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Yes, this is basic Socratic stuff. Being an excellent cobbler doesn’t make you an excellent person. And being an excellent football player doesn’t make you an excellent person. That’s just fucking obvious, isn’t it?

No, it’s not. It’s the exact same usage. Here’s why you (wrongly) think it’s different: You think the person is either (1) wrong, or (2) it didn’t really matter either way—so it’s a flippant use of an important word. That’s all.

You can’t do philosophy until you understand basic language.

Yes.

  1. Science is very good at measuring and defining things, however hard it may be. Consequentialists generally wave their hands and talk about indefinable quantities like pleasure and well-being and back down when asked for specific objective measurables.
  2. So where do you start? How do you objectively come to a conclusion that it’s fifteen, or thirty-five, or whatever, such that anyone who disagrees is ignoring the tree in the yard? Don’t back down with “oh, it’s hard”, because I think it’s impossible. Because such a calculus doesn’t exist.

I think you misunderstand me. I’m not saying one is better than the other, here, or that you’re missing anything from your explanation of consequentialism. I’m saying that they are different, and will reach different conclusions on what is moral in specific cases, for different reasons. And I’ve given you examples of such things, as you asked me to.

And of “soft sweet and juicy” was the criteria of “tasting good” then I would be forced by reason to agree with you. As it happens, I think your definition misses something, namely “hard salty and dry”.
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How can this be? We’re referencing objective criteria, one of us must be wrong.

I’ve just said. Within the frameworks, we discover new trees and planets. If a thousand years ago in Europe we’d discovered trees, and no-one believed in them any more, we’d have a situation like that of morality.

That’s not a moral ought though; no-one is to blame. No normative power.

Mo -

It’s obvious when you say what you mean. But you still haven’t told us what makes an excellent person. You seem to be claiming that a morally excellent person is an excellent person, and when we ask you about actual moral cases, you claim that you don’t know, that morality is “difficult”. Just what good is your claim, then? You tell us it’s easy to see a tree, but impossible to see right and wrong in the examples that have been given you. Moral theory is useful when it tells us which acts are right and which are wrong. You give extreme examples that most would agree with, on pain of being called insane, but you expect us to be insane enough to accept your claim that morality is just as easily seen - except that it’s not, for when it’s an example that’s not settled by your claim, you simply shrug your shoulders and say - “Well, tough luck. I don’t know the answer”.

Again, with all this verbiage, all you have done is to make a single claim, that morality is “objective”, and then use extreme examples that most would agree with, and when someone disputes not the moral choice itself, but the basis for that choice, you scream “Reductio! Reductio!” It’s an insult.

The biggest problem with all this is that newbies might think that this is all actual philosophy, which it is not.

What? Why wouldn’t a consequentialist just use the scientist to measure things like pain? Why reinvent the wheel? Is that what you want?

Talk to a scientist. I am not a scientist.

Begging the question again. You have not explained how they are different, and if they are, you cannot point to the difference by saying that “they fight the good fight”----because that’s obviously begging the question about what ‘good’ means here.

I’ve just said. Within the frameworks, we discover new actions and principles, because new problems arise—like abortion. There are clearly people here who are prepared not to believe in trees, if only they were prepared to be consistent.

This is nothing but begging the question again. I’m tired of responding to it. Just look backwards if you need to.

Plato beat me to it.

I gave you an easy case. You’re free to give me a hard case. You can do that to a scientist too. Just ask them if quarks exist. There’s no difference, and neither hard case is a problem for a scientist, nor an objectivist about morality.

This is the insult.

I really hope they do. Because philosophy is practical—at least it can be, and was for the people who knew how to do it best.

And this brings up a more general point about ILP. There are, right now, any number of topics that I think are more interesting than this. But it’s like talking to your neighbour and knowing in advance that he has a dead body in his closet. Some things need to be cleared up first…

Awhile ago, I wanted to figure out what makes something beautiful. And a bunch of …people started going off about how beauty doesn’t exist! it’s all just made up shit! blah blah blah! So I was like, whoa…

You want to know what’s not philosophy? That’s NOT philosophy. If your answer to any of the deepest most interesting questions is: “It doesn’t exist! You just make it up for yourselves! Every man for himself!” …that’s the style of answer people here give, including you… and it’s not philosophy. I hope the newbs recognize that.

Because pain is not suffering, as I’ve explained. And scientists don’t measure pleasure. And no moralist has yet told a scientist how to measure well-being.

What a disappointing cop-out. You haven’t a clue what to measure, yet you insist it’s there?

Yes I did, back up the thread. Twice, I believe. Deontologists see the rational rule as good regardless of contexts, because the rule-keeping itself is what leads to the aggregate best world. Act consequentialists ignore a rule that brings a suboptimal result. I’m not going to keep repeating myself.

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I’m not sure that “begging the question” means what you think it means. Or if it does, how pointing out that not all oughts (nor this particular one) are moral statements does so.

I don’t think that you’re wrong that the baby ought have had a better life, nor that it doesn’t matter. But it’s simply not normative, no-one has the slightest capacity to change things. Unless you have a God you wish to blame. Ought can refer to many things besides moral injunction: you ought to try balsamic vinegar on vanilla ice cream, it’s delicious - I’m not attempting to bring you in line, just offering a suggestion. Of course, if it is moral in that case, then “delicious” is an objective description, by your views. :slight_smile:

Then measure pain, not suffering. And measure pleasure. And reduce well-being to pain and pleasure.

Oh for godssakes. You see how this is begging the question, right? To say that “Good is good regardless of context” doesn’t tell you a freaking thing about what “good” is. And I seriously doubt you want to put the phrase “Aggregate best world” into the mouth of a deontologist. I seriously doubt that…

Everytime you say something that implies a distinction between a prudential ought, and a moral ought, you are begging the question… because I asked you pages ago to explain the difference that I don’t seem to see.

Unless the ought just refers to “trying new things” or “seeing if you like what I like”—or is just plainly false in this example! In any case, I see no difference.

Get as many people on an opium drip as society can sustain, then. Good luck with selling that as the definitive answer to human morality.

Morality is context-independent to the deontologist.

“That baby ought not have been born so” isn’t a prudential ought. How can one be prudent about such things?

I don’t believe you do. Ah well.

Though seriously, minor quibbles like morality aside, good balsamic vinegar on vanilla ice cream is good.

But she already thinks that, in fact, it is wicked; and for any number of reasons.

So, sure, that she has reasons is an objective fact. That they are good reasons is a matter of opinion. She may be a socialist convinced that capitalism has turned the world into a moral cesspool.

That’s a reason. Is it a fact about the world? Some say yes and others say no. And they can all give you reasons. Lots of them. How then does science or philosophy determine if they are good reasons. At best you can go down the escape hatch: “someday we will know this for sure but it’s hard to be certain now because these things are complex.”

All I’m looking for is an argument able to convince me that “capitalism = a wicked world” or “capitalism = a virtuous world” is an argument that might possibly be made objectively. I am not suggesting that it can’t be, only that you have not convinced me that it can. This is my escape hatch: that, in a world sans God, these things [i.e. value judgments] can’t be known. Not wholly. Not objectively.

But, as an ironist, I accept that my own point of view here is just that: a personal prejudice.

Like yours is.

Yes, so again, maybe something’s left out—I’d be glad to hear what you think it is.

That’s wonderful for a deontologist.

Begging the question again. I haven’t made the distinction, so to say it’s prudent but not moral, or moral but not prudent, is to beg the question of what you mean by the distinction.

What are her reasons? Why are those her reasons? What are her reasons?

You do that, you do philosophy. Period.

Logic and empirical fact.

I’ve already explained why Math is subjective, because it is language, but how it refers to the objective, often. That Math exists or is used is an objective fact, mathematical equations can be Empirically experienced. I’ve also determined that the goal of scientific inquiry is to determine what is objectively true, so you’re just repeating what I said there.

The subjectivity, or lack thereof, of Math and Science have nothing to do with reasons.

I’m not going to answer all of those questions in the second paragraph as they should really be reserved for different threads. Besides, I would just be answering with reasons which would lead to more questions. I agree that my reasons are certainly refutable, but I’m not sure that a morally based reason can strictly be, “Wrong,” certainly some are more unusual than others…

I will answer to the negative emotional impact. It is a matter of my opinion, unless I know that an individual has a decent enough relationship with his family. He may have no family alive. His family may hate him. Unless I know him, then I don’t really know.

beg the question - to use an argument that assumes as proved the very thing one is trying to prove

Thank you. If Only_Humean was wondering, that should show him.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1S8Wqnvuao[/youtube]

I think this thread is pretty much done. I wouldn’t say I’m totally dusting off my hands, after a job well-done… but something close to that. A few honorable mentions are worth making. Dan~, for one, was a beacon of reasonableness when reasonableness came at a premium, and the dark mist of obscurantism overhung ILP. JSSaint made some nice comments. Ambigui asked the right questions—it’s just a matter now of how badly he wants to be the King. I have confidence, regardless. If there was a “most improved” award, it’d go to phyllo. Big progress there… asking the tough questions. Pav and Faust were like Bert and Ernie… siding with the contract business, citing each other’s refuted posts as refutation of other’s. Everybody knows how the contract business ended up. You can draw up the most ridiculous contract imaginable, and the contract will still be ridiculous… it doesn’t justify or underwrite anything to do with morality, but is only worthy if it captures what has to do with morality itself. Most people here are consequentialists now, I think, broadly speaking. Ambigui gets it now. And that’s pretty much it. Good night and good luck.

I knew we were bound to agree on something.

Yes, but, again, Socrates and the philosophic “method” you employ here has a transcending Truth that one can rely on outside the cave. Or however this is understood philosophically by realists. You ask enough questions and eventually you reach a mythical formal morality and the merely existential points of view rooted in dasein become…inadequate?

But all I propose here are particular worlds understood by particular daseins. And particular daseins have reasons to embrace capitalism and reasons to eschew it. And, with no equivalent of the Platonic entity able to parcel out more Formal truths down here “on earth”, we are forced to rely on the extent to which we have come to believe our own existential prejudices reflect a “greater” good.

You have no God though. So, instead, you must reconstruct objectivity out of Reason. But the variables here are so complex [think “mind” alone!] there are any number of ways to define the words used in the analysis to make this “true”.

And then around and around we go speculating as to whether the meaning you have ascribed to them [producing, tautologically, a particular sequence of ideas deemed “logical”] is the meaning everyone should assign them—commensurable, of course, with how we each then relate this to “universality”.

Then we have to reconfigure these words so that somehow they are – theoretically? – in alignment with what we construe to be true empirically about the world around us. And “I” in it.

Then one day we are all dead and gone and the next generation takes up this seemingly Sisyphusian task.

Are we dismissed, your majesty?

You’re proposing scientific measures of morality in terms of neurological activity, not me. I think the project’s far wide of the mark.

So you’re giving up on this line? As you wish.

I’m not begging any question. I said the statement is not a moral one, you bring in prudence, I say it’s not prudential either. Whether they’re the same or not.

It seems you’re not interested in following the arguments, or maybe that there are too many going on in the thread and you’re confusing my points with others’. In any case, it’s a good time to let it rest.

Give me a single reason to think it’s off the mark. That’s what I’ve been asking you for, and you haven’t given a single one. Let’s be honest, whatever points you brought up earlier have been dealth with in such a way that you are now making yourself look to me like the Black Knight blocking the path forward without your arms and legs.

What line? Clearly morality is not context independent, as we both have agreed. Do you now want to give me a reason to think I should have to defend some deontological point?

Then explain what kind of ‘ought’ it is. Why should I have to help you explain yourself when I haven’t an idea what you’re referring to…?