Which book?

i still am.

but surely you agree that two different people who are equally sane/sentient can draw opposite conclusions about the truth of a moral statement and both believe they are equally justified.

maybe a more trivial gray area example illustrates this better-

'it is wrong to cheat on your taxes in the amount of X dollars in order to donate the money to cause Y.'

earlier you implied statements such as this for any particular (X,Y) are objectively either true or false regardless of our opinions, even though obviously for many (X,Y) you will find a an equal number of people who genuinely believe it is the right thing to do as genuinely believe it is immoral.

now you're saying the statement -

'it is wrong (or right) to cheat on your taxes to fund a particular cause IF YOU GENUINELY BELIEVE it is'

can be objectively true or false - a statement that is part of the same mind independent code as the former statement.

isn't it obvious that the truth of any statement that includes an 'if you genuinely believe' clause necessarily supercedes the truth of the same statement without it? how can a statement that doesn't include that clause be objectively true if it can be superceded?

if statements with such clauses are included in the code, why doesn't the whole code essentually reduce to 'you should behave in the manner you genuinely believe is moral', since that necessarily supercedes everything else?

how we feel about behavior can change as we learn what behavior does or doesn't support our preferences (value = just a particularly strong preference). i doubt modern humans would have such a strong tendency towards emphathy if it didn't involve any form of utility.

lost me. are you asking if i view your belief in objective morality as a preference?

because by treating prescriptive statements this way what you're saying reduces to 'it's objectively true that morality is subjective'.

A Concise Introduction to Logic

The one drawback is he doesn't get into modality, so maybe others know of a more comprehensive introductory book that covers that aspect.

Or perhaps someone could outline a modern curriculum in logic?

Well it's up to you, I guess. Nonetheless, if I'm arguing with someone and provide some paraphrase of their position which they declare to be incorrect, I'm far more likely that I've misunderstood their position than that they are lying, insane or stupid. Out of curiousity, which do you think applies to me? (Dont I have to be dishonest, irrational or dumb if your statement is a correct formulation of my position?)

Let me reverse the order of your comments in replying to the next bit. I dont think I've mentioned it in this thread, but something I also believe is that the practical differences between moral objectivists and moral subjectivists are negligible. I think that, even if morality is objective, we are forced by the nature of reality to follow a subjective code. That is, even if there is an actual, true and complete moral code, the best we're ever going to be able to do is to follow our interpretation of that code. I draw a distinction between the fact of the matter and our opinions on the facts of the matter. This is essentially touching on the epistemological problem we've skated past and which you said you werent interested in currently addressing. Nonetheless, I think it is the salient point in addressing this:
Since I think you are essentially drawing attention to the same fact of our necessary ignorance or uncertainty. Namely, this objection seems to rest on assuming that, because I believe an objective moral code exists, I therefore believe that we can follow it. Essentially, you are focussing on the practical effects and, as I said earlier, I dont think the metaphysical status of morality has much practical consequence at all. My position is that, even though such a code is 'out there' we are inevitably faced with some uncertainty - we dont have direct access to it and are forced to act based on our own subjective code.

Thus, although it would be desirable to 'overrule' "what seems right to us" if we were somehow able to know when we were making an error - the fact is, we cant do this. We are forced to follow a subjective code, even though it would be preferable to follow the objective one (if that were possible).


Having said that, I think the following rests on a lack of clarity (on my part) regarding what exactly constitutes a moral statement:
Remembering that I have defined a moral code to be a set of moral statements. I havent described what those statements look like though.

When I give an example of a moral statement such as 'You shouldnt steal' this is essentially an approximation, intended to capture a large class of statements. I was careful, early on, to distinguish between moral objectivism and moral absolutism and you are perhaps reading these statements as if I'm making them from the latter viewpoint. I don't defend the view that stealing is always wrong - I think it is contextual and that every possible moral situation, in fact, has its own formulation. They would look more like "You shouldnt steal unless [it is from someone relatively wealthy and you are doing it to feed your starving child (or you are doing it to provide life saving medicine for them (or you are...)...)...]" and so forth. It would be astonishingly large, complicated and involved. The moral code, being a list of all true statements, is consistent since there is no situation described twice.

"Stealing is wrong" is akin to me describing myself as 178cm (I'm probably 178cm and 2mm or 178.21 cm or 178.20659345... depending on how precise I need to be). On the face of it, my description is in fact false. But it's true to the implied level of accuracy.

In my view a statement like the one you gave 'it is wrong to cheat on your taxes in the amount of X dollars in order to donate the money to cause Y.' suffers from the same problem of underdefinition. There are times when it's right and times when it's wrong, based on X and Y. There are also other factors (some subjective and some not - as I mentioned previously, I see no problem in making objective statements with subjective terms) including knowledge and ability to make moral judgements. If the quoted sentence really was an element of the objective moral code, then appending '...unless you think it's right' does indeed cause a contradiction.

My view is that the kinds of things which constitute moral statements are not so easily expressed. Nonetheless, I say things like "Murder is wrong" as a shorthand to refer to a specific class, each with vastly more complicated elements. Some of these complicating factors include subjective elements such as state of mind and so forth. I dont accept that I cant make objective statements about subjective terms (see the icecream example above) and dont see anything other than question begging in appending 'except for prescriptive statements' to that.
I also doubt this - I suspect our ability to discern moral truths has an evolutionary advantage. I further suspect that any deficiencies in our ability to discern such truths has also been guided by evolution. That doesnt distinguish the case of subjective versus objective morality though, anymore than our ability to discern gravity, time and distance implies that spacetime is a subjective feature of the universe.

Our ancestors derived a competitive advantage from improving their understanding of the objective facts about the physical world. There's no reason this can't be true of an objective metaphysical reality either.
I'm asking you if you think that my disavowal of "morality largely reduces to a matter of practicality" is just a preference of mine? I would say that I think the statement is flat out wrong, not that believing it is undesirable.
Well again, I'm not saying that. I'm saying it's objectively true that morality is objective (ie that moral statements are either true or false). I'm also saying that it's objectively true that we are each forced to act according to a subjective moral code (ie our own set of statements we believe to be true).

I also think it's objectively true that we have an obligation to attempt to refine our subjective code (which we follow) to harmonise, as much as possible, with the objective code (which we can only make deductions about, based on logical deduction from intuitively justifiable and accepted axioms).

i meant what you wrote didn't change my view that you are actually describing a mind dependent code. i apologize for not phrasing my initial statement on your position as a question.

i will take a close look at the rest of this post when i have time.

No worries. And you dont need to apologise - maybe it looked like I was offended, but my "Which am I?" query was intended in the usual, relaxed and fun-poking way we generally talk to each other - there was no actual insult perceived.

you do seem like a tough person to offend, which is an admirable quality to possess.



especially for a didgeridoo sucking koala banger


as previously stated i'd go way beyond that. i think an objective code of behavior is by definition unknowable, since we by definition have no means to distinguish it from a subjective code. it would also be irrelevant even if it were knowable for the same reason. there's by definition no reason we would possibly consider it true in a sense that our opinions aren't. if we were born holding a sheet of paper with the objective code written on it we would still judge the truth of those statements in the same manner as we form our opinions - using our evolved instinct preferences and common sense.


maybe indirectly, but that's not what i'm getting at (or trying to anyway.) i've been trying to argue that if a mind independent code can contain statements in which mental state - including things like level of sentience, knowledge of the code, and/or genuine belief in one's subjective moral convictions are variables that determine truth, that necessarily leads to logical contradictions.

nope

i understand the concept, but i don't think you're addressing my objections. i'm saying any possible objectively true moral statement would necessarily have to reference mental state (if any do), which necessarily trumps all other factors and essentially renders the objective code as simply descriptive of our preferences - i see this as reducing to an argument that our preferences objectively exist (similar to your ice cream statement), not that morality does. i guess i'm making sort of a convoluted argument for noncognitivism.



if definition determines truth where/when do you stop defining the situation? does every moral statement have to reference the quantum state of the universe?

anything can be true of a reality where truth isn't defined by anything.

i think you might have a subconscious anthropocentric desire to believe it is wrong, similar to how i viewed your prior theism. just my opinion of course : )

why? as far as we are concerned in what way is the objective code better for us than our opinions?

how do you know by doing this we are actually making deductions about the objective code and not simply justifying our own opinions?