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>Second, we do just fine testing mathematical laws by checking for consistency without any tests of the sort you're describing. So is there some axiomatic syst
by fluoridation 3y ago
>Second, we do just fine testing mathematical laws by checking for consistency without any tests of the sort you're describing.
So is there some axiomatic system that can elucidate moral truths, such as the wrongness of stealing, from first principles?
>A Proof of the Objectivity of Morals - Bambrough (1969)
Quickly skimmed through it, but: awful, just awful. I challenge Bambrough to prove to me that I have two hands.
- naasking 3y ago> So is there some axiomatic system that can elucidate moral truths, such as the wrongness of stealing, from first principles? Read Kant. > Quickly skimmed through it, but: awful, just awful. I challenge Bambrough to prove to me that I have two hands. Clearly you missed the entire thrust of the argument, and Moore's before it.
- fluoridation 3y ago>Read Kant. Nah. And either way following such a reasoning would just tell you whether a statement meets a condition defined by an arbitrarily chosen axiomatic system. Whether someone chooses to call that moral or not is still subjective. Look, I can do it right now: bool is_moral(string s){ return false; }
- naasking 3y agoMath is also composed of arbitrarily chosen axiomatic systems, and yet math is still objective. I'm afraid such trivial arguments aren't much challenge to moral realism, which you'd know if you actually bothered to read anything about it.
- fluoridation 3y agoYes, but math just seeks to find truths that are internally consistent. is_moral("not murdering people") is objectively true in the exact same sense that mathematical truths are true. Yet this tells us nothing at all about whether not murdering people is moral.
- btilly 3y agoLet's see if I can achieve the same tone that you just did. Math cannot be proven to be objective. Therefore a trivial appeal to the objectiveness of math don't make your case. You'd know this if you actually bothered to read anything about it. I suggest that you start with Gödel. Seriously, no matter how much you might know about the topic, this is not how you make an argument that convinces anyone else.
- GoblinSlayer 3y agoIn this sense subjective opinions can be said to be objective to some extent: subjective opinion is brain configuration, and the latter is objective. But moral realists probably mean something else.
- btilly 3y agoIronically I talked about Kant with my son 2 days ago. He literally couldn't get through the first sentence without disagreeing. Kant argues that the only thing that is good in itself is good will. However it is trivial to find ways in which good will leads to bad things, and therefore having good will is not necessarily good at all! From my son's perspective, the argument did not improve from there. So people who disagree with you are not necessarily going to be convinced by an appeal to Kant.
- GoblinSlayer 3y agoIt's a strange claim that Kant somehow helps with realism. He sees reality as unintelligible noumena, that's agnosticism at best, absurdism at worst.