What would be the harm?

[The Grand Nudger]

No, moral realists do not depend upon the type of argument you're engaged in here.  Actual moral realists assert that there is some objective feature of the world which makes moral propositions true.  Actual moral realists reject constructs such as yours and Harris' because they realize that harm and well-being are subjective and thus they don't pick out objective features of the world and so they cannot form the basis of any moral realism.  As has been said of Harris, you think that you've solved the perennial problem of objectively grounding morals when instead you've simply done philosophy badly.  And here we have you simply reasserting what has already been shown to be wrong.  You're like Drich and Christians in thinking that simply reasserting something will make it true.  You've even said as much with your claim about having continually posted the same thing.  What you're not doing is actually answering objections, such as those given in my last post.  You didn't answer any of the objections there, or my Yoda objection to your rebuttal to my point about whether a wound constitutes harm or not, you're simply repeating yourself like an idiot.

Stop, and go read about intuitionism and moral objectivity.  Yes Actual Moral Realist™ make these arguments.  It's the only argument that naturalists and non naturalist both make....though naturalists really...really hate being reduced to it.  

You're welcome.

I was going to go through each of these, and I will in a limited fashion, but it's not really my job.  Apparently you didn't learn nothing from your last attempt at this and think that simply repeating your prior argument will somehow magically make it right this time when it wasn't last time.

I recall a smart person once mentioning that a person arguing with the definition of words had little left to say.  

All of the definitions given above either lead nowhere or to something subjective.  Why is damage or injury harm?  Because they negatively impact the desired function of a system.  You cannot damage a rock because a rock isn't a system and has no desired function.  As shown with the bloke who shot himself in the face, damage or injury is only harm if it is negative, otherwise it is neither harm nor damage or injury.  One simply has to consider it from a mereological perspective.  Something is damaged or injured if some of its parts are missing or non-functional.  How do we determine what are the appropriate and required parts of a thing?  By reference to its intended function.  I'm missing nine fingers.  That's only damage if I want to do something with those nine fingers.  And you chopping the fingers off a dead person isn't harm at all because you can't harm a dead person, regardless of whether you might through some teleological notion consider it damage or injury.  So both damage and injury necessarily refer to the purpose or function of a thing, and that is a teleological notion, and not an objective definition.

[
LOL, ofc you can damage a rock.  We do it all the time.  It's called mountaintop removal.  Damage doesn't depend on something being a system.  That you're missing nine fingers is damage regardless of whether or not you had any plan to do something with them.  Just as chopping the fingers off of a corpse is to damage that corpse. 

What you're blasting over is that you don't consider those things to be the morally relevant sort of damage you had in mind.  It's not a satisfying proposition.  It's not that I disagree with you in every instance -on that-.  However, I'll note that this urge, that you've expressed argumentatively in some doomed attempt to reassert subjectivty, could simply be moral failure, a problem of the agent, yet again, in an ethical context.  We propose that harm or damage done makes something bad or just -is- bad...and then, in a failure to consistently leverage our principles..see that something does do harm and decide that it isn't bad anyway.  The subjective agent fails to be rationally consistent and dives, instead, to constant appeals to subjectivity.  Quelle surprise!

*

Hurt is simply a a near synonym for harm which leads nowhere.

If there are brute facts of good and bad, as intuitive arguments propose, and harm is one of them..it -won't- lead anywhere in the direction you're going.  Everything will proceed the other way.  The brute fact has no explanation of itself, but is itself the explanation of some more elaborate thing or inference.  

Broken again refers to function, and function is another teleological notion which relies on intent and so is subjective.

Since we've already discussed the sensibility or possibility of a natural teloelogy, it;s simply not the case that any reference to teleology makes something necessarrily subjective in the sense that moral theorists are using that term.  

Made less valuable or successful?  Please.  These are obvious subjective measures.  Value is subjective.  What counts as success is subjective.

Def, I agree with you there.  Harm can be used as a subjective reference, but since it can also be used as an objective referant this one sense of the term will not help us to maintain that harm is subjective, only that it can be, like many other things, subjectively assessed.  

But we went through all this with your prior dictionary episode in which the definitions for bad were all shown to be subjective.  As noted above, you're simply repeating the same wrong arguments, ignoring and not grappling with the objections, and walking away with a smile on your face thinking that you have done well.  Instead, you're just behaving like an idiot.  As noted, it's not my job to show that all of the above definitions ultimately rely on subjective ideas, but your job to show that any of these definitions have an objective measure as a measure of harm.  Quoting the dictionary doesn't do that.  That you think it would, especially given your prior failure at this is astounding.

I'm repeating them because you are not engaging with them.  If you did, you might find that this is exactly the sort of thing that moral theorists are talking about, even if it doesn;t cut it, for you..or you were expecting something else.  As above, when you just didn't know that that the intuitive argument is the only thing that all moral realists have in common.  It's not particularly satisfying for all of them, either, though....and moral naturalists look elsewhere whereas moral non naturalists push it harder.

Why not, instead of repeating the assertions you've made before you try doing actual work and answering the objections given.  We can start with my objection that a wound is not an example of harm if the person desired a wound in their face.  Is that not true?  You responded to the trailer and insurance example by claiming that it was not what you wanted.  But that's just a subjective idea as to what should be desired, not an objective one.  In the case of the man whose trailer you burned down, who collected the insurance money, you did him no harm but actually helped him.  If harm is objective as you say, you need to show that the burned out trailer constitutes harm for the man who wanted his trailer burned down, because objective notions require the ability to show that someone was harmed in spite of them having a desire for the action to occur.  Get to work and show that.

I will stop repeating these arguments the very moment that you've shown comprehension with regards to these arguments.  If I want to contend that harm is objective in the sense that moral theorists are discussing, I only need to show that harm is not a mind dependent property.  The mans trailer is burnt down IRL, not in my mind or his.  That is all that it takes for something to be a mind independent property.  

As to whether I dismiss it out of satisfaction, I'll tell you the same thing that I told Drich and Huggy, even if I had such feelings, it would be irrelevant to the discussion as appeal to motive is a fallacy.  I've told you that it is not true.  The only reason you are repeating the suggestion is because you need to find some explanation for my refusal to accept your assertions that doesn't involve those assertions being wrong.  And so, obviously, you explain it by asserting and believing that my emotions and my feelings are interfering with my ability to reason properly about the subject.  This story has only one purpose, to make you feel better about your conclusion that you are right and put away any doubts that you are wrong prompted by an intelligent and philosophically astute interrogator disagreeing with you.  So far from me having such a motive, which you just dredged up out of your ass because you want or need it to be true, it's actually you that is showing himself to be lead around by his emotional needs and desires.  And I'll tell you the same thing that I told Drich.  Even if I had the motives you suggest that I have, it would not in any sense lead to the conclusion that those feelings were interfering with my ability to reason about the subject and come to correct conclusions.  But the fact is it's not true, I don't have such feelings, and this bullshit is just a comforting story that you are telling yourself so that you can feel better.

And now you have joined the ranks of Drich and Huggy with the quality of your arguments.  Proud of yourself?

Meh, more disappointed with you, for even thinking that the mentions of their name near mine would bother me or change these arguments and observations..honestly, lol.  

I think that you find moral realism -intellectually- unsatisfying.  Many people do, especially people who are just figuring out what it is.  It's difficult to argue against moral realists propositions..they're deceptively simple.  The main criticism lodged an the intuitive argument is precisely that.  It was a favorite of Moore, who had an immense effect on moral naturalism with his open question, but was himself a non natural realist (and in point of fact levied quite a few of the objections you have, in this thread..to moral naturalism).  The contention is that, if it's true, and there's no good reason in it's main thrust to argue that it isn't.....it doesn't really tell us anything about morality we didn't already know.  It doesn't shine down light on a complex or confusing subject.  It doesn't deliver the goods we're seeking.  It's a profoundly unsatisfying truth, if true.   

You're still confused.  It's not that you don't have a wound or that the bacteria or lion care about such, it's that a wound isn't harm unless its undesirable, and that makes the notion of harm subjective.  A wound, by itself, without reference to the wants and desires of some thing is neither good or bad.  Since it's neither good or bad on its own, it isn't harm because harm requires that it be bad (as well as your larger argument that harm is bad; if the wound isn't bad, and you consider the wound harm then that refutes your claim that harm is bad).  You're also confused about who has the burden of proof here.  You keep casting this as my attempting to prove that a wound has a subjective element and is therefore subjective.  You're right that this would not show that it is subjective.  However, I'm not saying that.  What I am saying is that any reason you can give for considering any state of affairs harm or bad is subjective, and my pointing out those subjective aspects is simply to show that the things you think are objective actually are subjective.  You haven't given me an example of objective harm, and until you do, all this talk of how these things are subjective and not objective is just refuting your attempts to prove your point, not my attempts to prove the reverse.

-and that's you not engaging, again.  Yes, it is exactly that I have bee objectively harmed that a moral realist who is also a naturalist is warranted in pointing that out as at least a part of the objective basis for their moral conclusions.  That is exactly the sort of thing they are talking about.   You are, btw, above..fielding moores objections to naturalism..which, as good as they are as objections to naturalism, they are not objections to realism.  A realist can make them and remain consistent to their own position.

I;m sure that you can find a way for anything I say to you to be subjective..but there's only one sense of subjectivity that is meaningful to moral theorists in this discussion.  Mind dependance.  That, and that alone, is what it means for something to be morally subjective.  If I refer to the fact that I have a wound, and i have a wound, then I am refering to a mind independent fact of the matter, and that's it, that's all, gg.  You might contend that it;s not a sufficient evaluative premise, but to contend that it is not objective..is..absurd.

So, more on moore and those objections to the naturalist reference to a wound from non natural realism.  It is proposed by some that moral properties are non natural.  That none of them can be reduced to biology, for example, to some empirical thing.  Instead, we simply observe or apprehend "the bad", and all that empirical observation can do is to signify that some x belongs in -that- set.  That, somehow, harm or some harm (but not all harm) is a token of bad but not bad itself.  It isn't required that a person paint themselves into a ridiculous corner asserting that harm is not or cannot be objective or is somehow fundamentally subjective in order to object to harm as the basis of a realist appraisal.  

You talk about moral realists above without realizing that it is actual moral realists who have problems with notions such as yours and Harris' being valid examples of moral realism.  I don't know exactly where the failure lies, but I suspect that you've mistaken common sense notions for the objective nature of harm or bad with actual philosophically rigorous ones.  Actual moral realists realize that you can't define bad so simply and have an objective definition of it.  That's why actual moral realists reject ideas like yours and Harris' because they see the problems with it even if you don't.  You, in your delusion, think this is because you have succeeded where others have failed when in reality it's simply that you don't recognize that you have failed.

Yes, moral realists, specifically, moral naturalists, have a problem with intuitivist arguments fielded by other moral realists, who are commonly non naturalists.  The problem, for them (naturalists) is that they will inevitably appeal to a form of intuitivism themselves - particularly when they go about demonstrating whatever natural fact they hope to pin their own concepts on.  Their objections are thus rendered inconsistent.  They don;t have to agree with the non realist, but they do have to allow for the validity of an intuitivist reponse even if they find it unsatisfying and seek to add more flesh..literally...to the spirit of that remark.   

No, that something can be subjectively valued does not mean that it cannot be an objective thing.  I readily admit that it could be an objective thing.  However, the fact that it could be an objective thing doesn't show that it is an objective thing.  You have to remember context.  You have been asked to show an example of harm that is objective and objectively bad.  You gave subjective accounts of its badness, primarily by citing your desire to burn down my trailer house.  I have, and will point out again, that your burning down my trailer house is only bad if you assume a certain perspective, and therefore it's only subjectively bad.  This does not show that burning down the trailer is not objectively bad, but what it does show is that your wanting to burn down my trailer is not objectively bad, which is a refutation of your point.  You're terribly confused about who is making the positive case.  I am not trying to establish that all harm is subjective in the case that you cited but rather that you have not given an objective account of how burning down the trailer house is bad or harm.  Those are your responsibilities, and you haven't fulfilled them.

-and to show that anything -is- an objective thing, we will ultimately have to appeal to intuitivist arguments.  I see it...you see it....it is observable and not mind dependent.  We apprehend the fact of it's existence.  So, while you or I may find ourselves wanting more (and we do, definitely) this actually would be enough to rationally ground an objective system.  It;s just that naturalist want to ground the objective system in something more visceral, and that's where something like harm or damage can come in..as a natural property of the act or consequence of x.  As something amenable to empirical observation.  

Now, if you like, feel free to show how any of the above dictionary definitions are objectively bad and harmful.  I suspect your primary attempt will be to focus on damage, but keep in mind the proviso above that damage isn't harm unless it's negative.  That essentially simply loops us back to the concept of bad, which we've already been through once, and to which it seems your only reply is to again axiomatically assert that harm is bad.  (And note that I don't need to show that damage has to be negative to qualify as harm even if the dictionary doesn't explicitly mention it because you do: you have asserted that harm is bad.  If damage isn't bad, then by your own definition it isn't harm.)

That proviso may be in error.  It commonly -is- the error that leads to moral failures of consistency, and thus moral disagreement.  The famous example is the boiled lobster, and this ties in with the non naturalists conjecture above, as well.  One person contends that boiling a lobster alive is bad, the other that it is not.  Thee people are in disagreement.  Is it a moral disagreement, though?  Maybe not.  A naturalist can then refer to the alleged fact that being boiled alive causes immense pain to the lobster, or can ask the other how they would feel boiled alive to signify what it is they are discussing.  The other person may, then, say "well, shit, I didn't realize i was harming the lobster, you're right, fuck me!"  The diagreement, in this case, was not a moral disagreement (as non naturalist realism puts it) it was an empirical disagreement.  However, all that the naturalist has done is show that boiling the lobster is harmful, he didn't show that it was bad..that much was already apprehended by the other.  

Now, you've got a lot of work ahead of you, and as noted, I won't have many opportunities to read and respond for a few days, so you're on your own for a while.  Make good use of your time.  Do not simply reassert your prior failed arguments but actually tackle the substance of my rebuttals.  And don't you worry about what motivates me, I'm a big girl and can handle myself, squirrely emotions and all, and besides, you've shown that you don't have the first clue about what I actually feel.

My "prior failed arguments" are the fundamental issues of moral realism.  The first stop in a great many different positions on the matter. Until you can accept that and them and engage this will be a pissing match where you call me drich, paint yourself into one ridiculous corner after another, argue with a dictionary.....and then storm off, lol.

As a recap to all of the above..in the end, I don't agree with these non natural realists contentions. I do, however, see that it's approaching something important and true about the moral landscape. That they lay out the pitfalls of natural properties as a foundation of moral objectivity. I acknowledge their fucking existence...lol. Can you bring yourself to do the same, and particularly in light of the fact that you do seem to find some of the objections compelling, yourself?

---

* this is actually my favorite subtopic in realist moral theories - how and why and what to do when we are or seem to be inconsistently leveraging our stated moral principles or evaluative premises.

So, using the example of harm applied in a seemingly inconsistent manner, how do we resolve that?  One way, is to resolve it fully after the initial moral appraisal is complete, as we begin to consider desert.  We can maintain that harm or damage is morally relevant, the semantics of how we do that are unimportant at the level of desert..because at this level we can say..and sensibly say, that while harm is bad in the general case and so all instances of harm deserve consideration..not all harm is equal.  Pushing you down and chopping your head off are not the same.  Defacing a cliff face in a natural park and burning down your house are not the same.  Some carry a heavier weight of consequence than others, even though all..by a plain reading of harm, are bad.  

Now, perhaps we might do this simply on the basis above, but there's also a compulsion to do this in that desert often carries morally relevant consequence, itself...not just for the person whom the judgement is being levied against, but also for the judge.    In effect, we say, "yes, this is bad..but it;s not -that- bad, or, yes, this is bad..but carrying through on some action against the person might be even worse."   At first blush, it seems like this, too, would be subjective and it often is...but that's not to say that it has to be.  That th question of how bad: cannot be resolved in some objective fashion.  OFC, it also doesn't entail that all questions of "how bad" will be..and there's a simple demonstration of why this would be so, imagining a world  (that we don;t currently live in) where bad was quantified in a objective and standard system.  

For this, we refer to moral dilemma and it's seeming intractability.   We're tempted to ask ourselves how, if this sort of objective quantification of "how bad" can be done, does moral dilemma persist?  Well, why is the sum of 5 and negative 5 zero?  Perhaps some moral dilemma persists and is, properly, un-resolvable...as the amounts on either side of that ledger cancel themselves out.  In those cases we could say that while both solutions are bad, they are not bad in a way that lends itself to consequential action.  That the agent chose between an exclusively suboptimal set of solutions and no choice was calculably -worse- than any other.  Whether a person save the people on the trolley, or the man the trolley runs over, or sits back and does nothing...all of these things amounted to little more than a shit sandwhich and we would not be within our moral license to penalize this person for any choice.  Everything rounded down to zero.

Now, I don't think that this is always the case..but absent some rigorous context of investigation (like cornell realism or analytical realism) it would be very difficult to resolve dilemma in a satisfying way.  So, in the interim, we err on the side of moral caution in consequence.  

Fun sidebars are fun.

[Angrboda]

LOL, ofc you can damage a rock.  We do it all the time.  It's called mountaintop removal.  Damage doesn't depend on something being a system.  That you're missing nine fingers is damage regardless of whether or not you had any plan to do something with them.  Just as chopping the fingers off of a corpse is to damage that corpse. 

I'll make a quick response because I don't feel like reading all this crap at the moment. I may not get to it for some time. I am interested in doing as you suggest and reading about intuitivism if you would be gracious enough to provide some links. In the meantime I'll simply point out that you are wrong, and the reason you are wrong was included in my last post, so your making this argument is just an example of you not engaging my objections and simply blathering on repeating things and making arguments without actually engaging the counter-arguments. When you don't engage my objections, and simply repeat your arguments on the pretext that I haven't shown sufficient understanding of how you are right, you are explicitly acknowledging that you aren't engaging. For you to accuse me of not engaging, despite having done so, when you, in this very post, show that you are not engaging my objections, is laughably hypocritical.

Now, onto why taking the top off a mountain doesn't qualify. In some loose sense it might qualify as 'damage' but qualifying as damage alone doesn't make it harm. That's the missing or implied part of the definition. By your own definition, harm is bad. Thus if it isn't bad, it cannot be harm. How is taking the top off a mountain objectively bad? Feel free to fill in the details because you haven't yet.

Anyway, I'll likely not get to the rest of your reply until Tuesday. In the meantime, if you have some links, that would be appreciated. If you can say how taking the top off a mountain is bad without either referring to subjective goals and wants, or recursively circling back to your assertion that harm is bad, it would be appreciated.

So, I'm out.

One more quickie. I found one link, but would appreciate more. I will read, but I'll note that SEP says the following:

Ethical Intuitionism was one of the dominant forces in British moral philosophy from the early 18th century till the 1930s. It fell into disrepute in the 1940s, but towards the end of the twentieth century Ethical Intuitionism began to re-emerge as a respectable moral theory. It has not regained the dominance it once enjoyed, but many philosophers, including Robert Audi, Jonathan Dancy, David Enoch, Michael Huemer, David McNaughton, and Russ Shafer-Landau, are now happy to be labelled intuitionists.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/intuitionism-ethics/

(One last comment. A brief glance suggests that the epistemology of intuitionism has much in common with Reformed Epistemology. If you're going to go that route, providing it pans out as I suspect, you'll need to show how reformed epistemology fails with respect to things like sensus divinitatas, while intuitionism succeeds, if in fact they are both making essentially the same epistemological assumptions.)

Again, forgive me, but the article immediately suggests a line of attack.

These seemings are not beliefs, for something can seem true even though one does not believe it, e.g., it may seem true that there are more natural numbers than even numbers, but we know that is false, so do not believe it.

If this seeming with even and odd numbers can be wrong, why should we trust such seemings on propositions such as yours that "harm is bad?" This may seem to you to be self-evident, but seemings can be wrong, so your having such a seeming does not put your belief that harm is bad on a sound footing. How do you get it onto a sound footing?

As a parenthetical note, this seems to run alarmingly parallel to notions such as the Stoic concept of phantasia katalepsis, which has significant problems. I don't think you're going to ultimately succeed going down this route, but I will continue to do as you suggest and read about intuitionism and try to understand it so I can be charitable and engage your arguments instead of us just talking past one another. In the meantime, I suggest you engage in reverse and understand why intuitionism isn't dominant in the field and grapple with the objections of those that do dominate the field and not simply shrug them off and repeat yourself because you disagree with mainstream philosophy and are beholden to your intuitionist views.

[The Grand Nudger]

I'll make a quick response because I don't feel like reading all this crap at the moment.  I may not get to it for some time.  I am interested in doing as you suggest and reading about intuitivism if you would be gracious enough to provide some links.  In the meantime I'll simply point out that you are wrong, and the reason you are wrong was included in my last post, so your making this argument is just an example of you not engaging my objections and simply blathering on repeating things and making arguments without actually engaging the counter-arguments.  When you don't engage my objections, and simply repeat your arguments on the pretext that I haven't shown sufficient understanding of how you are right, you are explicitly acknowledging that you aren't engaging.  For you to accuse me of not engaging, despite having done so, when you, in this very post, show that you are not engaging my objections, is laughably hypocritical.

I'm not sure what you mean here, do you mean, in sum, that intuitivists are wrong?  Well..okay, I think that they're wrong about alot of things too.  I'm not trying to browbeat you into accepting their arguments, only informing you of the existence and sensibility of the arguments, and this, vis a vis why the objections that they levy, which you have also levied..may be good arguments against some thing x, but are not arguments against -realism-.  They are, themselves, realist arguments.  

Now, onto why taking the top off a mountain doesn't qualify.  In some loose sense it might qualify as 'damage' but qualifying as damage alone doesn't make it harm.  That's the missing or implied part of the definition.  By your own definition, harm is bad.  Thus if it isn't bad, it cannot be harm.  How is taking the top off a mountain objectively bad?  Feel free to fill in the details because you haven't yet.

All that is required for objectivity in the sense that moral theorists are talking about is that the damage be mind independent..which it is.  If this is their standard, then it is an objective standard, at least.  This, alone, is enough to defang your assertion of a meaningful subjectivity.  

Harm as conceived of by moral realists isn;t subjective.  End of.  That harm can be conceived of subjectively or that some harm is..properly, subjective rather than objective is not a damning indictment of the realists position...but exactly the sorts of harm they would exclude from their criteria.  

Anyway, I'll likely not get to the rest of your reply until Tuesday.  In the meantime, if you have some links, that would be appreciated.  If you can say how taking the top off a mountain is bad without either referring to subjective goals and wants, or recursively circling back to your assertion that harm is bad, it would be appreciated.

You seem to have found one, you could follow that rabbit hole down.   

(One last comment.  A brief glance suggests that the epistemology of intuitionism has much in common with Reformed Epistemology.  If you're going to go that route, providing it pans out as I suspect, you'll need to show how reformed epistemology fails with respect to things like sensus divinitatas, while intuitionism succeeds, if in fact they are both making essentially the same epistemological assumptions.)

Again, forgive me, but the article immediately suggests a line of attack.

-and there are surely other lines of attack.  There is no moral theory which is free from lines of attack - but it;s important when offering them to understand both what it is that you're attacking and that your line actually applies to what you're attacking.  Your remarks regarding the subjectivity of harm have not been either of those things, had you engaged with the propositions to which you applied them.   Realists of -every- stripe accept that there are subjective conceptualizations of harm.  They simpkly contend that these are not the proper field of the objectivists moral landscape and are..instead, predictable failures of a subjective agent.  

If this seeming with even and odd numbers can be wrong, why should we trust such seemings on propositions such as yours that "harm is bad?"  This may seem to you to be self-evident, but seemings can be wrong, so your having such a seeming does not put your belief that harm is bad on a sound footing.  How do you get it onto a sound footing?

Why, indeed.  Harm is bad is self evident to a person who launches an intuitivist argument.  That doesn't make this so -to me-...I was simply capable of relating their argument to you, and expressing why your objections might fail in response to that argument.  I think they also fail in response to my moral naturalism, for reasons also laid out at length in multiple posts..post wherein I also took the time to note the pitfalls of naturalism as a sound footing for moral realism. Harm is a natural property, and in the sense meaningful to moral theory, it is mind independant...regardless of whether or not there are a whole host of mind dependant things in it;s periphery and about it. There are opinions and there are facts. We commonly have opinions about and around facts. Pointing out these opinions existence..something that neither of us (and no moral realist) denies, does not..in and of itself, make any of those facts necessarrily subjective.

The short of the long is that you are simply not using the term subjectivity in the way that moral theorists use it. Bcause of this, you can validly claim that any given x is subjective..but it won't matter if this is true..because they are not talking about the same thing that you are. Yes, we have desires. So what. Yes, our desires can align with our moral propositions. So what? Yes, we can and often do conflate our subjectivity with a meaningful objectivity, so what? Yes, we can and often do conflate objectivity with the subjectivity of survival. So what? Yes, we can and commonly do conflate the instrumental goods of x for an intrinsic good. So what? Yes, we can be in moral disagreement (and you don;t need to refer to lions or bacteria to establish that, lol). So what?

No realist need disagree with any of this. In point of fact, none do. Each example is pointed to as an artifact of a subjective agent, circumscribing -why- we have things like moral disagreement or moral indeterminacncy or moral failure.

Moral naturalists, for their part (and correct me if I'm wrong but you are trying to address moral naturalism, specifically, yes?) need to ground their moral schema in natural properties..but they can't ground every part of their schema in those brute facts of nature..as what is natural is not necessarrily right....and as they do so and avoid that...they have to ground them in such a way as to avoid the open question, and arching around all of that they have to ground them in such a way as to overcome some error theory. These are the main problems for moral naturalism, and the toughest one is the last one. Not subjectivity. Moral subjectivity is not an error theory. Error theories accept as a point of definition that moral propositions purport to report objectivity, they reject subjectivism fundamentally, they assert, instead..that we get the answer to some question wrong..but this is only a sensible notion within the implicit claim that there is a right answer - the realists contention.

Your answer to my so whats..and again correct me If Im wrong...is that.."so what if that's what we're doing!". It's a good question. I'm only suggesting that no invocation of subjectivity is a valid way to launch -those- attacks. You're shooting at the wrong thing. You're an error theorist, not a subjectivist. We both eschew subjectivity..again, as it;s used by moral theorists, in order to launch much more damning (or illuminating) arguments than..."but that;s like..just your opinion, man". All that pointing out some opinion as opposed to some fact might do, in the case of me being a realist, is to cause me to discard that opinion as a basis of moral justification..because it's not what I'm talking about. I'll just say.."thx, shitcanned, next?".

Yes, it's my/our opinion, but is it -wrong-. It sure as shit may be! Is harm wrong (as in, wrong as a moral basis) -because- it's subjective? No, a thousand times no. If it is wrong, it's wrong for some other reason. Is it wrong because there is disagreement? Because lions and bacteria (and other people) would not agree? No, there is disagreement over every true thing.

Is it wrong (still as a moral basis) because I desire to avoid or entertain it it? No, I desire to avoid many true things, that doesn't make them less true. I do a hell of a lot of harm, and have done a hell of alot of harm, and in point of fact -enjoy- doing at least some harm........everyone knows this about me, lol. Thankfully, that harm I've done and what harm I enjoy falls within the remit of social acceptability....but according to my moral schema, it's still wrong, still bad.

(I do understand, agree, and concede...btw, that intuitionism isn't dominant in the field..but that's not because intuitionism isn't ever-present in the field..lying under -every- justification, it is..it's just profoundly unsatisfying - my reference to it shouldn't be taken as an indication that I feel otherwise. I do think that it's a profoundly unsatisfying conjecture..it doesn't answer the questions I want to ask....but fuck me if I can make reference to any fact of any thing without some unspoken affirmation -of- it. Ultimately, that's a problem of all propositions, moral or otherwise. The thing that's dominant in the field is natural realism. Moral subjectivity long since acknowledged and dealt with and discarded in the sense that moral theorists are referring to it. Subjectivity made incredible contributions to how realists conceptualize and argue for their objectivity, and non natural realism made contributions to natural realism.....but, at present, it's error theory that's most concerning, error theory that gives us pause to wonder whether our foundations are built on sand - and error theory to which contemporary natural realism builds itself as scientific realism or analytical realism or standard reductionism in a bid to overcome.)

[Angrboda]

I've got a lot of catching up to do, but in the meantime I'll simply point out that you have failed to answer the rock objection. It isn't that subjective accounts do exist, but that objective accounts do not exist. The question which you were trying to answer with posting the dictionary definition was to show that harm has an objective definition. I'll grant you for the sake of argument that taking the top off a mountain is in some sense damage, but damage by itself is not harm. Damage has to be bad or else from your own example that taking the top off a mountain is damage, and damage even if it isn't bad is harm, then you've refuted your own axiom that harm is bad because in the case of the mountain top, we have a case of harm that is not bad. For the mountain top example to fly, you have to show that it is both damage and that it is bad, one without the other doesn't work. So, ultimately you have to show that taking the top off a mountain is bad, or your argument fails. You haven't in any sense shown that taking the top off a mountain is bad and I'm highly skeptical of your being able to do so without appealing to subjectivity or begging the question. Maybe you're more creative than I can imagine and you can show this without nicking either Charybdis or Scylla. So far, however, you haven't shown it. Until you do, simply repeating yourself is an empty promise as doing so doesn't feed the bulldog. And the reasons why it doesn't were laid out for you two posts ago. So, in spite of your accusations that I'm not engaging, and my current good faith efforts to address what you see as the cause of my failure to engage, you yourself are demonstrably not engaging. That's more of a problem for you than it is for me, as I don't have to engage if what you present isn't logically sound. I have and do intend to continue to engage by responding and pointing to your errors, but you yourself need to engage as well, not simply because it's the right thing to do but also because you are making a positive claim here and failing to engage the objections simply means you fail. So, start engaging and stop repeating. I will attempt to do likewise, but seeing as you haven't adequately addressed my prior objections, instead casting them as straw men which you feel proud to have defeated, I don't actually need to provide further rebuttals because you haven't adequately addressed the rebuttals lying on the table. Your failing to engage simply insures your ultimate failure.

Now, I haven't completely read either of your past two posts, so if I missed something and failed to engage with my prior two attempts to leap into the breach, I apologize. I will get to it, and the papers on intuitionism, but likely not until Tuesday. In the meantime, I suggest you contribute some relevant links if you are able and show how taking the top off a mountain is objectively bad. Failing the latter, your argument fails. My brief glimpse at the SEP page suggests there is more to intuitionism that lies along avenues that you haven't argued, and that your representation of intuitionalism, if that is your argument, is seriously lacking in substance. You need to fix that and the other errors if you want to be successful here. So, I will attempt to engage, but you need to do so as well. The signs and admissions on your part so far indicate that you haven't. If that continues, I may simply lose interest.

[The Grand Nudger]

I've got a lot of catching up to do, but in the meantime I'll simply point out that you have failed to answer the rock objection.  It isn't that subjective accounts do exist, but that objective accounts do not exist.  

This may simply be an intractable difference of opinion.  I maintain that rocks can be damaged, and damage is one use of the word harm, which is an objective use.  I see no sensible way that this can be objected to, itself..though I acknowledge that it may be that the damage done to a rock can be objected to as a self-sufficient or wholly sufficient evaluative moral premise. I see no need to add links to give this statement more weight, because no link to that effect would have more weight than the statement already has. Standard minimalism. The statement "Mountains can be damaged" and the statement "mountains can be damaged is a true statement" -backed up by links..adds nothing to the original statement. It's a content-tautology.

Even in this, however, with my sidebar, I explained how one can maintain it's validity as an evaluative moral premise and yet come to the conclusion that damaging a rock, though "bad" in a plain and consistent reading, can carry little or no weight in moral desert. Leading some to see paradox where others see sensible elaboration by reference to a related but distinct subject.

(keep in mind, in all of this, that I'm a pluralist - it's perfectly okay in my moral schema that no one thing can adequately encompass all that is meant by any given moral appraisal - I don't expect otherwise, and am not surprised when some single metric fails to encapsulate the entirety of the moral landscape. I think that harris' and other's intuitive consequentialism is right, true, but that it doesn't and cant account for the entire field nor can it stand alone. I regard things like that as just one part of some hypothetical naturalists unifying moral theory that we do not currently possess.)

---

I'll also state, right at the outset..and carry this with you in every subsequent interaction in some coversational reset between us...that you are not going to find or field some error theorists response to any realists moral proposition that I -don't- think can't be or isn't difficult, that I -don't- think approaches a consequential truth for any given realists proposition even if it were ultimately overcome.

My realism is deeply informed and constrained by error theory.  I don;t think that realist moral theory necessarrily or wholly overcomes any of them in some unique or inarguable way, only that realist moral theory -can- overcome them in the same ways and as much as any other realist conception of anything does...if any of them overcome them in the first place.

There will certainly be a point at which I throw up my hands and say "Damned good question, I have no satisfactory answer..but I side with this". and what, praytell, is the explanation for that whenever it arises? Be it an argument between moral theorists or an argument between realists and anti-realism in the general sense> Fucking intuitionism...son-of-a-bitch!

It may in fact be that moral propositions reduce, somehow and eventually, to an ipse dixit conjecture..but that isn't because moral propositions, themselves and alone or uniquely do so, it's endemic to any proposition if we keep asking for explanations of the explanations, including whatever system we use to ask for and assess explanations of explanations...and that fucking sucks, but it may be the way things are, or it may be a limit of human cognition.

: throws up hands :

[Angrboda]

I'll simply point out that if damage to a rock isn't bad, then it isn't harm because by your own axiom, harm is bad. In that instance, if damage to a rock isn't bad, but it is harm, then that violates your axiom that harm is [always] bad. In this case you either have to give up the contention that the damage to the rock alone is harm, or give up the axiom that harm is bad. You cannot satisfy both conditions simultaneously which is why the example of the rock as an example of objective harm fails. Since we appear to be out of examples, I say let's eat! (Just kidding. I know you gave other examples, I don't recall them at the moment, but unless they succeed where your rock example failed, they too will end up on the scrap heap.)

Later.

(And your last post is again one that I haven't read but only skimmed. Patience, Neo, the answers are coming...)

[The Grand Nudger]

I'll simply point out that if damage to a rock isn't bad, then it isn't harm because by your own axiom, harm is bad.  

All well and good, but the proposition you;re responding to is that it -is- bad, even if that bad doesn;t rise to the level of an actionable offense against normative ethics.

It's certainly possible that there is bad that doesn't rise to that level, so..... 

: throws up hands :

In that instance, if damage to a rock isn't bad, but it is harm, then that violates your axiom that harm is [always] bad.  

If - failure to engage- than..failure to engage.  

In this case you either have to give up the contention that the damage to the rock alone is harm, or give up the axiom that harm is bad.  You cannot satisfy both conditions simultaneously which is why the example of the rock as an example of objective harm fails.  Since we appear to be out of examples, I say let's eat!  (Just kidding.  I know you gave other examples, I don't recall them at the moment, but unless they succeed where your rock example failed, they too will end up on the scrap heap.)

Later.

(And your last post is again one that I haven't read but only skimmed.  Patience, Neo, the answers are coming...)

Which is a contention that I havent given up (and this for conversations sake..remember), and all of your subsequent remarks to that effect are your own, and not mine. The rock example doesn't fail, you simply don't agree with it. Your disagreement is immaterial to -my- rock example...and why, fundamentally, because disagreement signifies nothing of realist moral import.

That isn't to say that your disagreement isn't consequential. It's just not consequential...to realism. It;s consequential in that iot sends you one way and me another..but the direction it sends you in is the direction of other other types of realists, all the same in their realism.

---

#moralrealismisfrustrating

[Angrboda]

Khem, I'm not making an argument against moral realism as a whole but specifically against your version of moral realism, so this is another straw man you are knocking down without having engaged the point. In your version of moral realism, harm is necessarily bad. If it isn't bad, then it isn't harm, or you've violated your own axiom. I neither need to engage moral realism as a whole nor refute moral realism as a general thesis in order to show that your moral realism is not adequately supported. The example I've provided clearly shows that the example of a rock does not meet the standards for harm according to the axioms you have asserted. As such, the rock example cannot be used to establish that harm has an objective definition. If harm doesn't have an objective definition, then the statement that harm is objectively bad is incoherent. In that case, failing additional arguments, your moral realism argument is not successful. It's not a question of agreeing to disagree, it's a situation where you are asserting inconsistent things and I'm pointing out that this inconsistency is fatal. There is no room to agree to disagree. That you continue to fail to realize this astounds me, given my estimates of your general intelligence, but there it is.

So, thanks for the song and dance about how I'm not engaging moral realism generally, but it's rather beside the point as I freely confess I'm not addressing the possibility that some moral realism, somewhere, is valid. I am addressing your moral realism however, so my failure to address other moral realisms or moral realism in general is irrelevant. That you can't see this, too, is something I'm also astounded by.

Anyway, I'm trying to watch football. I'll get back to you in a few days. I still would like more links if you have them.

[The Grand Nudger]

My version of moral realism is moral naturalism, not realist intuitivism (though, ultimately, Ill be reduced to it if you fight tooth and nail for no other reason than fighting tooth and nail, and you'' only be fighting tooth and nail by explicit reference to intuitions).  I'm noting that your -subjectivist- objections are toothless against both.  They are inconsequential in the case of intuitivist moral non naturalism and elaborative natural realism.

Can harm or damage be objective?  Yes.  Can they be natural properties?  Yes.  Done and done.  There is no more to -be- done.  You can still disagree in the end but you cannot rationally or sensibly disagree with either of these statements if you understand what moral theorists are discussing. Subjectivist invocations are patently incapable. As to links, let wonder lead you to knowldge, I know better than to insert myself in that because that will only give you further impetus to argue by sheer fact of my insertion.

You can find all of this yourself, and I trust you to do so, even though I dont expect it to produce agreement between us. I still hold out the hope, though.. lol...not that we'll ultimately agree, but that you will at least discover why your objections thusfar have been inept. Best case scenario, you find better objections that I just have to throw my hands in their air towards!

[Angrboda]

My version of moral realism is moral naturalism, not realist intuitivism (though, ultimately, Ill be reduced to it if you fight tooth and nail for no other reason than fighting tooth and nail, and you'' only be fighting tooth and nail by explicit reference to intuitions).  I'm noting that your -subjectivist- objections are toothless against both.  

I'll consider this later.

Can harm or damage be objective?  Yes.  Can they be natural properties?  Yes.  Done and done.  There is no more to -be- done.  You can still disagree in the end but you cannot rationally or sensibly disagree with either of these statements if you understand what moral theorists are discussing.  Subjectivist invocations are patently incapable.

No, you are wrong here because you are proposing a moral theory, that's why it's called moral realism. You might be able to establish that harm has an objective definition, even though you haven't done so yet. You may be able to show that harm and damage can be natural properties, though the problems there are already evident. In order for harm being bad to qualify as a moral theory you have to show, in addition to what you've provided, that harm is morally bad. If you're appealing to bad in any other sense, then you're equivocating. If you can't show that damage is morally bad, then either it doesn't qualify as harm in the sense you are trying to establish, or you have violated your own moral theory in asserting it as harm. Your only way out here is to accept that damage by itself does not qualify as harm, and moving on to something else to use in establishing that harm can be objectively defined, or demonstrate that damage is necessarily bad in the moral sense. Those are essentially the two options. There is no third option if you want to hold to the assertion that harm is objectively bad as the foundation of your moral realism. That you can't see this continues to astound me.

So, no, your belief that there is nothing more to be done represents two failures on your part. First, that you fail to recognize that you have not accomplished both, and second, that even if you had accomplished both, both combined are still not sufficient to establish your moral realism.