The Great Contradiction

[ruby sparks]

I am asking whether you think one of the statements is false. Now you say you question whether there is a fact of the matter. Well, if there is no fact of the matter, why would you think that Jack's statement is false? If there is no fact of the matter, well, there is no fact of the matter.

Indeed. And that is currently the way I am leaning, and so far you are not getting anywhere even close to persuading me otherwise.

No. Moral humans have religions/ideologies too, and those are known to interfere with the normal functioning of a human moral sense. Take a look at, say, the belief in Young Earth Creationism. Or the beliefs that Jesus walked on water, raised the dead, resurrected, etc. Now, on the basis of the available evidence, people should not believe those things. But they do. Religions/ideologies do that. They are a cause (one of several) of malfunctioning.

Still, if you take a look at, say, political debates, you will find that even when Christians or other religious believers are involved, in most cases, when there is a moral disagreement, there is a disagreement on non-moral facts upon which the moral assessments are made. So, it would be akin to disagreement between the color of the traffic light because the input was different, say because Bob looked at it 1 second after Alice did, so they got different input.

How do you know if those things are malfunctions (which assumes a standard to set them against, with which they interfere) or merely functions?

In other words, is the urge to be rid of outgroup members (possibly because they are competition for resources) normal, or abnormal?

It's quite common in the rest of the animal kingdom. Why should it be different for the type of apes that we are?

I think we can stop doing traffic lights, because I'm pretty much good with that one. Let's stick with morals, and specifically, Nazis killing Jews.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

Sure, but they got a lot of things wrong. Which I think is exactly a point I've been trying to make several times, about not relying on intuitions.

And as I have been saying, the 'a lot' of things is only a minuscule proportion of the things they got right, all the time, all around that. And relying on intuitions we do all the time. And we must. And we should (see my examples here).

If we are talking about morality, and have stopped talking about free will (phew!) then, I don't think it's necessarily the case that I distrust moral intuitions.

But it seems to me that you do, given what you said in this thread. And free will is a part of it I'm afraid. If Hitler did not act of his own free will (not even a little bit), he is not blameworthy. He would be if he had acted at least a bit of his own free will (e.g., under duress) but not if he did not act of his own free will at all - zero free will. Now, you hold that he did not act of his own free will - not even a little. But you seem to think Hitler is to blame, at least you reckon he behaved immorally (unless you think people can behave immorally but blamelessly?).

You also reject the notion that people deserve to be punished (i.e., just retribution) for their wrongdoings.

Moreover, you reject that either Alice or Bob made a false statement, or that there is a fact of the matter.

Are you not rejecting your intuitions when you make the above assessments? (at least, you are rejecting ordinary human moral intuitions).

 

[Angra Mainyu]

I am asking whether you think one of the statements is false. Now you say you question whether there is a fact of the matter. Well, if there is no fact of the matter, why would you think that Jack's statement is false? If there is no fact of the matter, well, there is no fact of the matter.

Indeed. And that is currently the way I am leaning, and so far you are not getting anywhere even close to persuading me otherwise.

No. Moral humans have religions/ideologies too, and those are known to interfere with the normal functioning of a human moral sense. Take a look at, say, the belief in Young Earth Creationism. Or the beliefs that Jesus walked on water, raised the dead, resurrected, etc. Now, on the basis of the available evidence, people should not believe those things. But they do. Religions/ideologies do that. They are a cause (one of several) of malfunctioning.

Still, if you take a look at, say, political debates, you will find that even when Christians or other religious believers are involved, in most cases, when there is a moral disagreement, there is a disagreement on non-moral facts upon which the moral assessments are made. So, it would be akin to disagreement between the color of the traffic light because the input was different, say because Bob looked at it 1 second after Alice did, so they got different input.

How do you know if those things are malfunctions (which assumes a standard to set them against, with which they interfere) or merely functions?

In other words, is the urge to be rid of outgroup members (possibly because they are competition for resources) normal, or abnormal?

It's quite common in the rest of the animal kingdom. Why should it be different for the type of apes that we are?

I think we can stop doing traffic lights, because I'm pretty much good with that one. Let's stick with morals, and specifically, Nazis killing Jews.

You're taking away the arguments. How am I to defend the case if you do that? The parallel with traffic lights gets ignored.

Now, why I reckon that they were malfunctioning? Well, someone is, and I use my own intuitions. But religion/ideology has already been known to cause minds to malfunction not only in the moral domain, but also when it comes to all sort of other beliefs (see my examples about YEC, Jesus walking on water, etc.).

 

[Angra Mainyu]

I think we need to stop discussing free will and stick to discussing morals.

You have already indicated that you are content to rely on the colloquial and the intuitive.

You are saying, 'I intuitively feel I have free will in the colloquial sense'.

Fine.

I've tried to explain the various reasons why I feel that's extremely inadequate. You're not convinced. Let's just leave it. We can do morals instead.

I'm saying a lot more than that, but let us stop if you like.

One last shot then. What, other than that, are you saying. Try to be succinct.

No, I will not repeat myself I'm afraid. I said more than enough, with a lot of details.

 

[ruby sparks]

You're taking away the arguments. How am I to defend the case if you do that? The parallel with traffic lights gets ignored.

You don't need to defend or even restate the traffic lights scenario because I broadly accept it. What you need to do is show that your moral claim is a parallel to it. To do that you need to discuss your moral claim.

Now, why I reckon that they were malfunctioning? Well, someone is....

Says you.

....and I use my own intuitions.

And why should I trust your intuitions, or even my own, to represent a moral fact?

Now, why I reckon that they were malfunctioning? Well, someone is, and I use my own intuitions. But religion/ideology has already been known to cause minds to malfunction not only in the moral domain, but also when it comes to all sort of other beliefs (see my examples about YEC, Jesus walking on water, etc.).

First, when has religion been shown to malfunction in the moral domain?

How would you know if overall, religion is more moral or less moral than non-religion?

Second, how do you know there's a functional standard against which to note malfunctions (of any sort)?

It seems to me that a lot of the time, you talk as if the existence of moral facts was self-evident (eg saying that the traffic light situation is parallel to it) instead of advancing your claim that this is in fact the case.

So, we were doing Nazis killing Jews, and I asked a few specific questions related to that example. It isn't just among religious people, or among religious people acting for other reasons, that killing outgroup members (competitors) is/was a feature, so in some ways religion is merely a special case of a general. It's also common among several other animal species. Why should human apes be different?



Do you know what is happening here, in this thread, Angra? You are not really getting anywhere with your claims, either about free will or universal morality, yet. That is what is happening, so far.

 

[ruby sparks]

Sure, but they got a lot of things wrong. Which I think is exactly a point I've been trying to make several times, about not relying on intuitions.

And as I have been saying, the 'a lot' of things is only a minuscule proportion of the things they got right, all the time, all around that. And relying on intuitions we do all the time. And we must. And we should (see my examples here).

If we are talking about morality, and have stopped talking about free will (phew!) then, I don't think it's necessarily the case that I distrust moral intuitions.

But it seems to me that you do, given what you said in this thread. And free will is a part of it I'm afraid. If Hitler did not act of his own free will (not even a little bit), he is not blameworthy. He would be if he had acted at least a bit of his own free will (e.g., under duress) but not if he did not act of his own free will at all - zero free will. Now, you hold that he did not act of his own free will - not even a little. But you seem to think Hitler is to blame, at least you reckon he behaved immorally (unless you think people can behave immorally but blamelessly?).

You also reject the notion that people deserve to be punished (i.e., just retribution) for their wrongdoings.

Moreover, you reject that either Alice or Bob made a false statement, or that there is a fact of the matter.

Are you not rejecting your intuitions when you make the above assessments? (at least, you are rejecting ordinary human moral intuitions).

I'm not doing free will with you any further. Science has thrown up shedloads of evidence that our intuitions are fundamentally awry regarding that, and self, and consciousness. The proportion, for those things is nowhere near miniscule. It is abundant. Human intuitions are endemically wrong about those things. An intuitive, colloquial, introspective understanding is inadequate, and has been repeatedly demonstrated to be inadequate.



On morality, yes, I might be at least questioning my moral intuitions. Why should I not think that my moral intuitions are possibly a combination of culture, environment and individuality, and not derived from moral facts?

That latter is the nub of your claim about morals, and you are not advancing it very far, yet.

 

[The AntiChris]

I don't want to misrepresent your views, but as I understand it you would agree with the following:

"Fresh cat faeces taste horrible" implies the speaker is talking about something about which there is a fact of the matter.

"Anchovies taste horrible" does not imply the speaker is talking about something about which there is a fact of the matter.

Have I got this right?
I don't want to misrepresent your views, but as I understand it you would agree with the following:

"Fresh cat faeces taste horrible" implies the speaker is talking about something about which there is a fact of the matter.

"Anchovies taste horrible" does not imply the speaker is talking about something about which there is a fact of the matter.

Have I got this right?

No, there is a very important subtlety here.

Ok, let's try to tease this out.

I do not think it implies that. Rather, I would say that in the first case, the speaker probably means to talk about something about which there is a fact of the matter (i.e., one that is not speaker-dependent). But a speaker might be talking about her own taste.

What kind of fact of the matter might she be talking about in this case?

Are you saying that if the speaker believes horribleness is a property of a particular foodstuff then that "implies the speaker is talking about something about which there is a fact of the matter."?


Edited to Add:

You said:

I do not know enough about anchovies to be sure, but Alice might be mistaken. In the case of tomatoes, I would reckon she'd very likely be mistaken.

What mistake are you thinking of here?

 

[Wiploc]

But, then, your whole stance puzzles me.

You're not the only person in this thread feeling that about Angra's posts, on either free will or morality.

I assume, without evidence, that the vast majority of people would be puzzled by his stance on retribution.

As for his stance on free will, I don't even know what it is. I don't pay much attention to discussions on that topic, because I have never seen such a discussion bear fruit. (I hope that's not supposed to be the topic of this thread.)

I like and admire Angra, but I may borrow from this discussion sometime when I am writing a fictional villain: someone who thinks he is acting righteously even though -- no matter how hard we try -- we cannot underestand or sympathize with his motives.

I think that could make for a scary story.

And, of course, if Angra writes fiction, he can use a utilitarian as his villain.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

ruby sparks,

Your definition is that intuition is 'the ability to understand or know something instinctively, without conscious reasoning'. Let me present some examples:

Okays, so how do you know what objects are around you?
Intuition. You see them, and trust your senses. No conscious reasoning.
How do you know their color?
Intuition.
How do you know people around you have minds?
Intuition.
How do you know what you did a minute ago?
Intuition (you trust your memory; you do not reason).
How do you know, say, a dog or person is in pain?
Intuition.
How do you know a dog is threatening you?
Intuition.
How do you know a person is a Christian?
Intuition (they might tell you that, but you do not consciously reason your way to it; you just get it from their behavior, including affirmations of faith or not).
How does the scientist know that the measurements were such-and-such?
Intuition: memories + sight, etc.

You don't need to defend or even restate the traffic lights scenario because I broadly accept it. What you need to do is show that your moral claim is a parallel to it. To do that you need to discuss your moral claim.

But my point is precisely that in both the color and the moral case, humans understand themselves to be talking about something about which there is a fact of the matter. Intutively, humans reckon there is a fact of the matter in both cases. Human intuitions should be trusted unless we have specific evidence against them. That is the parallel. You accept human intuitions in the color case, but rejects them in the moral case. Why?

And why should I trust your intuitions, or even my own, to represent a moral fact?

Why should we trust our intuitions in any of the gazillion cases (see above)?
Answer: because that is our intuition, and the default position is to accept it. We should reject an intuition only with good evidence (empirical, logical, whatever) against it.

First, when has religion been shown to malfunction in the moral domain?

First, religion has already been shown to cause malfunction in other cases. If there is a malfunction, they already are being exposed to something that causes malfunction in other cases. I have not found a similar problem in my own case.

Second, in other cases, they are not even using their moral sense. That's a malfunction already. For example, they believe that there is an omnimax agent who commanded that says they ought to X, so they reckon they ought to X. They do not use their moral sense to assess whether that is so. They believe it on faith, as they also believe Jesus walked on water, the Earth is young, etc. Clearly, that is not the right way to make assessments.

How would you know if overall, religion is more moral or less moral than non-religion?

Many reasons, but for example:

Religion it fails to use the system that we have to make moral assessments: instead, people rely on faith to have those beliefs. Human intuition says there is a fact of the matter as to whether or not a behavior was immoral. For that to hold, we need to have a species-wide moral sense that can be used to make such assessments. Religions diverge. Suppose religion A says Bob should X because an omnipotent, omniscient, morally perfect creator says Bob should X. Religion B says Bob should not X because an omnipotent, omniscient, morally perfect creator says Bob should not X. Both religions are making unwarranted assessments about the creator, and also about morality, as they do not use a moral sense but faith.

Second, how do you know there's a functional standard against which to note malfunctions (of any sort)?

The same way we know that people are ill: intuition.
But moreover, we make such assessments all the time, and generally have no problem finding that someone is ill. The same for many other examples (see above). Morality is just one of them.

It seems to me that a lot of the time, you talk as if the existence of moral facts was self-evident (eg saying that the traffic light situation is parallel to it) instead of advancing your claim that this is in fact the case.

But why is it not self-evidence, but the color facts are?
How about, facts about illness and disease? Or about the existence of other minds? Or about fear, or hostility, or generally mental states of other people/animals?
Intuition all around, which is pretty much always the case. Plus reasoning in the form of observation of these facts about human behavior.

So, we were doing Nazis killing Jews, and I asked a few specific questions related to that example. It isn't just among religious people, or among religious people acting for other reasons, that killing outgroup members (competitors) is/was a feature, so in some ways religion is merely a special case of a general. It's also common among several other animal species. Why should human apes be different?

I make an intuitive assessment. But also, religion/ideology works in a similar way. The people committing massacres in Nazi times were not using their moral sense, but following Nazi instead. When they used their moral sense, many of them recoiled and realized it was wrong. Others actually demonized their enemies, so they have beliefs about their enemies that were not true, and that partially were used to justify their moral assessments (i.e., false input).

Now, if I am in error, the proper conclusion would not be that there is no fact of the matter. Why would it? Humans and other apes have local rules in addition to species-wide morality, and also moral rules against violating local rules in many cases. If you are correct, the proper conclusion would be that the prohibition on killing outgroup members is just one of our local laws, and it's immoral for us to do it, but I made the mistake of thinking it was a universal law, so it was not immoral on their part. But that is very improbable. If you look at the pattern of behaviors, those killings generally involve things like demonization (false negative beliefs about what their victims did, want, etc.), and the use of religion/ideology instead of a moral sense.

Do you know what is happening here, in this thread, Angra? You are not really getting anywhere with your claims, either about free will or universal morality, yet. That is what is happening, so far.

I know I am not persuading you, of course. The exchange might be helpful to others, now or in the future.

I'm not doing free will with you any further. Science has thrown up shedloads of evidence that our intuitions are fundamentally awry regarding that, and self, and consciousness. The proportion, for those things is nowhere near miniscule. It is abundant. Human intuitions are endemically wrong about those things. An intuitive, colloquial, introspective understanding is inadequate, and has been repeatedly demonstrated to be inadequate.

Obviously, you are wrong. You rely on that all the time, even to be able to respond in this thread (e.g., you rely on intuition to know that we had this exchange in the fist place, clearly).
But I wasn't even trying to discuss whether there is free will, but using your rejection of it at data to show you that you reject moral intuitions. You reject them in other cases as well.

On morality, yes, I might be at least questioning my moral intuitions. Why should I not think that my moral intuitions are possibly a combination of culture, environment and individuality, and not derived from moral facts?

No, unless you have good reasons to distrust your moral intuitions.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

What kind of fact of the matter might she be talking about in this case?

Probably that fresh cat feces are the sort of thing that humans find gustatorily disgusting (save for malfunction).

Are you saying that if the speaker believes horribleness is a property of a particular foodstuff then that "implies the speaker is talking about something about which there is a fact of the matter."?

No, the speaker means to talk about something about which there is a fact of the matter. She might be mistaken about that, though one should not think so without specific evidence.

What mistake are you thinking of here?

The mistake would be to think that just as fresh cat feces are the sort of thing that humans find gustatorily disgusting (save for malfunction), tomatoes are the sort of thing that humans find gustatorily delicious (save for malfunction).

Why do I think that that would be be a mistake?

Well, first of all intuitively.

But that aside, looking at how people assess the taste of tomatoes, the options seem to be:

Option 1:
a. There is widespread, global malfunctioning in the gustatory taste of the human population when it comes to tomatoes.
b. The predominant intuition that there is no (human) species-wide fact of the matter about whether tomatoes are delicious, is mistaken.

Option 2:
Alice is mistaken as described above.

Without any good reason to suspect such massive global malfunctioning (point a. above), Alice is far more likely to be mistaken than most people (generally, people are not ill until proven healthy so to speak; you would need good evidence that something is malfunctioning; in this case, the evidence strongly points to Alice's intuitions...but I haven't found many cases like that).

 

[Angra Mainyu]

I assume, without evidence, that the vast majority of people would be puzzled by his stance on retribution.

I reckon that the vast majority of humans would - if they read it and understood it - realize that Scenario 2 is a better world than Scenario 3. It's the default human position. Just retribution is a good.

I like and admire Angra, but I may borrow from this discussion sometime when I am writing a fictional villain: someone who thinks he is acting righteously even though -- no matter how hard we try -- we cannot underestand or sympathize with his motives.

You have repeatedly misrepresented my position (see our exchange), so you would very likely be misrepresenting me, not deliberately but because you keep for some reason misconstruing my words. For example, it's not about the amount of righteous anger (that amount is the same in Scenarios 2 and 3), it is not about targeting the innocent (your original example), or even the guilty for reasons not related to their guilt, and so on. As a result, that would damage my reputation for no good reason (if you give names). If you want people to see me as the villain, please kindly point them (with links) to the thread(s)/post(s) in which I behave villainously in your assessment.

Alternatively, if it is fiction without my name on it, please ask me what I think is good, just, etc., so that you construct your villain in that manner...actually, that might be fun:

Wiploc: Angra, do you reckon the following villain is behaving as you think he should?
Me: No way. Let me explain what I think your villain (who would no longer be a villain if he took my advice) should do in that scenario...

And, of course, if Angra writes fiction, he can use a utilitarian as his villain.

If I did that, I would be careful not to misrepresent the utilitarian.

 

[Wiploc]

Humans, by their own constitution, want some things. Humans want to be happy. But humans also want other things, like not behaving immorally.

Sometimes we do.

But, for instance, if I believed morality was dictated by gods, I wouldn't see any point in being moral.

I'm reminded of an incident in Houston in the seventies:

• I met a neighbor. He invited me in for a chat. He offered me a drink of stolen whiskey. A top brand. He gave me a bottle.
  
  He said he was a criminal; that's what he did; that was his career.
  
  He bragged on his woman. She never asked where he was going or when he'd be back. She was the best girlfriend a man could have.
  
  Then he looked at the glass of whiskey in his hand, and he said, "I'm going to Hell, and I know it. But Presbyterians will drink right in front of the preacher, and that's wrong!"

That guy wanted Presbyterians to behave morally, but he didn't seem much concerned to behave morally himself.

Those things are part of what humans want - as long as their minds are not ill, anyway.
It would be like asking: why would you want to be happy? You just do. Because you are human.

• Khitan General: Conan, what is best in life?
  
  Conan: To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women!

Rose Castorini, in Moonstruck, explains a man's behavior this way: "You're a little boy, and you like to be bad."

The man seems to accept her verdict: He likes to be bad.

Many people, and much of the time, do things they believe to be immoral, and they do so without remorse.

I'd think that most people are this way, at least at times.

I think this would happen much less often if we could straighten out people's thinking about morality. If we persuaded people that utilitarianism underlies all forms of morality -- or at least if we could persuade them that there is no point in going along with a morality that isn't based on untilitarianism -- then they wouldn't be so confused. They wouldn't keep seeing instances in which doing immoral things is okay, because being "immoral" doesn't hurt anyone, so there's nothing wrong with it.

This confuses people so much that they sometimes quit thinking of morality as valuable. The problem with that is that then they can violate their morality even when doing so does hurt people.

What you call "justice" seems to me to be pointless cruelty.

In doing so, you reject a significant portion of the human moral sense, and generally the monkey moral sense. ...

I don't agree.

Many rapists deserve death.

The word 'deserve' has a meaning. Take a look at how people use it. It is about retribution. You say they deserve death. Great. Their deserving death is independent of whether their death makes other safer, happier, or whatever.

I don't agree.

And, at this point, I don't think that any amount of further talking is going to bring us together.

That is probable. Hopefully, the exchange has been or will be helpful for at least one reader. Maybe you can think about it in the future, when the thread is long dead and you are not debating anyone.

Thanks. It's been a pleasure.

 

[Wiploc]

I reckon that the vast majority of humans would - if they read it and understood it - realize that Scenario 2 is a better world than Scenario 3. It's the default human position. Just retribution is a good.

I agree that most would choose scenario 2. But they want the perp to be punished. Undifferentiated punishment. They aren't separating out rehabilitation, isolation, and deterrence. So you can't say they are just after vengeance, because they haven't broken out the various motives for punishment in their minds. It's all one to them.

You have repeatedly misrepresented my position (see our exchange),

For this, I apologize. I did the best I could.

so you would very likely be misrepresenting me, not deliberately but because you keep for some reason misconstruing my words.

I don't understand your words. Your meaning, whatever it is, is alien to me.

For example, it's not about the amount of righteous anger (that amount is the same in Scenarios 2 and 3), it is not about targeting the innocent (your original example), or even the guilty for reasons not related to their guilt, and so on. As a result, that would damage my reputation for no good reason (if you give names). If you want people to see me as the villain, please kindly point them (with links) to the thread(s)/post(s) in which I behave villainously in your assessment.

Alternatively, if it is fiction without my name on it, please ask me what I think is good, just, etc., so that you construct your villain in that manner...actually, that might be fun:

I'm certainly not putting your name on a fictional villain.

 

[Wiploc]

And, of course, if Angra writes fiction, he can use a utilitarian as his villain.

If I did that, I would be careful not to misrepresent the utilitarian.

I don't think that would be possible. I doubt you could represent my position any better than I've been able to represent yours.

It's not for want of trying, but we just don't think the same way.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

Sometimes we do.

But, for instance, if I believed morality was dictated by gods, I wouldn't see any point in being moral.

I mean that instinctively, humans are motivated by their moral sense. They are motivated to avoid behavior they reckon immoral, and punish wrongdoers as they deserve (retribution). Since the moral sense is generally reliable, that translates in motivations not to behave immorally and to do justice. Those motivations may compete with others, and are defeasible.

That guy wanted Presbyterians to behave morally, but he didn't seem much concerned to behave morally himself.

Maybe a psychopath. Or maybe he cared, but not enough (again, defeasible motivation), or did not think his actions were immoral.

Many people, and much of the time, do things they believe to be immoral, and they do so without remorse.

I'd think that most people are this way, at least at times.

Without remorse, I'd say the slight proportion of psychopaths. With low remorse is another matter.

I think this would happen much less often if we could straighten out people's thinking about morality. If we persuaded people that utilitarianism underlies all forms of morality -- or at least if we could persuade them that there is no point in going along with a morality that isn't based on untilitarianism -- then they wouldn't be so confused. They wouldn't keep seeing instances in which doing immoral things is okay, because being "immoral" doesn't hurt anyone, so there's nothing wrong with it.

Well, they would be confused in their belief that morality is based on utilitarianism. But they would still mostly (but not always) go by their moral sense, not by utilitarianism.

I don't agree.

As I mentioned before, I suggest that you look at how humans behave, in the wild. Observe how they behave when they demand justice.

I don't agree.

Same as above. Look at how people demand that perpetrators be punished.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

I agree that most would choose scenario 2. But they want the perp to be punished. Undifferentiated punishment. They aren't separating out rehabilitation, isolation, and deterrence. So you can't say they are just after vengeance, because they haven't broken out the various motives for punishment in their minds. It's all one to them.

No, they do not need to separate different motives. The scenario does that. There is no difference in rehabilitation, isolation, or deterrence. And they would still reckon that Scenario 2 is a better world than Scenario 3.

For this, I apologize. I did the best I could.

Accepted.

Hint as an aside: I though I think you could do better if you just put utilitarianism or any other philosophy aside, and went with your intuitions .

I don't understand your words. Your meaning, whatever it is, is alien to me.

I suggest putting utilitarianism aside, and use your intuitions.

I'm certainly not putting your name on a fictional villain.

Fair enough.
Still, if you do intend to write such a villain, I offer to answer questions about how he would behave (you may not understand my words, but I do, so I can tell you how that would guide behavior).

And, of course, if Angra writes fiction, he can use a utilitarian as his villain.

If I did that, I would be careful not to misrepresent the utilitarian.

I don't think that would be possible for you. You've already given objection to utilitarianism in terms that no utilitarian would accept.

Maybe they would not accept that. For that matter, I raise objections to Christianity in terms no Christian would accept. But I have not misrepresented utilitarians. I have not said that utilitarians say something they do not say. I have not said that their position is something different from what it is. I have said that they are mistaken, but I have not misrepresented them. If you believe otherwise, I would ask you to please let me know where I did that, so that I can correct it.

 

[Wiploc]

I'm certainly not putting your name on a fictional villain.

Fair enough.
Still, if you do intend to write such a villain, I offer to answer questions about how he would behave (you may not understand my words, but I do, so I can tell you how that would guide behavior).

It will have nothing to do with how you will behave. I'm not casting you as a villain and changing your name.

My idea is that I might one day have an idea for a story in which it will be useful for the antagonist to believe in his own righteousness, but the protagonist will be unable to parse the antagonist's thinking.

The protagonist's blind spot (or the antagonist's opaqueness) could have something to do with morality, but I wouldn't expect it to have any recognizable relationship to the discussion we've had here.

There's an episode of West Wing in which a senator inexplicably filibuster's a budget. Nobody can figure out why. Finally, somebody realizes that research funding for a disease that has been cut, and that the senator has a relative with that disease.

And, of course, if Angra writes fiction, he can use a utilitarian as his villain.

If I did that, I would be careful not to misrepresent the utilitarian.

I don't think that would be possible for you. You've already given objection to utilitarianism in terms that no utilitarian would accept.

I wrote the above in post 554, took a break to eat dinner, and then came back and changed it. I think it reads better now: "I don't think that would be possible. I doubt you could represent my position any better than I've been able to represent yours. It's not for want of trying, but we just don't think the same way."

But, it turns out, you already responded to the prior wording.

Maybe they would not accept that. For that matter, I raise objections to Christianity in terms no Christian would accept. But I have not misrepresented utilitarians. I have not said that utilitarians say something they do not say. I have not said that their position is something different from what it is. I have said that they are mistaken, but I have not misrepresented them. If you believe otherwise, I would ask you to please let me know where I did that, so that I can correct it.

Maybe I'm wrong. If so, I apologize again. I'm not going to search the thread for an example.

And even if there were an example, it would probably be a fair criticism of act utilitarianism. It wouldn't be your fault that I'm not an act utilitarian.

 

[Angra Mainyu]

It will have nothing to do with how you will behave. I'm not casting you as a villain and changing your name.

My idea is that I might one day have an idea for a story in which it will be useful for the antagonist to believe in his own righteousness, but the protagonist will be unable to parse the antagonist's thinking.

The protagonist's blind spot (or the antagonist's opaqueness) could have something to do with morality, but I wouldn't expect it to have any recognizable relationship to the discussion we've had here.

Ah, okay, got it.

There's an episode of West Wing in which a senator inexplicably filibuster's a budget. Nobody can figure out why. Finally, somebody realizes that research funding for a disease that has been cut, and that the senator has a relative with that disease.

But unlike the senator, I do explain my views.

I wrote the above in post 554, took a break to eat dinner, and then came back and changed it. I think it reads better now: "I don't think that would be possible. I doubt you could represent my position any better than I've been able to represent yours. It's not for want of trying, but we just don't think the same way."

But, it turns out, you already responded to the prior wording.

Okay, no problem. I think I can represent rule utilitarianism reasonably well, because there are plenty of resources on the internet that explain it. I do not know to which extend I would match your views, but I would write a character with the general beliefs of rule-utilitarians (If I were to write fiction, which is not the case as I don't know how to do that, but I can make characters in hypothetical scenarios).

And even if there were an example, it would probably be a fair criticism of act utilitarianism. It wouldn't be your fault that I'm not an act utilitarian.

But it would be my fault for attributing to you a position I have no warrant to believe you have, so I would like to correct that.

 

[ruby sparks]

ruby sparks,

Your definition is that intuition is 'the ability to understand or know something instinctively, without conscious reasoning'. Let me present some examples:

Okays, so how do you know what objects are around you?
Intuition. You see them, and trust your senses. No conscious reasoning.
How do you know their color?
Intuition.
How do you know people around you have minds?
Intuition.
How do you know what you did a minute ago?
Intuition (you trust your memory; you do not reason).
How do you know, say, a dog or person is in pain?
Intuition.
How do you know a dog is threatening you?
Intuition.
How do you know a person is a Christian?
Intuition (they might tell you that, but you do not consciously reason your way to it; you just get it from their behavior, including affirmations of faith or not).
How does the scientist know that the measurements were such-and-such?
Intuition: memories + sight, etc.

Personally, I would not necessarily trust my intuitions on at least some of those, if I am allowed time to reflect on it if I want to (which often isn't the case). The one I have bolded in your post, for instance. I know that I can quite easily be fooled or wrong about that, as regards what the particular colour is, as can you and people generally. I might even say I can be fooled or wrong about whether there is a colour (or whether something is just monochrome). I doubt I even know the full extent of the ways in which my intuitions about colour can be mistaken.

. You accept human intuitions in the color case, but rejects them in the moral case. Why?

I broadly accept the human intuition that "there is a particular colour fact" (even if I allow my intuition about what the colour is may be awry) but I am suspicious of the human intuition that "there is a particular moral fact", yes, and even if I did agree that there is a moral fact about something in particular, I might still not trust my ability to know what it was (as with the colour).

Perhaps it's partly because saying there is a colour is something I take to be a statement about or describing a property of the world outside my head, which is not how I feel about morality. I do not think it exists in the world outside my head (except that I reckon it's probably in the heads of others too, but not in the exact same way, barring a remarkable coincidence that I have a doppelganger right down to neuron level).

Now, as I have said before, my position on morality is not the same as my position on free will. On morality, I think I am prepared to agree (and I will explore this further in my next post) that there are some things that might be called 'moral facts for humans' in the sense that they are endemic traits. The limitation of that is that it often, very often, seems to be the case that the devil is in the detail of any particular instance. See my next post.

Answer: because that is our intuition, and the default position is to accept it. We should reject an intuition only with good evidence (empirical, logical, whatever) against it.

I might disagree, I might say that it's reasonable not to just blithely trust our intuitions, even before any evidence to the contrary comes in, because of the knowledge from past experience that intuitions in the general sense can easily be awry.

Second, in other cases, they are not even using their moral sense. That's a malfunction already. For example, they believe that there is an omnimax agent who commanded that says they ought to X, so they reckon they ought to X. They do not use their moral sense to assess whether that is so.

To me that's not an accurate way to put it. Even under a religious framework, people pick and choose components to construct their individual or subgroup morality. That is why there are so many religions, and sub-religions within religions, and disagreement within those sub-religions (denominations) and diferences between members of individual congregations. So people do seem to be using their moral sense, even if only cherry-picking (to suit) what goes into it as content, what becomes the content of their morality.

They believe it on faith......... etc. Clearly, that is not the right way to make assessments.

Well then, perhaps you should be careful to not be similarly religious about intuitions.

But moreover, we make such assessments all the time, and generally have no problem finding that someone is ill. The same for many other examples (see above).

I'm not sure why you think that listing the cases where our use of intuition seems to be reliable says anything about other cases.

For a 'gazillion' counter-examples, see: the history of marital (or even just personal) relationships. In other words, humans appear to endemically (and routinely) intuitively misunderstand each other, more or less all the time.

Morality is just one of them.

That's just your claim. How do you know morality is on a par with colour?

But why is it not self-evidence, but the color facts are?
How about, facts about illness and disease? Or about the existence of other minds? Or about fear, or hostility, or generally mental states of other people/animals?
Intuition all around, which is pretty much always the case. Plus reasoning in the form of observation of these facts about human behavior.

See above. People seem to routinely misunderstand each other more or less all the time.

I'm not doing free will with you any further. Science has thrown up shedloads of evidence that our intuitions are fundamentally awry regarding that, and self, and consciousness. The proportion, for those things is nowhere near miniscule. It is abundant. Human intuitions are endemically wrong about those things. An intuitive, colloquial, introspective understanding is inadequate, and has been repeatedly demonstrated to be inadequate.

Obviously, you are wrong.

No, I am not obviously wrong, as any survey of the copious amounts of available evidence would confirm.

You rely on that all the time, even to be able to respond in this thread (e.g., you rely on intuition to know that we had this exchange in the fist place, clearly).
But I wasn't even trying to discuss whether there is free will, but using your rejection of it at data to show you that you reject moral intuitions. You reject them in other cases as well.

Perhaps in 'going about my daily business' I don't have time to query my intuitions and I often act on them, and a great deal of the time that seems to work out quite well, but it is also true that I know that my intuitions (in the general sense) can often be wrong, so if there's time to pause and consider, I might not be so trusting of my intuitions as I am initially and instinctively. And that may be more the case for certain things and not others, so the strength of my trust in my intuitions about one type of thing might not be the same as for another thing or type of thing.

No, unless you have good reasons to distrust your moral intuitions.

When I consider intuitions in general, when I have time to do that and am not rushing hither and thither through my day with little time for reflection, I think of them as 'things that could easily be wrong'.

When I consider my intuitions about free will, self and consciousness, I can see from copious amounts of science that my intuitions can easily be and very often are awry.

When it comes to my intuitions on morality, an additional problem is my thinking that morality is only in our heads. Another additional one is that there is so much variety. Should I trust my intuitions, or yours, or his, or hers, or theirs?

 

[ruby sparks]

So, we were doing Nazis killing Jews, and I asked a few specific questions related to that example. It isn't just among religious people, or among religious people acting for other reasons, that killing outgroup members (competitors) is/was a feature, so in some ways religion is merely a special case of a general. It's also common among several other animal species. Why should human apes be different?

I make an intuitive assessment. But also, religion/ideology works in a similar way. The people committing massacres in Nazi times were not using their moral sense, but following Nazi instead. When they used their moral sense, many of them recoiled and realized it was wrong. Others actually demonized their enemies, so they have beliefs about their enemies that were not true, and that partially were used to justify their moral assessments (i.e., false input).

Now, if I am in error, the proper conclusion would not be that there is no fact of the matter. Why would it? Humans and other apes have local rules in addition to species-wide morality, and also moral rules against violating local rules in many cases. If you are correct, the proper conclusion would be that the prohibition on killing outgroup members is just one of our local laws, and it's immoral for us to do it, but I made the mistake of thinking it was a universal law, so it was not immoral on their part. But that is very improbable. If you look at the pattern of behaviors, those killings generally involve things like demonization (false negative beliefs about what their victims did, want, etc.), and the use of religion/ideology instead of a moral sense.

Ok, this 'killing' issue is, I think, worth particular attention.

I do not think it is enough, in the end, to say that people were just following 'incorrect' Nazi ideas. Many might have been, but killing of outgroup members seems far too common for it to be explained in only that way. Killing outgroup members is something that appears to be a common behaviour that may go all the way back through evolution for millions of years, and may be something we share with many other species, perhaps especially social species and/or species we are related to in evolutionary terms.

We might even say that there is a moral fact to it (the way we are using moral fact, to be an endemic trait).

Yes, sometimes the killing of outgroup members may be informed by false beliefs about them or their intentions, but at the same time there is often nothing at all false about the arguably most crucial of all belief (I might even say fact) that you or your ingroup are competing with outgroups for resources on which to survive, and that the outgroup members want some of yours. That, is arguably an evolutionary imperative and completely rational function (not a malfunction) of survival in a world of competition.

Now, to set against that, we might say, with a lot of justification I think, that there are, nonetheless, 'species-wide moral facts' about killing other members of your species. But the rules for outgroup members may differ from those for ingroup members, in that the justifications would differ. Because I am going to (surprise, surprise) offer a candidate example of a human species-wide moral 'fact', namely:

"It is wrong to kill (and perhaps we might even say harm) another member of your species, without justification".

So there you have it. I could have thought of others that I had considered, but that's my first candidate.

I like that we do not seem to be in quite as much disagreement about morality as about free will.

I think the last two words of that rule (fact?) is where the real difficulty starts, when we encounter the devil in the detail.