Posted on 05/01/2003 8:44:18 AM PDT by RJCogburn
Oh, I know, but it seems to me that I ought to at least stick up for my own proposition, rather than leaving you alone to defend what I said, in addition to having to defend what you said ;)
Thank you for your seemingly innate senses of both utility and kindness, I'm sure.
But then he seems to make the mistake of assuming that because we can't prove truth to complete conceptual satisfaction within the human box, the matter of whether or not someone is outside the box doesn't matter to him.
I'd ask him, why is it that truth is so important to us, yet we realize we are too limited to be certain of it by what we can discover depending strictly upon our conceptual souls?
Well, it doesn't matter to me, because the question of whether someone is outside the box is ultimately a question of where we should start understanding what morality is or should be. I'm a results-oriented kind of person, and so it seems to me that the ultimate goal of morality is to make us better people and to make the world a better place - the question of whether moral propositions are true or not is ultimately less interesting than the question of whether they are useful or not, in no small part because the question of truth does not appear to be amenable to investigation. I could be wrong, but I think I'm pretty well insulated against being proven wrong any time soon ;)
Are you sure you even want to use the word "ultimate" then? But I don't want to fault find, especially with one who's got such a refreshingly clear level of intellectual honesty.
(I'm results oriented too. And of course, I'd say I think you've described a very, very important secondary use of morality and that morality's most important use for us is to instruct us that we are disconnected with where morality starts. So disconnected that morality's source may even seem unapparent.)
Now, at this point, having laid out my cards, I've probably managed to create a platform that very few people are actually interested in occupying - objectivists will pretty clearly object to my dismissal of objectivism, and if you look at it, you'll probably see that this position is rather dismissive of theistic brands of morality for pretty much the same reasons. Everybody tends to ask themselves "is X true?", and the answer to that question will determine your starting point for what morality is based on and what it ultimately is. But the question of "is X true?" does not seem to me to be fruitful, and so I ask myself "is X useful?"
(ibid.)
So really, the question you're asking me is "why is ultimate truth so important to other people?"
Well, I really asked about truth, but I think morality is an excellent subset and case in point. And I really didn't distinguish between ultimate truth and any kind of truth that we can know for what it is.
And for that, I have several answers.
One is that the ultimate truth about morality really exists and really is discoverable, and sooner or later someone will hit on it, and that humans have an instinctive sense that this goal is attainable. I tend to doubt that one myself, but I can't really honestly dismiss it either, so I at least consider it a possibility, albeit a rather remote one.
O-k. (I think that if nobody has come across the ultimate truth about morality by now, might as well forget about it. I'm certainly not an "Enlightenment" type, though their failed experiments are useful.) About that instinctive sense, it seems so strong as to be at least a subjective need, if not an objective one, however remote fulfillment of the need so obviously is.
The second answer is that people concern themselves with ultimate truth not because it is necessarily discoverable, but because the act of investigating it is itself inherently worthwhile in some objective sense - the act of investigating ultimate truth serves to improve us in some objective fashion, even if we never actually attain it. And further, that we know this to be true and act upon this true belief. I suspect that this will prove to be a rather popular option, particularly since I've seen it expressed nearly verbatim in places.
Well I see that the pursuit of truth is laudable; even "necessary for our survival," or at least for our weller-being. Continuous improvement is thought possible up to at least "six sigma" in the business world, but entrepreneurs are optimistic people and their employees are paid to be. But the pursuit of anything impossible to pursue to completion can be very dangerous as betty boop's Marx post pointed out, and it is certainly frustrating to that innate sense of the ultimate that we humans have.
The third answer is somewhat more cynical, in that humans are concerned with the question of ultimate truth because of what it brings about within them in a somewhat more selfish sense than the second answer. People investigate ultimate truth, whether it is or is not really knowable, because they like the subjective feeling of security and knowledge that it engenders in them - whether consciously or unconsciously, they do it because they like the warm and fuzzy feeling that insider information usually brings.
Yes, whether or not it is truly known, it is comfortable to think we are connected with the ultimate. I think that gets back to the idea that ultimate knowledge (if it exists, of course) is relational in nature to we beings who are relational in nature and that it is thoroughly natural for us to be deeply and thoroughly connected with the ultimate; so deeply that it delves deeper than our conscious capacities (but so thoroughly that it includes them). I think this is a need so critically important for us that we will make up ways to fool ourselves into fulfilling it and believe mistruths we are told about it, if we don't happen to find what we may find of, and accept the truth of, what truly comes from whoever devised that relationship.
And the fourth possibility that I see is the most cynical of all - people are interested in ultimate truth simply as a means to a preferred end. Consciously or unconsciously, ultimate truth is treated as a stick to beat people with. That's a rather ugly thought, but people can be rather ugly sometimes, notions of morality notwithstanding ;)
Yes indeed; that is very clear to me, too. To add to the culpability, I suspect this is the counterfiet mockery of the truth: that ultimate truth is, for us at present, a means to an end preferred for us by the one with the carrot, beautiful as he is.
What if morality is created by the supreme being (or, is an expression of who he is) and is universally applicable, and logically provable by him, to him, and for him to serve his purposes?
If true, I think that means it is both ultimately subjective and ultimately objective.
But of course, those two words each have different meanings.
Any comments?
But if we accept "dynamism" as an axiom, then you have no way to know what A is at any given time. For it to be an objective truth, you have to assume that it remains unchanged. If its properties changed due to dynamism -- well, then, the idea that A is an objective truth is no longer true -- what was true at one instant may not be true the next.
Thus, even "A is A" requires you to make non-objective assumptions about the nature of any A you happen to be considering.
Huh?
who says that I may not know what God has told me I know?
Well, why not share, dude? You and God got some insider deal going on?
All you have to do is ask, and God will be pleased to let you in on the deal. ;-)
Seriously, and no disrespect, but I feel like "I've been there done that. Now what?
I tend to look at things through a pragmatic lens, so it's probably fair to say that this colors what I see as the "ultimate" reason for morality to exist - as you can see, what I call the "ultimate" reason has a decidedly practical tendency to it. But it's perfectly possible to envision other reasons for morality to exist, even reasons that may supersede the purely practical benefits of it - e.g., "morality is God's way of bringing us closer to Him". And I can hardly avoid admitting that my judgment of why morality is important is no better than anyone else's - I don't claim any special insight into these things, after all.
But on the other hand, if we arrive in the same place, does it really matter if we started from different points? For example, if someone takes the view that A) God exists, and; B) God says that murder is wrong, therefore; C) murder is, in fact, wrong - is it necessary for me to accept A and B before I can accept C? I'm not at all sure that it is necessary - such a person might take A and B as axiomatic, and derive C from them, whereas I could take some other thing as axiomatic and still arrive at the same destination. I might posit as axiomatic that I don't want to be murdered, and add some other derivative postulates, such as B) in a society that considers murder acceptable, I am likely to be murdered - I trust that we can see how we might reason such a thing out - and therefore C) we should treat murder as wrong, in order to avoid B coming to pass. And so I think it's entirely possible to come to a shared understanding of a common set of moral tenets, even if we ultimately disagree on where those tenets are derived from.
You might say that murder is wrong because God says that it's wrong, I might say that we should treat murder as wrong because of my own personal preference not to be murdered, some other person might say that murder is wrong because Ganesha says that it's wrong, and some fourth party might conclude that murder is self-evidently wrong, for no other reason beyond that. But the important thing is that we all agree on the basic moral tenet that murder is or should be forbidden, even if we all have different reasons for arriving at that conclusion.
Now, that's a pretty easy case - we're not likely to run into too many people who wish to argue that murder isn't forbidden or shouldn't be forbidden. But not all tenets are likely to be so easy to arrive at a consensus. Consider moral propositions about something like polygamy for a moment - it seems that God is pretty clear to most people that you're only supposed to have one spouse, but on the other hand, Allah is taken to be saying that a man can have up to four wives, and there are certain fringe Mormons who still believe that a man can have as many wives as he likes. As for me, practical fellow that I am, I'd want to sit down and examine the situation before rendering an opinion on the subject, and any such opinion would depend on what I saw as the ultimate goals of society - if I thought of orderly society and family stability as the paramount goals of society, I would probably conclude that polygamy should be banned. If, on the other hand, I thought that the paramount goal of society was to maximize individual liberty, I would probably conclude that polygamy should be permitted. Or, as is the actual case, if I conclude that both order and liberty are important goals, then I will have to sit down and weigh the two against each other, to decide whether polygamy does more harm to the cause of order than forbidding polygamy does to the cause of liberty - which it probably does.
This is sort of what I see as the great advantage and the great failing of this system I have - it's very flexible. Maybe too flexible for most people, which is why I don't evangelize. But I think I can make the case that in order to have peace, people must be permitted to freely congregate and associate with those of like minds, and form communities based on shared values and goals. I think that most people will instinctively see the benefits of that, and for others, they can perhaps be persuaded to take it as axiomatic. That way, even if we really can't agree on what our moral tenets should be, we can at least go our separate ways in peace. We don't have to like each other, we don't even really have to figure out how to get along in that case - in the very worst case, all we have to agree on is to leave each other alone. So maybe I should take the right to be left alone as axiomatic - what do you think? ;)
(I think that if nobody has come across the ultimate truth about morality by now, might as well forget about it. I'm certainly not an "Enlightenment" type, though their failed experiments are useful.)
I think you're probably right, but the possibility of mass epiphany cannot be dismissed altogether, I suppose...
Well I see that the pursuit of truth is laudable; even "necessary for our survival," or at least for our weller-being. Continuous improvement is thought possible up to at least "six sigma" in the business world, but entrepreneurs are optimistic people and their employees are paid to be. But the pursuit of anything impossible to pursue to completion can be very dangerous as betty boop's Marx post pointed out, and it is certainly frustrating to that innate sense of the ultimate that we humans have.
Perhaps, but I think that someone of that mind might tend to take a Zen-like approach, that regards the journey as the important thing, and not the destination. In that sort of view, enlightenment is not something you attain by getting somewhere, enlightenment is attained simply by walking the path. Or, if the Buddhist overtones are a bit much, then one might regard the striving to understand truth as resulting in self-improvement, even if a final and complete understanding never comes. Some people may be disappointed by that, but one can always take heart in the thought that such a journey is important for the here and now, but that ultimate truth may be on tap in the afterlife for those who seek it now. I certainly can't prove otherwise ;)
But if we accept "dynamism" as an axiom, then you have no way to know what A is at any given time. For it to be an objective truth, you have to assume that it remains unchanged. If its properties changed due to dynamism -- well, then, the idea that A is an objective truth is no longer true -- what was true at one instant may not be true the next.
Thus, even "A is A" requires you to make non-objective assumptions about the nature of any A you happen to be considering.
You have no idea how hard it is not to be sarcastic. I have very patiently pointed out in other posts, "A is A" is epistimological, not metaphysical. "A" can be any concept. For example, let A be a clock.
Now a clock cannot be a clock unless there is change, namely, the moving of the hands of the clock (or the changing of the numbers if it is a digital clock). In this case, A would not be A if there were not change (or A is a broken A).
Why is this so hard to understand?
Here are some more As that could not be As if there were no change: an explosion, a flame, a river, a symphony, a dog, a cat, (or any other living organism).
I think the problem is that you do not understand the identity of a thing is determined by its qualities. Some changing characteristic is a quality of many things, including all living things.
Now consider your statement, "but if we accept "dynamism" as an axiom, then you have no way to know what A is at any given time." So, let's assume you have a child. Your statement would mean, since children almost never cease to be in motion, you could never know your child was a child, much less yours, because it was changing. You must live in a very uncertain world.
Hank
Show me where I have asserted “objective truth” on these threads, general_re. Mostly I devote myself to questioning the assertions of others WRT this thorny problem. Indeed, one wonders whether the formulation “objective truth” can mean anything at all. Perhaps it is an oxymoron.
I’m really glad to learn that John Stewart Mill is an intellectual companion of yours. To put him on the philosophical map, J.S. Mill is usually classified as a British empiricist of 19th century vintage. He’s one of my favorite thinkers. I love him for his insights into liberty, for his reliance on experience and observation as tests of knowledge, for his insistence that logic is “the science which treats of the operations of the human mind in the pursuit of truth.” I also love him for all the awkward situations he gets him self into, as a self-described devotee of Bentham’s Utilitarian School, and faithful adherent of empiricist methodology.
For instance, as much as he considered himself squarely in the Benthamite school, it turns out that Mill thought the utilitarians had not developed anything even near to an adequate theory of human nature. The utilitarians tended to regard human beings as mere “atoms” or units in a more or less malleable mass (given proper education). Human behavior was assumed to be motivated by the search for pleasure (happiness), and the avoidance of pain. Given this, statistics tells us pretty much what sorts of things can happen with human beings. And thus, armed with such utilitarian tools, institutions and even entire cultures can be made amenable to progressive change initiatives.
While still insisting that he was himself a utilitarian, Mill said that this conception of human nature was drastically inadequate. He noted that happiness as a goal could rarely be achieved directly, but usually only as the by-product of striving for and achieving some larger goal, a goal set by a unique private person. Thus human existence by its nature is particular; so to consign it wholesale to the reductive notion of the mass could hardly serve as a premise for serious thought. (This is Mill the empiricist speaking.)
Mill the great British empiricist lays down his credentials in this statement: “The notion that truths external to the mind may be known by intuition or consciousness, independently of observation and experience, is, I am persuaded, in these time the great intellectual support of false doctrines and bad institutions…. There never was such an instrument devised for consecrating all deep-seated prejudices.”
And yet Mill himself went far beyond empiricist methods when he adverted to “intuition or consciousness, independently of observation and experience” in two extraordinarily telling ways. First, he assumed that Nature possesses a stable structure; that is, it is lawful. And second, Nature is lawful because it has been designed. (He invoked a kind of “back-hand proof” in stating that science itself would be impossible, if Nature were not lawful, ordered.)
Would you would agree with me, general_re, that neither of these statements can be the result of direct observation?
Thus we have the case of an empiricist who, while not satisfied by a “proof of the existence of God” of the “First Cause” or “Prime Mover” type, is effectively persuaded by the proof of the existence of God by Design. He thought he could establish that on empirical grounds, if only inferentially.
Mill’s conceptions of Nature and God are fascinating topics in their own right, but beyond the scope of this writing.
Maybe by now you’re wondering what is the purpose of this rant on J. S. Mill? You might say you “resonate” to his ideas or whatever. But my suspicion is he would never say “Who cares?” – as you have rather cavalierly done in your last. He knew full well that there are limits to human knowledge and understanding; he just wasn’t prepared to say where they actually were in fact. (Indeed, how could he -- or you or me?)
He kept probing. He isolated and clarified problems; and where he couldn’t do that, he put up a flag for future thinkers. IMHO, he is an absolutely first-rate modern philosopher, and a man of rare intellectual acumen, insight, and integrity. It is ironic that, as much as Mill derided the idea of a priori knowledge of any kind, he seemed to have had recourse to it on occasion.
There is a spirit of adventure about John Stewart Mill that I love and cherish. He helps us see the limit of experience, to acknowledge that there are real things that direct observation cannot account for. And that science can only do what science can do. Which may or may not exhaust all the possibilities….
Mill kept an open mind. We’d do well to take a page from his book.
Meanwhile, general_re -- what was our disagreement about? Please refresh me.
p.s.: I really don't see how Objectivism fits into this picture at all -- though I gather Objectivists tend to look kindly on J. S. Mill....
Not corret. Formally demonstrated not to be correct by Godel.
Now that is an interesting question indeed. If the Objectivists are right, then asking the purpose of a moral code is like asking the purpose of gravity, or photons. In other words, it doesn't have a purpose -- it is just another in a list of "natural laws," which would be there regardless of whether or not humans existed.
In that case, it would seem that we cannot limit objectivist philosophy to humans, any more than we can limit gravity or photons to humans.
Now, in nature we see all manner of adaptations to gravity and light, but they are all predicated on the characteristics of those phenomena. And if Rand is right, and her objective principles are true, then we ought also to see in nature all manner of adaptations to the objective morality she espoused. But we do not -- we see various versions of the law of the jungle, instead.
The usual argument at this point is that we humans are different, because we can think about stuff. But that represents a specific assumption about who/what is affected by this set of "objective truths," and it further requires us to assume (without justification) that the existence of a rational mind somehow makes immoral the law of the jungle that seems to rule in non-human objective reality.
Turning it around, objectivists like to claim that beings who behave contrary to objective morality are somehow doomed. But if this is objectively true, then anything that behaves contrary to objectivist principles is doomed, whether or not there is a mind to apprehend the rules. Clearly this has not occurred in nature; thus, the scope of Rand's "objective truths" is at best limited to one particular facet of objective reality.
In either case, we are led to a contradiction, whereby a set of supposed "absolutes" does not have universal application.
I'm not sure what you're saying here. Could you restate it?
What is the entire idea of "morality" in the first place?
Hank
Anybody out there listening to Yaron Brook, Executive Director of the Ayn Rand Inst. on C-SPAN 1 now comment on the Middle East?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.