Why do you draw that line? In order to conclude that there is a background reality thats causing your sense experience, one needs a system of causality, which also needs to be highly nontrivial if it is to withstand the test of logical coherency (cf. the first cause argument). Even if you did not elucidate it, you have simply taken this complex system as a given. I contend that you've done so because it allowed you to derive a conclusion that matches your intuitive sense of 'reasonable'.Bugsby wrote:I draw the line at questioning observations made by your senses. There could be an evil deceiver, but parsimony makes that not a matter for consideration.
Personally, I'm rather suspicious of the whole notion of causality. I do not see it as necessary--for science, or for any reasonable endeavour, except possibly as a useful linguistic construct. However, that's not at the central issue here, so I'll leave that alone. It remains a fact that you must have assumed some sort of framework or principle to allow you to derive the existence of objective reality from nothing but your sense experience, since it is not deductively implied without some additional assumption(s). I do not question your conclusion in this particular matter.
Once again, your comments are based on the mistaken notion that for an ethical system to be objective, it is necessary for it to be rooted in objective reality (except in the most oblique of senses). I've covered this before, but I'll attempt to make this clear once and for all.Bugsby wrote:However, since there is no way to directly observe something moral, there is no way to make a moral obsertavion. Take this example: "The ball is big, and red, and round, and good." Seems a little off, right? Because "good" is not a sensation. It is an interpretation. Once you can show me a particle or wave that things emit that is picked up by sense organs, transmitted to your brain, and then interpreted as good, then I will consider "moral observations" accurate.
There are essentially two different but related areas of ethics: descriptive and normative. Descriptive ethics is simply the study of what is considered moral. Relativist ethics holds that descriptive statements ascribed to some group of persons directly imply the corresponding normative statement. For example,
- Descriptive: My society considers X to be immoral.
- Normative: I ought not do X.
- Everyone ought to always act in his or her self-interest.
I'm perplexed why you freely use this very process in some matters (e.g., metaphysics, as above), but cry 'foul!' when it is employed in ethics. Feel free to make an argument that this process is not necessary for ethics, or deny the normative aspect of ethics altogether (leaving it as a purely descriptive, if nihilistic, topic), but your position as you've presented it here is not supported.Bugsby wrote:As to them being axiomatic, that is just rediculous. Moral premises are taken for granted?? Why should they be? Because everyone believes them?
I'm not claiming the axiomatic method is a valid argument, but I am claiming it is necessary. Without it, it is not possible to conclude anything as basic as there being an objective reality behind sensory experience. It is even impossible to do purely interal mental tasks like arithmetic without making some assumptions about numbers. But your concerns are quite reasonable--because it is not valid, we need to seek the minimization of the number of axioms (and their complexity) and primitives (undefined terms). For example, 'moral' is a primitive property in this case: since we are using our system to define its meaning, we do not know its precise meaning before we have an actual system, although we may have some intuitions about it.Bugsby wrote:Thats not a valid argument. That's appeal to public opinion, or something like that *vows to check falacy thread*.
Of course, we need to have some goal for our ethical system. What is its purpose? You claimed it was the preservation of a stable society, and I've objected at the artificially inserted reference to society. I quote you directly: "Therefore, an action is immoral only if it is of such a nature that allowing that action to go unchecked will undermine the very existance of society." I propose instead the following:
- The purpose of ethics is to provide guidance as to which actions will preserve the most significant interests of people [or sapient life, if one likes].
- Survival (either individual, collective, or both) is either one of the most significant needs, or is an implication of one of them.
- One ought not to kill people [or sapient life forms] whimsically.
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I don't recall you asking me this question, so I'm unsuprised that I have not answered it.Bugsby wrote:You still have yet to answer my key question, which is how do we know that there is a categorical imperative. Kant makes a good case that if there WERE one, that it would act in the way he describes. Yet I am unconvinced that such a thing exists.
Kant takes it as axiomatic that autonomy of the will is good. He is incensed at the idea that someone can be considered moral if he or she is forced into doing an action. Appealing to consequence (e.g., fear of not doing the action) is just another form of that, although not necessarily that extreme. This rules out hypothetical imperatives ('Do not steal, because you may get caught'), leaving only categorical ones ('Do not steal, because it is immoral').
That presupposes that explanatory power of descriptive facts is the only purpose of ethics, which is false.Bugsby wrote:In my experience, all of morality can be easily explained as rules created by society for its own preservation. Even in moral cases that are unrelated to the preservation of society, this is just when circumstances echo the situations for which that morality was created and people react in the same way (for example, some people act on abortion the same way they do on murder).
Irrelevant. Simplicity by itself implies neither truth nor adequacy for some purpose. Furthermore, you are mistaken in thinking categorical imperatives are some wholly new breed of imperatives posited by Kant. They would exist whether or not Kant based his ethics on them.Bugsby wrote:I believe in the hypothetical construct in EVERY case, because that can be explained away by simple observations of cause and effect. Thinking of a categorical imperative involves another set of assumptions to be laid on top of this hypothetical morality, and parsimony rules that extra layer out. Not out of possibility, mind you, just out of consideration.
Again, you recognize only descriptive ethics. Why?Bugsby wrote:I, for one, always try to act morally, yet I will tell you that I cannot think of a single thing that I have done that I cannot explain by saying that it was what was expected of me, ...
In other words, you have not acted morally according to Kant. You were simply afraid of the consequences of not doing the action (e.g., failing to meet expectations forced on you).Bugsby wrote:... and therefore at least somewhat incumbant on me to do it, rather than say it was my autonymous will that saw the good and acted on it.