Moral and Epistemic Relativism

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by Kobi

After careful thought and brain gymnastics, I am thinking we disagree on a central premise. I believe you are saying their are absolutes truths for which no other explanation will ever be found by humankind as a species.

I believe otherwise. I believe anything, including the second law of thermodynamics , can be proven to be a false truth or an incomplete truth. I think as we develop new techologies and ask new questions in our research, the possibility exists for new explanations or clarifications for previously held truths.

That's not *exactly* what I'm saying. I always hold out the possibility that, for instance, the laws of thermodynamics could be overturned although I think that's vanishingly improbable. I like to use a scale from 0 - 1 with 0 being "certainly untrue" and 1 being "certainly true". Very large swaths of physics, for instance, I think are in the .7 to .9 range. It's *possible* but extraordinarily improbable that we're wrong. There are other areas, string theory for instance, where I have moved from the .4 - .5 range (probably true) to the .1 - .3 range (almost certainly not true). I'm never absolutely certain because of one of the sayings that I keep on the wall of my study: "When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is probably wrong."

That said, I think that most of the time we can proceed as-if some matter were settled until Nature, which always has the last word, says otherwise. Now, there are some areas that I'm pretty close to certain. The atomic model, the quantum mechanical model, the Einstein model of gravity and space-time and, on this planet, evolution are all .8 or .9 certainties for me. If any of those are wrong then not only are their respective domains irreparably broken but we, all 6 billion of us, are living in a very elaborate collective hallucination. What I mean by this is that, for instance, if the atomic and quantum mechanical models are wrong then you aren't reading this and I'm not typing this because computers don't work. If evolution is wrong then Nature has a lot to answer for because there's all kinds of genetic evidence that makes no sense except in the light of evolution. If thermodynamics is wrong then, again, Nature needs to explain why the flat tire I had on my bike a couple of weeks ago will never spontaneously inflate itself and why the coffee cup one of my cats broke will never spontaneously reform itself. (I would put the 2nd law in the .01 certainty range because of the kinds of examples above.)

There are no areas of science that I think are settled in that there's no more work to be done in them. If you think that's what I'm saying then that's entirely not what I’m saying. However, I AM saying that, barring contradicting evidence, I can proceed in my field of bioinformatics *as if* the chemistry underlying biology was a, more or less, settled matter at least in the broad outline and that the physics underlying the chemistry is also a settled matter, again at least in the broad outline.

I'm curious about something. How do you deal with past false truths? The reason I'm asking is because the examples I use to play with these ideas in my head all, generally, orbit around either the physical sciences or questions related to things that people believed in the past. For example, what kind of truth value would you give to the 19th century belief that I, as a black woman, was not quite really human. Was it true then but not true now? Was it false then and false now? The reason I ask is NOT--and I want to make this clear--because I think your'e racist but because it's a tough question. If we want to grant 19th century people that their worldview was consistent, valid and *true* and we are going to grant their beliefs the dignity of saying "well, it was true then" it begs the question of when racial bigotry became an injustice.

For example, no one ever complains that it is unjust that 18 months old infants aren't allowed to drive cars or fly jumbo jets. Everyone recognizes that 18 month olds lack the physical or mental abilities to do so and so, forbidding them from those activities isn't an injustice. Even if there were some extraordinarily precocious 18 month old who could it still wouldn't be an injustice since the *average* behavior of children of that age completely justified society forbidding kids from doing those things. So quite a bit turns on how we treat false beliefs from the past. If we grant those beliefs that were based in bigotry the dignity of calling them truths--even if we do not believe them ourselves--then what grounds do we have to claim that an injustice was being perpetrated? If blacks really WERE not-quite-human in the 19th century then on what grounds can we say that slavery was actually an evil? Is it an evil to keep a pet dog? Is it an evil to keep a cow? Slavery is an evil because it is wrong to use or treat humans as mere instruments but we draw a line between humans and other, less neurologically gifted, animals.

Do you see what I'm driving at?

[Kobi]

I might see what you are driving at. Then again I might not LOL.

Your field of expertise seems to be in the physical sciences and emperical data. My expertise is in the social sciences and quantifing things isnt quite as exact or easy.

You look at probability and in assigning it a value, proceed according to where on your scale something fits i.e. if there is a high probability, you can go with it. If there is a low probability, you might be more hesitant.

I look at possibility and try not to assign it a value judgement because in doing so, I limit its potential expressions. Any value judgement I give something automatically skews the results and pushes something in the direction of my value judgement.

Are we on the same page or am I still not understanding your perspective?

To answer your illustration of the history of slavery and how to quanitfy this historically....from my perspective.....I wouldnt want to give it any value that implies judgement for in doing so I am denying the potential process that may have been evolving during that time. For example, I would wonder if slave owners had any dealing with persons of other races before they had an economic need for laborers. I would want to know if they had preconceived notions and where they might have come from. Or, perhaps, did the slave traders introduce the idea that the people they were enslaving in Africa perpetuate the idea of savages and subhuman concepts in order to bolster and find support for their business - i.e. weird marketing technique.

Seeing I wasnt around back then and racism as a concept hadnt yet been developed, it behooves me to describe the process in its economic context rather than give it a value judgement based on current understandings.

I presume it might be easier to say were people inherently racist, even tho the concept didnt exist then, or was their behavior the result of something else.

I guess I am trying not to ignore the evolutionary aspects of the human experience by judging things based on an understanding that was not available at the time.

Am I making sense?

Originally Posted by dreadgeek

That's not *exactly* what I'm saying. I always hold out the possibility that, for instance, the laws of thermodynamics could be overturned although I think that's vanishingly improbable. I like to use a scale from 0 - 1 with 0 being "certainly untrue" and 1 being "certainly true". Very large swaths of physics, for instance, I think are in the .7 to .9 range. It's *possible* but extraordinarily improbable that we're wrong. There are other areas, string theory for instance, where I have moved from the .4 - .5 range (probably true) to the .1 - .3 range (almost certainly not true). I'm never absolutely certain because of one of the sayings that I keep on the wall of my study: "When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is probably wrong."

That said, I think that most of the time we can proceed as-if some matter were settled until Nature, which always has the last word, says otherwise. Now, there are some areas that I'm pretty close to certain. The atomic model, the quantum mechanical model, the Einstein model of gravity and space-time and, on this planet, evolution are all .8 or .9 certainties for me. If any of those are wrong then not only are their respective domains irreparably broken but we, all 6 billion of us, are living in a very elaborate collective hallucination. What I mean by this is that, for instance, if the atomic and quantum mechanical models are wrong then you aren't reading this and I'm not typing this because computers don't work. If evolution is wrong then Nature has a lot to answer for because there's all kinds of genetic evidence that makes no sense except in the light of evolution. If thermodynamics is wrong then, again, Nature needs to explain why the flat tire I had on my bike a couple of weeks ago will never spontaneously inflate itself and why the coffee cup one of my cats broke will never spontaneously reform itself. (I would put the 2nd law in the .01 certainty range because of the kinds of examples above.)

There are no areas of science that I think are settled in that there's no more work to be done in them. If you think that's what I'm saying then that's entirely not what I’m saying. However, I AM saying that, barring contradicting evidence, I can proceed in my field of bioinformatics *as if* the chemistry underlying biology was a, more or less, settled matter at least in the broad outline and that the physics underlying the chemistry is also a settled matter, again at least in the broad outline.

I'm curious about something. How do you deal with past false truths? The reason I'm asking is because the examples I use to play with these ideas in my head all, generally, orbit around either the physical sciences or questions related to things that people believed in the past. For example, what kind of truth value would you give to the 19th century belief that I, as a black woman, was not quite really human. Was it true then but not true now? Was it false then and false now? The reason I ask is NOT--and I want to make this clear--because I think your'e racist but because it's a tough question. If we want to grant 19th century people that their worldview was consistent, valid and *true* and we are going to grant their beliefs the dignity of saying "well, it was true then" it begs the question of when racial bigotry became an injustice.

For example, no one ever complains that it is unjust that 18 months old infants aren't allowed to drive cars or fly jumbo jets. Everyone recognizes that 18 month olds lack the physical or mental abilities to do so and so, forbidding them from those activities isn't an injustice. Even if there were some extraordinarily precocious 18 month old who could it still wouldn't be an injustice since the *average* behavior of children of that age completely justified society forbidding kids from doing those things. So quite a bit turns on how we treat false beliefs from the past. If we grant those beliefs that were based in bigotry the dignity of calling them truths--even if we do not believe them ourselves--then what grounds do we have to claim that an injustice was being perpetrated? If blacks really WERE not-quite-human in the 19th century then on what grounds can we say that slavery was actually an evil? Is it an evil to keep a pet dog? Is it an evil to keep a cow? Slavery is an evil because it is wrong to use or treat humans as mere instruments but we draw a line between humans and other, less neurologically gifted, animals.

Do you see what I'm driving at?

[EnderD_503]

Ok, just a heads up, I wrote up this post last weekend and was going to reread it and post it, but since I've been at work practically 24/7 the last week I didn't get a chance to do either. This is in response to Emmy and atomiczombie, for the rest who quoted me, some of your responses are addressed in some way in the post since they are similar to what Emmy and atmiczombie addressed, but I will post again later to try and clarify as far as those responses are concerned. Excuse the typos if any and rushed nature of the post, I didn't get a chance to reread. Here it be:

Thanks for your response Emmy.

In your first paragraph you write that “if the aim here is to show that an act can be right or wrong only insofar as people judge it to be, I don’t think the case has been made.” I’m curious about the reasoning behind your objection to the idea that morality (or the “right” or “wrong” nature of a given act) is entirely dependant upon the existence of man-made belief systems. What evidence is there to suggest that these acts inherently contain any moral substance when examined outside their respective systems? Belief systems are very much like a codex for the interpretation of information. Without the system or the aligning discourse they are stripped of moral meaning. For example, the end of human life on earth is one that is looked upon as negative, wrong, evil, bad, generally an unfortunate turn of events and yet take away the human desire to survive in that judgement and said apocalypse is neither positive nor negative; it simply is. The same goes for any act or event. What lends an act or an event its rightness or wrongness (particularly if one does not hold any religious belief, or any belief whatever in a sentient higher power)? What inherently grants an act moral meaning?

Originally Posted by Emmy

However, if the crucial point you make in your first paragraph is instead that particular moral codes, developed and upheld by particular cultures, must be remembered to be cultural products -and not, a priori, correct in their moral judgments - I'm with you entirely.

I do agree that one must remember that a particular moral code is a cultural product, however, I do not agree that there exists any inherently correct moral judgement. What causes one to be a more correct moral judgement than the other? Again, one requires that the judgement be made according to a particular system, otherwise it can be easily interpreted in a myriad of ways. The crux of my argument is: what determines the moral nature of a given act, if not man-made systems?

Both you and atomiczombie asked similar questions about my discrimination example and so I'm going to answer you both of you, particularly regarding what you both thought appeared to be a contradiction in my argument. Before I began I would like to say that my argument involves inherent morality, meaning a moral code that exists beyond the human mind and that is, thusly, universal.

Originally Posted by Emmy

I would also like to point out that, implicit in your argument, I contend, is the notion that discrimination against target groups is a bad thing. (And yes, I certainly agree ) But what underlies that assumption if not a moral judgment?

Originally Posted by atomiczombie

I find it interesting that you say this. I am wondering if you mean the same thing as I mean when I talk about reductionism. If so, then might that evaluation be a judgement too? What I am getting at is that making evaluations about whether or not something is say, "discrimination" or not, is implying that discrimination is wrong, or at the very least that some people who pass moral judgments on others is hypocrisy, which is a judgment in itself and also implies wrongness. At least that is what I hear you saying, and if I am wrong then please correct me.

I would like to clarify that nowhere in my post did I state that discrimination was inherently wrong. To evaluate something as discrimination is not a proclamation of its inherent wrongness. It is not an implication of wrongness until connotation is applied (which typically implies adherence to a specific system of thought) to meaning. Context, here, again implies system of thought. For example, within certain discourses the discrimination of individuals according to specific racial or sexual characteristics is not given a negative connotation, while in others it is. Discrimination itself is only positive or negative according to discourse, but is inherently neither.

Atomiczombie, you mentioned you were a philosophy student. You must certainly be familiar with Derrida and his Dissemination, then. Just as one may read a text according to a certain system (for example, what one would take from Milton's Paradise Lost using a Marxist lense differs from what one would take using Heidegger or Freud as a decoder), so can one read an act according to a certain system. Derrida wrote that when one reads a text, one both reads and creates, and that is arguably also the case with an act. One witnesses an act either directly or indirectly, and as this is done the act is also analysed and interpreted.

To clarify my meaning further: I do not need to believe that discrimination is inherently wrong in order to disagree with it or even to fight against it. I am both able to recognise that discrimination is not inherently wrong, as well as that it is not advantageous to my personal survival, yet, simultaneously, I recognise that what is disadvantageous to me or to the majority of human beings is not equatable with inherent wrongness since that would require a sort of universal archetype for right and wrong (similar to Aquinas's discussion of the goodness of god in relation to human and natural goodness discussed in his Summa Theologica, or similar to Plato's cave allegory). If morality is not man-made then it must come from some source, but if moral questions require a so-called human element then they are not absolute nor universal. As Nietzsche wrote in On Truth and Lies In A Non-moral Sense: "In some remote corner of the universe, flickering in the light of the countless solar systems into which it had been poured, there was once a planet on which clever animals invented cognition. It was the most arrogant and most mendacious minute in the 'history of the world'; but a minute was all it was. After nature had drawn just a few more breaths the planet froze and the clever animals had to die. Someone could invent a fable like this and yet they would still not have given a satisfactory illustration of just how pitiful, how insubstantial and transitory, how purposeless and arbitrary the human intellect looks within nature; there were eternities during which it did not exist; and when it has disappeared again, nothing will have happened. For this intellect has no further mission that might extend beyond the bounds of human life. Rather, the intellect is human, and only its own possessor and progenitor regards it with such pathos, as if it housed the axis around which the entire world revolved." Morality is centred upon species survival and moral codes (whether culture specific or pan-human) more often than not revolve around survival.

And yet, I would argue that what you describe is no absolutely human element at all, but, rather, the element of any living thing concerned with survival. I do not deny that the judgements I make are coloured by my own mortality, and yet neither do I consider them moral judgements, for I am able to recognise that no matter my judgement, that judgement is not absolute, but centres around purposiveness rather than absolute truth.

I agree that fact does not imply conclusion (like an act or a text they are interpretable according to thought system), and that it is up to the individual to interpret fact, however, this does not bring me to agree with Kierkegaard.

I'd like to delve further into how this relates to my example in my previous post. To do so I'd like to go back to this statement of yours, atomiczombie: "What I am getting at is that making evaluations about whether or not something is say, "discrimination" or not, is implying that discrimination is wrong, or at the very least that some people who pass moral judgments on others is hypocrisy, which is a judgment in itself and also implies wrongness."

I've already touched upon why I don't believe that evaluating something as discrimination is implying wrongness, but I'd like to get to the second part that states that "at the very least some people who pass moral judgments on others is hypocrisy, which is a judgment in itself and also implies wrongness."

It is not that I believe passing moral judgements on others is hypocrisy, but, rather, that I believe waging a war of moral judgements is not particularly practical when you can use concrete evidence and logical conclusion, since science provides a good foundation for debating against those who would claim homosexuality "unnatural." Both sides turn into emotional maelstroms ranting and raving about what is undeniably" "right" and "wrong," and both begin to take on the stench of fanaticism rather than logic. I dislike discrimination because it denies me the freedom to be, to speak, to act, and requires that I adhere to notions that I do not agree with. This has little to do with a personal moral code, and more to do with my preference toward the freedom to analyse, to question and to be something that may defy current convention. If we focused on the science we would note that homosexuality and bisexuality are far from "unnatural," and if either were some form of “unnatural evil” then Phelps would surely need to rename his website to "god hates bonobos" or "god hates homo sapiens sapiens." Fueling the fire by waging our own moral crusade really does not do much good in overcoming discrimination. In an age where scientific understanding demonstrates more and more that fact is without bias, I am perfectly content to simply be, rather than to be good or evil or even a combination of both.

And as far as you example of the woman in the car hitting the child, what if no one were there to see her, or if no one knew of her act except for her and she thought nothing ill of it? Morality requires that something or someone judge an act, it must have a source. Without a human source of judgment it would require some other source. And that is the question I ask to both of you: what is the source of morality, if not human?

[atomiczombie]

Originally Posted by EnderD_503

Ok, just a heads up, I wrote up this post last weekend and was going to reread it and post it, but since I've been at work practically 24/7 the last week I didn't get a chance to do either. This is in response to Emmy and atomiczombie, for the rest who quoted me, some of your responses are addressed in some way in the post since they are similar to what Emmy and atmiczombie addressed, but I will post again later to try and clarify as far as those responses are concerned. Excuse the typos if any and rushed nature of the post, I didn't get a chance to reread. Here it be:

Thanks for your response Emmy.

In your first paragraph you write that “if the aim here is to show that an act can be right or wrong only insofar as people judge it to be, I don’t think the case has been made.” I’m curious about the reasoning behind your objection to the idea that morality (or the “right” or “wrong” nature of a given act) is entirely dependant upon the existence of man-made belief systems. What evidence is there to suggest that these acts inherently contain any moral substance when examined outside their respective systems? Belief systems are very much like a codex for the interpretation of information. Without the system or the aligning discourse they are stripped of moral meaning. For example, the end of human life on earth is one that is looked upon as negative, wrong, evil, bad, generally an unfortunate turn of events and yet take away the human desire to survive in that judgement and said apocalypse is neither positive nor negative; it simply is. The same goes for any act or event. What lends an act or an event its rightness or wrongness (particularly if one does not hold any religious belief, or any belief whatever in a sentient higher power)? What inherently grants an act moral meaning?



I do agree that one must remember that a particular moral code is a cultural product, however, I do not agree that there exists any inherently correct moral judgement. What causes one to be a more correct moral judgement than the other? Again, one requires that the judgement be made according to a particular system, otherwise it can be easily interpreted in a myriad of ways. The crux of my argument is: what determines the moral nature of a given act, if not man-made systems?

Both you and atomiczombie asked similar questions about my discrimination example and so I'm going to answer you both of you, particularly regarding what you both thought appeared to be a contradiction in my argument. Before I began I would like to say that my argument involves inherent morality, meaning a moral code that exists beyond the human mind and that is, thusly, universal.






I would like to clarify that nowhere in my post did I state that discrimination was inherently wrong. To evaluate something as discrimination is not a proclamation of its inherent wrongness. It is not an implication of wrongness until connotation is applied (which typically implies adherence to a specific system of thought) to meaning. Context, here, again implies system of thought. For example, within certain discourses the discrimination of individuals according to specific racial or sexual characteristics is not given a negative connotation, while in others it is. Discrimination itself is only positive or negative according to discourse, but is inherently neither.

Atomiczombie, you mentioned you were a philosophy student. You must certainly be familiar with Derrida and his Dissemination, then. Just as one may read a text according to a certain system (for example, what one would take from Milton's Paradise Lost using a Marxist lense differs from what one would take using Heidegger or Freud as a decoder), so can one read an act according to a certain system. Derrida wrote that when one reads a text, one both reads and creates, and that is arguably also the case with an act. One witnesses an act either directly or indirectly, and as this is done the act is also analysed and interpreted.

To clarify my meaning further: I do not need to believe that discrimination is inherently wrong in order to disagree with it or even to fight against it. I am both able to recognise that discrimination is not inherently wrong, as well as that it is not advantageous to my personal survival, yet, simultaneously, I recognise that what is disadvantageous to me or to the majority of human beings is not equatable with inherent wrongness since that would require a sort of universal archetype for right and wrong (similar to Aquinas's discussion of the goodness of god in relation to human and natural goodness discussed in his Summa Theologica, or similar to Plato's cave allegory). If morality is not man-made then it must come from some source, but if moral questions require a so-called human element then they are not absolute nor universal. As Nietzsche wrote in On Truth and Lies In A Non-moral Sense: "In some remote corner of the universe, flickering in the light of the countless solar systems into which it had been poured, there was once a planet on which clever animals invented cognition. It was the most arrogant and most mendacious minute in the 'history of the world'; but a minute was all it was. After nature had drawn just a few more breaths the planet froze and the clever animals had to die. Someone could invent a fable like this and yet they would still not have given a satisfactory illustration of just how pitiful, how insubstantial and transitory, how purposeless and arbitrary the human intellect looks within nature; there were eternities during which it did not exist; and when it has disappeared again, nothing will have happened. For this intellect has no further mission that might extend beyond the bounds of human life. Rather, the intellect is human, and only its own possessor and progenitor regards it with such pathos, as if it housed the axis around which the entire world revolved." Morality is centred upon species survival and moral codes (whether culture specific or pan-human) more often than not revolve around survival.

And yet, I would argue that what you describe is no absolutely human element at all, but, rather, the element of any living thing concerned with survival. I do not deny that the judgements I make are coloured by my own mortality, and yet neither do I consider them moral judgements, for I am able to recognise that no matter my judgement, that judgement is not absolute, but centres around purposiveness rather than absolute truth.

I agree that fact does not imply conclusion (like an act or a text they are interpretable according to thought system), and that it is up to the individual to interpret fact, however, this does not bring me to agree with Kierkegaard.

I'd like to delve further into how this relates to my example in my previous post. To do so I'd like to go back to this statement of yours, atomiczombie: "What I am getting at is that making evaluations about whether or not something is say, "discrimination" or not, is implying that discrimination is wrong, or at the very least that some people who pass moral judgments on others is hypocrisy, which is a judgment in itself and also implies wrongness."

I've already touched upon why I don't believe that evaluating something as discrimination is implying wrongness, but I'd like to get to the second part that states that "at the very least some people who pass moral judgments on others is hypocrisy, which is a judgment in itself and also implies wrongness."

It is not that I believe passing moral judgements on others is hypocrisy, but, rather, that I believe waging a war of moral judgements is not particularly practical when you can use concrete evidence and logical conclusion, since science provides a good foundation for debating against those who would claim homosexuality "unnatural." Both sides turn into emotional maelstroms ranting and raving about what is undeniably" "right" and "wrong," and both begin to take on the stench of fanaticism rather than logic. I dislike discrimination because it denies me the freedom to be, to speak, to act, and requires that I adhere to notions that I do not agree with. This has little to do with a personal moral code, and more to do with my preference toward the freedom to analyse, to question and to be something that may defy current convention. If we focused on the science we would note that homosexuality and bisexuality are far from "unnatural," and if either were some form of “unnatural evil” then Phelps would surely need to rename his website to "god hates bonobos" or "god hates homo sapiens sapiens." Fueling the fire by waging our own moral crusade really does not do much good in overcoming discrimination. In an age where scientific understanding demonstrates more and more that fact is without bias, I am perfectly content to simply be, rather than to be good or evil or even a combination of both.

And as far as you example of the woman in the car hitting the child, what if no one were there to see her, or if no one knew of her act except for her and she thought nothing ill of it? Morality requires that something or someone judge an act, it must have a source. Without a human source of judgment it would require some other source. And that is the question I ask to both of you: what is the source of morality, if not human?

Nice. I am going to chew on this a bit before I reply. You pointed out a few things I said that I figured you would catch onto. I could have been clearer. This is a great discussion and I will have my reply for you soon.

[atomiczombie]

My answers are in red.

Originally Posted by EnderD_503

Ok, just a heads up, I wrote up this post last weekend and was going to reread it and post it, but since I've been at work practically 24/7 the last week I didn't get a chance to do either. This is in response to Emmy and atomiczombie, for the rest who quoted me, some of your responses are addressed in some way in the post since they are similar to what Emmy and atmiczombie addressed, but I will post again later to try and clarify as far as those responses are concerned. Excuse the typos if any and rushed nature of the post, I didn't get a chance to reread. Here it be:

Thanks for your response Emmy.

In your first paragraph you write that “if the aim here is to show that an act can be right or wrong only insofar as people judge it to be, I don’t think the case has been made.” I’m curious about the reasoning behind your objection to the idea that morality (or the “right” or “wrong” nature of a given act) is entirely dependant upon the existence of man-made belief systems. What evidence is there to suggest that these acts inherently contain any moral substance when examined outside their respective systems? Belief systems are very much like a codex for the interpretation of information. Without the system or the aligning discourse they are stripped of moral meaning. For example, the end of human life on earth is one that is looked upon as negative, wrong, evil, bad, generally an unfortunate turn of events and yet take away the human desire to survive in that judgement and said apocalypse is neither positive nor negative; it simply is. The same goes for any act or event. What lends an act or an event its rightness or wrongness (particularly if one does not hold any religious belief, or any belief whatever in a sentient higher power)? What inherently grants an act moral meaning?



I do agree that one must remember that a particular moral code is a cultural product, however, I do not agree that there exists any inherently correct moral judgement. What causes one to be a more correct moral judgement than the other? Again, one requires that the judgement be made according to a particular system, otherwise it can be easily interpreted in a myriad of ways. The crux of my argument is: what determines the moral nature of a given act, if not man-made systems?

Both you and atomiczombie asked similar questions about my discrimination example and so I'm going to answer you both of you, particularly regarding what you both thought appeared to be a contradiction in my argument. Before I began I would like to say that my argument involves inherent morality, meaning a moral code that exists beyond the human mind and that is, thusly, universal.






I would like to clarify that nowhere in my post did I state that discrimination was inherently wrong. To evaluate something as discrimination is not a proclamation of its inherent wrongness. It is not an implication of wrongness until connotation is applied (which typically implies adherence to a specific system of thought) to meaning. Context, here, again implies system of thought. For example, within certain discourses the discrimination of individuals according to specific racial or sexual characteristics is not given a negative connotation, while in others it is. Discrimination itself is only positive or negative according to discourse, but is inherently neither.

If you are saying here that discrimination is not inherently bad then I can agree with you to the extent that you look at its primary meaning: to make distinctions based on a set of characteristics. It is the negative evaluation of those characteristics that tends to go along with making such distinctions which is its negative connotation. But I contend that the value judgments involved in discrimination are relative, which makes them unfair and therefore, morally wrong. What I mean by "relative' here, is arbitrary.

Atomiczombie, you mentioned you were a philosophy student. You must certainly be familiar with Derrida and his Dissemination, then. Just as one may read a text according to a certain system (for example, what one would take from Milton's Paradise Lost using a Marxist lense differs from what one would take using Heidegger or Freud as a decoder), so can one read an act according to a certain system. Derrida wrote that when one reads a text, one both reads and creates, and that is arguably also the case with an act. One witnesses an act either directly or indirectly, and as this is done the act is also analysed and interpreted.

To clarify my meaning further: I do not need to believe that discrimination is inherently wrong in order to disagree with it or even to fight against it. I am both able to recognise that discrimination is not inherently wrong, as well as that it is not advantageous to my personal survival, yet, simultaneously, I recognise that what is disadvantageous to me or to the majority of human beings is not equatable with inherent wrongness since that would require a sort of universal archetype for right and wrong (similar to Aquinas's discussion of the goodness of god in relation to human and natural goodness discussed in his Summa Theologica, or similar to Plato's cave allegory). If morality is not man-made then it must come from some source, but if moral questions require a so-called human element then they are not absolute nor universal.

The assertion that I am making is that making moral judgments is part of human nature, and that those judgments are not totally dependent on culture or religion, but are often fleshed out within the context of culture or religion. That they are often fleshed out that way does not mean that moral discourse cannot be applied in a universal way. A Buddhist and a Christian and an atheist can all agree that the murder of innocent people is wrong, morally, and be talking about the same thing. It can make sense for them all to discuss these kinds of issues together. There is nothing absurd about that.

As Nietzsche wrote in On Truth and Lies In A Non-moral Sense: "In some remote corner of the universe, flickering in the light of the countless solar systems into which it had been poured, there was once a planet on which clever animals invented cognition. It was the most arrogant and most mendacious minute in the 'history of the world'; but a minute was all it was. After nature had drawn just a few more breaths the planet froze and the clever animals had to die. Someone could invent a fable like this and yet they would still not have given a satisfactory illustration of just how pitiful, how insubstantial and transitory, how purposeless and arbitrary the human intellect looks within nature; there were eternities during which it did not exist; and when it has disappeared again, nothing will have happened. For this intellect has no further mission that might extend beyond the bounds of human life. Rather, the intellect is human, and only its own possessor and progenitor regards it with such pathos, as if it housed the axis around which the entire world revolved." Morality is centred upon species survival and moral codes (whether culture specific or pan-human) more often than not revolve around survival.

I am not sure how this quote from Nietzche draws you to the conclusion that morality is only about the survival of the species. What I do know of Nietzche is that he considered morality to be a hinderance to his concept of the "will to power." He has said that the "overman", the ideal man, cannot actualize his potentiality unless he unbinds himself of the shackles of morality. He did not say that all people should unbind themselves of these shackles, however, but that only special individuals should, in order to gain power over others and maximize that power and control. It is not surprising to me that Hitler was a fan of Nietzche.


And yet, I would argue that what you describe is no absolutely human element at all, but, rather, the element of any living thing concerned with survival.

By this do you mean that making moral judgments is not only restricted to humans?!


I do not deny that the judgements I make are coloured by my own mortality, and yet neither do I consider them moral judgements, for I am able to recognise that no matter my judgement, that judgement is not absolute, but centres around purposiveness rather than absolute truth.

I am curious what you mean when you say your judgments are colored by your morality, and yet you contend they are not moral. How can you have a morality and not have moral values and make moral decisions? As far as purposiveness goes, do you mean that moral judgments have the form, if you want X, then you should do Y? If that is the case, then I would say that is not what morality is. Kant would call this a Hypothetical Imperative and not a Moral Imperative. A moral question would be, I want X but is doing Y to get it, morally right or good? Morality is a basis in itself, distinct from the question of how I achieve something.

I agree that fact does not imply conclusion (like an act or a text they are interpretable according to thought system), and that it is up to the individual to interpret fact, however, this does not bring me to agree with Kierkegaard.

I'd like to delve further into how this relates to my example in my previous post. To do so I'd like to go back to this statement of yours, atomiczombie: "What I am getting at is that making evaluations about whether or not something is say, "discrimination" or not, is implying that discrimination is wrong, or at the very least that some people who pass moral judgments on others is hypocrisy, which is a judgment in itself and also implies wrongness."

I've already touched upon why I don't believe that evaluating something as discrimination is implying wrongness, but I'd like to get to the second part that states that "at the very least some people who pass moral judgments on others is hypocrisy, which is a judgment in itself and also implies wrongness."

It is not that I believe passing moral judgements on others is hypocrisy, but, rather, that I believe waging a war of moral judgements is not particularly practical [practical on what basis?] when you can use concrete evidence and logical conclusion, since science provides a good foundation for debating against those who would claim homosexuality "unnatural." This debate about what is "natural" or not is separate from the argument about whether something that is natural, or unnatural is good or bad. Both sides turn into emotional maelstroms ranting and raving about what is undeniably" "right" and "wrong," and both begin to take on the stench of fanaticism rather than logic. I dislike discrimination because it denies me the freedom to be, to speak, to act, and requires that I adhere to notions that I do not agree with. This has little to do with a personal moral code, and more to do with my preference toward the freedom to analyse, to question and to be something that may defy current convention.

I can certainly understand and agree with your preference for freedom. Is freedom just a preference, really, or rather a value? Are other people's discriminatory acts which impede your freedom, wrong, or is it just that you don't like it? Do they have a right to interfere with your freedom? If they don't, then are you not making a moral judgment? Do you believe that other people should also be free? I imagine you might say something about the inherent inner drive of humanity for survival. Would you say that everyone having pure freedom is incompatible with survival or does it promote survival? Or does there not have to be some other basis for deciding how freedom is distributed and expressed? Is freedom a right? If so, when we say that, are we not making a moral judgment that is not purely relative? One could ask the same thing about survival? Is it not sometimes morally right to sacrifice your life for the sake of others? Or is it your contention that the survival of the species as a whole is an end, and not of individuals?

If we focused on the science we would note that homosexuality and bisexuality are far from "unnatural," and if either were some form of “unnatural evil” then Phelps would surely need to rename his website to "god hates bonobos" or "god hates homo sapiens sapiens."

And here, it seems you are sneaking in some sort of moral attachment to the concepts of natural and unnatural. Fred Phelps certainly does this. A purely scientific analysis can say something is natural or unnatural, but it is something further to conclude that what is natural is good, and what is unnatural is evil. That something further is the assignment of moral value to these concepts.

Fueling the fire by waging our own moral crusade really does not do much good in overcoming discrimination. In an age where scientific understanding demonstrates more and more that fact is without bias, I am perfectly content to simply be, rather than to be good or evil or even a combination of both.

And as far as you example of the woman in the car hitting the child, what if no one were there to see her, or if no one knew of her act except for her and she thought nothing ill of it? I never said or assumed in my example that anyone saw it, or what she herself thinks of it. Morality requires that something or someone judge an act, it must have a source. Without a human source of judgment it would require some other source. And that is the question I ask to both of you: what is the source of morality, if not human?

I do not disagree with you that the source of morality is human. It is part of our humanness. Human beings are beings that make moral judgments. Judgment lies in human reason, but not factual reasoning. It is moral reasoning. As to your assertion that morality requires that someone observe the acts in question for something to be moral or not, I heartily disagree. The whole, if-a-tree-falls-in-the-forest-does-it-make-a-sound-if-no-one-is-there-to-hear-it? argument is really misapplied here. There is nothing inherent in the way we use moral concepts that always assumes an observer. You can say something would be wrong if anyone did it. That is an appropriate use of moral language. Would you really believe, Ender, that if a man abducts a small child, rapes, tortures and kills that child, and no one ever sees this, learns of this, or finds the body, that the act in itself is neither moral nor immoral? I really enjoy our dialogue, and look forward to your responses.