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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

#391

Post by harperlee »

emptysongglass wrote: post #389
harperlee wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well those are very simple scenarios, but very quickly you get to a place where things are not so clear. For example, as soon as you need to compare two sufferings, you find trouble: is it ethical to kill before being killed? is it the same to have your neighbour suffer vs. someone whose suffering is far away and you don't perceive? It it better to have a child suffer, an adult, or an old man? Two people suffering le…

You're wrapping yourself up in mental games here, exactly what I was criticizing. The majority of people the vast majority of time are not encountering trolley problems. Start with the basics of not choosing to inflict what is harmful to others you encounter in your life.

As an example, surely you are aware about the ongoing discussions about whether abortion is ethical? Do you think people are just playing mental games for fun when they discuss that? Do you really think that it is not two different ethical systems clashing?

Re: Chomsky explains why nobody is a moral relativist

#392

Post by [deleted] »

FormerBandmate wrote: post #353
Willish42 wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Chomsky explained that he was not only referring to the fact that Russia is fighting in Ukraine in a more humane way than the US in Iraq: "I am not only referring to this, it is obvious." UN inspectors had to be withdrawn as soon as the invasion of Iraq began, he says, "because the attack was so severe and extreme ... This is the American and British style of war." Chomsky adds: “Let's look at the victims. I only k…

He’s wrong and full of shit. America is responsible for like 5% of the civilian casualties in Iraq, Russia’s killed like 500,000 people, and they rape everyone they can see. Moral relativism with geopolitics is cheap pseudo-intellectual play. America may not be perfect but we are definitely the good guys compared to Russia or China

[deleted]

Re: Chomsky explains why nobody is a moral relativist

#393

Post by emptysongglass »

harperlee wrote: post #391
emptysongglass wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're wrapping yourself up in mental games here, exactly what I was criticizing. The majority of people the vast majority of time are not encountering trolley problems. Start with the basics of not choosing to inflict what is harmful to others you encounter in your life.

As an example, surely you are aware about the ongoing discussions about whether abortion is ethical? Do you think people are just playing mental games for fun when they discuss that? Do you really think that it is not two different ethical systems clashing?

No I don't think people are playing mental games for fun. I think debates like these are not centered on the individual and their own responsibility to their and another's suffering.

In the case of abortion it's still the case that the mother is engaged in her own inquiry of harm. Notice how I've not brought myself into the picture.

That doesn't mean it can't be a complex inquiry but it is still her own inquiry and it is firmly rooted in suffering.

Re: Chomsky explains why nobody is a moral relativist

#394

Post by edflsafoiewq »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #365
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> better translated ‘though shall not murder’ for the modern reader Which cleverly punts the problem to the language centre of the brain, which gets to decide whether a particular killing was a good kill (execution, enemy combatant) or bad (murder).

It does for a reader, but reading wasn’t common ~4K years ago when it was written. These are communal truths verified through generations of dialog and discussion.

Yeah, which is a totally different epistemological view than the OP's, where ethics is basically math.

Re: Chomsky explains why nobody is a moral relativist

#395

Post by Liminal_Ledge »

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…

The concept of a 'biologically determined interpretive framework' doesn't seem all that determined to me. The variation in our individual moral compasses and the existence of intercultural moral divides indicate that this framework is as vague and inconsistent as it can be.

Using empathy or feelings as a basis raises the question of whose sensitivity we should calibrate it on. We are not moral relativists because the concept of morality itself is built on the idea of distinguishing right from wrong. We believe that what we are doing is right.

In the future, there might be a carbon-neutral vegan society, and they will view us through their newly derived ethical compass, much like how we perceive morality when we look back at our recent history.

If this biological source had any consistency, why did people do monstrous things while believing they are on the right? Would you have had your current moral compass if you lived in another society/another time that you look back at now with horror? Can you find a single human ethic that all societies from any time can agree on?

Re: Chomsky explains why nobody is a moral relativist

#396

Post by bambax »

simonh wrote: post #357
bambax wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 shari…

I didn’t say the same, I said mostly the same. Cultures consist of a consensus. When the consensus shifts, the culture shifts. Politics operates within an agreed framework at any given time. At the time of the founding of the USA some people had misgivings about slave owning, but even some of them still owned slaves. 100 years later there was a civil war over it. Today in the US slavery is almost universally maligned…

At the time of the civil war there was no country-wide consensus on the question of slavery, obviously.

Today, on that specific question, there seems to be a consensus (although one can argue it's largely a legal consensus: the song "Rich men north of Richmond" is choke-full of dog whistles advocating for a return to the good old times of pre-civil war in the South, and its runaway success shows it resonates with many people).

But there are a lot of other ethical topics where there is zero consensus, in the US, today. Guns, abortion, immigration, to name a few.

Re: Chomsky explains why nobody is a moral relativist

#397

Post by pydry »

throw__away7391 wrote: post #344
pydry wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Have you watched any of these debates? In all that I have seen him participate in the other party was gracious and patient, assuming good faith even when there was little evidence of such, generally far more polite than I could manage.

I havent seen any debates where he wasnt equally polite.

I'm familiar with tone policing as a concept though, and Im not surprised it has been applied to Chomsky.

Re: Chomsky explains why nobody is a moral relativist

#398

Post by debok »

hotdogscout wrote: post #140
debok wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by "cannot be applied"? Of course it can be applied. We know that those states and governments are wrong by the universal moral code condemning murder, slavery and genocide. We would have no grounds to condemn these things, if it wasn't for a universal moral code.

With that definition any moral code can he universal. I can support legalized murder and condemn everyone who doesn't, therefore creating the grounds to condemn anything else. Some religions practice human sacrifice, including of children.[1] My opinion is we're better off arguing there's a better moral code based on a number of arbitrary parameters (freedom, resource creation, comfort, longevity, equality, merit, en…

I'm not denying that civilizations use different moral codes. I am trying to say that we must have appeal to a universal moral code in order to judge whether a culture's moral code are in fact moral or not. This would apply to our own moral code as well as for those of other civilizations.

I am saying that if we are too say the Ancient Mesopotamians was wrong for sacrificing their children, we have to appeal to some kind of universal standard outside of them to do that. This logic also applies to the Aztec human sacrifice, and to the way the Nazi's treated the Jews. We need a universal standard to say they were wrong.

To make this more actual: You are advocating for a technocratic liberal moral code. Many people are advocating for a historic Christian moral code. How would you even start debating the Christians without appealing to a universal morality? You'll have to assert that your moral code is universal. If you don't, you have no basis to require other people to behave according to your morality.

Re: Chomsky explains why nobody is a moral relativist

#399

Post by Liminal_Ledge »

eynsham wrote: post #211
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…

I think you’re confusing epistemic problems for metaphysical problems. It’s quite plausible that any axioms we come up with are merely ‘based on feel', but there can be a truth ‘based on feel’ ultimately inaccessible to us except ‘[by] feel’. That inaccessibility does not make the underlying truth arbitrary; it merely makes our attempts to work it out arbitrary.

There is no truth coming from "feel". Our brain chemicals are designed in a way that suits evolution best, not to mention that there is absolutely no consistence in these feelings on an individual level (to a smaller degree) and on the the temporal and cultural level.

What you are saying assumes that brain chemical reactions have an ability to hint at some sort of truth. The idea itself sounds closer in nature to religious arguments. And I think if this was indicating a truth of some sorts, the differences morals doesnt sell this idea to me personally.

Re: Chomsky explains why nobody is a moral relativist

#400

Post by debok »

epups wrote: post #135
debok wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do human groups glorifying immorality imply that there is no universal moral code? If the universal moral code exists outside of those groups, then it can be applied to their actions, and we can call them wrong for the thing they glorify. Your very sentence implies a universal moral code. You are calling murder, slavery, and genocide wrong. By which standard do you know them to be wrong? Such a standard must nece…

> How do human groups glorifying immorality imply that there is no universal moral code? If the universal moral code exists outside of those groups, then it can be applied to their actions, and we can call them wrong for the thing they glorify. Those groups would also call us wrong. If groups of humans tend to display very different and incompatible moral codes, that's a strong argument against a universal morality.…

> Those groups would also call us wrong.

Wouldn't they then also be appealing to a universal moral code in order to call us wrong? If there is no universal moral code, nobody gets to call anybody else wrong (in the moral sense) at all.

We are rightfully condemning chattel slavery. However we can't do that if we are not appealing to a universal moral standard. We have no right to claim that the Southern states were wrong, if slavery in the way existed back then wasn't universally wrong.

This also applies to all the other examples people are giving in reply to my comment. People doing things that we consider to be morally wrong does not imply that there is no code. It merely implies that one of us is wrong.

> If groups of humans tend to display very different and incompatible moral codes, that's a strong argument against a universal morality.

I don't think is is a strong argument at all. People are wrong about things all the time. If a whole civilization of people consider earth to be flat, and a whole other civilization considers it to be round, it doesn't follow that earth has no shape at all. It follows that one of them are wrong.

> Not at all. I used those examples because I know that most contemporary readers would agree.

Fair enough. I misunderstood you. I didn't mean to strawman your argument.

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