Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
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Notes -
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.
You can read about Scanlon's "reasons fundamentalism" in his book Being Realistic About Reasons.
That seems right, but how you analyze the hypothetical will depend in large measure on whether you're writing a Hobbesian "state of nature" story, or whether there are further background details that can be discussed. As written, the hypo doesn't seem like a hard question at all; the old man needs fish to live. If he truly has no other alternatives, then he has an extremely weighty objection to a principle allowing the brewer to kill all the fish. You didn't specify that the brewer actually needs the lake to live, presumably the fact that he has a family means he's already got other resources, so he does not appear to have an equally weighty counterclaim. Now, if you're precommitted to some view preferring the "highest" or "best" use of something (utilitarians, for example), then sure, the question might seem hard. But it's not really hard at all, as you've written it: the old man needs the lake to live, the brewer doesn't.
We could easily go back and forth for a long time, modifying the hypothetical to pump intuitions in one direction or another, but the reason we could do this is precisely because morality is reasons-responsive, and adding or changing the relevant reasons can (and should!) change the moral judgments we reach on the matter. This is a very human process, but it is only one that even arises when we are committed to coexistence, at least in the abstract. Otherwise we would just shrug our shoulders and say "guess whoever kills the other one first gets to use the lake."
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?
Then how the fuck was this guy feeding his family before he "came along?" For that matter, where's the rest of the "mythical land" you specified?
My goal is not to fight your hypothetical; I'm happy to do my best to constrain myself to only the impossibly limited range of facts that you happen to find persuasive for whatever reason. But you keep losing the thread; whatever else these hypothetical characters are, they are not recognizably human, in the world you've described.
What makes you say that? Because it's wrong. I'm not assigning metaphysical primacy to anything. And I sure as hell haven't suggested that we're engaged in "pure reason." Go back and re-read the thread; you will find no mention of "pure reason" anywhere in it.
All I've done is stake a claim on morality as we understand it being a human activity undertaken by humans through reasoning processes, that is, through the activity of justifying ourselves to one another. You keep trying to challenge or argue against that for some reason (despite haven taken no clear or coherent position yourself), but your objections are complete misses; you don't even seem to understand enough to meaningfully doubt. Which would be fine if I felt like you were trying to improve your own understanding, but you strike me as far too busy being blindly contrarian to ever glean any insight, either into any particular moral theory or into the more specific things I have claimed.
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.
It doesn't disturb me, and I did answer. You're the one who was complaining about how I answered.
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. The desire and ability to coexist lead quite naturally to reasons for action. Without that desire and ability, it's all pretty moot.
We do, through the process of reasoning together.
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.
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?
If we are unable to agree on a mutual course of action through reasoning process, what moral obligations and rights to we owe/retain?
Look, at this point you're either being deliberately obtuse, in which case we're done, or you have a genuinely serious lack of reading comprehension, in which case I cannot help you. I'm increasingly persuaded that you're just trolling. Here:
Let's look. I said:
No modifications: just responding to what you actually wrote. Your "clarification" afterward was worse than useless (and seized on an irrelevancy); if anything, it made what was already a poor hypothetical to begin with into complete nonsense. What is morality like in a universe that consists of nothing but a fisherman, a yeast-grower, and a lake? Fuck if I know, there's no such universe, and I've repeatedly told you that morality as I understand it is a human endeavor undertaken by humans living in human conditions. I can't tell you what morality is like for space creatures or hypothetical beings who appear ex nihilo to lay claim to fishing ponds. We can use counterfactuals to imagine possibilities, but this requires us not to be assholes to our interlocutors, and be open to having hypothetical questions clarified for purposes of useful development without whinging about people fighting the hypo. You give every impression of trying to (clumsily) thumb the scales toward an anti-realist conclusion, and no impression at all of actually trying to understand what you're being told. Don't tell me I "didn't answer it" just because you don't like the answer.
Your question is underspecified and cannot be answered in this form. You need to be at least somewhat concrete in your questions. As noted--we're not doing "pure reason" here.
Contractualism is not about mutual courses of action. It is about finding principles for the governance of behavior that cannot be reasonably rejected. It is possible that in some cases two beings will simply lack any possible common reasons on which to ground such principles, but I've never seen any evidence that any human beings occupy that position with regard to one another.
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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