Moral Realism

@bigstew,

bigstew wrote:

Quote:

...it can be reduced to one sentence alone:
...pain is a relative comparative measurement...(think upon it)

Vague. Comparative to what? I'd rather you be explicit about your claims rather than hide behind implicit ambiguity.

Pleasure and displeasure are a relative measurement where the value, either positive or negative, attributed to any state of affairs is highly dependent on the referents average fluctuation in the extremes from where expectations are build... if by default any state of affairs concerning the supposed level of pleasure or displeasure were to become constant and without any sort of fluctuations then it would immediately become perceived has background noise...good example can be provided from third world country´s where people without money with diseases and dying as soon as forty do commonly report to be leading a very happy very fulfilling life...

1 Reply

@bigstew,

bigstew wrote:

Premise: Pain has intrinsic moral value

From a foundational basis, ethical issues often center on what is the grounding for normative ethics? Is ethics objective, or is it only subjective in nature?

bigstew wrote:

We have good reason to believe that an external world exists, objectively, and this is a justified true belief

Belief is subjective, so if you can only believe in ‘objective reality’ because of a subjective belief then it must follow that your belief in an objective reality is subjective. Therefore the belief that there is 'true objectivity' is a false subjective belief.

Therefore ‘grounding for normative ethics’, is not objective.

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@igm,

...by the same method the deconstruction of the value of objectivity would necessarily imply a deconstruction of the value and meaning of subjectivity itself...

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@Fil Albuquerque,

Fil Albuquerque wrote:

...by the same method the deconstruction of the value of objectivity would necessarily imply a deconstruction of the value and meaning of subjectivity itself...

Agreed! That’s why I didn’t end with ‘is subjective’ but with ‘is not objective’.

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@Setanta,

Quote:

Those who don't suffer the pain of others, and have no compassion or empathy will assign no intrinsic value to pain. And, of course, they will be exercising subjective judgment.

Yeah and it also doesn't necessarily mean they've got it right when it comes to what grounds a moral judgement. The overwhelming majority of people believe there is a right or wrong in terms of conduct e.g. violently raping a woman is wrong. Subjectivists can't account for this experience, and hence it fails at explaining what intrinsic values explain better.

Oh and your gold silver analogy is a false analogy. Gold and silver don't have intrinsic worth, but moral judgements are not analogous to gold and silver...

1 Reply

@igm,

All belief is subjective? You are going to have a hard time arguing with anyone (including myself) that empiricism in general does not provide good evidence of objective facts. Not everything is in the mind as you claim with "belief is subjective". Common sense people. Common sense.

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@Fil Albuquerque,

Quote:

Pleasure and displeasure are a relative measurement where the value, either positive or negative, attributed to any state of affairs is highly dependent on the referents average fluctuation in the extremes from where expectations are build...

This is incoherent and I'll just leave it at that.

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@bigstew,

The gold and silver analogy is very apt, because you are alleging intrinsic worth, and there has been nothing in human history about which more people agreed to the concept of intrinsic value than the "noble" metals.

Quote:

The overwhelming majority of people believe there is a right or wrong in terms of conduct e.g. violently raping a woman is wrong. Subjectivists can't account for this experience, and hence it fails at explaining what intrinsic values explain better.

This is mere ipse dixit. You have not demonstrated that "the overwhelming majority" of people believe exactly the same about what constitutes right and wrong. You haven't demonstrated that your so-called intrincsic values are objectively based, just as you have failed to demonstrate that there is any universal, objective morality. Common sense indeed. I should have recalled from previous experiences that you just state a case, without substantiation, and attempt to proceed from your undemonstrated premises. Have fun, Mr. Common Sense.

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@bigstew,

say whatever you want on that regard...
...what I was defending can be translated to numbers in fact...say for instance that in an X scale my degree of displeasure is -14 at time Y...what I was saying is that the degree -14 of my displeasure is calculated from the degree of variance of other similar relative measurements that produce an average and in that average of variances the referents for my suffering being -14 with such background...in other contexts with other averages of positive and negative referents the value will be different from -14 and even can eventually become a positive number...so off goes your theory ! (did you get it this time around or shall I draw you a picture instead ?)

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@Fil Albuquerque,

...lets put it plain simple then:
Is your perception of hot and cold water not dependent on the average temperature on which you live ?
Try to place your hand in the freezer for awhile and take it out for a room temperature of say just 5 degrees Celsius..it will feel hot...

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@bigstew,

bigstew wrote:

All belief is subjective? You are going to have a hard time arguing with anyone (including myself) that empiricism in general does not provide good evidence of objective facts. Not everything is in the mind as you claim with "belief is subjective". Common sense people. Common sense.

I stand by my statement that your beliefs (or others’ beliefs) are not proven objective truths. I’m not saying that equals everything being subjective. The weight of apparent facts doesn’t turn a belief into an objective truth it only strengthens non-objective belief.

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@Setanta,

Quote:

I should have recalled from previous experiences that you just state a case, without substantiation, and attempt to proceed from your undemonstrated premises

Refer to the OP where I state my premises very clearly before making any objections young one.

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@Fil Albuquerque,

Quote:

...lets put it plain simple then:
Is your perception of hot and cold water not dependent on the average temperature on which you live ?
Try to place your hand in the freezer for awhile and take it out for a room temperature of say just 5 degrees Celsius..it will feel hot...

Sure Fil, this makes more sense. How exactly does it speak against my argument? What I'm hearing is that what one feels is context dependent; tasting a warm soup will feel warmer in the Arctic than in the tropics for example. However, my premises are consistent with this context consideration. Pain can be context dependent, but that doesn't mean pain: (1) doesn't matter (2) isn't real (3) and it's badness is reducible to a non moral description. I suspect you are objecting to (3), but think about how pain feels, contextualized in any situation. The "badness" of pain is a property of pain itself, and it is something that must be experienced in order to make any sense of why pain feels bad. I don't see how a calculus (non moral description) can make any sense of the "badness" of pain without appealing to this qualitative experience.

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@igm,

Assuming this:

Quote:

The weight of apparent facts doesn’t turn a belief into an objective truth it only strengthens non-objective belief.

It is contradictory to state:

Quote:

I’m not saying that equals everything being subjective.

You're making a logical error. Your first premise entails all beliefs, and if you're going to be consistent, it must be the case that epistemologicaly speaking, everything we know (beliefs we have) is "all in the head". Care to argue that to the whole of physics, biology, etc that wqe assume provides objective knowledge?

No offense but you should do some reading in classical empiricism e.g. Berkeley, Hume, etc. because your reasoning is exactly the same classical puzzles these thinkers ended up in.

Further, your epistemological objection regarding normative ethics is erroneous. It is a meta ethical objection if we don't have sufficient grounds for aquiring moral knowledge.

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@bigstew,

...the way I see it "goodness" is the fine tuning of a system and "badness" it is the disarrangement of an average...until "accommodation" sinks in for the new system, the newer sets of substituting functions becoming clarified...what can possible be wrong in that ? Order and Chaos are both sides of the same ongoing coin, both intertwined, and both needed...there´s no intrinsic "badness" in anything unless of course you regard change at large as a bad thing...but then you would n´t have nor Stars nor Mozart nor this discussion...

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@Fil Albuquerque,

...if you want to make a stand for the moral realism of "badness" you rather should use the term efficiency as a referent for equilibrium...either more or less of it in a system, any system, not just moral ones...that would present a far better challenge to your adversaries around the place...

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Darwinism and Altruism:

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@Fil Albuquerque,

Quote:

the way I see it "goodness" is the fine tuning of a system and "badness" it is the disarrangement of an average

This only begs the question: how do we "fine tune?" Further, it begs the question as to what is determined to be "good" and "bad".

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@bigstew,

...Energy efficiency seems to be the criteria for any system...morally speaking a system is fine tuned when the citizens of a society are integrated productive and happy...Law is the state version of a moral system and essential for the correct organization of a country. (think of Port au Prince)

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@Fil Albuquerque,

...further it does not beg the question in any sense since the disarrangement of a system its also its evolution...its not the case that cause/effect relation necessarily results worse then the initial system. You cannot judge a function half way through...

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