Does morality exist?

[Syntax]

I’d drop the “simply” - I think there’s probably something more substantive going on, something St. Anselm, for instance, noticed, but to avoid further confusion (including my own, perhaps) I’ll leave it at that.

cool.

I think a better conversion of Voltaire’s claim would be:

“If we had no need to invent God, then this could only be because of God’s really already existing.”

I think this removes the sting of absurdity and should give the reflective atheist something to think about (if he at all understood in the first place what Voltaire was talking about).

Ok, I’m chuckling because I don’t like defending what the atheist actually believes, but it is charitable to be just to his position. He would simply claim that the way you re-phrased the converse of Voltaire’s conditional is begging the question of God’s existence.

I had said,

“If we don’t need to invent God, then God exists.”

This is a material conditional that says, if there’s no need to invent God, then God exists.

But you just rephrased Voltaire’s position as an argument, not as a material conditional. You said,

“If we had no need to invent God, then this could only be because of God’s really already existing.”

It is perfectly permissible for an atheist to deny this conditional is true because it begs the question. The “because” in your consequent is acting as an inference in the following argument:

God exists
Therefore, there is *no need *to invent God.

The conclusion is obviously true, assuming that the premise is true–but so what? We still need support for the premise.

So putting this argument back into the above conditional we would derive the logically equivalent statement:

“If we have no need to invent God, then we have no need to invent God because God already, in fact, exists.”

But then you get into an infinite regress on whether or not the orignal conditional holds for the atheist and whether or not God really does exist.

Therefore, we cannot claim “If we had no need to invent God, then God exists” is a true conditional that should hold for the atheist. So we are back at square-one in deciding whether or not Dostoevsky’s following conditional should hold true for the atheist all.

If God does not exist, then everything would be permitted.

The atheist says the consequent can be false even though the antecedent is true. Believe me, I think this conditional is true, but we need other arguments to support it before we can require the atheist believe it since, even though it is intuitively obvious to us, it is not intuitively obvious to him. So our argument on behalf of the truth of the conditional would have something to do with the need for Divine Sanctions to guarantee that moral laws are, in fact, binding on all individuals. So the move will pull us right into the Divine Command Theory of Ethics which should be ok for us.

 

[AntiTheist]

Betterave,

I normally ignore your posts since I find your writing confusing and difficult to decipher; usually, I can’t be bothered to put in the effort to figure out what you’re saying. But since you’ve written a particularly coherent post, I will happily respond to it.

Nice show of humility, Anti! I think that makes a lot of us feel good, so if you value making others feel good, you too now have something to feel good about! (Is that how it works?)

Yeah, that’s how it works, but I’m pretty much indifferent to making random internet strangers feel good.

Therefore,
either {beautiful (not=) pleasing to x} (Syntax’s conclusion)
or {beautiful is not a real property, since real things are identical with themselves} (Anti’s conclusion)

I…suppose I would agree with the sentiment of the second conclusion, but I wasn’t forming a syllogism. I was explaining how I defined the terms. I don’t use “beautiful” to refer to a “real property,” but to the expression of an individual’s values. Thus, I consider every instance of the word “beautiful” to refer to something different.

If this is right (I think it is), you’re not caught in an outright contradiction; you’re just making wildly unintuitive and groundless claims.

Well, Syntax was claiming that my position was one of contradiction and that therefore there is more reason to be a moral realist. If you are agreeing that my position does not contain a contradiction, then he doesn’t have a basis for claiming that there’s more reason to be a moral realist. That leaves us right back where we started from: nothing to suggest that there is morality outside of individuals’ value judgments.

I already tried to address this unicorn nonsense. Why do you ignore that fact?

As I said, I typically skip right over your posts. Since you’re being particularly coherent today, feel free to repeat your objection, and I’ll address it later.

The point I’m making with the unicorn syllogism is that just because two people can conceive of something doesn’t mean that the “something” they conceive has existence outside of their heads. You need more than just “a whole bunch of people have moral ideas in their heads” to claim that morality is something that exists outside of people’s heads.

did you really just post that?

Yeah, I did. I don’t agree that there’s something horribly “wrong” with the world or with people, nor do I think the world needs “fixing.” People just go about their business, the same as they ever did.

I’ll be back much later tonight to address anything that comes up.

 

[Betterave]

Yeah, that’s how it works, but I’m pretty much indifferent to making random internet strangers feel good.

I’m not sure why, but that strikes me as hilarious!

 

[Betterave]

I normally ignore your posts since I find your writing confusing and difficult to decipher; usually, I can’t be bothered to put in the effort to figure out what you’re saying. But since you’ve written a particularly coherent post, I will happily respond to it.

And to think that some people accuse subjectivists of being lazy! Syntax made this point originally, so maybe you read it? Anyway, I’m the one who first specifically pointed out that *you *seemed to be lazy - thanks for confirming that!

(Are you convinced yet Ender? - too funny!)

 

[Syntax]

Betterave,
I…suppose I would agree with the sentiment of the second conclusion, but I wasn’t forming a syllogism. I was explaining how I defined the terms. I don’t use “beautiful” to refer to a “real property,” but to the expression of an individual’s values. Thus, I consider every instance of the word “beautiful” to refer to something different.

Well, Syntax was claiming that my position was one of contradiction and that therefore there is more reason to be a moral realist. If you are agreeing that my position does not contain a contradiction, then he doesn’t have a basis for claiming that there’s more reason to be a moral realist. That leaves us right back where we started from: nothing to suggest that there is morality outside of individuals’ value judgments…

The contradiction does give us more reason to moral realists independent of any reference to the existence of properties.

Betterave, linguistically, it is a contradiction. He’s defining “beautiful” as what is pleasing to X, even though he says he’s not (what do think the copula “is” means, Anti? “Is” is a statement of identity. I also highlighted above your admissal that your task is primarily a linguistic enterprise that depends on a definition of terms.)

But if Anti makes that move, all communication is impossible since there would be infinite meanings of “beautiful”–which is absurd, linguistically speaking, because we have sufficient empirical counter-evidence that there are agreements on the definition. Notice, Anti is not saying the definition of beautiful is what is pleasing to A and B, but rather the definition of beautiful is simply the phenomena of pleasing to A and pleasing to B. Here’s how it works.

A’s undergoing being pleased is not the numerically identical experience of B’s undergoing being pleased since they are two numerically different token experiences of different people. So if “beautiful” just IS A undergoing the experience of being pleased and “beautiful” just IS B undergoing the experience of being pleased, and since A’s experience is not token identical to B’s experience, therefore, beautiful (not =) beautiful.

necessarily, then, since pleasing to A (not =) pleasing to B, because A’s being pleased is not identical to B’s being pleased, then beautiful (not =) beautiful,** even if ** A and B both find the same thing pleasing.

So Anti is caught in a dilemma. If there do exist shared meanings, then these shared meaning-concepts are both independent of what A and B find pleasing, and independent of their being pleased. If there are not shared meanings, then communication is impossible.

If he takes the latter route, then he is left **without an explanation **for why two different people find the same thing pleasing. If he takes the former route, then we know that the concept of the beautiful is **mind-independent **and object-independent.

 

[Syntax]

The equations that you’ve written are correct. “Beautiful” as used by person A and “beautiful” as used by person B do not refer to the same thing. The first “beautiful” refers to person A’s feeling that the object is pleasing to his senes, and the second “beautiful” refers to person B’s feelings that the object is pleasing to his senses.

Again, I fail to see where the “contradiction” is.

“Beauty” is not a quality possessed by the object, but a term attributed to an object by a person depending upon the degree of his senses **being pleased **by the object. Clearly, different people are going to call different things “beautiful,” and some people are going to assign the term to an object X, while others are not going to assign that term to object X. .

No matter which way you cut it, Anti, your reductionism will end up in contradition whether you are talking about the object of someone’s experience or their experiences themselves. See post #219 that references the bold-faced piece above I took the liberty to highlight.

 

[Prodigal_Son]

Are the italics on the word “actually” supposed to convince me that you’re designating a real distinction here? If so, it didn’t work.

A war general, believing that the enemy is recovering from the previous battle, advances. In fact, the enemy is waiting to ambush him. He has something he calls a “reason” to advance, but he truly has *reason *to stay put.

But prudential ethics are not ipso facto (qua prudential, as Betterave would say ), more or less objective than divine command ethical theories, surely?

Actually, I think Christian ethics are prudential. If someone tells me about an ethic that isn’t prudential, then I fail to understand why I should conform to it (unless it happens to concur with what I think is best, anyway).

What are “epistemic reasons” - a species of practical (action-guiding) syllogisms? For example…?

“If I know more about the functioning of the human body, then I will be able to do my job better” is what I had in mind, although I agree that it isn’t really an “epistemic” reason.

Rather they have no answer to the question: If I’m not a virtuous person, for whom moral reasons matter, why be moral? But no one has a compelling answer to that question. (Certainly not realists who can conceive of Lucifer’s revolt against God as a moral possibility - note that there is no assumption here about the real existence of God.)

If happiness is your goal, then Aristotle, Aquinas, Pascal, et al. have a perfectly compelling answer to the question. You have to buy their metaphysics first, of course, and this is precisely the point I’m trying to make. If you don’t buy into some metaphysical claims about ultimate happiness, the truth of moral claims need not bother you.

And yet, even the atheist has a feeling that he ought to be decent, of course, and I think it is honorable for them to conform to it. But I’m not sure it fits with their premises.

 

[Syntax]

A-moral reasoning for the practice of moral tolerance:

Don’t ever hurt my feelings because what may be true for you may not be true for me. Since everything is relative anyway, you should be tolerant of my mistakes because there’s no such thing as moral error. So even though there’s nothing actually wrong about my hurting your own feelings you shouldn’t be hurting mine because I don’t like it.

 

[Betterave]

Ok, I’m chuckling because I don’t like defending what the atheist actually believes, but it is charitable to be just to his position. He would simply claim that the way you re-phrased the converse of Voltaire’s conditional is begging the question of God’s existence.

I had said,

“If we don’t need to invent God, then God exists.”

This is a material conditional that says, if there’s no need to invent God, then God exists.

But you just rephrased Voltaire’s position as an argument, not as a material conditional. ****** You said,

“If we had no need to invent God, then this could only be because of God’s really already existing.”

It is perfectly permissible for an atheist to deny this conditional is true because it begs the question. The “because” in your consequent is acting as an inference in the following argument:

God exists
Therefore, there is *no need *to invent God.

The conclusion is obviously true, assuming that the premise is true–but so what? We still need support for the premise.

So putting this argument back into the above conditional we would derive the logically equivalent statement:

“If we have no need to invent God, then we have no need to invent God because God already, in fact, exists.”

But then you get into an infinite regress on whether or not the orignal conditional holds for the atheist and whether or not God really does exist.

Therefore, we cannot claim “If we had no need to invent God, then God exists” is a true conditional that should hold for the atheist. [Doesn’t that depend on what kind of an anthropologist the atheist is?] So we are back at square-one in deciding whether or not Dostoevsky’s following conditional should hold true for the atheist all.

If God does not exist, then everything would be permitted.

The atheist says the consequent can be false even though the antecedent is true. Believe me, I think this conditional is true, but we need other arguments to support it before we can require the atheist believe it since, even though it is intuitively obvious to us, it is not intuitively obvious to him. So our argument on behalf of the truth of the conditional would have something to do with the need for Divine Sanctions to guarantee that moral laws are, in fact, binding on all individuals. So the move will pull us right into the Divine Command Theory of Ethics which should be ok for us.

OK, I think I follow. Try this: Voltaire says,

Si Dieu n’existait pas, il faudrait l’inventer.
“If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.”

What does Voltaire mean?:

1. “no real God exists” is a sufficient condition, given human nature, for “it is necessary to invent the existence of God”
2. “if God does not exist, nonetheless humans have a real psychological need for God which will inevitably be filled by inventing Him”
3. “it is not necessary to invent God (although man has a real psychological need for God, which can only be met by inventing God or by God’s really existing)” is a sufficient condition for “God exists”
4. “If we have no need to invent God, then this could only be because of God’s really already existing”

What will the atheist have to say? This isn’t absurd, is it?

 

[Betterave]

Heady stuff!

Betterave, linguistically, it is a contradiction. He’s defining “beautiful” as what is pleasing to X, even though he says he’s not (what do think the copula “is” means, Anti? “Is” is a statement of identity. I also highlighted above your admissal that your task is primarily a linguistic enterprise that depends on a definition of terms.)

But if Anti makes that move, all communication is impossible since there would be infinite meanings of “beautiful”–which is absurd, linguistically speaking, because we have sufficient empirical counter-evidence that there are agreements on the definition.

…but these empirical agreements are only partial and they seem not to be grounded in a mathematical-theoretical framework; so this (partial) agreement is regarded as a matter of brute fact that is insufficient grounds for establishing an essential definition.

Notice, Anti is not saying the definition of beautiful is what is pleasing to A and B, but rather the definition of beautiful is simply the phenomena of pleasing to A and pleasing to B.

Hmmm… Well I interpret him to mean that “pleasing to x” is a fundamental element of reality that is in each case a token, and that there is no essential type which each token instantiates. There are only sets of pleasing-feelings that are designated by common names such as beautiful, but their being so denominated is basic, there is no good reason to postulate anything real grounding their being called by that name. Therefore,

beautiful = the set of all pleasing-to-x’s denominated by ‘beautiful’

This definition is sufficient for making ‘T is beautiful’ true just in case T is beautiful, i.e., just in case T belongs to the set mentioned above.

A’s undergoing being pleased is not the numerically identical experience of B’s undergoing being pleased since they are two numerically different token experiences of different people. So if “beautiful” just IS A undergoing the experience of being pleased and “beautiful” just IS B undergoing the experience of being pleased, and since A’s experience is not token identical to B’s experience, therefore, beautiful (not =) beautiful.

necessarily, then, since pleasing to A (not =) pleasing to B, because A’s being pleased is not identical to B’s being pleased, then beautiful (not =) beautiful,** even if ** A and B both find the same thing pleasing.

So Anti is caught in a dilemma. If there do exist shared meanings, then these shared meaning-concepts are both independent of what A and B find pleasing, and independent of their being pleased. If there are not shared meanings, then communication is impossible.

Doesn’t Anti want to claim just this: that (genuine) communication is impossible in such matters?

If he takes the latter route, then he is left **without an explanation **for why two different people find the same thing pleasing.

I thought he didn’t want an explanation, he wanted to take this as a brute contingent fact which could well be different, and which therefore carries no intrinsic value.

 

[Syntax]

OK, I think I follow. Try this: Voltaire says,

Si Dieu n’existait pas, il faudrait l’inventer.
“If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.”

What does Voltaire mean?:

1. “no real God exists” is a sufficient condition, given human nature, for “it is necessary to invent the existence of God”
2. “if God does not exist, nonetheless humans have a real psychological need for God which will inevitably be filled by inventing Him”
3. “it is not necessary to invent God (although man has a real psychological need for God, which can only be met by inventing God or by God’s really existing)” is a sufficient condition for “God exists”
4. “If we have no need to invent God, then this could only be because of God’s really already existing”

What will the atheist have to say? This isn’t absurd, is it?

3 is confusing. 4 is a restatement of the previous post. But I like 1 and 2. Not absurd to me. I know atheists though: they will either deny there is a universal psychological need for God (citing themselves as exceptions to the rule, haha! [your anthropological remark would apply here]), or admit there was a desire but that it didn’t suggest anything because the desire for something doesn’t entail the existence of what is desired.

Ok, back to the OP. I don’t care for defending atheists. I shouldn’t be doing it anyway.

 

[Betterave]

I think you’re confusing my usage of the term “reason”. By reason, I do NOT mean “stated motivation” nor “implicit motivation”. Rather, I mean “something that actually counts in favor of an action.”

A war general, believing that the enemy is recovering from the previous battle, advances. In fact, the enemy is waiting to ambush him. He has something he calls a “reason” to advance, but he truly has *reason *to stay put.

Hmm… There truly is reason for him to stay put, but he doesn’t have that reason. No reason actually counts in favor of performing an action unless it is a reason available to the relevant agent.

Actually, I think Christian ethics are prudential. If someone tells me about an ethic that isn’t prudential, then I fail to understand why I should conform to it (unless it happens to concur with what I think is best, anyway).

I’ll agree and add that being ‘prudential’ (in some sense!) is in general a necessary condition for being an ethic.

“If I know more about the functioning of the human body, then I will be able to do my job better” is what I had in mind, although I agree that it isn’t really an “epistemic” reason.

I’m not sure where you’re going with this…

If happiness is your goal, then Aristotle, Aquinas, Pascal, et al. have a perfectly compelling answer to the question. You have to buy their metaphysics first, of course, and this is precisely the point I’m trying to make. If you don’t buy into some metaphysical claims about ultimate happiness, the truth of moral claims need not bother you.

But no reason is perfectly compelling to a free agent! That’s the point of pointing to Lucifer. As it is, the notion of original sin - for which there is abundant empirical confirmation (I’m sure none of us need go beyond introspection for this) - implies that there is often a large gap between our motives and our reasons, what moves us and what we understand ought to move us. Mortimer Adler said something to the effect that he understood Aristotelian/Thomistic(?) metaphysics and ethics perfectly well, and had no rational objections to them, but there was still a long period of his life where these reasons simply didn’t move him.

 

[Syntax]

…but these empirical agreements are only partial and they seem not to be grounded in a mathematical-theoretical framework; so this (partial) agreement is regarded as a matter of brute fact that is insufficient grounds for establishing an essential definition…

But even if we had a partial definition, this is enough for a realist to begin making his point.

Hmmm… Well I interpret him to mean that “pleasing to x” is a fundamental element of reality that is in each case a token, and that there is no essential type which each token instantiates. There are only sets of pleasing-feelings that are designated by common names such as beautiful, but their being so denominated is basic, there is no good reason to postulate anything real grounding their being called by that name. Therefore,

beautiful = the set of all pleasing-to-x’s denominated by ‘beautiful’

This definition is sufficient for making ‘T is beautiful’ true just in case T is beautiful, i.e., just in case T belongs to the set mentioned above…

You are having “T” stand for the *object *of experience, which is ok, that’s how I initially interpreted Anti. But Anti has already denied several times that he was talking about the object (or the what) of experience, but rather the brute fact of my being-pleased (which is a token without a type).

Here is precisely the problem: we won’t even have a set of “all pleasing-to-x’s” without first having specified a type in virtue of which A’s and B’s experiences fall into that set as members. For even if A and B both found Da Vinci’s “Last Supper” pleasing, we still have no criteria to determine whether A’s experience of being-pleased is identical **in type **to B’s being-pleased. The existence of a type, I would think, is precisely what is under question here. For how would we know which set of natural numbers to include in a set unless we first specified a type like “all even numbers” or “all prime numbers”? The same goes for pleasurable mental states (I would think). First-person “beauty-experiences” first has to be defined with respect to A and B somehow, however imperfect or preliminary the working definition is, if we are going to make sense of whether two token experiences are of the same kind.

The fact that they are brute *fact-tokens *without having specified a type is what puts us in a various precarious skeptical position with regard to whether A’s experience and B’s experiece are members of a set to begin with.

Doesn’t Anti want to claim just this: that (genuine) communication is impossible in such matters? I thought he didn’t want an explanation, he wanted to take this as a brute contingent fact which could well be different, and which therefore carries no intrinsic value.

That sounds right, but it is deeply problematic. His reductionist approach has consequences for *all *aspects of language. Just think about how obviously counterintuitive this result is. Surely, we think we are communicating with eachother when I say “pass the mustard, please” and “bachelors are unmarried men.” He doesn’t really think that we aren’t communicating with each other when we say these things, does he? That’s just as bad as Hume claiming his senses can’t be trusted but then going about the world acting as if they could be so trusted.

This is precisely why meanings “can’t exist only in the head,” because when you privatize all meanings like this, meaning is no longer a public element we can discuss.

 

[Syntax]

Here’s another reason for believing realism over anti-realism, namely, for the real existence of concepts (not properties) that are mind-independent abstract entities. This is just a working argument but it goes something like this:

It starts with a question that hits home for noncognitive anti-realism that claims to reduce a concept type to the set of individuals who are members of that set:

If a concept can be shared among many individuals, does this concept exist over and above each individual’s conception of it, or is it identical to the **set **of each individuals’ conception of it so that its existence is dependent on each individual? Take the concept of beautiful. Is it the conjunction of (1) or the denial of this conjunction (2)?

(1) beauitful=(A’s conception and B’s conception and C’s conception).

(2) beautiful (not =) (A’s conception and B’s conception and C’s conception)

Therefore,

(a) If (1), then when A dies the concept ceases to exist, and B and C no longer have it.
(b) If (2), then when A dies the concept continues to exist, and B and C still have it.

But (a) is absurd.
Therefore, (b).
Therefore, (2) is true and (1) is false
So concepts exist over and above the mind’s conception of them.

 

[AntiTheist]

It’s possible that it’s partially because of the late hour, but I’m having a difficult time following what the hell you two are talking about right now. From what I can gather, Betterave is doing a decent job defending my position. A few thoughts:

For even if A and B both found Da Vinci’s “Last Supper” pleasing, we still have no criteria to determine whether A’s experience of being-pleased is identical **in type **to B’s being-pleased.

Sure, but so what? A and B might be pleased by it for completely different reasons of their physiological and psychological makeup; or there might be similar reasons. It’s difficult or maybe impossible to know whether an individual’s feelings are “identical” to someone else’s. But we don’t need to know whether our feelings are identical to someone else’s to say, “I find that pleasing to me.”

And given the fact that most humans are physiologically similar, it shouldn’t be surprising that large numbers of them will find similar phenomena pleasing. Whether the feelings that each of them label as pleasure are “identical” or similar or very different may be impossible to say.

Two people looking at “The Last Supper”:
Person A: “That’s beautiful.”
Person B: “Yeah, that’s beautiful, but look out the window at that sunset – so much more beautiful!”
Person A: “What? You’re crazy!”

Translation:
Person A: “That pleases my senses.”
Person B: “That pleases my senses, but the sunset out the window pleases my senses even more.”
Person A: “What? Your senses aren’t judging the way my senses are, which I presume is correct for everybody” [when it’s translated like this, the flaws of this statement are obvious]

There’s…no contradiction here that I can detect. Am I the only person having trouble grasping where the “contradiction” is? You’re going to really have to take your time and slowly explain it because I’m afraid what you’re saying isn’t making a whole lot of sense.

His reductionist approach has consequences for *all *aspects of language. Just think about how obviously counterintuitive this result is. Surely, we think we are communicating with eachother when I say “pass the mustard, please” and “bachelors are unmarried men.”

I mean, we communicate when we speak to the extent that we make known to others the contents of our minds. “I find that pleasing” and “I want you to pass that mustard” are both expressions of inner states to others. The fact that we can’t determine whether your wanting of the mustard is similar to my wanting of the mustard doesn’t change that. We might be labeling very different feelings or very different degrees of similar feelings with the same word. That’s the limitation of words, which is where all the “ineffable” stuff comes from that you always hear the religious babbling about. Experience is “ineffable” in the sense that language is almost always insufficient to perfectly convey one person’s experience to another.

I don’t see the relevance of constantly saying that my position is “unintuitive,” as if that carries some kind of weight. It’s unintuitive to think of the earth as going around the sun, but that’s not an argument against it. It’s unintuitive to think of gravity as curving spacetime, but that’s not an argument against it.

I may not have a chance to get back to the internet until the end of the weekend, so hopefully you’ll be able to explain yourself sensibly before then.

 

[AntiTheist]

A-moral reasoning for the practice of moral tolerance:

Don’t ever hurt my feelings because what may be true for you may not be true for me. Since everything is relative anyway, you should be tolerant of my mistakes because there’s no such thing as moral error. So even though there’s nothing actually wrong about my hurting your own feelings you shouldn’t be hurting mine because I don’t like it.

For the record, I don’t think there’s anything at all “wrong” with people hurting each other’s feelings. I think that most people feel that people who go around being mean to others are rude, and I – like most people I know – wouldn’t associate myself with someone with a personality like that.

However, if a person is inclined to be rude and doesn’t mind being isolated from most others, then he’s perfectly “permitted” to be rude (here, “permitted” means “he has the ability to do so,” which is a statement of the obvious).

At any rate, of all the things you could do to someone, hurting their feelings is a pretty mild kind of harm. I would advise those who run around complaining of “hurt feelings” to grow some thicker skin, and to grow up while they’re at it.

 

[James_S_Saint]

At any rate, of all the things you could do to someone, hurting their feelings is a pretty mild kind of harm. I would advise those who run around complaining of “hurt feelings” to grow some thicker skin, and to grow up while they’re at it.

Offense that is not taken, cannot be given. It is a greater offense to *Be *offended than to offend.

 

[Syntax]

Sure, but so what? A and B might be pleased by it for completely different reasons of their physiological and psychological makeup; or there might be similar reasons. It’s difficult or maybe impossible to know whether an individual’s feelings are “identical” to someone else’s. But we don’t need to know whether our feelings are identical to someone else’s to say, “I find that pleasing to me.”

I mean, we communicate when we speak to the extent that we make known to others the contents of our minds. “I find that pleasing” and “I want you to pass that mustard” are both expressions of inner states to others. The fact that we can’t determine whether your wanting of the mustard is similar to my wanting of the mustard doesn’t change that. We might be labeling very different feelings or very different degrees of similar feelings with the same word. That’s the limitation of words, which is where all the “ineffable” stuff comes from that you always hear the religious babbling about. Experience is “ineffable” in the sense that language is almost always insufficient to perfectly convey one person’s experience to another.

We got passed the contradiction point. That was your own blunder, not mine. You were explicitly claiming to define “beauty,” for instance, as “being pleasing to x.”

Your problem now, as I said in post #219, is this:

The way you privatize meaning makes communication impossible, unless you want to grant my thesis that some meanings can be shared–and that’s all I need to make my point against your reductions. So are there any meanings that can be shared or not? What do you think? If there are shared meanings between people, then when two different token utterances of “pass the mustard” are made by two different people, there is a common meaning. But this entails meaning is independent of people’s conceptions of them and independent of the objects they are talking about. Like I said in my previous post #219, this is precisely why meanings “can’t exist only in the head,” because when you completely privatize *all *meanings like this, meaning is no longer a public element we can discuss and you, Anti, will be left without an explanation for our success in communication. Why is this not obvious with your persistent reductions? Are you just biting the bullet on this one that there are NO meanings that are shared in our linguistic discourses?

 

[AntiTheist]

So Anti is caught in a dilemma. If there do exist shared meanings, then these shared meaning-concepts are both independent of what A and B find pleasing, and independent of their being pleased. If there are not shared meanings, then communication is impossible.

If he takes the latter route, then he is left **without an explanation **for why two different people find the same thing pleasing. If he takes the former route, then we know that the concept of the beautiful is **mind-independent **and object-independent.

I guess I’m not following because there is a shared meaning of the word “beautiful” – that meaning is “that which I find pleasing.”

The word can refer to my feeling that a sunset is pleasing and to some kid’s feeling that death metal is pleasing. “Beautiful” is just a label for those feelings.

It’s obviously true that one person can have a pleasing feeling about something and another person can have a not-pleasing feeling about the same thing. You’re confusing the map for the territory and spinning yourself in circles doing it.

If a concept can be shared among many individuals, does this concept exist over and above each individual’s conception of it, or is it identical to the set of each individuals’ conception of it so that its existence is dependent on each individual?

I don’t agree that concepts can be perfectly “shared” between minds, as I’ve indicated.

More to come after the weekend…

 

[Syntax]

For the record, I don’t think there’s anything at all “wrong” with people hurting each other’s feelings. I think that most people feel that people who go around being mean to others are rude, and I – like most people I know – wouldn’t associate myself with someone with a personality like that.
However, if a person is inclined to be rude and doesn’t mind being isolated from most others, then he’s perfectly “permitted” to be rude (here, “permitted” means “he has the ability to do so,” which is a statement of the obvious).
At any rate, of all the things you could do to someone, hurting their feelings is a pretty mild kind of harm. I would advise those who run around complaining of “hurt feelings” to grow some thicker skin, and to grow up while they’re at it.

Funny that you understood my post as addressed to you. I was only poking fun at absurdities I hear from others.