Does "dictatorship of relativism" exist?

[Whaleboy]

Assuming that people have private universes is just daft... intelligibility of error

Ah! This is the very problem you're having. Having a private universe, by which I mean a perception limited to the subjective and arbitrary understandings withother people -> society, does not remove the intelligibility of error since that can still exist though limited by said perceptions, as such it as you have used it requires a redefinition. If you are to be a determinist, then error by definition cannot exist.

That's false. Sometimes I don't feel any emotion at all... that my moral judgement opposes

Nein nein nein, but I won't go Freudian on you out the remnants of my desire to be taken seriously on the internet . I don't refer to conscious emotions, that you might put down on a form if asked "are you happy/sad/angry/horny etc". Emotions are more the way we perceive the world, you could say it's something that predicates empiricalism... if you think of the brain as a computer which has to conform to categorical logical principles like all matter, then emotions in this sense would be a very basic level programming language. It's a poor analogy because the brain works more like an orchestra than a computer but I think you get the picture.

Unfortunately it requires a kind of psychophilosophy/epistomological approach here which can seem a little distant from what is essentially a political question, but then if you package that up in an assumption; namely subjective free will + objective determinism, it makes more sense.

Regardless, I find it hard to accept that in the absense of your conscious emotion, you might apparently be to yourself a logical being (opposing logic and emotion in the colloquial sense), that you are in fact devoid of all emotion in your being. One greets all sensory experiences with emotion, you would recall how colour is supposed to stimulate different areas of the brain and you feel different according to smells, tastes etc, often unknowingly. Accepting for the minute that sensory experiences/perceptions cannot be devoid of emotion on some level, is it so unreasonable to say that morality would be the result of some emotional reaction to a certain chain of events, and a combination of rationalism and religion (sic) does the rest?

Act utilitarianism... flows from the framework and basis placed before them

Hmmm I can see how you'd justify that but I still think it falls foul of the is-ought gap, which is to say that the premise does not necessitate a prescriptive conclusion since there is nothing prescriptive in the premises themselves. That goes for all consequentialist arguments that I know of.

Well except for the is ought thing...

I think you're confusing an arbitrary "ought" with an objective "ought" in so far as the beholder sees it. The first is unavoidable but I don't see how the latter is necessary, and you'd need to impose a necessary condition here to make your argument; that because of subjective dialogue on morality, relativism is false. Surely that only says that relativism is false between them and by their perceptions? It's quite a geocentric position to take imo.

Apologies for the delay and any typing errors, GayOL doesn't like me at home and the library keyboard is exceedingly evil.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Agathon

Again you're confusing your absolutes and your objectives. With no predicate, an absolute can only exist as a self-contained holism like logic itself, but a logical axiom is not a moral axiom which is something structural by definition. The upshot is that you cannot equate deductive reasoning with the inductive reasoning required here. A bridge of the is-ought gap, if you will, can only occur arbitrarily, contextually and by agreement (shared assumptions).

I have no idea of what any of this is supposed to mean.

I'm glad the professor said it. I didn't want to look dumb.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Az
I've never seen anything better and more logical than utilitarianism.

Do you beleive that people should be forced to give kidneys?

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by grumbler
Okay, but "assumptions" are also accepted as true, if more provisionally. You properly make assumptions because you have to (lacking data), and you look at the implications of the assumptions being wrong. Assumptions are cool so long as you do that.

E.G. we assume that the laws of earthly physics apply everywhere in the universe, but we prepare (as the cosmologists do, in the case of gravity over long distances) to be wrong.

Assumptions don't have to be universally accepted, or anything near universally accepted actually.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Whaleboy


Then it isn't absolutely true. It can only be as true as "Socrates was a wise man" in the context of "all bearded men are wise" + "Socrates had a beard". That isn't to say that it was absolutely true, so your use of the word "true" has little relevance to a debate about relativism, unless you seek to demonstrate that which you attack.



*sigh*, things can't be true or false in the same context, but different contexts can self-evidently exist simultaneously. "Sodomy is wrong" may be true in parts of Africa, but is simultaneously false in Europe. You would seek some kind of objective morality to say that, for example, Europe is closer to it than Africa, but you need to provide firstly a basis for it's existence, and an attack on the reasoning for there being no absolute morality (a premise that leads to relativism). All you have done thus far on that latter point is say it is "ridiculous", and no more. You seem hung up on being true/false at the same time, but morality is, as I have said, different from quantifiable logic in that moral propositions do not equate to 2+2=4.

A thing can only be true or false in different contexts as far as the contexts are different, and just the fact that some people believe different does not make the context significantly different. Just because some one believes that 1+1=3 doesn't mean that it does in the context of themselves. The same goes for moral truths.

[Whaleboy]

Do you beleive that people should be forced to give kidneys?

That's not act utilitarianism.

Assumptions don't have to be universally accepted, or anything near universally accepted actually.

Then they can't be absolute.

A thing can only be true or false in different contexts as far as the contexts are different, and just the fact that some people believe different does not make the context significantly different. Just because some one believes that 1+1=3 doesn't mean that it does in the context of themselves. The same goes for moral truths.

True, context changes the predicate, not the subject. However, the predicate-subject relationship is inherent to logic, as is 1+1=2. Morality and 1+1=2 are not equable because the latter, and relativism, are part of logic as a holism whereas morality is an arbitrary logical structure.

Just because some one believes that 1+1=3 doesn't mean that it does in the context of themselves. The same goes for moral truths.

No. In order to even begin making this claim, you need to provide me some kind of basis for comparing moral "attempts", so one can be "hotter" than another relative to something that is "hottest". Do enlighten me. As for moral truths being analogous to logical principles, I've dealt with that above.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Whaleboy


That's not act utilitarianism.

Why not? I thought it would be if two people could live instead of one.

Then they can't be absolute.

I think you mean absolutely accepted instead of absolutely true.

No. In order to even begin making this claim, you need to provide me some kind of basis for comparing moral "attempts", so one can be "hotter" than another relative to something that is "hottest". Do enlighten me. As for moral truths being analogous to logical principles, I've dealt with that above.

I'm not trying to prove that any moral claim in particular is true. So the burden is with you to prove that none of them are.

[Whaleboy]

I think you mean absolutely accepted instead of absolutely true.

Being universally accepted |= universally true, they cannot be universally true by definition. If they're universally accepted then they may be objective in a human sense, but not absolute since they're as liable to change as the predicate upon which they are based, namely the acceptance of all humans.

Why not? I thought it would be if two people could live instead of one.

Sorry my bad, I got act and rule confused for a second... yes act utilitarianism in it's simplest form presents a binary choice, so one (living) person upon who's death the lives of ten depend, should be killed in order to save those ten lives. Act utilitarianism has it's obvious limitations since it is only concerned with the immediate context.

Rule utilitarianism wants you to consider the categorical rule or underlying the notion, so in this case "people should be forced to sacrifice their kidneys for transplants". The rule would create negative utility since many people would not go to the doctors for fear of getting their renal system lifted.

Act utilitarianism as you have presented it, however, was in it's simplest form... there are more complex scenarios that weigh up the question of utility in a more sophisticated manner, for example, one forced death > a marginal benefit to many people (as a logical principle). I don't subscribe to that myself, but it's unfair to use a simplestic ad absurdum against a complex position.

I'm not trying to prove that any moral claim in particular is true. So the burden is with you to prove that none of them are.

But you need to establish that there can be an absolutely true moral claim/system, though you needn't be Jesus and tell me what it actually is. Put simply, you need to describe the conditions under which it can exist... like proving that an ocean exists, in which resides a fish.

My argument #1:
Morality exists as a subject-predicate form, dependent upon context
For any supposedly objective moral system, there can always be found a context where it does not apply (a consequence of both determinism and uncertainty principle)
Without context/predicate, all subjects are equally (in)valid, so without the context to say something is +1 or -1, the value is 0.
Adding a context depends upon the beholder
Morality is relative to the conscious beholder
Assumption: All conciousness's are of equal logical value objectively
Morality is relative

As for my somewhat more ontological emotive argument, I've mentioned that earlier.

[Agathon]

Adding a context depends upon the beholder

False.

Plato and Aristotle both believed this, or something like it, and both were objectivists.

[Whaleboy]

Plato and Aristotle both believed this, or something like it, and both were objectivists.

As did Protagoras iirc, and he wasn't

Moral relativism needs a beholder, otherwise it's meaningless from a subjective human perspective, and moral relativism falls to cognitive relativism or solipsism depending on whether you're a rationalist or an empiricalist (the difference being the presumption of the existence of others). Adding a predicate to the subject depends ultimately on ones language, or idiolect to avoid confusion though it's an imperfect term.

[Agathon]

As did Protagoras iirc, and he wasn't

If that's what he actually meant. Most of our view of him is speculation.

Subjective and Objective are words in human languages with particular uses. They certainly don't imply relativism.

Subjective judgements are ones where the question of endorsement arises, or where there is no expectation that another will say the same. That is not the case with morality, but only in certain situations.

Relativism is an illegitimate transposition of those uses of language to morality. But no one actually uses moral words like taste words ? if someone did, they would be violating the rules of the language game.

[Whaleboy]

If that's what he actually meant. Most of our view of him is speculation.

Subjective and Objective are words in human languages with particular uses. They certainly don't imply relativism.

IMO they do, because they imply context (again the question of predicate). Remove that and any subject is valueless if you accept that Platonic essentialism is BS. If value is therefore dependent upon context then relativism holds, though not necessarily in a loaded context. It's a human view of a logical objectivity, not an prescriptive absolute.

Subjective judgements are ones where the question of endorsement arises, or where there is no expectation that another will say the same. That is not the case with morality, but only in certain situations.

IMO you're getting your necessary and sufficient conditions confused here, since it's perfectly reasonable to have a subjective judgement in an endorsement vacuum, accepting that it has a premise.

But no one actually uses moral words like taste words ? if someone did, they would be violating the rules of the language game.

Again imo I think you're taking a geocentric view of things, where our conception of morality in the West is still essentially Christian. For example, consider Hebrew or Sanskrit, where particularly in the latter, prescription is indistinguishable from preference. To argue otherwise is to not accept relativism because of the consequences of it, rather than its respective reasoning. This, in my opinion, is intellectual dishonesty, since I think we should concur with that which seems the most valid to us.

[Whaleboy]

Oh and as for Protagoras...

"Man is the measure of all things, of those that are that they may be, and of those that are not that they're not"

A beholders view of the subjective if ever there was any? And I would very much like to see a subjective with an absent predicate/context.

[Az]

Originally posted by Kidicious
Do you beleive that people should be forced to give kidneys?

After death, certainly.

[Agathon]

IMO they do, because they imply context (again the question of predicate). Remove that and any subject is valueless if you accept that Platonic essentialism is BS. If value is therefore dependent upon context then relativism holds, though not necessarily in a loaded context. It's a human view of a logical objectivity, not an prescriptive absolute.

WTF are you talking about? Sorry this is just meaningless bull****.

IMO you're getting your necessary and sufficient conditions confused here, since it's perfectly reasonable to have a subjective judgement in an endorsement vacuum, accepting that it has a premise.

Uh no. That is not how the words are commonly used in our language.

Again imo I think you're taking a geocentric view of things, where our conception of morality in the West is still essentially Christian.

"geocentric". Jesus Christ...

For example, consider Hebrew or Sanskrit, where particularly in the latter, prescription is indistinguishable from preference.

That doesn't prove your point.

To argue otherwise is to not accept relativism because of the consequences of it, rather than its respective reasoning. This, in my opinion, is intellectual dishonesty, since I think we should concur with that which seems the most valid to us.

Rubbish. None of this has anything to do with relativism. We tend to concur with that which seems most valid to us, but that does not make it so.