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 »

tillingborn wrote: Mon Mar 27, 2023 1:18 pm
Skepdick wrote: Mon Mar 27, 2023 12:52 pm
Skepdick wrote: Mon Mar 27, 2023 9:33 amtruth is the property of all true things.
Yes those are my words.

Here are your words.
tillingborn wrote: Mon Mar 27, 2023 10:21 am And I will answer it openly once you have demonstrated that it is in fact true.
So it follows from your words that you don't think it's true that this color is red.
You seem very confused. Whatever logic you have used to arrive at that conclusion, I do not think it will be useful to me.
Incredibly useful logic that.

When somebody asks you to demonstrate truth it's because they don't think it's true.

Are you asking me to demonstrate truth that you already know is true? That doesn't seem very useful to you.
tillingborn wrote: Mon Mar 27, 2023 1:18 pm Who said murder is objectively wrong?
You did. You said it's true that murder is wrong.

Objectively true. Subjectively true. Same difference. Differently the same.
tillingborn wrote: Mon Mar 27, 2023 1:18 pm And anyway:
Skepdick wrote: Mon Mar 27, 2023 6:06 amIf the adjectives "subjective" and "objective" are of equivalent utility when (further) qualifying the adjective 'true' then it's even more useful to discard them and let the qualifier 'true' do all the useful work.
Precisely!

Murder is wrong.
Murder is objectively wrong.
Murder is subjectively wrong.

Objectively true. Subjectively true. Same difference. Differently the same.
tillingborn wrote: Mon Mar 27, 2023 1:18 pm So you ask the stupid kid in the conversation to find the difference for you. Are you sure I'm the stupid kid?
I was being charitable until you convinced me I was wrong in my charity.
Skepdick wrote: Mon Mar 27, 2023 9:33 am What do you have that you think I might want?
I can't possibly imagine how my haves and your wants intersect unless you tell me what you want.

And it seems like guessing is really stupid game when you can just tell me.
Peter Holmes
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Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by Peter Holmes »

Elsewhere, VA quotes the following paragraph by Nietzche on how language works.

'Every word immediately becomes a concept, inasmuch as it is not intended to serve as a reminder of the unique and wholly individualized original experience to which it owes its birth, but must at the same time fit innumerable, more or less similar cases—which means, strictly speaking, never equal—in other words, a lot of unequal cases. Every concept originates through our equating what is unequal.'

VA asks me to explain why I think Nietzche was completely wrong about how language works, and whether I can cite anyone else's writing to support my opinion that Nietzche was recycling the old and pointless argument between Platonists and nominalists about the existence of universals. I ask VA to think about and challenge what Nietzche says.

For example: 'Every word immediately becomes a concept...' I ask: what exactly does that mean? For example, we use the word dog to talk about the real things that we call dogs. So there's one real thing - the word dog - and there are many real things - dogs. So what and where is a concept, and how does the word dog become a concept? What explanatory value does a concept have? And what concept does the word concept immediately become?

Nietzche was talking nonsense, and I don't feel the need to cite someone else's opinion in order to justify my conclusion that he was. It's the arguments that matter - not who makes them.
Skepdick
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Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by Skepdick »

Peter Holmes wrote: Mon Mar 27, 2023 2:16 pm Elsewhere, VA quotes the following paragraph by Nietzche on how language works.

'Every word immediately becomes a concept, inasmuch as it is not intended to serve as a reminder of the unique and wholly individualized original experience to which it owes its birth, but must at the same time fit innumerable, more or less similar cases—which means, strictly speaking, never equal—in other words, a lot of unequal cases. Every concept originates through our equating what is unequal.'

VA asks me to explain why I think Nietzche was completely wrong about how language works, and whether I can cite anyone else's writing to support my opinion that Nietzche was recycling the old and pointless argument between Platonists and nominalists about the existence of universals. I ask VA to think about and challenge what Nietzche says.

For example: 'Every word immediately becomes a concept...' I ask: what exactly does that mean? For example, we use the word dog to talk about the real things that we call dogs. So there's one real thing - the word dog - and there are many real things - dogs. So what and where is a concept, and how does the word dog become a concept? What explanatory value does a concept have? And what concept does the word concept immediately become?

Nietzche was talking nonsense, and I don't feel the need to cite someone else's opinion in order to justify my conclusion that he was. It's the arguments that matter - not who makes them.
If Nietzche was talking nonsense and arguments matter then you should have absolutely no problem presenting to us the argument which leads you to conclude that your body is "physical". I also ask "What exactly does that mean?". What are telling us about your body when you use the word "physical"? What knowledge would you have deprived us of had you left that word out?

I'll be sure to listen out for those crickets.
Skepdick
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Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by Skepdick »

Peter Holmes wrote: Mon Mar 27, 2023 2:16 pm And what concept does the word concept immediately become?
Peter "Dumb Cunt" Holmes discovers the complexities of self-expression given the recursive nature of language.

What does the word word mean?
Peter Holmes
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Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by Peter Holmes »

I look forward to seeing a civilised explanation of Nietzche's model of relationship between the things we call dogs, the word dog and the supposed concept of a dog - for example, how and why the word dog 'immediately becomes a concept'.

But I expect nothing more than the sound of crickets, tumbleweed in the afternoon, and the foul-mouthed lunatic ejaculations of the town dick-for-brains.
Skepdick
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Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by Skepdick »

Peter Holmes wrote: Mon Mar 27, 2023 2:49 pm But I expect nothing more than the sound of crickets, tumbleweed in the afternoon
Funny! That's precisely the sound I am hearing instead of you producing an argument which leads you to conclude that your body is "physical"
Peter Holmes wrote: Mon Mar 27, 2023 2:49 pm and the foul-mouthed lunatic ejaculations of the town dick-for-brains.
Oh no! Not not the foul-mouthed dick-for-brains who keeps pointing out that you are a dumb cunt!
Last edited by Skepdick on Mon Mar 27, 2023 3:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Skepdick
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Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by Skepdick »

Peter Holmes wrote: Mon Mar 27, 2023 2:49 pm I look forward to seeing a civilised explanation of Nietzche's model of relationship between the things we call dogs, the word dog and the supposed concept of a dog - for example, how and why the word dog 'immediately becomes a concept'.
Yeah sure. Here's a demonstration.

I typed the English sentence "Give me a photo-realistic image of a dog" in the prompt of DALL-E 2.
This is what I got - a unique/original, never-seen-before work of art, It exists nowhere else except in this forum post.
Photo-realistic image of a dog - 2371b0f0.png
Photo-realistic image of a dog - 2371b0f0.png (217.53 KiB) Viewed 730 times
How did a dumb computer know to generate this specific image from my English sentence "Give me a photo-realistic image of a dog"?
How is it that a human recognises this image as a dog if no human has ever never seen this exact image before; and if this is exact image is not a photo of an actual dog, but a painting of a dog made by a computer.

How does it work?! Well, lets ask the very AI which generated the image above.
So I asked it again: How does a machine learning algorithm conceptualize a dog?

Here's what it said:
A machine learning algorithm conceptualizes dogs based on the data it has been trained on. Typically, a machine learning algorithm would be trained on a dataset of images of dogs and non-dogs. During the training process, the algorithm would analyze the features of the images, such as color, texture, and shape, and learn to recognize patterns that are associated with dogs.

Once the algorithm has been trained, it can be used to identify dogs in new images that it has not seen before. The algorithm does this by comparing the features of the new image with the patterns it has learned during training. If the features of the new image match the patterns associated with dogs, then the algorithm will classify the image as a dog.
So I asked it some more stuff: How does DALLE-2 generate images from linguistic descriptions?
DALLE-2 (short for "DAll-E 2") is a deep learning model developed by OpenAI that can generate high-quality images from textual descriptions. The name "DALL-E" is a combination of the artist Salvador Dali and the character WALL-E from the Pixar movie of the same name.

DALLE-2 is based on the transformer architecture, similar to the one used in GPT-3, and it uses a combination of unsupervised and supervised learning to generate images. It consists of an encoder that encodes the textual description into a vector representation and a decoder that decodes the vector into an image.

To generate an image, DALLE-2 takes a textual description as input and encodes it into a fixed-length vector representation using an encoder network. This encoding is then used to generate the image using a decoder network.

The decoder network is based on a generative adversarial network (GAN), which is a type of neural network that can generate realistic-looking images by learning from examples. The decoder network is trained to generate images that match the input textual description, while a discriminator network is trained to distinguish between real images and generated images.

During training, the model learns to generate images that match the input textual description by minimizing the difference between the generated image and the actual image using a loss function. The loss function is based on the difference between the pixel values of the generated image and the actual image.

DALLE-2 is capable of generating a wide variety of images, including objects, scenes, and abstract concepts, and it can also generate images with multiple objects and complex compositions.
Last edited by Skepdick on Mon Mar 27, 2023 3:44 pm, edited 4 times in total.
Skepdick
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Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by Skepdick »

I think it's fair to say that computer software now exceededs the philosophical sophistication of Peter "Dumb Cunt" Holmes
Skepdick
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Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by Skepdick »

Skepdick: Is murder objectively wrong?
Chat GPT-4:
As an AI language model, I don't have personal opinions or beliefs, but I can provide you with different perspectives on the question.

Morality is often considered to be subjective, meaning that what is right or wrong depends on individual beliefs, cultural norms, and values. From this perspective, whether murder is objectively wrong is a matter of personal opinion.

However, many ethical systems and moral philosophies do assert that murder is objectively wrong. For instance, Kantian ethics argue that murder is morally wrong because it violates the categorical imperative – the principle that we should treat others as ends in themselves and not merely as a means to an end. Similarly, the principle of the sanctity of life, which is rooted in many religious and philosophical traditions, maintains that all human life is inherently valuable and that taking a life is morally wrong.

Ultimately, whether murder is objectively wrong depends on the ethical framework or moral philosophy one subscribes to. It is important to note that most societies and legal systems condemn murder and consider it a serious crime, reflecting a general consensus that taking someone's life without justification is morally wrong.
I think VA can feel vindicated now. Machine learning (when applied to the entire corpus of human knowledge) agrees with him.

What could make morality objective? An FSK (an ethical framework or moral philosophy).
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Harbal
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Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by Harbal »

Skepdick wrote: Mon Mar 27, 2023 3:53 pm Ultimately, whether murder is objectively wrong depends on the ethical framework or moral philosophy one subscribes to.
In other words, whether murder is objectively wrong is a matter of opinion, which is an absurd thing to say. It is probably a fact that the vast majority of human beings consider murder to be morally wrong. Why not just leave it at that if we have to bring the word "fact" into the matter? Nothing can ever be morally wrong, it can only be considered to be morally wrong.
I think VA can feel vindicated now.
No, he is not entitled to feel vindicated, but at least he is not alone in his mistaken position; he has you for company.
Peter Holmes
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Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by Peter Holmes »

I'm looking forward to seeing a computer-generated image of an abstract concept. Perhaps an image of the supposed concept named by the word knowledge, or the word truth.

Mind you, an image of a concrete concept would be nice. Of course, a picture of a dog isn't a picture of a concept. What sort of moron would think that? It's a picture of a dog.

Crickets, tumbleweed and moronic ejaculations. As usual.
Skepdick
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Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by Skepdick »

Harbal wrote: Mon Mar 27, 2023 7:33 pm
Skepdick wrote: Mon Mar 27, 2023 3:53 pm Ultimately, whether murder is objectively wrong depends on the ethical framework or moral philosophy one subscribes to.
In other words, whether murder is objectively wrong is a matter of opinion, which is an absurd thing to say. It is probably a fact that the vast majority of human beings consider murder to be morally wrong. Why not just leave it at that if we have to bring the word "fact" into the matter? Nothing can ever be morally wrong, it can only be considered to be morally wrong.
In other words you are misinterpreting the implications of what's being said.

Whether water objectively boils at 100 degrees celsius also depends on the measurement framework one subscribes to. That doesn't mean that whether water boils at 100 degrees celsius or not is a matter of opinion.

What it means is that:
IF you accept the Celsius scale then it objectively boils at 100 degrees celsius.
IF you reject the Celsius scale then it doesn't.

That is how objectivity works. You gotta accept the measurement units - and then everything is objective.

IF you reject the units - you can reject all the facts also.
Harbal wrote: Mon Mar 27, 2023 7:33 pm No, he is not entitled to feel vindicated, but at least he is not alone in his mistaken position; he has you for company.
Well, you see... if you accept the measurement units the objective answer to the question "Is murder wrong?" amounts to 1 Shannon of information.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon_(unit)

That's how scientific objectivity works. If you don't like it - that sounds like a you-problem.
Last edited by Skepdick on Tue Mar 28, 2023 7:13 am, edited 2 times in total.
Skepdick
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Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by Skepdick »

Peter Holmes wrote: Mon Mar 27, 2023 7:34 pm I'm looking forward to seeing a computer-generated image of an abstract concept.
You are looking at it. The image is globally unique.

There's no referent for the specific dog that's shown on the image anywhere in real world. So which dog is it an image of?
Peter Holmes wrote: Mon Mar 27, 2023 7:34 pm It's a picture of a dog.
Q.E.D The philosophical nuance of recognising a previously unseen picture as being a picture of a dog is entirely lost on Peter "Dumb Cunt" Holmes.

What is it in those pixels on your screen that makes it a "dog" exactly? It's just coloured dots!
How did you recognize it as being a dog if you have no concept of a dog in your head?
Peter Holmes wrote: Mon Mar 27, 2023 7:34 pm Crickets, tumbleweed and moronic ejaculations. As usual.
Sorry, I didn't quite catch that?

How exactly am I preventing you from presenting the argument which leads you to conclude that your body is "physical"?
Peter Holmes
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Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by Peter Holmes »

Far as I know, all I've got in my head is a brain and other tissues.

The rest of it - a mind containing mental things and events - is an ancient fiction about as ridiculous as the delusion that I 'have' a soul. Or that my heart contains feelings.

Or that a computer deals with abstract concepts.

Stroll on.
Skepdick
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Re: What could make morality objective?

Post by Skepdick »

Peter Holmes wrote: Mon Mar 27, 2023 8:42 pm Far as I know, all I've got in my head is a brain and other tissues.

The rest of it - a mind containing mental things and events - is an ancient fiction about as ridiculous as the delusion that I 'have' a soul. Or that my heart contains feelings.

Or that a computer deals with abstract concepts.

Stroll on.
Great! So just a brain and other tissues then. As far as you know no thoughts in there - those are just fiction! A ridiculous delusion.

I am not calling him Peter "Dumb Cunt" Holmes as an insult. It's just a fact. His brain contains no thoughts!

We are literally talking to the self-admitted village idiot.
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