Sam Harris: Science can answer moral questions

[fls]

Of course. But this does not make the act good or bad in and of itself, as Joel claims. For example, if there's something about a specific act which causes repulsion in most normal people (who would therefore likely label it as wrong) then it could be labelled as "wrong" by virtually everyone even though it is completely harmless. Joel mentioned as example torturing a kid to death, and claimed that the fact that 99% of people would consider it wrong that this proves that it is objectively wrong. However, not too long ago you could have asked the same question about homosexuality and gotten the same result. This proves that it really is a subjective matter, even if there is common consensus about some things.

I will let Joel Katz speak for himself, but this is different from what I am claiming.

I tell you about a child who is confined in a small room, he is lonely, scared and in pain. He is held down while needles and tubes are forced into his body. After 10 days of this he dies. I preface this story with three different introductions:

A psychopath inflicts pain on a child for his pleasure and the child dies from his wounds.

OR

A child is treated for bacterial meningitis, but succumbs to the illness and dies.

OR

A child is treated for a fractured femur, but develops a complication and dies.

That people will distinguish between some scenarios tells you that they differ on some property (e.g. the intentions of those inflicting the pain). That property is there regardless of whether any particular individual is able to identify that property (and thus able to state whether the two scenarios are different). That is, the presence or absence of the property doesn't depend upon consensus. Similarly, if people do not distinguish between some scenarios, then they do not differ on whatever property that human judgements about right and wrong are based.

The colour on my bathroom walls and the colour of a blue jay are the same, but we would have no other way of realizing this without the concept of colour. The structural reasons for this appearance are so different that a connection could not otherwise be drawn between them.

Linda

 

[Sophronius]

That people will distinguish between some scenarios tells you that they differ on some property (e.g. the intentions of those inflicting the pain). That property is there regardless of whether any particular individual is able to identify that property (and thus able to state whether the two scenarios are different). That is, the presence or absence of the property doesn't depend upon consensus.

Yes, this is very clearly true.

Similarly, if people do not distinguish between some scenarios, then they do not differ on whatever property human judgements about right and wrong are based.

Hm, I think I agree, but I'm going to have to nitpick the way you phrased it. "on whatever property human judgements about right and wrong are based". Clearly there is not a universal property on which human judgements of right and wrong are based. Unless the given scenario's are indistinguishable, there will always be at least one person who disagrees with the rest. Humans are a varied bunch.

 

[JoelKatz]

Anyway, the answer to your claims here is once again that you are conflating colour with the perception of colour. The perception part is subjective, the colour itself is not. The action is objective, the morality of it is not. If you want to complete the analogy, you should argue that our perception of colour is objective.

Well, I would argue that our perception of color is objective. My eyes are what they are, my brain is what it is. Whatever the end result of me looking at a blue sky is, it is the result of the operation of physical laws that are no different from the physical laws that control all other processes. I think the term "subjective" as you are using it here in contradistinction to objective is incoherent.

However, there is a useful notion of "subjective". When two people perceive the same thing, differences in those two people may result in them assessing the thing differently. One can talk about the "subjective" differences being those differences that are not inherent in the thing perceived. Note that this "subjective" is simply a sub-species of things that are objective but that are not properties of the target of perception but of the means of perception.

And for all things perceived, the means of perception have some effect over what objective properties are measured. For example, what we think of as color is heavily influenced by the particular frequencies of light we are sensitive to. We'll describe two different light sources as white, for example, just because they stimulate our three color-sensitive sensors equally, even though they emit drastically different spectrums of light. "Color", as the term is ordinarily used, is heavily subjective in this respect. Nonetheless, that the sky looks blue to normal human vision is an objective property of the light the sky emits.

That morally-normal human beings consider torturing children for pleasure to be morally prohibited is an objective property of torturing children for pleasure.

 

[Sophronius]

I think the term "subjective" as you are using it here in contradistinction to objective is incoherent.

The perception still varies from person to person. As such I would describe it as subjective. But it doesn't really matter in this case.

And for all things perceived, the means of perception have some effect over what objective properties are measured. For example, what we think of as color is heavily influenced by the particular frequencies of light we are sensitive to. We'll describe two different light sources as white, for example, just because they stimulate our three color-sensitive sensors equally, even though they emit drastically different spectrums of light. "Color", as the term is ordinarily used, is heavily subjective in this respect. Nonetheless, that the sky looks blue to normal human vision is an objective property of the light the sky emits.

All right, your analogy has gotten better. Now you need to show that morality works like this.

That morally-normal human beings consider torturing children for pleasure to be morally prohibited is an objective property of torturing children for pleasure.

You intentionally choose the one thing that is likely to get the least disagreement, to create the illusion of objectivity. However, even on this subject there are people who will disagree. The fact that people will disagree on the morality of virtually every act imaginable clearly shows that the matter is not objective.


Just to recap:
1: You insist that morality is the objective property of an act, that morality is independent of human thought.
2: I say that the objective properties of an act are subjectively interpreted by humanity, and that this is what makes up morality.

We agree that the act itself has objective properties. Your claim that all of morality is therefore an objective property of the act itself and human interpretation is irrelevant does not follow from this. Substantiation is required.

 

[JoelKatz]

You intentionally choose the one thing that is likely to get the least disagreement, to create the illusion of objectivity. However, even on this subject there are people who will disagree. The fact that people will disagree on the morality of virtually every act imaginable clearly shows that the matter is not objective.

It does not show any such thing. It simply shows that we lack a way to measure the property that has no subjective component. That people generally agree that the sky looks blue, can generally predict what color people will say things are, and can use color to make useful distinctions among objects is sufficient to very strongly suggest (and almost prove) that the subjective notion of color is measuring an objective property.

Also, the lack of any coherent alternative is convincing too. What else could you subjectively be measuring? And if there were such a thing as a purely subjective measurement, how could there be any agreement at all, ever, on it?

1: You insist that morality is the objective property of an act, that morality is independent of human thought.

Independent in a sense. Just as color is, in a sense, independent of human thought but in a sense dependent on human thought. There are two notions of 'color' that science had to separate.

2: I say that the objective properties of an act are subjectively interpreted by humanity, and that this is what makes up morality.

Well, sure. But that's how color works too. We look at the sky, and its objective properties create a subjective sense of color in us. Science was able to explain the objective properties that we were subjectively measuring.

We agree that the act itself has objective properties. Your claim that all of morality is therefore an objective property of the act itself and human interpretation is irrelevant does not follow from this. Substantiation is required.

When we interpret something, it is that thing that we are interpreting. I would not say the interpretation is irrelevant -- two light sources may only both look the same color because human vision focuses on specific frequencies in specific ways. But that doesn't change the fact that human vision interprets objective properties of the light.

Just as understanding how color vision works allows us a better understanding of color -- we can now say that two lights that look the same are actually *not* both the same color in a deeper, more meaningful sense, so an understanding of how our moral sense works will likely allow us a better understanding of morality.

Science *will* answer moral questions. And our understanding of morality will change as we learn to separate what we are actually measuring from the sense that measurement creates in us.

 

[Sophronius]

It does not show any such thing. It simply shows that we lack a way to measure the property that has no subjective component.

Also, the lack of any coherent alternative is convincing too. What else could you subjectively be measuring? And if there were such a thing as a purely subjective measurement, how could there be any agreement at all, ever, on it?

Ah, now I see where the problem lies. Why do you presume that morality is "measuring" some hidden attribute? Morality is clearly a method for evaluating and judging things, not a means of measurement.

 

[JoelKatz]

Ah, now I see where the problem lies. Why do you presume that morality is "measuring" some hidden attribute?

The same reason I 'presume' that color vision is measuring some attribute. There is no other way to explain the widespread agreement on the measurements.

Morality is clearly a method for evaluating and judging things, not a means of measurement.

To the extent I understand the distinction you are drawing, I don't understand why it's relevant. In the case of properties of any level of complexity, the techniques are indistinguishable. For example, when we "measure" the temperature of a star, it is an objective property of the star that we are trying to get at. But because we don't have any simple measurement techniques available, we use a complex process of evaluation and judgment to obtain the approximate measurement.

In the case of stellar temperatures, of course, we have a very good understanding of the property we are measuring by this process. But I don't think that matters either. For example, say we didn't have a very good understanding of mass. We could still evaluate and judge the mass of objects by watching how much people struggle when they try to lift them. We may watch people who look strong struggle with an object or we may see people who look fairly weak lift an object with ease.

Despite the imprecision and judgment needed in the process, and despite the fact that we have no idea what makes things heavy and our measurements are imperfect, it is still an objective property of the things that we are trying to measure/deduce. And this is what explains why people using that method would generally agree on how heavy things are. And the primitiveness of the method and lack of understanding of the property also helps to explain the imperfection in the agreement.

 

[Dragoonster]

e) None of the above.

There are as many answers to your questions, and either rational or completely utterly insane in nature, but certainly believed wholly by each, as there are humans on the planet.

Morality is: a) what an individual belives should be right/wrong (assuming the individual has a concept of right/wrong, which isn't certain.)

b) whatever a strongest populace/government can force others to follow, and declare their particular stance to be the One True Morality.



JoelKatz: How would you deal with a person who thinks "blue" is "red"? Apparently in your argument the person is objectively WRONG. Do you put him in jail? Perform brain surgery on him? Put him in an insane asylum?

Why would moral "wrong" be any more wrong than color-seeing "wrong"? Why wouldn't it receive the same punishments or campaigning/ostracizing against?

Is there an objective property of the Universe that says wrong moral-seeing is worse than wrong color-seeing, among humans? If there isn't, please explain why there isn't.

 

[JoelKatz]

JoelKatz: How would you deal with a person who thinks "blue" is "red"? Apparently in your argument the person is objectively WRONG. Do you put him in jail? Perform brain surgery on him? Put him in an insane asylum?

If a person makes objectively wrong judgments about anything, we take the action that's appropriate for the type of wrong judgments they make, using our own judgment. Certainly putting a person in jail or punishing them for being colorblind or even having an equivalent "moral blindness" seems unnecessary. But if they act on their wrong judgments in a way that causes the kinds of harm we see fit to criminalize, then putting them in jail is justified. If they have a problem that's curable, and they want treatment (or are sufficiently insane that others can make that judgment on their behalf), then treatment is appropriate. We can certainly treat people who are colorblind (and thus see colors 'wrong') if we have a way to treat people and they want such treatment.

Why would moral "wrong" be any more wrong than color-seeing "wrong"? Why wouldn't it receive the same punishments or campaigning/ostracizing against?

I wouldn't say it's any more wrong, except that it's more likely to lead to the type of behavior that we criminalize.

But if a person's moral sense is really 'broken', and we knew this reliably, we wouldn't punish them. This is why the law has special cases for people who, due to some defect, cannot tell right from wrong. Similarly, if a person ran a red light, we might charge them with vehicular manslaughter, but if we knew they had some defect that made them lose the ability to tell red from green temporarily, we would instead act to prevent that defect from working further harm (or cure it, or whatever).

Is there an objective property of the Universe that says wrong moral-seeing is worse than wrong color-seeing, among humans? If there isn't, please explain why there isn't.

I'm really not sure I understand the question. I think there probably isn't because the notion of 'wrong' here is not a good one. A person who cannot distinguish red from blue is not seeing 'wrong' any more than a normal person who cannot see infra-red is seeing 'wrong'. The idea that to see 'right' there must be no influence from our manner of detection or how we process information is one I reject. All 'seeing' is an interaction between the thing seeing and the thing seen.

A colorblind person simply fails to assess a property that is objectively there. A person who had some bizarre visual defect that caused them to hallucinate might, if they didn't know they had this defect, erroneously attribute things to objects that are not properties of those objects. These are the things humans have effectively dealt with for thousands of years and science has effectively dealt with for hundreds of years.

I think you are arguing based on the assumption that the objectiveness or moral properties has some astonishing consequence. Quite the reverse, we all act ordinarily as if moral assessments were objective because we really have no other choice. And we all really know that they must be objective because the alternatives are incredibly absurd. (Just as we all knew that color vision was assessing some property of the light coming from things even before we had any idea what that property actually was. The idea that 'people paint the world purely with their mind' is transparently absurd.)

 

[Dragoonster]

If a person makes objectively wrong judgments about anything, we take the action that's appropriate for the type of wrong judgments they make, using our own judgment. Certainly putting a person in jail or punishing them for being colorblind or even having an equivalent "moral blindness" seems unnecessary. But if they act on their wrong judgments in a way that causes the kinds of harm we see fit to criminalize, then putting them in jail is justified. If they have a problem that's curable, and they want treatment (or are sufficiently insane that others can make that judgment on their behalf), then treatment is appropriate. We can certainly treat people who are colorblind (and thus see colors 'wrong') if we have a way to treat people and they want such treatment.

"the kinds of harm we see fit to criminalize" is the issue here. Why isn't seeing red instead of blue a harm we see fit to criminalize? Why isn't punishing people for seeing red not necessary? If science says people seeing red and people killing infants are equally wrong in their assesment of the objective Universe, why aren't each seen as fit to criminalize?

You seem to be entering with a ready-made assumption that morality is somehow more serious than color-viewing. You haven't justified this, from what I've seen. WHY (scientifically)

I wouldn't say it's any more wrong, except that it's more likely to lead to the type of behavior that we criminalize.

But if a person's moral sense is really 'broken', and we knew this reliably, we wouldn't punish them. This is why the law has special cases for people who, due to some defect, cannot tell right from wrong. Similarly, if a person ran a red light, we might charge them with vehicular manslaughter, but if we knew they had some defect that made them lose the ability to tell red from green temporarily, we would instead act to prevent that defect from working further harm (or cure it, or whatever).

Pretty sure the vehicular manslaughter charge would stick in that case. And we already know, I assume, color-blindness would possibly lead to such situations/deaths. What acts have we taken to prevent that defect, again?

I'm really not sure I understand the question. I think there probably isn't because the notion of 'wrong' here is not a good one. A person who cannot distinguish red from blue is not seeing 'wrong' any more than a normal person who cannot see infra-red is seeing 'wrong'. The idea that to see 'right' there must be no influence from our manner of detection or how we process information is one I reject. All 'seeing' is an interaction between the thing seeing and the thing seen.

Not sure I understand your notion of "right" and "wrong" then. You seem to be basing it on pure objectivity. A person with bad morals is objectively "wrong". Why isn't a person with bad vision objectively "wrong"?

Or are you saying morality isn't actually about "right" and "wrong"? That there is instead a blind, objective morality existing outside of human beings? (scratch an answer if this is your answer, as Sophronius has already gone great guns on this.)

A colorblind person simply fails to assess a property that is objectively there. A person who had some bizarre visual defect that caused them to hallucinate might, if they didn't know they had this defect, erroneously attribute things to objects that are not properties of those objects. These are the things humans have effectively dealt with for thousands of years and science has effectively dealt with for hundreds of years.

And in the case of Science Can Answer Moral Questions, has effectively dealt with for 0 years.

I think you are arguing based on the assumption that the objectiveness or moral properties has some astonishing consequence. Quite the reverse, we all act ordinarily as if moral assessments were objective because we really have no other choice. And we all really know that they must be objective because the alternatives are incredibly absurd. (Just as we all knew that color vision was assessing some property of the light coming from things even before we had any idea what that property actually was. The idea that 'people paint the world purely with their mind' is transparently absurd.)

People certainly do paint the moral world purely with their mind. I don't for a second belive moral assesments are objective. I comply with laws considering acts because I don't wish to be jailed. If that wasn't an issue and I had the capacity I'd be murdering many, many people, and believe it or not, for moral reasons.

One admittedly philosophical question to you: Without your mind how would you paint the world? You wouldn't exist btw.

 

[Ron_Tomkins]

If science can answer psychological questions, science can answer moral questions.

That does not necessarily mean science can be the ultimate authority on morality. I'm not sure about that one. Morality, as a subjective and collective cultural phenomenon, is about what "feels like the right thing to do" for a group of people that conform a society. Such moral code does not necessarily have to be science based. But science can approach, study, and analyze moral issues from a third person point of view and determine why there's a moral conflict for instance.

 

[JoelKatz]

"the kinds of harm we see fit to criminalize" is the issue here. Why isn't seeing red instead of blue a harm we see fit to criminalize? Why isn't punishing people for seeing red not necessary? If science says people seeing red and people killing infants are equally wrong in their assesment of the objective Universe, why aren't each seen as fit to criminalize?

I don't understand the argument. Honestly, I just flat out don't get it. We don't criminalize assessing killing infants as right either, we criminalize actually killing infants. We don't care whether you think it's wrong or right, we simply insist that you don't do it. Criminalization has nothing to do with whether people make accurate or inaccurate judgments but with whether people live by society's rules.

You seem to be entering with a ready-made assumption that morality is somehow more serious than color-viewing. You haven't justified this, from what I've seen. WHY (scientifically)

I don't understand why you think that. Honestly, I don't see the relevance of the criminalization issue. We generally don't even criminalize things because they're morally wrong, we generally accept that people are free to do things that are wrong.

Pretty sure the vehicular manslaughter charge would stick in that case. And we already know, I assume, color-blindness would possibly lead to such situations/deaths. What acts have we taken to prevent that defect, again?

No, it wouldn't stick in that case unless we didn't realize a perceptual defect was at fault. Manslaughter requires negligence. We might punish it erroneously, of course.

Not sure I understand your notion of "right" and "wrong" then. You seem to be basing it on pure objectivity. A person with bad morals is objectively "wrong". Why isn't a person with bad vision objectively "wrong"?

Because there is nothing magical or special about human vision. We happen to see those things we happen to see. If our vision were constructed differently, we would see differently. There is nothing inherently wrong with not seeing infrared or with seeing infrared. It's just the particular objective aspects of light that we happen to be able to detect.

The aspects of light are the objective properties. The color names (red, blue, and so on) are labels we apply to some combinations of frequencies of light that happen to register a particular way. The mapping of light frequencies to color names comes largely from how we see light, not from how light actually is. It took a lot of science to separate the two things.

And I should point out that we then learned two very different things. First, we learned about light -- that it comes in different frequencies and that things generally reflect, emit, or absorb a mix of frequencies. And we learned about human vision -- that it is only sensitive to some frequency ranges of light and that it creates a sensation of color based on the mix of frequencies inside specific ranges. That is, we learned what light was objectively, what it was subjectively, and how those two related. And with that information, we learned better way to measure color.

We don't yet know that for morality. But there is no reason science can't tell us.

Or are you saying morality isn't actually about "right" and "wrong"? That there is instead a blind, objective morality existing outside of human beings? (scratch an answer if this is your answer, as Sophronius has already gone great guns on this.)

I am saying that people's moral judgments are based on objective properties of the things evaluated, and that once science figures out what this is, our understanding of morality will change and we will better separate the actual properties of the things evaluated from how we evaluate.

People certainly do paint the moral world purely with their mind. I don't for a second belive moral assesments are objective. I comply with laws considering acts because I don't wish to be jailed. If that wasn't an issue and I had the capacity I'd be murdering many, many people, and believe it or not, for moral reasons.

Then why do people largely agree that torturing children for pleasure is wrong? Coincidence? Magic? It is an objective property of torturing children for pleasure that morally normal people will consider it wrong.

 

[Dragoonster]

I don't understand the argument. Honestly, I just flat out don't get it. We don't criminalize assessing killing infants as right either, we criminalize actually killing infants. We don't care whether you think it's wrong or right, we simply insist that you don't do it. Criminalization has nothing to do with whether people make accurate or inaccurate judgments but with whether people live by society's rules.

uh, why is killing infants wrong? Why is it more wrong than seeing red when the actual color is blue? We're certainly missing each other points now.

Because there is nothing magical or special about human vision. We happen to see those things we happen to see. If our vision were constructed differently, we would see differently. There is nothing inherently wrong with not seeing infrared or with seeing infrared. It's just the particular objective aspects of light that we happen to be able to detect.

Okay. I guess you just need to now show that a certain moral good/wrong Truth is an objective aspect of morality. Or something.

The aspects of light are the objective properties. The color names (red, blue, and so on) are labels we apply to some combinations of frequencies of light that happen to register a particular way. The mapping of light frequencies to color names comes largely from how we see light, not from how light actually is. It took a lot of science to separate the two things.

And it took no science to separate Moral Good from Moral Wrong. It only took Mr. Sam Harris and his utilitarianism, prefounded morality and his laughable attempt to somehow couch this in objective science.

And I should point out that we then learned two very different things. First, we learned about light -- that it comes in different frequencies and that things generally reflect, emit, or absorb a mix of frequencies. And we learned about human vision -- that it is only sensitive to some frequency ranges of light and that it creates a sensation of color based on the mix of frequencies inside specific ranges. That is, we learned what light was objectively, what it was subjectively, and how those two related. And with that information, we learned better way to measure color.

We don't yet know that for morality. But there is no reason science can't tell us.

Uh, wait. The claim at hand is "Science CAN Answer Moral Questions". Not "Science might, possibly, in the future, map moral questions from brainstates and combined with well-being calculi answer something".

Is there also no reason science can't tell us which woman I should love? Which TV show I should favor? Which flavor of ice cream I should buy? Hey, science, if you know these things, FFS tell me! Oh....you can't, "yet".

Then why do people largely agree that torturing children for pleasure is wrong? Coincidence? Magic? It is an objective property of torturing children for pleasure that morally normal people will consider it wrong.

For the reasons Sophronius gave. Essentially you're arguing that morality is "fine-tuned". It isn't just that morality came to exist from our particular species happening to exist and live (with our living helped by whatever morality we tended to abide); it's that something OUTSIDE of humans guided our morality. Evidence of this is as ephereal as evidence of God.

Why do people largely agree that Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior? Why do people largely agree that athiests are immoral and damned to Hell? Does just largely agreeing mean something is correct?

Argumentum ad populum.

 

[JoelKatz]

uh, why is killing infants wrong? Why is it more wrong than seeing red when the actual color is blue? We're certainly missing each other points now.

We don't know why killing infants is wrong yet. Just as at one time we didn't know why the sky was blue.

As for "seeing red when the actual color is blue" being "wrong", it depends on precisely what you mean, and I can't quite tell what it is you mean.

Okay. I guess you just need to now show that a certain moral good/wrong Truth is an objective aspect of morality. Or something.

I assume by "morality" above you mean "reality". And to the extent I understand what you're saying, there's no alternative. If I look at the sky under certain conditions and I see that it's blue, then it's an objective aspect of the sky that it is such that it looks blue to me. There simply is no alternative.

Uh, wait. The claim at hand is "Science CAN Answer Moral Questions". Not "Science might, possibly, in the future, map moral questions from brainstates and combined with well-being calculi answer something".

I'm not sure what you mean by mapping moral questions from brainstates, but I fear based on that that you've wholly misunderstood my point. You wouldn't try to measure the sky's color objectively by looking at the brainstates of a person looking at the sky, except perhaps as a first step in getting a better handle on how the brain measures color.

Is there also no reason science can't tell us which woman I should love? Which TV show I should favor? Which flavor of ice cream I should buy? Hey, science, if you know these things, FFS tell me! Oh....you can't, "yet".

I think for many of those things, the answer is yes. For example, taste preferences for ice cream flavors may be the result of objectively measurable properties of things like taste buds. But we don't really understand those things very well yet, so it's hard to know. We describe it in subjective terms "I like ice cream", but it may largely be our way of measuring objective things (the way certain compounds interact with the physical construction of our taste buds). "I like ice cream" may be in the same category as "I am six feet tall".

For the reasons Sophronius gave. Essentially you're arguing that morality is "fine-tuned". It isn't just that morality came to exist from our particular species happening to exist and live (with our living helped by whatever morality we tended to abide); it's that something OUTSIDE of humans guided our morality. Evidence of this is as ephereal as evidence of God.

I have no idea what you mean by "guided our morality". Do we need a god to guide our color vision? Or do we just see what's there?

Why do people largely agree that Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior? Why do people largely agree that athiests are immoral and damned to Hell? Does just largely agreeing mean something is correct?

Argumentum ad populum.

I already addressed this point, but in case you didn't see it, I'll repeat it. That many people agree on these things means that some objective facts explain that agreement. That thing *could* be the truth of the claim agreed on, but it needn't be. Argumentum ad populum occurs when you argue that the popularity of a belief suggests that this belief is *true*.

As an example, consider the popularity of Elvis. Does this provide evidence that Elvis is objectively "better" than other musicians (unless you circularly define 'better' as ability to gain popularity)? No. But it would be absurd to argue that this popularity doesn't help us determine and understand many objective facts about Elvis, his music, the times he lived in, and so on.

 

[Sophronius]

The same reason I 'presume' that color vision is measuring some attribute. There is no other way to explain the widespread agreement on the measurements.

There is. It's a common principle in science that if you can't imagine any other possible solution, it could be that it's just your imagination that's lacking.

We have shown that there are other, perfectly plausible explanations. In fact, these explanations are better because they have the same explanatory power but presume less (no unit being measured, so Occam's razor says we're right until evidence is presented otherwise). Thus it is up to you to show that your explanation, that of some unknown unit being measured, is superior somehow.

So far, you have given exactly two arguments, in various forms:
1: When we observe X, we are measuring some objective property. Therefore Y (morality) is measuring some objective property as well. (argument by false analogy)
2: There is common agreement on many subjects in morality, therefore something objective must be measured as I can't think of another explanation (argument by incredulity / Lack of imagination)

You should be able to recognize that neither of these arguments are very persuasive. Yet you keep repeating them in various forms as if you can't get why we don't accept them as valid.

We don't know why killing infants is wrong yet. Just as at one time we didn't know why the sky was blue.

And we don't know why ghosts exist yet. This is called "Argument To The Future" last time I checked. Killing infants is not "wrong" in any objective/measurable sense. You may not like it, but reality doesn't care.

I assume by "morality" above you mean "reality". And to the extent I understand what you're saying, there's no alternative. If I look at the sky under certain conditions and I see that it's blue, then it's an objective aspect of the sky that it is such that it looks blue to me. There simply is no alternative.

Yes there is. Our minds could "paint the world". That is to say, morality is our subjective interpretation of events, and does not necessarily reveal some hidden truth. Several people can look at the exact same action and come to completely different moral conclusions. This indicates that morality is subjective interpretation and judgement. You have been unable to address this option so far, preferring instead to express your incredulity that anyone could disagree with you.

 

[AlBell]

... morality is our subjective interpretation of events, and does not necessarily reveal some hidden truth. You have been unable to address this option so far, preferring instead to express your incredulity that anyone could disagree with you.

Well said.

The analogy to color perception is ridiculous.

 

[JoelKatz]

There is. It's a common principle in science that if you can't imagine any other possible solution, it could be that it's just your imagination that's lacking.

I agree. Whenever we're arguing about something we don't fully understand, there's a possibility of error.

We have shown that there are other, perfectly plausible explanations. In fact, these explanations are better because they have the same explanatory power but presume less (no unit being measured, so Occam's razor says we're right until evidence is presented otherwise). Thus it is up to you to show that your explanation, that of some unknown unit being measured, is superior somehow.

There is no other plausible explanation. I'm not sure what you're referring to. What is your explanation for people's general agreement that torturing children for pleasure is wrong other than that it's a property of torturing children for pleasure that human beings will generally agree that it's wrong?

So far, you have given exactly two arguments, in various forms:
1: When we observe X, we are measuring some objective property. Therefore Y (morality) is measuring some objective property as well. (argument by false analogy)

That is not my argument.

2: There is common agreement on many subjects in morality, therefore something objective must be measured as I can't think of another explanation (argument by incredulity / Lack of imagination)

That's a cartoon version of my argument. But every scientific conclusion will be of the form "I can't think of any other/better explanation for the evidence". So to the extent that's a refutation, it's a universal refutation of all scientific conclusions. You can always say "your explanation is wrong, there's a better one you can't think of".

You should be able to recognize that neither of these arguments are very persuasive. Yet you keep repeating them in various forms as if you can't get why we don't accept them as valid.

Feel free to refute them if you can.

And we don't know why ghosts exist yet. This is called "Argument To The Future" last time I checked. Killing infants is not "wrong" in any objective/measurable sense. You may not like it, but reality doesn't care.

You seem to be responding here to argument other than mine. For example, I never said killing infants was objectively wrong. (And I don't think it is. Again, "killing infants is wrong" is like "the sky is blue". Sure, sometimes, not other times. That doesn't make the sky's blueness subjective.)

Yes there is. Our minds could "paint the world". That is to say, morality is our subjective interpretation of events, and does not necessarily reveal some hidden truth. Several people can look at the exact same action and come to completely different moral conclusions. This indicates that morality is subjective interpretation and judgement. You have been unable to address this option so far, preferring instead to express your incredulity that anyone could disagree with you.

If our minds "paint the world" then how do you explain the agreement that torturing children for pleasure is wrong? Coincidence? Magic?

Our minds, of course, do pain the world in the sense that we have subjective sensations of color when we look at things. But there is no way to explain the consistency of color vision across people and the ability of people to perform useful tasks based on their color vision other than that they are measuring objective properties.

Look at, for example, ice cream preferences. What could be more subjective than that? Yet ice cream preferences are not random. There is a clear majority preference for vanilla ice cream. I defy you to come up with any conceivable explanation to explain this preference that doesn't involve objective properties of vanilla ice cream such as how much sugar it has, inherent properties that affect how it interacts with particular physical sensors that make up normal human taste and smell (properties it would have even if humans didn't exist), and so on.

The alternatives to objective properties that explain the agreements are coincidence and magic. Every scientific argument will be of the form that the conclusion argued for is the best one to explain the observations.

 

[Sophronius]

There is no other plausible explanation. I'm not sure what you're referring to. What is your explanation for people's general agreement that torturing children for pleasure is wrong other than that it's a property of torturing children for pleasure that human beings will generally agree that it's wrong?

I have already addressed this argument half a dozen times. Maybe seven is your lucky number, I don't know, but I don't see how it would be productive to do so again if you ignore it every time.

That is not my argument.

And yet, every time I ask you why you think morality is objective, you respond by pointing out that colour is objective, as if this answers the question.

That's a cartoon version of my argument. But every scientific conclusion will be of the form "I can't think of any other/better explanation for the evidence". So to the extent that's a refutation, it's a universal refutation of all scientific conclusions. You can always say "your explanation is wrong, there's a better one you can't think of".

No, that's what things like peer review are for. If nobody else can think of a better explanation, it is entirely valid. The issue here is that you fail to address the counter arguments that are subsequently put forth, saying only that you can't imagine how your explanation could be wrong.

Feel free to refute them if you can.

Pointing out that they are logical fallacies should have done the trick. Of course now you claim that I misunderstand your argument. So you'll have to point out how your "colour is objective" argument does prove that morality is objective. Until you do that, there is no point in trying to refute it.

You seem to be responding here to argument other than mine. For example, I never said killing infants was objectively wrong. (And I don't think it is. Again, "killing infants is wrong" is like "the sky is blue". Sure, sometimes, not other times. That doesn't make the sky's blueness subjective.)

You say that killing infants is wrong in the same way that the sky is blue. Anyone would take that to mean that killing infants is objectively wrong. You also said that science would figure out why killing children is wrong, not why we consider it wrong, but why it IS wrong. You also said that the morality of an action doesn't depend on what humans think of it. You further stated outright that morality is objective.

I don't see how you could possibly say then, that you never claimed that killing infants is objectively wrong, when this is so clearly implied by everything you have said up until this point.

I very strongly suspect that our disagreement is mainly due to your or mine inability to understand your position. However, every time up until know when I paraphrased your position, you said "yes, I am clearly saying that". You make statements like "morality is the property of an act rather than of human judgement" or "morality is measuring an objective value, we just don't know what yet" yet proceed to act as if you have made no extraordinary claims, as if you are only stating the obvious. I find it all very confusing, yet however charitably I try to interpret you, no matter how many times I ask for clarification, what you say still doesn't make sense to me.

Edit: Anyway, "killing infants is wrong" is a normative statement, while "the sky is blue" is a descriptive statement. One is a value judgement, the other a description of how something is perceived. Your attempt to equivocate two fundamentally different statements makes no sense. But then, that is basically what our whole argument is about, as I understand it. You insist that normative statements are the same as descriptive statements. I don't understand why anyone would consider that a sensible position, so I expect that you'll say I misunderstand. But I don't see how.

If our minds "paint the world" then how do you explain the agreement that torturing children for pleasure is wrong? Coincidence? Magic?

This'll help. I mean, it's not as if we have gone over this 7 times already.

I am going to stop replying to this every time you bring this up until you make an attempt to understand and reply to the responses I have given so far.

Look at, for example, ice cream preferences. What could be more subjective than that? Yet ice cream preferences are not random. There is a clear majority preference for vanilla ice cream. I defy you to come up with any conceivable explanation to explain this preference that doesn't involve objective properties of vanilla ice cream such as how much sugar it has, inherent properties that affect how it interacts with particular physical sensors that make up normal human taste and smell (properties it would have even if humans didn't exist), and so on.

Ok, this is basically the same argument again in a new coat, but fine, let's call it the ninth time.

Yes, the properties of ice cream determine (in part) the preferences that people have for various flavours. Nobody has ever denied this and there is 0 point in bringing it up. The reason that the argument doesn't work is because, as you just admitted yourself, the preferences are still subjective. The preferences are not, as you insist in the case of morality, a purely objective property of the ice cream itself. There is not a single, objective value that ice cream preferences are supposed to measure. The preference for vanilla ice cream is not the "correct" one, no matter how many people prefer it. Science will never determine that vanilla "should" be desired, or that people who prefer peanut butter flavoured ice cream are "wrong" to do so.

I sincerely hope that this is the last time that you claim that I am arguing that moral agreement is due to coincidence or magic.

The alternatives to objective properties that explain the agreements are coincidence and magic.

Yea, that.

So, just a question. If morality is purely the property of the acts themselves, how come people can disagree on the morality of a single action?

 

[JoelKatz]

So, just a question. If morality is purely the property of the acts themselves, how come people can disagree on the morality of a single action?

The same reason people disagree over whether the sky is blue. The sky is not always in fact blue, it can have clouds, it's not blue at night, and so on. Not everyone has normal color vision. And some people just like to be jerks and lie to make a point, since there's no way to refute their claims (there is now, with color). This doesn't change the fact that "the sky is blue" is a description of objective facts about the nature of the sky.

At some point, if a person says "I don't see anything wrong with torturing children for pleasure", we will be able to explain why he's 'wrong' the same way we can explain to someone who denies that the sky and grass are different colors is 'wrong'. We'll be able to explain how human moral perception works, how objective properties of the acts evaluated interact with the construction of a normal human to create an resulting conclusion that measures these objective properties. (But we know, quite obviously, that he's wrong. We just don't know precisely how and why. Just as anyone who insisted the sky and grass were 'really' inherently the same color is obviously wrong, even if we don't understand color.)

We will also have a better understanding of what we can use those measurements for. Just as understanding color vision allowed us to realize that color gave us some information about temperature. Just as understanding color vision allowed us to measure physical properties as useful as color and analogous to it that human vision doesn't perceive. We'll better be able to separate what is objective and what comes from the nature of how we perceive. And so on.

 

[Sophronius]

The same reason people disagree over whether the sky is blue. The sky is not always in fact blue, it can have clouds, it's not blue at night, and so on. Not everyone has normal color vision. And some people just like to be jerks and lie to make a point, since there's no way to refute their claims (there is now, with color). This doesn't change the fact that "the sky is blue" is a description of objective facts about the nature of the sky.

No, I am talking about one and the same act, the exact same situation. So no "the sky is not blue at night". In this case, the underlying reality is identical. So how come people will consistently disagree on the morality of just about any one specific thing?

And no, don't go picking the torture children example with the specific purpose of minimising the disagreement and acting as if that shows that morality is objective. There is always disagreement, the exact amount just varies. But if morality is solely dependent on the act itself, if it is simply a case of some hidden criteria being measured, then how can people disagree on the morality of a single act?

The answer is, of course, simple. It is because people have different "measurement sticks". There is not a specific attribute that is being measured. Just subjective interpretations by people who often value completely different things.