Contraversial AC Related Thread (TL;PR)

[nietzreznor]

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It's easy to think of many a relative basis for a moral decision or principle. I think I've already given an example or two.

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You haven't given any that are 'clearly' relative--you've only given examples of things that might be relative (eg, 'theft is wrong') but you still haven't provided an argument for why they are relative.

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But if no one can do so satisfactorily then rationally speaking, morals should be considered relative. So, I disagree, the burden of proof is on the moral absolutist.

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First of all, I'm not a moral 'absolutist'--I believe that there are objective ethical facts, but that doesn't entail anything about absolutism.
Second, when both the majority of the philosophical community believe moral relativism to be false, and the majority of people act as if there are objective ethical facts, I don't see how one can really make a case that the burden of proof doesn't lie with the relativist. I think that the reason one might find this view attractive is that one might be tempted to see objective ethics as this positive position that needs justification, while relativism is a "negative position"--not really a claim about an ethical matter but a claim that other positive claims are false. But this is a misrepresentation of what is happening, since moral relativists are making positive moral claims; they're just making unique positive claims for each individual (or culture, or whatever) since a moral relativist is essentially intepreting a statement like "theft is wrong" as "theft is wrong FOR ME" (ironically, the statement "relativism is true" seems to lose all force unless it is interpreted non-relativistically).
Similarly, ethical non-cognitivists (which are separate from ethical relativists but I'm still not entirely sure which view you are advocating) are making the (dubious) positive claim that ethical 'statements' aren't really statements at all (and hence a statement like "theft is wrong" just means something like "theft! boo!"). But this position surely needs justification!

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Second of all is it fair to say the burden of proof lies with us, because the majority of philosophers disagree with us (I'm not even sure this is true, but assuming it is)? The majority of philosophers used to believe in God, after all and I don't know that you'd want to say the burden of proof was on atheists to disprove God.

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I would certainly say that the burden of proof lay with the atheists, at least within the philosophical community. I'm not sure that they had the burden of dis-proving god (just like I don't think you have the burden of dis-proving my position), but they certainly had the burden of supporting their claims!

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And how would you support number 1?

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I'm not sure this needs support, since most people already believe that theft and slavery are wrong.

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Empirical sciences have predictive power. "Theft is wrong" does not. That's an important difference.

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I'm inclined to agree that, yes, this is an important difference, and it has something to do with why ethics and natural sciences are totally different branches of knowledge. But this is a difficult argument for a relativist to make, since what constitutes an 'important' difference is relative (according to relativists).

[nietzreznor]

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And BTW, are you really suggesting we can just make up premises arbitrarily

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Absolutely not.

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because science isn't 100% empirical (I don't know enough about science to know what you're talking about exactly, but assuming you have some sort of point)?

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The point I was making is that empirical science isn't value-free; it, too, depends on values like relevance, simplicity, and coherence--values that ought to be subjective and relative if we are to be consistent.

Or at least it would seem that way. Part of the problem--and part of what I think constitutes your burden of proof--is that it isn't clear exactly what is supposed to be objective and what is supposed to be relative. It would be nice and convenient if we could just say that only ethical values are relative (whatever that means), but one would have to provide some sort of argument as to why only ethical values (or, ethical and aesthetic, etc) are relative. The underlying difficulty is that many ethical relativists don't want to subject science to this same relativism, and hence want to posit some strict fact/value distinction to keep this all neat and tidy. Which, it seems to me, is doomed to fail since science couldn't exist w/o the presuppostion of values that can't really be 'proved' (eg, imagine trying to do a scientific expreiment w/o knowing what was relevant in the expremiment; or positing a scientific theory without Occam's Razor).

In any case, even if we left the sciences alone, it isn't clear to me why ethics are relative, but philosophical arguments about ethical relativism are objective (remember, philosophical arguments about relativism don't have 'predictive power'). There may be good reasons for treating these two classes separately, but I haven't heard any reasons and I don't personally know of any convincing arguments.

[foal]

I'll preface this by saying that I either expressed my views very sloppily before or I've changed positions. Maybe some combination of the two. Sorry about that. Actually I thank you for pointing out some of that sloppiness in what I was saying, as it’s helped me to clarify and refine my own position.


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First of all, I'm not a moral 'absolutist'--I believe that there are objective ethical facts, but that doesn't entail anything about absolutism.

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Ok. Then the burden of proof is on the one positing that there are objective ethical facts. It’s my job to question the evidence or logic behind such facts. If there is no good reasoning supporting them as true then there is no reason not to view those concepts as being empty. I don’t hold objective moral facts to be empty, meaningless and unsupportable, because I view morals as relative. It’s more the other way around. You can call morality relative or even non-existent. It depends how you define it. Some would define it as social norms and I would certainly say that social norms are relative to their respective societies (I hope you don’t disagree). Others might define it as a set of higher truths that exist for everyone and in that case I would take an eliminative stance rather than a relative stance since I don’t think those kinds of moral truths exist in any sense.

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Similarly, ethical non-cognitivists (which are separate from ethical relativists but I'm still not entirely sure which view you are advocating) are making the (dubious) positive claim that ethical 'statements' aren't really statements at all (and hence a statement like "theft is wrong" just means something like "theft! boo!"). But this position surely needs justification!

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I’m not making a judgment on what “theft is wrong” means. I’m just saying that it’s an unsupportable and empty statement that can only defended with other similarly unsupportable and empty statements (such as “violating people’s property is wrong”).

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And how would you support number 1?

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I'm not sure this needs support, since most people already believe that theft and slavery are wrong.

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First, most people don’t actually believe “theft is wrong”. That is, it would be easy to come up with many examples of theft that most people would not consider wrong. When truly scrutinized most people would probably only agree to something like “theft is wrong in some circumstances” or “theft is wrong without a good reason for it”.
But are you saying
A: “most people believe theft is wrong, therefore theft is wrong”
or
B: “most people agree with my assertion already, so supporting it logically is not needed”
?

If A:

Even if this was true, you can’t base an objective fact on what most people believe. That’s like saying “most people believe in God, therefore the existence of God is an objective fact”.

If B:

I guess you don’t need to support it. You don’t need to support anything. But that makes my claim that your assertion is baseless appear more plausible.

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And BTW, are you really suggesting we can just make up premises arbitrarily

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Absolutely not.

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Then what basis are you using to come up with them?

--the friendly vat of glue

[nietzreznor]

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Ok. Then the burden of proof is on the one positing that there are objective ethical facts. It’s my job to question the evidence or logic behind such facts. If there is no good reasoning supporting them as true then there is no reason not to view those concepts as being empty.

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Fair enough. I certainly wouldn't disagree that anyone setting forth a specific objective ethical view needs to supply some sort of reasoning. But I haven't really been supporting any specific ethical viewpoint, I'm just pointing out that 'moral relativism' isn't some sort of ethical vacuum or ethical nihilism since it, too, makes positive claims about the truth of ethical statements.

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You can call morality relative or even non-existent. It depends how you define it.

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On how I define what? One problem I'm having is that there is a large difference between calling morality relative and calling it nonexistent. And these two are (perhaps?) different from calling moral statements meaningless.
If morals are *relative*, then morals and moral statements clearly are a) existent, and b) meaningful. They're just not objective under this view, since when I say "theft is wrong", all I am saying is that "i think theft is wrong", or "theft is wrong is true FOR ME". But this position clearly depends on moral statements being meaningful.
Morals not being 'meaningful' is a different matter, and also depends on interpretation. It might mean something existentialist, like "morals exist but they just don't matter" (nihilism?) but I think usually it means that moral statements aren't actually statements at all (a view known as "ethical non-cognitivism"). If this view is true, then it would be incoherent to say that morals are relative, since a meaningless statement couldn't be "true" for anyone at all.

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Some would define it as social norms and I would certainly say that social norms are relative to their respective societies (I hope you don’t disagree).

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Depends on how you define 'social norms'. I certainly would agree that there are legitimate differences across cultures and societies (clearly differences exist, and some subset of those are legitimate). But I certainly wouldn't define ethics as anything like 'social norms'.

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Others might define it as a set of higher truths that exist for everyone and in that case I would take an eliminative stance rather than a relative stance since I don’t think those kinds of moral truths exist in any sense.

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Fair enough. But I think that this just takes us back to ethical non-cognitivism (which is an eliminativist position). For so long as something like "theft is wrong" is a statement, then it is either true or false, and hence (if we're not relativists) it sure seems like there are objective ethical facts. So if we're gonna avoid this, then we're gonna need an argument as to why ethical statements aren't really statements, and I would think you have this burden of proof since we have strong prima facie reason to believe that they are, in fact, statements.

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I’m just saying that it’s an unsupportable and empty statement that can only defended with other similarly unsupportable and empty statements (such as “violating people’s property is wrong”).

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Fine. But 'empty' is a hard sell, since people act all the time as if such statements were meaningful. As for 'unsupportable', I would disagree; they seem supportable with other value-statements. If these are unacceptable, then most of science is 'unsupportable' too.

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First, most people don’t actually believe “theft is wrong”. That is, it would be easy to come up with many examples of theft that most people would not consider wrong. When truly scrutinized most people would probably only agree to something like “theft is wrong in some circumstances”

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That's fine with me, since it is more or less what I beleive. As I said, I'm not an absolutist, and when I began using "theft is wrong" as an example of an objectively true statement, I meant it as an objectively true moral guideline (as one might find in Aristotle). But absolutism and objectivism are two separate things, so there's no inconsistency in abandoning absolutism and keeping objectivity.

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If A:

Even if this was true, you can’t base an objective fact on what most people believe. That’s like saying “most people believe in God, therefore the existence of God is an objective fact”.

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True. But if most people believe that theft is wrong, then I have a prima facie reason to believe that theft is wrong. My belief is certainly defeasible, but it's something that ought remain in my thoughts when considering the truth or falsity of the statement.

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If B:

I guess you don’t need to support it. You don’t need to support anything. But that makes my claim that your assertion is baseless appear more plausible.

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The problem is that everything is ultimately 'baseless' in this sense; Quine has argued (convincingly, imo) that empirical evidence underdetermines theories. That is to say, empirical evidence is always compatible with multiple theories, as long as sufficient changes are made in surrounding beliefs. So I could view any statement as 'unsupported' if I changed enough of my other beliefs to accomodate.

In any case, my point was that I could try and give reasons as to why 'slavery is wrong', but most people would be less convinced by the points in the arguments than they are by just the fact that slavery is wrong.

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Then what basis are you using to come up with them?

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??

What 'premises' are you referring to? Generally i try to use premises that in some way mirror reality, or provide useful results, or are relevant, etc. etc.

[foal]

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Fair enough. But I think that this just takes us back to ethical non-cognitivism (which is an eliminativist position). For so long as something like "theft is wrong" is a statement, then it is either true or false, and hence (if we're not relativists) it sure seems like there are objective ethical facts.

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I’m not as well read in philosophy as you I’m sure, but I don’t see what saying things like “this is a statement and therefore true or false, therefore it seems there are objective moral facts” accomplishes. You still have to support these facts as being true before your position appears convincing (at least to me). I’d probably say that both the statements “theft is wrong” and “theft is right” are false. I’m sure you’d agree with me since you don’t think “theft is wrong” is a fact, but a “guideline”.

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Fine. But 'empty' is a hard sell, since people act all the time as if such statements were meaningful. [
'unsupportable', I would disagree; they seem supportable with other value-statements. If these are unacceptable, then most of science is 'unsupportable' too.

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Ugh. No, most of science is supportable, because it has predictive power and is based on things that can be observed. There’s a major difference. Yes there is interpretation associated with observed data. But the interpretations are supported by observable data, unlike your ethical value-judgments, which are supported only by other ethical value-judgments. If you going to claim a value judgment is an objective fact then you need better support than that. Otherwise why should I believe it?

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First, most people don’t actually believe “theft is wrong”. That is, it would be easy to come up with many examples of theft that most people would not consider wrong. When truly scrutinized most people would probably only agree to something like “theft is wrong in some circumstances”

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That's fine with me, since it is more or less what I beleive. As I said, I'm not an absolutist, and when I began using "theft is wrong" as an example of an objectively true statement, I meant it as an objectively true moral guideline (as one might find in Aristotle). But absolutism and objectivism are two separate things, so there's no inconsistency in abandoning absolutism and keeping objectivity.

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I don’t even know what an “objectively true guideline” is, but it certainly doesn’t appear to be the same as a fact. You must say, then that “theft is wrong” is a false statement since you wouldn’t consider it wrong in all instances. Either you’re a moral relativist who thinks “theft is wrong” is relative to the circumstances or there are some underlying objective moral facts more basic than “theft is wrong” that we’re missing out on and that are the cause of theft often being “wrong”. I would still be interested to see an “objective moral fact”. Or are you modifying your position (I’ve done it, so that’s obviously fine) to say that there are no “objective moral facts”, but instead “objective moral ‘guidelines’”?

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In any case, my point was that I could try and give reasons as to why 'slavery is wrong', but most people would be less convinced by the points in the arguments than they are by just the fact that slavery is wrong.

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But you’re talking to me. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[nietzreznor]

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I don’t see what saying things like “this is a statement and therefore true or false, therefore it seems there are objective moral facts” accomplishes. You still have to support these facts as being true before your position appears convincing (at least to me).

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I agree; but I haven't really attempted to justify any specific moral positions (ie, I haven't argued that "theft is wrong" is true, or that it is false--just that, since it is a statement, it is necessarily either true or false). I think it should be convincing that "theft is wrong" is either true or false, since it is a statement and statements are either true or false.

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I’d probably say that both the statements “theft is wrong” and “theft is right” are false.

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Fair enough, but then this certainly isn't a relativist position (since it makes claims about ethics that are purportedly true-for-everyone), and neither is it an eliminativist position (since it assigns truth-value to ethical statements).

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I’m sure you’d agree with me since you don’t think “theft is wrong” is a fact, but a “guideline”.

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Depends on what is meant by "theft is wrong" but generally speaking I agree since I would assume that when most people say "theft is wrong" they really mean that "theft is almost always wrong", or something a bit less absolute. But if the statement is "theft is always wrong under every imaginable circumstance", then, yeah, I think that's false.

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Ugh. No, most of science is supportable, because it has predictive power and is based on things that can be observed. There’s a major difference.

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Look, I'm certainly not denying that there are major differences between ethics and natural sciences. And 'predicitive power' is among those differences. But you seem to be ignoring the values that underlie science and scientific theories, which seems incompatible with the stance you take on ethical values. For instance, why should we regard "predictive power" as something worthy and good? Why isn't this just someone's 'subjective opinion' that predicitive power is an important difference between science and ethics? I think there are good reasons for valuing predictive power, but they can't a) be explained by predictive power itself, nor b) be explained through any empirical evidence.

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But the interpretations are supported by observable data, unlike your ethical value-judgments, which are supported only by other ethical value-judgments.

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Well, how a scientific theory is interpreted is of course subject to supporting observable data, but, again, extremeely basic values like simplicity, relevance, and predictive power--things that we generally just take for granted--are not and cannot be supported by observable data.

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If you going to claim a value judgment is an objective fact then you need better support than that. Otherwise why should I believe it?

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I would imagine that you live everyday of your life depending not only on value-judgments that can't be 'supported', but also empirical claims that you could never personally verify. You should probably continue to do both since they seem necessary for living a reasonable and good life.

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I don’t even know what an “objectively true guideline” is, but it certainly doesn’t appear to be the same as a fact. You must say, then that “theft is wrong” is a false statement since you wouldn’t consider it wrong in all instances.

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Only if you give "theft is wrong" an extremely literal interpretation, which imo is unreasonable. If it will help clear stuff up, I will say that I think "theft is generally wrong" is true, and "theft is always wrong under all circumstances" is false.

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Either you’re a moral relativist who thinks “theft is wrong” is relative to the circumstances

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But thinking that how one should act is circumstance and context-dependent (which I do beleive) doesn't make one a relativist! To be a relativist I would have to believe something more like "everyone's own subjective ethical judgment is true-for-them", which I deny.

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Or are you modifying your position (I’ve done it, so that’s obviously fine) to say that there are no “objective moral facts”, but instead “objective moral ‘guidelines’”?

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How about: it is an objective fact that there are objective moral guidelines? [img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]

Seriously, I'm more or less happy with either interpretation, since I don't really see the difference as being very significant (given that I've already admitted to not being an absolutist).

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But you’re talking to me. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

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Touche. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[foal]

I think we’re treading water a bit. Or just playing hot potato with the burden of proof. I admit I’ve become kind of muddled and fuzzy on some points. Partly because you are coming at me with philosophical terms that I’m not familiar with. Or at least philosophical definitions that I’m not familiar with. So when you say “x” means b, I haven’t been very clear on your meaning yet have tried to alter my phrasing of things in ways, which I think will make them escape your objections. I should have tried to get clear on their meaning instead, but lacked the patience I suppose.
Oy.
Well I’m going to try to drop those parts of the discussion.

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Ugh. No, most of science is supportable, because it has predictive power and is based on things that can be observed. There’s a major difference.

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Look, I'm certainly not denying that there are major differences between ethics and natural sciences. And 'predicitive power' is among those differences. But you seem to be ignoring the values that underlie science and scientific theories, which seems incompatible with the stance you take on ethical values. For instance, why should we regard "predictive power" as something worthy and good? Why isn't this just someone's 'subjective opinion' that predicitive power is an important difference between science and ethics? I think there are good reasons for valuing predictive power, but they can't a) be explained by predictive power itself, nor b) be explained through any empirical evidence.

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You’re one hell of a mind twister.
If you want to support something as being true, then predictive power is a good tool. Scientific “facts” (or theories) can be falsified by testing the right hypotheses (predictions). This gives some semblance of confidence that scientific theories have some tendencies toward describing or explaining reality. Some will turn out to be wrong, but this is good news (that bad theories can be falsified). Prediction and constant conjunction are simply ways that we attempt to determine truth both in every day life and in science. The reason that’s “good” is subjective, but there’s not a person on earth who doesn’t use predictive power and constant conjunction to determine truth. We’d be unable to function in the world on any level if we didn’t.
And anyway you can point out flaws in empirical science all day, but it still doesn’t change the fact that you haven’t shown how an objective moral fact could be supported reasonably. It’s a bit like:
“I’m God.”
“Can you provide evidence for that?”
“Yes. I am the greatest being in the universe. Therefore I am God.”
“Can you support your claim that you’re the greatest being in the universe?”
“Pft. There is no real support for anything.”
It’s not that I 100% disagree with what you say about science, but it does still beg the question of why then, you still think there are objective moral facts (or guidelines). Or why anyone should.

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If you going to claim a value judgment is an objective fact then you need better support than that. Otherwise why should I believe it?

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I would imagine that you live everyday of your life depending not only on value-judgments that can't be 'supported', but also empirical claims that you could never personally verify. You should probably continue to do both since they seem necessary for living a reasonable and good life.

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Value judgments like “banana peppers taste bad” or "The Daily show is funny”? I don’t need to support such things if I’m not claiming them to be objective facts… And even if you had a point, this still doesn’t tell me why I should believe there are objective moral facts. You could make this exact same argument for any unsupportable claim, couldn’t you?

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If it will help clear stuff up, I will say that I think "theft is generally wrong" is true, and "theft is always wrong under all circumstances" is false.

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By “generally wrong” do you mean that in 100 instances of theft, say… an average of 90 (or any number you like) of them will be “wrong”? This is a fairly useless fact since it doesn’t tell us which thefts are wrong and which are right.

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How about: it is an objective fact that there are objective moral guidelines? [img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]

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I don’t think you can have objective moral guidelines as facts without having facts that determine, which of the instances of the action (theft for example) are right and which are wrong. You need some underlying objective facts.

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Seriously, I'm more or less happy with either interpretation, since I don't really see the difference as being very significant (given that I've already admitted to not being an absolutist).

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Heh, sort of like how I'm happy with either moral relativism or moral eliminativism.

[nietzreznor]

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. Partly because you are coming at me with philosophical terms that I’m not familiar with. Or at least philosophical definitions that I’m not familiar with. So when you say “x” means b, I haven’t been very clear on your meaning yet have tried to alter my phrasing of things in ways, which I think will make them escape your objections. I should have tried to get clear on their meaning instead, but lacked the patience I suppose.

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Sorry about that. A lot of this stuff can be confusing, and I tend to explain stuff in confusing ways. And in any case, philosophical terminology can offern differ in important respects with everyday language.

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If you want to support something as being true, then predictive power is a good tool.

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I'm certainly not denying this. I just don't think a relativist could consistently hold this position, without first giving an argument as to why this type of statement is (relevantly) different from an ethical statement.

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Scientific “facts” (or theories) can be falsified by testing the right hypotheses (predictions). This gives some semblance of confidence that scientific theories have some tendencies toward describing or explaining reality. Some will turn out to be wrong, but this is good news (that bad theories can be falsified).

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Well, yeah, science works like this sometimes. But this is a very simplistic model, and isn't completely true. Changes can always be made elsewhere in the system, so it certainly isn't the case that by testing some theory via experimentation that there is some clear, undisputed demonstration of the theory as either 'true' or 'false'. You should read some stuff on the philosophy of science and its history (especially beginning with thw advent of logical positivism). I think you would be surprised how difficult philosophers have found it to precisely state the relationship between theory and observation, how we adjudicate between competing theories, and so forth (I know I did). In any case, if nothing else it is very interesting.

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And anyway you can point out flaws in empirical science all day, but it still doesn’t change the fact that you haven’t shown how an objective moral fact could be supported reasonably.

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Fair enough. Advancing a positive theory is a lot more complicated than pointing out holes in other theories, so I haven't really gone into any of my reasoning.

If you really wanted a good 'argument' for objective (but not absolute) moral claims, I would read Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics.

If I were to give a quick cliff-notes version, I might say sometjing like:

1. All human beings wish to live a good life
2. For a human being to live a good life, he/she must live a life in accordance with the essence of a human being
3. The essence of a human being is the same for all humans
4. Functioning well as a human being requires virtuous character (acting unvirtuously would be to fail to achieve human potential or to fully utliize the core human trait of reason)

These are more or less the lines along which I would argue for objective moral facts--I think being a good person is a constitutive part of living a good life, and since what constitutes 'good' is derived from the essence of being human, it is the same for all people.

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By “generally wrong” do you mean that in 100 instances of theft, say… an average of 90 (or any number you like) of them will be “wrong”? This is a fairly useless fact since it doesn’t tell us which thefts are wrong and which are right.

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I disagree; it certainly tells us a fair amount since it tells us that, barring a good reason, we ought not steal. But, yeah, the trick to being a good person would be knowing in which times stealing was OK and which (the vast majority) it wasn't. No one said living virtuously was easy!

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I don’t think you can have objective moral guidelines as facts without having facts that determine, which of the instances of the action (theft for example) are right and which are wrong. You need some underlying objective facts.

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Well, this is a very complicated matter indeed, since exactly what circumstances would permit, say, stealing in some instance are extremely context-dependent. Since I am a virtue-ethicist, and I beleive that all virtues are connected, I would argue that someone who had all the virtues would know in which instances it was okay to steal.

[ConstantineX]

I wish there were threads like this in politics all the time. [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

[foal]

positive claims are bloody hard to support in general, innit. you did a good job defending against mine though.

In regard to your cliff notes of Nichomachaen Ethics, #1 immediately jumps out at me as being wrong and #2 jumps out at me as being non-sensical. But I guess I'd have to read the book.