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A think we're getting to a stuck point here, but to wrap up some of my main qualms: 1. I feel like we keep talking in circles on the definitional aspect. I'm w

A think we're getting to a stuck point here, but to wrap up some of my main qualms: 1. I feel like we keep talking in circles on the definitional aspect. I'm with you on the many definitions causing confusion and I would love to see expanded vocabulary around this. But you haven't said anything to convince me against the idea that all three have moral relevancy in various ways. 2. To be clear, I do not believe hard determinism needs any sort of pseudo-blame to be workable, at least how I understand you are using that term. The only thing needed is causality in order in order to find the ideal "organization" of the world to optimize for whatever factors are settled on by other parts of the argument. 3. I actually agree with you on the lack of convincing of 1 and 3 for error theory (slightly different reasons but details not needed), but the argument from queerness seems to fit quite well. I'm not sure what part you're claiming is misunderstood. 4. The mentioned "justifications" on hard determinism are going the wrong way logically - you don't decide if something is true by if you need it to make morals that look nice, you follow what is true and see the results, and only then can you "check your work" with a sanity test. You've seem to cut off your thoughts on determinism before ever getting to a point where it actually produced a full set of moral ideas to check in favor of compatabilism simply because it produced something that passed said check, but if the underlying principle is false that's simply a coincidental state. Obviously you've also personally eliminated error theory, which is the core of our disagreement. As to justice, I fully agree on that being way oversimplified. For context, looking ahead, my theories on morality out of error theory basically lead to a consequentialist version of Rawls, so that's about where I stand re justice, with some nuance. > I think there are reasons to think we already know some moral facts. Can you give examples? Single or multiple, whatever you think is more useful in this context. I don't see how we get to moral facts without them being tied back subjectively to humans, which either invalidates the objectivism tract (now we're back at arguing metaethics fully) or you'd have to get there from the error theory route I've been talking about. To Bambrough's child surgery example, I think that only shows that that moral fact is true only subjectively to humans - it's not an "objective" moral truth. It is derived from the traits of a human, and the example generally works because it takes a clear cut case we can all agree on. All of this reasoning is still useful to an error theorist, but it is laid on the groundwork that morality is subjective to the state of humans/beings. If you mean to say that this is objective, then there is basically infinite moral facts in existence, we just debate them because humans and society are complex. That is to me the precise meaning of that "optimal organization" I reference, which is essentially that collection of all true moral facts, which I would argue are always subjective to the deterministic state of the world. Change anything about the world, and you likely change ethics itself. The argument from queerness highlights that without our perspective and values, objective morality wouldn't exist at all. I suspect definition will be the issue here again - are "moral facts" derived from the combination of human traits and our perspective considered objective or subjective? To me, that is subjective and then the combinations of subjectiveness along with the lack of inherent meaning or value produces a single objective level practical morality. I can understand the argument to classify that set of things itself as objective morality, but I think that weakens the base of the argument needlessly.

naasking 6y ago
> But you haven't said anything to convince me against the idea that all three have moral relevancy in various ways. Because I think only one has moral relevancy, not all three. I've been saying it's a mistake to conflate the others with the one specific to moral responsibility. > The only thing needed [in hard determinism] is causality in order to find the ideal "organization" of the world to optimize for whatever factors are settled on by other parts of the argument. The "ideal organization" necessarily designate faulty parts which don't conform to the ideal, and so the parts that require rehabilitation. That's blame however you want to spin it. > To Bambrough's child surgery example, I think that only shows that that moral fact is true only subjectively to humans - it's not an "objective" moral truth. It is derived from the traits of a human, and the example generally works because it takes a clear cut case we can all agree on. I think you're missing the forest for the trees by mistaking an existential claim for a universal claim. Suppose we swap out the human child with an alien that doesn't feel pain as we do, but has an adverse reaction to some other stimulus. The same argument applies by parity of reasoning. You're focused on the specifics of the human case, but the moral fact in that case is just an instance of a more general principle from which this fact derives. It's like I'm pointing out 1+2=3, that's a fact, an instance of the general rule of addition. You then agree that 1+2=3, but gotcha, 1+3!=3, therefore 1+2=3 is not a general fact applicable to all numbers. No argument there, but it was never suggested as such. > I suspect definition will be the issue here again - are "moral facts" derived from the combination of human traits and our perspective considered objective or subjective? "Objective" means "mind independent", which is to say, that any form of intelligence will reach the same conclusions given the same understanding. Any intelligence will reach the same conclusion that a human child undergoing a painful surgery ought to be given anesthetic, all else being equal, assuming they fully understand the meaning of every word in that sentence.
- adjkant 6y ago
  > Because I think only one has moral relevancy, not all three. I've been saying it's a mistake to conflate the others with the one specific to moral responsibility. And that's exactly where we're stuck, which is all I'm saying. I think all three affect moral responsibility. > 1+2=3, etc > Any intelligence will reach the same conclusion that a human child undergoing a painful surgery ought to be given anesthetic, all else being equal, assuming they fully understand the meaning of every word in that sentence. There's another assumed aspect though that you have not separated, which is that the judging intelligence has empathy if it agrees. You're claiming only using pure logic, but you're using aspects of that subjective human perspective to imply that the reduction of pain/whatever stimuli. Without the human perspective, the example fails to be a "moral" fact. It's just a configuration that raises x, lowers some y maybe, and the beings prefer more x and less y. But without value being projected on x and y, it is not inherently "good". We require the human perspective to create human morality. What if the intelligence viewing this entire scenario loves to see pain/y? Would it not rationally conclude the anesthesia is bad? Only if it assumes or judges based on the values of a human does it get the same conclusion. Yes, within that, it's objective. I find that distinction is key in how we approach the derivation later. A lack of such distinction can, for one example, enable using the idea of objectivity here to assign value to the entities (more ideal = more value), which then can shift practical effects possibly. And maybe you disagree with this specific example on deriving value from objective nature, but that is one of the many doors the lack of distinction opens. I'm sure if we went far enough down the road, there is likely an argument that you do agree with that comes from the lack of distinction. You say I'm missing the forest, but I think you are minimizing the importance of the trees through all of this and disagreeing that the trees can be important, even if you zoom out and the forest is the same. You're saying that the rule in play here is "addition", but I'm saying I think you're missing some rules/definition/workings of the "operator" in this metaphor that lead to different results later down the line, even if it works in this case. > The "ideal organization" necessarily designate faulty parts which don't conform to the ideal, and so the parts that require rehabilitation. That's blame however you want to spin it. I typed up a longer distinction here, but again this seems to come down to distinguishing between two definitions and if that distinction means something. See importance of trees. In this case, blame being the tree.

naasking 6y ago

> But you haven't said anything to convince me against the idea that all three have moral relevancy in various ways. Because I think only one has moral relevancy, not all three. I've been saying it's a mistake to conflate the others with the one specific to moral responsibility. > The only thing needed [in hard determinism] is causality in order to find the ideal "organization" of the world to optimize for whatever factors are settled on by other parts of the argument. The "ideal organization" necessarily designate faulty parts which don't conform to the ideal, and so the parts that require rehabilitation. That's blame however you want to spin it. > To Bambrough's child surgery example, I think that only shows that that moral fact is true only subjectively to humans - it's not an "objective" moral truth. It is derived from the traits of a human, and the example generally works because it takes a clear cut case we can all agree on. I think you're missing the forest for the trees by mistaking an existential claim for a universal claim. Suppose we swap out the human child with an alien that doesn't feel pain as we do, but has an adverse reaction to some other stimulus. The same argument applies by parity of reasoning. You're focused on the specifics of the human case, but the moral fact in that case is just an instance of a more general principle from which this fact derives. It's like I'm pointing out 1+2=3, that's a fact, an instance of the general rule of addition. You then agree that 1+2=3, but gotcha, 1+3!=3, therefore 1+2=3 is not a general fact applicable to all numbers. No argument there, but it was never suggested as such. > I suspect definition will be the issue here again - are "moral facts" derived from the combination of human traits and our perspective considered objective or subjective? "Objective" means "mind independent", which is to say, that any form of intelligence will reach the same conclusions given the same understanding. Any intelligence will reach the same conclusion that a human child undergoing a painful surgery ought to be given anesthetic, all else being equal, assuming they fully understand the meaning of every word in that sentence.

adjkant 6y ago
> Because I think only one has moral relevancy, not all three. I've been saying it's a mistake to conflate the others with the one specific to moral responsibility. And that's exactly where we're stuck, which is all I'm saying. I think all three affect moral responsibility. > 1+2=3, etc > Any intelligence will reach the same conclusion that a human child undergoing a painful surgery ought to be given anesthetic, all else being equal, assuming they fully understand the meaning of every word in that sentence. There's another assumed aspect though that you have not separated, which is that the judging intelligence has empathy if it agrees. You're claiming only using pure logic, but you're using aspects of that subjective human perspective to imply that the reduction of pain/whatever stimuli. Without the human perspective, the example fails to be a "moral" fact. It's just a configuration that raises x, lowers some y maybe, and the beings prefer more x and less y. But without value being projected on x and y, it is not inherently "good". We require the human perspective to create human morality. What if the intelligence viewing this entire scenario loves to see pain/y? Would it not rationally conclude the anesthesia is bad? Only if it assumes or judges based on the values of a human does it get the same conclusion. Yes, within that, it's objective. I find that distinction is key in how we approach the derivation later. A lack of such distinction can, for one example, enable using the idea of objectivity here to assign value to the entities (more ideal = more value), which then can shift practical effects possibly. And maybe you disagree with this specific example on deriving value from objective nature, but that is one of the many doors the lack of distinction opens. I'm sure if we went far enough down the road, there is likely an argument that you do agree with that comes from the lack of distinction. You say I'm missing the forest, but I think you are minimizing the importance of the trees through all of this and disagreeing that the trees can be important, even if you zoom out and the forest is the same. You're saying that the rule in play here is "addition", but I'm saying I think you're missing some rules/definition/workings of the "operator" in this metaphor that lead to different results later down the line, even if it works in this case. > The "ideal organization" necessarily designate faulty parts which don't conform to the ideal, and so the parts that require rehabilitation. That's blame however you want to spin it. I typed up a longer distinction here, but again this seems to come down to distinguishing between two definitions and if that distinction means something. See importance of trees. In this case, blame being the tree.