What could make morality objective?

[Skepdick]

Word salad. Look this conversation is relying heavily on our use of meaning/context, so you cannot participate.

Look, this explanation is relying heavily on the inter-play between context-sensitive and context-free expressions.

So if you are strictly biased towards context-sensitive language you can't participate in understanding it.

Meaning is meaningful is a context-free expression. An objective truth - a tautological fact.

Meaning is meaningful to people is a context-sensitive expression. This is objectively true, but only in the context of people.Outside of this context meaning may or may not be meaningful.

[FlashDangerpants]

Is the value of a vase the property of the vase that is being valued or of the man that is valuing it?

It's a property of the vase. The answer lies in the language itself. We say "The value of a vase".

But note that this is entirely an issue of convention. We could have said that it belongs to those to whom it is of value. But we didn't.

Value denotes how useful something is to someone. It consists of two sides, that which is valuable ( the object ) and those to whom it is of value ( the subjects. ) It's not entirely about the object but it's also not entirely about the subject(s). However, we have decided, by convention, to set the center, or the origin, of this phenomenon to be inside the object rather than any one of the subjects. We did so because we found it to be more convenient, more useful, than the alternative -- and not because it's true.

Also note that the verb "to value" means "to perceive something as valuable". We perceive value. Value is out there, up to us to discover it. We don't just arbitrarily assign it to objects. Water is of value to us, not because we decided that it is valuable, but because it is.

What you are describing there is not a property of the vase, it is a system relationship property between valuer and the valued.

Is this some sort of secondary property equivalent to rocks that reflect a certain wavelength of light being the sort of thing that a normal person with standard issue eyes would come to call "ruby red" and thus the rock can be considered to hold a secondary property of redness? Or is the value just projected onto the object?

Yes, it is. But that's an easier case because color describes the physical object it is associated with and nothing else. Namely, it describes its surface. Value is a bit more complicated because it goes beyond the object itself.

There is no projection taking place. Neither colors nor values are projected into physical objects. They literally belong to them. The idea that they are projections is merely a confusion that is typical for people influenced by philosophers such as Locke, Berkeley, Kant, Schopenhauer and others who can be put into the category of "recovering naive realists", i.e. thinkers who struggle to accept the full implications of indirect perception.

It's super important to understand that language precedes observation and that you cannot observe anything without employing some sort of language. To observe means to construct a map of some portion of reality, and since maps of reality are made out of symbols, you need a set of symbols with which to construct a map. You need to make a bunch of symbols first. A set of symbols, together with a set of rules that establish how these symbols can be combined to construct symbols that can express things that cannot be expressed with the symbols we already have, is called a language. We can't describe reality without using some sort of language. Your mind has its own intrapersonal language it uses to facilitate communication between different parts of your brain. Everything you see with your own eyes is a message sent to you by the lower chambers of your mind to your conscious mind. That message is expressed in certain intrapersonal language that your brain is using. There is an infinite number of such languages and one and the same message can be accurately expressed in many of these languages. There are no true and no false languages. There are, at best, more useful and less useful languages.

Your language decides what a tree can be. Your language decides what properties it has. Your language decides what these properties reflect. And there is no prohibition saying that these properties must reflect the object and nothing but the object itself. They are free to reflect anything you want them to reflect, e.g. how the objects they belong to relate to other things.

This is Fodor's LOT hypothesis? I'm kind of down with that, but I'm not sure that I see how it relates to moral realism or even antirealism.

Every physical object at every single point in time has a property called "speed". This property does not describe anything about the object itself. It says NOTHING about its physical constitution. One and the same speed can be possessed by every conceivable physical object. Instead, it is describing the extent to which the object's position will change after certain period of time. Does that mean we project speed into physical objects? Of course not.

The object has a relational property of speed locally, but is on a planet that is revolving around a star at a certain speed, and that star is circling galaxy at another speed. So how many of these speed properties does your left nostril have exactly?

[Skepdick]

What you are describing there is not a property of the vase, it is a system relationship property between valuer and the valued.

Ironic much.

"Valuer" and "valued" are properties ascribed by the property-ascriber.

[Skepdick]

So how many of these speed properties does your left nostril have exactly?

As many fixed points as there are in the universe from which to measure/calculate "change in distance".

The integral of which is part of the object's identity in the history of the universe (however complex that integral happens to be).

But we can certainly talk about the speed of my nostril relative to any coordinate in spacetime you are happy to specify.

[Peter Holmes]

The only thing that could make morality objective is the existence of moral facts.

Unable to produce one example of a moral fact, moral objectivists are forced to reject the existence of what we call facts - to reject the distinction between what we call facts and what we call opinions.

The dick-for-brains does this by means of the 'red square experiment' - failing to notice that what we call a fact - and therefore objectivity - is not constituted by agreement on the use of signs. And, hilariously, dick-for-brains appeals to computers and mathematics as evidence for the nature of reality - mistaking what we say for the way things are - the deep and pervasive philosophical delusion.

By contrast, VA invokes philosophical antirealism, as though that has any more credibility than the supposed philosophical realism with which he charges those of us who reject moral objectivism. The idea is that, since reality is a human invention, we can invent moral facts - such as that homosexuality is morally wrong.

'Strawman!' - cries VA. 'The moral wrongness of homosexuality is just a matter of opinion - whereas an actual moral fact is the wrongness of humans killing humans.' But VA can't explain the distinction between a moral fact and a mere moral opinion. The invocation of 'evil', 'as defined', fails to clarify the distinction. Why is homosexuality not 'to the net detriment of the individual and society'?

A note for morons: I don't think it is. I'm trying to expose the nasty absurdity of the claim and belief that morality is objective. Objectivist morons, confronted with the fact that people have rationally justifiable but absolutely opposed moral opinions on issues such as abortion, capital punishment and eating animals, have no defence for their position. They just dodge and weave - and invent fatuous arguments.

[Immanuel Can]

The only thing that could make morality objective is the existence of moral facts.

Unable to produce one example of a moral fact, moral objectivists are forced to reject the existence of what we call facts - to reject the distinction between what we call facts and what we call opinions.

You've just assumed the conclusion you need to prove. You've assumed that when somebody says, "Rape is evil" or "Slavery is wrong," that they aren't stating a moral fact. But they believe they are, and that's how they mean them. That you refuse them any grounds for it doesn't make it less of a moral fact, and neither does it make their grounds evaporate, if they have them.

All it shows, Pete, is that you're refusing to accept their grounds.

A note for morons:

Are they objectively wrong or stupid for refusing your claims? Or by "morons" do you simply mean, "People Peter does not subjectively like?"

If it's the latter, you're a subjectivist, alright...but it's not much of a criticism. If you're wanting to say it's objectively bad to be a "moron," then the insult might have a sting; but it also means you're not a subjectivist at all.

Either way, your argument fails. And when an argument has no logical means of succeeding, even when it follows out its own terms to their logical conclusion, that means it's irrational.

[Harbal]

You've assumed that when somebody says, "Rape is evil" or "Slavery is wrong," that they aren't stating a moral fact. But they believe they are, and that's how they mean them. That you refuse them any grounds for it doesn't make it less of a moral fact, and neither does it make their grounds evaporate, if they have them.

Out in the real world, rather than "refuse them any grounds", I would prefer to pretend that I accepted their assertions about rape and slavery as fact, because I would prefer a world in which everyone treated those things as being wrong. On a philosophy forum, however, I think they would have difficulty in proving those things to be facts.

[Skepdick]

You've assumed that when somebody says, "Rape is evil" or "Slavery is wrong," that they aren't stating a moral fact. But they believe they are, and that's how they mean them. That you refuse them any grounds for it doesn't make it less of a moral fact, and neither does it make their grounds evaporate, if they have them.

Out in the real world, rather than "refuse them any grounds", I would prefer to pretend that I accepted their assertions about rape and slavery as fact, because I would prefer a world in which everyone treated those things as being wrong. On a philosophy forum, however, I think they would have difficulty in proving those things to be facts.

Ahhh, so the rules of philosophy are disconnected from the real world?!?

That is a sigh of relief…

So on what grounds should I even give a shit about a made up game with made up rules?

[Magnus Anderson]

Are you making the argument that since indirect perception is the case (which is correct), everything we experience must have an indirect referent in the external world?

Not quite.

I am saying that language precedes perception, i.e. that we cannot perceive anything without employing some sort of language. The reason for that is because 1) to perceive means to represent a portion fo reality, and 2) a representation of reality is made out of symbols. You cannot construct a representation of reality if you don't have symbols with which to construct it.

In order to perceive a unicorn, you must have a symbol with which to perceive it. You must have a symbol to which the concept of unicorn is attached. That symbol can be a word, e.g. the word "unicorn", but it can also be any other type of symbol. ( What we see with our own eyes, for example, is expressed using visual language. )

When we construct symbols, we decide on their make-up, their physical constitution, but we also decide on some other things, such as their meaning. The meaning of a symbol refers to the set of rules that establish what kind of things can be represented by that symbol.

As an example, we invented the word "unicorn" and decided that the word can only be used to represent certain type of things -- those that can be captured by the sentence "a horse with a straight horn on its forehead". That sentence is a definition, i.e. a verbal description of the word's meaning. That allowed us to use that word to construct our maps of reality such as "Mary is riding a unicorn". That statement is saying that Mary is riding a physical object that can be represented by the word "unicorn". Whether or not the statement is true is irrelevant.

The meaning of a symbol limits what things-that-can-be-represented-by-that-symbol can be. For example, the meaning of the word "unicorn" limits what unicorns can be. It tells us that unicorns cannot be animals that have no straight horn on their forehead.

Furthermore, we can add any number of any type of properties to anything. These properties can be permanent or impermanent. And they can either describe the object and nothing but the object itself or they can go beyond it. It's up to language.

For example, we can create a property called "volume", add it to unicorns and say that it denotes the amount of space the animal occupies. That would be an example of a permanent property, one that never ceases to exist as long as the unicorn it belongs to exists, and one that describes no more than the unicorn itself.

But we can also add a property called "position". Such a property would describe nothing about the unicorn itself, nothing about its physical constitution. Instead, it would describe the unicorn's spatial relation to other physical objects.

Values are properties of objects denoting how useful these objects are to someone or how useful they would be to someone if that someone existed at that point in time in some way.

The only important thing for this thread is that we perceive value, i.e. how useful something is to someone, rather than arbitrarily decide it.

[Harbal]

You've assumed that when somebody says, "Rape is evil" or "Slavery is wrong," that they aren't stating a moral fact. But they believe they are, and that's how they mean them. That you refuse them any grounds for it doesn't make it less of a moral fact, and neither does it make their grounds evaporate, if they have them.

Out in the real world, rather than "refuse them any grounds", I would prefer to pretend that I accepted their assertions about rape and slavery as fact, because I would prefer a world in which everyone treated those things as being wrong. On a philosophy forum, however, I think they would have difficulty in proving those things to be facts.

Ahhh, so the rules of philosophy are disconnected from the real world?!?

I suppose it depends on what rules you follow.

So on what grounds should I even give a shit about a made up game with made up rules?

I can't think of any grounds.

[Skepdick]

Out in the real world, rather than "refuse them any grounds", I would prefer to pretend that I accepted their assertions about rape and slavery as fact, because I would prefer a world in which everyone treated those things as being wrong. On a philosophy forum, however, I think they would have difficulty in proving those things to be facts.

Ahhh, so the rules of philosophy are disconnected from the real world?!?

I suppose it depends on what rules you follow.

So on what grounds should I even give a shit about a made up game with made up rules?

I can't think of any grounds.

Yep, I guess it does suppose.

I follow the rules of induction. Starting with the premise "There is a difference between Truth and Falsehood" and by induction I arrive with Classical logic.

True = not False

This is a valid proof in proof theory. But apparently it's not a valid proof for philosophers.

[Magnus Anderson]

What you are describing there is not a property of the vase, it is a system relationship property between valuer and the valued.

It's a property of the vase, by definition. It's merely not a property that describes something that is fully contained within the physical constitution of the vase.

It's similar to how position is the property of every physical object even though it says nothing about the physical constitution of the object it belongs to.

[Skepdick]

The dick-for-brains does this by means of the 'red square experiment' - failing to notice that what we call a fact - and therefore objectivity - is not constituted by agreement on the use of signs.

I acknowledge Peter "Dumb Cunt" Holmes's acceptance of the burden of proof.

According to the above "The color in the image below is crimson-red" is NOT a factual claim.

Awaiting rejection-of-factuality proof



Furthermore, find below scientific protocol for determining the dominant color of any arbitrary image on the internet.

url='https://www.symbols.com/images/symbol/2 ... -color.png'
The color in the image is: crimson
url='https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/aesth ... 0723215419'
The color in the image is: green
url='https://htmlcolorcodes.com/assets/image ... 0x1080.png'
The color in the image is: red

Please explain to me why you think the assertions made by my computer about the color contained in arbitrary images are NOT facts.

Code: Select all

import io
import requests
import webcolors
from PIL import Image
from colorthief import ColorThief

def closest_color(requested_color):
    min_colors = {}
    for key, name in webcolors.CSS3_HEX_TO_NAMES.items():
        r_c, g_c, b_c = webcolors.hex_to_rgb(key)
        rd = (r_c - requested_color[0]) ** 2
        gd = (g_c - requested_color[1]) ** 2
        bd = (b_c - requested_color[2]) ** 2
        min_colors[(rd + gd + bd)] = name
    return min_colors[min(min_colors.keys())]

def get_color_name(requested_color):
    try:
        closest_name = actual_name = webcolors.rgb_to_name(requested_color)
    except ValueError:
        closest_name = closest_color(requested_color)
        actual_name = None
    return actual_name, closest_name

image_url = 'https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/aesthetics/images/0/0e/Green.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20200723215419'
response = requests.get(image_url)
response.raise_for_status()  # Check if the request was successful
image = Image.open(io.BytesIO(response.content))
color_thief = ColorThief(io.BytesIO(response.content))
color = color_thief.get_color(quality=1)
actual_name, closest_name = get_color_name(color)

print(f"The color in the image is: {closest_name}")

[Immanuel Can]

You've assumed that when somebody says, "Rape is evil" or "Slavery is wrong," that they aren't stating a moral fact. But they believe they are, and that's how they mean them. That you refuse them any grounds for it doesn't make it less of a moral fact, and neither does it make their grounds evaporate, if they have them.

Out in the real world, rather than "refuse them any grounds", I would prefer to pretend that I accepted their assertions about rape and slavery as fact, because I would prefer a world in which everyone treated those things as being wrong. On a philosophy forum, however, I think they would have difficulty in proving those things to be facts.

Well, all Peter has done is basically made his argument this way:

1. I, Peter Holmes, do not believe in any metaphysical realities, including morals.
2. I, Peter Holmes, demand that you prove to me there is such a thing as morals.
3. Since you cannot show me, without referring to metaphysics, that there are any grounds for morals, I'm going to assume there are none.

Now, is that sensible?

But he goes on:

I, Peter Holmes, regard as objectively "moronic" (his word) any attempt to argue for objective morals. And being "moronic" is evil / bad / wrong / undesirable / unworthy in some way I consider very powerful...and compulsory for you as well as me, so not subjective.

Hence, what he is really saying, is "I disbelieve in metaphysical wrongness, and anybody who disagrees with me is metaphysically wrong."

But the problem is presuppositional. And it's very, very easy to show that it is. All you have to do is ask yourself the following question:

"If there were justifications for morality being objective, what in what form would a justification that I would believe come?"

You see, if it's something like "unicorns," which both Peter and I presumably agree are fictive, then he or I can stipulate very straightforward criteria for the proof of their existence. For example, if there is a horse, even one, with a horn naturally growing on its forehead, then I, and presumably Peter too, would be prepared to concede that something like a unicorn does indeed exist. (We can leave aside all the magical properties, colours, symbolic baggage, and so forth, for the purposes of present argument.) And if it had more of the expected features of a unicorn, well, then, against our earlier skepticism, we'd both concede that there is such a thing as a unicorn, even though we hadn't believed in such before.

That's a very easy example. However, I do not see a single test that Peter would ever concede to "make morality objective," as this OP requires. If he has one, he could stipulate it; but I'm reasonably confident there's simply not one single thing, not one kind of evidence at all, that Peter would accept as proving that a moral precept was, indeed, objective. And that means that he's fixed the match. He's cooked the books. He's made it impossible for anybody to refute his claim that morality is merely subjective, because there are no terms upon which he would accept another view. His skepticism is non-evidentiary; it's merely presuppositional, and for that reason, unbeatable: no evidence against his disbelief will ever count.

And that's the same for every modernist or skeptic who considers the matter of morality. They can concede that a belief in morality exists, sociologically, within societies; they can even concede that some people believe morality is objective, anthropologically, as a claim about the human race; but they can never, never convince themselves, no matter what evidence were produced, that morality can be objective. And it's not because they know it isn't; it's because they've cut themselves off from any possibility of knowing that it is.

[Atla]

Are you making the argument that since indirect perception is the case (which is correct), everything we experience must have an indirect referent in the external world?

Not quite.

I am saying that language precedes perception, i.e. that we cannot perceive anything without employing some sort of language. The reason for that is because 1) to perceive means to represent a portion fo reality, and 2) a representation of reality is made out of symbols. You cannot construct a representation of reality if you don't have symbols with which to construct it.

In order to perceive a unicorn, you must have a symbol with which to perceive it. You must have a symbol to which the concept of unicorn is attached. That symbol can be a word, e.g. the word "unicorn", but it can also be any other type of symbol. ( What we see with our own eyes, for example, is expressed using visual language. )

When we construct symbols, we decide on their make-up, their physical constitution, but we also decide on some other things, such as their meaning. The meaning of a symbol refers to the set of rules that establish what kind of things can be represented by that symbol.

As an example, we invented the word "unicorn" and decided that the word can only be used to represent certain type of things -- those that can be captured by the sentence "a horse with a straight horn on its forehead". That sentence is a definition, i.e. a verbal description of the word's meaning. That allowed us to use that word to construct our maps of reality such as "Mary is riding a unicorn". That statement is saying that Mary is riding a physical object that can be represented by the word "unicorn". Whether or not the statement is true is irrelevant.

The meaning of a symbol limits what things-that-can-be-represented-by-that-symbol can be. For example, the meaning of the word "unicorn" limits what unicorns can be. It tells us that unicorns cannot be animals that have no straight horn on their forehead.

Furthermore, we can add any number of any type of properties to anything. These properties can be permanent or impermanent. And they can either describe the object and nothing but the object itself or they can go beyond it. It's up to language.

For example, we can create a property called "volume", add it to unicorns and say that it denotes the amount of space the animal occupies. That would be an example of a permanent property, one that never ceases to exist as long as the unicorn it belongs to exists, and one that describes no more than the unicorn itself.

But we can also add a property called "position". Such a property would describe nothing about the unicorn itself, nothing about its physical constitution. Instead, it would describe the unicorn's spatial relation to other physical objects.

Values are properties of objects denoting how useful these objects are to someone or how useful they would be to someone if that someone existed at that point in time in some way.

The only important thing for this thread is that we perceive value, i.e. how useful something is to someone, rather than arbitrarily decide it.

Thanks for taking the time to explain your view, unfortunately I can't make much sense of it. It looks like some kind of general misunderstanding/misrepresentation of indirect perception to me, maybe some kind of Kantian misunderstanding. Or maybe you didn't touch on the issue of the external world at all, you are just talking about internal processes? Or maybe you were still just talking about some convention?

All "perception" is happening in the head, so it doesn't mean much when people say that they perceive something as valuable. It doesn't follow at all that the value is an inherent property of the external object.

Some of our perceptions are created from a mixture of external and internal input, and some of perceptions are created from internal input only. Value is most likely in the latter category. It's entirely internal in origin, and then gets assigned to other perceptions that may have external inputs too. The brain/mind does this process automatically, so it seems as if the value was an inherent property of the external object, but that's probably just an illusion.