Making iambiguous's day

If you think that the universe operates by laws, no less by immutable laws, rather than that sentient beings such as humans create laws based on their limited forever-expanding experience, i.e. a set of observations they have accumulated throughout their lives, in order to assume the unknown, and most importantly, to predict the future so that they can prepare themselves for it, then that is an example of anthropomorphization.

But I wasn’t responding to what you said in that sentence. I was responding to what Biguous has been saying in this thread and on this forum in general.

He’s saying that ideas like reasonable/unreasonable or good/bad or right/wrong don’t make sense if there is no choice.

If is unreasonable, it is because he cannot avoid being unreasonable. He cannot choose to be reasonable in the situation in which he is unreasonable. He can’t alter the way he is.

Good and bad are words we use to describe the quality of correspondence between what is expected and what is realized.

When I expect to hit a 3-pointer and when I observe that I did hit it, that is good. Otherwise, it is bad.

They have an idealized notion of concepts such as choice and free-will. To them, these entail the ability to go back in time.

First, they want the ability to pause the flow of time so that they can ponder over choices as much as they want. We can think of pause as a balance between forward and backward flows of time. Time still moves forward, decisions are still made without any waiting, with no hesitation, but one is quickly returned to the previous point in time thus nullifying the effect of the automatic decision.

Then, once they make their decision, they want to be able to return to that same point in time whenever they realize their decision was less than ideal.

As you can see, they are perfectionists who cannot tolerate mistakes and who want to make sure that their past contains nothing but right decisions. It is actually them who want to eliminate the distinction between right and wrong and that by using time travel in order to erase everything about their past that is less than ideal.

Strange fellows, aren’t they?

Even computers, which are manmade and thus predictable in all relevant aspects, can have a sense of good and bad.

They can also possess what we may understand to be free-will in the empirical, which is to say down-to-earth, sense of the word. Free-will, not as an ability to go back in time and change your decisions, but as an ability to make your own choices without undesirable influences.

They can also choose between several alternatives, and not only that, they can also learn from the consequences of their choices.

Computers have no consciousness – a first-person experience of reality – only awareness – a map of reality that is not accompanied by any kind of first-person experience of it.

They also cannot go back in time and change their decisions.

Despite all of this, they can have a sense of good/bad, choose between several options on their own and learn from the consequences of their choices.

I don’t think it’s difficult to imagine a computer program that has all of these properties.

What is necessary for such a program is:

  1. that it has awareness of the external world (e.g. outputs such as computer monitor)

  2. that it has some idea of what it wants to do, otherwise known as a goal, which is just a description of the state of the external world it wants to bring about

  3. that it can affect the external world in some way, say by sending “signals” to it, which in programming terms would be commands that are issued in order to change the state of the outputs

  4. that it has a memory of every combination of posited goal, signal sent in order to achieve that goal and subsequent output state

The computer program would work in the following manner:

  1. posit some goal
  2. go through the memory in order to assign the probability of success in relation to the posited goal to every possible signal that can be sent
  3. choose the signal with the highest probability of success
  4. if the highest probability is shared among several signals, randomly pick one
  5. send the chosen signal
  6. declare “good” if output equals goal otherwise declare “bad”
  7. store the tuple (goal posited, signal sent, output state) in the memory
  8. return to step 1

This is incredibly simple stuff. It’s strange when people fail to understand it.

Let’s put forth some definitions then.

CHOOSING
the act of using some kind of logic to rank a finite set of options in an effort to determine the highest ranked option so that we can act upon it

FREE-WILL
the ability to choose on our own, using whatever logic we want, instead of choosing in a way that is not our own

GOOD/BAD
words describing the quality of correspondence between what was expected and what was realized

LEARNING
memorizing every expected-realized pair in order to be better informed when making decisions in the future

The above computer program is clearly performing actions of choosing and learning. It also has a sense of good/bad (learning cannot function without it anyways.) And finally, it has free-will but only because it cannot violate it. The computer program can be destroyed and in this way stopped from exercising its free-will. It can also be reprogrammed but this would only change what it wants to do – it wouldn’t go against its free-will. What the computer program cannot be made to do is to do something it does not want to do. It simply does not have the ability that is necessary to expose it to the risk of acting against its will.

That would be all.

So again, I have to ask, what is Biggy’s problem?

I would like to ask you to help me understand the exact steps necessary to take in order to “demonstrate a truly objective morality”. What has to be done? If by any chance you happen not to know what has to be done, would you agree it is meaningless to speak of such a process then?

I would also ask you to provide me with an example of morality – I suppose a simple moral statement would suffice – but most importantly, I would like to understand what it means for morality to be “truly objective”.

Truth value can only be assigned to factual statements. What Biguous calls a matter of is. Basically, truth value describes whether an imagined event to which it is assigned has been observed in the past (true) or not (false.)

Suppose we have a moral statement such as “abortion is wrong”. What does it mean to speak of it as being either true or false? Nothing. Because it refers to no specific event. On the other hand, if someone said “mothers who abort their unwanted babies are happier than those who do not” that would be a factual statement that can be verified through observation.

When someone says “abortion is wrong” that is an imperative, not a declarative, sentence. It is meant to force you to abandon the use of abortion. To ascribe truth value to imperative sentences is insanity . . .

So what does “objective morality” mean in the face of the fact that moral sentences tend to be imperative rather than declarative?

I fear you are using words you do not understand the meaning of.

The other question I want to ask – both you and Biguous but also everyone else on this topic or otherwise familiar with Biguous – is what does he really want to achieve?

Apparently, finding a demonstration of a truly objective reality is out of the way considering the fact that moral sentences tend to be imperative. You can’t find something if that something is non-sensical. Imperative sentences cannot have a truth value.

The only thing left is . . . conflict resolution. He’s basically looking for a way to resolve moral disagreements and make everyone agree. This is why he’s constantly forcing us to demonstrate the practical application of our observations in resolving moral disagreements . . . though they were never meant to have such a use. Otherwise, he judges them as being unworthy, merely mental fabrications having nothing to do with reality, simply because they are useless in resolving moral disagreements.

Yes, I’d say it’s meaningless. Remember, this is what Biggy requires to resolve his dilemma, not what I require or believe in. I was responding to this:

So if Biggy requires finding a demonstration of a truly objective morality in order to resolve his dilemma, then he’s right that being a subjectivist or persuading a person over to one’s own point of view won’t help.

Well, since I’m not an objectivist, this might be rather difficult to do. But morality to me is whatever my conscience tells me. For example, if I see a child wounded in the ditch, I would feel obligated to do something. ← But I recognize that is a personal feeling, not an objective mandate. As a subjectivist, I’m content to regard it as morality for me, but not morality independently of me.

I’m more or less in agreement with this, only instead of saying that assigning truth value to moral or subjective statements is meaningless, I’d say it is relative. Something is only right or wrong relative to a person and their conscience.

dunno. :confusion-shrug:

Remember, these are Biggy’s terms, not mine.

I have my opinions, but I’ll leave that one to Biggy.

From what I’ve gathered so far, Biggy wants a way of knowing that when he picks one side of a moral conflict over another–say pro-life over pro-choice–he’s made the right decision. ← I think it goes deeper than this, but that seems to be what he’s willing to discuss on the surface.

Are you referring to the fact that if we are just mindful matter, then we can’t be responsible for any of our actions? Or be obligated to act in any particular way?

There are other ways of defining “choice” than “violating the laws of nature”.

There doesn’t have to be. Intelligent men and women all around the world subject themselves to being persuaded by one or another objective-sounding arguments for this or that morality all the time. Unless your brain suffers some kind of critical defect, so can you.

Yes, I see your point that a line is drawn between “is” and “ought”–but when you bring in the argument that we cannot do anything, feeling anything, be convinced of anything, given that it could not have been any other way, I don’t see how the is/ought line is relevant. The only difference I see is that when it comes to “ought” questions, the determining laws of nature that operate on our brains seem to force us to arrive at radically different conclusion–we ought to eat chickens vs. we ought to be vegetarians, we ought to allow a woman her free choice to abort her unborn baby vs. we ought to defend the life of that unborn baby–whereas when it comes to “is” questions, the determining laws of nature that operate on our brains seem to force us (with the exception of a few abberations and occasional brain farts) to arrive at the same conclusion. But as I see it, they are still laws of nature that could just as well force us to to arrive at fallacious and delusional conclusions, shared among us all as they may be. This is why I say that the argument about being stuck in a deterministic universe applies even to mathematical logic and concrete sensory experience.

My point is that insofar as you are able to do this too (and you are), you are not “stuck” in your dilemma.

I would simply say that there is a wide diversity of different configurations according to which our brains are wired, configurations that determine how we react to such value judgements. Comparing this to how our brains are configured to process visual information such as the pattern of dominoes depicting Jong-un, there seems to be very little diversity.

What you are doing here is, at one moment, allowing yourself to see the reasoning of your own views (your nihilism, your arguments about dasein, the reality of your dilemma), and then in the next moment, withdrawing from those views and looking at them as existential contraptions of a brain that could never have not had those views. My point is that you can withdraw yourself into this skeptical frame of mind with anything, and that if you ever want to be convinced of something, stop this habit of withdrawing. You know I’m right because, with the exception of these moments when you withdraw, you are convinced of the reasoning of your own views. ← And further, I’m saying that it’s no different with anyone else and their views.

A moral statement such as “X is wrong” is neither factual, because it does not say that some event occurred in the past, nor predictive, because it does not say that some event will occur in the future. Instead, it is an imperative. It says “do X instead of Y or Z”. Thus, neither factual truth value (true/false) nor predictive truth value (probability) can be assigned to it.

A factual statement would be something like “I did X then Y happened”. This is either true or false. Either you have memory of these events, in which case you say they are true, or you don’t, in which case you say they are false. (There are, of course, indirect methods of assigning truth value, such as reasoning, that can override negative judgments, but that’s irrelevant here.)

When someone says that “X is right” they are in most instances saying that they will do X instead of Y or Z. That does not mean they did any kind of thinking beforehand. It simply means they are going to do X.

And what does “the right decision” mean?

What exactly does he want? Does he even know what he wants?

There is a difference between imperative, factual and predictive right.

When I say “X is right” that is an imperative right.

When I say “I did X and then Y, which I wanted to happen, happened” that is a factual right.

When I say “if I do X then I predict that Y, which I want to happen, will happen” that is a predictive right.

Predictive right can produce a factual wrong and predictive wrong can produce a factual right.

Once again: what does Biguous really want?

He wants confirmation that he did nothing wrong in his life, that he made no mistakes and that he could not have done anything in any other way. He wants to feel that he cannot be criticized by others and he need not criticize himself. That is what brings him peace.

It means choosing the morally correct side. Biggy is disillusioned to the fact that everyone who argues one side or another of a morally controversial subject has their own rendition of a “rational justification” for that side. Because of this, he has given up simply weighing the arguments of each side and coming to the most rational conclusion he can on that basis. Instead, he wants something beyond this, something above rational-sounding arguments. He wants something on the order of a mathematical proof that demonstrates which side is right and which side is wrong. ← He wants that to be the basis on which he decides which side to align himself with. He feels that anything less would be to risk being persuades by one’s own biases, one’s own leaps of logic, one’s own unconscious motives, etc.–you know, things that hold us back from being as strictly rational as we could be, things that prevent us from knowing that we’ve got it right rather than merely deceiving ourselves into thinking we’ve got it right.

I’m convince not only that such a bias-free, such a deception-free, rationality, or demonstration of proof, doesn’t exist, but is incoherent, for the only context in which such a rationality or demonstration of proof exist is in the moments when we try to construct our reasons and justification as a means of defending ourselves against our opposition. I’m convinced that there’s more to the reasons and justification we come up with in those moments than formal logic. I’m convinced that the emotion, the biases and prejudices, the unconscious motives, all have their own brand of “logic” with which they contribute to the reasons and justifications for this or that moral position, and accounts for the undeniable diversity on moral positions and arguments for them.

^ This is difficult for me to explain not only to Biggy but to anyone because it hinges on my theory of consciousness and meaning, on all subjective experience being rooted in its own unique brand of “justification”.

It appears to me that he has no idea what he wants. He cannot communicate it clearly. So it’s up to us to interpret it.

Perhaps he has already found what he’s looking for. Perhaps all he wants is to post what he’s been posting on these boards and absolutely nothing more than that.

A very bizarre form of behavior, I must say.

What is more likely is that he’s looking for universal and eternal agreement between people. Perhaps what’s happening is that he realized that this is an impossible goal and now he’s suffering due to his inability to give up on this impossible goal.

But he will never confirm this. In fact, he’s going to deny it by claiming that agreement is not what he’s after.

I guess he’s quite simply uncooperative. In general, people without, or with very poor self-consciousness, are uncooperative.

As such, as eyes wide open said earlier, it’s up to us to interpret him. We can’t rely on his self-knowledge . . . he doesn’t have one.

My current theory is that iambiguous is part of a secret NSA program allegedly called Singulauous.
Its goal is to create a singularity of wasted time which will eventually swallow up all thinking in the universe.

Well, what you just did is you replaced one vague phrase with another. So I have to ask, repeating myself in a sense, what does “the morally correct side” mean?

These words either mean something or they mean nothing. They refer to some events that can be experienced or they do not.

It’s not enough to simply regurgitate words and phrases. One must also understand them.

What kind of event, or a sequence of events, does he, I mean Biguous, want to bring about?
How do you experience being on “the morally correct side”?
That is the relevant question.

You didn’t answer that question.

Magnus,

I’m not sure how else to answer your question.

Whatever answer you require is going to require shuffling around words–that’s how one delivers answers or defines terms and phrases. How do you define X? Well, X = a, b, and c. ← You substitute “X” with “a, b, and c”. The key isn’t to reach for something above and beyond a different set of words; the idea is to find the right set of words that satisfies the questioners requirements. Sometimes the right set of words is more than just a another sentence, sometimes it’s a whole paragraph, sometimes several… the object is to put together some set of words whose effect is to trigger an idea in the questioner’s mind such that he says: “Oh, that idea. Now I understand.”

Obviously, my rephrasing above doesn’t trigger such an idea in your mind, so I’ll have to try something else (although at this point, it’s like taking shots in the dark). How 'bout this:

You come across a child wounded in the ditch. What’s the right thing to do: 1) leave the child to die, or 2) get the child to a hospital? Intuitively, most people would feel 2) is the morally correct thing to do. It’s not something that necessarily requires elaborate rational thought–it’s usually a gut feeling; furthermore, it’s not something that’s always right (ex. the child may grow up to be the next Hitler), but insofar as the feeling goes, it would probably seem to most people that 2) is the right choice.

Biggy is trying to find a method for determining which faction in a moral conflict is the one striving for what most people see (or feel) in the scenario above when they intuit 2) to be the morally right choice. That is to say, when most people intuit the “right thing to do” in the scenario above, they believe they are seeing (or feeling, or intuiting, or understanding) the correct moral choice to make–that is, that they are seeing reality, not just a personal preference. Biggy wants to be able to see that in any moral conflict–he wants to be able to determine what’s the “right thing to do”–which faction in a moral conflict is striving for it–and to be guaranteed that he’s seeing reality for what it is, not being deceived by his own prejudices and personal preferences–not just to feel that one side in the conflict is morally right, but to somehow know it.

Precisely! And it is the entire crux of Biggy’s dilemma. Biggy doesn’t even know what event or sequences of events would count as an objective demonstration of the morally right choice. He simply asks objectivists to present one if they can. He doesn’t accept any answer that could conceivably be construed as yet another arbitrary outcome of dasein. But then I for one am at a loss to understand what else such an objective demonstration of the morally right choice would look like. That’s what we’re struggling with in this thread. How does one accept such a demonstration without being able to construe is as, in Biggy’s words, an “existential contraption”?

I can answer what the experience of being on “the morally correct side” is–it’s the same as the experience of intuiting the morally correct choice in the scenario above (with the child in the ditch)–only Biggy wants more than just an intuitive experience–he wants something that proves even beyond experience that such an intuition is correct. But I don’t know how he can get beyond experience, especially when it comes to morality.

Quite astute.

That is true. What I am looking for is the right set of words that will help me identify the exact event, or the sequence of events, that you’re speaking of when you say “choosing the morally correct side”.

But in the case that you do not understand what these words mean, no amount of elaboration on your part will help me identify what you mean – because you mean nothing.

And this is what I suspect. You are using Biggy’s words without understanding them. Biggy is using other people’s words without understanding them. These other people are using other people’s words without understanding them. And so on.

In social systems with centralized authority, I might be able to trace the origin of these words and then determine whether they mean anything at all, but in social systems with decentralized authority, such as the ones we have today, I will end up running in circles, each person referring me to some other person, and then only if they are honest enough to admit they are using other people’s words.

That question simply asks what would you do in such a situation. Additionally, it might also be asking what do you want others to do in such a situation.

As such, there is no guarantee that people will come to agreement. They may or may not agree. If they don’t, each one will have their own answer to the question.

Is that what “the morally correct side” means?
I don’t think so.

If you want others to do something, then you must have a clear idea of what you want them to do. Otherwise, you cannot say it is YOU who want them to do something. And even if we ignore this, and assume that it is YOU who wants them to do something, then you wouldn’t be able to measure whether they did what you supposedly wanted them to do or not.

In other words, if you’re asking others to demonstrate that their side is “the morally correct side” then you must know what this means otherwise you won’t be able to measure their performance.

It’s akin to people asking for proof of God without knowing what that entails (because they don’t understand what the word “God” means.)

They are simply asking to be manipulated – to be “swept off by their feet”.

I understand what this means. Your “intuiting the morally correct choice” would be my “doing what you’re most comfortable with”.

However, I will disagree this is what these people mean by “the morally correct side”. As you say, Biggy wants more than this, which is to say, something else, but without ever bothering to define what that is.

He’s skipping an important step: he has to define what he’s asking others to prove. And because this is not his word, this means he has to try to understand how others are using it.

As long as spouts the dasein stuff, he is king of the mountain - unassailable. Only his thoughts about everything are right for him. He can accept or reject any argument on the basis of any whim. Total control.

I’m sure that he enjoys sitting in bed and passing judgement on the arguments :

“No.”
“You have not convinced me.”
“You have not demonstrated it to me.”
“Try again.”

And as long as he does it, people keep coming back and talking to him. If he was ever convinced by an argument, then the conversations might end and then what would he do.

He’s got a sweet situation here. :smiley: