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

Re: Chomsky explains why nobody is a moral relativist

#431

Post by GoblinSlayer » Fri, Sep 29, 2023, 2:44 PM UTC

TimPC wrote: post #190

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…

Moral relativists don't believe that all positions are equally valid, my position is the most valid obviously. They believe moral positions are subjective.

Re: Chomsky explains why nobody is a moral relativist

#432

Post by 3seashells » Fri, Sep 29, 2023, 2:56 PM UTC

Well, as long as Noone ascribes agency to the unwashed masses of eastern Europe, who rejected the antipode to American imperialism. That would be quite unmoral-relativistic. Honestly Chomsky political stances are by now casting in my eyes doubt on his academic works. How can someone who blatantly engages in American - diabolism be expected to produce differentiated results in linguistic research? The Chomsky hierarchy might have layers missed by him , for all I care.

Re: Chomsky explains why nobody is a moral relativist

#433

Post by GoblinSlayer » Fri, Sep 29, 2023, 3:01 PM UTC

johnnyjeans wrote: post #366

TheHappyOddish wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you dispute his claim, or do you simply find it distressing? It appears to be an accurate one, so I'm curious to hear a contrary take here.

i dispute it because fundamentally the entire notion of some war being fought in a noble way relative to another is heinous. as though there are good wars which aren't so bad and the soldiers behave themselves. chomsky perpetuating the harmful myth of comparative "goodness" of wars alone is enough to indict his capacity for real thought and compassion, however in the context of the life he's lived and his personality…

Do you propose to not oppose evil with force?

Re: Chomsky explains why nobody is a moral relativist

#434

Post by snowpid » Fri, Sep 29, 2023, 3:04 PM UTC

za3faran wrote: post #274

0xDEF wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. This is a lie. There was a legitimate democratic election in Iraq in January 2005 with 58% voter turnout. Because of the Shia majority of Iraq they voted into power a pro-Iranian Shia-dominated government which is the very opposite of a US "puppet government".

If you believe that the west didn't have a hand in the outcome, I have a bridge to sell you. Plus, we don't believe in western style democracy in our tradition, so further proof of western destruction and meddling in other countries' affairs. Quite the hypocrisy when they do it themselves but then cry when another power like Russia does it (and I don't condone what is happening in Ukraine either, but the hypocrisy mu…

Can you elaborate how a pro Iranian government is a Western puppet government? With credible sources etc.? Also I like to know who is "we".

Re: Chomsky explains why nobody is a moral relativist

#435

Post by emptysongglass » Fri, Sep 29, 2023, 3:05 PM UTC

JackFr wrote: post #415

emptysongglass wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not arbitrary because suffering is universal and unwanted by those who experience it.

But that doesn’t make it a universal basis for ethics.

If you can come up with a better basis than that experienced by all living organisms, the floor is open for you to make your pitch.

Re: Chomsky explains why nobody is a moral relativist

#436

Post by Novosell » Fri, Sep 29, 2023, 3:33 PM UTC

nico wrote: post #240

fluoridation wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I can assign a different meaning to it I don't even understand what that means. Ideas don't have meaning, they are meaning. What does it mean to assign a different meaning to the idea represented as "1+1=2"? >No ideas are objective truth No. Mathematical truths are objectively true. Even if addition itself is false in the universe, in the sense that in some cases you can put one real thing next to another and get ot…

You can believe whatever you want, assign any meaning you want I can say that 1+1=2 means it’s lunchtime on the moon I can also say that 1+1=11 I can’t force you (nor anyone else), to accept or agree with those meanings, but I can definitely assign any meaning I want No ideas, nor meaning, nor formulas, nor math are objective truth Just the fact that I can disagree with you right now means there isn’t an objective tr…

If I write "water is wet", I'm referring to the matter known as water, not the symbols that make up the English word "water".

Likewise, in this conversation, 1+1=2 is saying that if you take the idea represented by the symbol 1 and then add it to itself, the result is the idea represented by the symbol 2.

The ideas behind words and the words themselves are not equivalent.

Re: Chomsky explains why nobody is a moral relativist

#437

Post by XTHK » Fri, Sep 29, 2023, 3:53 PM UTC

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.

I'm definitely "America bad", and have observed the Russian government as absolute trash. I am far from alone on this viewpoint.

Re: Chomsky explains why nobody is a moral relativist

#438

Post by simonh » Fri, Sep 29, 2023, 4:04 PM UTC

Liminal_Ledge wrote: post #395

simonh wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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.

Is it limitlessly inconsistent as Foucault claimed?

>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.

That is correct, and Chomsky raised almost that identical example. As I said he's not arguing for no moral relativism, just that there are some biologically imposed limits.

>Can you find a single human ethic that all societies from any time can agree on?

You're missing the forest for the trees that are blocking your view. The very fact that individual societies do have consensus moral frameworks demonstrates that individual moral frameworks are not unlimited by constraints such as environment and culture. This is why he says relativism is incoherent. The fact that it accepts that cultural moral frameworks exist, and that there are reasons for that, kills this hard form of extreme relativism stone dead. After all if human ethics were truly unconstrained, how can cultural norms exist?

It is true that individuals can vary greatly, most people are not psychopaths but some are. Most do not experience extreme abuse as children that warps their perspective, but some do. Even so, these individuals have their ethical frameworks very largely determined by factors outside their control. A psychopath can't choose not to suffer from psychopathy, an abuse victim cannot just choose not to be warped by that abuse. They do of course have autonomy within a range, and it's not the same range as most of us, but it's still a range.

Re: Chomsky explains why nobody is a moral relativist

#439

Post by dllthomas » Fri, Sep 29, 2023, 4:05 PM UTC

mcv wrote: post #425

dllthomas wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose I can grant "feels a bit like", but unless I'm missing something (and to be fair I have not rtfa...) it hasn't actually reached refutation. The observation that there is enough information to determine grammar rules in the training set for an LLM is only very weak evidence that there is also enough information in the much smaller training set for a typical human.

I think it's pretty obvious that there is more than enough information in the training set of a typical human to learn grammar. Because we do. And people in different countries learn different grammars. Also keep in mind that people get more feedback over their control of language ad grammar while they're learning. We don't just listen, we communicate.

That's the point, though. As you say there is obviously enough information to learn grammar given our starting point, but Chomsky's point is that there's not enough information to distinguish between all possible languages, so (paraphrasing from a decades-old recollection and probably very much putting my spin on it) learning a (first?) language as a human is probably a matter of figuring out how to apply existing "machinery" that imposes some of its own structure rather than operating entirely from the information provided to the senses.

I'm not saying it's necessarily correct, but it does seem well formed, and LLMs only undermine it in a very weak sense (so far?). To defend the conclusion itself I would have to know a whole lot more about how he estimated information content (needed and available).

Re: Chomsky explains why nobody is a moral relativist

#440

Post by simonh » Fri, Sep 29, 2023, 4:29 PM UTC

bambax wrote: post #396

simonh wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 man…

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

There was a consensus in the South. There was a consensus in the North. It's the existence of consensus at all that is the problem for Foucault's unconstrained relativism.

The very fact that individual societies do have consensus moral frameworks demonstrates that individual moral frameworks are not unlimited by constraints such as environment and culture. This is why he says relativism is incoherent. The fact that it accepts that cultural moral frameworks exist, and that there are reasons for that, kills this hard form of extreme relativism stone dead. After all if human ethics were truly unconstrained, how can cultural norms exist?

It is true that individuals can vary greatly, most people are not psychopaths but some are. Most do not experience extreme abuse as children that warps their perspective, but some do. Even so, these individuals have their ethical frameworks very largely determined by factors outside their control. A psychopath can't choose not to suffer from psychopathy, an abuse victim cannot just choose not to be warped by that abuse. They do of course have autonomy within a range, and it's not the same range as most of us, but it's still a range and these ranges are set somehow.