The only common ground that actually functions as a universal objective fact, is our biology, our human nature. This has to be the foundational ground that guides our moral thinking, from which we extrapolate ideas about what is "good" and "bad" for us. Only by accepting this can we start to form principles to live by and moral principles to be discussed about.

And it's this that I mean is measurable. Our human nature exists as an objective thing, and it is measurable. Anything disregarding this foundation when trying to produce moral facts fails. — Christoffer

I broadly agree with what you are saying in this post. However, I think that saying that our human nature functions as a universal objective fact, ignores genetic variation between individuals. Isn't it more realistic to think that we have human natures with, similarities, but also differences? How do you avoid creating a Procrustean bed?

To start off with, I don't think immeasurability is a condition for non-existence of moral facts. For example, your thoughts exist while also being immeasurable. A lot of aspects of the human live are immeasurable, but do exist (even if it's in a transcendental way).

I believe we (human species) have adopted moral values in order to create a stable, harmonious society, as a kind of attitude framework, to not live in absolute chaos where everyone would do as they please. Throughout our history, our numbers have grown and so has the need for moral judgement.

The classic ways of defining morality (objectivism, relativism, emotivism) are highly debated.
The big problem lies in formulating moral facts that count for everyone living on this planet. Because just because 90% decide something is morally wrong, doesn't make it morally wrong as a fact, a certainty. Very likely, but not 100% certain. Then, there is also the addition of intent when doing something morally right or wrong, but that is a completely other discussion.

Anyway, those are my 2 cents. I would like to add I'm a beginner in philosophy and English is not my native language, so pardon any mistakes.

I broadly agree with what you are saying in this post. However, I think that saying that our human nature functions as a universal objective fact, ignores genetic variation between individuals. Isn't it more realistic to think that we have human natures with, similarities, but also differences? How do you avoid creating a Procrustean bed? — wonderer1

Our "human nature" is mainly referring to those similarities. As I described we can look for similarities that exists between cultures, that transcends what we invent for ourselves in isolation.

But we also need to put those similarities in the context of history. For instance, what societies and social interactions have produced the longest form of well being for people? Because if we only look at similarities, we can find a lot of murder and war, or we can find a lot of bad strategies of handling a society that are returning throughout history. The key is, do they lead to the downfall of a society, or do they keep existing because of positive contribution? Finding what sticks and produce positive outcomes in forms like well being for the people and individuals in that society, helps inform what similarities to look for.

In order to avoid a Procrustean bed, is rather simple. Looking for the similarities between people and what gives them a sense of well being, using history as a guide to rule out bad practices and short term illusions, will inform what is in fact functioning for people as humans. The idea that we have individuality that differs so much that it produces an individuality in our biology does not exist, therefore we are more similar than we are different and the differences that exist can co-exist with such a moral system.

But the system requires the deterministic principle of society, i.e that we form society based on better understanding of the deterministic factors that form us. Because someone can find well being in killing others, it could even spiral into group think. And such thoughts can arise out of emotional needs for retribution of past events. In a deterministic society we control and mitigate the mechanisms that would produce such spirals out of control and with analysis of history on what frame of mind that can exist long term and what would collapse society, we can spot why it is immoral to produce such well being through killings.

The core tenets of it then has to do with deterministic-based society, historical studies and statistical studies on human nature and psychology. All of these combined can produce principles to live by.

What outliers and differences would not fit into that moral strategy? It's basically taking the categorical imperatives and places them in a context of human emotions aimed towards the well being of both individuals and the collective. Because most of the moral problems that exist comes from the inability to fuze Utilitarianism with Kantian ethics.

So if we form some basic tenets out of the similarities between all humans (biology) that are true regardless of cultures or historically different ideas, we have a core foundation to work from. Then use historical studies to form knowledge about what societal and sociological strategies give the most utilitarian gain for society and which last the longest (i.e does not give rise to revolutions or suppressions of some people), and frame all of it within the context of a deterministic-based society in which we focus on preventative measures and making sure causes for problems have more focus than mitigation of consequences. Both in justice and development of societal functions.

I do not propose that I have the solution here, but I believe that this is a path to explore if we are to combine aspects of utilitarianism and Kantian ethics into a better functioning system than what we have today.

The most common argument against the existence of objective morality and moral facts besides moral differences between societies is that they aren’t tangible objects found in the universe and can’t be measured scientifically. Are there any refutations or arguments against this?- — Captain Homicide

I would say that they are probably correct -- there may not be tangible or objective morality, that's why we have laws (morality and the law) to enforce morality, at least some of our moral practices.

What I'm more interested in is what then do these people who complain about the lack of objective morality or the lack of tangible factual morality conclude? What is their conclusion? That a cruel regime should exist if in their own land, cruelty is not considered immoral?

Thank you for the reference to the Wang paper, which I will read with interest. For now, though, you quote him as saying that conceptual relativism does not involve “confrontations between two conceptual schemes with different distributions of truth-values over their assertions, but rather confrontations between two languages with different distributions of truth-value status over their sentences due to incompatible metaphysical presuppositions.” I understand the distinction – language A may countenance T-or-F evaluations over a different set of sentences than language B – but why would this make them distinct conceptual schemes?

If there’s no short answer to this, no worries, you’ve referred me to Wang and I’ll see what he has to say.

you quote him as saying that conceptual relativism does not involve “confrontations between two conceptual schemes with different distributions of truth-values over their assertions, but rather confrontations between two languages with different distributions of truth-value status over their sentences due to incompatible metaphysical presuppositions.” I understand the distinction – language A may countenance T-or-F evaluations over a different set of sentences than language B – but why would this make them distinct conceptual schemes? — J

Wang argues that a conceptual scheme cannot be reduced to a sentential language.

Could a conceptual scheme be identical with a scientific language? Although a scientific language is more closely related to a conceptual scheme than a natural language is, a scientific language construed as a sentential language is not a conceptual scheme either. First, many parts of a conceptual scheme, such as a categorical framework (usually a lexical structure of a scientific theory), are simply not a set of sentences or beliefs. Second, a conceptual scheme that serves as the conceptual framework of a theory cannot in itself be the theory or the language expressing the theory. Third, it would not improve matters to stipulate that a conceptual scheme is the totality of sentences held to be true by its speaker or the believer's total belief system.

A conceptual scheme is not supposed to be what we believe, what we experience, or what we perceive from the world, but rather what shapes our beliefs, what schematizes our experience (even what makes our experience possible), or what determines the way in which we perceive the world. Schemes are something ‘forced on' us conceptually, something we commit tacitly as fundamental presuppositions of our common experience or beliefs. Besides, a conceptual scheme does not describe reality as the Quinean fitting model R2 suggests; it is rather the theory a scheme formulates that describes reality. A conceptual scheme can only ‘confront' reality in a very loose sense, namely, by coming in touch with reality in terms of a theory. Accordingly, a conceptual scheme cannot be said to be true or largely true. Only the assertions made in a language and a theory couched in the language can be true or largely true.

But isn’t this a contradiction? In the first quote, Wang describes conceptual relativism as “confrontations between two languages,” but then you say (and the second quote seems to bear this out) that “a conceptual scheme cannot be reduced to a sentential language.” (For what it’s worth, Davidson didn’t think it could be, though Quine did.) I would agree with this, in the sense that Wang means it: “Accordingly, a conceptual scheme cannot be said to be true or largely true. Only the assertions made in a language and a theory couched in the language can be true or largely true.” That’s why I was hoping for clarification about why the range of T-or-F evaluation sentences within a particular language would make any difference.

These are difficult issues to take piecemeal, and I didn’t mean to put you on the spot. I’ll read Wang and we can discuss further.

Because this won’t work for almost all of our uses of “objective”. It’s objectively true, I presume, that water is composed of H2O. Do we want to describe this statement as a “bias shared among a normative community” -- of scientists, presumably? What would motivate us to call this a bias?

There is widespread agreement on many of the properties of water, its identity as H2O, its boiling point, etc. But there is also widespread disagreement about many of its properties on some levels. For example, questions around the nature of chemical bonds, quantum effects, measures of entropy, etc.

This being the case for basically every topic (once you get deep enough into it, you reach the fringes of consensus), it seems to be the case the objectivity breaks down to a certain degree. In specialized, highly technical debates, there might be only a few viewpoints and they can be quite incommensurate (e.g. quantum foundations). It would seem to me that objective facts are only established once this sort of contradictory plurality is resolved.

But I think your judgement here is correct. We want our morality to be as apparent as "water is H2O." I think it actually is this way on a number of points. "Do not torture people for pleasure, do not molest children," are pretty much taken as concrete. Do people violate these precepts? Of course, but people often also agree that they act immorally. Do some people disagree? Sure, but some people also think the Earth is flat, so we shouldn't lose too much sleep over not convincing everyone. What justice means to the emergent whole of society is probably the more important thing.

You are assuming a compatibilist free will as truth here. I'm saying there's no such thing. The "will to align yourself to your internal logic" which is a core part of the compatibilist framework is in itself a deterministic feature. There is no free will to being with.

I'm not assuming it. I am saying, if compatibilism is the case, the problem you bring up is not a problem. But I do find compatibilism more compelling in general, due to problems in libertarian theories that probably aren't relevant here.

However, people seem unable to imagine a world in which we put most effort into preventative measures, meaning, we understand that years of causes determines a person's actions and that if we make sure that our entire society aligns towards making sure all inhabitants do not end up in such causality, then we have mitigated the majority of crimes in society.

Certainly crime prevention is a worthy goal. I see problems with making it the primary goal though. It seems to run into the problem Hegel points out, of treating other people as animals to be trained into proper behavior, rather than people to be lifted upwards into self-determining freedom. That is, if people are to be free, they have a right to be punished, to pay the costs of restoring right if they violate it. This doesn't mean that crime prevention, recidivism, etc. can't be part of the policy conversation, it just means that merely shaping human behavior towards ideal outcomes cannot ground justice.

This is true even if we take a very narrow definition of freedom as: "doing what you want to do and not doing what you don't want to do," which seems like a state that even a fatalist can allow a person might be in. That is, the self-actualized person's preferences are commensurate with the law. They accept following the law as a duty, as part of their identity, rather than them responding to surface level incentives not to break the law.

I tend to agree with Hegel's view, and I suppose Kant would say something similar re treating human choices as merely means to an end vis-a-vis aggregate behavior. Assuming fatalism seems to lead to something like Strawson's morality, which reduces justice into something akin to breaking a horse.

For instance, in a deterministically guided society we would need much better social securities. Especially for parents and their kids. Parents would need to also raise their children as part of a community and be more transparent about their family life since any problems for children need to be addressed before they manifest as psychological damage. Families would probably have a supporter who constantly council their day to day challenges and there would need to be a greater openness among neighbors and people living close to them since everyone to some degree would be part in the upbringing of the children. This prevents parents who are unfit as parents to damage their children's childhood creating a cause for their later lives in which such causes can manifest as everything from depression, anxiety, social problems, or criminal activity, murder etc.

I agree on the policy ideas, but wouldn't this be beneficial even if there is some sort of acausal libertarian free will? Obviously, people's upbringing greatly effects their adult behaviors vis-a-vis criminality.

For starters, the idea of justice as retribution or "evening the balance" needs to be removed. While feelings of retribution are strong emotions and hard to overcome, the justice system needs to stop focusing on punishment. "Restoring the balance" can still lead to emotions of retributions and a causality chain that leads to vengeance rather than preventing harm from spiraling out of control.

I agree that "vengeance" isn't helpful. However, restoring right is not equivalent to fulfilling an emotional need for vengeance. Crime is an infringement of other's rights, and of right as a whole. It is the denial of mutual recognition. “The restoration of right” consists in what was infringed being reasserted and reaffirmed by society. Crime is a negation of right and punishment is the “negation of the negation."

This doesn't entail retributivism. In a mature moral relationship, there must be "space for persons to confess their moral shortcomings and forgive the shortcomings of others." This could result in something along the lines of restorative justice.

"The goal of restorative justice is to bring together those most affected by the criminal act—the offender, the victim, and community members—in a nonadversarial process to encourage offender accountability and meet the needs of the victims to repair the harms resulting from the crime."

Victims' and society's emotional need for retribution only comes up to the extent that a form of punishment will help bring criminals back into harmony with the ethical community, i.e., the criminal is seen as "having paid their debt to society." Punishment then is an expression of the rationality and freedom inherent in the legal and ethical order of a society. It represents the authority of the state and the collective will of the community in upholding the ethical norms. In this sense, punishment is not a mere act of vengeance, but an institutionalized expression of the community's commitment to justice.

Whereas, if we only care about "getting people to not do crime" (training behavior), we might not care about restorative justice. Why sit the criminal down with the victim and try to facilitate repentance and forgiveness if it doesn't boost outcomes re recidivism? But, if we think that criminals have a right to be free, and to develop such that they freely choose to join the ethical community, then we have an obligation to shape their punishment such that it (hopefully) results in them seeing it as a duty to the community -- one they accept. And this is not unthinkable, sometimes people admit that they deserve to be punished.

That said, I can see what you describe looking quite like what I've described when it comes to policy implementation. The difference would lay in the concepts underpinning the justice system.

I'm focusing on the lack of universal meanings, objective meanings. Those are not what you find for yourself, those are objective. The specifics here are essential for the argument I made. And the argument had to do with how most people try to find some objective morality, i.e some rules that exist as universal truths. Such objective rules require a meaning that exists as a universal truth, a universal meaning.

See my and other's earlier replies. I don't think it's at all useful to say that "objective" is a synonym for "universal," or "of itself." Like this:

Yes, this is a problem of language. Objective can mean externally objective, i.e objective in the eye of the universe, cold dead objectivity.

IDK about the usefulness of "internal" and "external" objectivity; I've never come across it before. It would seem to make it easier to conflate the concept of "objectivity" with the idea of "noumena" and "in itselfness," which is quite common. I think it comes out of the positivist idea that "objectivity approaches truth at the limit; more objective = more true." Positivism has fallen out of favor, but this idea has a zombie legacy. I would just consider whether it's a useful way to think about objectivity in the first place, since it would seem that "external objectivity" doesn't have anything to do with the possibility of subjectivity.

The rest, I agree with. I'd probably go even further and say that, rather than there not being "evidence" for some sort of universal meaning, the concept itself is fatally flawed. And biology, in the ways that it is able to clearly define harm, and to a lesser extent, flourishing, does seem to have paramount importance in grounding morality. Although, I would also add that the social sciences would seem to have plenty to say here.

This is the type of morals that religion tries to impose on us.

I am not sure about this, although I don't think it's all that relevant. This seems to bring up Plato's Meno Paradox. Are things good because God loves them or does God love good things because they are good? If the latter, as often claimed by religions, then it would be the case that religion's authority when it comes to morality simply stems from the fact that the religion has been the recipient of divine revelations, special knowledge. Why does this revelation have authority? Because, presumably, God knows much more than us about the world, and has a better handle on justice. No "universal meaning" is required. It can be the same sort of "objective morality" we could create, just better formulated.

"Good" and "bad" can still be guided by commonalties between humans regardless of culture. And there has to be a guiding principle underneath. There's no point in discussing what is more punk or not if you don't have anything informing what "punk" actually is in the first place. Or you cannot debate the atomic weight of lithium if you don't have a definition of what "atom" means...

The only common ground that actually functions as a universal objective fact, is our biology, our human nature. This has to be the foundational ground that guides our moral thinking, from which we extrapolate ideas about what is "good" and "bad" for us. Only by accepting this can we start to form principles to live by and moral principles to be discussed about.

And it's this that I mean is measurable. Our human nature exists as an objective thing, and it is measurable. Anything disregarding this foundation when trying to produce moral facts fails.

:up: agreed

There is widespread agreement on many of the properties of water, its identity as H2O, its boiling point, etc. But there is also widespread disagreement about many of its properties on some levels. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Definitely. I didn't mean that there were no further questions about the nature of water -- or of objectivity. I just picked the chemical composition as a good example of an objective property, using "objective" in its most uncontroversial sense.

I'm glad the analogy with moral objectivity makes sense to you. I actually think "moral facts" are a tall order! But those who regard moral judgments as being about something other than personal or group preferences, or evolutionary equipment, probably need them in order to have a subject matter. Very broadly, I'm with Nagel on this -- moral thinking is sui generis, contentful, and argues from reasons rather than "desires" in the Humean sense. By appealing to reasons, it situates itself in the objective world, or perhaps something a bit more Peircean and intersubjective. Beyond that, we still have a lot of filling-in to do.

if compatibilism is the case, the problem you bring up is not a problem. But I do find compatibilism more compelling in general, due to problems in libertarian theories that probably aren't relevant here. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I focus on what type of determinism that is most likely. Compatibilism is in my view a sign of human arrogance over the forces of reality. A form of rejection of being under control of determinism because it just feels scary or bad. So I can only adhere to the type of determinism that science supports and which seem most rationally logic for us to function by. Therefor I can't view any "if"s as anything more than wildly more speculative than that which is the most rational foundation for the argument.

Certainly crime prevention is a worthy goal. I see problems with making it the primary goal though. It seems to run into the problem Hegel points out, of treating other people as animals to be trained into proper behavior, rather than people to be lifted upwards into self-determining freedom. That is, if people are to be free, they have a right to be punished, to pay the costs of restoring right if they violate it. This doesn't mean that crime prevention, recidivism, etc. can't be part of the policy conversation, it just means that merely shaping human behavior towards ideal outcomes cannot ground justice. — Count Timothy von Icarus

All of this assumes free will exists. Self-determining freedom is faulty concept in a deterministic reality, it's a fantasy. That doesn't mean that we should treat people as animals to be trained, it's not about that. It's about making sure that people does not get damaged into becoming people perpetuating that cycle of violence as more damage.

The problem with using old philosophical concepts like this is that we have much better understanding of determinism today and how non-existent free will actually is. So whenever a concept is used that relies on a fundamentally required of truth free will in people, it falls flat. Without such free will, all we have is causality and forming society based on mitigating harm, violence and damage through preventing causal chains leading to it, is a much more rational strategy as a foundation for a better society.

So crime prevention should be the major focus, prevention of harm should be the main focus. The possible problem with such strategies however, is that people's analysis for what is harmful usually backfires. Like, banning rock music and video games in the 80s and 90s because people thought that was the causal chain to violence, while ignoring other social and societal issues that were in fact the real causes for it. Focusing on prevention of harm and violence requires deep studies with scientific rigor and hard evidence for the causal roots of events. And that's where the focus should be.

I agree on the policy ideas, but wouldn't this be beneficial even if there is some sort of acausal libertarian free will? Obviously, people's upbringing greatly effects their adult behaviors vis-a-vis criminality. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes it would, because it is a sound strategy to prevent harm. The problem is that because society is basically built on free will being true, all preventative actions to improve society are hard to fund and get support among the people.

The biggest problem installing such measures in society and focusing society from a retribution society to a preventative society is that people rarely see what has been prevented. We don't have news papers listing headlines of "Extra extra! Today, this would probably have happened if this thing hadn't been done 20 years ago! Extra Extra". No, what we see in newspapers are headlines after the fact, which triggers people's cry for justice and revenge. It's tangible and easy for people to get behind punishment, but hard to get them to support preventative measures.

If we however could inform society of how powerful determinism really is in forming and shaping our decisions, then it would be easier for people to be aware of the causality that shapes society.

This goes far beyond merely crime, it has to do with every part of society, everywhere, globally.

This doesn't entail retributivism. In a mature moral relationship, there must be "space for persons to confess their moral shortcomings and forgive the shortcomings of others." This could result in something along the lines of restorative justice.

"The goal of restorative justice is to bring together those most affected by the criminal act—the offender, the victim, and community members—in a nonadversarial process to encourage offender accountability and meet the needs of the victims to repair the harms resulting from the crime." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Which is a much better strategy overall. It also follows along the line of preventative measures to make sure cycles of violence breaks and the balance restored is the balance against such cycle of violence.

Of course, there are crimes that are unable to be solved in this way. Only crimes in which the criminals are conscientious of what they've done can be restored through it. But people don't realize how often these types of strategies actually works, because most of the time the public is blinded by vengeance.

There has to be strategies for when crimes do happen. That cannot be prevented. So, restorative justice in itself is part of preventative measures since it takes into account cycles of violence.

then it would be the case that religion's authority when it comes to morality simply stems from the fact that the religion has been the recipient of divine revelations, special knowledge. Why does this revelation have authority? Because, presumably, God knows much more than us about the world, and has a better handle on justice. No "universal meaning" is required. It can be the same sort of "objective morality" we could create, just better formulated. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Which is why it's easy to see how these things were such a powerful tool of power over the people. But morality needs to make sense. It needs to have an internal logic that makes sense for us humans. Some can argue that many religions have their morality rooted in iterative justice over thousands of generations, but the problem is that since religion has gone in and out as a tool of power, it's infected by things that makes it rather irrelevant as a source for moral thinking. We then have to go back to the drawing board and find actual rationality as a foundation rather than just relying on arbitrary axioms found in these religious teachings and texts.

What is this "rock solid evidence," that no form of freedom can exist?


Consider this: If volition has "no effect" on behavior, i.e., it is epiphenomenal, then why did natural selection select for consciousness in the first place? If consciousness and the sensation of volition has absolutely no effect on behavioral outputs, it shouldn't be selected for. It must be an accidental byproduct.

But epiphenomenalist claims seem to be making huge assumptions here based on scant empirical evidence (indeed, I would say work in psychology tends to falsify epiphenomenalism in its more robust forms).

The most common arguments for fatalism I am familiar with do not rely on any direct empirical evidence that "volition has nothing to do with behavior." Rather, they rely on the claim that reductionism and smallism are true. That is, "facts about any living organism are reducible to facts about atoms and molecules. Atoms lack a will, and so volition must have no real effect on behavior."

There is a problem here. Reductive physicalism's claims hinge on the proposition that "there is no strong emergence in physics", that all physical change is reducible facts about "elementary" particles. This is an increasingly unpopular opinion in the sciences for several reasons.

-First, because it clashes with processed based, computational views of physics.

-Second, because it would seem to make it impossible to explain how first person experience emerges (an example of strong emergence), unless you embrace panpsychism, the view that everything, including atoms, have some level of phenomenal awareness.

-Third, you have things like Paul Davies' proof, which claim to show that the information processing capabilities of the universe are incapable of accounting for the complexity biological life unless there is strong emergence (and thus data compression). The last of these is probably the least convincing, the second probably the most.


Aside from that, the argument that "people only prefer compatibalism because it makes them feel better," makes no sense if epiphenomenalism is true. If our feelings and volitions have absolutely zero influence over our behavior, then it is simply a mistake to say that anyone's feelings have anything to do with what they do or say about anything. Feelings would be merely an accident caused by certain arrangements of feelingless molecules. But of course, such psychological arguments are so compelling precisely because they make sense in causal explanations, which should lead us to question epiphenominalism. So to, there is the problem of why our feelings should seem to sync up so very well with our actions if they actually have no direct causal interaction.

Further, the whole argument for epiphenominalism and fatalism from smallism ("everything can be explained in terms of atoms") crashes to the ground if we allow strong emergence to account for first person subjective experience. If some strong emergence is possible, why delimit it to only epiphenomnal consciousness and not a consciousness that affects behavior (in which case, organisms can be self-determining to varying degrees). Certainly, a consciousness that has causal effects makes more sense it terms for it having been widely selected for across complex organism.

Which is all to say, I find compatibalism more convincing because the evidence for strong emergence seems far more convincing.

What is this "rock solid evidence," that no form of freedom can exist? — Count Timothy von Icarus

For starters all evidence in physics and biology. There's nothing that breaks causality and entropy in our physical reality and saying that our consciousness is somehow disconnected from this have no rational ground whatsoever. If all evidence in science points to everything, including us, in our universe being part of a deterministic causality, then the burden of proof lies on the one claiming free will exist to prove that our will is in fact detached from this fundamental system. More recently you can also check out the recent works of Robert Sapolsky who drives a very good argument based on his scientific research.

Consider this: If volition has "no effect" on behavior, i.e., it is epiphenomenal, then why did natural selection select for consciousness in the first place? If consciousness and the sensation of volition has absolutely no effect on behavioral outputs, it shouldn't be selected for. It must be an accidental byproduct. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Natural selection didn't break determinism. Just because a system becomes self-governing doesn't mean that it's parts have free will. The decisions of individuals is the result of a complex webb of causalities which leads to their decisions. All of your decisions have a cause, all your emotions have a cause, everything comes from the composition of your biology and from the environmental impact on you. Add to that all the social interactions that shape your world view, your opinions, your emotions, your culture, your politics, everything. Free will is a fundamental illusion that we can never break free from because if we did it would create such a fundamental dissonance in our cognitive function that it would drive us insane. Luckily, we do not seem able to do so. However, we can understand the concept, just like we can understand general relativity. We cannot experience time dilation, but we can understand it and measure it. Just like we can take the concept of causality and map out some parts that would help us figure out a better system of preventative actions in society to help people not ending up in harms way.

The problem is that you posit the free will cart before the horse. All processes in our brain, in our biology, in our nature and universe, are deterministic. Even if you were to include quantum randomness and how it might effect decisions in the brain, that still does not count as free will, only that there's a set of random dice throws that effect the brain. I.e randomness being just another cause. Free will requires a conscious will to do something without a previous cause and this does not exist, there is no evidence for it and there's a lot of evidence against it in everything from logical reasoning to factual evidence in physics and our biology.

There is a problem here. Reductive physicalism's claims hinge on the proposition that "there is no strong emergence in physics", that all physical change is reducible facts about "elementary" particles. This is an increasingly unpopular opinion in the sciences for several reasons.

-First, because it clashes with processed based, computational views of physics.

-Second, because it would seem to make it impossible to explain how first person experience emerges (an example of strong emergence), unless you embrace panpsychism, the view that everything, including atoms, have some level of phenomenal awareness.

-Third, you have things like Paul Davies' proof, which claim to show that the information processing capabilities of the universe are incapable of accounting for the complexity biological life unless there is strong emergence (and thus data compression). The last of these is probably the least convincing, the second probably the most.


Aside from that, the argument that "people only prefer compatibalism because it makes them feel better," makes no sense if epiphenomenalism is true. If our feelings and volitions have absolutely zero influence over our behavior, then it is simply a mistake to say that anyone's feelings have anything to do with what they do or say about anything. Feelings would be merely an accident caused by certain arrangements of feelingless molecules. But of course, such psychological arguments are so compelling precisely because they make sense in causal explanations, which should lead us to question epiphenominalism. So to, there is the problem of why our feelings should seem to sync up so very well with our actions if they actually have no direct causal interaction.

Further, the whole argument for epiphenominalism and fatalism from smallism ("everything can be explained in terms of atoms") crashes to the ground if we allow strong emergence to account for first person subjective experience. If some strong emergence is possible, why delimit it to only epiphenomnal consciousness and not a consciousness that affects behavior (in which case, organisms can be self-determining to varying degrees). Certainly, a consciousness that has causal effects makes more sense it terms for it having been widely selected for across complex organism.

Which is all to say, I find compatibalism more convincing because the evidence for strong emergence seems far more convincing. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I actually fail to see the throughline in this reasoning as an argument against determinism? Regardless of processes, you must prove that you can will something without a previous cause. A process that produces a random emotion or random state of mind does not equal free will, it equals just another cause. For us to have free will, it requires us being able to choose without influence of anything. But everything you choose is the consequence of a prior cause, always.

Name a choice that people can make that does not have any prior cause.

Which is all to say, I find compatibalism more convincing because the evidence for strong emergence seems far more convincing. — Count Timothy von Icarus

What evidence for strong emergence?

There's nothing that breaks causality — Christoffer

Causality does not apply at the quantum mechanical level. Whether it applies at higher aggregate levels is still up for debate.

For one, the idea of first person experience being strongly emergent, rather than molecules having their own phenomenal experience. Panpsychism seems implausible to me, and denying that consciousness "really exists" seems downright silly.

Second, strong emergence is in no way precluded by a process centered metaphysics. This has more to do with undermining the evidence against the the possibility of strong emergence that providing support for its existence. Nonetheless, its worth pointing out that arguments against strong emergence are largely based in philosophy in the first place.

Across a wide array of fronts, the natural sciences have concluded that process, not substance, explains a host of phenomena. E.g., heat as average motion instead of the substance caloric, combustion as a process instead of the substance phlogiston, life as a far from equilibrium thermodynamic process instead of there being a "vital substance," particles as part of an ever changing field instead of being discrete fundamental "building blocks," etc. The unification of the EM force and weak force also lends credence to the idea of there being no truly sui generis substances at work, that physics can be unified. Support for process as fundamental is support for a framework where strong emergence is possible. This is important because arguments against strong emergence are largely grounded in the fact that the philosophical framework in use precludes it.

In terms of positive evidence, we could consider variations on Robin Hendry's argument that molecular structure is strongly emergent. I recall seeing a poll that at least most chemists do not think their field can be reduced to physics. The heat carry capacities of metals would also be an area that suggests strong emergence. There are also a variety of arguments that quantum mechanics itself displays strong emergence, e.g., https://arxiv.org/abs/1502.03831, https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/12716/1/Emergence%20revised.pdf

I mentioned Davies' proof, and there are other, similar information theoretic arguments for strong emergence that I am less familiar with.

Then there is the wide popularity of pancomputational conceptions of physics, which would allow for strong emergence, although they also hinge on the speculation that the universe is "computable."

I would also consider the philosophical problems in defining superveniance to be evidence against reductive physicalism, even if they are not arguments in favor of strong emergence. That is, the concept itself that under girds popular forms of fatalism seems to have coherence issues, and I'm not sure if they can be ironed out.

Causality does not apply at the quantum mechanical level. Whether it applies at higher aggregate levels is still up for debate. — EricH

Nothing needs to be framed in the context of this discussion. Nothing that remotely connects to free will, i.e our awareness of breaking causality through choice. Quantum randomness can break causality, it might even influence large scale events as a butterfly effect, but quantum randomness as influence on our choices would only boil down to another cause, a dice throw cause for an outcome. We aren't aware of it and it doesn't make us consciously aware of breaking from causality in choices. In conclusion, we can map out almost any choice by their causal connections in our reality and when we can't, the cause is randomness.

In the context of this discussion all we have to define our behavior in society, nature and the universe is determinism. All choices have a prior cause, all behaviors have a prior cause and the more we can understand and map out, the better we would be able to predict harmful actions and crimes in society. Therefore, a larger focus on researching preventative measures to make sure people don't end up in harm or violence should be part of a better society.

It reminds me of a concept in which society has the ability to look into the future. Let's say it's possible to change the now to influence the future. Most science fiction around such concepts works something like Minority Report, getting the criminals before the act. But what if we used such technology to just map out the consequences of people's situations so we can see if they end up in crime. It would drastically reduce crime in society by just changing small conditions in people's childhood. Only a fraction, maybe almost an insignificant number would end up in serious crime.

I would also consider the philosophical problems in defining superveniance to be evidence against reductive physicalism, even if they are not arguments in favor of strong emergence. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think this is exactly right, and a good reminder not to confuse the two issues. Reductive physicalism can probably be defeated, or at least made implausible, by several strategies. Even Jaegwon Kim acknowledged that psychophysical supervenience is “not in itself an explanatory account of the mind-body relation; rather, it reports the data that such an account must make sense of.” But strong emergence remains such a poorly understood concept that, IMO, it’s hard to even know whether it’s a genuine biological phenomenon, or could play an explanatory role. It’s too easy to kinda wave our hands and say, of consciousness, “Well, it just emerges!” But what does, exactly, and how? I think we’re waiting on the science.

I'm with Nagel on this -- moral thinking is sui generis, contentful, and argues from reasons rather than "desires" in the Humean sense. By appealing to reasons, it situates itself in the objective world, or perhaps something a bit more Peircean and intersubjective. — J

This seems like something I could get on board with. I actually think the general idea here is crucial if law and society are to (continue to) exist. If there is no objective grounding for law then it is hard to see why it would be binding (assuming for the moment that "social contract theory" is largely a fiction).

I find explanations of emergence in terms of computation quite convincing. "More is different" seems ostentatiously true in terms of the "Game of Life" or very simple cellular automata being able to run through every computable function.

I agree that popular attempts to explain models of strong emergence in terms of superveniance are unsatisfying. I think this has more to do with the idea of superveniance though. The problem has been that the opponents of strong emergence have to some degree defined "a model of strong emergence that makes sense," as "one that works with superveniance."

The other thing I would add is that there are very, very many phenomena we study that have not been successfully reduced. Chemistry is not a new field, it is mature, and yet we still have serious questions about whether molecular structure can be reduced. This should give us serious pause when deciding that denying strong emergence should be our default position. Is it our default because we can find no phenomena we can't reduce? Absolutely not. Is it our default because of popular metaphysical assumptions? That seems to be more true.

I think you need to rewrite the OP. It is contrary.

I think there’s a third possibility why we tend to “default” against strong emergence. This ties to your point that a good model for strong emergence is usually taken to be “one that works with supervenience.” What we’re really wanting is a model that works with scientific understanding in general, that respects the successes of similar inquiries in chemistry and biology. Supervenience may be the ticket, or it may not, but we need something that doesn’t invoke new processes or entities that violate physical and causal closure. I’m not sure this is possible. Consciousness, if and when it reveals its secrets, may turn out to involve concepts that make “physical” and “mental” ludicrous, and “physical closure” a profound misunderstanding. But “popular metaphysical assumptions” seems a bit brusque to describe the bind we’re in. They’re popular largely because up till now they’ve done such a good job.

I think the causal closure thing is a red herring. Strong emergence only seems to violate causal closure in the context of systems that have already begged the question regarding reductionism.

Barnes and others have made this case. We can reformulate causal closure in terms of elements of the world that are fundemental. Strong emergence is said to violate causal closure precisely because it is assumed that "basic physics" is the only thing that is fundemental, that higher level emergence cannot, by definition, be a fundemental principle because things must be decomposable into their parts. But all that is just a convoluted way to beg the question re strong emergence.

If strong emergence is a property of the "physical" universe, then by definition it doesn't violate the causal closure of all that is physical. It would not be a non-physical cause.

In a strongly stated version, physical causal closure says that "all physical states have pure physical causes" — Jaegwon Kim,[1] or that "physical effects have only physical causes" — Agustin Vincente, p. 150.[2]

These don't say anything about strong emergence until the added (and IMHO unsupportable) premises about what is "fundemental" are added in.

We might be on the same page here, pretty much. Like you, I’m not sure we can maintain physical/causal closure, in our current understanding of what this means, and also give a convincing account of emergence. Yet that’s what many philosophers seem to require. Instead, we may need to rethink whether a commitment to the fundamentality of physics really precludes strong emergence. You know all the problems with trying to do this, I’m sure. I think so-called top-down causation is the biggest roadblock. But I’ll say it again – we need a lot of help from neuroscientists here, who are surely still decades away from even a good theory-based hypothesis about how all this works.

A mere comment after reading through (most) of the thread:

I'm noticing a number discussions are not about things that could be called objective, even in light of the arguments for and against.

A example is one poster (cannot recall - apologies) discussing that H2O is an 'objective' (or not) property of water.

If your concept is a clearly defined, artificial object, then of course you can get artificially objective ideas about it. We have dictated that the two objects we have observed to make up the most abundant fluid we know of, are 'atoms' and for various other reasons, that those atoms 'are' Hydrogen and Oxygen.

Since we observe there to be One Hydrogen and Two Oxygen 'atoms' we can, based on our artificial scheme of (admittedly, extremely well-ordered) objects, pronounce the initial claim. However, per @Count Timothy von Icarus in the comments a few above this one, that seems to be essentially a universally accepted artificial symbolism and not anything objective in the sense of 'it would be true without human/sentient perception'.

Without a sentient (possibly human) being with the exact perceptual circumstance as to

1. Know those terms/concepts and how they fit together;
2. Know they apply to (what we are calling) water symbolicly; and
3. Be in a position to point that out

there could never be a claim that 'H2O is/describes/identifies water'. It is only true in light of those three requisites.

But, there seem to be two 'something' s that make up 'something' that we call water. So, the door is not closed. I just noted that particular move being made often...Really enjoying the extremely well-thought-out and time-intensive discussions here.

I'm also not very experienced in writing long-form responses so please take it easy if i made some rookie errors, or misunderstood something wholly. I'd like to learn :)

People have often claimed that moral facts exist. Many people certainly believe it. But where is there a solid philosophical or scientific argument proving that moral facts exist? What's an example of a moral fact? From what I can tell, the closest you can get are statements or rules that are contingent upon some desired outcome, e. g. human flourishing as Sam Harris puts it. It's true that there are certain behaviors that are more conducive to certain outcomes, and this can be based on what we know about human psychology and measured over time. That might be the closest we can get to something defined as a moral fact.

https://philosophynow.org/issues/115/Is_Morality_Objective

Just thought i'd throw this in for comments.

They all appear to be badly argued responses, and apart from one they all conclude that morality is objective. An interesting proclivity..