Objective morality

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Objective morality
OP - November 08, 2011, 12:29 AM

http://www.youtube.com/user/QualiaSoup?feature=chclk#p/a/u/0/sN-yLH4bXAI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKxCZNw2F2I

So once again I'm left with the classic Irish man's dilemma, do I eat the potato or do I let it ferment so I can drink it later?
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Re: Objective morality
Reply #1 - November 08, 2011, 01:45 AM

i'm not going to engage in any discussion with the thoughts of william lane craig, but here are some questions:

what does objectivity mean?

what does morality mean? what is the basis of morality?

who would have the power to enforce this objective morality? would they be objective?

and please, especially since we're discussing objectivity, let's set our biases aside and engage in a proper philosophical discussion. people tend to be very invested in having an objective morality that they can't see beyond the cages of their subjectivities.
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Re: Objective morality
Reply #2 - November 08, 2011, 06:36 AM

i find objectivity to be a hard concept to grasp formally tbh. i think for something to be objective, it must act as a 'holding construct', something 'concrete' that we 'know' is 'true' and that we can deduce other 'concrete' and 'true' constructs that we can 'know' about.

so what is a 'holding construct'? well it's a proposition with the property of 'concreteness'.

what's 'concreteness'? well it's something that is 'known' to be 'true'.

what's 'knowledge'? i haven't figured it out yet.

what's 'truth'? see above answer.

so basically i'm saying i don't have a fucking clue what objectivity is yet until i figure out those two things. so why didn't i say that before? because this whole 'concreteness' and 'holding construct' bullshit is my own tacit way of thinking about objectivity, and it's sort of how i process the notion in my head.
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Re: Objective morality
Reply #3 - November 08, 2011, 06:42 AM

but don't you need objectivity to obtain true knowledge? the problem with traditional epistemology is that philosophers have tended to assume it was objective when it wasn't. in the proposition 'S knows that p', we need to know S so that we know how s/he relates to p. What S knows about p depends in large part on his/her embodied, subjective experiences. traditional epistemology is based on the assumption that the mind is disembodied and therefore has access to a disembodied reason.
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Re: Objective morality
Reply #4 - November 08, 2011, 06:52 AM

i suppose it depends on how you define objectivity. i've defined it in a manner which has knowledge and truth as a consequential property of it(i.e., it a given proposition is objective, it can be known and it is true). i suppose it'd require me to go into how a proposition is 'known', but i'm not going to be that rigorous at 7am in the morning.

i'm not okay with the assumption however that reason is transcendental and disembodied, but i suppose if i were to justify my position i'd have to go into the philosophy of mind which i'm not at all versed in. all i can do is sort of naively state that it'd be inconsistent with my position on god and religion to assume a transcendent reason or abstraction that i access through my mind.
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Re: Objective morality
Reply #5 - November 11, 2011, 04:00 AM

Shelly Kagan is fantastic btw. Good to see William Lane Craig completely disarmed and out of his depth when debating an actual proper philosopher.

Too fucking busy, and vice versa.
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Re: Objective morality
Reply #6 - November 11, 2011, 07:42 PM

Bloody hell. I actually sat through all that. Craig's pathetic. Kagan is better, but still seems rather weak in a lot of points.

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Re: Objective morality
Reply #7 - November 14, 2011, 08:30 AM

After letting this percolate for a few days without really thinking about it, some of the things Kagan said are looking even dodgier. IIRC, he mentioned the Contractarian/veil of ignorance idea as being his preferred explanation for how to derive moral standards. Amusingly enough, that actually describes a moral code designed by computer. Not sure that would be our best option.

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Re: Objective morality
Reply #8 - November 14, 2011, 08:36 AM

the veil of ignorance seems to be a popular method among contemporary objective moralists. personally i think a system of justice/morality is useless if it's not viable, and i don't see how it could be. it might be to some extent on a personal basis, but it's not possible systematically.
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Re: Objective morality
Reply #9 - November 14, 2011, 08:55 AM

I assume you mean that the veil of ignorance could not be viable in practice. Probably not. I was thinking of something else though.

As I understand it, the whole basic idea was that you get yourself a bunch of perfectly rational beings (available in six packs at your local corner store) and let them loose on the problem of coming up with a moral code. The idea of using perfectly rational beings is that they wont make mistakes in reasoning. That sounds cute and perfectly rational at first glance, but there are some fundamental problems with it.

If they are perfectly rational beings then they will operate on pure reason, and pure reason only. That means they will be incapable of coming up with their own starting conditions, unless they are given somewhat irrationally derived starting conditions by some other helpful source. So straight away the whole idea of going for perfect rationality to get the best result is screwed before it even leaves the starting line.

That's what I mean about a "moral code designed by computer". We don't have access to perfectly rational biological beings, but computers are a good facsimile of what they would be like. Give a computer some starting conditions and it will chew through any problem in a perfectly logical fashion. It needs the starting conditions first though, and you had bloody well better make sure they are adequately specified if you want a useful result.

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Re: Objective morality
Reply #10 - November 14, 2011, 09:21 AM

i don't think it necessarily has to be a priori, i've always interpreted as meaning that we need to put ourselves above our interests and view things from an objective viewpoint. for example if i had $1,000 and someone else had nothing and needed money to survive, from my subjective point of view i can say that i have the right to keep everything because i earned it, but if i were to have a veil of ignorance and not know who owns that money, i could come to the conclusion that whoever owns the money needs to share it, because the poor person might actually be me. that's at least john rawls' version of it.
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Re: Objective morality
Reply #11 - November 14, 2011, 09:29 AM

Oh yeah I get the veil of ignorance part. That wasn't what I was getting at though. I just mentioned it because Kagan mentioned it along with the Contractarian bit.

Kagan (and I assume some others) seems to think that you want to proceed in a perfectly rational manner to get the best results. I'm saying that is likely to be a recipe for disaster.

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Re: Objective morality
Reply #12 - November 14, 2011, 09:57 AM

relevant
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Re: Objective morality
Reply #13 - November 14, 2011, 10:22 AM

Quote from: Abood on November 14, 2011, 09:21 AM
i don't think it necessarily has to be a priori, i've always interpreted as meaning that we need to put ourselves above our interests and view things from an objective viewpoint. for example if i had $1,000 and someone else had nothing and needed money to survive, from my subjective point of view i can say that i have the right to keep everything because i earned it, but if i were to have a veil of ignorance and not know who owns that money, i could come to the conclusion that whoever owns the money needs to share it, because the poor person might actually be me. that's at least john rawls' version of it.

That looks like you using Empathy to come to a moral decision, aren't you ??

Imagine if u were immune to empathy, you wouldn't give those money to him or part of those money, if Morals are objective and absolute then they need to apply to everyone.
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Re: Objective morality
Reply #14 - November 14, 2011, 10:30 AM

yes, i agree with you. we can be empathic, but power relations hinder that. empathy requires being equal and thus being able to connect and relate to other people.

interesting thought: we can in a sense have objective morality, but only following a global radical transformation of power relations. i will think about that.
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Re: Objective morality
Reply #15 - November 14, 2011, 10:43 AM

Quote from: Abood on November 14, 2011, 10:30 AM
yes, i agree with you. we can be empathic, but power relations hinder that. empathy requires being equal and thus being able to connect and relate to other people.

interesting thought: we can in a sense have objective morality, but only following a global radical transformation of power relations. i will think about that.

Can u elaborate that ?
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Re: Objective morality
Reply #16 - November 14, 2011, 10:48 AM

i think power relations tend to make us more selfish. we always want to have more and be on top, so we think of ourselves at the expense of others. we need to eliminate as much as possible the incentive to be selfish and realize that we share interests with others, or at least learn to empathize with them.
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Re: Objective morality
Reply #17 - November 14, 2011, 10:58 AM

Quote from: Abood on November 14, 2011, 10:48 AM
i think power relations tend to make us more selfish. we always want to have more and be on top, so we think of ourselves at the expense of others. we need to eliminate as much as possible the incentive to be selfish and realize that we share interests with others, or at least learn to empathize with them.

Doesn't that prove that absolute/objective morality doesn't exist and that humans can overcome stuff like feeling sorry or things like that ?

Yes we share interests with others, like my interest as a leader or owner is that the mass should be dumb and ignorant so I can use them as my work force, is that morality ??
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Re: Objective morality
Reply #18 - November 14, 2011, 11:11 AM

I see it like this
1: Subjective - The evidence is within you and you cannot present it to others.
2: Objective - The evidence can be shared because it is either external to you or within you but shared with others (for example, pain.)
3: Moral - Beneficial
4: Immoral - Detrimental

To be objectively moral would therefore mean that you need to present evidence external to yourself or that is shared by others from which you can deduce that something is beneficial or detrimental.

"Objective morality" is certainly not what theists paint it as, they are actually talking about "universal immutable" morality.

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Re: Objective morality
Reply #19 - November 14, 2011, 05:48 PM

That is not the (objective ) definition of "objective" (adj.) though.

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Re: Objective morality
Reply #20 - November 14, 2011, 06:50 PM

Quote from: osmanthus on November 14, 2011, 08:30 AM
After letting this percolate for a few days without really thinking about it, some of the things Kagan said are looking even dodgier. IIRC, he mentioned the Contractarian/veil of ignorance idea as being his preferred explanation for how to derive moral standards. Amusingly enough, that actually describes a moral code designed by computer. Not sure that would be our best option.

contractarian ideas run into certain problem when trying to decide who and when someone has contracted to something. It starts getting into ideas like " implicate consent" and other dubious areas. Theistic morality of course falls into a lot of those dubious areas as well but they put a patina of the objective moral law giver to avoid the same grey areas. I don't have too much of an issue with what Kagan said because I don't think it was a contractarian vs. Theistic morality but to show that there can be sources of non theistic sources of morality of which contractarianism is one that can be adequately defended ( though not exhaustivly defended)

So once again I'm left with the classic Irish man's dilemma, do I eat the potato or do I let it ferment so I can drink it later?
My political philosophy below
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwGat4i8pJI&feature=g-vrec
Just kidding, here are some true heros
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Re: Objective morality
Reply #21 - November 14, 2011, 08:13 PM

Yes, Kagan did do a good job of showing there are possible alternatives to the theistic option. They didn't appear to be particularly convincing options though, or at least not as he presented them.

The contractarian option, as he presented it, is fundamentally flawed. He seemed to like it, and if he had a more convincing option that he preferred then I would have expected him to present that instead. Do note that I'm not just having a go at the contractarian option per se. I'm disputing that a rational approach is the best one.

Kagan's a philosopher, so he wants things to be rational and consistent. He therefore assumes that deriving a moral code should be a rational and consistent process. That gets you into a lot of problems. To take a very basic example, a perfectly rational process would have a trouble coming up with a prohibition against murder. Why? Because the desire to live is not rational. It's emotional.

Such a process would have trouble dealing with rape. Many rapes don't take long, and do not result in physical injury or disease or pregnancy. In purely rational terms, such rapes are a trivial inconvenience. A perfectly rational assessment of them does not reflect the emotional impact on the victim.

The same would apply to various forms of emotional abuse. There would be no need for a purely rational process to take account of them. It would apply to screwing around on your partner too. As long as you aren't taking up their own screwing time or otherwise directly inconveniencing them, they have no rational reason to object to you screwing around.

Short version: a rational and objective derivation of a moral code is going to be a mess, unless you begin by deliberately restricting the process with a whole crapload of irrational starting conditions to take account of all the irrational things that real people will want in a moral code in practice. This means that the whole idea of perfect rationality as a goal is stupid.

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Re: Objective morality
Reply #22 - November 14, 2011, 09:00 PM

Quote from: allat on November 14, 2011, 05:48 PM
That is not the (objective ) definition of "objective" (adj.) though.

This one: not influenced by personal feelings, interpretations, or prejudice; based on facts;

Something outside of you can be presented to others, and can therefore be evaluated as a fact.
Something within you is only influenced by personal feelings and cannot be presented by facts, unless others share it too.

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Re: Objective morality
Reply #23 - November 14, 2011, 09:02 PM

Quote from: osmanthus on November 14, 2011, 08:13 PM
Such a process would have trouble dealing with rape. Many rapes don't take long, and do not result in physical injury or disease or pregnancy. In purely rational terms, such rapes are a trivial inconvenience. A perfectly rational assessment of them does not reflect the emotional impact on the victim.

It causes stress and fear to the victim, often for the rest of their lives. Arguing that rape is a trivial inconvenience is simply ridiculous.

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Re: Objective morality
Reply #24 - November 14, 2011, 09:05 PM

You missed my point. The effects are not rational. Therefore, they cannot be accounted for by a rational process. Therefore, attempting to derive a moral code by a rational process is a flawed concept.

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Re: Objective morality
Reply #25 - November 14, 2011, 09:08 PM

Quote from: osmanthus on November 14, 2011, 09:05 PM
You missed my point. The effects are not rational. Therefore, they cannot be accounted for by a rational process. Therefore, attempting to derive a moral code by a rational process is a flawed concept.

How can ignoring years of mental trauma yet taking into account bruising possibly be rational?

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Re: Objective morality
Reply #26 - November 14, 2011, 09:16 PM

Very easily. It depends on what you are taking as your starting conditions. Look at it this way: how can allowing emotional considerations to interfere be regarded as rational?

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Re: Objective morality
Reply #27 - November 14, 2011, 10:52 PM

Emotional distress can easily have a negative impact on the victim's productivity, and their social cooperation.

Apart from this you question is as silly as asking me why I should consider insignificant physical injuries as relevant.

Both are detrimental and should be avoided.

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Re: Objective morality
Reply #28 - November 14, 2011, 10:55 PM

They are not detrimental in a purely rational sense. They are only detrimental if you make certain irrational assumptions to begin with.

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Re: Objective morality
Reply #29 - November 15, 2011, 09:35 AM

Such as?

You need to convince me that psychological damage is less significant than physical damage that will heal without causing risk of death. Or are you claiming those types of injuries would be irrelevant too?

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