How do you interpret “such-and-such an entity is required by such-and-such a theory, which seems to work, bit turns out not to exist”. Do things wink in and out of existence as one theory replaces another?
PrawnOfFate
Whatever you call them, I like seeing them at the top. Your own postings would be hugely improved by the addition of abstracts.
Not the world, the US.
Just imagine...there are countries where education can be discussed without bringing in race at all...
I think a lot of people are confusing a) improved ability to act morally, and b) improved moral wisdom.
Agreed.
“Slavery oughtn’t exist” is a moral statement—it only has a truth value according to a particular ethical/moral set.
That; something we don’t know. Moral statements might be uniformly false (error theory), neither true nor false (expressivism), have singe non-relative truth values (moral realism) etc.
Not true? Please, please post about that. Not about moral progress etc, but how you have come to hold that any moral belief can be an objectively true belief.
I wouldn’t want “enslave him” to become a universal law (Kant I)
Enslaving people treats them as means, not ends (Kant II)
I wouldn’t want to become a random member of society that permits slavery (Rawls)
etc
No., because your beliefs might be wrong. Aris was asserting relativism against error theory, non-congitivism and realism. Relativism is the claim that some set of statements have truth values, and have truth values that are relative to something. Relativism is not proven simply by producing evidence of conflicting beliefs.
Why worry about prediction if it doesn’t relate to a real world?
So, what are those possible worlds but models?
The actual world is also a possible world. Non actual possible worlds are only accessible as models. Realists believe they can bring the actual world into line with desired models to some exitent
And isn’t the “real world” just the most accurate model?
Not for realists.
Properly modeling your actions lets you affect the preferred “world” model’s accuracy, and such. The remaining issue is whether the definition of “good” or “preferred” depends on realist vs instrumentalist outlook, and I don’t see how. Maybe you can clarify.
For realist, wireheading isn’t a good aim. For anti realists, it is the only aim.
ie, realism explain how you can predict at all.
I don’t see how someone could admit that their inputs are connected in the sense of being caused by a common source that orders. them without implicitly admitting to a real external world.
Realism doesn’t preclude ethical frameworks that endorse wireheading
No, but they are a minority interest.
’m not yet clear on how one goes about valuing things other than one’s own experience in an instrumentalist framework, but then again I’m not sure I could explain to someone who didn’t already understand it how I go about valuing things other than my own experience in a realist framework, either.
If someone accepts that reality exists, you have a head start. Why do anti-realists care about accurate prediction? They don’t think predictive models represent and external reality, and they don;t think accurate models can be ued as a basis to change anything external. Either prediction is an end in itself, or its for improving inputs.
Your having a preference for worlds without, eg, slavery can’t possibly translate into something iike “i want to change the world external to me so that it no longer contains slaves”. I have trouble understanding what it would translate to. You could adopt models where things you don’t like don’t exist, but they wouldn’t be accurate.
One can of course only say that inputs have occurred in patterns up till now. Realists can explain why they would continue to do so on the basis of the Common Source meta-model, anti realists cannot.
The reification error you describe is indeed one of the fallacies a realist is prone to
And inverted stupidity is..?
I prefer models which describe a society without slavery to be accurate (i.e. confirmed in a later testing).
And how do you arrange that?
So where did you address it?
why would an “ethciical/moral set” be what makes a moral claim (realistically) true? Realists tend to think claims are rendered true by some sort of fact.
If you define “morality” broadly, as maximising values you can end up with that sort of thing. Some would take the attitude that if your definitions covers counterintuitive cases, your definition is too broad.