(October 19, 2018 at 2:30 pm)Dr H Wrote:

(October 18, 2018 at 7:39 pm)wyzas Wrote: Did you omit the "morals" from my statement and just flip to conditions in math?

Previously someone said killing is both immoral and moral based on the conditions of situation. My view, changing based on conditions/circumstances makes the moral position subjective.

My point is that "conditional" is not the same as "subjective".

Two people might view the same killing, under the same conditions, and one might judge it to be moral, and the other might judge it to be immoral.  That is subjective.

I'm not talking about the difference between two people (intersubjectivity I think), I'm addressing one person's moral position and how that changes based on conditions. A change in conditions changes their opinion of what is moral.

Why wouldn't a change in conditions necessitate a change in moral positions to an objectivist?

(October 19, 2018 at 2:08 am)Khemikal Wrote:

(October 19, 2018 at 12:21 am)bennyboy Wrote: It's a matter of opinion, commonly shared in our modern Western culture due to societal norms.

Then your moral appraisal is subjective.  Easy enough, right?  An objectivist would tell you that it was some thing x about rape, not some thing x about your opinion that made it wrong.  

What about rape would make it wrong? Wrongness implies some metric by which it might be contrasted with rightness. But wrongness and rightness are ideas. Other than in the minds of agents, where would such ideas exist, independent of the agent who considers them?

(October 20, 2018 at 1:07 am)bennyboy Wrote:

(October 19, 2018 at 2:08 am)Khemikal Wrote: Then your moral appraisal is subjective.  Easy enough, right?  An objectivist would tell you that it was some thing x about rape, not some thing x about your opinion that made it wrong.  

What about rape would make it wrong?  Wrongness implies some metric by which it might be contrasted with rightness.  But wrongness and rightness are ideas.  Other than in the minds of agents, where would such ideas exist, independent of the agent who considers them?

Doesn't matter.  Any proposition that says "this thing about rape x makes it wrong" is..at least..an attempt at an objective moral appraisal.  If they get it wrong, because thing x isn't true, or because thing x isn't cogent metric, then they're wrong (but still objectively wrong, lol).

Here I have to ask you the obvious question..though, can you actually not think of anything about rape that makes it wrong? Yes, I have opinions, you have opinions, we all have opinions...and those opinions exist in our minds.....but you don't have any opinions about that....?

The existence of opinions and their place in the mind does not make any other thing necessarily subjective. We contend that some opinions are fact based, and others are free floating opinions. Since a moral realist sees a moral proposition as the equivalent of any other (purported) fact..this would also be true of moral statements. The simple fact that you are expressing your opinion isn't enough to determine whether the moral statement is subjective or objective, and this is mostly due to the fact that both subjective and objective statements or positions are privately held in the mind (which is the sense of subjectivity to which possesion of the concept refers).

I can only say this so many ways and so many times...but moral realism does not contend that we are not necessarily subjective agents who hold opinions. That this is true is not a counterargument to the position. The question being asked (by moral realism, in contrast to moral subjectivism, lol) is not whether you have an opinion...but whether some x causes that opinion, or whether the opinion causes some x. That's the ground floor. Does it purport to report facts.

Thought it was worth reproducing an old post from TheRocketSurgeon that really nailed this issue.

"Several have already answered you on this, but it's quite clear that "normal" (as in, non-sociopathic, non-malfunctioning) people evolved as a social species, and the concept of guilt and a desire to heal rifts within our tribes was a massive evolutionary advantage. It's good that you feel bad when you harm someone; that's what makes you good at being a human being! Indeed, I tend to base my evaluation of others on two factors: intellectual honesty (ability to face hard truths and change their minds when called for) and empathy for others.

"Religion, unfortunately, has learned over time how to hijack that brain architecture, like a virus latching onto your DNA, and imprints onto our "social programming" section an additional number of things to feel guilty about: "thought crimes". It then uses that sense of added guilt to badger and bludgeon you into compliance and conformity. This may even have had evolutionary advantages, in the sense that a group religion caused the tribe to have a cohesive identity and purpose, giving that tribe survival benefits over their less-organized rivals. Unfortunately, like many of our hunter-gatherer adaptations (such as our tendency to love sugar and store fat), this has become overblown and harmful in the modern world, with so many people crowded together and almost no humans living in tribes anymore. But to compensate for the trend, religion got better at the guilt-and-shame game.

This (along with a lot of other coding in the Christian faith "brain virus" that is self-defensive, like teaching us to doubt our own reason) makes deconversion difficult and often emotionally painful. Worse, preachers have learned to present atheists as immoral and/or amoral, meaning that if you (like 99% of people) are emotional and able to show empathy, you tend to think, "well I don't want to be an atheist, I'm a good person!"

In closing, I'll just leave you to ponder the words of one of my favorite sci-fi authors:

"Sin lies only in hurting other people unnecessarily. All other 'sins' are invented nonsense. (Hurting yourself is not sinful - just stupid.)" - Robert A. Heinlein."

I agree with DLJ that the subjective/objective terminology can become a barrier to communication. It often seems to create a false dichotomy where something is pushed towards either "just an opinion" or "totally factual"; so many things end up more nuanced than that. Morality is clearly neither hard-coded into reality, nor arbitrary whims.

(October 20, 2018 at 8:25 am)robvalue Wrote: I agree with DLJ that the subjective/objective terminology can become a barrier to communication.

Obviously it's a barrier but it should be easy to overcome.  

Quote:It often seems to create a false dichotomy where something is pushed towards either "just an opinion" or "totally factual"; so many things end up more nuanced than that.

IDK, it may seem that way, but that isn't any claim of or necessary to moral realism, to objective morality.   

Quote:Morality is clearly neither hard-coded into reality, nor arbitrary whims.

Moral realism contends or allows for both.  Moral realism is a position on those things (purportedly) "hard-coded into reality" and contained in our moral propositions.  The effect (and presence) of arbitrary whim is very real, but it's a comment on the moral agent...not the purported moral fact of a matter x.

Concepts like super-rationality, blind construction, permissive normatives...all empoyed by moral realists to both acknowledge and then account for error in that regard.
(not an exhaustive list - imma make a thread about blind construction at some point...it's the perfect participatory conjecture, lol)

(October 20, 2018 at 7:13 am)Khemikal Wrote: ...
 The question being asked (by moral realism, in contrast to moral subjectivism, lol) is not whether you have an opinion...but whether some x causes that opinion, or whether the opinion causes some x.  That's the ground floor.  Does it purport to report facts.

So, one is D>I>K>W (facts to opinion) and the other is W>K>I>D (opinion to facts).



Or, to add the governance mantra of (governance is about "doing things right and doing the right things")



The scientific method is an example of the former (DIKW); folklore, religion, a heuristic (if it seeks substantiation at all) is the latter (WKID).

In truth we, humans, are adapted to use both in feedback loops.

Morals align to the data and information layers because they are about sensory data and classification of that data; they require competence but not necessarily comprehension; ethics (descriptive ('is') and normative ('ought') respectively) aligns to the knowledge and wisdom layers.
Governance (decision making) uses all layers and depends upon a few other enablers too.  It requires comprehension (even if that comprehension is faulty e.g. religion).

(October 20, 2018 at 1:07 am)bennyboy Wrote: ...
What about rape would make it wrong?
...

Here's a weird thing about Deontology, Consequentialism and Virtue Ethics:
- Nothing wrong with rape using the deontological model if those are rules/duties... think Conan or Dothraki or the Vikings... same for Divine Command Theory.  
- Nothing wrong with rape using the consequentialist model if one values human existence... none of us would be alive today if there had never been a rape sometime in the last 300,000 years.
- Nothing wrong with rape using the virtue model, in fact it might even be regarded as a virtuous self-sacrifice, to be raped to atone for the rape of another person from a different tribe.

... and catholic priests... say no more.




-

(October 20, 2018 at 7:13 am)Khemikal Wrote:

(October 20, 2018 at 1:07 am)bennyboy Wrote: What about rape would make it wrong?  Wrongness implies some metric by which it might be contrasted with rightness.  But wrongness and rightness are ideas.  Other than in the minds of agents, where would such ideas exist, independent of the agent who considers them?

Doesn't matter.  Any proposition that says "this thing about rape x makes it wrong" is..at least..an attempt at an objective moral appraisal.  If they get it wrong, because thing x isn't true, or because thing x isn't cogent metric, then they're wrong (but still objectively wrong, lol).

Here I have to ask you the obvious question..though, can you actually not think of anything about rape that makes it wrong?  Yes, I have opinions, you have opinions, we all have opinions...and those opinions exist in our minds.....but you don't have any opinions about that....?

The existence of opinions and their place in the mind does not make any other thing necessarily subjective.  We contend that some opinions are fact based, and others are free floating opinions.  Since a moral realist sees a moral proposition as the equivalent of any other (purported) fact..this would also be true of moral statements.  The simple fact that you are expressing your opinion isn't enough to determine whether the moral statement is subjective or objective, and this is mostly due to the fact that both subjective and objective statements or positions are privately held in the mind (which is the sense of subjectivity to which possesion of the concept refers).  

I can only say this so many ways and so many times...but moral realism does not contend that we are not necessarily subjective agents who hold opinions.  That this is true is not a counterargument to the position.  The question being asked (by moral realism, in contrast to moral subjectivism, lol) is not whether you have an opinion...but whether some x causes that opinion, or whether the opinion causes some x.  That's the ground floor.  Does it purport to report facts.

When I say rape is wrong (and I do), I recognize it as a shorthand: I don't like rape due to my feelings, and I know that the majority of people in my social environment don't like rape due to their feelings, and so we say it's wrong.  We have a social contract to stand against it, and to punish those caught doing it.

But what's the difference between sex, which most people consider good, and rape, which most people do not?  It's a complex history of ideas about rights, freedoms, responsibilities, and so on.  Essentially, it's a narrative.  It's much more about the sense of identity, of personal power, and so on than about anything that I'd call objective.

What would happen if a man raped his dog? The dog would squirm around, might be kind of confused. He might be sore for a couple of days. But I doubt he'd live out a life of insecurity, PTSD, etc. That's because he's not capable of establishing a narrative in which sex is related to self esteem, and where the wrong kind of sex will disillusion him forever. In essence, you'd have to argue that one's entire world view is objective, which to me is a broken semantic.