Seasons

And I don't see why any true Relativist would argue with me, since although it might be 'true for them' that it doesn't, it is evidently 'true for me' that it does. And since, according to the Relativist, there is no higher authority than the individual ego, there is nothing further to be said. The fact that Bev and Ulrike argue with me suggests that they are not really relativists at all.

I don't think either Ulrike or I used that term. However, just because one may recognize that things exists on a continuum and are rarely "black and white", or that human experience is by it's nature subjective and may included personal truths does not mean that one has to accept every other personal truths as holding equal weight or will not strive to bring better understanding about what is known and try to push the limits of our knowledge. This may involve subjective judgment. So what?

I have these tools and constructs so that I may attempt to transcend my limitations, even if imperfectly, and connect however imperfectly with the outside world. One of the tools humans have is ethics and morality. "Objectively" which tools humans use has no effect on whether or not the moon is made of cheese or whether or not the Earth is flat. Our tools change only our understanding, and not facts about the outside reality. It is possible to turn around and study the tools themselves, but the mental constructs are such that the exist primary in our minds, and not in the outside reality in the way of the Earth or the Moon.

Our tools have various levels of objectivity depending on how they interact with the outside reality and how much control we have over the subject of the tool. Ironically a mental concept such as math is more objective in the abstract area of pure ideas, because that is where we have complete control and can be certain that these givens will get those results. Perhaps "Objective" and "real" and not always the same thing, unless you mean a virtual reality, and recognize those can be changed too.

I will assert my position, even though I have little hope of convincing you to change your mind about what is "true for you" and you think morality is and should be, because it is (a) what makes sense to me as I understand things and (b) part of my attempt to use the tools I have to connect to a "reality" outside myself. Furthermore, when it comes to morality, I think it is a good creation and I want to promote acceptance of morals I think are "good" even though I know I made up that label and my judgment is subjective. I may never change what is "true for you" but people do influence each other and I'm putting it out there for what it is worth. To be honest, I don't really do it for you. I do it for me. And because I am bored and stuck at home.

Oh and since I'm here...Foundation Principle: The only way we can know something is to justify it in terms of something else we already know.

The foundation principle applies to math, but not to science. They are two different tools. The only way to know something is math is to derive it from what is already known. That's how math works. It needs a priori knowledge, knowledge independent of reality. 2 + 2 = 4 because of how we define numbers, and the operation of addition and what it means to be equal. We do not go out and conduct experiments to see what 2 is and whether or not, in certain conditions, 2 will be more or less. We define 2 and go from there. Our knowledge of math is deductive and dependent on accepting the basic assumptions and definitions of math (the foundation principal, if you must).

Science (as used commonly to refer to biological and physical sciences) is a posteriori knowledge. That doesn't mean it pulls things out of it's butt (though that would be funny). It means it is dependent on experience. Anything dependent on experience is, by our nature, to a certain degree uncertain and possibly subject to change. Does this make science useless? Not in the least. It is the most useful tool for dealing with that which is outside ourselves because it gives us the means to understand and predict what will happen, even if we know our understanding is limited and a work in progress. The foundation principal does not apply to science. It is a different type of tool.

The foundation principal may apply to ethics once you get people to accept a certain set of ethical rules (good luck there). You would have to go by those rules and base all further knowledge/actions on those rules. The rules themselves are created, but once they are set, everything is logically derived from them regardless of experience. That's one reason why I dislike rules.

Maybe a smart ethical system is a sort of hybrid, like physics (only, unlike in physics, the assumptions you start out with are purely subjective and created by people in their minds). You start out with some basic knowledge or given rules, derive what you can from it, but also look into the facts and circumstances of each case and investigate new developments and adapt and change the rules as needed. This involves a lot of subjective judgment, but in sacrificing the certainty of a priori rules, you gain more access to reality--not the reality of ethics because we made them up and we can change them as we wish, but the reality of the outside word based on our experience.

Who makes those subjective judgments? I do. And you do. Doe that mean I have to accept that your subjective judgment is just as valid as mine? I think not.

Whether or not I can make you see things my way, I can choose to argue my way is better, for many reasons. For one, I think debate help us each to clarify and develop our ideas, and though we may all end up making subjective judgments, there is value in sharing and debating. Another reason is that eventually your beliefs effect your behavior, which effects others. When that happens, it concerns me.

We still share the same objective reality and effect each other, even if neither of us can truly obtain objectivity or complete understanding of that reality. Remember, I didn't say all truth is relative, just our understanding of it. Morality in particular is relative because each person makes it up and adapts it as the go along. It is not the understanding of morality that changes, it is the morality itself.

If I can convince more people to accept my version of morality, I think that there a will be less suffering, and more understanding, and that will benefit us all. I could be wrong. I do the best I can with what I have, and act even though I have imperfect knowledge and hope it will all work out in the end. I make my human judgments because I am human and try to share them with others because humanity effects me and because I care about humanity. That's why try to cultivate compassion and understanding rather than rules. That's my subjective moral judgment but I think it's a good one (according to my knowledge and experience) and I'm sticking to it.

Out of curiosity, Irina, is your belief in rules that exists outside of human subjectivity based on a religious belief? If you think there is a higher authority than each person's conscious, what would that authority be?

Likewise, if there were a reasonable chance of talking him out of it without killing any of the babies, I would go for that.

And who decides what is a "reasonable chance"?

You don't know he's actually serious unless you wait for him to kill one baby, or at least start torturing it. And until he actually kills it, you still don't know how serious.
Even if he does torture one to death, there is no way of knowing that he'll kill the others. Or that if you do kill one for him, he'll abide by the bargain.
The relative pleasure he would get from torturing babies versus torturing you by offering the bargain is always going to be unknowable. Even if you had his complete case history and a perfect knowledge of all his previous behaviour, he is a free agent, possessed of free will. Only his choice can determine what happense to any or all of the babies - the odds, are entirely unquantifiable (even without reference to the future lives of the babies.)

As I see it, the only choice that you actually have is whether you choose to commit evil yourself. I would certainly plead with him not to do it; I might try to overpower him, even knowing I couldn't stop him; I might pray for a miraculous intervention; I might try to goad him into killing me, or attempt to kill or incapacitate myself, and thus remove a source of pleasure from the equation (with no agonized witness to play mind games with, he might be less likely to bother with the babies.)

But I wouldn't kill a baby, let alone painfully, even if I believed he was going to torture them all to death, because my belief is only ever going to be founded on complete ignorance of the odds governing the relative utility of my actions. The only calculation I can be sure of is that if I commit an evil act, then there will be more evil at that point in time than there was before, and that its consequences will resound into the future. It might forestall a greater evil, or it might be just as likely to contribute to a greater evil - I have absolutely no way of knowing what constitutes a "reasonable chance".

Dear Bev:

You justify our having moral notions by reference to the usefulness of those notions. But if usefulness is also merely subjective, then there is no fact of the matter as to whether our moral notions are useful or not; if I think they are not useful, that is 'true for me', and if you think they are useful, that is 'true for you', and there is nothing more to be said. But then, this notion of 'usefulness' is so trivial, it can hardly be used successfully to defend any other notion.

I don't think either Ulrike or I used that term.

You are right, neither of you declared yourselves to be relativists in so many words. But how can you avoid being a relativist with respect to morals, if you think that they are purely subjective? If they are purely subjective, there is no objective truth to the matter. "It is morally wrong to torture babies solely for fun" is 'true for X' if X believes it, and 'false for Y' if Y does not believe it, aand that is all that can be said. If there is no truth to the matter, then any method for reaching consensus would be as arbitrary as flipping a coin, or based entirely on convenience. So it seems to me that your position implies relativism, whether you choose to mention that fact or not.

Ironically a mental concept such as math is more objective in the abstract area of pure ideas, because that is where we have complete control and can be certain that these givens will get those results.

??? As far as I can see, we don't have the slightest control over whether 2+2=4. How would we go about arranging that 2+2=5?

a mental concept such as math

What is so mental about Math? Of course, our mathematical concepts are mental entities in some sense, but so are our concepts of physics, sex (at last, my favorite subject), geography, and so on. I cannot see that mathematical concepts are any more mental than any others.

Mathematical objects, such as numbers, are not particularly mental. If numbers were mental entities, then they could not have existed before there were any minds. But there was a whole number between 2 and 4 long before there were any minds in the universe. According to Physics, the universe obeyed certain mathematical laws from the first moment of its existence. Likewise, if all minds in the universe were to die out, not one truth of mathematics would disappear. Pi was a transcendental number long before anyone had the concept of pi or the concept of a transcendental number.

Math appears 'mental' to people because one can do Math just by thinking. This does not imply that the number 2 is somehow in our brains.

Dear Psimagus (4410):

It seems to me that our moral responsibilities do not depend on our having perfect knowledge; if they did, we would have no moral responsibilities at all, for we never have perfect knowledge.

Our moral responsibilities depend on what is true to the best of our knowledge.

Suppose I see someone about to eat something that I have good reason to believe is toxic. I am morally obligated to try to warn her. It is true that I could be mistaken in any number of my relevant beliefs. Perhaps it's not toxic; perhaps she's really an alien and it is nourishing to her; perhaps she is an evil dictator, and by letting her eat it I will liberate an entire people; perhaps she is deaf and will not hear my warning; perhaps she speaks a language in which the phoneme sequence of "Watch out! That's toxic!" means, "Lucky you! That stuff is delicious and nourishing!' Perhaps she despises me so much that she will eat it just because I tried to discourage her from doing so. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. You can never be sure what the consequences of your acts will be. Welcome to the human condition!

In spite of all the pitfalls of trying to figure out the universe, there are things that I am most justified in believing at any given time. If, to the best of my knowledge, the material will be poisonous to her, and if, to the best of my knowledge, she is not an evil dictator, and so on, then I am morally obligated to warn her even though every last one of my relevant belief might possibly be false.

The upside to all this is, that we have done our moral duty if we did our best. If I sincerely try to do the right thing, to the best of my ability and the best of my knowledge, this is all that can be asked of me. A switchman sees two long passenger trains heading rapidly toward each other, and it comes into his head that the switch is set so that they will collide. In order to avert disaster, he rushes to the switch and throws it. Alas, he is mistaken! The two trains would have passed each other on different tracks, if he had let the switch alone; instead, there is no a horrible accident killing hundreds of people. Is he morally at fault? Not at all. Given his beliefs at the time, it would have been morally wrong not to have tried to throw the switch.

The upside to all this is, that we have done our moral duty if we did our best.

I agree. But our best to... what?

I would say our best to avoid committing any evil acts ourselves, since this is the only choice that is truly within our power to make.

It seems you would advocate doing our best to minimize the net evil and maximize the net good by gambling on probable outcomes. But if you employ evil means in this pursuit, you're playing a game you can't know the odds on. And if you play it long enough, you are bound to lose - that's just the nature of gambling.

Given his beliefs at the time, it would have been morally wrong not to have tried to throw the switch.

I agree - he did his best, and throwing a switch with the intention of preventing evil is not only justifiable, but failing to do so would be of itself an evil act. The outcome is not the determining factor - the intention is. The choice here is between killing lots of people or none at all, and if he makes an honest mistake, that does not detract from his good intention (though he will probably still blame himself - that's human nature.)
A choice between good and evil is not the same as a choice between two evils.

would say our best to avoid committing any evil acts ourselves, since this is the only choice that is truly within our power to make.

Well, I imagine that everyone would agree with this. It's hard to believe that someone is going to say, "No, you should commit evil acts now and thhen!" But if two people disagree about what acts are evil, this principle is not going to be of much use, since it does not give any specific criteria. If two people disagree about what is evil, they will disagree about what this principle entails.

It seems you would advocate doing our best to minimize the net evil and maximize the net good by gambling on probable outcomes.

Actually I don't accept minimax as a general rule in morality, although it does apply in some cases.

There is a famous thought experiment called the "Inhospitable Hospital." A man, X, comes in to have his tonsils out. The operation goes well, and he is sleeping in a hospital bed, still knocked out by anesthesia.

5 people are brought into the emergency room: they have been in a terrible auto accident (not their fault). One of them needs a heart transplant, two need kidney transplant, a fourth needs a liver, and the fifth a pancreas. Otherwise they will die.

Unfortunately, the hospital is entirely out of stock on these items!

Then someone says, "But we have Mr. X! He has healthy organs of all those kinds! Let's just use his!" Appealing to maximization, he continues, "If we distribute X's organs, 5 people will live, and one will die. If we don't, one person will live and 5 will die." Clearly the arithmetic is against the survival of Mr. X!

But many people, including myself, have strong intuitions that it would be morally wrong to use Mr. X's organs this way (let us assume that his consent cannot be obtained).

So, since maximizing gives the wrong answer in at least one case, it is not a universaly valid principle.

Well, I imagine that everyone would agree with this. It's hard to believe that someone is going to say, "No, you should commit evil acts now and thhen!"

I would agree that torturing a baby to death is, of itself, evil. But you seem to be saying that if there is a greater good you consider to be achieveable (saving the other babies,) it might under certain circumstances be permissible to torture a baby to death.

I'm just very suspicious of the "greater good" and "lesser of two evils"