well you can't see this other kind of thing at all, but it's why that kind of thing is happening, I swear".

Things that have no experiential impact whatsoever to anyone ever are of no consequence to anyone ever, and are rightly disregarded as literal nonsense. Things that do have experiential impact are by definition empirical, natural, physical things.

@StreetlightX This conversation seems to have veered way off the original topic, any chance you can do another thread split for us?