What is Constructivism? Common Denominators

[Flannel Jesus]

Either

A. Humans can construct any facts they want, and thus they can construct the moral fact that heterosexuality ought to be punished by death, or

B. Humans can't construct any fact they want.

Your words make me think that you think that B is the case.

[Skepdick]

Either

A. Humans can construct any facts they want, and thus they can construct the moral fact that heterosexuality ought to be punished by death, or

B. Humans can't construct any fact they want.

Your words make me think that you think that B is the case.

Human can define, undefine and redefine anything they want however they want.

Did they? Will they? Should they?

[Veritas Aequitas]

Either

A. Humans can construct any facts they want, and thus they can construct the moral fact that heterosexuality ought to be punished by death, or

B. Humans can't construct any fact they want.

Your words make me think that you think that B is the case.

Note my previous post, i.e.

You are engaging with some kind of mirroring, picturing and correspondence some pre-existing fact. i.e. typical of philosophical realism which is fundamentally illusory.

Note,
all facts are conditioned upon a specific human-based FSK.

A fact that cannot be constructed is not a fact per se.
What we called facts are what emerged after it has been processed within the FSK.

Before a FSK fact emerged, we can have ideas, hypothesis but never facts.

A. Humans can construct any facts they want, and thus they can construct the moral fact that heterosexuality ought to be punished by death, or

I had stated 'killing of human' is never a moral element, thus cannot be a moral fact, but rather it is an evil element.

Where one has the political power, they can construct laws that heterosexuality ought to be punished by death, but that is a political and evil issue which need to be overcome with moral forces.

[Flannel Jesus]

Either

A. Humans can construct any facts they want, and thus they can construct the moral fact that heterosexuality ought to be punished by death, or

B. Humans can't construct any fact they want.

Your words make me think that you think that B is the case.

Note my previous post, i.e.

You are engaging with some kind of mirroring, picturing and correspondence some pre-existing fact. i.e. typical of philosophical realism which is fundamentally illusory.

I don't think I'm engaging in anything in particular other than trying to grasp the ideas you're putting forward. Is A your view? If A is not your view, then B must be, right? I feel like I've put forth a pretty fair dichotomy. Either they Can, or they Cannot, what other options are there?

[Iwannaplato]

I don't think I'm engaging in anything in particular other than trying to grasp the ideas you're putting forward. Is A your view? If A is not your view, then B must be, right? I feel like I've put forth a pretty fair dichotomy. Either they Can, or they Cannot, what other options are there?

And note...

I had stated 'killing of human' is never a moral element, thus cannot be a moral fact, but rather it is an evil element.

1) When it's convenient, he talks about objective morality in relation to acts. When he is defending himself against PH, he claims not to do this, that it has nothing to do with his morality.
2) Not the game playing: an act is an element.
3) He asserts. He is not asserting via a scientific FSK. He is simply asserting. His values are axioms. They determine what is evil or good. It's not a scientific process as he constantly claims. And hey, it's fine that it's not a scientific process, he could just stop pretending that his morality's core elements are from the scientific FSK.

[Flannel Jesus]

I'm going to lay out a bit of the background thoughts I have about all of this, maybe it will be illuminating - at the very least, illuminating my own stupidities, but I hope it's more than that.

The start of it for me is narrowing down what it means to say someone should, or shouldn't, do something. "You should do this." "You shouldn't do that." Morality aside for a moment, what do statements like these mean and how can they be objective?

It's simple: should statements are goal oriented statements. "If your goal is this, you should do that." If you have a goal, there are usually things you can do that will move you towards that goal, and things you can do that will move you away from that goal. Goal oriented should statements are capable of being objective - I'm on board with the objectivity of statements like "if you want to learn guitar, you should watch these lessons" or "if you want to build an extension on your house without getting in trouble with the local government, you should have plans drawn up and you should submit them to your local council for approval first."

You have a goal, and there are things that are objectively good for reaching that goal, and other things that are objectively counter to that goal.

Morality can be framed as a subset of these goal oriented statements. Morality most often comes in one of two flavours: virtue based morality, and consequence-based morality. I'm going to just ignore virtue based morality for the time being and focus on mortality based on consequences.

Now, I don't know how any of you guys define morality in particular, but in terms in consequence based morality, what we have is a "moral goal" of, for example, achieving the greatest happiness for the most people (or contentment or satisfaction), or avoiding the most suffering for the most people - something along those lines. Those are the moral "goals" - maybe not exactly those, I'm using very loose wording here, but it's a reasonable enough starting point. So we have some goals, now we can construct some "should" statements.

If your goal is to achieve the greatest happiness for people and avoid suffering, you shouldn't torture people. Obviously the consequence of torturing is usually suffering, so if your goal is to avoid suffering, it stands to reason...

If your goal is to achieve the greatest happiness for people, you should (support some policy that someone wants to argue will result in more happiness).

The objectivity of those two statements above, for me, is perfectly fine. I could totally agree that both of those statements above could be objective. If your goal is this, OBJECTIVELY an effective way of achieving that goal is this. No problem here whatsoever.

But, the reason why I don't go from that to "I believe in objective morality" is, that's a big IF.

If your goal is to achieve the greatest happiness for people and avoid suffering, you shouldn't torture people. Yes, this is objectively true. But what if you come across a creature whose goal isn't that?

What if an alien species shows up to earth, and they're intelligent and rational - more intelligent and rational than us - but, for them, the greatest pleasure is in consuming human babies? What if they experience the euphoria of a thousand human orgasms when they consume a human baby?

Let's imagine this species isn't hostile to humans, apart from their desire to consume babies. Let's even imagine there's only, say, 1000 of these aliens, and they only want to each eat 1 baby a week, so there's no real risk of us going extinct any time soon. And they're more than willing to talk to adult humans.

What could we do to convince them that they shouldn't eat human babies? What could we do to convince them that it's an objective fact that they shouldn't eat babies?

They are rational beings. They are scientific beings - they know how to look at evidence and decide what they think is true based on that evidence and the models that best explain it.

If we're talking to these beings, humanity could convince them of, say, the atomic model of chemistry. Humanity could convince them of relativity, or quantum mechanics. Humanity probably wouldn't need to convince them, because they'd probably have their own models that are more or less isomorphic to these things, if not more refined, but we could.

But could we convince them that they should want to share our moral goals? Could we use observable, objective, scientific facts to convince them that their goal of achieving euphoria through consuming human babies should be replaced by our goals of avoiding human suffering, increasing human happiness, not killing human babies for pleasure?

I don't think we could. I don't think there's any objective scientific fact we could point to to make them give up their goals and replace them with ours. And I don't think the aliens would be in any way irrational or unscientific if they said, no thanks, we'll just keep eating the babies.

That's what I mean when I disagree with objective morality. I fully agree with the objectivity of "if your goal is this, you should do this". I don't agree that all rational, scientific agents in the universe could necessarily be convinced to share our moral goals. Their axioms of value are too far removed from our own, and they're not irrational for that. I don't believe in objective morality means I don't think there's an objective reason why some other being with different goals must share our moral goals.

And it doesn't apply only to aliens either. It applies to humans. Psychopaths and sociopaths. You could convince a sociopath that, IF their goal is to achieve the most happiness for the most people, they shouldn't be scamming all these old people. But could you convince that sociopath to care about the most happiness for the most people? Rationally? If they don't care, then they don't care. I don't know what you could say to make them care.

[Skepdick]

....

Talk of goals, sociopaths or aliens isn't helpful. In fact it's a terible red herring and it's a terrible framing.

Part and parcel in ethical/moral conflicts is goal alignment; and in AI research this is generalized as the alignment problem.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Alignment_Problem

Here's a perfectly persuadable (programmable) entity: a computer. It will do whatever you program it to do! It will pursue whatever goals you tell it to pursue!

Explain to it the following two things:
1. How to pursue its primary utility function
2. How to avoid accidentally exterminating humanity while pursuing its primary utility function

If you can't make your morality explicit - it's not the computer's fault! It's doing EXACTLY what you told it to do.

https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/squiggle- ... -maximizer

Now if you don't think that exterminating mankind is objectively wrong then I don't think humans have anything else to say about morality.

[Agent Smith]

Slosh ... slosh ... slosh ... slosh How very fascinating!!

[Iwannaplato]

I'm gonna react in small ways, at least first.

Morality can be framed as a subset of these goal oriented statements. Morality most often comes in one of two flavours: virtue based morality, and consequence-based morality. I'm going to just ignore virtue based morality for the time being and focus on mortality based on consequences.

There's also deontology, not that the three are ever gonig to be completely separate. In deontology, you might have a never rape a child rule. This would mean, even if it saves 20,000 people somehow. So, you have injunctions that are not related or at least supposedly not related to consquences. Most people are some kind of mix of these approachs, but I wanted to bring it up because it isn't based on a should + goal.

If your goal is to achieve the greatest happiness for people and avoid suffering, you shouldn't torture people. Obviously the consequence of torturing is usually suffering, so if your goal is to avoid suffering, it stands to reason...

If your goal is to achieve the greatest happiness for people, you should (support some policy that someone wants to argue will result in more happiness).

The objectivity of those two statements above, for me, is perfectly fine. I could totally agree that both of those statements above could be objective. If your goal is this, OBJECTIVELY an effective way of achieving that goal is this. No problem here whatsoever.

To put this another way, once you find a common value, you can then approach a common morality. The practicalities of this can potentially be objective. We might be able to demonstrate that attitude B or behavior X helps achieve that value.

So, we have value X, be can build pragmatically and objectively, to some degree or other, in achieving it. I don't think that makes an objective morality, but it does allow for objective thinking around implementation/achievement.

And VA tends to treat his FSK around morality as if it doesn't matter that there is a value based axiom at root. Let's say his morality has 10 assertions. 9 are from science, 1 is the moral axiom. For him that's 90% science. The problem is that that means that someone with a different moral axiom will also have an objective morality that is 90% science.

Now he's suddenly betrayed mirror neurons but won't say what his morality is about, at all. But for a long time the axiom was empathy is the moral attitude we should enhance. Someone with a different moral axiom, say an aggression based one, will come up with what VA is forced to call and objective morality that has exactly as much 'science in it' be leads to completely different cultures, behaviors, attitudes and what most people would call morals.

I don't think we could. I don't think there's any objective scientific fact we could point to to make them give up their goals and replace them with ours. And I don't think the aliens would be in any way irrational or unscientific if they said, no thanks, we'll just keep eating the babies.

People generally have a few moral axioms, but unless the aliens have one like, for example, sentient species cannot be treated solely intrumentally, I don't see where we put the crowbar in.

Then it's time to be armed, like Skepdick is. You wanna rely on your protecting your family, might makes right (or 'protects what I value') is going to be necessary in some circumstances.

It seems there's this concern often that if someone doesn't view something as objective right they won't fight for it. Perhaps that is true for some people. IOW it might be a useful heuristic for your team. And it might be a useful heuristic for the team trying to kill you also. I don't need to think the axioms are objective to fight. It might also nag at the conscience of your team if you think you actually have to be objectively in the right to fight or strive.

[Flannel Jesus]

I'm gonna react in small ways, at least first.

Morality can be framed as a subset of these goal oriented statements. Morality most often comes in one of two flavours: virtue based morality, and consequence-based morality. I'm going to just ignore virtue based morality for the time being and focus on mortality based on consequences.

There's also deontology, not that the three are ever gonig to be completely separate.

Yes, I mistakenly left that out, or rather I think I was mentally combining virtue based morality with deontology without communicating that explicitly. Maybe they shouldn't be bundled up in idea-space like I intuitively do, who knows?

[Skepdick]

In deontology, you might have a never rape a child rule. This would mean, even if it saves 20,000 people somehow. So, you have injunctions that are not related or at least supposedly not related to consquences. Most people are some kind of mix of these approachs, but I wanted to bring it up because it isn't based on a should + goal.

It seems the goal is explicit in the rule - avoid child rape.

[Iwannaplato]

I'm gonna react in small ways, at least first.

Morality can be framed as a subset of these goal oriented statements. Morality most often comes in one of two flavours: virtue based morality, and consequence-based morality. I'm going to just ignore virtue based morality for the time being and focus on mortality based on consequences.

There's also deontology, not that the three are ever gonig to be completely separate.

Yes, I mistakenly left that out, or rather I think I was mentally combining virtue based morality with deontology without communicating that explicitly. Maybe they shouldn't be bundled up in idea-space like I intuitively do, who knows?

I think the people arguing that the facts aren't independent of collective individual FSKs have a point. Perhaps the universe is much more multi-interpretable than we realize. The alien example is good because I think we can easily imagine an alien species that has very different values, but whom we could talk to about and agree ona lot of things scientific and mathematical. I think it's a good intuitive thought experiment. And this is true across cultures, even where there are major differences in ontologies, we can still get on board about how to make steel more durable or when Mars will appear near the horizon. Some of the physicalists here are sure that ontology is like science and it sure as shit isn't, but that's another story.

But, again, I think pointing out that human understandings of what we call objective have some significant degree of subjective aspects, if not more than that. And all experiments to verify things are going to be carried out by homonids who are local in space, who experience time and who have primate senses plus abstract thinking coming from the motor cortex or behave in ways that this is a metaphor for.

I'm happier to let science be intersubjective than to make morals objective. It's all bathwater to me. I do think the subjective/objective distinction is useful. I think sometimes it can even be useful to look at it as binary, other times as a kind of spectrum. But if you want to undermine other people's idea of objectivity so that morals can be seen as objective, my reaction, if the case is made well, would be, yeah science stuff isn't objective either.

Which doesn't mean you have to throw out science, because we do get, often, useful tools out of it. And Muslims and secular Western atheists often, perhaps usually, get the same useful tools. So, no reason to give it up. It seems to be a useful methodology cross cultures - though not across all cultures. We've wiped out the cultures that didn't agree with the objectivity of technological advance and focus with scattered exceptions in the dominant cultures.

IOW I think VA and then sniping from the side Skepdick make a much better case that nothing is objective than that morals are objective. PH is not going to grant that, so this thread will likely go on until death determines who is the winner.

As an aside: my gut sense is that the universe is much more complicated, even at the ontological level, then we realise. What we are calling objective is local and not mind independent. I can't demonstrate this, though I can suggest ways one can have more experiences that indicate this might be the case.

[Skepdick]

But if you want to undermine other people's idea of objectivity so that morals can be seen as objective, my reaction, if the case is made well, would be, yeah science stuff isn't objective either.

Then don't undermine other people's ideas of objectivity - stretch their understanding of what objectivity is so as to eliminate the conflict and accomodate both views.

You can no more see or touch morality than you can see or touch gravity (and if you want to get philosophical it's questionable whether either one exists), but there are observable phenomena in the world which are explained by gravity and and by morality.

Why do apples fall from trees? Gravity.
Why is the world getting better, safer, less poor, more educated, less violent, more equal democratic etc.? Morality.

IOW I think VA and then sniping from the side Skepdick make a much better case that nothing is objective than that morals are objective.

That's only true in misinterpretations of my position.

If nothing is "objective" then you have yourself a meaningless word; and inability to explain how abstract ideas have a causal effect on reality.

[Veritas Aequitas]

Either

A. Humans can construct any facts they want, and thus they can construct the moral fact that heterosexuality ought to be punished by death, or

B. Humans can't construct any fact they want.

Your words make me think that you think that B is the case.

Note my previous post, i.e.

You are engaging with some kind of mirroring, picturing and correspondence some pre-existing fact. i.e. typical of philosophical realism which is fundamentally illusory.

I don't think I'm engaging in anything in particular other than trying to grasp the ideas you're putting forward. Is A your view? If A is not your view, then B must be, right? I feel like I've put forth a pretty fair dichotomy. Either they Can, or they Cannot, what other options are there?

I don't agree with your A and B as presented in the manner above.

[Veritas Aequitas]

I'm going to lay out a bit of the background thoughts I have about all of this, maybe it will be illuminating - at the very least, illuminating my own stupidities, but I hope it's more than that.

The start of it for me is narrowing down what it means to say someone should, or shouldn't, do something. "You should do this." "You shouldn't do that." Morality aside for a moment, what do statements like these mean and how can they be objective?

It's simple: should statements are goal oriented statements. "If your goal is this, you should do that." If you have a goal, there are usually things you can do that will move you towards that goal, and things you can do that will move you away from that goal. Goal oriented should statements are capable of being objective - I'm on board with the objectivity of statements like "if you want to learn guitar, you should watch these lessons" or "if you want to build an extension on your house without getting in trouble with the local government, you should have plans drawn up and you should submit them to your local council for approval first."

You have a goal, and there are things that are objectively good for reaching that goal, and other things that are objectively counter to that goal.

Yes, goals drive actions but merely setting expected actions against merely goals is vague.
Rather, 'shoulds' and 'oughts' are conditioned upon a Framework and System with its embedded constitution, ultimate and sub-goals.
This is where I introduced the concept of a Framework and System of Reality [FSR] or Knowledge [FSK].

Morality can be framed as a subset of these goal oriented statements. Morality most often comes in one of two flavours: virtue based morality, and consequence-based morality. I'm going to just ignore virtue based morality for the time being and focus on mortality based on consequences.

Now, I don't know how any of you guys define morality in particular, but in terms in consequence based morality, what we have is a "moral goal" of, for example, achieving the greatest happiness for the most people (or contentment or satisfaction), or avoiding the most suffering for the most people - something along those lines. Those are the moral "goals" - maybe not exactly those, I'm using very loose wording here, but it's a reasonable enough starting point. So we have some goals, now we can construct some "should" statements.

You need to be very precise here.
ALL humans has various mental functions supported by its specific neural correlates, e.g. intelligence, memory, dreaming, reasoning, etc.

As such, ALL humans has a specific inherent moral functions supported by its specific neural correlates.

So, we need a precise definition for 'what is morality' based on empirical evidences that represent what morality mean in terms of the human being and its brain.

If your goal is to achieve the greatest happiness for people and avoid suffering, you shouldn't torture people. Obviously the consequence of torturing is usually suffering, so if your goal is to avoid suffering, it stands to reason...

If your goal is to achieve the greatest happiness for people, you should (support some policy that someone wants to argue will result in more happiness).

The objectivity of those two statements above, for me, is perfectly fine. I could totally agree that both of those statements above could be objective. If your goal is this, OBJECTIVELY an effective way of achieving that goal is this. No problem here whatsoever.

But, the reason why I don't go from that to "I believe in objective morality" is, that's a big IF.

If your goal is to achieve the greatest happiness for people and avoid suffering, you shouldn't torture people. Yes, this is objectively true. But what if you come across a creature whose goal isn't that?

What if an alien species shows up to earth, and they're intelligent and rational - more intelligent and rational than us - but, for them, the greatest pleasure is in consuming human babies? What if they experience the euphoria of a thousand human orgasms when they consume a human baby?

Let's imagine this species isn't hostile to humans, apart from their desire to consume babies. Let's even imagine there's only, say, 1000 of these aliens, and they only want to each eat 1 baby a week, so there's no real risk of us going extinct any time soon. And they're more than willing to talk to adult humans.

What could we do to convince them that they shouldn't eat human babies? What could we do to convince them that it's an objective fact that they shouldn't eat babies?

They are rational beings. They are scientific beings - they know how to look at evidence and decide what they think is true based on that evidence and the models that best explain it.

If we're talking to these beings, humanity could convince them of, say, the atomic model of chemistry. Humanity could convince them of relativity, or quantum mechanics. Humanity probably wouldn't need to convince them, because they'd probably have their own models that are more or less isomorphic to these things, if not more refined, but we could.

But could we convince them that they should want to share our moral goals? Could we use observable, objective, scientific facts to convince them that their goal of achieving euphoria through consuming human babies should be replaced by our goals of avoiding human suffering, increasing human happiness, not killing human babies for pleasure?

I don't think we could. I don't think there's any objective scientific fact we could point to to make them give up their goals and replace them with ours. And I don't think the aliens would be in any way irrational or unscientific if they said, no thanks, we'll just keep eating the babies.

That's what I mean when I disagree with objective morality. I fully agree with the objectivity of "if your goal is this, you should do this". I don't agree that all rational, scientific agents in the universe could necessarily be convinced to share our moral goals. Their axioms of value are too far removed from our own, and they're not irrational for that. I don't believe in objective morality means I don't think there's an objective reason why some other being with different goals must share our moral goals.

And it doesn't apply only to aliens either. It applies to humans. Psychopaths and sociopaths. You could convince a sociopath that, IF their goal is to achieve the most happiness for the most people, they shouldn't be scamming all these old people. But could you convince that sociopath to care about the most happiness for the most people? Rationally? If they don't care, then they don't care. I don't know what you could say to make them care.

I see you are critiquing your own proposals and I agree that 'happiness' as a goal is not fool proof.

As I had stated, we need to define morality precisely such that it is foolproof.

In addition 'morality' is only restricted to humans and never applicable non-humans [aliens].
This is why humans can continue to kill non-humans consciousness or unconsciously to prioritize own interests. Otherwise, humans should not kill viruses, bacteria, insects, etc.; humans should not kill any living non-human things like plants and animals for food to facilitate their survival.
But killing of living non-humans has to be optimized, confined and limited to the extent where it is NOT to be detrimental to the long term survival of humans.

But could you convince that sociopath to care about the most happiness for the most people? Rationally? If they don't care, then they don't care. I don't know what you could say to make them care.

As I had stated, ALL humans has an inherent moral potential is that slowly unfolding where at present 2023 is at a slow rate and low activity.
This is why at present we have psychopaths and all sort of evil laden humans with low moral competence.

I have also stated, it is too late for the present because we cannot change the brain states of the evil laden human overnight to enable them with high morally competent.
As such have to bear with the current state of morality.

To expedite the activity and unfoldment of the inherent moral potential in a human will take lots of time in rewiring the moral neural correlates in the brain.
Thus the ONLY possibility of efficient moral progress is to effect such changes in future generations which may take >50, 75, 100, 150 years or more to achieve reasonable results.

To expedite the above neural changes in the brains of the average humans in the future to ensure high moral competence, we must at present be able to identify the objective moral facts and its physical mechanisms so that appropriate changes can be made in the FUTURE.

The above must be carried out within a FOOLPROOF mode in the future within the scientific-FSK and the moral FSK.
I want to emphasize FOOLPROOF to avoid any inkling of creating 'frankensteins'.