Hello, Anyone interested in a debate?

[bennyboy]

Wait a minute. If morality is objectively defined, then who or what defines it, and how are we to know if such a definition exists, or if we have found it? It's starting to have the same problems as the God idea. And to me, there is a likely reason why this is so: both morality and the God idea are made up by people to represent abstract ideas which do NOT represent an objective reality.

We can trying looking at it in terms of goals. A "right" action is one which serves a good goal. So what goals do we have? 1) instinctive goals, like survival, sex, and protection of others; 2) created goals, like getting rich or visiting Nepal; 3) universal goals, like contributing to God's efforts to sustain the universe or something.

The problem with the latter is that if they exist, they are inscrutible to me-- and I'm certainly not going to take any other human's words as representative of something so important as the will of God. Therefore, the most sensible approach I can take is to assume that if the only goals available to me are those of instinct and ambition or interest, then it is right that I follow those goals. Following a divine plan is, at least to me, like agreeing that the Emperor has beautiful new clothes-- it would be either a lie or a confession of insanity.

[Anima]

As noted in the analogy to science, we never have a universal set of particulars, so we are left assuming the particulars are representative of the whole.  In the case of actual moralities, there aren't sufficient number to presume representativeness; each morality is divergent in its particulars.  Aristotle may presume, but as in science, presumption of perfection in particulars fails to prevent you from falling into error by relying on those particulars.  We saw it with Galen's medical treatises, with Ptolemaic cosmology, with Newtonian physics — the reality is that you cannot guarantee a glimpse at what is hidden underneath simply by presuming you have a set of trustworthy views.  That's begging the question.  

First, I would disagree with your assertion that morality is divergent in the particulars. Generally speaking, moralistic determinations across a broad spectrum of societies and cultures tend to lead to the same result for the same causes. This is not to say there are no differences, only that the majority of the systems are functionally the same while the semantics (thanks benny) of the systems differ.

Second, particular perfections may not be contend to be assumptions. A particular perfection is akin to the thing being what it is (everything is perfect in and of itself, though not perfect objectively). To state particular perfections do not exist is to state the object is not what it is (or is not properly being itself). Now realism does indeed contend the particular perfections are part of some universal set. For any subjective observation or morality to have credibility it must be part of a universal set which thereby allows for correlation and correspondence of the information contained in the given particular with other particulars of the same object to approach certainty. As those particulars approach infinity the knowledge approaches certainty or objectivity.

To say otherwise is to state any subjective observation or morality is the complete and universal set in and of itself, thereby removing any correlative or correspondent with any other observation or morality. Thereby asking us to accept that any subjective observation or morality is inherently correct because it cannot (and does not need to be) related to any other. (this seems less subject to scrutiny than what i am proposing). Again referring to the drawing I made before:

Realism:
A ==> X <== B such that X=Xa+Xb+Xn
or
A1 ==> X <== A2 such that X=Xa1+Xa2+Xan where 1,2 denotes A at a different perceptive orientation.

Idealism:
A ==> X; B ==>Y such that X=Xa and Y=Yb

Where it is made observable that the definition of X under realism must satisfy I greater level of scrutiny than the definition of X under idealism where a single subjective observation by A is held to define X completely.

How does an individual get multiple views as to whether some specific moral fact is truth?  Do they not only have their own moral judgement to fall back on?  That's getting back to individual morals being 'composited' by them voting with their own particular sense of morality as being the only perspective they can contribute.  Again, the question is "how do we test" that a given moral hypothesis belongs to objective morality or not?  In the end, the only test is our individual judgement about the truth or falsity of the moral hypothesis.  We don't have multiple personalities that we can look at tentative moral facts with multiple perspectives.  The only test is the assent or dissent from the hypothesis; that leads us right back into morality simply being a matter of counting heads, which is the relativism you're trying to avoid.

The individuals facilitates various views by imagination or variable experiences. For example in any given situation imagine your are the victim, the perpetrator, the bystander, the dependent, the individual, the state, etcetera. As the individual considers the moral situation as if they were different persons (while in fact being the same person) they are effectual changing their perspective orientation around the phenomena (it is like they are walking around the problem to look at it from different angles). The individual may further change the means by consideration of other similar situations or what others have stated is the moral solution to the given moral dilemma.

The problem here is one familiar in science, namely the underdetermination of theory.  If you postulate that a set of moral truths is only imperfectly representative of the hidden reality, how do you determine which of the set is truly reflective of the reality, and which part of it is in error?  Do we simply take the intersection of all moral views and call that our set of hidden truths?  How do we know any better to trust the intersection rather than the differences?  Surely this is no way to arrive at objective moral truth.  More importantly, it obfuscates the reason why an objective moral fact is moral.  Am I not to kill because it angers God, or because it incurs bad karma, because it is contrary to my sense of empathy, because living persons have inalienable rights?  How do I determine why what is immoral is immoral from an incompatible set of explanations?  This revisits the question of multiple views by individuals: how does the Jew, Hindu, etcetera gain 'different angles' from looking at incompatible views?

Once again I do not quite see how these are incompatible as all are held as bad (angering god, incurring bad karma, acting contrary to my sense of empathy). As per my original argument it would appear we are arguing which imaginary friend will be offended. I would argue that people do not have an inalienable right to life on the contention that as a theist and philosopher my existence does not cease upon the separation of my biological life and that such a right to life would be in contradiction to the natural law and the billions of living organisms we have killed today alone if not over our lifetimes (think bacteria which are living and would have an inalienable right to life as well).

It appears you are interjecting the continuum fallacy stating that unless a definitive finite number of observations may be stipulate as constituting representative of the objective reality than we must assume there is no number of observations which will be considered representative and thus the objective reality may not be known. As noted we know this logic is fallacious and may even be used in a contra point to state unless specification can be made of how many non-representative points are required to stipulate there is no representation of the objective hidden reality than we must assume there is no number of observations which will be considered non-representative and thus the objective reality is known.

It appears we have reached the point of Cartesian dualism. Either we contend that nothing may be considered as representative of the objective reality and thus we cannot know the objective reality; thereby negating everything including our person. Or we contend that everything may be considered representative of the objective reality upon which knowledge may be predicated upon as consisting of normitives and outliers.

[bennyboy]

As noted we know this logic is fallacious and may even be used in a contra point to state unless specification can be made of how many non-representative points are required to stipulate there is no representation of the objective hidden reality than we must assume there is no number of observations which will be considered non-representative and thus the objective reality is known.    

Tell that to the blind guys with the elephant.

I've got to say that my Spidey-sense is tingling.  You seem to be doing a lot of horizontal groundwork here, laying a foundation as it were.  Maybe your patience reflects a sincere interest in how people arrive at truth. However, methinks under that giant tarp up ahead I see the outlines of a crucifix. When do we get to the punchline?

[Cyberman]

He doesn't have to and he won't go to the bother. He's just going to point to the empty space above his foundation and say, "look at my god - isn't it magnificent?" Followed by "all you have to do is believe and you'll see it!" on the way to "you're just pretending you can't see it because you don't want it to be true."

Maybe I'm wrong in this assessment. Maybe Anima'll surprise us and come out with something original. I await with baited breath and vodka cocktail.

[robvalue]

I await with baited cock and vodka tail-breath.

[LastPoet]

I want to debate something real. I think watering plantations with an old school puley from a well is exercise. Any contenders?

[pocaracas]

This one is for you, LP:


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[Angrboda]

As noted in the analogy to science, we never have a universal set of particulars, so we are left assuming the particulars are representative of the whole.  In the case of actual moralities, there aren't sufficient number to presume representativeness; each morality is divergent in its particulars.  Aristotle may presume, but as in science, presumption of perfection in particulars fails to prevent you from falling into error by relying on those particulars.  We saw it with Galen's medical treatises, with Ptolemaic cosmology, with Newtonian physics — the reality is that you cannot guarantee a glimpse at what is hidden underneath simply by presuming you have a set of trustworthy views.  That's begging the question.  

First, I would disagree with your assertion that morality is divergent in the particulars.  Generally speaking, moralistic determinations across a broad spectrum of societies and cultures tend to lead to the same result for the same causes.  This is not to say there are no differences, only that the majority of the systems are functionally the same while the semantics (thanks benny) of the systems differ.

The way in which moral systems differ is more than a semantic difference.  Take the Jewish view of murder and the Hindu view.  The Jew seeks not to offend God while the Hindu seeks to avoid incurring bad karma.  Each of these constitutes a theory as to why something is immoral.  It is these theories that make up the 'pictures' of what objective morality consists in.  Contrary to your assertion, moralities do differ in both particular and more importantly they differ in the theory on offer as to why certain things are immoral.  It is these theories which you must reconcile as they are the models of what is lying underneath, that being the objective reality.  You are trying to reconcile the particulars rather than the theories, whereas it is the theories which constitute the nature of morality.  

Second, particular perfections may not be contend to be assumptions.  A particular perfection is akin to the thing being what it is (everything is perfect in and of itself, though not perfect objectively).  To state particular perfections do not exist is to state the object is not what it is (or is not properly being itself).  Now realism does indeed contend the particular perfections are part of some universal set.  For any subjective observation or morality to have credibility it must be part of a universal set which thereby allows for correlation and correspondence of the information contained in the given particular with other particulars of the same object to approach certainty.  As those particulars approach infinity the knowledge approaches certainty or objectivity.  

We're simply repeating ourselves here.  I don't disagree that in the ideal case in which we are able to make unlimited observations we can come to some sort of model of a physical reality.  However morals differ from physical reality in important ways.  Moral systems tend to be passed down whole from one generation to another.  But more importantly, we have no way to falsify that a particular observation of a moral theory is in fact false.  This is a major problem for your summation procedure as there does not appear any way, short of polling individuals, to determine whether a particular view of morality is in fact a view of actual, objective morality, rather than simply being a spurious and unrelated assertion.  It is the problem of testability which grounds your idea of modeling objective morals upon a summation of independent views.  There is no way to test whether a particular individual's view of morality is in fact a legitimate perception of the moral contours in doubt.

How does an individual get multiple views as to whether some specific moral fact is truth?  Do they not only have their own moral judgement to fall back on?  That's getting back to individual morals being 'composited' by them voting with their own particular sense of morality as being the only perspective they can contribute.  Again, the question is "how do we test" that a given moral hypothesis belongs to objective morality or not?  In the end, the only test is our individual judgement about the truth or falsity of the moral hypothesis.  We don't have multiple personalities that we can look at tentative moral facts with multiple perspectives.  The only test is the assent or dissent from the hypothesis; that leads us right back into morality simply being a matter of counting heads, which is the relativism you're trying to avoid.

The individuals facilitates various views by imagination or variable experiences.  For example in any given situation imagine your are the victim, the perpetrator, the bystander, the dependent, the individual, the state, etcetera.  As the individual considers the moral situation as if they were different persons (while in fact being the same person) they are effectual changing their perspective orientation around the phenomena (it is like they are walking around the problem to look at it from different angles).   The individual may further change the means by consideration of other similar situations or what others have stated is the moral solution to the given moral dilemma.

I find this a wholly impractical suggestion.  Moral theories aren't perspective dependent like you suggest.  A person operating from a theory of karmic law will view all the different roles of the actors through that same lense.  You haven't multiplied the number of views at all.  All you've done is create pseudo-observations which poison the picture of the objective whole.

The problem here is one familiar in science, namely the underdetermination of theory.  If you postulate that a set of moral truths is only imperfectly representative of the hidden reality, how do you determine which of the set is truly reflective of the reality, and which part of it is in error?  Do we simply take the intersection of all moral views and call that our set of hidden truths?  How do we know any better to trust the intersection rather than the differences?  Surely this is no way to arrive at objective moral truth.  More importantly, it obfuscates the reason why an objective moral fact is moral.  Am I not to kill because it angers God, or because it incurs bad karma, because it is contrary to my sense of empathy, because living persons have inalienable rights?  How do I determine why what is immoral is immoral from an incompatible set of explanations?  This revisits the question of multiple views by individuals: how does the Jew, Hindu, etcetera gain 'different angles' from looking at incompatible views?

Once again I do not quite see how these are incompatible as all are held as bad (angering god, incurring bad karma, acting contrary to my sense of empathy).  As per my original argument it would appear we are arguing which imaginary friend will be offended.  I would argue that people do not have an inalienable right to life on the contention that as a theist and philosopher my existence does not cease upon the separation of my biological life and that such a right to life would be in contradiction to the natural law and the billions of living organisms we have killed today alone if not over our lifetimes (think bacteria which are living and would have an inalienable right to life as well).

I specifically said a right to life for living persons.  That takes it out of the realm of natural law.

It appears you are interjecting the continuum fallacy stating that unless a definitive finite number of observations may be stipulate as constituting representative of the objective reality than we must assume there is no number of observations which will be considered representative and thus the objective reality may not be known.  As noted we know this logic is fallacious and may even be used in a contra point to state unless specification can be made of how many non-representative points are required to stipulate there is no representation of the objective hidden reality than we must assume there is no number of observations which will be considered non-representative and thus the objective reality is known.  

We are dealing with the question of discovering the metaphysical truths about objective morality, the theory so to speak.  It is not merely an empirical question, but one of matching up observations with specific models of that underlying reality.  Since the number of those models is extremely limited and sharply divergent, I am arguing that you have yet to present a method for reconciling them in order to arrive at one view which is the metaphysical truth.  This is not a question of the vagueness of the boundary between true and false views of morality, it's pointing out that you have no way of distinguishing them. Period.  Until you propose a method for reconciling Jew with Hindu theory, with Jain theory, with Confucian, you are left making noises about pencils and other empirical cases which are unlike the case with morals.  

It appears we have reached the point of Cartesian dualism.  Either we contend that nothing may be considered as representative of the objective reality and thus we cannot know the objective reality; thereby negating everything including our person.  Or we contend that everything may be considered representative of the objective reality upon which knowledge may be predicated upon as consisting of normitives and outliers.

I would argue that you have yet to reach a point where Cartesian skepticism would apply.

[LastPoet]

This one is for you, LP:

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Hmmm, that is a very basic set for bodybuilding. I already have a more complete one.

[Anima]

Tell that to the blind guys with the elephant.

I've got to say that my Spidey-sense is tingling.  You seem to be doing a lot of horizontal groundwork here, laying a foundation as it were.  Maybe your patience reflects a sincere interest in how people arrive at truth.  However, methinks under that giant tarp up ahead I see the outlines of a crucifix.  When do we get to the punchline?

He doesn't have to and he won't go to the bother. He's just going to point to the empty space above his foundation and say, "look at my god - isn't it magnificent?" Followed by "all you have to do is believe and you'll see it!" on the way to "you're just pretending you can't see it because you don't want it to be true."

Maybe I'm wrong in this assessment. Maybe Anima'll surprise us and come out with something original. I await with baited breath and vodka cocktail.

I await with baited cock and vodka tail-breath.

You may all relax. At best argument may be made to an objective reality which may then be consolidated into a single entity (similar to all of our reality being part of a single universe). One may come to the god of philosophy, but not the god of the bible (no they are not the same thing). However, as Kant points out in his critique of Aristotle's ontological causal argument for the existence of god, even when it is possible to argue a single entity/thing by means of ontology or epistemology what that thing is cannot be specified. In which case your belief in the flying spaghetti monster (or nega monster) is safe.

I am truly making an argument to truth and not necessarily to God or Christianity. As my original argument stated, morality requires an imaginary friend. Meaning it needs a least one imaginary friend. I cannot limit that argument to only one imaginary friend beyond an argument to efficiency or redundancy. Though I may argue that imaginary friend must have sufficient sentience to understand our intentions as well as te objective truth I cannot specify that imaginary friend is an omniscient god or gods.

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The way in which moral systems differ is more than a semantic difference.  Take the Jewish view of murder and the Hindu view.  The Jew seeks not to offend God while the Hindu seeks to avoid incurring bad karma.  Each of these constitutes a theory as to why something is immoral.  It is these theories that make up the 'pictures' of what objective morality consists in.  Contrary to your assertion, moralities do differ in both particular and more importantly they differ in the theory on offer as to why certain things are immoral.  It is these theories which you must reconcile as they are the models of what is lying underneath, that being the objective reality.  You are trying to reconcile the particulars rather than the theories, whereas it is the theories which constitute the nature of morality.  

Ah. I see what you are saying. If i may make reference to the floating bowling ball again. What I am saying is that upon observation of the floating bowling ball there may be many theories of why it is floating (not a bowling ball but a balloon, suspended form the ceiling, counter opposing magnets, etcetera). You are saying that I am trying to meld all of these hypothesis (you called them theories) together. What I am saying is efforts will be made to verify each hypothesis as the particular observations account establish the validity of each hypothesis the hypothesis will be abandoned, modified, or amalgamated in order to make a theory (more than an educated guess) approximating the objective reality of the floating bowling ball.

In like manner I would be saying that the jewish hypothesis(pleasing god), the hindu hypothesis (next life points), the subjective hypothesis (what i think is good/bad) may be supported by the moral data acquired. Now we apply the moral situation of the subject lying for their own sake. Does this lying satisfy Jewish hypothesis as moral conduct? No. The Hindu hypothesis? No. The subjective hypothesis? Yes.

Next we change the moral situation to gain a varying perspective. Being lied to by another who is lying for their sake. Does this lying satisfy each hypothesis as moral conduct? No, No, No. Now based on this limited data (naturally I would recommend more scenarios of varying complexity, but I do not want this to get too long). It is determined the subjective hypothesis of morality leads to an answer which is not applicable to multiple persons at the same time. As such definition holding conduct of any given subject as moral by their own standards while being immoral by the standards of another subject at the same time is leading to a contradictory answer. So we may say the subjective hypothesis of morality is to be discarded (aka the floating bowling ball is not a balloon)

We then proceed to continue to verify the remaining hypothesis Jewish and Hindu by various moral situations and perspectives (test to see if there is a wire on the bowling ball, if there are any magnets, etcetera). As you stipulate correctly I am starting from the particular and not presupposing any specified hypothesis will be supported by the moral data to be considered a theory. With each moral scenario and variable perspectives hypothesis will remain, appear, or be discarded.

I find this a wholly impractical suggestion.  Moral theories aren't perspective dependent like you suggest.  A person operating from a theory of karmic law will view all the different roles of the actors through that same lense.  You haven't multiplied the number of views at all.  All you've done is create pseudo-observations which poison the picture of the objective whole.

It is assumed that a person may observer a moral situation from the same hypothesis. However, this does not exclude them from considering that hypothesis from a different role. And then relating the answer expressed by the hypothesis in each role to one another to determine consistency or a point of further analysis for explanation. See the subjective hypothesis example above.

We are dealing with the question of discovering the metaphysical truths about objective morality, the theory so to speak.  It is not merely an empirical question, but one of matching up observations with specific models of that underlying reality.  Since the number of those models is extremely limited and sharply divergent, I am arguing that you have yet to present a method for reconciling them in order to arrive at one view which is the metaphysical truth.  This is not a question of the vagueness of the boundary between true and false views of morality, it's pointing out that you have no way of distinguishing them. Period.  Until you propose a method for reconciling Jew with Hindu theory, with Jain theory, with Confucian, you are left making noises about pencils and other empirical cases which are unlike the case with morals.  

Once again. I do not think the theories are as divergent as you are stating. However, as with the subjective hypothesis above we may verify if said hypothesis is self contradicting. Then we may proceed to determine where there is conflict between theories and make further analysis regarding why the conflict. For example Jewish (pleasing god) and Hindu (points for the next life) come to me as two theories that may be amalgamated. If it may be argued that the purpose of pleasing god is to have a better existence in the next life than we may say that pleasing god = points for the next life, in which case we may now treat those to theories as congruent as we continue our investigation and pit the theory of pleasing god/points for the next life against our next theory.