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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

#301

Post by cuteboy19 »

wunderland wrote: post #268
Varqu wrote: post #265

I find it troublesome to listen to the person who claims that Russia is fighting in Ukraine in a more humane way than the US in their wars [ https://civilek.info/en/2023/04/30/noam-chomsky-russia-fight... ]

Maybe this is because you are ignorant to the extent of American war crimes?

Of course if one is to learn about war crime denialism, who better to learn from than Cambodian genocide denialist Noam Chomsky?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian_genocide_denial#Chom...

Here we have a person denying eyewitness testimony of Genocide. Surely we all have to learn from such a great individual

Re: Chomsky explains why nobody is a moral relativist

#302

Post by codexb »

aionionio wrote: post #264
zilchnotta wrote: post #200

"Moral" is a problematic word with religious baggage. If you exclude the words "right", "wrong", and "ethical" from the debate, you make things easier as well. If you simply use the word "strategy" instead, most heated arguments vanish. Yes, there are foundational social strategies that exist in every successful human culture. It's pretty easy to account for why that is the case, and no reason to oppose the idea that…

If you refuse to engage with a challenging concept and instead talk about something else entirely, you make things easier. Go figure. Strategy helps us decide which actions will help us reach a goal. It does not tell us what that goal should be. It has practically nothing to do with morality. Human societies adopt different means but they also work towards different ends.

The only goal is self-preservation. It's universal. All individual "moral" decisions are based on this one goal.

Re: Chomsky explains why nobody is a moral relativist

#303

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

mech765 wrote: post #299
afwef wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For example, the Commandment "Thou shalt not kill" is anything but an axiom. All but the most unreasonable followers will be able to produce some circumstance where killing is moral. That's not an axiom, that's a guideline. So can you give an example of an actual "moral axiom"

Kant's categorical imperative is a decent attempt at one. Also (closely related)- "do unto others as you would have others do unto you." They both have holes and edge cases though.

> "do unto others as you would have others do unto you.

This one doesn't just have edge cases, it has a hole large enough to float an aircraft carrier through it. My grandparents (all deceased at this point) did not want to be treated in the same way I want(ed) to be treated.

The much less absurd version is: "treat other people the way they would like to be treated". Still edge cases, but the holes are much smaller.

Re: Chomsky explains why nobody is a moral relativist

#304

Post by pixl97 »

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…

>It's not clear what universal moral values looks like, like Epicurean pleasure/pain or maybe it stems from thermodynamics, or even just mathematics itself, but it is possible that it could be discovered.

So if you want to take thermodynamic morals for a spin, the answer is complete chaos.

In the case of humanity we are just a waveform, a state, running from low entropy to high entropy. The only outcome of any open universe long term thermodynamic equation in itself is entropy maximization.

Mathematics seems like another dead end here. Mathematics is both incomplete and paradoxical. My assumption is any mathematical system that attempts to answer morality questions will quickly fall foul of Russel's Paradox.

And as of so far no one has any proofs that morals/morality is a reduceable problem. If morals are NP hard, then it is not a problem with findable solution, one could exist, but finding it would be random chance. And for example said morality solution could have hash conflicts, any reducible answer could be one many potential random answers.

Re: Chomsky explains why nobody is a moral relativist

#305

Post by pixl97 »

Barrin92 wrote: post #180
speak_plainly wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 no it wouldn't because meta-ethical statements express objectives claims about moral values, they are not themselves normative or moral claims. It is equivalent to pointing out that everyone is a relativist in regards to their favorite flavor of ice cream. That statement is itself verifiably true or false.

>That statement is itself verifiably true or false.

Is it verifiably true without spending more entropy than exist in the visible universe to answer the question, because really affects if the answer if verifiably true or not.

Re: Chomsky explains why nobody is a moral relativist

#306

Post by bambax »

simonh wrote: post #242
scoofy wrote: post #201

I think that the thing that most people don't realize about ethics is the meta-ethical problem that axioms are by definition arbitrary. When we really think about the fact that all of our ethical theories are based on arbitrary axioms, suddenly the teeth to ethics have a deep, serious problem. The only argument we have at that point is that the axioms "feel" correct, and I have no problem with this basis, I consider…

He’s not saying we have instinctual ethical views. He’s saying we have a biologically determined interpretive framework we use to evaluate ethical questions. This is what he was talking about when he said we make a leap from scattered data to specific conclusions, and we all do this in a similar way. We all just have different data. However when we have very similar data, such as living in a particular culture, we mo…

> when we have very similar data, such as living in a particular culture, we mostly come to the same conclusions

That's not my take from the interview, but in any case this is provably false. People living in a given "culture" don't come to the same conclusions: they come to different conclusions -- usually opposite ones.

Politics wouldn't exist otherwise. Or most wars, which are almost always between neighbors sharing more or less the same "culture" but having values so different they're willing to die to defend them.

Re: Chomsky explains why nobody is a moral relativist

#307

Post by krapp »

tjrgergw wrote: post #277
wunderland wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe this is because you are ignorant to the extent of American war crimes?

Such as?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_war_crimes

Or just a top 5:

- Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

- Battle of Okinawa (and just the habit of American soldiers on Okinawa to rape and kill the locals in general)

- No Gun Ri massacre, Korea

- The use of Agent Orange in Vietnam

- My Lai massacre, Vietnam (really, most of the Vietnam War and Korea. Americans really do like killing Asians in the most violent and horrible ways it seems.)

- Haditha, Iraq (and arguably the entire Iraq war, which was waged under false pretenses to redirect American bloodlust after 9/11 towards the neocons' existing goals to "democratize" the Middle East and distract the public from Saudi involvement in the attacks.)

- Abu Ghraib as a runner up just because stacking pyramids of naked, tortured prisoners of war is just kind of banal compared to everything else.

Now does any of this mean other countries also don't commit war crimes? No. But the US has arguably committed more war crimes than any other country, going back to the continent-wide genocide against the natives. Is this because the US is more evil than all other countries? Subjectively, yes, but I would argue that the US as a nuclear superpower simply has no external limit on its capacity to commit war crimes and therefore commits the most simply because it can get away with it. If other countries were in America's shoes, they would probably be committing war crimes just as often.

Re: Chomsky explains why nobody is a moral relativist

#308

Post by pixl97 »

mushufasa wrote: post #86

I think what Chomsky is saying here "rhymes" with his theory of Universal Grammar (UG). The UG belief is that there are a finite set of "primitives" of language, and all human languages have grammar syntax that are the permutations of those primitives. This is actually pretty clearly the case for programming languages -- primitives like addition/subtraction, methods, objects, etc. -- are chosen by language developers…

Eh, this sounds like they are trying to say that the halting problem is reducible.

Simple finite components can generate infinite, non-halting answers.

Re: Chomsky explains why nobody is a moral relativist

#309

Post by 3abiton »

tjrgergw wrote: post #278
Varqu wrote: post #265

I find it troublesome to listen to the person who claims that Russia is fighting in Ukraine in a more humane way than the US in their wars [ https://civilek.info/en/2023/04/30/noam-chomsky-russia-fight... ]

Come on, Choamsky is the ultimate "america bad" man. He practically invented it. "America bad" people are also "Russia not so bad" people. These are highly valuable people for Russia propaganda, of course. They're literal useful idiots.

Is he a moral relativist?

Re: Chomsky explains why nobody is a moral relativist

#310

Post by esafak »

scns wrote: post #257
scoofy wrote: post #201

I think that the thing that most people don't realize about ethics is the meta-ethical problem that axioms are by definition arbitrary. When we really think about the fact that all of our ethical theories are based on arbitrary axioms, suddenly the teeth to ethics have a deep, serious problem. The only argument we have at that point is that the axioms "feel" correct, and I have no problem with this basis, I consider…

Well, since i shed the shackles of religion and am diametrically opposed to simply following leaders, i had to find my own definition of ethically correct behaviour. The question i ask myself: "Is my action beneficial to mankind and nature as a whole?"

What is beneficial can be debated, as can how to weight the pros and cons of any action. Still, it is a good question to ask!
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