Chomsky explains why nobody is a moral relativist • Hacker News Board

Re: Chomsky explains why nobody is a moral relativist

#181

Post by OkayPhysicist » Thu, Sep 28, 2023, 7:13 PM UTC

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…

It's worth clarifying the somewhat ambiguous subject and object of your moral relativism example.

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

Because there is confusingly similar, yet orthogonal concept, ethical subjectivism, which argues that ethical statements can be universally either true or false, but that the truth value of such statements is tied to one's subjective reality. Whereas moral relativism says that the moral nature of one's actions should be judged by the moral culture they are acting within, ethical subjectivism concludes they should be judged by the ethics of the person doing the judging.

This avoids the key pitfall of moral relativism: "One should be judged on the basis of the moral culture they are embedded in" is, in of itself, a universal claim.

Re: Chomsky explains why nobody is a moral relativist

#182

Post by msla » Thu, Sep 28, 2023, 7:13 PM UTC

throw310822 wrote: post #45

jebarker wrote: post #2

I'm not sure I understand the point being made. Chomsky seems to be saying that since we learn the prevalent morality of our culture through sparse data there must be an underlying universal morality. But how does that allow for the fact that different cultures do have different moral codes and that those do change over time?

Seems very close to his argument about the innateness of language structures. I can rephrase your question replacing moral* with language: > Chomsky seems to be saying that since we learn the prevalent language of our culture through sparse data there must be an underlying universal language structure . But how does that allow for the fact that different languages do have different grammars and that those do change o…

Which, again, is a poor argument in that Chomsky never demonstrates his central conceit: Is there a poverty of the stimulus? Here's a review of a book that makes the case that children need, and use, plenty of stimulus to learn new linguistic constructions:

https://zompist.wordpress.com/2008/05/06/so-much-for-chomsky...

> It’s been noticed that children rarely learn a new pattern that’s demonstrated in front of them, which has been taken as meaning that they don’t imitate adult speech. But now we see that they don’t do it because a single instance isn’t enough data for them. They don’t venture to use a new construction till they’ve heard it many times and know how to use it.

> A nice confirmation of this: children learning inflectional languages don’t learn the six person/number combinations at the same rate. They first master the ones with the highest frequency in adult speech– e.g. 1st person singular, rather than 3rd person plural. Again, they’re learning by imitation, and it takes a huge amount of repetition for them to learn something. They also seem to learn each verb paradigm separately– it takes a long time before they start generalizing.

Re: Chomsky explains why nobody is a moral relativist

#183

Post by LindeBuzoGray » Thu, Sep 28, 2023, 7:14 PM UTC

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…

[flagged]

Re: Chomsky explains why nobody is a moral relativist

#184

Post by throw0101c » Thu, Sep 28, 2023, 7:15 PM UTC

dotsam wrote: post #138

epups wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe it does, at all? How do you "solve" the moral problem of, say, whether we can breed and kill animals to eat them?

What I mean is: solving problems is good. Solving scientific problems is good, solving moral problems is good. If you do not think solving problems in general is good, you will not think solving the killing animals moral problem is good. The only way to solve problems is to create knowledge. We need to create good explanations of what is there, what it does, and how and why. The only we know to create knowledge is th…

> What I mean is: solving problems is good. Solving scientific problems is good, solving moral problems is good. If you do not think solving problems in general is good, you will not think solving the killing animals moral problem is good.

Not necessarily universally: one can have a philosophy / worldview where dealing with your problems is a way to spiritual enlightenment and getting rid of the problems / suffering prevents you from achieving higher spiritual / intellectual levels.

> Gnostic cosmogony generally presents a distinction between a supreme, hidden God and a malevolent lesser divinity (sometimes associated with the God of the Hebrew Bible)[1] who is responsible for creating the material universe. Consequently, Gnostics considered material existence flawed or evil […]

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnosticism

Any worldview (Buddhism? Hinduism? that treats the material world as 'bad(-sh)' or an illusion would be 'susceptible' to this line of thinking.

Re: Chomsky explains why nobody is a moral relativist

#185

Post by aa1234556 » Thu, Sep 28, 2023, 7:16 PM UTC

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Re: Chomsky explains why nobody is a moral relativist

#186

Post by fluoridation » Thu, Sep 28, 2023, 7:17 PM UTC

speak_plainly wrote: post #173

31337Logic wrote: post #167

I admire Chomsky but I'm afraid this particular argument isn't very convincing. He merely asserts his position but does nothing (substantial) to defend his position. In what way is moral relativism a logical contradiction? "...even if you’re the most extreme cultural relativist, you are presupposing universal moral values. Those can be discovered.” That's not true at all. I don't presuppose universal moral values. An…

It's a logical contradiction in a simple way: If you assert that 'moral relativism is true' that itself would be a relative claim which would undermine the assertion as a universal position. Further, you end up in a position of equivalence of all claims and generate major contradictions. I will go out on a limb on the universal moral values claim and I think again it's pretty simple: The existence of even the most ba…

>If you assert that 'moral relativism is true' that itself would be a relative claim

Would it? If we define "moral absolutism" as "the position that there exist moral statements that are true independently of any observers" then we could define the position of "moral relativism" as its logical negation: "there don't exist moral statements that are true independently of any observers". Is that sentence itself a moral statement? Why? To me it reads like a statement about reality, not about what is moral or immoral.

>It's not clear what universal moral values looks like

Universal moral values are not the same as absolute moral values, though. For example, let's suppose that "murder is wrong" is a universal moral value. That just tells you that every human agrees on that, but we're still working off a subjective, biased system, because every human you could ask will evaluate this moral question using their human brain. And if you could ask every living thing in the universe, you would still have the bias of matter-based life. How could you tell a universal moral value is basic enough that it's independent of any subjective point of view? The only truths I can imagine that could meet those requirements would have to be really abstract, like 1+1=2 as you say.

Re: Chomsky explains why nobody is a moral relativist

#187

Post by lambdasquirrel » Thu, Sep 28, 2023, 7:20 PM UTC

reedf1 wrote: post #5

jebarker wrote: post #2

I'm not sure I understand the point being made. Chomsky seems to be saying that since we learn the prevalent morality of our culture through sparse data there must be an underlying universal morality. But how does that allow for the fact that different cultures do have different moral codes and that those do change over time?

I think his point is not that there is an absolute moral landscape or that moral relativism can't exist in abstract. But that morals are so deeply held, that they shape your being and understanding of reality. So on a day to day basis you would feel revolted against something that appears to be immoral in another culture despite being able to logically pare out that it is okay in their system of morality.

I don’t think it’s that radical in a sense but trying to argue it is.

When you think about it though, we kind of know that e.g. the founders of the U.S. had some sort of guilty conscience going on with regards to slavery. So we have folks like Washington freeing the slaves in his will, which of course his wife walked back on, and he probably had an idea that she might do that too.

And yet people are able to jump through mental hoops to justify it anyway. We tell ourselves, well it was okay during their time. They probably said the same thing to themselves too. One day I’m sure our ancestors will curse us for bringing about the environmental disaster that was the end of days.

Re: Chomsky explains why nobody is a moral relativist

#188

Post by voxl » Thu, Sep 28, 2023, 7:20 PM UTC

speak_plainly wrote: post #173

31337Logic wrote: post #167

I admire Chomsky but I'm afraid this particular argument isn't very convincing. He merely asserts his position but does nothing (substantial) to defend his position. In what way is moral relativism a logical contradiction? "...even if you’re the most extreme cultural relativist, you are presupposing universal moral values. Those can be discovered.” That's not true at all. I don't presuppose universal moral values. An…

It's a logical contradiction in a simple way: If you assert that 'moral relativism is true' that itself would be a relative claim which would undermine the assertion as a universal position. Further, you end up in a position of equivalence of all claims and generate major contradictions. I will go out on a limb on the universal moral values claim and I think again it's pretty simple: The existence of even the most ba…

Yes, there are physical facts, most moral relativists are physical realists.

But that is also exactly where the moral relativism originates. You _do_ have physical laws, you _do not_ have moral laws. You can _test_ physical laws, you _can not test_ moral laws.

Once you axiomatically ordain some set of rules as "moral truths" or some measure of "moral truth" then the physical apparatus comes in, and you get to use it. But you have to pick the framework of morality first!

Re: Chomsky explains why nobody is a moral relativist

#189

Post by pydry » Thu, Sep 28, 2023, 7:21 PM UTC

throw__away7391 wrote: post #43

CoastalCoder wrote: post #11

I've read that Chomsky can be pretty nasty to his debate opponents, but he's amazingly congenial in this video. It really makes me wish I could spend hours and hours chatting with him. I've run across a handful of philosophers: Chomsky, Peter Kreeft, etc. who can stay really chill during a debate. It's seems like a superpower for keeping discussions productive.

He's very dismissive and disrespectful to anyone who isn't fawning over him. If you interview him and interlace praise and admiration for him, yes he's gonna be congenial.

Dismissive and disrespectful to people who are dismissive and disrespectful of him... what a monster.

Re: Chomsky explains why nobody is a moral relativist

#190

Post by TimPC » Thu, Sep 28, 2023, 7:23 PM UTC

31337Logic wrote: post #167

I admire Chomsky but I'm afraid this particular argument isn't very convincing. He merely asserts his position but does nothing (substantial) to defend his position. In what way is moral relativism a logical contradiction? "...even if you’re the most extreme cultural relativist, you are presupposing universal moral values. Those can be discovered.” That's not true at all. I don't presuppose universal moral values. An…

I think the point is that if you're a moral relativist across the range of morals encountered in human societies you're hardly a moral relativist at all because from the space of all possible moral positions you've accepted as equally valid the tiny subset that have organically originated from the extreme restraints of human culture. It's far rarer to see moral relativists for example who think the moral positions of serial killers and humanitarians are equally valid, but even that range is small across the landscape of all possible moral positions.