On Morals
98 Responses
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You have to be called George for that role.
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Awfully sorry to interupt, but this is kind of a moral issue...
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I'm surprised so many people think suicide is OK. I guess the question matters a lot for that one.
I'm also really surprised about the depth of feeling about fur in farming nation. All leather must be nude?
Frankly, I'd like to see some polling on meta-ethics: how many people prefer Kant's categorical imperative to Benthamite utilitarianism, for instance.
LOL, you'd need a huge sample to find the people who knew the difference. It's also a hard question, since they might not be mutually exclusive - you could apply Kant and get Bentham in a lot of cases. Which is really more a problem with Kant, I think. In trying to be more general, he simply becomes unclear.
That said, I'd argue that most moral questions boil down to the "icky/not icky" test for most people. Just how we're wired, I suppose. Plus, if you hear about people who have derived a substantive moral principle and actually stick to it (say, Kant, Peter Singer), they usually come across as inflexible, humourless prigs. Who may be right, but that's beside the point. ;)
Not really. They may also be wrong. Or (my view) there might not be any "absolute" right or wrong about the matter at all. The problem with moral theories is that the only litmus test is "moral intuitions". It's also, generally, the only source for the base axioms of most theories. So rejecting moral intuitions later on seems like a particular untenable position - in doing so you are rejecting the very basis your theory sits on.
Mine is not a popular position though. I've heard it described as "ethical non-cognitivism" or "emotivism". It boils down to saying that morals are like tastes - totally arbitrary, although probably shared amongst groups, but certainly without "logical" or "scientific" basis. It makes it hard to argue about morals, since you have to change the language you use to describe the things you are talking about. Right and wrong in morals are not the same as right and wrong in propositions, despite using the same words. Practically, it's not a particularly useful position in moral debate (in fact it suggests that moral debate is basically a popularity contest). So I have to mentally code everything I say about morals as "I like", or "I don't like" in place of "It's right" or "It's wrong". But I still think non-cognitivism is true.
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It boils down to saying that morals are like tastes - totally arbitrary, although probably shared amongst groups, but certainly without "logical" or "scientific" basis.
Actually, I basically agree with this position. Except that I tend to think of it as a variant on social contract theory - the notion that what is right and wrong is, well, what we think it is. That said, a discussion of any potential underlying principles can be useful, as most people seem to want to refer to a principle a bit deeper than "we all think this is true".
I managed to nicely time becoming a moral sceptic with finishing my MA thesis in ethics. Handy that one.
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Although men are more accepting of sex outside of marriage, women are more accepting of divorce.
Modus Penis?
Yes I have been reading, ;-)Any of you guys been in the position of an executor of a will backing out and leaving a legal vacuum?
WTF?
Anyhoo, like the new site so far and thanks for the edit button, who thought of that?.
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Steve Barnes: yes.
In 2001, my uncle died: the person he had named as his executor/trustee was in a distant & very foriegn country (Saudi Arabia) and declined the job. Our family got together and fingered me...it took 3 months for the court to accept the change and probate to be granted (and there's still a couple of estate matters to be completed.) It was an interesting learning curve, and a bit more complex than for most e/ts (e.g. had to organise the formation of a whanau trust, & deal with Canadian government authorities, as my uncle had worked there for nearly 40 years...)
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Spokesperson for Immorality
There'd be a queue (with lots of shoving and bribery).
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I managed to nicely time becoming a moral sceptic with finishing my MA thesis in ethics. Handy that one.
Heh, you held out! I turned moral skeptic during my first class on Ethics, and spent the next couple of years trying to talk myself out of it. I found that it was nearly impossible to continue discussing ethics in a constructive philosophical manner - the position really suggests that any further study of ethics should be pursued from an anthropological point of view, looking at the customs of humans. Normative theories kind of bounce off.
Which is actually a bit of a suckful position to find yourself in, when asked for an opinion (or feeling like your opinion should be heard). It means that I can't give reasons that I really believe in intellectually for any moral position. All I can give is my own intuitions, and if they clash with other people's (and they always do), then we're just left with an impasse. All argumentation on the subject seems dishonest to me, at the deepest level.
So I pursued ethics without wanting to commit to any theory. Some theories came closer to my intuitions than others, (utilitarianism being the best fit) but I always find counter-intuitive examples can be given, so ultimately the theory gets rejected. Not that intuition is much of a better guide - it conflicts internally quite a lot too. Having mastered some of the theories, I find that the only real power that confers is the ability to understand exactly where a whole bunch of dogmas come from, and in some cases to turn other people round by discovering the internal logic of their position. But why they should then move to my position is simple verbal sleight of hand (sleight of mouth?). It's the Socratic tactic of exploiting the logically exhausted mind. Sometimes people turn me around with a powerful counterexample that hits me squarely in the intuitions. All of the theory is just backdrop to that, to make it sound like it's deep.
That said, a discussion of any potential underlying principles can be useful, as most people seem to want to refer to a principle a bit deeper than "we all think this is true".
Yes, I think apparent depth is a powerful thing. It helps us ignore the conflicting moral intuitions that we must otherwise feel...conflicted about. Moral theories are powerful tools for exploiting minds. They're banners to rally around, weapons to beat opponents down with. They may not generally appeal to opponents, but they may consolidate friends, which can be just as important in a battle. It's a symbiotic relationship.
I have to say, it's not the kind of philosophy I liked. I went for logic, language, meaning.
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Wow, two emotivists in one place! (Yeah I think you're right, Ben: I'd guess your position isn't very typical.)
It boils down to saying that morals are like tastes - totally arbitrary, although probably shared amongst groups, but certainly without "logical" or "scientific" basis.
Isn't that contradictory? If morals are totally arbitrary, why would they even be shared amongst groups? Also, even in less "enlightened" and scientific times than ours people discussed moral matters using logic and reason.
Actually, I basically agree with this position [the one quoted from Ben above]. Except that I tend to think of it as a variant on social contract theory - the notion that what is right and wrong is, well, what we think it is.
But is what we think based on reasoning of some kind, to some degree, or purely arbitrary?
The classic refutation of emotivism is from Brant: it’s obvious that moral statements are not like “taste” statements. People can, and often do, change their moral views based on reason. Furthermore, when they do, they no longer consider their old views merely “different” (such as with changes of taste), but actually wrong (such as if they come to understand that the world is not flat after all, but spherical).
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Isn't that contradictory? If morals are totally arbitrary, why would they even be shared amongst groups?
Why shouldn't they? Arbitrary doesn't necessarily mean random.
Also, even in less "enlightened" and scientific times than ours people discussed moral matters using logic and reason.
Were any conclusions ever drawn though? Was anything ever actually settled? Seriously, we're still having the same arguments now, and they're still not settled. Doesn't that suggest a paucity of actual truth to the matter?
But is what we think based on reasoning of some kind, to some degree, or purely arbitrary?
That's a very hard question to answer. "Reasoning" can be very unreasonable, to the point of arbitrariness. Especially where morals and tastes are concerned. It can and is frequently used merely to confirm existing prejudices.
The classic refutation of emotivism is from Brant: it’s obvious that moral statements are not like “taste” statements. People can, and often do, change their moral views based on reason. Furthermore, when they do, they no longer consider their old views merely “different” (such as with changes of taste), but actually wrong (such as if they come to understand that the world is not flat after all, but spherical).
Yes, that is a classic example of why my position is not popular. It takes quite a lot of work to point out that you changed your usage of "wrong" mid-sentence there. Certainly people move from calling a view right to calling it wrong, and they give reasons. But if you do not assume that there is truth to the matter, then you can equate calling it wrong to "I don't like it". Which is quite different to a statement like "the world is flat". This is a statement about the world, not a statement about one's own preferences, and there could well be a truth that is independent of the person making the claim. It's could even be independent of people altogether.
Perhaps the dynamic of the movement of these tastes is not identical to tastes of the tongue, since, as you point out, it's not common to 'reverse' a taste, and go from liking it to disliking it. But it can and does happen. Furthermore, a number of tastes are acquired with a huge amount of input from the functions of the mind. Tastes may evoke memories, for instance, which are pleasant and override a (perhaps natural) tendency to dislike them. Or they may evoke unpleasant memories and cause revulsion where it did not occur before. Tastes can build upon each other, in increasing subtlety, until you can like something that you would previously have found utterly disgusting. I think this is not uncommon, even.
Now you could come back to me and say that when people say "X moral is wrong", they are not intending to say "I don't like X moral". They are intending to speak of the actual morality of the matter, and are making a factual statement independent of themselves about the matter. But that again presupposes that there is an actual truth of the matter. Perhaps there is not.
I could say in all earnest say that "All unicorns have a single horn". And I would be fully intending to actually talk about actual unicorns. But since there probably are no actual unicorns, there would actually be no truth or falsity to the matter of how many horns they have, and the statement would most likely end up as false (if you decide that it is a valid proposition). Perhaps morals are like unicorns - human fictions - and everything we say about them is either false (if they are to be considered propositions), or neither true nor false, just something we say for an effect. I think this is the case.
I'm not committed to any particular translation of moral statements into emotive ones. There can be any number of effects one is after in making a moral statement. Often, people espousing morals don't believe in them at all, they just want others to. Sometimes they just want approval from the group, or an individual. Sometimes they're just trying to solve a practical problem.
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So, how about suicide then BenWilson?
I firmly hold that all mentally healthy adults have the absolute right to commit suicide. Whenever, whyever. Life can get so onerous (for whatever reason) as to be unbearable, and extinction is preferable (Note well: I am an atheist. 'Afterlife' is a non sequiteur.)
Oooo...is the permanant log-in 'on this computer' finally working too? Kudos Cacti! -
Islander, I don't much like the idea of it. It might make sense to relieve oneself from unbearable pain, or a life without prospects of happiness, or to avoid an even worse outcome (like torture, followed by being killed anyway), but as a response to the kind of things a lot of people commit suicide for, it's just shortsighted. Life has many unforeseen reversals.
But it's a difficult question, and highly situational. Why do you ask, btw? I said I was surprised that suicide was considered so acceptable, but by that I mean I thought most people would be against it. For myself, if the question was "Are you always against suicide?" then the answer would be no. If it was "Should anyone who feels like killing themselves any time be allowed to?" then I would answer no to that as well.
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Oh, and the fur/leather thing:
I have a vegan friend whom I totally respect. Deep vegan = straw & rubber sandals and *entirely artificial fibres* for all clothing. I really wasnt being unkind when I said, O, all that stuff comes coal? Oil? And coal? Oil? comes from-
his compromise is to use recyclable clothing (of the non-animal kind.) Which seems to me to be really committed to his ethos.
I happily kill & eat fish, and eat bird meat when I know how the bird has lived, been raised, been killed.. I will also eat, with relish but very rarely, mammal meat that trusted family & friends have shot. And once that has all happened, I will cheerfully utilise the leather/fur/feathers.
Yep, I understand the dalmation puppy factor - but is it just the seal pups? Or a huge dichotomy between your veal and your swanky slinkskin bag? -
Thanks BenWilson: I asked because most of my - can we call it consensus-group? Family/friends/knowledgable people whom I esteem? who think as I do - it's an ever-ready option for all sane adults if things become unbearable.
"Should anyone who feels like killing themselves any time be allowed to?" - well, that wasnt what I said: it was sane adults....and as for 'life has many unforseen reversals": well, not in several instances I'm thinking of, know of, regret the dead person: bone cancer; 15years of unrelieved severe depression (I call this person an ultimate hero); living with a severe untreatable skin disease until death really was her better option, and quadriplegia.
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I actually meant "why did you ask me ?". Was it just because I was up at that time (late night infant feeding duty)?
It looks like your reason for exceptions to a no-suicide rule are much the same as mine. As I said right at the start - the exact question matters a great deal. I'm firmly in favor of voluntary euthanasia for the terminally ill. I recently saw how that can work, even, a friend died of cancer. She was eventually sent home with enough morphine to control the considerable pain, and pretty much overdosed on it, over a period of a few days. But other friends have from time to time expressed suicidal thoughts, and I've always made a point of doing my utmost to talk them out of it, however I can. Usually the best way is to just cheer them up, but in at least one case I (and everyone else) said that the person just needed to get out of their bad relationship. They've been fine ever since they did exactly that.
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Pretty good response, Ben. I’m not convinced, but your rebuttal of the “Brant” criticism is better than I thought it would be.
Were any conclusions ever drawn though? Was anything ever actually settled? Seriously, we're still having the same arguments now, and they're still not settled. Doesn't that suggest a paucity of actual truth to the matter?
I guess that depends on what you mean. Progress has been made in many areas. I think the sense of a lack of progress is overemphasized. (I expand on this thought a little in the first part of this old blog entry) Sure, there’s probably someone somewhere willing to argue any moral philosophical point, but so? There are still people who do not accept that the earth not flat. Anyway, further elaboration on this would be too much of a digression.
Perhaps the dynamic of the movement of these tastes is not identical to tastes of the tongue, since, as you point out, it's not common to 'reverse' a taste, and go from liking it to disliking it. But it can and does happen.
Sure. My point is not that taste doesn’t change, but that it doesn’t change because of evidence or reasoned argument. For a literal example: I like broccoli now. As a teenager I did not. My previous taste was not incorrect or misinformed - it simply was what it was. There’s no way to make an argument, or show some evidence, that my view of broccoli's taste was wrong. That’s just not how taste works. For a less literal example: kids often have favourite animals as they grow up, and these sometimes change. These preferences are capricious: intuitive, emotive, not amenable to rational argument or evidence - they are truly arbitrary in that regard.
Emotivism holds that moral views are just like those taste preferences above: “Racism is wrong” is the same as saying something like “I think spider webs are prettier than butterflies” or “I don‘t think purple looks good on you”. Excuse the stereotype, but the example I’m about to use is true … My friend from a conservative family in a small town held anti-homosexual views. He changed his views over the period of a few years at university. Clearly his change of moral position on sexuality is not the same as his change of taste for veges, or change of favourite colour. Going back to racism, if it can be argued based on reason and facts we know about the world that racism is wrong, then “racism is wrong” is different from “this tastes nicer than that”. One reason why racism is misguided is that there really is no such thing as race (in the sense basically outlined here). To counter the ‘racism is wrong’ proposition, one must make counter-arguments about the world and facts we know about it. Thus, to say the moral statement “racism is wrong” is no different than the statement “broccoli tastes yuk” is not tenable.
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Steve, thanks for your reply. That was an interesting post in your blog too.
I think discussing the extent to which philosophy as an entire discipline has produced real answers that have spun off into sciences is a red herring. We were discussing whether it has done so for questions of morality, and it really doesn't matter if physics is now in the hands of physicists, rather than philosophers. The question is "is morality like physics?". I don't think so.
Philosophers in the time of Plato were considered authorities (usually by themselves) on both morality and physics. Don't you find it highly suspicious that after 2 millenia, one of those disciplines gradually left the hands of philosophers and the other did not? We are still having a debate right now that Plato would surely understand and probably have had with his mates. But he sure as hell wouldn't get much about relativity physics, or how the internet works, or evolutionary biology. So much progress has been made that we take for granted, that he just wouldn't have the background at all.
I know what you are trying to say about the 'reasoning' behind liking broccoli appearing quite dissimilar to the reasoning behind morals. Physical taste has a logic of its own, as does the way that children change their preferences for favorite animals. What you are trying to say is that the reasoning behind moral decisions is in some way superior to those kind of things. What I'm saying is that this is an assertion .
You can't prove that moving from an anti-homosexual position to a pro-homosexual one is a rational decision, just because someone who became educated changed their position. I discovered a taste for broccoli during my own university education, mostly on account of living with someone who cooked it nicely. But I can't claim that broccoli IS nice, on the strength of that. At University, it's likely that one will meet quite a few openly homosexual people and discover that they are not bad after all. But the opposite can happen too - I'm damned sure a few people I know became much more homophobic during the same period.
I hope you can see my point that you've done little more to prove that moral statements are statements about facts of the world than to merely assert it. Suggesting that countering "racism is wrong" must be done by argumentation is wishful - most of the ways that we counter such an idea are actually non-rational - we live with people of many races and find that they're not so bad. Or not, quite often, so the matter can't really be considered settled. Sure, I don't like racism, but I don't claim to have the power of science behind me on this one. I don't even claim to have the majority behind me. Perhaps I could claim to have the majority of educated people behind me, but even then, I'm not so sure. Quite frankly, I'm happy enough just to consider it my preference, rather than claim it to be the one true preference. I would like other people to have this preference, and that is pretty much the effect I go for when I condemn racism.
Which is, as I said before, one of the suckful things about the position. It's definitely easier to be an absolutist when one wants to change other people's minds, insisting that there is a truth, and that you know it, carries a lot more weight than merely taking a side.
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Steve, thanks for your reply. That was an interesting post in your blog too.
Thanks. I think you just doubled the readership of that blog post.
It's definitely easier to be an absolutist when one wants to change other people's minds, insisting that there is a truth, and that you know it, carries a lot more weight than merely taking a side.
I'm too many beers into Friday evening to address all your points at the moment. I may do so later in the weekend. I'll just say for now for the record, in case it's not clear, that I am not an absolutist. I think there can be moral truths within certain contexts, and in that sense moral propositions aren't arbitrary, and are not purely expressions of preference. But I don't think they exist as absolute truths either, given to us from God, or an abstract place of ideas.
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Thanks. I think you just doubled the readership of that blog post.
Heh, yup metaphysics doesn't appeal to so many people. But it was my bag, in my day, and I had a lot of my best discussions about it a little bit drunk.
I'll just say for now for the record, in case it's not clear, that I am not an absolutist.
I don't doubt you. Philosophy training can leave people with an unusual collection of beliefs - not necessarily wrong beliefs, though. Personally a lot of them are held in my mind as theories, possible truths, rather than things I actually believe - that set is very much smaller, and the set of things I absolutely will not budge on is actually empty. To that end people often think I'm insincere. They might even be right but there you go - I'm not going to lie and say I hold firm beliefs in what I don't. It's a fine line between sophisticated and sophistry.
Certainly I think that there are many true statements that can be made about morals and how humans generally see them, and I also have a moral position. I just get less and less convinced that it's 'rational' the older I get.
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Thanks BenWilson - no disagreements. I've 3 times had the fortunate experience of talking to someone who is really down, feeling all is useless, no-one loves them, might as well die etc. (with 2 having made preparations to do just that) and been able to suggest other possibilities - an overseas research trip (for which I was able to give intros); a pet for another person (an alpaca of all things), and a course for someone who was a total foodie but...didnt...quite...realise...he was (very happy now, fat instead of lean & haggard, and will probably die of heart disease but -happy!)
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The question of allowing suicide for someone who isn't going to die anyway is especially complicated when there's a high chance that the person isn't in their right mind. Mental illness can come in clusters, and feeling depressed may not be the whole story - I'm extremely wary of giving advice to anyone who seems to be seeing things I can't. I want to help but some people need it from professionals, and amateurs can actually do harm. Maybe the problem is actually chemical (or too many chemicals!) sometimes. But I'm equally wary of saying that people who don't see things the same way as me or others should be deprived of their rights. Suicide is probably the biggest call a person will make in their life, if they do it at a young age, so it shouldn't be taken lightly. I especially despise when it is used as a threat to control and manipulate people - the Japanese seem to have taken this practice to a fine art.
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My attitude towards this can be best summed up by "existence is better than non-existence".
I liken it to the temperature scale. On the "happiness" scale, being in the negatives is obviously bad, but, in my view, death is not 0 degrees Celsius, it is 0 degrees Kelvin. If you are dead, the essence that is you ceases to exist - this cannot be better than any state in which you can exist.
Obviously, this is stated rather baldly, and I'm sure, when push comes to slow-lingering-death, there may become a time to hasten the end, but I like "existence is better than non-existence" as an adage to live by.
(Heh - I've just googled it and come up with pages referring to "Augustine", "Nietzsche", "Leibniz", "Elsner", et al, so I guess philosophers have discussed this a bit already).
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They had to talk about something while waiting to die.
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Interesting discussion, if a little academic and over intelectualised but what the hey. ;-)
The concept of "Do as you would be done by" has always worked for me.
I would not like my stuff stolen, so I would not steal from others and hope that my example would be followed, if you see what i mean.
The whole 10 commandments thing is an extension of this but in a more proscriptive form and the thing runs like a stream through Judeaic culture.
We could try to deconstruct the moral aspect and say things like "It is wrong for me to kill because I would not like to be killed but if a person is willing to die for a cause the would he have the moral right to kill for that same cause?" which is a justification for war.
So could a person say "I would not like to be poor therefore I must work hard and become rich" here, in my book at least, is were complex moral codes become excuses for behaviour. Because to become rich, as opposed to being comfortably well off, means the exploitation of others. Calvinism is a case in point here, the protestant work ethic and the "God" given right to rule etc.. -
if a little academic and over intelectualised but what the hey
That's actually one of my main reasons for the position of 'emotivism'. If morals are like tastes, then, as with wine-tasting, one can work on them to a very great degree. But do you really need to learn wine-tasting to know if you like wine? And, having learned a lot about the tasting of wine, are you any more "right" about it, than the naive taster? Certainly you are more sophisticated and educated in your tastes, but fundamentally it comes down to whether you like it or not. Just about every avenue of human taste has highly sophisticated tasters - think about people who sample cars widely and lovingly - are they necessarily better judges of a better car? If you jump in a car and love it, but the connoisseur hates it, are you wrong? Almost inevitably, connoisseurs have very different tastes to the naive, but that only makes the cars they love good for them.
Similarly with morals. Having sampled them widely, one is certainly in a position to compare them with one another. But perhaps, having done so, one actually distances oneself from the original motivations, and certainly from the common motivations.
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