This is something that we just can't debate. Either you are correctly grasping our language or you aren't. Whichever one of us is right, it can't be proved in debate. All I can do is make the following two points: Should: Look at these conversations: "I want to buy a Wii" "You should save up for one then" "If you hadn't made that racist joke she might've come home with you" "Yeah! With hindsight I shouldn't have done that" This is not the only way that we use the word 'should' but it is clearly atleast one way. The 'should' in the above sentences is clearly the 'should' of practical reason - what I could do to achieve my aims. And such 'shoulds' can be worked out rationally through cause and effect - I should do something if it causes my aim. Happiness: In my experience, the only people who are sceptical about whether we really want to be happy are those who are questioning it for the sake of questioning. I.e. asking philosophical questions. Even then, I've never seen that scepticism arise in their decision making. Even people who do terrible things to themselves either justify it in that it makes them happy, or if it doesn't then they wish they could stop themselves in order to be happy. This is why I think that you are the one who is misunderstanding 'happiness' as my 'theory' of it fits how everyone uses it in everyday decision making. Remember, all the sceptics of rational objectivism from Mackie to Ayer are all being counter intuitive and using complex philosophical arguments, so if how we commonly use the word is the decider then their positions clearly fail. No. Why should there be one? All I am doing is showing how we can call some actions rational and some actions irrational. If someone didn't want to be rational then I could hardly persuade them rationally now, could I? Where in my theory does the objectivity of moral facts depend on what the person believes? I was wondering when you would come round. Instrumentalist practical reason is something I've never seen someone sceptical of before. So you agree that there's a rational 'shoulds' given that we have an aim? Now do you agree that there are objective facts about human nature? This is where we get back to 'needs' - things that humans naturally aim for. These are anthropological facts about the nature of the human being. I know what you're going to say here, that our aims are subjective, but I think you over-state the separation between subjectivity and objectivity. "Balloons are nice" is a subjective statement from my first person point of view. "Strafio thinks balloons are nice" states the same truth, but from an objective third person point of view. So there can be a connection between third person objective facts about us and our first person subjective nature. So here is my argument for the objectivity of practical reason: 1) Our decision making language is founded on the principle that we aim for what makes us happy. 2) There are objective facts about what kind of conditions are necessary for happiness. 3) There are objective facts about what actions will lead to these conditions. It appears that you only disagree with condition (1) at the moment. But you agree, that if hypothetically that someone was aiming for what makes them happy then there would be objective facts about how is best to achieve this aim and if so, there would be rational ways of going about it and irrational ways of going about it? If you just agree with that, I'd be happy to leave the debate here. My only last word on the happiness issue would be the point I made at the top of this post in bold. From there I would leave it to your own opinion based on your experience of decision making conversations.
I actually know why I do this, two reasons. First. When I'm answering something sometimes I try to cover a question that hasn't been asked but I feel may come up. (Sometimes it's a bit like covering a base no-one is trying to steal sadly.) Second. (This happens less than the first but does happen.) Sometimes I'm trying explain something to myself. (Don't ask, it's a habit.)
I think that with the language of decision making, paying too much attention to the experience confuses things. Our descriptive language is all about pointing to objects that we experience. Decision making has a different purpose, and while experience plays it's part, it's more important to look at how we use it in practice.
I think the mistake you are making is that you see what we'd consider an obvious decision such as: "I want to buy a Wii" "You should save up for one then" which I'd agree with. But you then go and try and extrapolate a logical law. For instance if you want X you should do what you can to obtain X. And then you have to run into difficulties, for instance if someone says "I want to murder a child" (which we've been through before, but I'm hoping you'll see it in a new light now) you'd probably say, "you shouldn't do that" and you then have to amend your logical law to incorporate other things. The fact is that when we say someone should save up for a wii, we are not using logic, but rather our common sense instincts or intuitions. The point isn't whether we want to be happy, but rather if we can deduce from our desire to be happy an objectively right way of acting. I came up with an analogy in class today about how I view certain attempts to rationalize the scientific method, but i think it is at least as relevant to this. People sometimes say "You should never lie" and try to make a logical law from that. They then need to amend that law to fit in "we should only lie to spare someone else's feelings". They then need to amend that to say "we should only lie to spare people's feelings when it will not cause any other harm". Eventually the adjustments to the law grow increasingly complicated, because it ignores the fact that we can only decide whether or not to lie by looking subjectively at the situation, instead of trying to follow some logical laws. I think you're incorrectly tried to deduce certain objective laws about how we ought to act, when what we really need to do is look inwards. lol. But if there is no logical way of deciding whether or not to act rationally, acting rationally can't be said to be a rational decision itself. Can't you see that we cannot truly find an objective true method of decision making. In the end we have to choose what we feel is right. I thought you were saying that there was an objectively right way of acting, but it was only objectively right if you already believed that there was an objectively right way of acting (or something). I haven't come around. I don't believe the "should" of your arguments is really something that defines how we should behave. I've never really had a problem with that. I can accept that whether someone likes something is objective, it is how someone "should" behave that I think we can only decide irrationally. I don't really disagree with one, but I do disagree that from our decision making language we can deduce logical laws about how one should live their lives. No. I'd agree that there are ways that are more likely to let you succeed, but not that they are rational. lol. The funny thing is, I thought you were just about to admit that I was right all along and it seems you expected me to do the same thing. Hmmm..
Hey strafio you might fancy to take a look at this guy and his stuff.. [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8nB2FjS8AQ"]Universally Preferable Behaviour: A Rational Proof of Ethics - YouTube[/ame] I'm pretty curious myself to get a hold of the pdf for his book, i was wondering how far you are in synch with objectivist philosophy generally? Even though i'm curious I doubt very much this book in conclusion amounts to much more than moral/ethical values people already basically use like "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" etc. I think fundementally we come to experience the meaning and value and practicality of moral codes/guides rather than reason them out - though I think we might or preferably do some of that to justify our positions. My gut feeling is they are more born out of practical living than practical reasoning. Not that we don't use practical reason at all. But maybe you are over stating our use of it in relation to our general day to day, year to year moral behaviors and actions ? Of course it is preferable that anyone doesn't use force to get things from others or make them do what they want (including governments..) But that's all we can say, what is preferable. We can't treat it exactly like a law of gravity. "Universal preferable behaviour" interesting that he alludes to preferences though.. This guy seems almost evangelical in his aim to "slay the beast of subjectivism". I'll get hold of it some time today i think and let you know where it goes.. I watched one of his other podcast and it was pretty good, though that one is more of a plug for the book. But anyway i though it might be of interest. A link to the site is www.freedomainradio.com. Interesting forum..
I can't believe I listened to that for 20mins and he didn't even tell us his theory. If anything he just listed most of the things wrong with Stafio's. EDIT: I just found an article of his detailing his theory and it's all wrong.
lol! I know I know - i did warn ya it was mostly a plug for the book. But yea i did take note of what he listed at the end.. where is it Lj am curious to see it - cheers. edit: this one i guess http://freedomain.blogspot.com/2007/01/universal-morality-proposition.html or this one http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/molyneux8.html
Yep, the first one. His argument for saying that our values can be shown to objectively deduced seems to come from his belief that rejecting it requires the belief that truth is objectively preferable to falsehood, which is nonsense.
LJoll, I was going to take your last post point by point, but I got the impression that it was all based on a big strawman. You have a very narrow view of logic, with the idea that mathematical logic is all there is to logic. It's got to be absolute or it's nothing. That appears to be why you refuse to call is 'rational' and call it 'sensible' instead. I'd actually like to see what you mean by sensible, because to me it sounds like "more or less logic just not as absolutely precise as mathematical logic". The flavour of your latest posts seem to come across as a dissatisfaction in general with logic and reason.
I skimmed it rather than go through detail, but it sounds so far he's on a similar wavelength to me. Objectivism is a dirty word! It is associate with Ayn Rands philosophy! I don't really care much for 'isms'. It really depends on what the objectivist is claiming. I agree with this. Reason is for settling disputes. I don't think that I should always be thinking in terms of reason and I think that a big part of morality is just doing it naturally. But from time to time you will face disputes and personal dilemnas. These are the kinds of problems we can use reason to settle. Subjectivists, in my view, give up by saying "it's all just personal opinion" and then we have no right or method of settling dispute. Not at all. If you look back I've pointed out a several times that my arguments are a direct response to LJoll's scepticism that morality can be rationally justified. We have spent all this time talking about reason as that is the topic at hand.
In a way I'd say I am dissatisfied with logic and reason. I feel the most important things in life can't be proved or understood through a rational process. I still don't believe your argument is really something that is accurately deduced. I'd like to come back to my point about not breaking the word "should" down into different externally defined meanings. What I feel you did was break an intuitive idea of what we consider that we "should" do, into separate, precisely defined concepts that you treated as objective laws. However, I don't believe that our idea of what we "should" do can be reduced to these concepts and a symptom of this is that you've had to create numerous exceptions to your theory to try and keep it in line with reality. The word "should" seems to be complicating things, but if you take a more general look at the question by asking "what makes one thing better than another", it's obvious that you cannot answer this on an objective level.
Ev'rybody's talking about Bagism, Shagism, Dragism, Madism, Ragism, Tagism This-ism, That-ism, is-m, is-m, is-m
I wasn't trying to make claims about 'should' in general. The question was whether rationality can have a place in morality so I gave examples to show that the word should can be used in a rational way, so it was possible to treat morality in a rational way. Point some of these exceptions out to me. I've admitted that when people use the word 'should' they aren't necessarily using the 'should' of practical reason, just pointed out that they can be. From there, I don't think I've needed any ad hoc exceptions at all. Being happy is surely better than being miserable, right? That's the first grounding. And there are objective facts about what makes us happy. I wouldn't say that objective facts absolutely determine happiness, because I think that would be OTT, but you can make objective observations about what in general makes people happy. You'll never pick absolute details but who says we need absolute details? So reasoning in morality will always be slightly vague, not as clear cut as the sort we see in mathematics, but it's still reason. I think it's this slight vagueness is why you prefer to call it 'sensible' rather than rational. I'll also restate my opinion that you've got a narrow and distorted view on what logic and reason is. You've perhaps gotten used to too many stereotypes about it or something. Getting sick of it is actually a good thing, because it encourages you to drop all your old conceptions about it, then gradually you'll find yourself finding reason to be useful, realise what it really is with no more misunderstandings or false expectations. This isn't an argument or anything, just a prediction on how your opinion on reason will change.
Well you can use the word should by redefining it, but it doesn't help tell us what to do. Instead of actually contributing any knowledge you're defining words so that they're consistent within a certain logical structure. So you admit that just because you desire x, you shouldn't necessarily do it? How do you make that consistent with a logical view of morality? The fact that we can define the word 'should' in such a way that it directly follows from facts of nature doesn't really affect how we should make decisions. It is equivalent to saying I can objectively prove one painting is better than another: Paintings with lots of red in them are better than ones without much red. Painting X has more red than Y, which has hardly any red at all. Painting X is better than Y. I've treated it no less rationally than you have, but I doubt you think that you can deduce that one paining is objectively better than any other with logic. In my opinion. I wouldn't say it objectively is. It's sensible because it goes along with what most people instinctively feel to be right, it isn't rational because at no point is it really logically deduced. What is the other logic then?
cloudhandz, I forgot to admit that I misused the terms "a priori" and "a posteriori". I reread the thread and noticed I forgot to acknowledge that. So, there it is, and sorry about that. I geuss the point would have been better made by saying those terms weren't necessarily synonymous with what I was talking about. Again sorry for not taking the time to understand those terms it would have made our exchange shorter if nothing else. (I'm actually looking into them to further understand their use. It seems there are a couple of camps a few of which say that priori knowledge isn't possible, like Hume, and others who draw a line after certain things are in place.)
I gave examples to show that we do use should in this way. It's not the only way that we use should but we do. So it's clear that practical reason in this way is possible. I've explained this to you so many times that I don't know why I keep having to repeat it. You do what you desire unless it contradicts a stronger desire. We always make decisions in real life about things we'd like to do, but won't because it will clash with something we'd like more. E.g. she's tempting but I'd rather live my life without HIV, or something like that. So there's two levels of practical reason: 1) The best way to go about achieving an aim once I have an aim. 2) How to choose between different aims. Lesser aims, e.g. the aim to get laid or the aim to resist temptation, will be judged in terms of higher aims, e.g. to stay healthy. So choosing between lesser aims is actually an example of (1). Infact, I don't know why I'm still explaining this to you because you know this but you just call it sensible rather than rational. Here you're once again demanding too much from practical reason. Remember I gave that example with mathematics? Once the groundwork is in place, e.g. I know the rules of counting, the rules for addition, mathematical reason is possible. Questions like "Is 2 a number?" question the groundwork itself. The groundwork cannot be rationally justified - it has to be in place before reason is possible. Reason starts with the groundwork in place. You keep denying the groundwork of practical reason. Maybe some people out there don't have this groundwork, and they will be incapable of practical reason. But this groundwork exists for atleast some people so they will be able to apply reason to their decision making. You call this groundwork 'sensibility', and you're right that it comes intuitively. It comes hand in hand with our practice of talking about decision making, and letting discussion affect our decisions. And it is necessary for our decision making language to have any meaning. Reason doesn't have to deal with absolutes. Arithmetic has been found that it can be determined by 5 rules, the five axioms of Peano Arithmatic. They describe absolutely everything in the system and the truths within arithmetic are absolutely determined by them. Reason doesn't have to deal with such absolutely defined concepts. Our everyday language employs concepts more loosely, not always with strict explicit rules. Is there a dichotomy between absolute rules and no rules? No. There's loose rules in between, rules of thumb. Often such rules are too loose to be absolutely defined but this doesn't matter because we get an intuitive grasp of them. When dealing in looser rules, reason is less absolute, but there's still reasoning going on nonetheless. It's less clear when a contradiction is a contradiction because there's a question whether the rule has been properly applied. Take the suggestion: "Never jump out of an aeroplane without a parachute!" Sensible, yes? Does it contradict "Jumping out of an aeroplane with a jetpack is okay"? If you took it as a literal absolute, yes. If you grasped the spirit of it, the way it was intended, then no. We'd say that someone who claimed there was a contradiction between the two was being pedantic, i.e. treating a rule of thumb like an absolute and thereby missing the point.
You've given examples of ways we use the word that look a bit like the logical argument you gave. To extend the analogy I used before, it is like someone saying that they like a picture with lots of red in it, then you saying that they were using the word "like" to mean "has lots of red in it". You've incorrectly used a particular example of the usage of a word to extrapolate a logical truth which really doesn't exist (although I think you honestly know that "should" doesn't mean that.) I've explained this to you so many times that I don't know why I keep having to repeat it. You do what you desire unless it contradicts a stronger desire. We always make decisions in real life about things we'd like to do, but won't because it will clash with something we'd like more. E.g. she's tempting but I'd rather live my life without HIV, or something like that. But can't you see that your exceptions to your original rule directly contradict it. We intuitively know that the objections stand. The problem is that your original rule is not true. It is simply an approximation of what our instincts will tell us. Well I think you've got your groundwork all wrong. Why would you consider that to be logical at all? Why even try to apply some vague logical form to it? We intuitively know we shouldn't jump out of an aeroplane. You can't apply to principles to other situations, without being pedantic. Why on Earth would you then consider the answer to be deduced using logic? What you're doing seems to be a weird attempt to apply logic to something that is clearly does not fit. With a right angled triangle you can use logic to deduce that the squares of the two shorter sides are equal to the square of the longer side, which is not necessarily intuitively obvious to us. On the other hand, with your moral questions logic does not add to our knowledge at all: we work out what is intuitively right and then try to fit a vaguely coherent logical structure to it.
What exceptions to what rule? That you do what you desire unless you have a stronger one that contradicts it? The exception isn't really an exception really, it's still doing what you desire, just that some desires are stronger than others Logic is the rule of debate. When you have two opposing rules, logical rules can settle the dispute. What's more, logic follows the rules of language so wherever there's a language there's logic that can guide debate in that language. You seem to have been show formal logic in a uni course and assumed that that's all there is to logic. In maths, logical arguments are absolute. The concepts and groundwork is so clearly defined that an error can only be an error in the logic, so logical arguments are absolute. When the rules aren't so clear, the rules aren't so absolute. That doesn't mean that there are no rules at all. So there's still room for logic in morality, it just doesn't have the absoluteness that it does in mathematics. Why call is logic? Because it's still rules for debate that hold. Or rather, we try and find the logic roots of our decision-making practice and by recognising these roots we have the ability to find clearer answers. Mathematics was practiced long before they finally grounded mathematical theory into axioms. Standardising these axioms was a discovery of how we had been naturally doing maths before, the intuitive grounding of mathematics, but some of the results following from these axioms weren't always intuitive and we wouldn't have been able to find them without looking at the roots of mathematics. Morality is different to mathematics, logic plays a much lesser role. But it's important to recognise some logic as it does have it's uses. In life there will be disputes over what a person should do, and logical method can solve these disputes. We can also use logic to make predictions. Think about this: Surely it happens to everyone in life that they do something, but then they really regret it and wish that they hadn't. They know they were wrong because they regret it, but the feelings that informed them didn't come about until after they had done it. Feelings don't always give us the information we need when we need it. By taking a look at morality from an objective standpoint, we have access to a foresight that we just don't get if we rely purely on feelings.
It is still an exception. Do what you want unless there is another reason not to do it. More importantly you admit there are other aspects to our decision making process which can directly contradict your original proposition, which are clear evidence that your original proposition is not true. Not all debates use logic. When people argue about objective facts, their arguments usually follow some sort of logical structure, but when people argue over opinion, such as the merits of a particular piece of music, it rarely involves anything that can be described as logic. Interesting, but I agree that there are mathematical facts and that maths is an inherently logical process. I think it is a mistake to try and so the same thing with morality. I have never suggested that we simply stumble around blindly. If you simply believe that we should treat morality as if it were logical, then fair enough, I don't happen to think that is the best way to live your life.
