So at this point one can be a skeptic and believe that the only thing that really exists is your personal experience.
Or you can assume that your experiences are caused by a real world out there, composed of objects (and persons).
What I more or less implied is that all [personal] experience, is, well, personal. It’s almost a tautology if you will, but it’s also one of the definitions of “subjective”.
If you are looking at a cow, you are experiencing a subjective/personal vision/image of a cow.
However, the cow is a real object. It’s a fact that the cow exists. The cow is objective. Is it true that there’s a cow out there ? Yes, it is true = the assertion describes reality. Et cetera.
You wrote, “Natural law, are those laws that can be derived logically from what objectively is.” If you mean laws like, “If you do X action, consequence Y will logically follow as a result,” you have answered my question.
The requirement of “logically meaningful” was merely intended to exclude vagaries such as, “Rights just are,” and to ensure that any specific definitions provided would be logically coherent.
For example, no longer addressing your comment but addressing objective ethicists, if we define “objective” and “value” in the following ways:
Objective means true independent of anyone’s beliefs.
Value means something that someone believes to be important.
Then it is not clear how “objective value” can be a logically coherent concept, because it is unclear how value - being something dependent on someone’s belief - can be “true independent of anyone’s beliefs” (objective).
The point here is that simply placing two logically well-defined terms together does not guarantee that the resulting term will still be logically well-defined. In the example above, the resulting term is internally contradictory even though each constituent term is well-defined.
This is surely a familiar concept to everyone here: “non-coercive” is well-defined, and “socialism” is well-defined, but if a man came along talking of a great thing called “non-coercive socialism,” would we not demand to know how he defined each term so as to allow for “non-coercive socialism” to be a logically coherent concept? It seems - by the normal definitions - to be internally contradictory, so we would not hesitate either to call it incoherent, or ask for definitional clarification.
Note that I am not claiming these to be the definitions objective ethicists or natural rights theorists use. That would be a strawman. I have in fact been looking for their base definitions, but have been unable to find them. Hence the OP.
David Gordon’s recent Mises Daily critiquing Cowen’s Autistic slant:
"But though his arguments just canvassed have great value, I sense in them a danger. If pushed too far, his line of thought could lead to an undue subjectivism, in which people’s perceptions and classifications, rather than what actually occurs, would be the sole issues of importance…
But this is not the key indication of what I take to be Cowen’s unduly subjectivist turn. This emerges rather from his suggestion that Nozick’s argument rests on a questionable appeal to an “authentic” world, bereft of human ideas. Cowen suggests that we have no access to a world-in-itself; our perception is inevitably structured by our concepts and theories.
I don’t think the so-called real world is very “authentic” at all. No one who refuses to plug into the machine is in fact choosing or defending pure authenticity. (p. 144)
But Nozick’s argument does not depend on a direct realist theory of perception. Quite the contrary, it need only appeal to our ordinary notion of the actual world. So long as there is a distinction between doing something and imagining it, and we think this distinction important, Nozick’s argument works. Cowen, by neglecting this point, is in danger of having constructed a defense of individuality that severs us from the world."
Wilderness, I read that one, too - very interesting article.
I’d like to start a thread on the “experience machine” thought experiment Cowen mentions (I disagree with several of Cowen’s remarks about it). It reminds me of the “what if you could take a pill that would make you believe your children would be well taken care of after you die” thought experiment. Basically, I like thought experiments because they stretch the debate in interesting ways.
That statement does seem odd, but I suppose it could be charitably interpreted as “I find your action distasteful but I don’t deny your right to do it.”
Still, if we look past the ambiguity of the language and focus on the meaning behind it, it is clear that Alice either does or does not disagree with Bob about the truth of some statement. In other words, it is either true or false that
There is a statement S such that Alice believes S and Bob believes ~S (or vice-versa).
If this is false, then there is no real debate at all between Alice and Bob; though they might have the outward appearance of arguing, all they are really doing is misunderstanding each other or simply fighting (AdamKnott, this applies to your proposed statement as well). Since the purpose of our discussion is to determine who, of Alice and Bob, is correct, it is needless to consider this case any further.
If, however, this is true, then the S that Alice believes must be the same S that Bob disbelieves. (It can’t be “I [Alice] like chocolate” vs. “I [Bob] don’t like chocolate” because these statements do not fit the form S vs. ~S.) So, if S is a statement about whether someone should(n’t) do something, then it cannot be a mere statement of somebody’s individual preference. Rather, it must state some preference-independent fact that there can be disagreement about.
I hope that was clear. It makes perfect sense to me, but I find it difficult to communicate it.
The bold above matches the bold below, right? If so, you’re interpreting “Don’t do it” (command) as “I find your action distasteful” (subjective statement). However, earlier you appear to have interpreted “Don’t do that” as an objective ethical statement:
Can you sort out these statements more clearly?
Even acknowledging the ambiguity of language, I don’t see that a command (“Don’t do that”) has any statement necessarily contained within it. Even if we assume it has a statement contained within it, it could be something like, “Don’t do that, or else I’ll scream.”
Isn’t that what you are attempting to demonstrate? I.e., the fact that there is a debate (over an issue of objective truth or falsehood)? I’m afraid I’ve lost track of what you’re aiming at proving with the Alice and Bob example. Could you please restate the conclusion you would like to reach based on that example?
I thought the purpose of the current discussion was to determine whether it is even coherent to say “Alice is objectively correct/incorrect” or “Bob is objectively correct/incorrect” when they make moral statements.
That’s what I mean about the ambiguity of the language. Depending on the context, the same sequence of words can mean something different. By itself, “Don’t do that” is ambiguous, but depending on what else Alice says, we can interpret it as either hypothetical (“Don’t do that if you don’t want me to scream”), or categorical (“Don’t do that in any circumstance”), or a statement of individual preference (“I don’t like that”).
If it doesn’t contain a statement, then it can be ignored for the purposes of debate.
The fact that there is a debate is the premise, from which follows the conclusion that both Alice and Bob accept the objective truth/falsehood of the statement in question.
Now, you might question the assumption that a disagreement exists. Indeed, it’s perfectly conceivable for there to be two people who don’t have a disagreement about something. However, neither Alice nor Bob are in a position to deny that they disagree about S, because for consistency’s sake he/she would then have to stop arguing about S.
Think of this example from the perspective of Bob. He is about to do some action X. However, he anticipates that Alice might object to X by saying “X is bad/immoral/unethical.” Therefore, he tries to think of arguments that he can use to refute Alice’s statement and justify his own belief that X is not unethical. If, however, Alice does not object, then the need for Bob to use these arguments never arises in the first place, because there is nobody demanding that he supply an argument. Thus, his arguments can take as a premise that Alice has an objection.
It’s similar to “Moore’s Paradox.” A third party (such as you or me) could examine Bob’s arguments and object to them on the grounds that the premise (that Alice has an objection) might not be true. However, Alice herself cannot make this counterargument because it would be self-refuting.
You’re right that that’s the definition I’m using, but this definition is not arbitrary, because it makes it possible to show (as outlined above) why Bob can take as given the premise “There is debate.”
so between abandoning discource into discovering truth on the one hand , and engaging on it, and finding that the results rely to some extent on the necessary assumptions needed in order to set out to do it.
I’m curious. Would you consider discourse/dialogue to include participation between all parties involved thus a flowing of differing methods and an exchange of ideas emerging out of an array of questions, comments, etc…? But on the other hand, dialogue is not a student asking questions and a teacher lecturing answers? The former is a wide array of methods. The latter is a simple question-answer drill.
To clarify, I mean that Zavoi appears to be assuming the coherency of objective ethics (which is what he set out to prove) by starting with the premise that there is a debate, and defining debate as a disagreement over some objective ethical truth.
In other words, by defining debate in terms of objective ethical truth, the premise (“There is a debate”) appears to already entail what he at first set out to prove (“There are objective ethical truths”).
Several pages back in the thread, Zavoi set out to prove the existence of objective ethical truths. I was referring to Zavoi’s definition of debate (actually, his exact word was “argument”) in that context:
In other words, Zavoi’s definition of argument (which I assume is meant to be synonymous with debate in this context) appears to entail the assumption of the existence of objective ethical truths, or as stated here, “an objective standard of good and bad.” My recent comments are saying, in effect, Doesn’t your definition entail what you’re attempting to prove?
So do we agree at least that the following argument is valid?
Alice is in a “debate” about some ethical issue. (Premise)
Alice accepts that the ethical issue is objective. (Conclusion)
As you said, this implication is valid by the definition of “debate.”
Now, for a valid argument, one either accepts the conclusion or rejects the premise(s). Would it be correct to say that you reject this argument on the basis that the premise “Alice is in a debate” is not necessarily true (for the definition of “debate” that I gave)?