Miscellaneous Chatter > Philosophy & Science
The Gamification of Public Discourse
sciborg2:
--- Quote from: H on March 03, 2020, 09:01:38 pm ---
--- Quote from: sciborg2 on March 03, 2020, 08:44:50 pm ---Question - do you think the statement "It's wrong to rape a child" is dependent on cultures and goals or is it as true today as it was in antiquity and will be as true in when we're past the Singularity?
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You bait me with a loaded question, ;D
I think it does depend on something. Now, if we want to call whatever that is culture, then sure. The thing, to me, is that it depends on whatever it is that "tells" us that children are valuable things to be protected. I mean, consider, if somehow someone was a member of a society of people for whom there was no value to children for some reason, then it would likely not be normative to ascribe any particular sentiment or moral value to your given case, right?
In the end though, I think we are probably working with differing ideas of Objective though. To me, we might be able to get at something "objective seeming" but never the Objective in-itself. In this way, morals might seem objective, in so far as they lack the distinct subjective quality. To me, though, that doesn't make morals objective, rather something more like a collective or shared subjective ground (maybe).
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So if you were transported to a culture that celebrated child rape you wouldn't try to change the system?
H:
--- Quote from: sciborg2 on March 03, 2020, 09:33:08 pm ---So if you were transported to a culture that celebrated child rape you wouldn't try to change the system?
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Well, of course I would, but that is because I am already "raised into" a different set of normative expectations. That is, I am already a product of a different system. I could label my view as "objective" but what makes it demonstrably so?
Unless I could point to something at least "objective seeming" like a goal, or something, I could likely make the case that there is something immoral about it. But if I were to just say, "that's not right" on what am I going to be basing that other than subjective valuation?
I just don't see how anything could be a "pure" objectively moral. You need subjectivity to even have a notion of the moral. I'd see it as a related, but ultimately still different, case if we want to say that moral can have an "objective seeming" ground. But again, that would not make morality objective, rather, we are just beginning with a ground that seems so.
Does this distinction make sense? Not a rhetorical question, it seems so to me, but I am not sure I am making the case in a way that is understandable.
sciborg2:
--- Quote from: H on March 03, 2020, 09:48:12 pm ---
--- Quote from: sciborg2 on March 03, 2020, 09:33:08 pm ---So if you were transported to a culture that celebrated child rape you wouldn't try to change the system?
--- End quote ---
Well, of course I would, but that is because I am already "raised into" a different set of normative expectations. That is, I am already a product of a different system. I could label my view as "objective" but what makes it demonstrably so?
Unless I could point to something at least "objective seeming" like a goal, or something, I could likely make the case that there is something immoral about it. But if I were to just say, "that's not right" on what am I going to be basing that other than subjective valuation?
I just don't see how anything could be a "pure" objectively moral. You need subjectivity to even have a notion of the moral. I'd see it as a related, but ultimately still different, case if we want to say that moral can have an "objective seeming" ground. But again, that would not make morality objective, rather, we are just beginning with a ground that seems so.
Does this distinction make sense? Not a rhetorical question, it seems so to me, but I am not sure I am making the case in a way that is understandable.
--- End quote ---
It seems to me like you're saying that while it would feel visceral, the moral quales would just have to be conditioned...but this seems like - to rephrase - that while you do feel visceral moral quales that seem closer to mathematical truths than gustatory preferences you cannot reconcile this notion of Truth with a picture of the world you're holding in your head?
But if the issue with moral and mathematical truth claims is they rely on subjective feeling arguably distinct from and removed from whatever the Actual is...then how much more removed is the intellectual picture of the world you're constructing from your philosophical reading?
Another way of looking at it from the Tart Toter in Adventure Time** ->
This cosmic dance of bursting decadence
and withheld permissions twists all our arms collectively,
but if sweetness can win, and it can,
then I’ll still be here tomorrow,
to high five you yesterday my friend.
Peace
**One of the great anti-mechanistic, pro-initatory works of our time
H:
--- Quote from: sciborg2 on March 04, 2020, 01:00:11 am ---It seems to me like you're saying that while it would feel visceral, the moral quales would just have to be conditioned...but this seems like - to rephrase - that while you do feel visceral moral quales that seem closer to mathematical truths than gustatory preferences you cannot reconcile this notion of Truth with a picture of the world you're holding in your head?
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I think it would be more with the notion of Objectivity or the Objective in-itself I hold. To me, I still can't wrap my head around how, even if morality were Objective, that we would access them without somehow Subjectively evaluating, or valuating, them. In this case, while there might have been a moral Noumenal from which the moral Phenomena might thus flow, what can we justifiably say that we know of the Noumenal, when all we have access to is the Phenomenal?
There seems to me to be only two options, we either assume the Noumenal (Objective) and the Phenomenal (Subjective) are the same, or we assume they are not the same. The issue though, to me, is that no matter which we choose, we are still just assuming. This is why, to me, while we might make the claim that we ground this, or that moral principle in the Objective, there is no way we are, since all we actually have is the Subjective experience not immediate access to the Objective in-itself.
So, I am still lost how, even if there is Objective Morality, we might come to know it? All we could, as far as I could tell, Subjectively evaluate the Objective at which point it is no longer Objective, but mediated by Subjectivity.
--- Quote ---But if the issue with moral and mathematical truth claims is they rely on subjective feeling arguably distinct from and removed from whatever the Actual is...then how much more removed is the intellectual picture of the world you're constructing from your philosophical reading?
--- End quote ---
Hmm, well, I am certainly not making the case that I have access to the Objective, or Noumenal, at all. At best, all I could possibly claim is to document the disconnect (or possible disconnect) between the Phenomenal and the Noumenal. I could not say what the Actual is, only to say that I don't see how we could have anything but mediated access to it.
Then that leaves us in the same sort of place that Euthyphro was, right? We'd claim the moral is moral because the Objective Moral tells us so, yet, the only way we'd know those via some Subjective method, no? Then we are still in the same place we were before, with only Subjective valuation to go off of, whether or not the Objective is "truly" out there or not.
sciborg2:
--- Quote from: H on March 04, 2020, 01:47:55 pm ---I think it would be more with the notion of Objectivity or the Objective in-itself I hold. To me, I still can't wrap my head around how, even if morality were Objective, that we would access them without somehow Subjectively evaluating, or valuating, them. In this case, while there might have been a moral Noumenal from which the moral Phenomena might thus flow, what can we justifiably say that we know of the Noumenal, when all we have access to is the Phenomenal?
There seems to me to be only two options, we either assume the Noumenal (Objective) and the Phenomenal (Subjective) are the same, or we assume they are not the same. The issue though, to me, is that no matter which we choose, we are still just assuming. This is why, to me, while we might make the claim that we ground this, or that moral principle in the Objective, there is no way we are, since all we actually have is the Subjective experience not immediate access to the Objective in-itself.
So, I am still lost how, even if there is Objective Morality, we might come to know it? All we could, as far as I could tell, Subjectively evaluate the Objective at which point it is no longer Objective, but mediated by Subjectivity.
Hmm, well, I am certainly not making the case that I have access to the Objective, or Noumenal, at all. At best, all I could possibly claim is to document the disconnect (or possible disconnect) between the Phenomenal and the Noumenal. I could not say what the Actual is, only to say that I don't see how we could have anything but mediated access to it.
Then that leaves us in the same sort of place that Euthyphro was, right? We'd claim the moral is moral because the Objective Moral tells us so, yet, the only way we'd know those via some Subjective method, no? Then we are still in the same place we were before, with only Subjective valuation to go off of, whether or not the Objective is "truly" out there or not.
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Is the atomic composition of salt subjective? The gravitational constant? The truth of the Pythagorean theorem?
I realize people claim to be suspicious of, say, mathematical truths, all the while confidently relying on the technology born of that mathematics. But to me this is the distinction between the armchair philosophizing of academia and the real world living of truth claims.
That said I would agree we could always be wrong about our morality, based on historical shifts...but then why did moral quales bring about changes in history? We can intellectualize this but moral quales seem of a piece with the quales that ground Reason. To me the statement, "Raping a child is wrong" doesn't seem bound by culture or context, and is as true as Pythagoras' Theorem.
I could be wrong, just as the proofs underlying the algorithms we use for flight could be wrong, just as we could be in the Matrix or this could all be a dream...but does anyone really take that seriously in their actual course of life besides maybe the insane?
As for Euthyphro, I think that specifically is an argument against Divine Command given Plato had no qualms with making a distinction between the Good and mere sophistry. Of course Plato also realized that getting to the Good was itself not an easy task...and he did seem pretty okay with slaver if not some pedo shit...
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