Seasons

HA! That was mostly about economic issues of an industrial north conflicting with a agricultural south with a slave based economy, coupled with a power struggle between various states and the Federal government.

That is the standard Marxoid view, but is it true? I do not see what John Woolman, a white middle-class Quaker and early abolitionist, had to gain by abolishing slavery. If the abolitionist movement had been fueled by the interests of plutocrats and politicians, the earliest abolitionists in the USA would have been Episcopalians, not Quakers and Unitarians.

Were the early advocates of Woman Suffrage in the USA also tools of plutocrats and politicians? What did the plutocrats and politicians have to gain from woman suffrage?

Was the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960's the tool of plutocrats and politicians? Are the opponents of globalization and the agitators to take global warming seriously the tools of plutocrats and politicians? If not, how did they escape such a fate? Ah, but they are closer to us, are they not? We can't be taken in! No, it is only others, dummies like Thoreau or Frederick Douglas, who naively think they are making reforms while really, they are just being manipulated...

I am inclined to the view known as "Rule Utilitarianism." A person's moral prnciples can be seen as a set of rules, but it can also be seen as one big rule, of which all the little rules are corollaries.

Now, of all the candidates for the correct moral rule, which should we choose? Roughly, the RU position is this: an optimal rule will be one which, in the long run and to the best of our knowledge, will maximize human flourishing.

"They" in that case was mean to refer to morals. Morals are a human creation. They are subjective. If you don't believe me, try talking about objective morals to my cat.

One might just as well argue: "Mathematics is purely subjective. Mathematics (the discipline) is a human creation. If you don't believe me, try talking about objective Mathematics with my cat."

Or: "Physics is purely subjective. ... with my cat."


Or: "Which phone number is whose is purely subjective. ... try talking about objective phone numbers with my cat."

Morality is a mental construct. We made it up.

No doubt that is true in some sense. In the same sense, Physics is a mental construct; we made it up. It is only because our genes are thus-and-so and our society is thus-and-so that we are able to understand Physics. To conclude from this that Physics is entirely subjective would be a mistake, however.

What our genes give us is an ability (imperfect, no doubt, but also not trivial) to infer the laws of Physics (or some approximation thereto) from our experiences in the world, and to construct societies that will be able to pass many of these insights along to successive generations.

Our genes also give us an ability (imperfect, no doubt, but also not trivial) to infer the principles of Ethics(or some approximation thereto) from our experiences in the world, and to construct societies that will be able to pass many of these insights along to successive generations.

Why should the role of genes and society in the development of Ethics prove that Ethics is merely subjective, while the analogous role of genes and society in the development of Physics does not prove that Physics is merely subjective?

Addendum to message 4387:

In message 4387 I questioned what I called the "Marxoid" view. But even if the Marxoid view is true, I don't think that proves what you seem to think it proves.

It is very, very probable that Physics is in the control of plutocrats and governments; certainly,that is where their funding comes from. We could say that Einstein's General Theory of Relativity is was brought about by whomever funded the Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies while it supported Einstein's work - presumably that owuld be the US government and the Princeton Trustees. Does this prove that the General theory of Relativity, and Physics in general, is merely subjective?

So even if you could make a case - which I doubt very much you can - that the abolitionists were all funded or somehow controlled or manipulated by governments and plutocrats, that would not prove that the moral wrongness of slavery is nothing more than a convenient falsehood. [I mean, really Bev, I can't believe that you really believe that! My opinion is that you really believe that slavery is wrong, period, full stop, end of story, that is was wrong during the heyday of the Roman Empire, even though hardly anyone questioned it then; and that all this relativism stuff is a veneer of stylish academic doctrine that you picked up in college or somewhere! OK, you may get mad at me now!]

Hee hee, I am not a Marxist nor a Marxoid, though I interpret history differently than you may at times. Although I don't doubt that there were many good and moral people argument against slavery, I don't think real change happened until economic and political conditions changed. There May have been some influence from those whose morals opposed slavery in the mix. Civil rights is another matter. I'll grant that we can influence others morals. I just don't think slavery was the best example.

One might just as well argue: "Mathematics is purely subjective. Mathematics (the discipline) is a human creation. If you don't believe me, try talking about objective Mathematics with my cat."

Math is a construct in that you have to accept the primitives and rules of math, and everything else is inferred from these primitives. The fact that my cat ha no capacity for math (though a chimp might) is further evidence that it is a mental construct. Sagan and others may say math is the language of science, but it is still an abstraction...a tool we made up to help us understand the world and not the world itself. It also allows us to play with hypothetical worlds by imagining what would happen if we changed some of the rules.


Or: "Physics is purely subjective. ... with my cat."

Physics is a construct. It is a tool we made up t help us understand the world. It has a more direct relationship with "reality" as we perceive it and can test it than math, but our understanding of physics grows and changes. We can also imagine hypothetical results of changing some aspect of physics and seeing what would happen on paper. Physics can be applied to help us predict and effect outcomes in the real world, but it is not part of the "real world".

Or: "Which phone number is whose is purely subjective. ... try talking about objective phone numbers with my cat."

Phone numbers are a part of a meaning we created as humans and imposed on the outside world. Humans created numbers and language and phones. They are a part of the outside world and not subjective, but they are not part of the "cat" experience, AFAIK. They are an example of something humans created and made real.

Morals do not exist independently of humans. You can not create a hypotheses and test whether or not the moral is correct. Would you try to say, "If it's wrong to torture babies, then..." and come up with a way to test your hypothesis that did not involve subject human reaction?

You may argue that morals, like telephone numbers, are something humans created that have taken on an independent meaning in the outside world, and there is a certain amount of truth in that. However, morals are not universal, and acceptance of a moral depends on the human buying into the system and developing it. Telephones had no meaning to people 500 years ago. There may be a time when we find a different way of communicating serves our needs better than the phone. I'll give you the existence of phones is objective, and they can be use by anyone who understands them. They are still an inventions.

Unlike phones, morals can not be demonstrated to be definitively "correct" or "false". You are more likely to convince people of moral values with emotional arguments and by hitting their personal squeak factor than through any practical or logical presentation. How would you respond to the "sex outside of marriage is evil" argument if it were presented as "objective" truth?

But you appear to know that they are made up, so I don't see how they can help you to make sense out of your existence

It is because I know they are made up that I can use them to make sense of my existence, just as I know how to use physics, or art or language. You agreed earlier that human experience is limited and there is no way to know everything without transcending human limitations, didn't you? You are probably familiar with Descartes' demon argument that for all we know everything we remember or experience or perceive could be the result of a demon being in control of our mind and could have no objective reality at all. This is similar to the theme in The Matrix where people believed they had lives in a real world, but were actually plugged into a virtual environment controlled by AI gone wild. The point is, the only thing we can be absolutely sure of is what we perceive to be true in a given situation, and we can never know for sure if there is any objective truth at all.

Given this limitation in the human experience, we are all ultimately alone in a potentially hostile universe. We strive, therefore, to transcend our limitations and create ways to connect to what we perceive as outside of ourselves. The only way to connect our perception of self and that we see as not self or other is to make constructs within our subjective mind to help give us a feeling of understanding, connection and meaning.

In this sense creation is transcendence (or perhaps the illusion of transcendence) and the only meaning I can have is that which I make for myself. Anything I perceive as outside of myself has already been filtered and arranged by my perception of the world, and it is within my awareness that I must exist, unless I find a way to go beyond the human condition or until I loose awareness and my own sense of existence.

I create meaning because I need it. It's possible I create everything else too a la the Matrix, though I doubt it. However, I stand by my created meanings as a means of connecting and transcending because they are my best bet of connecting to and understanding an objective reality. I can only see the world through my own eyes.

you appear to be saying that morals are convenient illusions. That it's not true that it's wrong to torture babies for fun, but that we have found it convenient to believe such things (in spite of their falsity) because it increases our species' ability to survive and allows us to avoid wasting our innate capacities.

I wouldn't say "illusions" but I would say constructs. I might go with "inventions" (like the telephone), except that ideas have no physical form and cannot be used in quite the same way. Ideas are harder to verify than things, and tend to vary more from person to person (hence my use of "subjective"). Just because we created something doesn't mean we can't communicate it or use it, but all things considered, there is no "natural law" or universal moral system: we are making it up as we go along. Just because we make things up doesn't mean they aren't "real" to us.

Ethics and laws are not the same as morals, although they may be based on certain morals and values. You can point to written rule and say, "Here, we can apply this rule to these facts and get those results." Not a bad tool, unless we forget to allow for changing circumstances and have room for the rules to grow and adapt to human needs.
The rules are our tools, we are not theirs.

The problem with zero tolerance and absolute rules with no room from growth or exceptions is they can lead to negative or unwanted results in certain circumstances which may be the exact opposite of the goal of the original rule. Take "Any weapons in school means automatic expulsion. No exceptions, no appeal. A weapon is defined as any object that can be used to harm another." The moral behind this rule and the social goal is no doubt acceptable to most of us: harming others is "wrong", and harming each other in school is not beneficial for society. What happens when you start to apply this rule to every student, no exceptions? What if 5 year old has a plastic knife in his lunch? Throw him out! What if a student sharpens his pencil? You know that can be used to stab someone in the neck, right? Soon we can clear all those pesky kids out of our schools and put them in the streets where they belong. The schools will be safe. The streets, however, are another matter.

Rules, in and of themselves, are a useful tools for society. They are constructs, things we created, in some way like the way buildings are constructed, though they have less of a physical presence, because you can point to them and say" here are the words (though you can argue about what the words mean and how they should be applied). Rules existence depend on the authority and power of the person(s) making the rules, and the willingness of those ruled. You cannot argue a rule is objectively "right" or "wrong" in the same way you can argue whether or not the Earth is flat, but you can say, "Based on these rule, we should get these results."

If you create rules that are absolute and static, with no exceptions and no room for growth, change and refinement, you create a bad tool that will eventually be discarded when it does not serve people. Rules need balance. Rules need process. Rules need to have a mechanism for change, appeal, and further development. So the rules should be relative, and "true until further notice" just like everything else. We should never forget that we created rules, and therefore, we can recreate them.

PS I think slavery is wrong, and I hope that people will develop and teach morals where most think so too. George Washington didn't think it was immoral. We can judge him by our morals, but we can't change what his values were. If morals were objective, what is immoral to me should be immoral to George.

If morals were objective, what is immoral to me should be immoral to George.

A. What does "to" mean here? Are you saying that if morals were objective, then what seems moral to me would seem moral to George?

That would like saying, "If the shape of the Earth were objective, everyone should perceive the Earth as having the same shape."

Objectivity does not mean that everyone agrees; it means that there is a truth to the matter. It means that if two people disagree, at most one of them can be completely right.

B. But perhaps when you say, "If morals were objective, what is immoral to me should be immoral to George", you mean that the very same things are immoral, regardless of what George or I may think. In that case you are correct.

I am fortunate in having a genome that allows me to see that 2+2=4 and that torturing babies just for fun is wrong.

The truth of 2+2=4 is not created by human beings. If that were so, then if human history had been different, it could have turned out that 2+2=5.

Is there some agency, some collection of human beings, that decides whether 2+2=4 is true or not, in that same way that a human agency decides whether (in a given country) it is legal to drive in the left, or on the right? I don't think there is, or could possibly be, such an agency. It is true, I believe, that in certain midwestern states of the USA, it is technically illegal to say that pi, the ratio of a circle to its diameter, is anything other than 3. But even in those states, pi is not equal to 3.

Likewise, there is no human agency, individual or collective, that can make it moral to torture babies just for the fun of it.

If morality is purely subjective, then George was just as right to believe that slavery was moral as you are to believe that it is immoral.

If morality is purely subjective, there is no good reason for me ever to change my views on any moral issue. If I believe that slavery is right on Tuesdays and wrong on Thursdays, that is 'true for me,' as people say. If that's the only kind of truth there is in the matter, I might as well accept the simplest possible moral code, so as to save myself the trouble of calculating what is right and wrong 'for me.' And I might as well adopt the code, "Everything Irina does is right." That will save me from feeling the unpleasant feeling of guilt. Of course, since morality is purely subjective, you can accept the principle, "Everything Irina does is wrong," and that will be true 'for you.' Which doesn't make it a whit less true 'for me' that everything Irina does is right. Likewise, you may as well adopt the principle, "Everything Bev does is right." If you believe it, that will make it true 'for you,' and since truth 'for X' is the only kind of truth there is, there is really nothing more to say.

So you torture a baby to death, and... he laughs and says he was just messing with your head, and wasn't going to kill any babies anyway?

Well, we have to stay within the parameters of the problem, whatever they may be. I gave my answer under the assumption that he would carry out his part of the bargain. If he cannot be trusted to do so, then I would respond differently. Likewise, if there were a reasonable chance of talking him out of it without killing any of the babies, I would go for that.

I agree that in situations likely to arise in the real world, a person who made such a deal would not be likely to be trustworthy. Likewise with the brain haemorhage, the police bursting in, and so on.

I was trying to answer the question, if he could be trusted, if no deus ex machina were going to appear, what would the right thing to do be? I'm sorry if I jumped to conclusions about the conditions of the problem as you intended them.


Why, you sound almost like you're going to agree to torture a baby?

Well, I have been feeling sort of bored and at loose ends lately. And Bev has just about convinced me that morality is only subjective, anyway. And, now that I think of it, torturing absinthe drinkers would probably be even more fun than torturing babies...and as for people who take human beings and turn them into lawyers...

Like a personal "god" (sorry Prob). It's subjective. Ironically, that also makes it obtainable, though changeable. Why sorry Prob? Did I miss something?
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