I know because she told me about the totalitarian dangers from such narrow thinking.
I’m more with Orwell, seeing the totalitarian dangers from non-realism.
I don’t know if you want to yank your Mom’s chain, but I think it would be fun to deal with irrationalists of all stripes by gleefully hitting the gibberish ball back into their court. Contradict yourself, then say that you’re “beyond” such limited thinking as logic. Claim “faith” in your nonsense. When she points out your claims are false, decry her totalitarianism.
And above all, do this when she has a practical purpose in mind and wants to get something real done.
A lot of people peddle this claptrap when they argue. Sam Harris has a catchy and appropriate term for it—playing tennis without a net. I think the only real response is to find where they want a net, and start playing without it, and see how they like it.
I’m more with Orwell, seeing the totalitarian dangers from non-realism.
Can you point to any historical examples of totalitarian regimes that adhered to an official ideology that contained non-realism (anti-realism, etc...) as a doctrine?
The Catholic Church? All this nasty material stuff isn’t the real you, there’s a magical kingdom “beyond” all this where you could live forever in your sparkly immaterial form, Satan has dominion over this world, always seeking ways to deceive you. It’s all a big mystery you can’t understand. Don’t believe your mind, don’t believe your senses, just believe and obey us coughcough, I mean God.
For secular antirealism, I recall Hitchens relating that the reaction to Orwell behind the Iron Curtain with respect to DoubleThink was “how does he know?” I don’t believe that the communists had an official antirealist stance, however. They were supposed to be scientific socialists. But when it becomes illegal and dangerous to disagree, people are forced into making statements contradicting their own minds, which is antirealism in practice if not in “official ideology”.
And of course, saying “I am antirealist” is not the kind of direct factual statement one should expect out of an antirealist. I’d expect mysterion or collectivist piffle.
Okay, it has become clear to me that you, the OP, and I are all have different definitions of “realism” in mind. Furthermore, this threads is full of confusions and people talking past each other. I lay the majority of the blame on the OP for using the term in a way completely alien to mainstream philosophy, but I messed up myself by only half-reading it and assuming he was discussing the philosophical position of realism (as it is used, say, in ethics or philosophy of science) rather than a mix of mystical thinking, circular reasoning, appeals to emotion, and selective scepticism.
I think his “something exists” is pretty standard philosophical realism as well.
Wikipedia:
Contemporary philosophical realism is the belief that our reality, or some aspect of it, is ontologically independent of our conceptual schemes, linguistic practices, beliefs, etc.
Seems to me like the totalitarian regimes see themselves as realist. They just refuse to update when their “reality” does not match the territory. Killing the people who point out the difference is easier. Sometimes they change opinions, but then the new opinion becomes the “reality”.
So I would say that totalitarian regimes profess realism. They just refuse the idea of updating, because they believe their map already matches the territory perfectly. And they also refuse the outside view, because they believe to be incomparable to others.
EDIT: Seems like I was probably wrong. I am not sure.
I’m more with Orwell, seeing the totalitarian dangers from non-realism.
I’m not aware of any tyranny that failed to assert a moral realist position. The relationship between their philosophies and physical reality was tenuous, but they didn’t act like they were uncertain.
I’m not aware of any tyranny that failed to assert a moral realist position.
The Soviet Union.
Communist doctrine was that morality is not objective but determined by economic relations; therefore, communists were free to operate under whatever morality was most convenient. Need to eliminate descendents, no reason to let those archaic moral principals against mass killing stand in your way.
I believe you’re correct as a matter of old school Communist ideology. Class struggle is an amoral battle between classes asserting their interests. Old style socialists and communists seem very different to me than their modern day US counterparts, who more explicitly justify their arguments on moral grounds.
I’d argue, however, that Marx and Marxism are shot through with moralisms, starting with the Labor Theory of Value, Surplus Value, etc. Any theory of Objective value is implicitly a morality.
I’d argue, however, that Marx and Marxism are shot through with moralisms, starting with the Labor Theory of Value, Surplus Value, etc. Any theory of Objective value is implicitly a morality.
Marxian value theory is not normative axiology; it’s a positive but partial theory of price formation and certain macroeconomic variables which is true in some worlds but not others.
(This is not to deny that people who try to change the world but deny being moralists are confused on that point or using language differently.)
No, because “value” had a pre-existing non-normative meaning in classical economics distinct from price. (Since this use of the word was already linked to value from the first, the phrase “labor theory of value” is redundant and as far as I know did not appear until marginalism dispensed with value.) A decent overview of the intellectual history if you are hopelessly nerdy enough to care is Ajit Sinha’s Theories of Value from Adam Smith to Piero Sraffa.
It is of course reasonable to argue that the categories of classical economics were fundamentally confused and inferior to those of marginalism (or for that matter some other system,) but to do so on the basis that “value” referred to something normative is to be fundamentally confused yourself about what classical economists were saying, like assuming that a “final cause” for Aristotle must be the most recent cause to act on something.
I’d argue, however, that Marx and Marxism are shot through with moralisms, starting with the Labor Theory of Value, Surplus Value, etc. Any theory of Objective value is implicitly a morality.
Agreed. They were reflectively inconsistent in much the same way the OP’s mother is inconsistent with respect to her (physical) non-realism.
The Soviet Union believed it was implementing a morality based on scientifically objective economic facts. That’s moral realism, not anti-realism. That the USSR was a tyranny and did terrible things isn’t inconsistent with their belief that they were doing what was objectively right.
Sure, they believed that the bourgeois value system functioned to maintain the bourgeois status quo (isn’t that true?). But you seem to be saying that disagreeing with the bourgeois value system is a moral anti-realist position. There’s nothing in the definition of moral realism that says particular moral realists must agree about what is right.
Suppose someone said Islam isn’t a religion because Muslims say Christianity is a false religion. That’s a misleading usage of the word “religion.” It’s just a clearer usage of “religion” to say that Islam and Christianity are religions with conflicting tenets. Likewise, bourgeois ideology and communist ideology are both value systems that assert they are reflections of the correct moral facts, and they clearly disagree on the content of moral facts.
Sure, they believed that the bourgeois value system functioned to maintain the bourgeois status quo (isn’t that true?). But you seem to be saying that disagreeing with the bourgeois value system is a moral anti-realist position.
They believed that the concept of morality itself was merely a tool of oppressors, or at best merely a tool that they might as well turn against the bourgeois.
Yes, you are proffering the inside view, and I am proffering the outside view.
Let x = the circumstance one finds oneself in, and let y = the choice one makes. Define f() as the function that converts x into y. By definition y = f(x). I think that “morality” is just the label we apply to a particular person or group’s f().
It is clearly true the BOURGEOIS(x) != COMMUNIST(x). But your position seems to be that COMMUNIST() cannot be labeled the “Communist morality” because they used the word “morality” exclusively to refer to BOURGEOIS() or FEUDALISM() (or whatever).
I’m not primarily interested in that assertion—instead, I’m asserting that Communists believed the function COMMUNIST() was validated by objective facts, external to any particular human mind. Likewise, I might assert that the Pope thinks CATHOLIC() is validated by objective facts, external to any particular human mind.
It is true that there is (at most) one status quo at a time. Further, I would expect the dominant morality of a particular moment to support the status quo, but that doesn’t imply that only one moral system is believed at any particular time.
I don’t know what you mean by asserting that there is only one status quo—it seems false. The status quo in France in 1788 wasn’t the same as the status quo in France in 1791.
Further, there’s nothing inherent in the concept of a morality that requires it agree that the current state of affairs is best. Mencius Moldbug has a morality, and he thinks the way western nations run their affairs is filled with nonsense.
I think Mussolini counts. I don’t have the original reference, but Mussolini argued that ethical relativism licensed Italians to champion and impose their values upon whomever they felt it appropriate to. Given the premises, Mussolini’s conclusion seems inevitable.
Everything I have said and done is these last years is relativism, by intuition. From the fact that all ideologies are of equal value, that all ideologies are mere fictions, the modern relativist infers that everybody has the right to create for himself his own ideology, and to attempt to enforce it with all the energy of which he is capable. If relativism signifies contempt for fixed categories, and men who claim to be the bearers of an objective immortal truth, then there is nothing more relativistic than fascism. —Benito Mussolini, Diuturna (1921)
Thanks. It’s very interesting that Mussolini labelled himself a moral relativist. But I’m not sure he was using the label consistent with how moral philosophers use the label. Consider the inference he draws from the falseness of all ideologies:
the modern relativist infers that (A) everybody has the right to create for himself his own ideology, and (B) to attempt to enforce it with all the energy of which he is capable.
(A) is a straightforward conclusion from anti-realism—although I’m not sure every moral anti-realist endorses it. (B) comes out of left field—there is no reason to think it follows from the premise that morality is not objective. If morality is not objective, then what justifies imposing the morality one created on others? Superior force predicts who will succeed in imposing their views. But from the outside view, there is no reason to think that actually winning is identical to deserving to win.
Contrast with physical realism, which has an outside view justification for deciding which theory is better: the theory with more accurate predictions should win. To get that kind of certainty in morality, one must adopt some inside view. And justifying which particular inside view to adopt by relying on the view adopted is just circular reasoning.
In the case of Mussolini, it turns out that the value system he adopted “valued” being imposed on others. But the quote you found suggests that he might have known this in advance—before he knew anything concrete about the value system he would adopt. That’s not something that moral anti-realism says you can know in advance.
More realistically, it’s likely that Mussolini choose his value system with knowledge of the contents, and specifically picked one that called for it to be imposed on others. But using this quality of the moral system as a litmus test for whether to pick it is not justified by moral anti-realism. Mussolini asserts the contrary, which is why I question whether he is using the label “moral relativist” appropriately.
I don’t quite think he asserts that. He merely claims that fascism is at least equal to anything else in measure of consistency with relativism. But I’m not too interested in the finer points of Mussolini interpretation. I’m mainly putting him forth in answer to your interest in non-moral-realist tyrants.
Fair enough, but whether Mussolini is accurate to label himself a moral relativist is fairly central to whether he disproves my “tyranny = moral realism” assertion.
Even if he did make the mistake of thinking relativism implies imposition, that need not invalidate his claim to be a moral relativist. Relativism remains consistent with imposition. And his comment that “all ideologies are mere fictions” certainly seems to point him in a broadly anti-realist direction.
Being uncertain about the truth-value a moral proposition is quite compatible with moral realism.
And only compatible with non-relativistic moral cognitivism. If moral propositions can’t be false, there’s nothing to be uncertain about. If a moral truth just amounts to my belief or my society’s belief, and I know what that belief is (which I do), then again uncertainty is out of place.
I may be misunderstanding you, but it seems I have the same objection to this assertion that I raised here. That is, I don’t necessarily know my own moral beliefs, let alone my society’s. (Of course, that’s not to say that you don’t; if all you meant by “which I do” was a claim about torekp’s knowledge, I withdraw my objection.)
If one has moral certainty and a moral anti-realist position, one is deeply confused. As far as I see, moral certainty requires a commitment to moral realism.
More generally, the parent to my comment asserted moral anti-realism was an intellectual precursor to totalitarianism. Because I’m not aware of any totalitarian regime that wasn’t a moral certainty regime (and therefore a moral realist regime), I am confused how a contrary philosophical position can be seen as a ideological precursor to totalitarianism.
If one has moral certainty and a moral anti-realist position, one is deeply confused.
It only seems that way to you because you’ve retained enough meta-moral realism to believe that there’s something wrong with having an inconsistent about your position on morality.
Er? I can believe that there’s no intersubjective or objective fact of the matter as to whether an act is right or wrong, merely an algorithm in my mind that makes moral judgments, and also not know whether I think rescuing kittens from a flood is right or wrong. I suppose I’m confused in that case about kitten-rescuing, but I’m not sure that counts as “deeply confused.”
If morality is just whatever is returned by the algorithm in your mind that makes moral judgments, then when that algorithm returns a result “no result” that is itself a result—what is there you do not know about the subject?
This can be contrasted to an algorithm in your mind designed to calculate objectively real things like prime numbers -- in that case you can still express uncertainty about whether 5915587279 is a prime number, because primes are a real thing with an objective definition and not just “whatever my mind considers to be prime”.
If morality is just whatever is returned by the algorithm in your mind that makes moral judgments, then when that algorithm returns a result “no result” that is itself a result—what is there you do not know about the subject?
If the algorithm in my mind returns “gee, I’m not sure… there are wrong things about X, and there are right things about X, and mostly it seems like I have to think about it more in order to be sure,” one possible interpretation of that result (and, in fact, the one I’m likely to provisionally adopt, as in my experience it often turns out to be true) is that if I think about it more, and more carefully, I will know more about my moral judgments about X than I do at that moment.
Sure, it’s possible that this is confabulation, and that what I experience as “not knowing what my judgment is” is really “not having yet made a judgment”. I’m not sure that distinction actually matters, though.
Note, also, that there is a difference between what I said (that morality is “an algorithm in my mind”) and what you said (morality is “whatever is returned by the algorithm in your mind”). I don’t know if that distinction matters, either, but it seems related… you are focused on an answer to a specific question in isolation, I am focused on the process that generates answers to a class of questions, often over time.
I think that if one has moral uncertainty and a moral anti-realist position, one is also deeply confused.
Why? There isn’t anything incoherent about assigning a non-zero or non-one probability to a proposition F that states that a sentence G is or is not propositional.
I suppose we should divide moral uncertainty into two categories: a) Non-certainty about whether there’s some (positive, negative or zero) “real moral value” attached to a given action X. b) Given that such a value exists, non-certainty about its value.
So far I considered moral uncertainty to just mean (b), but it can ofcourse mean (a) as well, you’re correct about that.
That’s… tempting. She will yell at me for sure, though. Plus, if I say she does the same thing, she will say it’s not the same (she told me it’s not the same, so I know she’s aware of her double standard).
I’m more with Orwell, seeing the totalitarian dangers from non-realism.
I don’t know if you want to yank your Mom’s chain, but I think it would be fun to deal with irrationalists of all stripes by gleefully hitting the gibberish ball back into their court. Contradict yourself, then say that you’re “beyond” such limited thinking as logic. Claim “faith” in your nonsense. When she points out your claims are false, decry her totalitarianism.
And above all, do this when she has a practical purpose in mind and wants to get something real done.
A lot of people peddle this claptrap when they argue. Sam Harris has a catchy and appropriate term for it—playing tennis without a net. I think the only real response is to find where they want a net, and start playing without it, and see how they like it.
Can you point to any historical examples of totalitarian regimes that adhered to an official ideology that contained non-realism (anti-realism, etc...) as a doctrine?
The Catholic Church? All this nasty material stuff isn’t the real you, there’s a magical kingdom “beyond” all this where you could live forever in your sparkly immaterial form, Satan has dominion over this world, always seeking ways to deceive you. It’s all a big mystery you can’t understand. Don’t believe your mind, don’t believe your senses, just believe and obey us cough cough, I mean God.
For secular antirealism, I recall Hitchens relating that the reaction to Orwell behind the Iron Curtain with respect to DoubleThink was “how does he know?” I don’t believe that the communists had an official antirealist stance, however. They were supposed to be scientific socialists. But when it becomes illegal and dangerous to disagree, people are forced into making statements contradicting their own minds, which is antirealism in practice if not in “official ideology”.
And of course, saying “I am antirealist” is not the kind of direct factual statement one should expect out of an antirealist. I’d expect mysterion or collectivist piffle.
Okay, it has become clear to me that you, the OP, and I are all have different definitions of “realism” in mind. Furthermore, this threads is full of confusions and people talking past each other. I lay the majority of the blame on the OP for using the term in a way completely alien to mainstream philosophy, but I messed up myself by only half-reading it and assuming he was discussing the philosophical position of realism (as it is used, say, in ethics or philosophy of science) rather than a mix of mystical thinking, circular reasoning, appeals to emotion, and selective scepticism.
Mostly agree, except I don’t understand why you think the OP’s use of “realism” is nonstandard.
I think his “something exists” is pretty standard philosophical realism as well.
Wikipedia:
Seems to me like the totalitarian regimes see themselves as realist. They just refuse to update when their “reality” does not match the territory. Killing the people who point out the difference is easier. Sometimes they change opinions, but then the new opinion becomes the “reality”.
So I would say that totalitarian regimes profess realism. They just refuse the idea of updating, because they believe their map already matches the territory perfectly. And they also refuse the outside view, because they believe to be incomparable to others.
EDIT: Seems like I was probably wrong. I am not sure.
I’m not aware of any tyranny that failed to assert a moral realist position. The relationship between their philosophies and physical reality was tenuous, but they didn’t act like they were uncertain.
The Soviet Union.
Communist doctrine was that morality is not objective but determined by economic relations; therefore, communists were free to operate under whatever morality was most convenient. Need to eliminate descendents, no reason to let those archaic moral principals against mass killing stand in your way.
I believe you’re correct as a matter of old school Communist ideology. Class struggle is an amoral battle between classes asserting their interests. Old style socialists and communists seem very different to me than their modern day US counterparts, who more explicitly justify their arguments on moral grounds.
I’d argue, however, that Marx and Marxism are shot through with moralisms, starting with the Labor Theory of Value, Surplus Value, etc. Any theory of Objective value is implicitly a morality.
Marxian value theory is not normative axiology; it’s a positive but partial theory of price formation and certain macroeconomic variables which is true in some worlds but not others.
(This is not to deny that people who try to change the world but deny being moralists are confused on that point or using language differently.)
Then they should have called it a labor theory of price, not a labor theory of value.
Marx was the worst kind of moralist and idealist—one that confuses his ideas for reality, and thinks he is objective and scientific.
No, because “value” had a pre-existing non-normative meaning in classical economics distinct from price. (Since this use of the word was already linked to value from the first, the phrase “labor theory of value” is redundant and as far as I know did not appear until marginalism dispensed with value.) A decent overview of the intellectual history if you are hopelessly nerdy enough to care is Ajit Sinha’s Theories of Value from Adam Smith to Piero Sraffa.
It is of course reasonable to argue that the categories of classical economics were fundamentally confused and inferior to those of marginalism (or for that matter some other system,) but to do so on the basis that “value” referred to something normative is to be fundamentally confused yourself about what classical economists were saying, like assuming that a “final cause” for Aristotle must be the most recent cause to act on something.
Agreed. They were reflectively inconsistent in much the same way the OP’s mother is inconsistent with respect to her (physical) non-realism.
Or they thought they were doing what was best to achieve a better society in the future. Everyone is the hero of their own story.
I fail to see how this is supposed to contradict what I said.
The Soviet Union believed it was implementing a morality based on scientifically objective economic facts. That’s moral realism, not anti-realism. That the USSR was a tyranny and did terrible things isn’t inconsistent with their belief that they were doing what was objectively right.
Specifically, they believed that the objective fact was that morality was not objective but something bourgeois used to oppress the proletariat.
Sure, they believed that the bourgeois value system functioned to maintain the bourgeois status quo (isn’t that true?). But you seem to be saying that disagreeing with the bourgeois value system is a moral anti-realist position. There’s nothing in the definition of moral realism that says particular moral realists must agree about what is right.
Suppose someone said Islam isn’t a religion because Muslims say Christianity is a false religion. That’s a misleading usage of the word “religion.” It’s just a clearer usage of “religion” to say that Islam and Christianity are religions with conflicting tenets. Likewise, bourgeois ideology and communist ideology are both value systems that assert they are reflections of the correct moral facts, and they clearly disagree on the content of moral facts.
They believed that the concept of morality itself was merely a tool of oppressors, or at best merely a tool that they might as well turn against the bourgeois.
Inside view vs. outside view.
Wait, which of us do you think is describing which view?
I think I’m describing inside view and you’re describing some kind of partial outside view.
Yes, you are proffering the inside view, and I am proffering the outside view.
Let x = the circumstance one finds oneself in, and let y = the choice one makes. Define f() as the function that converts x into y. By definition y = f(x). I think that “morality” is just the label we apply to a particular person or group’s f().
It is clearly true the BOURGEOIS(x) != COMMUNIST(x). But your position seems to be that COMMUNIST() cannot be labeled the “Communist morality” because they used the word “morality” exclusively to refer to BOURGEOIS() or FEUDALISM() (or whatever).
I’m not primarily interested in that assertion—instead, I’m asserting that Communists believed the function COMMUNIST() was validated by objective facts, external to any particular human mind. Likewise, I might assert that the Pope thinks CATHOLIC() is validated by objective facts, external to any particular human mind.
Isn’t there only one status quo, and don’t all mainstream value systems function to maintain it? For better or worse.
It is true that there is (at most) one status quo at a time. Further, I would expect the dominant morality of a particular moment to support the status quo, but that doesn’t imply that only one moral system is believed at any particular time.
I don’t know what you mean by asserting that there is only one status quo—it seems false. The status quo in France in 1788 wasn’t the same as the status quo in France in 1791.
Further, there’s nothing inherent in the concept of a morality that requires it agree that the current state of affairs is best. Mencius Moldbug has a morality, and he thinks the way western nations run their affairs is filled with nonsense.
Sure, one status quo at a time. But you didn’t label you didn’t label “status quo” with a time period, you labeled it with “bourgeois.”
I think Mussolini counts. I don’t have the original reference, but Mussolini argued that ethical relativism licensed Italians to champion and impose their values upon whomever they felt it appropriate to. Given the premises, Mussolini’s conclusion seems inevitable.
Edit: found it
Thanks. It’s very interesting that Mussolini labelled himself a moral relativist. But I’m not sure he was using the label consistent with how moral philosophers use the label. Consider the inference he draws from the falseness of all ideologies:
(A) is a straightforward conclusion from anti-realism—although I’m not sure every moral anti-realist endorses it.
(B) comes out of left field—there is no reason to think it follows from the premise that morality is not objective. If morality is not objective, then what justifies imposing the morality one created on others? Superior force predicts who will succeed in imposing their views. But from the outside view, there is no reason to think that actually winning is identical to deserving to win.
Contrast with physical realism, which has an outside view justification for deciding which theory is better: the theory with more accurate predictions should win. To get that kind of certainty in morality, one must adopt some inside view. And justifying which particular inside view to adopt by relying on the view adopted is just circular reasoning.
(B) follows from (A), at least if we take (B) as elliptical for
(B’) to attempt to enforce it, if the ideology indicates that this is valuable, with all the energy of which he is capable.
And Mussolini’s ideology presumably did indicate that enforcement of Italian values is valuable.
In the case of Mussolini, it turns out that the value system he adopted “valued” being imposed on others. But the quote you found suggests that he might have known this in advance—before he knew anything concrete about the value system he would adopt. That’s not something that moral anti-realism says you can know in advance.
More realistically, it’s likely that Mussolini choose his value system with knowledge of the contents, and specifically picked one that called for it to be imposed on others. But using this quality of the moral system as a litmus test for whether to pick it is not justified by moral anti-realism. Mussolini asserts the contrary, which is why I question whether he is using the label “moral relativist” appropriately.
I don’t quite think he asserts that. He merely claims that fascism is at least equal to anything else in measure of consistency with relativism. But I’m not too interested in the finer points of Mussolini interpretation. I’m mainly putting him forth in answer to your interest in non-moral-realist tyrants.
Fair enough, but whether Mussolini is accurate to label himself a moral relativist is fairly central to whether he disproves my “tyranny = moral realism” assertion.
Even if he did make the mistake of thinking relativism implies imposition, that need not invalidate his claim to be a moral relativist. Relativism remains consistent with imposition. And his comment that “all ideologies are mere fictions” certainly seems to point him in a broadly anti-realist direction.
Well put. Hmm . . . must think more about what’s wrong with my previous thesis.
Aren’t you confusing moral realism with moral certainty?
Being uncertain about the truth-value a moral proposition is quite compatible with moral realism.
And only compatible with non-relativistic moral cognitivism. If moral propositions can’t be false, there’s nothing to be uncertain about. If a moral truth just amounts to my belief or my society’s belief, and I know what that belief is (which I do), then again uncertainty is out of place.
I may be misunderstanding you, but it seems I have the same objection to this assertion that I raised here. That is, I don’t necessarily know my own moral beliefs, let alone my society’s. (Of course, that’s not to say that you don’t; if all you meant by “which I do” was a claim about torekp’s knowledge, I withdraw my objection.)
If one has moral certainty and a moral anti-realist position, one is deeply confused. As far as I see, moral certainty requires a commitment to moral realism.
More generally, the parent to my comment asserted moral anti-realism was an intellectual precursor to totalitarianism. Because I’m not aware of any totalitarian regime that wasn’t a moral certainty regime (and therefore a moral realist regime), I am confused how a contrary philosophical position can be seen as a ideological precursor to totalitarianism.
It only seems that way to you because you’ve retained enough meta-moral realism to believe that there’s something wrong with having an inconsistent about your position on morality.
The ability to recognize logical consistency is from moral realist thought?
The ability to recognize logical inconsistency about morality is from meta-moral realist thought.
I think that if one has moral uncertainty and a moral anti-realist position, one is also deeply confused.
Both certainty and uncertainty imply that there’s something real to be certain or uncertain about.
Er? I can believe that there’s no intersubjective or objective fact of the matter as to whether an act is right or wrong, merely an algorithm in my mind that makes moral judgments, and also not know whether I think rescuing kittens from a flood is right or wrong. I suppose I’m confused in that case about kitten-rescuing, but I’m not sure that counts as “deeply confused.”
If morality is just whatever is returned by the algorithm in your mind that makes moral judgments, then when that algorithm returns a result “no result” that is itself a result—what is there you do not know about the subject?
This can be contrasted to an algorithm in your mind designed to calculate objectively real things like prime numbers -- in that case you can still express uncertainty about whether 5915587279 is a prime number, because primes are a real thing with an objective definition and not just “whatever my mind considers to be prime”.
If the algorithm in my mind returns “gee, I’m not sure… there are wrong things about X, and there are right things about X, and mostly it seems like I have to think about it more in order to be sure,” one possible interpretation of that result (and, in fact, the one I’m likely to provisionally adopt, as in my experience it often turns out to be true) is that if I think about it more, and more carefully, I will know more about my moral judgments about X than I do at that moment.
Sure, it’s possible that this is confabulation, and that what I experience as “not knowing what my judgment is” is really “not having yet made a judgment”. I’m not sure that distinction actually matters, though.
Note, also, that there is a difference between what I said (that morality is “an algorithm in my mind”) and what you said (morality is “whatever is returned by the algorithm in your mind”). I don’t know if that distinction matters, either, but it seems related… you are focused on an answer to a specific question in isolation, I am focused on the process that generates answers to a class of questions, often over time.
Why? There isn’t anything incoherent about assigning a non-zero or non-one probability to a proposition F that states that a sentence G is or is not propositional.
I suppose we should divide moral uncertainty into two categories:
a) Non-certainty about whether there’s some (positive, negative or zero) “real moral value” attached to a given action X.
b) Given that such a value exists, non-certainty about its value.
So far I considered moral uncertainty to just mean (b), but it can ofcourse mean (a) as well, you’re correct about that.
I can’t think of one either, but:
It’s dangerous to deny there is any basis for determining whether something is absurd.
Quotes are written like this:
Click on the “show help” button at the lower right corner of the edit window.
(Edit: This feels a bit blunt. That wasn’t intended, sorry.)
thanks!
That’s… tempting. She will yell at me for sure, though. Plus, if I say she does the same thing, she will say it’s not the same (she told me it’s not the same, so I know she’s aware of her double standard).
Is it tempting because it’d be amusing, or because it’s likely to change her mind?
You know her better than me, but in my experience antagonizing people rarely works. I don’t know what would, unfortunately.
Because it might change her mind. But the odds are not good. It would also not be amusing at all. I think I won’t attempt it.