Is morality objective or subjective?

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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Magnus Anderson
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Re: Is morality objective or subjective?

Post by Magnus Anderson »

Atla wrote: Sat May 27, 2023 1:15 pmColor primarily means color-quale, and then we assign these color-qualia to external objects.
That's the mistake. The word "color" does not primarily refer to color qualia ( whether it's the kind that is said to exist within minds or the kind that is said to exist outside of minds. ) Rather, it primarily refers to the surface of physical objects. When we say that an object is certain color, we're describing its surface, we're not describing what's inside our minds; we're not describing our perceptions, we're not describing color qualia. Color qualia are merely symbols that we use to represent colors. They are like words. The color of a red apple, for example, can be represented by the corresponding color quale ( a visual symbol that looks like this ) in the same way that it can be represented by the word "red" ( a verbal symbol. ) Noone thinks that colors are words, right? Noone thinks that the word "red" is a color. The same exact thing applies to color qualia. They aren't colors either. They are merely symbols that can be used to represent colors.

A number of facts that argue in my favor:

1) A red object is red even if noone is looking at it.

2) A white object is white even if you use lightning and other techniques to manipulate its appearance, i.e. the kind of color qualia it produces in people.

3) A red object is red even when it's dark and when the color qualia it produces in us is that of a black color.

4) We say "The apple is red". We don't say "The apple appears to be red to me". We also don't say "My visual perception of the apple contains red color". The language we're using tells us that colors are properties of physical objects.

5) Humans are primarily concerned with the external world, i.e. the world that exists outside of minds.
Skepdick
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Re: Is morality objective or subjective?

Post by Skepdick »

Magnus Anderson wrote: Sat May 27, 2023 2:49 pm
Atla wrote: Sat May 27, 2023 1:15 pmColor primarily means color-quale, and then we assign these color-qualia to external objects.
That's the mistake. The word "color" does not primarily refer to color qualia ( whether it's the kind that is said to exist within minds or the kind that is said to exist outside of minds. ) Rather, it primarily refers to the surface of physical objects. When we say that an object is certain color, we're describing its surface, we're not describing what's inside our minds; we're not describing our perceptions, we're not describing color qualia.
Yes you are. You are describing your perception of the light refected by the surface of the object.
Atla
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Re: Is morality objective or subjective?

Post by Atla »

Magnus Anderson wrote: Sat May 27, 2023 2:49 pm
Atla wrote: Sat May 27, 2023 1:15 pmColor primarily means color-quale, and then we assign these color-qualia to external objects.
That's the mistake. The word "color" does not primarily refer to color qualia ( whether it's the kind that is said to exist within minds or the kind that is said to exist outside of minds. ) Rather, it primarily refers to the surface of physical objects. When we say that an object is certain color, we're describing its surface, we're not describing what's inside our minds; we're not describing our perceptions, we're not describing color qualia. Color qualia are merely symbols that we use to represent colors. They are like words. The color of a red apple, for example, can be represented by the corresponding color quale ( a visual symbol that looks like this ) in the same way that it can be represented by the word "red" ( a verbal symbol. ) Noone thinks that colors are words, right? Noone thinks that the word "red" is a color. The same exact thing applies to color qualia. They aren't colors either. They are merely symbols that can be used to represent colors.

A number of facts that argue in my favor:

1) A red object is red even if noone is looking at it.

2) A white object is white even if you use lightning and other techniques to manipulate its appearance, i.e. the kind of color qualia it produces in people.

3) A red object is red even when it's dark and when the color qualia it produces in us is that of a black color.

4) We say "The apple is red". We don't say "The apple appears to be red to me". We also don't say "My visual perception of the apple contains red color". The language we're using tells us that colors are properties of physical objects.

5) Humans are primarily concerned with the external world, i.e. the world that exists outside of minds.
Direct (naive) realism was refuted by science and psychology, we never directly experience the outside world. What we experience is always a representational construct in our head, it's simply an evolutionary deafult to believe that we directly see the outside world. So of course color primarily means color-quale.

Your facts can be reduced to: the external world doesn't change when no one is looking. But that's also perfectly consistent with the above indirect/representational realism.
Magnus Anderson
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Re: Is morality objective or subjective?

Post by Magnus Anderson »

In response to Skepdick:

You aren't.

Let me give you an example. If a friend of yours sends you a message telling you that he's sick, and you then state "My friend is sick", you are not describing the message that he sent you, you are describing his health.

Sure, you used his message to arrive at that conclusion. Nonetheless, the portion of reality that your statement "My friend is sick" is describing is not the message that he sent you. Rather, it's your friend's health.

If you actually wanted to describe the message your friend has sent you, instead of his health, you would have said something like "My friend told me he is sick".

The same is taking place inside your brain. When you look at an apple on your table, the brain sends you a visual message describing the surface of that apple. Unlike the message that your friend sent you, which was a textual message constructed using words, this is a visual message made out of color qualia. The message is basically describing the surface of the apple on the table using visual language. It may or may not be true, but because you generally have no reason to distrust this part of your brain, you accept that what it is telling you is true, and then you proceed to state "The apple is red". That statement isn't describing the visual message that the brain sent you. Sure, you used that visual message to arrive at the conclusion that the apple is red. But the statement isn't about the visual message itself. It's about the surface of the apple that is sitting on your table.

I think you have to learn the difference between what a proposition is describing and what caused someone to adopt that proposition.
Skepdick
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Re: Is morality objective or subjective?

Post by Skepdick »

Magnus Anderson wrote: Sat May 27, 2023 3:33 pm In response to Skepdick:

You aren't.

Let me give you an example. If a friend of yours sends you a message telling you that he's sick, and you then state "My friend is sick", you are not describing the message that he sent you, you are describing his health.

Sure, you used his message to arrive at that conclusion. Nonetheless, the portion of reality that your statement "My friend is sick" is describing is not the message that he sent you. Rather, it's your friend's health.

If you actually wanted to describe the message your friend has sent you, instead of his health, you would have said something like "My friend told me he is sick".

The same is taking place inside your brain. When you look at an apple on your table, the brain sends you a visual message describing the surface of that apple. Unlike the message that your friend sent you, which was a textual message constructed using words, this is a visual message made out of color qualia. The message is basically describing the surface of the apple on the table using visual language. It may or may not be true, but because you generally have no reason to distrust this part of your brain, you accept that what it is telling you is true, and then you proceed to state "The apple is red". That statement isn't describing the visual message that the brain sent you. Sure, you used that visual message to arrive at the conclusion that the apple is red. But the statement isn't about the visual message itself. It's about the surface of the apple that is sitting on your table.

I think you have to learn the difference between what a proposition is describing and what caused someone to adopt that proposition.
Your example has nothing to do with anything.

I don't know how else to explain this to you. Trichromats and tetrachromats describe the exact same objects with different color-words. Whose description is correct?

You are conceptually confused about the way your visual system works.
Magnus Anderson
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Re: Is morality objective or subjective?

Post by Magnus Anderson »

Atla wrote: Sat May 27, 2023 3:15 pmDirect (naive) realism was refuted by science and psychology, we never directly experience the outside world. What we experience is always a representational construct in our head, it's simply an evolutionary deafult to believe that we directly see the outside world. So of course color primarily means color-quale.

Your facts can be reduced to: the external world doesn't change when no one is looking. But that's also perfectly consistent with the above indirect/representational realism.
We're talking about what the word "color" means. That's a matter of language.

We're not talking about how beliefs / perceptions / maps of reality are formed, aren't we?

How does answering the second question answer the first question?

It doesn't take much intelligence to realize that your belief that there is an apple on your table isn't directly caused by the apple. After all, you're not directly in contact with it. There's quite a bit of a distance separating the two of you. You're really only in direct contact with what immediately surrounds you. And what immediately surrounds you, among other things, is light, some of which has been reflected off of that apple. Based on how that light affects you, and based on your past observations, as well as thanks to your ability to reason, you can form a belief about what's on the table. That's indirect realism. It's the idea that we perceive reality indirectly.

How exactly does that prove that the word "color" primarily means color quale?
Atla
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Re: Is morality objective or subjective?

Post by Atla »

Magnus Anderson wrote: Sat May 27, 2023 4:39 pm
Atla wrote: Sat May 27, 2023 3:15 pmDirect (naive) realism was refuted by science and psychology, we never directly experience the outside world. What we experience is always a representational construct in our head, it's simply an evolutionary deafult to believe that we directly see the outside world. So of course color primarily means color-quale.

Your facts can be reduced to: the external world doesn't change when no one is looking. But that's also perfectly consistent with the above indirect/representational realism.
We're talking about what the word "color" means. That's a matter of language.

We're not talking about how beliefs / perceptions / maps of reality are formed, aren't we?

How does answering the second question answer the first question?

It doesn't take much intelligence to realize that your belief that there is an apple on your table isn't directly caused by the apple. After all, you're not directly in contact with it. There's quite a bit of a distance separating the two of you. You're really only in direct contact with what immediately surrounds you. And what immediately surrounds you, among other things, is light, some of which has been reflected off of that apple. Based on how that light affects you, and based on your past observations, as well as thanks to your ability to reason, you can form a belief about what's on the table. That's indirect realism. It's the idea that we perceive reality indirectly.

How exactly does that prove that the word "color" primarily means color quale?
I don't really know what you mean. Color qualia are literally parts of the representational construct in the head. Color qualia are what we "directly" experience. So
Color primarily means color-quale, and then we assign these color-qualia to external objects. So color has two uses.
It's the evolutionary default to treat this construct as the external reality, and that's when we say that an apple is red. If we look at it from this everyday, evolutionary default perspective, then yes color simply means the color of external objects.

An often used example is looking at magenta objects, it's the color qualia experienced inside the head, after it gets processed that blue and red cones are firing simultaneously. But that's red and blue wavelengths "out there", not magenta. They couldn't even find a wavelength for magenta so far (although it might have one).
Magnus Anderson
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Re: Is morality objective or subjective?

Post by Magnus Anderson »

Skepdick wrote: Sat May 27, 2023 4:24 pmI don't know how else to explain this to you. Trichromats and tetrachromats describe the exact same objects with different color-words. Whose description is correct?
It depends on two things:

1) the actual color of the object

2) the concepts they are attaching to the words they are using

Without knowing the details, everything is possible. They might be both wrong, only one of them might be right and both of them might be right.

Let's try a different example. There is a table with an apple on it. Beside it, there is your standard trichromat looking at it. Next to him, there is a monocrhomat, a person who only sees in shades of gray, also looking at the apple. They are not saying anything, they are merely looking at the apple. But, even though they are looking at the same apple, their visual perception of it is different. The trichromat sees a picture that is rich in colors whereas what the monochromat is seeing looks like a very impoverished version of the trichromat's picture.

Who is right and who is wrong?

Whose visual perception of the apple is the correct one?

Again, without knowing all the details, it's hard to tell. But the most likely scenario is that they are both right. Both of them are representing one and the same portion of reality in the accurate manner, they are merely using different visual languages to do so. The trichromat is using a richer visual language, one with a larger vocabulary. He's more specific about what he's looking at than the monochromat, but nonetheless, they are both right.

The bottom line is that, just because people are describing one and the same portion of reality in different ways, it does not mean that only one of them is right.

In order to represent any portion of reality, you must pick a language in which you're going to do it. Since there is an infinite number of languages to pick from, there is an infinite number of different ways one can accurately represent one and the same portion of reality.

None of that proves that they are describing something within their minds ( let alone that the word "color", a symbol that belongs to a verbal language we call English language, refers to something within minds. )
Skepdick
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Re: Is morality objective or subjective?

Post by Skepdick »

Magnus Anderson wrote: Sat May 27, 2023 8:16 pm
Skepdick wrote: Sat May 27, 2023 4:24 pmI don't know how else to explain this to you. Trichromats and tetrachromats describe the exact same objects with different color-words. Whose description is correct?
It depends on two things:

1) the actual color of the object
Who etermines the "actual color" of the object? A trichromat or a tetrachromat?
Magnus Anderson wrote: Sat May 27, 2023 8:16 pm Without knowing the details, everything is possible. They might be both wrong, only one of them might be right and both of them might be right.
Uhuh. And who determines whether they are right or wrong?
Magnus Anderson
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Re: Is morality objective or subjective?

Post by Magnus Anderson »

Skepdick wrote: Sat May 27, 2023 9:04 pmWho etermines the "actual color" of the object? A trichromat or a tetrachromat?
A very strange question.

The actual color of the object is already determined. And it was determined by whatever means it was determined. Perhaps someone painted the object that color, e.g. if you're talking about a white fence, perhaps its color was determiend by someone painting it white. I don't know. I dno't have the details. You're not giving me anything. As such, I can only guess.

Perhaps you're asking a different question. Maybe you're asking something along the lines of "Who determines what people believe to be the color of that object?" In general, beliefs are determined by those who hold them. This isn't always the case, of course, but again, I can't tell you much. You're not giving me anything to work it.

It really seems like you're just asking random, arbitrary and irrelevant questions.
Skepdick
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Re: Is morality objective or subjective?

Post by Skepdick »

Magnus Anderson wrote: Sat May 27, 2023 9:42 pm
Skepdick wrote: Sat May 27, 2023 9:04 pmWho etermines the "actual color" of the object? A trichromat or a tetrachromat?
A very strange question.

The actual color of the object is already determined. And it was determined by whatever means it was determined. Perhaps someone painted the object that color, e.g. if you're talking about a white fence, perhaps its color was determiend by someone painting it white. I don't know. I dno't have the details. You're not giving me anything. As such, I can only guess.

But perhaps you're asking a different question. Maybe you're asking something along the lines of "Who determines what people believe to be the color of that object?" In general, the beliefs are determined by those who hold them. This isn't always the case, of course, but again, I can't tell you much. You're not giving me anything to work it.

It really seems like you're just asking random, arbitrary and irrelevant questions.
I think it's pretty relevant to ask the question.

What color is this question?

Given that there are 16581375 possible answers to this question - which answer is correct?
Magnus Anderson
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Re: Is morality objective or subjective?

Post by Magnus Anderson »

Where exactly is this leading?
Skepdick
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Re: Is morality objective or subjective?

Post by Skepdick »

Magnus Anderson wrote: Sat May 27, 2023 9:59 pm Where exactly is this leading?
Away from your conceptual error.
Magnus Anderson
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Re: Is morality objective or subjective?

Post by Magnus Anderson »

Atla wrote: Sat May 27, 2023 4:58 pmI don't really know what you mean. Color qualia are literally parts of the representational construct in the head. Color qualia are what we "directly" experience. So
Color primarily means color-quale, and then we assign these color-qualia to external objects. So color has two uses.
It's the evolutionary default to treat this construct as the external reality, and that's when we say that an apple is red. If we look at it from this everyday, evolutionary default perspective, then yes color simply means the color of external objects.

An often used example is looking at magenta objects, it's the color qualia experienced inside the head, after it gets processed that blue and red cones are firing simultaneously. But that's red and blue wavelengths "out there", not magenta. They couldn't even find a wavelength for magenta so far (although it might have one).
Color qualia are indeed components of our visual maps of reality. They are visual symbols, in the same exact way that words are verbal symbols, that we use to construct our representations of reality. By definition, they are things that exist within minds, so they are subjective. As such, there is no such thing as color qualia existing "out there" where by "out there" I mean outside of our minds. In other words, there is no such thing as color qualia inside apples. To say otherwise is a logical contradiction -- it's nonsense. That's not an isuse.

The issue is whether or not the word "color" means color qualia, or more generally, whether or not the word "color" is defined as something that is subjective, i.e. existing within minds. It's a language issue that has nothing to do with how our perceptions of reality are formed. ( As such, all talk about indirect realism, how our perception works, how we form beliefs, etc is irrelevant talk. )

When you make a statement such as "This apple is red", what is it that you're actually describing? Are you describing the apple or are you describing your perception of the apple?

The language itself is suggesting that you're describing the apple.

Every proposition is made out of two components: the subject ( or the portion of reality the proposition is describing ) and the predicate ( or the description of that portion of reality. ) Roughly speaking, every proposition has a form of "X is Y" where X is the subject and Y is the predicate.

In the case of "This apple is red", the subject is clearly "this apple" and the predicate is obviously "red". The language is telling us that the portion of reality we're describing is the apple. The predicate further indicates that we're really really only describing a single aspect of that apple, namely, its color. So, if we want to be precise, the subject of the statement "This apple is red" is the color of that apple.

This does not mean that the language that we're using is indicating that the word "color" means "color qualia that exists outside of minds". It merely indicates that the word "color" is defined as a property of physical objects. It indicates that the word "color" does not refer to color qualia, but rather, to an aspect of physical objects that causes us to perceive them in certain ways under certain conditions. Specifically, it indicates that the word "color" means "the texture of a physical object". Red, green, blue, black, white, yellow, orange, magenta, etc are merely different names for different textures. In the same exact way, the visual symbols that our brains use to construct our visual perceptions of reality, what we call color qualia, are merely different visual symbols for different types of light ( color qualia do not represent textures, they merely represent light. )

If you actually wanted to say that your perception of the apple is that it is red, you could have said so by saying "My perception is that this apple is red" or "It appears to me that this apple is red". The two statements mean the same thing but they do not have the same meaning as the statement "This apple is red". This is because they have different subjects. The subject of "It appears to me that this apple is red" is your perception of the color of the apple. The subject of "This apple is red", on the other hand, is the color of the apple. They aren't interchangeable.

You can, of course, argue that when we say "This apple is red", we're actually saying that the color qualia that is located inside that apple is red. But you have to understand that, in that case, we're actually making a non-sensical statement since there are no such things as color qualia inside apples. Do you understand what that means? It means that our statement is not even false. It means it's nonsense. Why would you think this is what we're doing? Why would you do so considering the alternative?
Last edited by Magnus Anderson on Sun May 28, 2023 2:07 am, edited 1 time in total.
Magnus Anderson
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Re: Is morality objective or subjective?

Post by Magnus Anderson »

Skepdick wrote: Sun May 28, 2023 12:49 amAway from your conceptual error.
I won't answer your question if you can't show it's worth answering.
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