I have delayed my response cause I saw there were some comments addressed to you and I did not want to put you in the position of answering too much at once.
But you still haven't explained this "sense" you are talking about. You feeling that killing children is wrong is no more special than me feeling infinity is impossible. Both are extrapolations feeded to us, in part by the subconsious and in part by reasoning. The translation of the senses by our brain to form an image is not like that. You are conflating two very different senses.
You need to show how this sense of morality is anything more than a mental process. And yes, seeing is a mental process too. But not all mental procesess are the same. You would not say dreams are somehow detections of a plane beyond us where dragons are real so what makes this moral sense, that is so subjetive and dependant on education and your sanity(cause we know of some people who CAN'T feel empathy), anything more than a value judgement ?
Keep in mind this question is immune to the brain in a vat problem. If we were to be brains in a vat, the mental process we call seeing would still be different in nature from the mental process of feeling something is wrong. The external world would be an illusion, yes, but the process by which we detect the external world would still be different in nature than the moral one.
The external world, in this case, would be feeded to us while the moral sense would be of our own making. You need to show how do you differentiate between a subjective value judgement and stimuli reception processing (seeing, hearing etc.). These things are different in nature by a magnitute of ten yet you readily and easily mix them together in a blender.
The act of seeing is not something we do, the translation of light to electrical impulses to the compillation of it by the brain is done automatic. The sense of morality you speak of is, by necessity sans a libertarian view of free will, is vastly different. For you to sense somehting is wrong you need experience (you have to have felt a similar pain at some point OR empathy and here we come back to the biological and evolutionary explanation), education (biologically we may be predisposed to hate gays but is it right ? nature vs. nurture) and post-processing of the information. What I mean by post processing of information is that it is not automatic nor immediate in the way seeing is. Seeing an inocent human being beaten brings up past information (memories) and prompts you to make a value judgement (this is wrong, that human in innocent -even these two claim require a library of former education).
In the same way that I feel like two things cannot have two different paths at once. I feel that is wrong yet Quantum Mechanics tells us that is not the case. Now how and why did I get that so wrong ? Well because me feeling a statement that contains a truth claim is false or wrong is similar, if not identical, to the moral sense you are talking about. I brought up past information (memories- hold on, we never saw that happen) and I made a value judgement (that is wrong because we never saw it, logic tells us this can't happen).
What you are seeing in these two cases (moral feeling, QM feeling) is the same thing. It is a problem solving mechanism and to conflate it with the process of seeing is not only wrong, is wrong on a monumental scale. These things cannot be compared to eachother, they are as different in nature as CPU's are to software.
For you to make a parallel between the sense of sight and this "sense of morality" you need to show what this sense of morality is receiving. In the same way the sense of sight receives photons and translates them to mental images, you need to show what physical quantity this sense receives. If you don't do that, then your parallel is akin to comparing CPU's to software, which is to say, complete nonsense.
Logic is merely the attempt by humans to make sense of the world. I view it and think it is descriptive, not prescriptive. I hope hackenslash can give us his take on this, given his grasp on the subject.
It's a weird thing to say that your logic would still be valid in a world that is an illusion. I can see the need for that assumption though. Even you understand that you still need elements of the world you supposedly are a skeptic of in order for you to make the argument that you are skeptic of the said world.
So I say we need a bit more than a mere assertion. Why would the logic be sound ?
But does it really not have a physical feeling associated with it ? Does't you brain not release chemicals in order to make you "feel guilty" ? In those people who lack empathy that does not happen. They might think it's wrong from an intellectual point of view, depending on their moral philosophy, but clearly the feeling is not there. Is the addition of dopamine some vodoo mojo shtick that is so hard to comprehend or are we just making problems where there are none ?
I've already explained why I think this conflation of vastly different processes is wrong in my earlier paragraph so lets address the trust issue. I can very well trust this sense you are talking about exists. I can even trust what it is feeding me is right.
But that does nothing to decipher its nature. Evolution+nurture is enough to give us some sort of explanation for this sense. It might not be objective in the sense that you view the word but in this case not only would I accept this sense and what it is feeding me but I would even have an explanation for it, something you do not have. After that point on, your brain in a vat attack would not work anymore and you will be left to defend a whole bunch of assertions (the existence of the metaphysical, the moral realm, objective morality etc.etc.)
And this is another problem. Trusting this sense of morality does nothing to the nature of the information. The information it is feeding us could very well be, and it seems to be, a sort of evolutionary-nurture mix that we evolved to keep our species going.
And now I realise we have let a very big pre-supposition slip through our fingers. Why are we even accepting the assertion that this feeling is a "moral sense" ? What arguments have we brought forward to link this feeling to the concept of "objective morality". Answer: none. This is a lesson of carefully defining our terms before we engage in a conversation.
This is important because, without this link, there is no need to invoke the brain in a vat problem. In fact, you can't.
I think I've addressed this in my previous paragraph. I think I have an answer to your question. I get the sense from my mind. You see, in the same way I "sense" the Moon cannot be me, I have this feeling that the apples I am eating are not what they are supposed to be.
I am glad you think this analogy is not good given that, as you say, to all sense my vat apple is identical to actual apples. So the question I will throw back at you is, where do you get the sense that the feeling of seeing an innocent human being beaten has anything to do with the concept we call "objective morality" ?
I don't think that is anything controversial to say, just basic biology. I addressed this in my first paragraph though. Needless to say, we arrive to vastly different conclusions.
I don't know. I guess it just felt right. And OMG how are you not seeing it ? If indeed this sense is a product of evolution, it is no more a detector of "beyond realms" that my feeling that QM just is not right. These are problem solving mechanisms that reflect our experience of how things are at our scale.
We evolving this sense of morality along with the sense of sight does nothing to show how they are similar. It only goes to show how they might both be required for our survival. And if survival is to be the answer, the whole assumption that this sense is a detector of morality falls flat.
We also evolved the sense of flight and fight. But we running along when we see a bush moving does not, in any way, suggest that there is this beyond real that contains scary monsters and our sense of flight and fight is a detector of some kind.
That is because you conflate two vastly different senses. On one hand, you have a stimuli based processing sense. That is, the translation of light to a mental image. That is automatic and done entirely without our conscious self.
On the other hand you have a problem solving mechanism, in the same way mathematics, logic, our expectation of the world and the flight or fight sense are. The problem is that you assume this feeling you are talking about is a detection of a beyond realm when the simplest and most substantive explanation is evolution+nurture. Just like our sense of things not being in two places at once is a problem solving mechanism we have evolved.
Understanding how we came to see light does not mean it did not exist before we saw it. But again you are conflating between different senses. The sense of sight deals with the reception of outside simuli. The sense of morality is an internal problem solving mechanism. And again keep in mind even in a vat brain world this would be the case. In the brain in a vat scenario, the information of sight would be feed to us but the moral sense would still be of a different nature than the sense of sight, it would still be an internalised problem solving mechanism. Positing the brain in a vat parallel actually does nothing to support the assumption that objective morality works. You might say that the prupose is to defend against skepticism but again you can trust the information you are getting fed while at the same time differentiating its nature and its meaning.
You put the sense of sight and sense of morality on the same pedestal with a broad brush without differetiating between their vastly different nature and assume that just because the feed us some sort of information, that information is to be trusted equally.
This is not a parallel that is substatiated in any way.
It would be like me trying to prove the existence of a realm beyond us that contains scary monsters and in defense of that I would bring in the sense of flight and fight. For problems I have already shown, this is wrong on different levels.
Yes, we have experiences. Based on those experiences we create mental maps to help us navigate the world we find ourselves in. But the concepts of "real" and "false" are also creations we invented to help us compare our maps to the world.
You cannot even talk about brains in a vat without invoking the world we observe. This is putting the cart before the horse. It just does not work
Again. You first have to link this moral sense to the concept you call objective morality. I cannot link my flight and fight sense to the "dark dimension of crackers" so how and why are you able to complete such a feat ?
Furthermore, we can equally trust our "physical senses" and our moral sense. But that does not mean we should treat the information they feed us equally. Not only because they are different in nature and that makes it impossible to create a parallel. But because, even in the event we are brains in a vat, our moral sense would still be different in nature than the sense of sight. It would still be a mental problem solving mechanism of our own making.
ALSO, and this is very important. This paralel is actually a very skewed one, on purpose I think. It says that since we trust that our physical senses give us a "real" image of the world, we should not doubt that our moral senses give us a "real" moral image.
But we already know our physical sense do not give us a real image of the world from time to time(eg. optical illusions). So why is the paralel not: "We don't doubt that our physical senses give us a real image of the world most of the time, so in the same way why should we doubt that our moral senses give us a real moral image of the world most of the time".
This is a much better and balanced paralel yet it is obvious why it is not used. Cause it deals a fatal blow to the skeptic position. It puts both the physical senses and the moral ones under scrutiny and it actually provides a way for us to know if we should trust both equally and the nature of their information and their inner working.
We already know our sense do not give us the "real" picture of the world. We see a tiny fraction of the light specturm, same goes for the audio spectrum and the other senses.
What this paralel does is attack the reality of the external world, NOT the reality of the picture our senses create. In other words, what it says is "You don't know the external world is real, therefore don't doubt what your gut says is right". So why are we led to believe the paralel says "You don't know if your 5 senses give you a real picture of the world, therefore why doubt the 6th or 7th sense are the same ?"
Admitting that our 5 sense do not give us the real picture of the world stops this argument in its tracks. Cause it puts two flawed type of senses under scrutiny. No longer can you say "Why doubt your moral sense ?" when you already doubt your sense of sight. It actually forces you to get to the business of doing science and not merely babble about vodoo mojo shtiks.
That's kind of the point of the question. How do you differentiate between an metaphysical apple and an non-existence apple. I am not asking how the concepts differ. I am asking why you treat them differently.
P.S. Do not interpret my vodoo mojo babble as hostile. They are meant to be light hearted. It's a phrase I like to use. I got it from George Carlin.
If our "physical" senses are not on trial, then our moral senses shouldn't be either. That's the argument, in a nutshell.
But you still haven't explained this "sense" you are talking about. You feeling that killing children is wrong is no more special than me feeling infinity is impossible. Both are extrapolations feeded to us, in part by the subconsious and in part by reasoning. The translation of the senses by our brain to form an image is not like that. You are conflating two very different senses.
You need to show how this sense of morality is anything more than a mental process. And yes, seeing is a mental process too. But not all mental procesess are the same. You would not say dreams are somehow detections of a plane beyond us where dragons are real so what makes this moral sense, that is so subjetive and dependant on education and your sanity(cause we know of some people who CAN'T feel empathy), anything more than a value judgement ?
Keep in mind this question is immune to the brain in a vat problem. If we were to be brains in a vat, the mental process we call seeing would still be different in nature from the mental process of feeling something is wrong. The external world would be an illusion, yes, but the process by which we detect the external world would still be different in nature than the moral one.
The external world, in this case, would be feeded to us while the moral sense would be of our own making. You need to show how do you differentiate between a subjective value judgement and stimuli reception processing (seeing, hearing etc.). These things are different in nature by a magnitute of ten yet you readily and easily mix them together in a blender.
The act of seeing is not something we do, the translation of light to electrical impulses to the compillation of it by the brain is done automatic. The sense of morality you speak of is, by necessity sans a libertarian view of free will, is vastly different. For you to sense somehting is wrong you need experience (you have to have felt a similar pain at some point OR empathy and here we come back to the biological and evolutionary explanation), education (biologically we may be predisposed to hate gays but is it right ? nature vs. nurture) and post-processing of the information. What I mean by post processing of information is that it is not automatic nor immediate in the way seeing is. Seeing an inocent human being beaten brings up past information (memories) and prompts you to make a value judgement (this is wrong, that human in innocent -even these two claim require a library of former education).
In the same way that I feel like two things cannot have two different paths at once. I feel that is wrong yet Quantum Mechanics tells us that is not the case. Now how and why did I get that so wrong ? Well because me feeling a statement that contains a truth claim is false or wrong is similar, if not identical, to the moral sense you are talking about. I brought up past information (memories- hold on, we never saw that happen) and I made a value judgement (that is wrong because we never saw it, logic tells us this can't happen).
What you are seeing in these two cases (moral feeling, QM feeling) is the same thing. It is a problem solving mechanism and to conflate it with the process of seeing is not only wrong, is wrong on a monumental scale. These things cannot be compared to eachother, they are as different in nature as CPU's are to software.
For you to make a parallel between the sense of sight and this "sense of morality" you need to show what this sense of morality is receiving. In the same way the sense of sight receives photons and translates them to mental images, you need to show what physical quantity this sense receives. If you don't do that, then your parallel is akin to comparing CPU's to software, which is to say, complete nonsense.
Not at all, because the logic is sound even if we assume the physical world as we perceive it ISN'T real. We don't have to rely on any experiences we have in this world (imaginary or otherwise) for the logic of the question to be valid.
Logic is merely the attempt by humans to make sense of the world. I view it and think it is descriptive, not prescriptive. I hope hackenslash can give us his take on this, given his grasp on the subject.
It's a weird thing to say that your logic would still be valid in a world that is an illusion. I can see the need for that assumption though. Even you understand that you still need elements of the world you supposedly are a skeptic of in order for you to make the argument that you are skeptic of the said world.
So I say we need a bit more than a mere assertion. Why would the logic be sound ?
I don't question the moral sense you are talking about. I question its nature/meaning. In the same way me feeling infinity is impossible is not a detection of a "mathematical plane" I don't view this sense differently.And obviously the moral sense is not going to have a physical feeling to it (unless you count feelings of disgust or something like this maybe?) Nevertheless it's definitely a sense people use frequently (whether they admit it in conversations loosely related to religion or not).
But does it really not have a physical feeling associated with it ? Does't you brain not release chemicals in order to make you "feel guilty" ? In those people who lack empathy that does not happen. They might think it's wrong from an intellectual point of view, depending on their moral philosophy, but clearly the feeling is not there. Is the addition of dopamine some vodoo mojo shtick that is so hard to comprehend or are we just making problems where there are none ?
Absolutely not. Remember that it is first and foremost about that moral sense we tend to heed, and then about DEFENDING our trust in that sense by showing how a parallel attack could be leveled at the belief in the reality of the external world as we sense it.
I've already explained why I think this conflation of vastly different processes is wrong in my earlier paragraph so lets address the trust issue. I can very well trust this sense you are talking about exists. I can even trust what it is feeding me is right.
But that does nothing to decipher its nature. Evolution+nurture is enough to give us some sort of explanation for this sense. It might not be objective in the sense that you view the word but in this case not only would I accept this sense and what it is feeding me but I would even have an explanation for it, something you do not have. After that point on, your brain in a vat attack would not work anymore and you will be left to defend a whole bunch of assertions (the existence of the metaphysical, the moral realm, objective morality etc.etc.)
And this is another problem. Trusting this sense of morality does nothing to the nature of the information. The information it is feeding us could very well be, and it seems to be, a sort of evolutionary-nurture mix that we evolved to keep our species going.
And now I realise we have let a very big pre-supposition slip through our fingers. Why are we even accepting the assertion that this feeling is a "moral sense" ? What arguments have we brought forward to link this feeling to the concept of "objective morality". Answer: none. This is a lesson of carefully defining our terms before we engage in a conversation.
This is important because, without this link, there is no need to invoke the brain in a vat problem. In fact, you can't.
And so I'll gladly concede that your vat apple analogy is hereby defended from one angle, but the question of where you get the SENSE of a vat apple (particularly if it's, as you say, to all senses identical to actual apples) still reveals how the analogy isn't altogether good.
I think I've addressed this in my previous paragraph. I think I have an answer to your question. I get the sense from my mind. You see, in the same way I "sense" the Moon cannot be me, I have this feeling that the apples I am eating are not what they are supposed to be.
I am glad you think this analogy is not good given that, as you say, to all sense my vat apple is identical to actual apples. So the question I will throw back at you is, where do you get the sense that the feeling of seeing an innocent human being beaten has anything to do with the concept we call "objective morality" ?
Thank you for admitting, however, that in both cases we could write the senses off as purely mental. I think that concession further shows how strong this parallel really is.
I don't think that is anything controversial to say, just basic biology. I addressed this in my first paragraph though. Needless to say, we arrive to vastly different conclusions.
Why are we putting "feel" in quotations. Are you trying to be sneaky? It would still be a feeling, whether it was a product of evolution or otherwise. And I'll add that evolution says we evolved EVERY sense we have, and so this further completes the parallel!
I don't know. I guess it just felt right. And OMG how are you not seeing it ? If indeed this sense is a product of evolution, it is no more a detector of "beyond realms" that my feeling that QM just is not right. These are problem solving mechanisms that reflect our experience of how things are at our scale.
We evolving this sense of morality along with the sense of sight does nothing to show how they are similar. It only goes to show how they might both be required for our survival. And if survival is to be the answer, the whole assumption that this sense is a detector of morality falls flat.
We also evolved the sense of flight and fight. But we running along when we see a bush moving does not, in any way, suggest that there is this beyond real that contains scary monsters and our sense of flight and fight is a detector of some kind.
We evolved the sense of SIGHT, for example. Does that mean light didn't exist before we saw it? Or that we should question whether or not it's real because we understand how we came about seeing it? Absolutely none of these attempts to refute belief in objective morality work.
That is because you conflate two vastly different senses. On one hand, you have a stimuli based processing sense. That is, the translation of light to a mental image. That is automatic and done entirely without our conscious self.
On the other hand you have a problem solving mechanism, in the same way mathematics, logic, our expectation of the world and the flight or fight sense are. The problem is that you assume this feeling you are talking about is a detection of a beyond realm when the simplest and most substantive explanation is evolution+nurture. Just like our sense of things not being in two places at once is a problem solving mechanism we have evolved.
Understanding how we came to see light does not mean it did not exist before we saw it. But again you are conflating between different senses. The sense of sight deals with the reception of outside simuli. The sense of morality is an internal problem solving mechanism. And again keep in mind even in a vat brain world this would be the case. In the brain in a vat scenario, the information of sight would be feed to us but the moral sense would still be of a different nature than the sense of sight, it would still be an internalised problem solving mechanism. Positing the brain in a vat parallel actually does nothing to support the assumption that objective morality works. You might say that the prupose is to defend against skepticism but again you can trust the information you are getting fed while at the same time differentiating its nature and its meaning.
You put the sense of sight and sense of morality on the same pedestal with a broad brush without differetiating between their vastly different nature and assume that just because the feed us some sort of information, that information is to be trusted equally.
This is not a parallel that is substatiated in any way.
It would be like me trying to prove the existence of a realm beyond us that contains scary monsters and in defense of that I would bring in the sense of flight and fight. For problems I have already shown, this is wrong on different levels.
That's simply false, for the reasons I've given. We have experiences, but we can by no means say that we've better reason to think the "physical" senses we experience are any more trustworthy than our moral senses.
Yes, we have experiences. Based on those experiences we create mental maps to help us navigate the world we find ourselves in. But the concepts of "real" and "false" are also creations we invented to help us compare our maps to the world.
You cannot even talk about brains in a vat without invoking the world we observe. This is putting the cart before the horse. It just does not work
Again. You first have to link this moral sense to the concept you call objective morality. I cannot link my flight and fight sense to the "dark dimension of crackers" so how and why are you able to complete such a feat ?
Furthermore, we can equally trust our "physical senses" and our moral sense. But that does not mean we should treat the information they feed us equally. Not only because they are different in nature and that makes it impossible to create a parallel. But because, even in the event we are brains in a vat, our moral sense would still be different in nature than the sense of sight. It would still be a mental problem solving mechanism of our own making.
ALSO, and this is very important. This paralel is actually a very skewed one, on purpose I think. It says that since we trust that our physical senses give us a "real" image of the world, we should not doubt that our moral senses give us a "real" moral image.
But we already know our physical sense do not give us a real image of the world from time to time(eg. optical illusions). So why is the paralel not: "We don't doubt that our physical senses give us a real image of the world most of the time, so in the same way why should we doubt that our moral senses give us a real moral image of the world most of the time".
This is a much better and balanced paralel yet it is obvious why it is not used. Cause it deals a fatal blow to the skeptic position. It puts both the physical senses and the moral ones under scrutiny and it actually provides a way for us to know if we should trust both equally and the nature of their information and their inner working.
We already know our sense do not give us the "real" picture of the world. We see a tiny fraction of the light specturm, same goes for the audio spectrum and the other senses.
What this paralel does is attack the reality of the external world, NOT the reality of the picture our senses create. In other words, what it says is "You don't know the external world is real, therefore don't doubt what your gut says is right". So why are we led to believe the paralel says "You don't know if your 5 senses give you a real picture of the world, therefore why doubt the 6th or 7th sense are the same ?"
Admitting that our 5 sense do not give us the real picture of the world stops this argument in its tracks. Cause it puts two flawed type of senses under scrutiny. No longer can you say "Why doubt your moral sense ?" when you already doubt your sense of sight. It actually forces you to get to the business of doing science and not merely babble about vodoo mojo shtiks.
"How do you differentiate between the metaphysical and the non-existent ?"
I would simply go by the dictionary definitions? One means "in addition to the physical world" and the other means "it doesn't exist in any way".
That's kind of the point of the question. How do you differentiate between an metaphysical apple and an non-existence apple. I am not asking how the concepts differ. I am asking why you treat them differently.
P.S. Do not interpret my vodoo mojo babble as hostile. They are meant to be light hearted. It's a phrase I like to use. I got it from George Carlin.