I don't know what you mean by objective information. I think it is a nonsense phrase. I don't think you know what you mean by it either.

Do you mean 'information'? Or 'information about things that are objective" perhaps?

I am setting up the problem that I am then going to deal with.

Stop assuming I'm an idiot.

This does not imply that the moral principles are fixed — JosephS

and

If we, sociologically/ethologically, can develop statistically valid predictions of which actions (and under what narrative) are likely to give rise to counter-action (social stigma, physical aggression), does this not deserve the label of 'objective'? — JosephS

run contrary to each other.

To my understanding "objective" implies "fixed-ness". If moral principles can change then that would be admitting it's subjective. Unless, you have a real interesting explanation for this I'll have to disagree.

As for how objectivity relates to the question of morality, all I'm saying is that subjectivity can be studied objectively. Isn't that how we know something is one of the two?

I defined how objective and subjective are being understood here. Stop trying to make this about labels rather than theories.

Subjective means 'made of subjective states' - that is, states of a subject-of-experience, a mind.

Objective means 'not made of subjective states'.

If you don't like those definitions, then just deal with it or start up your own thread in which you use them as you wish.

Subjective and objective can be defined as we like. Usually, they're taken to be ways of organizing information. Subjective information is from a particular point of view. When a doctor records subjective information, she records the way you describe your pain.

Objective information has no particular point of view. When your doctor records objective information about your situation, she records heart rate, temperature, etc.

But let's put that to the side and embrace your way of understanding the terms. "Objective" refers to mind-independent things? Is that what you're saying?

yes, so I defined them at the outset so that they could be used in a uniform manner in this thread.

If you are using them differently, then I refuse to understand what you're talking about. Plus I genuinely don't know what you're talking about.

Fair enough. I'll leave you to it.

But let's put that to the side and embrace your way of understanding the terms. "Objective" refers to mind-independent things? Is that what you're saying? — frank

'Objective' means 'not subjective' and 'subjective' means 'made of mental states'.

So, objective means 'not made of mental states'.

That does not mean the same as 'independent of minds' though.

Take minds themselves, for instance. Minds are not made of mental states. They 'have' mental states. But they are not made of them.

Thus, minds are objective, not subjective. They are not made of subjective states.

Minds clearly do not exist independently of minds.

Thus something can be objective, yet be incapable of existing independently of minds.

Another example - first and second storeys.

A second storey cannot exist absent a first. However, although second storeys cannot exist independently of first storeys, second storeys are not made of first storeys.

Sorry, I'd have to bend my mind into a pretzel to follow you from there into your argument. I don't know what it means to be "made of mental states."

Feelings, beliefs, memories, sensations - these are all mental states.

Some things are made of them.

Pain, for instance. It's a feeling, yes? Feelings are subjective states. So pain is subjective. When it exists, it exists 'as' a subjective state.

That's why anaesthetics work - they work by eradicating pain, rather than by inducing the hallucination that you are not in pain.

Deliciousness is subjective.

Funniness is subjective.

Beliefs are subjective (what they are 'about' will often not be).

The problem, note, is not that it is likely that rape is right. For clearly rape is wrong and there's not a shadow of a doubt about that. And that remains the case regardless of whether you agree with me that the disvaluer of rape is a subject or, well, whatever. — Bartricks

Maybe; but what I was wondering is, if god thinks rape is right, does that make it right? I don't think so. I'd say that if god said rape was fine, rape would still be wrong.

You don't agree?

Bishop Berkeley believed that all the objects of our sensations - so all the furniture of the sensible world - was ultimately made of the mental states of a god. That is, he thought - well, argued - that we are living in a god's sensorium.

So for him external reality is subjective.

Most people assume he is incorrect and that the objects of sense experience are not made of mental states, but rather are extended things that some of our mental states give us insight into. That is, most people are 'objectivists' about the sensible world.

I think morality is subjective.

Sure, but it is nonetheless humans who program the machines, no? — Janus

Yes, agreed.

According to Gödel's incompleteness theorems, there is no mechanical procedure that can generally discover new theorems along with their proofs. The reason why I mention this, is the Curry-Howard correspondence, according to which:

CHC: a program is a proof and a proof is a program

So, strange but true, the discovery of new theorems (or new programs) is not an exercise in rationality. It somehow uses other, unknown mental faculties.

However, proof verification is a purely mechanical procedure.

So, a human discovers a new theorem with its proof, and then a machine can verify that the proof establishes a path (=a proof) between the construction logic of the theory and the theorem which is being proven.

It is therefore a warning shot in the direction of the practice of memorizing knowledge or merely doing exercises in verifying their evidence. Machines can do that too. The real value is not there. The real value is in discovering these theorems and their proofs.

I think morality is subjective. — Bartricks

Is math subjective?

If our reason is fallible, then how do we know what Reason values? I also see an incongruence between "reason" and "Reason" in Bartrick's position or "game". He says Reason is a subject, and I don't know what that could mean. He says Reason is infallible, but our reason is fallible; if that is so how could we know that Reason is infallible? So, I agree with you that reason "departed long ago" from his argument, however "valid" it might be. It certainly seems critically unsound.

I mean I think the acid test here is that no one seems to be able to work out what Bartricks is actually saying. Perhaps it's because his is the only infallible reason? :yikes: :wink:

Seriously though, I think the explanation for why most people think murder, rape, torture and so on are all wrong is because if they didn't social life would fall apart and die. So, those attitudes and the empathic feelings that go along with them have been evolutionarily selected for. Other social animals are no different; although of course there can always be divergent aberrations.

Yes, certainly.

they work by eradicating pain, rather than by inducing the hallucination that you are not in pain. — Bartricks

How could you tell an hallucination of not being in pain from... not being in pain?


:yikes:

Yes, certainly. — Bartricks

Math seems to be made of truths that are beyond any one individual. It's not like pain. If math is subjective, are we living in the mind of God?

You couldn't. But I am right about how anaesthetics work, yes? It's how our reason says they work. Otherwise we could sue surgeons for all the pain they caused us - for if we were merely hallucinating that we were not in pain when in fact we were, then we'd have a case.

I am sticking to morality at the mo, as maths doesn't really matter whereas morality matters more than anything.

But yes, 2 + 2 = 4 regardless of whether I think it does. But that's consistent with it being subjective.

For after all, I am arguing that rape is wrong regardless of whether I think it is, yet still the wrongness of rape is subjective.

Your view of math helped me understand you, though. You're a subjective idealist. Nothin' wrong with that.

Beliefs are subjective (what they are 'about' will often not be). — Bartricks

As soon as beliefs are expressed in language, they are language expressions, which could possibly represent an uncanny correspondence with the real, physical world, or be provable from the construction logic of an abstract, Platonic world.

The existence of objectively justified (true) beliefs (JtB) is a widely-accepted assumption, axiomatized by epistemology, and without which epistemology would not even make sense as a discipline.

As normal, I don't really understand what you're saying or see its relevance.

I have not denied that justified true beliefs exist, for instance, or that knowledge is made from them (although I think I might deny that, but I haven't done so here).

After reading an article on Darwinian Morality, I started a separate thread on the topic. I am using predictive success as a reflection of objectivity (I'm not well versed in ontology, but if I can hand wave i'm not talk about anything that is truly 'real' as much as a reflection of that truth that can be modeled such that the model matches our senses consistently).

Objective is a description of the meta-ethical theory as it reflects its predictive capability in assessing suitability of a more to an environment. Hypothetically, if the addition of a more or principle to an environment reduces its competitive advantage that principle is liable to selected against (against a sample of groups that unsuccessful principle is less likely to be prevalent).

So any particular principle may not be predicted for an environment, the theory as a whole would provide an objective view of human ethics. I'm not looking to author it. I just want to see where this idea is likely to falter.

As normal, I don't really understand what you're saying or see its relevance. I have not denied that justified true beliefs exist, for instance, or that knowledge is made from them (although I think I might deny that, but I haven't done so here). — Bartricks

The idea that all beliefs are subjective, is not compatible with the idea that there exist objectively justified (true) beliefs. Therefore, objectivity in beliefs is assumed to be possible.

I am off to the pub, so drunk replies to whatever attempts at refuting me people make will be forthcoming later.

I know that virtually everyone else's says the same thing, for this apparent fact about moral values is widely acknowledged among those who have reflected on the matter - that is, those who have consulted their reason on it. — Bartricks

Meta-ethics: moral realism or moral anti-realism?
Accept or lean toward: moral realism 525 / 931 (56.4%) - Phil Papers Survey.

...hardly an overwhelming majority is it? And that includes many ethical naturalists who'd still disagree with your conclusions despite identifying as moral realists. So where does it leave your argument (based as it is on the presumption that 'reason' when averaged over a mass of thinkers, delivers us answers we should take as being true? Over half of professional thinkers on ethics have not reached the conclusion you claim to be obvious despite whole careers of considered thought.

drunk replies to whatever attempts at refuting me people make will be forthcoming later. — Bartricks

Your previous ones were written sober??

so I say virtually everyone agrees that p is true and you point out that only 56% of contemporary philosophers who bothered to respond to some survey agree that X is true. Good one!!!

er, what?