It's all but universal, — Janus

The popularity of a view is irrelevant to it being correct.

And we might judge them according to their efficacy in promoting harmonious relations. — Janus

Aside from just what counts as harmonious relations being a matter of individual judgment, lest you be suggesting yet another argumentum ad populum, the notion that harmonious relations are preferable is yet another individual judgment (or argumentum ad populum that you'd be forwarding)

can you give just one example of anything that is subjectively better than anything else, in any sense of the word better, that is not just an opinion/view. — Rank Amateur

With repect to "not just an opinion/view," no, because that's what "better" is. It simply amounts to preferring one thing over another, often because of some goal that one has.

In your view - that in no way is any kind of a truth statement — Rank Amateur

That's a fact (that that's what judgments are). It's the way the world is ontologically.

If all moral views are subjective, by definition none can be objectively better than any other. — Rank Amateur

Yes--that's exactly right.

The thing is that "objectively better" is a category error in the first place.

So competing views are not better or worse than each other objectively--but the objective realm is the entirely wrong place for doing that sort of work. It's akin to noting that a dog has no category number as a hurricane. Dogs aren't the right sort of thing for that--they're not hurricanes, so it's not going to make sense to talk about a dog having a hurricane category number.

But that doesn't at all imply a problem with making judgments about competing moral stances. Judgments, by their very nature, are things that occur in the subjective realm, not the objective realm. Judgments are indeed just one more subjective view--they can never be anything other than that. The trick is to recognize and deal with them as what they are.

Two common, relatively clear senses:

(1) natural is contrasted with artificial/man-made
(2) natural is contrasted with supernatural--ghosts, magic, demons, etc.

There's also a relatively unclear attempt to use natural in a normative manner, typically from a "conservative" perspective--where it basically just amounts to the stuff someone approves of being "natural" while the stuff they're uncomfortable with is "unnatural"

Given that, I suppose the most sensible way to conduct the debate is to avoid "PC is good" vs "PC is bad" type positions and focus in on actual real-life examples and see what's going wrong (or right) with them, and why. — Baden

But then you get folks like me who don't care for any moralizing at all when it comes to speech.:razz:

I merely note that any community would consider the views of one of its members who disagreed with every other member as "wrong", wouldn't they? — Pattern-chaser

Depends on the community and who we ask. But sure, it's not unusual that a lot of people are pro-conformist enough that they think that.

fine with all that - your right I don't change my mind. And it leaves us with two different subjective options about the morality of Hitler and no objective way to resolve our differences.

that does not seem a good endpoint to such a moral judgment to me. — Rank Amateur

Well, but isn't it clear to you that no matter what we do, whatever we believe about meta-ethics, we're left with people with diametrically opposed moral stances? That's hardly a new situation, and it's hardly the result of there being a bunch of meta-ethical subjectivists or relativists.

If we're all objectivists we don't magically arrive at a scenario wherein we all have the same moral stances. We just believe that the folks with other stances are incorrect, that they're unreasonable, etc. That doesn't help change anyone's mind.

My meta-ethical views are not not supposed to be a solution to everyone having the same moral stances. It's just aiming to get right what's really going on ontologically when it comes to morality.

maybe this is a better way of me making my point.

My subjective moral judgment is that Hitler did nothing that is morally wrong.

Assume your subjective moral judgement is Hitler did lots of stuff that was morally wrong

Make an argument - absent of any objective moral standard to change my mind — Rank Amateur

Rather than trying to make an argument for that--because it would take a lot of time, take a lot of steps, etc. I'll explain how I'd go about doing it.

Basically, one needs to ferret out other stances that the person has, and then try to appeal to them via those stances. In other words, it's a matter of "trying to talk them into something" using things that they already accept/that they're already comfortable with, to try to lead them to a different conclusion. Or, this is similar to the traditional sense of what an ad hominem argument is--it's a matter of appealing to views the person already has, appealing to their biases, to push them to a different view. (But in this case, the ad hominem approach isn't a fallacy, because we're not even dealing with things that are true or false, correct or incorrect, though it is necessarily manipulative.)

At that, it might not be possible to persuade the person to a different position. "Hitler didn't do anything morally wrong" might be foundational for them, for example, so that it doesn't rest on any other views they have. Or their stances might be so situation-specific that there's not a sufficient way to generalize that would lead them to different stances.

But if you are committed to subjectivity - there is no way to compare subjective judgments. Each attempt is just one more subjective judgment. — Rank Amateur

Sure, and I'm not saying that it's anything more than a subjective judgment.

I just don't get saying that there's no way to compare them. We're comparing them subjectively.

Apparently if you're referencing me why not quote me? — Anaxagoras

That wasn't intended to reference you. I don't know if you think any of that stuff or not.

go ahead and make the argument please - tell me why my subjective judgment that rape is not immoral. — Rank Amateur

It's a subjective judgment comparing two stances. It's not an argument about it in the sense of premises leading to a conclusion. What I explained is all that needs to be involved.

Are you not saying that we can't make a subjective judgment comparing two different stances?

It's not logical. It must be psychological. His drive for objectivity is psychological, and it is of such force that it overrides logic. — S

Yeah, that could be.

I'm not comparing subjective judgements. — Isaac

Well, but we can do that. I don't get why someone would think that we can't.

fine - but must now give up the the believe that all moral judgments are subjective. Because now you are comparing subjective judgement - how can it be possible to compare them subjectively - that is impossible - they must be compared in measure of objectivity. — Rank Amateur

I don't understand what you're thinking here.

Say that my view is that it's not okay to rape others.

I run into someone who thinks that it's okay to rape others.

Per what you're saying above, I can't subjectively compare "not okay to rape others" and "okay to rape others," But I don't know why. It seems like it would be easy to compare them, especially since I already have a view about it, that view being "It's not okay to rape others." When I consider "It's okay to rape others" I reject that, because I don't agree with it.

Right, but on what grounds? All I can think of is that they discover the speaker is probably not going to say the sort of thing they wanted him to say (informed facts about contract law, presumably). I'm struggling to think of any other objective grounds. But the trouble is the same would apply to someone they found out was racist (by their definition). It's just that they realise he's probably not going to say the sort of thing they wanted him to say (non-racist things). — Isaac

There's not going to be any objective grounds (in my view).

The grounds are simply that they contracted the person because they believed them to have some expertise in the field the event is focused on, but it turned out that, at least per appearances on that occasion, the person doesn't have those qualifications.

Or in the other scenario, the grounds could simply be that the person appears to have had some psychotic break or whatever.

Not that they need grounds. They could maybe just not like the person or something. Again, my view is NOT that anyone is obligated to provide a platform to anyone. Free speech is an issue re control in the sense that I explained re things like violence, making it difficult for someone to make a living, etc. That's why it's not just a legal issue, because it's not only the law that can affect others' lives in those ways.

If I may. They only must admit that the other's subjective judgement is correct for them (the other person) it is still incorrect for the person thinking about it and so still requires action to remediate (or not, depending on the degree).

The realisation that one cannot make objective ones preferences, does not prevent one from acting to further them. Afterall, you're invoking a kind of 'fairness' here, that it would be somehow 'unfair' if we were to impose our moral preference on another knowing that they feel just as justifiably right as we do.

But what is 'fairness' but another subjective moral preference? — Isaac

Exactly. Which is what I was getting at above re his framework being that we have to defer to what's objectively the case. (And since what's objectively the case to a subjectivist is that there is no objective preference, then we have to defer to that and have no preference, too.)

Then your morals would be out of step with your community. That would put you 'in the wrong'. — Pattern-chaser

People who think that "out of step with their community" amounts to "wrong" in any manner are the last people I want to be spending time around.

I wouldn't like to see them obligated to honour the booking so that you could say whatever you wanted to about contract law. — Isaac

Yeah, they wouldn't be. And in that situation, there's a chance that the person who did the booking should have their job threatened, because they didn't do their homework very well.

First, before even reading the article, it's worth noting that among the many ways that I'm a relativist is that I'm a "perspectivalist." I don't actually like that term, because it suggests that I'm necessarily talking about the perspectives of persons when that's only a subset of it. I think that things are relative to "points of reference" (human perspectives, in particular places at particular times, being one set of points of reference) . . . although I don't like that term, either, because for one I don't want to suggest realism about points, and also people think of "frame of reference" in the physics sense, which is a more limited idea than my view. I haven't thought of/don't know a better term to use for it yet, though, so I use "perspectivalism."

At any rate, on to the article:

So first, this is partially because I don't know enough about how it is achieved, perhaps, but I've always been skeptical of the notion that we conduct experiments where we know with any degree of certainty that we're looking at a single photon, electron, etc. at a time. For one, obviously we can't check such things with our unaided senses. We have to rely on what machines are telling us is the case, and they can only tell us what we've constructed them to tell us, in whatever manner we've devised for them to indirectly tell us something.

The problem is both a control issue--how do we really know that we're only releasing a single photon, electron, etc.? And a knowledge issue--how do we know for sure that (a) we do finally have a correct model of subatomic structure (it turned out to be the case not too long ago that we didn't have the correct model), and (b) we do have a complete model, so that we know with any certainty that there aren't other things going on--other sorts of phenomena that we're simply not aware of yet?

Aside from that, what this experiment is actually doing is taking a pair of supposedly entangled photons (I say supposedly because I'm not sure how we're observationally confirming that that's what we have) and splitting them so that Bob observes m re his photon, x, and Alice observes n re her photon, y. Theory has it that x and y should have a specific relationship, and m and n are not consistent with the relationship x and y are supposed to have.

So the first obvious question is this: if we're observing x and y to have a different relationship than they're supposed to have (and this is supposing that we're observing both x and y, which from my scan of the experiment (the actual paper is here, by the way: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1902.05080v1.pdf), on the one side we're actually observing the classic "interference pattern," we're not really observing the properties of a single photon), then the theoretical notion that x and y would be incompatible with respect to m and n is simply wrong, and insisting that it's correct is an example of theory worship.

The bottom line is that Bob and Alice are observing two different things in response to two different things (we're talking about two different photons). The supposed problem arises because of what theory proposes about what they should be observing about their two different things. Curiously, we interpret this as the theory being correct rather than noting that theory doesn't gel with what we actually observe, thus we are going to need to revise our theory at some point.

Usually people stressing that (free) speech has "consequences" are folks who support things like violence in response to speech in some instances, taking away or making it difficult for someone to earn a living, basically ostracizing or blacklisting the person, etc.

Speech shouldn't have those sorts of consequences in my opinion.

Wow, you guys were busy overnight.

In my view there's not an obligation to provide a platform for just any arbitrary speech.

The obligation is to not take a certain class(es) of actions against anyone due to the content of their speech. What class(es) of actions? That would take awhile to delineate for robots, and it might not be feasible to delineate it for robots, but things like initiating physical violence against the person, imprisoning them, fining them or otherwise monetarily sanctioning them, effectively taking away their ability to earn a living (barring speech they contractually obligated themselves to not engage in when accepting a job), effectively taking away their shelter, their healthcare, etc. I guess we could at least roughly describe it as "not doing things that make it difficult for someone to go about their daily business/to do the daily things they need to do."

Some of that is stuff that only the government could do. Some is stuff that people can do with a mob mentality. Some is stuff that select individuals can even do.

I wouldn't make not doing all of that stuff a legal issue. I don't see freedom of speech as only a legal issue, and I think it's a big mistake to see it that way.

But it doesn't at all amount to being obligated (legally or otherwise) to provide any arbitrary speech a platform. However, we'd hope that people would care enough about freedom of speech that they'd not remove a platform that was bestowed just because folks object to someone's speech. It's easier to get to a culture that doesn't do things like that when we stop seeing freedom of speech as just a legal issue. When it's seen as a legal issue only, people tend to be fine with controlling and effectively censoring speech as long as they're not doing something illegal in the way they're controlling it. That's a problem in my opinion.

The consequences free speech should engender are speech consequences.

Because all value judgments imply against some standard, and if you are applying them against a standard they are now objective. — Rank Amateur

Let's look at this part first.

So, first off, "I prefer pizza to horseradish" is a value judgment. Comparing and preferring one thing to another is making a judgment about them, and it has a valuation included--"I like A more than B" is valuing A more than B.

So, per your theory above, Joe's value judgment that he prefers the taste of pizza to the taste of horseradish "imply against some standard." What standard would you say it "implies against"?

The harms in question are facts of that subject, whether the subject cares or not. — TheWillowOfDarkness

That's simply contradicting what I wrote. They're not facts of that subject, not insofar as any sort of value judgment or normative is attached to it.

but that doesn't mean it lacks harmful effects — TheWillowOfDarkness

Above, when I wrote " if we're attaching any sort of judgment or normative to different objective states (and those terms typically have those sorts of connotations), we're doing something that's only individuals' preferences and that can't be correct or incorrect," what happened when you read that?

Terms like "harmful," "healthy," "harmonious" etc. typically have those sorts of connotations. You can just ignore it, I guess, but that doesn't make the terms not typically have those sorts of connotations, and it doesn't make those states, with those sorts of connotations, obtain independently of an individual's preferences.

The point of morality is the presence of a normative judgement — TheWillowOfDarkness

This isn't to suggest agreement or disagreement, but the point according to whom?

Hence why I tried to clarify just what you were claiming. You explicitly said "No, not per any particular individual's judgement"

There is no "objectivity" in the context of moral philosophy and you're confusing yourself by thinking there is. — Janus

On that, prima facie, we agree, but in general you sure don't type as if you agree with it.

'Healthy' in the social context of subjective interaction, just means 'able to function harmoniously within the context of general subjective moral feeling'. Basically, we all value pretty much the same things. Almost no one thinks murder, rape or torture is a good thing; and someone who thinks those things are good will not be able to function harmoniously in interpersonal relations, if they are honest about their views, which means that their views are subjectively unhealthy. — Janus

You can just ignore "if you're attaching any sort of value judgment of normative (in the "should" sense) to emotional AND physical health (as well as "harmonious" etc.), you're engaging in something subjective for which there is no correct answer" I suppose.

There's not much I can do about that.

In the posts I've read, they talked in terms of harm or well-being, which is defined on an individual's relation to everyone else. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Again, if we're attaching any sort of judgment or normative to different objective states (and those terms typically have those sorts of connotations), we're doing something that's only individuals' preferences and that can't be correct or incorrect.

So, you believe that all preferences are possible in an emotionally healthy individual; you don't allow that there might be moral health or sickness just as there can be physical health or sickness? — Janus

Again, if you're attaching any sort of value judgment of normative (in the "should" sense) to emotional AND physical health, you're engaging in something subjective for which there is no correct answer.

Objectively, there are simply different possible states--having cancer, living to 100 and being able to still run a marathon at that age, thinking that you're the incarnation of Napoleon and drooling all over yourself, being able to foster worldwide peace as a political leader--anything imaginable. Outside of individuals' judgments, none of those states are preferable to other states.

Are there some mental states that would preclude particular preferences? Probably, especially as we could basically set up definitions there so that we'd just be stating tautologies.

But one emotional state compared to another is not objectively preferred, and the fact that 99 or even 100% of everyone we ask says that they prefer mental or physical state A to B doesn't imply that they're correct--that would be an argumentum ad populum.

It's not an argument ad populum; — Janus

Yes, it is, if you're saying that something is correct because it's statistically common. That's the whole nut of what the argumentum ad populum fallacy is.

Re "healthy," if you're attaching any sort of value judgment to that at all, it's again subjective.

Culinary and moral preferences are not at all of equal consequence to human life. — Janus

But the explanation had nothing at all to do with whether anything is of equal consequence. That's a pretty serious misunderstanding of the gist of the analogy.

Individual subjective views are more or less consonant with general subjective human good will. — Janus

More or less similar to the norm or the statistically common views, sure. You're not suggesting that something being statistically common makes it right, are you? Because that's simply the argumentum ad populum fallacy.

That is, look closely enough and there's a right and a wrong, a moral and an immoral. But it's not too difficult to make excuses for not looking. — tim wood

If it's so clear, all you need to do is to point out how we'd observe/check/etc. the objective moral stances.

The answer, of course, can't be merely what anyone thinks/feels, because that wouldn't be evidence of anything objective. The answer would have to point to something independent of persons' opinions, the independent thing that their opinions can get right or match, versus get wrong or fail to match.

No, not per any particular individual's judgement — Janus

There's no "not in any particular individual's judgment 'better'," so that's a problem.

There's no "not in any particular individual's judgment" assessment of poison versus not poison.

Some judgements are better than others; the word "objectively" is meaningless in this context, unless it refers to something like 'in accordance with the best subjective feelings'. — Janus

The best subjective feelings per some individual's subjective judgment? (But likely not others?)

Look at it this way, with something that's less controversially a matter of preferences:

Say that Joe prefers the taste of pizza to the taste of horseradish.

Bob, though, prefers horseradish to pizza.

Is Joe going to say, "From my perspective, Bob's preference is just as good as mine"?

Wouldn't that imply that Joe doesn't actually have a preference between pizza and horseradish? If one preference is just as good to Joe as another from his perspective, then he shouldn't have a preference in the first place. This is pretty wrapped up in how preferences work/what they are.

I understand it, but I'm trying to explain the conceptual framework issues that are causing your lack of understanding of the relativist view.