Intrepid-figment
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User ID: 2356
Intrepid-figment
11mo ago
I did answer
As far as I can see, you only answered a form of the hypo which included your modifications, you have yet to answer it as written, or as clarified. If my drawing attention to that is a complaint, then yes, I did complain about how you didn't answer it.
The answers to these questions will depend, inescapably, on the nature of these beings and their compatibility with human existence, especially in terms of the ability to give and receive acceptable justifications for actions
Does that mean that if we are unable to ascertain any justifications offered by them, we are morally free to eliminate them? Or vice versa?
reasoning together
If we are unable to agree on a mutual course of action through reasoning process, what moral obligations and rights to we owe/retain?
Well, I'm certainly saddened you have taken such a dim view of our exchange. I am learning a lot, but not enough to parrot "this guy clearly has it all figured." The hypo is meant to be a highly distilled, but if it disturbs you, you're obviously under no obligation to answer.
I did unfortunately miss the part until now where you say that morality is only relevant in a human context.
You did claim that the foundation for all morality is "human reason," which phrase I transliterated to "pure reason." It is an unfortunate mistake.
It raises a line of questions you glanced off earlier. What about other beings whose reasoning may be equal or greater to that of humans, but not necessarily the same? Does one or the other groups owe anything to the other? How are we to discern that such a group might be in our midst?
Another question that I haven't been able to understand from our repartee or the entries you linked, is who gets to decide what a reasonable objection is? Is it presupposed that "human reason" is everywhere always the same?
Edit to add: I have not stated a position, rather asking you to clarify yours so that I might gain a deeper and truer understanding. I have intended to be careful not to ask you necessarily defend your position, but rather state it with greater specificity and explain it. If we reach a point where you are willing to go no further, I will state a thesis and submit myself to the same treatment as I have given you, so long as we can agree to refrain from cursing, mocking, belittling. I would ask that we begin a new thread though, as this one is getting hard to read for all the indentations.
Intrepid-figment
11mo ago
I think you read things into my hypo that are not there. For example, TNG is growing yeast to feed his family, not make beer. The implications are that one, he is vegetarian, and two, he has a family. I'm not sure you could draw the implication you did about outside resources, but let me be explicit, there are no other resources in the universe.
I'm not sure it matters, though, as you seem to have a presupposition regarding the primacy of human life. How do you move from pure reason to human life matters most?
It's final authority rests on reason. But yes, in the sense that "what we owe to each other" logically depends on the existence of a "we," contractualism doesn't have anything to say about what morality might look like if there were not a "we."
This looks a little like a dodge. I don't understand how "reason" can be a final authority on anything, since reason requires premises? It would seem that perfect logic can produce widely different regimes and outcomes, depending on what question we ask of it, or what context we provide it. Intuition suggests this might be related to the paperclip machine problem.
The lake problem is a conceptualistic framework to determine resource allocation (including dealing with externalities), and as such is an economic question, but strongly implicates moral values.
The hypo goes something like this, paraphrased for my curosities. There's a lake in a mythical land where few people exist. The first person to find the lake is an old man, who fishes in the lake for subsistence. Some years later, another comes along and decides the lake is a fine place to grow yeast to feed his family. The new guy won't eat fish for religious reasons. Growing yeast kills all the fish the old man catches to eat. For the purposes of our exploration, there is no way the yeast can be grown that does not kill the fish. There's no other food for the old man to eat nearby.
The question is, who gets to use the lake, how, and why? The answer, it would seem to me, requires moral judgments.
Intrepid-figment
11mo ago
Thank you again for your continued indulgence.
I think we agree that Rick Sanchez is an interesting character in part because it explores the limits of self-sufficiency. I disagree he is supernatural, however, at least in-universe. I think the setup is that he is someone whose intellect is so far off the chart as to render physical constraints non-existant. I also think part of the show's message is questioning whether, why, and what morals might apply to such a person.
When I was a lad I read a short story about a character who couldn't get along in society and committed some crime. As a result he was exiled to a kind of penal territory with no rules, but also no access. He was allowed to take with him anything, and ended up taking a completely reliable RV will full armor and food and ammo and energy to last a million years. Upon exile, he was promptly relieved of it entirely through a rogue's wiles (no force needed), and thereby forced to engage with his peers in exile. Ultimately he redeems himself by snitching on his new pals to the Republic. After our conversation, I expect this author (can't remember who) was exploring the contractualist ideas.
If I understand you correctly, contractualism's final authority rests on a particularity of the human condition where individual humans must, innately, remain part of the collective?
How does contractualism resolve Coases' lake problem?
Intrepid-figment
11mo ago
No, this is not how "being right" works. If you would be right if you had all the information, but you don't have all the information and you are wrong, then you are still wrong. (You might lack all the information and accidentally be right, but then you're just lucky.) This is just how truth works.
This mischaracterizes my statement. I meant, right based on the available information. There is no speculative conditional embedded there. And, as a practical matter, there is always incomplete information, and always, two minds will interpret the same information differently. In the case where their capacity and approach to logic is identical and without error, they may still reach opposing conclusions. They are nevertheless both "right."
Intrepid-figment
11mo ago
So I read your linked encyclopedia entries. I'm not sure the author of the moral realism entry would agree that "human reason" is equivalent to moral truth, or that it can exist in any objectively ideal form. Based on these entries alone, it would seem that relativism and realism are not directly antithetical. Rather, realism might be a subset of objectivism, the true antithesis of relativism. But I'm not into binary synthesis, so that probably doesn't matter much.
However, it seems from the articles, your agreement that no moral universal exists places you in one of the modified relativist camps. These seem to take a realist approach but only within particular contexts, such as a society; in your case, broad humankind.
I'm still unclear on two things. One question I didn't see answered in your linked entry is why anyone should care whether none of their peers could reasonably reject any particular proposition? What about Rick Sanchez? His skills are infinite, enabling him to act in any direction he wills. Every choice is executed in a perfectly well-reasoned way, what logical basis could persuade him to engage in any contract with anyone?
The question remains, too, what is the procedure by which human reason may be made manifest? What basis is there for the presumption that every human has the same concept of "reasonably?" If no such presumption is in play, how can a contract form without a common framework? As a practical matter, noone's conception will be identical, and some will vary a lot. What basis exists to coerce one to accept another's conception? Whose conception should be the one enforced?
Intrepid-figment
1yr ago
You seem to have sidestepped my question, which was not “are morals relative,” or even, “why do you believe in moral absolutes.”
It was rather, how do individuals and groups determine morals? This is also not a question about politics, but rather procedural. I don’t think your answer would be “long tradition,” but I guess it could be. That runs counter to your confession if individual rights, however, as many groups across the world, often in the minority, have lengthy traditions different from Europe’s.
For example, certain Buddhist traditions would, in fact, hold that allowing torture of oneself is a moral imperative.
FWIW, I certainly don’t feel like I am losing a debate, or even having one. I’m simply asking clarifying questions about assertions of yours that seem presumptive. I do appreciate your engagement.
I will push back on one thing though. If the basis of your belief in “moral realism” is simply long tradition, I don’t see how thousands of years is sufficient. Humanity has been around for much longer. And I can’t think of any moral that is universal and also divorced from economics. Perhaps you can provide an example? Maybe involuntary euthanasia of old people? Not sure that goes back much before the Hebrews in the western tradition, nor has it ever been universal.
Another way to ask my question might be, what is the standard against which you measure moral truth, and where does it come from?
Intrepid-figment
1yr ago
What then does make a morally correct view? And, assuming such a circumstance can or does exist, who is to recognize it? I also don’t see why it follows that one person is likely morally wrong (in some objective or universal sense) when two disagree on their rights. It’s as likely, it seems to me, that they could both be wrong, or both be right based on incomplete information.
Sticking just to the constitution of the us (including the bill of rights), I’m not persuaded that even all signatories agreed what it meant. And that’s an arbitrary, defined set of rights and relationships. I happen to agree with a particular interpretation of much of it, partly due to conditioning and partly to sharing certain values with some of the drafters (could also be due to conditioning, tough to tell). But my interpretations differ widely from many others. Have so far been unable to persuade a sufficiently powerful group to my point of view, and so I remain coerced into abiding by understandings with which I disagree. Is this a moral outcome? How am I alone to determine that? How are you and I? How are we as a polity?
Intrepid-figment
1yr ago
Your celebration of individual rights seems to me, however, to be just a different shade of pink. When individuals' understanding of their rights differ, either the more powerful of the differers or some other more powerful authority (like a government) will assign an outcome, and coerce the other (or both) to abide by the decision. I'm not sure which of these two is the greater moral failing.
Intrepid-figment
1yr ago
How are taxes different in their coercive nature from any other government action? Even in a direct democracy, if you are on the losing side of a vote you are coerced by the government to abide by the terms if the winning vote.
I'd first ask you to be more charitable in your assessment of me, and not ascribe motivations for which you have no real evidence. It is also most unhelpful to mock me as a troll or impugn my intellect. I am skeptical of your claims, but have yet to dispute them (except regarding whether you answered my hypo, more on that in a moment). I have so far mostly only asked for clarifications. You seem to believe that your conclusions and pronouncements flow obviously, but they do not. Much smarter academicians than I, and as generally well regarded as he, have challenged Scanlon, I assume they understood his point of view thoroughly.
While it is true I did not specify that the latecomer in my hypo had no other access to resources, neither did I suggest that he did. I know you believe that your stated presumption follows from what I did write; it might have been more helpful to ask for clarification if you believed the hypo was vague or certain factors were implied. Please note, I do not appreciate your unflattering paraphrases of my statements about your responses as being those of an "asshole," or "whinging," and that increases my skepticism of your credibility. Regardless, it seems you are unwilling to respond to my hypo as intended, so I'll let that lie, you're under no obligation to me.
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If there are beings among us who have as sophisticated an apparatus for reason as we, and they are actors (or objects of our actions) in our midst, and yet we are unable to comprehend what objections they may be making for our moral principles (and thereby, unable to ascertain whether their objections might be reasonable), is anything owed nevertheless to them? Or do they owe anything to us? And are we then free to act toward them in any way that suits us?
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This appears to me to be a distinction without a difference, at least on a practical level. Could you clarify?
If no human beings have ever reached a place where they could find no common reasons on which to ground their principles, where does conflict come from?
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