SEP: Supervenience in Ethics

[Flannel Jesus]

I thought that particular prompt was not important because it is implied in the answer.

Yes, that's because you're silly and have no idea how to think carefully and critically.

I told you the prompt is implied in the answer.
To save time, I did not want to do extra copy, paste or having to edit out the non-essential bits from the program.

Elsewhere, where I think it is critical I will include the prompt, I have done so many times where necessary.

Let's stop quoting ai here entirely, it's not useful. If you personally find it useful to explore ideas with ai, then you do that on your own time and keep your conversations with ai to yourself - we don't care

The prompt is never implied in the answer. You only think that because you are a sloppy thinker.

[Peter Holmes]

AI: '"...how you judge a particular action is entirely situational, and different situations may call for different judgments, but identical situations call for the same moral judgment".

Situation: an abortion.

Ethically supervenient moral judgement: Abortion is morally wrong. OR Abortion is not morally wrong.

And changing the details of the situation - such as threat to the mother's life, or fatal embryo abnormality - makes no difference. There can be no ethical supervenience - no unarguable moral judgement.

So much for situational ethical supervenience.

[Veritas Aequitas]

Can we hop off the AI train yet please VA?

The truth must prevail.

Here is from ChatGpt:

With reference to his article:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/supe ... ce-ethics/
Someone commented the following:

"It's just basically saying "morality is situational".
So for example, generally it's not moral to kill another person, but if you find yourself in a situation where someone is trying to kill you, suddenly you killing another person becomes a moral option.
It's not about moral facts compared to natural facts at large, it's about situational ethics."

It is true it is basically about situational ethics and not about moral facts supervened on natural facts?

Here's ChatGpt response which is the similar my earlier response:

The comment you quoted oversimplifies the concept of supervenience in ethics. The idea of supervenience in ethics is more complex than merely situational ethics. Here's a more detailed explanation:

Supervenience in ethics is the idea that moral properties depend on, or are determined by, non-moral properties (often called "base" properties). This means that any change in moral properties must be accompanied by a change in the base properties, but not necessarily vice versa. For example, if two situations are identical in all their non-moral (natural) properties, they must also be identical in their moral properties.

Situational ethics, on the other hand, emphasizes the context and circumstances of a particular situation in determining the moral action. It suggests that what is right or wrong can vary depending on the specific details of the situation.

While situational ethics focuses on the context of actions to determine their moral value, supervenience in ethics addresses the relationship between moral properties and the underlying non-moral properties.
The article on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy discusses supervenience in terms of this dependency relationship, rather than just situational variability.

The idea is not simply that morality is situational, but rather that moral facts are tied to natural facts in such a way that any change in moral judgment implies a change in the underlying natural facts. This is a nuanced philosophical position about the structure of moral reality, rather than a straightforward claim about situational decision-making.

[Flannel Jesus]

Oh yay, more ai slop!

Your brains are dripping out of your ears VA. Access to ai has atrophied your ability to think critically.

[Veritas Aequitas]

AI: '"...how you judge a particular action is entirely situational, and different situations may call for different judgments, but identical situations call for the same moral judgment".

Situation: an abortion.

Ethically supervenient moral judgement: Abortion is morally wrong. OR Abortion is not morally wrong.

So much for situational ethical supervenience.

That's Flannel-Jesus' claim not mine.

Mine is
Abortion is Not Permissible, Period!
viewtopic.php?t=42514
the above is a moral standard not enforceable on individuals.

The above is a moral fact supervened on natural facts based on the principles of supervenience.
The justification of why it is a moral fact is too tedious to present here.

[Flannel Jesus]

If only all of your ideas were too tedious to present here...

[Veritas Aequitas]

Oh yay, more ai slop!
Your brains are dripping out of your ears VA. Access to ai has atrophied your ability to think critically.

You understand what is rationality and critical thinking in problem solving?

Where matters and things that are tedious, we leave to AI so to save our thinking capacity for more complex issues like how philosophical realism [yours?] is grounded on illusion.

[Flannel Jesus]

Let me know when you're ready to clearly lay out what you mean by ethical supervenience. So far it looks like you mean "how someone feels about morality depends on their brain state - like mirror neurons - and someone with a different brain may feel differently about morality."

If that's not what you mean, then all of these pages have done absolutely no work at helping anyone understand what you do mean, so let's get to it. None of this slop is meaningful if nobody knows what you mean.

[Peter Holmes]

There is no supervenience of moral facts upon natural facts. The claim is a sleight-of-hand to magic moral facts out of thin air. And it doesn't work, just as non-moral premises can't entail moral conclusions.

[Flannel Jesus]

There is no supervenience of moral facts upon natural facts. The claim is a sleight-of-hand to magic moral facts out of thin air. And it doesn't work, just as non-moral premises can't entail moral conclusions.

Half the time in these conversation, it looks like "moral facts" means "facts about how humans feel about morals". That's why he focuses so much on mirror neurons - mirror neurons affect how people feel about the morality of various actions.

He calls it a straw man when I say it, but it's the closest thing to clarity anybody has about what he means.

[Veritas Aequitas]

There is no supervenience of moral facts upon natural facts. The claim is a sleight-of-hand to magic moral facts out of thin air. And it doesn't work, just as non-moral premises can't entail moral conclusions.

Your thinking in this is too primitive, i.e. relying on outdated arguments which has lost their moral teeth.

Classic Arguments Against Moral Realism is Losing Force
viewtopic.php?t=42510

[Veritas Aequitas]

There is no supervenience of moral facts upon natural facts. The claim is a sleight-of-hand to magic moral facts out of thin air. And it doesn't work, just as non-moral premises can't entail moral conclusions.

Half the time in these conversation, it looks like "moral facts" means "facts about how humans feel about morals". That's why he focuses so much on mirror neurons - mirror neurons affect how people feel about the morality of various actions.

He calls it a straw man when I say it, but it's the closest thing to clarity anybody has about what he means.

I have never agree the resulting judgments based on feelings are the essential elements related to morality proper.
Morality = Rightness or Wrongness is WRONG
viewtopic.php?t=40331

In a refined perspective feelings are fact
Are Feelings Facts?
viewtopic.php?t=42562

For example, the manifested emotional feelings are not facts per se.
However, when emotional feelings are correlated with its underlying neural correlates they are facts [FSERC] i.e. science-biological-psychological facts where the primary emotional mechanisms and even manifestations are universal in all humans.
These facts [FSERC] can be tested empirically.

[Flannel Jesus]

If your claims about ethical supervenience aren't primarily claims about how people feel about morality, then you still need to answer that you mean by moral supervenience. Your focus on mirror neurons looks like a focus on how people feel about morality - if that's not what you mean, clarify what you do mean.

[Flannel Jesus]

Supervenience is a claim about dependence in changes of one thing on changes in another thing.

The common claim is "mental states supervene on brain states".

That means the following things are true:

If person A and person B have the same brain-state, they have the same mental state.
If person A and person B have different mental states, they must also have different brain states.
However, there are potentially situations where person A and person B have different brain states but the same mental state.

The same formulation effectively applies to all other uses of 'supervenience'. So, "moral facts supervene on natural facts" means:

If state A and state B have the same natural facts, they have the same moral facts.
If state A and state B have different moral facts, they must also have different natural facts.
However, there are potentially situations where state A and state B have different natural facts but the same moral facts.

So far, your only example is about the mirror neurons of a person. "If you change the mirror neurons of this person, that changes his moral facts in some way." As far as I can tell, the only moral fact that changes about a person if you change their mirror neurons is how they feel about the morality of various actions.

A person with a shit load of mirror neurons might be unwilling to break someone's knee caps for the mafia, because it feels wrong.

A person with no mirror neurons might be willing to, because it doesn't really feel like anything at all to break the kneecaps of another human.

Changing mirror neurons affects how people feel about the morality of things they might do. If that's not the kind of "moral fact" you intend to talk about, VA, you aren't doing a good job of clarifying your position.

People are showing curiosity in your ideas but you aren't putting any real effort into clarifying what they are.

If state A and state B have the same natural facts, they have the same moral facts.
If state A and state B have different moral facts, they must also have different natural facts.
However, there are potentially situations where state A and state B have different natural facts but the same moral facts.

Give us some more edifying examples of moral supervenience using the above three lines as a guide.

This post was written by a human being.

[Peter Holmes]

There is no supervenience of moral facts upon natural facts. The claim is a sleight-of-hand to magic moral facts out of thin air. And it doesn't work, just as non-moral premises can't entail moral conclusions.

Half the time in these conversation, it looks like "moral facts" means "facts about how humans feel about morals". That's why he focuses so much on mirror neurons - mirror neurons affect how people feel about the morality of various actions.

He calls it a straw man when I say it, but it's the closest thing to clarity anybody has about what he means.

Agreed. But his argument is that feelings don't come into it, because they're subjective.

The supposed supervenience is this: the moral fact that humans ought not to kill humans supervenes upon the natural fact that humans are neurologically programmed with oughtness-not-to-kill-humans.

So, by the same argument, the moral fact that humans ought to kill humans would supervene upon the natural fact that humans are neurologically programmed with oughtness-to-kill-humans.

And this is why he says morality has nothing to do with rightness and wrongness. The 'ought' has no conventional moral meaning - such as that we ought to do something because it's right to do so, or not do it because it's wrong to do so. Here, 'ought' just means something like 'consistent with programming'.

But then, why 'ought' we to change the programming - the subvenient fact - in any direction, or at all?

I'm starting to think there's something Nietzschean about VA's argument: pathetic bleatings about rightness and wrongness are features of a slave morality - so away with them!

(Apologies if this has already been pointed out. I forget.)