Here’s a thought experiment for our materialist friends.
Suppose you have a table, and on that table you place three cylinders, one each of oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen. Beside these cylinders you place a lump of carbon, a lump of calcium, and a jar of phosphorus. These chemicals make up over 98% of the human body by mass. Suppose further that you place on the table containers of each of the trace chemicals found in the human body so that at the end you have on your table all of the chemicals found in the human body in the same amount by mass and in the same proportion as those chemicals occur in the human body.
Now ask yourself some questions:
1. Do you owe any moral duty to any of the individual chemicals? I presume you will say the answer is “no.”
2. Does your answer change if instead of the individual chemicals, you consider all of them setting there on your table together? I presume the answer is still “no.”
3. Now suppose you mix all of the chemicals together? Does your answer change? I presume the answer is still “no.”
I presume by your answer to these three questions that you believe that there is nothing special about the chemicals in the human body – whether considered in isolation or in combination – that causes you to owe any moral duty to those chemicals. On materialist premises, a human being is nothing more than a somewhat sophisticated mixture of its constituent chemicals. I presume you will say that you owe moral duties to other human beings. So my final question is this:
4. What is it about the mixture of chemicals we call “human being” that makes it the repository of moral rights (i.e., the converse of the moral duty you owe it)?
Chart courtesy of Wikipedia.
I’m going to go with molybdenum. It’s the Mo in CroMo. Steel bicycles have soul:)
“Now suppose you mix all of the chemicals together? Does your answer change?”
Um, yup it does. Mix hydrogen and oxygen together and you have a very volatile mix. I would presume moral responsibility to make sure the boom doesn’t hurt anyone.
Just sayin.
Same thing that makes a diamond worth more than the equivalent amount of carbon in the form of coal.
OK; ppolish, Moose Dr and Petrushka have got nothing. Anyone else care to answer?
There is something special. The arrangement.
This is what Intelligent Design has come to … dumb questions.
UD Editors: Graham, no need to expose the poverty of your intellect like this. You can just not post if you’ve got nothing.
A better thought experiment. On a table before you is a recently deceased person. What moral duty you owe the corpse? Please explain:
I would say it’s the qualities that we associate with personhood – intelligence, feelings, sentience, etc.
Petrushka:
Next time you’re freezing to death try tossing diamonds into your coal burning stove rather than coal.
Rhamptwn7, your thought expirement is interesting, but why is it better than Barry’s? Barry’s was quite interesting.
The question was, what is about the mixture.
And the answer is the arrangement or configuration.
SNIP
UD Editors: Transparent attempt to derail a thread that obviously makes Petrushka uncomfortable deleted.
It is interesting to point out that the materialistic philosophy has an extremely difficult time assigning any proper value to humans in the first place, i.e. Just how do you derive value for a person from a philosophy that maintains transcendent values are illusory?:
I would like to think, despite the atrocities of Nazism and Communism, that most people intuitively know that they are worth far more value than a dollar?!? Yet, as pointed out, on materialism you have the ‘resale value’ of less than one dollar!
Of course, in the marketplace some arrangements of matter carry much more value than other arrangements of matter because of the craftsmanship inherent within how the matter is arranged. But materialists deny that there is any true craftsmanship within humans. We are merely the happenstance product of a lucky series of accidents! Thus, why should any person’s particular arrangement of material carry any more value than any other particular arrangement of matter since any person’s arrangement of matter is just a happenstance accident and was not the work of a craftsman (i.e. was not fearfully and wonderfully made)?
Whereas in Theism, particularly in Christianity, there is no trouble whatsoever figuring out how much humans are really worth, since infinite Almighty God has shown us how much we mean to him, since he was willing to pay the ultimate sacrifice so as to redeem us:
To try to answer Mr. Arrington’s question, I would say that we have our foundational moral rights and value because we have souls that are made in the image of God (i.e. endowed by our Creator with inalienable rights):
There is simply no way to derive any true meaning and value for human life without God, as Dr. Craig makes clear in the following video:
goodusername:
So it’s still nothing but a bag of chemicals, but certain qualities of the bag of chemicals makes it a repository of moral rights when the identical chemicals without those qualities would not? Sounds arbitrary to me. Says who? You’ve given me no reason that a bag of chemicals with those qualities is morally any different from a bag of chemicals without those qualities.
Why would you say it’s just a bag of chemicals? I would never say that.
Petrushka:
Non-answer trying to masquerade as an answer.
Petrushka
Of course you wouldn’t. Because most materialist I find are scared to death to confront the logical conclusions compelled by their premises.
Barry Arrington:
Let’s not pretend that this describes our position. However, in case you’ve been living under a rock, Barry, I will quote Nobel laureate Phil Anderson’s 1972 essay “More is different.”
The essay can be easily found on the web. Until Barry and his friends read it and at least try to understand the main points, there is no reason to engage them.
UD Editors: Until skram and his friends admit that emergence (which is what is described in the quote) is nothing more than materialist mysticism trying to pass itself off as an intellectually respectable scientific account, there is no need to deal with them. Skram, you can run off and comfort yourself with your little stories. Do not expect those who demand plausible accounts to be impressed.
Sure, a coal burning stove is great at burning coal, but just think how much better it must be at burning diamonds!
Or not.
111
Or, it could also be that you can’t really understand that (at least some) materialists are perfectly happy to give special treatment to some meatbags and not to others. Therefor, they are not actually scared to death about confronting anything. It just turns out that you are mistaken about what they are actually compelled to by their premises.
Hahaha, just joshing. Barry can’t be wrong about this.
UD Editors: Scoffing and scorn are sad and pathetic substitutes for argument. It seems, though, that is mainly what I get from materialists nowadays.
as to,, “The ability to reduce everything to simple fundamental laws,,,”
The claim that everything can be reduced to laws is simply false:
In fact, Kant’s empirical requirement for the moral argument for God to be verified, (influences arising from outside space-time), has now been met in quantum mechanics:
For a prime example of something that cannot be reduced to law (i.e. chance and necessity), we need look no further than the information generated by humans every time they write a single sentence of functional information or create an axiom in mathematics:
Of related note:
David Chalmers is semi-famous for getting the ‘hard problem’ of consciousness across to lay people in a very easy to understand manner:
Here are a few more comments, from atheists, that agree with Chalmers on the insolubility of ‘hard problem’ of consciousness,,
Here a Harvard neurosurgeon, a former atheist and who had a life changing Near Death Experience, comments on the ‘hard’ problem:
Does Richard Dawkins Exist? – Answers to “Scientific” Materialism – http://idvolution.blogspot.com.....rs-to.html
By his own beliefs Richard Dawkins does not exist.
UD Editors: Another attempt to change the subject deleted. Graham, if you’ve got nothing, best to move along.
OT: Hey Dr. Torley made it on ID The Future
podcast: “Vincent Torley: Can Science Point to the Existence of God?”
http://intelligentdesign.podom.....3_36-08_00
Casey Luskin talks with Dr. Vincent Torley about his defense of Eric Metaxas’ recent WSJ op-ed, which argued that modern science points towards theism, rather than against it.
Barry,
Yes
Says me. Says everyone (well, maybe not some sociopaths). Because it’s those qualities that causes us to empathize with them, and such bags of chemicals are special to us.
Says you too. There are many people whom I’m sure you care for deeply, and you still would even if somehow it were discovered they lacked a soul. And you still wouldn’t think the difference between them and a bag of chemicals was arbitrary.
goodusername @ 26:
Thank you for at least trying to meet the substance of the OP. I’ve just deleted half a dozen thumb sucking, crybaby comments.
To the substance of your post, you continue steadfastly to avert your eyes from the point. I understand. You are afraid. As Nietzsche said, “if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee.” And that is a frightening prospect. Better to avert your eyes.
So you delete our off-topic posts, but Ba77’s off-topic posts are just fine huh?
UD Editors: No, I delete thumb sucking crybaby posts. If you don’t like our editorial policy, you are welcome to start your own blog. I have never yet seen BA77 whine like the average materialist does on these pages. Moreover, BA77’s posts are not off topic, and the fact that you think they are means you don’t really understand what the topic is.
Might it be best to leave the “thumb sucking crybaby” comments as incriminating evidence against the comment-er?
But I digress. A question for Barry: you have 2 parts elemental hydrogen and one part elemental oxygen in a flask? Drink it? I think not, until you set it alight with a spark, forming the compound water.
Is watery-ness an “emergent property” of the reaction? Or is this what we call chemistry?
I think the answer to question 3 is that if we could precisely synthesize all the bonds necessary in all the chemicals that make you or I up, then yes, I would owe ethical duties to that being (including not undertaking this experiment).
REC, why would you owe ethical duties to a bag of chemicals when the only difference between the chemicals on the table and the chemicals in the bag is that, well, they are now mixed together in a bag? Giving a plausible answer to that question is the point of the exercise. Perhaps you missed that.
Barry,
You seem to want to dismiss chemistry all together.
So, I’ll ask again: Is watery-ness an “emergent property” of the reaction of hydrogen and oxygen? Or is this what we call chemistry?
I’ll continue with a short answer. The difference between life and a pile of chemicals is that life is a precisely bonded arrangement of those chemicals, maintaining homeostasis, far from equilibrium.
Barry
Rec has answered your question rather well – we are not just any old mixture of those chemicals in a bag but a complex, more-or-less self sustaining, arrangement of those chemicals. I would like to add that the very complicated chemical system which is you and me also participates in a society and an ecosystem (i.e. complicated relationships with other such systems) and a lot of our moral duties to each other arise from that.
Barry probably imagines that physics should always favour perfectly homogenised “mixtures of chemicals”, and that there’s no natural reason why any kind of order should develop in such mixtures spontaneously, without God’s personal intervention. It’s been almost forty years since Prigogine got a Nobel Prize for work on open system thermodynamics (including the formation and stability of dissipative structures), but news travel slowly in some circles.
While no one owes moral duty towards chemicals, they do owe moral duty when those chemicals are in a ‘bag’ of organs networked by neurons attached to a brain.
The elemental matter-energy components interact differently in different mutual arrangements. That’s the most basic law of natural science (laws of matter-energy interactions in physics). A weight interacts differently with a set of metal atoms that are arranged into a spring than with the same set atoms arranged into a ball.
Hence, there is no surprise or any breakdown or dissonance in the patterns of natural science in the observation that matter-energy arrangements we label “humans” interact differently with other chunks of matter-energy (humans, animals, or piles of chemicals) depending on their internal and mutual arrangements.
If you fall back on a defense that piles of chemicals which interact differently with each other based on their internal arrangements (e.g. chemical bonds) don’t feel moral obligation to act differently, you’re stepping outside (i.e. invoking deus ex machina “solution”) of both the empirically demonstrable facts and theories of natural science, since you cannot objectively demonstrate or prove based on some axioms or equations of natural science that you have any idea what is it like to be some other arrangement of matter-energy interacting with the other matter-energy arrangements beyond yourself. In fact, you can’t even even objectively demonstrate anything about what is it like to be matter-energy arrangement that makes up “you”.
Hence, you would be making assertions about matters you cannot demonstrate to have any clue about i.e. this fallback defense would be indistinguishable form any random gibberish.
Of course, the present natural science is limited to what it can effectively/practically model, thus what it can explain in detail. For example, it is not presently possible to compute what a human or animal or cell, or even a set of complex molecules, will do in a given setup from the basic laws of physics and chemistry (plus the initial and boundary conditions).
Furthermore, the present natural science lacks a scientific model for consciousness i.e. a way to model questions such as ‘what is it like to be’ such and such arrangement of matter-energy.
But neither of the two forms of incompleteness above is an inconsistency or incoherence or break in the pattern of natural science.
Note also that by Godel’s theorems any ‘non-trivial’ system of knowledge is either incomplete or inconsistent. Therefore, any logically coherent natural science, present or future is doomed to remain incomplete. This again is perfectly harmonious with the incompleteness patterns noted above about the state of present natural science. Hence, there is no surprise or break of the patterns in this aspect either.
1. No
2. No
3. No
4. Kinship
fG
Aurelio Smith, per your link on the soul, there is something fundamentally flawed in the belief that souls can be weighed. Neither energy, nor information ‘weigh’ anything. Only matter is able to be measured by weight. I touched on the fact that information is weightless in my response to you the other day about the soul:
Moreover, energy/light has no rest mass and cannot be put on a scale to be weighed. Thus, energy/light has no ‘weight’ that can be measured by a scale even though light, per e=mc2, has a mass equivalence:
Of related note to ‘measuring the soul’, humans emit ‘quantum light’:
Quotes:
REC:
Yes, we know your propaganda, however you don’t have any evidence to support it.
Me Think:
Not if evolutionism is true. Also other animals fit your description and I am sure you would have them killed and eaten.
skram:
Emergence is mysticism because it is used as such. Just because emergence works in some cases doesn’t mean it is universally applicable.
Barry,
There is nothing mystical about “emergent properties”. Of course, calling something “emergent” is not a sufficient explanation, because “emergence” is not a particular schema for generating complexity. It’s a general term for a large variety of natural mechanisms. They have been studied and described formally in terms of thermodynamics and control theory. Some emergent phenomena are relatively simple and well understood (say, honeycomb-like convection cells in oil heated in a frying-pan); others are more complex and cannot be explained in minor detail, although we have a general idea how they work and can study them using computer simulations (weather phenomena such as tornadoes belong in this class). Still others remain intractable at least for the time being (especially if they involve multiple layers of complexity and numerous feedback loops). But we know at least that complexity does arise naturally.
skram, Listen to Joe- emergence isn’t a cure-all.
Piotr, There is plenty of mysticism behind emergence especially when people use the word as some sort of cure-all for the issues they face.
Complexity does arise without an intelligent agency’s involvement. However mere complexity is not being debated.
UD Editors: Yet another attempt by Petrushka to change the subject deleted. Final warning P.
Barry Arrington: 1. Do you owe any moral duty to any of the individual chemicals?
It depends. People form attachments to non-human, or even non-organic things.
Barry Arrington: 2. Does your answer change if instead of the individual chemicals, you consider all of them setting there on your table together? I presume the answer is still “no.”
See #1.
Barry Arrington: 3. Now suppose you mix all of the chemicals together? Does your answer change? I presume the answer is still “no.”
You mean like in a bucket? Again, see #1.
Why do people like the movie “Frozen” so much? It’s just an arrangement of light and sound.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0MK7qz13bU
Barry Arrington: 4. What is it about the mixture of chemicals we call “human being” that makes it the repository of moral rights (i.e., the converse of the moral duty you owe it)?
We just happen to have a certain fondness for the little apes, er, peculiar mixture of chemicals you call “human being”. Say it’s a peccadillo, if you like.
That doesn’t even address the question let alone answer it.
So that is why we allow 1.2 million abortions a year in the USA alone? That is a strange way of displaying fondness…
Again, comments that exhibit whining, thumb sucking and crybaby tendencies instead of addressing the substantive issues are subject to being deleted from my threads and if the whiner refuses to desist, he will be shown the exit.
BA:
Wow!
Astonishing . . .
May I have permission to call to the witness stand a certain Plato in The Laws, Bk X, for the second time this morning?
When we set out in any direction, we meet Socrates, Plato and Aristotle . . . on the way back. [I forget who this is.]
Some rethinking is called for, if we so struggle with the difference between piles of chemicals, mixtures, compounds and even bodies and a living breathing self-aware reflexively acting human being.
KF
MT,
That makes me ask why the difference between catching and roasting a fish for lunch and cannibalism.
KF
KF,
We have enough food without restoring to cannibalism. I am sure you have heard desperate survivors resorting to cannibalism, and it was pretty common in early centuries.
Me Think:
I don’t eat other land animals, so why would I eat humans?
kairosfocus: That makes me ask why the difference between catching and roasting a fish for lunch and cannibalism.
The latter might go well with some fava beans and a nice Chianti. With the former, try rice pilaf and a Sauvignon Blanc from the Adelaide Hills.
Also if evolutionism were true than humans eating other humans would be OK.
Me Think, I take it your answer to question 4 is “nothing.” Now that is a straightforward, honest and even courageous answer that I think Nietzsche would have applauded. Much better than your materialist friends.
REC @ 31
Yes, I ignored your reference to emergentism before. When it comes to the issues we are discussing here, I agree with atheist Thomas Nagel, who calls emergentism materialist “magic.” See my discussion here.
But even if I grant for the sake of argument that the “emergent property” evasion somehow really is an answer that accounts for the data, you have not answered the question. As I stated in the post linked above I grant that many systems have emergent properties. But I am sure you will agree that the mere fact that a system exhibits emergent properties does not mean the system is a repository of moral rights implicating my and your moral duties. Flocks of birds; schools of fish and hurricanes exhibit emergent properties. I have no duty to refrain from murdering a flock of birds.
You seem to think that because a bag of chemicals is arranged in a particular way, it all of a sudden becomes a repository of rights. You give no explanation for why this should be so. It certainly is not self-evident. So, again, your answer amounts to nothing more than an assertion. It is not an argument.
AS @ 36:
Your reference to MacDougall’s kooky experiment leads me to believe you are not being serious.
Faded Glory @ 38.
A single word does not an argument make.
Piotr @ 33
You are good at writing mocking dismissive irrelevancies while ignoring the 800 pound gorilla sitting next to you on the couch. As I said to GUN, I understand. You are afraid to look. As Nietzsche said, “if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee.” And that is a frightening prospect. Better to avert your eyes.
Piotr @ 43
It depends. Again, I agree with Thomas Nagel. In some contexts it is appropriate. In other contexts (especially the one we are talking about here), it is materialist “magic.”
Your discussion of emergence is actually a fair summary. The issues, of course, are twofold. (1) the fact that emergence works as an explanation for hurricanes by no means implies that it works as an explanation for, say, subjective self-awareness. (2) more importantly, as I explained to REC above, it does not even begin to answer the question.
Gentlemen, try to focus on the question. Here it is again.
The response “emergent properties are involved” does not address, much less answer, the question unless you can further explain why those emergent properties make a difference with respect to whether the system suddenly becomes a repository of moral rights. Surely you will agree that many systems that exhibit emergent properties are not repositories of moral rights (e.g., flocks, schools, hurricanes). It follows that “it has emergent properties” is not an explanation for why a system is the repository of moral rights.
Zachriel @ 47. Your response is not worthy of notice. Go back. Think harder. Try again.
KF @ 50. Indeed. There is nothing new under the sun.
I am gaveling the discussion of cannibalism. It has served its purpose of showing that Me Think is a nihilist. As I implied above, nihilism is an honest position even if I disagree with it. It is far better than the “cake and eat it too” materialists we get so often on these pages.
piotr
The phenomenon of an emergent effect is possible when a proportional cause or the proportional causal conditions that could produce it are already in place. It can happen, for example, when physical causal conditions produce another physical effect, as in a thunderstorm. (A “proportional” cause is one that is sufficient for the task.)
Materialistic emergence is different because it posits an effect without a proportional cause. There is nothing present in matter or in material conditions, for example, that could produce a non-material effect, such as information. There is no logical pathway from matter to non-matter or from non-intelligence to organization. Thus, emergence in that context, is irrational because it posits an effect without a proportional cause.
SB @ 59. Even some atheists understand this. The reasons you describe are precisely the reasons Nagel calls emergantism “magic” in this context.
Human beings belong to a class of physical objects that are more than a mixture of chemicals and anything that emerges from that mixture. Meaning human beings and all other living organisms are emergent properties.
This assumes that there are non-material effects. If you are a materialist then clearly you don’t believe such effects exist. In particular, in the context of this OP, the OP assumes that there is a property of an object “repository of moral rights” which then needs to be explained. If you realise that actually morals and ethics are defined by people’s reactions to the events and objects then the problem goes away. The system of chemicals that is our body and its context in the broader environment cause other bodies to react to it in that distinctive way we call morality.
Materialists cannot explain information, which is neither matter, energy or anything that emerges from their interactions. Materialism cannot explain the existence of living organisms.
Zachriel: People form attachments to non-human, or even non-organic things.
Barry Arrington: Your response is not worthy of notice.
Heh.
Handwaving aside, it’s a fact. People will form attachments to other people, things, ideas, symbols, notions of themselves, a distant past that inhabits their thoughts. That’s what makes life what it is for most of humanity. Logic is all well and good, but rarefied morality has precious little currency with most people. It’s passion that drives people to act.
And more handwaving. I thought it said “Handwaving aside.”?
#59 StephenB
Information is any pattern that contrasts with another pattern (and so “makes a difference”). Any binary contrast (like absence versus presence of anything is one bit of information by definition. No big deal. Information always has a physical representation and can only be transmitted using a physical medium. To say that it isn’t material is like claiming that two electrons can’t be material because in order to distinguish them from one or three electrons you have to determine their number, and numbers are not matter or energy.
Barry Arringon:
Faded Glory @ 38.
A single word does not an argument make.
You asked a modest question (What is it about the mixture of chemicals we call “human being” that makes it the repository of moral rights (i.e., the converse of the moral duty you owe it)?, I gave you my modest answer.
I can elaborate if you wish.
We observe that humans are conditioned to assign the most value to those who are closest to them. Closest family usually comes first, followed by more remote family and friends, then other people, and the more remote and/or different, the less we care. Perhaps not nice or fair, but it seems to be the way most people are wired.
It goes down from there to animals, and again most people value animals that are closer to humans more than others. Whereas all of us would squat a fly, none of us would kill a dog off-hand except perhaps as an act of kindness to put is put of its misery.
Nobody I ever heard of has any moral issues with weeding unwanted plants from our gardens.
Valuing minerals for anything other than their usefulness, financial value or beauty is just weird.
In other words, this is not a black and white issue but a gradational scale of how we feel connected and related to other living beings, and why we assign corresponding value to them.
I think this may well have roots in our evolutional heritage and mankind’s particular background as social animals.
Therefore my answer: kinship.
fG
Mark Frank
I presented two examples of materialist claims of effects that occur without proportional causes. That should have been a clue that the proposed transition from matter to non-matter is not the only example. Materialism posits many such unaccounted for effects, such as the transformation from non-life to life, which would be an effect without a proportional cause.
Second, it is a fact that information is non material. The arrangement (not the existence) of nucleotides exists as a non-material reality. So it is with a process, or a disposition, or an order of events or objects. In that context, then, it hardly matters that you have beliefs at odds with those facts.
piotr
Information is an arrangement of matter. Arrangements are not material. How it is represented or transmitted is not a description of what it is.
ppolish,
The obvious difference between a corpse and a living person narrows the focus of the question to its essential because only one variable changes. What is the difference in our moral duty to life versus non-life?
In addition, this framing of the question still touches the issue of objective morality. Looking at human cultures over history, there are many differing answers. So, what is the objectively correct moral duty owed to a recently deceased person, and why?
Information is an arrangement of matter. Arrangements are not material.
Glad to note you agree that information doesn’t exist without something that can be arranged into a pattern (in space/time). That excludes disembodied information as something that could be encoded or transmitted.
piotr
Whatever the necessary conditions for its coding or transmission may be, information is still non-material? We know this both through logic and empirical science:
Logic:
Information is an arrangement of matter. An arrangement cannot be material.
Science:
Information can be destroyed. Matter cannot be destroyed. Therefore, information cannot be material.
StephenB,
I have a problem with vague terems like “matter” and “material” (not to mention “materialist”). Matter can’t be destroyed, you say? Is it another way of saying that mass-energy is conserved? Then why paraphrase a conservation law if the original formulation is more precise? Ah, but mass and energy are properties, not objects. Linear momentum is also conserved (“can’t be destroyed”): does it mean that momentum is material? Is electric charge (also conserved) material?
If two protons collide in the LHC and disintegrate into a shower of miscellaneous particles, their energy and momentum are conserved, but aren’t the protons themselves “destroyed”? Are protons material?
piotr
I am addressing the claims of commentators like Mark Frank (and just about every other critic on this site), who characterize themselves as materialists and who know what they mean when they use that word. They think information can be reduced to matter. I am persuaded that I have refuted their claim.
Accordingly, I have stated that information is an arrangement of matter. Arrangements are non material. You say that information is a pattern. Very well, information is a pattern.—-of what? If the word matter is too “vague” or has no meaning for you, then feel free to plug in your own word.
What I’m driving at is that the dualism “matter vs. information” looks artificial to me — an anachronistic distinction from the time when elementary particles were visualised as tiny billiard balls. What is matter? You seem to identify it with mass/energy, but it would be equally legitimate to treat mass as information. The mass of the electron, for example, is what distinguishes it from the muon and the tauon (their charges and spins are the same). Ditto for the sign of electric charge (the only difference between the electron and the positron), ditto for the orientation of the spin, etc.
Today, the proton is not even regarded as an elementary particle but as a pretty complex dynamic system consisting of three valence quarks surrounded by a cloud of virtual gluons and virtual quark-antiquark pairs. Just a tiny proportion of its mass is accounted for by the masses of the valence quarks; the rest is — yes — an emergent effect of the gluon field. Where’s the “matter” of the proton? Why should we regard it as indestructible?
No it would not. To say that mass is information is literally nonsensical on the order of saying green is square. Let us say the mass of particle X is 1. That the mass of particle X is 1 is a property of particle X. The mass itself is not information. The fact that the mass of particle X is 1 (and not 2 or 3 or any other value) is information. Information is, fundamentally, the elimination of possibilities.
Piotr, modern information theory was formulated in the 1940’s long after Quantum theory prevailed. And, in by far and away most cases, the level of matter at which information is stored in arrangements, is in fact well above that where such is material. The prong heights in a Yale lock type key are informational, and the prong height pattern of mRNA in a ribosome works in much the same key-lock fit fashion to control protein synthesis. The sequence of coded punched holes in a paper tape and the prong height coded sequence in the same mRNA in the ribosome are both sequential storage tapes. SB is right. KF
PS: and the 1/2 life of an electron is? (as opposed to a muon)
#77 Barry Arrington,
I know. It’s equally nonsensical as saying a particle has the properties of a wave, or vice versa.
I don’t see information as vital in this thought experiment. The difference between the recently deceased person and the living twin is not one of information.
I fully agree with the latter. However I’m not sure that information *is* an arrangement of matter. If the exact same information can be stored in several media – distinct arrangements of matter – does it not follow that information is something other than a specific arrangement of matter? And if we state that distinct arrangements of matter *are* the same information, what are we saying?
It is one thing to say that information is usually presented (or expressed or even symbolized) in an arrangement of matter, it something else to say that information *is* an arrangement of matter.
piotr
Perhaps, I can make this easier with a classic example. If I use chalk to write a message on the blackboard, and if I then erase the blackboard, the information is destroyed but the chalk remains. Do you understand that the information is not, nor can be, the chalk? Under the circumstances, do you also understand that the distinction between the chalk and the information is not “artificial” or “anachronistic.”
Barry Arrington:
To begin with is this that you probably did not study either:
https://sites.google.com/site/theoryofid/home/TheoryOfIntelligentDesign.pdf
I applaud Barry for the early attempts to keep the thread on point, and although the voiced concern over not letting everyone see the other posts was heard, as he said, if you don’t like it get your own blog. The vast majority of lame divergent posts are allowed in most threads, so just trying to get “our materialist friends” to bust out a straightforward answer to question number four this time is fine by me.
Somewhere, somewhere deep in the lengths and “twinings” of the thread, our friends managed to say something, some thing, about being alive, (homeostasis and ff.) and interaction and kinship. The only “qualities” found in being “human beings” so far on materialism seems to be 1)there is an emergent quality that we call being “alive” and 2) we all seem to be in a similar boat, hence kinship, and in turn lessening levels of kinship with those with whom we have less similarity.
Of course, these “emergent qualities” explain nothing. Even being self-consciously alive, on materialism, is an arbitrary descriptor of our condition which does nothing to fundamentally cause moral right to obtain. I know Mark Frank, in particular, pushes the idea that moral rights do obtain “because we are human” out of what I can surmise is a limited “emergent” desire for our species (again, with other types and forms of “Rights” for other life forms), but the “what is it” in question number four remains: our materialist friends are faced with their only honest answer, “the ‘what is it’ is an arbitrary construct both found in and explained by itself — “human being.” And that, of course, must be both the beginning and end of the discussion.
For if we look too closely at what a human being is, on materialism, it is hard to find what separates humans from their constituent elements, even if when those elements “are really jamming,” we can read the International Herald Tribune and clip our toenails. A pile of our elements can “do” things, too: be blown away in the wind, slump over in a sack, stiffen, harden, etc. That we “initiate” or even “reflect” on our actions, again on materialism, makes such interesting descriptors like “initiate” and “reflect” moot.
I’ll end (eventually) with this quote from goodusername:
I am deeply troubled by this statement; I hope it is because it is nonsense. Assuming that being endowed with a soul is universal for humans (either we all have souls, or none of us do), goodusername has got it exactly backward and quite wrong. Were it found that I have no soul I would NOT care for people deeply; look around you, goodusername, at all the life that is soul-less. Does the salmon care for the salmon next to it? Deeply? What is in fact happening is that people access and are moved by their souls to care for others, deeply, even as they deny the existence of souls. It can be no other way, nor can there be any other explanation. As Chesterton wrote in Orthodoxy, “We talk of wild animals but man is the only wild animal. It is man that has broken out. All other animals are tame animals; following the rugged respectability of the tribe or type”
“What is it” that frees humans from the “rugged respectability” that orders tribe and type; “what is it” that gives us “should” and “ought” and “virtue”?
No, it is not being human on a great continuum of life. Among numerous singularities, here is another: “Man is the only wild animal.”
Tim, excellent summary. Maybe there is a materialist answer to question 4 that makes sense. I don’t know what it would be. Apparently, neither do any of the materialists who post on this site.
Tim,
No, I don’t think salmon are capable of such feelings. If salmon were sentient, intelligent creatures endowed with empathy, then I believe they would.
Well, if you define the soul as that part of us that moves us to care about others, than I can see why you would think we wouldn’t care for each other without souls. But as the statement of mine that you quoted said, “if somehow it were discovered” that you, and others, lacked a soul, would you then stop caring for others? Obviously not. You would then merely conclude that the soul was not responsible for such feelings. But the point of my statement was that the notion of a soul is not why we care about others.
I myself,from within an animated bag of chemicals, perceive a moral duty toward others. Living bags of chemicals have no moral duties without an “I” within.
It’s just you
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-iQldPiH64
I would again like to draw attention to the studies that show how certain higher mammals display behaviours that for all the world look like they care about each other.
Does this mean that those animals also have souls? Or does it mean that caring for one another is not proof that one has a soul?
fG
#84 Tim
I deliberately avoided talking about emergent qualities as I agree calling them emergent doesn’t add much. All I am saying is that as a matter of fact we respond differently to chemicals when they are arranged as a living human body and placed in a social environment. This is an obvious fact of psychology. It is clearly not dependent on the belief that there is some immaterial aspect to being human as we make similar responses to animals and even machines when they are sufficiently life-like. So really question 4 comes to the same old debate that we are having all over UD – is being “a repository of moral rights” an immaterial attribute of a human being or a function of how that human being takes part in the social activity which is morality. As you say that is the end of the discussion – in the sense that Barry has no further recourse but to say he is self-evidently right and I am lying. The thought experiment adds nothing to it.
#75 StephenB
Now you are confusing meaning with information. A message on a blackboard, if written in a language someone understands, is meaningful to the users of that language. It has little to do with information as a formal concept, except that information transfer is necessary to transmit a meaningful message. If you claim that by erasing the chalk marks from the blackboard you destroy information, let me ask: how much information do you destroy? How do you measure it? If the message says F&T$v4PRLO!;NmSA*+3, or looks like this, how do you decide whether it contains some “immaterial information” or not?
Without meaning what is the information?
Could be. So what?
Information is neither matter nor energy. That is just a fact. True matter and energy are required as media for information but that is the only relationship they have.
But I do disagree with Stephen B- information cannot be destroyed. The media it resides can be but that is it.
Just because Shannon didn’t care about meaning doesn’t mean information is not about meaning. Shannon didn’t care about meaning because the transmitting and receiving equipment doesn’t care about meaning. The equipment just needs to transmit what it is told to transmit and the receiver receives whatever is transmitted. Shannon cared about the fidelity of the transmission, reception and storage of a signal, regardless of what that signal was.
Joe,
Meaning is the role (or set of roles) of a sign in a given communicative context. One and the same physical sign may be interpreted completely differently by different people in different situations. The sign-meaning association is in principle arbitrary, so you can’t say that the meaning of a sign somehow resides in it; it’s only triggered by the sign. The amount of information carried by a message is not a function of its meaning but of the total number of possible messages of the same length (no matter if they are meaningful or meaningless) that can be sen via the same medium.
Piotr:
Without meaning what is information?
Yes, so what?
I didn’t say that. The meaning is obviously immaterial, Piotr.
So you won’t get the meaning if you don’t know the other possible messages of the same length? What’s your point?
My point is it isn’t information if it doesn’t have any meaning.
The argument that the mix of chemicals has nothing to do with morality will be smack down by atheists and materialists. Their ideological basis is that this mix can produce the mind and ergo our morality.
They will argue that in one case in trillions and trillions, and especially by the “multiverse manufacturer” some mixes of chemicals are clever enough to think that mind arises without a punch by ultimate Intelligent Designer.
piotr
I am afraid that you are the one who is confused. With respect to the message on the blackboard, I was referring to information only. I said nothing at all about its “meaning.” I used the word meaning only in the context of your claim to the effect that you don’t know what “matter” means.
If you don’t think that a written message with purposefully organized characters contains information, then I don’t think I can carry the discussion any further. No refutation that I could muster would ever be as devastating as your own self refutation.
Mark Frank @ 89. I would not put it as “has no further recourse.” I would put it as “stating an obvious fact.” When you say you believe torturing an infant for personal pleasure might be an affirmatively good thing depending on the circumstances, you are lying. I know you do not believe that. And when you start telling obvious lies to support your argument, it is no use arguing with you.
On the discussion of information:
Here is Dembski:
Barry #97
OK. So you have resorted to saying “what I believe is an obvious fact and you are liar”. Curiously I am not even clear what the obvious fact is! As I tried to explain in the other thread there are two statements that are easily confused:
A) Torturing infants for pleasure is wrong under all circumstances.
I agree with this – I cannot conceive of a convincing counter-example.
B) Everyone under all circumstances believes it is wrong to torture infants for pleasure.
This is very likely false.
It seems to me our disagreement is not over (A ) or (B ) but this third statement:
C) “Torturing infants for pleasure is wrong” is an self-evident objective fact.
I certainly disagree with this. If you think I am lying when I assert (C ) then you are presumably accusing all those philosophers who hold similar views to myself of deliberate falsehood.
StephenB
If you don’t think that a written message with purposefully organized characters contains information…
Anything that can occur in two or more distinct states “contains information”. It doesn’t have to be purposeful or to make sense. A purposefully written message is additionally meaningful (provided that the sender and the receiver agree how to interpret the information it carries).
Mark Frank
C) “Torturing infants for pleasure is wrong” is a correctly held subjective belief that all people should hold.
Do you agree?
c hand
Not sure what you mean by “correctly held”. The word correct kind of implies it is objective. I would accept:
Everyone should believe that torturing infants for pleasure is wrong.
I suspect you are trying to lay some kind of trap. I wouldn’t bother. I have conducting this argument for about 10 years and know most of the twists and turns. It usually ends up with Barry declaring he is obviously or self-evidently right and therefore I am wrong.
Piotr:
What information does it contain? My bet is it contains the information that makes it what it is and that has meaning and purpose.
Reference please.
Not if we live in a Darwinian world.
Mark Frank
No tricks or traps, just looking for common ground.
What is the PRACTICAL difference in perceiving (rightly or wrongly) as an objective self-evident truth something that “Everyone should believe”?
How would you classify subjective beliefs that should be universally held?
piotr
So you are saying that an organized message written on a blackboard contains information only if the sender and receiver agree on how to interpret its meaning?
# 105 c hand
I am a bit confused by this question – difference between what things precisely?
I have no particular classification for such beliefs. I really wouldn’t make too much of it. It just seems reasonable to suppose that if I think X is morally good then “everyone else thinking X is morally good” would itself be a morally good thing.
#106 StephenB
No. Only then does it become a meaningul message. What do you mean by “organised”, by the way? Is RAPLPYBCNRQVN organised?
Mark Frank
Actually, what happens Mark, is this: You end up misusing the language in an attempt to have it both ways. According to your philosophy of subjectivism, nothing can be objectively wrong, or wrong, in fact; it can only be wrong “for you.” That is what subjectivism means. Yet when you are confronted with the poverty of that world view, you temporarily reverse course and express your views using the common-sense terminology of objective morality, saying, “Yes, “it is ‘wrong,’ period,” which is at variance with your subjective morality.
As an evasion, you claim that such phrases as “should not do” or “It is wrong” or “it is wrong for everyone” are not necessarily objective formulations, even though everyone knows that they are. It is hard to believe that you do not know it, especially when you try to compare them with subjective terms like, “it is tasty,” or “it is malodorous.” That is why Barry comes on so strong. You are misusing the language to create the illusion that you accept the conclusions of objective morality even as you argue for the opposite world view.
Mark Frank
I think we agree that the proposition that “Everyone should believe that torturing infants for pleasure is wrong,” should be perceived by all people.
What is the practical difference between “should be universally perceived” (MF’s position )and “self-evidently true”
Either formulation is agreeable from my perspective.
me:
SB:
I should have included StephenB along with Barry.
We are debating whether such phrases as “should not do” or “It is wrong” or “it is wrong for everyone” are objective. There have been many debates among philosophers about this over the centuries.
piotr
I write this sentence on a blackboard: “All men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.” Some readers do not understand its meaning. Under the circumstances, does that sentence contain information?
Mark Frank
Which philosophers have argued that such formulations as, “it is wrong” or “should not do” or “this is wrong for everyone” are subjective terms?
#113 SB
Hume, AJ Ayer and all the verificationists, RM Hare and other linguistic philosophers – that will do for a start. As I said before read RM Hare The Language of Morals if you are interested in hearing a different point of view.
The most amusing thing about Mark Frank’s polemics is that he invariably resorts to an appeal to emotion instead of logic. This is how he does it:
Barry @ comment 162 to moral intervention thread: You know for a certain fact that torturing an infant for personal pleasure is evil at all places, at all times, for all people. It is literally impossible to imagine any circumstance under which that act would be other than evil.
Mark Frank @ comment 181 to moral intervention thread: By taking an extreme example you hide issues under a cloud of emotion and make anyone who disagrees with the precise wording appear to condone the act. Nevertheless I disagree.
Barry @ comment 202 to moral intervention thread: if you are going to deny a self evident moral truth, there is no use arguing with you. By definition self evident truths cannot be demonstrated. And when you lie, as you have here, and say a self evident truth is false the discussion must necessarily come to an end.
Mark Frank @ comment 89 to the modest experiment thread: Barry has no further recourse but to say he is self-evidently right and I am lying.
Notice the implicit appeal to emotions here. “Intolerance” is the unpardonable sin of our time. Mark is clearly playing to that along the lines of, “That Barry. He’s just so close minded and intolerant. It’s my way or the highway for him.”
This is an appeal to an emotional aversion to the unpardonable sin of our time. It is an implied insult disguised as an argument. It is not logic.
Suppose I were to say 2+2=4 and Mark were to say “I disagree.” Here we have another self evident truth. There is no way to demonstrate that 2+2=4. It is either accepted as a self evident truth or not. And anyone who denies it is true is lying (granted; they could be insane, but let’s set that aside). If I called Mark on this lie, I am certain he would not say “Barry has no further recourse but to say he is self-evidently right and I am lying.”
Yet, he does say that for purposes of a self evident moral truth. What is the difference? The difference is that we live in a time when you can get away with denying self evident moral truth. Indeed, it is fashionable among a certain class to do so.
The point is that I am not “intolerant” when I call someone a liar for denying that 2+2=4. I am merely pointing out an obvious fact. Nor am I intolerant when I say Mark Frank is lying when he says he disagrees with the following statement: “torturing an infant for personal pleasure is evil at all places, at all times, for all people. It is literally impossible to imagine any circumstance under which that act would be other than evil.” Again, I am merely pointing out an obvious fact.
Mark Frank: There have been many debates among philosophers about this over the centuries.
Thank you for that. In past centuries philosophers were revered.
Now we have materialists as the self-appointed priesthood. Professional philosophers are held in some kind of deprecated esteem by the new priesthood of material – including Neil deGrass Tyson, Richard Dawkins, and Jerry Coyne. Philosophical history is a “waste” in light of the new
philosophy‘knowledge’. What the world has been obliviously awaiting all these millennia is this new knowledge of materialism for to make sense of it all.Petrushka @ 11: The question was, what is about the mixture.
And the answer is the arrangement or configuration.
Yes I see. The chemical arrangement on the table is what is intelligently designed obviously.
It is the human being that is the randomly concocted jumbled mess, the result of stochastic indeterminism and chaos. And obviously purposeless. Obviously.
Barry
This would appear to be another thing that is clear to you that is not clear to me. All I said was that you had no further recourse. I said nothing about intolerance. I try to think only in terms of the debate not personalities (although I admit I have sometimes said that you appear to be more interested in winning an argument than discovering the truth).
How about discussing whether it is true i.e. do you have any arguments to support your case other than saying you are right and I am lying?
It is not strictly true that there is no way to demonstrate 2+2=4 and there are people (in fact everyone at some stage in their life) who do not find it obvious. However, leaving that aside, we were debating a highly controversial topic which as I pointed above has been disputed since Hume at least. To announce that you are self-evidently right and I am lying in this case seems like no argument at all.
Please read #99. I agree that “torturing an infant for personal pleasure is evil at all places, at all times, for all people.” That is not our disagreement. Our disagreement is whether this an objective fact or a subjective assessment – something which has been the subject of debate for centuries.
Mark, I never said you did not personally agree with the statement. I simply quoted you when you said you disagreed with the following proposition:
When you resort to invoking babies’ inability to understand even simple math to make your case, there really is no sense in continuing to discourse with you.
Barry Arrington:
Is 5+5=10 also a self-evident truth? How about 135+334=469? Also self-evident? Where do self-evident truths end and provable propositions begin?
These are serious questions.
skram at 121. There is an extensive literature on the subject. You should check it out.
I’ll check out the literature, Barry. Give me a short answer.
Pretty please.
Barry
When I disagreed with your comment:
I stressed that it was the because I don’t regard moral judgements as facts. This after all is the essence of the subjective/objective debate. I think they are opinions not facts. In the very same comment I said:
So we both agree it is evil at all times and all places for all people. It is just we disagree on whether it is a fact or an opinion. So when you announce that I am lying – what exactly am I saying that is intentionally false?
Edited addition:
I don’t understand your introductory sentence which appears to say you never said I didn’t personally agree but only that I didn’t agree! A subtle difference!
Barry #120
It was hardly central to my case. The fact remains there are plenty of ways of demonstrating 2 + 2 = 4. You can prove it from Peano’s axioms. You can learn it the way a child does by taking two pairs of things,putting them together and then counting how many you have etc. In the event that someone disputed it you could do better than to saying it is self-evident and they were lying.
#120 Barry Arrington,
Maths is the field of learning where you can prove a proposition (not every one, to be sure), rather than test it, by tracing it back to axioms. 2+2=4 (i.e., S(S(0)) + S(S(0)) = S(S(S(S(0)))) ) easily follows from the Peano axioms for the natural numbers and the definition of “+”. Of course in order to prove it you start with the assumption that the Peano axioms are “self-evident”, but that’s a different story.
(Addition can be extended to domains other than N, for example to modular arithmetics: 2+2=1 (mod 3), where “=” stands for a congruence relation.)
No, Mark and Piotr, you cannot demonstrate that 2+2=4. Yes, you could illustrate it with synonyms, like || and || is the same as ||||. But that is not a demonstration. A demonstration requires one to reason from prior principles to subsequent principles. There is no prior principle to the idea that when I have two of something and add two more I have four. That is why it is self evident. To understand the proposition is to know that it must be true, not because some prior principles are true and one can deduce its truth from those prior principles. Sheesh. Is there no truth so basic you people won’t dispute it? What am I saying? I know the answer to that question is “no.” You sadden me and disgust me in equal measure.
Mark, certainly a person can have a different opinion. And it is self evidently true that such person’s opinion would be wrong, just as it is self evidently true that if that person had a different opinion about the sum of 2 and 2, they would be wrong. Thus, stating the matter in terms of opinion is self defeating. You cannot have a correct opinion that a self evident truth is false. Why is that so hard for you to understand?
Piotr, if you are suggesting that in math there are no self evident fundamental propositions for which further demonstration is impossible, then you do not understand math. Demonstration must at some point come to an end.
There is no prior principle to the idea that when I have two of something and add two more I have four. That is why it is self evident.
Tell it to speakers of languages which have no numeral systems (Pirahã is an example). Speakers of Pirahã simply lack the concept of “4” as a specific number, nor do they do addition. 2+2=4 is no more self-evident to them than 5896329+999985741=1005882070 is to you. Their general intelligence is normal, in case you wonder, it’s just a question of their language lacking some concepts that we (well, some of us) take for granted.
Have you ever wondered what the Peano axioms are really about? Even to understand the expression 2+2=4 you need to grasp the concepts of equation, addition, and the idea that there are many different natural numbers.
UD Editors: *sigh*
You sadden me and disgust me in equal measure.
You are such a wonderful host. The sentiment is reciprocal.
UD Editors: And thanks for coming onto this blog and demonstrating everything that is wrong with this postmodern hell you people are busy building. As I’ve said before, don’t worry. I realize I am fighting a rearguard retreat. The center cannot hold. Your side will surely win (at least in the short to medium term), and you can come and mock me at whatever camp they put me after the round up all of the undesirables (assuming I live long enough to see the inside of a camp).
#129
Yes, such fundamental propositions have their place in maths; we call them axioms. 2+2=4 is not one of them. Even axioms, however, are not supposed to be statements about the real world. To a mathematician, a small arithmetical “universe” (mod 3) with just three natural numbers {0, 1, 2} in which 1+1=2, but 2+1=0 and 2+2=1, is thinkable, well-defined, and logically consistent (and, in case you shrug it off as a meaningless abstract game, such systems have important real-world applications).
UD Editors: *sigh* You can demonstrate anything you want when you change the meaning of terms. But when you have two sticks and then add two more sticks you will always have four sticks. You are a fool.
MF (& Piotr), that one may prove a self evident truth through some process does not change its self-evidence. And in the case of things like 2 + 2 = 4, the proof relative to axiomatic systems is far more abstruse than the recognition that based on what is meant this must be so. (I have seen for example establishment of natural numbers based on successive power sets of transfinite character . . . I much prefer to start with the set that collects nothing. But I have had quite a debate with an intelligent youngster on how complicated and counter-intuitive that notion is.) KF
PS: Self-evidence does NOT mean axiomatic.
Mark Frank at 89, thanks for this:
If, as you say, morality is nothing more than a social activity that humans take part in, I see exactly why you would subscribe at least in part to Hare’s preference utilitarianism. You are correct in the sense that it is somewhat of a discussion stopper; however, you have laid the “blame” with Barry and his claim that he is right and you are lying. This is not accurate, though. The conversation ended with your claim that moral judgments can only be subjectively held.
Please consider:
1) Such a claim is consonant with strict materialism, but that also implies that all moral judgments are only subjectively held, and what’s worse . .
2) The weight of moral judgment in terms of “right and wrong” action is, indeed must be, completely arbitrary (in both senses of the word!), you wrote:
I would suggest that your inability to conceive of a counter-example in “A” is due only to a lack of imagination — a pitbull (or wild tiger) mauling a child comes quickly to mind. On strict materialism, certainly the pitbull (or wild tiger) experiences pleasure and the terrorized infant, torture. Your (anticipated) response may well be (and please correct me if I am wrong), “But the pitbull (or wild tiger) is not a moral agent!”, but my response is just as straightforward, “What’s the difference between the pitbull (or wild tiger) and the human sociopath who would do something similar given the chance?”
It does no good to say that the sociopath is more like us because clearly in this case, it is not true.
Numerous problems arise for you when you deny “C”, for such a denial is inhumane. We must say that the mauling, while tragic and not preferred, cannot be considered wrong because it was in the pitbull’s nature. But, what then do we say to the sociopath? Moreover, what do we do with such a person? On materialism and preference utilitarianism, the answer is easy. Easy, as long as you are willing to treat the sociopath like a dog.
Oops.
Barry: Here’s a thought experiment for our materialist friends.
It seems Barry has set up his materialist “friends” to fail, which doesn’t seem very friendly.
Specifically the experiment proposed is loaded in that it implicitly assumes the existence of moral “duties” based on a specific epistemological view. I can’t explain what it is about the “mixture of chemicals” that endows it something which I don’t subscribe to in the first place.
The best explanation for the growth of moral knowledge is that, like all knowledge, moral knowledge grows when we conjecture solutions to specific problems we encounter. This is in contrast to assuming moral knowledge takes the form of moral “duties” divinely revealed to us via holy text or though pre-programming. The latter is assume that knowledge has “just aways existed” in an authoritative source without explanation, while the former is part of our universal explanation for the growth of knowledge.
“God wanted it that” way doesn’t solve the problem. It just pushes it up a level without actually improving it.
For example, there are the moral problems of unwanted or dangerous pregnancies and being attracted to individuals of the same sex. This is in contrast to framing the issue as if killing unborn children is “good” we should kill all unborn children, or if homosexuality “good”, we shouldn’t conceive children in the first place. There are no problems, but merely rules – some of which if followed would result in the extinction of the human race.
IOW, I’m suggesting the latter approach is mistaken from the start and smuggled in as part of the experiment.
The biggest criticism I have with the idea that we have moral duties in the objective sense implied is that they would have to be immune to any new knowledge that we could create that actually allows us to actually solve these, or other problems we will face in the future.
Surely, if this knowledge has always existed and is unchanging then it must have taken any other knowledge into account. We’re simply stuck with the options at hand and cannot make any progress regardless of what knowledge we might create. The problem of unwanted pregnancies is assumed to always be a problem because the whole process of reproduction, as it is now, is assumed to be designed that way in the first place.
However, unless something is prohibited by the laws of physics, the only thing that would prevent us from accomplishing it is knowing how. This includes creating solutions to the problem, such as creating an artificial womb or even transferring an unwanted pregnancy to a woman who cannot conceive on her own but wants a child. We can an will solve these problems by creating new knowledge.
Should these options be inexpensive and safe (which would be the result of even more more knowledge) will everything be perfect? Of course not. But this will result in different, even better set of moral problems to solve that *we* couldn’t even conceive of two thousand years ago. And when we solve those as well, we’ll have an even better set of problems.
We, as finite beings, cannot predict the effect of the growth of genuinely new knowledge.
More importantly, it’s unclear how the supposed divinely revealed set of moral duties we have today will be sufficient for such a set of future moral problems, while remaining unchangingly objective in the sense implied.
So, it seems to me that something has to give for the implicit ideas in this though experiment to be tenable.
For example, does someone here assume there must be something beyond the laws of physics that would make these moral problems unsolvable, and therefore prevent a whole new set of moral problems? Does someone here assume we only gain this knowledge because God reveals it to us, which implies the epistemology that knowledge comes from authoritative sources? If neither of the above, how could the existing set of moral duties be sufficient for future moral problems, yet be objective in the sense implied?
Barry:
“Says who” implies there must be a rights-giver in an authoritative sense. But this represents a specific theory about moral knowledge that is foundationalist in nature and ignores other epistemological positions. I can’t give you a reason why I hold a position I do not hold.
One key criticism of foundationalism is that it assumes some ideas are not subject to criticism and the point of which criticism ends appears arbitrary. See the Müller-Lyer illusion for example of how we can criticize experience, etc.
Barry:
I am? But that assumes I’m a disappointed justificationist. But this simply isn’t the case. From this paper on the abuse of reason.
Just as there is no logical methodology that demands we seek truth over falsehood or criticize our conjectures in an attempt to reduce errors, there is no logical methodology that demands we seek human flourishing or any other moral goal. But this doesn’t mean that solutions we propose to moral problems cannot be criticized and improved by discarding errors. There are objectively better or worse solutions to goals we choose. We can be mistaken…
So, I’d suggest we both think there are objective moral choices. However, in my case, it is objective in a specific problem space.
For example, If you want to build a car, but actually receive plans to build, say, a helicopter, you will not end up with a car merely because you expected otherwise. The result is independent of your belief. So, it’s in this sense that it’s objective.
I’d also suggest that our moral goals are, in part, based on our preferences. And what happens when our preferences change? We adopt new ideas about how the world works.
For example, if one thinks it’s better to chop off one’s hands because their actions would result in eternal damnation in the afterlife, that’s a sort of “explanation” about how the world works. And it would shape one’s preferences. However, like all ideas, I’m suggesting those explanations start out as conjectures. As such, they can and should be criticized, errors can be found and they can be discarded. Again, we can be mistaken. If an afterlife exists, such an act could be construed as grounds for eternal damnation instead, or there could be no afterlife.
In fact, the idea that knowledge comes from authoritative sources that have always existed is a sort of “explanation” about how the world works, which one’s preferences would be based on. So I’d suggest we both share the same goals but we think the world works differently and our preferences diverge accordingly.
I don’t claim to know that God doesn’t exist. Nor do I harbor some fear or anger at God. Rather, when I actually try to take classical theism seriously, it does not withstand rational criticism. It’s epistemologically at odds with our based explanation for the universal growth of knowledge. As such, I discard it.
Barry,
You may have missed my post on another thread in answer to something you said about self-evident truths:
——————
Barry Arrington:
Again, whether the Inca perceives the objective reality of the moral truth is beside the point. Being wrong about an objective truth does not make it false.
At any rate, if you are going to deny a self evident moral truth, there is no use arguing with you. By definition self evident truths cannot be demonstrated.
This is incoherent. How can the Inca wrongly perceive a self-evident truth? It wouldn’t be all that self-evident then after all.
Furthermore, even if it is possible to be wrong about a self evident truth, as you just said, how do you know that yours, and not the Inca’s, particular concept of it is the correct one?
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I think this is a valid criticism of how you apply the idea of self-evident truth in this discussion. Care to respond?
fG
BA #128
Which comment are you responding to? I never said that I agreed that it was self-evident that child torture is wrong – only that I strongly agree it is evil at all times in all places for all people. I also agree that you cannot have a correct opinion that a self evident truth is false.
The term ‘self-evident truth’ is inextricably linked to that resonant paragraph in the Declaration of Independence. If the objectivists here mean something different, they could do with coining a different expression.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
This was 1776. It took nearly 100 years to come to a constitutional agreement that Africans should be included in the set of ‘all men’. Surely that was ‘self-evident’?
Tim #133
Thank you for a calm and polite response.
With all these threads it is very hard to tell where the conversation ends! I have given several arguments to support my case and I am prepared to continue to defend it (time permitting). I will do this by presenting arguments and examples – not by declaring myself obviously or self-evidently right. The fact remains that at that time Barry was arguing that he is self-evidently right and I am lying and really that was about it – although curiously he has never made it clear what the actual lie is (i.e. what I have said that is intentionally false). Since then he has written a passionate OP which seems to amount to adding that not only is he right but it is immoral to disagree with him – but I confess I find the OP rather hard to understand and I may be interpreting it wrongly.
I have slightly simplified my position to avoid writing an essay each time I respond. I am convinced that moral judgements are essentially subjective but I also recognise that some objective facts are so universally accepted as reasons for judging something right or wrong that they effectively entail a moral judgement. For example, it is so universally accepted that inflicting human suffering is wrong that to say “this causes immense suffering” almost entails this is morally wrong.
I strongly disagree. Arbitrary means based on random choice or personal whim. I have argued countless times that subjective judgements are frequently based on extensive reasoning – often appealing to commonly accepted principles
That’s a very interesting debate but objectivism doesn’t solve it. For me it is a subjective decision as to what counts as being a moral agent for you it appears to be an objective decision – but it involves much the same arguments and quandries.
For preference utilitarianism maybe – for materialism in general it is no easier than it is for you. Although I have great respect for R.M. Hare this is mainly based on his insight into the prescriptive nature of moral language – I am not a preference utilitarian.
Barry Arrington: There is no prior principle to the idea that when I have two of something and add two more I have four. That is why it is self evident.
In fact, the prior principles were determined over a century ago.
Barry Arrington: if you are suggesting that in math there are no self evident fundamental propositions for which further demonstration is impossible, then you do not understand math.
Mathematical propositions have to be adopted, but they don’t have to be self-evident.