Comments on: Bright Morals

By: gry java

gry java — Tue, 13 Jan 2004 21:55:30 +0000

Mein Hobby ist es Gästebücher zu besuchen. Das ist immer ganz interessant und widerspiegelt so, was die Leute im Internet wirklich denken. War auch interessant bei Dir ! Bis zum nächsten Mal. All The Best OfNew Year. Sorry for my english i’am from Germany.

By: Matt Evans

Matt Evans — Wed, 30 Jul 2003 05:44:09 +0000

I’ve issued a challenge to those who think they can deduce a moral premise from nature at The Buck Stops Here. Please stop by! stuartbuck.blogspot.com – Matt Evans

By: Brian Weatherson

Brian Weatherson — Tue, 29 Jul 2003 19:18:20 +0000

I don’t find that kind of position on free will very attractive, but I don’t have any idea how to start building an argument against it. But my gut feeling is that my position is going to end up resembling Dave Chalmers’s views on consciousness. As in bq. Whether someone is free in a particular situation is independent of what the actual world is like. This makes ‘being free’ like ‘having experiences’ and unlike ‘being water’. Whether a particular substance is water depends on what the actual world is like. But not the others. (Insert sound of table being hit hard just about her.) Er, if I had a better argument than that, I’d be running it here. Basically I think conceivability and possibility only come apart for natural kind terms, and ‘free will’ isn’t a natural kind. But both premises here are at best highly debatable.

By: Keith DeRose

Keith DeRose — Tue, 29 Jul 2003 17:33:34 +0000

—————————- In general, I think there’s an important disanalogy between reasoning here about mathematics, where all the relevant propositions are necesssary and a priori, and reasoning about ethics. —————————- And you seem to think in the realm of ethics, the argument form, You’d continue to believe that P even if you came to know that Q; so, you’re committed to the compatibility of P & Q, or something like that, holds promise, even though that argument form fails in math. I wonder, then, what you think of the compatibilist argument I reject in the non-mathematical area of free action & determinism? I’m guessing you back that argument, or at least think it holds some promise. I think the van Inwagen-style incompatibilist stance is quite sensible (and in fact take that stance myself): I’m an incompatibilist, but show me that determinism is true, and I’ll become a compatibilist rather than give up my belief in free action. But that involves rejecting the compaitibilist style argument in the realm of ethics-not-math.

By: Keith DeRose

Keith DeRose — Tue, 29 Jul 2003 17:09:59 +0000

————————The anti-naturalists I had in mind were arguing (or at least seemed to be arguing) that we can infer from commonly accepted premises that there are no ethical obligations in a perfectly natural world. As far as I can tell, your position agrees that that is false. It might be impossible that there are ethical obligations in a natural world, but any argument for that involves a premise that is in dispute, like the actual falsity of naturalism.————————- Right. We’re agreed here. (Sorry: I haven’t found how to itallicize in comments.)

By: Brian Weatherson

Brian Weatherson — Tue, 29 Jul 2003 17:01:56 +0000

Well, OK, there’s a gap in the particular argument I gave. I was certainly assuming that around here conceivability and possibility are pretty closely tied together, and maybe that’s wrong. Let’s look at what the lie of the land is without that assumption. All the thought experiment shows is that we (or at lest those of us who aren’t convinced beyond all doubt that naturalism is false) take it to be an epistemic possibility that there could be ethical obligations in a perfectly natural world. Similarly in the Goldbach case, there’s an epistemic possibility that the Goldbach conjecture is false. And we know in general that this kind of epistemic possibility (epistemic possibility without perfect understanding of the concepts involved, in this case numbers) doesn’t imply metaphysical possibility, which might be what’s important here. (Or it might not, as I’ll get to presently.) What does this show? Well, a few things: (a) If conceivability entails possibility in the ethical case then it’s a metaphysical possibility that there are ethical obligations in a perfectly natural world. For what it’s worth, I’m inclined to think a restricted conceivability-possibility connection will go through here. (b) It shows that there’s no proven incoherence in the position of the naturalist who believes in ethical obligations, because as we’ve agreed, it’s an epistemic possibility that there are ethical obligations in a perfectly natural world, but if this incoherence had been proven that would no longer be an epistemic possibility. In general, I think there’s an important disanalogy between reasoning here about mathematics, where all the relevant propositions are necesssary and a priori, and reasoning about ethics. In maths incoherence and impossibility really do go together, and both come apart from known falsity. In ethics/meta-ethics, it’s not clear how these concepts connect. If you want to hold a position that says, “It could have turned out that ethical obligations apply in a natural world, but in fact as it actually turns out ethical obligations are necessarily linked to some extra-natural being”, the arguments here were meant to challenge that position. (I’d think there are other arguments against it, particularly Euthyphro arguments, but that’s a different post. I may as well add here that I wasn’t even arguing against the view that naturalists have to take some unattractive but coherent meta-ethical position, like non-cognitivism. Again, I doubt it, but nothing here even starts to be a response to those arguments, which are serious arguments.) The anti-naturalists I had in mind were arguing (or at least seemed to be arguing) that we can infer from commonly accepted premises that there are no ethical obligations in a perfectly natural world. As far as I can tell, your position agrees that that is false. It might be impossible that there are ethical obligations in a natural world, but any argument for that involves a premise that is in dispute, like the actual falsity of naturalism. Remember I wasn’t trying to give some knock-down proof of naturalism. It’s certainly (epistemically) possible that there’s an argument from naturalist premises plus some other things that are true to the conclusion that there are no ethical obligations. But that’s just because if naturalism is false there are arguments from naturalist premises plus true premises to any old conclusion whatsoever, because our premises will now be inconsistent. (I assume here that we also don’t have conclusive proof that naturalism is true – anyone who disagrees should ignore this last paragraph, and indeed probably this entire comment.)

By: Keith DeRose

Keith DeRose — Tue, 29 Jul 2003 16:37:56 +0000

I reject the basic form of one of the key arguments used in the post. It looks like: If we came to know that P, we’d still believe that Q; so, P and Q are compatible (or “compossible,” as Brian’s post has it). Perhaps more charitably, it’s something more like: Even if you came to know that P, you’d still believe that Q; so, you’re committed to the compatibility of P & Q. Or something like that. No matter: I reject all such forms of argument. I’m far from sure about the matter, but I’m inclined to think free action and determinism are incompatible: in no possible world is it both the case that determinism is true and free actions are performed. I also believe, fairly tentatively, that determinism is false and, fairly firmly, that I do perform free actions. If some compatibilist were to ask me whether I’d hang on to my belief that I perform free actions even if I came to know that determinism is true, I’d definitely admit the answer is “yes.” If she then declared: “Aha! So you are committed the compatibility of free action and determinism,” I’d reject that as a fallacious argument. I answer the three relevant questions as follows: 1. Do you sometimes act freely? Yes [fairly firm] 2. Is determinism true? No [fairly tentative] 3. Is free action compatible with determinism? No [fairly tentative] The compatibilist is asking me to imagine that I came to know that the answer to 2 is yes, and asking how I’d revise my relevant beliefs if I did come to know that. My response is that I’d then hang on to my positive answer to 1, and change my answer to 3 from “no” to “yes”: Show me that determinism is true, and, even though I’m an incompatibilist, you won’t get me to give up my belief in free action (though perhaps some others have belief sets where this would be their reaction, and it would be a rational reaction). Rather, you’ll then make me convert from incompatibilism to compatibilism. But what I don’t see is why that should make me a compatibilist now, without having seen the demonstration of determinism. [Here I take myself to be adopting the same basic position that Peter van Inwagen adopted in his great book, AN ESSAY ON FREE WILL (Oxford UP, 1983); for a very sensible discussion of this way of reacting to the possible news that determinism is true, see esp. pp. 219-221.] Let N be some naturalist thesis, and change our questions to: 1. Are some actions morally wrong? 2. Is N true? 3. Is N compatible with the moral wrongness of some actions? And I think we get the same story. Some type of anti-naturalist may well answer: 1: Yes [very firm]; 2: No [less firm]; 3: No [less firm]. They can admit that if they came to know that they were wrong about 2, they’d then change their mind about 3, but, as far as I can see, have been given no reason yet to change their mind about 3 now. Similarly for the teleosemanticist who thinks that meaningfulness of mental states is incompatible with a particular creationist story, C, but is willing to admit that if she actually came to know that C is true, she’d then revise her claim of incompatibility. Here’s a less controversial example that might convince some of the invalidity of the form of argument in question. Let A be the anti-Goldbach property: a number has property A if it is not the sum of two primes. You are a mathematician considering a very large natural number which we’ll call “Charlie.” You’re sure that Charlie is an even number and is greater than 2. You haven’t checked whether Charlie has property A, and you’re not certain as to whether it does, but you’re strongly inclined to think it doesn’t. You think, and have good reason to believe, that Goldbach’s Conjecture [every even number greater than 2 is the sum of two primes – in our terminology: no even number greater than 2 has property A] is probably true. Suppose that some mathematicians you know and rationally trust claim that they’re closing in on a proof of Goldbach’s Conjecture. They’re not sure it will work, but it needs just a few holes to be plugged, and they think they will probably be able to plug those holes successfully – though they admit that there is some chance that the proof can’t be completed, and that maybe GC isn’t even true after all. Still, they think that GC is probably true, and, based on their reasons, you rationally believe that GC is probably true….. So, you’re an “incompatibilist”: you think that, probably, Charlie’s being an even number greater than 2 is incompatible with it having property A (and you think your friends will probably soon prove this incompatibility). Still, if some “compatibilist” were to ask what you would conclude if you determined that Charlie had property A, you’d have to admit that you’d continue to believe that Charlie is an even number greater than 2 and would revise your belief about the incompatibility of that with Charlie’s having property A. What you would do is inform your friends that they turned out to be wrong: GC turns out to be false, and Charlie’s being even (and greater than 2) is compatible with its having property A after all. That’s what you would do if you came to know that Charlie has property A. But, as I hope everyone can sense, admitting that doesn’t commit you now to the compatibility of Charlie’s being even (and greater than 2) with its having property A. That’s no way to prove the compatibility of being an even number greater than 2 with having property A! If that were a good way to show compatibility, we’d be in a position to very quickly and all-too-easily lay to rest a lot of problems in math!

By: Anarch

Anarch — Tue, 29 Jul 2003 06:41:34 +0000

Otherwise “ought” would have to be some sort of reification, some abstraction of duty. Philosophers either tend to make the duty owed to an imaginary deity, or they choose a naturalistic approach and base the duty on the desires of mere mortals. Not necessarily; you could have a notion of a “natural order”, where moral deviation is measured by deviation from that order. One can look at the Tao in that light, for example.

By: Mike Huben

Mike Huben — Tue, 29 Jul 2003 02:41:10 +0000

The “no ought from is” principle works because “ought” really implies somebody or something to which duty or obligation is owed. Otherwise “ought” would have to be some sort of reification, some abstraction of duty. Philosophers either tend to make the duty owed to an imaginary deity, or they choose a naturalistic approach and base the duty on the desires of mere mortals. Much of philosophy seems to be based on incomplete statements: once you complete the statement (as in this case youfind whome the duty is owed to), the situation is greatly simplified and much more concrete and honest.

By: Lawrence Solum

Lawrence Solum — Tue, 29 Jul 2003 02:39:47 +0000

By: Stuart Buck

Stuart Buck — Tue, 29 Jul 2003 02:25:29 +0000

I respond here.

By: russell l. carter

russell l. carter — Mon, 28 Jul 2003 23:58:06 +0000

“Sixty years ago, Nazis tortured and killed Jews by the millions, man, woman, or child. they thoought they were doing good, indeed ridding the world of evil.” But the Nazis didn’t get efficient until they removed responsibility from ordinary soldiers onto a somewhat self-selected very few: from http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?ModuleId=10005220: “Use of gas vans began after Einsatzgruppe members complained of battle fatigue and mental anguish caused by shooting large numbers of women and children.” But of course a variety of “communists” were in sheer numbers considerably more lethal. However! You don’t say it explicitly, but if you mean to imply that history does not provide examples of morally equivalent atrocities committed at the behest of all manner of theists, then that’s not true. Most of the truly egregious ones in terms of proportional devastion occurred in earlier times when theists controlled state power. Now that they don’t, the worst they can do is devastate their own local flock. Considerably simplifying, I’d offer that the death of stalinism occurred at least in part because enough of the world irregardless of whether they were theist or not eventually recognized the moral bankruptcy of it as an ethical system. And that includes a large number of its adherents as well. Evidently there is something more fundamental at the root of this evolution in thought than theistic sermonizing.

By: Shai

Shai — Mon, 28 Jul 2003 23:02:14 +0000

Nevermind what the Nazis thought, I think it’s pretty obvious that torturing babies for fun is wrong course of action even if it isn’t a naturalistic fact. There is a social consensus that functions as if it were a fact, and further, anyone living in a society with remotely similar values and social institutions will probably agree it isn’t the best course of action. But I think there’s something about being human that makes most people sick just thinking about the possibility. Even if there were a society where this is the thing to do, the person arguing for it would still have to convince me that it’s a good idea. In my previous post I wasn’t descending into ethical relativism! I agree with Brian.

By: Shuan Rose

Shuan Rose — Mon, 28 Jul 2003 21:55:06 +0000

Did I miss something? Sixty years ago, Nazis tortured and killed Jews by the millions, man, woman, or child. they thoought they were doing good, indeed ridding the world of evil. Nine years ago, Hutus slaughtered Tutsis in Rwanda. The armies of mass murderers who worked for Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot did’nt think they were doing anything wrong-no, they thought they were making the world safe for Communism and that was a Good Thing.Many of those people were quite regular folks, not Hannibal Lector types. Given the facts of history, I do not think it is at all obvious that torturing babies is wrong.

By: Russell L. Carter

Russell L. Carter — Mon, 28 Jul 2003 21:43:40 +0000

Perhaps the question is formally undecidable from within every rational ethical system. The theist gleefully concludes that what should be is what he has been told to believe by the flavor of his faith. The naturalist shrugs his shoulders and concludes that what should be is whatever his group(s) have decided over the reach of time. Inevitably some of these groups will err, as inevitably do theistic prescriptions. The naturalistic explanation is the simplest possible. Given the theistic requirement of enormous elaboration beyond the observable, which historically has produced ethical systems at least as repugnant as those of any secular ideology, the theists have quite the burden of proof.