(July 9, 2013 at 2:01 am)MindForgedManacle Wrote: (July 9, 2013 at 1:49 am)Inigo Wrote: Yes, morality could be a hallucination. I take it that for morality to 'exist' at least some statements of the form 'Xing is wrong' or 'Xing is right' would need to be true. And if we mean by 'wrong' something that is instructed 'not to be done' and that we thereby have inescapable reason not to do, then I think such statements will only be true if a god of a certain sort exists.
Well, that was part of point. With respect to certain goals and desires, there is - at least in potential - the capability of saying what is the wrong way of achieving them. If the claim is that because 'there are instructions on what ought not be done, therefore you should or should not behave in blah blah blah....", then that would seem to cross Hume's is-ought gap.
Quote:Note, my claim is not that the god does exist. It is rather that the god would need to if morality is to be a reality as opposed to a mere hallucination.
I would have to contest that. What about there being a god would ground morality? Why should we listen to the god(s) say is moral or not moral? I won't get into the Euthyphro Dilemma, but it wouldn't seem to make sense to say - in this hypothetical - that you simply do what the god(s) say with no concern as to why you're doing it.
Well, the point is that morality requires a god. That's MY point. That's what I'm arguing. I'm arguing that only the instructions of a god would have all of the features of a moral instruction.
You mention Hume. I take Hume's point to be, in part anyway, precisely that morality instructs, whereas claims about what 'is' the case do not, or not normally. 'there is a chair over there' just describes. 'That act will maximise utility' or 'that act will harm someone' - none of these amounts to any kind of directive.
However, pointing out that an act is commanded not to be done is, while not itself a directive, to draw attention to a directive. This is what we are doing when we describe an act as wrong. We are describing rather than prescribing. So, we have an 'is'. However, what we are describing is the presence of a directive not to do the act. The wrongness is the directive, and when we describe an act as wrong we are making a truth apt claim about the act, namely that it is one we are directed not to perform.
Of course, there is more to moral directives than this. But any plausible account of what morality 'is' must account for its directing nature, and I don't know of any way of doing this apart from making those directives into the directives of agencies.
So, the first step is to note that morality needs to be, or be composed of, the directives and favourings of an agency of some sort (for I know of no other way in which a real directive can come into being). The second step is to note that morality's directives are distinct in being ones that we have inescapable reason to comply with.
I take this to be another part of Hume's point. Pointing out that there is a directive not to do a thing does not yet provide one with reason not to do it. After all, one may be in no doubt that there is an instruction to do a thing, yet think that there is no reason whatsoever for one to do it.
Moral instructions are not like this. It seems to be a conceptual truth about morality that if morality instructs you not to do a thing, you have reason not to do it. Someone who acknowledged that Xing was wrong but still wondered whether there was any reason not to do it would have to be considered confused (as opposed to wondering 'why' there is reason not to do it - that's a perfectly legitimate thing to wonder about).
My instructions, your instructions, the instructions of our communities etc all fail to be inescapably rationally authoritative and thus cannot be said to compose the instructions of morality. This is not to deny that we, our unconscious, and/or our communities may be causally responsible for our moral sensations and beliefs. But in that case morality is not real, just a hallucination that we're disposed to have and that can be recruited to serve the ends of our communities, ourselves, and so on. (Much as a disposition to believe in a god can be as well).
But the instructions of an agent who has complete control over our interests in an afterlife, and who is vengeful, would be ones we would have inescapable reason to comply with. For instance, someone who acknowledged that this agency was instructing him not to X but wondered at the same time 'but what reason do I have not to X' would have to be considered confused. Thus I conclude that the insructions of an agency like that would be ones that would share with moral instructions two core features. A) they would be instructions (real ones, not merely apparent ones). B) they would be instructions that possess inescapable rational authority. I conclude that until someone offers some other way of satisfying these conditions, this is what morality 'is' and thus that it would take the existence of something like the above for it to be true that morality 'exists'.
(July 9, 2013 at 4:50 am)pocaracas Wrote: (July 8, 2013 at 6:24 pm)Inigo Wrote: And once again you are just talking about my moral beliefs and sensations. Those constitute 'moral phenomena'. Morality is not my beliefs and sensations. It is the 'object' of moral beliefs. It is the thing sensed. It may not exist. but don't keep confusing it with the beliefs and sensations. You won't be addressing anything I've argued until you stop making this silly mistake.
Yep... that's because they're the same thing,.... you've created an artificial subjective distinction just so you can argue a god in there...
How can they be the same thing? How can morality be composed of beliefs? beliefs about what? Only a collection of beliefs is composed of beliefs. Anyway, I'm tired of arguing with people like you, you're not actually interested in the argument or addressing it.
Tell you what, why not just get out the old dictionary and play the pointless semantics game instead? That's what most of you prefer to proper debate.
Here, I'll get you going by telling you about how I use various terms and you can then get a dictionary - which is just a record of how morons use a word - and tell me I'm wrong and that all I'm doing is defining a god into existence, thus demonstrating your total inability to properly engage in a debate.
Here we go then......first, 'atheism'. I take atheism to be 'true' if there are no gods of any kind, and false if there are any gods (thor, Zeus, you name it). Ooo, that's got you hot under the collar hasn't it?? Yessss. You prefer an incoherent definition, that way you insulate your position against any possible refutation as one cannot attack fog.
I use 'atheist'.....wait for it.....to refer to someone who believes atheism (see above) is 'true'.
I use 'theism' to mean someone the view that a very specific kind of god exists, namely one that created the universe, is omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly morally good.
Some of you will literally shit yourself at that. I hope so anyway. I hope you're sat there in shitty underwear with big veins popping out all over your neck and forehead as you start pounding away at your keyboard to tell me how silly I am and how Mr Dictionary is cross with me and will come and spank my little arse.
(July 9, 2013 at 1:59 am)paulpablo Wrote: Quote:If I believe I am instructed to eat some food I believe someone must be issuing that instruction. Perhaps you mean to refer to my desire to eat food. That is a favouring of my eating food and it requires a mind to exist, doesn't it? Do you think desires can exist outside of minds?
But then why do you desire to eat food? This desire could be a hallucination.
I can't hallucinate that I desire to eat food. If it seems to me that I desire to eat food then I do desire to eat food. Similarly, I can't be a hallucination (Descartes' point). But this table might be a hallucination. I'm definitely sensing that there is a table in front of me. But it may be a hallucination because a table is not composed of sensations. It is something I have a sense 'of', but it is not one and the same as the sensations.
Similarly, my moral sense is a sense of external instructions. Because they create the impression of an external instruction they are relevantly analogous to my impressions of the table. If there is no table out there then although I am definitely experiencing table-sensations they constitute a hallucination. Similarly, if there are no external instructions out there that have the same character as moral instructions then my moral sensations constitute a hallucination.
(July 9, 2013 at 5:24 am)Stimbo Wrote: (July 8, 2013 at 10:32 pm)Inigo Wrote: Re theism - I am not a theist because I do not believe in a creator god who is omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good. And that is what I understand the word 'theist' to mean. If you do not, bully for you. I don't care. Put whatever label on me you want, but I don't put that label on me.
Oh, if you crave authorities telling you about what terms means (which is quite beyond me - once someone has told you what they mean by a term that's really all you need to know, the rest is just semantics)
Dictionaries record the usgae of words. That's all they do. Lexicographers don't invent words and then try to come up with definitions to go with them . That's what makes their work so useful as a reference source - it's not merely arguing from authority. Making up your own personal definitions for commonly established words might be fun, but be aware that by doing so you're desperately attempting to define your own argument into existence. In fact, I know you are aware of this because I've yet to see a post from you that doesn't depend on some variation of "well, I'm defining [word] to mean..." to make it work.
I quite agree this is tedious. You're not the first to go down this road and I forecast there'll be someone else following you before too long.
Don't tell me how a dictionary works for crying out loud!! I have told you what I mean by my terms. If you don't like it you just dislike my labels. That's all. You're not addressing my arguments, you're just telling me that YOU don't use those terms like that. Why do you think I care?? As I've said before, you can use these terms in whatever silly, incomprehensible way you like. But I'm sticking to my usage and if you don't like it that's entirely your problem. I just repeat: I don't care if you dislike how I'm using terms. Just rebadge the terms in the arguments if you really dislike them. But unless you're going to address those arguments kindly stop telling me what you label things. I DON'T CARE!!!
(July 9, 2013 at 2:45 am)genkaus Wrote: (July 9, 2013 at 1:49 am)Inigo Wrote: Yes, morality could be a hallucination. I take it that for morality to 'exist' at least some statements of the form 'Xing is wrong' or 'Xing is right' would need to be true. And if we mean by 'wrong' something that is instructed 'not to be done' and that we thereby have inescapable reason not to do, then I think such statements will only be true if a god of a certain sort exists.
Once again the two-level error rears its head. Even if we mean 'wrong' as an instructions of something not to be done, it still doesn't imply that it is something that we have an inescapable reason for not doing it and even if we needed an inescapable reason, it still wouldn't require a god.
Okay, so you have just said that 'even if' morality is composed of instructions that have inescapable rational authority such things would not require a god. Okay - so now kindly explain how one could have such a thing without having to posit a god of some sort?
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