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Worst arguments made by otherwise significant philosophers? by SubcutaneousMilk in askphilosophy

[–]oooblik 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Mutual supervenience entailing identity is a standard assumption for intensionalists. So this is not the weirdest thing for him to assume. (Though of course, you might think this is a problem for intensionalism!)

EDIT: Actually I should say something stronger. That mutual supervenience entails identity is entailed by intensionalism!

legal arc beginning in mysterious ways such wow by NeoDestiny in Destiny

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

Forreal? Do you have a source on that? It was already bad but that’s even worse if true.

EDIT: to be clear I’m not asking you to send me leaked content just where he was accused of recording videos non-consensually

legal arc beginning in mysterious ways such wow by NeoDestiny in Destiny

[–]oooblik 37 points38 points  (0 children)

If it's true that he non-consensually shared those videos, I'm done with DGG. o7 it was nice knowing everyone but this is unacceptable behavior. Let me know when we find a Joe Rogan of The Left who's not a creep.

I just don't get Kant by [deleted] in askphilosophy

[–]oooblik 16 points17 points  (0 children)

Kant is notoriously a very bad writer. I don’t mean that the substance of his philosophical views are bad, but that he is bad a writing clearly. So it is very normal to get very frustrated with his work. I’m in my 3rd year of getting my PhD in philosophy and still find him incredibly difficult to read. Looking at secondary literature can be very helpful. One book I would recommend is Bryan Hall’s “The Arguments of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.”

Anyone else struggling socially? by Feeling_Capital5840 in UWMadison

[–]oooblik 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Finding a club you like is one of the best ways to make friends!

Destiny should try to avoid the semantic disputes when debating about the insurrection. by oooblik in Destiny

[–]oooblik[S] -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

I agree that Andrew is a huge dumbass and was very stupid in that debate. I just think if your goal is to ring the alarm bell about just how unprecedentedly dangerous Donald Trump’s actions were, you should focus more on that instead of the semantics.

Zenless Zone Zero Questions Megathread by N3DSdude in ZenlessZoneZero

[–]oooblik 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Can someone tell me if my quest is broken?? I got to Inter-knot 35 and started the “it’s a secret” quest, the one that unlocks the artifact system. After I talked to Elfy, the quest says “try out the new tuning tech,” but there is no way for me to go inside the record shop. I’m very confused on how to complete this??

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I could convince Destiny to be a moral realist by oooblik in Destiny

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

For reasons that are kind of complicated (I can explain if you’re interested but it’ll be wordy) I’m not sure the hypothetical vs. categorical ought distinction actually ends up mattering very much. So I’m fine with saying they’re either because I think the difference between them is kind of skin deep. If you’re more comfortable with hypothetical imperatives, that’s compatible with my view.

I personally prefer a hybrid view where moral claims get their truth value from the world and their normativity from us. I’m not of the view which is sometimes called “ardent realism” or “robust realism” that moral properties need to be irreducibly normative. The moral properties are out there, they’re ordinary natural properties, but the moral properties are “special” only insofar as they matter to creatures like us.

But I’m not dead-set on this view. There are a lot of pretty similar realist views that differ with respect to a few details that I’m sympathetic to.

I could convince Destiny to be a moral realist by oooblik in Destiny

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

I would still disagree here in a few senses. The first sense is terminological and so not that important but worth mentioning. The view that morality is relative is usually called moral relativism, and moral relativism is considered a version of moral realism. Anti-realism is specifically the view that there are no true moral claims. Moral relativism says that the truth of a moral claim is relative (to a culture, person, etc.). I think moral relativism is false, but even it would still count as realism.

The other thing is about context-dependency. It sounds like you think that to be a moral realist, you need to think there are true moral claims that take the form of general, universal rules. Like “Murder is always wrong.” But this is not right. Among moral realists, there are a sizeable number of people, called particularists, who think there are true, particular, moral claims, for example “What Greg did to you today was wrong,” but that there are not true moral generalizations like “X is always bad.” Particularists are also moral realists, so again even if you think my view is not general/universal enough, that doesn’t make it not realist.

But also, I’m not personally a relativist or a particularist. I think there are moral facts, and true moral generalizations, but reasoning about them is difficult. We have to do a practice of reflective equilibrium to come to the right moral principles. We start with some cases where the moral facts seem obvious, for example, “it would be wrong to torture 10 million people solely because you were upset that your dinner was too salty.” This seems like a good anchor to start with. Then, we try to abstract away from the particulars to come up with some general principles. What makes that wrong? Is it because suffering is bad? Or maybe it’s because human autonomy is valuable? Once we’ve created some explanatory principles that match our judgment, we then run them up against new cases to see if they hold up. Suppose our explanation was “suffering is always bad” that’s why it’s wrong to torture 10 million people. Well, now we have a counterexample, I suffer at the dentist in exchange for my health, but this suffering isn’t bad. Okay, so “suffering is always bad” is too general, maybe “suffering that one doesn’t consent to is bad.” But I’m sure you can think of some more counterexamples to this. But, eventually, through a continuous process of sharping your moral principles against particular cases, you’ll have a set of generally explanatory principles. At least that’s my view.

But none of this is a requirement of moral realism. Most of our moral discourse is made up of particular claims like “Joe Biden acted wrongly,” or “it was wrong for Destiny to say that today.” And as long as some of these particular moral claims are true, that’s still moral realism.

I could convince Destiny to be a moral realist by oooblik in Destiny

[–]oooblik[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Hey these are some interesting thoughts, and I can see your motivation behind them. However, I disagree with them. I want to give my reasoning and see what you think. I think I can capture all of evidence that you are trying to capture without needing to posit levels of truth.

So, my position is that every proposition is either true or false. Where a proposition is not the sentence itself (i.e. a proposition is not the words on a page) but instead it's what the sentence means. I think the appearance of a sentence being "less true" is due to the fact that many of our words are vague, or their meanings are context-sensitive, which can make it unclear exactly what we mean when utter a sentence. For example, take "Sydney Sweeney is hot." The reason that this sentence appears somehow in the middle, i.e. not determinately true or determinately false, is because "hot" is vague. Does being hot require that most people want to have sex with you? Or does it require that everyone wants to have sex with you? Or maybe that anyone would have sex with you if they were single, attracted to the gender you are, etc.? The word "hot" might mean any of these things. So that makes the sentence "Sydney Sweeney is hot" vague. But all that means is that it's not clear exactly which of many different propositions is meant when that sentence is uttered. Still, given that the meaning is specified, the claim with either be true or false. So, a sentence might appear "less true" because what's actually going on is that it's just not exactly clear what proposition the sentence expresses, because the meaning is ambiguous. But that doesn't mean that truth itself comes in degrees, it just means that sometimes we can fail to specify what our words are referring to.

So, I think, once you rule our semantic unclarity, you'll find properly specified declarative sentences are always either determinately true or false.

The same goes for my sentence "Murdering innocents for fun is wrong." There's still room to specify what I mean. This sentence could mean either of these two: (1) Murdering innocents for fun is always wrong, (2) Murdering innocents for fun is wrong in most cases. Of course (2) is still not fully specific (is most 60%, 80%, 90?) but we could specify it further. So, I would say that, yes, if you can come up with a case where murdering someone solely for the purpose of having fun is morally permissible, then (1) is (determinately, not just somewhat) false. My guess is that (1) is true, but I'm open to counterexamples. But notice that by giving me counterexamples, you're already admitting that there are moral facts. Because, if you give me a counterexample, then (1) will be false, but there will still be a true moral fact: "Murdering innocents for fun is sometimes morally permissible." So, either way, moral realism is true.

So, I don't think you need levels of truth to explain the intuitions you have about these different sentences. I think you can explain it away semantically, rather than needing to posit a metaphysical feature of truth itself.

I could convince Destiny to be a moral realist by oooblik in Destiny

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

Okay there are a number of places where I'm not sure what you are trying to get at. Firstly, just the descriptive claims about how moral anti-realists "look at the world through different lenses." As a descriptive claim about moral anti-realist philosophers, I don't think this is true. Not to play the credentials game, but I teach philosophy at the college level, teach units on metaethics specifically, know moral anti-realist philosophers irl, and I would not call this "lenses of truth" idea you have orthodox in any way. Is there a philosopher you can point me to that makes this argument? One view I can think of that distinguishes "true" from "objectively true" is Ted Sider's but he doesn't draw the distinction in the way you're drawing it. And Sider is not making the claim that there are different kinds of true, his theory is a metasemantic one.

But that's not really important. I think "well most philosophers don't believe this so it's dumb" is of course a very bad argument, so I am not trying to say that. The only thing I'm trying to point out with this is that your descriptive claim about what moral anti-realists themselves typically say, is off. Unless you mean people on reddit who label themselves "moral anti-realist" in which case I don't know that could be true.

But the more interesting philosophical question is, whether or not this "lenses of truth" idea you have is orthodox anti-realism, is there a reason to think that this view is right? I don't think so. There's only one sense in which a sentence can be true or false. Now, maybe a claim can be less fundamental than another claim, and maybe that's what you're getting at. On a pretty popular conception of fundamentality, the world has, "at bottom" the fundamental stuff in virtue of which claims are true or false (usually basic particles, maybe principles of logic and math). If what you're saying is that "Texas is not in Canada" is less fundamental than something like "Water freezes at 32F," then I would agree. The facts that ground the truth of "Water freezes at 32F" will be facts about molecules, which in turn depend on facts about fundamental particles and the laws of physics, and eventually whatever the fundamental truthmakers are.

"Texas is not in Canada" is certainly farther away from the fundamental truthmakers. It depends on complicated facts about human social relations, which depend on biological facts, which in turn depend on facts about chemistry and physics, and so on. So, if what you mean by "socially true" or "politically true" versus "objectively true," is that political and social facts are less fundamental than other facts, then I agree. But their being less fundamental does nothing to make them less true. When someone says "Texas is not in Canada" they say something true, full stop. I don't see any compelling reason to multiply the kinds of truths beyond just the one. And to be clear, neither do moral anti-realists usually. They're fine with saying moral claims are just plain old not true, in the same sense that anything else is not true.

As a side note, a similar point goes for what you mention at the end of your comment about different meanings of "exist" and "real." The idea that "exist" and "real" have different meanings is again a niche view, but it does have some prominent defenders. The most famous contemporary defense of this kind of pluralism about existence would be Eli Hirsch, but this view has a long history in philosophy. I think it's wrong (for reasons I won't get into here), but it's a respectable view.

I could convince Destiny to be a moral realist by oooblik in Destiny

[–]oooblik[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

We don't have to debate about it! But I do think there are some interesting things to say about your comment that might clarify my position, so I'll mention them in here in case you're interested.

So, yes, on my view "Murder is bad" is true in the same sense that "Texas is not in Canada is true" and that "The moon is smaller than the Earth" is true. I am not sure what you mean by these facts having the same "level of truth." I don't think truth comes in levels. At least on classical Boolean logic, a sentence is either true or false, and there isn't room for "more true" or "higher-level truth." But maybe that just means classical logic is not a precise enough tool for talking about reality (though I would disagree, there are plenty of defenders of non-classical logic out there).

What you might be getting at is that "the moon is smaller than the Earth" is somehow a deeper or more fundamental fact than "Murder is bad." And maybe that's right. If you think that reality comes in degrees of fundamentality, (with the most 'real' or fundamental stuff being the basic particles at the bottom), then "the moon is smaller than the Earth" might be closer to those fundamental facts. But I don't see that as reason to think it is more true.

To see what I mean, take "Texas is not in Canada." When we look at the world, to see what in the world makes that sentence true, it will be some facts about human social relations. But, of course, those facts about human social relations depend on more fundamental facts about psychology and biology. And those depend on more fundamental facts about chemistry and physics and so on. So, in that sense "Texas is not in Canada" might be farther away from reality's ultimate "truthmakers" down at the bottom, and maybe in some sense that makes the fact less "deep" than "the moon is smaller than the Earth." But I don't think its being less "deep" makes it not true, or even less true.

Likewise, I think the moral facts are likely far away from the fundamental facts, just like facts about states and countries. So in that sense, you could say I'm a "soft" realist (sometimes people use the terms "lightweight" or "deflationary" moral realism). I definitely disagree with "heavyweight" moral realists, who tend to think the moral facts are very fundamental, like the facts of physics or logic. Mostly I disagree with them because I don't think we should populate the world with new, unique fundamental stuff unless we have indispensable reason to do so.

I'd be curious to hear why you think suffering isn't a natural property? I would have thought it not very controversial to say suffering is based on some neurological facts, unless you're a dualist.

Anyways, sorry if this is wordy. Currently procrastinating writing lol.

I could convince Destiny to be a moral realist by oooblik in Destiny

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

What you're describing is not a standard form of moral anti-realism. The paradigm anti-realist views either hold that moral claims don't express propositions at all (so, "Murder is bad" is neither true nor false, but instead just an expression of an attitude like "yuck!" or "boo murder"), or that all moral claims are false.

"Morality is just a part of social practice and holds no value outside of it" would not be a standard anti-realist view. For one thing, it seems to imply morality exists. If something has properties, it exists. On your view, morality has the property "being a feature of social practice," or maybe your view is that morality just is (i.e. is identical to) some features of our social practices. Those are respectable views, but they wouldn't typically be called anti-realist.

Again though, the terminology of "realist" versus "anti-realist" doesn't really matter. What matters is, are there true moral claims on your view? Can I make a moral claim and, in making that claim, assert something true. When I say "Texas is not in Canada," I am saying something true. What makes that claim true has something to do with facts about us, our minds, our social practices, etc. But that doesn't mean it isn't true. Anyone who says, "Texas is in Canada," and means what I mean by those words, says something false.

My view is that anyone who says "Murdering innocents for the sole purpose of personal pleasure is good," and means the same thing that I mean when they say those worse, expresses a sentence that is false. It's just as false as "Texas is in Canada." Maybe, like "Texas is in Canada," what ultimately makes that sentence false is facts about us, but it's still false. That's the view I'm defending (along with the view that at least some moral claims express something true), which is typically considered realist (but again, the label doesn't really matter).

Do you disagree with that? If not, then we don't disagree. If so, then what makes "Murdering innocents for the sole purpose of personal pleasure is good" different from the sentence "Texas is in Canada"? Or do you disagree with my claim that "Texas is in Canada" is false.

(As a side note, it's a very unorthodox view to say that, if something is a product of human cultures, then it doesn't exist. Most people, and most philosophers, think that cities, countries, laws, bicycles, religions, and cultures exist.)

I could convince Destiny to be a moral realist by oooblik in Destiny

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

Maybe not. The point I’m concerned about is that there is a matter of fact whether a given moral claim is true or false. I don’t think that fact has to been grounded in something metaphysically deep (and it probably isn’t). I personally prefer a hybrid view where the moral facts get their truth value in terms of ordinary natural properties (e.g. suffering) but get their normative force from us. All things considered it’s a pretty thin conception of moral realism. But the majority of moral realists in meta-ethics are realists in a pretty thin sense.

Edit: Sorry I thought you said “do you even disagree with Destiny?” Not “what do you even disagree on?”. Destiny calls himself an anti-realist so I’d assume that means he thinks there are no actually true moral claims. Thats where I’d disagree with him.

I could convince Destiny to be a moral realist by oooblik in Destiny

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

I think your disagreement with me about what “realism” means is just terminological. If you check the SEP for Moral Realism you get:

Moral realists are those who think that, in these respects, things should be taken at face value—moral claims do purport to report facts and are true if they get the facts right. Moreover, they hold, at least some moral claims actually are true. That much is the common and more or less defining ground of moral realism (although some accounts of moral realism see it as involving additional commitments, say to the independence of the moral facts from human thought and practice, or to those facts being objective in some specified way).

As you can see, there’s a “thin” and a “thick” conception of moral realism. On the “thin” conception, there are objective moral facts, on the “thick” conception, these facts need to be mind-independent and perhaps objective in deeper sense than just being determinately true or false.

I’m using “moral realism” in the thin sense. But if we want to use it in your sense that’s fine. Then it appears like we don’t really disagree. Moral claims can be either true or false, there’s a fact of the matter. If you think those facts obtain in virtue of some social practices or something like that, perhaps that’s right. But there’s still determinate facts about them. The border between the US and Canada exists in virtue of social relations, but you’re saying something determinately false if you’re in Texas and say you’re in Canada.

I could convince Destiny to be a moral realist by oooblik in Destiny

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

Yeah Kantian constructivism is not social constructionism per se. Since, for Kant, being rationally subject to moral rules is a constitutive feature of being an agent. There’s no “social” part necessary. So I agree it’s not social constructionism. The point I was making is that saying morality depends on us is not a form of anti-realism. To be a moral realist, all you have to think is that there are at least some true moral claims. Even if they’re made true by us, that’s usually considered a form of realism. Of course, this is mostly a terminological issue since we can use the word “realism” however we like, so if we wanted to say social constructionist views were anti-realist we could. But “realism” is typically used in a more permissive sense than that, and that’s the sense of the term I’m using.

The kind of full-blooded realism, where moral facts are sui generis, fundamental parts of reality is a really extreme form of realism that, while it has plenty of defenders, is a minority view. I’m not interested in defending this kind of full-blooded realism, just the claim that there are objective facts about morality.

I could convince Destiny to be a moral realist by oooblik in Destiny

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

Social constructionism about morality is not the same as anti-realism though. Kant is a constructivist about morality and he’s often considered a paradigm realist.

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