@Liberte: There are reasons why humans find some things beautiful and other things ugly. Having a reason is the opposite of being arbitrary.
Clayton -
errrr big conceptual misslead man!
“Liberty” is not having no rules at all… the reality test teach us that if you apply this to real world, it would rapidly degenerates as the domination of all under the reign of a little group.
“Liberty” is when nobody can restrict the rules of any others ! Read J J Rousseau man, he’s a Swiss guy from the XVIIIth century, one of the fathers of Democracy and of Anarchism.
Of course. Where have I suggested otherwise?
Is that not the state of affairs in which we currently exist?
Yikes, Rousseau was a hardcore statist.
Clayton -
@Liberte: There are reasons why humans find some things beautiful and other things ugly.
Even if it were true that this were true of all human beings (and given the variation among subjects, I doubt this is so) it is not necessarily so of all teleological entities. The fact that all humans shared this would be mere coincidence, it would not gain argumentative validity thereby.
So? The word “beautiful” is a part of natural language and it has a meaning which both you and I understand. “She looked beautiful in the gradient shades of sunset” conveys a meaning that is well understood and not arbitrary. That does not mean that you and I cannot disagree on the beauty of a particular object since beside the natural language meaning of beauty, there is the private-use meaning of beauty, the expression of one’s own aesthetic assessment of something. Unlike the natural language use of “beauty”, this assessment is observer-relative (subjective) but it is still not arbitrary. Even though it may not be possible to formalize rules describing the “algorithm”, if you will, by which I assess the aesthetic appeal of things, there can be no doubt that my assessments are not random. I find art that is symmetrical, novel, insightful and surprising to be beautiful. Some art is infantile and stupid, it is not beautiful. Of course, my aesthetic judgments are my own so they have no relevance to your aesthetic judgments.
You used the word “necessarily” and I assume that you are driving towards the concept of logical necessity. Why have philosophers so extensively studied logical necessity? For the reason that if we can find truths that are necessarily true, then there is no need to worry that we may have made a mistake in our choice of axioms and deciding the matter of what is true or false is no longer an issue of personal judgment… all individuals who follow a method of strictly deducing the consequent propositions of necessary truths would all arrive at the same, necessarily true conclusions. We would be living in logical paradise. It turns out that the real world thwarts such utopian fantasies… there is not nor can there be any method which decides whether any given proposition is true or false. There is no mechanical method of evaluating true and false. That this is equally true of good and bad (ethics) should not be surprising.
The moral absolutists, of course, find this deeply disappointing. How convenient it would be if we could start from some necessary truth and the derive all the necessarily correct rules of behavior. Then, different people wouldn’t come to different conclusions about what is good and bad, we could all come to the same necessarily true conclusions about ethical propositions by strictly deducing propositions from necessarily true ethical premises. Of course, if this goal is unattainable in logic, how much more so in ethics?
But just as the unattainability of logical certainty is no reason to throw our hands up in despair of understanding the basis of human aesthetic judgment, so it is no reason to throw up our hands on ethics. Ethical considerations are a great deal more important than aesthetic considerations but both have a lot in common so that discussing aesthetics can be very useful in allowing us to build a framework for reasonable discussion of ethics, minus the emotive component that inevitably attaches itself to ethical discussion. Human aesthetic and ethical judgments are not arbitrary. It is a matter of scientific study to understand the theoretical and biological bases for human aesthetic and ethical judgments. Understanding these bases can help me be better informed in choosing my own course of action and imposing expectations (rules of behavior) onto others.
Of course. If everyone reported that they believed the Mona Lisa to be beautiful, that would not make it objectively beautiful because beauty is a subjective assessment, it is inherently observer-relative. What we mean by aesthetic judgment is an observer-relative (subjective) assessment of something’s appeal to oneself, or the degree of pleasure that one derives from observing it. “This song is beautiful” means “I am deriving pleasure from hearing this song.” Satisfaction of wants (pleasure) is inherently observer-relative since you do not experience my pleasure and I do not experience yours.
Ethical judgments are in the same category. But the things we derive pleasure from are not arbitrary. Poisonous plants are universally distasteful and this is not a coincidence, it is not random chance whether you will find a particular plant palatable or unpalatable. Ethics is not arbitrary - even though our individual ethical judgments are subjective - for similar reasons.
Clayton -
But see, that’s where I think egoistic libertarianism goes too far - it’s not aggression for me to forcibly grab my 5-year old as he tries to run across the street, even though he knows full well that he could be run over by a car because I have told him in the past that could happen and I am currently yelling it at him, “Stop, you could be run over!”
maybe this argument could work in other situation (she has curable deadly desease but chooses to die etc.). But this time it’s not something horrific, in my humble opinion.
…what?
Why are there so many Engrish speakers with all capital names?
Assuming KOBALT lives in the EU, his point about the “wonders” of European government ‘education’ are truly self refuting, given his English skills and belief that Rousseau was a founder of anarchism.
there can be no doubt that my assessments are not random
‘Arbitrary’ and ‘random’ are no the same thing. All judgments of value are arbitrary, as are all conventions as to the names and range of things (i.e., what a ‘chair’ is as opposed to a ‘stool’). But nothing is random in an ontological sense. ‘Random’ is at best shorthand for events the sufficient conditions of which we do not know.
Not exactly the same thing but both are instances of irrationality, that is, absence of reason. If something is arbitrary, there is no reason why it is the way it is. If an event is random, there is no reason why it happened this way rather than that.
But they’re not. There are reasons why people make value judgments. The preference for symmetry in art does have a rational basis. It’s a complicated topic but read about “low-complexity art” to find out why.
That is not to say that value judgments are deterministic or follow some mathematical rule or equation that can be written down.
I disagree that names are arbitrary. Yes, the particular phoneme is relatively unimportant to the problem of communication, so long as it is readily distinguishable from all others, but words do not correspond randomly to the world, there is a structure to the correlation between human language and the natural world. Steven Pinker has a fascinating lecture online where he discusses the “theory of physics” implicit in natural language. The ways in which we abstract about the world are built in to the very way we use words to describe the world.
The orthodox interpretation of quantum physics is that there are, in fact, “ontologically random” events. Of course, we’re dealing in theology at that point but just the same, you can’t know that there is nothing random in the ontological sense.
Clayton -
Have the grandparents decide.
There are reasons why people make value judgments.
Ultimately there is no reason behind value judgments. They all reduce to simple facts, behind which there is no ‘reason’ whatsoever.
That is not to say that value judgments are deterministic or follow some mathematical rule or equation that can be written down.
While diversity and complexity probably prevents it from being ‘written down’, utlimately I don’t think it’s coherent to deny that everything is deterministic. I’m pretty sure Menger and Mises agreed with me on this.
My favorite part of the story was when abortion groups flew to mexico to “talk” with her. To convince her to kill her child.
You are questioning where she is fit to make the decision? I would consider it is her choice alone to do what she wants with her body. What if she is unfit to make the decision as you suggest? Have the state of Mexico come in and slug her in the stomach a few times?
That girl is a spokeswomen for freedom.
Where do they get the money for these airfare tickets?
Indeed.
Clayton -
Clayton - this thread reminded me of another similar situation involving a 13 year old boy refusing chemotherapy: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/05/13/health/main5011247.shtml
Yeah, it’s a sad situation when these things happen. I think the interests of children in this sort of situation would be greatly increased if it were other family members - rather than “the State” - coming to bat for them. I think it makes some sense to forcibly intervene on behalf of, say, the child’s grandparents rather than the State. And, State subsidy of one side or the other in these kinds of disputes creates a legal imbalance. We need to leave people alone to settle their own disputes, rather than injecting these sanctimonious, busy-bodied, self-appointed spokespersons for the “interests” of the child who are in no way related to the child.
Clayton -
(1) “capital name”: no particular reason so don’t waste too much time thinking on it. (1 bis) “EU gov education”: please quote me? Where was it? You’re trolling, and it’s irrelevant in this chat and forum. (1 ter) “my English skills”: thx for another irrelevant personal bashing. Sorry for not being as good as you… btw i speak more lenguages than you do but you won’t see why it’s a “plus”…
(2)… to answer your interesting comment : Yes, Rousseau was and is known to be one (among others, there are a lot) of the fathers of the modern concept of Liberty, Democracy and Anarchism. So sad that nobody told you. Please check by yourself, for example here : (i) about Liberty (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_liberty) (ii) about Anarchism (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01452a.htm). Even the Catholic know it. And Just for fun: the first guy to call Rousseau an “anarchist” was … F Nietzche, in the XIXth century 