User Controls
Posts by Obbe
-
2018-09-26 at 6:28 PM UTC in why won't god let me be happy ?
-
2018-09-26 at 6:27 PM UTC in We have a moral obligation to stop eating meat
-
2018-09-26 at 6:23 PM UTC in why won't god let me be happy ?
-
2018-09-26 at 6:18 PM UTC in We have a moral obligation to stop eating meat
-
2018-09-26 at 10:29 AM UTC in We have a moral obligation to stop eating meat
-
2018-09-26 at 1:37 AM UTC in We have a moral obligation to stop eating meat
-
2018-09-25 at 8:42 PM UTC in We have a moral obligation to stop eating meat
-
2018-09-25 at 8:10 PM UTC in We have a moral obligation to stop eating meat
Originally posted by RisiR † If nothing matters, Obbe, why don't you life your life like Bill Krozby? Why don't you fuck your mother? Why don't you shit on the street? Why don't you stop being a faggot? What's the point?
Do you think that the lives of the people you plagiarize where pointless?
I live my life the only way I can. Free will doesn't exist. None of this matters. -
2018-09-25 at 7:49 PM UTC in We have a moral obligation to stop eating meat
-
2018-09-25 at 6:32 PM UTC in We have a moral obligation to stop eating meat
Originally posted by Lanny
I've told you several times now that what I mean by moral facts is not facts about how someone imagines the world should be. So yes, without reason as you're repeatedly saying there is no truth value to something you're defining in such a way as to have no truth value and refusing to address my actual position.
That's not my definition of immoral lol, you would know that if you read pretty much any of my posts in this thread.
By moral facts you mean ought statements. Like I said earlier:
Originally posted by Obbe Nobody is morally obligated to do anything. If "moral truths" are just "ought statements", and if "ought statements" have no "truth value" because they are just statements about how someone thinks the world should be rather than statements about how the world is or is not, then "ought statements" and "moral truths" are just peoples opinions and preferences and nobody has any obligation to adopt someone else's opinions or preferences.
-
2018-09-25 at 1:13 PM UTC in We have a moral obligation to stop eating meat
Originally posted by Lanny
You've said that a number of times now without really seeming to respond to what I've been saying. All I can say is if you're thinking of morality as a thing without a truth value then you're not thinking of the same thing as I am when I talk about moral propositions. I've offered you my a definition of moral statements and you've rejected it seemingly without reason.
Not without reason - moral statements don't have a truth value because they are statements about how someone imagines the world should be, not about how it is or is not. -
2018-09-24 at 8:46 PM UTC in We have a moral obligation to stop eating meat
-
2018-09-24 at 6:27 PM UTC in We have a moral obligation to stop eating meatWhatever we think we should do and whatever we do, none of it matters.
-
2018-09-24 at 6:09 PM UTC in We have a moral obligation to stop eating meat
Originally posted by Lanny
In the same way statements about how the world is can be true or false. How the world ought to be be is in fact a statement about how the world is.
I don't really see the contradiction. I can offer empirical evidence for that though, for example almost everyone would prioritize their sight over a video game console. I could conduct an experiment and blindfold myself for a week and go a week without video games and see which sucked more.
We usually can't know with absolute certainty what will maximize utility but we can make informed decisions about it. We can't know with absolute certainty that a given medicine will cure a given patient, individuals are idiosyncratic, but that doesn't mean doctors should just reach into a drawer and grab a pill bottle at random, or that the medical practice is a hoax.
Wether you hold the same definition of utility or not isn't particularly an issue, at least not any more than the possibility of us holding different definitions of "physical fitness" is an issue for the medical practice. People disagree on things all the time, the fact that people don't agree on something isn't an issue for the study of that thing.
I don't really understand what you're saying here. The classic definition of utility is absence of suffering or presence of pleasure. What if different things make us suffer or feel pleasure? What if I like chocolate ice cream and you like vanilla? Fine, not an issue. You get what you want and I get what I want and utility if maximized. The maxim is about utility, there is no need to try and formulate a universal policy on which is the "best" ice cream flavor.
So what does this mean though? Are you saying each thing is an inescapable consequence of the one before it? If so I'm calling slippery slope.
Where have I said that? I think many of our laws are informed my our moral opinions but it seems pretty easy to imagine immoral laws, or laws in a society that doesn't have any moral opinions.
I guess my response here is so what? Is this supposed to be an argument against the assertion that eating meat is wrong? The fact that you can imagine some scenario where some laws are enacted and that the legal system isn't infallible doesn't seem to say anything at all about the moral status of eating meat.
Why? For what reason to you believe that moral truths are unprovable? So far I've gotten "because no one's proved it to me", which I think you can see why that doesn't work, and "because moral systems are based on feelings" which I've shown a number of times either isn't the case or is a trivially true complaint that could be equally applied to the institution of science.
What proof have you gained through reason that offers you 100% certainty that the earth is round, or that objects are composed of atoms? I'll answer for you: none. There's little to nothing that we know with 100% certainty, insisting on it for moral propositions is an atrocious double standard.
"The world is flat" is a statement that can be true or false... the world either is or is not flat.
"Meat eating is immoral" cannot be true or false. Individuals may have different opinions about what is or is not immoral but at no point do those opinions become true or false, there is no way the world should be, there is only the way the world is. -
2018-09-24 at 11:34 AM UTC in We have a moral obligation to stop eating meat
Originally posted by Lanny
I don't think I'm assuming that, can you please point to where I'm making that assumption?
If your asking what the utilitarian response to that situation is we have to understand the difference between hedonic utilitarians and preference utilitarians, and probably act utilitarians and rule utilitarians.
But I think what you're trying to say is that utilitarians are somehow committed to trying to forcefully try to cure a man who's blind, which is just wrong, that's not how it works. The moral imperative is to maximize utility, not to cure every blind person no matter what.
What diagram?
The fact that we have emotional motivations for finding a system of morality is not an indictment of those systems of morality. Scientists have feelings too. The main reason we do science at all is the feeling scientists have that they want to collect a paycheck and society's feeling that they want to enjoy the productive outputs of science. But even nobler reasons like curiosity or a love of truth are still just feeling people have that causes them to practice science. But you don't think this is a condmenation of science to mere opinion, since it would never be done without the influence of feelings, purposefully or not?
You're contradicting yourself. First you say moral truths are unprovable, and you've seen no evidence for them. Then you say moral truths are simply a matter of popular opinion, which surely you've seen quite a bit of evidence for. So which is it?
To be clear, when I say moral truth I'm not talking about popular opinion. I'm taking about facts about what ought to be and which is not contingent public opinion. If you thought by "moral truth" I mean "what people of the day think is the moral truth" then you've gravely misunderstood what I've been saying.
You're right, and I've said little about society at all. I've made no real mention of laws or "morality enforcement". Laws and the effects of laws on our society are very important of course, but they have little to do with moral premises like "it's wrong to eat meat". It's entirely reasonable to hold radically different views on questions like "is it wrong to eat meat?" vs. "should we punish people who eat meat?".
Of course! Please don't think that because I've argued that there are true moral facts that I'm somehow arguing that the vague folk morality that our society enshrines in law or that christian morality is correct. I have a long list of grievances with the moral beliefs widely held by members of our society and prescribed by religious institutions. One such gripe is the belief in our society that it's acceptable to treat animals in whatever way is most expedient and to have no concern for the well being of non-human animals. It's undeniable that most americans hold the moral belief that the meat industry and its practices are morally acceptable and there's like a hundred pages of this thread in which I'm arguing that the popular opinion there is squarely wrong.
How can opinions about "how the world should be" be true or false? I could understand statements about "How the world is" being true or false because the world either is or isn't the way it actually is. But I don't believe there is a true "way the world should be", there are just a variety of ways different people imagine it should be. None of them are true or false, they are just imagined. -
2018-09-23 at 2:58 PM UTC in Superhero films are gay
-
2018-09-23 at 5:09 AM UTC in How feasible would it be to build a livable structure on your own?
-
2018-09-20 at 10:41 PM UTC in We have a moral obligation to stop eating meat
Originally posted by mmQ I'd convince them by brainwashing them into believing that we're morally obligated to not eat meat, and then ask them to explain why they feel that way after my brainwashing is complete.
Nobody is morally obligated to do anything. If "moral truths" are just "ought statements", and if "ought statements" have no "truth value" because they are just statements about how someone thinks the world should be rather than statements about how the world is or is not, then "ought statements" and "moral truths" are just peoples opinions and preferences and nobody has any obligation to adopt someone else's opinions or preferences. -
2018-09-20 at 10:26 PM UTC in We have a moral obligation to stop eating meat
Originally posted by Lanny On the contrary, it says something about how the world ought to be. That's saying something about the world. "The way it ought to be" seems like a perfectly valid property of a thing.
Right it's saying how the world "ought to be" but that's not saying anything about how the world actually is or is not. Which is why I'm asking you to explain why you consider ought statements to be "truths". Truth is how the world is or how it is not. How the world "ought to be" has nothing to do with truth, only fantasy and imagination. I'm asking you to explain why you believe ought statements are "truths" and how you would convince someone to believe you.
Originally posted by Lanny It seems like a structural property of the statement. If you have a proposition about a thing "X" and some logical structure like "If Y then X is true" then it seems like X has a truth value on its own.
It doesn't. The structure of your sentence demonstrates this... "If Y then X is true". X depends on Y. If Y is unknown, or isn't even mentioned, X must be unknown. If there is no Y then X has no truth value.
Originally posted by Lanny Indeed, we can reason backwards from that and say "If X is not true, then Y is not true", and this statement is resolved by discovering the actual value of X.
You're determing the condition of one by the condition of the other.
Originally posted by Lanny I'm not saying the statements "If you want to win the race you should train" and "you should train" are the same. I'm saying the statements "If <all the facts about the world> then you should train" seems to have the same meaning as "You should train".
Do you believe a statement like "If <all the facts about the world> then you should train" has a truth value?
Yes but I do not beileve that has the same meaning as "you should train".
I do not believe "you ought not eat meat" is the same as "you ought not eat meat because of <insert reason>".
I do not believe "ought statements" have a truth value because they are not statements about how the world is or is not, they are statements about how someone thinks the world should be.
I have been asking you all day to to explain how you would convince someone to believe otherwise, and you are not even trying to do so. -
2018-09-20 at 7:46 PM UTC in We have a moral obligation to stop eating meat
Originally posted by Lanny How do those statements differ? Structurally one has a "If you want to win the race" condition put on it but why is that qualification necessary for the statement to have a truth value?
Explained in the last post. Without the condition the statement has no truth value because it doesn't say anything about how the real world is or is not, it doesn't explain why the statement is being stated. "You ought to train" has no truth value by itself.
Originally posted by Lanny It seems to me like if a statement like "if X then Y" has a truth value then a statement like "Y is the case" should also have a truth value.
I'm asking you to explain why you believe that.
Originally posted by Lanny I have, here:
and I don't think you've really responded to the questions I posed there.
Those two statements do not have the same meaning. One is referring to a real world condition (you want to win the race) which makes the statement true or false - the other doesn't refer to anything about how the world is or is not; therefore how could it have a truth value? I'm asking you to explain that.
