Anything wrong with hurting people? — tim wood

Hurting people is not categorically, morally wrong, no.

Only certain actions that fall under that heading are things that I consider morally wrong.

You're misreading, and in a way that's odd. The ought being derived is that which prescribes a path, the destination having been chosen. It says nothing about the choice of the destination. — tim wood

So why ought you pursue x if you want y, just in case x is a prerequisite for y?

That something is hurting people. (The question seems predicated on not knowing how English conventionally works.)

Apparently you want some sort of other classification scheme. But I have no idea what you're looking for there. You'd have to be more explicit about your concepts.

The fact that makes it true is the fact of itself. — tim wood

You seriously just wrote that. lol.

It's not true or false that you ought to achieve what you want.

It can be the case that x is a precondition/prerequisite or requirement for y--that y can't obtain unless x obtains. That can be true or false.

It's not true or false that you ought to achieve y if you want y. Its not true or false that you ought to pursue some prerequisite first if you want something (iow, it's not true or false that you ought to achieve x if you want y). That's simply a preference that most people have because they want to achieve things they desire, they want to achieve the necessary prerequisites for that first, etc.

It's hurting people, for one. That's something, isn't it?

If it is the case that to get P you have to do Q, then, if you want P, you ought to do Q. An ought from an is, courtesy of Mortimer Adler, and doubtless not new with him. — tim wood

What fact makes it true that you ought to achieve what you want?

Do not you think you might pay at least some attention to agency, intent, motivation, and responsibility? — tim wood

Not when it comes to hurting people's feelings, because I don't think that's a moral issue.

When it comes to things that I believe are moral issues, sure. I think we should pay attention to intent, motivation, etc.

I was born in 1962. I've seen plenty of people have their feelings hurt. My feelings have been hurt. I don't think it's a moral issue.

I really wish we could keep things shorter, because I'm sure a bunch of worthwhile stuff is being bypassed. At any rate, re the first point you're bringing up in this post:

but I'm specifically targeting complex explanations such as - that moral principles (preferences) are foundational rather than based on other principles. I'm claiming that such a level of self-awareness is simply not justifiable. — Isaac

They have to be because you can't derive an ought from an is. You can't derive a value statement from a factual statement.

If you were to literally blindfold the person, say, and you were to keep giving them the same exact thing over and over, and their responses were to be apparently random re liking/disliking something--maybe where you gave them no other information other than suggesting that you'd be giving them different wines on each occasion, for example, then that can't show that they can get wrong their like/dislike reports, either--or show that they don't know their tastes. Because they can't be wrong that on each iteration, they either liked or disliked what they tasted. You can't treat the subject as if there are no changing variables, because that's not the case. Countless things change for the subject on each iteration of the taste test. People are complex "machines" with tons of ever-changing factors.

People who claim not to like white wine can be fooled into saying they like the white wine they're drinking by the addition of a tasteless red dye. — Isaac

(What does that have to do with neural imaging?)

At any rate:

(1) "I like/don't like F" isn't about whether they're identifying some particular x as F correctly per either convention or per how the person in question would identify x (as F) in different circumstances/given different information. It's made true or false by them liking or disliking the thing in question, whatever it really is/whatever someone calls it.

(2) If someone says "I don't like white wine," but you give them white wine and they like it, whether it's disguised to them or not, one thing that can be going on is that their tastes have changed.

(3) If someone says "I don't like white wine," but you give them white wine where it's alternately disguised and not disguised, in a kind of extended blind A/B test, where they consistently say they like the disguised stuff, whatever you call it, but they say they do not like the non-disguised stuff, then what's going on is more complex than simply liking the taste or not. That doesn't make them wrong, because it's not possible to get this sort of thing wrong.

Re your other comments, you'd have to argue that there's no way that other factors can't influence their perception of taste, but there's no way to argue that.

(Do we have any actual examples of reasonably controlled experiments a la what I described in (3), by the way?)

Every time you respond you bring up more topics, but I dislike doing multiple topics per post. I like focusing on one thing at a time and ideally "settling it." So with that in mind:

This seems like rather a controversial point of view given the advances in neural imaging, what reason do you have for persisting with it in spite of the evidence to the contrary? — Isaac

What would you take to be evidence to the contrary? (In other words, detail some evidence and explain what you think that evidence shows.)

The anti-establishment sentiment has been steered into attacks against the Clinton Administration — Ilya B Shambat

Is this something you wrote in 1995?

If you say you dislike olives, but then, on trying one some years later, you find them to be delicious, at some point in the intervening years you must have been wrong about your liking olives, right? — Isaac

No. That's not the sort of thing you can be wrong about. Whether you like olives is a mental state that you're in at present. (And in my view there is no reason to believe that there are unconscious mental states.)

What you could be wrong about is a prediction a la, "If I were to try an olive at future time x, I wouldn't like it."

And of course, whether you like olives can change over time--and it could change many times, in many subtle to not-so-subtle ways.

Re moral stances, sure, your feelings might not be so clear to you, and there might be various things you haven't considered that would change how you feel, or you might otherwise change how you feel over time. But moral stances can't be correct or incorrect in the first place, and you can't get wrong how you feel in terms of however you feel at time Tx being how you feel at time Tx.

As usual, this is just the typical right wing BS about "PC" stopping "problems from being solved" and such. What always always always turns out to be the actual motivation, the actual belief, is that the person complaining PC - never defined by them, notice - is they want to say something outlandish about another group or groups but don't want their words to be labelled as bigotry — MindForged

This might not apply to me, as I don't characterize PCism or SJWism as "stopping problems from being solved," but I simply take issue with people wanting to control others' thought/speech/expession. I have a problem with people wanting to control others in general, which is part of why I have the relatively unusual views about laws (far fewer things would be illegal if I were king), the prison system (I'd have a completely different system in place/different approach to criminal justice in general), etc. that I do, too.

No. Properties of the air between the hammer and the nails would be nitrogen, oxygen, argon and carbon dioxide. You won't find a fact in the air. That's crazy talk. — S

Facts are simply "ways that things are" --their material make-up and their relations, including dynamic relations (and the relations obviously include "to other things"), and all of this is also identical to properties. This is also known as "states of affairs."

Hammering nails does not happen in a vacuum (at least not normally). The air in the vicinity is affected, too, and it's a part of the system/process in question.

Minds are bodies, yes, but are minds just bodies? — TheMadFool

Yes. :grin:

Is mental experience not rich enough to deserve its own domain separate from mere physicality?

Why rag on physical stuff like that?

I have also been arguing that since such an object is, in principle at least, decipherable, it must embody meaning. If it didn't embody any meaning then it would not be decipherable; that is, there would be nothing to decipher. It embodies meaning simply because it was intentionally produced to convey something, to be meaningful. — Janus

You could just say that you'd not call it "deciphering," but deciphering a text can simply be a matter of assigning meaning to it--not discovering meaning that's somehow literally in it, ontologically.

What we have been arguing about here is what it is reasonable to believe, and what it is reasonable to say, and also whether the terms we use in saying what we say are in accordance with ordinary usage. So, I have been arguing that it is reasonable to say that an intentionally produced inscribed stone tablet embodies meaning, on account of the fact that it was meaningful in the culture within which it was produced, and also on account of the possibility that what it meant could be, at least to some significant degree, deciphered. — Janus

This is supposedly an ontology thread, though. Are "manners of speaking" really good enough for ontology? And if so, wouldn't ontology simply turn into journalism about common ways to talk?

Why would it be important if we're talking about "true" giving or "true" love?

(Talk in that vein always reminds me of talk a la "true metal" (among heavy metal fans), and of course it brings to mind the "No True Scotsman" fallacy.)

There's a good reason why a lot of philosophy papers, at least in analytic philosophy, make explicit how the author is defining terms that are important for the paper. That's especially important if there are a number of common senses of the term in the field, or if the author is using a definition that's at all novel or controversial.

But it doesn't answer my question as to why you feel emotional harm should be bracketed out in terms of not being allowed re interpersonal behaviour that we consider more significant than etiquette. So, I've read it now twice and responded to it twice.

If all you want to say is it's just that you feel it should be allowed and are not willing to answer why then your position has no support and no value. I thought you might want to say more than that. But, OK, fine. — Baden

For everyone, including you, for any moral stance they have, it's either foundational or not in this sense:

If a moral stance a la "one should/shouldn't behave in such and such way," "It is morally good to do x," etc. is a consequence of another moral stance that person holds, the first-stated moral stance isn't foundational.

If a moral stance (a la the same sorts of examples) isn't a consequence of another moral stance that person holds, then the moral stance is foundational for that person.

Moral stances can not be the consequence of non-moral stances, because of the is/ought issue. No moral stance, no value judgment (a la good/bad, better/worse, etc.) follows from any non-evaluative fact.

So ALL moral stances, if foundational, per your comment above, would have to "have no support and no value."

People can state either foundational or non-foundational moral stances initially. If they state a foundational moral stance, then there isn't going to be any sentential support or justification of the stance. If they state a non-foundational moral stance, we can work back to the foundational moral stances they've built the non-foundational stance upon, if we're interested in that, but there's nothing preferential about non-foundational stances.

Everyone gets to foundational stances rather quickly. If they don't start with them, it's almost never more than a step or two back until they get to one.

he big difference between us, which you've made more explicit in your last few posts, is that I don't just trivially define meaning in a way which necessitates a subject, whereas you do. — S

Meaning doesn't require a subject due to a definition. The realization that it requires a subject is the result of an ontological investigation/analysis.

Not necessarily. So, I posit they can't. — Baden

What would be the reason for that?

OK, so morality is about degree of harm then? — Baden

Degree of "physical" harm in my view, yes.

It's possible to emotionally torture someone to the point where they commit suicide. And you are saying you wouldn't consider that immoral? — Baden

Yes, I wouldn't consider that immoral. For one, they could choose to leave the situation before it gets to that point.

Re punching someone, that's not sufficient to be immoral either. It depends on just how hard someone is punching the other person, the injury sustained if any, etc.

You will never reach an exhaustive qualification of criteria. And there's little point in trying. The point is there are cases like the one I gave that (I claim) are clearly immoral. And there are other cases like the one you gave that (I claim) are clearly not (without further detail given). Then there are grey areas where a more granular analysis would need to be done. I recognize that. You seem not to, and, if so, you'll need to justify why you think the behaviour in the example I gave is not immoral. Can you do that? — Baden

The point is simply that you're not actually using a "it's immoral just in case someone's feelings are hurt" criterion then. You're also not using a simple "it's immoral just in case someone is hurt (period)."

I'm not either. I was just explicit that I'm not using that as a criterion.

I don't feel that hurt feelings is ever sufficient to make something immoral. Some examples of hurt I do think are immoral--such as frank's examples. I just don't consider hurt feelings sufficient, and I wouldn't frame it as hurt being immoral unqualified aside from that, because that would be misleading.

"You will never reach an exhaustive qualification of criteria."--I agree with that, and it's a reason that I think that "principle-oriented" approaches aren't the way to go.

Re justifying why we find anything in particular moral or immoral, as I've stated many times, it simply comes down to what we feel should or shouldn't be allowed re interpersonal behavior that we consider more significant than etiquette.

And no, Terrapin Station, I don't care what shirt you wear. — Baden

Right, but someone could be emotionally hurt by that. So, is it immoral? If not, then we'd need to qualify things better.

Terrapin: what is vague about the word "hurt"? — tim wood

But I explained this already. Someone can be hurt, especially emotionally, by any arbitrary thing.

What that leaves is that it is not wrong to hurt people. Is that your position? — tim wood

Right. "Hurt" is too vague. As if "suffering," "harm," etc,

It depends on what we're talking about.

And this is the case a fortiori because someone can be hurt--especially if we're including emotional reactions--by any arbitrary thing. No one is going to argue that any and every arbitrary thing is thus morally wrong. They're going to have some sort of more qualified/restrictive criteria.

Where racist views predominate, it's not so much that an expression of racism hurts anyone's feelings, — frank

The issue there was just that he was characterizing someone with hurt feelings as a victim. I was saying that I don't consider hurt feelings to qualify for victimhood. That bit isn't just about racism. I mean in general.

A very few people might not understand what it means — Baden

Not agreeing with you, or not agreeing with some particular conventional view, doesn't amount to not understanding something.

And is unethical, like most things, insofar as it causes unnecessary, and particularly, intentional, physical and/or emotional harm. — Baden

What criteria would you put on what counts as morally problematic emotional harm? Would a person experiencing emotional harm in response to any arbitrary thing count? For example, say that Joe has an emotional problem with orange striped shirts, so that when he sees someone wearing one, he experiences emotional harm. Is it then morally problematic to wear an orange striped shirt around Joe?

Or does it have to be a common reaction to be a problem? Just how common?

Let me just make sure I understand your position:

1) hurting someone's feelings is never wrong.

2) since people say/do bad stuff, we should just let it go and learn to be tougher. — NKBJ

Re (1), it's not sufficient to be morally wrong (and certainly not sufficient to suggest social action, censure, laws, etc.). Re (2), learn how to parse it better. I explained that as succinctly as it can be explained. A shorter paraphrase isn't really going to capture the idea, and I didn't say anything resembling what I'd call "tougher."

I guess that's what I was trying to get at with the incorrectly calibrated spectrometer. There's still some other chain of events which have to all be in place on order for the spectrometer to record 'blue' as a consequence of what the light waves reflected from the cup do to it. — Isaac

To record blue, sure. x having property F is a different thing than D recording that x has property F.

fall foul of your restriction the the response must be the same each time for it to count as a property of the object? — Isaac

We're really having a communication problem if you believe that I said anything at all like that.

What I said was that I don't buy that potentials are real, except as a manner of speaking about something not being impossible. Potentials are not existent >>whatevers<< that somehow obtain as something not actualized. Potentials are the fact that (a) it's not impossible for x to be in state S, and (b) the properties of x make it more likely that x will be in state S in the future than other possible states.

Again, this stuff, on my view, has zilch to do with the thread topic, though.

In CPR 1787 of course, he deleted that whole synopsis given in CPR 1781 as being incoherent. — Mww

I like that even Kant himself thought that he was writing incoherent stuff.

So we experience the phenomenon and then afterwards we experience the representation?

That's just victim-blaming and totally ignoring how humans work. — NKBJ

I don't think that one is a victim just because their feelings are hurt.

As social beings, we care about how others view us, — NKBJ

First, it's important to realize that no matter what you're like, no matter what you do, and no matter what we do as a culture, not everyone is going to like you, not everyone is going to respect you, be interested in you, etc. You need to be able to accept/deal with that.

Aside from that, people could be just giving their opinion, which can't be right or wrong, and you shouldn't get upset that people have different opinions than you do, or they're claiming something that can be right or wrong, in which case either they're right--and you shouldn't get upset that someone is saying something true, or they're wrong, in which case you can either try to help them not be wrong or if you realize that's hopeless, you can just let them be and move on to something else. They're going to be wrong and you can't teach them otherwise, at least not at that moment.

doesn't mean that those spewing racist garbage should be let off the hook. — NKBJ

I wouldn't put anyone on the hook for anything they can say. People can say things that we disagree with or that we think is stupid or wrong. They should be allowed to do so.

I think if your position is that meaning is a private subjective sensation, however, there is still (to my mind) the question of whether the ability to cause such sensations in language users is a property of the word, as per the ability of Carbon-14 to produce beta particles, or the ability of a blue cup to cause correctly calibrated spectrometers to register 'blue'. But that may be a different argument to the one set out in the OP here. — Isaac

Yeah this is basically the same conversation as the other thread now. ;-)

At any rate, meaning, on my view, is the associative act that we're performing. I wouldn't say that external things cause that associative act . . . the associative act is in response to external things often, and we could say that they catalyze it, but I wouldn't say they cause it, because you could easily expose someone to a cup or whatever and they might not perform the associative act at all.

The word "dog" (as a collection of sound waves) emits these sound waves which, upon being intercepted by anything correctly calibrated to recognise them, would produce the image of a dog. — Isaac

You could program a machine to do that, sure. The problem is that it's something different than meaning. And the machine isn't even making an association. We'd be interpreting it that way (and programming it in a way that's consistent with what we're interpreting).

Okay, that makes sense at least with respect to why you've been pursuing the angles you've been pursuing, but the problem is that I don't agree with any of it, starting with the old "meaning is use" idea.

We could say that the meaning of x to S is determined by the way S "uses" x, but that would have to amount to us saying that the use we're talking about is the specific associative way that S thinks about x, and we could say just as well that "meaning is thought." That would be as accurate/ inaccurate, detailed/not detailed, in a similar way, to "meaning is use."

Aside from that, "meaning is use" has some merit as a bumper sticker slogan in that we pay a lot of attention to behavior, context, etc. when we assign meanings to other persons' utterances, and that can influence our own meanings.

I was just being a smartass due to you asking "what is the greatest strength of the human mind," whereupon you listed a handful of things and then said "All of the above."