(September 6, 2016 at 9:49 am)Alasdair Ham Wrote: Devil's advocating for some premises:
Premise 1. Subjectivity is ontologically objectively existent.
Premise 2. Moral values are purely and wholely epistemlogically subjective.
Premise 3. Those wholly epistemolgically subjective moral values reside ontologically objectively existent within all human brains.
Premise 4. Those ontologically objectively existent moral values residing in human brains are just as capable of disageeing with one another as if they were not ontologically objective.
Premise 5. Ontological objectivity is both entirely meaningless and valueless and there is no difference whatsoever between ontologically objective moral values and fully subjective moral values.
In summary I'd conclude that ontology is meaningless. 'Being' is indefinable and therefore no different to 'nothingness' because nothingness can't be anything anyway because it's nothing. There is no nothing.
Premise 1: OK-----I think I'm here.
Premise 2: Unwarranted assumption: Absolute morals may or may not exist outside me, I have only my experiences to judge.
Premise 3: Unwarranted assumption: Experiential, subjective evidence only suggests other consciousnesses and their similarity to me.
Premise 4: Rejected as being subordinate to premise 3.
Premise 5: Rejected as being subordinate to premise 3.
Aaaaand we're back at solipsism.
My model and explanation of moral frameworks is that they are emergent properties of persistent and replicating structures of information. Common normative values in human societies consist of those which enable and improve the ability of that society to expand and replicate, to prosper. e.g. Don't kill your neighbor (but killing the tribe member next door is OK.) Don't breed with your sister. The societies which incorporate such rules prosper more and supplant those who don't.
To show objectivity in a moral imperative, you'd have to look at it from some other perspective. For example, if human life were truly sacred, then momma bear would sacrifice her cub rather than killing the hunter. What is observed is that she will sacrifice the hunter or perhaps herself to save her offspring, the perpetuation of her replicating structure. I cannot observe her conscious reality as I cannot directly observe any other than my own, but I speculate that she sees the death of the hunter as "good."
So how, exactly, does God know that She's NOT a brain in a vat?
