by Lena Groeger
A few weeks ago I went to a talk by philosopher-turned-neuroscientist Patricia Churchland about her new book Braintrust. The talk began with the moderator turning to a packed audience in Columbia’s Havemeyer Hall and asking quite pointedly: “With a show of hands, can science tell us right from wrong?”
Only about four hands go up.
“All right,” he said, beckoning Churchland to the stage, “let’s see what you all think afterwards.”
Presumably Churchland was about to change a few hundred minds on the science of morality. But as she proceeded through her lecture, it became increasingly clear that even she wouldn’t answer the moderator’s question wholeheartedly in the affirmative. She was providing the “yes” to another question, something more like “Can science tell us about right and wrong?” While the question is slightly less interesting (because it seems so obvious) her answer is fascinating.
It all begins with me. Ok, not me, but the self. Each one of us is equipped with a neural circuitry that ensures our own self-caring and well-being — values in the most fundamental sense. As Churchland likes to say “we’re all born with systems that are very deep in the values business.” Neurons in the brainstem and hypothalamus monitor the inner state of our bodies to keep us alive; they also cause us to run from predators or eat when we’re hungry. Without these life-relevant feelings we wouldn't survive very long, let alone reproduce.
The next step is to move from self-caring to other-caring. In mammals, this shift occurs not by some radical new engineering plan, but by slight adjustments to the neural mechanisms that are already in place. Modifications to the emotional, endocrine, stress and reward/punishment systems motivate new values, namely, the well-being of certain others. It’s as if the “golden circle of me” expands to include offspring, mates, friends and eventually even strangers.
At the heart of all these modifications and changes to the brain is a relatively simple hormone called oxytocin. Oxytocin is thought to play an important role in mammalian bonding, evoking feelings of contentment and trust, reducing defensive behaviors like fleeing or fighting, and increasing the sense of calmness and security. Churchland describes the importance of oxytocin by telling her favorite story of all time — it involves voles.
Actually, two types of voles: prairie voles and montane voles. Prairie voles bond for life; montane voles are promiscuous. Male prairie voles protect their pups from harm, provide them with food, and fight off other males. Male montane voles take no role in guarding the nest, the female, or the pups. Scatter them across a room, prairie voles will collect back together in a huddle. Montane voles are content to be left alone.
What makes these furry little rodents behave so differently? In the 1970’s neuroscientist Sue Carter decided to look for the answer in the brain. She found that in a very specific place, the density for oxytocin receptors was much higher in prairie voles than in montane voles. Subsequent studies have shown that blocking the receptors for oxytocin in prairie voles changes their social behavior dramatically, and they no longer bond with their mates. For Churchland, this story was the clue that oxytocin was the neural mechanism for attachment, or what “Hume might accept as the germ of the moral sentiment.”
So if oxytocin is something like the building block of morality, then attachment and trust are the platform. These basic dispositions — to extend care to others, to want to belong, to be distressed by separation — constitute the motivation for animals to find solutions to social problems. They shape what Churchland dubs “the moral problem space,” so that only certain kinds of problems arise and only certain kinds of solutions are ever really entertained.
Churchland is adamant in pointing out that this neural platform for morality is only the platform. The rest of the scaffolding — the culture in which these brains live — is still very much being worked out. As she writes in her book: “There is no simple set of steps to take us from ‘I care, I value’ to the best solution to specific moral problems, especially those problems that arise within complex cultures. It’s a messy practical business.”
Which leads me to two final points (they actually came up in the Q&A after the main talk, but I think they are absolutely central to her thesis). They have to do with what Churchland does not claim, and can be seen as direct replies to other voices in the science of morality discussion.
First, in response to a Sam Harris-esque type of “science can give us answers to moral questions because values are a kind of fact,” Churchland explicitly states that neuroscience cannot answer questions such as “When can organs be donated?” or “When is an inheritance tax fair?” or “When is a war a just war?” On questions of this sort, neuroscience has nothing to say directly. To get some answers, we have to talk to each other, consider other points of view, see what kinds of consequences follow what sorts of actions, etc. Morality is a practical problem-solving endeavor, and to solve problems we must balance various considerations against each other to produce suitable — albeit not perfect — solutions.
Second, in response to a tendency to attribute universal moral intuitions to an innate moral sense or biological foundation (à la Marc Hauser or Jonathan Haidt), Churchland warns us to proceed with caution. Just because something is very common it doesn’t mean it’s innate. Making boats out of wood is common in all sorts of cultures across the world — does its universality make it fundamental to our biology? Of course not, people make boats out of wood because it floats, is available in many places, and is pretty easy to work with; it’s a good solution to a common problem. Moral problems may be solved in a similar fashion, without the necessity for an innate grammar or specific moral foundation.
If you want a much more detailed (and slightly more coherent) explanation of Churchland’s thoughts on the matter, I would definitely take a look at Braintrust. It makes abundantly clear just how much science has to say about the roots of morality, but also, just how much more work needs to be done on that scaffolding.
Great post. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteHow many hands went up after her talk? Or was the question not repeated?
ReplyDeleteVery good post, Lena. Your highlighting the fact that Churchland asks one question and answers another is something that points to a problem in most of the debates around the role science can play in a full understanding of morality. The problem is that people involved in discussing these issues too infrequently make the distinction between moral judgments and moral theory (the fact that Churchland backs off the Sam Harris conclusion makes me think she's not conflating these, however).
ReplyDeleteScience can teach us about the former. Ethology, psychology, neurobiology, etc. can all contribute to a greater understanding of how we make moral judgments, whether those judgments are rational or emotional (of course, those terms would need definitions) or some combination thereof. It can also help teach us about the extent to which we are free, about the effects of psychological disorders on moral judgments, and about how the context of our judgments can affect the contents.
But science can't help us decide between utilitarianism, deontological ethics, virtue ethics, sentimentalism, or any of the other moral theories that philosophers have argued about for 2500 years. Until someone "solves" the is-ought "problem" (scare quotes b/c I'm not convinced there is a problem that requires solving) the fact that we make certain judgments in certain contexts doesn't entail anything at all about whether we ought to do so.
My familiarity with Churchland is largely mediated through various Youtube videos; I’ve never actually picked up and read anything she has written. Fair warning. But, going by the synopsis here, it seems like Churchland: 1) locates the basis of morality in the brain (or neural circuitry); 2) assumes the individual is somehow more primary, rendering dubious the claim that, at some level and to some degree, morality is innate. Lena writes, for instance, “The next step is to move from self-caring to other-caring,” suggesting that self-caring comes first – is innate – and other-caring is developed later. If that is, indeed, Churchland’s claim, I’m highly skeptical.
ReplyDeleteWe’re brought into the world radically dependent upon others for care; our first relationships are, by necessity, loving, caring, and social - without affection infants quickly die. So how is the view that our brains are “hardwired” to care for the self complicated by the fact that our very bodies (and, indeed, our minds) are “hardwired” to engage, interact – to care – with and for others? And I don’t think caring for the self is necessarily at odds with caring for others. Joseph Stiglitz, in a recent Vanity Fair article, elaborated on what Alexis de Tocqueville called “self-interest properly understood.” Stiglitz wrote,
“Everyone possesses self-interest in a narrow sense: I want what’s good for me right now! Self-interest ‘properly understood’ is different. It means appreciating that paying attention to everyone else’s self-interest—in other words, the common welfare—is in fact a precondition for one’s own ultimate well-being.”
That seems quite right. Moral sentiments, I would think, could certainly become more or less pronounced as we progress through life, but I’m still fuzzy on how someone could remain skeptical about the innateness of concern for others – our very lives are intimately bound up with others.
Switching gears: Churchland *seems* to inherit and accept (again, just going off of what I’m reading here) Sue Carter’s premise that morality has its roots in the brain. Well, if our bodies and minds are specifically organized to engage with and care for others (as I suggested above), then highlighting oxytocin as “the building block of morality” seems completely misguided. If the whole structure (i.e. the body) is predisposed towards engagement and concern for others, emphasizing one hormone as the key to understanding morality is like saying that the 1rst Amendment is the key to understanding the US government. A single part doesn't explain the whole.
I'm currently reading The Belief Instinct by Jesse Bering. It touches on a lot of the same points coming from the direction of psychology, specifically Theory of Mind. Worth a look.
ReplyDeleteThe boat analogy is a good one. *Universality* needs to be nuanced.
ReplyDeleteA well done and interesting post Lena.
The key here was the example that there are cultural differences between varieties of voles as to the nature and exercise of trust. And the assumption that a mutuality of trust is functional to all social organisms. When and how to trust is then conditioned by environment and learning. Cognitive systems and structures adapt.
ReplyDeleteThat's the short of it in any case.
Good stuff.
Jeff writes: "Lena writes, for instance, “The next step is to move from self-caring to other-caring,” suggesting that self-caring comes first – is innate – and other-caring is developed later. If that is, indeed, Churchland’s claim, I’m highly skeptical."
ReplyDeleteI would be too. But I do not think Lena's rending the point exactly. Caring for offspring evolves in all sorts of animal whenever the offspring need to be taken care of (otherwise the offspring would not survive and that species would go extinct). This evolves "at the same time" that own-caring by the parent animal (otherwise the parent would not survive to make offspring, and likewise they would go extinct). There is no temporal interval between the two, and less so any sense that one is "inherited" and the other is "acquired" or "cultural". A lion would take care of its offspring, without burdening itself with any "culture". Moreover, a lion would kill any previous pups a lioness may have from former partners, before mating with her. Both behaviors co-evolve as well (otherwise, if the step pups are not given good riddance, the genes in Papa Lion would have lower chances of being transmitted to successful offspring, so any lions carrying genes that reduce this nasty pendant for killing step-pups would tend to become rare in the lion population, and those genes themselves will become rare in the lion gene pool).
Now, however, numerous animals (like plants, fungi or bacteria) may reproduce without having to take care of offspring. Thus fish leave their fertilized eggs unattended, bacteria simply divide, plants do not exercise much parenting, and so on. In this sense one could say that a tendency for "self-preservation" may evolve first and a tendency to take care of immature offspring may have evolved "later" in evolutionary timescales, once such species appeared that need offspring to be taken care of.
Oyster Monkey writes: "But science can't help us decide between utilitarianism, deontological ethics, virtue ethics, sentimentalism, or any of the other moral theories that philosophers have argued about for 2500 years".
ReplyDeleteScience cannot philosophically "decide" among those or other philosophical theories, just as it cannot "decide" between different religions, regardless of the fact that philosophy aspires to be rational while religion does not (necessarily) feel constrained by rationality.
What science can do about philosophical (or religious) doctrines is to study them, as anthropologist use to study the beliefs of hunters and gatherers about the world (or the afterworld, underworld, invisible world or whatever). An empirical study of philosophers, their doctrines, the evolution thereof, their impact on non-philosophers and other spheres of life (and the converse) is surely a worthy field of empirical investigation.
However, what science can do is studying the way morality evolves, and the way moral decisions are actually made, and why some moral decisions feel "right" to us (also, depending on who is "us"), and why some other decisions feel "wrong", even for those unfortunate souls lacking even the slightest clue about deontology or other branches or schools of moral philosophy. That is indeed another worthy endeavor, methinks.
interesting! i'd be interested in the specifics of the neurology though - where are the oxytocin receptors? what bits of the brain are lit up or suppressed? amygdala? orbitofrontal cortex? without the neurological detail isn't the argument simply summed up by the phrase "the selfish gene"?
ReplyDeletea quote i like is by the geneticist JBS Haldane, who was asked "would you give your life for another?" to which he replied,
"i would for two brothers or eight first cousins". (of course, i would say it should be 3 brothers or 9 cousins...)
But science can't help us decide between utilitarianism, deontological ethics, virtue ethics, sentimentalism, or any of the other moral theories that philosophers have argued about for 2500 years.
ReplyDeleteOh, I wouldn't say that. For example, a Kantian/deontologist can talk all he wants about the moral demands of "pure reason." But given the understanding of human nature that I've acquired from science (e.g. cognitive science, neuroscience, and experimental psychology), there is no such thing as pure reason, and any moral framework that is based on it strikes me a non-starter (i.e. it's about as realistic to me as one based on divine commandment - and so are the conclusions that follow from it).
However, I agree insofar as, even if moral philosophers all agreed that scientific/empirical evidence is pertinent to moral decision-making (and in the same degree), there would still be controversies over how to interpret it into prescriptive terms.
Res Cogitans, read the writings of both Churchlands (Patricia and husband) as well as other related authors, and you'll find plenty of information about neurological loci, neurotransmitters, and even (e.g. in the work of John Bickle) about specific chemical reactions involved (in memory formation and other mental processes).
ReplyDeleteExcellent post. I like the foundation idea. I think things like utilitarianism are simply ethical strategies, but its the scope of our empathy that ultimately defines the basis of what we call morality... and that scope can vary quite a bit.
ReplyDeleteRes Cogitans,
ReplyDeleteof course what Haldane meant was not that he would give his life for those numbers of relatives: people, including Haldane, may occasionally give their life for complete strangers, or not give it at all under any circumstances. As a card-carrying member of the British Communist Party, Haldane would be expected to give his life for the people, or for the cause, if need be.
What he actually meant with that quip was that in a two-sex species, if individuals customarily give their life for less than two brothers or eight cousins, whatever genes those individuals share with those relatives would become scarcer in the gene pool. If the tendency to give their lives for so little was even partially inheritable, the tendency would ultimately die off.
This is based on the fact that a brother shares (on average) 50% of your genes (except for your identical twin who shares 100% of your genes) and each cousin shares 12.5%. Hence two brothers and eight cousins (although this is only true on average in a population: your two brothers share each 50% of your genes, but some of the genes you share with your elder brother you may also share with the younger one, so in the end part of your brothers' gene pool is redundant; for other people, the two brothers may carry between them 70%, 85% or even 100% of your genes. If your two brothers are identical twins, between the two of them they are expected to share 50% of your genes. None of this is about morals, of course: the genes in question include everything from the length of your nose to your testosterone level (and consequences thereof).
Hector, you seem to think that lions and the like don't have a form of culture, and that apparently they teach their young how to hunt, hide, pounce, kill so forth from stochastically acquired instinct. And if that instinct is not augmented by learning, it would seem that if these cubs learned or were taught something new about their means of survival under changing circumstances, they would be unable to pass that learning on to their immediate progeny on pain of learned lessons failing to have achieved the status of heritable instincts - and thus the other lions would shun them and banish them as "cultishly" and instinctively heretical.
ReplyDeleteAnd if the answer is that nature made some "heritable behavior" exception for lions, why did nature give such as humans culture and reserve heritability of some behaviors for such as lions? Are we not just as deserving predatorily as they?
I'm on board with the co-evolution of concern for self and other, Hector, but I was thrown off by Chuchland's warning to "proceed with caution" when attributing "universal moral intuitions to an innate moral sense or biological foundation".
ReplyDeletePerhaps she's just worried about attributing *specific* moral intuitions universally, rather than acknowledging that there's an innate concern-for-others that's imprecise and highly malleable. That's probably the more charitable interpretation that I hadn't considered earlier...
It seems my concerns were also misplaced surrounding Chuchland's emphasis on oxytocin.
Jeremybee,
ReplyDeleteteaching or training is one thing, having a "culture" is different. Cultures have been recognized in some species, such as apes, in the sense that different bands have different patterns of behavior that they transmit to their offspring (but are not generally shared by other bands even in the same environment). The same goes for some birds (concerning songs and concerning migratory routes, for instance) and other many species.
As far as I know there is no description of a "culture" that varies between different prides of lions. There might be differences between lion varieties, shared by all members of the variety.
However, I wouldn't be surprised if some enterprising zoologist observes culturally transmitted behaviors among lions as well. Culture is not exclusive to humans.
Jeff,
ReplyDeleteI do not know what Patricia intended with her "caution" remark, but I concur with the prescription: one should exercise caution about causal attribution and jumping to conclusions in this field.
Regarding animal cultures, I should clarify that they do not just differ between groups within the same species: they are also transmitted by teaching and learning, not by genes. If one baby ape or a baby bird is adopted into a different band or tribe, it still has the genes of the other band, but it learns the culture of the new one, just as a human baby from, say, France would learn the language and customs of Germany if adopted by a German couple.
ReplyDeleteHector M. said:
ReplyDelete"What science can do about philosophical (or religious) doctrines is to study them, as anthropologist use to study the beliefs of hunters and gatherers about the world (or the afterworld, underworld, invisible world or whatever). An empirical study of philosophers, their doctrines, the evolution thereof, their impact on non-philosophers and other spheres of life (and the converse) is surely a worthy field of empirical investigation."
That pretty much sounds like History of Philosophy (which is my current field of study) rather than empirical science.
JCM said:
"[A] Kantian/deontologist can talk all he wants about the moral demands of "pure reason." But given the understanding of human nature that I've acquired from science (e.g. cognitive science, neuroscience, and experimental psychology), there is no such thing as pure reason, and any moral framework that is based on it strikes me a non-starter (i.e. it's about as realistic to me as one based on divine commandment - and so are the conclusions that follow from it)."
This is a good point, and it's one of a number of considerations that makes me reject Kantianism, but the Kantian can respond in a variety of ways.
First, she could say that the fact that people don't make moral judgments on reason alone does not mean that they shouldn't. Even if we were to show definitively that reason can never be fully separated from the emotions (or some other nonrational faculty), accepting the rational dictates of the Categorical Imperative might be possible, even in circumstances in which your "gut" might pull in a different direction.
Second, the Kantian may say that the characterization of Kantian moral theory as based on "pure reason" is a bit of a caricature: Kant wrote extensively on the nonrational features of moral behavior (esp. in the Doctrine of Virtue section of the Metaphysics of Morals).
Now, I would argue that he never succeeded in showing how virtue or disposition can have anything but derivative moral value in his system, which means that the CI is still the only arbiter of moral value, but that's for a different (and probably very boring) discussion.
OysterMonkey: That is precisely the response that I would expect from a Kantian - particularly the part where he argues how one should reason. Of course, I'm coming from the standpoint of someone who (thus far) is unconvinced by such arguments.
ReplyDeleteAnd I say that, not merely because I believe "that people don't make moral judgments on reason alone." That gives way too much credit to reason (or to Reason, in the 18th Century metaphor of a disembodied, conscious, dispassionate, and wise dictator). What we now know (or should know, if we care to fashion a realistic ethics) from science is that, without the capacity for certain emotions (e.g. empathy and compassion), morality as we know it cannot even exist.
@Stan,
ReplyDeleteFrom what I remember, less hands went up after her talk than before.
jcm: More good points. Like I mentioned before, I'm no Kantian, either, so I'm less than enthused by the strict Kantian framework. My point was merely that I don't think we can say: Science shows pure reason doesn't exist. Kantian morality is wrong. QED.
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree that a moral theory (like any other theory) needs to respond to facts and be sensitive to empirical work (especially work in moral psychology), but ultimately any moral theory that contains a normative element that addresses judgments (as opposed to only addressing behaviors) is going to have to make some prescriptive or evaluative statements that are not ultimately empirical. Which means that we need a method of deciding between ethical systems that includes something more than fit with current scientific knowledge. Consistency with scientific findings will be one criterion in theory choice, but it can't be the only one.
Oyster Monkey says of my idea of an empirical study of philosophers: "That pretty much sounds like History of Philosophy (which is my current field of study) rather than empirical science."
ReplyDeleteI did not mean history of philosophy, although of course it would contribute valuable data. I meant a scientific (sociological, psychological, economic) study of how philosophers think, how they produce their intellectual products, how they influence society, how society influences them, how are they sustained while philosophizing, how their livelihood influences them, and so on. Just as one may study the politics of Yanomano indians tribes, or the shopping behavior of Americans before Christmas, or the origins of the capitalist economy in Europe, or the social structure of colonial Rwanda. Empirical scientific study of Homo Sapiens in its manifold activities and manifestations, including this curious habit of philosophizing.
I challenge anyone to clearly explain how "can science tell us right from wrong?” is any different at all from “Can science tell us about right and wrong?”. They're the same thing, and claiming otherwise is humbug. It's like saying "science can determine whether a wavelength is red, but it can't determine whether we call it red".
ReplyDeleteSome interesting references for the subject of P.Churchland's talk:
ReplyDeletePatricia S. Churchland. Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells Us about Morality. Princeton UP, 2011.
Paul M. Churchland. Matter and Consciousness: A Contemporary Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind. MIT Press 1988.
Paul M. Churchland. Neurophilosophy at Work. Cambridge UP, 2007.
Carruthers, Laurance & Stich, The Innate Mind (3 vols), OUP, 2006-07.
John Bickle, Psychoneural Reduction, MIT Press, 1998.
John Bickle, Philosophy and Neuroscience. Kluwer, 2003.
Frans de Waal. Good Natured: The origins of right and wrong in humans and other animals. Harvard U.Press, 1996.
Frans de Waal. Primates and Philosophers: How morality evolved. Princeton, 2009.
L. Tancredi. Hardwired behavior: What neuroscience reveals about morality. Cambridge U.Press, 2005.
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong (ed). Moral Psychology (3 vols). MIT Press, 2007. Especially Vol I: The Evolution of Morality: Adaptations and Innateness (Vol II is on emotion, brain disorders and development; Vol.3 on the cognitive science of morality).
That would do for beginners, I guess. Much more is available in this fast-growing field.
Mike writes: "I challenge anyone to clearly explain how "can science tell us right from wrong?” is any different at all from “Can science tell us about right and wrong?”. They're the same thing, and claiming otherwise is humbug."
ReplyDeleteI beg to disagree. Science can study what people (and other animals) consider right and wrong, and how those feelings evolve or are acquired, without scientists having to follow those human/animal criteria to take their own moral decisions. By the same token, anthropologists may study the beliefs of tribes A compared to those of tribe B, without having to adhere to either. Science cannot tell whether Tribe A's gods are credible or reliable, or exist at all, or whether they are better or worse compared with those of Tribe B, just as somebody studying right and wrong in apes, humans, lions or mice does not have to "decide" whether a certain conduct "is" morally right or wrong. A scientist is content with just understanding how world is and how it works.
Hector M: I see what you're saying now. That could be interesting. As long as it doesn't devolve into something like Latour's Science Studies.
ReplyDeleteVade retro, Oyster Monkey: nothing like Latour's nonsense (or other such post-modernist babble) is alluded here.
ReplyDeleteOysterMonkey: I basically agree. After all, there are good reasons (e.g. linguistic and psychological) that we distinguish between descriptive and prescriptive statements. I only singled out deontological theory because I believe it is particularly weak in the "fit with current scientific knowledge" department - so much so that I doubt that its other merits can compensate for that weakness, relative to competing theories (despite having their own problems).
ReplyDeleteJCM,
ReplyDeletethanks for reminding the audience about the difference between descriptive and prescriptive statements (descriptive, here, includes explanatory). Science is not prescriptive: it aims at understanding the world and how it works. If anything like prescriptions arise from science, they are conditional statements such as "If you do not want to be burnt, do not touch the fire", or "To make water boil, heat it to 100°C". But no scientist will unconditionally tell you "Thou shalt not touch the fire", "Thou should boil water", or for that matter, "Thou shalt not kill" or "Thou shalt not steal" or (to lions or men) "Thou shalt not kill or rape your mate's offspring by another male". Those may be moral statements, but science does not make moral statements: at most, it studies them to ascertain, among other things, how they arise and are enforced.
JCM,
ReplyDeleteHelp me understand something. Unless you wish to argue for the very controversial thesis that all forms of abstract reasoning (to include logic and mathematics) and the findings therefrom are empirically revisable, how, exactly, do scientific findings impugn, say, the following abstract imperative: "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law"?
Be mindful that it is not enough merely to say 'Well, per the relevant scientific evidence, that's not how people actually conduct moral reasoning' because it is entirely consistent with Kant's account that people *do not reason* in such a way; indeed, Kant notes as much and contends rather that they *ought* to so reason.
Paraconsistent asks of JCM: "how, exactly, do scientific findings impugn, say, the following abstract imperative" (followed by such imperative).
ReplyDeleteParaconsistent should by now be aware that no scientific findings may ever "impugn an abstract imperative". Science is not in the business of endorsing or impugning moral imperatives. At most, science may study the actual or expected consequences of following such rule, or the probability that human beings, as they actually are, will follow that rule on their own without external pressure. It cannot say whether people "ought to" follow it, or "ought to" ignore it. It is completely indifferent to and uninterested in making such "ought to" statements. But would gladly study people who do make such statements, trying to explain why they think or behave that way.
Hector,
ReplyDeleteI am curious. Why do you suppose that I have asserted that scientific findings do impugn abstract moral imperatives? I can see no room in my comment to JCM for such an interpretation. Perhaps you have misunderstood the nature of my previous comment?
P.S. As it happens, I do assert that logics, mathematics, and the ontological commitments of moral statements (viz. the existence of moral facts) are empirically revisable. However, one could not have inferred that from my previous comment and lest we go too far afield of the present post, I don't care to begin that discussion.
People who disagree with me should jump off a bridge. Granted, few people, if any, would agree. But just because they won't doesn't mean they shouldn't.
ReplyDeleteAbsurd, right? Yet that's where the is/ought dichotomy logically leads, if not tempered by "how people actually conduct moral reasoning", or (in more cognitive-scientific terms) how their brains permit them to do so.
Paraconsistent,
ReplyDeleteI simply commented upon your rhetorical question to JCM. In fact, I did not suppose you thought that: I actually said that I expected you to be aware that science cannot impugn moral imperatives. So we agree, after all, and so far.
JCM
ReplyDeleteI see, right. The fact that most people are likely not to obey your moral command no more shows people ought not to obey your command than does the fact that most people fail to reason well probabilistically shows that people ought not to reason well probabilistically. On pain of holding more false beliefs than true beliefs, people ought to reason well probabilistically; on pain of being wicked, people ought to obey your command. The analogy is precise.
Whether your moral command is absurd is determined, I would imagine, via other means: Moral reasoning. There are I think problems with the is – ought distinction, but you have not given me reason to believe that you have identified them.
Re: Hector
All apologies for the miscommunication.
Paraconsistent: Whatever moral reasoning determines the absurdity of my moral command, I am not conscious of it. I just know intuitively that it is absurd.
ReplyDeleteScience might help to explain where that intuition comes from, but I doubt that any normative theory (deontological or otherwise) is responsible, and (more to the point) any theory that defies it is almost surely stillborn.
Paraconsistent informs JCM that "Whether your moral command is absurd is determined, I would imagine, via other means: Moral reasoning".
ReplyDeleteI disagree. No amount of reasoning would do that. And the moral command in question is not "absurd" per se. It is perfectly logical.
For instance, it may be the reasoning of an absolute monarch or a high priest, both beloved by their people and supposedly appointed by God to their posts; or the statement may refer to an entire people: "Any other people that disagrees with us should jump from a bridge", which is more or less what Americans thought about "Japs" and Nazis after Pearl Harbor, or Germans and "Japs" thought about the "weak" Western Democracies while they were embarking on their mission to save their countries and humankind (Heidegger, a great philosopher, also opined the same way). Hitler thought that extermination of Jews was equivalent to cleansing and saving the world, a high moral mission, and he certainly felt that anybody dissenting should jump off a bridge before he and his henchmen threw them off themselves.
Similar high moral commands were felt by millions Japanese obeying their sacred Emperor and expanding their empire, to the point of fighting to the last bullet and killing themselves at the end before surrendering.
Those moral imperatives were in turn part of a whole Weltanschauung, expressed by many thinkers and intellectuals, and linked to the very existence and traditions of each people involved. These feelings were not only supported by the ignorant masses, but by the brightest minds in each people, many philosophers included. They all applied moral reasoning (and other kinds of reasoning) to reach their conclusions, and all deeply felt they were right.
Well said, Hector.
ReplyDeleteI described my moral command as "absurd", under the presumption that Paraconsistent (and probably others) would react negatively to it, and would then attribute that negative reaction to some error in my reasoning. (Apparently, he took the bait.)
Yet, the only "error" that I can see in it is that it portrays me as someone who is extremely intolerant of others (as in: what a jerk!). And, if that deserves to be called an error, is it an error of reason? or of something else; for example, character, brain physiology, and/or compliance with some mental model that we simply take for granted?
I personally lean towards the "something else" explanation (which doesn't rule out that logical errors may also creep in when reasoning about moral problems). Not only that, but I would say that, inasmuch as that "something else" represents a body of facts (e.g. facts about the human body/brain/mind and the environment/culture with which it interacts), I think it is fair to say that these facts bias our values - including those, which moral philosophers reason from in their work.
JCM,
ReplyDeleteI did not react negatively to your command. Note the use of 'whether' in the penultimate paragraph of my previous comment. My claim was that *whether* your moral command ought to be followed depends on the moral reasoning which purports to justify it. It does not matter that your command strikes one or many wrong on 'intuitive' grounds (I count intuitions for nought; I am not sure what they are if not one's personal prejudices); its moral validity is something else entirely.
JCM,
ReplyDeleteI should add that one may frame the is - ought distinction as an error in logic. Consider.
(1) People don't like to torture puppies
(2) Therefore, torturing puppies is wrong.
The conclusion, (2), does not follow from the premise, (1); the argument is formally invalid.
An extra premise is needed. E.g.
(1') If people don't like to x, then x is wrong.
If we employ (1'), then the argument will be valid:
(1) People don't like to torture puppies.
(1') If people don't like to torture puppies, then torturing puppies is wrong.
(2) Therefore, torturing puppies is wrong.
However, (1') is a contentious (false) premise, and requires defense via moral reasoning. I do not understand why you do not recognize this.
Paraconsistent: My apologies for misrepresenting your position.
ReplyDeleteBut it does not change my position (which overlaps somewhat with Hector's): As far as I am aware, I never reasoned my way to the conclusion that my command is wrong. I just believe that it is (i.e. the value, in this case, also happens to be a fact, and a rather brute one at that). What's more, I highly doubt that there is any line of reasoning that can convince me that it is right (although there might be other, less reasonable ways of doing so).
Similarly, I don't recall ever having reasoned my way to the conclusion that torturing puppies (to use your example) is wrong. Yet, if I imagine such a scenario, I instantly feel disgust, and value-laden phrases like "that's wrong!" spring to mind.
That said, it strikes me as highly artificial to frame such a scenario as an error in logic, when logic plays little or no role in it - unless, perhaps, we use "logic" idiosyncratically, to mean some mental process that's hidden from consciousness and which is by no means dispassionate.
JCM,
ReplyDeleteI see, right, so you are comfortable with irrationality (warm & fuzzies, intuitions, and 'just believing' in the face of reasoned arguments, etc.) and I am not. To me, your view is a bete noire. As for the naturalistic fallacy being an error of logic, formally speaking, it is one; sorry.
Of course, you are free to disagree if you just 'feel' like you are right...
Paraconsistent:
ReplyDeleteYour sillogism to represent some people position, namely:
"(1) People don't like to torture puppies.
(1') If people don't like to torture puppies, then torturing puppies is wrong.
(2) Therefore, torturing puppies is wrong."
is not correctly phrased. The second premiss is not granted (the phrase "is wrong" is not clearly defined). What is granted is the following:
1. People (actually most people) don't like to torture puppies.
2. If people don't like to torture puppies, people would consider it wrong.
3. Therefore torturing puppies would be considered wrong by most people.
You may add also the following:
4. If most people agree on something being wrong, they are likely to declare it illegal if the matter is important to them.
5. Therefore, torturing puppies is likely to be declared illegal in societies where most people do not like it and consider the matter sufficiently important.
All these statements are empirically testable, falsifiable and even quantifiable in terms of probability or in other ways. No pure reason involved. No "moral reasoning" involved. No "ought-to" judgment. Only an objective statement about what certain people think that ought to be done or avoided.
On the other hand, "pure reason" and "moral reasoning" may lead people, even great philosophers, morally to justify things that other people, including other great philosophers, consider morally abhorrent. Thus our confidence on the powers of "moral reasoning" should be greatly diminished.
Sorry, P, but contriving an imaginary world of "pure reason" only insures that moral philosophy will remain an academic curiosity - an interesting topic for sociologists to study, perhaps, but not much else.
ReplyDeleteMind you: that's not to say that all philosophers are equally out-of-touch with morality in the real world. There was Hume (and his "passions"), of course, and more recently, Mark Johnson, who co-authored, w/ cognitive scientist/linguist George Lakoff, a chapter on this topic (see "Morality" in Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought). I found their analysis of Kant and his (Christian-influenced, Strict-Father) conceptual model of morality to be particularly enlightening (and amusing).
If is is wrong and can't be otherwise then it ought not to be right.
ReplyDeleteIntriguing article. Hector writes:
ReplyDelete'Oyster Monkey writes: "But science can't help us decide between utilitarianism, deontological ethics, virtue ethics, sentimentalism, or any of the other moral theories that philosophers have argued about for 2500 years".
Science cannot philosophically "decide" among those or other philosophical theories, just as it cannot "decide" between different religions, regardless of the fact that philosophy aspires to be rational while religion does not (necessarily) feel constrained by rationality.
What science can do about philosophical (or religious) doctrines is to study them, as anthropologist use to study the beliefs of hunters and gatherers about the world...'
Hector, sure science can study philosophers and their doctrines empirically, but I think you miss Oyster Monkey's point, which is, as I understand it, that science is limited in what it can say about morality because it cannot answer essential philosophical questions about it, such as what it is and how it works. These are conceptual rather than empirical questions.
Paul, of course science cannot answer what you call "essential philosophical questions", but neither can philosophy. Neither empirical research nor philosophical reasoning can decide whether something is "morally right" or "wrong", except by adopting first some axioms about what is right or wrong which would be begging the question.
ReplyDeleteWhat science can do is not only "study" but also "explain" moral beliefs and behaviors. It can elicit evolutionary and cultural reasons why some moral feelings arise and are enforced in human (or animal) societies.
However, that some behavior has an evolutionary origin or is culturally sanctioned does not mean that it is "right" (except for those that consider it "right"). Some instincts that have evolved in our evolutionary past are ordinarily deemed to be "right" (e.g. the drive to offer parental care to offspring) while other tendencies with possibly similar evolutionary origins are nowadays, in our societies, deemed "wrong" (e.g. aggressive feelings towards people who are "different" in external appearance).
Philosophy, I surmise, may offer thoughts on prevailing morality, may suggest or inspire new moral values (that would be perhaps adopted), and may also elicit the logical (or illogical) structure of certain moral beliefs or behaviors. But they cannot establish or validly justify what "ought to" be done, not at least to the satisfaction of everybody (including other philosophers).
There remains the question whether all humankind share some central moral principles or instincts, irrespective of culture, probably evolved in our ancestral past. Apparently those "transcultural" moral principles do exist, but this does not mean that they are "philosophically right". You may always invent a philosophical system making some of those instincts "wrong".
Re: Hector,
ReplyDeleteYes, I concur that each of the premises and the conclusion of your argument are empirically determinable. However, you have missed the point I think. That people consider an action (torturing puppies, as it were) morally wrong neither entails that the action *is* morally wrong nor, for all of that, that it *is* morally right; nor for that matter that the action is supererogatory.
Whether the empirical fact that people consider an action wrong logically entails that that action is morally wrong turns on the premise: (S) If people consider an act wrong, then it is morally wrong. In nuce, you have yet to extract yourself from the naturalistic fallacy and will have to formulate some premise along the lines of (S).
Re: JCM
I accept a more or less Quinean version of empiricism, so I too find notions of 'Pure Reason' and other rationalist fancies (indeed all forms of a priori knowledge) suspect. I also contend logic and maths admit to empirical revisability. But, Lakoff et al. notwithstanding, that moral reasoning can reveal (establish, discover, whatever, pick your verb) moral truths is at first blush no more problematic than the fact that other forms of abstract reasoning, such as logic and maths, can reveal truths.
I will leave the last word with you gentlemen
No "acts" are intrinsically wrong. No instinctive strategies are intrinsically wrong. There are no acts or strategies that exist absent of purpose and expected or anticipated consequences.
ReplyDeleteThere's much talk of behaviors here as if they were intrinsically principled. That would require them to know their purpose in advance and be unfailingly tied to the inevitability of consequence.
Paraconsistent, I fully concur with your comment. The fact that people consider something right or wrong does not imply that this something is actually right or wrong. Furthermore, I surmise that neither empirical science nor philosophical reasoning can determine what is right or wrong in a moral sense. In fact, I think the idea of something that "is" right or wrong is a poorly formulated idea: I tend to believe that nothing "is" right or wrong (as in right or wrong forever and for everybody, right or wrong per se) just as nothing "is" per se ugly or beautiful. The contrary illusion is caused or reinforced by the use of such words in a poorly defined way, and may be dispelled by more careful thought about what one means by those words.
ReplyDeleteRe: Baron & Hector
ReplyDelete(Apparently, I lied about the last word. Apologies.) Torturing a toddler for fun *is* wrong (intrinsically wrong). Are you not prepared to make that assertion?
P: You are appealing to my moral feelings with your toddler example. Probably to everybody's moral feelings. But that is not a reasoned demonstration that it is "wrong" in a moral sense. What it shows is an ingrained drive to care for infants that normal humans have naturally evolved, as well as other mammals whose offspring are born immature and need care. That tendency is inherited, and is found everywhere because those that had it tended to leave more descendants. However, many people counter that instinct, especially towards toddlers not biologically related to them (remember all the cases of infant abuse by baby sitters, step parents, other children, etc.).
ReplyDeleteThe fact that we humans have that instinct against torturing toddlers is not proof that it is "wrong" in a moral sense. It only tends to prove that it was evolutionarily successful in ensuring the survival and reproduction of our ancestors. Note that other such strategies (like killing members of another band, or behaving aggressively towards strangers or sexual rivals) we do not regard as "moral" nowadays, even if they evolved by the same reasons, probably because cultural and technological progress have created other means of dealing with those "problems" without endangering survival and reproduction.
People, you keep going at this as if morality were a matter of context-dependent "right" and "wrong." It isn't. Yes, torturing babies is morally wrong - not just a feeling (though it is that too) - IF one agrees that the point of morality is to increase human flourishing, or decrease pain, etc.
ReplyDeleteIn other words, moral reasoning is instrumental at core, it *always* takes the form of IF X is a value that you hold, THEN if follows that Y is right and Z is wrong.
But, you might say, what if I don't happen to hold that human flourishing or decreased pain is a value worth holding? Then we'd call you a psychopath, lock you up and put you on drugs.
P, I am prepared to make the assertion that torturing a toddler for fun is wrong. But, given the spirit of this discussion, I feel obliged to add the caveat that the sentence structure can be misleading, inasmuch that it suggests that "wrongness" is an objective attribute of the scenario; that even if no humans (or humanoids) were present to make this evaluation, it would be wrong (which seems paradoxical, given that humans are present in the scenario).
ReplyDeleteSo, although I do not accept that suggestion as literally true, it is nonetheless conventional to express moral disapproval this way, and I'm therefore prepared to use it. Perhaps a more literal, truthful statement is: I feel intense disgust and anger at the thought (or mental image) of torturing toddlers for fun - and I sure hope that you do, too! But it's much quicker & easier to simply pronounce: that's wrong!
Massimo, I'm not so sure that religious conservatives are concerned (or at least not primarily) with human flourishing and decreased pain (with all their secular humanistic overtones) - as compared to, say, obedience to authority (God, Scripture, clergy) - when they proclaim homosexuality "immoral", for instance. And yet I would not call them "psychopaths" - maybe "wrong" or "immoral" - if/when I'm up for a fight.
ReplyDeleteRe: Hector
ReplyDeleteI made no such appeal. I did not present an argument, it is true, but that does not constitute an appeal to emotion (though it may have initiated an emotional response on your part).
Also, you may argue that the findings of evolutionary biology entail that there are moral facts or not, but, insofar as you do argue, you employ philosophical (moral) reasoning.
Moreover, I am always amused by evolutionary arguments, such as yours, against moral facts. Humans evolved faculties for logic and maths too, but who among us is prepared to argue that logic and maths do not produce facts?
Re: JCM
I should re-emphasize that this is not my position. However, most moral philosophers are moral realists and, as such, often contend that moral facts are akin to rational facts. The fact that no moral agents are present no more impugns various moral truths than the fact that rational agents are present impugns, say, the law of noncontradiction.
As Massimo points out, that various actions are morally wrong AND cause moral agents to react in disgust is entirely compatible (though not all immoral actions need engender disgust in moral agents).
Massimo, I fully agree with your conditional statements: IF one agrees on such and such, THEN X is morally right (or wrong). Two remarks:
ReplyDelete1. This is far away from any claim that something is "intrinsically right" or "wrong". In fact, it is nearly a tautology or definition, since it could be phrased as "IF one agrees that such and such moral principles are to be held, THEN such and such examples of behaviors where those principles apply are said to be right (or wrong).
2. Locking people up or pronouncing them as psychopaths is no valid philosophical argument. The Soviets did that to dissenters, the Nazis to "inferior races" and "degenerate" thinkers and artists, the Spanish Inquisition to "heretics", all of which prove nothing about the intrinsic morality or immorality of the victims and their acts or beliefs. The argument about locking people up reminds me of a passage in Mein Kampf: "When we failed to convince them [the Jews and the Communists] with the force of our arguments, we resorted to the argument of our force".
P,
ReplyDeleteyou sure did not intentionally "appeal" to my feelings. I meant that I certainly "feel" that torturing toddlers "feels" wrong. What I said is that the fact that humans universally feel that way is no philosophical proof that such behavior is "wrong". As Massimo said, that philosophical proof necessitates prior assumptions in the form of a conditional statement:
1. IF you held such and such beliefs (about promoting "flourishing" etc), and
2. (omitted in Massimo's example) torturing toddlers would violate such prior beliefs of yours), and
3. (also omitted by Massimo) we agree that behaviors not agreeing with those conditions are to be called "wrong", THEN
4. Torturing toddlers is "wrong".
But notice that calling that behavior "wrong" is just a convention of language. What you actually mean is "goes against a certain principle of my devising, that has been (arbitrarily) defined in such a way that torturing children goes against it. Changing the definition of concepts in the first premiss might conceivably change the conclusion. For instance, you may include among your beliefs that "Jews should not flourish" and that "Jews are fair game for us to indulge in aggressive behavior" (justified perhaps by a prior belief that jews are an evil and dangerous race), then the conclusion might be that torturing toddlers for fun is "wrong" except if the toddler happens to be Jewish (or black, or non Christian, or non Muslim, or whatever). Or you may assume that it is wrong except if done in the presence of his father, a suspected terrorist prisoner, as a form of "enhanced interrogation" to elicit the location of a timed bomb, within the rules for enhanced interrogation authorized by Pentagon directives during the Iraq war. In other words, philosophical reasoning about what is right or wrong rests on arbitrary assumptions, and incapable of yielding any "moral truth" independent of those assumptions: any human behavior can be justified by a convenient set of assumptions. Only resorting to empirical facts can provide a more solid and objective justification of moral norms, although that empirical justification arises from contingent historical development, not from pure reason, and may be changed tomorrow (holding slaves was "right" up to two centuries ago, even for righteous people like many of the US founding fathers, but is no longer so in most societies, with the exception of some cultures in Africa and Asia).
P, I'm casually aware of what moral realists contend (having read some academic work in meta-ethics some years ago). That said, I suppose that my last reply to you serves as evidence that I was not convinced by them.
ReplyDeleteHector said: ...although that empirical justification arises from contingent historical development, not from pure reason, and may be changed tomorrow...
ReplyDeleteYes, but (just to keep the circle going) it shouldn't be changed tomorrow. :-)
Seriously, as much I would like to believe in what Peter Singer called the "expanding moral circle", I must admit that it is probably no iron law of history, and even those of us who feel strongly positive about it must recognize at least some limits and exceptions.
JCM,
ReplyDeleteYes, your last reply does serve as much.
Re: Hector & JCM
I enjoyed the exchange.
Massimo, I think you're right that moral judgments (or at least our rational reconstruction of them) are hypothetical necessities or conditional statements, but there is obviously more to moral theory than just judgments (maybe you weren't implying that there isn't, though).
ReplyDeleteDetermining what values belong between the "if" and the "then" in moral judgments can't be handled by instrumental reason. And I also don't think it can be handled only by empirical/descriptive work. I think there is still a role for traditional moral philosophy in this.
Torturing for the purpose of hurting toddlers is wrong if it's the purpose that's considered wrong. And torture of course is not an act so much as a strategy, and not one that intrinsically applies to toddlers.
ReplyDeleteThe point being that we act with moral purpose, the morality being relative to that particular purpose rather than the act itself.
The act of lying for example is not categorically wrong, because firstly, lying is not so much an act as a strategy, and the strategy not wrong unless it has always had to serve a wrongful purpose.
Baron P, Baron P, and then who is to say that the purpose is wrong? The problem of the morality of acts would thus just be moved to the morality of purposes, not providing a solution to the quandary.
ReplyDeleteThe idea of "justification" of the righteousness or wrongness of something, except in terms relative to some (arbitrary) assumptions, is simply a dead end. There is no such thing. Humans at different times and places variously believe in certain behaviors to be right or wrong, mostly based on our (common) evolved nature and somewhat modified by our (varied) history and culture, and that's it. Nothing transcendental lies behind, no metaphysical "reason" to account for it, just the accidents of evolution and history. In other terms, just us and the way we are.
Oyster Monkey,
ReplyDelete> Determining what values belong between the "if" and the "then" in moral judgments can't be handled by instrumental reason. And I also don't think it can be handled only by empirical/descriptive work. I think there is still a role for traditional moral philosophy in this. <
Agreed, though there I think one would also have to consider basic empirical facts about being human, a social animal, etc.
jcm,
> I'm not so sure that religious conservatives are concerned (or at least not primarily) with human flourishing and decreased pain (with all their secular humanistic overtones) - as compared to, say, obedience to authority (God, Scripture, clergy) - when they proclaim homosexuality "immoral", for instance. <
True, so they have (partially) different axioms, about which we can talk in the context / way that Oyster Monkey is suggesting. Still, if their obedience to god makes them torture babies for fun I will declare them psychopaths and lock them up if I can, regardless of what Hector says.
Hector,
> This is far away from any claim that something is "intrinsically right" or "wrong". <
Correct, but since I wasn't defending that position, I'm not sure why that's a problem for me. I think the phrase "intrinsically right/wrong" is intrinsically meaningless. But that doesn't mean there are no *objectively* right/wrongs things given the considerations above.
> The argument about locking people up reminds me of a passage in Mein Kampf <
It's a bad sign in an argument when someone has to being in Hitler, who of course was the quintessential example of a psychopath.
"The problem of the morality of acts would thus just be moved to the morality of purposes, not providing a solution to the quandary."
ReplyDeleteWell for one thing if the quandary cannot be about the morality of acts alone then it shouldn't be the quandary in search of a solution.
If there are no principles to be found where the acts themselves are concerned, don't look there.
Also a la Hector, there was this:
ReplyDelete"Humans at different times and places variously believe in certain behaviors to be right or wrong, mostly based on our (common) evolved nature and somewhat modified by our (varied) history and culture, and that's it"
No that's not it, unless like some incarnation of Polonius, you look only to the surface of the problem for an answer.
There is no consistency of belief in the rightness of behaviors because while their uses change through evolution, their mechanical aspects persist. The reasons for their uses equate with their purposes, so that if it's the circumstantial "rightness" of that use that changes, so will the cultural perceptions of the rightness of its purpose.
A distinction that philosophers evolved to make perhaps but sometimes fail to do so.
Massimo said to Hector: But that doesn't mean there are no *objectively* right/wrong things given the considerations above.
ReplyDeleteMassimo, I think you'd have to define "objective" in a way that's compatible with mind-dependence in order for that to be true. Granted, your "IF X is a value that you hold..." condition is premised on an assumed fact (and X might even be very popular and stable value over time and across cultures, in which case it's hardly arbitrary). But it also happens to be based on a mental fact, which I would normally describe as "subjective" (not that there's anything wrong with that).
Baron P says: "There is no consistency of belief in the rightness of behaviors because while their uses change through evolution, their mechanical aspects persist. The reasons for their uses equate with their purposes, so that if it's the circumstantial "rightness" of that use that changes, so will the cultural perceptions of the rightness of its purpose."
ReplyDeleteSeems to me a fancy and convoluted way of saying that the evaluation of certain behaviors or acts as right or wrong changes over time and space, due to the accidents of evolution and history, which is precisely my point.
Massimo:
your kind of conditional statements, like "If value X is to be upheld, then Y (which is in agreement with X) is said to be morally right" does not assert an "objective" moral truth. On the contrary, it is more like a definition, and at most it only states a logical implication, like "Given Euclides axioms, then the angles of a triangle add up to 180°". Nothing there implies that the real world follows Euclides axioms (in fact it doesn't, as we have known ever since Einstein).
jcm,
ReplyDelete> I think you'd have to define "objective" in a way that's compatible with mind-dependence in order for that to be true. <
2+2=4, objectively true in a mind-independent way, even if there were no minds to think it.
Hector,
> your kind of conditional statements ... does not assert an "objective" moral truth. On the contrary, it is more like a definition, and at most it only states a logical implication <
If you want to go that route. That implies that math is "only" a matter of definitions. But those are definitions on the basis of which we build bridges and send rockets in space. Similarly, IF ... THEN instrumental ethics may be logically true, that doesn't mean it doesn't have real world consequences.
Massimo to me: 2+2=4, objectively true in a mind-independent way, even if there were no minds to think it.
ReplyDeleteExcept it isn't. Again, you're depending on a mind espousing a value.
and to Hector: But those are definitions on the basis of which we build bridges and send rockets in space.
That means math (or abstract thought, in general) has proven very useful to us, when applied to engineering and other forms of design. That does not necessarily mean that it is "true" in any mind-independent way.
"Seems to me a fancy and convoluted way of saying that the evaluation of certain behaviors or acts as right or wrong changes over time and space, due to the accidents of evolution and history, which is precisely my point."
ReplyDeleteNo, Hector,I'm not saying that because it's precisely not my point. What you euphemistically refer to as evaluation of behaviors is a re-evaluation of their purposes and related usage, which were not evolved as accidents of evolution but as strategies more adaptive (suitable for a new use or purpose) to ongoing change in circumstances.
Baron P, of course evolutionary changes are adaptive, but they are accidents nonetheless. Any slight difference in the environment or the evolving organism would entail different paths of evolution. Purpose plays, if anything, just a limited role in it.
ReplyDeleteHector,
ReplyDeleteAre you deliberately trying to miss the point? I'm talking about the inheritance of adaptive strategies, or if you prefer, the heritability of learned behaviors, which were new ways of using old reactive patterns, for example, learned from experience in a changing environment.
If in your opinion that doesn't happen, fine, but you might at least recognize that other people think it does. See references to genomic selection strategies for example.
There is no heritability of learned behaviors. The mechanism of natural selection works differently. Among the various genetic tendencies in a population, those more favorable to survival and reproduction in a given environment tend to proliferate and become more frequent. Those genetic traits might include a greater facility for learning, but learned behaviors as such are not heritable. They may be transmitted culturally of course.
ReplyDeleteAnd then are new ways to use old tricks not transmitted culturally as new moral strategies?
ReplyDeletejmc,
ReplyDelete2+2=4 is most definitely *not* a mind espousing a value. It is a mind recognizing an objective truth. Would you call the discovery of Neptune a mind espousing a value? And yet, it wouldn't have happened without minds around ready and capable of discovering things.
Massimo,
ReplyDeletethe fact that 2+2=4 is an "objective truth" does not prove that "Torture is wrong" is an "objective moral truth". Granted, both need some assumptions: the assumptions of ordinary arithmetics and some assumptions about moral values. The difference is that arithmetic "truths" are verifiable (or falsifiable) empirically (put two aples on the table, add another two apples, check that four apples are in the table), whereas moral "truths" cannot. Besides, arithmetics assumptions correspond to the real world (even if we could imagine other mathematical assumptions that do not apply in this vale of tears), whereas assumptions about morals are essentially arbitrary (unless one resorts to popular vote to check that they are held by "most" people (in a certain epoch and culture/s); this latter proof is not "philosophical" but empirical and sociological.
Hector,
ReplyDeleteyou managed to cram so many incorrect things into a few sentences that I'm going to have a hard time responding w/out turning this into a full post. But here we go:
> the fact that 2+2=4 is an "objective truth" does not prove that "Torture is wrong" is an "objective moral truth". <
Nor did I claim it did. It was an analogy.
> The difference is that arithmetic "truths" are verifiable (or falsifiable) empirically <
No, most of them are not and they are true nonetheless. Try to verify Fermat's Last Theorem empirically. Good luck.
> arithmetics assumptions correspond to the real world (even if we could imagine other mathematical assumptions that do not apply in this vale of tears), whereas assumptions about morals are essentially arbitrary <
Actually, more the opposite: most math does not correspond to the real world, while assumptions about ethics can be derived from verifiable statements about human nature or the nature of social, highly intelligent animals in general.
Massimo: I wouldn't call the discovery of either Neptune or 2+2=4 "a mind espousing a value", because neither are values in the moral sense that we were discussing. But I would say that, unlike Neptune, 2+2=4 is (probably) a product of the human body and brain. Of course, that doesn't mean that it is ineffective (e.g. as a conceptual tool for understanding and interacting with the world), but then so is color perception, and colors also do not exist "out there", mind-independently.
ReplyDeleteCorrection: that last sentence should read: "but then neither is color perception"
ReplyDeletejcm,
ReplyDeletemost philosophers of mathematics, and I'm pretty sure every mathematician, agree that mathematical truths are mind independent. Of course not *literally* in the same sense that a planet is mind independent, but certainly a heck of a lot more than colors.
See: http://goo.gl/vmjzd
Yes, I'm aware that what I said about math is controversial.* I can live with that.
ReplyDelete* At least among those academics who are still in a romance with Platonism. However, I'm also aware of cognitive scientists who hold a different view, for example.
Yes, a common mistake is to show that knowledge of X comes from certain human cognitive abilities and to imply that therefore there is nothing "external" about X.
ReplyDeleteApply this to science: since scientific reasoning is "embodied" in human psychology and cognition, if follows that...? Not much, as I'm sure you'll agree.
It follows that, while it's reasonable (not to mention practical) to infer that an objective reality exists, human knowledge of it is not objective (more like: a combo of subjective and intersubjective, which in turn emerges from concrete sensory-motor experiences), that the body/brain did not evolve for the purpose of grasping transcendent truths, etc.
ReplyDeleteAgain, that doesn't mean the knowledge isn't useful (e.g. to our survival and well-being) and subject to improvement (e.g. as a kind of technological advancement), but objectivity it (very probably) 'aint.
jcm,
ReplyDeleteof course, we completely agree on that one. But remember what started this thread...
Massimo,
ReplyDeleteI am sorry to have incurred in so many errors.
However, what I meant about ordinary mathematical truths is that its axioms correspond to the structure of the world (otherwise one should easily find counterexamples). In this sense those axioms are empirically falsifiable. However, in general mathematics starts with some axioms (which are in principle arbitrary), and its "truths" are only logical implications of the axioms, i.e. conditional statements. One cannot prove Fermat's last theorem empirically, granted, but (before the Wiles demonstration of its mathematical validity) the theorem was only a conjecture, and one could conceivably find a counter-example which would disprove it (i.e. some sum of two cubes that is another cube, beyond 1^3+2^3=3^3). Now we know that could not happen, because the impossibility has been demonstrated (always subject to certain axioms: I suppose other axioms may allow for it).
In the case of "moral truths", you say now that "assumptions about ethics can be derived from verifiable statements about human nature or the nature of social, highly intelligent animals in general". I agree with that, assuming for a moment that our knowledge of human nature (and social animals' nature) is well known. But I do not think the study of (empirical) human nature would yield the moral axioms you or me can hold. For instance, several behaviors that were useful in evolutionary terms may be abhorrent to us, such as male aggression towards sexual rivals, or submission of females to a dominant male, or male promiscuity. "Naturally evolved" does not mean "good" or "right": remember the example of Darwin about an insect species depositing eggs inside a paralysed caterpillas (was it a caterpillar? I don't remember exactly): the discovery led Darwin to atheism. It leads me to reinforce my idea that having a nature resulting from natural selection does not mean that tendencies arising from that nature are "right". The same goes, with more force, for tendencies of cultural origin, such as genital mutilation in parts of NE Africa, class exploitation, child forced prostitution, war, and so many other "evils" brought about by human culture (normally ingrained also in our biologically evolved nature).
In fact, trying to see a moral content in evolved features of Humankind is what led Spencer to his deformed brand of "Social Darwinism", and caused many misguided objections to Wilson's Sociobiology in the 1970s: an evolved tendency was considered by Spencer as "right", and many people thought that also Wilson's findings or theories implied that violence or other "moral evils" were morally justified, which Wilson did not imply of course.
More so with culture, of course, because it varies across time and space: some behavior that a culture cherishes as legitimate and ethically right (e.g. stoning adulterous women, practicing genital mutilation, holding slaves, exploiting workers, cannibalism, exterminating Jews and Gypsies, executing criminals, etc.) is not necessarily "right": other cultures might disagree.
Any collection of moral axioms would reflect a particular choice of values, not necessarily universally accepted. However, moral values evolve historically, and we humans may reach a stage in which all share the same moral values (this, of course, would not make those values philosophically superior to other values). For instance, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights may be considered as an attempt in that direction, however imperfectly applied in practice. But the emergence of the Declaration is a contingent historical fact, not a philosophical deduction, and even if most governments have signed it, millions of people (and some governments) do not feel all those "rights" are really "right".
Hector,
ReplyDeleteit's okay, we all make mistakes at one point or another ;-)
Right, more seriously:
> what I meant about ordinary mathematical truths is that its axioms correspond to the structure of the world (otherwise one should easily find counterexamples). In this sense those axioms are empirically falsifiable <
Again, no, only a fraction of math maps to the empirical world, the rest doesn't, and yet it is objectively true.
> One cannot prove Fermat's last theorem empirically, granted, but (before the Wiles demonstration of its mathematical validity) the theorem was only a conjecture, and one could conceivably find a counter-example which would disprove it. Now we know that could not happen, because the impossibility has been demonstrated <
that makes my points: a) FLS cannot be tested empirically, and b) we know it is objectively true, in the sense that it follows deductively from certain premises. The fact that it was at one point an unproven conjecture that could have been disproven is a point about epistemology, and therefore not really what we are talking about.
> assuming for a moment that our knowledge of human nature (and social animals' nature) is well known <
They don't need to be known with scientific precision for us to proceed (I ain't no Sam Harris).
> "Naturally evolved" does not mean "good" or "right" <
Of course, but who said anything about evolution? I agree with you that there is a danger of "Spencerism" here, but that's why I think moral philosophy, not just science, has things to contribute. I'm thinking more along the lines of Aristotle's considerations abut flourishing than simple survival and reproduction.
This, by the way, agrees with your idea that the Declaration of Human Rights represents progress. A virtue ethicist would agree, but it makes no sense to talk about moral progress if one doesn't agree that there is something objective (as far as human beings are concerned) about morality.
Hector writes, with regard to moral instincts: "Baron P, of course evolutionary changes are adaptive, but they are accidents nonetheless."
ReplyDeleteBut Hector, as you've proposed, if you trace moral behaviors back to their origin as instinctive, yet can't trace instincts back to experience, then you've found no basis for why morality will have sprung from man's early experience. Which is what you've claimed it did.
You've made the connection between instinct and experience as fundamentally accidental and there goes your chain of sequential logic - unless you want to argue that in the end all functional causation is accidental.
Baron P, what I wrote simply expressed what evolution means. If something is actually embedded in our genes, it is because those genes were selected for in some durable environment in our evolutionary past, and subsequent environmental changes (say, during the latest 10,000 years of agricultural and industrial development) did not make those genes disappear. Evolution springs from genetic variety among individuals, and an environment in which some varieties fare better than others. In that restricted sense, evolution emerge from people "experiencing" life under a certain environment during a lon time (say, as hunters and gatherers in African savannas during several million years). Some hominid species survived, others went extinct; and within the species that survived (Homo Sapiens Sapiens), those individuals carrying a certain genomic configuration survived better, so that their genes became more frequent in the population until driving other alternative forms of the genes to extinction or to a very limited presence in the gene pool.
ReplyDeleteNow, that some individuals had those genes or alleles and others (perhaps their very relatives or neighbors) did not, and the fact that they were in that particular environment during that particular time, was just accidental. Things could have gone otherwise.
Many "moral" feelings can actually be traced to that environment, and even studied in today's apes, other mammals, and man (e.g. a tendency to punish cheaters and free riders, even at a personal cost), just as the evolution of speed through changes in the muscles in cheetahs' limbs can be traced to cheetahs' evolutionary arms race with herbivorous prey and other predators (even if nobody has actually witnessed the process of cheetahs and gazelles becoming faster and faster over millions of years).
And my chain was not a chain of "sequential logic", as in the steps of a theorem's proof, but a chain of actual historical processes, which as we know are always affected by random events and not necessarily by logical necessity alone. Those accidents provide variation in species, and variation in environments, so that when the twain meet something wonderful emerges: evolution by natural selection.
Hector writes:
ReplyDelete>If something is actually embedded in our genes, it is because those genes were selected for in some durable environment in our evolutionary past<
That's not an explanation for anything, just a recitation of the current doctrine from the modern synthesis, and not even that.
If something is actually embedded in our genes
what would you suppose the necessity for a 'durable environment' had to do with it its selection? The inference would seem to be that it's no accident, but that balloon seems to have floated way above your head.
"A chain of historical processes" does not explain the nature of the processes.
>which as we know are always affected by random events and not necessarily by logical necessity alone.<
So how did the random events produce the strategic reactions to those events and selectively embed them in our genes? You hint at logical necessity, but go no further.
If it's in fact the logical necessity for an organism to react strategically to random acts of nature, is that not logically a learning process? What is it that's selectively embedded in their genes, if not bedded there from some logical necessity for use?
If you don't like 'sequential logic' as applied to how the evolutionary chain is formed, how about predictive logic? Is not selection a predictive process, and who or what makes the predictions outside of the organism and its collective reaction to the prospect of random change? It's not the environment itself that changes by the force of its own logic, or would that also be "not necessarily a logical necessity?"
Massimo: I'm glad we agree on that much. (In fact, I'd be surprised if we didn't, given your grounding in evolutionary biology and how closely I've followed this blog over the past few years.)
ReplyDeleteBut, when I say "the body/brain did not evolve for the purpose of grasping transcendent truths", I mean to express skepticism towards claims that abstract ideas, like those of math or formal logic, are themselves transcendent truths, as opposed to useful conceptual tools, which exist only because human bodies and brains exist.
If you meant to suggest that this view is unpopular among mathematicians and philosophers (to which I'm tempted to add economists and theoretical physicists, for whom reification also seems an occupational hazard), I find that objection quite plausible. Of course, it's hard for me to imagine how they could prove to me that math is beyond biology, but then I also can't prove that it isn't (or, for that matter, that God doesn't exist), so I suppose that I'll have to plead agnosticism on this one.
Baron P., it seems you are not acquainted with basic facts of evolution. The very idea that organisms engage in "strategies" betrays that. It's far more mundane than that: some organisms are better equipped for survival in certain environments, and so they survive better and reproduce more abundantly.
ReplyDeleteMy reference to a durable environment is a logical implication: if an environmental condition lasts only a short time, that does not allow the necessary time for selection to operate.
What you call "a recitation of the modern synthesis" was not the enunciation of a doctrine (albeit in an excessively brief manner), but of the state of knowledge about how evolution occurs. Of course there are many more details (let's just mention sexual selection, drift, epigenetical processes and what not), but the essence is there, for the "modern synthesis" or for its more recent incarnations.
jcm,
ReplyDeleteI hear you. And yet, I do think itmis hard to deny that mathematical truths are bot mind dependent in a strong sense of the term. I don't know what their ontological status is, but they are certainly not in the same category as, say, arbitrary definitions in human language (e.g., bachelor = unmarried man). Nobody, of course, claims that they have the same kind of existence as,say, planets. They are somewhere in between. And so, I maintain, are ethical "truths."
@Hector
ReplyDelete"Baron P., it seems you are not acquainted with basic facts of evolution. The very idea that organisms engage in "strategies" betrays that. It's far more mundane than that: some organisms are better equipped for survival in certain environments, and so they survive better and reproduce more abundantly."
Hector, you've betrayed the fact that you are way behind the curve when it comes to the latest work being done in evolutionary biology, and it's all about the evolutionary strategies of organisms. Even if you don't buy into it, you should be aware that others in the field do.
One of the latest and most controversial papers on the subject is here:
http://bio.fsu.edu/~miller/HOMEPAGE/docs/Nowak%20et%20al.%202010.pdf
By the way Hector, "the very idea that organisms engage in strategies" was referred to repeatedly in Churchland's book, Braintrust. Which this particular post is supposed to be about.
ReplyDeleteBaron, I know about "strategies", but the word, like "genes for" and other verbal shortcuts in evolutionary science, is a metaphor. Even plants have such "strategies" while evolving, and that does not mean they or their evolution have any "purpose". In fact, I'd like evolutionary scientists to find some less equivocal language, like replacing "strategies" by "paths" or something similar.
ReplyDeleteHector, among your litany of stochastic evolutionary processes you mentioned epigenetics.
ReplyDeleteEpigenetics is about the survival strategies of organisms that evolve from the organism's experience.
Strategies by the way that serve a purpose.
Evolutionary psychology for example attempts to explain about how behavioral strategies evolve to serve a different purpose in a changed environment.
And if you'd like to use a less equivocal word than strategy, try tactic.
Tactic or strategy both have the common defect of evoking intention. Epigenetics is not evolution proper, but gene manifestation due to embryonic or foetal development (in the uterine environment).
ReplyDeleteStrategies are not any processes that "serve a purpose". That phrase is equivocal too. What you actually mean by "serve a purpose" is "fulfill a function", or "achieve a result", just like phototropism in plants "serves the purpose" of exposing leaves to sunlight, without the plant having any clue about what is going on, nor having any purpose or displaying any strategy or tactic about it.
Similar genes as those driving leaves towards sunlight may drive leaves towards the dark; but that "strategy" would generally be doomed, except in rare cases in which the plant finds other ways of absorbing energy (e.g. parasiting another plant); plants with genes orienting it towards sunlight, or making it a parasite of other plants, may prosper whilst other plants lacking both tendencies do perish, all obeying their genes but without any "purpose".
Of course strategies and tactics evoke intention. Or do you suspect that organisms assess their options accidentally? Or that now some do but early on some didn't.
ReplyDeleteGene manifestation, you say. What the hell is that but the mother of all metaphors for life as a function of robotics.
Life is a strategic enterprise. Instincts are comprised of optional choice assessment strategies.
Organisms, plants or fungi included, make tactical use of their functional apparatus. They do so with some expectation of that equipment's usefulness. Built (or 'embedded') into the system as an instinct or not, they serve a useful purpose that the organism has come to rely on.
Definition of this form of 'purpose' used in a sentence: The purpose of a function is to be useful to the organism.
>All obeying their genes but without any "purpose."<
Classic
Massimo: I would agree with you that mathematical ideas are not arbitrary. I say that, not only because they've proven themselves so effective in science & technology, but also because the concept of quantity (and at least some basic manipulation thereof) appears to be innately (though not exclusively) human.
ReplyDeleteIt's the ontological stuff that raises my skeptical hackles. Unless we're talking about the neural pathways that bind mathematical ideas, I really doubt that the ideas exist in any literal, mind-independent sense.
The same goes for moral ideas, which doesn't make them any less effective or valuable.
jcm,
ReplyDeleteYes, I know, used to have the same qualms, I just let them go because that way it makes more sense to me. I don't think we have any practical disagreement, though, either about morality or mathematics.
Baron P, hereby I declare my total inability to understand your ideas, and to pursue this debate further. I dare to recommend you read some good book on evolution, the classic synthesis or the new one proposed by Massimo.
ReplyDeleteHector, they're not exclusively my ideas, so why pretend they are as a basis for claiming not to understand them. I would accept your condescending gesture to read some good books, etc., except I've already read the better ones - which I can tell from the level of your regurgitations that you haven't.
ReplyDeleteI'll leave you with this that you also haven't read of:
Examples of the inheritance of acquired characters:
Epigenetic inheritance - inheritance of cellular or gene-expression states such as patterns of DNA methylation, cortical inheritance in ciliates, dauermodifications.
Inheritance of induced changes in genomic DNA - fertilizer treatment of flax and other plants; drug-resistance in mammalian cells insecticide- resistance in insect pests and herbicide-resistance in plants.
Feedback from somatic cells to germ cells - reverse transcription and insertion of cDNA into germ cells, eg. immunoglobulin V genes
'Adaptive' mutations in bacteria, yeast and other cells.
Anyone that asserts that "torturing an infant for fun is immoral" should have, if there is to be any meaning in their assertion,the ability to define what THEY mean by the word 'immoral'.
ReplyDeleteDespicable? Unacceptable? Odious? Do you have a precise definition of, say, pornography? Or art? And if not, can you still express an opinion on it?
ReplyDeleteMassimo...Thank you for the suggested definitions.
ReplyDeleteNow we can say "torturing an infant despicable" which is to say that "you despise the action."
Or...we can say "torturing for fun is unacceptable" which is to say that someone, perhaps you, "would not permit the action"
That you despise the action does not make it immoral in any objective sense of 'immoral'.
Unless by 'immoral' you simply means "you or someone else dislikes it very much."
I have addressed elsewhere on this blog what I mean by morality, and it's none of the options you list, but it isn't an objective - in the sense of mind indeoedent - thing either.
ReplyDeleteMassimo...I would greatly appreciate it if you could take the time to remind me of what you mean by the word 'morality' when you are using it in a sentence.Thank you.
ReplyDeleteI'm traveling now (actually, at a conference as we speak), but you can use the search function on this blog. Use the google search from the front page, not the Blogger's default function, the former is much more efficient.
ReplyDeleteMassimo...I need to correct myself...Would you please tell me what you mean by the word 'immoral'when you use it in a sentence of the form "X is immoral" rather than what you mean by 'morality'. That would be very helpful during the course of this discussion. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteC'mon man, as I said, I've addressed this issue several time before, I don't have time to get into it once more. Read what's already on the blog, then we can talk about specifics.
ReplyDeleteMassimo
ReplyDeleteI have read your previous comments regarding your views on morality. They are very interesting. In my previous posts, I was not really pursuing what you thought morality is. I would like to explore what you actually mean by the word 'immoral' when you use it in a sentence of of the for "X is immoral" I believe that exploring the actual usage of a word is the best way to shed light on a subject such as this. There is a long line in the history of philosophy flowing from Moore and Russell to Wittgenstein and Austin that has supported the idea that the most important task of modern day philosophy is to attempt to clarify. Please help clarify what you mean by 'immoral' when used in such a statement as "X is immoral" Thank you.
DJD, well, if you read what I wrote on morality shouldn't you know what I mean when I say that "X is immoral?" Broadly, what I mean is that - given certain facts / assumptions about human nature, X is immoral is X significantly hampers one's ability to flourish, in the Aristotelian (eudaimonic) sense of flourishing.
ReplyDeleteMassimo
ReplyDeleteThank you for clarifying what you mean when you say that X is immoral. That is a very clear explanation. Since it is now clear that your use of the word 'immoral' in this and similar contexts is "X hampers one's ability to flourish" we can easily do without the confusing word 'immoral'and instead simply say "torturing infants for fun hampers their ability to flourish" I wish everyone would clarify their use of that confusing word in the same way....by substituting a more clear word or phrase. Thank you.
"torturing infants for fun hampers their ability to flourish"
ReplyDeleteExcept that if it's fun to flourish, refraining from the fun of torturing infants then hampers your ability to thrive as well. Would morality then lie more in the exercise of power than power in the exercise of morality?
Baron
ReplyDeleteI am not quite clear about "Would morality then lie in the exercise of power" (To slightly paraphrase you). What does it mean for "morality to lie in the exercise of power"?
It raises a question as to whether you can spot what's wrong with your example of seeing immorality as simply the opposite of morality.
ReplyDeleteBaron
ReplyDeleteI am not positing that at all. My point is to say that "X is moral OR immoral" needs to be clarified in the most simple of ways....at least where the speaker is still available for continued conversation, unlike discussing the meaning of a term in a novel....where authorial clarification is not available. In this case...the speaker has stated that by 'immoral' in the statement "X is immoral" that he means "hampers their ability to flourish". If that meaning of 'immoral' is carried over to the sentence regarding torturing infants for fun....then one can use the author's stated meaning of 'immoral' and the sentence becomes "torturing infants for fun hampers it's ability to flourish" This replacement of the "is moral" with a statement of what the torture causes.."hampers the infant from it's ability to flourish" and thus removes some of the "bewitchment of our minds by language" as Wittgenstein would say.
But you leave open the implication that torturing them for other than fun doesn't hamper them, and obviously that makes the statement meaningless as to any difference between the moral and immoral aspects of torture.
ReplyDeleteBaron
ReplyDeleteRemove the "for fun" from the sentence. I am making no moral claim....moral or immoral. I am pointing out that another person has stated that when they use the word 'immoral' in a sentence of the type "x is immoral" their meaning of 'immoral' is "hampers their ability to flourish" So....if one substitutes "hampers their ability to flourish" for the word 'immoral' in the sentence "torturing an infant is immoral" one gets "torturing an infant hampers their ability to flourish" I make no claims as to the morality or immorality of torturing an infant. The party that I cite has changed his original statement from an ontological statement or an ethical statement, to a statement regarding cause and effect. To what torturing an infant causes.
So was the point of pointing out what the other person said simply to point out that you agreed with it, even though you'd left the 'for fun' in there and got it wrong?
ReplyDeleteBecause if you now see it as reduced to some direct sequencing of causation to effect, you've missed the point again. Which would be the explanation of why you think torture as an action separate from reason or intention hampers the ability to flourish, when torture may in fact at some time in the past have effectively increased our ability to flourish simply as an example of what we needed to develop the ability to avoid.
Baron
ReplyDeletePlease read my previous exchange with Massimo.
I am making no claim regarding the morality of torture....whether or not it is connected to reason or intention.
And you made no claim about the immorality of torture as well? Then I guess we're done here.
ReplyDeleteBaron
ReplyDeleteMy statements were in response to statement made by Massimo..."when I say that "X is immoral?" Broadly, what I mean is that - given certain facts / assumptions about human nature, X is immoral is X significantly hampers one's ability to flourish"
I simply used his stated 'meaning of the word 'immoral' in place of the word "immoral"....so that the statement now reads "X significantly hampers one's ability to flourish" As you can see....this brings clarity to what Massimo meant when he said "Torturing a baby is immoral"...It now reads "torturing a baby hampers one's ability to flourish" In addition to more clarity...this move creates a statement of fact in the form "X causes Y" rather than the previous ontological or ethical statement. If all the move accomplished was increased clarity and understanding.....that would be a positive from my point of view regarding the role of modern day philosophy.
Yes, but as it was my original intent to point out, and still remains so, you've neglected to consider what the certain given facts of human nature are that apply to human upon human cruelty.
ReplyDeleteX causes Y is pointless if you omit the conditionals.
All the rest of what you say just becomes so much gibberish.
Baron
ReplyDeleteThank you for your input and good night.
Baron
ReplyDeleteYou believe that "We are all purposive" If that is true, can you tell me what significance that would have if it turned out to be true?
Thanks
Sorry but I don't recognize that quote as mine. In any case that's a subject that we beat to death here last month and is not presently on this blog's agenda.
ReplyDeletebaron
ReplyDeleteI got that quote from your web site. Do you disagree with this statement (of yours)? If not....what would be significance of that being true?
There is no such statement on my site. If there were, you wouldn't have to ask me if I disagreed with it. Instead you've twisted something written there just as you've earlier twisted something written here by Massimo. The statements in each instance had been rendered meaningless.
ReplyDeleteIn any case this has nothing to do with this blog and the subject being addressed on this post, so you may not be done here but I am.
Baron
ReplyDeleteFrom your web site....
Thursday, October 14, 2010
We are all purposive
Strategies and their functional apparatus exist for a purpose, they are algorithmic structures, they enable choice making by providing a range of optional responses to stimuli. These tactical responses are probative and expectant. They enable comparative analysis, relating expectations to feedback, assigning relevant meaning to the data accordingly. They allow for storage of results and continued analysis of data from the feedback loop, adjusting the relevance of the stored results accordingly. In short, they allow for learning. They form the structures of biological intelligence.
That was a post title, not a statement in the body of my commentary. In any case the commentary explains the meaning of the title. And again has nothing to do with this blog or this blog post.
ReplyDeleteBaron
ReplyDeleteHas anyone on this blog ever asked you what importance there would be or what significance your position on purpose have if it were true rather than not true?
What would be the significance of discovering that there was indeed purpose in evolution....or that humans evolved to have purpose. What difference would that make to anything?
It serves here as an irritant.
ReplyDeleteBaron
ReplyDeleteKnowing the significance that you attach to your belief about purpose in evolution and humans would help in understanding your statements concerning purpose. I would very much like to understand what you are claiming to be true. Knowing the significance of those claims being true would really be a help. Thank you.
As I've said repeatedly before, I'm not going to discuss my theories about anything on this blog that are not relevant to the subject at hand or otherwise appropriate to the taking of the space provided for discussion here.
ReplyDeleteBaron
ReplyDeleteIt is an opportunity to help others understand what you are saying. You have repeatedly discussed the idea of purpose in evolution on this blog. So, it is germane to this blog. Please reconsider discussing the significance of the claims you have made on this blog....if those claims were indeed true. It would help everyone that has discussed this subject, on this blog, to better understand what you are saying.