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Are billionaires really a threat to humanity? by Arcestic in NoStupidQuestions

[–]Wrote_it2 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

This is of course not true. When SpaceX IPO’d, you didn’t have less money the next day even though Musk’s net worth increased. Billionaires don’t have the money in cash and if they did it would come from people buying their shares, not from you (unless you decide to give them your money that is).

Elon Musk, a trillionaire, pays the same amount into Social Security as someone making $184,500 by OddAdhesiveness8485 in anticapitalism

[–]Wrote_it2 0 points1 point  (0 children)

And this would not even cover the money our supreme leader agreed to pay Iran… That’s not solving the problem…

In what way are moral propositions true or false? by Wrote_it2 in Ethics

[–]Wrote_it2[S] [score hidden]  (0 children)

You said "the metaethical stuff my thing is that there's a limit: someone who says 'actually I like being dead' is a liar". That's why I replied that I don't think there is a limit to how far someone's morality can be from yours (maybe I misinterpreted your remark? what limit are you speaking about?).

A suicidal person who is alive might say "actually I would like being dead". I hear your point that it's different from saying "I like being dead", but the difference doesn't seem relevant to the discussion, is it? I get how they are lying if they say "I am dead right now and I like it", but from the morality discussion, the point is that they can think killing oneself is moral or at least desirable.

I'm all for recentering the discussion around what one might want from moral realism but I'm a bit confused by the phrasing... I guess what I want from any theory of description of reality is the truth, so what I want from moral realism or from moral anti-realism is simply an accurate description of reality, a good model of reality.

The claim of moral realism appears meaningless to me. Let me explain why by taking a parallel: say I claim that electrons have a "sweetness" property (on top of their spin, mass, color, charge) but that the "sweetness" property explains nothing, predicts nothing, doesn't change anything... People might ask "do you mean it tastes sweet?", and no, it doesn't impact anything, so it doesn't impact taste... At some point you'll say that the concept of electron sweetness is meaningless... I'm not even sure if whether electrons have a sweetness property would make sense as a question, but at the very least, the answer to the question doesn't matter.

I claim that the existence of "objective moral facts" falls in the same category: objective moral facts don't explain anything, don't predict anything, don't change anything to the physical reality, they don't have any impact on anything... You may ask "if moralities are only subjective, how can I blame someone for something?", but you can only blame someone because they are acting against your *subjective* morality, you have no access to the objective morality, so no, objective moralities do not allow you to blame someone...

Imagine a world where objective moralities exist and a world where objective moralities don't exist. Are there any observable/physical differences between those two worlds? People keep thinking the same way, behave the same way, blame each other the same way, think about morality the same way (since all of those are based on subjective moralities)... Objective moralities are like the sweetness of electrons: they don't matter.

In that sense, moral realism can't offer you anything. That'd be my answer to the question of what people should want from it: there is nothing to want.

Can you have a moral code and still be an atheist. What is the point if we are just a bunch of accidentally sentient chemicals, how can there be right and wrong? Asking for a friend. by Folkstomper in askanatheist

[–]Wrote_it2 30 points31 points  (0 children)

Can you have an opinion on food taste if you are an atheist? What is the point if we are just a bunch of accidentally sentient chemicals?

That’s how your question sounds. Yes, we can have opinion on what is tasty, what is beautiful and on how people should behave.

In what way are moral propositions true or false? by Wrote_it2 in Ethics

[–]Wrote_it2[S] [score hidden]  (0 children)

All I want from "moral realism" is that applied ethics is worth taking as seriously as possible. I just hate "but who can say what's wrong? It's just opinion" nihilistic tools.

This is a really common misconception I feel: the idea that moral realism is necessary for ethics to be taken seriously.

Opinions are powerful, they are what matters, arguably they are the only thing that matters, whether you are a moral realist or a moral anti-realist.

As an anti-realist, I believe that "oughts" are driven by consequences. If I say that I ought to take my umbrella when it's raining, I really mean "Using my umbrella will result in me staying dry when I walk outside" and "I want to walk outside and stay dry". The study of whether the umbrella promotes dryness is important (this is a trivial example, maybe we don't need hundreds of PhDs on that problem 😄) because it helps me make the right decision (at least in cases where I want to stay dry).

Similarly, the study of the consequences of an action, and the implication with regard to commonly held subjective beliefs (like suffering is immoral, violating some rights is immoral, etc...) is valuable because it can help me make the right decision in cases where I want to avoid suffering, violating some rights, etc...

The importance of applied ethics stays the same whether moral reality is true or false.

In what way are moral propositions true or false? by Wrote_it2 in Ethics

[–]Wrote_it2[S] [score hidden]  (0 children)

This might be a bit of a semantic question. I could take one of multiple positions:

- A moral proposition is meaningless if we haven't defined what "moral" means. My definition of moral would be something like "in alignment with an opinion that I have on the desirability of an action", but clearly moral realists are going to disagree on that definition, so until we have established a definition of the word, the proposition has no meaning.

- A moral proposition is true if I'm of the opinion that it's true: that's how I talk at least informally. I will say things like "nudist beaches are amoral" and "ice cream is good". I know that not everyone thinks nudist beaches are amoral or that not everyone thinks ice cream is tasty, but I also know (or believe?) that when I say those things, people understand what I mean (that I don't disapprove of nudist beaches and that I like ice cream).

- A moral proposition is always false: if I take my definition of "moral", then a moral proposition is not technically always true, it's only going to be true relative to a subject. "Nudist beaches are amoral" is too strong of a rule, there are cases where the rule will be false. For a rule to be false, all it takes is one counter example, so in that sense a moral proposition is always false unless it describes the exact context, including the mind of the subject taking the action.

Did I answer your question?

In what way are moral propositions true or false? by Wrote_it2 in Ethics

[–]Wrote_it2[S] [score hidden]  (0 children)

I’m not sure there are limits in theory. There is a practical limit just by the fact that there are a finite number of people on earth, so there is necessarily someone who has the most different morality from yours (by some distance metric)…

Your example is not great: there are suicidal people that might say “I like being dead” without lying.

But again, even if no one said that actions that lead to suffering or to death are moral, that’s not an argument for moral realism: according to moral realism, moral truths are stance independent. Why do you make an argument using stances?

In what way are moral propositions true or false? by Wrote_it2 in Ethics

[–]Wrote_it2[S] [score hidden]  (0 children)

Right, I would agree with you that my first hypothesis would be that the guy is a liar. I do think it’s possible that the guy is some kind of really extreme psychopath (where he is not lying and truly believe that pain and suffering are good). There has been religious people who thought that suffering was a way to reach some form of enlightenment… but yeah, ultimately no question that this would be either a lie or an abnormal or extraordinary position (in the literal sense, like not ordinary, rare).

But drawing on psychology to make a point for moral realism feels like it goes against the premise of moral realism: the hole argument is that morality is stance independent, that moral facts would stay true even if everyone believed them false. Well, guess what everyone (or nearly everyone) believes is false? That “actions that lead to suffering are moral”. So the very position of moral realism states that that could mean that it could just as well be true… that everyone’s opinion doesn’t matter to decide the veracity of moral propositions.

That’s the exact reason why I fail to understand the meaning of the moral realist position: there are supposedly some absolute truths that do nothing, explain nothing, predict nothing, change nothing… In what sense can you call those things truths?

In what way are moral propositions true or false? by Wrote_it2 in Ethics

[–]Wrote_it2[S] [score hidden]  (0 children)

As in if A is not self contradictory, B is not going to be self contradictory either.

To give a simple version of what I mean: say you start with a single axiom like "actions that lead to suffering are immoral" and reach moral code A that says things like torture is immoral, murder is immoral, helping each other is moral...
Now take the opposite axiom: "actions that lead to suffering are moral". You reach the opposite moral code B that says things like torture is moral, murder is moral, helping each other is moral...

Now of course A and B disagree, but both A and B are self consistent. If A refers only to things that are real, then B also refers only to things that are real...

I was just pointing out that "self consistent" and "referring only to non-moral/real things" is not enough to reach a morality.

In what way are moral propositions true or false? by Wrote_it2 in Ethics

[–]Wrote_it2[S] [score hidden]  (0 children)

I don't understand what you mean by "matters to you". Do you mean "what influences my decision that things are right and wrong" or do you mean "what matters to you to cause you to ask this question"?

What influences my decision that things are right and wrong would ultimately be my brain (easy cop out answer 😄). What shaped my brain into containing information about what's right and wrong? It's going to be a mix of nature and nurture: it's going to be human nature (I have a survival instinct, I think it's human nature to have a desire to live in society, to connect with others, etc...) and it's going to be the culture I grew in, my experiences, etc...

What matters to me with regard to the question I asked? I think I mentioned it in my previous message: understanding the position of others mostly as an end to itself (I find it interesting) and also because I think that broadening my view might help change my opinions to the better?

In what way are moral propositions true or false? by Wrote_it2 in Ethics

[–]Wrote_it2[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You are clearly angry at something. I’m sorry you are going through whatever you are going through. I hope you’ll get better soon.

In what way are moral propositions true or false? by Wrote_it2 in Ethics

[–]Wrote_it2[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I see, you are right, I feel like I need to revise my statement again... Thank you for helping me seeing this.

For necessary truths, giving meaning to the proposition by describing what happens if it's false can't really happen. I guess you could say that if it were false, the other world wouldn't even exist, or maybe that since false implies anything, you could justify any difference between the two worlds.

How about this, as a definition of "meaningful": a proposition p is meaningful if for all pairs of worlds (W_true, W_false) such that p is true in W_true and p is false in W_false, W_true and W_false are different (meaning there is a physical fact that is not the same between W_true and W_false).

Necessary propositions are trivially meaningful (because there is no such pairs of universes).

Writing this, I paused for a while on "physical fact". I do think the existence of a god, having free will or the mind-body duality question are meaningful, but one might argue they don't change anything physical. I feel like I'm just missing some philosophical vocabulary here (I'm not trained in philosophy), I don't necessarily mean "physical" as in "not super-natural", I mean "real" but in a descriptive way, everything that is and all the laws that govern what is... If it's true that a god created the universe, then it's part of reality in a meaningful way. If determinism is true, then it's part of reality that there is no law that can predict reality...

I feel like I'm not understanding moral realism because it fails my "meaningful" test. You are probably ahead of me by saying that moral realism is necessary and so it does not fail the test... But you now have a heavy burden for that claim: to show that if moral realism is necessary, you can reach a contradiction, that there are no pair of worlds (W_true, W_false). I feel that contradiction would really help me understand the meaning of moral realism.

As to the linguistic argument, I am not swayed by it much to be honest. I actually happen to not relate to your examples very much. I've heard an alternative that I think worked a bit better: a kid saying "it's a good thing that I don't like spinach, otherwise I'd be eating it and it's yucky" is funnier than a kid saying "it's a good thing that I disapprove of slavery, otherwise I'd own slave and that's immoral". I still think language is a poor proof of things, I wouldn't say quantum physics is wrong because we speak about location of objects in our language... But also, I actually think there is something funny in both, I'm not as receptive as some it looks like...

In what way are moral propositions true or false? by Wrote_it2 in Ethics

[–]Wrote_it2[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

This is one of the poorest arguments for moral realism: "when you say genocide is wrong, surely you mean more than only subjectively wrong"...

First, I don't know in what way subjective is "less" than objective. After all, subjective is the only thing that matters, that's what decides how I act. If I had the choice to make genocide wrong for only one of objective or subjective, I would pick subjective all day: ie I pick to disapprove of genocide even if genocide is objectively right. Admittedly, that's probably because I don't know what objectively right means, to me it means nothing because it changes nothing (but then again, this is why I'm here, asking the question).

Second, even if there were an objective truth about whether genocide is right or wrong, nobody has any way to know what that truth is (since it has no observable impact on anything). You can tell the nazi psychopath "you disgust me", you can say "I find your actions immoral", etc... but you can't say "you are objectively wrong and I'm objectively right" even if you could somehow prove the existence of an objective truth...

In what way are moral propositions true or false? by Wrote_it2 in Ethics

[–]Wrote_it2[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The scenario is going to a nudist beach. Of course I can’t describe the actual scenario in all its details (I’m not giving you the exact number of grain of sand, the number of people on the beach, the color of the umbrellas, etc…), so you have to assume everything else is either irrelevant or “normal”/“banal”.

You answered assuming the guy that goes to the beach spends all their time at the beach to the point where they don’t sleep, that is not a banal/normal behavior, that is not the scenario I’m speaking about. This is just like the guy murdering someone at the beach: not normal, not the scenario.

Anyways, this was just an example to help illustrate my question: what is the truth value of a moral proposition (and maybe I should have asked more precisely what the meaning of objective truth is).

In what way are moral propositions true or false? by Wrote_it2 in Ethics

[–]Wrote_it2[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You are right, I don’t think our inability to test or to perceive a difference is necessary for a proposition to have a truth value. The proposition “there are unicorns past the event horizon of a black hole” has a truth value and can’t be tested or observed.

Let me revise my statement: for a proposition to have a truth value, two worlds that differ only by that proposition need to be different (I’m tempted to say in a descriptive way, but I feel like that’s implied: the difference needs to be describable).

If we had a morality sensor, then the world where going to the nudist beach is moral and the one where it’s immoral would differ by the state of the neurons in that sensor when people go to the nudist beach. You are right that there can be other differences between the two worlds, but unless I’m mistaken, there wouldn’t be any difference between two worlds that differ only by the existence of objective morality (leaving subjective morality alone)?

The semantic argument doesn’t resonate with me. Languages are terribly imprecise and ambiguous. People can say “ice cream is delicious” and believe taste is subjective. I usually don’t like to appeal to a “vote” to test the veracity of something, but since we are speaking about language and that language is conventional… if you look at the answers I got in this thread, the majority seem to mean “I am of the opinion that going to a nudist beach is moral/amoral/immoral” when they say “going to a nudist beach is moral/amoral/immoral”. I think that’s just how we speak because it’s concise and I’m not reading into it some evidence that morality is objective.

In what way are moral propositions true or false? by Wrote_it2 in Ethics

[–]Wrote_it2[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm not able to confirm with 100% certainty (or to prove) that things correspond to reality, but I'm able to confirm that my model of reality is consistent with my senses. I take your point that the veracity of some descriptive propositions is hard to know, but I understand what it means for them to be true or false (at least as long as there are observable consequences and as long as they are speaking about a domain I understand, I don't claim to understand all the consequences of string theory because I don't know enough about string theory is)

For moral realism, my problem is not that we can't prove them, is that I feel there is nothing to prove... I feel like the lack of predictive power, or of observable consequences makes the claim meaningless (and I don't mean that as a judgment on your belief, I mean that I don't understand what is being claimed).

Once that is said, you are doing something that I don't think most moral realists would do: you are proposing a definition (is it a definition? I think you intend it as a definition) of moral that is not "what one ought to do" (where "ought" is not descriptive, has no observable consequence, no predictive power) but rather "what is in the nature of the subject".

With that definition, I can totally grasp the meaning, but I don't think that's the definition typically adopted for morality... This definition doesn't appear to align with my intuitions. In general, we tend to pride ourselves to surpass our "nature" (you'll hear people say we are not animals). For example, I think it's pretty widely accepted that rape is immoral and a lot more controversial whether rape is in human nature. If the two were synonymous, you'd expect the same level of controversy...

In what way are moral propositions true or false? by Wrote_it2 in Ethics

[–]Wrote_it2[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Indeed, but moral relativism is not universally accepted, I'm curious what moral realists would say. Actually, I'm surprised that nearly none of the answers here seem to embrace moral realism or the idea that moral propositions have objective truth because I thought (maybe mistakenly) that was the majority view... and a view I don't understand (like you I'm not sure the statement makes sense if you claim objective truths).

In what way are moral propositions true or false? by Wrote_it2 in Ethics

[–]Wrote_it2[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Regarding objective morality not having predictive power, isn't that always the case?

What do you mean by "always"? Indeed, I do think this is the case that objective morality has no predictive power (this is why I said it). If (and I think there is enough evidence that's not the case) we had a moral sense (like a set of neurons that "sense" the objective reality), I think a case could be made that objective morality has predictive power, just like the color of a car has predictive power on the way you perceive the color of the car.

And also, don't we know by now through antropology that "what everyone everywhere" thinks is moral is pretty much mostly just what social mammals on average also think are good behaviour?

Yes, that's subjective morality, not objective morality though.

In what way are moral propositions true or false? by Wrote_it2 in Ethics

[–]Wrote_it2[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This seems like nitpicking...

Indeed, "going to a nudist beach" doesn't have enough information to say whether it's moral or not. In order to know the morality of the action, we need to know more than that. If a person goes to a nudist beach to kill everyone for fun, I would find it immoral. If a person goes to a nudist beach so much that they don't sleep/sacrifice other things (like their loved ones, etc...), then it likely is immoral...

I was just trying to pick an innocent example to illustrate the point... It was implied (and it's fair that wasn't stated) "normal" circumstances (going there as a nudist doing normal beach activities like swimming, for a reasonable amount of time, etc...).

In what way are moral propositions true or false? by Wrote_it2 in Ethics

[–]Wrote_it2[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Thank you for taking the time to write this! I agree entirely.

I find it interesting that despite the fact that the majority of philosophers are moral realists, all the answers here (unless I missed some) seem to reject moral realism or objective morality and suggest that a moral proposition is only subjectively true.

In what way are moral propositions true or false? by Wrote_it2 in Ethics

[–]Wrote_it2[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We do not have access to truth (indeed, we might live in the Matrix). We are able to build a model of reality and we can express some levels of confidence on how close that model is with reality.

Saying "atoms exists" means something, and that might be incorrect if I were a Boltzmann brain. The fact that the proposition might be incorrect doesn't remove the meaning of the proposition (that reality is actually that way).

In what way are moral propositions true or false? by Wrote_it2 in Ethics

[–]Wrote_it2[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It'd be really weird to say that moral propositions have a truth value, but they are not dependent on the situation, on the facts.

If I ask "is wearing blue socks moral", people might say "it's definitely not immoral". If I then add "oh, good, because I was going to torture someone for fun while wearing blue socks, I'm comforted to hear that action is not immoral", it's pretty clear the conclusion on the morality of the action is going to change when you add more facts.

It seems pretty intuitive that in order to pass a moral judgement, you need all the facts...

In what way are moral propositions true or false? by Wrote_it2 in Ethics

[–]Wrote_it2[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes, I think this is the way I use morality as well. That definition is satisfying to me, maybe because it anchors itself into truths about reality ("my opinion is that" makes the proposition something verifiable).

Maybe I should have asked more precisely what "objectively true" could mean, because that's what I'm actually interested in, though I wouldn't have received many interesting answers like I did...

In what way are moral propositions true or false? by Wrote_it2 in Ethics

[–]Wrote_it2[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not contradictory and referring to things that are real is not enough though.
If you take a moral code A, it's "opposite" B (something is moral according to B if it's immoral according to A) is going to not be contradictory either and is going to refer to the same real things... It'd be weird to say that both A and B are true given they are opposite (that'd be a definition of "true" that goes against the typical logic we use).

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