I occasionally check in with the pro-ID blog Uncommon Descent, on the off chance they may have said something interesting. Sadly, the blog has mostly fallen on hard times. Nowadays it's mostly just post after post whose only point is to demean and insult people, or to proffer absurd misunderstandings of thermodynamics.
Sometimes, though, they really come through. Every once in a while they present an argument so carefully reasoned, so cogently thought-out, that the rest of us must sit-up and take notice. Folks, one such post has recently appeared. It was authored by Barry Arrington, who has stirred himself to lay down some straight talk on the nature of morality.
The post is titled, “RDFish is an Idiot,” “RDFish” being the nom de plume of one of their commenters.
The important part of the post is this:
In my last post I challenged materialists to answer the following challenge:
Materialist premises lead ineluctably to the following conclusions. There is no such thing as “good.” There is no such thing as “evil.” There is only my personal preferences competing with everyone else's personal preferences, and all of those personal preferences can be reduced to the impulses caused by the electro-chemical processes of each person's brain.
My challenge to materialists was to show how any of the conclusions I've reached based on materialist premises are not in fact compelled by those premises.
This sort of thing is Arrington's stock-in-trade. He writes short, sneering posts presenting what he imagines to be devastating challenges to “materialists.” When the materialists are less than impressed by his childish rants, and calmly explain why things might be a bit more complex than he suggests, he simply declares victory and heaps insults and ridicule on his opponents.
The last time we looked at an Arrington post, he was holding forth on thermodynamics. He had noticed, you see, that some discussions of the second law restrict it to closed systems. But only the universe as a whole is truly closed! He considered this so insightful that rather than, say, read the Wikipedia article on the second law, as a grown-up might, he rushed to his computer to present his latest challenge to materialists.
If you skim the comments to Arrington's current post, you will find a handful of commenters very patiently explaining why he needs to think more carefully. This sent Arrington into a rage, to the point that he wrote a second post on the subject. This post contains assertions like this:
My argument rests on three main premises:
1. On materialism there can be no such thing as “good” and “evil.”
No fair equivocating on those words, which is the usual dodge we get. It is clear that in this context I am using the terms in the same sense that Dawkins used them: “The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.” Richard Dawkins, River out of Eden : A Darwinian View of Life (London: Phoenix, 1995), 133.
If you are going to refute the statement, you will need to show how Dawkins was wrong.
Now, we might note a small change from the first post to the second. What is presented in the second post as the first premise in his argument, was presented in the first post as a conclusion of his argument. That's worth commenting on, since the second post begins with a lengthy and condescending explanation of basic logic to those who found his challenge less than impressive. It would seem that Arrington is the one who requires a refresher course in logic.
Arrington goes on to restate the rest of his premises, but there is really no need to get too far down in the muck. His first premise is simply false, you see.
But here's the thing. It's so obviously and transparently false that, if Arrington is presenting it seriously, then I must assume that he does not understand what the words “good” and “evil” mean. He decries equivocation regarding the meaning of the words, and then gives a quote from Richard Dawkins to clarify his intention. He means it the way Dawkins means it. But this intention is badly undermined by his assertion that to claim that good and evil exist is to claim that Dawkins was wrong.
That is such a childish misunderstanding of Dawkins' point that we must wonder once more if Arrington is serious. Dawkins, obviously, was discussing the universe as a whole. He was not discussing the existence of good and evil in general. To do evil requires a malicious intent; it is not enough simply to produce a harmful effect. Dawkins was merely pointing out that the universe as a whole does not have intents. Things happen, and sometimes those things are good for living creatures and sometimes those things are bad for living creatures. He was noting that if there is a loving God behind it all then the relentless onslaught of harmful effects in nature is hard to understand.
What has that to do with the existence of good and evil in general?
Once again UDs commenters have anticipated me. They made precisely the point I just made. Arrington's reply should be savored:
Are you suggesting that the earth is not part of the universe. How odd. Let me give you another hint: Just because you can say some idiotic thing in response to an argument, does not mean you should.
Since we're quoting Dawkins, I'm reminded of his quip, in reply to a very snide but badly misinformed review of one of his books, that, “We are in danger of thinking that no one would dare to be so rude without taking the elementary precaution of being right in what she said.” Had the commenter pointed out that the universe as a whole is not green, Arrington would no doubt have replied that grass is green and grass is part of the universe. Then he would have called the commenter an idiot.
If you asked me to explain what is meant by an evil act, I would say that an act is evil if its primary intent is to cause harm to sentient beings. I have no doubt that scenarios could be contrived that would show my definition to be insufficiently precise or nuanced, but it surely captures what is generally meant by the term “evil.” Virtually everyone, including most religious people, would respond along similar lines. By contrast, you would have to journey into the darkest corners of religious fundamentalism to find anyone who would define “evil” in a way that entailed a belief in God, or in a way that entailed that materialism is false.
That is why Arrington's little challenge is just silly. Why can't a materialist, no less than a theist, note that people have intents and that sometimes those intents cause harm? And if you grant that--and how can you not?--then why can't a materialist talk sensibly about good and evil?
Of course, you can challenge my definition. You can say that it's just a product of my own subjective judgment that it's bad to harm sentient beings. But so what? I can as easily challenge a theist's subjective judgment that we have a reliable way of knowing God's will, and that we should accede to that will even if we do. Any proposed standard of morality can be challenged by someone intent on denying it. The fact remains that my definition is in accord with what virtually everyone agrees “evil” to be. Take it up with all of us if you wish, but don't be surprised if we decline the debate and instead suggest politely that you seek help.
In one of his comments, Arrington writes:
Not only does no one act as if materialism is true; the vast majority of those who adhere to materialism steadfastly avert their gaze from the logical contradiction between adhering to materialism and acting as if morality is an objective commodity.
Of course, the question of whether morality is objective or subjective is separate from the question of whether good and evil exist. It's also entirely separate from the question of materialism versus theism.
But the more relevant point is that the reality is precisely the opposite of what Arrington suggests. Almost no one actually behaves as though the divine command theory, or anything like it, is true. When confronted with actual moral dilemmas, we all, religious or nonreligious, behave as though we can reason our way to the morally correct conclusion. We don't go thumbing through scripture, or running to the local cleric, every time we face difficult questions about competing goods or the lesser evil.
Do you really want to argue that the ones who do go running to scripture and clerics are the ones who are thinking clearly about morality?
- Log in to post comments
I'd argue the definition of evil mainly on the point that it is to constricting in my opinion. There are many acts I'd consider evil, where the primary intend is not harming sentient beings, but it's an unavoidable side effect of that act. For example if someone dumps toxic waste illegally, the primary intend is not "I'd like to poison my fellow human beings", but just "I get more money if I just dump that stuff". The willful disregard of harm would be a better hallmark of evil in my opinion than to limit it to the intend of harm.
Sorry JR but you are not making your case with respect to 'evil'.
"Of course, the question of whether morality is objective or subjective is separate from the question of whether good and evil exist."
But you also argue that 'everyone agrees what evil is' as part of your case that evil exists.
The point is that any characterization like good or evil or moral is purely arbitrary-- that means that it is undefinable, and so to claim that it 'exists' is meaningless.
I do not label intentionally harming other humans even if it is done because it gives someone pleasure as good or bad or evil, because it adds nothing to the conversation.
Let's face the fact that once rational people acquiesce to such language, we descend to the middle-school level of argumentation: "x is good, no, y is good".
You can't complain that people say homosexuality is immoral if you have your own arbitrary list that gets that label.
Harming another human is immoral itself
I have not read Arrington's posts, but I would bet that he is exactly going after the subjective vs. objective distinction. There's been a recent spate of philosophers and/or reasonably prominent atheists trying to propose an objective morality (without the need for a god). I would bet he is going after these ideas.
It may be "so what" to you (and me) that morality is ultimately subjective, but many people find that thought upsetting. Arrington is pushing on that discomfort to gain converts for theism. He's proselytizing: design will give you laypeople back that foundation for objective morality you want so badly, so (this part is implied and rarely stated) therefore you should believe in design.
Zebra:
"Crime" is perfectly definable and if you say 'crime exists' or count the number of instances of it (example: 'in 2014, there were 30 instances of violent crime in our community'), the vast majority of people will understand perfectly well what point you are trying to convey. Funnily enough, probably the only group of people who would count such comments as meaningless are philosophers who get wrapped around the axle about referents and reism. For the rest of us, there is no need for some objective physicochemical property 'criminal' in order to talk meaningfully about the existence of crime.
I fail to see why the same thing isn't true for good and evil. Am I saying there is some objective physicochemical property 'good'? No, I'm not saying that. I'm saying that most of us are adept enough language users that we can discuss the existence of properties that use a community-based standard or definition (example: an act is a crime if it is against one of our laws) without getting tied up in knots over whether this is a proper use of the word 'exist' or not. The logical positivists went down the wrong track in trying to truncate language down to fact claims about objective things, and we should not follow them. Your quote, above, is basically following them down this track.
To talk meaningfully about the existence of subjective things, the process is relatively simple: collectively agree on a method or criteria you'll use to decide what's in and what's out, then have the discussion. Crime refers to actions which are against the law. You can even have multiple methods/criteria and discuss the different pros, cons, and conclusions you'll reach from using each: should we count rapes by convictions, or by self-reports? Those can also be valuable and interesting discussions. What is not useful is throwing the baby out with the bathwater by claiming we can say nothing meaningful about the existence of crime because it isn't definable. Of course it is, and of course we can. And the same is true for good and evil.
I don't see how the complaint that "materialists" have no objective good and evil is any different than gold bugs saying that fiat currency has no objective value. Both of those claims may be true, and yet they conflate "subjective" with "arbitrary". The value of money may indeed be "subjective", and yet our economy nonetheless chugs along with having currency objectively tied to the value of a precious metal. Likewise, it may not be the case that "evil" exists as some ontological category inherent in the fabric of the universe, and is instead just an aspect of social interactions among humans on this specific tiny speck of dust in the vastness of space, yet nonetheless may work just fine regulating social behaviour.
Eric,
From this and your discussion WRT polygamy, I get the sense that you provide a perfect example of the middle-school ipse dixit mindset I mentioned, combined with the idea that writing a lot of words can hide a lack of reasoning.
If "moral" or "evil" is, as you say, definable, then why are you going on and on about crime? Why don't you just give us the definition, as you did for crime?
Rhetorical question, of course, because you can't. Lists of crimes tell us something other than that "x is on the list"; lists of "what is immoral" tell us only that. We could as easily label the list "giggoral", and it would be the same thing.
Tulse,
No, it is the arbitrariness that is the problem. We can label anything "immoral", because there is no criterion for applying the label.
No ontology involved, because we know that the *concept* of "moral" exists.
Sure I can! In fact I will give you several:
- Good is what Jesus/the bible says is good
- Good is what maximizes human happiness
- Good is what meets the requirement of a categorical imperative.
We can have meaningful conversations about what is good in any of those frameworks, and we can have meaningful conversations about the pros and cons of each framework if you like too. None of these are "purely arbitrary," unless you are using 'arbitrary' as a synonym for 'subjective.' Good is certainly not undefinable because I just defined it three different times for you. And talking about good existing is therefore no more meaningless than talking about crime existing, beauty existing, etc....
Sure, there can be communication problems when you're referring to 'good' under one framework, I'm using a separate framework, and we either don't know that or don't acknowledge that we have different frameworks. But those sort of problems do not make all such conversations meaningless: they just mean that if we want that conversation to be meaningful, we have to make honest attempts to use language in the same way and understand each other's premises.
That's not true at all. Granite is not immoral. The orbit of Charon around Pluto is not immoral. The second "e" in this sentence is not immoral. In all those cases, the notion of "immoral" doesn't even apply, because they are not the kinds of things relevant to the concept. Morality involves interactions between human beings, specifically those actions that may impact the well-being of humans.
But the argument Arrington is making rests precisely on an ontological claim, namely that morality requires an objective standard actually built into the universe. Simply saying that the concept exists doesn't remove the ontological claim -- the concept of unicorns exists, but that doesn't mean they are real. The ontological status of a thing is separate from the concept of the thing.
Eric,
Gnarb is whatever maximizes human happiness.
See how it works?
If you want to discuss what maximizes human happiness, then we can discuss that without the use of the word "good". It is meaningless in the sentence.
You just say: "hey, zebra, let's discuss what maximizes human happiness."
Arbitrary means based on whim or randomness, a conclusion with no rationale behind it. Kant's ethics and utilitarianism are about as far from arbitrary as a subjective system can get. They may each have cons, but they each have thousands of pages of rationale written about why they are useful frameworks. They have internal rules and methods used to figure out what good is, they are not simply random lists of acts considered good.
Are you using the word 'arbitrary' to mean non-objective? As in: good is an arbitrary concept because it is based on some human-derived framework (of which there are many) rather than some objective property of the universe? If you want to use 'arbitrary' in that sense, there are a lot of useful human practices that we could label arbitrary. Such as our criminal justice system.
And if you want to discuss what improves the flow of cars on a street, you can discuss it without using the word "traffic".
If you want to discuss the aerodynamics of winged flying machines, you can discuss it without using the word "airplane".
I'm not sure what your point is. If you're saying that it is not correct to define "morality" in terms of human happiness, that's fine, but arguing as you do is simply pointing out that all word meanings are "arbitrary".
Tulse,
I was speaking for myself there. Yes, of course I meant human behavior-- that's where we understand the concept to apply.
But you fall into the trap of confusing what you arbitrarily hold to be in the category "moral/immoral" with the definition of the term when you say "especially those actions that may impact the well-being of humans".
Surely some acts which have no impact on the well-being of others have been labelled immoral.
Tulse,
Very weak at #13. You ignore the context of my and Eric's statements.
Note to Eric and Tulse. I will be checking back on this discussion regularly but I am really not interested in responding to this cherry-picking little quotes out of context.
If you can't frame a coherent answer to my position, it's not worth my time to reply.
So if I want to discuss the time it takes for a quantity to fall to half its present value, I can discuss that without the use of the word "half-life," because the term half-life is meaningless? Does that really make sense to you? No, being able to substitute one phrase or term for another does not make the initial word meaningless. It can serve as a useful shorthand for a technical or complicated concept. 'Good' is a complicated concept. Yes, I could run around referring to utility and Kantian ethics and biblical morality and 20th century western norms and never use the words 'good' or 'evil'. But geez, what a lot of effort to go through just to get rid of a word that most people can use most of the time in most contexts and be reasonably well understood.
You are also wrong to say all such definitions are arbitrary, as many ethical systems aren't based on whim or a random collection of elements assigned the label 'good.' The only way I can see this charge as having meaning is if you're using 'arbitrary' to refer to 'subjective.' Yup, its subjective (at least IMO).
I think we have. You claimed good was undefinable, I gave you three separate definitions for it. You claim good is arbitrary, but many subjective judgments including moral ones do not fit the definition of arbitrary. You claim the term 'good' is meaningless but as far as I can tell, what you mean by that is something more like: we shouldn't use the word because it can have different meanings in different contexts. To which I say: chill dude. The masses are down with context-based word choice. See?
Zebra's position amounts to arbitrarily claiming that he is right and everyone else is wrong. Irony anyone?
#19
Nope. I'm claiming that modern philosophy rejects this nonsense about morality, and since no one here has offered a philosophical defense of the concept, that rejection holds.
A philosophical defense would require providing a definition of "moral" that would make these statements have differentiable meanings:
1) "X behavior is immoral."
2) "X behavior is gibboral."
I can make any arbitrary list of behaviors and label it as "immoral" or "gibboral" or "blittoral" ..., and there is no way to ascribe any characteristic to the members of the list other than membership in the list.
This is not true for the examples given by Eric and Tulse as putative rebuttals. If something is labelled a crime, that provides information beyond the label. But they ignore that fact.
This is mere question-begging -- both eric and I have argued that morality involves behaviours that impact human well-being. You are simply asserting without any argument that this isn't the case. If you don't accept that characterization, explain why.
Eric is right--
"Are you using the word ‘arbitrary’ to mean non-objective? As in: good is an arbitrary concept because it is based on some human-derived framework (of which there are many) rather than some objective property of the universe? If you want to use ‘arbitrary’ in that sense, there are a lot of useful human practices that we could label arbitrary. Such as our criminal justice system."
Morality is a humanly conceived, consensual expression of values. It's obviously arbitrary and necessarily so since our understanding and knowledge of ourselves and the world are always incomplete and fallible.
Scientists may be more or less good or bad people, more or less interested in and concerned about morals. But if they are, it's as a feature of their characters and personalities as individuals first. Their scientific understanding might inform their view of morals but I think that more often they're much the same as anyone else--either rather good or rather bad morally irrespective of their professional work and understanding. Most scientists, I daresay, are not great moral exemplars. It isn't typically necessary to their work that they be. But they've probably grasped that morals are arbitrary conventions arranged by mortals, not given by divine authority--though some scientists seem to sometimes confuse divine authority with their own whims--much like some clergy.
Morals aren't to be dismissed just because they're arbitrary --i.e. man-made. It's either that or nothing.
Just keep repeating your assertion until everyone gives up and you claim victory - yeah!
Tulse:
" both eric and I have argued that morality involves behaviours that impact human well-being. You are simply asserting without any argument that this isn’t the case. If you don’t accept that characterization, explain why."
"morality involves"
Right. Now that's a clear definition if I've ever heard one. (sarcasm alert)
The thing is, gibborality also "involves" behaviors that impact human well-being. Also blittorality, as it happens.
BTW, you are using "question begging" incorrectly.
`And only one for birthday presents, you know. There's glory for you!'
`I don't know what you mean by "glory,"' Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. `Of course you don't -- till I tell you. I meant "there's a nice knock-down argument for you!"'
`But "glory" doesn't mean "a nice knock-down argument,"' Alice objected.
`When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, `it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.'
"a fallacy in which the premises include the claim that the conclusion is true (directly or indirectly)"
What's funny is that Zebra has declared there is no answer a priori and guess what - in his mind there never will be. Might as well give up before you start. It is going to be blah, blah, blah I can't hear you no matter what is said.
#22
Maybe you require a list of things not to do, otherwise you would commit rape and murder and so on. Some of us don't.
#27
So you got the point that I am mocking you and Eric because you can't give a definition for "morality". Good.
Apparently you have trouble with the whole concept of definition. You are confusing question-begging with tautology, perhaps?
Too bad you haven't gotten that thinking you know something and actually knowing something are not the same thing....
To nitpick.
I would say that an act is evil if its primary intent is to cause harm to sentient beings.
I'd probably have to add or the primary intent is to gain , without consideration of harm to sentient beings (someones primary intent may be just to get richer for e.g.)
Jason,
Well, not really, unless you don't think that the definition of good and evil is determined by morality or your moral view. If it is true that "good" and "evil" relate directly to morality and immorality, then before you can say that good or evil exists you are going to have to have an objective meaning for the terms, which would then have to follow from an objective morality, unless you go full-on subjective and say that what is good or evil is nothing more than what someone considers to be moral or immoral, which is not what you are doing here. Otherwise, you'll end up with the equivalent of saying that God exists because to a particular person God is love, and love exists, so God must exist, except that in your case you'll be saying that evil exists because evil is intentionally harming others and that happens, and that fits with materialism, so the point must be invalid. I know that you can see the problem with the former statement, but the latter isn't any better.
When talking about moral philosophy, it is the nuances that are of prime importance. Sure, most people think that intentionally causing harm to sentient beings is generally immoral, but there are numerous cases where it is clear that that isn't the case. Utilitarianism builds itself around the idea that sometimes causing harm is moral, if it benefits more people. When you get into deontological and Virtue Ethics, you move even further away from that statement. So looking at that, it seems reasonable to say that while in general intentionally harming innocents counts as "evil", that's not what being evil MEANS. And you need to get at an objective, accepted view of what evil MEANS, not a loose rule of thumb for determining it.
I'm not sure that it would mean that someone needs to seek help if they disagree that what it means to be evil is indeed just that it causes harm to sentient beings, particularly since almost all moral systems will, in fact, advocate that as being moral under some conditions. This is PRECISELY the problem with simply stipulating an idea of morality without having the moral system to back it up.
But the argument against the materialist, as Arrington himself outlines, is NOT about DCT, or even about necessarily consulting clerics and the like. It's about the fact that for the materialist, especially the materialist about mind, all we have are brain states to appeal to. And a brain state is personal and subjective. So all you can point to when talking about morality is that there is a brain state in a specific person that says "This is immoral". The question for materialists -- again, who assert that only material things exist -- is where do they ground their morality in something outside of themselves? In evolution or evolved traits? That reduces to survival, not anything that looks like morality as we know it. In social cohesion? Again, it reduces to a pragmatic and relativistic idea, not morality as we know it.
Without that grounding, talking about what is "good" or "evil" becomes as meaningful as talking about what tastes good or tastes bad; you can get some ideas that generalize across a lot of people, but if someone else says that they don't think that, say, chocolate tastes good, there is nothing that you can say to them. They simply have a different physical configuration than you do, and you can't say that it is better or worse than anything else. And the claim would be that this follows from materialism.
Now, being Stoic-leaning, I'm not going to dismiss the idea that materialism can represent an objective morality, as they were staunch materialists, even though I myself am not. But how you ground your objective morality is indeed important, and not a question that can be dismissed as easily as you do here.
In my view, compared to Utilitarians, they can't be much worse [grin].
Tulse,
We don't need morality to regulate social behaviour. We have laws, norms, customs, etiquette and other things to do that. What's special about morality so that it is necessary in that progression? It's not harm, because all of those can and do mitigate harm. So if morality is only about social interaction, what do we need it for?
Or so you say, but this is definitely you starting from your definition of morality and then using that definition to prove it true. For example, I don't consider morality to be about the well-being of humans. I consider that pragmatics. One of the reasons for this is that I think it perfectly sensible to suggest that morality might demand that all humans sacrifice all of their well-being in service to a greater moral demand, even if that moral demand is for non-sentient life, for example. Under your definition, that can't work, but it does not clearly contradict the concept of morality. If your particular view of what morality entails is right, that would, but you have not yet sufficiently justified that particular view yet.
Indeed we do -- human social interaction is rich, and I didn't mean to suggest that morality is the only thing that regulates social behaviour. But it is the only social concept concerned with regulating harm. Sure, you can argue that laws do that, but I would suggest that those laws are simply codifying morality within the structure of civil governance. We typically consider laws that do not follow our morality as being unjust or invalid (just ask a fundamentalist about laws around same sex marriage or abortion).
As for your other examples, those also regulate social interaction, but their intent is not to focussed on harm (or if it is, I'd argue that their strictures have arisen largely as a way to codify morality).
I don't think my claim is circular -- we need at the very least to agree on the domain covered by morality, and I don't think it is unreasonable to suggest that any definition of morality will exclude the notion of granite and planetary orbits from its concerns. I don't see this as any more circular than saying that arithmetic involves number -- we can argue about whether there is an objective grounding for mathematics, but we at least have to agree on what math is.
Well, to be more accurate in my position, I would argue that sentience (not sapience) is the morally relevant quality, and that therefore we do have moral obligations to non-sapient life (this is one reason I'm vegetarian). I think that morally relevant harm, however, can only be done to things that have experiences, that can actually experience harm (unlike say granite or orbits). So I would grant that there may be instances where human well-being is a lower moral priority than some other entities' well-being.
To pick up your comment to Jason:
Right, but that is also true for any abstract concept, like "mathematics" or "justice" or "grammar" or "truth" or "meaning". Heck, even supposedly concrete concepts are merely brain states, and so notions like "granite" and "orbit" and "golden retriever" are presumably just personal and subjective under this view -- there is nothing special about "morality". Yet we seem to get on quite well without any universally-accepted formal grounding for these concepts, so purely subjective brain states seem to work just fine.
If one is going to demand a foundational account for all abstract concepts, one has a very big job. But in the meantime, people will get on with using these ungrounded concepts in everyday life, seemingly pretty well.
I am just curious how being a non-materialist helps with understanding morality. How is it any less personal and subjective?
Moral (as in "that's a moral judgment, not an aesthetic one"): a normative or values-based judgment of an event or action.
Moral (as in good: "that action is moral"): an assessment that an action meets the criteria layed out in a moral (see first definition) or ethical system.
Now, if you give me your definition of "gibboral," we can compare it to my definition of 'moral" and see if they are talking about the same thing or not. But again, I think your claim that the term is "undefinable" has been proven to be false through counterexample at least four times now. Moreover, you've never even responded to my comments on your misuse of the term 'arbitrary.'
Verbose Stoic--
This is like saying that in doing physics we only have atoms to appeal to. Yet most physics is done without appealing to the motions of individual atoms. Likewise, it may be that everything is ultimately reducible to brain states, but that doesn't mean that higher order concepts like empathy, pain, cruelty or suffering have no meaning, or that they cannot be appealed to in formulating ideas about morality.
The argument against the materialist is that he does not have any sound basis for morality, but that a theist does. I was pointing out that in practice no one acts that way. Moral philosophy is a cute hobby, but in practice it's rarely difficult to discern right from wrong. And people manage to do the discerning without any reference to religious notions.
VS:
I agree with your characterization of his argument, but as I said in @4, this seems to me that he is just rhetorically bashing subjectivist morality. His argument is not much more than "if you're a materialist, you'll be stuck with no objective morality, and who wants that? Come over to the theist side, we claim there is an objective morality. That's much more emotionally appealing, isn't it?"
eric--
In the two posts under consideration here, Arrington is adamant that he is not talking about objectivity versus subjectivity. Take a look at comments five and nine of the original post. Arrington writes :
Consult the original quotes for the full context!
#34 Eric:
"Moral (as in “that’s a moral judgment, not an aesthetic one”): a normative or values-based judgment of an event or action."
Talk about circular definitions. "moral" "normative" "values-based".
How are these terms different from each other? What is a "value", other than a moral claim?
I guess you will now say "but normative may describe something that is derived". Yes, but that from which it is derived is a value or moral claim. Whatever the original premise is, that premise is itself arbitrary.
zebra,
Jesus Christ onna pogo stick, is it really so hard to understand that humans agree on definitions for words and then use them in conversations?
Yes, we could define gnarb as whatever maximizes human happiness. And then we could have a useful discussion about gnarb: if it can be quantified, if we would want our legal system to be built on gnarb, etc. So what? Is that somehow surprising?
Yes, we could define torturing kittens as moral, and then see where that gets us. But hardly anybody actually does. So what's the point?
We could define a whole branch of the tree of life as 'a monophyletic group', as Hennig suggested, or we could define a whole branch of the tree of life as 'a holophyletic group' and a partial branch as 'a monophyletic group', as Ashlock suggested. Does that mean that evolutionary relationships are subjective? That they are arbitrary? That we cannot even talk about them because nobody knows anything? Ye gods.
Again, is it really such an astounding insight that people have to define words before they can use them in conversations? If there is another way of collectively trying to sort things out then I have never heard of it.
On (sic) materialism there can be no such thing as “good” and “evil.”
A strict materialism allows for no abstractions at all.
Strict materialism doesn't work very well at all outside of a limited problem space. Arrington here wants to work in a very general problem space, so he conjures an ideological system which functions terribly in that space and out of it builds a straw Dawkins to beat on.
@39: Moral: of or relating to principles of right and wrong in behavior (Mirriam Webster)
Moral: of, relating to, or concerned with the principles or rules of right conduct or the distinction between right and wrong; ethical (Dictionary.com)
Moral: relating to standards of good behavior, honesty, and fair dealing, or showing high standards of this type (Cambridge).
Is that sufficient? Or do none of those meet your standard of defining the term because 'right' has a similar meaning to 'moral'. We're now up to seven counter-examples to your claim that it's "undefinable" and six posts by you ignoring my counterargument about your use of the description 'arbitrary.' Which is made even more amusing by the fact that you seem otherwise obsessed that people define their words carefully before using them.
Jason: @38: well then, I would have to agree with you that he doesn't really understand the words. Or the fact that humans develop words and terms (in many cases) to make it easier to discuss concepts and ideas. If he has no problem with subjective good and evil, then how could he possibly argue that humans can't develop criteria for it? You might as well claim its impossible for humans to develop criteria for beauty. We do it all the time. We don't always agree on them (because they are subjective), but we certainly make them. You might as well claim it is metaphysically impossible under materialism to hold a Miss [Whatever] Pageant. It makes no sense.
#42
" Or do none of those meet your standard of defining the term because ‘right’ has a similar meaning to ‘moral’."
Finally, you are beginning to get it.
"Right and wrong" is an arbitrary construct.
As I explained, and you ignored, such constructs are arbitrary whether invoked ab initio or if they are derived from an arbitrary premise. It just depends on the context you are talking about. You don't understand that?
Ah, the subject of meta-ethics rears its ugly head again! This is such a difficult subject that even sensible materialists cannot agree among themselves. Nor can theists for that matter. Virtually all theists are moral realists, but they can't agree on the basis for moral realism. Just read the Wikipedia entry on Euthyphro's Dilemma to see how many meta-ethical positions theists have adopted in response to it.
Jason, I think you're making a common error of not adequately distinguishing between definitions (statements about meaning) and substantive statements of fact. If we say that torturing children is evil (or morally wrong), I expect you will agree that this is a substantive statement, attributing the property of evilness to a particular type of action. But when you say that causing suffering to people is evil, you say that you are giving a "definition". What's the difference between these two statements:
A: Torturing children is evil.
B: Causing harm to sentient beings is evil.
B is more general than A, but they are both the same kind of statement. I would say that they are both substantive statements, not definitions.
One problem here is that in common parlance people use the word "definition" very loosely, and often don't seem to be referring to statements about meaning. However in your previous post you specifically said that you were giving us the "meaning" of the word "evil". So it seems to me that you are mistaking B for a definition (a statement about meaning), when it is in fact a substantive statement.
Conflating substantive statements with definitions leads to further errors. In particular, it can lead you to think that your substantive assertion needs no justification, because it seems to be true by definition. This mistake is quite common among people who take a position known (to philosophers) as "moral naturalism". Moral naturalism comes in different varieties, but typically moral naturalists claim that moral facts are just natural facts. Sam Harris is an example. He claims that moral facts are just facts about how to maximise well-being. And he insists that anyone who disagrees with this doesn't seem to understand the meaning of the word "good". Your position seems broadly similar to his.
Harris also makes the mistake of conflating moral good with non-moral good, another common error. Many of the words we use in discussing this subject can be taken in both moral and non-moral senses. Arguably, this is even true of the word "evil". For that reason, in discussing meta-ethics, I make a point of always inserting the word "morally", and focusing on the terms "morally wrong" and "morally obligatory", as I think these are the mostly distinctly moral of moral properties. I used the word "evil" above, for the sake of consistency with the text I was responding to, but I suggest re-reading my words, substituting "morally wrong" for "evil".
I don't consider Arrington's drivel worth responding to. But my usual response to the apologetics argument from moral realism (or "objective moral truth"), is this (very briefly). The apologist has established neither of the needed premises: (1) moral realism is true, and (2) the truth of moral realism is dependent on the existence of God (or on the falseness of materialism). In practice, apologists rarely make much serious attempt to support these two premises, typically doing little more than relying on the fact that these premises appeal to most people's naive intuitions. In response I would raise Euthyphro's Dilemma, not because it's a cast-iron argument (philosophical arguments never are), but because it calls the naive intuition into question, and so puts the onus back on the apologist to support his premises. And attempts to support these premises usually amount to little more than resorting to some other dubious premise, such as "divine command theory". My advice is: don't accept the onus that the apologist is trying to put on you. He's the one claiming to have a good argument. Put the onus back on him where it belongs. If you take on the onus of giving a meta-ethical position (and even more so if you try to justify it) you are stepping into a mine field.
That said, I reject moral realism. I say that it's not only false but conceptually (logically) impossible. My rejection of moral realism is not dependent on the non-existence of God (or the truth of materialism). Even God cannot make true that which is logically impossible. But I don't intend to make the case against moral realism here. That's too big a job. People often think they can settle significant philosophical questions with a quick killer argument (e.g. the Chinese Room, Mary, Twin Earths). But these matters cannot be settled so easily. They usually require a careful unravelling of tricky conceptual confusions.
P.S. Oops. I wrote "in your previous post", when I was referring to the current post (above). I originally planned to post this comment under your newer OP on this subject, but changed my mind.
Jason,
I don't he's denying that pain, suffering and empathy have meaning or exist under materialism. I think he's arguing that when the materialist tries to formulate ideas about morality they only have subjective, personal states to appeal to, and so can only make appeals to personal preference when they make appeals to the morality or immorality, or the "goodness" or "evilness" of something. The demand, then, is on what do you ground your notion that pain, suffering and empathy are relevant or in your case it seems paramount in determining what is good and what is evil?
This is actually crucially important, because on my blog I have advanced a number of arguments for why empathy is actually a really bad way to do morality, not the least of which being that since it works best with people we understand better it leads to in and out group thinking. If you think morality is more than just personal preference, you have to be able to address the counter-arguments -- and there are plenty -- and if you don't think you need to address the counter-arguments then your view of morality is just that: yours.
Wow. Just ... wow. I really can't believe you said that. Especially in light of this from your post:
The systematic approach towards reasoning about morally correct conclusions and the basis of those reasonings is, in fact, moral philosophy. That's all it is. So what you say here is like saying that formal physics is a cute hobby, but we don't need anything more than folk physics to get through our daily lives and no one needs formal physics training to do the physics stuff that we do. That's all true, but that does not mean that we don't need formal physics to examine those views, systematize them, and eliminate the myriad contradictions we have on our folk physical views. The same thing applies to moral philosophy: we have massive contradictions in our moral reasoning and moral philosophy's job is to point them out and try to figure out the right system of reasoning to apply to morality.
Your claims about what morality entails are, in fact, moral philosophy. To dismiss moral philosophy as a "cute hobby" essentially means that you want to be able to toss out a view that is intuitive and not have to face the massive reasoned objections to your view. Some of which I outlined in the original comment.
Yes and no. He is clearly saying there that he is not arguing that objective morality is the correct view, just that you can't be a materialist AND an objectivist about morality, and so materialists can't act like objectivists and maintain their materialism. That's also what he means by saying that materialists don't act like materialists wrt morality, which is a point that your post doesn't address. Most materialists DO act like objectivists ... even you, but I think I'll try to address that on your latest post, because it fits better there.
Tulse,
This is a prime example of how I say that you are generating support for your view by assuming it and evaluating things in light of it. Who says that it is the only social concept concerned with regulating harm, or that that is its purpose? We can see this clearly in your counter against the idea that law is also about harm, as all you do there is argue that the portions of law that are about mitigating harm are just attempts to legislate morality. But if we don't agree that any attempt to relate social issues to harm is necessarily moral, then that argument simply holds no water. It is assuming that morality is what you say it is to then turn around and say that anything doing what you say morality ought to do is really morality by definition. Without accepting the definition, no one need accept the argument or classification.
But the issue is that while most will agree that granite and orbits don't generate moral obligations to them, you assume from that that it is about harm. Essentially, you use your harm criteria to rule them out and then justify the harm criteria by pointing out that they are excluded and, see, they don't experience pain or harm! But there are myriad other qualities that could be important, and it is possible that we DO have moral obligations to them even though we don't think we do. Thus, you need to establish your position first before you can use them as examples that prove the rule.
As another example, Sam Harris argues that the only possible moral agents are things that are conscious. This is relatively uncontroversial. But then he says that therefore morality is about conscious beings. That's shakier. Then he grabs one quality of conscious beings -- suffering -- and insists that therefore that is what morality is all about. Which is weak considering that his best argument for it in that progression is just that that is something that all conscious beings have. All conscious beings have other qualities as well: why that one and not something else? Harris never says. but he must say.
Yes, that's true ... if you are a materialist, and specifically a materialist about mind. In fact, Arrington's whole point IS that there's nothing special about morality in this regard; it is only subjective and a subjective brain state. That he feels is the challenge to materialists, that they cannot pass: how can you get an objective morality from purely subjective mechanisms, as your view entails? In this part, you'd end up agreeing with him on the implications of materialism.
VS, you argue that the notion of morality as being about harm is unjustified, but then offer no alternative. I am certainly happy to consider different formulations of morality, but without understanding what you take the scope of the topic to be, it is hard to respond. What I want to avoid is a game of "words can mean whatever I want them to mean, so your definition is subjective". If you have counterexamples, or a different conception that we can examine, I think that would forward the discussion.
#46 VS,
I agree with a number of your arguments but I have to wonder about the following:
"This is actually crucially important, because on my blog I have advanced a number of arguments for why empathy is actually a really bad way to do morality, not the least of which being that since it works best with people we understand better it leads to in and out group thinking."
Like JR, you appear to have an abstract conception of empathy, when in fact empathy is an experience-- we feel empathy, we don't 'understand' it. Also, you seem to believe that its scope is somehow fixed or constrained, when clearly the process of human maturation belies that; as we grow up the range of individuals with whom we empathize increases.
Of course, I don't really know what you mean by 'doing' morality as in "a really bad way to do morality".
Tulse,
First, if your view is unjustified, I shouldn't have to present an alternative to point that out.
Second, in general the harm views result in some form of Utilitarianism, which is a hedonic philosophy basing harm on pleasure and pain calculations. Both Kantian -- duty, and the categorical imperative -- and Stoic -- pain and pleasure are moral indifferents -- reject that idea. This idea also leads to conflicts with our moral intuitions, so if it values life insisting that you ought to sacrifice 1, 10, 100, 1000 or even more to save a million, even though we tend to balk at that. So basing things on harm is controversial, at the very least.
I could go into more detail, but I'll just say here that these discussions are what moral philosophy is all about ... and it has been doing it for thousands of years.
What I wanted to avoid was arguments regarding the arbitrariness of any definition, which could be applied to any concept. But your examples give me a much better sense of the ground of discussion.
I certainly agree that purely utilitarian approaches to morality are not successful. The difficulty is that problems of similar magnitude arise for deontological, virtue ethic, and other approaches as well. Under all ethical systems, one can construct cases where there will be conflicts with our intuitions.
But I would argue that, at base, any moral system has to involve notions of harm and well-being (however quantified, and however qualified) in order to capture our deepest intuitions about what we mean by the term "moral". That's not necessarily all it has to capture, but that has to be the core, or else we're really not talking about "morality", but about some other system of regulating human behaviour (such as law, or custom, or etiquette).
I suppose it might be most fruitful for mutual understanding if you could put forward what you think the job of a moral system is. How do we know that something that regulates human behaviour is a moral system?
@#40 Alex SL, is it really necessary to swear on a public blog? Have some respect please.
@51 WTF - now the prigs are out in force.
Tulse,
That's what I think the job of moral philosophy is, because that's a pretty complicated question, yet as you say it's fundamental to understanding morality properly. I don't think that it's hedonic well-being, though, because we certainly don't think that if someone wouldn't get their ideal hedonic life if they acted morally that that would justify them acting immorally or, in fact, saying that things that harmed others -- using your definition -- would in that case be moral because morality must allow them to achieve their maximum hedonic well-being. And we don't think that morally should force someone to live an utterly miserable life, either; a good morality doesn't seem to do that. At which point, looking at harm or well-being in the hedonic sense doesn't seem to relate to morality, and in fact restricting that seems to be rather the point of morality.
I am rather suspicious of positions that end up justifying our wants. We should conform our wants to morality, not morality to wants.
VS #53
"We should conform our wants to morality, not morality to wants."
Umm....why? Other than that's what you want?
zebra,
Because satisfying your wants is what pragmatics and practical reasoning is for. If moral reasoning is all about that as well, then moral reasoning is pointless and you might as well just talk about practical reasoning without adding on the extra oomph from making it a moral claim.
VS #55
So, moral reasoning is just pragmatic reasoning about satisfying your wants, except that it has "oomph"?
Or is it something else, and if so, what?
VS @46:
If we agree that it's subjective and we don't try and get an objective morality from subjective experiences, then what makes it especially hard for materialists to 'do' moral philosophizing and reasoning? Can materialists make subjective valuations of beauty? Yes. Art? Yes. Music? Yes. Baked goods? Yes. Figure skating performance? Yes. Behavioral praiseworthiness? Oh no, according to Arrington, that's impossible for materialists to do! Huh? How can that one subjective form of evaluation be so impossible for materialists to do, when none of the other ones are (and when, in fact, there are numerous counter-examples of materialists actually doing such subjective moral evaluations. JR's example being one - whether you think his statements are superficial or deep, consistent or flawed, he seems to me to be doing exactly what Arrington would say its impossible for materialists to do.
Zebra @43:
You keep using the word 'arbitrary' like you mean 'subjective.' Define it for me, because you clearly aren't using it in the dictionary sense. And I haven't ignored your claim, you can find my response to it in @12 and @17. In contrast, your response to those arguments has been just to reiterate the bald assertion "they're arbitrary!" with no attempt at explanation or counterpoint.
I do understand that. Do you understand that context dependent /= arbitrary?
If there were an objective morality, what would be its source? I don't see oughts as objective, but perhaps one of the non-materialists can clue me in.
I'm a bit confused here, as I don't think that anyone is arguing that acting morally will guarantee maximal utility for the actor, or that such possibility would justify immoral behaviour.
But we also presumably don't think that any action is justified to avoid an utterly miserable life. Specifically, I doubt if most people believe that someone who is impoverished would be justified in committing genocide to better their own life. However, I think our intuitions are that actions that didn't hurt other people would be fine.
I guess I'm just really stumped as to what morality could involve if not harm of others. Again, that's not to say that is necessarily the only criterion, but surely it is a necessary one. If you have an argument against that position, I'd be very interested in seeing it.
#58
Please read through carefully; this is as clear as I can make it.
1) If you begin with a false premise, but make a logically valid argument, your conclusion will be false.
If you begin with an arbitrary premise, like "the bible tells us what is moral", it doesn't matter how many clever Jesuits develop RCC doctrine, in the meta-context (not within the RCC), the doctrine developed is arbitrary. You appear to disagree with this, and consider it a 'counterargument' for some reason.
2) The reason that "the bible tells us what is moral" is arbitrary is not because it is subjective (e.g. the bible v Kant), but because you can't give a definition of "moral" which allows me to differentiate between "moral" and any other nonsense word like glarb.
I already pointed out that your example of "crime" contradicts your position. If something is a crime (on the list "crimes" for your municipality) I know something about it other than that it is on the list-- e.g. I may have to go to jail or pay a fine if I do that behavior.
What do I know about things that are on the list "immoral" other than that they are on the list? If you can't answer that, just say so instead of bobbing and weaving endlessly. You can't just say "they're evil" or "they're wrong" and so on. Tell me something I don't know.
Tulse
"I’m a bit confused here, as I don’t think that anyone is arguing that acting morally will guarantee maximal utility for the actor,"
Then why would the actor act that way? Any act is chosen based on perceived utility, unless it is the result of psychosis.
Arrington is the guy who postulated that the speed of light was higher in the past, isn't he? So he claims to do physics.
"he does not understand what the words “good” and “evil” mean"
Oh, he does. He's writing about absolute morals, not even objective morals like atheist philosopher Daniel Fincke defends. And in that Dawkins quote Dawkins is talking about the same thing. Indeed materialists reject absolute morals. What materialists call morals Arrington relabels as personal preferences. Well, that's OK with me - a new label doesn't change the content.
It's just not a problem at all. See, Homo Sapiens remarkably agrees on personal preferences. Almost everyone agrees that being happy is preferable to being unhappy. Even many dualists do, including believers. So that's a pretty good starting point to develop morals. That has been done since at least Jeremy Bentham of course.
So shrug.
Oops - forgot to add: Arrington doesn't (want to) recognize that the meaning of the word morals is ambiguous. That's unforgiveable for someone who claims to do physics. I am not going to make an account for Uncommon Descent, thank you, but in the unlikely case Arrington reads this: if we accept that morals are not absolute, but do change (and human history provides evidence for this) and humans based on personal preference that being happy is to be preferred to being unhappy then personal preference enlarged to the level of mankind (or larger, to include several animal species) can ground talking about good and evil - ie about morals. This is done in about the same as the individual characteristics of gas molecules contribute to the characteristics of the gas. The analogy is far from perfect, I know, but the differences can be accounted for.
The great fun is of course that Arrington's favourite Holy Book shows how his imaginary sky daddy doesn't hold absolute morals either. Thou shall not kill, unless god whispers in your ear to commit genocide on Canaanites and their likes.
Tulse,
The argument is essentially this: you say that it is critical to the concept of morality that it be about well-being. I counter with the two-fold counter-argument of:
1) Well, it's not about MY PERSONAL well-being, because we all expect people to sacrifice their personal well-being to do the right thing.
2) But it doesn't seem to be about global well-being either, because one of the main criticisms of Utilitarianism is that it might force me to always sacrifice my own personal well-being for others, leaving me with a miserable life, and no one thinks that acting properly morally should make you miserable. Even the Stoics, who reject hedonic well-being, say that if you are miserable acting morally it's because you value the wrong things, and so you have to change to value the right things.
So morality doesn't seem to be about maximizing hedonic well-being. Rather, it seems to be about regulating hedonic well-being, and ensuring that no one achieves their hedonic well-being or that of others invalidly. Since it therefore conflicts with hedonic well-being, it can't be based on it.
VS, I think you're reading far more into my claims than was there. The point of the discussion, I thought, was to just establish what the domain of concern was for morality, and not to provide a specific moral theory. (If you recall, the issue was some claims that morality is an arbitrary concept for materialist -- what I was trying to establish is that it can't mean simply anything, but clearly refers to a particular type of human interaction.) My comments were not intended to provide a defence of utilitarianism, but to just argue that morality necessarily involves, in some manner, behaviours that impact the well-being of others.
As I said, it is certainly possible that moral concerns may involve a variety of criteria -- my point was only that harm to others must be one of those criterion, or one isn't talking about morality, but about some other system of regulating human behaviour. I don't believe that your argument regarding stoicism undercuts that, since clearly even it is focussed on, as you say, "regulating hedonic well-being".
#66 eric
You obviously started answering 1 without reading 2. But anyway, your answer to 2 is just silly.
If by "face social opprobrium" you mean that most people would disapprove of behavior X, then we are talking about an empirical question, not a philosophical one. There is no point to all this blather; we simply have to do a statistically valid survey.
As others have pointed out, the result may change over time, but still, we can create a list with the label "immoral", because you have defined "immoral" as "behavior that most people disapprove". For example, farting in the elevator would very likely be considered "immoral" by your test.
However, if you do want to engage in philosophical discourse rather than social science, I'm still waiting for you to define "immoral" in a non-arbitrary way.
Eric,
With respect to the point (1), I think you should just read what Richard Wein says in the more recent thread #33; quoting part:
"In fact I don’t accept that they are “expressing different opinions about the proper basis of morality”. The following two statements seem to be of the same sort; one is just more general than the other:
C: “The morally right thing to do is try to maximise total well-being.”
D: “The morally right thing to do is give money to charity.”
It seems to me that you are determined to take the most general moral statements (such as C) as being a completely different type of statement than less general ones (such as D). I say that all of them are “moral claims”, i.e. assertions of substantive moral facts. I’m not saying that there actually are any such facts. I say that such statements cannot be true, and therefore there are no such facts. What I’m objecting to is the false distinctions I see you making between the most general moral claims and less general ones."
Richard is obviously a professional and uses a rigorous style; I try to say pretty much the same thing in fewer words. Not always with perfect success, of course. The premise is still a moral claim.
Tulse,
My replies weren't meant to argue for or against Utilitarianism, but to point out that one of the reasons we say that Utilitarianism -- which definitely encompasses hedonic well-being -- is criticized for not properly capturing morality is because it can by definition lead to that condition. Essentially, I'm arguing that morality being about hedonic well-being is controversial, at least, because of those two conditions where we insist that either the individual or the group sacrifice their overall hedonic well-being simply because it is right to do so. If that's the case, then being right is not a matter of maximizing hedonic well-being -- which means that it isn't about or necessarily only limited to those actions that can cause harm.
I already argued that the relation between morality and harm is coincidental, for the same reasons: good moralities will have the effect of reducing harm, but if being right means harming people then you harm them, or else you aren't doing right, whether or not that ever can happen in practice.
Thus, the onus is on you to explain exactly what you mean and how you mean it when you talk about how morality necessarily involves those calculations, as something stronger than just "They align almost if not all of the time".
Again, VS, you appear to me to be conflating "concern about well-being as a necessary criterion" with some form of utilitarianism. It's not necessarily the case that a moral system has to maximize in some crude sense hedonic well-being, just that any moral system has to include consideration of hedonic well-being, or it's not a moral system, but something else.
But if "being right" involves reducing everyone's well-being to nothing, then surely your morality is "incorrect" in some real sense.
Tulse,
That's a very slim basis to advance the claim you started with though, as I pointed out with the idea that most of us think that if acting morally necessitates you being absolutely miserable then there's something wrong with that moral code. That being said, I DO think that the only moral choice in a situation might well be one that reduces everyone's hedonic well-being to the minimum ... and since the Stoics considered all of those traits to be indifferents, and since Kant insists that those concerns are not relevant to the morality of an action, it seems that those moral systems could indeed have that as a consequence, but it would be rather odd to suggest that they aren't moral systems but are "something else" just on the basis that they could completely disregard hedonic well-being under the right conditions.
Note that there's a reason I keep talking about hedonic well-being, because the Stoics talk about eudaimonia which can map to well-being. It's just a radically different one than one that can map to the normal notions of "harm".
And again, VS, I don't see how saying that morality must consider well-being is at all equivalent to saying it must only consider well-being. My argument to this point really hasn't been to defend a crude caricature of utilitarianism.
So species suicide could be a morally required action?
Tulse,
I just answered your specific question there about how you claim to relate harm/well-being to morality:
To which my answer is that if that's all you mean by relating to well-being, then I already talked about that and at least partially granted it.
Yes. This can hold even if you think of it in terms of harm, though, as Utilitarian views might say, but for Kant and the Stoics this might possibly hold even if there are no other sentient or sapient or whatever entities to consider.
I'd take that as a reductio ad absurdum for any moral framework that proposed it.
Surely the notion that all humanity should be morally required to destroy itself is far more objectionable and against intuition by practically any measure than the notion that a single individual has to reduce their own well-being to be moral, a notion which you argued was effectively a reductio for utilitarianism. (And again, to be clear, I was not advocating that specific position.)
i have learned more that i expected this is realy a good job,keep up the good work now my mind is ready
Zebra:
No, I meant it as a direct parallel to your crime example. You say 'crime' is not arbitrary or meaningless because "I know something about it other than that it is on the list– e.g. I may have to go to jail or pay a fine if I do that behavior." But the same is true for "evil." You know that you may have to face concrete, observable, social and economic consequences if you do that behavior. The same is true for good: you may get an observable reward for it, from the gold star a kid might get for sharing all the way up to an employment preference for being an honorably discharged veteran.
And I'm still waiting for you to tell me how your use of "arbitrary" differs from "subjective." The difference is, I've been polite and tried to answer you several times and you haven't tried to answer me once. So on this point, the ball's in your court. You'll get another definition of morality after you explain to me what you see as the difference between arbitrary and subjective.
Richard is arguing against moral realism. He says that explicitly. That does not appear to be all that you are doing: you are arguing that moral claims don't refer to objective properties of acts (i.e. against moral realism) and that all moral claims are arbitrary and that all moral claims are meaningless. See the difference? Or do you think all three terms - subjective, arbitrary, meaningless - are synonyms of each other?
If we agree that it’s subjective and we don’t try and get an objective morality from subjective experiences, then what makes it especially hard for materialists to ‘do’ moral philosophizing and reasoning? Can materialists make subjective valuations of beauty? Yes. Art? Yes. Music? Yes. Baked goods? Yes. Figure skating performance? Yes. Behavioral praiseworthiness? Oh no, according to Arrington, that’s impossible for materialists to do! Huh? How can that one subjective form of evaluation be so impossible for materialists to do, when none of the other ones are (and when, in fact, there are numerous counter-examples of materialists actually doing such subjective moral evaluations. JR’s example being one – whether you think his statements are superficial or deep, consistent or flawed, he seems to me to be doing exactly what Arrington would say its impossible for materialists to do.
, I think you’re reading far more into my claims than was there. The point of the discussion, I thought, was to just establish what the domain of concern was for morality, and not to provide a specific moral theory. (If you recall, the issue was some claims that morality is an arbitrary concept for materialist — what I was trying to establish is that it can’t mean simply anything, but clearly refers to a particular type of human interaction.) My comments were not intended to provide a defence of utilitarianism, but to just argue that morality necessarily involves, in some manner, behaviours that impact the well-being of others.
As I said, it is certainly possible that moral concerns may involve a variety of criteria — my point was only that harm to others must be one of those criterion, or one isn’t talking about morality, but about some other system of regulating human behaviour. I don’t believe that your argument regarding stoicism undercuts that, since clearly even it is focussed on, as you say, “regulating hedonic well-being”.
Eric,
This seems trivially obvious to me but I will explain it one more time, but then you will have to address specifically what you don't understand.
"Subjective" means different people have different opinions about something.
If everyone in the world agreed that e.g. "the greatest good for the greatest number" is "moral", and then developed a code of conduct based on that, that would be
Not
Subjective.
Get it?
But if all the world did indeed agree "X is moral", and created a code of conduct based on that, I would still say that this is arbitrary, and I would still ask the same question-- what do I know about X that I didn't know before that label was applied?
Your only answer is that "people would disapprove if I violated the code of conduct". But, as I said, I can discover that purely by observation; no philosophy involved. Like farting in the elevator.
zebra,
No. Subjective means that there is no truth of the matter beyond what those opinions are. If two different people have different opinions on whether the world is round, that would not make the proposition "The world is round" subjective. It would mean that one of them, at least, is wrong about whether the world is round or not.
VS, you're making a silly error (which doesn't mean you're wrong though). Zebra is obvioiusly not talking about opinions about statements that can be empirically tested. You have to think of something better.
VS,
That's just your opinion.
Zebra:
Ok, what I specifically don't understand is how your definition or use of the word 'subjective' (above; thank you) differs from your definition or use of the word 'arbitrary' (never given; you are completely unresponsive on this point).
eric,
I just explained it yet again. "Moral" is an arbitrary label; it conveys *no* information. Did you even read my last two paragraphs? What don't you get about that?
Subjective means *different* information. See the difference?
Are you saying arbitrary = conveys no information? If so, (a) that's a pretty strange definition of the word and (b) you're wrong. If I ask you "please tell me the moral of the story 'the turtle and the hare,'" then I bet not only will you know that I'm asking for information, you'll know exactly what information I'm asking for.
tell you a story has a moral, that conveys information too, about my assessment of the story. I bet you're even smart enough to tell me what information.
Act, editing error. Please ignore the last two lines.
#86
"The ...moral... of the story."
Teehee, see, the word is just like when zebra said "moral" but not the same. Ha ha how clever.
That's your contribution to philosophy?
Are you saying arbitrary = conveys no information? If so, (a) that’s still a pretty strange definition of the word and (b) you’re still wrong.
If I say "I think taking the lord's name in vain is immoral" that certainly conveys to you information about my opinion about saying 'Jesus Christ on a pogo stick', does it not? Before I say that, you might not know if I will laugh or frown in response to someone saying that. You wouldn't know if my kid says it whether I'll ignore it, laugh at it, or discipline him for it (note the last is analogous to your crime example: it would mean something to him because he would know he would be punished for it). After I say it, you have information on my likely response. So, you're still wrong; morality is not arbitrary (by which you seem to mean 'conveys no information').'
Tulse,
I'm objecting to what I think is your attempt to say that morality is critically about hedonic well-being by definition, that any moral code that does not include it as a definitional principle -- perhaps one among many -- is not merely a BAD moral philosophy, but one that doesn't even count as a moral philosophy. My points were aimed at showing that since we can claim that morality is often about sacrificing hedonic well-being, then it isn't true of the concept of morality that it be about that. Moralities CAN use it as a key component, and it may be the cases that a good morality WILL include it explicitly, but that's not just what it MEANS to be moral. Ultimately, the arguments I raised are, in fact, aimed at proving the views bad as opposed to proving them to be not moralities at all. But since we can, indeed, raise them as proofs that the morality is bad without it being the case that we are challenging the very concept of morality itself suggests that hedonic well-being is not, in fact, a conceptual property of morality. Add in things that are clearly moral philosophies that explicitly reject that, and we have good reason to think that the concept of morality is not crucially about hedonic well-being.
So, you may say that the Stoic view is not a good moral philosophy because it is possible that all humans would have to give up their lives for morality. You can't, however, say that that means that it isn't a morality at all. I apply the same thing to Utilitarianism in light of the objection I raised: I say that this means that it isn't a good moral philosophy or isn't the right one, but it still counts as a moral philosophy.