bugzysegal

Sorry, to clarify do you mean "ought" in the moral sense or "ought" in the sense that something is necessarily true? Does that meaning change from the beginning of your sentence to the end thereby creating something that looks contradictory but isn't? I forget the fallacy name here, someone help me out.

"self-evident" is nonsense. If you want to track down the philosophical history of "apriori" and "synthetic" as opposed to "analytic apriori," you'll find that the philosophical community has found that what can be said of even the most fundamental "truths" is very little. Kant said space, time, and causality are among this class. I would not lump "logic" in with this group as his treatise "A Critique of Pure Reason" is widely respected in a relevant sense. I'm saying questions don't necessarily depend exclusively on some objective standard, that the objective standard is only part of some larger context which is not itself "objective" or "logical."

This is what you are saying, "Using reason in objective way to evaluate what question begging is, requires that you use reason in an objective way" Circular sir. A non-circular version of what you said might go something like this, "Any statement you employ against reason must be vacuous because reason is the only way we can determine value or meaning. That is, you have not in making your statement, demonstrated that there is some other method of deriving value or meaning." To which my reply above still works. I made the distinction for a reason. Imagine if you will, that a much larger portion of the world is governed by paraconsistent logic as opposed to classical logic. Imagine if it applies in the realm of ethics. If you say UPB deals strictly in classical logic, fine, but note there now non-universal aspects of UPB. As far as "preferred" vs. "preferable" you are absolutely right. The circular nature of Stefan's reasoning still seems tangible to me and that was my motive for forwarding the argument. I will be more careful in the future. I will keep my arguments on point and try not to make adversaries. Thanks for the pointers. I will refer you to my other response to you. Thank you. I actually used those terms after someone had done so in another thread. If we take what is objectively true to be what is the most reliable (most testable) and most useful, I think we are on the same page. Whether or not there is some state of affairs that is absolutely objective is something I am suspicious of. Just like it is reasonable to say something is circular, but we never think that anything really is or could be absolutely circular.

After taking a wee break I realized I erred in calling the logical argument for logic tautological, when instead it is question begging. I apologize for any confusion. But, professors always told me confusion was good. It meant we were getting somewhere haha. That comment is still up for review so please bear with me.

As I clarified, "mic drop" was a joke. Perhaps this is a poor medium for humor, I'll grant you that. I don't feel you are dullards. I've just found this community generally hostile to dissent, especially that which is far from what's considered orthodoxy here. I am getting downvoted for non-hostile posts (the above one excluded). I was venting in this particular post after experiencing this. Should I edit it? The brunt of the argument I presented in the second post applies to my alternative depiction of Stefan's views. Shame on me for not making that explicit.

While the Wikipedia article calls paraconsistent logic a subset, I'm going to say that it's more useful to think of it as a type of logic (specifically one which operates without the law of non-contradiction). Where Stefan umbrellas logic under UPB, he's someone using a dialectical trick; that is, he's saying "any logical argument you make against logic being universally preferred, can only make sense if it's logical; therefore it is self contradictory" Arguments killed right? You should be suspicious of any argument that appears to be necessarily true in this fashion. It is tautological. Logic is reasonable; therefore logic is reasonable. Working strictly with arguments and two way truth values, the conversation is over. Just so you know, there are major contradictions that occur if you take this kind of stance. Russell's paradox is a good one as is the liars paradox.. What we might consider in an alternative fashion is whether there exists other meaningful methods of reasoning which call into question UPB's ubiquitous application of classical logic and the logic Stefan used to assemble his initial arguments(paraconsistent logic!), or other methods of deriving meaning that don't fit into such narrow confines.

Ah, so it is not a law governing all of reality is it? So why must ethics conform to one kind of logic and not another? Sure, the implications of ethics being paraconsistent are hard to fathom for me (and maybe you), but that doesn't mean it isn't true. The fact that this alternative kind of logic is useful in real world applications seems as though it might be deeply concerning for anyone who values the non-contradictory nature of their ethics for its law-like, or universal, applicability. Notice that the argument has shifted from being grounded in metaphysical truth, to pragmatic, epiistemic value. At the very least, this is significant I think.

For the purposes of answering the question, my beliefs are irrelevant since I'm asking about how UPB it is widely interpreted amongst the FDR community. I'm not trying to be rude, but rather keep the scope narrow, as philosophical discourse has a way of digressing to the point of being useless. Excellent! What if the "law of non-contradiction" is in fact not a law, but a useful tool in some kinds of logic? Paraconsistent logic that does not observe and in fact violates this rule. Yes it is rigorous, systematic, and has been applied in mathematics, electronics, and computing. The technical stuff is way beyond my skill set, but Wikipedia and the Stanford Encyclopedia provide some laymen explanations that I think are useful.

Not at all. That would relegate it to relativity or subjectivity, would it not? Either way, is UPB some set of facts that are woven into reality?

I'll keep it short and sweet. What does "objective" mean and how does it apply to ethics? If something is objectively true, is there something about the workings of the universe that weave this truth into the very fabric of reality?

Great. No one takes this subject seriously. Theories of meaning, when it comes to philosophy, are fundamental to every argument. It's a huge deal if you are arguing from a standpoint that relies on logical principles as being fundamental, that you do not address holism and anti-foundationalism. I would think that "the #1 philosophy" followers might have at least something to say on the topic. But that's right, academic philosophy is just what the man says is legitimate. I would love to see a pole of this website on how many of you have read philosophical texts or neutral summations of texts, of philosophies competing with Libertarian and Empiricist thought. Real philosophers don't go to school though, right? A thread above this asked the definition of tautology. Of all the responses only one actually answered the poor posters question. Meanwhile, literally anything said in dissent of Stefan's views has been down voted on other threads. If anything you should welcome challenges. If the challengers are misinformed, it presents an opportunity to make your theories more robust, educate, or both. So much for welcoming discourse.

Means can be justified by their ends. As long as it's all a part of the bigger murder plan, my sleeping and unconsciousness is totally moral. Imagine this scenario: Sherry and Lucy are without any moral inclinations. Then they are instructed that actions are good if and only if they are leading to the eventual murder of someone. Both of them go about their lives as per usual doing all sorts of things. Each thing they do is in a causal chain of events, some essential to the murder and others trivial, that lead to the other's murder. I love how dissent is downvoted. Thanks folks.

Is this true? If it is moral to give back to the community, could one say that actions taken in preparation (like starting a business and ensuring that business is profitable so that those profits might be donated) for that moral act are indeed moral themselves? What if the moral proposition is "One should murder in the future(or when you get around to it)"? If Sherry thinks "I'm going to kill Lucy tomorrow, but after I do what I need to do today" she is still going to murder Lucy, and is abiding by a moral prescription to murder (at some point).

Ridiculous. People behave in manners that you would call immoral all the time. As a result, they are unhappy? Am I unhappy while spending the money I stole from you? Of course not, I bought a jet ski and jet skis are great! If I never get caught I'll be further thrilled that I got away with it. Are dictators and despots never happy as a result of their actions? Do they never live long happy lives? "It means it is a fundamental structure of how our universe functions in reality whether we like it or not" Aside from nearly being unintelligible, you might want to pause before making claims about the objective nature of reality/morality. Notice that even Stefan bases his arguments for UPB on pragmatic considerations rather than physical laws.

Tautologies are logical statements that are always true, and thereby trivial, for example: A, therefore A. Another way to state this is: a proposition whose truth value is never F.

Are you asking if I think his theory of meaning is relevant? Yes. If you believe in "objective truth" "objective morality" or just "morality" then yes. The extent to which these are concepts that are self-evident, definite, and certain all rests heavily upon whether you believe that words simply derive their meaning from use, or from some underlying logical properties which are the scaffolding of some objective reality.

It was a joke. If you were joking in your comment, sorry it's hard to tell these things through text.

I apologize for redundancies. Also I'm going to broaden the scope of Stefan's position. In that video I described above. He discusses at length how there are objects in the worlds and concepts in our minds and that's how language works essentially. This is leaving aside his views on the concreteness of definitions. He is still sorely mistaken. Russell and Frege agreed that the world could be separated into propositions and references (see "Frege and Russell" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sense_and_reference) Thisleads to all sorts of paradoxes. Russell's Paradox is a good one. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/russell-paradox/. If anyone knows where Stefan goes into more detail about his views on language, please direct me to those videos/essays/etc.

err *edited* "I always have these kinds of trouble when debating with people. Far too late do I notice they use different meaning to words than me. I try to remedy this by using concise mathematical definitions, no abstractions, no new terms, etc. " I am going to say that's a bad move in this or any language inquiry. I imagine you didn't click on the link I included, which is totally fair. I should have just copied and pasted what I needed, but I also wanted to show I'm not pulling this out of my butt and am actually just forwarding the philosophy of another. So here's my (Wittgenstein's) response: "A common summary of his argument is that meaning is use—words are not defined by reference to the objects they designate, nor by the mental representations one might associate with them, but by how they are used. For example, this means there is no need to postulate that there is something called good that exists independently of any good deed...This anthropological perspective contrasts with Platonic realism" I am saying platonic realism is wrong, but it's not just me, a great number of modern philosophers and students of of philosophy would agree. Words are not reducible to logical components that are self-evident. I'll grant, and I don't at all think there is reason to but anyway, that language is reducible to logical or mathematical scaffolding in some-sense. In an effort to prove mathematical realism, that logic and math both map onto the world and are self-evident, Betrand Russell embarked with Alfred Whitehead on a conjoined effort in The Principia Mathematica. Keep in mind that Russell and Whitehead were considered preeminent in their respective fields of philosophy and math. They failed utterly. "PM, as it is often abbreviated, was an attempt to describe a set of axioms andinference rules in symbolic logic from which all mathematical truths could in principle be proven...However, in 1931, Gödel's incompleteness theorem proved definitively that PM, and in fact any other attempt, could never achieve this lofty goal; that is, for any set of axioms and inference rules proposed to encapsulate mathematics, either the system must be inconsistent, or there must in fact be some truths of mathematics which could not be deduced from them." https://en.wikipedia...pia_Mathematica. But what does this have to do with natural language? Well... quite a bit. "Logic", "reason", "mathematics", "truth", "provable", and any word you like that might be the example of some foundational platonic form is only going to have meaning or "be provable" in the context of its use. There is a marvelous discussion of this here: https://www.quora.co...eteness-theorem. I realize there is a lot of information to grapple with here, but please take the time to at least try and comprehend it before responding. When I say comprehend I mean try and look at it from the perspective of the person forwarding the argument. That is one possible way he could have meant it. I was granting "abstract" a reading that might rescue it from my criticism. I'm not saying your wrong, but I try and give the best possible defense of a philosophical notion I am criticizing. In other words, if you're right, Stefan's position is untenable. That is one possible way he could have meant it. I was granting "abstract" a reading that might rescue it from my criticism. I'm not saying your wrong, but I try and give the best possible defense of a philosophical notion I am criticizing. In other words, if you're right, Stefan's position is untenable.

Hello FreeDomainRadio members, I recently came across a Youtube video of Stefan's about free will. I am aware of the ban on free will discussion on these boards and that is not the subject matter of this post. If I reference that video, it is only in reference to non-free will centered theses. In this video "Free Will Part 2" at around 20:52 Stefan mentions the unique ability of human beings to form "abstract, rational, consistent, objective, definitions." Perhaps I am missing some video but it seems like this sums up Molyneux's views on how language works. More precisely I take this to outline Stefan's working theory of meaning. My position is this, meaning of language is how it is used (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_Investigations#Language.2C_meaning.2C_and_use). As such, the notion that meaning necessarily is rational, consistent, objective, or that definitions like those in a dictionary are how meaning in language works is wrong. It's overly broad in that there are aspects of meaning that don't require those conditions and simultaneously overly narrow in that there are many other ways that meaning can arise (all of them consisting of usage). "Abstract" won't do the work here unless you can formulate some version of "abstraction" that doesn't contradict "definite," "consistent," and "logical." Mic drop.

Well from what I remember (that's always a bad start) Stefan gives at least some argument for why we should reject moral relativism. He then goes on to give an argument why we should reject moral skepticism (no is from ought Humean problem). These being the only two brands of subjectivism I'm familiar with, this deductively is an argument for objective ethics.

Errr... for my longest relationship I never treated my girlfriend any differently when she was on her period. We would high five at the beginning chanting "zero babies!" in honor of the birth control she was taking.

LOL are there arguments to show that morality is objective? Yes and they are all still hotly contested by subjectivists and skeptics. Seriously though, every argument for any objective set of ethics is itself an argument for the objective nature of ethics.

We would fall into ethical subjectivity without universality or delimited universality. I think the distinction is one made by definition of objective morality. Trying to put bounds on definitions while it seems like the right idea, has lead philosophers like Bertrand Russel and Moore to the ends of their rope. The amount of restrictions and asterisks you can put on a definition are limitless. Trying to reduce grammatical statements to their logical counterparts and form rigid complete definitions of language drove philosophers like Bertrand Russel to the edge. The number of asterisks and footnotes you would need to have a "complete" definition of ethical bounds is as infinite as it is impossible. Certain ones may be more useful, but don't think it will ever be "complete." For more, read Wittgenstein's complete body of work, though you could save time and skip to "Philosophical Investigations" but you would be without some context(<haha).

This exact question was posed in the introductory philosophy class I took to finish up my degree! Hah people have used drugs for centuries to achieve the effects you so value. Mathematicians and scientists were very big on meth like substances. They dramatically improve cognitive function for the period they are active. Alcohol obviously is not one of those substances, but would you be in favor of constantly bumping meth in small amounts? This is more than theoretically possible. If you were careful to maintain a normal sleep schedule by tapering off use within a certain buffer of bed time, you could do this indefinitely with negligible side effects on your health.