False Consciousness, Psychological Freedom, and Pluralism
Some thoughts relevant to general issues about kids raised on isolated compounds by religious fanatics…
There’s nothing wrong with false consciousness explanations, as long as they are actually explanatory. You’ve just got to specify actual mechanisms. Political freedom loses much of its point in the absence of psychological freedom. Rationality and the capacity for moral agency develop. That’s why we do not think children have the same rights and responsibilities as adults: they haven’t developed the requisite capacities. But this development can be retarded, creating adults with little more than a child’s capacities, reinforcing childlike dependency. If you don’t worry about this, then I wonder in what sense you care about human freedom.
It is tyrannical for parents to attempt to reproduce their ideologies and prejudices in their children, especially when this requires social isolation and emotional coercion. Liberals who worry about religious home schooling are not wrong to worry. I defend home schooling not because parents have a moral right to indoctrinate their children. Indeed, parents have a moral obligation not to. They just have a political right to not be stopped, within bounds. Many parents, though they intend the opposite, are in fact guilty of wrongful disregard for the development of their children’s psychological freedom. They deserve condemnation and ostracism, not interference from the state. I defend their political right to potentially behave immorally — to harm their children’s capacity for the full exercise of their rightful freedom — in part because I appreciate how accommodating pluralism reduces social conflict. But, perhaps more importantly, because I think that full-fledged competitive diversity in education will help erode superstitious thick identities, that it will help fosters a sense of contingency in inherited identities that make it easier to slough them off, or at least easier to wear lightly. But, even then, the scope of liberal pluralism has its limits, and it is neither right nor desirable to avoid the conflict inherent in debating and enforcing those limits.
April 29th, 2008 12:58
The problem Karl Popper (coincidentally the inspiration for Taking Children Seriously) had with Marxist “false consciousness” was not that it didn’t explain anything, but that it explained TOO MUCH. False consciousness was not falsifiable. How do you respond to the Marxist who claims you have false consciousness?
But this development can be retarded, creating adults with little more than a child’s capacities, reinforcing childlike dependency
That reminds me a bit of this. I don’t claim that the teens Robert Epstein discusses have “false consciousness” though.
If you don’t worry about this, then I wonder in what sense you care about human freedom
Have you read Liberalism’s Divide? I take others as they are and want them to have the freedom to live their lives as they see fit, not judge how they come to believe a certain way of life is proper.
It is tyrannical for parents to attempt to reproduce their ideologies and prejudices in their children
So is it tyrannical for parents to tell their kids that murder is bad or that they shouldn’t hit their siblings? Or that they should not take rides from strangers? Those can all be considered aspects of ideology/prejudice. I don’t what parent would be innocent, other than an absentee one.
especially when this requires social isolation
All of us are isolated to some extent, and most of us had parents that were concerned we didn’t “hang out with the wrong crowd” or go to “bad schools”, which is really code for bad peers. Most of us were also prohibited from viewing certain materials before we reached certain ages.
and emotional coercion.
I’m unsure what that is. Is it different from regular coercion?
psychological freedom
Again, I’m not sure how you can prevent others from claiming you lack it.
April 29th, 2008 13:10
TGGP, Popper was wrong. Marxist theories of false consciousness are falsifiable. And they are false. It is possible to find out how the mind works and to develop intelligible conceptions of normative cognitive functioning.
I think you’re being a bit obtuse in your selective moral skepticism. You seem to endorse some normative conception of freedom but then pretend you don’t even know what other conceptions might even mean. It’s just not interesting or useful.
April 29th, 2008 14:24
It is possible to find out how the mind works and to develop intelligible conceptions of normative cognitive functioning.
Normative cognitive functioning? As in the way ones mind ought to work? Forgive me if I believe this oversteps bounds. I myself wouldn’t like someone telling me that some of my particular habits - including the one that afflicts most Americans, too much TV time - run afoul of proper normative cognitive functioning.
Like TGGP, I take people at their word, and don’t second guess what they claim to value and celebrate in their particular lifeworld, as Habermas might say.
I think being a Santa Cruz hippie burnout is stupid, but hey, it ain’t my thing, and my capacity for empathy can at least produce some reasons in favor of it. And if he tells me he was homeschooled by former Dead Heads and their friends? Hm, that’s kinda cool.
We all have extremely parochial and circumscribed experiences and points of view. Truth and widely shared subjective views of the good life result from interaction among discrete individuals, some more cosmopolitan than others. They certainly aren’t something known in their entirety at any given time by a certain group of people who staff the state. And they are certainly never settled.
Someone in a tight knit family who values tradition for its own sake and the older values of solidarity and ‘natural’ living could very well have something unique to offer the urban yuppie, but not if they aren’t allowed to play out that particular lifestyle to begin with. Especially when they’ve already declared they want to.
I’m curious as to how Marx’s theory of false consciousness can be debunked while the claim of false consciousness on the part of Mormon kids (or my parents’ kids!) cannot be. As Jeffrey Friedman would say, somebody is always mediating between a claim and the point of its reception. Whether it be advertisers appealing to a ‘need’ for a product or a Mormon parent doing the same for a sisterhood of house wives.
Lastly, as a side note, Joan Iverson wrote a paper called Feminist Implications of Mormon Polygny. She notes that Mormon women were some of the nineteenth century’s most vocal feminists! I’d never seen these women referred to as feminists, but their status as an official pariah and fiery defender of and unpopular group, comibined with their efforts to keep their territory independent of broader US control, turned the heads of eastern feminists who were rather baffled by these women. Good god, what does it even mean to be “progressive” and “feminist” in the face of this? (The current struggle between first world feminism and third world Muslim women is fascinating, and somewhat parallels this.)
April 29th, 2008 14:36
“Normative cognitive functioning? As in the way ones mind ought to work? Forgive me if I believe this oversteps bounds. I myself wouldn’t like someone telling me that some of my particular habits - including the one that afflicts most Americans, too much TV time - run afoul of proper normative cognitive functioning.”
So you don’t think that kids ought to be able to read by a certain age?
April 29th, 2008 14:43
Ok, I worded that badly. Ought should be distinguished from “you must“.
Yes, I think kids ought to be able to read by, well, fairly soon in their lives. That’s my preference. I can’t accurately pinpoint a specific age for every child, everywhere, no more so than the Dept. of Education.
If a parent decided to take their young child on a grand tour of the nomadic cultures of the world, not learning to read English until well after age 7, that’s rather neat, me thinks.
April 29th, 2008 14:46
I think that’s neat, too, as long as they can read some language.
April 29th, 2008 15:36
Marxist theories of false consciousness are falsifiable. And they are false.
Could you elaborate on that?
selective moral skepticism
It’s not selective, I do not even believe that someone else torturing and murdering me along with everyone I know is objectively bad. I simply would not like it.
You seem to endorse some normative conception of freedom
There are certain things I want for myself, which include being free from coercion from others. To that end I seek a framework of interacting with others (which may include communities) discouraging aggression. What goes on within those communities party to the framework is not really of my concern. However, I do not elevate my concerns to the status of objective “oughts”. To get some idea of where I’m coming from, you can check out the Against Politics “about” page, though I had no hand in creating it and merely host it. Another page from that site that might be relevant is Keith Preston’s “Our Struggle is Neither Moral nor Intellectual but Physical“.
pretend you don’t even know what other conceptions might even mean
I recognize that you have preferences for the way children of FLDS members should be raised, just as their parents have completely differing ones. I don’t see any objective way of resolving the two. If someone wants to advocate that social relations be “egalitarian”, “godly” or whatnot I’m willing to use those terms even if I do not share their advocacy of the concepts. However, I do not see how “brainwashed”, “informed consent”, “legitimate choice”, “moral development” and so on have any meaning. They seem like attempts to smuggle in a normative so that things are acceptable if they are “what I approve of”. They are not invariant with regard to the speaker and so I do not see them as useful.
Normative cognitive functioning? As in the way ones mind ought to work?
I wouldn’t be much of an emotivist if I accepted such a thing was objectively possible.
If a parent decided to take their young child on a grand tour of the nomadic cultures of the world, not learning to read English until well after age 7, that’s rather neat, me thinks.
I’ll go further and say it is alright for hunter-gatherers to raise their children never learning how to read. Was everyone from pre-history an awful parent? I would guess they’d be shocked at the way we raise our children give the same accusation in return.
I think a complicating factor is that the majority/authorities have values closer to Will than the FLDS. Imagine instead it is the reverse and they are instead using the same sorts of arguments to deny your agency and prohibit your way of life. Because in fact the majority/authorities do not have identical values as you and there may well come a time when you are in such a situation.
April 29th, 2008 15:49
selective moral skepticism…
It’s not selective, I do not even believe that someone else torturing and murdering me along with everyone I know is objectively bad. I simply would not like it.
Well, I’m gonna have to part ways with you here. At the point of coercion - of physical apprehension - I believe I can “go out on a limb” and say this is objectively bad. Normatively bad. Force is not a viable generalizable maxim. It’s zero sum and eliminative.
I’m no Stirnerite.
April 29th, 2008 15:55
Woops, there I go again. An ethos of might makes right could be a generalizable maxim. But it’d be still be zero sum and eliminative, and someone making the case for it is assuming their own exemption from this ethos the minute they indignantly try to save their own ass from coercion-because-I-can.
April 29th, 2008 16:04
[...] around competent agency, brainwashing and “false consciousness”. Now Will has made a post dedicated to those issues. Join the [...]
April 29th, 2008 16:07
TGGP, There are facts of the matter about what leads to longevity, happiness, pleasure, wealth, the realization of certain human potentials, etc. And it is a fact that, other things equal, more life is better than less, less pain is better than more, more happiness is better than less, wealth is better than poverty, etc. etc. Certain systems of institutions and norms facilitate the realization of these aims better than others, and we ought to have a system that makes people better off rather than worse off in all these ways. There is of course no way to prevent you from disagreeing with all this, just as there is no way from preventing people from being criminals, parasites, or sadists, if they are really determined.
If the way you want to put it is that decent people “prefer” that men not rape their nieces, but you think nothing of it, then you can put it that way, but it puzzles me why you would want to.
April 29th, 2008 17:24
TGGP,
You realize that moral skepticism is a self-refuting position if you take it is as a moral commandment? You can consistently say that people are mistaken if they think moral statements have truth values, but you can’t (consistently) be indignant that they do so. But that’s just the position you are taking. You clearly think coercion against the FLDS is wrong. Will’s emotional reaction is different. Where does it get you?
April 29th, 2008 17:43
Dain, you haven’t established that things that aren’t generalizable, non-zero-sum and/or non-eliminative are objectively bad. Speaking of Stiner though, have you read his book? I’ve put it all in one place here.
happiness, pleasure,
Those aren’t directly observable. The positivist in me agrees with Kling over Caplan on the value of happiness research.
And it is a fact that, other things equal, more life is better than less [and so on]
Oh, is it now? How did you discover that fact? Those are all normatives, and it would be quite a big deal if you had managed to bridge the is-ought divide.
If the way you want to put it is that decent people “prefer” that men not rape their nieces, but you think nothing of it, then you can put it that way, but it puzzles me why you would want to.
Because someone else could claim that decent people believe the opposite, and I would no more be able to force them to change their mind than you are able to change mine. All we are left with are subjective preferences, so that is why I will call them.
You realize that moral skepticism is a self-refuting position if you take it is as a moral commandment
I don’t take it as a moral commandment. If someone wanted to mug me I would have no problem shooting him without quibbling over whether it is objectively wrong of him to do so.
but you can’t (consistently) be indignant that they do so
I can be indignant at people’s preferences when it comes to pop culture, but I don’t think there is any sense in which my tastes are objectively more correct.
But that’s just the position you are taking. You clearly think coercion against the FLDS is wrong
Not in any objective sense.
April 29th, 2008 18:31
So why are you trying to argue about coercion of the FLDS? You don’t try to argue me out of my preferences in ice cream.
April 29th, 2008 20:21
TGGP,
I’m not sure I understand your first point. I tried to show that a non-zero sum and non-eliminative ethos was good, not bad.
In any case, I see that you value conversation by engaging in it. This cannot occur unless we at least implicitly agree to keep our hands to ourselves and abide by the NAP. If I violate it and interrupt your ability to conversate by gagging you, you might very well think “so be it, he got the upper hand”. You believe this not to be immoral, but just an unfortunate preference?
I’m willing to accept an evolutionary, game theoretic reason for more or less libertarian rules of interaction, but as far as I’m concerned an objectively derived ethics is part of this process. So, we give our kids the line about how it’s just wrong to hurt somebody for no reason, but also about how we wouldn’t want somebody to do the same to us. It’s two sides of the same coin.
April 29th, 2008 21:49
Until recently, as far as I can tell, the age at which people were allowed to marry in Texas was 14.
I don’t recall any postings by you arguing that this law should be changed. In fact, I don’t believe I’ve read one word on what you consider to be the proper lowest age for legal marriage.
So please, if you would be so kind, at what age should marriage be prohibited? And further, please provide evidence that anyone married below that age loses out on developing their freedom enabling capacities.
April 29th, 2008 22:22
I can buy that there aren’t any fundamental ethical principles that are entirely intrinsic to reality- CERN isn’t likely to discover, Ten Commandments-style, some fundamental ethical principles engraved into every proton.
At the same time, the objection to broad moral generalizations about humans seems like pointless sophistry to me. We have generally similar preferences and drives as a result of generally similar DNA and neural equipment. There’s a fair amount of plasticity built into our little gray-cells, but not enough generate the kind of unique preference-sets that would legitimize torture, captivity, and child-rape. Fire is hot, rejection hurts, and everyone dances when they think no one is looking.
Refraining from normative moral observation might make sense if we had to create ethical codes of conduct for dealing with space aliens (phasers to maximum, I say!). But we aren’t dealing with aliens, we’re talking about people. H. Sapiens, so we CAN generalize certain preferences and go about making normative moral claims based off of those preferences. Those ethics might not apply to Martians, but unless the FLDS is hiding more than just child-rape, we can forget about that.
Since we all have the same cognitive equipment, I can say that child-abuse is “bad” in the same way that I could say drinking paint thinner is “bad”. It’s silly for me say “well, when I was a kid, I had a strong preference for not having Dad burn me with cigarettes, but maybe those FLDS kids think it’s neat.”
It’s especially silly to use the professed consent of the child as an excuse when we already know that our preferences, and the cognitive equipment that actualizes them, can be just as subject to damage as any other organ.
April 29th, 2008 22:35
K.Larson, Excellent, as was your comment in the last previous thread. Thanks!
April 29th, 2008 22:38
Rue, Don’t have time for research right now. In terms of cognitive and emotional maturity, and given the nature of the choice, I suspect the marriage age ought to be around 35.
April 30th, 2008 01:44
You don’t try to argue me out of my preferences in ice cream.
That shows how little you know me! Have you ever seen people argue over the merits of a film? This is analogous.
This cannot occur unless we at least implicitly agree to keep our hands to ourselves and abide by the NAP.
That sounds like Hoppe’s argument, which is wrong. A master can easily argue with his slave and most people throughout history have not been fully free.
You believe this not to be immoral, but just an unfortunate preference?
I view it as unfortunate because it is my preference not to be coerced.
At the same time, the objection to broad moral generalizations about humans seems like pointless sophistry to me
The point is keeping our is and ought separate. It is quite hard to converse with people who don’t understand the distinction.
Fire is hot, rejection hurts, and everyone dances when they think no one is looking
There are children with a mutation that prevents them from feeling the effects of fire, there are somewhat sociopathic pick-up artists that shrug off rejection and I don’t dance. Ever. Perhaps silly objections, but you should really watch out when using terms like “everyone”. My guess is that most of us would be excluded from the definition of human given enough “everyone” generalizations that seemed reasonable to most other people.
but not enough generate the kind of unique preference-sets that would legitimize torture, captivity, and child-rape
All that is necessary is that at least one person has a preference for those things, and by revealed preference we see that is in fact the case. If we accepted utilitarianism, you would not be able to prove there was no utility monster whose enjoyment of sadism outweighed the harm it inflicted on others. If you argued that any negative utility at all is prohibited, that would mean I could stop you from doing anything I chose by claiming it causes me negative utility. The commenter “Person” at the Mises blog makes a similar point about intellectual property and scarcity in a number of threads like this and this. Jealousy seems a deep-rooted emotion, but libertarians (who I’m guessing comprise a substantial portion of commenters here) tend to dismiss it when arguing that inequality ITSELF (not poverty) is bad.
H. Sapiens, so we CAN generalize certain preferences and go about making normative moral claims based off of those preferences.
So because pain is so universally disliked, if me and my girlfriend like to engage in some S/M we are simply objectively wrong?
Since we all have the same cognitive equipment, I can say that child-abuse is “bad” in the same way that I could say drinking paint thinner is “bad”
Bad analogy. I am guessing that if you were more strict about separating normative and positive you wouldn’t make that assumption.
the cognitive equipment that actualizes them, can be just as subject to damage as any other organ.
Right now we’re talking about “emotional coercion”, which I don’t think is analogous to braining someone with a blunt object and does not produce similar physical effects.
I suspect the marriage age ought to be around 35.
I can’t make your head explode, but I can link to the Inductivist.
April 30th, 2008 03:39
I’ll admit to being under-equipped to handle the larger meta-ethical issues, but it seems to me that there isn’t an is-ought problem if we restrict our moral conclusions to similarly equipped humans. We’re not trying to make extrinsic moral propositions, rather, we’re trying to generate an ethical framework in a game-theoretical environment with multiple, largely-identical, agents. “Ought” is consequentially derived from a common “is” within a local contextual environment.
I suppose we can go back and forth about this forever, but if you set the bar from ethical propositions too high, you end up reducing ethical theory to mere numerology- a wonderfully consistent intellectual framework that gets you exactly nothing. Winning the argument then means that best you can hope for is being better armed than I am when I show up at your house to carry you off into slavery. Most people would probably tolerate a second-most-coherent ethical framework if it avoids this kind of situation.
While we’re on the topic of generalizations, it’s incorrect to argue that generalization is impossible because “reasonable-sounding generalizations” can be excessively exclusive. That’s an argument against bad generalizations, not generalization per se- the fact of shared DNA and brain structure allows us to test and reject bad generalizations.Sociopaths don’t disrupt the validity of general moral principles in the same way that amputees don’t invalidate the general utility of stairs. Things like S&M only mean we need to be careful about where and how we make generalizations. Abandoning generalization is only coherent in a world with infinite diversity, which clearly isn’t the case here. I can’t help but think you knew this when you wrote your arguments down, TGGP.
I’d be interested in hearing how raising someone in total isolation to believe that you’re Jesus differs from drugging someone. I’d guess that you’d say the later is physical in that it disrupts brain function while the former is purely psychological. This distinction seems to rest on the bizarre assumption that brain functions that we can’t see on today’s MRIs occur in some magical non-physical realm that is somehow intrinsically less determinate than visible neurological structures. The fundamental difference between psychology and neurology is equivalent to the difference between chemistry and physics: there isn’t one.
Will, thanks for the kind words, I think you’re swell too.
April 30th, 2008 09:08
TGGP
Are you an emotivist or expressivist about all normative matters, such as logic (valid/invalid inferences), epistemology (justified vs. unjustified), etc? If not, why not? What is the status of the is/ought distinction in these areas? Am I simply expressing a preference when I say “Here’s how we do tend to reason, but here’s how we ought to”?
April 30th, 2008 12:00
This example shows one problem with emotivism. Plenty of people say things like, “I find polygamy distasteful. In fact, I have a visceral reaction that makes me hope the feds lock those FLDS dudes up forever. But, as a libertarian/believer in the rule of law/whatever, I believe it would be wrong to act on that visceral reaction.” In other words, we do, in fact, distinguish between our moral feelings and our moral beliefs. I recognize that the line between them is a porous one: if I am emotionally disgusted at something, I am more inclined to believe it is wrong and if I believe it is morally indifferent, I am more inclined to become less disgusted at it. Still, there is no logical contradiction in having moral feelings and moral beliefs that pull in the opposite direction, as there would be if moral beliefs just were moral feelings.
April 30th, 2008 13:45
Will, you should know better. If you’re not prepared to state what the law ought to be, and further, to give reasons for supporting that belief, then all your posts on this topic amount to nothing more than vague gestures. If you’re going to send the guys with guns in, you better state exactly under what conditions you grant that order.
Although I suspected 35 might be your answer, given your back and forth with Bryan on children.
The man in Austria who kept is daughter prisoner in his basement for 20 years is clearly different from the FLDS, given the available evidence. It is a difference in degree not kind and that’s why the question is so difficult.
April 30th, 2008 14:37
similarly
That sounds vague.
We’re not trying to make extrinsic moral propositions, rather, we’re trying to generate an ethical framework in a game-theoretical environment with multiple, largely-identical, agents
Objective “oughts” sound like extrinsic moral propositions. I am interested in creating a framework for multiple agents, but I don’t expect telling people they “ought” to do something will accomplish anything, which is why I want to establish disincentives for defecting.
“Ought” is consequentially derived from a common “is” within a local contextual environment
Explain how you derive an ought from an is.
you end up reducing ethical theory to mere numerology- a wonderfully consistent intellectual framework that gets you exactly nothing
As an non-cognitivist I do not think that by force of will I have “reduced” it to that. Rather, that’s what it was already (although granting consistency may be generous).
Winning the argument then means that best you can hope for is being better armed than I am when I show up at your house to carry you off into slavery. Most people would probably tolerate a second-most-coherent ethical framework if it avoids this kind of situation.
Read L. A. Rollins’ “The Myth of Natural Rights” (I’ve written the preface to the republished edition, coming soon). It always boils down to power. No ethical argument can stop bullets or remove your chains.
That’s an argument against bad generalizations
Which would include every generalization you offered, as I refuted them? I’m open to the argument that realism must be balanced with parsimony. I ask that you hedge your statements with qualifiers other than “everyone”, or if necessary drop all qualifiers to allow the understanding that there are exceptions.
Sociopaths don’t disrupt the validity of general moral principles in the same way that amputees don’t invalidate the general utility of stairs
Stairs actually have utility for the self-mobile: they let you ascend and descend. What do moral principles get you? And if you concede that stairs are not useful for those in wheel-chairs, would you also say that moral principles don’t apply to sociopaths?
Abandoning generalization is only coherent in a world with infinite diversity, which clearly isn’t the case here
Confining ourselves to this finite world (although the entire universe may be infinite), of course diversity is also finite. However, it is nearly always greater than anyone imagines.
I’d be interested in hearing how raising someone in total isolation to believe that you’re Jesus differs from drugging someone
I don’t know of any drug that would cause you to believe I’m Jesus.
I recognize that the brain is a purely material thing and any effects on it must be physical. What I don’t believe in is some ideal brain-state that we can use as a comparison to see who is brainwashed or not. If I claim you are a product of brainwashing, how do you falsify that statement?
Are you an emotivist or expressivist about all normative matters, such as logic
You can create any logical framework you want with its own rules. Coming from a computer science background, I can certainly see them as useful in some respects. However, I think they have very limited usefulness in understanding the actual world.
epistemology (justified vs. unjustified)
I don’t really hold truck with the notions of “justified” or “unjustified”. There are things that are true and things that are false, there is no divine judge that you can argue your defense for believing something to. That seems an aspect of “social rationality“. I think Bayesianism will tend to result in being closer to the truth more often, but you still need a reason to want to be correct.
Here’s how we do tend to reason, but here’s how we ought to
Yes, you cannot even establish that we ought to reason at all. If you are speaking to a group of like-minded people who share the same goals than you have a chance of persuading them that your method is more apt to achieve those goals.
Still, there is no logical contradiction in having moral feelings and moral beliefs that pull in the opposite direction, as there would be if moral beliefs just were moral feelings
There is no reason you can’t have multiple conflicting moral feelings. I may be disgusted by the FLDS, but even more disgusted by the coercion manifested against them.
April 30th, 2008 16:28
There is no reason you can’t have multiple conflicting moral feelings. I may be disgusted by the FLDS, but even more disgusted by the coercion manifested against them.
Yes, but I can also not be disgusted by coercion against FLDS, but think it’s wrong — against my emotional inclinations.
April 30th, 2008 18:35
Explain how you derive an ought from an is.
All ‘oughts’ necessarily derive from ‘is’-es. What else can we derive ‘oughts’ out of but facts and reasoning about facts? Facts and reasoning about our preferences and needs, facts and reasoning about the preferences and needs of others. Facts and reasoning about how conflicting needs should be balanced. Facts and reasoning about what will work best, and what won’t work, to achieve related goals about needs and preferences.
The society that favors the preferences of those who do not want to be raped over those who wish to rape will have greater sum subjective well being. We can argue the premises down to the bone, but what we’re doing to establish our ‘oughts’ here is essentially no different than science. The ‘is’ begets the ‘ought’.
April 30th, 2008 19:03
happiness, pleasure,
Those aren’t directly observable. The positivist in me agrees with Kling over Caplan on the value of happiness research.
Neither is gravity. Reported well being is linked to behavioral, hormonal, psychological and physical effects. This is an obscure use of ‘positivism’. Also Kling is simply wrong.
April 30th, 2008 19:31
Yes, but I can also not be disgusted by coercion against FLDS, but think it’s wrong — against my emotional inclinations
I can think a work of art is displeasing on one level but superb on another, but that doesn’t suffice to demonstrate an objective aesthetics.
What else can we derive ‘oughts’ out of but facts and reasoning about facts
As I don’t believe in objective “oughts”, I don’t think they can be derived at all.
preferences and needs
Disentangling the two sounds tricky. Would “needs” be only what’s necessary for immediate survival?
The society that favors the preferences of those who do not want to be raped over those who wish to rape will have greater sum subjective well being
What kind of units of well-being are we talking about that can be summed? And are you saying the total utility version of utilitarianism is correct and the average utility version is wrong, so embracing the repugnant conclusion?
what we’re doing to establish our ‘oughts’ here is essentially no different than science
I don’t know, ethical philosophers seem to do a lot fewer experiments.
Neither is gravity
Cavendish was able to quantify it with a repeatable experiment. “Well being” in happiness surveys is a subjective response without any real units.
linked to behavioral, hormonal, psychological and physical effects
Do you have a formula that relates them? The average score on Rottem Tomatoes for a movie could be linked to its length, budget, average score for other films made by leading participants and so on, but that wouldn’t demonstrate the existence of objective movie quality.
This is an obscure use of ‘positivism’
I guess its more behaviorism, which is inspired by positivism.
April 30th, 2008 21:20
TGGP,
Our disagreements here appear weakly metaphysical (as you appear to think they are), and primarily empirical. With you assuming the role of the radical skeptic, which is, frankly, never the good side to be on; because the radical skeptic must deny much already researched and offer little back but doubt.
Psychology isn’t physics, but it measures traits linked to physiology and behavior. Well-being, depression, and stress are measured in various units, perhaps just not units you “approve” of. So be it. Go publish your objections in the proper venues. The tests have construct validity which means the scores are replicable and linked to external phenomena of interest. If you want to deny an entire research program I suggest you at least familiarize yourself with it first, so you can, at least, make informed objections.
In addition to the radical skeptic you are donning the hat of the sophist which is both irritating and unenlightening. I certainly did not suggest that art or ethics have independent truth value outside of human existence or outside of their effects on human beings, yet you keep arguing like this is the claim.
It is not the claim.
As the sophist and radical skeptic you deny that human needs/preferences have been or can be measured, reasoned, or negotiated.
They can be, and have been.
And are you saying the total utility version of utilitarianism is correct and the average utility version is wrong, so embracing the repugnant conclusion
There is no need to judge complicated hypothetical alternatives when the judgment here is very simple: both in absolute and average levels the no-rape society is better.
(Unimportantly, I’ve argued elsewhere one good reason why the repugnant conclusion is wrong: nonexistent people don’t even exist to have preferences for existing people to weigh against.)
Would you really like to argue - using reasoning and facts - why society is better off qualitatively and quantitatively prohibiting rape?? Because at this point I see no reason to take your comments seriously or believe they are sincere.
Please note: You aren’t arguing that “morality isn’t objective” like you think you are here. You really aren’t. You are arguing that we can’t make reasoned or informed decisions about our personal behavior or collective politics that increase human well-being.
This isn’t “philosophy” on your part; it’s pseudoscience! You are wrong. You are denying things that can be predicted that we know we can predict.
Even if the possible rape victim can’t prove her preferences are recognized somehow by the unblinking void (and they aren’t, of course), she can easily make a more convincing case either through science or reason, things such as 1) why her loss would be much greater than her rapists gains, 2) why the precedents set by the rapists rules would end up hurting said rapist, and other rapists, more than the gains they would collectively accrue from them (E.g. would a rapist choose to live in a rape tolerant society if it meant he too would get frequently raped?), 3) The society that makes these rules would gain far more collectively from prohibiting rape than allowing it.
Note, even if the rapist denies her logic/evidence through simple contradiction or weaker/fallacious argument, he is still wrong for the same reason a claim that 1 + 1 = 5 is wrong. The rapist himself would correctly be worse off from his own preferences.
So, yes, ‘oughts’ do come from ‘is’-es. And oughts are objective in the sense that humans factually have needs/preferences and there are factual ways to better and more thoroughly meet these needs/preferences.
April 30th, 2008 23:04
The key problem with this talk of ‘false consciousness’ is that the concept is just a rationalization for the condemnation of positions that people don’t like.
Talk of norms is an excuse for people to try to impose the structures they want onto reality. It doesn’t matter if you can show that structure X leads to outcome you prefer Y, if you cannot show that your preference for Y is itself justified.
April 30th, 2008 23:46
Jason:
You haven’t shown that happiness is good instead of bad. This seems obvious, but how can you derive this? If you can’t derive this (or say something completely different), then all your other arguments don’t matter.
May 1st, 2008 00:25
Um, No.
Like I said, ‘good’ isn’t and can’t be defined by the cold, inanimate universe, but is defined in the context of actual human nature/needs/preferences and our evolving and imperfect (and, yes, competitive) knowledge/reasoning thereof.
What you are implying is that goodness can only be “derived” if it is an intrinsic property of the universe. Therefore what you are saying is that my argument can only “matter” if the exact premise my argument is disputing is true! (heads I win, tails you lose…)
May 1st, 2008 00:42
By the way, this is how theists commonly “debunk” atheist morality: Morality isn’t legitimate or possible by reasoning or facts, because, God forbid, people might be wrong or disagree about what is right - so it must all be nothing but arbitrary personal preferences. Therefore morality can only be handed down from an authority. (This, by the way, is genuinely debunked by the Euthyphro dilemma.)
You and TGGP accept the theist preference - reasoned morality can’t exist - but presumably don’t agree with their flawed “solution”. So all you’re left with is the theist’s atheist caricature: moral nihilism; morality can’t exist.
This position is unreasonable and unnecessary, and little different than postmodernist notions that all facts and science are completely relative as well.
May 1st, 2008 01:04
In fact science nihilists might have even better footing than moral nihilists in the problem of induction.
At the very least both ‘problems’ are manageable with the same low budget solution: just precede in reasoning and effort as if they don’t exist. The result will be moral/cooperative conditions getting better over time in the case of morality and knowledge/technology getting better over time in the case of science.
… The surprising uselessness of philosophy.
May 1st, 2008 14:04
“It is tyrannical for parents to attempt to reproduce their ideologies and prejudices in their children, especially when this requires social isolation and emotional coercion.”
What are your criteria for determining which are the impermissible ideologies, prejudices, and the acceptable forms of isolation and coercion?
May 1st, 2008 18:51
is defined in the context of actual human nature/needs/preferences
Why? Why? Why?
I can’t say this over and over again if you are saying that gravity exists because gravity has been observed (and the theory of gravity is derived from observation). How do you observe that satisfying preferences is good? (You can’t. You can only observe that you like it or that other people like it, but that doesn’t show that satisfying preferences isn’t bad. “Satisfying preferences is good because people prefer it that way” is a circular argument.)
May 1st, 2008 20:57
Peco,
Because that is the only possible intelligible definition of ‘good’ or ‘bad’. The universe doesn’t have preferences. ‘Good’ and ‘bad’ are ways of describing human behavior vis a vis other human beings (and whatever else humans feel morally obligated to). That’s it. No humans: no ‘good’ and no ‘bad’ (except in the analogous calculations of other animals). Morality is an evolved human trait.
If you believe satisfying preferences, or something else is immoral, then argue it is. Appeal to shared human concerns. Appeal to facts. Make a logical argument.
There really are right and wrong answers in this context. ‘We should allow rape’, for instance, is a wrong answer.
May 1st, 2008 21:15
Oh? Why?
It seems to me that you are simply declaring your own preferences to be the defining standard. You are not making a logical argument, you are taking the positions you want to reach and declaring them correct.
You’re not making a logical argument. You’re not even making an illogical one!
May 1st, 2008 21:36
[...] does not happen often: Political freedom loses much of its point in the absence of psychological freedom. Rationality and the capacity for moral agency develop. [...]
May 1st, 2008 23:22
Caledonian,
I assume you are saying I’m “declaring my own preferences” on rape correct, but the argument I’m participating in is over whether or not there is an objective basis of morality, not the morality of rape specifically. I have given you a logical argument why there is an objective basis for morality, please engage those arguments specifically if they are flawed.
I used the logical wrongness of rape as an illustration, because I assumed we are all in agreement on this point. Perhaps you do not feel there are logical arguments against rape in the context of negotiating human interests. Is this correct? Do you feel, for instance, maybe that more human beings would be better off, or that greater well being would be achieved if rape were permitted or encouraged?
These are questions that can be debated with logic and facts, which is all that is important. Even the morality of the goals themselves — e.g. is it greater human well-being? and if so, sum or average?, etc — are debatable on this basis. And there really are right and wrong answers, and righter and wronger answers, because human moral instincts and human interests themselves are material things based in the brain.
May 1st, 2008 23:32
I should also repeat the only time I’m ever forced into debating this - that there is a rational, secular basis for morality - is with fundamentalist theists.
That I’m debating this right now with not one but several ostensibly secular atheists is, honestly, mighty depressing.
May 2nd, 2008 06:52
You are stating errors far faster than they can possibly be rectified - just listing them fully would take up more space than the entire thread thus far.
Suffice it to say that you are wrong about many, many of your assertions, most especially that 1) the universe has no preferences, 2) human interests are uniform and universal, 3) the implicit claim that morality and ethics are the same thing, which is so deeply confused that I don’t even know where to begin correcting it and 4) that you’ve established why human interests ought to serve as the basis for morality in the first place.
You are not reasoning. You are dressing up sophistry and calling it reason. Instead of replacing the arbitrary authority of the theists, you’ve merely placed yourself in the central seat as the source of Ultimate Law. Your having convinced yourself that you’re basic your proclamations in reason only means that you’re honestly deluded instead of hypocritical.
May 2nd, 2008 08:02
[...] With Will Wilkinson safely on the other side of the Earth, I am free to agree with him about something: [...]
May 2nd, 2008 10:23
Caledonian,
If the so-called errors you list are the most fatal to my arguments here, then I must be on pretty firm ground.
1) the universe has no preferences…
‘Preferences’ by definition are generated by conscious agents. “The universe” is an abstraction, and therefore can’t have “preferences” anymore than “justice” or “love” can have preferences. Non-sentient entities like water, rocks, and mud can’t have “preferences” which requires sentience. Many animals obviously do have preferences, and the weight of these preferences certainly falls under moral calculus. Again there are righter and wronger answers in how these preferences should be weighed in the cooperative matrix.
2) human interests are uniform and universal…
Wow, I didn’t make this claim at all. The very fact that I indicated a key aspect of moral reasoning is negotiation implied that I don’t believe it. But human interests are largely identical, and are similar enough in important fundamentals to give morality a coherent foundation. (yes, these are empirical issues, and yes, I know more of the relevant science than you do) In fact even the difference between humans and a species as different as say, hummingbirds, would leave some room for a coherent foundation for cooperative well being.
, 3) the implicit claim that morality and ethics are the same thing, which is so deeply confused that I don’t even know where to begin correcting it
I’m just going to dismiss this as pedantic whining. Even if there is a distinction to be made here, the conflation wouldn’t damage any arguments I’ve made in this thread in the least. If you disagree you should probably articulate specifically how my argument has been damaged.
4) that you’ve established why human interests ought to serve as the basis for morality in the first place
What other “interests” are there? Mud and trees and rocks don’t have “interests”, which are only generated by minds. Many animals, again, do have interests (if less developed ones), and again, I think their interests certainly can be weighed against human interests based on facts and logic. There are righter and wronger ways to weigh these interests.
Instead of replacing the arbitrary authority of the theists, you’ve merely placed yourself in the central seat as the source of Ultimate Law.
Complete bullshit! I have simply stated that there are right and wrong answers to questions of how humans can cooperate to affect human well being. This is a fact because it’s what basic logic and scientific evidence show, not because I have declared it Truth.
May 2nd, 2008 10:24
Caledonian,
If the so-called errors you list are the most fatal to my arguments here, then I must be on pretty firm ground.
1) the universe has no preferences…
‘Preferences’ by definition are generated by conscious agents. “The universe” is an abstraction, and therefore can’t have “preferences” anymore than “justice” or “love” can have preferences. Non-sentient entities like water, rocks, and mud can’t have “preferences” which requires sentience. Many animals obviously do have preferences, and the weight of these preferences certainly falls under moral calculus. Again there are righter and wronger answers in how these preferences should be weighed in the cooperative matrix.
2) human interests are uniform and universal…
Wow, I didn’t make this claim at all. The very fact that I indicated a key aspect of moral reasoning is negotiation implied that I don’t believe it. But human interests are largely identical, and are similar enough in important fundamentals to give morality a coherent foundation. (yes, these are empirical issues, and yes, I know more of the relevant science than you do) In fact even the difference between humans and a species as different as say, hummingbirds, would leave some room for a coherent foundation for cooperative well being.
, 3) the implicit claim that morality and ethics are the same thing, which is so deeply confused that I don’t even know where to begin correcting it
I’m just going to dismiss this as pedantic whining. Even if there is a distinction to be made here, the conflation wouldn’t damage any arguments I’ve made in this thread in the least. If you disagree you should probably articulate specifically how my argument has been damaged.
4) that you’ve established why human interests ought to serve as the basis for morality in the first place
What other “interests” are there? Mud and trees and rocks don’t have “interests”, which are only generated by minds. Many animals, again, do have interests (if less developed ones), and again, I think their interests certainly can be weighed against human interests based on facts and logic. There are righter and wronger ways to weigh these interests.
Instead of replacing the arbitrary authority of the theists, you’ve merely placed yourself in the central seat as the source of Ultimate Law.
Complete nonsense! I have simply stated that there are right and wrong answers to questions of how humans can cooperate to affect human well being. This is a fact because it’s what basic logic and scientific evidence show, not because I have declared it Truth.
May 2nd, 2008 13:14
Jason,
I think much of the controversy in this thread stems from a disagreement over the definition of the term “objective basis for morality.” You seem to mean something along the lines of “morality is informed by empirically verifiable, scientific, objective facts, such as human nature and brain states.” Your critics seem to mean something along the lines of “morality is entirely informed by all of the above, and nothing else, especially nothing subjective such as whether or not we should prefer a world in which human preferences are better satisfied than alternative worlds.”
Both of you are correct, of course; you are not really disagreeing about anything substantive, but merely arguing over the proper definition of “objective morality.” Once both sides understand that the other side is pretty much in agreement on all the substantive issues but with different language, the controversy will disappear.
Some people would certainly be better off if rape were permitted or encouraged; namely, rapists. But then wouldn’t rapists be subject to rape too? Only if we accept a Kantian universalization principle of either all-rape or no-rape. But why must we accept that? A male rapist could favor a policy, for example, which states that only men are allowed to rape women; women are not allowed to rape men and men are not allowed to rape other men. (And let’s assume this hypothetical male rapist also has no female friends or relatives who he cares about enough to not want them to suffer rape.) Such a policy would certainly make male rapists better off (all else being equal, ignoring any unintended second-order consequences), and might make society as a whole better off if we gave sufficiently greater weight to the interests of male rapists and sufficiently lesser weight to the interests of their victims.
But there is no “objective” reason to adopt a Kantian universalization maxim, or to give everyone’s interests equal weight. These might seem more fair than the alternatives, but the universe doesn’t care about fairness, nor does it even care about Pareto or Kaldor-Hicks improvements between possible worlds, even worlds in which persons’ interests are not given equal consideration.
Denying the pure objectivity of morality (while acknowledging that objective truths combined with subjective preferences constitute morality) is not a concession by atheists to theists in the god debates, because the atheist isn’t arguing for moral nihilism, and even if he was, it still wouldn’t be any kind of concession. Whether morality can ultimately be grounded on purely objective truths is irrelevant to the question of whether morality can be grounded on a sufficiently weighty foundation. And further, whether morality can ultimately be grounded on a sufficiently weighty foundation is not necessarily relevant to the question of whether people are more or less likely to behave morally. I don’t think most people–even professional philosophers and theologians–behave morally if and only if they have a complete, well-grounded, sufficiently objective moral system in mind first. People behave morally for a variety of reasons: that’s what they were taught as children, it’s what society expects of them, they want to be well-liked by others, they want to think of themselves as good people, they fear the legal repercussions, they believe moral behavior is a necessary component of a flourishing life, or they just believe, axiomatically, that immoral behavior is wrong, period, full stop. Finding out that all of these reasons are also supported by Divine Command or purely objective secular observation changes nothing.
May 2nd, 2008 15:17
Before we can concern ourselves with whether an act is right or wrong, we need to establish what it means to be ‘right’. Right how? In what way? Evaluated by what criteria?
If we have a specified goal, we can at least determine objectively what courses of action can and cannot let us reach that goal - and thus we can say that one course of action is ‘right’ and another ‘wrong’. But how do we establish objective standards for the goals that we should have?
There are an infinite number of possible moralities, and any given action is both compatible and incompatible with an infinity of codes.
May 2nd, 2008 15:27
With you assuming the role of the radical skeptic
I’m fine with being referred to as a skeptic, but I think the comparison to David Berlinski is inapt. According to Derbyshire, he accepts the Genesis creation myth.
Psychology isn’t physics, but it measures traits linked to physiology and behavior
Architecture is linked to physics, but that doesn’t remove the subjective aesthetic component. I don’t think Szasz thought all of psychology was worthless, but he did want to seperate the positive from the normative.
Well-being
The world “well” introductes subjectivity right off the bat.
depression, and stress
I’m more (not to say totally) skeptical about depression, but I think stress can be operationalized through something like cortisol measurements. Whether stress is good or bad (I can’t remember how many times I was told in health class about “good stress” and “bad stress”) is another thing altoghether though.
various units
I’ll accept the ones for stress, but what could they possibly have for “well-being”?
perhaps just not units you “approve” of
Not sure why you put quotes around “approve”, but it’s measured using a one-to-ten scale on surveys or something like that, then yes I wouldn’t approve.
In addition to the radical skeptic you are donning the hat of the sophist which is both irritating and unenlightening. I certainly did not suggest that art or ethics have independent truth value outside of human existence or outside of their effects on human beings, yet you keep arguing like this is the claim.
I use a comparison to art because others seem to accept the claim that there is no objective truth about its quality. There are some who disagree with that claim, so I would not be able to use the comparison. I argue that ethics is similarly subjective. Just as when two people disagree on the quality of a work of art, there is no way to objectively resolve a dispute between two people over ethics. Do you agree or disagree with that last statement?
you deny that human needs/preferences have been or can be measured, reasoned, or negotiated
I’ll accept “revealed preference” through actions and I agree people with different preferences can sometimes reason and negotiate before coming to an agreement. I don’t accept that an objective third party can know a proper resolving of different preferences. I’ll accept the use of the term “needs” to indicate what is necessary (often as opposed to sufficient), with “human needs” being something whose absence would indicate not being human.
There is no need to judge complicated hypothetical alternatives when the judgment here
Total and average utilitarianism may agree in some instances, but if they disagree anywhere they can’t both be right. As a skeptic of ethics, I don’t think either is. Average utilitarianism does seem to have the obvious problem of a divide-by-zero error when there are no agents.
Would you really like to argue - using reasoning and facts - why society is better off qualitatively and quantitatively prohibiting rape
I don’t think there is any objective meaning to the phrase “society is better off”. If you’re asking me if I would push a button to rid the world of rape, sure I’d do it. I’d also hit a button to rid the world of drum-machines. To me they are both issues of subjective preference.
You are arguing that we can’t make reasoned or informed decisions about our personal behavior
No, I do not think personal behavior is invariant with regard to information.
or collective politics
I’ll accept things like game theory about how agents can make decisions depending on the actions of other agents.
that increase human well-being.
You’re right that I don’t think that phrase has objective meaning.
You are denying things that can be predicted that we know we can predict.
What predictions are you referring to?
why her loss would be much greater than her rapists gains
How would that be measured?
The society that makes these rules would gain far more collectively from prohibiting rape than allowing it
I don’t yet know how you are measuring these things, but imagine instead we are talking about wealth and agree that it can be objectively measured in dollars or something. Established that everyone in a society would have more money under alternative A would not persuade many people if it came at some other cost they hate, which may include economic inequality. There is no way to objectively decide between economic growth and inequality as far as I know. Could you be sure your measurement would not be vulnerable to the same uncertainty?
The rapist himself would correctly be worse off from his own preferences
I know you have already assumed the rapist would choose not to live in the alternative society, but this is an issue that seems worth exploring. There are people that argue against utilitarianism and claim that suffering is not inherently bad. Some of these people intentionally subject themselves to suffering through fasts or hair-shirts or whatnot. Under a utilitarian theory it would be good to prevent them from causing themselves suffering. Would you agree that would be the right thing to do?
little different than postmodernist notions that all facts and science are completely relative as well
I accept the difference of scientific facts. It seems to me they are extremely different from “normative truths”, which is why moral philosophy tends to resemble worthless fields like theology. I do accept the theist critique of atheist morality, though I would not accept any morality handed down from an authority (as Stirner noted: Does God serve any cause but his own? Then I shall as well).
Euthyphro dilemma
If you’re interested in that sort of thing, Vox Day has a series of posts on it from a fundamentalist Christian perspective.
May 3rd, 2008 16:14
I am on a public computer right now. Unfortunately several three and four day old replies of mine are still ‘awaiting approval’, and Will’s website isn’t allowing me to send any more messages without such approval. (I don’t know if it recognizes my home IP address, my name, or both)
Given that he’s in Turkey, and probably won’t be approving my messages anytime soon I don’t know how I can continue the conversation.
May 3rd, 2008 16:20
Ok, yeah, I tried to send a nearly identical message a couple of days ago from home, and that message was sucked into the ‘approval’ blackhole.
So something about me looked suspicious to Will’s security software, and I guess I’ve got the scarlet letter.
May 4th, 2008 23:40
OK, I see my comments were finally posted, so let’s try this again and see how long it takes before this goes up.
TGGP,
I’m fine with being referred to as a skeptic, but I think the comparison to David Berlinski is inapt.
No, I referred to you as a “radical skeptic”, which is not a “skeptic” at all. The linked three-part Slate article wasn’t just about Berlinski, but about people who opportunistically reject scientific data and premises because of its “incompleteness” (the author refers to this as “radical skepticism”). It is a self-serving, self-contradictory world-view. The genuine skeptic appeals to the preponderance of evidence to find a best answer; the radical skeptic appeals to the incompleteness of evidence to buttress a foregone (and less supported) idea.
(In fairness, this is simply in reference to very specific positions of yours in this thread, by the way. I don’t mean to make a general opinion on the integrity of your thinking.)
You appeal to Arnold Kling’s position on happiness research, but that position is ignorant, clumsy, and unscientific. (This appears to be a pattern in Kling’s attitude towards inconvenient science in general, as seen in his posts on global warming, his recent post on DDT, etc.)
Not sure why you put quotes around “approve”, but it’s measured using a one-to-ten scale on surveys or something like that, then yes I wouldn’t approve.
Not only is the 1-10 scale valid for measurement, why would it even matter if it was just ‘yes’ or ‘no’ survey? If I accidentally step on your foot and you say ‘Ouch’ that is useful data on your subjective well-being. It says you don’t like it when I do that.
Subjective well-being research goes beyond the 1-10 scale, but to the extent it doesn’t you haven’t made a scientific argument why those surveys and that research paradigm can be rejected, nor can you. It is a useful, validated, and completely legitimate science paradigm.
Just as when two people disagree on the quality of a work of art, there is no way to objectively resolve a dispute between two people over ethics. Do you agree or disagree with that last statement?
I’ve been disagreeing this whole thread. Let me try and itemize most of my underlying premises:
1) The universe is not conscious, and does not have ethical preferences.
2) Evolution resulted in organisms with consciousness and preferences.
3) Evolution resulted in an intelligent, social species. (human beings)
4) Evolution resulted in a moral machinery for this social species because cooperation was adaptive. This includes shared biological cognition related to fairness, guilt, shame, and altruism.
5) There is therefore a considerable uniformity in the underlying goals, needs, preferences, and cognition of human beings. This does not mean human beings are identical in these domains, but they are relatively similar members of the same species. (and, yes, this is coming from someone who is both knowledgeable and outspoken on human biodiversity - which should enhance the strength of my claim)
6) Basic human needs and preferences are overwhelmingly logical, predictable, intelligible, and uniform. (i.e. human beings need food to live, do not like to be unhealthy or injured, etc.)
7) There are factual ways to meet these needs and preferences. For instance it is a fact that humans can survive by eating meat. It is a fact that humans can’t survive by eating plastic.
9) Because human needs and preferences are standardized (#5), rational (#6), and ordered (#8), human ethical disagreements over how these preferences and needs should be met and balanced are largely disagreements over facts.
10) Circumstances and cognitive barriers and limitations prevent facts from being known or processed. Facts may not be known from lack of exposure to them, or from inability to process them, or from lack of trust in the source.
11) Because ethical disagreements are overwhelmingly based in factual disagreements (#9) and people differ in their knowledge and acceptance of facts (#10), this indicates that many ethical opinions are factually wrong, not subjectively wrong.
There is no way to objectively decide between economic growth and inequality as far as I know.
You assert this because you assume both preferences are fundamentally irrational, based in nothing but arbitrary preference. But they are competing theories about what factually makes people happier. So the disagreement can be resolved with more facts. The recent Wolfers paper provides evidence that growth creates more measurable psychological benefits than equality.
Could you be sure your measurement would not be vulnerable to the same uncertainty?
I can’t be “sure” about anything. The anti-rape society is based in better arguments and facts, which is what matters.
Under a utilitarian theory it would be good to prevent them from causing themselves suffering. Would you agree that would be the right thing to do?
No, because invasive totalitarian laws to prevent people from “fasting” would not create more well-being. So it’s not better under a utilitarian theory.
If the people you describe were hurting themselves, say, because of a mind-bending bacteria in the water, and we put something in the water to kill that bacteria, then that would be a completely acceptable solution. So, like everything else, facts make the biggest difference in an ethical decision.
May 4th, 2008 23:46
I made a spelling error in comment #35:
“…just proceed in reasoning and effort”
Yeah, I’m that guy.
May 5th, 2008 01:49
Micha,
Both of you are correct, of course; you are not really disagreeing about anything substantive, but merely arguing over the proper definition of “objective morality.
There are substantive disagreements which are more important. TGGP rejects that human well-being can be or has been measured or reasoned about at all. If I step on your foot and you say ‘Ouch’, you might’ve actually liked it when I did that. We Can Never Truly Know.
In this way moral nihilism relies on scientific and rationality nihilism.
Even without scientific data, it is unreasonable to assert that there aren’t more and less reasonable opinions about how behavior and policies will affect the lives of others in ways that will help or hurt them.
If someone really can’t think of a reason that pro-rape laws would result in more bad than good then they are probably intentionally trying not to think about it too hard. This is called sophistry and it’s disingenuous and annoying.
Such a policy would certainly make male rapists better off (all else being equal, ignoring any unintended second-order consequences), and might make society as a whole better off if we gave sufficiently greater weight to the interests of male rapists and sufficiently lesser weight to the interests of their victims.
This wouldn’t make society better off because whether it is recognized or not the women are suffering intensely; there are biological reasons for this. Men who are prevented from raping do not suffer in this intense manner.
…because the atheist isn’t arguing for moral nihilism, and even if he was, it still wouldn’t be any kind of concession. Whether morality can ultimately be grounded on purely objective truths is irrelevant to the question of whether morality can be grounded on a sufficiently weighty foundation.
Good points.
May 5th, 2008 02:09
…and might make society as a whole better off if we gave sufficiently greater weight to the interests of male rapists
And this is an unrealistic counterfactual; even rapists don’t want their wives, daughters, and mothers getting raped, and would suffer from this.
May 5th, 2008 15:09
Well, there’s the problem right there: the universe DOES have ethical preferences.
Organisms have behavioral traits that are successful in their niche - tigers will drive rivals out of their territory through any means necessary, from threats to violence to death, while wolves cooperate in societal groups and have an entire complex of instincts to manage this social interaction. They have the traits they have for a reason.
May 5th, 2008 15:59
Tigers and wolves have preferences because they are conscious animals with interests.
Tigers and wolves are not “the universe”, an abstraction.
Abstract concepts and inanimate things do not have interests or preferences, something generated only by sentient minds.
If someone wants to argue that rocks “like” to be wet or hugged (or whatever) then they are a grossly superstitious new-age flake.
May 5th, 2008 17:58
Jason:
You still haven’t shown that helping people is good. “It is good because people like it”–why?
May 5th, 2008 19:07
Peco,
See your comment #37, and my comment #38. Your question has already been addressed.
By the only intelligible definition of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ - the evolved human context (comment #52) definition - behaving in certain ways is ‘good’ and ‘bad’. Outside of a human context the concepts of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ have no meaning; they aren’t tethered to anything.
May 5th, 2008 20:34
Tigers and wolves are just as much abstractions as the universe.
Think the universe doesn’t have preferences? Modify tigers to act like wolves, and wolves to act like tigers, and see how long your modifications persist. Organisms have ethical systems, but it is the nature of the universe that determines what they are, and whether they persist. It is the niche in which an organism exists that determines what systems of ethics are viable. Human judgment has nothing to do with it.
May 5th, 2008 20:55
Jason:
Just because humans think something is good doesn’t mean it is. Yes, the concept exists, but you could say it’s wrong.
May 5th, 2008 21:16
Tigers and wolves are just as much abstractions as the universe.
A tiger is not an “abstraction”! Tigertude is an abstraction.
Tigers and wolves have consciousness that includes pain and pleasure, emotion, a theater of awareness, insight and analysis, and drives. The universe does not.
Think the universe doesn’t have preferences?
It doesn’t. What you just described are material laws and operations, not “preferences”! A metaphor does not an accurate description make. If a doctor tries to cure “butterflies in the stomach” with a butterfly net, the patient will probably die.
Organisms have ethical systems, but it is the nature of the universe that determines what they are, and whether they persist.
Yep. See comment #52. My primary argument is that human ethics are based around facts about humans (originating from material laws and operations) that are known or can be discovered.
It’s not even clear what you disagree with me about.
May 5th, 2008 21:53
Yes, the concept exists, but you could say it’s wrong.
Well you can say anything you like. You can say the moon doesn’t exist. I already told you why the concept of ‘good’ is meaningless unless it’s reasoned about in the human context that generated it.
If someone stabs and eats a bus driver because they were hungry and didn’t care for rice, you can certainly call that ‘good’ (or ‘chair’, or ‘blorxivozz’) if you’d like, but you have necessarilly redefined the word or drained it of it’s meaning in the process, unless the usage is trying to indicate you believe the action promoted some increased welfare that compensates for the harm it created.
And while you would be using the right word for what you were, in fact, trying to describe, you would still be factually wrong and the act still wouldn’t be ‘good’.
May 6th, 2008 07:53
Then why do you insist upon using it? Questions of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ aren’t meaningful - we have to turn to right and wrong.
It is right for wolves to be cooperative, and wrong to be individualistic, while it’s right for tigers to be individualistic and wrong to be cooperative. This is determined by the niche in which they exist.
You don’t seem to understand that a system of morality doesn’t need to address anyone’s interests or wants at all - it’s still a moral code. A code that permits casual rape is theoretically possible, and you must address that theoretical contingency without saying “it’s immoral”.
May 6th, 2008 11:50
Jason,
True, but TGGP doesn’t need to go that far to make his point. I accept your claim that most people’s ethical opinions are factually wrong, and so ethical disagreement is less a matter about disagreement over subjective preferences than a disagreement over which facts are the case. But even granting that, TGGP’s conclusion still stands; ultimately, the preferences that you and I share, and that you are think are “objective”, are only objective in the sense that a significant majority of humans share those preferences. Sociopaths, Vikings, sadists, masochists, and others with strange, minority preferences could honestly say they disagree and we would have nothing to say to rebut them other than, “Too bad, let’s fight.”
Again, you are assuming that society should give equal weight to the interests and suffering of women as it does men. But historically, many human societies have not done this. Some currently existing human societies do not yet give equal weight to the interests and suffering of women, to various degrees; on the most extreme end of the spectrum, some currently existing human societies allow men to rape women under certain circumstances. And it’s simply not true that all rapists don’t want their wives, daughters, and mothers getting raped, because some rapists do in fact rape their wives, daughters and mothers, and some societies systematically approve of this kind of behavior - consider “honor killings” in certain parts of the Middle East and North Africa.
This all may seem unrealistic compared to our enlightened Western sensibilities, but even the West is mostly humanist; we do not, as a social policy, give equal weight to the interests and suffering of human animals and non-human animals. Our choice of how much weight to give to the interests of non-human animals relative to our own is not a question that can be answered by appealing to the objective universe. We might be able to answer the question by appealing to objective facts concerning which sort of social policies are most likely to promote human interests, but again, this doesn’t tell us whether or not, and if so how much, we should take non-human interests in to account.
So too, we might be able to answer the question of which sort of social policies are most likely to promote male interests, but this doesn’t tell us whether or not, and if so how much, we should take female interests in to account. Equality seems like the obvious choice to many in the modern age, but it certainly didn’t seem as obvious to people living even a century ago, and equality between the interests of humans and non-human animals does not seem at all obvious to most people in the modern age, apart from Peter Singer and his fellow travelers.
May 6th, 2008 12:05
Then why do you insist upon using it? Questions of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ aren’t meaningful
That’s not what I said. They are meaningful because humans exist.
…we have to turn to right and wrong.
Those are both normative descriptors. They are describing the same thing.
It is right for wolves to be cooperative, and wrong to be individualistic
Again normative terms are meaningless outside of the human context. It isn’t ‘right’ or ‘good’ for the sun to be hot or grass to be green, they just are.
You don’t seem to understand that a system of morality doesn’t need to address anyone’s interests or wants at all
I don’t “understand” this because it’s false. Without human beings and human interests there is no one to generate a “system of morality”. It is meaningless outside of the human context where it evolved.
A code that permits casual rape is theoretically possible, and you must address that theoretical contingency without saying “it’s immoral”.
If it is possible that some human society would believe casual rape is good, then this would be a society with factually wrong beliefs according to the necessary definition of ‘good’ or ‘right’. I am not a cultural relativist - their society is based on factually wrong social and political ideas that are failing their people.
I’m not just asserting that “it’s immoral” I’m telling you there are biological facts about rape and it’s psychological consequences for women that make it wrong according to the necessary human definition of ‘wrong’.
If human beings, as a species, were extremely different genetically and behaviorally from what they are now, then “rape” might be “good”. But we aren’t. Either way, ethical reasoning is necessarily based in facts about humans.
May 6th, 2008 12:06
Caledonian,
I’m still unclear where normativity enters the picture here. Neither the universe, nor nature, nor evolution, nor any other entity other than tigers and those species whose survival is interrelated with the survival of tigers, cares whether or not tigers continue to exist. Evolution is not goal directed - it just is. Whatever happens to result from evolution, through the processes of random mutation and natural selection, is neither good nor bad. The result just happens to be, by way of luck, the result that best fits with the current environment.
But again, the term “best fits” is not normative, anymore than claiming that the winner of a single-elimination, multi-tiered coin-flipping tournament normatively deserved to win. Someone had to be the winner, someone had to be the person who didn’t lose a single coin toss; if it hadn’t been this guy, it would have been someone else. There is nothing special about the winner; by the rules of the game, there necessarily will be a winner. But the winning is entirely random, undeserved, and non-normative.
May 6th, 2008 12:51
But even granting that, TGGP’s conclusion still stands; ultimately, the preferences that you and I share, and that you are think are “objective”, are only objective in the sense that a significant majority of humans share those preferences. Sociopaths, Vikings, sadists, masochists, and others with strange, minority preferences could honestly say they disagree and we would have nothing to say to rebut them other than, “Too bad, let’s fight.”
Regardless if they are sociopaths or vikings, and regardless if they can establish their way by force, they still couldn’t disagree correctly from an ethical standpoint.
A sociopath can correctly argue ‘I’m going to kill you for fun’, but could not correctly argue ‘I’m going to kill you for fun because it’s good’ because he would then require a rational argument for why human wellbeing has been fairly increased at the expense of my suffering. This argument could not be made, because the murder was factually selfish and unfair.
Again, you are assuming that society should give equal weight to the interests and suffering of women as it does men.
No, I am arguing that societies that don’t are necessarily built on factually wrong ideas about women.
Our choice of how much weight to give to the interests of non-human animals relative to our own is not a question that can be answered by appealing to the objective universe.
I disagree; animal rights must rest on the same analytical foundations that we take human rights from. The ethics of animal treatment depend on four factual issues: a) which capacities are the basis for rights, b) how do these capacities vary, c) how does variation in capacity map on to variation in rights, and d) what capacities do certain animals have.
May 6th, 2008 17:47
And where is it written that to be moral one cannot be selfish and unfair? The sociopath can correctly argue “I’m going to kill you for fun because it’s good” because the sociopath can rationally argue that his personal wellbeing is all that matters in the world, and anything that increases his wellbeing is therefore good. Yes, this sociopath’s conception of the good is selfish and unfair, but so what? The universe contains no rule against calling something good only if it isn’t selfish or unfair.
May 6th, 2008 17:58
Suppose a society justifies its misogyny, not on any factual claims about innate differences between men and women, but on purely subjective value claims that male interests count for more than female interests. Why do male interests count for more? Isn’t this inherently unfair and selfish? Yes. So what? What are you going to say to the male misogynist who prefers his status quo? That women would be better off under a more egalitarian system? But we’ve already stipulated that he considers his interests to be more important than womens’ interests. How are you going to argue him out of his subjective preference? You can try to show him how this preference, if acted upon, leads to all sorts of social ills, many of which negatively effect his own interests as he understands them. But at the end of the day, if his preference for misogyny is great enough, and you cannot convince him that he will be worse off from his own perspective if he doesn’t take your advice, the argument is over.
May 7th, 2008 13:43
Precisely! Subjective judgements have nothing to do with it!
The subjective can value, or not-value, anything at all. It is arbitrary and unconfined. It’s the operation of the objective upon the subjective that creates order - subjective values that do not perpetuate themselves die out and are replaced by those systems that do.
Why is it ‘wrong’ for wolves to be individualistic? For the only reason that matters: they’d die if they did. Why is it ‘wrong’ for tigers to be altruistic? For the only reason that matters: they’d die if they did.
We can construct systems of morality of any kind, with any properties we wish. But the universe will operate upon the things we construct, destroying some and preserving others. Whether a moral system furthers the interests of the humans carrying it is irrelevant - the system could stamp on every human face, forever, and yet could be so effective at perpetuating the society it shapes that it would persist.
Those bold in daring, will die:
Those bold in not daring will survive.
Of these two, either may benefit or harm.
Nature decides which is evil,
But who can know why?
Even the enlightened find this difficult.
May 7th, 2008 16:10
Micha,
And where is it written that to be moral one cannot be selfish and unfair?
As I have argued many times in this thread, it is written in the definition of morality itself, which is in turn written into the genetic code of human beings.
You are confusing the word ‘good’ for the concept of ‘good’. Just because a sociopath says killing me for fun is “good” doesn’t mean anything at all. He can just as easily say a tuba is a chair, or an elephant is a penguin. But as soon as he’s forced to define “chair”, we will readily understand he is talking about the large, low-pitched brass instrument and not the piece of furniture you sit on.
It’s the same exact thing for ‘morality’. As soon as he defines morality as “causing others pain for my own amusement” he is necessarily automatically defining something else entirely. The concept of morality inherently means something different: behaving in a fair way to reduce or not cause harm to others.
These premises were laid out most nakedly in comment #52. The concept of morality is genetically hardwired into the evolved brain of human beings, and it has a logical meaning.
But at the end of the day, if his preference for misogyny is great enough, and you cannot convince him that he will be worse off from his own perspective if he doesn’t take your advice, the argument is over.
This is irrelevant to the objectivity of morality, since the same thing can be said for factual issues in general. If he wants to say/believe the moon is made of bacon, there is absolutely nothing I can do to “make” him change his mind except present evidence and logic that refute his claim.
Similarly, if he wants to argue that oppressing women is “good” he necessarily has to A) Define ‘good’ - which has a factually correct and factually incorrect definition, and B), if he defines it correctly (which he isn’t according to your own scenario), show how the facts of his sex-biased system are consistent with fairness and well being - which he couldn’t do as well.
May 7th, 2008 17:06
The concept of morality does not contain with in itself instructions for which sort of creatures deserve equal respect.
If I say I believe the moon is made of bacon, you can present me with evidence and logic and hopefully convince me to change my belief. But what sort of evidence or logic can you present me with if I am a committed misogynist or racist? Whatever evidence or logic you present me with, can I still not reasonably say, “Sorry, men are just more important than woman, whites are just more important than blacks.” You can ask me to emphasize and pretend to walk a mile in another person’s shoes. But that’s not the same as evidence or logic; it requires a leap of faith that accepting evidence or logic about the physical makeup of the moon does not.
May 7th, 2008 18:09
That’s precisely why determining whether the beliefs are functional, rather than “good” or “bad” - is so important.
One can be right or wrong objectively, but good and bad are only subjective.
May 7th, 2008 20:41
Whatever evidence or logic you present me with, can I still not reasonably say, “Sorry, men are just more important than woman, whites are just more important than blacks.”
No, you obviously can’t! In what sense is it “reasonable” if you’ve presented no factual (i.e. reasoned) basis for the moral distinction? ‘Good’ has a coherent, biologically rooted meaning, and any justification based on facts will not be consistent with that meaning.
Are you referring to any facts here other than common usage?
‘Common usage’ is a faulty way to put it. See comment #52; we’re not talking about the Merriam-Webster College English Dictionary definition of a word but the pan-psychological human knowledge of a concept. Without the biologically rooted concept there would be nothing to put a word to.