Moral Facts Supervene on Natural Facts

[Flannel Jesus]

What is moral must be justified to be universal and true.

Wait, I thought you said you could change brains or DNA to change moral truths. Now you're saying instead that moral truths are universal, so... not in any way changeable by changing someone's DNA or brain...

This is quite a wacky ride with you. I think we're in the middle of the pattern iambiguous just described about you.

[Veritas Aequitas]

You don't understand supervenience. That is not because you are stupid, the topic is too simple even for idiots to be excluded from understanding. It is because you never read in order to learn things, you only ever read to find justifications for your existing thoughts.

Interesting analysis

But is his unwillingness to actually put effort in to learn the words and concepts he's trying to use an artifact of stupidity?

I did not claim to be an expert on the topic of supervenience.
I wrote this to AI implying my ignorance:

Please explain in simple terms the meaning of this statement especially on the term "supervene on":
"Ethical naturalism claims that Moral facts and properties are constituted by, and so supervene on, natural and social scientific facts and properties."
Please give examples.

I closed my OP with;
Discuss??
Views??

The very stupid ones are the ones who interpret the wrong thing and make false accusations.

[Iwannaplato]

Strawman.

It is not a strawman, you do precisely the same thing here.

It is not changing brains to fit what "I" think is more moral.

What is moral must be justified to be universal and true.

Which you have claimed is based on what we find in brains. The oughtness to X. The oughtness not to Y.

We look in brains and find X. Thus the morality can be claimed to be objective, given that it is based on the neuroscience FSERC.

There has to be the greatest care and ensure the move is fool proof.
We are talking about this possibility in the future where the knowledge and technology is easily available, not now

This part is not relevant. I am not saying you are too hasty. I am not saying you are not careful. Those are practical issues that might come up later on or in some other discussion.

What I am focused on is what you say justifies the conclusion that something is an objective moral fact.

Ultimately it must be tested with the objective reduction in say the number of human killed by humans.
Currently, it is estimated 475,000 per year are killed by homicide.
If we implement some sort of moral strategies, and the result is
100,000 per year are killed via homicide, obviously there is objective moral progress grounded on the recognition of objective moral facts.

And this is also not relevant.

The issue is about the epistemology involved in deciding X is a moral fact.

[Flannel Jesus]

I did not claim to be an expert on the topic of supervenience.
I wrote this to AI implying my ignorance:

Your admission of your ignorance here is admirable - and I don't mean that as a joke at your expense, it is.

As someone who has read quite a lot about supervenience, because it relates closely to a part of philosophy I'm passionate about, emergence, the cake explanation in OP is completely and utterly confused, and it's apparent that your ignorance of what supervenience is led you down a hole of misapplying it in ways you didn't know you were doing.

So, thread finished?

[Peter Holmes]

So a change in DNA could change moral facts, fabulous. Don't know why it took you so long to get here, probably because you didn't realise that something like that had to be true for supervenience to be meaningful - probably because you don't know what supervenience means. If you did, you would have just said that in your first reply.

Anyway, this seems like moral relativism to me. Morality is relative to whatever values our DNA gives us. If some person, some individual, has mutated DNA, the "moral realism" of yours that applies to him is potentially different from everyone else's morality.

'...a change in DNA could change moral facts...'

I see your aim here. But I have to demur. Since there are no moral facts, there can be no supervenience (whatever that means) of moral facts upon natural facts. In other words, this concession gives the whole point away - though your conclusion about moral relativism is well taken.

A change in DNA - or any natural fact - has no moral entailment whatsoever. Human programming with ought-not-to-kill-humans doesn't mean humans killing humans is morally wrong, any more than human programming with ought-to-kill-humans would mean humans killing humans is morally right.

In other words, moral conclusions must come from outside any factual premises or argument. That's what VA just can't understand.

You're replying to me as if I believe in the supervenience claim of the op.

Apologies. I didn't mean to suggest that.

[Flannel Jesus]

Apologies. I didn't mean to suggest that.

For the record, in case anyone is curious what I think (and maybe noone is, that's okay), I'm completely agnostic about moral truths. I don't know if they're relative or objective, I don't know if moral realism is the case. Moral realism doesn't exactly make complete intuitive sense to me, but I also wouldn't go so far as to say it's intuitively nonsense either. There's aspects of moral realism argumentation that feel off to me, but other aspects that feel intuitively like they're touching on something true, so... I just don't know.

But I will say, if there is a great and compelling argument for moral realism, it's almost certainly not any of the arguments VA makes.

[Veritas Aequitas]

'...a change in DNA could change moral facts...'

I see your aim here. But I have to demur. Since there are no moral facts, there can be no supervenience (whatever that means) of moral facts upon natural facts. In other words, this concession gives the whole point away - though your conclusion about moral relativism is well taken.

A change in DNA - or any natural fact - has no moral entailment whatsoever. Human programming with ought-not-to-kill-humans doesn't mean humans killing humans is morally wrong, any more than human programming with ought-to-kill-humans would mean humans killing humans is morally right.

In other words, moral conclusions must come from outside any factual premises or argument. That's what VA just can't understand.

Strawmaning again.

You just don't understand what I'm saying.

I have already mentioned to you a '1000' times.
Morality = Rightness or Wrongness is WRONG
viewtopic.php?t=40331

My focus on morality is NEVER on the idea of right or wrong. This is fire-fighting.

I didn't mention moral rightness and wrongness above.

You wrote above.

A change in DNA - or any natural fact - has no moral entailment whatsoever. Human programming with ought-not-to-kill-humans doesn't mean humans killing humans is morally wrong, any more than human programming with ought-to-kill-humans would mean humans killing humans is morally right.

Still deny it??

My focus on morality is how can humanity expedite moral progress at source.

What constitutes moral progress, and why should we be expedite it? Try a simple answer.

It can be very evident.
If scientists were to tweak your neurons settings and those of your future lineage that will make one a malignant psychopath, the change in moral facts and consequences will be very evident.
This can be empirically tested, verified and justified.

QED. I wrote '...moral conclusions must come from outside any factual premises or argument. That's what VA just can't understand.'

Such a physical/natural change has no moral entailment. You just assume it does. You have a moral opinion already in place: 'of course, less malignant psychopathy would mean moral progress.' Now, think. Why?

I have argued extensively,
your problem is your must come from 'outside' is grounded on an illusion.
I already have mentioned, whatever has to do with morality is all going on within the inside of the human brain.

It is delusional to insist moral conclusions must come from outside.
This is the traditional outdated argument against moral objectivity, i.e. from those who claim moral objective is from outside, i.e. God or Platonic Universals.

Your views are outdated.

Images of prisoners’ brains show important differences between those who are diagnosed as psychopaths and those who aren’t, according to a study led by University of Wisconsin–Madison researchers.
https://www.med.wisc.edu/news/psychopat ... -function/

If your moral theory rejects talk of moral rightness and wrongness, then it isn't a moral theory. It can't say why we should or shouldn't do something - so talk of moral progress is meaningless.

That you and the majority do not go about killing humans, it that based on rightness or wrongness.
Are you making moral judgment every second whether you are doing right or wrong?

The actual moral condition is just that you are indifferent to killing humans despite being programmed to kill, it is the moral fact supervened on natural facts, i.e. the oughtnot_ness to kill humans inhibitors at work that suppress any impulse to kill humans.
There is no decision of right or wrong from moral judgment whether to kill or not.

In certain situation, the oughtnot_ness to kill humans inhibitors may be weaken due to various reasons and it triggers an impulse to kill humans in the person, at this point the conscience and guilt will come into play to decide whether the person should go forward to kill humans or not.
By the time one has to make such a moral judgment it is fire-fighting and that is not morality-proper.
What is morality-proper is to prevent, inhibit and suppress the impulse to kill humans at source.

This is the most critical because it is the most effective strategy to ensure moral progress.

[FlashDangerpants]

David Brink in his Moral Realism and the Foundation of Ethics wrote:

It would appear, judging by the fact you don't understand the basics of supervenience, that you also cannot have gained any basic understanding of this book, either by reading it or any other means.

So why are you basing an OP a claim that implies this book supportd your argument?

[Veritas Aequitas]

I did not claim to be an expert on the topic of supervenience.
I wrote this to AI implying my ignorance:

Your admission of your ignorance here is admirable - and I don't mean that as a joke at your expense, it is.

As someone who has read quite a lot about supervenience, because it relates closely to a part of philosophy I'm passionate about, emergence, the cake explanation in OP is completely and utterly confused, and it's apparent that your ignorance of what supervenience is led you down a hole of misapplying it in ways you didn't know you were doing.

So, thread finished?

What is critical here is
there is a possibility of moral supervenience and this add one possibility of the emergence of moral facts.

So it just childish to simply claim and brush off, there are no objective moral facts.

So, thread finished?

Not too fast;

The possibility of "supervenience without entailment" or "supervenience without reduction" is contested territory among philosophers. WIKI

I will be researching more into this.
There seem to be a lot of articles from both sides re this topic of moral supervenience so it is immature just to give it up.

You have not explained why 'Moral Facts Supervene on Natural Facts' is not possible.

[Flannel Jesus]

You have not explained why 'Moral Facts Supervene on Natural Facts' is not possible.

It's not my contention that it's not possible. It's my contention that you started this thread without knowing what it means, and that terminally undermines everything you're trying to do here. You appear like a man drowning, flailing your arms trying to find a way to drag yourself up out of the water. "Supervenience" is the latest place where your slippery hands have found a bit of purchase, and you're trying your best to pull your head out of the water using it.

I think you'll have a more interesting journey in philosophy if you become less obsessed with finding purchase to pull your head out of the water, and just relax and let the water take you where it takes you. Instead of trying to use supervenience to pull yourself out of the water, don't try to USE supervenience for anything - read about it, learn about it, let it take you where it takes you. This is philosophy, you won't really drown, so just let the water take over. Be curious, genuinely curious, and be less obsessed with proving what you want to be proven. Your obsession with proving yourself by using any means available is just so so painful to watch.

[Peter Holmes]

You have not explained why 'Moral Facts Supervene on Natural Facts' is not possible.

If there are no moral facts, then there can be no supervenience of moral facts upon natural facts.

And in that case, talk of moral supervenience is incoherent.

In other words, first you have to establish the existence of moral facts - which you've failed to do. Supervenience can't produce moral facts from natural facts.

And, as it happens, I think the idea of supervenience - especially without entailment - is a con designed to smuggle in a supposedly necessary connection. At least, that's my impression from all the examples of supervenience I've seen so far. Happy to be disabused, of course.

Example. It can never be a fact that an object, which has XYZ physical properties, is beautiful. So the putative aesthetic fact that an object is beautiful can never 'supervene upon' the fact of its physical properties.

And whether the fact of other physical properties 'supervene upon' the fact of its physical properties opens the can of worms to do with properties and identity - which, as always, is really about language games.

[Veritas Aequitas]

You have not explained why 'Moral Facts Supervene on Natural Facts' is not possible.

If there are no moral facts, then there can be no supervenience of moral facts upon natural facts.

And in that case, talk of moral supervenience is incoherent.

In other words, first you have to establish the existence of moral facts - which you've failed to do. Supervenience can't produce moral facts from natural facts.

And, as it happens, I think the idea of supervenience - especially without entailment - is a con designed to smuggle in a supposedly necessary connection. At least, that's my impression from all the examples of supervenience I've seen so far. Happy to be disabused, of course.

Example. It can never be a fact that an object, which has XYZ physical properties, is beautiful. So the putative aesthetic fact that an object is beautiful can never 'supervene upon' the fact of its physical properties.

And whether the fact of other physical properties 'supervene upon' the fact of its physical properties opens the can of worms to do with properties and identity - which, as always, is really about language games.

Are you familiar [not necessary agree] with Coherentism.

I have proven there are moral facts based on a set of various arguments.
The claim of moral facts supervene on natural facts cohere with there are objective moral facts. i.e.

• 1. What is fact is contingent upon a human-based FSERC; the scientific FSERC [gold standard] is the most credible and objective.
  2. All empirical variables can be factualized [varying degrees of credibility and objectivity] within a FSERC.
  3. Moral facts as empirical based can be factualized within a moral FSERC which is established to be as closed as possible to the scientific FSERC.
  4. Therefore there are objective moral facts, so Morality is Objective as qualified to the moral FSERC.

You yourself [or any human being] is an obvious case and example of 'supervenience" i.e.
an alive being out of the physical body [if not a live is a corpse]

Here's AI [wR]:

.. the emergence of consciousness from a physical body can be regarded as a case of supervenience. In philosophy, supervenience refers to a relationship between two sets of properties such that if there is a change in the supervenient properties, there must be a corresponding change in the subvenient properties. Applied to the mind-body problem, this means that mental states (consciousness) supervene on physical states (the brain and body).

In this context:

Subvenient properties are the physical properties of the brain and nervous system, including neurons, synapses, and their complex interactions.

Supervenient properties are the mental states and conscious experiences that emerge from these physical properties.

The principle of supervenience implies that any change in mental states must be accompanied by a change in the physical states of the brain. However, it does not necessarily mean that the relationship between the two is causal or reducible. It allows for the possibility that mental states are dependent on but not fully explainable by physical states, aligning with certain non-reductive physicalist or emergentist perspectives in philosophy of mind.

[FlashDangerpants]

I think you'll have a more interesting journey in philosophy if you become less obsessed with finding purchase to pull your head out of the water, and just relax and let the water take you where it takes you. Instead of trying to use supervenience to pull yourself out of the water, don't try to USE supervenience for anything - read about it, learn about it, let it take you where it takes you. This is philosophy, you won't really drown, so just let the water take over. Be curious, genuinely curious, and be less obsessed with proving what you want to be proven. Your obsession with proving yourself by using any means available is just so so painful to watch.

Apparently he already tried that once. The story makes very little sense and is before my time, but it seems he used to hold to some very rigid and dogmatic arguments that didn't work (ahem) and then sombody persuaded him somehow that he had been all wrong and that Kant was the way.... so he then claims to have spent 3 years doing nothing but read Kant all day.... and now he's got himself into a situation for the last 10 or so years where he has rebuilt the same castle of rigid dogma but in a new form.

Along the way he's tried but forgotten a whole bunch of super weird shit. He went through a phase of insisting that ying and yang are an indisputable universal law. He has claimed that Miss Universe pageants are a science with audited scoring systems. You're not wrong, he'll cling to any nonsense that floats.

[Veritas Aequitas]

You have not explained why 'Moral Facts Supervene on Natural Facts' is not possible.

It's not my contention that it's not possible. It's my contention that you started this thread without knowing what it means, and that terminally undermines everything you're trying to do here. You appear like a man drowning, flailing your arms trying to find a way to drag yourself up out of the water. "Supervenience" is the latest place where your slippery hands have found a bit of purchase, and you're trying your best to pull your head out of the water using it.

I had not dug into 'supervenience' seriously previously.
While reading David Brink, 'supervenience' seem to be valid with my argument re the complementriness between the scientific FSERC with the moral FSERC.
I have used other approaches to link the above elsewhere.
I have not leveraged [or will ever] 'supervenience' as the main thing to support my theory but rather it cohere [coherentism] with all my other arguments that scientific facts can be transmuted into moral facts.

I think you'll have a more interesting journey in philosophy if you become less obsessed with finding purchase to pull your head out of the water, and just relax and let the water take you where it takes you. Instead of trying to use supervenience to pull yourself out of the water, don't try to USE supervenience for anything - read about it, learn about it, let it take you where it takes you. This is philosophy, you won't really drown, so just let the water take over. Be curious, genuinely curious, and be less obsessed with proving what you want to be proven. Your obsession with proving yourself by using any means available is just so so painful to watch.

It is natural for one to argue for one's hypothesis until it is accepted or trashed.
I believe the concept of 'supervenience' is useful for my purpose until I am convinced [with further research] it is not.

My approach is contingent upon the human conditions which I recognize is fallible, so I understand and anticipate failures.

It is painful for you because you are stuck dogmatically and ideology within the philosophical realism paradigm, thus the painful cognitive dissonance.
Philosophical realists [you? and others] jump to the conclusion with certainty there is something existing absolutely independent out there awaiting discover.
Your position on this principle that there is this thing existing absolutely independent out there, is not falsifiable at all.

[FlashDangerpants]

I had not dug into 'supervenience' seriously previously.
While reading David Brink, 'supervenience' seem to be valid with my argument re the complementriness between the scientific FSERC with the moral FSERC.

It is very unusual for such a book, or even an individual paper to use such a concept as supervenience as a core step within the argument presented without also defining it around the time of first use so that any confusions which might arise from other ways of using that term which the author takes no responsibility for.

So if I look at the first couple of pages of the nearest such book to hand while I type this, I find the sentence 'The first lecture, in particular, tries to explain in a non-technical way what I mean by "ontology" and what I mean by "ethics" in the present context.'
From where does this sentence come? From a book called "Ethics Without Ontology" by Putnam.

I rather suspect Brink probably did something similar, but VA didn't read it, perhaps his special speed-reading technique let him down again.