This is long but I expect that hopefully it still only comes in a few chunks that can just be block quoted.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Aug 04, 2022 5:37 pmAstro Cat wrote:
My position is that all oughts are constructed by hypothetical imperatives ...
I know. But that's non-responsive to the question.
My question is very simple: if we are not "owned" by God,
who "owns" us?
It does respond to the question, though. You defined this concept of ownership as being that P owns S if S ought to do as P wishes.
My response is that the only oughts I know about are those formed by hypothetical imperatives based on values (what we're calling instrumentalist oughts, like "if I don't want to be late, then I ought to get ready" and "if I value life, then I ought not to murder"). As nobody forces anyone else to have different values, my response is essentially that the question is wrong because it assumes that S is subject to an ought that doesn't come from S's values and isn't built on a hypothetical imperative S has formed from S's own values.
If S doesn't value P's wishes, there's no way to get to "S ought to do as P wishes" without demonstrating the existence of an ought that is true (has some correspondence to reality) and which is not formed on a hyothetical imperative (if S values x, then S ought to do y where y somehow furthers S's value of x).
But as I've said,
you have the onus of proof for that. I'm the one that doubts a moral ought exists because I don't see how it could have cognitive content. Your question about "ownership" is answered: it's a nonsense concept alongside moral oughts because it
contains a moral ought, and you still have the onus of proof to render the concept of moral oughts cognitive and true.
Immanuel Can wrote:Astro Cat wrote:I think the painter values having some control over where the painting goes,
That ducks the question.
So what if a painter WANTS to put the painting she created somewhere? Maybe she wants what it is not reasonable for her to expect to have. So what if she "forms an instrumentalist intent" to get it there; maybe she has a method to try and make her wishes come about, but we still think she has no right over her painting.
But most of us don't seem to think that way, intuitively. We do think, if she made it, she has some right to say what happens to it. What we need to ask, then, is whether that intuition is completely nuts, or whether there's something to our instinct that tells us that creation does entail some right to say how the creation is used.
And what would you say? Are we nuts?
I think we intuit that creators of paintings may place them where they wish empathetically, and that what we're doing is still a form of instrumentalism. The painter's right to place the painting where she wants is an instrumentalist right in that it's still about values and hypothetical imperatives based on those values. The painter values being able to place the painting where she wishes, so she experiences that she wants to place it where she wishes (she experiences an instrumentalist ought). When someone else agrees that she ought to place it where she likes, they are also forming an instrumentalist ought.
I think they are prone to agree with her because most humans have empathy, and most humans have created something before, and most humans have valued being able to do what they wish with their creation, and most humans can abstractly project that experience to value someone
else being able to do what they wish with
their creations. Now, note that it's not about popularity: even if most humans think she ought to put her painting where she wishes, nothing about there being many humans that think this way makes it "correct." A human that simply doesn't value her being able to put her painting where she wishes isn't wrong in an intrinsic, objective way, even if many humans do value her having the choice.
Then, of course, we have to remember that values come in complex hierarchies. Consider the painter may have a conventionally strange desire of what she wants to do with her painting: she wants to hang it on the fridge door. Her husband may generally value her being able to do what she wishes with what's hers, but suppose her husband values having more conventional things on the fridge door, such as a calendar. He may love his wife and her choices but value having a calendar on the fridge more, plus he may claim the fridge is his as much as it is hers for instance, so he may talk her out of it or "put his foot down" so to speak about it.
All of this makes sense in terms of values and instrumentalist oughts which are formed by hypothetical imperatives. It doesn't make sense to say that there is something about the universe that makes it a
truth she can hang the painting where she wishes (whatever that would mean, again moral realism doesn't make any cognitive sense). It does make sense to say that she and anyone else involved is operating on their values to determine what they instrumentally ought to do in accordance with those values.
Immanuel Can wrote:And a second thing about simply "valuing" something and then finding an "instrumentalist" way of making it happen: it's amoral. I don't mean it's necessarily "immoral," but rather that it has not thing to do with moral "oughtness." And this can be easily shown.
Perhaps I value Aryan-ness, let's say. Instrumentally, setting up a system of xenophobic legislation is the instrumentally best way to guarantee what I happen to value. And I can get my society to go along, too: I'll simply tell them that other "races" are "inferior," and that our great, Aryan nation will rise to supremacy when we eliminate intermarriage and "resettle" in interlopers, or otherwise eliminate them. I'll incentivize them with economic and military gains, or public-works projects that make society seem better to the majority of Aryans. And I'll increase the size of our country by invading inferior nations, and by making war on weaker powers.
There. I have something I value. And I have the most instrumental ways of achieving it. And I have the support of my society, as well.
Does that mean I "ought" to do it? Is it now "moral"?
As far as I can tell, all oughts are amoral. That's what it means to doubt the existence of moral oughts.
You ask, "Does that mean I 'ought' to do it?" We have to be
extremely careful with this wording here. If the question is whether there is a moral ought about it such that you should do it because it is intrinsically good to do it, then no: I submit the question doesn't even make sense until the concept of a "moral ought" (one that is not based on a personal value/composed by a hypothetical imperative) is rendered sensible by some cunning moral realist's argument.
If you're asking "Does that mean I have an instrumentalist ought to do it?" the answer is "yes, if Z values Nazism over all else, then Z instrumentally experiences an ought to further that value." Then of course it will be true that for anyone else, if K values crushing Nazis, then K instrumentally experienced an ought to stop Z. This is the way of the world. Oughts come from hypothetical imperatives based on values. Since Z values Nazism, and to value something means to want to further that thing in some way, then Z will experience feeling they ought to do things that further Nazism. Z has an instrumentalist ought: to further Nazism's cause. And of course K may come along and have an instrumentalist ought to stop Z. Or maybe not. That is why the world is dangerous, after all.
Unless you can demonstrate there can be a moral ought, my position is that
all oughts we experience in everyday life are
instrumentalist oughts. If a Nazi values Nazism, of course they'll instrumentally experience oughts that they ought to further Nazism's cause. And if someone abhors Nazism, of course they'll instrumentally experience oughts that they ought to stop Nazis. Reality is described this way.
Immanuel Can wrote:Astro Cat wrote:I got curious at some point about what would happen, on your view, if an evil being were to create a creature with agency.
Free agency is a "good." We all realize that. Any creature that has it is better than the same creature without it. A person is always better than a robot or a zombie.
So it's self-contradictory to suppose a genuinely "evil" being would ever want to do it. You'd have to be talking about a
partially evil being, one with some ability to create a good. However, since such a thing has never happened, and we have no reason at present to believe it ever could, I see no conclusions that can be drawn from such a scenario anyway.
I'm not sure that I agree that free agency is always good (is a being that always chooses evil somehow more good to exist than a being that only chooses evil because of its programming? That doesn't feel right even on moral realism), and that's maybe a fun conversation for another time though. It also feels like creating a free agent could be more evil than not creating a free agent (e.g., a malevolent deity creates a person solely to torture the person for eternity seems far more evil than a malevolent deity creating a non-sentient robot to "torture" or just not creating anything
to torture).
I don't understand why you have such an aversion to fantastic scenarios. As a physicist I learn quickly that if I really want to test an idea, I need to test it at extremes and see if it holds up. I find that to be true in philosophy and argument as well. Just because a scenario seems fantastic doesn't mean that it isn't apt. Imagine if Einstein never wondered what it would be like to ride on a train next to a light beam because he brushed it off as fantastic. All that should matter is whether a scenario is relevant, not whether it's fantastic. Entering the fantastic is sometimes the only way to tease out problems with ideas by showing that an idea might seem OK in mundane circumstances but has serious problems in fantastic scenarios (but which render the whole idea incorrect once discovered at the edges).
If I have a supposition like "a creation ought to do as its creator wishes," then I'll try to imagine whether that's always true, even under extreme scenarios. So I put on my moral realism cap and thought it through something like this: if P creating S means that S morally ought to do as P wishes, then what if P's wishes are evil? The moral realist's contention is generally that S only morally ought to do what is intrinsically good. So there's a conflict here:
P1) If x creates y, then y morally ought to do x's wishes
P2) P creates S
C1) S morally ought to do P's wishes
P3) S always morally ought to do what is intrinsically good
P4) P's wishes are intrinsically evil
C2) S morally ought-not to do P's wishes
But these are in direct conflict with each other. So what does it even mean to say that S ought to do what P wishes just because P created S? If the very act of creation
imparts a moral duty, then how can S simultaneously have a moral duty to do as P wishes and a moral duty to
not do as P wishes?
The conclusion would be that P creating S doesn’t impart a moral duty at all on S; all that matters is that S ought to do what is intrinsically good. The creation act is extraneous and doesn’t matter to S’s moral oughts, else S morally ought to do P’s evil wishes if it were the case.
Immanuel Can wrote:Astro Cat wrote:...if oughts come from values...
They don't, of course.
But let's clear that up, because you say three things that don't work together, I think.
Do you think "oughts" come, ultimately and finally, from
values, or from
instrumental considerations, or from
social consensus?
In other words, is racism wrong because Cat values anti-racism? Or is racism wrong merely because we can't make it "work" for us in some way? Or is it wrong because Cat believes the majority of society doesn't like racism?
Those three are very different claims. And however one tries to blend them, one has to be the primary and decisive explanation. For it's manifest that the three can easily be at variance -- the values of Cat can be not those of her society, and they can be not those that have particular instrumental utility in a given case -- and we need to know which one to pay attention to, when that happens. Which one is the true, root explanation for "oughtness"?
Well, now I'm uncertain whether we're still not on the same page on what I mean by "instrumentalist ought" and "moral ought" if you're asking this, so let me hopefully try to be as exactingly concise as I can.
An instrumentalist ought is a personal ought that a person experiences because they value something. If I value a homeless man's health on a hot day, then I experience a feeling where I want to give him some water. That feeling is an "instrumentalist ought." I value his health, so I ought to give him some water. Notice that this feeling is personal and applies only to me: that's because it comes from my values. Someone else of course could have the same value and experience the same feeling, but the feeling always comes from ourselves. That is what an "instrumentalist ought" is: we experience that we ought to do something that furthers our values. So in your Nazi example, yes, the Nazi experiences an instrumentalist ought to further Nazism. And the Nazi-fighter experiences an instrumentalist ought to fight Nazism. This is what I'm saying
all oughts are until someone demonstrates that a moral ought can be cognitive and true. Is this more clear to you now?
I am not sure how to describe what a moral ought is because that's the very onus of my position (I don't know what one would be). It doesn't seem like it's a feeling one should do something, because then why can some people do ostensibly "intrinsically evil" things and never feel that they should have done otherwise (true psychopaths)? All I can say is that a moral ought would be an ought that
applies, in some way I can't fathom how to describe, to everyone regardless of their personal values. Again, I have no idea what this means, I don't know what it means for there to be something about reality that means we "ought" to do this and not that which doesn't depend on what our values are. So, sorry if this definition isn't great, but that's what happens if we ask the noncognitivist what a "moral ought" is supposed to be.
Anyway, you asked me, paraphrased, "Do oughts come from values, instrumentalist considerations, or social consensus?"
My response is that instrumentalist oughts come from values. Racism isn't intrinsically wrong (nothing about the universe makes it "intrinsically wrong") unless "intrinsic wrongness" can be made cognitive and true. So if Cat says "racism is wrong," she means that she doesn't value racial stereotypes, or that she values human equality in treatment, and any other number of values. Because she has those values, she experiences that she ought-not to treat someone of a different "race" poorly because of that fact. So really, the "values" and "instrumentalist considerations" are the same thing: values are used to arrive to instrumentalist oughts.
As for the social consensus, everyone individually has their own values. When many of those values align, values begin to have power behind them. This is when peoples' instrumentalist oughts begin to be able to be projected onto others. If most of society values life, they may experience an instrumentalist ought to stop murderers; and so they will use force to do so (pass laws). That doesn't mean there's anything about the universe that makes murder intrinsically wrong, just to be clear. You might object "well then why does it matter if it's not even intrinsically wrong." Because this is just the way reality is. Most people do value not-murdering, but it's possible for people in aggregate to not value that (Nazi analogy strikes again, right?).
So to complain "but if murder isn't intrinsically wrong, nothing stops people from valuing murder" is just sort of an argument towards consequences fallacy (if you're not careful). I am describing reality. It
is always a danger that peoples' values will be dangerous for other people. That is just reality. People that do value things like altruism, truth, liberty, justice, and so on ought to make sure they are helping to increase adherence to those values as much as they can if they value them (even
that is an instrumentalist ought formed by hypothetical imperative), because those that don't share those values will be doing the same.
Also, thanks for the response to my question on syllogisms. I think it's hard to break everything down to two lines and a conclusion chained together, e.g. sometimes the complexity of some idea seems like it takes multiple premises to get to a conclusion (see for instance the Problem of Evil). But I get what you're saying.
Immanuel Can wrote:Astro Cat wrote:...this doesn't help your "goodness is identical with God" statements...
I don't think I ever put it quite that way...and if I did, I spoke poorly...but I don't think I did.
I think what I said is that God is the
prototype and
epitome of goodness, the
consummate model and
origin from which all our palid, secondary, human conceptions of "goodness" are derived. That is a better way to put it, if I misspoke.
If adultery is wrong, it is wrong because God is faithful. If murder is wrong, it is wrong because God is the giver of life. If covetousness is wrong, it is wrong because God is the great Provider...and so on. The ultimate reason for anything being "sin" is that it "falls short of the glory of God," as Romans and Isaiah both put it.
The Greek word for "sin" is "
hamartia," which means "a falling short of the mark," a metaphor from archery. The Christian idea is that human beings have a duty to think, act and behave in ways harmonious with the character of God, so as to achieve their basic teleological purpose of having a relationship with the eternal God, which is the ultimate Good for anybody. Though they have the choice not to do this they "should not" forego that which is not only the right thing to do, but is also in their ultimate best interests as well. That's how a Christian sees it.
You did put it that way, not to rub it in (I believe you if you say you misspoke, I do it too lol). You had said "goodness is identical with God" and when I asked "well what is goodness then?" you just responded "God." (with the period and everything). But that's ok, I misspeak or sometimes I start out an argument where I'm doing something weird for some reason and then forget what I'm doing because I'm multitasking and some weird thing will still be left in my argument -- and you get how it is. So no worries. All that matters is that you are agreeing that goodness is
not identical to God. Good (see what I did there?).
Ok, a lot of concepts here need fleshing out.
1) You say that God's goodness is the "origin" from which all of our goodness is derived. What does that mean? This sounds somewhat like God is some kind of Platonic form or something. Consider the largest object in the universe: it has the most of the property of largeness. Other things don't seem to derive largeness from this object, it's just that the object has the most of the property of largeness.
Likewise if God has the most of the property of goodness, the maximum possible even, I don't understand how or why that would mean other objects "derive" goodness as a property from God. God's having maximal goodness seems materially unrelated to whether Cat has some of the property of goodness, or whether a rock has any of the property of goodness, etc. What does this concept of a property being an "origin" to other properties mean?
2) You say "if adultery is wrong, it is because God is faithful," and other such things. "The ultimate reason for anything being 'sin' is that it 'falls short of the glory of God'". (Now, I am going to assume I can use "being a sin" and "being intrinsically wrong" interchangeably, let me know if that's not the case). But here we are sort of back to Euthyphro's fork again.
Is adultery intrinsically wrong
because God is faithful? Then Divine Command Theory is true: if God being faithful is has a
causal role in adultery being intrinsically wrong, then this is DCT. If DCT is true, then moral realism can't possibly be true.
Is adultery intrinsically wrong because it is intrinsically wrong (but also God is faithful)? Then God being faithful is extraneous information and we don't need to know what God is doing or thinking to understand why adultery is intrinsically wrong.
Now you might go back to the first one and say "ah, but it's not DCT, because God has no choice but to be faithful." But this doesn't help anything (this is just a bait-and-switch to the second horn). If God has no choice but to be faithful, then adultery isn't intrinsically wrong
because God is faithful: adultery would be intrinsically wrong
because of whatever it is that
makes God faithful: whatever it is that's external and transcendental to God that makes God have the properties that God has, beyond God's own control (since He
can't decide not to be faithful under the premises). So again God isn't really important, the thing that would be important to why adultery is wrong is whatever that transcendental thing is that makes God faithful, and we should talk about what that is and not about whatever God's doing. God again doesn't matter in this scenario, what God's doing is extraneous.
So, this is still a problem for your view, this dilemma. Either DCT is true, or God has nothing to do with answering what "intrinsic goodness" is.
Immanuel Can wrote:Astro Cat wrote:Some of your language suggests that God's property of being good is a difference in quantity, but some of your comments suggest it's a difference in quality.
Can you point that out?
Well, this was the passage that gave me that feeling; though it echoes what I'm responding to in this post here:
Immanuel Can wrote:IC is male is one accurate predication of IC. But IC is not all males, nor maleness itself, nor the sum-and-total of maleness. IC is tall. IC is of a particular age. IC is argumentative, perhaps.
God has this distinctive, though: that when one speaks of something like goodness, that God is not merely a possessor of a feature that can be equally applied to other things, as IC is. God is, Himself, the origin point, paragon of, and ultimate possessor of that quality, such that all further predications to other things are derived from Him.
So when we say, IC Is good, we would literally be saying, "IC is a palid reflection of that ultimate goodness that originates and is exhibited in God." To the extent that IC Is really good, he would be God-like. For God is the wellspring and ultimate possessor of the quality being attributed, much more conditionally and remotely, to IC.
(IC does not, however, regard himself as "good." He's merely using the key moral quality to illustrate the point.)
So we're not saying "God = goodness," as if God were Himself NOTHING BUT the abstract quality of "goodness," but that goodness is a correct predication of God. So is holiness. So is love, and justice, and righteousness...But all of these, God alone has in absolute quality. Any other predications are derived only by analogy and association with His pure love, justice and holiness.
I was walking away from it the first go-through thinking it sounded like "well God has goodness like IC has goodness, but different." Then in other places you speak of others having a "palid reflection" of the goodness that God has. So it seemed to me to be saying God's goodness is both qualitatively and quantitatively different from IC's. Now, quantitatively different isn't a problem: that's perfectly sensible. I am still not entirely sure whether you're arguing God's goodness is qualitatively different though. We shall see when you respond to this post, as I got further into asking you questions about that somewhere above.
Immanuel Can wrote:Astro Cat wrote:...if God is the most good being in the universe, it would make sense to say that God has goodness like anyone else,
"Like anyone else?"
God's goodness is different from human goodness in two ways: first, His is more, and ours is less. But secondly, His is pure, and ours has admixture of evil in it. But that is not to say that the part of human goodness that is
genuinely good is not good in the same sort of sense that God's is.
I can accept that His is more and ours is less. That's just saying He has a property in more quantity, which is sensible.
What do you mean that our goodness has an admixture of evil in it? I mean I think I can make sense of this. Isn't this like saying that a yellow-green shirt has the property of being yellow but has an admixture of blue in it, and that we could conceive of a shirt that is pure yellow?
That seems fine. But then it wouldn't make sense to say that all other yellow things derive their yellowness from the pure yellow shirt. So you're still going to have to explain that (I already asked somewhere above, so I don't mean you have to explain it again, you know what I mean). It seems like the case that would make the most sense is simply that God possesses the most goodness as a property; the maximum possible goodness, while every other being possesses less goodness than that. That's a perfectly sensible scenario. But, then God wouldn't be the "source" of goodness: He would just be a perfect instantiation of it.
Immanuel Can wrote:For example, if I lay down my life for my friends, that is good. It is also what God would do, as we know from Jesus Christ. But we know that Christ went beyond this: He died for his enemies.
I am pretty sure normal human beings have laid down their lives for fellow humans that also happened to be enemies before, but I don't want to leave the main points we're discussing.
Immanuel Can wrote:So we are saying that God's goodness and human goodness are of a kind...but the human is lesser and polluted by our own limitations. However, when we are predicating "good" we have to remember in which direction the predication flows: we don't say that "God is good" because humans have a perfect understanding of what "good" actually is, or that they are perfectly "good" themselves; we say it because inasmuch as you and I even know what "good" actually is, it is only because we have some innate knowledge of the character of God.
Again, God's goodness is the prototype. We are merely the flawed and fallible "detectors of good." We are like slightly off-calibrated thermometers: we detect the "temperature" of good, but only approximately. We can be off by a couple of degrees, at any given time. But in general, we'll be right.
The important point is this, though. We are not the source or definition of goodness. We are not the benchmarks of God's goodness. Goodness is not in origin a human concept at all, but rather a divine attribute for which we have assigned a particular human word, the word "good."
I am not sure what this "prototype" business means. A shirt that is the most possible yellow isn't a "prototype" for yellow as a property in other shirts, for instance. I don't know what that would even mean. That would be some kind of Platonism, and I don't think Platonic forms are cognitive, and I don't think there's a mechanism by which some thing with the maximum amount of a property could have some role in why other things have that property.
Perhaps what matters is in the difference. Above, I asked somewhere for you to explain what it means for others to "derive" goodness from God (I am flabbergasted by this idea that a property is "derived" from another thing with that property, I confess, but ostensibly you've written something about that by this point. Or maybe I've misunderstood you). So can you explain why people get their property of goodness by "deriving" it from God, but shirts don't get their yellowness by "deriving" it from the most yellow shirt? Maybe if I understood why you think one is the case but (presumably) not the other I would get some understanding.
-----------------------------------------
Post-Script:
Where we're at in this conversation is this. Everyone can agree on the existence of instrumentalist oughts as I defined them above: they are the feeling a person gets when they value something, and to value something is to want to take actions to "further" that value somehow (whether "further" means to preserve that value, or spread that value, or lead to an outcome congruent with that value, whatever). If someone values being on time, then they feel they want to get ready sooner rather than later because that furthers their value. This is what I'm calling an "instrumentalist ought." I think that situations people normally call "moral" work the same way: people are generally using instrumentalist oughts in their everyday life when they're not philosophizing about morality. If I value property, then I experience a feeling whereby I want to
not take my friend's purse without her permission: this is an instrumentalist ought. I instrumentally ought not to take her purse, if I value property.
I think that "moral ought" is a nonsense utterance. A moral ought would entail some kind of ought that does not come from a person's personal values and isn't formed by a hypothetical imperative. I don't think there's any cognitive substance to this, I don't think there's a referent to which these utterance reference. It is up to the moral realist to demonstrate that a "moral ought" is cognitive (forms some cognition in a listener's mind to hear a description of it) and can be true (has some correspondence to reality outside of a person's feelings).
I think that one approach to demonstrating that a "moral ought" could exist is by demonstrating that "intrinsic goodness" can exist. I think the concepts of "moral ought," "moral right," "moral duty," "intrinsic goodness," and "intrinsic purpose" are all related concepts to the point that demonstrating one of them demonstrates them all. Yet in all my years talking to moral realists, I've never seen a satisfying attempt to do so. And I don't even mean something so epic as demonstrating all of morality in an argument, like "solving the problem of morality" basically. I
only mean someone needs to make it sensible. Someone needs to make it so that the utterance "intrinsic goodness" proffers up some kind of cognitive content that informs in the listener's mind a sensible concept when examined, something that doesn't just have a bunch of holes, problems, contradictions, or undefined/nonsense concepts. But that is all I ever get (and I'm not just saying from you, you are a fine debate buddy. I mean over my entire life being interested in this).
On the other hand, everyone understands (once explained) what an instrumentalist ought is. Everyone understands what an instrumentalist right is (it is pretty much the same thing: someone believes someone has a "right" to do something if they have values about them doing that thing, if we understand the word "right" in that sentence to mean an instrumentalist, and not moral, right). Everyone understands what an instrumentalist duty is for the same reason. Everyone can understand what "good" means if goodness is not intrinsic (it is a judgment by an individual that means something like "good is that which aligns with my values"). Yes, that means that a Nazi can say "genocide is good," and the usage of the term would still be sensible once we understand that "good" always means good
to them. Because if moral realism can't be demonstrated, that is all the word "good" ever means.
So that is why it's important for you to be able to explain what goodness is in an
intrinsic way. So far, your explanation is not cognitive, but of course the discussion is ongoing, so we'll see.
