This is utterly ignorant. If your post is not better than this, than it’s not worth making.
This is the most ridiculous thing that I have ever read and been asked to respond to in 6 or 7 years on ILP. Math is not subjective. If you disagree that 2+2=4… you are fucking wrong, dead wrong. Not a long time ago I explained the difference between ‘subjective’ and ‘subject-dependent’ to you. You have accused me of ignoring things that you have said… that’s false… and apparently hypocritical.
Math is a construct of language and is conceptual, it merely refers to an defines objects, as do names and colors. I do not disagree that 2 + 2 = 4 to the extent that we have agreed upon the meanings of, “2,” and, “4,” but my point is that there is no Universal necessity concerning either of those numbers, or that those numbers relate to one another in such a way. I could say that, “6,” and, “4,” replace one another to such an extent that I would count:
1, 2, 3, 6, 5, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10
And, pursuant to my own definitions, I would not be wrong in saying:
2 + 2 = 6
In fact, pursuant to my own definitions, I would be exactly right. The only reason that I do not do that is because numbers, as other people with similar numerical expressions choose to express it, entail that the counting order is such that four follows three and two plus two equals four.
The point is that none of that is necessary. If it is not necessary, it is not objective. Where there is a physical object that can be observed, it exists, by necessity. Math is a human construct that does not exist by necessity. It is not a priori, which is why, like spoken language, we must be taught mathematics. Mathematics is a language that was created by humans and agreed upon, subjectively, I choose to go along with mathematics and the values and associated counting orders, etc. I reserve the right to re-define mathematics if I want to, and if I did, I could still come up with a manner of doing mathematics that makes sense, to me (and all others who subscribe to my system) and describes what I am intending for it to describe.
Well, who decide it? Is it inherent? Is it objective? Were it objective, would it not have already been decided. The tree exists objectively. You want to say that the, “Most moral,” decision also exists objectively. If that is the case, then, nobody decides what the most moral decision is, it’s there for the taking.
When humans take action, then, in an effort to minimize suffering, is there action to be taken that objectively ensures the least suffering? If there were, would it not be inherent that we would take that action, as if by default? Why do we have to make decisions if there is an inherent and objective, “Best action?”
When you want to achieve something you need to use workable, functional knowledge to get you there. At that level (workable and functional) only is there value. Making up the non-workable or nonfunctional and experimenting around with it is as useless as pursuing those things that can never be attained with any kind of thinking.
What would make redefining four as six and six as four non-workable and non-functional? It would seem that the meaning of terms would still be there, I would just be changing what terms are being used to describe what.
Four smilies or six smilies?
+ = _______________
Equals four smilies or six smilies?
What’s the difference? Does the term that I apply to the number of smilies do anything to change the physical (and objective) smilies present?
In the physical, material world you can invent any workable method you wish and therein we would function. We get results there after some effort is put in. That’s the material world and there is no other level or dimension of human activity that is workable. Yet, there are those who attempt to shift the whole thing over to non-workable areas of thinking expecting to get results there too because they have previously gotten results in the physical, material plane.
You’re absolutely right in your first sentence, Finishedman, so then I would ask you: Do you think that there is any workable method by which we could function in such a way as to discover an objective morality, even if such a morality were there to be discovered? Is there anything in the physical, material world, in your opinion, that points to the objectivity of morality, and, if so, what?
Do you think that trying to demonstrate that our (individual or collective) thoughts and concepts of what morality is will successfully result in the existence of an objective reality on a physical or material plane? Keep in mind that I am not stating that our concepts of morality do not have an affect on the physical, or objective, reality. For instance, if a Judge sentences someone to ten years imprisonment as opposed to five, then that is five more years that the material person will exist in a material place that we call, “Prison,” as a result of the Judge’s decision. However, does that make the decision itself, and the basis therefore, a materially objective one?
It depends a lot on how strongly you hold to yourself and the ideas you identify with. Children don’t possess much of the abstraction of a self there due to the lack of thought perpetuation and strengthening. So for them there is a kind of freedom and liberality and within this tolerant state there is very little questioning of actions before or after they’re done.
Eventually there comes the assumption of rightness/wrongness when one comes in contact with initial knowledge of them, then standards are acquired from sources of knowledge. Without the knowledge there is no way to experience what it is to conduct yourself properly, that’s for sure. The reality of this is to see that there would be no questions about morality if there was no knowledge about it initially.
Perhaps the greater part of morality is stopping all the harm we do rather than taking on any great or noble deeds, that is the harm that comes from a false sense of self. If you feel something is right, do it. Don’t be impeded by what various sources of knowledge tell to do or not do.
I don’t think it’s worst every time; just that where things are a test of morals, it’s because there are other attractive options also open. Best can mean best materially, best spiritually, best in terms of self-development, best in terms of least effort…
So how do you define that which you said one learns is “best” to do, without a wholly circular loop back to “what is moral”? All you’re saying in that case is that what’s moral is what we learn is moral. Sounds fairly hardcore relativist to me 
I think you’re muddying the moral waters here. If you’re a consequentialist, you can’t hold that morality has anything to do with virtue/human excellence. I can make a choice out of fear and sycophancy, and as long as it minimises suffering it’s the morally right choice. Or, if you want rule-based consequentialism, the only excellence demanded is a rigid adhesion to duty.
Virtue ethics are not measured by material consequence (being rich is not a virtue, it’s only of instrumental value in, say, magnanimity), so I have no problem with rich people not necessarily being virtuous. But this is a digression; just to say that I thought you were arguing the target of morality was reducing suffering?
We can. So why should we take consequences as a guide to what is wrong?
I’d be inclined to say the same. But any reasons I gave him for not eating dog shit, and there are plenty, will not be to do with taste. Because I’ll say “it tastes disgusting” and he’ll say “well, I like it”, and there is nowhere further to go. I’ll say it’s unhygienic, it makes his breath smell, he’ll become a social pariah, and so on - but preferences as to the taste and form and texture, while referencing objective criteria, are irrelevant.
If he buys himself a healthy, nutritious, dogshit-flavoured muesli bar that doesn’t make him stink, I have no reason for him not to eat it if he wants to; in fact, needlessly restricting his freedom to do so might just be immoral. Point is, giving objective reasons doesn’t prove (or even necessarily intimate) objectivity.
Regarding pain - it certainly can be quantified by science. I’ve seen it done. But assuming you don’t want to ban wrestling or mountaineering, it’s suffering that we want to minimise, and that can only be assessed by subjective interview.
Warning issued for this post, following earlier in-thread caution for incivility.
You can attach electrodes to someone’s head and measure the pain of a pinprick. You can measure headache pain or chronic pain that way. But you are not going to break someone’s kneecap to get a measurement. There are all sorts of cases that you can’t measure. There is no way of knowing ‘how much’ that dog suffered or how much any human suffered after the fact. You can’t strike a victim so as to inflict 50 Attila-hours worth of pain on them - it’s beyond our control. You always end up using vague subjective terms to describe pain and suffering - mild,intense, excruciating, etc. The process of quantifying pain produces the illusion of objectivity propped by scientists and is used to silence critics who are ignorant of the limitations of science.
Counting the grains of sand on a distant planet - it’s called ‘countably infinite’ - nobody would try to do it and nobody could do it. Apparently philosophers enjoy thinking about such ridiculous ideas. 
You are prone to making assumptions and leaving them entirely unjustified. Where things are a test of morals, it’s just as likely that it’s only because of ignorance about what the right answer is, mistaken priorities which are also due to ignorance, Freudian drives for what’s worse for you, weakness of will, and such-like.
I think this is a question you should be asking yourself. You distinguish prudence and morality—I haven’t. Perhaps you should consider what you think all-things-considered best-ness is. Unless you’re just reasking the question with which I started this thread… and then it seems fairly ridiculous to accuse me of relativism or something like that.
Why not?
If your intention was to minimize suffering, how is it that your intention was also out of fear, again?
What is the difference?
Because good consequences are good, and bad consequences are bad.
To the psychologist, I say. As we agreed, there is something wrong with your dog shit eating brother.
Right, so we really will have a tough time showing that crazy gentleman the tree just by showing it to him. At least he has you to speak for him.
I’m asking you, because you said “you draw out of the world judgments based on how things have gone better or worse for you in past experiences, and formulate a general principle out of those” - leaving the better and the worse open. And then as I said, there are many ways to consider something better or worse, and I am at a loss to see how that those judgments lead to morality unless you make the circular claim that by better you mean morally better. Which leads to relativism.
Because excellence is a virtue and not a consequence.
Intentions don’t matter to the consequentialist, only the outcomes of acts. Hence the name.
Seriously? If you’re just going to keep typing until I get bored and give up, let me know now and save us both time and effort. Lack of suffering is not excellence.
Good rules are good, bad rules are bad. Virtues are good, vices are bad. Good weather is good, bad weather is bad. I don’t base my morality on the sunshine.
I don’t see anything, just someone stamping their feet and insisting it’s there. Maybe I’m the crazy gentleman, maybe you are.
As I’ve told you, I don’t distinguish between those different ways of going better or worse for you, and I don’t understand why you do. You still haven’t said why. You think prudence and morality are separate, but you haven’t (or can’t) give an example of something that is prudentially good but immoral. It would be easy for you, if you just said that by “prudentially” good you meant something like “more money”—which you’ve backed away from. I was preparing to re-write Plato’s Republic for you, or perhaps simpler, in the words of the ganster rapper Notorious B.I.G, “mo’ money, mo’ problems”. I have absolutely no idea on what grounds you think I am a relativist. I have never suggested there is more than one kind of ‘betterness’. What you are saying does not make coherent sense.
What makes a virtue (such as excellence) a virtue? I don’t see why a consequentialist cannot speak about the virtues, unless you think that being “excellent” is sometimes terrible—which strikes me as ridiculous.
Simply wrong. You don’t praise someone who accidently does a good act. And you don’t blame someone for unforseeably causing bad consequences.
Good rules are the ones with good consequences. Virtues are good because they have good consequences. Good weather is the weather with good consequences. Nobody praises the weather when it destroys their crops. Nobody calls something ‘brave’ that ruins their army—that’s foolishness. What the fuck is the problem here?
This is what you said. My answer: Yes it fucking does. What the fuck is going to make something objective unless it is objective reasons? Do you think anything at all is objective? The tree? Well then you’re going to have to enhance your claim—because according to you, I haven’t proved the tree is objective, and that strikes me as a reductio. You are that guy. It’s OK, I deal with this a lot. Ambigui is one of my main interlocutors.
What is important to me in this exchange is the extent to which one is able to show that something is “in fact” true.
For example, is it a fact that medical doctors know far more about human medical afflictions than they did 500 years ago? Yes. Is it a fact that a portion of this knowledge was garnered through the research done on animals? Yes.
And there is ample evidence to demonstrate this. At least insofar as most of us share an understanding of what constitutes “a fact” here.
A fact, after all, is said to be, “something that actually exists; reality; truth”. At least according to the dictionary I own.
But is it a fact that what medical doctors now know about these things is all there is to know about them?
No, of course not. But medical science is still in its relative infancy. It has been around for hundreds of years while the biology of life on earth has been around for millions of years.
Now, is there a similar set of facts that ethicists have accummulated over the centuries that have, in turn, gotten them considerably closer to resolving the moral conflicts that revolve around the use of animals in experiments aimed at securing this knowledge?
No, there is not.
Why not?
Why are “the facts” so different here?
If you were to ask ethicists around the globe to encompass what they believe to be the most rational and moral relationship between human beings and other living creatures how close to objectivity would they come? Would they come anywhere near as close as ethologists have in understanding animals in all other ways?
Is the weather good right now? I have no idea. What does ‘good’ actually mean? Rain is good if the crops need water, rain is bad if the crops have had enough water. Rain is bad if your laundry is drying outside. Rain is good if your well is dry and you need to wash. Snow is good if you want to go skiing, snow is bad if you have to commute to work and you don’t have snow tires.
Good and bad are whims and fancies. 
You said better, you meant more prudent, that’s clear now. So where does that leave a pregnant woman who would have to drop out of law school and get a minimum-wage job if she keeps the baby? Is it her prudence she should be concerned with, or the embryo’s, or society’s? Does her prudential self-concern make an abortion moral, or is it already moral and she needs to have had the right past experiences to see this?
Excellence isn’t a virtue, it’s a measure of virtue. A consequentialist can talk about the virtues all he likes, but makes moral judgments on the basis of outcomes and not of character.
You don’t do so because it would have no beneficial effect in the future, as it was not done willingly.
What? A soldier can’t recognise an enemy as brave, despite it having bad consequences for him? You can’t hope that the good weather will end soon because your garden’s drying out?
Can we keep this civil, please? Swearing doesn’t make you more right.
Objective facts can be shown by giving objective reasons. But lots of subjective things can be explained with reference to objective criteria. Fashion is a purely cultural phenomenon, for instance: someone can decry a pair of trousers as ugly because of the way they are cut, or the fabric that is used. Therefore, reference to objective criteria does not demonstrate objectivity.
[quote=“phyllo”]
Rain is good if the crops need water, rain is bad if the crops have had enough water.
[quote]
Yea, so rain is objectively good when crops need water, and objectively bad when crops don’t. Couldn’t be simpler.
So ‘good’ means suitable for a given goal or purpose. And each goal is defined by a human being. So there are billions of goals and billions of evaluations of how suitable something is for each goal.
Are you saying it is up to me when crops don’t need more water? Or can I be fucking wrong about that?