What could make morality objective?

[Immanuel Can]

According to Hume, there is no such thing as causation.

No. According to Hume, we do not have the means to prove causation. That's quite different from a claim it doesn't exist.

We can't prove the size of the universe. That doesn't imply the universe doesn't have a size. We can't prove how much water is in the ocean at any given moment; that doesn't remotely imply there's no water in the ocean.

What are you talking about?

Never mind. I can see it's not something you're grasping.

Everything in its time.

[henry quirk]

Do you understand people once did hang animals in a spirit of retribution for their bad behaviour? And this punishment for an evil animal was considered to be justice?

What I understand is that, today, there are folks who'll beat the hell out of dogs and torture cats, just for shits & grins.


If you do understand this then you will know justice depends upon what the culture says justice is.

What I understand is justice, its application, is uneven, often capricious, no matter what the culture sez.


Humaneness towards animals is comparatively new in the scope of human experience, and depends very much upon cultural values of time and place.

Man domesticated the dog about fifteen thousand years ago. If humaneness is so recent, how did man get his best friend?

[Immanuel Can]

Duplicate.

[Immanuel Can]

I have no idea how a moral requirement is different from an ontological one. Explain it to me.

Well, I have no idea what an "ontological requirement" is. After all, one cannot "require" a thing to exist. But a material or causal requirement simply means a thing that has to happen so another thing can.

If the Sun "ought" to come up, it's only because the rotation of the Earth requires or causes it to be the case that it will appear on cue. The Sun's not "evil" if it doesn't. There's no moral involvement there at all.

A moral requirement is a duty. It's an "ought." It's a thing we are not yet doing, perhaps, but "owe it" to do. It's a value judgment, not a physical prerequisite to a merely physical phenomenon. And the vexed question of the moment is "Do such things exist in reality, or are they immaterial delusions humans just happen to generate?"

Rationally big, as in "significant" or "substantial."

You don't have an objective measurement for "rationality".

Sure we do. We have things like logic and data. An argument that does not meet the formal standards of logic is fallacious. A hypothesis that does not meet the standards of its data is not credible. That's routine.

No. Even if I couldn't prove you wrong, that wouldn't suggest you were right. It would only suggest we don't know how to disprove your argument.

It's how this works with scientific theories. If your best attempt at falsification is unsuccessful the theory stands.

Actually, it doesn't. If it did, then science would quickly be clogged up and misdirected with a host of false but unfalsifiable assumptions.

The right scientific conclusion is not that a thing is true if not proven false, as you seem to suggest, but that it is regarded as unknown, if we have no inductive grounds for believing it to be either true or false, and hence nothing can be predicated upon it yet.

Your inability to prove me morally wrong is what makes me (probably) morally right.

That's a fallacy. Sorry. See above.

That's not at all mysterious. It means "tolerance" itself is not a universal virtue, but more of a "middle quality," or "Golden Mean" quality, of the sort Aristotle pointed out...namely, one that can be unvirtuous two ways: through too little or too much. Too little tolerance is authoritarianism. Too much is permissiveness of evil. Virtuous tolerance stands in the middle of those two extremes.

OK, so where is the middle when it comes to tolerating intolerance?

That's the problem organizations like B'nai Brith continually struggle with. Leftists just arbitrate the problem this way: everything they don't like is "reactionary," or "hate speech," or even "Nazi." And they shut down all dissent, and beat up dissenters. That seems to me (and, I hope, to you, too far, too fascist in its own right, to be reasonable or moral). Some dissent must be tolerated; and enough dissent must be encouraged to provide a critique to the status quo, so reform can happen. The problem is that we never like to be told we're wrong; but we need to be told that sometimes, and we need to be willing to listen to what our critics say. It can help us. Sometimes they have a point. So that means we have to be generous in allowing people to say things we don't like to hear.

But at some point, that tips over into allowing the intolerable...like outright racial hatred, encouragements to physical violence, or degradation of vulnerable populations. At some point we have to stop things.

So while the extremes on both ends are very clear, it's in the middle where things are less clear. Where, exactly, do we draw the line? If outright antisemitism is hate speech, is the boycott-and-divest movement included, or are they on the radical fringe, but should be allowed to speak? What about the academy? Should people be allowed to do research on gender, or is that prejudicial and inegalitarian, inherently? What about people who want to speak against open borders; should we hear them out, or stomp them down as nationalist extremists?

These are debates "in the middle" that are being had. But what's much more clear are the extremes: there is the obviously tolerable, things that might be unpleasant to us but not harmful, and which are covered by ordinary freedom of expression; and there are the obviously intolerable, such as incitements to violence or yelling "fire" in a crowded movie theatre.

That's what Hume said.

Why should we care what Hume said?

Well, you can't falsify Hume. So I guess you have to believe he's right.

But we both see the error of that thinking now, don't we?

That's only on the assumption that you are a rational person, and one who thinks he might owe other people the respect of being treated the same. If not, you don't need to explain yourself at all.

By your circular standards of "rationality" I am probably a very irrational person. Which is why I prefer my definition to yours...

Either way, rationality is not required for morality. Is it?

It's required if we're going to be anything but occasionally and accidentally moral.

Absent reasons, we won't know what is and is not moral to do; so if we are ever moral, it will only be by accident, and no credit to us. Moreover, we will not be able to tell ourselves or anybody else, how to become more moral than an accidental person can be.

If we both assume that morality is a good thing, then not rationally knowing what it was would be very detrimental to all efforts to get more of it.

[Belinda]

Henry, you heart is in the right place but you are no anthropologist or historian

[henry quirk]

Henry, you heart is in the right place but you are no anthropologist or historian

Yeah, I ain't real impressed with your credentials either, sister.

[RCSaunders]

Here's a quick summary of philosophy's "necessary/contingent" distinction, just to clear this up. http://faculty.washington.edu/wtalbott/ ... aepist.htm

The only contingent facts in this world are those which, before the fact, depended on some human choice, i.e. the man made. (Note, all your examples.) The rest is pure Kantian nonsense based on his bad epistemology. It is exactly the kind of equivocation I meant.

Did you read the summary, RC?

If you didn't then we've got a basic problem. You don't know what "contingent" means in philosophical terms.

Oh, yes I did (read the article) and recognized the scent of Kant immediately. I know exactly what "contingent," means in that corrupt version of philosophy. The man was demented, and everyone who has swallowed his lies is, to that extent, a self-induced psychotic who has damaged his mind in a way that makes it impossible to reason correctly.

There is only truth. There are not different kinds of truth. If you begin with his absurd epistemology that a concept means its definition, everything said after that is wrong and you can put over just anything like that set of lies that truth can be divided into a priori vs a posteriori, or necessary vs contingent, or synthetic vs analytic, all absolutely useless concepts except to those who are trying to promote nonsense or put something over. "Did you steal the money?" To which one may say just anything because the truth is contingent, synthetic, and a posteriori, or only true in some universes.

You think it means "man made."

If you use the word contingent to mean, "what is but could have been different," that only pertains to the man-made, and only before it exists. If you use the word contingent to mean, "the explanation of how something came to be," then everything is contingent and only means what the word, "cause," ought to mean, the explanation of what a thing is and how it came to be. In that second sense, nothing could possibly be other than what it is.

And you don't understand "necessary" either, apparently, as your light bulb example illustrates.

Of course I know what necessary means. I'm not going to pretend it has the meaning you'd like it to have. Water is necessary if you do not wish to die of thirst. In your view, the necessity of water is only true in this universe, right?

Light bulbs and circuits are all contingent...there is no need for them to have existed at all, that means. And you can see that this is certainly true, because there was a time when human beings had no light bulbs.

Of course the nature of electricity had to be discovered and developed by men like Edison and
Tesla and light bulbs had to be manufactured (a business my father was in all his life). Everything does have an explanation for its nature and existence and those things men produced were contingent on the men who discovered, invented, and produced them. That does not mean they could have been different than they are. There is electricity, electrical wiring, power plants, light bulbs. Those are the facts. Just because you can imagine something different from the facts cannot change what the facts are.

So first, we've got to clear up "necessary" and "contingent." Because you attribute straw-man claims to me, on the basis of misunderstanding those definitions. Here's another resource.

Yes, let's clear it up.

It is possible for A to not exist.
It is possible for A to exist.
Anything which can come into or go out of existence exists contingently.

If A exists it is not possible for it to not exist. If A does not exist, "A" identifies nothing, i.e., there is no A. It is not possible that something that exists, also does not exist.
For anything that does exist, it had to be possible for it to exist, and for anything that does exist, there must be an explanation of its nature and how it came to be (cause), which it is, "contingent," on, but that "cause" had to be, else the existent it caused would not exist, and the truth is, it does exist. It is not possible that what is true can also be not true. It is not possible that the, "cause," could not have been.

There is only what is, but there is always some fool who will say, well it could have been different "if." But the, "if," could only be so if whatever it was contingent on was was different and that could only be so if whatever that was contingent on was different, ad infinitum.

So long as contingent only means dependent on some other conditions, states, or events, there is nothing wrong with the concept. It is when that meaning of contingency is equivocally substituted with the notion of, "choice," or, "if," or, "one's imagination," that the concept becomes a lie. "The state (solid, liquid, gas) of water is dependent on temperature," and "the period of a pendulum is dependent on the length of the pendulum" are expressions of contingency, but to say, the relationship between temperature and the states of water or the relationship between the period of a pendulum and it length could be different, "if some other relationship was chosen," [assumes there is something that can make such a choice but that assumption cannot be used to defend the assumption], "If (anything were different)," [but they aren't different, only what is, is true], or, "because one can imagine them being different, [but just anything can be imagined including a universe where no such contingencies existed and there is no reason this cannot be that universe].

And that leads to our next abomination:

For A to exist necessarily means the following:

There is no possible situation whatsoever where A would fail to exist.

Contingency and necessity are what philosophers call modal properties. Their logic is investigated in modal logics. In this framework they would be explained as follows:

A exists contingently if and only if: there is some possible world where A exists but A does not exist in all possible worlds

A exists necessarily if and only if: A exists in all possible worlds.

Do not confuse this philosophical use of “contingent” with the ordinary sense of “something being contingent on something else”.

Necessary and contingent are perfectly ordinary expressions and they are used commonly in philosophy without any necessary reference to theology. So ignore the answer here that says they make no sense apart from religious theories.

Platonists would say that numbers exist necessarily for example."
[/color]

Got it yet, RC?

Oh, yes. I had it long ago, probably before you were born. I know all about other worlds and have often visited them in the works of writers from Lewis Carol to Robert Heinlein. Except for those, "other worlds," benevolently imagined in the minds of fiction writers and malevolently imagined in minds of philosophers and the superstitious, there are no other worlds. "Possible other worlds," is an oxymoron.

I do not grant that there are other worlds, even hypothetically, but as a concept to be judged, if there were other worlds, even if nothing was true in those other worlds that is true in this actual world, it could not possibly matter in any way. Only what is true in this actual real world can possibly matter and what is true in this world must be true, else it would be a different world.

You like contingent? This world is contingent on everything in this world being absolutely what it is. It is not possible for anything that is true in this world to be other than it is, else it would not be this world.

The belief in other possible worlds is just as baseless and superstitious as any belief in deities or the supernatural, and is, in fact, a kind of superstition.

The only consolation I see in all this nonsense is the fact that at least all those who believe and promote these absurdities know they (both the individuals and their ideas) are not necessary.

[Immanuel Can]

If you use the word contingent to mean, "what is but could have been different," that only pertains to the man-made, and only before it exists.

Nope.

I see you still haven't got it. I'll go over it again.

Here's an example of where your explanation is wrong:

It would be totally possible for this galaxy to have no life in it. It has life, but it could very easily have been like every other galaxy we can see, and lack the various conditions, like size of sun, amount of mass, rotations and orbits, the presence of a moon of the correct size, and so on.

That makes the fact that there is any life in this galaxy contingent, by definition. But it does not make life "man made." And it does not mean that once life does, in fact, exist, it's stopped being contingent. In fact, all life will be gone from this galaxy when our Sun burns out. It does not have to be here, necessarily.

"Contingent" essentially means only "did not have to be the way it is."

"Necessary" means, "can't possibly not-exist." For example, numbers are thought to be like that, as they cannot not-be what they are.

[RCSaunders]

It would be totally possible for this galaxy to have no life in it.

Proposition A is, "There is life in this galaxy," and is true. Proposition B is, "There is no life in this galaxy," and is not true. It is not possible, logically or factually that both proposition A and proposition B are true, because they contradict each other. Since proposition A is true, it is not possible that proposition B, "there is no life in this galaxy," can be true. It is not true now, was never true, and never will be true.

This galaxy has life in it. If this galaxy did not have life in it, it would not be this galaxy.

"Contingent" essentially means only "did not have to be the way it is."

That may be your own private definition of contingency, and that of some so-called philosopher. It is not my definition of contingency, nor that of any dictionary I consulted:

MERRIAM-WEBSTER
Contingent:
"Dependent on or conditioned by something else, e.g. "Payment is contingent on fulfillment of certain conditions," "a plan contingent on the weather."

Cambridge English Dictionary
Contingent:
Depending on something else in the future in order to happen, e.g. "Outdoor activities are, as ever, contingent on the weather," "Our success is contingent upon your support."

American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language
Contingent:
Dependent on other conditions or circumstances; conditional, dependent, e.g., "Arms sales are contingent on the approval of Congress."

Collins Dictionary
Contingent:
"If something is contingent on something else, the first thing depends on the second in order to happen or exist."

"Necessary" means, "can't possibly not-exist." For example, numbers are thought to be like that, as they cannot not-be what they are.

Define things any way you like. To anyone else, "necessary," means something required or on which something else depends, that is, whatever something is contingent on.

[Immanuel Can]

That may be your own private definition of contingency, and that of some so-called philosopher. It is not my definition of contingency, nor that of any dictionary I consulted

Only common dictionaries? The kinds of things they hand kids in public school classrooms?

Are you not aware that different disciplines have specialized vocabularies? There are medical dictionaries, for example: they list terms you'll never find in an ordinary dictionary, and give precise, medical definitions. Likewise, there are philosophical dictionaries. And philosophers use those terms in particular ways.

Take the term "valid." In common dictionaries, "valid" is said to mean the same as "true" or "reasonable," or something like that. But in philosophers usage, "valid" refers specifically and only to the form or structure of an argument, and never to its content. So a "valid" argument may be one that is well-formed, but not true. Common-use dictionaries generally make no mention of that fact. You would never know that from an ordinary dictionary.

That's the problem with your dictionary list. Not one of them is a philosophical dictionary. So all they give you is words the way they generally get used by the common population, people who have no clue about philosophy, and don't usually deal with concepts so precisely. But philosophers, because they make many precise distinctions, have to stipulate much more exacting definitions of terms than people need to do when they're bantering at the pub.

You need a philosophical dictionary, one that explains precisely how philosophers use the language for philosophical purposes. I gave you three...all academic sources: University of Washington, Stanford and Cal. And you give me Websters? Oy vey.

Well, we're not going to solve this without agreeing on terms. You're imputing to me positions that a) I don't hold, and b) the precise philosophical terms do not imply. So your batting away at straw men, RC. You don't even understand my real position yet...let alone have a sensible retort.

And, lamentably, I can't help you with that if really just contemptuous of philosophers and not open to better information. This is, after all, a philosophers' site.

[Veritas Aequitas]

Did you read the summary, RC?
If you didn't then we've got a basic problem. You don't know what "contingent" means in philosophical terms.

Oh, yes I did (read the article) and recognized the scent of Kant immediately. I know exactly what "contingent," means in that corrupt version of philosophy. The man was demented, and everyone who has swallowed his lies is, to that extent, a self-induced psychotic who has damaged his mind in a way that makes it impossible to reason correctly.

From a quick glance over this post, noted your condemnation of Kant.
How can you condemned Kant if you have not [as you had admitted] read Kant's work fully, thoroughly and understood [not necessary agree with] his philosophical views.
This is pure Rand's babbling and condemnation of Kant but did not read Kant's work thoroughly. Rand's do not have the philosophical competency to dig deep and wide.

I agree with IC in this case, your philosophical view of 'contingency' is kindergarten at best.

In philosophy and logic, contingency is the status of propositions that are neither true under every possible valuation (i.e. tautologies) nor false under every possible valuation (i.e. contradictions).
A contingent proposition is neither necessarily true nor necessarily false.
Propositions that are contingent may be so because they contain logical connectives which, along with the truth value of any of its atomic parts, determine the truth value of the proposition.
This is to say that the truth value of the proposition is contingent upon the truth values of the sentences which comprise it.

Contingent propositions depend on the facts, whereas analytic propositions are true without regard to any facts about which they speak.
-wiki

[Skepdick]

Well, I have no idea what an "ontological requirement" is. After all, one cannot "require" a thing to exist. But a material or causal requirement simply means a thing that has to happen so another thing can.

An ontological requirement is the the same thing as a dependency graph.
Whether you call it a causal, or a material requirement matters not. The key here is that we are both pointing out to ordering.

You can't have life forms (as we know them) before you have carbon atoms.

If the Sun "ought" to come up, it's only because the rotation of the Earth requires or causes it to be the case that it will appear on cue. The Sun's not "evil" if it doesn't. There's no moral involvement there at all.

Well, if the sun "ceases to come up" for whatever reason, then you will cease to exist shortly after.

If you don't exist to make moral arguments, then what is morality about?

A moral requirement is a duty.

Using a different word for the same thing isn't really helping you communicate your meaning.

It's a thing we are not yet doing, perhaps, but "owe it" to do.

Owe it to whom?

It's a value judgment, not a physical prerequisite to a merely physical phenomenon.

And you think value-judgment (or judgments, decisions etc.) aren't physical phenomena? Weird. What are they then?

And the vexed question of the moment is "Do such things exist in reality, or are they immaterial delusions humans just happen to generate?"

What a weird thing to say. There is nothing that does not exist.

Sure we do. We have things like logic and data.

Which logic? There are thousands of them - each one is man-made.

An argument that does not meet the formal standards of logic is fallacious.

Whose standards?

All logic is subjective - it's founded upon the axioms one chooses.

Different choices manufacture different logics.

A hypothesis that does not meet the standards of its data is not credible. That's routine.

Whose standards? Whose routine?

Actually, it doesn't. If it did, then science would quickly be clogged up and misdirected with a host of false but unfalsifiable assumptions.

Your inability to falsify my theory does not mean that my theory is unfalsifiable. It just means that YOU are unable to falsify it.

Naturally. You simply cannot offer even a single example where murder is right.

The right scientific conclusion is not that a thing is true if not proven false, as you seem to suggest, but that it is regarded as unknown, if we have no inductive grounds for believing it to be either true or false, and hence nothing can be predicated upon it yet.

But we do have inductive grounds. 3000 years of data - human history.

That's a fallacy. Sorry. See above.

This is the fallacy fallacy. Sorry.

Being irrational and accidentally moral still makes me moral.

Rationality (as you define it) doesn't matter.

That's the problem organizations like B'nai Brith continually struggle with. Leftists just arbitrate the problem this way: everything they don't like is "reactionary," or "hate speech," or even "Nazi." And they shut down all dissent, and beat up dissenters. That seems to me (and, I hope, to you, too far, too fascist in its own right, to be reasonable or moral). Some dissent must be tolerated; and enough dissent must be encouraged to provide a critique to the status quo, so reform can happen.

OK, but the status quo does not tolerate murder and slavery. So what do you propose we do to dissenters who dissent through murder and slavery? Tolerate them?

The problem is that we never like to be told we're wrong; but we need to be told that sometimes, and we need to be willing to listen to what our critics say. It can help us. Sometimes they have a point. So that means we have to be generous in allowing people to say things we don't like to hear.

Naturally. Murderers and slavers don't like to hear that murder and slavery are wrong, but I think your "wisdom" might fall on deaf ears.

But at some point, that tips over into allowing the intolerable...like outright racial hatred, encouragements to physical violence, or degradation of vulnerable populations. At some point we have to stop things.

That's what I said. At some point we have to be intolerant of intolerance. Which makes us intolerant hypocrites.

I am ok with being a hypocrite, and I am open about it. Why are you struggling?

If outright antisemitism is hate speech, is the boycott-and-divest movement included, or are they on the radical fringe, but should be allowed to speak? What about the academy? Should people be allowed to do research on gender, or is that prejudicial and inegalitarian, inherently? What about people who want to speak against open borders; should we hear them out, or stomp them down as nationalist extremists?

These are debates "in the middle" that are being had.

But what's much more clear are the extremes: there is the obviously tolerable, things that might be unpleasant to us but not harmful, and which are covered by ordinary freedom of expression; and there are the obviously intolerable, such as incitements to violence or yelling "fire" in a crowded movie theatre.

I am still waiting to hear your "middle" debate about the rightness of murder and slavery.

You have this exactly backwards. It is precisely the extremes which are clear. Lucky for us - it's the extremes that matter first and foremost. Dead or enslaved people can't debate moral issues.

Well, you can't falsify Hume. So I guess you have to believe he's right.

And so we shall falsify Hume. There is no ontological distinction between facts and values without appealing to dualism which would render Hume's argument circular.

From a monist metaphysic (such as mine) the distinction is subjective.

It's required if we're going to be anything but occasionally and accidentally moral.

Occasionally and accidentally moral is still better than perpetually immoral.

Absent reasons, we won't know what is and is not moral to do; so if we are ever moral, it will only be by accident, and no credit to us.

Moreover, we will not be able to tell ourselves or anybody else, how to become more moral than an accidental person can be.

You seem to be implying that an intentional morality is better than an accidental one, but that's a distinction without a difference.

For if you are to argue that you prefer intentional morality to an accidental one, you are simply demonstrating that you place higher value on in intellect, reason and autonomy than morality.

If we both assume that morality is a good thing, then not rationally knowing what it was would be very detrimental to all efforts to get more of it.

The irony in this argument strikes deep.

The statement "more morality" is better than "less morality" is a statement about mathematical derivatives.

Trivially, it states that A is better than B. It states that the slope of the "morality" curve (however you are measuring it) OUGHT to be positive not negative.

That's a moral judgment about morality. So, if I am to hold you accountable to "rationality and logic" it seems that you are affirming the consequent.

And so it goes. You don't need logic/rationality to be moral.

[Belinda]

Henry, you heart is in the right place but you are no anthropologist or historian

Yeah, I ain't real impressed with your credentials either, sister.

If you knew me better you would be even less impressed.

[Immanuel Can]

Well, if the sun "ceases to come up" for whatever reason, then you will cease to exist shortly after.

Of course. But morality still won't be involved. The Sun hasn't made any choice, and isn't betraying us. It's just doing whatever it is that suns do.

If you don't exist to make moral arguments, then what is morality about?

It's about intrinsic value. It's about what we "owe" to others: "ought," if you will.

It's a thing we are not yet doing, perhaps, but "owe it" to do.

Owe it to whom?

To God, to each other, to our nations and the world in general. Ad sometimes we even speak of "owing to oneself," although that might just be a mere metaphor...people aren't sure about that last one.

And you think value-judgment (or judgments, decisions etc.) aren't physical phenomena? Weird. What are they then?

Well, if value-judgments (like, say "murder is wrong") were merely physical phenomena, then they would be unjustifiable. After all, so what if I tell you, "Don't murder, Skep"? The mere fact that I say that doesn't obligate you. It needs to be the case that my judgment reflects an objective moral truth about the act of murdering.

Now, that won't in itself stop you murdering, if you're so inclined. But it will perhaps make you change your mind; but if it doesn't, it will establish that you are a bad person and your society has justification in prosecuting you for the act.

That is, unless there's no objectivity to morality, in which case there's nothing behind society's disapproval of the murder but their power to overwhelm, mug and incarcerate you if they feel so inclined...and since power is all there is, they could do that for fun, too. And you would not have any ground for an objection that what they were doing to you was "wrong."

And the vexed question of the moment is "Do such things exist in reality, or are they immaterial delusions humans just happen to generate?"

What a weird thing to say. There is nothing that does not exist.

Sure there are. Unicorns, pixies, fairies, leprechauns, Atlantis, the philosopher's stone, etc. These things "exist" only in myth, not in reality.

Sure we do. We have things like logic and data.

Which logic? There are thousands of them - each one is man-made.

Actually, there aren't. And deductive/inductive logics are the properties that formally make an argument worthy of credence or unworthy of the same. But every philosopher already knows that, so I won't belabour that point.

An argument that does not meet the formal standards of logic is fallacious.

Whose standards?

Formal logic's.

Actually, it doesn't. If it did, then science would quickly be clogged up and misdirected with a host of false but unfalsifiable assumptions.

Your inability to falsify my theory does not mean that my theory is unfalsifiable. It just means that YOU are unable to falsify it.

You have now uncovered the fallacy in your previous message. If one person can't "falsify" a statement, it doesn't imply that statement is true. It just means it's unknowable as to truth-value. As I said:

"The right scientific conclusion is not that a thing is true if not proven false, as you seem to suggest, but that it is regarded as unknown, if we have no inductive grounds for believing it to be either true or false, and hence nothing can be predicated upon it yet."

Being irrational and accidentally moral still makes me moral.

You would have no way of knowing whether you were or not. Neither would anyone else, for that matter.

OK, but the status quo does not tolerate murder and slavery.

Yes, it does. Firstly, these actions are tolerated in different places in the world. But even in modern, Western countries, we slaughter our children all the time, and sex-slavery is rampant through the internet and in all major cities. We tolerate both all the time. The US government even subsidizes murder, through "Planned Parenthood.

I am still waiting to hear your "middle" debate about the rightness of murder and slavery.

You're being silly. You keep repeating this argument as if it's somehow telling, but I have already debunked it. I'm not bothering again.

There is no ontological distinction between facts and values without appealing to dualism which would render Hume's argument circular.

Heh. You've got Hume completely wrong there. You would know that, if you'd read the relevant material. Hume contests not the existence of facts, but the justifiability of values. So his argument isn't at all what you suppose.

Absent reasons, we won't know what is and is not moral to do; so if we are ever moral, it will only be by accident, and no credit to us.

Moreover, we will not be able to tell ourselves or anybody else, how to become more moral than an accidental person can be.

You seem to be implying that an intentional morality is better than an accidental one...

Of course it is. Just like driving a car while knowing what you're doing is better than driving one while you don't.

[Skepdick]

Of course. But morality still won't be involved. The Sun hasn't made any choice, and isn't betraying us. It's just doing whatever it is that suns do.

The exact same thing can be said for murderers and slavers. They haven't made any choice, and aren't betraying us. They are just doing whatever it is that murderers and slavers do.

Your argument discriminates on free will, which is a red herring.

COVID-19 has no free will therefore it's not a moral concern. Surely you see how stupid that mode of reasoning is?

It's about intrinsic value. It's about what we "owe" to others: "ought," if you will.

So what does a murderer or a slaver owe you?

To God, to each other, to our nations and the world in general.

Yeah. That's why jihadists murder people.

Ad sometimes we even speak of "owing to oneself," although that might just be a mere metaphor...people aren't sure about that last one.

Seeming as I am way more certain about my existence than yours, I am pretty certain that I owe myself not-murdering you, much more than I owe you not-murdering you.

Well, if value-judgments (like, say "murder is wrong") were merely physical phenomena, then they would be unjustifiable.

You can't justify justification. Muchhausen trillema. Infinite regress.

After all, so what if I tell you, "Don't murder, Skep"? The mere fact that I say that doesn't obligate you. It needs to be the case that my judgment reflects an objective moral truth about the act of murdering.

You are confusing matters. This exact critique can be laid out against any and every belief you hold. In the face of your inability to justify anything - how do you arrive at the judgment "I OUGHT to believe X" ?

Anybody telling you to believe in God doesn't oblige you. So how did you convince yourself that you OUGHT to believe in God?

Now, that won't in itself stop you murdering, if you're so inclined. But it will perhaps make you change your mind; but if it doesn't, it will establish that you are a bad person and your society has justification in prosecuting you for the act.

You are still pre-supposing free will. It's really not necessary to muddy the water with "justifications".

Murderers murder.
Societies prosecute murderers.

if neither of them had free will - it's just what happens. Cause and effect.

That is, unless there's no objectivity to morality, in which case there's nothing behind society's disapproval of the murder but their power to overwhelm, mug and incarcerate you if they feel so inclined...and since power is all there is, they could do that for fun, too. And you would not have any ground for an objection that what they were doing to you was "wrong."

They could do that. Exactly like the sun could totally not show up for work tomorrow.

And who would hear my objections that incarcerating innocent people is wrong if society didn't care?

So, as I keep pointing out to you, power is necessary for morality, but not sufficient. That's why your God is immoral in my eyes.

Sure there are. Unicorns, pixies, fairies, leprechauns, Atlantis, the philosopher's stone, etc. These things "exist" only in myth, not in reality.

Q.E.D Unicorns, pixies, fairies, leprechauns, Atlantis are not nothing.

They exist in exactly the same senes as your God - platonic forms, concepts if you will. They exist in your mind.
Your mind is part of reality.

To argue that those concepts are not real is to argue that your mind isn't real. Dualism is self-defeating.

Actually, there aren't. And deductive/inductive logics are the properties that formally make an argument worthy of credence or unworthy of the same. But every philosopher already knows that, so I won't belabour that point.

Every computer scientist knows that every philosopher is wrong on that point.

Choosing a logic is the same as choosing a religion. If you don't like the ones on sale - make your own.

Logic is invented. An argument can be constructed for EVERY conclusion. This renders logic/reason powerless against its own insufficiency.
All that logic can ever give you is internal consistency. That's not sufficient for correspondence.

Formal logic's.

Which formal logic? They are ALL invented!

That's why the wikipedia page for "FORMAL logic" links you to Computer Science.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formal_system#Examples

You have now uncovered the fallacy in your previous message. If one person can't "falsify" a statement, it doesn't imply that statement is true. It just means it's unknowable as to truth-value.

You can't be making any such assertions unless you tell us how you objectively answer the question.

"Is statement X true?'
"Is statement X meaningful?"

I'll sit here and die waiting for you to tell me what it means for something to be true.

"The right scientific conclusion is not that a thing is true if not proven false, as you seem to suggest, but that it is regarded as unknown, if we have no inductive grounds for believing it to be either true or false, and hence nothing can be predicated upon it yet."

Naturally. All that scientists call "knowledge" is provisional and operational - it's polished conjecture.

Alas. That leaves you with a problem: If all falsifiable statements are unknowable, and all non-falsifiable statements are truism, then the truth is that there is no truth.

Sucks for foundationalists.

You would have no way of knowing whether you were or not. Neither would anyone else, for that matter.

Call it a polished conjecture then.

Yes, it does.

Cherry-picking. There is not a single country in the world where murder is legal.

Firstly, these actions are tolerated in different places in the world. But even in modern, Western countries, we slaughter our children all the time, and sex-slavery is rampant through the internet and in all major cities. We tolerate both all the time. The US government even subsidizes murder, through "Planned Parenthood.

Q.E.D Non-sequitur. We don't tolerate murder.

You're being silly. You keep repeating this argument as if it's somehow telling, but I have already debunked it. I'm not bothering again.

You debunked it? Where? Where did you give me a counter-example for the rightness of murder and slavery?

Heh. You've got Hume completely wrong there. You would know that, if you'd read the relevant material. Hume contests not the existence of facts, but the justifiability of values. So his argument isn't at all what you suppose.

It's inconsequential. You brought Hume into the debate - I am kicking him out

Of course it is. Just like driving a car while knowing what you're doing is better than driving one while you don't.

False equivalence. Driving is driving. Not crashing is the moral concern.