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Posts by Obbe
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2018-09-25 at 7:49 PM UTC in We have a moral obligation to stop eating meat
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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.
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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
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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.
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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
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2018-09-23 at 5:09 AM UTC in How feasible would it be to build a livable structure on your own?
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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. -
2018-09-20 at 6:17 PM UTC in We have a moral obligation to stop eating meat
Originally posted by Lanny Why does that make a difference?
Why would a statement like "you out to train" go from not having a truth value to having one when you throw in a precondition like "if you want to win the race"?
If we construct a statement like "if <all the facts about the world> then you ought not to eat meat" does that statement have a truth value? It seems to have the exact same structure as a statement like "if you want to win the race, you ought to train" yet the same meaning as the unqualified "you ought not to eat meat".
A statement like "you ought to train" has no truth value because it isn't stating anything about what is or is not. It says nothing about the real world. It follows nothing which would validate it as true or false. It is just someone's preference.
A statement like "you ought to train if you want to become faster" is actually stating something about the real world, something that could be true or false.
I'm asking you how you would convince someone otherwise. Please use "eating meat is immoral" as an example. -
2018-09-20 at 12:42 PM UTC in We have a moral obligation to stop eating meat
Originally posted by Lanny That's fine, but do you understand how saying my moral conclusions (like that we shouldn't eat meat, for example) is different from saying:
? Like you can think I'm wrong and believe that eating meat is not wrong, but that's simply asserting that the truth value of the statement "eating meat is wrong" is false.
Why would you say there's no truth value at all? It seems like a well formed idea, the proposition is either true or it isn't, so why deny that there's a truth value to it?
I don't believe statements like "it's wrong to eat meat" are true or false. Statements about what is right or wrong are just personal preferences. I'm asking you how you would convince a person otherwise.
Originally posted by Lanny They're simply different categories of belief. For example, I might believe that the world ought not to have thieves in it, but I still might steal. I have one belief about how the world should be (free of thievery) and one about how I want it to be (having at least one thief in it, namely me) and while I might be a hypocrite for holding these two beliefs at once they don't seem logically contradictory.
And simply on a level of possibility, people seem very capable of wanting the world to be a certain way but acting contrary to that. Weakness of will is a very common phenomenon in our society.
Ok but saying the world ought to be a certain way still seems like an opinion whether you desire it or not. I don't understand how it could be true or false because it is a statement of fantasy. Saying the world should be a certain way is not like saying it is or is not a certain way and carries no truth value as I see it. I'm asking you how you would convince someone otherwise.
Originally posted by Lanny I'm not saying ought statements are always true. Just that they have a truth value: they may be true or they may not be.
I understand you, but I do not agree with you and I'm asking you how you would convince someone otherwise. I don't believe ought statements may be true or false. They are not statements about how the world is or is not. They are statements about how someone fantasized how the world should be, and are therefore statement that are based in fantasy or imagination and not reality - truth has nothing to do with these statements as I see it. Change my mind.
Originally posted by Lanny I agree, truths are supposed to be what is, not what someone things it should be. And that's why ought-statements, which I'm asserting have truth values, are not merely statements of opinion.
I'm asking you to not simply assert that but to actually explain why you believe that.
Originally posted by Lanny The critical difference is that ought statements are not expression of desire, but rather an expression of how the world should be. We may be wrong about how the world should be, and it may be the case that there is no way at all that the world should be, but this would simply mean the truth value of all ought statements is false.
Right, but I don't agree with your assigning a truth value to ought statements. "The way the world should be" is not a matter of truth because it has nothing to do with how the world is or is not. "The way the world should be" is just someone's fantasy or imagination. Please, explain how would you convince someone otherwise?
Originally posted by Lanny There's a common explanation that I'm not sure is helpful here or not, but I think is an interesting way of putting it. Consider a statement like "if you want to win the race, you ought to train". This is a pretty straight forward statement and it seems to have a truth value. In the case of trying to win races we really probably ought to train, it's probably true. But if you said "if you want to win the race, you should eat poorly and not sleep", well that'd probably be false. Moral propositions are simply those that are not qualified by "if you want X then you should…" but rather those which hold always, or which hold conditional to all the actual facts about the world. Indeed, a statement like "If you want to win the race, and all the true facts in the world are true, then you should train" actually has the same meaning as "If you want to win the race, you should train". The important point here is that there is no structural difference between the conditional and unconditional forms of ought statements, and few would argue that conditional ought statements lack a truth value, so there's no logical reason to deny extending truth value to unconditional ought statements.
That's just if-then statements which follow logical conditions. Your ought statement "it's wrong to eat meat" has no conditional logic - you aren't deducing the validity of the statement on the condition of anything at all, you are merely stating that the world should be a certain way (in your opinion) and this has nothing to do with the way the world is or is not. It's just fantasy and should not be referred to as a truth. At least that's how I see It, please convince me otherwise.
Originally posted by Lanny Do you think discussions bout "the shape of the world" is anything more than people arguing for their opinions? If so, what is present in that sort of argument that's missing in an argument about if we ought to eat meat or not?
The shape of the world is something that can be demonstrated and proven. The shape of the world is something that either is or is not. "Moral or immoral" is not something that can be demonstrated or proven, it is merely the preference of the person making the statement. I'm asking you how you would convince someone otherwise. -
2018-09-20 at 2:29 AM UTC in We have a moral obligation to stop eating meat
Originally posted by Lanny Well the point is not that my moral conclusions are truths. I think they are, but my point is structural: when I say "it's wrong to eat meat" that statement has a truth value in the same way statements like "the earth is flat" has a truth value. You might think that truth value us "false", but to think I'm making a claim about peoples opinions is to mistake what I mean.
My point is that I don't think your moral conclusions are truths. I don't believe statements like "it's wrong to eat meat" have a truth value in the same way as statements like "the earth is flat". You believe these statements have a truth value in that same way, and I am asking you how you would convince someone who doesn't believe that.
Originally posted by Lanny A moral truth is a true "ought" statement e.g. "we ought to not eat meat". It's a claim about how the world should be, as distinct from how someone might want the world to be, or how the world is.
That doesn't seem to make sense. How can someone claim the world should be a certain way without a person desiring the world to be that way? What is the distinction?
Also who came up with the idea to call "ought statements" truths? Truth is supposed to be what is, not what someone thinks it should be. What is the difference between an "ought statement" and a persons preference or opinion?
Originally posted by Lanny Well I think you might not take the same position as we typically think of moral relativists as taking. Most of the positions that we'd traditionally call "relativist" would actually agree with the idea of moral truth, they'd just say the truth value of a moral proposition is contingent on (but not synonymous with) the individual or culture or whatever frame of reference is chosen for moral values to be relative to. From what you've said I think your position might be "morals are merely opinions", that is there is no difference between a statement like "I would for animals not to be eaten" and "animals should not be eaten". If this is your idea of ethics then I'd say you should adopt the definition I've offered because yours says nothing more than stating your opinion. Mine allows you to express a category of propositions you wouldn't seem to have a term for otherwise, and it's useful to be able to describe that sort of proposition, even if you think none of those propositions are true, since people refer to them rather often. E.g. in threads about moral obligations.
I don't believe discussions about "moral obligations" are anything more than people arguing for their opinions. But I still would like you to explain how you would convince someone who doesn't believe your "moral truths" are anything more than your personal preferences. -
2018-09-20 at 12:14 AM UTC in You are all mentally ill
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2018-09-20 at 12:09 AM UTC in You are all mentally illIs there a single sane person anywhere?
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2018-09-20 at 12:02 AM UTC in We have a moral obligation to stop eating meat
Originally posted by Lanny
That's a reasonable question to ask, but unfortunately it doesn't have a single direct answer. There are a number of moral positions that fall under the heading of "moral realist", and they each have different ideas about ideas about where we get the basic moral propositions that we build moral systems upon. You can read about Kant's categorical imperative for one of the most famous examples of a realist metaethical argument.
But even if you are wholly unconvinced by the arguments put forward by any moral realist, the point I was trying to make to DietPiano was that ethical claims made by realists, structurally, do not depend on consensus e.g. they are either true or false in fact, regardless of what people think about that matter in the same way the proposition "the earth is round" has a truth value that's not contingent upon people's opinions. And also that collecting empirical evidence is not the only way we go about learning things, and there are things which are widely believed to be true (even by DP) which have no empirical support.
I don't claim to know everything, and I'd say that I have significantly less confidence in my concrete ethical position that eating meat is morally unacceptable than I do in these structural points about moral propositions in general, and evidence supporting them. I'd prefer to reach a common understanding on these points before venturing into specific moral propositions. There's not much point in trying to make the case that "we ought not to eat meat" is a moral truth if we don't have a shared understanding of what is meant by "moral truth".
I never said you promised me anything. Where did you get that idea?
No, you did more than link a national geographic video, you made the claim that plants "feel" in a comparable way to humans. If you don't think this is the case I can link your post where you do it (see how that went? I claimed something (that you made a particular statement about plants) and offered to present evidence in support of that claim).
If you want to back away from your claim then that's fine. Foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds and all of that. But don't keep claiming that the natural of plant experience is well understood by "science" and then refuse to provide any evidence in defense of that claim.
Sure. How would you convince a moral relativist that your moral conclusions are not relative but are actually "moral truths". How would you define the term "moral truth" and how would you convince a moral relativist to accept and adopt your definition? -
2018-09-19 at 6:22 PM UTC in We have a moral obligation to stop eating meat
Originally posted by Lanny
Fine, you can make this objection but your argument has changed from "morality requires everyone to agree on it to be true" to "morality isn't supported by 'concrete, measurable data'" with the tacit premise that a theory needs to be supported supported by 'concrete, measurable data' to be valid or acceptable. In which case I turn your attention to this part of my post:
Well that the canonical texts are truly representative of the will of god (even if he isn't the direct author) is a pretty common foundation for religious morality.
That's not a mathematical theorem though. That's you finding that a mathematical model of how collecting coconuts works. If I say "I have two coconuts and I take three coconuts then I should have six coconuts because 2*3=6 but I find I have five" I haven't formed an argument against mathematics, empirical counter evidence, I've simply formed a poor model of coconut collection.
Falsifiability is a cornerstone of the modern scientific method, to some the idea of falsification or verification is fundamental to meaning in general. But what experimental result could you possible find to disprove a theorem of mathematics? I don't think you'll be able to think of an empirical test of mathematical theorems.
I agree we commonly use the two together to think about our experience but the difference is significant in this case, so I'm glad we agree they're separate things.
There is nothing about "rationality" that requires measurement. How can you "measure" a logical proposition or argument like "p -> q; p; Q.E.D. q"? What units do you measure it in? What tools do you use to measure it? Rationality isn't about measurement at all.
Mathematical theorems can't be sensed by humans either. My math sense doesn't tingle when correct statements about mathematical objects are presented to me. I have to reason my way through a mathematical argument to be convinced of such things. This is what most secular moral realists believe too: we can't measure morality with some piece of equipment but we can use tools like logic and reasoning and argumentation to reach moral conclusions.
How would a moral realist convince a moral relativist that their moral conclusions are not relative? Could you use "we have a moral obligation to not eat meat" as an example? -
2018-09-17 at 11:50 PM UTC in The Retarded Thread: Sploo Needs AttentionWhat are they doing to that kid?
