liberty student:Morals are values, values are subjective. It really doesn't get a lot more complicated than that.
What separates "moral" values from other values?
"I'm not a fan of Murray Rothbard." -- David D. Friedman
Jonathan M. F. Catalán:I believe that morals are factual insofar as the individual is concerned. An individual might really believe murder to be immoral.
All beliefs are not facts.
StrangeLoop: liberty student:Morals are values, values are subjective. It really doesn't get a lot more complicated than that. What separates "moral" values from other values?
I never said they were separate.
I agree, maybe I used the wrong word. I agree that morality cannot be objectively defined as factual. But, given their nature, I think they can be true insofar as the individual is concerned. You can't deny to another individual his conviction that murder is immoral, even if you yourself don't agree with the proposition.
Jonathan M. F. Catalán: I agree, maybe I used the wrong word. I agree that morality cannot be objectively defined as factual. But, given their nature, I think they can be true insofar as the individual is concerned. You can't deny to another individual his conviction that murder is immoral, even if you yourself don't agree with the proposition.
(Hooray for first posts!)
Jonathan M. F. Catalan: I don't know if I should bold certain statements next time or what.
I don't know if I should bold certain statements next time or what.
Was that necessary?
Jonathan M. F. Catalan: I don't know too much about the definitions of these different ethical philosophies.
I don't know too much about the definitions of these different ethical philosophies.
Apparently you know enough about the word to say that it probably describes you "closely enough".
Jonathan M. F. Catalan: If my interpretation of the word "inherently" is correct, then I agree with that.
If my interpretation of the word "inherently" is correct, then I agree with that.
What is that interpretation?
If I wrote it more than a few weeks ago, I probably hate it by now.
StrangeLoop: What separates "moral" values from other values?
They concern how to interact with other people instead of with something else.
Jonathan M. F. Catalan: So? What if I don't believe morality has a "powerful thrust" (whatever that is).
So? What if I don't believe morality has a "powerful thrust" (whatever that is).
I think that he meant that we shouldn't refer to something depending just on "subjective fancy" as "morality", because it wouldn't have the "powerful thrust" which seems to be pretty important to the definition.
StrangeLoop: All beliefs are not facts.
He meant that the existence of the belief could be a fact. It could be a fact that you believe that "murder is immoral". But that doesn't mean that the belief itself is true. And, in that sense, all (existing) beliefs are facts (because they exist).
Ladyphoenix,
So, not to put words in your mouth, but it would seem you're saying that empirical truth of a specific moral tenet is impossible to determine? However, it is possible to empirically determine (though not necessarily so) that a person holds to a specific moral tenet?
I'm not sure, it could be that you and I are saying the same thing. I believe that if a specific moral proposition is held by every individual on the planet it is because every individual on the planet subjectively believes that proposition to be true, not because the proposition is inherently or objectively true as a matter of prescribed natural morality. Or, in other words, morality is a belief.
I. Ryan,
Ok?
Inherent as in objective.
I don't intend on sounding hostile, but maybe it's because I'm not sure if you are building up to make a point.
I. Ryan: StrangeLoop: All beliefs are not facts. He meant that the existence of the belief could be a fact. It could be a fact that you believe that "murder is immoral". But that doesn't mean that the belief itself is true. And, in that sense, all (existing) beliefs are facts (because they exist).
SL and I are struggling to reach an understanding about this in another thread.
Jonathan M. F. Catalan: Ok?
That explains why, despite what you said, it was reasonable to ask for the definition.
Jonathan M. F. Catalan: I don't intend on sounding hostile, but maybe it's because I'm not sure if you are building up to make a point.
I was just trying to understand where you were coming from.
liberty student: SL and I are struggling to reach an understanding about this in another thread.
Which one?
Fair enough. :) I apologize.
Jonathan M. F. Catalán:I agree, maybe I used the wrong word. I agree that morality cannot be objectively defined as factual. But, given their nature, I think they can be true insofar as the individual is concerned. You can't deny to another individual his conviction that murder is immoral, even if you yourself don't agree with the proposition.
I see very little reason to argue about morals; I would only correct mistakenly-believed consequences from proposed rules or acts (e.g., advocating a minimum wage, on the basis of moral superiority, can lead to unemployment, and I would highlight that unintended consequence).
To the extent that I normatively define "morality," I would consider it to be behavior an actor ought to obey. And, although an individual might consider an act immoral for himself, I would still bet he prescribes that same behavior to others.
Insofar as a person prescribes behavior to others, I believe that person cannot factually ground the moral commands; that is, the moral propositions possess no truth-values. Although I don't fully agree with moral noncognitivists, I do believe that, more often than not, claiming "murder is bad" is akin to an aesthetic reaction.
When you claim "they can be true insofar as the individual is concerned," I would agree, but then the word "true" becomes superficial.
I'm not debating whether or not it's useful to argue about morals; I gave my view on the nature of morality. For what it's worth, obviously I don't approach economics from a moral perspective either.
I agree, but my point is more to the tune that how people ought to be act (in accordance with any morality) is subjective to any given individual. The moral is true only to the extent that it exists as a subjective belief; the entire point of my original post, in any case, was to present my perspective as one which disbelieved in the objective truth of any moral code (including natural law).
I'm cool with all that.
I would only add that if morals are only non-factual beliefs, then there is no rational, deliberative process to arrive at conclusively true morals.
StrangeLoop: I do believe that, more often than not, claiming "murder is bad" is akin to an aesthetic reaction.
I do believe that, more often than not, claiming "murder is bad" is akin to an aesthetic reaction.
Why do people usually have that "aesthetic reaction" instead of a different one?
I. Ryan:Why do people usually have that "aesthetic reaction" instead of a different one?
Natural selection. I believe fundamental parts of our psyche are generated by genetic adaptations.
I. Ryan: liberty student: SL and I are struggling to reach an understanding about this in another thread. Which one?
http://mises.org/Community/forums/t/20283.aspx
It's a lot of mindless back and forth over definitions and who gets to own David Friedman's intellectual legacy , but I could use some backup wrt to the difference between a moral subjectivist and a moral nihilist.
StrangeLoop: Natural selection. I believe fundamental parts of our psyche are generated by genetic adaptations.
What are our moral sentiments an adaptation for?
liberty student, when you share your thoughts like that, sometimes I think I could learn to like you.
I think we agree about the differences between a moral skeptic and a moral nihilist; the difference is that I believe that if a person abstains from arguing for his moral beliefs, then the arguments actually used can also be employed by a moral nihilist. That is, the same arguments--once purged of moral foundations--can be used by moral skeptics and moral nihilists alike.
That is, if we believe Friedman when he states, "I don't have any solid basis for my own moral beliefs, any way of proving to a reasonable and open minded skeptic that they are correct," then he doesn't attempt such a futile task (e.g., proving to others his moral beliefs, since he has no way "of proving...that they are correct"). Likewise, I outright deny moral statements can be objectively validated, and so I too abstain from employing moral arguments.
I'm fine with all of us appealing to moral sentiments, our temperaments, and cognitively-appetizing principles (e.g., self-ownership), but I consider all of that more rhetoric than fact. For instance, every time I argue for the legalization for drugs, I typically ask the opposing camp, "Don't you believe you own your own body?" However, such moral principles, I believe, actually bear no factual content.
I. Ryan:What are our moral sentiments an adaptation for?
Reproductive fitness, in the long run.
But, let's say you feel morally compelled to take care of your children. That's evolutionarily easy to explain: you especially cherish your own children since they share half of your genes. If you didn't care so strongly for them, your children would be at a disadvantage compared to children who had parents with an adaptive want to nurture their offspring.
For the most part, I believe moral sentiments achieve social cooperation (e.g., punish free riders, recriprocate gifts, etc.).
StrangeLoop: Reproductive fitness, in the long run. But, let's say you feel morally compelled to take care of your children. That's evolutionarily easy to explain: you especially cherish your own children since they share half of your genes. If you didn't care so strongly for them, your children would be at a disadvantage compared to children who had parents with an adaptive want to nurture their offspring. For the most part, I believe moral sentiments achieve social cooperation (e.g., punish free riders, recriprocate gifts, etc.).
So our moral sentiments are an adaptation to achieve social cooperation. And, in economics, we ask how we should interact with each other to achieve our goals. So we have two ways to figure out how we should interact with each other: the advice from our subconsciousness (our moral sentiments), and our conscious thought (our "moral ideas").
It is very important to understand that distinction, because, in almost every conversation about morality, conflating them leads to everybody talking past each other. If you want to talk sense about morality, you have to specify whether you are talking about our moral sentiments, our moral ideas, or both.
Let me switch gears for a second.
Consider a different kind of action: choosing what to eat. Instead of talking about how we should interact with other people, let's talk about what we should eat. (Of course not specifically.)
We have have two ways to figure out what we should eat: the advice from our subconsciousness (our taste faculty), and our conscious thought (our ideas about food). We can eat what tastes good, or we can eat what we think is the healthiest (if we are looking for what is the healthiest). Most people do a combination of them. Most people eat what tastes good, but also curb their cravings based on conscious ideas about how "healthy" each food is.
In that sense, people often receive the advice from their subconsciousness about food (cravings for something), but tend to disagree with that advice pretty often. Could we call that disagreeing? Could we say that our taste is "wrong"? If we are trying to eat what is the most healthy, would our subconsciousness be "wrong" if it advises us to eat something which would make us sickly?
Our taste faculty developed during a time in which most of the foods which people eat in the developed countries didn't exist. Pizza, grain-fed beef, chips, and so on didn't exist. So how "reliable" should we expect that faculty to be now, considering it developed to deal with totally different input than we give it now? If we design a program to deal with certain input, should we expect it to be reliable if we give it totally different input?
Let's move back to moral sentiments.
Did our "moral faculty" (what produces our moral sentiments) develop in a time in which most of the interactions which we have now didn't exist? Yes, I think so. Wouldn't it be reasonable to say that our "moral faculty" developed during a time before big, market economies came into existence? Wouldn't it be reasonable to say that our "moral faculty" developed during a time in which we lived in hunter-gatherer tribes, or something similar to that?
To conclude, our moral sentiments and our moral thoughts try to answer similar questions.
If we think that interacting with people in a way which our moral sentiments (such as our ordinary emotions about "price guaging" or something like that) prescribe wouldn't be the means to our ends, it would be fair to say that we think that they are "wrong" from our point of view. And, in the same, way, if I think that you interacting with people in a way which your moral thoughts (such as your conscious thoughts about economics) prescribe wouldn't be the means to your ends, it would be fair to say that I think that they are "wrong" from your point of view.
Our moral sentiments try to answer certain questions. They can be wrong. And our moral ideas also try to answer those questions. They can also be wrong. But both of them can only be wrong from the point of view of an actor with ends in mind.
We could call this subjectivism applied to morality.
This should clear up a lot of the confusion.
What I'm talking about is a person believing that something is right or wrong absent any prior premises. For example, one can believe that violating self-ownership is wrong a priori. But can he or anyone else prove that belief to be correct or incorrect? No.
why would I need to convince that you don't own yourself when I can just steal your stuff, beat you, and/or shoot you
StrangeLoop:liberty student, when you share your thoughts like that, sometimes I think I could learn to like you.
Let's not get carried away here...
StrangeLoop:Likewise, I outright deny moral statements can be objectively validated, and so I too abstain from employing moral arguments. I'm fine with all of us appealing to moral sentiments, our temperaments, and cognitively-appetizing principles (e.g., self-ownership), but I consider all of that more rhetoric than fact. For instance, every time I argue for the legalization for drugs, I typically ask the opposing camp, "Don't you believe you own your own body?" However, such moral principles, I believe, actually bear no factual content.
I operate somewhat like this. As I explained to someone else, just because I dissect an argument, doesn't mean I am for the opposite. I don't particularly care what your morals are (and yes, I do believe you have them) as long as we're transparent about it when discussing issues where morals apply.
So if you say it is ok to steal to accomplish a particular end, I might pursue that to an extreme and ask where you draw the line with stealing, and how you can rationalize it. Most people don't take their rationalization to an extreme and doing so is a very effective tool for getting people to re-evaluate their positions, particularly blatantly, logically incoherent ones like statism.
Now if someone says, I wanna be a dictator and rape and pillage, I'm not going to argue with them. I believe they are a small part of society that is anti-social and dangerous, and I am happy they have identified themselves to me, so I can be careful around them.
But most people I believe, are copacetic (psychologically) with the golden rule. And if I can point out that some ideas are in contradiction to the golden rule, they more often than not, come around to a more libertarian POV. Which is good for me, because my ideal is a world where aggression is not only considered bad (as it is now) but it is understood in most of its forms, which I believe will lead to less chance of aggression occurring and more opportunities for market outcomes.
I can accept answers like "I don't know", "I want to kill you", "I think murder is wrong". I struggle with contradictions and false premises. I also get agitated when people speak through other thinkers, because I am no closer to understanding what THEY think. Just the act of articulating ones own beliefs, much like pedagogy, helps exposes weaknesses in our reasoning and moves us closer to reason, which is a good thing IMO.
Too frequent block quoting of authorities (by anyone) is sloth in my eyes.
Jonathan M. F. Catalán:Ladyphoenix, So, not to put words in your mouth, but it would seem you're saying that empirical truth of a specific moral tenet is impossible to determine? However, it is possible to empirically determine (though not necessarily so) that a person holds to a specific moral tenet? I'm not sure, it could be that you and I are saying the same thing. I believe that if a specific moral proposition is held by every individual on the planet it is because every individual on the planet subjectively believes that proposition to be true, not because the proposition is inherently or objectively true as a matter of prescribed natural morality. Or, in other words, morality is a belief.
It sounds like your answers to both of her questions are yes. :)
I'd add that, as I've said before, a specific moral proposition is held by (nearly) every individual on the planet because it is part of their set of "moral instincts". StrangeLoop has been saying basically the same thing here.
Speaking of which...
StrangeLoop:I would only add that if morals are only non-factual beliefs, then there is no rational, deliberative process to arrive at conclusively true morals.
I agree. I'd say the crux is the is-ought problem: the fact that something is so in no way implies or proves that it should be so. To be honest, I think a better name for the is-ought problem is the fact-value problem.
Indeed, I see morality as just another kind of valuation by individuals. Can anyone prove that a given value for a car is the correct one? Hence since morality consists of values, and values are subjective, morality is subjective.
I. Ryan:So our moral sentiments are an adaptation to achieve social cooperation. And, in economics, we ask how we should interact with each other to achieve our goals. So we have two ways to figure out how we should interact with each other: the advice from our subconsciousness (our moral sentiments), and our conscious thought (our "moral ideas").
Of course, that presumes we have certain goals and not others. There's no way to prove which goals are the "correct" ones without first presuming at least one goal as a given.
Interestingly enough, though, nearly all people have an instinct that I call "the social instinct". It's more than a desire to cooperate with one another -- it's a desire to be (or feel) accepted by those around us. I think it's this social instinct that compels us to seek out one another and subsequently cooperate. Of course, that instinct itself arose through evolution.
GooPC:When are you even absent any prior premises, Crouse on his island? But he’s all alone so there really is no concept of ethics, properly rights, or self-ownership when there is only one person.
It seems that we might be using the word "premise" in different ways. I'm using it in the context of pure deductive logic.
GooPC:I guess if someone is just going to go around shooting people, they aren’t arguing over ethics and we can’t say their ethics are wrong. The problem arises when that person explains why they are killing people. The act of argumentation creates certain premises, namely that humans ought to have a right to self-ownership. I’m not totally sure about all this, I’m new of Hoppe’s argumentation ethics, but it seems to work out to me.
I’m not totally sure about all this, I’m new of Hoppe’s argumentation ethics, but it seems to work out to me.
If someone is just going to go around shooting people, I'll sure as hell still say that I consider his ethics to be wrong. :P
While commend Hoppe on his insight, his argumentation ethics is only valid for arguments. He himself admits this, of course. My point is that morality and ethics have bearing well outside philosphy. I'd say they're one of the main drivers for human action in general.
The keyboard is mightier than the gun.
Non parit potestas ipsius auctoritatem.
Voluntaryism Forum
ladyphoenix: (Hooray for first posts!)
Welcome to the Mises forums!
Morals are ontologically subjective, while epistemologically objective. (a moral is not a physical object, but is necessarily made to apply to more than one subject and so is objective in the sense of numbers, math, etc.). A moral that is subjective is nonsensical, like a house you can't live in nor use to serve as a model.
That people can keep a system of morality is good enough that it can be an objective system. All collections of statements can be considered 'objective' (not as things in themselves, but our reflections on them and their availability to more than one person), regardless of if they make sense or not. On the other hand, saying that 'moral arguments' are wrong to make only draws people into morality, rather than reject it. It merely begs the question.
From here, it seems the job of ethics is to untangle whether someone's system is consistent or can be consistent. Within the realm of logic.
Aesthetics is a result of our systems and the value system we hold; an outgrowth of it. That doesn't mean the system is always good (many people have 'feelings' for no reason they can figure out and that is not healthy) -- or even conscious -- but the proof that we have systems regardless of if we decide to make them rational through philosophical pursuit or not. Rational people can explore their premises that drive their emotions and preferences. Not to get rid of their emotions nor to justify their emotions, but to know the meaning behind it. But morals and aesthetics are not the same, for this very reason.
I’ve got a question for you folks who are discussing the is-ought problem. How do interpret “unethical” actions of the state. For example, on LewRockwell.com writers are constantly referring to politicians as murders, criminals, thieves, etc. But these are just subjective moral. Do you agree or disagree with these moral condemnations of the state? If you agree with them, don’t you still have to admit that these actions are only unethical according to a subjective morality?
GooPC:I’ve got a question for you folks who are discussing the is-ought problem. How do interpret “unethical” actions of the state. For example, on LewRockwell.com writers are constantly referring to politicians as murders, criminals, thieves, etc. But these are just subjective moral. Do you agree or disagree with these moral condemnations of the state? If you agree with them, don’t you still have to admit that these actions are only unethical according to a subjective morality?
Yes.
Autolykos: GooPC:I’ve got a question for you folks who are discussing the is-ought problem. How do interpret “unethical” actions of the state. For example, on LewRockwell.com writers are constantly referring to politicians as murders, criminals, thieves, etc. But these are just subjective moral. Do you agree or disagree with these moral condemnations of the state? If you agree with them, don’t you still have to admit that these actions are only unethical according to a subjective morality? Yes.
+1
Autolykos: Of course, that presumes we have certain goals and not others. There's no way to prove which goals are the "correct" ones without first presuming at least one goal as a given.
Of course.
(And a problem with this which I didn't mention in that post is that the "goals" which natural selection "had in mind" when it "designed" our moral sentiments, tastes, and so on, could be different than the goals which we now consciously have in mind, which is something which we should take into consideration when we evaluate the advice from our subconsciousness!)
I. Ryan:Of course. (And a problem with this which I didn't mention in that post is that the "goals" which natural selection "had in mind" when it "designed" our moral sentiments, tastes, and so on, could be different than the goals which we now consciously have in mind, which is something which we should take into consideration when we evaluate the advice from our subconsciousness!)
Most definitely. As we've only been practicing agriculture for the last 12,000 years at most, our minds are still firmly in the evolutionary context of relatively small and isolated hunter-gatherer groups living out in the open.
Natural rights,Natural law, Virtue Ethics,Enlightened self Interest,a dash of consequentialism and Eudaimoniaism.
I don't really want to comment or read anything here.I have near zero in common with many of you.I may return periodically when there's something you need to know.
Near Mutualist/Libertarian Socialist.