Atheistic morality

[BigBallinStalin]

I posted a link, a photo, a snippet. There's is plentiful info available.

The reason I'm asking is: since we collectively decide such things as fluoridating water, what is behind the collective decision that leads to such an immoral choice?

What is behind that? X-amount of individuals involved in varying degrees of the decision-making process which encompasses the political, economic, and social aspects of 'society'--or rather the composite of individuals in some particular place.

You'll need theory to go into details though. Public choice is pretty useful.

Or you can jettison centuries-old theory and rely on your cognitive bias as you vainly battle your way out of a paper bag.

[AAFitz]

And I actually do agree that one could argue you might not have any implicit right not to be stabbed in the stomach, but in that case, you've created a universe where there are no morals whatsoever...and maybe you are right, but unlike with people believing in God if he doesn't exist, people en masse believing in morals, actually does make them exist. Morals can be created, a creator either is or isn't.

The only problem with that is that there would still be no logical basis for proclaiming that an action is moral/good or immoral/bad. You might say it's immoral to kill under any circumstances ever, while I might say it's morally acceptable to kill if a greater number of lives will be saved as a result. So we disagree, and now what? There is no objective foundation for our claims, and as such neither of us can justify our respective stances if challenged. Neither of us can logically claim to know what is or isn't 'moral'.

I agree that there are things which can be created just by people having the idea in their heads (e.g. social norms of behavior) but a moral cannot be created in this way. We can create the concept of a moral, but we can't actually create a moral.

Well, the entire idea of logical is man made too, so as communities we work to define what is logical, and what is moral....IE. exactly how the world exists now.

Technically, yes, the moral is a concept of a moral, but as is creating a creator. Creating a concept of a creator, and suggesting He/she/it created the moral, gives no more inherent credibility to the moral, than an individual or society chooses to give it.

[AAFitz]

Public choice is pretty useful.

It worked great for hitler....for a time.

[mrswdk]

And I actually do agree that one could argue you might not have any implicit right not to be stabbed in the stomach, but in that case, you've created a universe where there are no morals whatsoever...and maybe you are right, but unlike with people believing in God if he doesn't exist, people en masse believing in morals, actually does make them exist. Morals can be created, a creator either is or isn't.

The only problem with that is that there would still be no logical basis for proclaiming that an action is moral/good or immoral/bad. You might say it's immoral to kill under any circumstances ever, while I might say it's morally acceptable to kill if a greater number of lives will be saved as a result. So we disagree, and now what? There is no objective foundation for our claims, and as such neither of us can justify our respective stances if challenged. Neither of us can logically claim to know what is or isn't 'moral'.

I agree that there are things which can be created just by people having the idea in their heads (e.g. social norms of behavior) but a moral cannot be created in this way. We can create the concept of a moral, but we can't actually create a moral.

Well, the entire idea of logical is man made too, so as communities we work to define what is logical, and what is moral....IE. exactly how the world exists now.

Technically, yes, the moral is a concept of a moral, but as is creating a creator. Creating a concept of a creator, and suggesting He/she/it created the moral, gives no more inherent credibility to the moral, than an individual or society chooses to give it.

Do you have a definition of 'logic' that would undermine what I said in my last post?

Do you think that I'm religious or something? Because I'm not.

[mrswdk]

I agree by the way that objective moral truths exist, in much the same way that objective mathematical truths exist (i.e. as concepts that describe the nature of reality

Except fields such as mathematics, physics and chemistry are studies of the physical world around us, whereas morality is not. Morality is different from rocks or bridges in that it does not exist outside of the human mind.

Does metaphysics exist within the mind or outside the mind? What does it mean for an idea to exist "outside the mind"?

I don't know. I didn't say that any ideas exist outside the mind

[crispybits]

The point is slightly different. It's not that religious people make moral choices based on things other than their religion therefore religion and morality are independent, but more that religion only provides values rather than a process, and has not grounded those values within the variable contexts that happen in real life but proclaimed them as universals. For some moral choices "should I be allowed to kill for fun?" then this simplified authoritarian approach is fine, but it falls over whenever it meets anything with any degree of nuance or complexity.

The underlined isn't true cuz shari'ah law exists. Islam has a process which serves as an extended development of the religion in order to encompass legal/moral cases that aren't clearly addressed in the Quran. This spontaneous order has withstood the test of time with a great degree of nuance and complexity. Human institutions can be robust and dynamic--regardless of their religious foundation.

Missed this edit before.

I think putting Sharia law in as the Islamic process might be a little bit like comparing apples and oranges in this context. It depends entirely on where you draw the line with what can be said to come from the religious tenets, and what has been developed in interpretting those tenets to daily life, and which count as what the religion gives us and what we make for ourselves.

I think that if a holy book says "X is wrong" and a scholar comes along later and says "X is wrong except if Y, cos if we look at these other bits of the holy book they clearly show that Y wasn't bound by the rule against X" then they start to enter into a grey area where the new rule isn't actually clearly defined within the religious source. If a scholar went further than that, and said "X is wrong except if Y, because our reasoning says that Y must be OK and to forbid it would go against the spirit of X" then they are getting into very grey areas. It's no longer a law proscribed by the tenets of the religion, but admits it's human source openly.

The Sharia law exists, at least in part, within these very grey areas. They allow for human reasoning to over-ride specific scriptural instructions if reasoning shows that applying the full technicality of the religious tenet would lead to injustice. That process by which the technicalities are not applied regardless of their consequnces, but new rules are fashioned to try and create a situation where the spirit of the religious tenet is followed is what Sharia law is for.

The Quran does not lay out this process, but rather is used as one of the foundational elements of values by which this process will operate.

So to say that Sharia law disproves my assertion that religion doesn't give processes, only values, would be akin to me saying that all physics is Newtonian physics, even special relativity and quantum mechanics that comes along later and modifies central ideas. You're ascribing the legislative process to religious origin, where in fact the religious section of the overall process is still only providing value statements, and it's sources outside of the religious tenets that give the structure to the process.

[Gillipig]

And btw, trying to find an absolute morality is pointless, it's a man made concept that varies between different times and places and individuals, my morality for example is different from yours, you can find out what an average human considers moral but it changes with time, making it impossible to determine what "humans consider moral and immoral". And there's nothing guaranteeing that our great grandchildren won't agree with Hitler's view on morality just as there was no guarantee that his generation wouldn't.

I think we have to be clear about the meaning of the terms we are using. I think there does exist such a "thing" as objective moral truths - but I think that these are dependent on concious beings existing. Under some definitions that would seem to imply it's subjective, but what I mean is not that morality exists independent of minds to conceptualise it, but that there exists a moral framework theoretically accessible to us and built on entirely objective phenomena. That might well end up being vaguely defined if you're talking in general terms (like "health" is vaguely defined in a general sense) but with the right process we can apply it to specific cases to get specific answers (like "he's got appencitis, we need to operate").

If you accept that emotional states are the products of brain states, then what remains only in the realms of subjectivity that is both something which theoretically could provide moral value distinctions and something that we are able to evaluate reliably (not necessarily objectively, but reliably)?

Also, what we observe about morality doesn't work like that. Slavery doesn't go in and out of fashion, neither does theft or rape or murder. Once a convincing case has been made for why something is moral or immoral then that thing generally stays moral or immoral until some new case is made challenging that judgement. In practice, moral progress mirrors the nature of scientific progress in this way. Mistakes and mis-steps are made along the way, but there is a clear directionality overall.

Okay, we can do that. When most people talk about an absolute morality they are postulating a morality independent of the human mind, what is right is right regardless of us and our genetics, and what is wrong is wrong in the same fashion. To get this way of thinking up and running you almost have to be religious but some atheists have managed the feat as well. You seem to be arguing that there doesn't exist an absolute morality but that you can imagine a set of rules that could be used as some sort of holy guidelines and because you can, the idea of an absolute morality exist. (correct me if I'm wrong on that) But how is this any different from let's say god, you wouldn't say you believe in god just because you can imagine the concept of a god, so why say you believe in an absolute morality when all you believe is that people can create such a framework? Let me tell you how my view of morality is like, I believe it's not right to kill another human being, but I would never claim that it is objectively so, I recognize that it is only because of my genetics and my environment that I think it's wrong and I would never claim that the notion is independent of my mind.

Oh and about slavery, it has been considered a just concept for the majority of human history, clearly the human mind is "designed" in such a way that it is able to justify it and consider it moral, and because it is I wouldn't bet against slavery coming back at some form during some government in the future. Your idea of "clear direction" is something rather naive, where does Hitler fit into this clear direction? And what about homosexuality? Not considered taboo in the Hellenic time but then considered highly immoral for one and a half thousand years and now just recently considered harmless again. And pedophilia, accepted in various different cultures throughout time including the hellenic world but considered morally wrong nowadays. How is all of this just not trends coming and going in a similar way as fashion? The human mind sets the limits within which our cultures can develop, but these limits are extremely wide, including everything from cannibalism to human sacrifice to slavery and many other things we today happen to consider immoral, not due to our genetics, but due to our environment.

[tzor]

The general point that I've been getting from crispybits' example is that morality is independent of religion--regardless of how much a believer insists about knowing with enough certainty that the religious rules are true because god, Zeus, WhatNot.

Well it all depends on how you define religion. In a strict technical sense, you are correct. Moral behavior is not dependent on the actual beliefs on the nature of God. A Mormon, a Unitarian and a Trinitarian would have the same general moral beliefs even though their idea of the nature of God is vastly different from each other in critical areas.

I think the problem is that most or all of the current religions (and yes I include those who say "I don't follow the church, I follow Jesus") are built not on providing us with a framework or process by which moral decisions can be made, but instead a series of pronouncements of what is moral and what is not. When the value judgements relevant to any given moral decision are extremely complex, a series of instructions for what values to hold can be less than helpful. Better is a process by which we can agree, as a society, which are the primary values and which are secondary and which are irrelevant and then apply those values to a problem in proper proportions.

Well, I will only comment on Christianity as a whole (and then through the lens of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church). The moral framework of the church isn't really based on "pronouncements." St. Thomas Aquinas used reason to develop his notion of natural law. Whole sections of church moral codes are based off of reason and not pronouncements. There is, for example, not a single word written in the New Testament or recorded from Jesus that describes "just war theory."

Next, Aquinas asks whether there is in us a natural law. First, he makes a distinction: A law is not only in the reason of a ruler, but may also be in the thing that is ruled. In the case of the Eternal Law, the things of creation that are ruled by that Law have it imprinted on the them through their nature or essence. Since things act according to their nature, they derive their proper acts and ends (final cause) according to the law that is written into their nature. Everything in nature, insofar as they reflects the order by which God directs them through their nature for their own benefit, reflects the Eternal Law in their own natures.

The Natural Law, as applied to the case of human beings, requires greater precision because of the fact that we have reason and free will. It is the our nature humans to act freely (i.e. to be provident for ourselves and others) by being inclined toward our proper acts and end. That is, we human beings must exercise our natural reason to discover what is best for us in order to acheive the end to which their nature inclines. Furhtermore, we must exercise our freedom, by choosing what reason determines to naturally suited to us, i.e. what is best for our nature. The natural inclination of humans to acheive their proper end through reason and free will is the natural law. Formally defined, the Natural Law is humans' participation in the Eternal Law, through reason and will. Humans actively participate in the eternal law of God (the governance of the world) by using reason in conformity with the Natural Law to discern what is good and evil.

Or to directly quote him on matters of Just War Theory ...

I answer that, In order for a war to be just, three things are necessary. First, the authority of the sovereign by whose command the war is to be waged. For it is not the business of a private individual to declare war, because he can seek for redress of his rights from the tribunal of his superior. Moreover it is not the business of a private individual to summon together the people, which has to be done in wartime. And as the care of the common weal is committed to those who are in authority, it is their business to watch over the common weal of the city, kingdom or province subject to them. And just as it is lawful for them to have recourse to the sword in defending that common weal against internal disturbances, when they punish evil-doers, according to the words of the Apostle (Romans 13:4): "He beareth not the sword in vain: for he is God's minister, an avenger to execute wrath upon him that doth evil"; so too, it is their business to have recourse to the sword of war in defending the common weal against external enemies. Hence it is said to those who are in authority (Psalm 81:4): "Rescue the poor: and deliver the needy out of the hand of the sinner"; and for this reason Augustine says (Contra Faust. xxii, 75): "The natural order conducive to peace among mortals demands that the power to declare and counsel war should be in the hands of those who hold the supreme authority."

Secondly, a just cause is required, namely that those who are attacked, should be attacked because they deserve it on account of some fault. Wherefore Augustine says (QQ. in Hept., qu. x, super Jos.): "A just war is wont to be described as one that avenges wrongs, when a nation or state has to be punished, for refusing to make amends for the wrongs inflicted by its subjects, or to restore what it has seized unjustly."

Thirdly, it is necessary that the belligerents should have a rightful intention, so that they intend the advancement of good, or the avoidance of evil. Hence Augustine says (De Verb. Dom. [The words quoted are to be found not in St. Augustine's works, but Can. Apud. Caus. xxiii, qu. 1): "True religion looks upon as peaceful those wars that are waged not for motives of aggrandizement, or cruelty, but with the object of securing peace, of punishing evil-doers, and of uplifting the good." For it may happen that the war is declared by the legitimate authority, and for a just cause, and yet be rendered unlawful through a wicked intention. Hence Augustine says (Contra Faust. xxii, 74): "The passion for inflicting harm, the cruel thirst for vengeance, an unpacific and relentless spirit, the fever of revolt, the lust of power, and such like things, all these are rightly condemned in war."

[crispybits]

No I'm saying the moral truths exist in the same way that mathematical/logical truths do. I'll try and lay out the premises I use to get to this one by one so that you can zero in on the particular bit you disagree on, because I'm not sure exactly what point you're disagreeing with just yet:

1) Emotional/mental states are equivalent to physical/chemical brain states, therefore subjective experiences are able to be objectively measured/quantified (obviously we lack the ability to do this right now with any degree of specificity but theoretically there is nothing as far as I'm aware which precludes this as a possibility and we're able to do it in a rudimentary way already)

2) The purpose of morality is to optimise some form of value judgement, be that maximising happiness or minimising suffering or some other metric. Defining exacty what the metric is may not be helpful or useful in a general sense in the same way that "maximising health" is not a useful value judgement for a doctor. (I'll come back to this comparison further in following premises)

3) Moral choices are only made by sentient agents, and are only moral choices if they affect at least one sentient agent (you can't commit an immoral act against a rock or a lake)

4) Moral choices are dependent on context and the appropriate value metrics to use are also dependent on context. From the health example above, while it is not very helpful to tell a doctor to "maximise health", within the context of someone presenting with specific symptoms, the value judgements about how to maximise health are more easily discernable based on that context (we must perform this surgical procedure / prescribe these drugs). Similarly the relevant value judgements of moral choices will present themselves as part of the external context.

5) Moral choices are quantifiable in terms of changing physical circumstances or changing emotional/mental states. Something which improves these is moral, something which deteriorates these is immoral.

6) Therefore there is an objective basis for making moral choices, and objective moral truths exist.

I will try and clarify (4) a bit better because it's the one I have trouble explaining the most. If there are 7 oranges on a table, and 2 roll off, at no point do mathematical concepts apply to that situation. It's simply reality being reality. However, if a sentient being that understands mathematical truths observes the situation, then they can apply mathematics to it and they know the context they need to apply to figure out how many oranges remain on the table. It's 7 minus 2, using the laws of addition/subtraction.

Similarly, if a sentient being shoots another sentient being in the face for fun, any observers to that action that understand moral truths observe the situation and they know the metrics they need to apply to figure out if the act is moral or immoral. The same observers, if asked if someone should tell their wife if they cheated on her once, a long time ago, and have always regretted it would be faced with a completely different context, but they would still know which metrics to go to to find the best possible answer. The metrics of determining morality in these two different contexts are massively different, but in both cases there are objective metrics.

Every system that I know of where we define objective metrics of measurement are called objective systems. Maybe I'm mistaken, maybe it's possible to build a subjective system based on objective metrics. But if so I'm missing any idea of how that would happen...

[Metsfanmax]

How does your objective moral truth view confront the trolley problem?

[tzor]

How does your objective moral truth view confront the trolley problem?

The trolley problem exists because an event prevents the consideration of an option of ultimate good. Instead one is "forced" to choose between two generally bad choices. This forced condition is a free will violation since the "choice" to determine the "lesser" of two evils is no real choice at all; the real choice is between "good" and "evil." The moral element of the decision is effectively "moot" because it is impossible to judge the criteria between the decisions without using standards which are at odds with the moral truth.

[crispybits]

Oh and about slavery, it has been considered a just concept for the majority of human history, clearly the human mind is "designed" in such a way that it is able to justify it and consider it moral, and because it is I wouldn't bet against slavery coming back at some form during some government in the future. Your idea of "clear direction" is something rather naive, where does Hitler fit into this clear direction? And what about homosexuality? Not considered taboo in the Hellenic time but then considered highly immoral for one and a half thousand years and now just recently considered harmless again. And pedophilia, accepted in various different cultures throughout time including the hellenic world but considered morally wrong nowadays. How is all of this just not trends coming and going in a similar way as fashion? The human mind sets the limits within which our cultures can develop, but these limits are extremely wide, including everything from cannibalism to human sacrifice to slavery and many other things we today happen to consider immoral, not due to our genetics, but due to our environment.

I said there are mis-steps and mistakes along the way. Just like in other areas. The Ancient greeks believed that there were four elements, earth, air, fire and water, and verything that existed was a combination of these. Medieval doctors believed that leeches and bloodletting cured certain things. We got things wrong. There's nothing to say we always have to be correct in the case of morality either, but these mistakes don't mean that there is no objective framework. Some mistakes even take hold and persist for a long time, like the idea that epileptics are possessed by demons, or the idea that the sun revolves around the earth.

The existence of incorrect ideas within an overall general progression of consistent ideas that stick doesn't disprove the objectivity of the framework in which those ideas exist. The fact we were mistaken about epilepsy for so long doesn't have any effect on what actually causes epilepsy, it just means we were wrong. I also never claimed that we can't go from right to wrong then back to right, I only said that generally, once an idea is adopted as correct, it remains as correct until someone challenges it and shows why it's incorrect.

[crispybits]

To Tzor - the same thing applies to Aquinas et al making interpretations and judgements based on human reasoning as I said applied to Sharia law. Once you accept human value judgements then those judgements are no longer what I was referring to as "religious judgements".

If Aquinas had been a muslim or if there had been a direct muslim counterpart, he may have had exactly the same ideas about just wars or whatever, and if he did he would have expressed them in terms of muslim theology. These kinds of reinterprative re-evaluations of subjects may be theologically expressed, but they aren't codified as dogmatically as "the word of God" as the pronouncements within the bible.

[tzor]

I said there are mis-steps and mistakes along the way. Just like in other areas. The Ancient greeks believed that there were four elements, earth, air, fire and water, and verything that existed was a combination of these.

If you want to get technical, they believed in five elements (each element corresponding to a polyhedral solid), earth, air, fire, water, ether. There is a subtle irony that these conform to the basic five states of matter, solid, gaseous, plasma, liquid, and of course energy. But this might just be a combination of broken clock theory and retrograde intelligence seeing patterns that aren't really there.

Medieval doctors believed that leeches and bloodletting cured certain things.

Don't sell people short. Leeches deliver a blood thinner in the course of their progress and modern man would eventually stumble on the same thing and not understand that for decades. We call it aspirin today. Blood thinners, when properly used, can prevent a whole lot of problems.

Oh by the way, don't blame the medieval doctors, the practice started with the Egyptians. The medieval mindset had the church generally against the idea, which is why it moved over to "barbers." History Channel Source

In medieval Europe, bloodletting became the standard treatment for various conditions, from plague and smallpox to epilepsy and gout. Practitioners typically nicked veins or arteries in the forearm or neck, sometimes using a special tool featuring a fixed blade and known as a fleam. In 1163 a church edict prohibited monks and priests, who often stood in as doctors, from performing bloodletting, stating that the church “abhorred” the procedure. Partly in response to this injunction, barbers began offering a range of services that included bloodletting, cupping, tooth extractions, lancing and even amputations—along with, of course, trims and shaves. The modern striped barber’s pole harkens back to the bloodstained towels that would hang outside the offices of these “barber-surgeons.”

Note the interesting medieval mindset, clergy were often "doctors" while barbers were "surgeons." History is far more complex than one pretends.

[tzor]

To Tzor - the same thing applies to Aquinas et al making interpretations and judgements based on human reasoning as I said applied to Sharia law. Once you accept human value judgements then those judgements are no longer what I was referring to as "religious judgements".

Sharia law is based on direct quotations of the holy book, with the additional principle that a later verse overwrites an earlier verse. It is not based on philosophical arguments about the nature of God in general; it is what is written, no more and no less.

[crispybits]

How does your objective moral truth view confront the trolley problem?

Well, firstly a disclaimer. I don't think I have any more right to express knowledge of what exact objective moral truth is by myself than a single scientist has a right to express knowledge of any newly hypothesised natural law. In science, people make hypotheses and then they get tested and discussed by many other people. It's not until they have been thoroughly reviewed and consensus has been reached that any claim is accepted as definitive.

How would this system deal with it though... well firstly we would come to consensus on the metrics appropriate to the conversation, and how heavily to weight each one. We might consider overall loss of life, the fact that the 10 workers on the other track have knowingly put themselves into a position where a train could conceivably hit them, whereas the single guy you might push from the bridge has avoided entering the dangerous area, we might consider the potential benefit to society of keeping the guy on the bridge alive if he were a doctor or something and his continued living may result in many more people being alive that would not otherwise survive, we might consider the emotional impact upon ourselves from knowing we pushed someone in front of a train, these and whatever other metrics people can think of that might be relevant to the decision. Then we could conceivably use entirely objective judgements (some based on probability even) to decide if it is better that the guy on the bridge dies or the guys working on the other tracks die.

It's really fricking complicated, and it requires us to answer a lot of difficult questions, some of which right now we definitely don't have access to sufficient information to answer. But this doesn't disprove it's objectivity.

Imagine if, at the start of us conceptualising maths or logic someone has gained traction with the idea that maths and logic are subjective. We'd have messed around with basic stuff and never really gone anywhere with it because how could we if all sorts of different people had all sorts of different ideas. Someone presenting the Fermat's final paradox to these people would be much the same as someone presenting a complex moral dilemma to us today. Loads of pople would have come up with loads of different answers and justifications for why their answer is right, but nobody could have ever said that THIS solution is the right one, even by consensus, because the maths knowledge wouldn't have been developed enough to allow that.

[crispybits]

To Tzor - the same thing applies to Aquinas et al making interpretations and judgements based on human reasoning as I said applied to Sharia law. Once you accept human value judgements then those judgements are no longer what I was referring to as "religious judgements".

Sharia law is based on direct quotations of the holy book, with the additional principle that a later verse overwrites an earlier verse. It is not based on philosophical arguments about the nature of God in general; it is what is written, no more and no less.

Incorrect. Shariah law has 4 basic "values providers"

The Quran - the divine word of God, which gives commands and pronouncements.
The Sunnah - the account of the life of Mo - which gives examples of how to live morally
The Ijam - consensus among scholars as to the interpretation of the above
The Qiyas - analogical deduction and individual reasoning

The Ijam and the Qiyas are not set out procedurally in the Quran. Therefore the practice of Sharia law is not derived from divine command, but rather it is invented by scholars later in order to solve societal problems (particularly when technicalities within the divine law produce results in the real world that contradict the "spirit" of the divine law as we understand it.

The Quran (and to a lesser extent the Sunnah, though I know much less about the specific contents of that) are what I am referring to when I say "religion does not provide us with processes, only with value proclamations". The man made constructs beyond that are equivalent to Aquinas in the sense that they are not divine and infallible, but rather men making the rules for men. I can easily say "Thomas Aquinas was incorrect about X" in a meeting of passionate christians and it might spark an interesting debae. I can't say "God was wrong about X" without getting a very different response 9 times out of 10. They are qualitatively different in the minds of many believers. The first statement is simple disagreement with a scholar, the second is blasphemy.

[crispybits]

I said there are mis-steps and mistakes along the way. Just like in other areas. The Ancient greeks believed that there were four elements, earth, air, fire and water, and verything that existed was a combination of these.

If you want to get technical, they believed in five elements (each element corresponding to a polyhedral solid), earth, air, fire, water, ether. There is a subtle irony that these conform to the basic five states of matter, solid, gaseous, plasma, liquid, and of course energy. But this might just be a combination of broken clock theory and retrograde intelligence seeing patterns that aren't really there.

Medieval doctors believed that leeches and bloodletting cured certain things.

Don't sell people short. Leeches deliver a blood thinner in the course of their progress and modern man would eventually stumble on the same thing and not understand that for decades. We call it aspirin today. Blood thinners, when properly used, can prevent a whole lot of problems.

Oh by the way, don't blame the medieval doctors, the practice started with the Egyptians. The medieval mindset had the church generally against the idea, which is why it moved over to "barbers." History Channel Source

In medieval Europe, bloodletting became the standard treatment for various conditions, from plague and smallpox to epilepsy and gout. Practitioners typically nicked veins or arteries in the forearm or neck, sometimes using a special tool featuring a fixed blade and known as a fleam. In 1163 a church edict prohibited monks and priests, who often stood in as doctors, from performing bloodletting, stating that the church “abhorred” the procedure. Partly in response to this injunction, barbers began offering a range of services that included bloodletting, cupping, tooth extractions, lancing and even amputations—along with, of course, trims and shaves. The modern striped barber’s pole harkens back to the bloodstained towels that would hang outside the offices of these “barber-surgeons.”

Note the interesting medieval mindset, clergy were often "doctors" while barbers were "surgeons." History is far more complex than one pretends.

Corrections gratefully accepted (I didn't have time to google everything and fact check myself) - however none of these inaccuracies of example invalidate the point the examples were intended to illuminate.

[Metsfanmax]

[Oh by the way, don't blame the medieval doctors, the practice started with the Egyptians. The medieval mindset had the church generally against the idea, which is why it moved over to "barbers." History Channel Source

Could you find this information from a source that doesn't also prominently feature UFO Hunters and Ancient Aliens?

[Metsfanmax]

How would this system deal with it though... well firstly we would come to consensus on the metrics appropriate to the conversation, and how heavily to weight each one. We might consider overall loss of life, the fact that the 10 workers on the other track have knowingly put themselves into a position where a train could conceivably hit them, whereas the single guy you might push from the bridge has avoided entering the dangerous area, we might consider the potential benefit to society of keeping the guy on the bridge alive if he were a doctor or something and his continued living may result in many more people being alive that would not otherwise survive, we might consider the emotional impact upon ourselves from knowing we pushed someone in front of a train, these and whatever other metrics people can think of that might be relevant to the decision. Then we could conceivably use entirely objective judgements (some based on probability even) to decide if it is better that the guy on the bridge dies or the guys working on the other tracks die.

Given that no one can ever have this perfect set of knowledge (or anything anywhere close) at the time the action is taken, what value does your objective moral system have? You're proposing a literally impossible task, and then asserting that because you can even formulate the question, that means the answer must exist. This is a fallacy. The answer only exists in some non-abstract sense if it can be at least theoretically obtained before the action is taken, because moral truths are there to guide actions and not to judge them afterwards -- if no one knows what the rules are, you can't punish them for it afterward.

If the universe is deterministic and we can actually obtain this perfect knowledge prior to the action, then morals are useless because every action was predetermined anyway.

Imagine if, at the start of us conceptualising maths or logic someone has gained traction with the idea that maths and logic are subjective. We'd have messed around with basic stuff and never really gone anywhere with it because how could we if all sorts of different people had all sorts of different ideas. Someone presenting the Fermat's final paradox to these people would be much the same as someone presenting a complex moral dilemma to us today. Loads of pople would have come up with loads of different answers and justifications for why their answer is right, but nobody could have ever said that THIS solution is the right one, even by consensus, because the maths knowledge wouldn't have been developed enough to allow that.

Gödel's incompleteness theorems.

Boom.

[crispybits]

Given that no one can ever have this perfect set of knowledge (or anything anywhere close) at the time the action is taken, what value does your objective moral system have? You're proposing a literally impossible task, and then asserting that because you can even formulate the question, that means the answer must exist. This is a fallacy. The answer only exists in some non-abstract sense if it can be at least theoretically obtained before the action is taken, because moral truths are there to guide actions and not to judge them afterwards -- if no one knows what the rules are, you can't punish them for it afterward.

If the universe is deterministic and we can actually obtain this perfect knowledge prior to the action, then morals are useless because every action was predetermined anyway.

Because we don't have this kind of knowledge intuitively now doesn't mean that it's not possible to have this kind of knowledge. If you go back to those first humans developing a sense of mathematical truths, the ones who first conceptualised the basic numbers 1-10, and you said to them "what is 200x1762" they wouldn't have the tools to answer. They wouldn't know what multiplication even meant, they would have no real concept of numbers going beyond the small numbers of things they had to count in any meaningful way. Go up to any reasonably numerate person on the street today and offer them $5 to answer that question correctly, and you'll most likely be $5 down within a matter of seconds.

Yes I'm making assertions I can't prove, and I'm saying we're looking at an incredibly complex system. I'm saying we're those first people to grasp numbers looking at questions as complicated to us as integral calculus would be to them. But again, I fail to see any subjective element within the system that disproves my statement. My statement is falsifiable, all it needs is one well formed moral question which definitionally cannot be solved using objective measurements. One single fossil in the wrong soil layer and I hold my hands up and say I'm wrong. But all I keep hearing is "I don't understand it" and every response displays the fact that the responder has not understood what I am saying. And that's my fault more than anyone's because I'm obviously not explaining it properly (and maybe I lack the tools to do that effectively)

I think it is somewhat defeatist to say that because we cannot use it, at our current level of understanding of it, to make real time moral judgements on some of the most difficult problems we can concieve then it has no value. It's similar to one of those first mathematicians saying we'll never understand the most complex problem they could imagine when today, that problem may well be elementary to us. Children would probably be able to solve it. I think you vastly underestimate the ability of thinking systems to develop which make previously inconceivable problems solvable, even simple.

As for Godel's theorems, you're not understanding the point I am trying to make (again, my fault for not explaining it sufficiently). The existence of a truth that says that you cannot form a complete and consistent theory of morality doesn't make objective moral judgements worthless, impossible or whatever any more than Godel's theorems disprove the value of mathematics. We know about Godel's theorem, yet still we regularly use maths all the time and get reliable real world results from it.

[Metsfanmax]

Because we don't have this kind of knowledge intuitively now doesn't mean that it's not possible to have this kind of knowledge. If you go back to those first humans developing a sense of mathematical truths, the ones who first conceptualised the basic numbers 1-10, and you said to them "what is 200x1762" they wouldn't have the tools to answer. They wouldn't know what multiplication even meant, they would have no real concept of numbers going beyond the small numbers of things they had to count in any meaningful way. Go up to any reasonably numerate person on the street today and offer them $5 to answer that question correctly, and you'll most likely be $5 down within a matter of seconds.

Well if your argument is "humans are capable of learning complicated things, therefore X which is complicated is also possible" then how am I supposed to respond? You've just made a huge logical leap without any evidence one way or the other. I mean, I could just as easily frame this in the context of religion -- humans will one day surely be smart enough to comprehend God, therefore he exists -- and you would probably balk.

Yes I'm making assertions I can't prove, and I'm saying we're looking at an incredibly complex system. I'm saying we're those first people to grasp numbers looking at questions as complicated to us as integral calculus would be to them. But again, I fail to see any subjective element within the system that disproves my statement. My statement is falsifiable, all it needs is one well formed moral question which definitionally cannot be solved using objective measurements. One single fossil in the wrong soil layer and I hold my hands up and say I'm wrong.

It is not falsifiable because at any turn, you'll just say "with enough information I can solve this." You're implicitly assuming that we can make comparative value judgments in some sort of objective frame without realizing the inherent lack of an objective frame. For example, even if we could agree on a set of objective societal measures for morality, why does it follow that this should inform my actions? Why should my goal be to maximize societal good and not my own good?

But, since you asked, here is a moral question that your system can't answer: should humanity destroy itself?

I think it is somewhat defeatist to say that because we cannot use it, at our current level of understanding of it, to make real time moral judgements on some of the most difficult problems we can concieve then it has no value.

Your system is basically utilitarianism, and we should use it. However, we should accept the imperfection of our knowledge into that system instead of trying to avoid it. A system of approximate practical ethics based on that idea is far more useful than the abstraction you are talking about.

As for Godel's theorems, you're not understanding the point I am trying to make (again, my fault for not explaining it sufficiently). The existence of a truth that says that you cannot form a complete and consistent theory of morality doesn't make objective moral judgements worthless, impossible or whatever any more than Godel's theorems disprove the value of mathematics. We know about Godel's theorem, yet still we regularly use maths all the time and get reliable real world results from it.

You just said above that "all it needs is one well formed moral question which definitionally cannot be solved." The incompleteness theorems essentially are tantamount to proving that this must be the case. Now you're changing your argument.

[tzor]

Could you find this information from a source that doesn't also prominently feature UFO Hunters and Ancient Aliens?

If I felt like it, perhaps. Perhaps you could loop up "Barber Surgeon" in Wikipedia. Perhaps you might see the following ...

The Barber surgeon was one of the most common medical practitioners of medieval Europe – generally charged with looking after soldiers during or after a battle. In this era, surgery was not generally conducted by physicians, but by barbers. In the Middle Ages in Europe barbers would be expected to do anything from cutting hair to amputating limbs. Mortality of surgery at the time was quite high due to loss of blood and infection. Doctors of the Middle Ages thought that taking blood would help cure the patient of sickness so the barber would apply leeches to the patient. Physicians tended to be academics, working in universities, and mostly dealt with patients as an observer or a consultant. They considered surgery to be beneath them.

Which in turn cites ... McGrew, Roderick (1985). Encyclopedia of Medical History. New York: McGraw Hill. pp. 30–31. ISBN 0070450870.

[mrswdk]

The thinking behind bloodletting (and the practice itself) was present in ancient Greece, so whoever said that bloodletting was not started by medieval doctors is correct.