i applaud the attempt, but don’t actually fully agree with any of your main points. The missing component is the acknowledgement that we are all running on corrupt hardware, and don’t have infinite compute power.
a) This is a fine goal, but completely impossible if you expect simple, human-operable principles. Instead, a good human moral structure acknowledges contradictions and tensions among it’s tenets.
b) I can’t tell if you’re arguing moral realism (moral structure is a fact), or just that you think it should be acceptable to people with certain beliefs. Since there are no facts with which literally everyone agrees, this is probably doomed.
c) The simplified version of a moral theory which can fit in a person’s head, or be communicated across individuals in a lifetime cannot be so perfect that it applies in all cases. Blind adherence to any small set of strictures without impossible calculation levels can always go wrong.
I’m also not sure I get your distinction between personal and societal. I think you mean “applied to yourself” and “enforced on others”. This is a fine point to keep in mind, and to note that extra humility is needed when interacting with others. That said, a moral theory which doesn’t specify when you can (and should/must) coerce or punish others is pretty useless.
You are right that we have limited computational power, but this is a theoretical tool. I do not grant that a) is impossible—it can be achieved by either having a system that relies on a single principle (e.g. libertarianism) or one that relies on ordered principles, so that if two conflict in a particular scenario, you go with the highest ranking one.
On (b), insane people & postmodernists aside, I do think there are facts on which everyone agrees… and re the latter, I do not know how seriously I take their disagreements with objective facts given that I have yet to witness one jump out of Sokal’s window!
Yes, that’s what I mean about societal vs personal. A societal theory should be coercive, which is exactly why it must meet these criteria—otherwise, if it doesn’t meet (a) there will be situations where the theory will coerce you to perform two mutually exclusive actions, if it doesn’t meet (b) you won’t get people to agree to a covenant that allows for coercion and if it doesn’t meet (c), if you start coercively applying its principles, you will end up with a dystopia.
Consider a steelman of the postmodernist position:
“Every question of major concern contains some element of evaluation, and thereforecannot be settled as a matter of objective fact.”
As I said though, I will start taking postmodernists seriously when they put their money where their mouths are and give a public display of how gravity isn’t necessarily a thing!
Thats a bad example twice over. In the first place, it is not a particularly realistic or fleshman example of something
pomos say. For another, its somewhat defensible scientifically.
Any scientific theory is subject to refutation, hence the not necessarily. In particular, gravity is less of an independent entity in relativity than it is in Newtonian physics.
OK, serious response: if you don’t want to admit the existence of facts, then the whole conversation is pointless—morality comes down to personal preference. That’s fine as a conclusion—but then I don’t want to see anyone who holds it calling other people immoral.
I didn’t say anything amounting to “there are no facts”...and furthermore I wasnt even citing my own views, but those of postmodernists...and furthermore wasn’t attributing wholesale rejection of facts to them either. You seem to have rounded off my comment to “yay pomo”. Please read more carefully in the future.
First, you wrote “Every question of major concern contains some element of evaluation, and therefore cannot be settled as a matter of objective fact”—if this does not mean to say “there are no facts”, I am not sure what it is trying to say.
Second, this whole this is pertaining to the second criterion. My point is that rejecting this criterion, for whatever reason, is saying that you are willing to admit arbitrary principles—but these are by definition subjective, random, not grounded in anything. So you are then saying that it’s okay for a moral theory to be based on what is, at the end of the day, personal preference.
Third, if this isn’t your view, why bring it up? I don’t think it’s conductive to a discussion to say “well, I don’t think so, but some people say...” If we all agree that this position is not valid, why bother with it? If you do think it’s valid, then saying “it’s not my view” is confusing.
First, you wrote “Every question of major concern contains some element of evaluation, and therefore cannot be settled as a matter of objective fact”—if this does not mean to say “there are no facts”, I am not sure what it is trying to say.
It starts “Every question of major concern” so,straight off, it allows facts of minor concern. But concern to whom? Postmodernists do not, I contend, deny the existence of basic physical facts as regard them as rather uninteresting. When Derrida is sitting in a rive gauche cafe stirring his coffee, he does not dispute the existence of the coffee, the cafe or the spoon, but he is not going to write a book about them either.
Postmodernists are, I think, more interested in questions of wide societal and political concern.
(perhaps you are, if your comment “everything else pertains to politics, and is kind of pointless if not;” i anything to go by). And those complex questions have evaluative components (in the sense of the fact/value divide). Which is compatible with the existence of factual components as well, whcih is another wayin which I am not denying the existence of facts.
But what I am proposing is a kind of on drop rule by which a question that is partly evaluative cannot be solved
on a straightforward factual basis. For instance, there are facts to the efect that a fetus that is so many weeks old is capable of independent existence, but they don’t tetll you whether abortion is right or wrong by themselves.
If you believe that some moral theories are better than others (and it wasn’t clear that you do, but I suspect it is so), why would you ever accept a personal theory that’s not good enough to be coerced on others?
I’m not saying you have to interfere, just that your moral theory should be good enough to specify when you can/should. There’s not a separate internal and external theory; any worthy theory is both.
If the point of a non-personal, universal or group-level, morality is to satisfy group level values, such as equality and justice, then the justification for coercion is that co ordination is necessary to achieve them, and voluntary co ordination is not sufficient.
If the point of personal morality is to achieve personal values, there is no justification for one person to impose it on another with different values.
Its not about how good theories are but what they are supposed to do.
Regardless, I think there’s a further distinction there that ArisC isn’t making. Actual systems of social enforcement don’t generally consist of enforcing all and only the tenets of a particular moral theory. No one (so far as I know) thinks it’s a fundamental moral principle that we should drive on the left or, as it may be, the right side of the road, or that we should pay 25% income tax rather than 20% or 30%, but this sort of thing is enforced, often quite vigorously. Presumably there’s some sort of moral system underlying the choice of things to enforce (though, given how laws are actually made, it will be a weird mishmash of the moral systems and non-moral preferences and pecuniary interests and so forth of the law-makers, and it certainly won’t satisfy any nice neat meta-level axioms except by good luck), but the things enforced will not be the same as the moral values leading to their selection.
Well, Since it’s not part of everyone’s moral theory, clearly we can’t impinge on people’s liberty to drive in their preferred lane.
Ok, sorry—please ignore that.
I suspect this is a good place for another level—how does your moral theory prescribe enforcement of morally-irrelevant actions? And does your meta-theory prefer theories with more enforcement of cohesion or more room for diversity?
i applaud the attempt, but don’t actually fully agree with any of your main points. The missing component is the acknowledgement that we are all running on corrupt hardware, and don’t have infinite compute power.
a) This is a fine goal, but completely impossible if you expect simple, human-operable principles. Instead, a good human moral structure acknowledges contradictions and tensions among it’s tenets.
b) I can’t tell if you’re arguing moral realism (moral structure is a fact), or just that you think it should be acceptable to people with certain beliefs. Since there are no facts with which literally everyone agrees, this is probably doomed.
c) The simplified version of a moral theory which can fit in a person’s head, or be communicated across individuals in a lifetime cannot be so perfect that it applies in all cases. Blind adherence to any small set of strictures without impossible calculation levels can always go wrong.
I’m also not sure I get your distinction between personal and societal. I think you mean “applied to yourself” and “enforced on others”. This is a fine point to keep in mind, and to note that extra humility is needed when interacting with others. That said, a moral theory which doesn’t specify when you can (and should/must) coerce or punish others is pretty useless.
You are right that we have limited computational power, but this is a theoretical tool. I do not grant that a) is impossible—it can be achieved by either having a system that relies on a single principle (e.g. libertarianism) or one that relies on ordered principles, so that if two conflict in a particular scenario, you go with the highest ranking one.
On (b), insane people & postmodernists aside, I do think there are facts on which everyone agrees… and re the latter, I do not know how seriously I take their disagreements with objective facts given that I have yet to witness one jump out of Sokal’s window!
Yes, that’s what I mean about societal vs personal. A societal theory should be coercive, which is exactly why it must meet these criteria—otherwise, if it doesn’t meet (a) there will be situations where the theory will coerce you to perform two mutually exclusive actions, if it doesn’t meet (b) you won’t get people to agree to a covenant that allows for coercion and if it doesn’t meet (c), if you start coercively applying its principles, you will end up with a dystopia.
Is liberty a fact?
Consider a steelman of the postmodernist position: “Every question of major concern contains some element of evaluation, and thereforecannot be settled as a matter of objective fact.”
As I said though, I will start taking postmodernists seriously when they put their money where their mouths are and give a public display of how gravity isn’t necessarily a thing!
Thats a bad example twice over. In the first place, it is not a particularly realistic or fleshman example of something pomos say. For another, its somewhat defensible scientifically.
Any scientific theory is subject to refutation, hence the not necessarily. In particular, gravity is less of an independent entity in relativity than it is in Newtonian physics.
ETA
How about responding to my strongman?
OK, serious response: if you don’t want to admit the existence of facts, then the whole conversation is pointless—morality comes down to personal preference. That’s fine as a conclusion—but then I don’t want to see anyone who holds it calling other people immoral.
I didn’t say anything amounting to “there are no facts”...and furthermore I wasnt even citing my own views, but those of postmodernists...and furthermore wasn’t attributing wholesale rejection of facts to them either. You seem to have rounded off my comment to “yay pomo”. Please read more carefully in the future.
First, you wrote “Every question of major concern contains some element of evaluation, and therefore cannot be settled as a matter of objective fact”—if this does not mean to say “there are no facts”, I am not sure what it is trying to say.
Second, this whole this is pertaining to the second criterion. My point is that rejecting this criterion, for whatever reason, is saying that you are willing to admit arbitrary principles—but these are by definition subjective, random, not grounded in anything. So you are then saying that it’s okay for a moral theory to be based on what is, at the end of the day, personal preference.
Third, if this isn’t your view, why bring it up? I don’t think it’s conductive to a discussion to say “well, I don’t think so, but some people say...” If we all agree that this position is not valid, why bother with it? If you do think it’s valid, then saying “it’s not my view” is confusing.
It starts “Every question of major concern” so,straight off, it allows facts of minor concern. But concern to whom? Postmodernists do not, I contend, deny the existence of basic physical facts as regard them as rather uninteresting. When Derrida is sitting in a rive gauche cafe stirring his coffee, he does not dispute the existence of the coffee, the cafe or the spoon, but he is not going to write a book about them either.
Postmodernists are, I think, more interested in questions of wide societal and political concern. (perhaps you are, if your comment “everything else pertains to politics, and is kind of pointless if not;” i anything to go by). And those complex questions have evaluative components (in the sense of the fact/value divide). Which is compatible with the existence of factual components as well, whcih is another wayin which I am not denying the existence of facts.
But what I am proposing is a kind of on drop rule by which a question that is partly evaluative cannot be solved on a straightforward factual basis. For instance, there are facts to the efect that a fetus that is so many weeks old is capable of independent existence, but they don’t tetll you whether abortion is right or wrong by themselves.
If you believe that some moral theories are better than others (and it wasn’t clear that you do, but I suspect it is so), why would you ever accept a personal theory that’s not good enough to be coerced on others?
Because what do I care how someone lives their personal life? I care the moment they start telling me how to live mine.
I’m not saying you have to interfere, just that your moral theory should be good enough to specify when you can/should. There’s not a separate internal and external theory; any worthy theory is both.
If the point of a non-personal, universal or group-level, morality is to satisfy group level values, such as equality and justice, then the justification for coercion is that co ordination is necessary to achieve them, and voluntary co ordination is not sufficient.
If the point of personal morality is to achieve personal values, there is no justification for one person to impose it on another with different values.
Its not about how good theories are but what they are supposed to do.
Regardless, I think there’s a further distinction there that ArisC isn’t making. Actual systems of social enforcement don’t generally consist of enforcing all and only the tenets of a particular moral theory. No one (so far as I know) thinks it’s a fundamental moral principle that we should drive on the left or, as it may be, the right side of the road, or that we should pay 25% income tax rather than 20% or 30%, but this sort of thing is enforced, often quite vigorously. Presumably there’s some sort of moral system underlying the choice of things to enforce (though, given how laws are actually made, it will be a weird mishmash of the moral systems and non-moral preferences and pecuniary interests and so forth of the law-makers, and it certainly won’t satisfy any nice neat meta-level axioms except by good luck), but the things enforced will not be the same as the moral values leading to their selection.
Well, Since it’s not part of everyone’s moral theory, clearly we can’t impinge on people’s liberty to drive in their preferred lane.
Ok, sorry—please ignore that.
I suspect this is a good place for another level—how does your moral theory prescribe enforcement of morally-irrelevant actions? And does your meta-theory prefer theories with more enforcement of cohesion or more room for diversity?