We don’t have to rely on politically correct statists and religiously correct theists to trash the Golden Rule, given the sterling job that self-righteous libertarians can make of the task.

But the issue raised by iambigous is not whether people pay lip-service to the Golden Rule or whether they actually try to observe it, or even whether it would have prevented the Iraqi war. It’s whether the Golden Rule (or any other ethical rule) has an objective validity independently of whether or how people adhere to it

Well, good luck solving that issue. There is also the question as to how many angels can dance on the head of a pin that remains to be answered definitively.

iambiguous,

I've been thinking about the amount that you've raised abortion as a complex issue, and I'm starting to agree with you on this issue - abortion is currently too complex to figure out. The definition of at what point the foetus becomes a "person" or "conscious" is a difficult one, and, while it may be solved in the future, we don't have the tools for solving it now. I think even if someone was to hand us objective ethics on a plate, we would still be in the dark trying to find out exactly how to apply them to this situation.

But while I was thinking about this, I don't think this is true of all situations. I think that some, if not most, situations are well-defined. But in situations like abortion there are two battles - anyone who argues a particular set of ethics for that situation can be beaten by disagreement on the definition of what exactly is happening. If we solved one or other (definition of what is happening in abortion, or objective system of ethics) then it would be easier to try and solve the rest.

I'm not sure if it gets more or less confusing if you believe in the soul, but I don't believe in the soul, so I'm just not going to go there.

I might not argue these same points in precisely the same way but that is a reasonable summation. And assumptions [premises] are all they can ever be in the absense of a knowledge that would make them objective conclusions instead.



Yes, but it is a system that is thought up by particular people situated in particular circumstantial contexts having particular prejudices regarding particular preferences.

Some may want to go from the particular to the general by way of deduction but it is usually the other way around.



"In whatever capacity it might exist" is always the rub. What does that mean? How, for example, does one go from a particular rendition of free will to a universal ethics of abortion? Mary is pregnant with an unwanted fetus. How free is she to decide whether to abort it or not? How free are we to pass judgment on her choice?




Again: How would any one particular man or woman encompass all of the knowledge one would need to accummulate in order to do this? Every possible behavior? From every possible circumstantial context? Viewed from every possible existential vantage point?

This might explain why ethicists [by and large] choose deduction over induction. They can deduce an argment that in principle accommodates the numbing complexity of human interaction.

God, of course, does this effortlessly. But we don't.



Yes, this makes sense. And that's why democracy and the rule of law are preferable to all other forms of government. But given even the broadest possible democracy---one inhabited by the most intelligent and sophisticated citizens of all---does little to negate my points above.

Which is why I embrace moderation, negociation and compromise in attempts to legislate and enforce public policy.

No, this is what the system is. This is what ethics is. This description doesn't say, but the preferences have to be this way or that way. The whole point of ethics is that it applies to decisions, and the whole point of it applying to decisions is that it supposes there to be a better or worse choice. That's not subjective - the subjectivity enters when you assume how it does this, not that it does it.



Yes, in whatever capacity in might exist. As I mentioned earlier (somewhere, this is a rather long thread now), this is where the research needs to be. Will we ever be able to say definitive things about free will? I don't see why not. It's a different branch from ethics, though.

I think I mentioned abortion above, and how it suffers from a real definitional problem, unlike many other ethical situations. No, I'm not claiming that what I propose immediately solves everything, but it has a solid foundation to work from. You asked how - well, by starting somewhere objective and working from there. This is my proposal for something objective, but, no, I haven't done all the work. The definitional problem stems from having no good definition of "free will" in the first place. Can we learn more about the development of the baby over time? I hope so.



Well, they don't need to do it for every possible situation and every possible behaviour and every possible vantage point: they only need to consider the situation that exists at the time and whether or not it will affect the ability of a decision-making agent to reason. Yes, this is probably a lot of information, and again I don't claim that no one will ever make a mistake. Even if a god existed, humans can still err (you claim that all sinners would be punished later, so the mistakes will "work out" in the end, but this makes the assumption that this "deferred punishment" is fair, and that it will "balance out" the bad deed/mistake at the time).



I don't know if democracy is the epitome of the principle I outlined. Democracy is inherently subjective and often ignores science and scientific thinking.

I sympathise with that view in general. I take ‘objectivity’ to refer to a veridical relationship between, on the one hand, animate or inanimate things, states of affairs, and so forth, observed to be features of a mind-independent reality, and, on the other, the propositions that describe them, where this ‘truth’ relationship is sufficiently reliable for one to be perverse not to accept it provisionally (roughly, the kind of explanation that the scientist Stephen Jay Gould offered of what ‘facts’ are in science). Ethical codes, narratives, theses, treatises, and so forth, however elaborated, are prescriptive, proscriptive, exhortatory or commendatory propositions reducible at some point to basic aphorisms about ‘good’, ‘bad’, ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ behaviours. That’s not news, of course. I quite see why at the point of this reductio it can be judged that there is no objectivity in sight, but unless we are totally committed to the idea that objectivity (on the foregoing understanding) is indivisible – i.e., that there could not be kinds or degrees of objectivity - there may remain ways in which some objectivity could be claimed for these propositional objects (‘ethical codes’ – I’ll call them ‘EC’).

Written EC as minimal propositions represented in some physical or electronic form appear to have symbolic functions in a manner analogous to those of, say, money or passports, in the particular sense that they are points of entry to a vast referential field of permissions, obligations, duties, proscriptions, and so forth (tokens might be a $50 banknote, an entry visa to EU countries, the aphoristic EC ‘Turn the other cheek’ or ‘Minimise harm’). I think we could allow that where an EC is simply implied in an utterance (‘If he goes on like that, he’s going to make a lot of people unhappy’), it is at least susceptible to representation as a written proposition and can be considered symbolically in the same way.

In the empirically realised forms described, EC can be said to have a social ontology and the objectivity associable with it, that is, a particular kind of existence that seems to accord with what philosopher John Searle describes and theorises as that of ‘social status functions’, which are indubitably ‘real’ in their instantiations. Considering EC as ‘points of entry’ helps in seeing that the associated referential field is indeed vast, since EC are invoked from the most basic of inter-subjective sensitivities to the exercise of the death penalty or rules of engagement in combat. As such, they infer behavioural possibilities with degrees of probability: to take the example tokens given above, respectively, possibilities and probabilities converge around, say, ‘purchasing utility’, ‘travel’, or ‘harming’. Although it seems too obvious to mention, there is no one-to-one relationship between EC and behaviour, any more than possessing a valid passport makes it other than more probable that its possessor will do some things rather than others.

That is possibly the best we can do in terms of claiming any objectivity for EC, and it obviously stops short of the objective grounding of ‘good’ or ‘right’. But the unlikelihood of any quick fix in objectively grounding the ‘good’ as an authoritative basis for EC doesn’t mean that the adduction of objective factual evidence has no role to play. Indeed, it can be demonstrated that EC may, by this means, show increasing objectivity over time.

Many see the project of attempting to objectively ground ‘good’, ‘right’, and so forth, for the purpose of making ethical decisions, as a worthy one. Like you, Daryl, I'm sceptical, and much more strongly inclined to heed research evidence that ethical decisions are to a significant extent not made integrally with reasoning about EC. It seems that that’s generally not the way we make ethical decisions. Rather, ethical reasoning about decisions tends to be a form of post hoc justification for decisions in which intuition and emotion have played the predominant role. This suggests to me that until the ‘good’, the ‘right’, and so forth have a fully objective grounding, the future of making ethical decisions stands to benefit most significantly from our learning progressively more, through methods of empirical enquiry, about how humans actually make them.

Davoz, You said:
“This suggests to me that until the ‘good’, the ‘right’, and so forth have a fully objective grounding, the future of making ethical decisions stands to benefit most significantly from our learning progressively more, through methods of empirical enquiry, about how humans actually make them.”

Is it really necessary that an ethical code be grounded on the “good” and the “right”? If one accepts the proposition that everyone has a legitimate claim to one’s own body by default, even hard questions such as abortion become answerable; the answer being that no one has more legitimate controlling authority over if and when a woman will or will not give birth than the woman in possession of that body.

We have been conditioned to believe since the days of the divine right of kings that someone else has rightful control over us, and both of today’s prevailing ideologies, Marxism and Judeo-Christi-Islamic Old Testament authoritarianism (It matters little that most who profess to endorse the Ten Commandments cannot name them, and probably think there’s a prohibition of homosexuality there.) are in agreement that it is the State which takes precedence over the decisions of individuals, and to advocate for individual sovereignty and against statism is not only politically incorrect, but delusional. How can one be opposed to nation-states? To Imagine there’s no countries, as John Lennon suggested, seems to require more imagination than most people possess. In the succinct words of Alain de Botton:

“As Marx posited, ‘The ruling ideas of every age are always the ideas of the ruling class… It is in the perfidious nature of ideological statements that unless our political are well developed, we will fail to spot them. Ideology is released into society like a colourless, odourless gas. It pervades newspapers, advertisements, television programmes and textbooks, always making light of its biased, perhaps illogical take on the world and meekly implying that it is only presenting age-old truths with which none but a fool or maniac could disagree.”

Do we really need the State and all its laws? Rabbi Hillel said “Do not unto others that which is hateful to you; this is the whole of the law, the rest is commentary.” But a myriad of laws, and extensive commentary have been produced, the IRS code, for example, which is between 2,500 pages and 2,000,000 pages long: http://www.trygve.com/taxcode.html
Scroll to the bottom and check out the amusing comment from George W. Bush.

“But we need laws to protect us against Bernie Madoff, and what about people who kill their children and bury them in the woods. Without laws, what’s to prevent everyone from doing it”
Without laws against murder it is:
1. Doubtful that many would kill their children and bury them in the woods.
2. It may be that laws to prevent the abandonment of children might make killing them and burying them in the woods an attractive option for some. (The “law” of unintended consequences.)

Let me just say something positive about Marxism-- It became a rallying cry for liberty and struck a great blow to the absurd notion of royalty and colonialism. It might be noted that the US made an effort to aid the Russian Czar, and has supported royalty (Saudi Arabia, Jordan, etc.) and colonialism (Vietnam, South Africa, etc.). as far as I can see, wherever it has existed.

iambiguous wrote:

Yes, but it is a system that is thought up by particular people situated in particular circumstantial contexts having particular prejudices regarding particular preferences.



When a doctor performs an abortion, her decisons will be for the better or for the worse. But this is measurable. It is not subjective. Or, in any event, it is far less subjective than calibrating "better" or "worse" decisions when discussing abortion and ethical behavior.

This is how I view the subjective/objective divide: out in the world and pertaining to particular decisions that must be made in particular circumstantial contexts.

iambiguous wrote:

How...does one go from a particular rendition of free will to a universal ethics of abortion? Mary is pregnant with an unwanted fetus. How free is she to decide whether to abort it or not? How free are we to pass judgment on her choice?



I'm considerably less sanguine than you are. If only because 2500 years after the pre-Socratics first started delving into this sort of thing we are really no closer to pinning it down. And ethics is just that much more convoluted to me because we disembark from the land of either/or and enter the intractable domain of neither/nor.

Is abortion either ethical or unethical? Well, neither one side nor the other really knows. Even if we assume a significant chunk of free will is involved with each decision.



What can we know objectively about aborting the unborn that will lead us to a more solid foundation? Well, for one thing, we can know that a newly formed zygote is considerably less developed than an 8 month old fetus. But does that make it less human? And we can know that forcing women to give birth against their wishes will precipitate a world in which women cannot realistically compete with men for the best schools, jobs and opportunities. But does that make it less ethical?

This just brings me back to the points William Barrett raised in Irrational Man about a clash of two goods.

iambiguous wrote:

Again: How would any one particular man or woman encompass all of the knowledge one would need to accummulate in order to do this? Every possible behavior? From every possible circumstantial context? Viewed from every possible existential vantage point?



But any particular situation is always bursting at the seams with subjective references. No one can describe it objectively. And even if every agent involved has the ability to reason why should one set of reasons be construed as optimal?



I don't see it as just "a lot of information". I see it as, in some crucial respects, incalcuable information that is situated in history and in culture and in contingency, chance and change. Imagine for example you set out to determine all the information we would need to know in order to ascertain whether or not Barack Obama's policy in Afghanistan was justified on ethical grounds. Or if his compromise with Republicans regarding the tax cut extensions reflected the most rational policy.

Immediately you would be confronted with all manner of conflicting and contradictory narratives regarding what is or is not rational, just and ethical. And I'm sure there are any number of similar examples percolating in Australia.

iambiguous wrote:

....that's why democracy and the rule of law are preferable to all other forms of government.



Democracy is inherently subjective because views on public policy are inherently subjective.

And to the extent it ignores objective reality is the extent to which that needs to be nipped in the bud. But at least with math and science there is actually something objective there.

Hey iambiguous,

I'm a little unsure if we're even talking about the same points anymore. To give an example:



So here I'm saying what ethics is - the common thing between all the various ethical systems is that ethics is about showing which decisions are more or less preferable. If you say "ethics", this is what you are talking about. This is the definition part. Whether you want to talk about objective or subjective ethics, this part is the same, but the value of the preference will change.



I think you're saying here that the idea of an ethical system, the definition, is still thought up by people. Well, yeah, sort of. I mean, decisions exist. Multiple options for decisions exist - that's what makes them decisions. And we know that we have to choose one decision over others. So ethics is about asking, "Is there a best way to choose one decision over others?" The answer might be "yes" or it might be "no", but the question is as valid as, "Is there a best way to build a house?" This question, about the house, can go down one of two tracks:
(a) yes, there is a best way to build a house if you want it to stand up - why should it stand up? - so that people can live in it - why do we want people to live in it? - so they are protected from the weather, wild animals, and so on - why do we want this? - because it's better than the alternative
...which leads us straight back to our original question, or
(b) yes, there is a best way to build a house, if we first agree upon a definition of what a house is and ignore the reasons why.
So ethics can have a valid definition that is as objective as the definition of a house, a particle, whatever else humans apply definitions to.



Here I try and show that the point I am making at the beginning of my argument is that there is something common to all ethical systems - such as when they apply. This definition doesn't cover what criteria to judge a situation by, just the type of situation the comes into the realm of ethics. For example, the sun exploding is not unethical if it just happens in the course of physics, but if someone makes it explode then we can say that this is a situation where can try to label it is ethical or unethical. It's not subjective to say that this is where we apply ethics, just as it is not subjective to say that below the Planck length is where we apply quantum mechanics.



Now here I am stumped. When the doctor performs the abortion, her decisions will be for the better or for the worse depending upon the definition and purpose for the abortion. Does she have to keep the mother alive? If yes, why is this part of the definition of abortion? If is "just is", then of course the decisions can be "better or worse" because you've decided already what "successful" and "unsuccessful" mean, but arbitrarily, as in the example (b) above about the definition of the house. The abortion can be successful because you've decided what a successful abortion is, and you're not going to question that decision. This is the only way in which is it "measurable". If this is the case, you should extend the same objectivity that you give to the definition of abortion to the definition of ethics.
However, if you ask, "Why is saving the life of the mother part of the definition of a successful abortion?" then you have to trawl back through the list of "why"s (as in example (a) about the definition of the house) until you reach "Is there a best way to choose between alternatives?"
This shows that the definition of a house, of an abortion, and of ethics, all have the same amount of objectivity. And yet, in the next sentence ("it is far less subjective than calibrating...ethical behavior") you treat the definition of ethics as something less.






What has changed in regards to free will since two and half thousand years ago? Well, the fields of neuroscience, psychology, sociology, causality and physics have all come a long way since then (not all of them existed, for a start), so I think there is considerably more knowledge about free will now than there was then. I argue that free will is a prerequisite for ethics, and that therefore an increase in knowledge about free will will inevitably lead to an increase in our capabilities to understand ethics. So there has been an increase in our understanding of ethics as well. Has it answered all our questions yet? No, it hasn't. Will we ever get the answers to all our ethical questions? Who can say? Should we start writing off all the options, then? No, that's a bit unscientific.



This is both a good question and one designed to muddle the argument. It is a good question because we would all like the answer. It is designed to muddle the argument because neither of us knowing the answer doesn't prove anything either way. No one here is claiming to have all the answers.



There's a lot of stuff here.
Firstly, about history and culture. Is it important to look at the history of every situation and the culture of every situation in order to make an ethical examination? Some people would argue yes, and others no. I think you are working from the top down when you assume history and culture are included in ethics in some way, and even more if you assume how. Tom Palven and I have been attempting to show our workings from the bottom up, trying to start with the basics and see what must be included, and trying to throw out as many assumptions as possible along the way. It is very difficult to work from the top down, because when you make your definition you tend to assume the conclusion.

As to things being incalculable, well, this happens in physics and maths as well. In quantum mechanics it is possible to measure the momentum or the position of a particle (say, an electron) but not both. This is a physical law which determines the limit on the information we can get from a particle. But this doesn't mean we can't say objective things in physics. Similarly, Godel's Incompleteness Theorem shows us that any logical system, including maths, will have statements that it cannot prove to be true or false, but this doesn't mean that 1+1 doesn't always equal two. We may or may not find things that are incalculable, and we may find that calculable things are not always able to be calculated in the time necessary, or that when someone calculates it they always do so without making a mistake. This happens in physics, in maths, in medicine, and yet we don't call these things subjective and we don't stop using them because sometimes we hit a wall or make a mistake. It is also the case that probably the universe will throw at us situations where the most ethical option has been rendered impossible by circumstance, and sometimes these circumstances might be natural (earthquake, for example) and sometimes they might be insane people (have we invoked Godwin's law already in this thread?). But what does all this mean for our objectivity in ethics? Nothing.

Okay, so why do I post all the time about objectivity in ethics? Well, I have two reasons. The first is simple: I am working on the assertions above that I have posted, and I see some value in them.
The second one is longer, and may sound a little like a rant. But it is not that I believe people who think that ethics is only subjective are bad people, using bad ethics, and likely to commit nefarious crimes and so forth. Nothing of the sort. It is because I see people asking questions about ethics and saying, "That's too hard, there must be no answer" and then giving up on the process of reasoning and just labelling it "subjective". If we don't know then we don't know, and we should be agnostic about it. And for most ethically agnostic people, using subjective ethics is fine. But if you're going to post a question about it on an ethics forum, you should be prepared to question your assumptions about it and spell out a chain of reasoning.

To end my very long post, I am glad I got to talk about the definition of abortion and the house and ethics; I think this has helped me understand something about definitions and ethics that I had not thought of until challenged here. I find this forum can sometimes be incredibly constructive, so thanks to all the people that put ideas out.

iambiguous,
You ask how one can determine whether Obama's actions regarding Afghanistan are ethical. It's been said that if you ask the wrong questions you don't get wrong answers, you get irrelevant answers, Perhaps the question shouldn't be whether Obama's actions are ethical, but whether nation-states are ethical, and, given a nation-state, is a pyramdial societal arrangement with a politician as Decider-In-Chief on top the most ethical way to organize it? And if so, WHY? Here might be a youthful, open-minded way to look at things:

"Youth is the incarnation of reason pitted against the rigidity of tradition; youth puts the remorseless questions to everything that is old and established – Why? What is this thing good for? And when it gets the mumbled, evasive answers of the defenders it applies its own fresh, clean spirit of reason to institutions, customs and ideas and finding them stupid, inane or poisonous, turns instinctively to overthrow them and build in their place the things with which its visions teem."--Randolph Bourne (1886-1918)

I think what you say here misses two points, Tom

First, it seems to me that what you suggest regarding abortion is a paramount principle of personal autonomy; nobody other than the pregnant woman has any right to dictate whether she will or will not continue the pregnancy. But it seems to me that this is a matter of “good” and “right”; she has a “right” to personal autonomy, and it would be “wrong” for anyone else to force a particular course of action on her.

Secondly, this approach seems to me to address the minor ethical question while ignoring the major one. The big ethical question here is not “should I [a third party] compel this woman to abort/to continue her pregnancy?” but “should I [a pregnant woman] abort/continue my pregnancy?” An ethical approach which focuses on whether the state does or does not have the right to impose a decision here is very incomplete; it ignores the main ethical question, which is certainly a question of which course of action would be “good”.

My point was that it is "good" to ignore the question of what is "good", and instead leave it up to the individual to decide what is good, because it is easier to establish a legitimate case for ethics based upon individual sovereignty than cases for what is good, which are entirely subjective. Thomas Aquinas and other theologicans determined that masturbation is evil (not good). Why? Why was Aquinas concerned about other people's masturbation? Many Christians maintain that homosexuality is not good, but what business is it of theirs if two same-sex individuals want to engage in sex and/or marry, and what business is it of groups of people calling themselves "governments", entities which in addition to illegitimately controlling other people's lives, routinely commit mass murder of individuals, among other atrocities?

How is “the individual to decide what is good” if she is also to “ignore the question of what is good”?


Advocating individual sovereignty does seem to assign priority to the “entirely subjective” no? Plus, the view that individual sovereignty is a good thing is just as much entirely subjective as the view that anything else is good¸ isn’t it?


What makes you think that Aquinas was concerned with other people’s masturbation? Have you any evidence of him ever denouncing or attacking any other person for masturbation, or any other supposed or actual sin? Aquinas usually considered moral issues in general, without passing judgments on any individual. He was, in fact, doing precisely what you say any individual has to do – trying to decide what is good.

Don’t get me wrong, Tom. I’m not objecting to your advocacy of individual autonomy and sovereignty. I’m objecting to the suggesting that, by advocating sovereignty, you can construct an ethical system which avoids the question of right and wrong.


You're still writing as though ethics is only about what governments do. It isn't. The branch of ethics which devotes itself to such questions is called "politics". If two same-sex (or opposite-sex, for that matter) individuals want to engage in sex, that raises ethical questions which they must address. And if all that your ethical system can say about those questions is "the government cannot interfere", then I'm afraid it's woefully inadequate. It will be no help at all to them in addressing the issues that, you agree, they have to address.

You're still writing as though ethics is only about what governments do. It isn't. The branch of ethics which devotes itself to such questions is called "politics". If two same-sex (or opposite-sex, for that matter) individuals want to engage in sex, that raises ethical questions which they must address. And if all that your ethical system can say about those questions is "the government cannot interfere", then I'm afraid it's woefully inadequate. It will be no help at all to them in addressing the issues that, you agree, they have to address.[/quote]

Tell me then, is it ethical for two two same-sex consenting adults to engage in sex?

It may or may not be. One of them may be married to someone else. Or one of them may be a carrier of a contagious and serious disease and the other may be unaware of the fact. Or one of them may believe that the act is taking place in the context of some kind of committed or exclusive relationship and the other may know that it's not. Or a host of other relevant circumstances could arise and need to be considered.

The point is (a) this is a decision they have to make, (b) it's an ethical decision, and (c) an ethical system which can say no more than "this is not the government's business!" evidently fails to address the issue they face, and is no use to them.

My approach to ethics is different. I propose that we basically disregard definitions and concentrate instead on how any particular definition is applicable out in the world. And, realistically, relating to actual human interaction down on the ground, decisions are more or less preferable depending on your point of view.

What is objective is that every human community must have the equivalent of an ethical framework because every human community must establish rules of behavior.

But, beyond that, inter-subjective exchanges always rule the roost. And this necessarily involves historical and cultural factors as well as individual preferences chosen over the course of actually living our lives. In other words, ethics, however defined, is always situated.



In my view, the "best way" to engage conflicting ethical narratives is within the democratic process. That way, at the very least, the rule of law can be invoked.

But building a house is considerably less subjective. Or, rather, it is if, as you noted, you want it to remain intact and standing over many years. Here one might get into a disagreement with another about aestethic values---what should the house look like? how it should be decorated?---but the construction of the house itself [like the performing of abortions] must be in alignment with the objective laws of nature.

Outside of that, however, there is no one correct preference.

And, just as a house serves its purpose, so too does a set of ethics. But, unlike a house, ethics often revolves, in turn, around things like religion and ideology. Or wealth and politics. And this is just another way of pointing out it revolves around power---around which agenda can be enforced.




I agree completely. But this just goes back to my point that whenever human beings congregate there are going to be conflicts. All of us have passions---deep-seated wants and desires---hard wired into our brain. We are driven to survive, to procreate, to defend oursleves. But these basic attributes of human interaction often lead to fierce conflicts [even conflagrations] over what should or should not be done. And we don't really need a philosophy of ethics to point that out to us.

iambiguous wrote:

When a doctor performs an abortion, her decisons will be for the better or for the worse. But this is measurable. It is not subjective. Or, in any event, it is far less subjective than calibrating "better" or "worse" decisions when discussing abortion and ethical behavior.



For whatever reason an abortion is perform---and whatever factors you include in the procedure itself---it still must unfold strictly in accordance with human biology. If an abortion is performed to save the life of the mother you perform it accordingly. Or if you embrace the Catholic ethos that neither the mother nor the embryo/fetus should be given preference, you perform it taking that into consideration.

But I am equally as stumped here as you are. I'm not entirely sure what you are trying to conclude. On the other hand, I do know that in the abortion wars raging all around us there are those who will insist that even if the pregnant woman's health or very life may be in jeopardy the unborn must be protected at all costs. But how do they back this up other than by invoking their own authoritarian narrative? There is no way anyone can demonstrate objectively that one side or the other is being more reasonable or more ethical.

I just don't see the definition of a house, an abortion and ethics in the same way. Why? Because, so much more than the first two, ethics points less to an actual "thing" than it does to the interpretation of relationships that can easily spiral out of control down on the ground.




If that is true, cite the general arguments that prevailed 2500 years ago and the arguments that prevail today. How has this accumulated knowledge inclined us more in one direction rather than another? Or, as with the case of astrophysics and quantum mechanics, has the increased knowledge merely disclosed instead just how much we still need to understand? For example, I recall reading an article about the Hubble space telescope. An astronomer pointed out all of the extraordinary new discoveries made because of Hubble. But he was also quick to point out these discoveries led only to deeper mysteries still.

I'm not for "writing off" further progress that will be made. I just don't see the progress made thus far getting us any closer to resolving these things. And suppose one day science is able to unravel all the mysteries embedded in free will only to discover we have none? And, as you note, if we have no free will what does it really mean to speak of ethical decisions?

iambiguous wrote:

What can we know objectively about aborting the unborn that will lead us to a more solid foundation?



Yes, but suggesting that answers "in princple" may be forthcoming someday doesn't much change the fact they are not here today. I see this as Sam Harris's argument. He is let off the hook regarding the past and the present because he can always cling to the future.

And, true, there is no argument I can raise that would dispute that. But meanwhile out in the world of actual flesh and blood interactions moral and political disputes rend us as they always have.

And there is always the danger that alleged moral truths [whether from philosophers or scientists] will become the basis for tyranny. Did not Marx base Communism in part on the "scientific" understanding of dialectical materialism? Did did Artistotle include slavery and misogyny in his Ethics? Did not Nazis invoke Kant's philosophy in the construction of the Third Reich?

iambiguous wrote:

Imagine...you set out to determine all the information we would need to know in order to ascertain whether or not Barack Obama's policy in Afghanistan was justified on ethical grounds. Or if his compromise with Republicans regarding the tax cut extensions reflected the most rational policy.

Immediately you would be confronted with all manner of conflicting and contradictory narratives regarding what is or is not rational, just and ethical



Yes, and that is precisely my point. There are many, many, many interwining variables across both time and space. I doubt the world's most sophisticated computers could grasp them all. And then put them in the most "logical" order?

What to leave in, what to leave out, what to weight?



How would someone broach the question of ethics and Afghanistan without being fully informed about that nation's history and culture? Just factoring these two variables into the role the global economy plays there today would be a staggering task. And it is the supporters of Harris [science] and Kant [philosophy] that want to approach this from the top down. In other words, they want to dismiss the historical evolution of culture and capitalism in Afghanistan and merely deduce the most rational [and thereby ethical] behaviors that apply to all men and women. If this is done we can dispense with history and culture altogether. But can it be done?




I'm still not clear what you mean here. How does one work from the bottom up in resolving the conflicting moral and political narratives that swirl about America's involvment in Afghanistan? What assumptions can be thrown out there?

Or take the case of Schapelle Corby. How would we determine the extent to which she is ethically culpable here? Wouldn't that entail encompassing the most rational drug laws? And what might they be? What assumptions can be thrown out here?

In other words, how can we possibly make this analogous to 1 + 1 = 2? Describing the most rational drug policy is incalculabe to me. And that's because everyone makes different assumptions about drugs based on different points of view about existential relationships that are not necessarily calcuable rationally.

And this is all before our emotional and psychological reactions kick in.



I did present a chain of reasoning above.

But allow me please to clear up a couple of things:

1]

What my arguments about ethics are always aiming towards is moderation, negociation and compromise. I believe we must abandon the illusion of an objective ethics. And, if we do, we can, through a democratic political process predicated on the rule of law, legislate public policies that take as many different points of view into account as possible. And we can see the practical results of this in places like America, Canada, England, Europe, Japan, Australia. And increasingly in nations like India and Brazil.

2]

What my arguments are always warning against are precisely those who insist that, through philosophy or science, we will one day desribe ethical interaction as we describe the parts of an internal combustion engine. That, to me, is a very dangerous road to go down. Those in power are always looking for ways to rationalize their policies. They are always searching for folks able to offer up ways to convince the citizens it is their solemn duty to behave one way rather than another.

This might be the source for most of our trouble. If we have a definition of something then we can talk about it. If we don't have a definition of something then we can't really talk about it until we establish a definition. How do we "concentrate instead on how any particular definition is applicable out in the world" if we don't have the definition yet? Without a definition you can pretty much claim that anything falls into ethics where you feel it is relevant, such as "In this example I'm going to include emotional history, because it seems right". Well, of course you see ethics as subjective if you don't have a clear definition of ethics.



I have not said, "Let's just let people do whatever they want and murder people until we get an objective set of ethics." I agree that we have to do the best we can with what we have, whether objective ethics exists or not. However,


What I have been arguing for is a scientific dismissal of objective ethics, not a vague hand-waving dismissal. You have, for example, picked "moderation, negociation [sic] and compromise" as values to work towards, and say that there are "practical results", but of course (and you know this, this is, in fact, your argument) all this is subjective.

I don't quite follow [2] - you feel that objective ethics would be bad, or because you believe that no objective ethics exists that any claimed objectivity will be created for exploitation? Because to say this, you have to assume there are no objective ethics, assume exactly how governments will act (now and in the future, I guess, as you say "always") and then assume that the way governments will act will be "bad" (another subjective term, if no objectivity exists).

The way I see it:
(a) if subjective ethics is all there is, then different people will always disagree about what is "right" and "wrong"
(b) if an objective ethics exists, people still might disagree about "right" and "wrong" (just as some people disagree about evolution, for example). Not only that, but it may not be possible to figure out the "right" and "wrong" of every situation because of computing power, information overload, limited access to information, and so forth. However, it may be possible to show clearly that several things are "right" and "wrong".

So (a) is obviously imperfect, and (b) is imperfect as well, but (b) is potentially imperfect in less areas than (a) is. So while you might have a lot of objections as to people's emotional reactions, the limitations of the human brain and information processing and so forth, these are not actually arguments against an objective ethics existing, but in how it can be put into practice, which are the same set of challenges you would face with any subjective ethic as well - how can we know all the information, how can we take everyone's emotional responses into account, etc.?



Yeah, this was pretty much my point - the "success" of an abortion is based upon the outcome you consider "successful", which is not "in accordance with human biology" but an ethical question. So there's no "best way" to perform an abortion unless you have decided who you want to survive, which is an ethical question. Similarly, with the house, a house is only "successfully" built if it conforms to the purpose you have in mind. Yes, in both cases there are physics involved, but there are physics involved in all real-world situations and all ethical situations are real-world situations. So a measure of "success" is just as subjective or as objective as the ethics which underlies it.

Tom

I expressed the same scepticism in the post you quote from. We evidently see rather different implications in the likelihood that moral realism is not arguable. I’ll pursue that point.


I think one can say with reasonable confidence that an ancestral form of ‘rightful control’ not only predates the divine right of kings but is evolutionarily primordial. If ‘rightful control’ picks out, as I think it does, some feature which is proprioceptive, bodily-proprietary and control-seeking, then one can fairly describe it as homeostatically constitutive for that animal [1]. To put it more generically, whenever a bounded animate object [2] fails to seek to harm another bounded animate object, it is recognising ipso facto the boundedness of the other object, or its ‘rightful control’ (for the sake of simplicity, I leave to one side how boundedness and sociality are reconciled in the relevant ecology).

So it can be said on the basis of this constitutiveness that ‘rightful control’ picks out a default existential condition which holds for modern humans as it does in general for bounded animate objects. However, to make it ethically foundational is to say that what is constitutive for bounded animate objects is necessarily constitutive for ethics, so one sees the naturalistic fallacy looming. In parallel fashion, the ready translatability of moral terms – ‘good’, ‘bad’, ‘right’, ‘wrong’ - across cultures (but not with identical referents) points to an intuitive base with an evolutionary history which has all the appearances of also being a default existential condition, and this latter default is precisely the ground for the moral realism of which we are both appear to be sceptical.

My guess is, consequently, that if we’re sceptical about moral realism, ethics can be argued for only counter-intuitively and piecemeal, and it may ineluctably be the case that different criteria have to be resolved for different cases and circumstances. A complementary anti-moral realist aspiration is to rewrite the moral vocabulary in the terms of a decision-making and practical problem-solving language which is as value-neutral as we can get it.


[1] David Geary 2005, The Origin of Mind: Evolution of Brain, Cognition, and General Intelligence, Washington DC: American Psychological Association

[2] Nicholas Humphrey 1992, A History of the Mind: Evolution and the Birth of Consciousness, Simon and Schuster, 1992

Do you see value in this approach? This is the approach I usually try to take.

Jeezus! I'm not sure about everything you said, and may try to translate things further, but I'm sure glad we seem to generaly agree.