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I disagree, but interesting or not, my account of the nature of morality more closely aligns with reality and has more explanatory power.
From the evidence we have, it appears that morality is relative. I am making the argument that just because morality is relative that doesn't rob us of morality. It doesn't lead to moral nihilism and it doesn't decrease the relevance of morality in our lives.
I think I have made a strong argument that this is not a necessary result of moral relativism.
The behavioral result is identical in my account and your moral realist account. If I am a moral relativist who thinks the nazis are wrong, I will say "There are some people over there who think that exterminating Jews is good and some people over there who think that exterminating Jews is bad" also I can say "I am one of the people who thinks that the nazis are wrong and exterminating Jews is bad" and I can act accordingly to stop their abhorrent behavior.
Nothing has changed behaviorally from your account, as both the allies and the nazis are going to behave the same regardless. Even if I was a moral realist the nazis were going to act in line with their fucked up beliefs. I was still going to act in accordance with my beliefs.
The difference between the accounts is their explanatory power. moral relativism doesn't have the issue of needing to find a justification for moral axioms that as far as I can tell are fundamentally not possible to justify objectively. Can you explain to me how you can justify a moral axiom without relying on another moral axiom?
This is going to depend on things like the determinism/compatibilism/free will debate. It cannot be freely concluded.
This is not what it means to have more explanatory power. In fact, if it were, we could on similar grounds jettison the entire scientific endeavor for objective physical reality. No need to go to the trouble of looking for a justification when we can just happily settle for the subjectivist view.
I'm not sure I believe that actual compatibilists exists but otherwise I guess that's fair. I'll think more about how that debate interacts with this one.
I think it kind of is but that's a larger argument. As this feels to not be the core of the argument, how about I start by just saying it's more coherent and has at least an equal level of explanatory power as the alternate theory. I think to argue explanatory power in depth I would need to know more about what you think moral realism vs. moral relativism predicts, which you have said would require pulling in the debate over determinism/free will.
Thats not true.
Science is different in that it has no need to be justified by arbitrary axioms. It has utility as a justification which I think we would both agree is not a valid justification for morals. All science needs to show that it is better science is to work.
The scientific endeavor can be tracked via its utility. If my opponents and I have different science, but their science makes better bombs and medicine, then I should reconsider my science.
But if my opponents and I have different morals, and their morals make better bombs and medicine (let's say they use children in their mines or sacrifice children to create a working immortality potion), that is not grounds to reconsider my morals. Science is judged on utility, morality is not.
I would still like an answer to this please.
I'm going to have to back out of this soon, because I can now tell that you've been too steeped in the New Atheists. There's not going to be much value in proceeding beyond simply suggesting that you spend a bit more time in some philosophy courses.
You've run absolutely roughshod over centuries of philosophical underpinnings of science, plus you've come to a plainly wrong conclusion to boot. Not a single word on what the actual object of science is, nor why such a thing should correlate in any way to "utility", whatever that means. If you lived in a Matrix where the only thing that seemed to bring you an ill-defined "utility" was pressing the experience-machine-go-heroin button, I guess that would be the proper domain of science or something.
I'm sort of proceeding by reductio ad absurdum. Seeing how your test here would play out when turned against something you like. You seem vastly less willing to be even a tenth as stringent in favor of bounding over giant buildings in a single leap (of faith).
I think you are pigeon hole-ing me really incorrectly.
I really really am not. For one, aren't they are all stridently opposed to moral relativism?
I have no love for them as an ideological group and also have not read much of their stuff. Looking up the people that define that group I can honestly say that while I have heard of some of them, the only one I have really read at all is Dennett, who I do enjoy. But I don't agree with their beliefs and am not that familiar with their thoughts. Clearly they oppose religion and the things that come with it and I am deeply in favor of religion.
I do not think my beliefs line up with the New Atheists in general. Wasn't someone earlier in this thread saying that Sam Harris was trying to compose an objective system of morality based on naturalism? That flies in the face of my entire position.
Dude mean. I'm pretty familiar with the philosophical literature. It's embarrassing to retreat to a call to authority but I went pretty far into the philosophy class tree in undergrad and it was a college with a well respected philosophy program. I took lots of upper level philosophy courses. I don't have a philosophy PHD but I'm also not green by any measure. I guess I reject some of the established positions of analytic philosophers, but I have read them, and I have a lot of love for the continental literature as well. I don't think a lack of knowledge of the canon is the issue here.
Ah, ok I think I see the confusion. You're interpreting my use of utility to be the same as economists or utilitarians; essentially the same as human pleasure (I know they quibble about the exact meaning but something in that space). That was not what I meant at all. I meant it in the informal or scientific sense of a description of the degree to which something is practically useful. If your science makes tall buildings that don't fall down, medicine that heals the sick, and bombs that explode well - then it is good science. Good science correctly predicts the material world and successfully provides control over it. The more it does those things, the better science it is. I wasn't trying to refer to utility as human happiness/pleasure at all.
I really don't think I have. Science's core objective is to provide us with a reliable and predictive understanding of the natural world. Its success is best measured by its utility, and in a scientific context, utility refers to the practical applications of scientific theories and findings. That might not be the only goal of science or the method of science, but it's a very strong measure of its success. If your science doesn't work when applied to physical experiments, you go back to the chalkboard. That position does not "run roughshod" over the philosophical underpinnings of science.
With that explained, do you feel your matrix thought experiment is still relevant here? I think it was based on the assumption that I meant utility like utilitarians do, but if I am misunderstanding, please tell me.
I'm not sure I follow what you are saying. Is the reductio ad absurdum argument you are making the matrix thought experiment? If not can you lay the argument out again please?
What thing that I like?
Of the what now? Where did that thing come from? All you have right now are some subjective perceptions.
EDIT: Historically, many New Atheist adherents leaned hard naive moral relativist, with nearly exactly the same positions as you. Adding on the papering over of how we go all the way from nothing to magic utility in one shot just sealed the deal for how close you are to where that community was, whether intentional or not. Of course, their naive moral relativism was the biggest thing that they were constantly taking Ls over in Internet Arguments, so a segment of them (including the aforementioned Sam Harris) pivoted hard toward trying to science away the is-ought gap and construct their own scientific moral realism. But yeah, I was more placing you pretty much exactly in that community, but prior to the pivot. Back in the day when I was most engaged in it. As I was getting a better phil education was when this turn started happening. I could pretty immediately see the central flaws in a couple different attempts, so I kinda stopped paying attention to it as I drifted away from caring much about them more generally.
We start with subjective perceptions but I am not universally against any kind of realism. Science is an effective way to handle the material world as we perceive it. It works as far as we can tell. That's enough for science because that is the grounds on which we judge science. We want science to work, if it does, then it has fulfilled its stated purpose.
The requirements for justifying moral stances are higher because the stated purpose of morality is not "just work". That is why it raises the question of relativism. If all we wanted was for morality to work, then we could compare the moral positions of different groups and the associated outcomes and using that data we could pick the best moral positions. But that is not the grounds on which we judge moral positions, so we have to grapple with the questions of relativity.
Well, I am only passingly familiar and certainly not steeped in that context. I don't have your knowledge of their internet argument history. I really don't think my philosophy in general aligns with new atheism, which again, I presume is in favor of atheism. I am in favor of religion.
I feel like you have not been charitable in the course of this discussion. By which I mean you tend to focus on very specific things I have said while avoiding dealing with the central cruxes of the arguments I am presenting - despite the fact that as far as I can tell, you know very well what the points I am trying to make are. And even knowing that, you don't make much attempt to argue with them head on. Instead you focus your responses away from the central arguments. If you were being charitable, the first target of your responses would be the core issue and you would directly explain what the problem with it is.
Wow, what a statement. If my position is so obviously retarded then show me by engaging it head on. I ask you multiple questions in most of my posts, you ignore them in general. You are continually dismissive in your responses, despite my best attempts to engage in good faith. Where's the charity?
Sorry, the what now? Where did that come from? I feel like I'm missing some axioms or something.
Let me clarify what I meant. I could see the flaws in a couple different attempts to science their way across the is-ought gap to a scientific moral realism. This is not what you're doing, so it's not your position.
I argue it in the following sentences. I specifically said the material world as we perceive it. Should I post the exact same thing again? If you think that my stance on moral relativity is incompatible with my stance on the material world, I think you need to make that argument more clearly, instead of just continuing to say "Wah? What?".
maybe you are missing some of my relevant axioms, I'm happy to fill them in if you're actually curious. It doesn't feel like you are.
Ok. Well thanks for that. I agree you can't science your way across the is-ought gap, and have no interest in trying. The fact that at least current New Atheists appear to try to do that is part of why I have low interest in their position.
I'm not that enamored of science.
No reply to my accusation of a lack of charity? That doesn't concern you?
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