tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post5002924153671014208..comments2023-10-10T08:02:18.073-04:00Comments on Rationally Speaking: Definitions Don't Prove AnythingUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger40125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-65559456266981640732013-11-15T20:07:02.365-05:002013-11-15T20:07:02.365-05:00I've just read this great post. I'm wonder...I've just read this great post. I'm wondering if this argument has been made elsewhere. A blog is unfortunately difficult to cite.<br /><br />I wonder if we could refine or generalize this logical fallacy.<br /><br />To take art as an example, I don't think that anyone would define it as something that has to be taken seriously. Other things can be taken seriously, like science, or war. What's hidden in the word art is that something being art is a sufficient condition for it to be taken seriously. Or:<br />x is art => x has to be taken seriously.<br /><br />My understanding of a definition is that it implies an equivalence <=><br /><br />And if you say for example "techno music is art" then you are probably not claiming that it is the only form of art. You would probably mean:<br />x is techno music => x is art<br /><br />Which again, is not a definition. It defines neither hard rock nor art. So there is no definition involved anywhere here, but I still feel that we're in a very similar situation.<br /><br />Also, a different comment is that the mere fact of defining a word may be used to make a point, no matter what the definition is.<br /><br />For example, if you say "I define morality as X", then you could be making the implicit statement that morality is something worth discussing in philosophy. This would involve, among other things, arguing over definitions.<br /><br />If in contrast someone argues that there is no point defining the word morality (because, e.g., it is an ambiguous term for which all interesting meanings can be captured by another term), then it seems that there is not much left to discuss.<br /><br />Similarly, giving a name to a concept may be used to make the implicit point that the concept is worth studying. This is the opposite of defining a term, where we're giving a concept to a name. This is often used to legitimate fields of study in science.<br /><br />I didn't read all comments so sorry if I'm being redundant.<br />Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04584930668407092090noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-2665611204570434992010-09-05T12:34:22.619-04:002010-09-05T12:34:22.619-04:00Romney said... Somethings are simply "unquant...Romney said... <em>Somethings are simply "unquantifiable"</em><br /><br />Such as? Do you mean unquantifiable in principle or just as a practical matter?<br /><br /><br />Romney said... <em>Maybe the concept of "god", even if unknown, wouldn't preclude the fact that the "effects" of such concepts are very much quantifiable.</em><br /><br />I don't see how the concept of god precludes anything other than maybe its own negative. I also don't see your point.<br /><br />Romney said... <em>"love" in most cases has nothing to do with reason or logic</em><br /><br />Logic goes to the sub-neural level, so there is no question it is involved in love. Reason presumably starts at some inter-neural level with a critical mass of neurons organized in some particular way, and there may be unconscious reasoning as well as conscious reasoning, so how do you know it isn't involved in love, too?<br /><br />Romney said... <em>Therefore, god may not exist, but the existence of the effects of such beliefs are quite measurable. </em><br /><br />I agree, but don't see your point. The measurable effects of beliefs in god are good grounds to classify such beliefs as pathological.<br /><br />Romney said... <em>From my perspective it is the atheist that is advocating the "myth" that somehow "consciousness" is supposed to be monolithic, when clearly it is not observed to be so.</em><br /><br />I never heard an atheist make the argument that "consciousness is monolithic", but I have heard some say that Ayn Rand was a good philosopher. On that basis I would say that some atheists are idiots.<br /><br />What does any of that have to do with god?<br /><br />Romney said... <em>Besides science proves that the human brain has evolved to communicate and perceive abstract thoughts without the use of language....</em><br /><br />I question such science or your telling of it. The term "language" is pretty broad and includes such things as "machine language" (binary code) and "body language". There had to be one or more of neural "languages" in use in the brain prior to the evolution of spoken language and such are presumably still in use at various levels of brain operation.<br /><br />What of it?<br /><br />Romney said... <em>perhaps the existence of "god" for many people is simply moot</em><br /><br />Good thinking.<br /><br />Poor Richard<br /><br /><a href="http://almanac2010.wordpress.com/" rel="nofollow">Poor Richard's Almanack 2010</a>Poor Richardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00780183195105651583noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-15023940133009583992010-09-04T12:36:33.934-04:002010-09-04T12:36:33.934-04:00who was it that said you can't double dip?
S...who was it that said you can't double dip? <br /><br />Somethings are simply "unquantifiable" which in contrast to "unknowable", are two totally different things. It is unknown why "matter" has "mass", but apparently science seems to move on despite this great unknown. Maybe the concept of "god", even if unknown, wouldn't preclude the fact that the "effects" of such concepts are very much quantifiable.<br /><br />"love" in most cases has nothing to do with reason or logic, but the effects of "love" can be quantified in many ways by measuring the amount of chemicals being released in the brain. Therefore, god may not exist, but the existence of the effects of such beliefs are quite measurable. <br /><br />From my perspective it is the atheist that is advocating the "myth" that somehow "consciousness" is supposed to be monolithic, when clearly it is not observed to be so. Besides science proves that the human brain has evolved to communicate and perceive abstract thoughts without the use of language.... perhaps the existence of "god" for many people is simply moot.Romneyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03177363199253694724noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-90284679251243896942010-09-04T05:34:25.210-04:002010-09-04T05:34:25.210-04:00I'm with Julia and Ritchie.
Moral, good, righ...I'm with Julia and Ritchie.<br /><br />Moral, good, right, flourishing, eudaimonia, utility, etc. all have the same problem of composite incoherence and inconsistency.<br /><br />In order to compare my utility to your utility we would need in each case to break out all the constituents--all the individual kinds of "goods" and the relative weights we placed on each.<br /><br />Even if we each listed many of the same "goods", such as happiness, freedom, justice, security, health, longevity, etc., we can still be talking about apples and oranges.<br /><br />For example, there are many kinds of freedom and many kinds of security. Some kinds of freedom are in tension with some kinds of security but not with others. And we may each give to each kind of freedom or security a different weight.<br /><br />I agree that most debates about morality, art, etc. are psuedo-debates because the implicit assumptions, associations, biases, etc. are not laid out and compared on a coherent, one-to-one basis.<br /><br />I agree with Ritchie that morals are about controlling behavior. Evolution has laid in some instinctive "moral phenotypes"; but society is also composed of many different "interest" groups with a variety of agendas and different criteria for their own moral behavior and that of others. When we argue about morality, we implicitly argue about power. Is it any wonder that two people (much less two groups) will seldom agree about who should be the most powerful?<br /><br />Poor Richard<br /><br /><a href="http://almanac2010.wordpress.com/" rel="nofollow">Poor Richard's Almanack 2010</a>Poor Richardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00780183195105651583noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-59030085507325570612010-09-03T12:24:47.109-04:002010-09-03T12:24:47.109-04:00Ritchie the Bear, you've mapped out this tangl...Ritchie the Bear, you've mapped out this tangle of problems with admirable clarity. There's too much good stuff in your posts to respond to all of it, so let me just focus on the one thing I think is most important: <i>"Persons sometimes make statements in the form of a proposition that really seem to simply express their state of mind."</i><br /><br />Exactly. There are many statements which might appear to be claiming something about the world, but which are really (if you examine how the statement is actually used) doing something else: applauding, admiring, condemning, etc.<br /><br />Admiring something is a fundamentally different act than making a claim about that thing. But it doesn't <i>feel</i> that way to us, from the inside! We feel like our admiration is a property of the thing itself. So when we are challenged to explain what we mean when we admire something, we end up just pointing to the properties of that thing which gave rise to our admiration.<br /><br />We will always end up mired in confusion if we keep trying to talk about people's reactions to things as being true or false.Julia Galefhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05020069129381463375noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-45559039770772992622010-09-03T11:24:35.105-04:002010-09-03T11:24:35.105-04:00If only it weren't so hard to articulate to pe...<i>If only it weren't so hard to articulate to people what's wrong with that kind of logic. </i><br /><br />I had a couple odd discussions like this, where a person defined "God" to be the creator/designer of the Universe. It was very explicit, where he argued that there was a cause for the BB and he actually said "let's call this cause 'God'". When I agreed, he immediately jumped to quoting the Bible. "Wait a sec," I said, "that 'God' is a completely different thing than what we were talking about before!" This sparked a long discussion where he argued that Christians have always believed that God created the universe and he didn't see any problem with what was going on.<br /><br />And that's nothing compared to the frustration of someone saying "you've been in love and the bible says God is Love, so of course the Christian God exists."<br /><br />It's doing exactly what Julia said - using a strange, new definition to establish God exists (for some definition of God) and then acting like this weird God is the same one as in the Bible and that they worship in church. Happens all the time.<br /><br />My turn to speculate: maybe this sort of argument is presented to them in church or apologetics books? I've seen it in formal debates so it's not unexpected that people might parrot these same flawed arguments.Adrianhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08694840174170043470noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-39010457345742173192010-09-03T11:14:54.947-04:002010-09-03T11:14:54.947-04:00TheBanterist said, "...at some point I'd ...TheBanterist said, <i>"...at some point I'd realize we actually agreed in terms of the concept, but were just defining words under different criteria. After I pointed this out, I expected the debates to be over, but they'd keep arguing with me because they genuinely thought the definition was the important part worth debating!"</i><br /><br />I know, I've had that exact same experience, and it used to utterly confound me! Now I've come to anticipate it, but frustratingly, I still don't have much luck resolving those debates. If only it weren't so hard to articulate to people what's wrong with that kind of logic.Julia Galefhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05020069129381463375noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-57203376953698253152010-09-03T11:00:01.553-04:002010-09-03T11:00:01.553-04:00Julia,
I am not questioning the assertion that &q...Julia,<br /><br />I am not questioning the assertion that "god" means something beyond "unknown" to those who say that god is the unknown. The rest of my post makes that clear. What I question is your inference that they make such statements and define "god" as they do in order to retain their belief in "god". I question your empirical basis in making that inference. Again, I would suspect that most people who believe in god, however they define it, don't much care what atheists think of god. In any case, whether or not they do, and the reasons as to why they describe god in the way they do is an empirical question that you simply ignored to the detriment of your argument. I think that Massimo gets to some of what I mean in his post - your assume that everyone who is doing work of defining or describing is doing what you define definition to be, but you haven't done the work of checking if that is so. As such, you don't know if your conclusions are justified, but you give little sense of the appropriate level of tentativeness such would call for.Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16038143823260179846noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-40125139942539327752010-09-03T10:57:40.195-04:002010-09-03T10:57:40.195-04:00RichardW, well put!
Also, you said, "I wou...RichardW, well put! <br /><br />Also, you said, <i> "I would define a definition more broadly, as an attempt to instruct a listener about the meaning of a term. And a definition can be correct or incorrect if it claims to be reporting a pre-existing meaning. This is known as a 'reportive' or 'lexical' definition. The other sort of definition is 'stipulative': it stipulates how a term is to be used in the future."</i><br /><br />You're right, this is a good distinction to make. But in theory, this shouldn't have to be confusing; people could just be clear about whether they are saying, "When most people use word X, they mean..." or whether they are saying "When I use word X, I mean..."Julia Galefhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05020069129381463375noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-10839468580350602982010-09-03T10:46:41.063-04:002010-09-03T10:46:41.063-04:00Mel said, "How do you know 'they' fee...Mel said, <i>"How do you know 'they' feel this? What data have you gathered?... It seems in these passages you are making assumptions about the motives and intents of those you wish to dismiss, and that does not make for good argument.</i><br /><br />Mel, you're right that I can't get inside their heads. But the fact that they would rather say "God exists" than "The unknown exists" indicates that there is something that "God" represents for them that goes beyond just "The unknown", despite the fact that they claim the two to be identically defined. It's that extra connotation of "God" -- whatever it is for them -- that I'm pointing to as the implicit meaning that got smuggled in.Julia Galefhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05020069129381463375noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-49892175592387193832010-09-03T10:46:17.721-04:002010-09-03T10:46:17.721-04:00Massimo--
I know that I got carried away, but we ...Massimo--<br /><br />I know that I got carried away, but we have had this debate before, and making comments similar in detail and clarity to my previous comments would have been of no use. While you will recognize much of what I have said, I think I have stated things with much greater detail and clarity. I want this discussion to go somewhere. Sorry if I posted too much material, but I hope you let it stay for this particular discussion.<br /><br />As for my own blog: I am not yet a strong enough philosopher to justify it.Ritchie the Bearhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10249784344018510589noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-35578775112240195242010-09-03T10:45:48.413-04:002010-09-03T10:45:48.413-04:00Val Schuman said, "You say that 'Typicall...Val Schuman said, <i>"You say that 'Typically, the word (moral) is used to refer to how people ought to behave.' And that's fine, some people may think that they and others ought to behave morally. Others may think otherwise. What does this have to do with the definition of being moral? Yes, if you don't act to increase human flourishing you're acting amorally, and if you act to decrease it, you're likely acting immorally. You absolutely have the right to not care whether or not you're acting morally, without having any sort of conflict with the definition of the word."</i><br /><br />Val, you're conceiving of "moral behavior" descriptively (e.g., increasing human flourishing) and then saying many people feel like they ought to act morally. But what I'm saying is that people can't have it both ways -- either they can define "moral behavior" descriptively, but then they have to give some argument for why people "ought" to act in that way, or they can define "moral behavior" to refer to how people ought to act, but then they have to give some argument if they want to make claims about what kinds of actions that entails. What they CAN'T do is define it to mean both things simultaneously (how people ought to behave AND some set of actions, like increasing flourishing) and then act as if they've proven the one to entail the other.Julia Galefhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05020069129381463375noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-62264758333281332942010-09-03T10:40:23.478-04:002010-09-03T10:40:23.478-04:00Ritchie, I'm impressed by your writing flow, b...Ritchie, I'm impressed by your writing flow, but you might need to start a blog of your own about this!Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09099460671669064269noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-58305447789124796112010-09-03T10:11:33.710-04:002010-09-03T10:11:33.710-04:00Art
Let’s return to the actual issue that was und...<b>Art</b><br /><br />Let’s return to the actual issue that was under debate when Julia brought up the idea of a false debate. Massimo replied “it's a pseudo-debate only if you assume that no matter what reasons one brings forth they are as worthy, sound, coherent, etc. as anyone else's reasons. I simply don't think that is the case. If you do, then you are a relativist in these matters.” But just what “reasons” is Massimo talking about? The fact of the matter is this: if person A defines “good” as “having qualities x, y, z” and person B defines “good” as “having qualities d, f, g”, and person A and person B start firing it off over whether or not Dali’s <i>Oeufs Sur le Plat</i> is good, they are <i>absolutely</i> having a pseudo-debate, end of story. When Massimo accuses Galef of relativism on the value of reasons, he is missing the point completely. If two people are arguing over whether a painting is “good” and they define that term in the same way, then some reasons will be better than others when arguing for this-or-that stance on the painting’s merits. If Julia denied this, Massimo could reasonably accuse her of relativism. This is the way it is in other debates; we need not give equal weight to reasons given for or against the proposition that the moon landings were faked. But in the case of different definitions of the term “good” (or some other term central to a debate), relativism has nothing to do with it. In such a case nothing is really being debated.<br /><br />Connotations and the underlying essentialism that makes them matter are the real issue here. Most people just intuitively believe in <i>pure goodness</i>. But Massimo, rather than admitting that his preference for Wagner over Stevie Ray Vaughan is just a preference, gives an objective definition of artistic quality that equates complexity and nuance with quality. Once again, it’s an attempt to steal connotations: Massimo wants to feel justified saying that certain artists are <i>better</i> than others, objectively, because “better” has so much oomph to it.<br /><br />Am I being too cynical? No, because there just is <b>no</b> reason to define your terms this way unless you’re fishing for connotations. In the case of art the tactic is particularly clever, because, as Steven Pinker notes in the magnicent book <i>The Blank Slate</i>, our circuitry for morality is cross-wired with our circuitry for status, which is why “noble” has the dual meanings of ‘good” and “high status” (ie “nobility”).<br /><br />Connotations are the heart of this debate. Philosophers should want justified true belief. Massimo, in these cases, wants something akin to justified true gravitas.Ritchie the Bearhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10249784344018510589noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-74503217311921815722010-09-03T10:07:54.662-04:002010-09-03T10:07:54.662-04:00One might ask “are moral beliefs incoherent in the...One might ask “are moral beliefs incoherent in the same sense that the previously discussed beliefs, like the belief in free will or coolness, are incoherent?” My answer is yes. Behind the academic, philosophical mug’s game of giving objectively rational definitions for moral terms is the fact that people have a much more intuitive and essentialistic way of thinking and feeling about morality than many philosophers quite want to admit. People tend to treat notions of good or evil in much the way they treat concepts like free will: they just sort of have this fuzzy feeling in their head that, goddamnit, you know, some things are just evil! Even Alan Dershowitz once said, in essence, “moral truth just has to exist because otherwise the Holocaust wouldn’t even be wrong”. That’s not Dershowitz’s astronomical IQ speaking; it’s his heart doing the talking. Moral beliefs, when not dressed up with deceptively objective definitions are vague, fluffy propositions, which is exactly what you’d expect of beliefs whose purpose is to regulate behavior. Since actions, in and of themselves, are not rational or irrational, why would we even expect beliefs whose purpose is to regulate behavior to make sense?<br /><br />At the back of the academic, philosophical moral realist is still that nagging, irrational feeling that, goddamnit, some things are just, you know, they’re just, they’re just wrong! You know!? They’re just wrong! And all the talk about “utility” and “happiness” is just an attempt to make that cerebral homonculus’s nonsense make sense.Ritchie the Bearhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10249784344018510589noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-38976528013524872942010-09-03T10:05:02.631-04:002010-09-03T10:05:02.631-04:00Because we cannot shed the moral connotations of m...Because we cannot shed the moral connotations of morally loaded terms like “ought”, “should”, “good”, “morality”, “justice”, and so forth, any objectively coherent <i>definition</i> of moral terms implicitly binds certain real-world actions to the nagging feeling of <i>oughtness</i> that accompanies moral terminology. It is ostensibly clear and straightforward to say that “one ought to do x” means “x increases overall happiness”. Yet in doing so, the definer binds the concept of happiness to that God-awful feeling that, you know, you just <i>should</i> donate money to Oxfam. Rational definitions of moral terms are really forced marriages of fact and behavior. <br /><br />This is exactly why moral realists like Massimo and Sam Harris try to get away with <i>defining</i> moral terms like “ought”, “should”, “good”, and “evil” in terms of happiness and suffering. They know they can’t argue that certain actions possess some essence-of-goodness quality, so instead they attempt a cognitive coup by saying “hey, I’m just defining my terms man, that’s all, just describing things”. But when Harris <i>defines</i> “morality” as “the maximization of happiness” (or something like that), he is really trying to gain the cognitive <i>oomph</i> that moral terms have because of their connotations. For Massimo and Harris, the right to implicitly boss people around is just a definition away.<br /><br />Val claims innocence. Replying to Julia, he has this to say about Massimo’s take on morality:<br /><br /><i>Also, you say "we already have a name for the concept of increasing human flourishing – we call it “increasing human flourishing.”"<br /><br />But that's the whole point of defining words, so that we may express an idea with one word instead of three, as you'd have to do with "increasing human flourishing" if the word "moral" didn't exist.</i><br /><br />A seemingly reasonable reply; if “Master of Ceremonies” has become “MC” (the original phrase almost forgotten), why wouldn’t “increases human flourishing” become something shorter too?<br /><br />The problem is that the selection of moral terms to abbreviate concepts in positive psychology is incredibly conspicuous. If the point of defining “morality” and related terms in terms of happiness were not an attempt to conquer connotative territory, just what would it be? If Massimo, Val, and other morality-is-happiness folks were simply out to give their tongues a break from burdensome phrases like “increasing net flourishing”, they might have done one of many things: they might have invented new terms, created abbreviations, or (most likely) borrowed much less heavily connoted terms. Why not borrow the term “fitness” from evolutionary biology and say that actions which increase flourishing increase fitness? Why not borrow terms from economics and say that actions which increase human flourishing “raise capital”? If brevity is all Val and Massimo wish for, it’s very weird indeed that they would appropriate words from the lexicon of normativity, words which just happen to have some of the strongest connotations, this way or that, in the entire English (and broader human) vocabulary. Generally speaking, one wants technical terms to have as <i>little</i> connotation as possible this way or that so that readers and listeners can see more clearly to the heart of the phenomena being discussed.Ritchie the Bearhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10249784344018510589noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-82362367103812519882010-09-03T09:59:42.748-04:002010-09-03T09:59:42.748-04:00In an earlier thread about art, Julia raised the i...In an earlier thread about art, Julia raised the issue of pseudo-debates between people with differing <i>coherent definitions</i> of artistic value:<br /><br /><i>…then we get into these pseudo-debates in which you say, “This piece is bad because X, Y, Z" and someone else says, "No, it's good because of A, B, C" and the only reason you appear to disagree is that you're using different definitions of good and bad. That's why I call it a pseudo-debate.”</i><br /><br />Similar pseudo-debates might emerge between people with different coherent definitions of moral terms. If Sam Harris defined morality as “the maximization of flourishing among conscious beings” and I defined morality as “the respecting of fundamental of rights G, H, and F”, Harris might say that “x behavior is wrong” while I might say “x behavior is right”, and we would not really be contradicting each other because we both used different definitions of morality. In fact, acceptance of both of our propositions together could be perfectly rational.<br /><br />When people with very different moral standards meet, however, it does not seem that they are having a pseudo-debate; it seems that they most certainly <i>are</i> contradicting each other. The reason for this is critical: moral terms have <i>connotations</i>. Our moral terminology, because of our evolutionary background, is weighted. We feel emotional and social tugs when phrases like “theft is wrong” and “we must help the poor” are stated. This is no coincidence; the reason moral beliefs have any relevance in society is precisely the fact that people have certain emotional responses to them.<br /><br />Connotations cannot by shunned at will. Suppose that I define “vulva” as meaning the same thing as what everyone means by the word “cat” and asked you to read this statement:<br /><br /><i>My vulva, Fluffins, had a huge rash on his back, so I put him in the vulva carrier and took him to the closest vet, Vulvas Exclusive.</i><br /><br />You probably had exactly the same reaction to this sentence as you would have if I had simply used the word “cat” all the way, through. No problem, right?<br /><br />Wrong. We cannot shed the connotations we attach to words. Because of this, any definition of a strongly connoted word is going to carry its connotations with it to its new definition, just as the word “vulva” did in its previous example. Words can have all sorts of connotations: warm, beautiful, childish. But words with <i>moral</i> connotations have <i>behavioral</i> force. The statement “you ought to visit your aunt” derives its force of meaning—the emotional reaction it causes—from the morally connoted term “ought”.Ritchie the Bearhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10249784344018510589noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-87100185281900498552010-09-03T09:56:27.070-04:002010-09-03T09:56:27.070-04:00Morality
Moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt, discu...<b>Morality</b><br /><br />Moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt, discussing the differences between liberal and conservative/religious moral thinking, defined a “moral system” in this way:<br /><br /><i>Moral systems are interlocking sets of values, practices, institutions, and evolved psychological mechanisms that work together to suppress or regulate selfishness and make social life possible.</i><br /><br />In doing so, Haidt pointed out a critical fact about moral psychology: moral concepts and thinking exist for the regulation of human behavior. Moral beliefs have always served as a force for or against certain behaviors, encouraging disdain, praise, enforcement, training, taboo, and other social pressures. This is a descriptive, rather than normative claim.<br /><br />Because of this, moral beliefs held by individuals are significant at every level of social interaction within a society, from the individual all the way up to the national. People who believe that masturbation is evil are less likely to masturbate themselves and more likely to disdain masturbation among those around themselves; they may try to stop their spouses or children from masturbating or even support legislation against masturbation. Such are the consequences of moral beliefs. A man who believes that theft is wrong is less likely to commit theft himself and more apt to disdain thieves, try to stop thievery, and support laws against thievery.<br /><br />Since moral beliefs exist for the regulation of human behavior, it might make sense that they would not peg up cleanly with literally existing facts about the external world. After all, the ultimate role of moral beliefs in a society is the modification of behavior—the creation of social norms, balances, and structures. Yet, as I pointed out in a reply to a recent post by Massimo, rationality is a property of beliefs or processes of inquiry; it is not a property of desires (like a desire for love) or of behaviors (like jumping). Since behaviors and desires cannot be rational or irrational in and of themselves, might beliefs meant (from an evolutionary standpoint) to bring about certain behaviors themselves be largely irrational? The idea seems hardly far-fetched.Ritchie the Bearhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10249784344018510589noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-71311916973083267732010-09-03T09:53:24.127-04:002010-09-03T09:53:24.127-04:00An example of such a fuzzy vibe is the notion of f...An example of such a fuzzy vibe is the notion of free will as it is invoked by uninformed, unphilosophical laymen and strong religious believers. If the concept of free will as it is described by most people (not by incredibly smart philosophers like Daniel Dennett) made sense, they wouldn’t have so much trouble describing it clearly when pressed by a skilled interlocutor. When faced with the materialist computational theory of mind, free willies will say things like “if that’s true then there’s really no way I can affect what I do or change it” or “I guess I really can’t change my destiny”. The difficulty free willies have with expressing their conception of free will corresponds to the fact that free will is not even a coherently formed idea within their own mind. Free will, as a concept, arises from the sensation of choice, the feeling of control, and the sense that our actions are neither determined nor random. While these feelings are common among all sentient human beings, the notion of free will that they give rise to is not rationally statable or describable because <i>it is malformed within our very minds</i>. Have you ever replied to somebody who says “…if you know what I’m saying” with the phrase “I don’t even think <i>you</i> know what you’re saying”? Well, in the case of free will, ordinary people who invoke it really don’t have much of an idea of what they’re saying. There is a lot of emotional and aesthetic gobbledigook that comes together to produce the sensation of free will, but one notion that is central to free will is the totally nonsensical idea that an event can be neither determined nor a result of luck nor a mere combination of the two. If a thing is <i>determined</i> it follows necessarily from some other state of affairs in reality, and if it is not then there is merely a <i>probability</i> that the given thing will attain. There is no “free will” between determinedness and randomness to explore, and so the fuzzy, emotional, irrational feeling of “free will” is pointless fluff. <br /><br />Because of the irrationality of the normal human conception of free will, attempts to give a rational, objectively useful definition of “free will” <i>don’t do justice to the irrationality of the notion of free will</i>. A definition of a word or phrase must do close justice to its usage. In the large majority of circumstances, the phrase “free will” denotes nothing more than a gigantic brainfart. For this reason, objectively useful definitions of “free will” actually tell a false story about the concept of free will. If such a faulty definition were accepted, we might find it more difficult to actually talk about the irrational concept of free will, because we had given a deceptively rational definition of the phrase “free will”.<br /><br />We should be sensitive to the possibility that the notions of goodness and badness, both in morality and in art, are so irrational that, if their denoting terms are given objectively useful definitions, they have actually been done an injustice through misrepresentation. What if our perceptions of goodness and badness in morality are fluffy, emotional, aesthetic responses to actions, responses that we have somehow confused for coherent ideas about the world around us? What if the idea of goodness is really like the idea of free will, an incoherent, fluffy idea? In that case, we would not do justice to the word “goodness” to give it a definition like “increases net happiness among conscious creatures”. We would do much better to describe the fluffy, emotional, aesthetic vibe running through people’s cognitive circuitry that causes them to deem things “good” or “bad” in the first place, while admitting that these sensations and judgments do not strongly correspond to actually existing traits of actions or pieces of art in the world around us.Ritchie the Bearhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10249784344018510589noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-8149176326809155822010-09-03T09:50:18.479-04:002010-09-03T09:50:18.479-04:00The problem here is that no straightforward defini...The problem here is that no straightforward definition of “coolness” that allows objective verification of a thing’s coolness will mirror the use of the word “cool” in normal English language conversation. It will not suffice to define “coolness” as simply “charisma” or as “physical beauty” or as “artistic success” <i>or as a composite of similar such things</i>. The reason for this is that, when someone says that Miles Davis is cool, he or she is expressing a fluffy, emotional sensation with a phrasing that might seem to attribute some sort of essence-of-that-sensation to the focus of that sensation. Hence, a person who says that Miles Davis is cool is aesthetically experiencing coolness and, instead of saying “I experience Miles Davis as cool”, is using a phrase that attributes a mysterious “coolness” trait to Miles Davis. The phrasing itself might seem to imply that the perceiver feels that he or she is merely responding to an essence-of-coolness present in Miles Davis. Most people who say “[x | x is something] is cool” do not literally believe that there is such a thing as an essence-of-coolness, because they are simply using the commonplace form of expression that I have described; I am merely pointing out what the phrasing itself might seem to imply. They use that phrasing, but most people don’t literally believe in the essence-of-coolness concept.<br /><br />Since coolness is really an aesthetic and emotional response to someone or something, rather than a set of objectively existing traits within those persons or things, <i>no objectively coherent definition of coolness (one that allows objective investigation of a thing’s coolness) does justice to the use of the word “cool” in normal English language conversation</i>. This is an absolutely critical point, and it should be generalized and restated: there are nouns, verbs, and adjectives for which no straightforward and rationally evaluable definition will suffice precisely because the nouns, verbs, and adjectives in question do not represent coherent, rational human conceptualizations. They instead represent fuzzy, vague, emotional or aesthetic vibes people have running through their cerebrums.Ritchie the Bearhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10249784344018510589noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-47051131314322173612010-09-03T09:46:42.612-04:002010-09-03T09:46:42.612-04:00Usage, Coherence, and Definitions
Persons sometim...<b>Usage, Coherence, and Definitions</b><br /><br />Persons sometimes make statements in the form of a proposition that really seem to simply express their state of mind. An example of such a statement is “Miles Davis is cool”. The statement has the syntactic form of a truth claim: the speaker might seem to be saying that Miles Davis possesses the quality of coolness. We know, however, that the speaker is really just expressing his state of mind in the form of a proposition. The notion that our own tastes correspond to some sort of broader objective reality is probably, in my view, rooted in the fundamental egocentrism of human perception and belief-formation: we struggle to imagine failing to <i>feel</i> that Miles Davis is cool, and so we state his coolness as though it were some sort of general fact about the world. Even people who state their sensations of coolness in this form rarely believe that coolness exists objectively; they are simply using that phrasing.<br /><br />Suppose the devil’s advocate shows up and says that he is actually a <i>coolness realist</i>: he believes that things (including people) can objectively possess the trait of coolness, that some things are objectively more cool than others, and that while we can’t always know, as a matter of practice, how cool something is, we can always say that it has, in principle, a definite degree of objective coolness. We probe the coolness realist, “when you say that coolness is an objectively existing trait, what is it that you mean by coolness?” The coolness realist replies that he defines “coolness” as “the composite trait of having played in top-selling jazz records, dressing well, and having personal charisma”. <br /><br />At this point, we are apt to accuse the coolness realist of deceiving us by using a definition of “coolness” that does not closely mirror the term’s actual usage in normal English language conversation. And we’d be right about that—it’s simply not true that people who say “Miles Davis is cool” literally mean “Miles Davis sold many top-selling jazz albums, looks good, and has personal charisma”. Not even close. But suppose the devil’s advocate’s assistant showed up and said “now now, my boss has merely tried to use the best straightforward definition of ‘coolness’ that he can think of. If you objective to his definition, might you at least name some other straightforward definition that he can run by?” The devils’ advocate’s assistant is asking for some sort of alternate definition that the devil’s advocate can use so as to keep the project of coolness realism afloat.Ritchie the Bearhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10249784344018510589noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-35421362844285767782010-09-03T09:43:58.573-04:002010-09-03T09:43:58.573-04:00A couple of parodies might be explanatory:
- God ...A couple of parodies might be explanatory:<br /><br />- God exists in the sense that Eric Clapton is still alive.<br />- Grizzly bears are dragons in the sense that they’re large, scary creatures.<br /><br />Further illustration would probably be superfluous; I think I’ve communicated the idea clearly enough. The philosophical rescuer doesn’t want a particular valued concept to die or be refuted, so instead he downgrades it, never admitting that the original, full-fledged position is totally false and that the downgraded version is nothing but a shadow of the original position. <br /><br />I think that all four of the notions mentioned above—God, free will, moral truth, and objective artistic merit—are confused. The latter three I consider to be not only contingently false but logically incoherent, accepted, supported, and discussed only because of their emotional and social significance. In the service of truth, I believe that they should all be allowed to die, and that intellectuals should give up their philosophical rescue attempts.<br /><br />Massimo, I am sure, understands by now the tactics that I am discussing and the ways in which Julia, myself, and (possibly) others consider his views on morality and artistic merit to be flawed. He most likely has a solid grasp of how definitional ambiguities can be used to make deceptive arguments and muddle up discourse. Instead, I suspect that Massimo will assert that, while many arguments do employ faulty definitions and/or fit my outline of philosophical rescue, his own assertions about moral and artistic value escape the charges of definitional manipulation or abuse. In both cases, however, I do not think that he will be able to build an adequate case. In the past, his responses to me and Julia on the issues of morality and art have hardly justified his approaches to these contentious matters.Ritchie the Bearhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10249784344018510589noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-7814260079179031742010-09-03T09:43:35.981-04:002010-09-03T09:43:35.981-04:00Julia’s post is related to a central issue in topi...Julia’s post is related to a central issue in topical philosophical debates. It is the tendency on the part of some intellectuals to uphold certain disputable philosophical positions by showing that they are true “in a sense”. I call this activity <i>philosophical rescue</i>.<br /><br /><b>Philosophical Rescue</b><br /><br />Many significant concepts seem threatened by the development of science and analytic philosophy. Among them are the concepts of God, free will, and objective morality. The questions of how these concepts are most rationally viewed has brought forth both academic and public discourses. Some of these debates are largely settled among very smart intellectuals, such as the question of whether or not God is real. Others, such as the question of whether objective moral truth exists, are not. <br /><br />When trying to defend a contestable philosophical idea, many employ faulty arguments that fit into what I call the “’in a sense’ fallacy”. This fallacy is the fallacy of trying to rescue a contestable concept by showing that it is correct in a sense that does not live up to the concept’s overall purpose, structure, and meaning. We’ve all seen instances of the “in a sense” fallacy, because just about <i>any</i> statement is true <i>in a certain sense</i>. Here are four notable uses of the fallacy, the latter two of which have been discussed across multiple threads at this blog:<br /><br />- God exists in the sense that the universe had a beginning which we may never be able to understand.<br />- Free will exists in the sense that organisms can anticipate the consequences of their actions and make choices. (Daniel Dennett, I’m looking at you.)<br />- Moral truth exists in the sense that some actions increase or decrease overall human flourishing.<br />- Some art is objectively better than other art in the sense that some pieces of art evidence greater skill, vision, and understanding on the parts of their creators than do other pieces.Ritchie the Bearhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10249784344018510589noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-85350464600201536122010-09-03T09:29:45.734-04:002010-09-03T09:29:45.734-04:00Sheldon,
That's not how I understood "hu...Sheldon,<br /><br />That's not how I understood "human flourishing" and by allowing us to focus on individual happiness at the expense of the lives of other individuals seems to defeat the intent of this moral code. But okay.<br /><br />"Human" also seems problematic. Is it obvious to everyone that our only moral obligations are to other humans?Adrianhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08694840174170043470noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15005476.post-15069079069877863442010-09-03T09:28:51.341-04:002010-09-03T09:28:51.341-04:00Baron P said... "Context is the key, whatever...Baron P said... "Context is the key, whatever that means."<br /><br />Aha! Well said. Context is part of the convention. That is, if you know what I mean that you mean.<br /><br />And historical context in particular, I'd say. You can use the word faith to signify whatever you want but unless you're familiar with the past uses of it you'll just be creating your personal solipsistic language. Faith can only mean disregard for evidence-trust in god- and whether this is a good or a bad thing is, in Julia term, a "claim" rather than part of the definition. Historically, disregard for evidence, or skepticism about frail human faculties, was a good thing, a virtue, at least for consistent <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fideism" rel="nofollow">fideists</a>. Because nowadays open unashamed disregard for evidence is not fashionable, people try to do all kinds of contortions to redefine faith so that it may either become compatible with evidence or disprovable by it.<br /><br />Excellent post, by the way.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com