What could make morality objective?

Should you think about your duty, or about the consequences of your actions? Or should you concentrate on becoming a good person?

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Skepdick
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Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by Skepdick »

Peter Holmes wrote: Thu Mar 23, 2023 4:56 pm As this premise assumes the conclusion, the argument is fallacious.
Just because an argument is fallacious it doesn't mean the conclusion is not true.

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

It sounds like Peter "Dumb Cunt" Holmes has never heard of Kurt Gödel who explained rather elaborately to all the idiot-philosophers why what is deducible is only a subset of what is true.
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Agent Smith
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Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by Agent Smith »

He looked behind. No use, a red semi blocked his view, it was crawling, slow, too slow. By the time the last inch of the truck was outta sight the laws of nature had done their work - nothin' to see, only to remember, but he was not young anymore, he drank, heavily, chain smoked, heroin whenever he could cough up the money.
Peter Holmes
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Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by Peter Holmes »

What we call water would be what we call H2O even if the science of chemistry didn't exist.

That's the nature of facts. We can know and describe them only if they exist in the first place.

And that's why VA's theory is trash. It gets the whole business of knowledge back-to-front.
Skepdick
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Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by Skepdick »

Peter Holmes wrote: Thu Mar 23, 2023 5:34 pm What we call water would be what we call H2O even if the science of chemistry didn't exist.
Peter Holmes wrote: Tue Mar 21, 2023 8:27 am In different ways, each of these arguments is invalid. Each mistakes what we say about things for the way things are.
So when other people "mistake" what we say about things for the way things are their arguments are invalid.

But when we say "water" or "H2O" about a thing and Peter "Dumb Cunt" Holmes mistakes what we say about the thing for what the thing is his argument isn't invalid.

🤣🤣🤣
Skepdick
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Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by Skepdick »

Peter Holmes wrote: Thu Mar 23, 2023 5:34 pm That's the nature of facts. We can know and describe them only if they exist in the first place.
So you can know and describe the facts about water over and above knowing and describing water?

So now you have two sets of descriptions
1. Descriptions of water
2. Descriptions of water's facts.

:lol: :lol: :lol:

Signature Peter "Dumb Cunt" Holmes
Veritas Aequitas
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Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by Veritas Aequitas »

Peter Holmes wrote: Thu Mar 23, 2023 4:56 pm Elsewhere, VA has kindly offered a travesty of my argument against moral objectivism. So here's VA's own silly argument for moral objectivism.

P1 A fact exists only within a 'framework and system of knowledge'.
P2 There is a morality 'framework and system of knowledge'.
C Therefore, there are moral facts, and morality is objective.
Agree in general.
P1 is false, because the facts we discover and describe existed before we discovered and described them, and would exist even had we not discovered and described them. (After all, there was a universe before humans turned up, would be one had we not turned up, and will be one after we're gone.)

As this premise is false, the argument is unsound.
What you are ignorant of is there are perspectives and their precisions in the consideration of reality.
Within the vulgar crude common sense, convention sense [Newtonian, Einsteinian] it is relative and necessarily true, the universe existed [emerging from the Big Bang] before there were humans.
But this is the crude sense of reality while there a more precise sense of reality.

Within the more precise sense of reality, whatever exist, they are intertwined and entangled with the human conditions.

Note this thread;
The Moon Does Not Exist If No Humans 'Look' at It
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=39510
implying the existence of reality is intertwined and entangled with the human conditions.
which contain the principles of the thesis that won the 2022 Nobel Prize of Physics.
If you disagree with P1, that reflects your ignorance.
P2 begs the question, because it assumes the conclusion: that there are moral facts which can therefore be known within a framework and system of knowledge. (After all, there is an astrology 'framework and system of knowledge', so there should be astrology facts and astrology should be objective. But there aren't, and it isn't.)

As this premise assumes the conclusion, the argument is fallacious.
The most credible and reliable Framework and System of Knowledge [FSK] is the scientific FSK which has a high degree of objectivity.
All moral facts from the moral FSK are reducible to the scientific-biology FSK and other sub-scientific FSKs, thus has near equivalence of objectivity to the scientific FSK.

On the other hand, whatever facts as claimed from the astrology FSK or the theistic FSK cannot be reducible to scientific facts, thus has low or zero degree of objectivity.

Btw, your linguistic-fact-FSK by itself cannot be reduced to scientific facts or its near equivalent, therefore its objectivity is negligible.

Note "There Are No Such Things As Facts"
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=39806
as claimed by Lawrence Johnson;
Lawrence Johnson wrote:Also, Facts are often said to have something to do with the story, in some way or another.
Facts have a way of intruding into truth theory as well as into practical affairs, and in each case we must come to terms with them.
Even so, I believe that while a practical concern for the facts is usually of benefit, truth theory has very often suffered as a result of a preoccupation with facts.
This is because truth theorists have too often taken facts as if they were entities of some sort.
Rather, I maintain, fact-language is a means we have for talking about things, with facts being merely linguistic substantives.
They [Facts] are not entities of any sort, not even propositional entities.
(There are no propositional entities.)
What you claimed as 'facts' are merely linguistic-FSK substantives or things, i.e. intelligible things aka noumena that has no sense of reality.
Your facts as features of reality which is just-is, state of affairs, that is/was the case, are merely illusory linguistic substantives /things only for the purpose of talking about things within the linguistic FSK.
Lawrence Johnson wrote:Fact-language is very complex, following a number of related but different patterns.
I shall argue that we can, at least normally, identify a performative-like factor, wherein our use of the term fact serves to express certification of the adequacy of the evidence for some directly verifiable empirical statement.
What you use the phrase 'it is a fact that' [within the linguistic FSK] you are merely alluding to some degree of the adequacy of the evidence for some directly verifiable empirical statement [that necessitate the authority of the scientific or other verification FSKs].


Note,
It is the fact that [linguistic fact] 'water is H20' [science chemistry' conflates two FSKs, i.e. the linguistic FSK and the science-chemistry FSK.
this statement cannot be absolutely independent of the human conditions because the FSKs inevitably entangle with the human conditions.

What I claimed as "facts" are human-based-FSK facts which can be reduced to scientific facts.
Last edited by Veritas Aequitas on Fri Mar 24, 2023 4:25 am, edited 2 times in total.
Veritas Aequitas
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Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by Veritas Aequitas »

Peter Holmes wrote: Thu Mar 23, 2023 5:34 pm What we call water would be what we call H2O even if the science of chemistry didn't exist.
That's the nature of facts. We can know and describe them only if they exist in the first place.
And that's why VA's theory is trash. It gets the whole business of knowledge back-to-front.
Note my post above which demonstrate what you claimed as facts are merely linguistic substantives [not real things] within a linguistic FSK.

You CANNOT assert 'Water is H20' without any reference to the implied human-based-science-chemistry-FSK.

Re 'What we call water' there is no such thing as 'that-What' before it is called water.
That 'that-what' is merely a speculated thought, i.e. a linguistic thing within the linguistic FSK. This is the problem with the Bottom-up approach.
You are begging the question by assuming there pre-exists a 'that-What' which you subsequently call 'water' then 'water is H20'.

What is most realistic is the "Top-Down" approach which is based on real experiences supported by verifiable and justifiable evidences, NOT based on speculation.
Point is we have real experience of something that is 'wet', fluid, not-solid, i.e. of a certain same pattern with consistence features everywhere.
We then name this experience of that-pattern 'water' [sign] within the linguistic FSK.
To get more details we determine this consistent patter is 'Water is H2O' from within the human-based-science-chemistry-FSK.

That's it! there is no need to speculate 'that-what' before it was called 'water' or 'water is H20'.

Repeat;
Lawrence Johnson wrote:
Fact-language is very complex, following a number of related but different patterns.
I shall argue that we can, at least normally, identify a performative-like factor, wherein our use of the term fact serves to express certification of the adequacy of the evidence for some directly verifiable empirical statement.
When you use the phrase 'it is a fact that' [within the linguistic FSK] you are merely alluding to some degree of the adequacy of the evidence for some directly verifiable empirical statement [that necessitate the authority of the scientific or other verification FSKs].

Note,
It is the fact that [linguistic fact] 'water is H20' [science chemistry' conflates two FSKs, i.e. the linguistic FSK and the science-chemistry FSK.
this statement cannot be absolutely independent of the human conditions because the FSKs inevitably entangle with the human conditions.

What I claimed as "facts" are human-based-FSK facts which can be reduced to scientific facts.
Peter Holmes
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Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by Peter Holmes »

Same old confusion. We use the word fact in two completely different ways, as the following dictionary definition demonstrates:

Fact: a thing that is known to exist, to have occurred, or to be true.

Now, words can mean only what we use them to mean. And a thing that is known to exist, or to have occurred, is a thing that exists, or has occurred. After all, a thing can't be known to exist or have occurred if it doesn't exist, or didn't occur - unless, of course, we deny that the word knowledge and its cognates mean what we use them to mean.

So the writer(s) that VA quotes are promoting a crudely limited use of the word fact, forgetting its primary use, and asserting only its linguistic use: 'a thing that is known to be true'. They then mistake true linguistic expressions - true factual assertions - for the features of reality that they assert, and proceed to deny that those things exist. Hence the absurd claim that factual language is what constitutes facts.

And this is false. The existence and nature of water has nothing to do with linguistic description. And VA's appeal to the credibility of scientific descriptions, because of the empirical evidence for their truth, exposes the silliness of saying that facts exist only within a descriptive context. Evidence of things (facts) that don't exist outside a description is not evidence for the truth of those descriptions. How can it be?

In different ways, this fashionable mind-warp has been deranging philosophy for many decades now. And VA and sidekick dick-for-brains keep plugging it. The irony that to deny the existence of what we call facts is to deny the existence of moral facts - thus demolishing the case for moral objectivity - is patently obvious.
Skepdick
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Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by Skepdick »

Peter Holmes wrote: Fri Mar 24, 2023 9:14 am Same old confusion. We use the word fact in two completely different ways, as the following dictionary definition demonstrates:

Fact: a thing that is known to exist, to have occurred, or to be true.
Peter Holmes wrote: Tue Mar 21, 2023 3:11 pm A factual assertion has a truth-value, but a fact doesn't.
At what point are you going to stop lying to yourself (and to us) that you care about logical non-contradiction?

It is obvious that your use of "fact" is different to the dictionary use of "fact".

So if you are using the word differently to the way other people are using the word then how are "we" using the word?
Skepdick
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Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by Skepdick »

Peter Holmes wrote: Fri Mar 24, 2023 9:14 am The existence and nature of water has nothing to do with linguistic description.
So things have an existence; and they also have a "nature"? I think you are confused.

What's the nature of existence?
Peter Holmes
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Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by Peter Holmes »

VA: 'Like all features of reality/facts, human being exist only within a descriptive context.'

Questions:

1 Who or what produces descriptions?

2 What exactly are the 'human conditions' with which human descriptions of the 'human conditions' are entangled?

Thus the water vortexes and disappears down the plughole.
Peter Holmes
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Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by Peter Holmes »

Here's a plan.

1 VA keeps peddling a stupid argument for moral objectivity.
2 I and others keep explaining its stupidity.
3 Dick-for-brains keeps pumping out the odd fatuous idiocy, such as that noumena can exist, cos they're just undiscovered things.

Sic transit tempus sed non gloria mundi.
Ansiktsburk
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Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by Ansiktsburk »

Just reading the thread title and seeing the 495 pages one would think probably nothing.
Skepdick
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Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by Skepdick »

Ansiktsburk wrote: Sat Mar 25, 2023 10:37 am Just reading the thread title and seeing the 495 pages one would think probably nothing.
And improbably?
popeye1945
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Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by popeye1945 »

Ansiktsburk wrote: Sat Mar 25, 2023 10:37 am Just reading the thread title and seeing the 495 pages one would think probably nothing.
Ansiktsburk,

It is not unusual, that even if the question is elegantly solved perhaps even more than once that these threads just go on and on. I answered the question to my satisfaction a long time ago, therefore I no longer post any variations of an answer. Any of these very long threads have probably been answered in the first few pages.
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