What could make morality objective?

[Immanuel Can]

That 'any claim has truth-value' is precisely what we're debating,

Not quite.

ALL claims have "truth value."

But some, as we might say, have the "truth value" worth 10/10, and some have the "truth value" 5, and some have 0 "truth value." "Truth value" simply refers to the quality of a statement that it can be addressed as true or false.

Commands have no "truth value," no matter how justified the command may be; for commands are not responded to coherently by reference to their truth or falsehood. They are responded to by "yes" and "no."

What we're debating is not whether claims have "truth value," but whether moral claims are objectively true or not.

You've consistently asserted that none of them are true. I have consistently asserted that some are true, and some are false.

The difference between us is that you do not believe there is an objective basis of moral truth. I believe there is.

And until we sort out whether or not there really IS an objective basis capable of grounding moral truth, we are unable to agree.

So far, that's where we are.

[henry quirk]

Do you want to be property?

If yes: why?

If no: why?

Please, no dissembling or restatement of position.

Please, just answer the question(s).

-----

To everyone else: please, this question is for Pete, not you (not now, anyway).

Let him answer first.

[Veritas Aequitas]

I am not exceptionally clever but had rode on the giant shoulders of Kant on this issue.

Funny. Other philosophers seem to know Kant didn't succeed. But you say you know he did?

Explain how he did.

Good luck.

Whatever valid counter arguments to my claim can be laid bare openly in this forum for all to see and verify.

You just ignore them, as soon as they're offered. But maybe that's more a lack of comprehension than a deliberate ignoring...who knows?

So far there are no convincing counter arguments to my argument.

Exactly what I mean.

If so, where?

You haven't even begun to resolve Hume's Guillotine. You just basically declared "victory" at the start, then stuck to that story.

...the secular as in the UN came up with secular moral laws...

Heh. You don't know any history, obviously.

I am very familiar with the establishment of the UN.

Apparently not. You might have some idea of the date, and maybe of some of the immediate circumstances. But you show no awareness of very straightforward facts, like that the UN code of human rights was copied off the US's and the French, which are both indebted to the arguments of Locke, who made his arguments purely on a Theistic basis.

You just didn't go back at all.

When Communist Russia and Confucius China were the founding and permanent members, how the heck can its foundation be theistic??

The UN was a US idea. Why do you think the headquarters are in NY? These other countries were invitees to an already-designed idea, as were other non-Christian countries, like all the Arab states and most of Southeast Asia.

Note the human rights record in all these countries, and you'll get some idea of how important Theistic underpinnings are to human rights.

It was Roosevelt's idea, designed and shaped in America. Heck, the history page you quoted told you as much. If you even read what you posted, you would know it was the Americans who drove the whole show. The Russians, Chinese, and so on initiated none of it. They signed on after the fact.

The Russians did obviously have ideas about "uniting nations" -- but not the ideas you think they had.

Your above are babbling without substance.

Kant made the claim he had resolved Hume's Guilotine in his Critique of Pure Reason.
Note Kant has done his part and presented his arguments and the onus on you to understand [not necessary agree] his argument and counter whatever you think if false.

The relationship between Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) and David Hume (1711–1776) is a source of longstanding fascination.
Kant credited Hume with waking him from his “dogmatic slumber”, and he describes the Critique of Pure Reason, arguably the most important work of modern philosophy, as the solution to the “Humean problem in its greatest possible amplification” (Prol 4:260–61).
SEP

Note I made the effort to understand Kant [took 3 years full time] and I agree with his argument.

How much do you know of Kant personally to have any credibility to counter his argument?
You can't depend on 3rd party sources because you cannot be sure they understood Kant's argument precisely - thus shooting blanks.

It is nonsense to claim the UN's UDHR is from Christianity. Note P. C. Pang's argument re the basis of the UDHR. You did not counter to dismiss that point at all.

[Immanuel Can]

Kant credited Hume with waking him from his “dogmatic slumber”, and he describes the Critique of Pure Reason, arguably the most important work of modern philosophy, as the solution to the “Humean problem in its greatest possible amplification” (Prol 4:260–61).
SEP

Yeah, I saw that. What I want to see is if you actually understand a word of what Kant thought was his solution to the Humean problem. And so far, all you've said is,

... I agree with his argument.

So I ask again, "Which argument?"

How much do you know of Kant personally to have any credibility to counter his argument?

Try me.

And by the way, I have the Critique right here, the Penguin edition. So go right ahead, if you know anything about it at all.

It is nonsense to claim the UN's UDHR is from Christianity.

You only think so because you can't even recognize that the language of the UDHR is borrowed practically verbatim from the American, British and French sources that quote Locke.

Check it yourself. You'll see I'm right.

[Skepdick]

Okay. I think you're lost, and not able to understand what I say. That 'any claim has truth-value' is precisely what we're debating, so merely asserting it is pointless. I've shown why a moral assertion doesn't have truth-value, and all you do is say it does - or that we haven't established that it doesn't.

*sigh*

Peter, you are applying a double epistemic standard.
WHY do some ASSERTIONS have truth-value, while other ASSERTIONS don't?
WHY do some propositions have truth-value, while other propositions do not?

You are deeply, and uncorrectably ignorant about the inner workings of propositions! If there is any hope for you you will at least read this paper

On the meanings of the logical constants and the justifications of the logical laws

The things that the logical operations operate on, which we normally call propositions and propositional functions, and, on the other hand, the things that the logical laws, by which I mean the rules of inference, operate on, which we normally call assertions. We must
remember that, even if a logical inference, for instance, a conjunction introduction, is written

A B. <------- IS
----- <------ THIS IS THE IS-OUGHT GAP. THE GAP BETWEEN "INTRODUCTION" and "ELIMINATION"
A & B <-------OUGHT

which is the way in which we would normally write it, it does not take us from the propositions A and B to the proposition A &B. Rather, it
takes us from the affirmation of A and the affirmation of B to the affirmation of A & B

Logic is imperative - because it has logical commands we call operators.
Logic is assertive - ALL OF IT.

In appealing to Logic for 2000 years Philosophy has been guilty of appealing to authority. Logic has no authority over humans.

If you are deeply committed to the harmful religion of Logicism, this statement is probably causing you significant cognitive dissonance.

To assert whether any particular Logical system is "correct" or "incorrect" is a subjective, mind-dependent value judgment.

There is no mind-independence! Objectivity means something entirely different to humans. Your definition is wrong.

[Peter Holmes]

Do you want to be property?

If yes: why?

If no: why?

Please, no dissembling or restatement of position.

Please, just answer the question(s).

-----

To everyone else: please, this question is for Pete, not you (not now, anyway).

Let him answer first.

No, I don't want to be property, because I want to be free to do as I choose. And that's a fact.

[RCSaunders]

If Veritas is really alone in his view, on that basis alone, he is very likely to be right, since most of what most people in this world believe is untrue, and every new right idea in history was, in the beginning held by one single individual.

That's the funniest rejoinder I've seen in a long while, RC.

It goes, "If the vast majority of people believe something, it's untrue. If only one person believes it, it's right." Awesome. I can't make up a parody that looks any better than that.

Just because the world is full of ignorant and gullible people, and 92% of them think God exits, and 96% think it's possible, and 99% think it's worth discussing does not mean it is.

Of course it doesn't. But it doesn't even remotely suggest it's NOT either. That's what makes your argument so darn funny.

I mean, at least Bandwagon Fallacy, the belief that majorities make right, at least has this going for it: that if many people think something, a lot of people are having the same conclusions. But if only one person in the world believes something, that's either a case of exquisite, exceptional genius, or the best definition of "delusion" you're going to find.

And whether there are more exquisite, exceptional geniuses around, or more deluded people, I'll let you be the judge. You say yourself you think 99% of the people have never had an original idea...so you can figure out which is more probable.

I'm the one that pointed out that the majority of mankind is deluded. Genius is always the exception, that's what makes it genius. Funny, huh?

[Immanuel Can]

I'm the one that pointed out that the majority of mankind is deluded. Genius is always the exception, that's what makes it genius. Funny, huh?

Well, yeah...but genius is also RARE, which is why the majority of people are more probably right, though there are no guarantees, and although, as per the Bandwagon Fallacy, it is not true that the truth or falsehood of any particular claim can be established on the basis of popularity.

If many people thinking something doesn't make it right -- and that's right, it doesn't -- then as sure as shooting, the fact that only one person believes it doesn't help make any case.

But back to the rare geniuses.

To be honest, we've got to give the Collectivists their due...they're not wrong to say that every genius grows up in a particular society, is educated by them, learns his craft by them, and gains his influence through them. Moreover, the science, the art or the activity in which the genius expresses his genius always existed long before the genius himself existed...that, too, was a social product. And when the productions of his genius have their full benefit, it will be not merely in the lifetime of the genius and to himself, but his achievement and legacy will be perpetuated only through other people, through his society.

In all those ways, other people are instrumental in producing the phenomenon of the genius. On every side, he is shaped, supported by, dependent on, and in relation to other people. Admitting this fact does not diminish his genius...but it locates him in a social context that makes his genius possible.

John Galt, mythically, is an architect. But John Galt did not invent architecture. Nor would John Galt build great skyscrapers in which he would live alone. Nor, if Galt were the total story, would Rand be celebrating his mythical genius, because in this sense, Rand herself is one of the members of that society that incubates the John Galts of the world. And her readers are another level of society that is involved in the process of valourizing John Galt.

Without society, John Galt is nothing.

So any idea that "the exceptional man" is a complete answer to how history moves along its course, or how civilization develops, is simply not plausible. And it runs the danger of leaving many opportunities for the Collectivists to point out giant holes in the theory, like I have above. To advance the case for the importance of the individual, it is thus better not to ignore completely the role of society in making him what he is. By so doing, we disarm the Collectivists of many perspicuous objections that we would otherwise surrender to them.


PS --

Anyway, does anybody actually find Rand's novels readable, let alone plausible? She was a lousy writer, really...certainly no Shakespeare, Dickens or even Grisham...more a raw propagandist than a shaper of compelling and engaging narrative. Her characters are stick figures, really...stand-ins for concepts, rather than embodied human beings. To get through her stories is labourious, like running in a swamp, up to one's knees in mud. And Rand herself was is in such radical rejection of the Collectivist ideologues of her past that she herself became nothing but an ideologue for the other side -- and it's hard for any author to remain open to experience, art, opportunity and intuition while rigorously aiming, at the same time, to arrive at a particular point she has chosen long before she started.

But balance...nobody accuses Rand of having much of that.

[henry quirk]

Do you want to be property?

No, I don't want to be property, because I want to be free to do as I choose. And that's a fact.

I dare say everyone in-forum agrees with you, Pete. No one wants to be property.

I'll go further and say everyone on the planet agrees with you. No one wants to be property.

The desire to be one's own, to be free, seems as basic, as universal, as necessary, as factual, to anyone, to everyone, as eating and sleeping and waste elimination; it seems to be a feature of human beings, common and defining. There doesn't seem to be any exceptions.

Even those who enslave desire freedom for themselves.

Can we agree, then, the desire to be one's own may be something more than opinion?

[Peter Holmes]

Do you want to be property?

No, I don't want to be property, because I want to be free to do as I choose. And that's a fact.

I dare say everyone in-forum agrees with you, Pete. No one wants to be property.

I'll go further and say everyone on the planet agrees with you. No one wants to be property.

The desire to be one's own, to be free, seems as basic, as universal, as necessary, as factual, to anyone, to everyone, as eating and sleeping and waste elimination; it seems to be a feature of human beings, common and defining. There doesn't seem to be any exceptions.

Even those who enslave desire freedom for themselves.

Can we agree, then, the desire to be one's own may be something more than opinion?

No. The desire not to be property isn't an opinion at all. That's not how we use the word 'opinion'. If humans universally desire not to be property, that's simply a fact about what humans universally desire.

[henry quirk]

No, I don't want to be property, because I want to be free to do as I choose. And that's a fact.

I dare say everyone in-forum agrees with you, Pete. No one wants to be property.

I'll go further and say everyone on the planet agrees with you. No one wants to be property.

The desire to be one's own, to be free, seems as basic, as universal, as necessary, as factual, to anyone, to everyone, as eating and sleeping and waste elimination; it seems to be a feature of human beings, common and defining. There doesn't seem to be any exceptions.

Even those who enslave desire freedom for themselves.

Can we agree, then, the desire to be one's own may be something more than opinion?

No. The desire not to be property isn't an opinion at all. That's not how we use the word 'opinion'. If humans universally desire not to be property, that's simply a fact about what humans universally desire.

Yes, that's what I'm driving at: it is fact, not an opinion or preference, that all individuals want to be free, no one wants to be property.

Can we infer then, if it is a feature of the individual to be his own, that it is a violation of the individual to be made into property?

[Peter Holmes]

Henry, I don't mean to be awkward. And I may have misunderstood where you're going with this line of questioning.

But is this the claim you're working towards?: If no one wants be a slave, then it is morally wrong to enslave people.

If that's not your claim, please can you re-formulate it in this kind of conditional premise? Then we can cut to the chase.

[henry quirk]

As I pointed out up-thread, some things are real unambiguously, like a stone; some things are real but only exist when certain conditions are in place, like fire; some things are real but only exist in a certain context, like my hunger.

I believe morality (the rightness or wrongness of an action) is real, not like the stone, but like fire and hunger.

Morality exists only in certain conditions, only in a certain context. The conditions are man's universal nature (his intrinsic desire to be his own, for example). The context is the individual (as he forms intent and acts).

Simply: it is wrong to enslave a man because it is not in his nature (not in the nature of any person) to be property.

To leash a man is a violation of him because he belongs only to himself.

[RCSaunders]

You misunderstand. "Moral duty" simply means "obligation to act on a moral imperative." ...

Every moral principle has an imperative, a duty associated with it. If, for example, murder is wrong, then it means that we all have a duty not to murder. If theft is wrong, then we have a duty not to steal. So don't tee off on the word "duty." It's automatic, in ethics. It has nothing to do with what you talked about.

That is still wrong. There is no such imposed obligation as duty.

Sorry, RC. You're still misunderstanding. I think you're reacting to a colloquial understanding of the word "duty," and not realizing I'm using the philosophical term precisely there.

Maybe we can talk about "moral obligation" instead. Every ethical imperative implies (rightly or wrongly) that the recipient is to consider himself morally obligated to do the good, not the bad. That's maybe the simplest way of putting it. We can argue over whether the moral obligation in each case is fair, but we can't really argue that it is not implied.

So, for example, "Murder is wrong," is a statement that implies, "You should not murder," or "You have a moral obligation not to instigate or participate in a murder."

There is no such obligation. Ethical principles are not, "laws," or, "rules," or, "mandates," or, "proscriptions." Moral principles are values, and all values are relationships. Before anything can be good, bad, right, or wrong, the goal or objective of the value must be specified. If the purpose or objective of ethical principles is not specified, just anything can be put over as moral.

For example, when the collectivist or statist decides that the objective is the security of the state, the wholesale murder of men and destruction of property is considered, "moral," to secure state power (always put over in the name of, "defense," or "protecting freedom," or some other lie). When someone decides that the objective is to make the society safe from drugs, the murder of those who defy the state's laws is considered, "moral." When someone believes the objective is to obey God, when that God commands the people who worship him to go into another country and kill every, man, woman, child and animal, or kill all the males and non-virgin women but keep the virgins for themselves, that wholesale slaughter and slavery is considered, "moral." [1 Samuel 15:3, Numbers 31:17&18]

If moral or ethical principles determine how an individual ought to live his life, should those principles be benevolent or malevolent for the individual that observes them? It seems obvious if observing moral principles results in one's own benefit it makes sense to observe them, but if observing moral principles leads to one's own harm or destruction, there is no good reason to observe them.

Unless moral principles are for the benefit of individuals, they are of no use or value at all. But, even if one knows what the moral principles required for an individual to live successfully and enjoy his life are, there is no requirement, no duty, to conform to those principles. To fail to observe right moral principles (or even to bother learning what they are) means a life of failure and regret at best, and most likely disaster, but there is nothing that makes it necessary to live successfully--that has to be rationally chosen and pursued.

One must choose to live happily and successfully if they are to be happy and successful...

Of course. But what is "happy," and what is "successful"? Those questions are not explained in that claim. "Happiness" as I said, is a mere emotion, and as such, is dependent on fortune -- literally, on "hap." And "success" is always "success IN." One can be a "successful" doctor, or a "successful" torturer.

A human being cannot live without knowledge. Just as food and water are necessities of his physiological nature, knowledge is a necessity of his psychological nature, because human beings are volitional and must consciously choose all they do, and informed choice is not possible without knowledge. One kind of knowledge required for making right choices is the knowledge of what is good and bad for the kind of being a human is, because it is that knowledge or lack of it that will determined whether an individual will or will not be successful living as the kind of being he is. When someone suggests they do not know what human success is and can see no difference between a doctor and a torturer, it is a kind of ignorance I do not know how to comprehend.

Believing happiness is some kind of emotional feeling is the shallow view of the hedonist.

I agree. But it is not only capable of being misunderstood to be the kind of "dependent emotion" I was just talking about, but the use of the word so generally IS that, that there's almost no chance that if you use it you will be understood aright at all.

That's why I'm glad you filled out your definition as follows:

Happiness is the total psychological state of the individual that knows he is living a life proper and fitting to a human being, in total agreement with the requirements of his human nature and the nature of reality, that he is living his life to the fullest possible, being and achieving all he possibly can. There is a feeling that results from that consciousness, a feeling of achievement, exultation, integrity, and joy derived from one's own virtue and the knowledge that all one is and all one enjoys is his because he has produced it. With or without the feeling, however, it is that kind of successful life that is happiness and all that makes life worth living.

This is not "happiness," per se,

The happiness I described is the only happiness there is and the only happiness that makes life worth living. It is that kind of happiness and achieving that human life is, "for." It has no other purpose, nor could there possibly be a greater one.

So could you explain to me what a "happy and successful" life would look like, in very concrete terms? Could you maybe tell me somebody who has lived the kind of life you are advocating we should live...like Socrates, or Ghandi, or Bill Gates, or whomever?

Probably not. I don't see how I can describe a successful life to someone who does not know the difference between the success of a doctor and a torturer. A, "concrete," example of a, "happy successful life," would unlikely be any you have suggested. I know and have known many individuals who, as far as I know, are or were totally happy and successful, but it is not possible to make such a judgement about others absolutely, and I think it is wrong to do so. There is one thing I do know, no two successful individuals will have very similar lives except in the principles they live by. All the successful individuals I have known have lived very different lives. Some observations I will make is that some of the most successful were successful almost their entire lives, some got their acts together rather late in life, all were totally self-supporting, most are wealthy, and some are extremely wealthy. Very few are well known, and most would almost never be recognized. I could name some names, but they would mean nothing to you, and I would not presume to expose them to others. (Some a law breakers, just because it is immoral to obey an immoral law.)

... What is it "rational" to do? We can only know that after we know what a human being is FOR.

NO! We know what is rational for a human being to do by knowing what a human being is.

Okay, put it your way.

What IS a human being?

I can recognize one in the street, but you say not all are "happy and successful," and that a good one ought to be -- so not everybody I recognize as a human being qualifies, obviously.

Most human beings are not happy and successful because they do not live as their nature and the nature of the world requires one to live to be a successful.

What is a human being? A human being is a volition, rational, intellectual being, the only such beings in this world. Volitional means that all one does must be consciously chosen. Rational means one's only means of making a choice is by means of reason, the mental process of judging which actions will achieve one's values. Intellectual means capable of gaining and keeping knowledge which is one's only means of reasoning, because knowledge is all there is to reason with or reason about.

The biological definition can't be what you have in mind, then. What is a fully-actualized human being in the sense you want us to be more individualistic to become? [Emphasis mine.]

You've made an unwarranted assumption which is quite telling. I do not want others to be or do anything. I know that all human beings would benefit from living their lives rationally, and I would certainly like for all individuals to live successful happy lives, but how others live their lives is not my (or anybody else's) business. I regard the desire, and any action taken to fulfill such a desire, to make others the kind of people someone thinks they ought to be immoral. If there were such a thing as a, "golden rule," it would, "hands off," and, "mind your own business."

The only purpose human beings have is the use and enjoyment of their own lives.

Well, Jeffrey Epstein enjoyed his...until the end. So did Jimmy Saville...all the way, apparently. Ghengis Khan probably enjoyed his; he certainly got a lot of his desires. And plenty of others whom the rest of us would surely want to call "immoral" and "bad." Moreover, we would not merely want to say they wasted their lives, but much worse, used them in active creation of evil and victimizing of other human beings.

If the only purpose human beings have is "enjoyment" of their own lives, then would it not obviously be the case that every psychopathic pedophile predator would be living what you would have to call "a good life."

After all, he would certainly be untroubled by the twinges of altruism...

You really believe the sexually disfunctional and those who's lives are controlled by irrational desires and passions, because they have, "pleasure," are enjoying their lives? If a socialist like G.B. Shaw could understand, "The most intolerable pain is produced by prolonging the keenest pleasure," why can't a Christian?

Do you really believe Jeffrey Epstein and Jimmy Saville enjoyed their lives? What lives? They were never free, never really alive. They were slaves to their irrational self-destructive desires. You have confused physical, "pleasure," with, "intellectual joy," and, "subjectivism," with "objective value."

You may denegrate Ayn Rand all you like, but when it comes to understanding human nature, she never could have made the mistake of thinking the kind of subjectivist hedonists you use for examples could possibly have been truly happy or enjoyed their lives.

"But the relationship of cause to effect cannot be reversed. It is only by accepting "man's life" as one's primary and by pursuing the rational values it requires that one can achieve happiness—not by taking "happiness" as some undefined, irreducible primary and then attempting to live by its guidance. If you achieve that which is the good by a rational standard of value, it will necessarily make you happy; but that which makes you happy, by some undefined emotional standard, is not necessarily the good. To take "whatever makes one happy" as a guide to action means: to be guided by nothing but one's emotional whims. Emotions are not tools of cognition; to be guided by whims—by desires whose source, nature and meaning one does not know—is to turn oneself into a blind robot, operated by unknowable demons (by one's stale evasions), a robot knocking its stagnant brains out against the walls of reality which it refuses to see." [The Virtue of Selfishness, "1. The Objectivist Ethics"]

"An emotion is an automatic response, an automatic effect of man's value premises. An effect, not a cause. There is no necessary clash, no dichotomy between man's reason and his emotions—provided he observes their proper relationship. A rational man knows—or makes it a point to discover—the source of his emotions, the basic premises from which they come; if his premises are wrong, he corrects them. He never acts on emotions for which he cannot account, the meaning of which he does not understand. In appraising a situation, he knows why he reacts as he does and whether he is right. He has no inner conflicts, his mind and his emotions are integrated, his consciousness is in perfect harmony. His emotions are not his enemies, they are his means of enjoying life. But they are not his guide; the guide is his mind. This relationship cannot be reversed, however. If a man takes his emotions as the cause and his mind as their passive effect, if he is guided by his emotions and uses his mind only to rationalize or justify them somehow—then he is acting immorally, he is condemning himself to misery, failure, defeat, and he will achieve nothing but destruction—his own and that of others." ["Playboy's interview with Ayn Rand," pamphlet, page 6.]

I think some of the things you think (or at least have expressed) are dangerously mistaken, not to anyone else, but to yourself. I doubt very much that anything would change those views, and it is certainly not my intention. Nevertheless, I will continue express the truth as I understand it, for no other reason than because I have to be honest, (for the very selfish motive of protecting my own integrity).

I do not believe, "all men mean well," but I think you do, and I appreciate that.

RC

[Peter Holmes]

As I pointed out up-thread, some things are real unambiguously, like a stone; some things are real but only exist when certain conditions are in place, like fire; some things are real but only exist in a certain context, like my hunger.

I believe morality (the rightness or wrongness of an action) is real, not like the stone, but like fire and hunger.

Morality exists only in certain conditions, only in a certain context. The conditions are man's universal nature (his intrinsic desire to be his own, for example). The context is the individual (as he forms intent and acts).

Simply: it is wrong to enslave a man because it is not in his nature (not in the nature of any person) to be property.

To leash a man is a violation of him because he belongs only to himself.

Thanks, Henry. If it were part of universal human nature to be selfish, would selfishness be morally justifiable?

What I mean is: if the criterion for the moral rightness or wrongness of an action is its consonance with a (supposed) feature of human nature, then selfish and violent actions are morally justifiable - if selfishness and violence are inherent to human nature. I assume you accept that conclusion from your argument.