Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang, Essays on Mind and Matter

[Bacchus]

I don't think 'realism about ontologies' makes any sense. Realism is about reality: i.e. there are real things out there, whatever they may be. That's the essence of realism.

I don't think I got across my definition of ontology. I think there is something real. I don't know whether that which is real is objectively split into a particular set of parts in one particular way. A split of reality into parts is precisely what I call an ontology. To say that there are plural things as opposed to just one thing, and presumably some determinate number of things at any one point, is already to come up with an ontology, not something prior to coming up with it. Once you say that there are plural things independent of any human understanding, you say that there is exactly one true partition of what's real -- and it's a partition into those things. Only those things are really capable of relating to each other, only at the level of those things can a true account of facts be given. I by contrast say that the whole business of partitioning seems to be a logical, human exercise (which you actually also admit, as far as I can see), and that reality does not carry in itself any necessary partition. Again, I'm talking about an actual partition, not a description of one. A book really is distinct from a table, but a partition into macroscopic objects is just one partition out of many that reality allows. Maybe in saying "there are things" you just want to say "there are real distinctions that can be drawn in what's real" -- and I have no problem with that.

Actually maybe that's the way forward. Distinctions are real, ontologies are constructed on top of them, but because distinctions are cross-cutting and multi-dimensional, no single partition arises.

[ipecac]

I don't think 'realism about ontologies' makes any sense. Realism is about reality: i.e. there are real things out there, whatever they may be. That's the essence of realism.

I don't think I got across my definition of ontology. I think there is something real. I don't know whether that which is real is objectively split into a particular set of parts in one particular way. A split of reality into parts is precisely what I call an ontology. To say that there are plural things as opposed to just one thing, and presumably some determinate number of things at any one point, is already to come up with an ontology, not something prior to coming up with it. Once you say that there are plural things independent of any human understanding, you say that there is exactly one true partition of what's real -- and it's a partition into those things. Only those things are really capable of relating to each other, only at the level of those things can a true account of facts be given. I by contrast say that the whole business of partitioning seems to be a logical, human exercise (which you actually also admit, as far as I can see), and that reality does not carry in itself any necessary partition.

My approach to philosophy is uncommon. I don't think 'knowledge' in terms of the classical justified true belief or variant thereof is all that important. Knowing something is to perceive and understand what it is, as an metaphor we often say 'I see'. To truly know something is to 'see' it.

So logical and prepositional schema is a useful tool, but true knowing does not rest on that sort of thing at all and goes far deeper than 'I assent to the truth of this preposition'. True knowledge isn't about assent to prepositions.

Again, I'm talking about an actual partition, not a description of one. A book really is distinct from a table, but a partition into macroscopic objects is just one partition out of many that reality allows. Maybe in saying "there are things" you just want to say "there are real distinctions that can be drawn in what's real" -- and I have no problem with that.

Actually maybe that's the way forward. Distinctions are real, ontologies are constructed on top of them, but because distinctions are cross-cutting and multi-dimensional, no single partition arises.

It seems like you treat partitioning as set definition in a mathematical fashion, 'define S= {...}'. I would say that though we can certainly construct such ideas of sets, there are actual things-in-themselves, actual parts of actual wholes. That's not constructing an ontology in the way you would put it, that's arises from first getting a 'glimpse' of how reality is and then trying to express what has been glimpsed into a type of language.

[ipecac]

A good approach to 'why do we need objective standards' is to ask the questioner about his own moral demands and expectations of other people, as well as his attitudes about justice. If they are just subjective, we can just ignore his stances because why should we care?

I define subject as that which perceives (or acts) and object as that which is perceived (or acted upon). Then a subjective conviction can motivate an action towards an object. The subject can be affected by being an object to other subjects.

When two people clash about morals, they do it because they assume that the other's stance threatens their wishful image of the world. This doesn't mean that you'd need to condemn or punish, say, robbery because you fear that you specifically will be robbed, but rather that you think robbery should not occur in the world. I see morals as an extension of the human desire to act as a designer to one's environment. The designer holds himself to standards because (a) they arise from the structure of his consciousness or (b) they arise from his perception of objects (whether these are themselves designed or not). I would call the former "purely subjective" and the latter "analytically subjective", though, or maybe innate and stimulative. I'm not a philosopher; this might just be a renaming of what you mean by subjective and objective.

If you don't expect that my own demands and expectations matter to your design, then you can ignore them.

Different types of subjectivity is interesting, as is the designer idea. But overall, the last sentence indicate that the view is subjective. Objectivity mean that a given description just is true in a real sense.

Yet how do you convince yourself that a duty or standard is "objective"? I see two roads; either by embracing descriptive science as normative to human morals, or by the conviction that you were born with the pneumatic seed and those who disagree weren't. I'd even argue that the latter is neither possible to refute by "dialogue", nor necessarily even desirable to try and refute by "dialogue" if it were, which is why I'm not replying to TheHumanHydra, despite disagreeing with all his opinions on the role of religion. But I think our disagreement doesn't matter, despite concerning how each of us would define the ultimate in objectivity. What I wholeheartedly agree on with him, incidentally, is that which seems to be his quiet insistence on the importance of epiphanies.

Intuition and revelation are the classic Christian starting points. One of the points I made about T-Hawk's position is relevant here: you can try to believe that there is no objective standard, maybe you can consciously train yourself to override your instinctive perspective that such a standard exists. But your behaviour will betray your true belief, and I would argue from intuition that this belief in an objective standard arises from grasping something fundamental about reality.

I care more about the process of looking for a unifying principle in life (and if it seems to exist, then what it could be) than any intermediate (or let's say mutable) result, which is likely as incomplete as any other attempt to nail down exactly what one is driven towards (except simply listing all items, but then there is no higher-order insight).

"Love your neighbour as yourself", where love is not at all emotional fluffiness but seeking the genuine good of the people around you, sometimes extending to 'tough love', e.g. disciplining a child, telling a close friend harsh but necessary truths and so on.

[Bacchus]

Some questions to T-Hawk:

* Given that we can always give a finer-grained account of any particles posed as fundamental, how do we know that we've reached the objective 'bottom' and not gone past it? Let's take quarks — how do we tell whether hadrons interact with probing particles as if they were composed of empty space and some point charges vs them actually being composed of quarks?

* If the usefulness from a human's perspective is not enough to make a statement fully meaningful, why is the uselessness from a bacteria's perspective enough to make it entirely meaningless?

* Are you at all open to experimental evidence given in terms of objects of a higher order than particles? What would it take to show you causality at a higher order for you to accept that it really goes on at a higher order?


And for THH:

* Do you accept prudence as a source of objective, non-moral normativity? If someone seeks to build a Granary, is that enough to say he ought to click the appropriate icon?

* Is there a problem in giving a similar account of normativity for logic? E.g. if you believe that cats are black, and you believe that Tiffany is a cat, you ought to believe that Tiffany is black. Doesn't logic pick out just the rules of valid entailment: of what we ought to believe, given what we already believe?

* Let's say for the moment that there is objective correctness broadly considered -- that you can be objectively right and objectively wrong in matters like knowledge, or beliefs, or choosing the best instrument for the job. Is anything further required to say that you ought to strive to be right, rather than wrong? Is "you ought not commit mistakes" anything more than a tautology? Isn't to say "Oof, that was a mistake" just to say "I/you/he ought not have done that" and to say "this is the right instrument" just to say "this is what you ought to use"?

Edit: oh, and on utilitarianism -- you are absolutely right that without an account of normativity any ethical theory remains at best descriptive, this powerfully goes towards various evolutionary theories of ethics for example, and you are just as right in pointing out that the question of WHOSE welfare really seems to have no non-arbitrary answer. Other questions are WHEN welfare and how do we "net" pleasures and pains, even within one person, much less across many, and across time.

[TheHumanHydra]

When two people clash about morals, they do it because they assume that the other's stance threatens their wishful image of the world. This doesn't mean that you'd need to condemn or punish, say, robbery because you fear that you specifically will be robbed, but rather that you think robbery should not occur in the world. I see morals as an extension of the human desire to act as a designer to one's environment. The designer holds himself to standards because (a) they arise from the structure of his consciousness or (b) they arise from his perception of objects (whether these are themselves designed or not). I would call the former "purely subjective" and the latter "analytically subjective", though, or maybe innate and stimulative. I'm not a philosopher; this might just be a renaming of what you mean by subjective and objective.

If you don't expect that my own demands and expectations matter to your design, then you can ignore them.

Coeurva, I know you don't want to debate me, which is completely fine. I just wanted to note that I think this (the whole thing) is a good articulation of what I would call subjective morality (behaviour out of personal desire, including reactions to perceptions).

I agree with you that we're not likely to arrive at God through debate. Just for clarity, not for debate, what did you mean by 'that which seems to be his quiet insistence on the importance of epiphanies'? I was just struck by the phrase.

It was a thoughtful post, thanks for it.

[TheHumanHydra]

And for THH:

* Do you accept prudence as a source of objective, non-moral normativity? If someone seeks to build a Granary, is that enough to say he ought to click the appropriate icon?

* Is there a problem in giving a similar account of normativity for logic? E.g. if you believe that cats are black, and you believe that Tiffany is a cat, you ought to believe that Tiffany is black. Doesn't logic pick out just the rules  of valid entailment: of what we ought to believe, given what we already believe?

* Let's say for the moment that there is objective correctness broadly considered -- that you can be objectively right and objectively wrong in matters like knowledge, or beliefs, or choosing the best instrument for the job. Is anything further required to say that you ought to strive to be right, rather than wrong? Is "you ought not commit mistakes" anything more than a tautology? Isn't to say "Oof, that was a mistake" just to say "I/you/he ought not have done that"?

I sense a logic trap, but I'm not schooled enough to avoid it. 

1. Yes? Importantly, this is non-moral normativity, it is not really directive, and it is almost akin to saying, 'I accept that prudence is prudent'. We could alternatively define this concept as proficiency -- at a very basic level, the individual who doesn't click the granary icon is not very proficient at building granaries. In other words, while it may from the perspective of efficiency objectively be reasonable for one to take action in accordance with one's goals (note that subjectivity), this appears to be a different axis from moral imperatives -- which may or may not reflect efficiency or proficiency!

(From the perspective of morality, it may not objectively be reasonable for one to take action in accordance with one's goals, if one's goals are evil!)

2. Yes -- but importantly, this is a different sort of ought. It is foolish for me not to believe that Tiffany is black given those parameters, not immoral. This approaches the previous point about proficiency. While I would argue that morality is usually logical, so logic is a valuable tool in discerning objective morality, it is not the font of it any more than my mind writes another's words.* Again, these are different axes.

3. I do believe that (not for every question, but for many questions). Here I wonder if I'm stepping into the trap again, but yes, I think we do need something further to impel us to be correct, not incorrect. As for mistakes begetting oughts, they can according to logic in pursuit of subjective goals (I think this is your Kantian argument, which again seems to be speaking of efficiency/proficiency, not morality), and they can morally, but only if the 'mistake' is a moral one! (We might just as well adjust the phrase to, 'I wish I hadn't done that', to demonstrate its relation to subjective goals.)

You're right that there are other kinds of objectivity than moral objectivity. But that is what they are, other kinds. Or, better, you're right that it's possible to be correct or incorrect on a great many questions. Not all of them are moral questions. Each of them has its own metric. Some of those metrics are put into place by subjective goals. Others reflect raw, amoral factuality. We wish to ascertain moral factuality, which entails a standard of measurement distinct from the others, or a substance different from the others to measure.

Well, there we go. I suspect I've made a mistake somewhere in my argument (thankfully not a moral one). I'll soon find out!


* Yes, the words are 'rewritten' in my mind as I perceive them -- perhaps inaccurately.

[Bacchus]

I'm not at all in the business of setting traps, I'm quite interested in the genuine exercise of finding out. I wanted to settle some issues that deal with normativity before we get into issues specifically of morality, so as not to conflate the two.

I think it's good that you answer in the positive to the first two, because it's quite possible in these debates for someone to take the position of "Well, I don't see anything wrong with being mistaken!", and I was half-worried you'd go there when you started asking "Why be logical?".

I don't quite get your position on the third question, especially in the light of the above. You do agree that logical mistakes can beget oughts, just by nature of being mistakes. But you also say that incorrectness by itself doesn't have normative force. How do the two tally?

Does it have to do with the introduction of 'subjective goals' with respect to logical normativity, which I also don't understand? What exactly is the goal in question in pursuit of which logic starts begetting 'oughts', beyond a goal "to be right"? Even in prudence, the goals are subjectively selected, to be sure, but the principle of prudence isn't, is it? You are quite right, on my view, that to accept normativity of prudence is to admit that prudence is in fact prudent -- normativity is built into the concept itself. I would argue the same for logic. But if that's the case, there is nothing extra needed to impel us to be correct in the prudential or logical sense. To show that something is logical or prudent is already to impel. "This is a logical conclusion" is all the reason we need to accept it, any addendum of the sort "and we should accept logical conclusions" is vacuous because it amounts to nothing but "we should accept conclusions that we should accept". Now, Korsgaard does introduce something extra, she notes the overarching goal or, rather, a problem, a need -- we need reasons for actions, justifications for beliefs, and prudence and logic provide some of them. But there is nothing subjective about the need for reasons, it's an objective consequence of our objective nature, it's not something you can choose away by preference.

We could imagine someone setting himself a subjective goal of disobeying logic. Does for that person logic then lose its normative force? Does he stop being objectively wrong? Do the reasons that impel us to follow logic disappear for him? Not really. He will definitely be wrong, and logic telling us what's right is just the reason that impels us to follow it, so why would the normative force disappear? This person is simply refusing to take account of what's right and wrong. Does his refusal make logic subjective? I wouldn't say so. The reasons are still there, he's just choosing to be impervious to them. All this proves is that logic doesn't have causal force -- it's not necessarily efficient in compelling people to follow it, but normative force need not be a causal one, and maybe even must not be such. A causal force would just be a matter of fact -- normativity seems to require some space for disobedience to be meaningful and distinctive from causality.

The nature of logic in this sense is a matter of some debate. Let's say you claim to believe that all cats are black, and that Tiffany is a cat, and that Tiffany is red. What does that even mean? You are proclaiming a set of beliefs, but it's not all that clear how you could actually hold them. Maybe you don't understand the meaning of 'all'. Some people would say that you just can't hold illogical beliefs -- which would of course render the question of logical normativity moot.

Pfff, this turned out to be too long again. Anyway, in the light of the above, just what role do subjective goals do you think have in granting logic normativity, and what could this something further be that would impel us to follow logic, beyond logic itself? You follow logic, after all, don't you -- what impels you?

[TheHumanHydra]

I'm not at all in the business of setting traps, I'm quite interested in the genuine exercise of finding out. I wanted to settle some issues that deal with normativity before we get into issues specifically of morality, so as not to conflate the two.

I'm sorry if you were offended by the phrase -- if so, please let me know by PM.

Maybe our ships are crossing in the fog. Your questions and previous posts appeared to me to lead toward defining moral normativity as one of the other forms of normativity, which is what I was trying to preempt in that post.

I can clarify what I meant by the third point if you'd like (shortly, logical correctness doesn't by nature have moral normative force, likewise prudence, for which it is the goals it drives toward that possess a moral aspect). But, if it's okay, I'd be more interested to hear the problems you are trying to avert by having this preliminary discussion so I can clearly direct my responses.

[T-hawk]

Given that we can always give a finer-grained account of any particles posed as fundamental, how do we know that we've reached the objective 'bottom' and not gone past it?  Let's take quarks — how do we tell whether hadrons interact with probing particles as if they were composed of empty space and some point charges vs them actually being composed of quarks?

I'm not sure I understand this question -- I define the objective 'bottom' as that which can't be gone past.  I don't agree that we can always give a finer-grained account.  If it's physically impossible for "quark" and "empty space with a point charge" to exhibit any observable difference in behavior, then those descriptions are equivalent and the objective fundament is equivalently either.  If the question is how do we know we've hit bottom, that our current-best-guess matches the objective, of course we don't know, we can't prove that our theory and observational methods are complete, but a current-best-guess is good enough to stake materialism on.

If the usefulness from a human's perspective is not enough to make a statement fully meaningful, why is the uselessness from a bacteria's perspective enough to make it entirely meaningless?

It's not entirely meaningless for the bacteria.  It still finds usefulness in the fact that there's a large number of hydrocarbon bonds in close proximity.  It has its own abstraction of "a mass of food" separate from yours of "book".  Each involves the hydrocarbon bonds, since those maintain the arrangement that you describe as a page.  But there is always another abstraction possible for which any such property does not matter.  If a black hole consumes the book, only the mass matters, the hydrocarbon bonds are meaningless to it.

Are you at all open to experimental evidence given in terms of objects of a higher order than particles? What would it take to show you causality at a higher order for you to accept that it really goes on at a higher order?

I am open (to all experimental evidence); as we said particles are merely the current best-guess for the fundament and could be swapped out.  A divine miracle could be an example of higher-order causality, that God's will is the fundament exerting causality on the particles.  But as you said, we can't objectively distinguish between that versus reformulating our theory with a yet-unobserved particle.  It's possible the miracle explanation could reach a higher (subjective) confidence level than the particle, when considered including all details of the experimental evidence and heuristics like Occam's.  I don't know what experimental evidence would reach that confidence level, but I contend that I don't need to, the burden of that is on he who proposes the evidence.  Like Newton would never have known what evidence would constitute Einstein's refinements.

[Bacchus]

@THH

I wanted to establish an agreed pathway to identifying some non-subjective non-divine kinds of normativity, so that now we are apparently agreed that they exist we have at least a sketch of what such a kind might look like. I also wanted to show how we can bring to an end infinite regresses of the sort "Well, you described A, but why should I care? Oh, B? But why should I care about B? Oh, C? And why should I..." These can be very tempting, so it's good to show that there are some concepts which are just constituted as normative, they are the relevant standard for their domains.

The next question is that there is indeed a separate domain of morality. I don't think we disagree on its existence, but we do need to define its boundaries or its constitution. I think we agree that the whole issue of normativity arises in consequence of the necessity of choice, which in turn is a feature of us being willing beings. Choice of means -- prudence, choice of beliefs -- logic and perception (we haven't talked about this, but I don't think you'll disagree that you ought to discard beliefs in light of contradictory evidence), choice of ends -- morality. This seems to map nicely onto what an action is -- we strive towards ends, which we seek to bring about through a choice of means, having built up some beliefs about their efficacy. To act we need to do just these things, and to act successfully we need the beliefs to be true, and the means to be selected prudently. What do we need the ends to be? Well, I would say we need the ends to be good. Striving towards bad ends is just a mistake, it is to be avoided, just like irrationality or imprudence are.

So, I put that if we can show some ends to be good, and some to be bad, just as we can show a choice of means to be effective or ineffective, we would provide an account of normativity of morality. If we can also show that some ends are good irrespective of anyone's preferences, tastes, inclinations or urges -- then we've given a non-subjective account of normativity of morality.