3 ms·

> I don't see what's so difficult to accept in this, frankly. Because you're stopping once you reach the conclusion you like and not seeing where it leads. De

by bonaldi 12y ago

> I don't see what's so difficult to accept in this, frankly. Because you're stopping once you reach the conclusion you like and not seeing where it leads. Debating about morality is a pre-requisite for, for example, coming to agreement on a community standard on a moral question of behaviour. And if it's futile to debate about morality, then of course it's futile to try to define a community standard on a moral question of behaviour. Without consensus on standards of behaviour, communities and societies fall apart. People value communities and societies. Therefore people value being able to debate about morality.

throwawayaway 12y ago
Interesting comment. I don't care where it leads, it's a personal thing. I don't feel the need to hold a position that applies to everyone. Taking it to something I understand better, like coding standards. I could care less what people decide the rules are, they seem completely arbitrary to me. I'm happy to go with what's gone before, and if people want to fight about new ones I'll leave them to it.
- bonaldi 12y ago
  But you accept that people can fight and decide what the rules are? That you can have a meaningful discussion about which coding standard is the best, and why, and reach a conclusion you all agree on? Because metaethical moral relativism wouldn't accept that. It says you might as well have a discussion about which colour is the best and try to reach a conclusion everyone agrees on.
  - throwawayaway 12y ago
    well you changed a word out there. the first question is you accept that people can fight. the second question is you can have a meaningful. i accept that people and can fight but i don't accept their discussion is meaningful and i don't accept that they can reach a conclusion i agree on. i don't see how accepting that people can fight and decide on rules, means that i think there's any meaning in it and why that means i agree, disagree or care about the conclusion. > It says you might as well have a discussion about which colour is the best and try to reach a conclusion everyone agrees on. that seems pretty close to how i feel about it.
    - bonaldi 12y ago
      > i don't see how accepting that people can fight and decide on rules, means that i think there's any meaning in it and why that means i agree, disagree or care about the conclusion. "Fight" is probably the misleading point. People can and will fight about meaningless things, yes. Perhaps "debate" would be better, because that implies meaning in the discussion. I think you can reasonably debate, compare and judge coding styles -- "which is more readable?", "which aids understanding better?", etc -- in a way you can't reasonably debate "which is the best colour?".
      - throwawayaway 12y ago
        if you say so, although we are now at a meta point of debating the value of debate and i'm out.
huxley 12y ago
There might be a confusion between a prescriptive and a descriptive stance of moral relativism. You can be a moral relativist and take a pragmatic position that traditions or societal consensus are worth having without disappearing in a puff of logic.
- bonaldi 12y ago
  > You can be a moral relativist and take a pragmatic position that traditions or societal consensus are worth having without disappearing in a puff of logic. Not really, because if you believe the relativism you must believe that moral consensus can't be reached. What you are saying is very close to "You can be a climate change denier and take the pragmatic position that we need to change our behaviour to stop the earth heating up"
  - huxley 12y ago
    I think you're talking about a very naive normative interpretation of moral relativism, the fundamental argument, as I understand it, is actually that societies do reach some form of moral consensus, but that this consensus has cultural and historical roots (and possible other contingent factors), it will vary and change over nations and time. I won't throw a segfault if I take a descriptive moral relativistic position and simultaneously think that honour killings are wrong. I am logical and well-read enough to realize that most of our Western courts have allowed honour killings but called them "crimes of passion"[1] and until not that long ago that could be a complete defence against a charge of murder. It is still an acceptable partial defence in some courts and some judges apparently advocate its return in others [2]. So by recognizing the moral relativism inherent in that situation, am I normatively obligated to think honour killings are A-OK? I don't think so, I am however apparently outside the moral consensus on that subject, so what do I know. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_of_passion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_of_passion [2] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/9020632/Crimes-of-passion-defence-restored-in-murder-cases.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/9020632...
    - bonaldi 12y ago
icebraining 12y ago
I'm not stopping, I just don't agree with that. You can argue about and agree upon a standard of behavior without it being a moral standard. In fact, I'd argue that's exactly what most laws are. When the CA road laws say that drivers must keep a 3-foot buffer from cyclists, is that a moral rule? Now, it may be that you still need some moral axioms to build those standards upon, but you don't need to argue about them, merely to have enough people with a roughly similar pattern. The dissenters will just be made to comply by force.
- bonaldi 12y ago
  > I'm not stopping, I just don't agree with that. Logic doesn't care if you agree or not, it just takes you to the conclusion anyway. And if that reveals you to have an incoherent position, so be it. Also, you're not going to get far trying to define away moral aspects. _Why_ was the cycle law enacted? Presumably to reduce cyclist deaths. Why reduce those? You get to a moral question incredibly quickly from the most arcane law. And your thinking that you can find a majority with "roughly similar pattern" without any need for debate is effectively saying "a majority will agree on fundamental moral axioms" and now you're nowhere near relativism. You might as well have posited the article's "moral facts", at this point.
  - icebraining 12y ago
    If I roll five dice, and three of them hit on 3, does that mean that 3 is some special number? Moral relativism doesn't imply that everyone's subjective moral are all and always incompatible with each other. As people's subjective moralities change this way and the other, clusters are bound to happen - those are the "majorities". What I deny is that any of those are the one objective morality. It's just the latest sample from the RNG. Tommorrow will bring new ones.
    - bonaldi 12y ago
      Again, it's not binary: you don't have to accept a moral objectivism just because you deny relativism. I too deny that any of the axioms are the one objective morality (although the clusters of moral belief over time are nothing like you'd get from a RNG, and tomorrow broadly speaking does not bring new ones, but that's a digression).

by bonaldi 12y ago

throwawayaway 12y ago

Interesting comment. I don't care where it leads, it's a personal thing. I don't feel the need to hold a position that applies to everyone. Taking it to something I understand better, like coding standards. I could care less what people decide the rules are, they seem completely arbitrary to me. I'm happy to go with what's gone before, and if people want to fight about new ones I'll leave them to it.

bonaldi 12y ago
But you accept that people can fight and decide what the rules are? That you can have a meaningful discussion about which coding standard is the best, and why, and reach a conclusion you all agree on? Because metaethical moral relativism wouldn't accept that. It says you might as well have a discussion about which colour is the best and try to reach a conclusion everyone agrees on.
- throwawayaway 12y ago
  well you changed a word out there. the first question is you accept that people can fight. the second question is you can have a meaningful. i accept that people and can fight but i don't accept their discussion is meaningful and i don't accept that they can reach a conclusion i agree on. i don't see how accepting that people can fight and decide on rules, means that i think there's any meaning in it and why that means i agree, disagree or care about the conclusion. > It says you might as well have a discussion about which colour is the best and try to reach a conclusion everyone agrees on. that seems pretty close to how i feel about it.
  - bonaldi 12y ago
    > i don't see how accepting that people can fight and decide on rules, means that i think there's any meaning in it and why that means i agree, disagree or care about the conclusion. "Fight" is probably the misleading point. People can and will fight about meaningless things, yes. Perhaps "debate" would be better, because that implies meaning in the discussion. I think you can reasonably debate, compare and judge coding styles -- "which is more readable?", "which aids understanding better?", etc -- in a way you can't reasonably debate "which is the best colour?".
    - throwawayaway 12y ago
      if you say so, although we are now at a meta point of debating the value of debate and i'm out.

huxley 12y ago

There might be a confusion between a prescriptive and a descriptive stance of moral relativism. You can be a moral relativist and take a pragmatic position that traditions or societal consensus are worth having without disappearing in a puff of logic.

bonaldi 12y ago
> You can be a moral relativist and take a pragmatic position that traditions or societal consensus are worth having without disappearing in a puff of logic. Not really, because if you believe the relativism you must believe that moral consensus can't be reached. What you are saying is very close to "You can be a climate change denier and take the pragmatic position that we need to change our behaviour to stop the earth heating up"
- huxley 12y ago
  I think you're talking about a very naive normative interpretation of moral relativism, the fundamental argument, as I understand it, is actually that societies do reach some form of moral consensus, but that this consensus has cultural and historical roots (and possible other contingent factors), it will vary and change over nations and time. I won't throw a segfault if I take a descriptive moral relativistic position and simultaneously think that honour killings are wrong. I am logical and well-read enough to realize that most of our Western courts have allowed honour killings but called them "crimes of passion"[1] and until not that long ago that could be a complete defence against a charge of murder. It is still an acceptable partial defence in some courts and some judges apparently advocate its return in others [2]. So by recognizing the moral relativism inherent in that situation, am I normatively obligated to think honour killings are A-OK? I don't think so, I am however apparently outside the moral consensus on that subject, so what do I know. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_of_passion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_of_passion [2] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/9020632/Crimes-of-passion-defence-restored-in-murder-cases.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/9020632...
  - bonaldi 12y ago

icebraining 12y ago

I'm not stopping, I just don't agree with that. You can argue about and agree upon a standard of behavior without it being a moral standard. In fact, I'd argue that's exactly what most laws are. When the CA road laws say that drivers must keep a 3-foot buffer from cyclists, is that a moral rule? Now, it may be that you still need some moral axioms to build those standards upon, but you don't need to argue about them, merely to have enough people with a roughly similar pattern. The dissenters will just be made to comply by force.

bonaldi 12y ago
> I'm not stopping, I just don't agree with that. Logic doesn't care if you agree or not, it just takes you to the conclusion anyway. And if that reveals you to have an incoherent position, so be it. Also, you're not going to get far trying to define away moral aspects. _Why_ was the cycle law enacted? Presumably to reduce cyclist deaths. Why reduce those? You get to a moral question incredibly quickly from the most arcane law. And your thinking that you can find a majority with "roughly similar pattern" without any need for debate is effectively saying "a majority will agree on fundamental moral axioms" and now you're nowhere near relativism. You might as well have posited the article's "moral facts", at this point.
- icebraining 12y ago
  If I roll five dice, and three of them hit on 3, does that mean that 3 is some special number? Moral relativism doesn't imply that everyone's subjective moral are all and always incompatible with each other. As people's subjective moralities change this way and the other, clusters are bound to happen - those are the "majorities". What I deny is that any of those are the one objective morality. It's just the latest sample from the RNG. Tommorrow will bring new ones.
  - bonaldi 12y ago
    Again, it's not binary: you don't have to accept a moral objectivism just because you deny relativism. I too deny that any of the axioms are the one objective morality (although the clusters of moral belief over time are nothing like you'd get from a RNG, and tomorrow broadly speaking does not bring new ones, but that's a digression).