The only thing any scientist would say about anything that lacks empirical evidence is that is lacks empirical evidence, that is it, that is the only judgment real science would make. Any other judgment you all make about the lack of empirical evidence for anything is not scientific, it either philosophy or theology. — Rank Amateur

Scientists aren't going to be agnostics about the idea of, say, there being tranvestite ballerinas orbiting some distant star just because there's no evidence of the same. If the idea is clearly bonkers, with absolutely nothing to support anywhere near the notion of something so implausible, they'll just dismiss it until they run across any sort of evidence that suggests it might have some merit.

For some things that are widely accepted, they won't make those rejection moves simply as a public relations matter. But they're not going to get into social hot water by saying that there are obviously no transvestite ballerinas orbiting a distant star.

We can't have time stretching back endlessly in an infinite regress; thats impossible. — Devans99

It sucks that you keep repeating that when we've shown the problems with it.

It makes your posts come across more like a telemarketer . .. or televangelist. Or someone like Trump.

"To learn the breadth of what 'morality' conventionally refers to, you read the SEP page on it, and then you're done. Just repeat/paraphrase what you read there, and that's all you need to do."

I wasn't saying anything merely rhetorical. I was hoping you'd address all of that. The goal is to get your noggin working a bit better. To really do philosophy you need to think critically about stuff. That's what I'm trying to kickstart.

Two ways to use "morality". Both refer to codes of conduct. — creativesoul

Are you asserting that it's necessary to agree with Gert, by the way?

Is this really how you do philosophy as a "creative soul"--you find someone who you can verify is a professional in the field, read what they said, then treat it like gospel that everyone has to agree with?

Gert doesn't even define morality as narrowly as you defined it. I've already pointed that out.

Anyway, if he did, it would simply be a case of me not agreeing with Gert's definition, either.

A verification that some widespread, common phenomenon is exhaustively defined by x wouldn't be that some arbitrary person who has an academic background in the phenomenon has defined it as x.

I swear, sometimes I get the impression here that I'm talking with basement dwellers who think that reading a single web page--like an SEP page on something--makes them an expert in something they never experienced, even though they also quickly reveal that they aren't even really grokking the page about the stuff they otherwise have zero real world experience with.

The verification of what we're talking about when we are talking about morality is provided by how current and past convention used the term... — creativesoul

But I disagree with you that your definition covers the conventional usages of the term. That was just the point I made. It's exactly why I wrote, "(1) that would amount to ignoring a significant portion of the phenomena that people typically characterize as morality, moral stances, etc.,"

So how do we verify who is right there?

So the verification is "That's how Bernard Gert defines it"?

(And even if you're going by that, you don't seem to be acknowledging the "or accepted by an individual for her own behavior" part for example)

Obviously I don't agree that it's true. In what way would you say that it's verifiable? In other words, explain how we'd verify it.

I disagree, starting with the first premise, for the reasons I gave in the post of mine that this tangent is stemming from.

Bodybuilding doesn't imply that you do it competitively or even that you're trying to get unusually large. It also doesn't imply that you do not do other athletic things. At the gym I do calisthenics just as much as weight training. Outside of the gym, I also spend a lot of time biking, hiking, doing martial arts, playing tennis and racquetball, etc.

I'm very into fitness, including that I bodybuild. I don't take any steroids.

The fact that it's been remembered and celebrated for centuries is evidence, if not absolute proof, that it's better than most at whatever it does. — Baden

That's only evidence of some combo of a lot of people liking it and/or the way that things become entrenched and socially transmitted due to certain endorsements, including academic entrenchment, and including the fact that people like you put more weight on works that have become socially entrenched--that becomes a self-perpetuating cycle.

None of that amounts to it actually being better, since there is no actual better/worse.

the 20th century murders by Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, and a host of imitators are nothing whatsoever wrong in themselves. Apparently that's even a nonsensical idea. — tim wood

Correct.

The truth is that those persons thought their actions were acceptable/justifiable/necessary/good, take your pick — tim wood

Sure, they may have.

At least you're getting it now. :grin:

The right or wrong of something like "Murder is bad" or "One should not murder" is a moral right/wrong, and it's identical to the preferences "Murder is bad" or "One should not murder." The grounds of determination is someone having those preferences.

Moral stances are preferences of interpersonal behavior, not just with respect to oneself. "No one should murder anyone" is a preference that many people have.

But I know what I like/what I'd prefer, and I've long known that. I don't need anyone else to help me figure out what I prefer.

. But do understand that we want normative answers: how should we act that things would be better? — ssu

I don't believe that there are any normative facts, so I'm not looking for normative answers from anything.

On further reflection I would say that my Criteria is as General as it gets. What could be better than peer reviewed World acceptance? — SteveKlinko

I don't recall you mentioning that, but I could have just overlooked it. So you're saying that in your view, what matters is that some consensus of peers in the relevant field count something as an explanation?

So, for example, eclipses were explained in, say, 200 CE, and the explanation was that they were an omen from the gods, or a warning from the gods, etc.?

I've had many experiences with less than a billionth chance of happening; — Ilya B Shambat

Speaking of likelihood in the absence of frequency data . . . (I just brought up the problem with this in another thread)

Much of this depends on what it means to know, so it's an epistemological question. As such, it depends on what you count as good evidence. Many people limit their knowledge to science, but there are plenty of ways of knowing apart from what science tells us. In fact, one of the main ways of attaining knowledge is through the testimony of others. And while it's true that testimony is the weakest way of knowing, it can also be very strong depending on the number of people making the claim, the consistency of the claims, whether the claims are taken from a variety of cultures, contexts, and experiences, etc. The way we evaluate the claims is similar to the way we evaluate a good inductive argument. — Sam26

Testimony is fine as long as it's not just testimony. There needs to be "physical" empirical evidence, including evidence both that the people who originally testified had solid physical empirical evidence backing the testimony and then a chain of evidence that people who bought the testimony had some sort of evidence aside from only testimony to justify buying it. For example, having evidence that so and so won't testify to something unless they had solid physical evidence to support the testimony, even then the person removed from the physical evidence there didn't actually witness the initial physical evidence themselves.

Aside from that, though, the idea of assigning likelihood to something we don't have frequency data for is just nonsensical.

I'm even skeptical of likelihood with frequency data for that matter.

There is nothing there to disagree with. But it just does not say anything of value about the utility of moral judgments — Rank Amateur

Well, so for value, I'd also say that that is only something we think.

Re utility, I'm not sure what you'd be looking for. My approach would typically be descriptive, but that may not do anything for you.

Re the upshots of something only being something we think, one of the important issues is whether we can get such a thing correct or not. If we say we can get something that's only mental correct, then we need to be able to say just how that would be the case.

My definition of subjective morality is a moral judgment that has no inherent truth value. That the truth value of the statement, or the mental phenomena , is dependent on or subject to something else. It is not always true, it is only true if (fill in the blank) — Rank Amateur

Trying to avoid getting too much into truth theory, because my views on that are a big can of worms that require getting into a bunch of "technical" analytic philosophy stuff, we can just ask what it would amount to for something that exists only as a mental phenomenon to be "true"

As I've said a number of times, I don't think the terms are important. I'm fine with dropping the terms "objective" and "subjective." I've suggested dropping them a number of times, including earlier in this thread.

So I'm just saying that moral judgments are things we think.

Do you agree with that?

And on my view, I don't believe that moral judgments (or whatever else we might want to call them--moral whatevers) occur, as moral judgments (whatevers) other than as things we think.

And then what matters are the upshots of the fact that moral judgments are things we think.

The next US president will likely be a social democrat. Kamila Harris or Bernie Sanders will be the nominees; — Wallows

Honestly, I'll be very surprised if Trump doesn't win another term. Pleasantly surprised, but surprised nonetheless.

Once you understand how the term is being used, the next step is to understand the logical upshots of whether we're only talking about a mental phenomenon or not.

The most important aspect of this is the belief that there's some significance to something being very common, being near-universal, aside from the fact that it's very common or near-universal.

We need to explore the belief that there's some other significance to it.

So exactly how many does it take in your world to shift it from objective to subjective 1 in 7.5 Billion, 10, 1000, 1%. ? Rare exceptions does not proof subjectivity. — Rank Amateur

No number can do it. It's not a term about how common something is, or how universal it is. It's a term denoting whether something is a mental phenomenon or not. If 50 trillion people, always, for all time, in the past, now, and for all of the future, think exactly the same thing, it's still something they think. That's all I'm saying. It's something they think, and not something other than what they think.

Meaning there is some source of this judgment that is not relative or subjective to the person, the culture or the time. — Rank Amateur

Because on your view, we'd not be able to explain the similarity unless we receive the judgment from somewhere else, right?

The 10 toes was part of an example about something else (medicine) besides morality where we make “near universal” judgements based on our bodies developing in certain ways.
Correct me if im wrong on that Terrapin. — DingoJones

Not a judgment about. It's something that is a part of our body, that has a lot of similarities from body to body (almost everyone has 10 of them, etc.), but that we're not stumped about regarding how there can be such similarities if it's something that's simply a development of our bodies.

I understand the point, what has not been explained is the link that makes these judgments subjective by definition because a human being makes them. It is a source argument. And my point is there is either some source behind these near universal judgments that we all share, making such judgments objective. Or, are we all the individual source of all our own judgments, and it is just a matter of coincidence that on some issues all these individual mental actions the same. — Rank Amateur

You keep repeating this, and it's why I've used the analogies to things that should be less controversial.

Unless you think that we're not the sources of our noses, for example, you'd have to explain why the fact that we're the individual source of our own noses makes it a coincidence that there are such similarlties in them re placement, function, shape, etc.

If you think that we're not the sources of our noses, then you'd have to explain what you believe the source to be.

Part of the issue here might be confusion over whether we're talking about x as x--noses as noses, versus things that are prerequisites for x, preconditions for x, things that contribute to x being what it is, without actually being x itself. So, for example, genetics contributing to nose development, while the genetics in question aren't actually a nose.

I'm not going off on this tangent to be silly. I'm trying to understand what seems to be a perplexing viewpoint--the fact that you seem to think that if something is "of us"--it only occurs in or of our bodies, then it must be an odd coincidence that there would be any similarities in it.

I do not understand your link between our near general agreement agreement about some things, and our biological development. — Rank Amateur

Your brain is part of your biology. Your brain is as it is due to a combo of genetics (which have an evolutionary history) and environmental factors. From person to person, brains have a lot of similarities because of this.

Well, what it is to have mental phenomena is for a brain to be in a particular state.

I use the term "subjective" to denote mental phenomena.

If you include some near universal evolutionary dispositions I am there. But I don't get the link between we all have a nose and 10 toes so we all think the same about a specific thing and it is subjective. — Rank Amateur

The link is simply that your nose and fingers and brain are all part of your body. Your body is as it is due to genetics (with an evolutionary history again) and environment. Nature and nurture. Your brain, part of your biology, is what functions as a mind. The term I use for mental phenomena is "subjective." It's just another way of saying that we're refering to mental phenomena, and not other sorts of things that aren't mental phenomena.

Why, simply because it is a moral judgment, by an individual thought, makes that thought by definition subjective. — Rank Amateur

Why? Because I'm using the term to denote mental phenomena. It's basically a synonym for that in my usage.

People in that same mental phenomenon make a moral judgment, that the sorce of that thought is nearly universal, inherent in being human. Call it human nature or evolution- but if you agree such judgments exist they would seem to be much much more objective than subjective. — Rank Amateur

Since I'm calling mental phenomena "subjective" and I'm reserving "objective" for things that aren't mental phenomena, then if we're talking about people making a moral judgment as mental phenomena--we're saying that what it is to make a moral judgment is to be in a particular mental state, then even if 100% of everyone, throughout all of history, has that same exact moral judgment, because of how humans have evolutionarily developed, and that led to their brain working a particular way so that they all make that same moral judgment, then I'm calling that moral judgment "subjective," solely because/only because we're talking about mental phenomena, and "subjective" is a term I use to refer to mental phenomena.

It seems to me like I'm explaining this in a way that anyone should be able to understand (not necessarily agree with, but simply understand). But people are responding as if it's very difficult to understand for some reason. I don't know how to explain it so that it's simpler or more straightforward.

I'm confused then, I suppose. Did you not quote me and charge the excerpt with ignoring and/or neglect?

Yes, that actually happened.

Three charges of neglect. None true.

When I wrote "non-sequitur" I was drawing your attention to the situation at hand. None of those charges follow from my position. You quoted me, and then aimlessly opened fire. "Non sequitur" was not about your argument, it was about the fallaciousness of your inquiry. — creativesoul

"Non sequitur" refers to something being stated in the context of an argument as if it follows--that is, as if it is valid, but it actually does not follow, it is not valid.

All you're saying really is that you disagree with me that "Morality is codified rules of behaviour. Code is language" "amounts to ignoring a significant portion of the phenomena that people typically characterize as morality, moral stances, etc"--well, we should hope you disagree with that, otherwise you'd be forwarding stances more or less dishonestly, because you'd think that you're ignoring something but you'd not care.

Nevertheless, what you stated amounts to ignoring a significant portion of the phenomena that people typically characterize as morality, moral stances, etc.

I can never make any sense of likelihood claims where we don't at least have frequentist data.

you just have not come up with any reason why on some issues it is near universal. — Rank Amateur

The post I just linked you to explained it yet again. It's about the fifth or sixth time in this thread that I've explained it: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/267821

I will agree but that seems quite objective to me with the source being a shared human evolution. — Rank Amateur

Re this, for the umpteenth time, ALL that I'm saying by the term "subjective" is that we're referring to a mental phenomenon. We can just drop the terms "subjective/objective" and I can just say that "moral stances do not occur outside of persons thinking them." The reason that they think them is biological. Biology is as it is because of evolution and common environmental factors, which lead to near-universal agreement on some things.

It was a relatively long post. Here's a direct link to it: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/267821

I never argued this near universal agreement was not biological, I have said a few times said it could be evolved. It is just not a individually unique biology. — Rank Amateur

Re "individually unique" that's irrelevant to this discussion. (I have a view on that, but it has to do with nominalism, and we can leave that out of this discussion.)

"Individually unique" seems pertinent to something I wrote earlier today: "I can't help but think that some of this stems from misunderstandings--namely, believing that relativists and/or subjectivists are more or less saying that morality is wildly divergent from person to person, and that it's essentially arbitrary. But no one is actually claiming anything like that."

I explained that in detail in a post to you above.

But what exactly would be your grounds for complaint? — tim wood

Why wouldn't not wanting to be murdered be sufficient? Additionally most people don't want people to murder other people in general.

Yeah, and it's frustrating to me that it's apparently so difficult to get across to some folks.

I'm kind of an "irrational optimist," though, so I keep trying, lol

It is objective biology and outside individual human desire or judgment where our nose goes, — Rank Amateur

You understand that on my view it's biology that produces our moral stances, too, right?

I thought I had truly asked about absolutely emphatic abstractions in this thread. But maybe I didn't post it.