RE: What would be the harm?
December 3, 2018 at 11:22 am
(This post was last modified: December 3, 2018 at 11:48 am by The Grand Nudger.)
Jump on in, huggy, the waters fine, lol.
@Jorm
More for you whenever you get the time from your irl stuff.
After rereading harris argument, and the criticism of that argument, and his response to that criticism, I'll lay out a few observations, and particularly as they relate to what seems to be your main concern.
By far, the most common criticism of the argument was some formulation or another of what harris calls the value problem. The entrant that took the cake (so to speak) launched a variant of the open question, conceding in effect that while science might provide some illumination of value on basis of empirical grounds, it did not provide the initial value itself. Pretty much our lobster example from earlier. Science can tell us that some thing x is or isn't the thing we value, but we come into that question already having had a concept of value.
As to what we should value, you appear to be concerned that this could be a fundamentally and necessarily a subjective question. One of harris responses to that is, essentially, an argument described by putnams exposition of the fact-value dichotomy. He buttresses this between noting that if the fact value dichotomy holds, and is a problem, it's a problem for all knowledge, if that makes morality necessarily subjective it makes logical discourse necessarily subjective, and makes science necessarily subjective - and because of that it;s easy to miss. While this would be true, I don't think that it would actually allay anyone's concerns, if their concerns where of the sort you've expressed. Mostly..because a person expressing concerns of subjectivity isn't exactly going to find comfort in some notion that a whole bunch of other shit is just as subjective.
To make -really- short work of that case (and you should check it out because no post that would fit on these boards will do it justice, lol) value objectivists contend that it is or may be the valuing, itself..or at least our valuing..the act of, that's necessarily subjective - but that value -itself- does proceed or is derived from fact. As you point out, the valuing is contained within a mind and would thus qualify as subjective as moral theorists discuss it..or so it seems at first glance. Does this actually mean that the thing valued, or all values are subjective. Is the value...contained within that mind? In a word, no.
Enter universal conditionals, and value foundation. The simplest way to describe this is to discuss oxygen. Is oxygen valuable? Is whatever value oxygen has subjective in the way that moral theorists discuss it? We certainly value it (though we often don't pay for it, lol). Our valuing is subjective. Some..in a sense... value it more than others...astronauts, for example, lol. Or at least considerations of it's value are more pressing and urgent to some than to others. A man breathing in the fresh mountain air is unlikely to come to the same realization as a person fifty feet underwater and drowning. Is that value, itself, objective (again as moral theorists describe it), though? It seems difficult to argue some case in which it;s not. Regardless of whatever relative unit value we subjectively assess (and thus whatever disagreement of value may arise as a consequence of that)..all breathing things require oxygen - whether they have a mind to apprehend that necessity or the value of that necessary thing. This is not a mere artifact of mind. This is the objective value of oxygen. If there is some disagreement as to whether or not oxygen has value between two people..one saying yay and one saying nay...well..one of them is objectively wrong...and this much could probably be demonstrated by putting the naysayer in a vacuum and asking them to reassess their value formation. What of relative, value, however? Might it be the case that there is a correct answer between two competitors for value? Is oxygen objectively more valuable than a candy bar? Here again we can employ the vacuum chamber..and hand one guy a candy bar while pumping oxygen in the other room. See who's willing to trade with whom for what.
This exposition puts the contention that all value is subjective and so all value systems must, themselves, be subjective to the coals. That there is a dichotomy between fact and value. As a contention of universality, it is false prima facie...regardless of how many individual instances in which it may be the case that some value or some relative value of some things is meaningfully subjective, and regardless of the fact (if it is a fact) that the valuing, the act of assigning value, is meaningfully subjective.
The question we then turn to, with the above in mind...is whether or not harris "well-being" is a value like that. If it has value in the way that oxygen has value. Do we require well-being, in the way that we require oxygen? Or is well being more like the candy bar. Here, I fully diverge with harris in principle, as his notion of wellbeing is thoroughly hedonistic..but to give the question the broadest and most charitable range of interpretation, and yes, including pleasure in well-being without excluding all other things....I'd answer that it's more like oxygen than a candy bar. Pleasure itself, as an aside, being a little more like a candy bar than oxygen, lol. Important, nice to have...there's certainly an amount of pleasure which, if it drops below a point we begin to see objectively negative impact on health, on life, etc. But maybe not as important as other aspects of well being, just like the chocolate pales in comparison to oxygen in our vacuum chamber. Well-being, for it;s part...as a broad set, a compound proposition, is more like oxygen in that..in both cases, we can do with a little more and a little less of each. The mountain climber has less oxygen than some guy standing at sea level trying to rescue the drowning man...the drowning man has less than both. A person subjected to constant misery and sickness and..maybe, stabbed in the gut by his neighbor is suffering from a pronounced lack of well-being not entirely unlike the drowning man..and it's not a stretch to imagine that both men are approaching similar fates.
These different positions that each person finds themselves in, above, may help to explain whatever subjectivity or relativity there is in their individual conceptions of oxygens value, just -how valuable- oxygen is...but above around and outside of each mans mind..oxygen -is- valuable. If any of them fail to perceive that value, it's not because the value of oxygen is subjective, but because they have either failed to immediately apprehend value as the drowning man might...or failed to rationally infer that oxygen has value (by, for example..watching the drowning man). These are failures of agency, and of subjectivity, but not of the objectivity of values like those.
In sum, we expect that a person with a proper understanding of value, and a competent reasonable agency, would be able to answer the question "does oxygen have value" objectively, and correctly. Further, that a person with a proper understanding of value, and a competent rational agency, would be able to answer the question of "does oxygen have more value than a candy bar" objectively, and correctly. In the same vein, we expect that a person with a proper understanding of value.....etc etc etc, to the questions of wellbeing, and whether wellbeing is more valuable than this or that.
Obviously, this immediately opens up harris hedonism to those very same questions value and relative value, but theres no reason to assume that this question (of pleasures worth and relative worth) would be different from any previous question. That it would be somehow impossible to assess that pleasure has objective value, or that pleasure is objectively worth more or less than some other x. While that's a whole can of worms in and of itself..since the enterprise of this post was only to establish the sensibility of objective value and the inadequacy of the blanket subjectivist claim..I'll leave it up to you whether or not you want to explore that one further.
@Jorm
More for you whenever you get the time from your irl stuff.
After rereading harris argument, and the criticism of that argument, and his response to that criticism, I'll lay out a few observations, and particularly as they relate to what seems to be your main concern.
By far, the most common criticism of the argument was some formulation or another of what harris calls the value problem. The entrant that took the cake (so to speak) launched a variant of the open question, conceding in effect that while science might provide some illumination of value on basis of empirical grounds, it did not provide the initial value itself. Pretty much our lobster example from earlier. Science can tell us that some thing x is or isn't the thing we value, but we come into that question already having had a concept of value.
As to what we should value, you appear to be concerned that this could be a fundamentally and necessarily a subjective question. One of harris responses to that is, essentially, an argument described by putnams exposition of the fact-value dichotomy. He buttresses this between noting that if the fact value dichotomy holds, and is a problem, it's a problem for all knowledge, if that makes morality necessarily subjective it makes logical discourse necessarily subjective, and makes science necessarily subjective - and because of that it;s easy to miss. While this would be true, I don't think that it would actually allay anyone's concerns, if their concerns where of the sort you've expressed. Mostly..because a person expressing concerns of subjectivity isn't exactly going to find comfort in some notion that a whole bunch of other shit is just as subjective.
To make -really- short work of that case (and you should check it out because no post that would fit on these boards will do it justice, lol) value objectivists contend that it is or may be the valuing, itself..or at least our valuing..the act of, that's necessarily subjective - but that value -itself- does proceed or is derived from fact. As you point out, the valuing is contained within a mind and would thus qualify as subjective as moral theorists discuss it..or so it seems at first glance. Does this actually mean that the thing valued, or all values are subjective. Is the value...contained within that mind? In a word, no.
Enter universal conditionals, and value foundation. The simplest way to describe this is to discuss oxygen. Is oxygen valuable? Is whatever value oxygen has subjective in the way that moral theorists discuss it? We certainly value it (though we often don't pay for it, lol). Our valuing is subjective. Some..in a sense... value it more than others...astronauts, for example, lol. Or at least considerations of it's value are more pressing and urgent to some than to others. A man breathing in the fresh mountain air is unlikely to come to the same realization as a person fifty feet underwater and drowning. Is that value, itself, objective (again as moral theorists describe it), though? It seems difficult to argue some case in which it;s not. Regardless of whatever relative unit value we subjectively assess (and thus whatever disagreement of value may arise as a consequence of that)..all breathing things require oxygen - whether they have a mind to apprehend that necessity or the value of that necessary thing. This is not a mere artifact of mind. This is the objective value of oxygen. If there is some disagreement as to whether or not oxygen has value between two people..one saying yay and one saying nay...well..one of them is objectively wrong...and this much could probably be demonstrated by putting the naysayer in a vacuum and asking them to reassess their value formation. What of relative, value, however? Might it be the case that there is a correct answer between two competitors for value? Is oxygen objectively more valuable than a candy bar? Here again we can employ the vacuum chamber..and hand one guy a candy bar while pumping oxygen in the other room. See who's willing to trade with whom for what.
This exposition puts the contention that all value is subjective and so all value systems must, themselves, be subjective to the coals. That there is a dichotomy between fact and value. As a contention of universality, it is false prima facie...regardless of how many individual instances in which it may be the case that some value or some relative value of some things is meaningfully subjective, and regardless of the fact (if it is a fact) that the valuing, the act of assigning value, is meaningfully subjective.
The question we then turn to, with the above in mind...is whether or not harris "well-being" is a value like that. If it has value in the way that oxygen has value. Do we require well-being, in the way that we require oxygen? Or is well being more like the candy bar. Here, I fully diverge with harris in principle, as his notion of wellbeing is thoroughly hedonistic..but to give the question the broadest and most charitable range of interpretation, and yes, including pleasure in well-being without excluding all other things....I'd answer that it's more like oxygen than a candy bar. Pleasure itself, as an aside, being a little more like a candy bar than oxygen, lol. Important, nice to have...there's certainly an amount of pleasure which, if it drops below a point we begin to see objectively negative impact on health, on life, etc. But maybe not as important as other aspects of well being, just like the chocolate pales in comparison to oxygen in our vacuum chamber. Well-being, for it;s part...as a broad set, a compound proposition, is more like oxygen in that..in both cases, we can do with a little more and a little less of each. The mountain climber has less oxygen than some guy standing at sea level trying to rescue the drowning man...the drowning man has less than both. A person subjected to constant misery and sickness and..maybe, stabbed in the gut by his neighbor is suffering from a pronounced lack of well-being not entirely unlike the drowning man..and it's not a stretch to imagine that both men are approaching similar fates.
These different positions that each person finds themselves in, above, may help to explain whatever subjectivity or relativity there is in their individual conceptions of oxygens value, just -how valuable- oxygen is...but above around and outside of each mans mind..oxygen -is- valuable. If any of them fail to perceive that value, it's not because the value of oxygen is subjective, but because they have either failed to immediately apprehend value as the drowning man might...or failed to rationally infer that oxygen has value (by, for example..watching the drowning man). These are failures of agency, and of subjectivity, but not of the objectivity of values like those.
In sum, we expect that a person with a proper understanding of value, and a competent reasonable agency, would be able to answer the question "does oxygen have value" objectively, and correctly. Further, that a person with a proper understanding of value, and a competent rational agency, would be able to answer the question of "does oxygen have more value than a candy bar" objectively, and correctly. In the same vein, we expect that a person with a proper understanding of value.....etc etc etc, to the questions of wellbeing, and whether wellbeing is more valuable than this or that.
Obviously, this immediately opens up harris hedonism to those very same questions value and relative value, but theres no reason to assume that this question (of pleasures worth and relative worth) would be different from any previous question. That it would be somehow impossible to assess that pleasure has objective value, or that pleasure is objectively worth more or less than some other x. While that's a whole can of worms in and of itself..since the enterprise of this post was only to establish the sensibility of objective value and the inadequacy of the blanket subjectivist claim..I'll leave it up to you whether or not you want to explore that one further.
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