7 ms·

so many beliefs people have about morality rest on assumptions: my beliefs must be rational, founded on evidence, or else they are invalid. this insistence is h

so many beliefs people have about morality rest on assumptions: my beliefs must be rational, founded on evidence, or else they are invalid. this insistence is highly destructive. there is certainly a form of validity granted by axiomatic reasoning, but we have rejected things we can't axiomatize and generalize, as if anything uncomputable were not worth thinking of. ========= in this article I explain a common (most likely false) assumption in most moral thinking: http://markpneyer.me/2015/06/25/morality-and-the-subjunctive-ordering-hypothetical-situations/ http://markpneyer.me/2015/06/25/morality-and-the-subjunctive... and this is a series of articles explaining a model of emotion and why it works the way it does: http://markpneyer.me/2014/10/19/a-model-of-emotion/ http://markpneyer.me/2014/10/19/a-model-of-emotion/

ikeboy 11y ago
Frankly, in your article you appear to only argue against deontology, while appearing unaware of any alternatives. Your actual argument is also inconsistent with your uncomputable claim. Specifically, your proposed "taking context into account" is completely computable. Also, if you were right that morality exists but is not computable, why would that change anything?
- MarkPNeyer 11y ago
  > Also, if you were right that morality exists but is not computable, why would that change anything? because principles as the basis of morality then go away. making moral decisions becomes about looking at each _specific_ situation, and applying as much context as possible - instead of trying to say "well in general, X is bad".
  - ikeboy 11y ago
    >because principles as the basis of morality then go away. I don't see why. Why can't I say "uncomputable function X is the basis for morality", and simultaneously believe that X satisfies principle Y? There's nothing about uncomputable functions that says you can never know a value, and principles are useful even if they aren't always correct anyway. >making moral decisions becomes about looking at each _specific_ situation, and applying as much context as possible - instead of trying to say "well in general, X is bad". Why can't an uncomputable function have a rule that X is bad? It might not be computable in all cases, that doesn 't mean it can't have rules.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
keane 11y ago
>so many beliefs people have about morality rest on assumptions: my beliefs must be rational, founded on evidence, or else they are invalid. This is a very important observation. Moral language is fundamentally Imperatives: statements about what humans should do. If one begins by insisting that moral claims must be founded on empirical evidence, one subsequently must hold Moral Anti-realism as it is not adequate to simply suggest evidence for morality. This follows from Hume's recognition of the Is-Ought problem between Facts and Values: we cannot bridge the gap between Facts (mere observations of that which Is) to Values (including our statements regarding what Ought to be) because they are qualitatively different things: ~"In suggested approaches to morality, I am surprised to find authors moving from propositions with the usual copula 'is' (or 'is not') to ones that are connected by 'ought' (or 'ought not'). This change is imperceptible; but is however, of the greatest consequence. For as this 'ought' (or 'ought not') expresses some new relation or affirmation, 'tis necessary that it should be pointed out and explained; and at the same time a reason should be given, for how this new relation can be—inconceivably—a deduction from others that are entirely different from it. I am persuaded, that attention to this one small matter will let us see that the definitions of right and wrong are not based on the relations of objects nor can be perceived by reason." While we are unable to jump the gap by taking an observed Fact to infer a prescribed Value, we can travel from Values to subsequent Values (e.g. if you presuppose human survival--"Humans should survive"--from this Value you can go to another Value: "Humans shouldn't kill"). Of course, starting with any particular presupposed Value is a departure from Empiricism. That is to say, all normative statements are matters of assumptive belief, and one assumed Value is as unempirical as another. The trick of course, unless you become a Nihilist, is what unempirical assumptive Value will you support and proclaim. A really interesting part regarding all of this is that if morality does not truly exist, it was not morally 'wrong' anytime humans proclaimed it truly did. We remember the realization of the Marquis de Sade that if God does not exist then everything that is, is Right; but further, if the unempirical does not exist, then proclaiming it does is not wrong. In the words of philosopher Thomas Nagel: "If sub specie aeternitatis there is no reason to believe that anything matters, then that does not matter either". Wild.
- tunesmith 11y ago
  Generally, if someone comes to an "ought" conclusion that is different from yours, I tend to think that happens only for two reasons - either they are reasoning incorrectly from their own premises, or they are reasoning correctly but simply hold different moral axioms (values) than you do, values that are the kind of root-level ought statements that "reasonable people can disagree about". I haven't come across convincing arguments that people have actually found moral facts (bridging the is-ought gap), because those arguments usually just come across as very strenuously insisting that a certain moral ought statement should be accepted as a fact. In the case of this paper, I believe the author is suggesting that they've bridged the is-ought gap by suggesting that moral axioms are only created after the fact as justifications that came from emotional impulses. But I don't really see how that argument follows. If one's moral axioms are arrived at after the fact, then they would vary depending on the whims of the arguer's emotions, but then it's just a matter of pointing out the contradictions and demanding consistency. That would only prove inconsistency, not that moral axioms themselves are invalid. The author's discomfort at the end of the paper strikes me more as the type of discomfort that comes from realizing that one's initial axioms might lead to uncomfortable conclusions, leading to a re-thinking of those axioms/values - that's great in terms of the desire to maintain consistency, but I don't see it as bridging the is-ought gap. Such an examination might lead us to alter our values - or alter the conclusions that come from our values - but I don't see it as necessarily supporting the argument that values themselves are invalid, or that everything should (there's that word again!) be looked at entirely in a consequentialist fashion.

ikeboy 11y ago

Frankly, in your article you appear to only argue against deontology, while appearing unaware of any alternatives. Your actual argument is also inconsistent with your uncomputable claim. Specifically, your proposed "taking context into account" is completely computable. Also, if you were right that morality exists but is not computable, why would that change anything?

MarkPNeyer 11y ago
> Also, if you were right that morality exists but is not computable, why would that change anything? because principles as the basis of morality then go away. making moral decisions becomes about looking at each _specific_ situation, and applying as much context as possible - instead of trying to say "well in general, X is bad".
- ikeboy 11y ago
  >because principles as the basis of morality then go away. I don't see why. Why can't I say "uncomputable function X is the basis for morality", and simultaneously believe that X satisfies principle Y? There's nothing about uncomputable functions that says you can never know a value, and principles are useful even if they aren't always correct anyway. >making moral decisions becomes about looking at each _specific_ situation, and applying as much context as possible - instead of trying to say "well in general, X is bad". Why can't an uncomputable function have a rule that X is bad? It might not be computable in all cases, that doesn 't mean it can't have rules.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

keane 11y ago

>so many beliefs people have about morality rest on assumptions: my beliefs must be rational, founded on evidence, or else they are invalid. This is a very important observation. Moral language is fundamentally Imperatives: statements about what humans should do. If one begins by insisting that moral claims must be founded on empirical evidence, one subsequently must hold Moral Anti-realism as it is not adequate to simply suggest evidence for morality. This follows from Hume's recognition of the Is-Ought problem between Facts and Values: we cannot bridge the gap between Facts (mere observations of that which Is) to Values (including our statements regarding what Ought to be) because they are qualitatively different things: ~"In suggested approaches to morality, I am surprised to find authors moving from propositions with the usual copula 'is' (or 'is not') to ones that are connected by 'ought' (or 'ought not'). This change is imperceptible; but is however, of the greatest consequence. For as this 'ought' (or 'ought not') expresses some new relation or affirmation, 'tis necessary that it should be pointed out and explained; and at the same time a reason should be given, for how this new relation can be—inconceivably—a deduction from others that are entirely different from it. I am persuaded, that attention to this one small matter will let us see that the definitions of right and wrong are not based on the relations of objects nor can be perceived by reason." While we are unable to jump the gap by taking an observed Fact to infer a prescribed Value, we can travel from Values to subsequent Values (e.g. if you presuppose human survival--"Humans should survive"--from this Value you can go to another Value: "Humans shouldn't kill"). Of course, starting with any particular presupposed Value is a departure from Empiricism. That is to say, all normative statements are matters of assumptive belief, and one assumed Value is as unempirical as another. The trick of course, unless you become a Nihilist, is what unempirical assumptive Value will you support and proclaim. A really interesting part regarding all of this is that if morality does not truly exist, it was not morally 'wrong' anytime humans proclaimed it truly did. We remember the realization of the Marquis de Sade that if God does not exist then everything that is, is Right; but further, if the unempirical does not exist, then proclaiming it does is not wrong. In the words of philosopher Thomas Nagel: "If sub specie aeternitatis there is no reason to believe that anything matters, then that does not matter either". Wild.

tunesmith 11y ago
Generally, if someone comes to an "ought" conclusion that is different from yours, I tend to think that happens only for two reasons - either they are reasoning incorrectly from their own premises, or they are reasoning correctly but simply hold different moral axioms (values) than you do, values that are the kind of root-level ought statements that "reasonable people can disagree about". I haven't come across convincing arguments that people have actually found moral facts (bridging the is-ought gap), because those arguments usually just come across as very strenuously insisting that a certain moral ought statement should be accepted as a fact. In the case of this paper, I believe the author is suggesting that they've bridged the is-ought gap by suggesting that moral axioms are only created after the fact as justifications that came from emotional impulses. But I don't really see how that argument follows. If one's moral axioms are arrived at after the fact, then they would vary depending on the whims of the arguer's emotions, but then it's just a matter of pointing out the contradictions and demanding consistency. That would only prove inconsistency, not that moral axioms themselves are invalid. The author's discomfort at the end of the paper strikes me more as the type of discomfort that comes from realizing that one's initial axioms might lead to uncomfortable conclusions, leading to a re-thinking of those axioms/values - that's great in terms of the desire to maintain consistency, but I don't see it as bridging the is-ought gap. Such an examination might lead us to alter our values - or alter the conclusions that come from our values - but I don't see it as necessarily supporting the argument that values themselves are invalid, or that everything should (there's that word again!) be looked at entirely in a consequentialist fashion.