Is Moral Nihilism a Morality?

[DLJ]

...
We have determined all kinds of facts about this "brilliant glowing disc" such as that it is comprised mostly of hydrogen has a gravitational field associated with it, could be the giant wheel of a Greek chariot (world 3 stuff).

To me, some of these facts are objectively true. Others are objectively false.
...

Is the last bit (the chariot wheel) subjectively true?
Does “objectively”, in this context, mean completely or believably or measurably or accurately?

Had you said “comprised of hydrogen” (without the “mostly”) would that have been partially true? True enough for the purposes of this conversation?

Is it true to say that gold is more valuable than silver?  Yes. Yet, this would be an anthropocentric truth i.e. true for humans but not for, say, dolphins.

There are axiomatic trues: 2 + 2 = 4
Except in base 3: 2 + 2 = 11.

A feasible definition of truth could be the pragmatic one: true/false ... a label applied to a proposition for a given epistemology.
So someone who regards Faith, Authority, Revelation and / or Tradition (FART = hot air) as acceptable methods for gleaning truth might state that “Jesus created the universe” is “true for me” and we can’t argue against the notion that they truly believe it but we can happily shit on their epistemology.

Then there’s the ‘true at what level of detail’ issue: data, information or knowledge?

As we combine and interpret data into higher level patterns we are adding bias. You’ve probably seen this one before:



D>I>K>W is the scientific approach.
W>K>I>D would be e.g. folklore, myth (starting with a conclusion).
Each ‘>’ represents ‘intelligence’ in the IQ sense i.e. patterns and filtering.

In neural net terms each ‘>’ represents weightings and biases.

This vid is excellent as a primer:




What this implies is that to get to knowledge from data requires bias.

This will become more pertinent when/if we get as far as discussing the neurology of moral-event decision-making.

For now though, it’s just useful to note that humans use different types of truth value: logical, anthropocentric, digital, analog, axiomatic etc.

The DIKW model has some flaws (using a list edited from a post by Mordant over on a different forum who is more of a data specialist than I):
Indexing
Semantic classification
Interpolation
Garbage in / garbage out
Resource constraints
Unintentionally bias (from ignorance)
Technical debt
Misclassifying data for benign reasons
Manipulating data for preconceived ends.

Psychologists would use different terms for some of these e.g. misinformation effect, confirmation bias etc. but any/all could cause a misstep in the creation of accurate knowledge. And even the scientific method with its checks and balances is prone to (some of) these.

...
Couldn't a soap opera be said to have "a self-correcting, continuous improvement mechanisms to deliver high value intrinsic quality information?" At least a well-written one, perhaps. So what separates science from a well-written soap opera? To me, something separates them. They are obviously distinct things.

(Sorry, chart was confusing. Please explain which parts are relevant.)

I’ll have a crack at explaining it (a bit).

I don’t think that the soap opera writers are aiming for ‘intrinsic’ quality.
The show has to be convincing enough to be relevant (a contextual criteria) but it’s for entertainment purposes so they aren’t aiming for all four intrinsic values. They want ‘believability’ but not ‘objectivity’ and regarding ‘reputation’, well, we know the source is fiction.

Consistency matters for storytelling (unless they swap an actor because they ask for too much money) and conciseness matters for budgetary reasons. These are both contextual not intrinsic.

But yes, they will be continuously/continually improving aiming for high entertainment value (at low cost).

And how about Sherlock? Which of the criteria matter?

And Islam? Think of the lengths they go to to establish ‘reputation’ ... false prophet: bad ... as close a source as one can get to Mohamed: good.
There’s that argument from Authority again.

And Christianity? That started as a Jewish mystery cult so, intriguingly, they capitalised on the last criteria on the diagram ... “restricted access’. Scientology uses the same trick. It plays on the human ‘in-group’ instinct.

Science itself, as far as I know, is the only set of practices designed to aim for all four intrinsic quality criteria using various tools to achieve them e.g. peer review and (credit to Popper) falsifiability. It also aims for most (perhaps all) contextual criteria.

Did that help?