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Chomsky explains why nobody is a moral relativist

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Re: Chomsky explains why nobody is a moral relativist

#141

Post by johndhi »

ajuc wrote: post #129
johndhi wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is Russia's imperialism far far far worse? What about the us invasion of Iraq is "better" than the Russia invasion of Ukraine?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_genocide_of_Ukr... Let's also remember a few millions of Ukrainians were starved to death not 100 years ago by Russians. Ukraine is and was the most fertile soil in Europe. Russians sent soldiers to steal food and to ban people from leaving. This is what happens when Russia invades you. People in the west have no comparison.

Some interesting responses here but imo these sound like "worse" but not "far far far worse" conditions to me. A war where lots of people are being killed exploded maimed raped generationally ruined or traumatized - is really horrible either way. It sounds like Russia has somewhat worse intentional practices than us but I don't see what the us did as okay in any sense.

Re: Chomsky explains why nobody is a moral relativist

#142

Post by effed3 »

Agree. probably morality is deep rooted by evolution, is basic for -survival-, even today, is a necessary tool to build social structures where we can live better. skepticism is shallow, can express only in a more limited contingency, and in small doses serve to build deeper knoveledge, and maybe a deeper morality.

Different cultures appear to differ at surface levels, having different habits forged by different local environments, but being stables (or slow changing/adapting) this set of ideas/knoweledges reveal a wide similarity at deep level: this deep level is not relative, is just on top of levels like dna, cells, anatomy, is the ability to develop knowlewdge, can be the language, the walking, the relation is a group..

relativism is shallow in the big perspective of evolution, a deep relativist probably is an extinct one. But today extintion come from the opposite direction, not nature but ourselves.. but this is another story.

Re: Chomsky explains why nobody is a moral relativist

#143

Post by tomjen3 »

boppinz wrote: post #124
tomjen3 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you. I wish he was a banned subject on hn.

nah, I think a lot of armchair philosopher techies on here could use some alternate opinions and dialectics. The primary reason for bringing him up (or any philosopher on this forum, really) is the nexus of ethics and AI. Although we haven't particularly let ethics stop us from a lot of high-tech atrocities throughout the past century, in the military field or otherwise (I'm thinking private equity and rampant credit…

I don't disagree that we could use other useful perspectives.

I strongly emphatize he doesn't bring them.

Re: Chomsky explains why nobody is a moral relativist

#144

Post by LudwigNagasena »

dale_glass wrote: post #99
LudwigNagasena wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To me, "moral relativism" just means the recognition that different societies had and have different moral ideas, and that even within a single society rules are murky and fluid, and often outright undefined. That’s just a sociological trick. You redefine X to mean “what people think X is” and come to “profound” conclusions. That’s like saying that the laws of the universe has changed when Einstein invented relativ…

> That’s just a sociological trick. You redefine X to mean “what people think X is” and come to “profound” conclusions. That’s like saying that the laws of the universe has changed when Einstein invented relativity. That's exactly what you get under "objective" morality though. Everyone agrees "murder" is bad. Not everyone agrees on what "murder" means exactly. You don't have to try very hard to find people apparentl…

> That's exactly what you get under "objective" morality though. Everyone agrees "murder" is bad. Not everyone agrees on what "murder" means exactly.

I don’t see how it is exactly what you get. It doesn’t matter what everyone agrees or disagrees on. The point of moral objectivism is that doesn’t matter what people think morality is in general just like it doesn’t matter what you think about the laws of physics—they are still out there.

To oversimplify it:

Moral objectivism: laws of morality ~ laws of physics: something that exists regardless of what you think about it

Moral relativism: laws of morality ~ rules of football: it is good or bad to do something only by nature of social conventions and views

Using lots of water to grow cannabis instead of crops during a drought is bad because it could be allocated more efficiently to feed the poor — moral objectivism

Using lots of water to grow cannabis instead of crops during a drought may be good or bad depending on whether people around you care about the poor — moral relativism

Re: Chomsky explains why nobody is a moral relativist

#145

Post by za3faran »

snowpid wrote: post #125
johndhi wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is Russia's imperialism far far far worse? What about the us invasion of Iraq is "better" than the Russia invasion of Ukraine?

1.) Iraq was never annexed by USA. 2.) American govertment never claimed there is no Iraqi culture. 3.) There was no large kidnapping of Iraqi kids. 4.) There are no mass rapes made by the American military. 5.) Iraqis were never forced to forget Arab and learn only English. 6.) Hussein used poison gas on Kurdish people and used Zyklon B filled rockets (yes, same gas like in Ausschwitz) to attack Israel. Hussein occu…

Lots of these are paper arguments. Yeah so Iraq was not "annexed", but the west installed a puppet government to do what they want, and they attempted to brainwash the population with western values. They did the same in Afghanistan, but fortunately they failed miserably and left in a humiliated manner. Maybe the kidnapping wasn't as bad as ukraine, but the hundreds of thousands killed and millions displaced and sick and poor and left without anything would like to have a word with you. I'm not defending Saddam's atrocities, but let's not pretend that the US didn't nuke Japan or use napalm in Vietnam. Fact of the matter is that the western hypocrisy is now more exposed than ever. You think they really care about Ukraine? All they see is more room to expand their influence and power in the globe.

Re: Chomsky explains why nobody is a moral relativist

#146

Post by LudwigNagasena »

vehemenz wrote: post #9

Moral relativism is the most absurd form of moral realism, which is itself an absurd position. I'd be more interested in an explanation for why so many otherwise intelligent people, who are more than capable of reasoning for themselves and holding well-defended, sensible positions, find themselves attracted to moral realism, a truly mystical belief that offends science, reason, and grade school grammar.

I agree that moral relativism is absurd, but I don’t see any problem with moral realism. I think many intelligent people understand the boundaries of our knowledge in the domain of consciousness, cognition and agency and thus they don’t jump to conclusion that morality doesn’t exist on the grounds that there is no equation for it in string theory.

Re: Chomsky explains why nobody is a moral relativist

#147

Post by za3faran »

torstenvl wrote: post #137
johndhi wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is Russia's imperialism far far far worse? What about the us invasion of Iraq is "better" than the Russia invasion of Ukraine?

The U.S. could do better about prosecuting troops who commit war crimes, but it does prosecute them. By contrast, Russia openly condones war crimes. Not in the debatable "enhanced interrogation" borderline kind of way. In the kidnapping children to wipe out an entire cultural history and intentionally bombing civilian targets kind of way.

Why prosecute just the troops and not those in command who ordered the war crimes? Starting with Bush sr, Clinton, Bush, Obama, and the rest of the gang and all the way down the chain of command.

Re: Chomsky explains why nobody is a moral relativist

#148

Post by effed3 »

dale_glass wrote: post #72

I disagree. Moral relativism is very much a thing. But it's just a muddled matter. To me, "moral relativism" just means the recognition that different societies had and have different moral ideas, and that even within a single society rules are murky and fluid, and often outright undefined. Pretty much any moral rule you can name has been proudly broken. Eg, torture? Take Abu Ghraib for instance. Not only was it done…

>Pretty much any moral rule you can name has been proudly broken. Eg, torture? >Take Abu Ghraib for instance. Not only was it done, but it was done proudly, with >selfies taken for remembering the "good times" later"

Sure, can happen, but THIS was recognized as a CRIME by the -culture- we have, and some individuals forget/broken/ignored! And a decadent society/culture can be flooed with this also, and loose the capacity to condems this.

I don't mix single fact/events with the main argument, the organized/ritual/specific use of the -force- is universal in quite al cultures, is buiding some kind of order in the chaos, the uncontrolled violence is a crime in quite same every culture, because is disrupting the order.

Re: Chomsky explains why nobody is a moral relativist

#149

Post by dale_glass »

LudwigNagasena wrote: post #144
dale_glass wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That’s just a sociological trick. You redefine X to mean “what people think X is” and come to “profound” conclusions. That’s like saying that the laws of the universe has changed when Einstein invented relativity. That's exactly what you get under "objective" morality though. Everyone agrees "murder" is bad. Not everyone agrees on what "murder" means exactly. You don't have to try very hard to find people apparentl…

> That's exactly what you get under "objective" morality though. Everyone agrees "murder" is bad. Not everyone agrees on what "murder" means exactly. I don’t see how it is exactly what you get. It doesn’t matter what everyone agrees or disagrees on. The point of moral objectivism is that doesn’t matter what people think morality is in general just like it doesn’t matter what you think about the laws of physics—they a…

Rules of football all the way, yeah.

By this analogy, rules of Monopoly. Everyone knows the game, but everyone seems to have slightly different house rules for it.

Re: Chomsky explains why nobody is a moral relativist

#150

Post by cmrdporcupine »

fishtacos wrote: post #133
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with the Ukraine stuff is that it falls easily into the same crap position as Varoufakis and others on the left which is basically a) some kind of "realism" about what Ukraine should do [basically surrender] and b) gives credence to much of the crap that Lavrov has put out on the public stage about this war being somehow about American imperialism. Well, duh, everything is about imperialism, but what's mi…

Chomsky has missed the mark more than once. His response to the NATO campaign against Serbia during the Kosovo war was what clinched it for me. He's come back to apologize about being misunderstood in that he was only opposing NATO intervention because it would lead to a response (no shit) against ethnic Albanians by Serbs... Talk about missing the forest for the trees. The ethnic cleansing of Albanians in Kosovo had…

Agree 100%. FWIW I was in various left wing activist groups at the time and the Chomsky-type position was both mainstream, but one I disagreed with and one thing that pushed me further away from those kinds of groupings.

It's a blind tribal positioning -- NATO / US bad, therefore everything it does bad. But this is in no way a materialist or logical method of analysis. Either you support the oppressed and minorities (e.g. Kosovan Albanians or Ukrainians etc) or you don't, and making abstract statements about right and wrong without having an actual tactical answer is irresponsible when people's lives are on the line.

But, worse, we're finding there's people who not only have essentially abstentionist positions but also there's a large portion of "the left" that is explicitly pro-Russian through some sort of aesthetic and/or cultural attachment to some Russophile past related to the Soviet Union (e.g. "Tankies"), or just raging anti-American positions that push them in that direction (the George Galloway types) etc. etc. These people are... really messed up, but also way more prominent than I realized/feared. There is simply no excuse to support an authoritarian, homophobic, violent, quasi-theocratic, terrorizing gangsterist regime like Putin's... wow

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