Proving What We Already "Know"

[The Grand Nudger]

We constantly have to deal with things that had never before come up, and we sometimes spend time considering the potential ramifications of things that haven't. Ever read any sci fi? Without motivated sentience you may not have observers to see what is good or is bad and give a shit about it, but that doesn't tell you whether or not harm, for example, is present. Ostensibly, a thing can be harmed even when there are no motivated sentient witnesses present. I think it's easier to sell the idea that absent sentient motivated moral agents, moral desert would not be present. That's the factual difference in circumstance between what damage an earthquake does and the same damage done by humans. Sure, earthquakes harm, and can put things in danger, but they're not morally responsible for it. : shrugs :

Sure, what you've said may be as concise and clear as you can make it, but the problem is that it's demonstrably wrong. Factually wrong. Truly inaccurate.

Additionally, incogent. It may be that moral realism itself is wrong, but whatever case there is for that..you've just plain butchered.

[bennyboy]

Without motivated sentience you may not have observers to see what is good or is bad and give a shit about it, but that doesn't tell you whether or not harm, for example, is present.  Ostensibly, a thing can be harmed even when there are no motivated sentient witnesses present.

No, I don't think it can.

What IS harm? It's a bad change of state. But what makes any change of state intrinsically bad without a sentient observer that prefers one state to another?

Maybe you could give examples of such a change, because I cannot think of any at all.

[bennyboy]

-Edit-

Where's the edit button these days?

I should amend the above by saying that something can happen that a sentient observer WOULD call "bad," whether they are actually there to witness the bad change of state. But for it to be "bad," someone somewhere has to exist that either a) already thinks that type of state change is "bad," or b) if they encountered it, would think that type of state change is "bad."

That harm is not intrinsic to a nonsentient thing whose state changes should be clear if you and I interpret the same state change differently. Let's say you think an increase in humans is bad (too many fucking people, get off my lawn!), and I think it's good (more brains = bigger bell curve = eventual genius scientist who saves humanity). In that context, is a new pregnancy good or bad?

[The Grand Nudger]

Destruction is intrinsic to some events and relationships. OFC it takes a moral agent to notice an item of moral import - but it doesn't take a moral agent for destruction to be present. This is what it means to be extrinsic or intrinsic, of possessing attribute x itself. This is all it means.

Utilitarian arguments are realist arguments, whether they're right or wrong. If there really is utility in having more people and a person makes a utilitarian argument for it then it's true or false with respect to the facts it purports. Get off my lawn, however, is not a truth apt declaration, and so cannot be true or false in the sense of being supported or dismissed by the facts of the matter.

Between those two, only one of them can be true or false, only one of them refers to an attribute (purportedly) intrinsic to x. More people = more brain genius.

Personally, i think the question "is a new pregnancy good" requires far more..and far more intimate, detail, in order to render any moral conclusion we might call true. As even if we stay off of someone's lawn, and even if we do breed people for utility, there remain a great many questions to be answered. It could go either way depending on the details, couldn't it?

[Angrboda]

Destruction is intrinsic to some events and relationships.  OFC it takes a moral agent to notice an item of moral import - but it doesn't take a moral agent for destruction to be present.  This is what it means to be extrinsic or intrinsic, of possessing attribute x itself.  This is all it means.  

Utilitarian arguments are realist arguments, whether they're right or wrong.  If there really is utility in having more people and a person makes a utilitarian argument for it then it's true or false with respect to the facts it purports.  Get off my lawn, however, is not a truth apt declaration, and so cannot be true or false in the sense of being supported or dismissed by the facts of the matter.  

Between those two, only one of them can be true or false, only one of them refers to an attribute (purportedly) intrinsic to x.  More people = more brain genius.  

Personally, i think the question "is a new pregnancy good" requires far more..and far more intimate, detail, in order to render any moral conclusion we might call true.  As even if we stay off of someone's lawn, and even if we do breed people for utility, there remain a great many questions to be answered.  It could go either way depending on the details, couldn't it?

Without an objective vector, "destruction" is just another undifferentiated change of state. That would make your whole spiel basically low-rent equivocation.

[The Grand Nudger]

Some people don't agree that destruction is part of moral content or of moral import, even if it (as in destruction) is real, and I guess that would seem like an equivocation to them - but obviously not to me.

It would seem that if there were a mountain, and someone dynamited that mountain, there would be (and is) a great deal of differentiation between those two states of mountain - and not mountain, regardless of whether or not this was (or what you, or what I) would take to be an item of moral import. I (personally) regard and employ destruction as an objective reference to what can and does happen and is or is not a component of some acts and events and circumstances to be settled, even if moral realism is false. So, if it were (and I mean even so much as descriptively, here), it would not be for this reason.

[Angrboda]

[combined posts]

[Angrboda]

Some people don't agree that destruction is part of moral content or of moral import, even if it (as in destruction) is real, and I guess that would seem like an equivocation to them - but obviously not to me.

It would seem that if there were a mountain, and someone dynamited that mountain, there would be (and is) a great deal of differentiation between those two states of mountain - and not mountain, regardless of whether or not this was (or what you, or what I) would take to be an item of moral import.

Learn what a vector is.

It's equivocation regardless of moral import. Utility is teleological and without a loss in utility, there is no destruction. You simply don't get it from the universe herself.

[The Grand Nudger]

If the normative goal is utility, and there is no loss of utility - then there's no problem regardless of and even if destruction was done.

Destroy away, am I right, destruction is not what we concern ourselves with. I do think this explains alot of humans worst environmental behaviors. They're destructive..and even self injurious, but utilitarian.

[bennyboy]

Destruction is intrinsic to some events and relationships.  OFC it takes a moral agent to notice an item of moral import - but it doesn't take a moral agent for destruction to be present.  This is what it means to be extrinsic or intrinsic, of possessing attribute x itself.  This is all it means.  

Destruction is not harm. When we metabolize a sugar molecule, it is destroyed. I would not say that it is harmed.

Utilitarian arguments are realist arguments, whether they're right or wrong.  If there really is utility in having more people and a person makes a utilitarian argument for it then it's true or false with respect to the facts it purports.

Between those two, only one of them can be true or false, only one of them refers to an attribute (purportedly) intrinsic to x.  More people = more brain genius.

Implicit in "get off my lawn" is the idea that we already have an uncomfortable population density, and that more births are likely to increase our discomfort.

 
Personally, i think the question "is a new pregnancy good" requires far more..and far more intimate, detail, in order to render any moral conclusion we might call true.  As even if we stay off of someone's lawn, and even if we do breed people for utility, there remain a great many questions to be answered.  It could go either way depending on the details, couldn't it?

Not necessarily. The brain of the "get off the lawn" guy is collating uncountable experiences of his own, as well as a billion years of evolutionary history that leads to territorial feelings, empathy, guilt and so on. He's a truth-processing machine, but he has to reconcile a trillion truths like a time-traveling wizard.

But a woman who wants a baby is, too, and she is working with a different collection of truths-- for exapmle, that women who don't reproduce aren't represented in the subsequent gene pool, something that was true long before there were people.