What I did, which has been a really helpful path (given i'm only a fledgling academic philosopher and am purposefully leapfrogging the academic pathway in terms purely of duration...) was to read A.C Grayling's "The History Of Philosophy" and then choose (at a time) six books to attack, going from earliest, to later philosophies/philosophers which his account/s made me want to follow up on.

Initially, I went with some bigger names (Plato, Aristotle, Hume, Kant, Parfit, Chalmers) and a then added a couple of lesser known (North-Whitehead, Benatar, etc..). Since then, I just pick up what takes my fancy when im at the book store or on Amazon haha.

Has been very helpful to figure out what i'm interested in, and what I might think about those things without being beholden to views of those presenting the sources to me. I assume, when i hit the relevant courses, this will allow me a bit more room than out-of-highschool students too.

There is some X such that "one ought not X" is objectively true because it is a brute fact that one ought not X. — Michael

I think i can lay out here (to the point that we need not actually go any further) why this makes no sense to me:

Facts are derived from states of affairs. We agree there.
"One ought not x" (or any other behavioural command) is a thought, not a state of affairs. It's literally just the language enunciating a thought.
I cannot take a thought to be a state of affairs, which are necessarily mind-independent (in my understanding).

So, if you're seeing that statement as a state of affairs, we're just not talking about hte same thing as so we couldn't be wrong or right by each others lights :)

It's pretty damn rough to read. It's one a the very few cases in which I recommend secondary literature before reading the book, there's plenty of it. — Manuel

Any specific recommendations? I'm finding it very dense, but going slowly is giving me some confidence im my interpretations. I'd like to know if i'm just not getting it LOL

The task Kant set himself was to ask ‘What can we know before experience? — I like sushi

Do you think he came to a reasonable conclusion on that? I'm not done with CPR - and it's so dense, i'm asking this question without a preconceived possible answer.

But fascinating notwithstanding the futility of such an exercise, it's an obsession. — Manuel

Where do you get off the train? (meaning, at what point do you hit the 'its now a futile endeavour' line in your enquiry?)

The sentence "angels do not live in Heaven" is true even though the words "angel" and "heaven" do not refer to anything. — Michael

I do not agree. It’s a fictional sentence referring to nothing and so does not carry truth (is my take).

That we ought not eat babies. It's true even if we all believe otherwise (and even if we never consider it at all). — Michael

What supports your contention that it's true?

I take your other response as a tautology and can’t say much about it ‍:halo:
Morality exists in the mind, only. It isn’t discovered (is my position). See Hume :nerd:

I’m kidding. Enjoying the exchange

No, that's normative ethics. — Michael

:up:

all “alien” refers to is non-human, non-Earthbound life forms. All of those elements have direct referents which we almalgamate.

But noting the issue you’re outlining my question is - what moral facts could exist a priori? That is, without human knowledge of them?

The concept around geometrical facts ar least is that they exist whether we know about them or not right? We discover aspects of the material world.

What are we discovering when we come across moral facts?

Edit: sorry for post-comment additions - that isn’t my assertion. My contention is it must refer to a state of affairs. “Ought not” isn’t a state of affairs and so I can’t see it to be either a fact or compelling morally to begin with. The states of affairs “of” that statement is that there are others and we can harm them.

You have to do more work to support the “ought not” and I’m not seeing that work

I'll take some solace from the fact that you are talking in terms of conventions, and maybe leave it there. — Banno

Fair enough. Maybe we can revisit someone when I come up with a more apt way of explaining the distinction I see.

Really appreciate the exchange :cheer:

I reject that.

Moral truths are necessarily attendant to the world in which we live. They must refer.

and civilisation is necessarily a cooperative affair and such mutual obligations are integral to every human society without exception. — unenlightened

How are you accounting for all of the exceptions?

mathematical facts are not moral facts.

What possible morals exist a priori?

The Dicksonia example shows the murkiness is right there - it's a tree but not a tree. What counts as a tree is an issue of convention. — Banno

Your response seems to boil down to this - some labels are ill-defined. If the scientific fact is that tree is ill-defined, then yes, sure. That doesn't affect my distinction. It just means the distinction can't apply here. We can change the word, but not what it refers to, in a lot of cases. Water is a great one.

I would it looks like you're trying to defeat a rule by bringing up examples to which the 'rule' just wouldn't apply. It wouldn't apply to something artificially demarcated ( the plot of land called London) named by convention (the act of calling that plot of land London). For clarity, th 'rule' i refer to is the criteria of being objective.

Something to which we refer, without any grey area (water), by convention, can be objective, despite the use of the word 'water' being arbitrary. The object is the thing 'water' refers to, without ambiguity, whether you call it fire, paper, water, hogwash, bone or anything else.

Without the convention of London as to a border within what is called England, it ceases to be, in any sense other than imagination. The piece of land exists, but the restriction of it being 'London' vanishes immediately the convention isn't in play.
The Mines of Moria do not actually exist, as written in Tolkien, but we could refer to any plot of land as 'The Mines of Moria'. Would convention somehow bring them into existence, in that case? Or would we be merely enacting a naming, without having any effect on the object?

Which is, essentially, the point i made. Name is a convention - WHAT is being named, can either be convention (London) or not (wood). If we have to conclude that the mere use of language is what sets something upon the subjective pedestal, i just can't buy into that and need to do more work to enunciate why.

And again, what we consider to be true might well be revised on further consideration. — Banno

For clarity, I reject the suggestion in your post.

But im very interested in what could constitute a reason to revise a moral 'fact'?

What do you mean by "supernatural"? If you mean "non-physical" then yes, the moral realist will accept that moral facts are not physical facts; a moral statement being true has nothing to do with the existence of matter, energy, space, or time. — Michael

This doesn't get me anywhere unfortunately. I still see absolutely no justification for the claim unless one relies on revelation in some form. I can't figure out how a moral fact could escape needing to be tied to space and time, but that aside, even if granted, there's absolutely no moral force in the statement as-is.

I also just plum deny that it could be a state of affairs that a judgement on a behaviour is a fact. Seems counter to its definition.

P5: Moral facts are states-of-affairs. — Bob Ross

Arent facts derived from states of affairs, rather than consist in them?

Interesting. I could see saying moral realists tend to be quicker to judge, but I think this may becoming a bit of an ad hominem on moral realists out there... — Bob Ross

Fwiw, i felt the same - though, the underlying idea is probably close to my experience.

isn't not counting it as a tree a matter of convention? — Banno

Not my mind, but I recognize the difficulty in clearly delineating and may well end up conceding, so take the following as my muddling through intuition...
The symbolism "tree" or "plant" are customary as English-speakers have agreed to use them to refer, but they refer to an object, without custom, that has necessarily limited distribution. Here, an idealist would say i'm already off. But i take objects to actually exist.

A 'table' is merely a concept of mentation, attached, by custom, to objects with various and ill-defined forms and uses. The fact of their constitution (wood, glass, resin(that one's murky) etc..) aren't liable to the same murkiness and so whether we think your object is a tree or plant can be, definitively, shown to be true or false with reference to the actual circumstances of its constitution.

If there is a definition of 'fern' then using that term can be 'correct', if used in conjunction with an object which in fact, is, those things whcih constitute the meaning of fern. We could have used any other word, but it would refer to the same set of mind-independent properties contained in the currently symbol of 'fern'. Equally with tree. (again, a botanists correction notwithstanding).

Ok, so your argument is that facts about an objects constitution are objective, but facts about an object's identity are subjective? And further we "discover" what things are constituted of, but we "perceive" their identity? — Banno

I would say this is true for objects which are customary, rather than symbolic (i.e 'table' is customary, 'tree' is symbolic)

Ok, why is "This is a table" not objective? Seems to me that its being a table is at least as clear as its being made of wood. — Banno

Thank you; good question.

To my mind, that fact of any object being 'wood' is a fact about the object's constitution, not it's identity.
The object would be 'wood' (a symbol for a mind-independent fact about the arrangement of molecules which requires no perception to be extant). A 'table' is a concept of perception, rather than discovery. We can discover 'other things' to also be wood, but we run into the same obstacle defining any object as a 'table'. 'wood', in any usage, is still wood. A table may not be, if used for a distinctly 'other' purpose (e.g as a pedastal)

I may be ignoring a botanist's objection that the definition of Wood is murky (i don't know that it is, though). I understand it to be a discovered arrangement of molecules, universally discernable. And could be wrong on that - if I am, then I concede the entire thought.

I have taken you to be arguing that the distinction between ethical and physical sentences is that ethical sentences are subjective and moral sentences are objective — Banno

Not the case. I don't subscribe to any objective morals or ethics, currently. However, I am green to this type of 'proper' argumentation so please feel free where i made have made either technical or terminological mistakes that lead you to that conclusion..

I've been following up on that by trying to have you give a clear account of the difference between "subjective" and "objective" — Banno

My intention was never to give a distinct account of subjective vs objective, but to lay out why a custom is not objective unless you insert the condition that it's objective because of the custom and not because of any mind-independent state of affairs. To this end, i don't think i've at all missed the mark - but i take and accept your point here in that it's a pretty imprecise discussion of subjective vs objective. I was attempting discount the objective, not place it squarely within the subjective. Though, that does seem to necesasrily follow.

Ok. What is it that makes "This table is made of wood" an objective sentence? — Banno

It isn't one, unless you accept that the object is actually a table. But both the object being a table, and being made of wood are liable to this discussion. I concede the 'table' element is not at all objective unless referring to custom (as noted above wrt London).

Edit: Sorry, to make this clearer - I am taking as inarguable that London, whether it is objectively London, is actually a plot of land. Which sort of reverses the analogy you're making - The 'table' whether or not it is a table in actuality, is made of wood.

I take the 'land' and 'wood' as objective facts about the two objects, but their naming as non-necessary and a mere custom.

I'm not sure what you're asking. — Michael

Well, the statement, taken as a state of affairs, floats freely with no grounding. It references two states of affairs and then makes a judgment on them viz. That there are other's, and that other's can be harmed. Those are two states of affairs. The claim that one ought not harm those others who can be harmed isn't a judgement. So would I then be fine in simply concluding that this claim is nonsensical?

What do you mean by "supernatural"? If you mean "non-physical" then yes, the moral realist will accept that moral facts are not physical facts; a moral statement being true has nothing to do with the existence of matter, energy, space, or time. — Michael

This doesnt get me anywhere unfortunately., I still see absolutely no justification for the claim unless one relies on revelation in some form.

In our example, you are supposing that "London" refers only by some convention, and so is subjective; but that "that table" has something that makes it objective. — Banno

I genuinely cannot understand how you've concluded this.

I have, more than once, outlined the problem of a 'table' being an objective demarcation - and artificially took it for granted to make my point of distinction. It is a problem, but it's a problem at a higher level than the one we're dealing with.

Assuming we don't question the identity of a table, it being wood is objective. But i have elsewhere outright owned that if we don't make that assumption, it's a subjective statement. I just removed that grey area for discussion purposes.

And again I will suggest that these are issues of convention, which have broad agreement across speakers of English, and so are not, as you suggested, subjective. — Banno

I don't understand how that description provides an escape from being subjective? Wide-spread acceptance of a custom doesn't make it an objective fact about the state of affairs underlying it, does it?

Or would this end up coming under the rubric I tacitly accepted, that if you're referencing 'objective' within a framework viz. 'given the custom' outline, calling the 'correct' piece of land London is then objectively true?

So here you claim that "'London' is what we call a certain bit of land which, via custom for certain purposes, has been called 'London'". and I'll reply "'That table' is what we call a certain bit of the room, which, via custom for certain purposes, has been called 'that table'". — Banno

I don't understand how thats analogous. London is consists in a piece of land. A table consists in a piece of wood (if it's wooden, lol). You can't have a wooden table made of glass.

Yes, we have. The moral realist will say that that one ought not harm another is a state of affairs. — Michael

I think we can make some ground between us here - I've never seen a similar claim. Granted, i'm likely far less experienced in exploring academic positions than you are - Can you outline how this claim is made?

I.e, what's the source of the state of affairs? I can only imagine (as previously mentioned) a supernatural origin for such a brute claim.

Additionally, what's your personal position on that claim (that it is a state of affairs)?

What statement? — Michael

"One ought not harm others". Its a judgment, not a state of affairs. But i've just realised we've been over this :cry:

But the statement is an opinion, not universally held.

There need not be an ought from an is. There need only be an ought. — Michael

Are you suggesting that what is necessarily an opinion, not universally held, is a brute fact, with this statement?

just because "one ought..." is usually linguistically interpreted as a fact of the matter, it does not follow that they actually are — Bob Ross

My problem with almost all attempts to establish moral facts.

That one believes in a state of affairs as such, doesn't make it the case. Flat Earthers be damned!

Who has sided with Hamas here? Quote them. Call them out. Or drop the accusation. — Baden

I'm standing back from this then. I can't get on with this type of disguised motive.

If you were forced to live under an apartheid system and brutalized for protesting against it, I imagine you might be tempted to take up arms against it. I condemn all attacks on civilians on both sides without reservation. The underlying cause of this conflict though is the unrelentingly and largely unrecognized violent oppression of the Palestinians. Try the trivial thought experiment of putting yourselves in their place and you might come up with a more objective viewpoint. — Baden

The number of posts similar to this, is what im talking about. |
Equivocating, essentially saying "Yeah, but..." at every turn. Justifying. It's harsh. Just don't get it.

I am pretty disturbed by the sheer number of defenses of a terrorist attack targeting civilians throughout the thread.

Other discussion has been incredibly insightful, however.

One such brute fact might be “it is wrong to harm people.” — Michael

I'm sure you can appreciate that this is not always true in terms of normative values. There are certainly situations in which harm (for instance to prevent harm) is warranted, morally. Sometimes, it's called for morally. So you have to add further objects to the statement to justify it. To my mind, that precludes it from being brute.

I would ask, I suppose, what about that statement sets it aside from the need for justification?

Reality is a dance / battle between two opposing forces, a consciousness that, by observing waves of probability, collapses them into particular reality. This is the process of creation. — ken2esq

As other's have said, this makes no sense. What are you taking reality to be, in which this dance occurs? It's nonsensical to posit objects without a reality in which to exist.

On the other side is Wave Consciousness, which seeks to turn particular reality into waves, I think by blocking/destroying/hemming in the observations of the Particle Consciousness. — ken2esq

Can you explain what htis actually is? Mechanistically?

his means that all the far galaxies we observe through telescopes actually did not exist until we peered through those telescopes and then collapsed the waves of probability out there into what we expected to see. Strangely, this means scientists often, if not always, create rather than discover. — ken2esq

Again, totally nonsensical. Scientists often do not/i] find what they expected and these are considered more interesting results. Besides this, scientific claims are generally based on hundreds of thousands of data points crunched through multiple systems by multiple subjects. Is the claim that all scientists are predisposed to expect the same things, in the same way, at the same time, based on varying sets of data?

Women embody the wave consciousness and men embody the particle consciousness, at least primarily. — ken2esq

Where, specifically, with exactitude are you deriving this absolutely wild suggestion from? And when i ask this, i'm looking for a bottom-up description of how you concluded A. that creation and entropy are gendered somehow, B. That they relate to human genders, and C. How you apportioned each to the respective gender that you have apportioned them to?

If anyone has logic, reason, evidence, scientific studies, that refute this, I am happy to reconsider / revise. — ken2esq

Suffice to say your request for 'evidence' and scientific studies' is misplaced, to put it politely. You've presented precisely zero of them to support your argument.

"That which is presented with no evidence can be dismissed with no evidence"

Life arises in a quadrant of space as a fragment of God creating the universe in that area of space, by observing and choosing what to bring about in existence there, and once that process is complete in that area, the life is now obsolete, so it dies off and returns its energy to God, or perhaps we have eternal souls that are then reincarnated elsewhere in the universe where we can do more creation, as alien life forms on a distant world where observation is still needed to create the local reality. — ken2esq

Logically speaking, this defeats the preceding theory handily. If God is the source of creation, decision-making and completion, we have no place in those processes and therefore are not in any way creating anything. We are discovering God's whimsy.

It appears that your entire thrust of thought is predicated on ideas you cannot support and in fact, defeat later in your piece.
Secondarily, it appears that you're not open to update or further understanding of hte concepts you are misusing. I'd be first to say im no expert in Quantum physics. But i absolutely know enough to be entirely sure your use of 'wave', 'particle' and 'consciousness' are wanting. And in lieu of you providing sources for your suppositions and speculations, i don't think you're on very good footing to talk down to those who are spending their time pulling apart you claims on empirical grounds. You are factually wrong in many places, and so the speculations are necessarily as wrong or worse. Some noted above, some noted elsewhere but much smarter and better-read posters than I.

IN responding to this comment (if you do) please begin with the questions. Answering questions is really the only way to defend these thesis.

The conclusory "that's not a logical argument" skips all the NECESSARY steps to support your conclusion. — ken2esq

It does not. If you're not arguing from logic, then a rebuttal cannot be one in logic. That's the claim being made about your position. It isn't a logical position (not that it fails a test of logic).

EVERY argument which has an opponent necessarily is viewed as an ILLOGICAL ARGUMENT by the opponent — ken2esq

No it isn't.

Christopher Hutchins debating theists...he did not think they had a logical argument. Did he therefore say it was impossible to address their argume — ken2esq

Yes he did. Most of his debates with the likes of Lane-Craig and Lennox are expressly arguments about logical propositions. The premises are whats up for debate in those instances (though, admittedly, there are some great rebuttals to the conclusions of faulty premises - such as infinite regress not being as big-a-problem as once thought).

To claim you are free from that because the other side is somehow a priori illogical is just nonsense. — ken2esq

Its quite happy then, that the claim as i understand it (or at least, the one im standing behind) is that you haven't made a logical argument. Not that it fails a test of logic. It doesn't pretend to be a logical argument other than in your outright claims. Even happier, the lack of logical basis has been outline to you multiple times ..

I REALLY want to hear how you will rationalize stating such an obviously false position. Will you blame drugs? exhaustion? brain fart? being under the control of a super-conscious organization that does not want you to see the logic of my arguments and so puts really really stupid words in your mouth? (I'm partial to the last, by the way, do not blame you but that which controls you.) — ken2esq

Just a caution that this entire passage makes it seem as though you have absolutely no interest in discussing anything and purely an interest in defeating opponents. Not even their arguments.

And happily again, it's not a false position as best anyone but you can make out. I apologise that i've not been across many other threads regarding your OP. I shall take a stab at some elements there after this post.

It's subjective in the sense that it's people who are talking about its existence. — baker

I think it goes further. It's subjective in the sense that it is an artificial label upon something that has no conformity to the label other than in the mind of a subject who has accepted the command to apply the label to that plot of land.

Probability waves are not intrinsic to reality, again: it is an equation whose ontology is unknown, hence the different interpretations of QM. — Lionino

:up:

Why is London analogous to table, but wood isn't? London is also what it is - and that can also be boiled down to atoms, quarks etc... And the high-level organisation of those things is London. — Banno

Perhaps i'm not seeing what you are.. But this seems a bit askance from what i said

London is a piece of naming, not a piece of land. As is table viz. Table is what we call certain bits of wood, used via custom for certain purposes. While there isn't an exact analogy, London is what we call a certain bit of land which, via custom for certain purposes, has been called London.
It's not an exact analogy, granted, but I can't see any connection at all between London and wood as opposed to London and table. The '..is in England' bit just runs into the same problem of England being merely a name for a certain bit of a land which, by custom, we've agreed to call England - within which sits a smaller plot of land *insert above take on London here*. Is that a bit clearer?

And the reason for doing so is to show that the difference between scientific and ethical statements is not that the one is objective, the other subjective. — Banno

I assume on this front you accept there are no 'facts of the matter' beyond impression?

You are saying "yes", it is subjective, then concluding that it is objectively true? I don't follow this at all. — Banno

Sorry, hasty response there. Objectively true. I thought i had delineated between 'table' which would be subjective in some sense, with 'table made of wood'. If we accept a table as-is, then the statement is objectively true. Sorry for the confusion.

But isn't the table also a subjective demarcation? — Banno

Yes. I went over this in that same passage, but i understand the confusion given the above.

The table part, could certainly be considered subjective - but that's a known issue (what makes a table, such as it is?). So, the statement (taking the identity of a table for granted) is objectively true. — AmadeusD

I agree that 'table' is a subjective demarcation of an object (wood, or the tree from which that wood came). But the statement "The table is made of wood", accepting of what a table actually is, can be considered objectively true. It's not a perception that it's made of wood - it's a perception that it's a table. I had entered that claim on the premise that we're not questioning what a table is. If we're still questioning what a table actually is, then it's still subjective. I just purposefully removed that to get at the heart of the question (to my mind) whicih was the difference between 'wood' and 'London'. London is analogous to table. Both merely custom in practice. Wood is what it is - and that can be boiled down to atoms, quarks etc... But the high-level organisation of those things into a ligand-heavy plant matter is wood.

So again, what does "subjective" add to "I don't understand this to be a 'feature' of anything, but a subjective judgement"? — Banno

I guess having reference to the above, i would just repeat my answer with the addition of 'judgement' being ipso facto subjective - apologies for being imprecise. The word 'subjective' itself, adds nothing, but highlights that aspect of a judgement. So I'd probably roll back a claim that using that word has much value.

I'm not coming to that conclusion at all.

London exists as an abstract concept applied by custom to a plot of land. For someone to know London is where it is (by custom) they have to have that explained. Geopolitically, its objectively real.

But geopolitics are just persistent opinions of the majority.