Philosophy Now Forum

Skepdick wrote: ↑Mon Jan 31, 2022 2:38 am

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Mon Jan 31, 2022 2:12 am I don't believe morality is even a vaguely similar thing to gravity

Spare me the rhetoric.

With respect to sufficiency having measurable consequences is a sufficient condition for asserting the objective existence of a phenomenon.
If it's sufficient for gravity, then it's sufficient for morality.

If it's sufficient for one but not the other you need to justify your double standard.

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Mon Jan 31, 2022 3:06 am Yet again, your critique has no point because again you are challenging me to justify things which I am not claiming. Morals don't have objective existence.

Skepdick wrote: ↑Mon Jan 31, 2022 3:55 am Gravity doesn't have objective existence either. it only has objective effects we attribute to it. That is a sufficient criterion for the objective existence of gravity.

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Sun Jan 30, 2022 12:37 pm

Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Sun Jan 30, 2022 6:11 am

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Sat Jan 29, 2022 12:57 pm
No, I don't deny it.
If facts are, as you say, polished opinions, then scientific facts are arguably the most polished we produce.

Noted your acceptance.

Scientific facts as polished via the scientific FSK is the most polished opinions [say 80/100 grade].

Note I am claiming the following;
Moral facts as polished via the Moral FSK is the more reasonable polished opinions [say 70/100 grade].

See the point?
What you are blinded and missed out is the FSK factor.

This is where you go wrong. Your argument is this: facts are polished opinions; therefore polished moral opinions are (or can be) facts.

To generalise, this means: all As are B; therefore all Bs are (or can be) A.
And this is a fallacy, if B is a predicate or property of A. 'All houses are dwellings; therefore all dwellings are (or can be) houses.'

So your argument is invalid - leaving aside its unsoundness: what we call facts are not what we call opinions, polished or not. Words can mean only what we use them to mean, and we clearly distinguish between what we call facts and what we call opinions.

You are being rhetorical here and deliberate ignore the critical factor, i.e. the FSK grounding. Note the proper argument,

1. All opinions [conjectures] polished via a credible FSK are facts.
2. Opinions [scientific] are polished via a credible scientific FSK
3. Therefore all scientific facts are polished opinions via a credible scientific FSK.

So for moral opinions;

1. All opinions [conjectures] polished via a credible FSK are facts.
2. Opinions [moral] are polished via a credible moral FSK
3. Therefore all moral facts are polished opinions via a credible moral FSK.

There is nothing wrong with the syllogism above.
The only question you can raised [as mentioned earlier] is whether the moral FSK as claim is credible or not.
I have already explain why the scientific FSK is credible [90/100] and had demonstrated the moral FSK I proposed is of near-credibility [80/100] to that of the scientific FSK.

Re your claims of 'facts' it is what Belinda has insinuated, i.e. you are chasing God-like illusions which are impossible to be real.
As I had explained this is a common and default psychological issue from a cognitive dissonance driven by the inherent unavoidable existential crisis. Point is you are totally ignorant about this fact about yourself as a human being.

This is worse than irrelevant in this context - it's intellectually reprehensible.

Your views above exposed your intellectual bankruptcy.

The survey was carried out by philpapers.org/ managed by David Chalmers.
If the survey is "intellectually reprehensible" the community of philosophers from https://philpapers.org would have raised a hell of a condemnation of the results, but there is no such thing.
So in contrast, your views above ["it's intellectually reprehensible"] exposed your intellectual bankruptcy.

PhilPapers is a comprehensive index and bibliography of philosophy maintained by the community of philosophers. We monitor all sources of research content in philosophy, including journals, books, open access archives, and personal pages maintained by academics. We also host the largest open access archive in philosophy. Our index currently contains 2,630,900 entries categorized in 5,723 categories. PhilPapers has over 290,000 registered users.
https://philpapers.org/

1 Your argument is unsound, because your premise - 'facts are (polished) opinions' - is false, or at least not shown to be true. This is not how we (English speakers) use the words 'fact' and 'opinion'. And words can mean only what we use them to mean. I notice you don't address this point. But, as you know, if even one premise of an argument is false, or at least not shown to be true, the argument collapses.

2 You insist that the descriptive context (the 'FSK') of what we call a fact is critical. But if all facts are polished opinions, this applies to all descriptive contexts. So your premise is: all facts are polished opinions. The bare condition 'within a descriptive context' is redundant.

3 But you insist that the descriptive context (the 'FSK') of what we call a fact must be credible. But what makes an FSK credible is the empirical evidence for its factual assertions - which is why the natural sciences are arguably our most reliable FSKs.

4 You claim that morality constitutes a credible FSK, which can therefore produce moral facts. But the so-called empirical evidence (see 3 above) for moral assertions turns out to be either more moral assertions, or facts with no moral implication, such as scientific facts about human physiology. And a so-called FSK with no facts is not an FSK. It's merely a discourse consisting of opinions, polished or otherwise.

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Sun Jan 30, 2022 1:19 pm

Belinda wrote: ↑Sun Jan 30, 2022 1:08 pm

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Sat Jan 29, 2022 4:00 pm
But it's total shit. VA's entire "moral FSK" is nothing but the autistic listing of things and then rating them out of 100 badness units, and calling that a scientific measuring event. Comparing his own scheme to science is lunacy, why are you encouraging him to make an idiot of himself?

You do understand that just as he imagines his FSK measures good and bad, he genuinely thinks that Miss World counts as a scientific measure of beauty, right? Is that the kind of silliness you want to tag along with?

Like the organisers of Miss World have to decide on criteria. A set of moral criteria is a frame of moral knowledge. The clue to the subjective aspect is the word 'frame'. I don't think he claims frames are objectively real does he?

He thinks it's broadly equivalent to physics, and if you ask he he will probably invent numbers to the effect that physics is 99% objective and his moral FSK is 95%. He might even rate zoology lower than his own thing.

Model-dependent realism is a view of scientific inquiry that focuses on the role of scientific models of phenomena.[1]
It claims reality should be interpreted based upon these models, and where several models overlap in describing a particular subject, multiple, equally valid, realities exist.
It claims that it is meaningless to talk about the "true reality" of a model as we can never be absolutely certain of anything.
The only meaningful thing is the usefulness of the model.[2] The term "model-dependent realism" was coined by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow in their 2010 book, The Grand Design.[3]
WIKI

Belinda wrote: ↑Sun Jan 30, 2022 1:08 pm Like the organisers of Miss World have to decide on criteria. A set of moral criteria is a frame of moral knowledge. The clue to the subjective aspect is the word 'frame'. I don't think he claims frames are objectively real does he?

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Mon Jan 31, 2022 4:28 am Sufficient criterion for objective existence would be existing objectively. Why did you need any of those other sentences?

Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Mon Jan 31, 2022 4:37 am
I claimed MY [not others, e.g. utilitarianism] proposed Moral FSK is of near equivalent credibility to the scientific FSK.
My proposed Moral FSK rely heavily on scientific facts from the scientific FSK plus sound philosophical reasonings.
You are missing all my critical points.

Note:

1. ALL Facts are [polished opinions, conjectures] resulting from a specific FSK.
2. My proposed Moral FSK [credibility of 80/100] is a specific FSK.
3. My Moral FSK produce Moral Facts as polished opinions, conjectures.

I have argued how we obtain from my proposed Moral FSK,
the moral fact, i.e. It is morally wrong for a human to kill another human,
this is grounded on the empirical fact,
No normal human would want to be killed [by another humans or other reasons].
The philosophical reasonings for this is quite complex so I won't go into the details here.

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Mon Jan 31, 2022 9:29 am

Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Mon Jan 31, 2022 4:37 am
I claimed MY [not others, e.g. utilitarianism] proposed Moral FSK is of near equivalent credibility to the scientific FSK.
My proposed Moral FSK rely heavily on scientific facts from the scientific FSK plus sound philosophical reasonings.
You are missing all my critical points.

Note:

1. ALL Facts are [polished opinions, conjectures] resulting from a specific FSK.
2. My proposed Moral FSK [credibility of 80/100] is a specific FSK.
3. My Moral FSK produce Moral Facts as polished opinions, conjectures.

I have argued how we obtain from my proposed Moral FSK,
the moral fact, i.e. It is morally wrong for a human to kill another human,
this is grounded on the empirical fact,
No normal human would want to be killed [by another humans or other reasons].
The philosophical reasonings for this is quite complex so I won't go into the details here.

To repeat (ad nauseam): grounding or basing a moral opinion on a fact doesn't turn the moral opinion into a fact. So your argument doesn't even make it to the starting post. Here it is:

Premise: No normal human would want to be killed (...). Conclusion: Therefore it is morally wrong to kill a human being.

The conclusion does not follow from the premise. Even if it's true (which it isn't), the premise does not entail the conclusion. If it did, the following is valid:

No normal human being wants to be punished; therefore it is morally wrong to punish a human being.

Now, try to think very hard about this. The content of an argument has no bearing on its deductive validity (its structure). My example mirrors the structure of your example, so if yours is valid, then so is mine.

But I'm sure you disagree with my argument.

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Mon Jan 31, 2022 9:29 am So - what's gone wrong?

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Mon Jan 31, 2022 9:29 am Ah, it must be that 'what people want' can't be the deciding criterion for moral rightness and wrongness.

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Mon Jan 31, 2022 9:29 am And that's because people can want bad things - things that are morally wrong.

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Mon Jan 31, 2022 9:29 am Your invented morality FSK has no moral facts. And non-moral facts can't entail moral conclusions. So your invented morality FSK is not an FSK at all - let alone a credible FSK. It's a dead duck in the water. No revival is possible.

Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Mon Jan 31, 2022 5:51 am

Belinda wrote: ↑Sun Jan 30, 2022 1:08 pm Like the organisers of Miss World have to decide on criteria. A set of moral criteria is a frame of moral knowledge. The clue to the subjective aspect is the word 'frame'. I don't think he claims frames are objectively real does he?

See my point in the above post.

What is critical with the Moral frames [FSK] is what criteria are used and the soundness and rationality of the philosophical reasonings employed.

Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Mon Jan 31, 2022 5:49 am

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Sun Jan 30, 2022 1:19 pm

Belinda wrote: ↑Sun Jan 30, 2022 1:08 pm
Like the organisers of Miss World have to decide on criteria. A set of moral criteria is a frame of moral knowledge. The clue to the subjective aspect is the word 'frame'. I don't think he claims frames are objectively real does he?

He thinks it's broadly equivalent to physics, and if you ask he he will probably invent numbers to the effect that physics is 99% objective and his moral FSK is 95%. He might even rate zoology lower than his own thing.

Generally there is no absolute certainty [Wittgenstein, etc.] with regards to knowledge.

Physics has its own specific FSK which is a sub-FSK of the scientific FSK.
Whatever facts produced from the Physics FSK is objective but there are degrees of objectivity with respect to the specific facts of Physics.

However, the objectivity of the frames are based on intersubjective consensus, thus ultimately grounded on subjectivity.

Belinda wrote: ↑Mon Jan 31, 2022 11:58 am Veritas Aequitas wrote:

However, the objectivity of the frames are based on intersubjective consensus, thus ultimately grounded on subjectivity.

Intersubjective consensus pertains to the coherence theory of truth.

Peter Holmes wrote: ↑Mon Jan 31, 2022 1:30 pm

Belinda wrote: ↑Mon Jan 31, 2022 11:58 am Veritas Aequitas wrote:

However, the objectivity of the frames are based on intersubjective consensus, thus ultimately grounded on subjectivity.

Intersubjective consensus pertains to the coherence theory of truth.

I disagree, because the coherence theory of truth is not specifically a consensus theory.

(A consensus theory of truth - intersubjective or not - is ridiculous anyway, but that's a different story. And anyway, a theory of truth can be nothing more than an explanation of how we do or could use the word 'truth', its cognates and related words, such as 'falsehood'. What we mean when we say a factual assertion is true constitutes what we call truth - and that specifically excludes any idea of consensus. And words can mean only what we use them to mean.)

If somebody decides your moral FSK is stupid and just makes their own competing one with different facts, their competing moral FSK would be exactly as credible as yours (which apparently you have measured at 80% now rather than the 95 I would expect you to give to your own homework).