1. The emerging moral psychology

Comment #177315 by Spinoza on May 8, 2008 at 10:58 pm

Also, I just realized you seem to have made what looks to be a massive error in saying that all statements of the form "You ought to X." are moral.

No, they aren't. I would venture to posit that MOST statements of that form are hypothetical imperatives truncated from the form: "You ought to X, if you want Y." And the vast majority of these are certainly not moral statements. They could be statements of etiquette or of proper-function...

Philippa Foot thinks that moral statements are hypothetical imperatives, but it doesn't follow that all hypothetical imperatives are moral.

2. My Response to Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

Comment #177188 by Spinoza on May 8, 2008 at 5:57 pm

AfraidToDie, I only meant that you oughtn't universalize or rationalize your behaviours as though any human being who does not appear think or act in a way you think is "natural" is somehow secretly doing it and is therefore guilty of pretentiousness.

By all means, use genetics as your excuse, but it's certainly not a moral vindication (as that is what the theists accuse atheists of doing, even in the face of Prof. Dawkins' rebuke of the infamous Dostoevsky quotation).

That said, I don't think there's anything particularly wrong (at all) with such behaviours so long as they are done honestly...

Just watch the hasty generalizations.

3. My Response to Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

Comment #177180 by Spinoza on May 8, 2008 at 5:41 pm

When I see a hot looking female walk by, I know better than to make my wife feel bad by gawking; but come on, if you don't take a sly double take on an obvious physical attraction, then that's no different than putting on Catholic Priest attire and claiming to be holier than the common man; it's a charade.

False.

4. My Response to Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

Comment #177175 by Spinoza on May 8, 2008 at 5:33 pm

Prince Rogers Nelson. :)

... btw, a couple of the jokes Rabbi Shmuley told in the first youtube video were, as Richard acknowledged, quite good.

I laughed at the one about the wife coming home, checking the bed... and...

hehe... But that doesn't ameliorate the invective and ignorance ridden rant he works in and around the jokes...

5. My Response to Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

Comment #177172 by Spinoza on May 8, 2008 at 5:23 pm

Mitchell, you are confusing Prof. Dawkins with Prince?

6. My Response to Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

Comment #177165 by Spinoza on May 8, 2008 at 5:14 pm

I'm actually rather impressed that Boteach admitted the following:

So here we are. You and I did debate. You lost that debate, which is no big deal because, as we both know, debates are more about entertainment than serious scholarship

Exaaaaaaaaaaaaactly.

7. The emerging moral psychology

Comment #177039 by Spinoza on May 8, 2008 at 1:45 pm

If there's a "should", "Shall", "ought to" or equivalent, it's about morality.

I didn't say it wasn't! I said that there is a distinction that ought to be made between some statements and others, and I gave a somewhat truncated analysis of cases where the distinction holds.

When I said that it isn't their morality, I meant that it isn't their properly basic morality... that is to say, it isn't their bedrock/foundational (likely somewhat Darwinian in nature) conscience saying "This is wrong for its own sake."

It is probably important to note that so-called "hard-cases" are often hard BECAUSE they are a result of this confusion.

People don't flip-flop or change throughout their lifetime on the easy cases like murder or gratuitous, malevolent violence/theft.

But people can, and do often flip-flop (or at least harbour some doubts as to the justificatory status of their beliefs, except perhaps in the most voraciously religious of persons) on issues like abortion, homosexuality, etc. PRECISELY because these things are non-foundational... they are being mapped onto foundational concepts (even "What God wants is what's good." is a more foundational concept that might be utilized by incredibly unsophisticated religious types).

... I was simply trying to convey the importance of distinguishing superficial moral talk, which as you say, is all about "What should I do?", but can be confused, wrong, etc. from underlying uncontroversial principles like the "Golden Rule" or "Don't Murder", which are foundational in the sense that they are broad categories that individual cases get applied to as a litmus test of their validity as practical values.

... my worry is only that moral psychology will both harbour, and fail to acknowledge, the confusion here, and treat the practical vocalizations of all cultures as morality per se.

8. Citing Faith, Bush Defends War Actions

Comment #176996 by Spinoza on May 8, 2008 at 12:38 pm

20. Comment #176971 by mordacious1 on May 8, 2008 at 12:04 pm
John McCain promised to appoint Supreme Court Justices in the mold of Scalia. Enough said.

It was always fairly certain that McCain would be the next President.

This essentially just confirms it.

It obviously doesn't help that Clinton is purposely staying in the race [clearly helping McCain] so she can run again in 2012.

McCain doesn't strike me as "stupid", which, at least, is something... I think perhaps he's just vote-pandering at the moment... and hopefully his presidency will at least be more secular than the current one.

9. An Atheist Goes Undercover to Join the Flock of Mad Pastor John Hagee

Comment #176723 by Spinoza on May 7, 2008 at 10:45 pm

I guess I should clarify... I'd say the musical side of "evangelical" or "new life" churches is a really potent cocktail of the "Leader" song, and the god-awful (literally) band Creed.

Also, I only "tagged along" because I had an acquaintance who was a member, and they have these recruitment drives where existing members are encouraged to invite their friends (while reminding their friends that they're not required to join, free to leave, etc etc, and of course, they hand out free "reading" material... EXACTLY like in that Simpsons episode...)

10. An Atheist Goes Undercover to Join the Flock of Mad Pastor John Hagee

Comment #176702 by Spinoza on May 7, 2008 at 10:05 pm

I've tagged along to pentecostal youth services before... that shit SCARES me.

It's basically a room full of ex-cons and addicts, listening to one or more con-artists tell them what a piece of shit they are without the grace of their omnipotent sky-daddy... The Pentecostals love to bust out their acoustic guitar and get everyone to sing terrible, catchy songs (not unlike the "Leader" song from that episode of The Simpsons where they join the cult)... people start closing their eyes, raising their hands in the air, crying, etc etc.

I stood there, wide-eyed, basically thinking "What. The. Fuck.?!"

11. The emerging moral psychology

Comment #176508 by Spinoza on May 7, 2008 at 2:06 pm

... What I'm saying is that people's outward talk is not a good way to measure their moral views.

People come to SAY homosexuality is wrong via a totally different reasoning process than when they say that murder is wrong.

He really judges that homosexuality is a sin, he really believes it, he really expresses that opinion and he really acts accordingly.

That is not the same thing as having a judgment cohere with your moral intuitions (by which I only meant existing moral judgments that happen to map onto morality in a more foundational way).

I've said this several times, I don't know why you seem to have missed it, or ignored it, but my point is that when people say things like "Homosexuality is wrong!" or "Masturbation is wrong!" or "Immigrants are bad for the country!" What they are in fact doing is not expressing a foundational moral judgment, but attempting to connect some event or object in the world to some other, pre-existing moral judgment in a way that differs massively from moral judgments like "Murder is wrong." or "Stealing is (mostly) wrong!"

Generally the kinds of "moral" beliefs that are highly polarized, often with the religious on one side, and the secular on the other, are so contentious BECAUSE one side is failing to connect an event or object to their underlying, already accepted moral principles or judgments, in a rational, or logical manner, and the other side is failing to understand that that is what is going on.

For example, the use of the Burqa as an article of clothing for women in some Arab Islamic countries is SAID by many Muslim men to be a "moral" behaviour.

But their reasoning is NOT that it's a properly foundational moral behaviour, but that it maps onto a pre-existing desire to protect their women from rape, to prevent the arousal of desire from men who MIGHT commit atrocious/violent acts against them (esp. in a Bedouin tribal culture), etcetera.

And my point in distinguishing this sort of "moral" talk from properly moral talk is that it is prima facie a fair distinction to make.

If I say "It's wrong for children to be outside the house late at night!", I'm not expressing a foundational moral principle, I'm attaching a moral principle I already hold (namely, that we should protect our children from harm) to an event that I think (rightly or wrongly) necessarily entails the transgression of that OTHER moral judgment.

In THAT sense, there is a clear distinction between some statements that have a normative form, and others...

And I would prefer to avoid the confusion.

A great many conflicts between cultures and people in general would be avoided if we recognized this.

12. The emerging moral psychology

Comment #176438 by Spinoza on May 7, 2008 at 10:32 am

But it is still their morality, still addressing those questions.

My point is actually that it ISN'T their morality... they're just totally unaware that their outward statements don't connect up to their moral intuitions.

13. The emerging moral psychology

Comment #176193 by Spinoza on May 6, 2008 at 8:59 pm

Also, "Transcendental Aesthetic Travel" makes absolutely no sense.

The TA is just Kant's arguments for Space and Time as a priori intuitions (rather, forms of intuition)...

Travel only makes sense a posteriori...

... I realize the intent was probably some sort of joke... but my e-autism seems to have kicked in, and I don't get it. LOL

14. The emerging moral psychology

Comment #176191 by Spinoza on May 6, 2008 at 8:34 pm

In the descriptive meaning of "moral", it applies to everything that "pertains to or attempts to address questions of right and wrong".

That is just what I mean by "moral talk" (I already said several times that I take "moral talk" to include the neurology/biology/sociology/psychology of moral talk).

I take it that many people are actually just confused when they attempt to address questions of right and wrong.

And that is all I meant by saying that some sentences of the form "S should x." are not moral, and others are...

I'm NOT appealing to objective moral values, I'm simply saying that people can, and often are, confused, and to me, it looks a heck of a lot like moral psychology doesn't distinguish between the two when studying what they call morality.

An extremely important question, I should think, is what exactly distinguishes a claim like "Homosexuality is wrong!" from a claim like "Kicking babies in the head arbitrarily is wrong!"

... It seems like, you, Mphil, have presupposed an error theorist perspective, and said that it's prima facie irrelevant whether those sentences are different (and also that they really aren't different)... because, you think, in both cases the utterer/adherent is trying to address questions of right and wrong.

But it's exactly my point that in the former case, it's easy to see why the statement itself, the moral judgment "Homosexuality is wrong!" is actually just a confusion, and isn't REALLY an attempt to address questions of right and wrong at all! The reason it's a confusion is that when you probe for justification, and stipulate no dogma allowed, the sophisticated (I mean this literally, in the sense of engaging in sophistry or rhetoric) anti-homosexual will generally try to tack on additional features to homosexual behaviour in an attempt to convince their interlocutor that their initial judgment is correct.

It might go something like "Homosexuality is wrong because it spreads AIDS" or "deviant lifestyles that go against the norm harm society."

And an acute interlocutor (a philosopher, let's say) ought to be able to see that homosexuality is a red herring for those OTHER fears in EXACTLY the same way xenophobes who hate Mexicans or Indians are engaging in red herring and ad hominem attacks, when really (when probed) they are worried about other issues like crime, economic prosperity, etcetera.

Is that clearer?... When I had said that some moral judgments are wrong, I was not presupposing moral realism, I was presupposing that the utterer was committing some sort of fallacy or error and actually failing to address the issue of right and wrong altogether.

... and my WORRY, and the sole reason I mentioned all this in this thread in the first place, is that moral psychology should be wary of this distinction.

... I hope that addresses this point:

They are talking about moral values, their behaviour falls under the phenomenon of morality, whether it is actually "moral behaviour" in a normative sense of "moral" or not.

You've said this about people condemning homosexuality or blacks... but I think I've shown why this is a separate phenomenon, not the phenomenon of morality, in the sense that it's not just that they've failed to map onto "correct" moral values (I don't think there are such things out there in the world), but rather, that they've confusedly made normative claims on the basis of fallacious reasoning in a way that belies a difference in the underlying psychology.

... Actually, THAT would be a more interesting scientific study, I think... of the neurological/psychological difference between judgments that don't require appeals to other moral propositions (like "Murder is wrong." doesn't require an explanation like "Murder is wrong because murder is a kind of X, and X is wrong.") versus judgments that do require appeals to other moral propositions (like "Homosexuality is wrong." which clearly requires some sort of explanation in the form of "Homosexuality necessarily Zs and Zing is wrong." ... which clearly isn't the case, since this is most likely a form of post hoc ergo propter hoc, or another related fallacy of causality)

15. Is Liberal Catholicism Dead?

Comment #175959 by Spinoza on May 6, 2008 at 9:33 am

Priests rape children because of religion's repressive and unnatural sexual customs!

Actually, I don't think that's right either.

My grandmother tried that one a while back...

Think about it.

It sounds a heck of a lot like you're accusing people of becoming pedophiles because they haven't been permitted to have sex, and if they were permitted to marry/have sex, then, according to your logic, less pedophilia would occur.

That can't be right.

Priests are not raping children because they are sex-starved (otherwise a heck of a lot more husbands would be raping their childrens' playmates). Priests are raping children because the priesthood has become a safe-haven for pedophiles.

Whether religion or genes caused them to BE pedophiles is somewhat irrelevant to the moral issue, which is that the religion has not, and is not dealing with the problem appropriately.

16. The emerging moral psychology

Comment #175953 by Spinoza on May 6, 2008 at 9:23 am

Admittedly, I was extremely tired last night, and it was late, so it's entirely possible I was misreading something..

HOWEVER, you have misunderstood me rather drastically as well.

First of all, no, I didn't presuppose objective values anywhere. I'm actually an anti-realist (that's what quasi-realism actually is, by the way).

Secondly, all I said was that the work being done in moral psychology is not NECESSARILY dealing with morality, and that they need to be careful to note that.

The reason is exactly that philosophers have not ironed out just WHAT morality is.

You seem to not want to make a distinction between moral talk (which often involves things that have nothing to do with morality), and morality per se.

But that's exactly what's at issue here, so simply stating that "It is still true that everyone is actually talking about moral values." is kind of ridiculous. Especially given that I'm not a Realist.

No, they aren't actually necessarily talking about moral values. That CLEARLY implies some kind of infallibility in the moral mechanism, whatever it is. And that certainly cannot be right.

The heart of the issue is this:

Ever heard of "descriptive ethics"? Describing the phenomenon of morality.

I don't need to "establish" that there is a descriptive meaning of "moral" and "morality" as well - it's unquestionable. People ask themselves questions of "what is right and wrong" "what is moral" and/or take positions that attempt to answer these questions, or propose answers to them. This is a fact. You may call it as you like, but there is nothing wrong with calling that "morality", the "phenomenon of morality".

Actually there is clearly something wrong with it.

I already pointed out the intuitive reason. Namely, it puts things like "Girls should wear the hijab." and "Don't murder." on equal footing when they clearly are not (REGARDLESS OF ONTOLOGICAL STATUS).

The way to avoid that sort of silliness (and overstepping of bounds by moral psychology) would simply be for the investigators to note that all they are doing is investigating the neurology of moral talk.

Which is my whole point.

17. The emerging moral psychology

Comment #175747 by Spinoza on May 6, 2008 at 1:00 am

I take it that investigation of the brain-states (neurological correlates) of moral-talk just IS investigation of moral-talk.

It says nothing about the distinction between say:

"Homosexuality is wrong!"

And:

"Murder is wrong!"

And there is certainly a distinction that can (and I think, ought) to be made. That is, the first case is clearly a case of moralizing talk on the part of a dogmatic idiot engaging in culturally inculcated hatred of that which is "different" (and called abominable).

The second points to something quite a lot more fundamental. If anything is wrong, murder is.

That is, murder is a paradigm case of wrongness (to take a Quinean approach), and homosexuality clearly isn't.

Surely we cannot treat these judgments with equal merit qua "moral".

When people talk about moral problems, form and express opinions concerning them, make judgements on moral issues - that is part of what "morality" means.

That has not been established. That is to take some form of expressivism to be correct a priori. And that is certainly not justifiable a priori.

That and you've defined morality circularly here and in a few other areas, i.e.,:

There are situations and dimensions that can only be called moral - any question of right and wrong, of moral values etc. Any behaviour, any approach to these things falls under the category of "morality" in virtue of being an approach to moral problems, moral statements etc.

All you've said here is that moral values (rightness or wrongness) can only be called moral. And then you say that anything falls under that category in virtue of being an approach to problems involving rightness or wrongness.

But that's clearly circular, and doesn't establish anything with regard to when people really ARE talking about moral values, as distinguished from when they are merely indulging their preferences.

I don't think I'm being too narrow here, I think you're being to broad! And as such, we're talking past each other.

You make it seem as if you think only someone working out a second order and first order ethical theory with a coherent and applicable account of all the theoretical issues is doing something that falls under the category of "morality" at all. Why?

That's not exactly true. I simply take it that the philosopher who does those things (in a well reasoned way) can be justified in telling the layman when their moral talk is, itself, wrong (and why).

18. The emerging moral psychology

Comment #175739 by Spinoza on May 6, 2008 at 12:27 am

Well, I don't entirely disagree, I just think that without the "ontology" pinned down, so-to-speak (either as non-existent or as natural or as non-natural [this last category is clearly the most unlikely of the three]), the "science" being done cannot with much measure of confidence be said to be talking about what Morality is.

The assumption that investigation of moral talk and behaviour called moral (by some) can tell us about what morality qua moral judgments, dispositions and behaviour is (as you say), is, I think, not a valid assumption.

I think it prudent to understand the distinction between mere moral talk and actually moral judgments/behaviour (i.e., of the Pope saying that contraception is "immoral" [he certainly cannot mean the same thing that I mean when I say "rape is immoral."], or when the Arab Muslim man says "immodest dress is immoral!", because he certainly does not mean by 'immoral' what I mean.)

That is to say, in those, and many (I would venture to say MOST) other cases, people are almost never talking about the same thing when they use the words 'moral' or 'immoral'.

The majority of the world is either a divine command theorist or a simple subjectivist, at least with regard to MOST of their "moral" TALK, and a large portion of their "moral" behaviour. And neither of those has anything to do with 'morality' if the word is to have any meaning at all. (if you follow me).


... By the way, enjoy the reductionism stuff! I love it!!! (one of my favourite areas, aside from meta-ethics and Spinoza, of course!)

... and I'm glad at least one (hopefully some!) others are enjoying this decidedly philosophic discussion in the midst of what I assume was intended to be a Science-oriented thread... I'm happy to oblige with such a worthy interlocutor as MPhil has proven.

19. The emerging moral psychology

Comment #175731 by Spinoza on May 6, 2008 at 12:06 am

Agreed. There is certainly debate to be had.

(perhaps we should/could continue this on some sort of Messenger or Facebook chat?... I would be interested in engaging your scepticism about quasi and Cornell realism...)

.. as for the topic of this thread... I'm not really sure what it tells us about morality per se... rather, it really only seems to shed light on why different people SAY different things are "moral" (ignoring entirely the question of who is right).

20. The emerging moral psychology

Comment #175721 by Spinoza on May 5, 2008 at 11:50 pm

Upon reflection, I don't think that Cornell Realism is necessarily subject to epistemic queerness. I think there are several ways out of that problem.

... Especially given that Boyd is a naturalist, not a non-naturalist.

21. The emerging moral psychology

Comment #175717 by Spinoza on May 5, 2008 at 11:42 pm

1. MPhil, I don't think I implied your point (1). I specifically said that Error theory AVOIDS the Frege-Geach problem (i.e. by being a sceptic you don't fall prey to it). [admittedly, the opening sentence of that section of my post is a little vague, and seems to imply that the Frege-Geach problem applies generally to all subjectivist positions, which is corrected immediately in the next sentence... the idea being that a naive subjectivist is probably not an error theorist until they meet Mackie! hehe].

2. You're right about Queerness, I glossed over it rather quickly (this is a web-forum, not a philosophy seminar, after all!)

3. I agree. But I have aspirations of combining Boyd's Cornell Realism with Blackburn's Quasi-realism in a kind of synthesis to make a better theory!!! (shhh!!! Don't steal my idea! lol)

4. I particularly like the line where Blackburn says that "What matters in the case of bear-baiting is not the attitude you or any observer has toward bear-baiting, but the attitude the bear has toward it."

Surely that is, if not damning, quite incriminating to a hardened error theorist like Mr. Mackie, no? :P

22. The emerging moral psychology

Comment #175710 by Spinoza on May 5, 2008 at 11:16 pm

I'd be curious to know what you mean by this. I thought, since Hume, it's been well established that there is no separate morality outside of what we "call" it. The question is not "is human nature the place to establish ethics?" (what else would be) but rather "what is the best way to examine human nature?" Are you denying that it's some sort of scientific endeavor?

Hume established no such thing. In fact the IS/OUGHT Gap (Hume's Fork) establishes exactly the opposite.

You CANNOT derive an ought from an is.

This is basic first year undergraduate philosophy, and can be briefly checked over here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is-ought_problem

Your last question strikes me as incoherent... but maybe there is something else you have in mind that wasn't conveyed directly.

You seem to have clearly and completely misunderstood me.

Now, I'll grant that philosophy needs to step in to give that prescriptive/normative push, to decide whether stuff like "sanctity" is a separate moral motivator from "justice" or whether it's just an heuristic shortcut. But you seem to think that the science is useless. Can you explain?

First of all, philosophers do two sorts of things in ethical philosophy. The first is meta-ethics. This is the study of what sort of thing moral judgments are ABOUT. That is, what sort of thing a moral fact is, if such a thing exists at all.

The reason it is given the appendage "meta-" is that it is about the underlying [ontological] status of Ethics proper (the second thing ethical philosophers do, or as we call it, Normativity, Normative Ethics, or Practical Reason).

The dichotomy runs sort of like this:

Either (1) Moral judgments point to properties we arrive at through the senses in objects, in which case, our being right or wrong in a given case is dependent on our correctly identifying these properties. Or, (2) Moral judgments are subjective attitudes or expressions or projections outward onto the world.

In the former case, you have to deal with the charge of the anti-realists (like Ayer and Mackie) that such "moral properties" would be QUEER. That is, they seem to be super-natural, since moral goodness CERTAINLY can't be reduced to any particular natural property (as Moore famously phrased it, morality is such that we can say "What is good is whatever has some natural property, G." (say, "increases happiness"), and yet, we can say "X has G, but is X good?" for any X. That is, the question "Is X Good?" remains open).

In the latter case, the subjectivist (or anti-realist), is subject to the Frege-Geach problem of unasserted contexts.

The solution there is to either be an error theorist (a moral SKEPTIC), like Mackie, and simply say that no one is entitled to say that anyone is more or less correct on any moral issue whatsoever; OR, (and this is undoubtedly better) you had better be able to formulate a "logic of attitudes" such that the Frege-Geach problem is resolved. [by the way, you can just google "Frege-Geach problem" to find out what I'm talking about... not enough room to explain].

I particularly like Simon Blackburn's Quasi-Realism.

But I also think Richard Boyd's "Cornell Realism" is quite good (he argues that "goodness" is a homeostatic property cluster of natural kinds that can be determined and measured by looking at the prosperity and flourishing of a society, of course, we must not simply say "I like that!" and thereby wish that it be true, we must examine his case, and determine whether it stands up to criticism. Such is philosophy.)

Two great seminal (and short) papers in meta-ethics I'd recommend to anyone here are:

Simon Blackburn's "How to Be an Ethical Anti-Realist"

And conversely, Richard Boyd's "How to Be A Moral Realist".

And just to make something QUITE clear, no I CERTAINLY do not think science is useless. I just think that moral psychology is in a ridiculous state of affairs at the moment, and is apt to make grievous errors in judgment since it has not been established just WHAT exactly a "moral value" actually is (or if such a thing exists at all!)

By all means, let's study why and how people have come to both say that (and sometimes act as though) they value certain things.

Let us not thereby say that we have established the status of correct and incorrect moral judgments on that basis.

That would be folly.


... I have sort of ignored Normativity theory... which is interesting because that's the directly prescriptive part of moral philosophy... But the point of all this is really to say that it looks an awful lot like Moral Psychologists are making broad-brush assumptions on the normative level...

I had the opportunity to talk with Patricia Churchland (famous Neurophilosopher) recently, and she brought up all the examples of thought-experiments and the data collected that are mentioned in this article... and of course, made the ubiquitous joke in neurophilosophy circles, that it has been shown that if you have lesions on your PFC, you'll be a Utilitarian, and if not, you'll be a Kantian.

That is, people with impaired emotional circuitry evaluate moral scenarios like the Trolley-car case, or the pushing the fat guy off the bridge case, in an unwittingly, and unfailingly utilitarian manner.

People with intact emotional circuitry tend to fall on the "Kantian" (never treat people as the means to an end, only as ends in themselves) side of things...


And to me, NEITHER of these theories is given any support by this data.

And nor should they be. They're both wrong!

23. Dumb and Dumber: A discussion between Ben Stein and Glenn Beck

Comment #175623 by Spinoza on May 5, 2008 at 6:16 pm

JD Cherry,

I can give you a sound-bite summary of why I, in particular, don't subscribe to utilitarianism on the normative level.

The first, and most potent, rebuke of Utilitarianism as it is traditionally cast, is that it fails to account for our moral sentiments in many cases.

Utilitarianism seems to (though it doesn't NECESSARILY) require a sort of naive moral realism on the meta-ethical level. That is to say, it says something like "Lives all have equal quantitative value." So that it is "BETTER" (to speak in evaluative terms) to kill one to save many.

But if moral realism is false (and indeed, I certainly think it is) then the Utilitarian needs to give us some sort of non-arbitrary grounds for treating lives as equally valuable.

OR, if the Utilitarian gives that equality up and says that we can quantify the amount of value different lives have, to end up with varying levels, it needs to provide some sort of standard that doesn't REQUIRE moral realism to be true.

Either that, or the Utilitarian needs to do some meta-ethics first and establish once and for all whether values are subjective or objective, and how we arrive at them.

That's really brief, and there's way, way, way more to say against utilitarianism... not just my own views, but tons of others.

A good friend of mine recently wrote and gave a talk in defense of utilitarianism though... and indeed it may be salvageable.

But Singer's arguments are often flawed for other reasons (my own view is that he makes far too concrete judgments on certain issues without considering enough nuance, but he is not so easily rebuked as that).

24. The emerging moral psychology

Comment #175543 by Spinoza on May 5, 2008 at 2:58 pm

RSP, um, try Christine Korsgaard's "The Sources of Normativity".

25. Dumb and Dumber: A discussion between Ben Stein and Glenn Beck

Comment #175527 by Spinoza on May 5, 2008 at 2:40 pm

Yeah, Al-Rawandi, it's just sad... in particular with Singer... who came up in a conversation I had about a month ago...

As a philosopher, it pains me that people just don't understand the discipline at all...

So anyway, I was talking to a bunch of students, and one of them said "Oh, I don't like philosophy at all." And I said: "What (the fuck!)? That seems kind of an unfair generalization. Why?"

And she said: "Have you heard of Peter Singer?"

And I said: "Sure. And though I disagree with him on the grounds that utilitarianism fails on meta-ethical grounds, he's a really smart guy and his positions are extremely well thought out."

And she goes: "Well, he's disgusting. He thinks we should retroactively abort children!"

And I said: "Do you know what his actual argument was?"

And she said: "No. I just think he's wrong to say that."

And I said: "Yeah, well, his argument isn't that we SHOULD retroactively abort CHILDREN. His point was that GIVEN that there are certain cases where the suffering of the child is inevitably so great, and it is obvious that the child will not survive adolescence, it might sometimes be prudent to allow parents the choice to "abort" up to 28 days after birth. The reason he gives a 28 day buffer AFTER the pregnancy is over is that methods for determining certain cases during the pregnancy are not 100% accurate, and have resulted, in the past, in errors where healthy pregnancies were terminated. You have to keep in mind that he's not saying 'Anyone who doesn't want their baby should be allowed to kill it or have it killed'. That WOULD be stupid. His argument is, rather, that in cases like Siamese twins joined at the top of the head, in severe mental-handicaps (i.e. severe Downs Syndrome, etc), or terminal cancers, such that the infant (and IF it survives past infancy, the child) will be in and out of hospital chronically, suffering greatly through pain, and never have a chance at anything anywhere near resembling a "normal" life, and is terminally ill such that they will die in childhood ANYWAY, then it is the morally responsible thing to do to weigh the suffering and if it is too great, to end the child's suffering BEFORE it has developed reflective self-consciousness (language).

It's an extremely well thought out argument, and an extremely tough call.

His point is that often what happens is that well-meaning parents cause their children to suffer well beyond any imaginable levels, and the child ends up dying in early childhood ANYWAY (and so, in many cases, is faced with the specter of an immanent death, along with chronic pain and discomfort etc etc etc), and that is morally reprehensible.


... In any case, it is an argument WORTH CONSIDERING ON ITS MERITS.

I realized something quite quickly, so after explaining all this, I mentioned: "Oh, but the reason you don't like him is that you're a Christian, right?... you believe in a soul put in the person by God at conception?"

And her reply: "Yes."

Me: "Oh. Well that explains why you don't like philosophy."

... conversation over. So stupid.

26. Dumb and Dumber: A discussion between Ben Stein and Glenn Beck

Comment #175483 by Spinoza on May 5, 2008 at 1:43 pm

Mr. Beck clearly hasn't actually READ anything Peter Singer has written.

27. The emerging moral psychology

Comment #175481 by Spinoza on May 5, 2008 at 1:42 pm

This is almost totally irrelevant to Ethics as a discipline.

The foundations of what people often CALL "morality" is important, to be sure...

But it sheds absolutely no light on normativity per se, and science journalism needs to stop pretending that it does.

Scientists should indeed be investigating the biology and evolution of socio-cultural values, but leave the Ethics to the philosophers (at least, for now).

28. Dumb and Dumber: A discussion between Ben Stein and Glenn Beck

Comment #175470 by Spinoza on May 5, 2008 at 1:28 pm

Hmm. Mr. Beck, your inane (read: retarded, ignorant) comments about Peter Singer lead me to conclude that you are the worst person in the world.

29. How to reconcile Richard Dawkins?

Comment #172177 by Spinoza on April 29, 2008 at 10:08 am

Simple rebuke:

Atheism is NOT Anti-theism.

30. Is religion a threat to rationality and science?

Comment #166154 by Spinoza on April 22, 2008 at 9:50 pm

Viktor Frankl, in the midst of the extreme deprivation, dehumanisation and despair of Auschwitz observes how, in his assessment, only those with some spirituality - not necessarily a belief in God - survived the depravity of the camp.

With all due respect (which, intellectually, doesn't seem very much due at all), my grandfather survived a Nazi camp without any spirituality whatsoever.

In fact, the experience solidified his lack of faith.

31. Resentment Over Darwin Evolves Into a Documentary

Comment #166092 by Spinoza on April 22, 2008 at 6:22 pm

I'm in the low end of the average education on the site, though I am confident that I am still in the high end of intelligence. Of course who of us don't think that? Though I'll let others be the judge of that.

Mitchell, you just reminded me of that famous survey where people were asked to rate their intelligence relative to their peers.

I think it was University professors where 90% of the respondents ranked themselves as "above average" with respect to their peers.

... Clearly not just religious people are deluded! ;-)

32. Responses to 'Gods and Earthlings' by Richard Dawkins

Comment #166085 by Spinoza on April 22, 2008 at 6:13 pm

There is no advantage to non-living material becoming a living cell

Fail.

33. Resentment Over Darwin Evolves Into a Documentary

Comment #165605 by Spinoza on April 21, 2008 at 8:34 pm

98% of the world is just getting by.

Also interesting to note: IQ is an artificial bell-curve of any given population, so 50% of richarddawkins.net posters are also below average intelligence. :)

34. Mecca should become core to measure time zones: scholars

Comment #165341 by Spinoza on April 21, 2008 at 11:15 am

whitepearl, pointless and petty?... you don't know the HALF of it!

Pokemon fatwa

In 2001, Saudi Arabia banned the game of Pokemon as a Zionist plot; Qaradawi issued a fatwa endorsing this in December 2003, saying that Pokemon not only uses Jewish and Masonic symbols, but teaches evolution. Not only do Pokemon evolve, they do so "in battles where the survivors are those who adapt better to the environment; another of Darwin's dogmas." In addition, both depiction of imaginary animals and card-games are contrary to the Koran. Qaradawi also notes that some Japanese expressions squeaked and gibbered by Pokemon may mean "I am a Jew" and "Become a Jew," but admits the matter is controversial and he isn't certain.[35]

LMFAO.

35. Open Letter to a victim of Ben Stein's lying propaganda

Comment #165271 by Spinoza on April 21, 2008 at 9:25 am

I have ancestors who were affected by the Holocaust directly. (paternal grandfather lived through a labour-camp, but the rest of the family were murdered).

That has nothing whatsoever to do with the facts of science.

Abusing the memory of those lost in the Holocaust by trying to pin the blame for it on anything other than the sick, twisted minds who perpetrated and permitted the acts directly is absurd, and offensive to me as a descendant of a Holocaust survivor.

36. A Conversation with Expelled's Associate Producer Mark Mathis

Comment #165019 by Spinoza on April 20, 2008 at 11:46 pm

Oh, this is BRILLIANT.

Sci Am REAMS this guy to perfection.

If only they weren't preaching to the choir...

37. Ben Stein Vs. Sputtering Atheists

Comment #165003 by Spinoza on April 20, 2008 at 11:24 pm

You don't have to be an atheist to think this stuff is garbage:

The progressive media watch group Media Matters for America has also repeatedly criticized the MRC, charging they view the media "through a funhouse mirror that renders everything--even the facts themselves--as manifestations of insidious bias."

38. Religious education as a part of literary culture

Comment #160767 by Spinoza on April 14, 2008 at 11:27 am

Robotaholic, spoken like a true engineer.

You weren't a reader as a child, were you?

39. Richard Dawkins' secular army must be stopped. God is behind some of our greatest art

Comment #160500 by Spinoza on April 14, 2008 at 6:53 am

It's very simple, isn't it?...

There's a one-line response that makes this whole line of questioning look ridiculous:

Great art will be made by great artists, with or without religion.

Q.E.D.

40. A New Flea

Comment #160229 by Spinoza on April 13, 2008 at 8:37 pm

This fellow is not a philosopher.

He needs to disabuse himself of that title.

I die a little every time I hear someone use the words "philosophy" or "metaphysics" or even "epistemology" in such bastardized ways.

41. Cult leader Pyotr Kuznetsov tries suicide after realising he was wrong about doomsday

Comment #155404 by Spinoza on April 4, 2008 at 12:42 pm

Prankster, Bipolar disorder is not the same thing as Depression, it is a combination of maniacal and depressive symptoms. But yeah, I think at some point we've got to move beyond the simple "He was just an asshole." or "He was just an idiot." or "He was just evil." (all forms of superstitious/folk-psychological essentialism of the kind that just absolutely annoys me...) to recognize WHY it is that people do the fucked up things they do, and strive (latin: conatus) to prevent it from occurring again in the future (for reasons Santayana recognized)

42. Beware the Believers

Comment #153889 by Spinoza on April 2, 2008 at 7:27 am

Just a small note of clarification for Professor Dawkins:

In that South Park episode, they didn't have your cartoon version buggering a transvestite, they had you actually having heterosexual sex with a post-op transexual female.

Which obviously doesn't make it any better... and I absolutely agree with you that that form of "satire" really isn't satire at all, and it is CLEARLY not in the same league as the Brechtian absurdities of Monty Python (that almost ALWAYS had a subversive intellectual element to them, so that idiots would laugh at the absurdity or not get it, but the true humour was revealed in the associations amongst the intelligensia).

... which is totally ivory-tower of me... but then, so is well-done humour.

43. Vatican: Islam surpasses Roman Catholicism as world's largest religion

Comment #153712 by Spinoza on April 1, 2008 at 10:48 pm

Barbara, you're a bit confused.

There are far more of "them" (people living in abject poverty whose only perceivable lifeline is their faith) than "us" (relatively wealthy, free people who have the luxury of rejecting institutions whenever we feel like it).

And THAT is a far more serious issue, imho, than how many listed "believers" there are in religions.

44. Vatican: Islam surpasses Roman Catholicism as world's largest religion

Comment #153249 by Spinoza on April 1, 2008 at 9:37 am

This doesn't make any sense.

Islam is not one religion, that's the same mistake Spinoza made when he said it was the only religion never to have a schism.

Is this statistic the number of Sunnis, Shiites, Sufis, Wahhabis, Ahmadiyyans....

I guess it would probably be of Sunnis?

Islamic Sect Comparison Chart

Hmmm...

45. Beware the Believers

Comment #152829 by Spinoza on March 31, 2008 at 3:49 pm

Additionally, I'm sure you are aware of the difference of the common use of the term rationalist and its strict use in philosophy within epistemology. But in any case I just thought you were being picky out of context - I don't mean to be pissy.

I am fully aware of the colloquial connotations of the word, but it still doesn't make any sense at all.

Yeah, a little picky... but it was just so funny (only to a philosopher's ear I suppose)... Yeah a rationalist empiricist is like a Berkeleyan Realist.

Hehe.

Just to make it even more picky, here's a reference for anyone who's curious about why I was being picky about that statement: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rationalism-empiricism/

;-)

No worries though...

46. Beware the Believers

Comment #152769 by Spinoza on March 31, 2008 at 2:16 pm

It is demonstrated here among individuals who prize them selves as rationalist and empiricist.

Just noticed this little gem of an oxymoron. Not meaning to insult the person who said it, but that is a contradiction in terms.

Basic History of Philosophy 101 should (have) point(ed) out that Descartes, Leibniz and Spinoza were The Rationalists, who were grouped into the school called "Rationalism". Empiricism was largely a British Isles movement that appeared as a scientific, experiential response to the Rationalists, who thought that a priori knowledge was the foundation of a systematic ontology (i.e. Descartes' substance dualism, Spinoza's neutral monism, Leibniz's substance pluralism... vs Empiricist rejection of talk of substance altogether).

So uhh... yeah, just saying... but that sentence makes no sense.

47. Beware the Believers

Comment #152768 by Spinoza on March 31, 2008 at 2:02 pm

It's not funny or clever... it's just a bunch of gibberish with the sort of lyrical hook you might hear in an Avril Lavigne song (read: song written by 3 old, balding, male marketing majors).

I don't care whose "side" it's on (Prof. Dawkins asked this way back at the beginning...) it's dumb.

The interesting thing is how many people enjoy it for some unknown reason...

The movie Idiocracy is suddenly coming to mind...

48. Beware the Believers

Comment #152234 by Spinoza on March 30, 2008 at 2:01 pm

I don't understand this at all.

At least the South Park episode was making a rather salient (though perhaps blatantly obvious to some of us) point that religion is not a necessary condition for war.

Some "New Atheists" seem to forget that...

49. Saudi Arabia Leader Calls for Interfaith Dialogue

Comment #152188 by Spinoza on March 30, 2008 at 11:48 am

Small clarificatory note to robotaholic:

Spinoza's God is not worshipped. It's the infinite natural universe, of which we are modes (technical term, roughly meaning 'area' conceivable under attributes)...

Anyway, I guess I wasn't clear enough...

I meant we might want to consider the fact that people are just simply unwilling to let go of the WORD "God", and they don't REALLY care WHAT you let fall under the concept... they just want to hear the superficial "I believe in God." claim.

So my suggestion, following the lead of of the great 17th century philosophers, is to be as subversive as is humanly possible... USURP the WORD from the theists, redefine it, and slowly warp it to conform to REALITY.

Which really is what has happened in intellectual theological circles in some cases, at least in Judaism and Christianity, since the Enlightenment...

Process Theology, for example ( of people like A.N. Whitehead ... who was a good friend and colleague of Bertrand Russell)...

It's a separate issue from religion, of course, so we still ought to criticize deleterious components of that...


... sorry for the lateness of my reply...

50. Saudi Arabia Leader Calls for Interfaith Dialogue

Comment #150052 by Spinoza on March 26, 2008 at 12:20 pm

Does everyone see why Spinoza (and Hobbes) vehemently denied being atheists, and why in their great works they utilized the word "God"?

Perhaps atheists should pipe up and simply say that they DO believe in one God, but that God is the infinite natural universe (Spinoza's use of the term "Deus").