(May 7, 2021 at 2:31 pm)Angrboda Wrote: If you want to peek at what I am arguing, consider Munchausen's Trilemma. Words or concepts can acquire their meaning in one of three ways. First, defined in terms of themselves, either directly, or indirectly, through a circular path. Second, a word can rest upon an infinite regression of sub-definitions, which rest upon more sub-definitions, ad infinitum. What's generally concluded is that both of these paths are vacuous. The words don't in any real sense end with a definition. The third leg of the trilemma is that definitions, concepts or whatever terminate in an indisputably basic fact. Basic facts are known through apprehension, or intuitively. You can't define what would constitute a basic fact, as that would lead to another iteration of the trilemma. So the challenge for those who would argue that morals have an objective foundation is to confront an equivalent trilemma for morals and show either that there is a fourth option that hasn't been acknowledged, or that there are basic, indisputable beliefs about morals that are objectively true. Failing to do either is just wasting my time.
IMO this is too skeptical. Math and science can't survive this sort of skepticism. So why require moral realism to pass this test? Or... put a better way... since it is reasonable to assume math and science produce truth statements, isn't it unreasonable to apply a brand of skepticism that renders math and science fictions to moral realism?
And (this is the first I've heard of this trilemma, and I only have the wiki page worth of knowledge about it) but what about founding things on axioms? An axiom is not a dogma, not circular, and not the other thing. (I forgot what it was.)
Quote:I also know people that agree with me that harm is a subjective measure.
Seeing the table in front of you is a subjective experience. That doesn't mean the table isn't real.
Causing someone pain has physically provable and observable consequences. If we (in some way... like being rational and sensible) can determine that interpersonally destructive behavior is wrong, the problem isn't that pain, suffering, or harm is subjective. It could theoretically be measured by a neuroscientist. It *IS* an objective phenomenon.
The problem is: how do we know pain, suffering, harm are bad. "We know it intuitively" is an okay answer... dissatisfying as it is. Think about holding your hand on a hot stove. If you could use one word to describe it-- either "good" or "bad"-- which would you chose? To me, the ONLY thing that could make holding your hand on a stove "good" would be like --- you win a million dollars if you can hold your hand on the stove for a minute-- like a game show or something.
But just a hand on a stove? Seems essentially bad to me...
