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If there were objective morality - how would you tell?

Piscivore said:
Wait- what? As a comics and movie fan I tend to disagree.
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I understand, I made a blanket statement which is always a fallacy.

Photos, videos and movies are not representation the way that drawing or painting is.

One can be merely a lonely web cam covering a door way, another can be an elegantly staged and scripted production. They may be metaphorical, allegorical, realistic and use language, but that is broadening the definition of language.

Now cultures and societies use idiomatic self reference with referral to external referents, so yes some forms of medial expression are language like, others are mechanical solely. In that they merely capture photons and there is no input from the taker as it were, so idiomatic it is not.

I like comics and movies as well.
 
Robin said:
A picture isn't a language any more than a letter is a language.
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Strangely he chose the language that use pictographs as phonemes, as opposed to the Hsia ideograms which are alleged to have started as representational drawings and became more formalized.

A letter uses language but I agree with you, it is language on the part of the operators not the operant. (If that makes sense.)
 
Dancing David said:
Strangely he chose the language that use pictographs as phonemes, as opposed to the Hsia ideograms which are alleged to have started as representational drawings and became more formalized.

A letter uses language but I agree with you, it is language on the part of the operators not the operant. (If that makes sense.)
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I think he meant "letter" as in "A B C...", not as in "the post".
 
Piscivore said:
Can you dumb that down a bit?
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Soory.... the gobbledy goo level was high in that one


I have defined language as being a symbolic set that is idiomatic (defined through common and personal usage) and self referencing (in that language often uses language to define terms) but that it ultimately gets to common perceptual experiences i.e. 'external referents'.

So we set this gobbledy gook in that setting
Now cultures and societies use idiomatic self reference with referral to external referents, so yes some forms of medial expression are language like, others are mechanical solely.
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Cultures, societies and sub groups often have forms of communication that are self referential and idiomatic aside from language usage, i.e. uniforms, gang signs, inside jokes, catch phrases, mythological characters, social and cultural norms.

In some forms of medial expression (WTF did that come from) i.e. all media that are used to communicate cultural, social and sub group values: dress, posture, art, any object with cultural social import, there is also this idiomatic and self referencing communication in that medial form , ‘good guys wear white hats’, parish teams wear certain colors, opera singers are always fat… etc..

So yes in some forms of complex expression (songs, movies, stories, etc…) there are symbols that are idiomatic and self referencing for members of various cultures, societies and sub groups and in that they convey coded messages they can be like language.

Sorry that was some gobbledygook up there!
 
Dancing David said:
Soory.... the gobbledy goo level was high in that one


I have defined language as being a symbolic set that is idiomatic (defined through common and personal usage) and self referencing (in that language often uses language to define terms) but that it ultimately gets to common perceptual experiences i.e. 'external referents'.

So we set this gobbledy gook in that setting

Cultures, societies and sub groups often have forms of communication that are self referential and idiomatic aside from language usage, i.e. uniforms, gang signs, inside jokes, catch phrases, mythological characters, social and cultural norms.

In some forms of medial expression (WTF did that come from) i.e. all media that are used to communicate cultural, social and sub group values: dress, posture, art, any object with cultural social import, there is also this idiomatic and self referencing communication in that medial form , ‘good guys wear white hats’, parish teams wear certain colors, opera singers are always fat… etc..

So yes in some forms of complex expression (songs, movies, stories, etc…) there are symbols that are idiomatic and self referencing for members of various cultures, societies and sub groups and in that they convey coded messages they can be like language.
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Okay, yeah, that's what I was talking about. Why are these "like" language, but not language?

Sorry that was some gobbledygook up there!
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No problem. I go overboard on the big words sometimes too. :)
 
Hmm, good question, probably because of the lack of consistent meaning in context, there is too much variation in interpretation. Take GWTW (Gone With the Wind), or if you prefer we can choose another film like Harry Potter. (Isn’t Nigel also someone who meets the Prophecy, is Snape a hero or villan?)

Is Scarlet O'Hara a hero or a villain?
Is Ashley a hero or a villain?
Is Rhett a hero or a villain?
Is Melanie stronger than Scarlet?

Is Butterfly McQueen's portrayal of a silly young black girl really accurate, isn't the meaning of her character going to change? Is Prissy a stereotype? How are people going to say what is the 'meaning' of that symbol?

Now the word 'dog' is going to have almost the same 'meaning' amongst the people of a society, but the character of 'pickaninny' is going to vary widely in it's meaning, pejorative, racial humor, offensive stereotype.
 
Dancing David said:
Hmm, good question, probably because of the lack of consistent meaning in context, there is too much variation in interpretation. Take GWTW (Gone With the Wind), or if you prefer we can choose another film like Harry Potter. (Isn’t Nigel also someone who meets the Prophecy, is Snape a hero or villan?)

Is Scarlet O'Hara a hero or a villain?
Is Ashley a hero or a villain?
Is Rhett a hero or a villain?
Is Melanie stronger than Scarlet?

Is Butterfly McQueen's portrayal of a silly young black girl really accurate, isn't the meaning of her character going to change? Is Prissy a stereotype? How are people going to say what is the 'meaning' of that symbol?

Now the word 'dog' is going to have almost the same 'meaning' amongst the people of a society, but the character of 'pickaninny' is going to vary widely in it's meaning, pejorative, racial humor, offensive stereotype.
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I was thinking about something a little more raw, more basic. For example, "speed lines" or "stink lines" in comic books. The drop of sweat or a nosebleed in a manga communicates the character in question is in a specific emotional state (Scott McCloud covers this really well in "Understanding Comics"). The visual image of a character standing under a second-story window with some musical device communicates a specific message- we know why he's there and what he's doing. Or a figure with a halo- we know what's being said about that person. Isn't that a "language"?
 
PAC said:
As you say "it's specific form depends on the history of the culture". Morality changes, it is different for different cultures. Is that not subjective?

Help me understand the "morality" of other species?
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Languages vary, but in systematic ways. The specifics which vary randomly or for historical reasons -- for example, the initial sound of the word for "dog" -- are superficial. This is what allows any normal human brain to learn the language of whatever culture it's born into, automatically and without any explicit instruction. (If the random or historically-dependent bits were significant, this would not be possible.)

Human morality appears to be biologically similar. It varies in systematic ways, and can take an infinite number of superficial forms.

By viewing morality as a biological phenomenon -- something that species do, ours in particular -- it's possible to get an objective picture of what the fundamentals are, how they vary and why, and which apparent clashes of morals are actually clashes merely of practice.

And yes, other animals have a moral sense.

Take a dog that enjoys doing tricks. Have it do tricks with another dog in the room, and give that other dog a treat for doing the trick. See how long it takes that first dog to get upset and stop. (This experiment has actually been done, btw.)

The dog enjoys playing, but when someone else is getting rewarded and he's not, it certainly seems that the dog is sensing unfairness.

We see even more complex moral systems among apes, who have an ecomic life woven into their relationships.

It's not surprising, and for the same reason that it's not surprising that emotions are more fundamental than thoughts, shared by more animals. Emotions and moral judgments may often be less accurate than cool reasoning, but they're easier to rig, less costly to maintain, and they're right enough of the time to make it worthwhile.
 
Piggy said:
Take a dog that enjoys doing tricks. Have it do tricks with another dog in the room, and give that other dog a treat for doing the trick. See how long it takes that first dog to get upset and stop. (This experiment has actually been done, btw.)

The dog enjoys playing, but when someone else is getting rewarded and he's not, it certainly seems that the dog is sensing unfairness.
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Is it "unfairness" they are sensing, or "this is no longer getting me food"?
 
bencg said:
To play devils advocate why should we trust our innate sense of morality?
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We shouldn't. Just as we don't always go with our gut, but have to use reason to figure out if our gut is right.

I think we need to make a distinction that's, unfortunately, covered by a single English word.

We all have our personal moral reactions. For instance, you might be physically repulsed and angered by the sight of someone burning a national flag and feel it's morally wrong. Or you might view it as a brave act of political speech, get an emotional uplift and a flutter in your chest from it, and feel it's morally right.

Two people from the same nation viewing the same event might feel entirely different ways about what they're seeing.

And there's really not much we can do about that, we just feel what we feel at the time, although our moral responses change over the course of our lives.

Then there's the social application of moral codes. For instance, what happens to the person burning that flag? Do we decide that one moral view of what he's doing is the correct one? And so do we jail him or pin a medal on him? Or do we really not care because it's a personal matter with no import to anyone else?

We have laws and social customs to enforce our answers to those questions.

But in neither case is it a good idea to allow gut feelings about morality determine behavior as a rule. As long as we're living with other people, we have to use some sort of restraint if we're not simply psychopathic or something like that.

So we have to make decisions.

"Yes, I feel like this, and I really don't like what's going on there, but I should put up with it anyway because that's the law and it's a useful law."

"Society simply can't allow that behavior so anyone who engages in it needs to be imprisoned or killed."

"It sure is an awful thing, but it wasn't really his fault, so he shouldn't be punished."

"We don't want to have to harm someone else, but it's something that has to be done in this case."

Since we have to make decisions, rather than go with our gut (or the gut of the most powerful person), what tools do we use to make them?

Some argue for holy books, but the results are mixed at best, truly horrific at worst, and the books all disagree anyway, plus they tend to mistake superficial customs for substantive morality.

Biology offers us a way out of the choice between that kind of option, on the one hand, and the idea that morality is entirely random and arbitrary, on the other.

Rather than looking at our feelings, we look at our species, and we figure out what the basics of human morality are, how they work, and where they can go wrong.

Seems to me, that's really our only shot at any objective basis for moral decisions.
 
Dancing David said:
Pictures are NOT verbal, and they are NOT language.
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Then you're going to have a tough time explaining how you're reading this forum. Because at the end of the day, a letter is a picture.

Other types of pictures can be language. As a rule, they're not.

Hand gestures are normally not language either, but they can be.

Our eyes can do as well as our ears for feeding the right kind of processed info to the parts of our brain that process language.

ETA: In a rebus puzzle, the brain is actually required to treat a set of pictures as language.
 
I think it is dangerous to speculate on what any animal is thinking or feeling beyond the most basic of ideas.


The trick/treat experiment does not show that the dog has a concept of fairness. It could be as simple as "HEY, they're handing out treats! I'm going to get me some." In other words, the treats are a big distraction, and it could be that the dog just lost focus.

Animals can be trained, but they are living creatures with a will of their own. Why did the tiger suddenly bite Roy's head? Who knows? They said it was trying to protect him, but how does that work? If that is true, I think it shows that animals function on a different level of instinct than we do.

As far as objective morality goes, I've never needed anything beyond the golden rule.

Regards, Canis
 
Piggy said:
Then you're going to have a tough time explaining how you're reading this forum. Because at the end of the day, a letter is a picture.

Other types of pictures can be language. As a rule, they're not.

Hand gestures are normally not language either, but they can be.

Our eyes can do as well as our ears for feeding the right kind of processed info to the parts of our brain that process language.

ETA: In a rebus puzzle, the brain is actually required to treat a set of pictures as language.
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Thanks I made a blanket statement, ooops.
 
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