Yup, especially when you factor in RR’s penchant for redefinitioning words and phrases to suit his arguments.
That’s not one of the hallmarks of an advanced intellect.
In fact, the habit is usually associated with sloppy thinkers, such as Time Cube.
Ok, I read that and re-read the discussion. So now if I understand what you are saying it is that since morality isn’t an objective fact, there is really no point in trying to discuss it. In particular there is no reason to try to influence others by calls for morality since the whole concept is meaningless. Although this is defined slightly differently than what I said I think that they are more or less equivalent, in that if morality is meaningless, and is really an expression of preferences, than one can make the concept of morality meaninful simply by defining an individuals morality to be those preferences, thus their own desires become the “good”. Thus the sadists preference for torture would define the sadists morality and so make torture moral for the sadist from the sadsits point of view.(again I’m not accusing Rand of being a sadist). From another person’s point of view they might rather not have the sadist torture, he can say that it is immoral, but there is no point in trying to convince the sadist of this fact.
We’ve gotten fairly far afield in this thread. Just for The Official Record, I’ll try to clear some shit up.
Let’s say I am having a conversation with Dude, and we are discussing Act, which is something that Country A did, and I am a citizen of Country A.
Dude: Act is immoral.
RR: All you’ve really said is “boo, I don’t like when people do Act,” you haven’t stated something objectively true, such as the length of a piece of string. If someone else joins our conversation and disagrees with you, then fighting over whether Act is immoral or not makes about as much sense as fighting pver whether ice cream tastes good or not. Also, I’m OK with Act.
Dude: Oh, you don’t think Act is immoral? I bet you would if Country B did it.
RR: If Country B did Act, I may dislike it. And disliking it would not be inconsistent with liking Act when Country A does it. I am a citizen of country A and not of Country B, and that fact alone justifies my statements above. I don’t need some grand theory showing that Act is OK in some objective sense when done by Country A but not Country B.
And that’s it. It’s not that exciting or earth-shattering.
No, you’re quite right, nihilism is rather dull, like evil is banal. Nobody finds your thesis exceptional, or even interesting, merely repulsive.
But as I pointed out to you earlier, this philosophy has some problematic consequences.
Let’s say the act in question is “killing people from the other country”. If people in both Country A and Country B adapted your philosophy, then they would have no problem with their guys killing people from the other country, but be mortally offended when they were killed by guys from the other country. In response to the mortal offense, they would most likely step up the “killing people” operations. This would lead to a thing people call “war”. War involves a lot of people dying, and likely people you (since you’re from country A in the hypothetical) know about. Which is bad for you, assuming you’re not a sociopath.
Meanwhile, if there is a moral truth of “Don’t kill people for no good reason”, then the two countries can work to eliminate the killing-people operations, and people you know won’t die young. Which is good.
Therefore, even if the moral truth “don’t kill people for no good reason” does not exist, it benefits everyone if we pretend it exists. And from there, many other moral truths can be derived.
Well, I think that the countries can work together to not kill people based simply on the fact that bad things can result if the two countries are constantly fighting (as you demonstrated). The intermediate step of calling something a “moral truth” is not necessary. Nothing in what I’ve discussed precludes or hinders the two countries from working things out as you describe.
Also, I think you have the cart before the horse a bit (or at least your rose-colored glasses firmly on). Countries are forever coming up with “moral truths” that justify the killing in the first place. So, it’s not like the whole concept of pretending that “moral truths” exist is automatically a good thing for everyone.
I wear my repulsiveness to the likes of your dumb ass as a badge of honor. Now shouldn’t you be over in ATMB bunching your panties over some very mild mod rebuke?
Also, I’m very disappointed in the SDMB that at least three references to nihilism have gone by without someone quoting Walter Sobchek.
First, I just try to go by what I read. Perhaps you have a much richer inner life, I don’t know. But your own example with El Duderino is kind of telling. It’s very nice to be able to critique naive ethical propositions. This is something people have been able to do since, shit, at least the pre-Socratics. Emotivism gives you a handy vocabulary to do it, and you can draw on material from some of the century’s truly amazing thinkers. How could you go wrong?
But you don’t actually go anywhere with it. I think that people would have the same opinions about things whether they were “objective morality” or just expressions of what they believe is collective preference. Whether it’s objective or not, collective preference does exist and it does constrain our behavior. What does your flavor of emotivism tell us about how to think in that context? How does the truth value of an ethical proposition affect whether or not we should actually follow it?
I’ll save some for you, but you’ll have to beg. Again.
Yes, you don’t need the moral truth. But by calling it a moral truth, you add quite a bit of weight to it. Compare:
Alice: “Henry says he likes it when we don’t steal stuff.” Bob: “Oh, screw him.”
Alice: “Henry told us that it’s evil to steal things.” Bob: “Pssh.” :is secretly guilty:
Without the added oomph of morality, there’s not guaranteeing that various groups can iron out the differences between their respective preferences.
Point taken. But I feel that, overall, it does more good than harm, and that as our societies grow and learn, the moral weight self-corrects for the good of humanity. Kind of like a free market, but for abstract preferences.
I just go by what I read as well. And in every interaction you have with me, you come off as some cooler-than-thou peckerwood who just so happens to have read absolutely everything on whatever subject I happen to be talking about. I’m not really buying it anymore, bub.
Also, re: my inner life–I’m a busy motherfucker. I don’t have time to carefully word my posts, as if they are little mini-op-ed columns. I just bang out what’s on my mind and move on.
This is a freaking messageboard. I go where people take me. So take me somewhere. Trying to get folks up to speed who just think I’m your basic asshole in the emperor’s new clothes is getting tiresome (looking at you, Bryan and Buck and 'luci and EP and gonzomax and . . . fuck, I give up).
I think I touched on this above. I think that discussions of what’s “moral” or not do make some sense if we are talking about behavior in a society, and we can substitute “what is best for our society” for “what’s moral.” This, of course, has no application to interactions outside of our society (which, ya know, is what this thread is about, supposedly).
Also, lots of people certainly do seem to think that their morality is objectively true. So, the objective truth is important to these people, whether or not they would do the same thing without it.
One’s perception of collective preference may constrain one’s behavior, but collective preference (like the objective truth value of morality) doesn’t do shit all by its lonesome.
I’m not sure what you mean exactly, but I think I touched on this above. I think that if people want to talk about the “moral” thing to do within the context of a society, then that’s fine, and I can substitute “what’s best for society” for “what’s moral” and have it make sense to me. But that doesn’t work in all contexts. People arguing from a religious moral base don’t generally give a shit about what’s best for society.
And I think it makes sense for a person to decide to follow the rules of one’s society as best one knows them, and I think most people have generally done that. The problem enters, then, when thinking about interactions with people outside of society, where all rules are off.
[quote[How does the truth value of an ethical proposition affect whether or not we should actually follow it?[/QUOTE]
I’m not sure what you mean by “truth value of an ethical proposition.” I don’t think that an ethical proposition can have a truth value, it’s just a preference.
All that being said–Maeglin, follow up with this. You always come waltzing into these types of discussions and act like you are god’s gift to whatever topic I’m discussing and throw out lots of jargon and off-hand references to stuff you assume I’m familiar with, but you never really follow up. Or, if you do, it’s just more of the same. Look, I haven’t read everything there is to read about emotivism (I actually haven’t read that much at all–I discovered it and had one of those aha moments where I finally found out that other people have thought about stuff I’ve worked out on my own). So, if you can back up that attitude you have, teach me some stuff.
The student must be willing to learn. Calling your prospective teacher “some cooler-than-thou peckerwood” is not an auspicious start.
At least you didn’t call him a liberal douch. You’re showing signs of improvement!
[quote=“Rand_Rover, post:191, topic:538550”]
I just go by what I read as well. And in every interaction you have with me, you come off as some cooler-than-thou peckerwood who just so happens to have read absolutely everything on whatever subject I happen to be talking about. I’m not really buying it anymore, bub.
[quote]
Well, that’s because I am a cooler-than-thou peckerwood. Don’t take it personally: I’d do it to anyone who sprays the crowd with semi-digested crap as you do. It’s pure coincidence that I find your opinions objectionable, ill-informed, and I happen to know a little something about them. You’re really no better than some of the hard left new agey blowhards I know. They slap all sorts of -isms on their beliefs but they fall apart under the slightest scrutiny. I know they don’t give a shit about anything but self-gratification, so I can dismiss them as harmless tools.
But I really want to believe that you care about ideas and just have different political views. You’re a smart guy, you aren’t always a total asshole, and quite frankly, I don’t get the opportunity to talk to enough people who come from a totally different place than I do. I also really want to believe that you actually know something of what you’re talking about given how authoritatively you state your opinions. I think to myself that you just might be full of surprises, that I just might learn something useful from you yet.
I’m still waiting.
I’m real busy, too. That’s why I try to only post about things that I at least have some meager knowledge of. Crazy, right?
You go where people take you? So much for personal responsibility.
Here’s something at least. What do you think of RM Hare’s statement of universal prescriptivism? It doesn’t accept the truth values of ethical propositions but instead breaks them down into their underlying imperatives, which all have to conform to logic. The end result is a set of ethical imperatives that, you guessed it, we ought to obey. It is complementary to emotivism and offers some reasonably compelling counterarguments.
That sounds like preference utilitarianism. I am not really sure why you need to constrain the moral question to “society”. The people involved in the moral calculus can very easily be outside of our society, but if they bear any of the costs of our moral decisions, their preferences ought to be taken into account.
And maybe they’re wrong, too. So what? Greater minds than ours might have been wrong but they managed to maintain this position against all comers.
Of course it does. Are you implying that without a law, there is no expression of collective preference? That it has no bite? If so, that’s completely false. We design self-enforcing institutions for coordination based on collective preference all the time. They’re everywhere. Have you ever waited on line for seats after you’ve gotten tickets for a movie?
I think that a lot of policy arguments informed by religious doctrine are wrong, but I think it’s a bit hasty to assume that they do not care about society. Except save the Church of Satan or other such religious whose purpose is self-gratification.
I don’t know that this is true. People tend to internalize the rules of interaction for their own sakes, disconnected with what might have been the original intent of the rule. People have a natural attachment to what is appropriate and tend to apply similar ethical reasoning even in cases, say, with people outside of society. Personally I think this is a good thing. I’m pretty interested in ancient philosophy as a hobby. Some ancient writers talk about this process of first following the rules and then internalizing the rules in their ethical and developmental theories.
I don’t think that’s true or fair. There are times I feel I have spent way too much time following up. The last time I remember was when you asked me to really lay out the collective action problem. I did, without jargon, references, whatever. That discussion died a swift death, and I honestly felt like I wasted an hour or two. I remember feeling pretty damned disappointed because I actually thought we might have been able to have a good discussion about it. But no. So I am hesitant to do more than point out where your attitude exceeds your knowledge. If you want to do something about it, I (and people far more expert than me about philosophy on this board) can try to point you in the right direction. If you’re too busy to read anymore but not too busy to mouth off on the SDMB, well, I’ll take time out of my busy day point that out every so often.
What do you want me to do? How did you discover it? Have you read Stevenson’s Ethics & Language?
Alright, I wrote that post about an hour past my bedtime after a couple of sodey pops, so some parts are a little embarrassing in the cold light of day.
In any event, Maeglin, thanks for the response. Your posts on the collective action problem were not wasted–I’m continuing to think about the issue.
I keep meaning to start separate GD threads on my two big topics (ie, my theory of government and emotivism) so that I have a place to discuss both seriously and at length, and I plan to link to posts that have responded previously to those ideas (including several of yours). The problem with talking with people like you in threads like this one is that I spend so much time trying to get people to simply understand what I’m saying that I’m basically exhausted and exasperated by the time someone who understands and has interesting responses comes along. I think I need to lose the need I feel to respond to some of the folks I currently feel the need to respond to. Some ignorance just can’t be fought.
Perhaps people would understand you better if you stopped messing with the definitions of commonly understood terms; torture for example. You don’t do yourself any favors by insisting that others understand and use Randspeak. Heck, some of us think that your asking is presumptuous and rude.
I would be very interested in those threads. I’m sorry if the thrill of the pit made me a little more outspoken with regard to personal attacks than I normally am. Given the rough and tumble why you deal with others I thought it would be how you expected to be addressed. I am actually very interested in how your morality works, even it I totally disagree with it. Although my background in philosophy is somewhat limited, being more of a math science guy, I do suspect I have the “mental horsepower” to follow your discussion.
Out of curiosity how (if at all) does this differ from my portrayal of Rand’s philosophy?
That’s cool. You don’t have to take my word for it: there are some good books out there that really explore the problem and see how it plays out in modern institutions.
Ok, I can understand that. If you do start a thread, please PM me or something. I come and go, but I would be happy to discuss in a better context. I should just let the pit be the pit, I guess.
I hesitate here since I will be trying to bat a little bit above my average. I haven’t read a huge amount of Peter Singer, though I probably should. But the difference between preference utilitarianism and what you attribute to Rand is that in the former, the preferences of all of the people actually affected matter. In your attribution, only Rand Rover’s preferences matter. This is strictly speaking not how a preferential utilitarian would make a decision.
Thanks, that what I thought. Although I would also add that Rand also doesn’t seem to give much care to the preferences of others either. Which is why I was surprised that he dismissed my analysis out of hand. But I guess I’ll just wait for the other thread.