Absolute truth

Or is the *aim* of the act of killing children that's relevant to making a moral judgment?"

(I take you to mean "Is it [the] aim of the act of killing children that's relevant to making a moral judgement ?"

You mean "Why was it done?" is relevant to making a moral judgment.
Could the end justify the means ?

I think that comes into play in making a moral judgment ... motive.

I would add that when 'civilized' powers drop bombs upon cities, they have killed many children.

We often do what we hate.
We often have a knowledge of good but fail to live up to the good that we know.
We often have a knowledge of evil but fail to suppress in us the evil that we know.

It is as something of another power in us is constantly dragging us down.
Or it eventually can drag us down in some area of behavior if not every.

We humans have a knowledge of good and evil. Too often we lack the life power, the life ability to carry out the good that we know or to stay away from the evil that we know.
But we have the knowledge of good and evil and are very proud of it.

Do you think there is a Judge who ultimately will point out that what we KNEW was one thing and what we DID was something else.

I came out of the 1960s saturated with moral relativism. I started in the early 70s to study the New Testament. And like stepping into a cold shower something awoke me from a moral stupor. The New Testament said that the judgment of God was according to truth.

Though difficult moral situations do occur as no one should deny, I got persuaded that eventually we all have a rendezvous with a judgment which is according to absolute truth.

But the same New Testament gives us a forewarning. And it gives us a way of reconciliation at this inevitable final bar.

Originally posted by vistesd
Well, as I recall, the nail in the coffin for the logical positivists was that their criteria for what constitutes a meaningful statement does not meet their criteria for a meaningful statement (i.e., either being true analytically, or being empirically verifiable) . Ooops.

Does the following statement meet those criteria: “God (i.e., the Christian God) ...[text shortened]... for the logical positivists generally, this reduces to such a statement being just meaningless.

I did a little searching around to clarify my remarks about the stupidity of Positivists and their association with Wittgenstein. It is more relevant that some might anticipate.

Positivists demand that only "meaningful" statements are worth considering and that idea is taken from what Wittgenstein wrote in Tractatus: viz: "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."

He also wrote: "4.003 Most of the propositions and questions to be found in philosophical works are not false but nonsensical. Consequently we cannot give any answer to questions of this kind, but can only point out that they are nonsensical. Most of the propositions and questions of philosophers arise from our failure to understand the logic of our language. (They belong to the same class as the question whether the good is more or less identical than the beautiful.) And it is not surprising that the deepest problems are in fact not problems at all."

Finally, or to be accurate, initially, he wrote:
"1 The world is all that is the case.
1.1 The world is the totality of facts, not of things.
1.11 The world is determined by the facts, and by their being all the facts.
1.12 For the totality of facts determines what is the case, and also whatever is not the case.
1.13 The facts in logical space are the world.
1.2 The world divides into facts.
1.21 Each item can be the case or not the case while everything else remains the same."

All this would seem to lead to the position of the Positivists, that since everything else is nonsense, then all ethics, all religion, all non factual science is nonsense and therefore not worth our while to bother with. This attitude is also misrepresented as the "materialist" view in opposition to the religious or "spiritual" view of things, a false dichotomy based on the illusion that Positivism correctly represents the view of scientists and rationalists. It is of course the view of s o m e but a reducing minority.

What Wittgenstein was saying is in reality very different to what Positivists wanted to imagine he was saying. Their problem was a failure to commit to serious philosophical thinking, settlling for a superficial and simplistic way of thinking, hearing only what they wanted to hear in their limited imaginations.

In a letter to Ludwig Ficker written in 1919, Wittgenstein wrote this:
"The book's point is an ethical one. I once meant to include in the preface a sentence which is not there now but which I will write out for you here, because it will perhaps be a key to the work for you. What I meant to write is this: My work consists of two parts: the one presented here plus all I have not written. And it is precisely this second part that is the most important one. My book draws limits to the sphere of the ethical from the inside as it were, and I am convinced that this is the only rigorous way of drawing these limits. In short, I believe that where others today are just gassing I have managed in my book to put everything firmly in place by being silent about it. And for that reason, unless I am very much mistaken, the book will say a great deal that you yourself want to say. Only perhaps you won't see that it is said in the book."

Another writer about Wittgenstein (Friedrich Waismann) says "This running up against the limits of language is ethics. I think it is definitely important to put an end to all the claptrap about ethics - whether untuitive knowledge exists, whether values exist, whether the good is definable. In ethics we are always making the attempt to say something that cannot be said, something that does not and never will touch the essence of the matter. It is a priori certain that whatever definition of the good may be given - it will always be a misunderstanding to say that the essential thing, that what is really meant, corresponds to what is expressed. But the inclination, the running up against something, indicates something. St Augustine knew that already when he said "What, you swine, you want not to talk nonsense? Go ahead and talk nonsense, it does not matter!"

What Wittgenstein was actually setting out was an extreme version of the is-ought division, identified for example by Hume: the claim that one cannot infer what ought to be based on what is: ethics are not factual; ethical thinking is quite unlike scientific reasoning. And that is a part of my argument in this thread - that it is false to imagine or argue that all materialists can only base their ethics or morality or values on scientific empirical thinking and methods. It is just not so.

Even a commitment to science, or to empiricism, or to facts, requires an earlier value statement, such as the value that it is better to speak the truth than to lie. Ethics are "transcendental," defined by Iris Murdoch this way: "What is transcendental is beyond human experience, what is transcendental is not derived from human experience, but is a condition of it." [All this post is borrowed from Iris Murdoch btw]

I think one possible reason it suits some religious advocates to build their argument on a row with Positivism is that they in turn are actually using very similar methods of argument - already referred to as Christian positivism - arguments built on reason, proof and disproof, evidence, authority. Such arguments are what Wittgenstein dismisses as "gassing."

Originally posted by finnegan
I did a little searching around to clarify my remarks about the stupidity of Positivists and their association with Wittgenstein. It is more relevant that some might anticipate.

Positivists demand that only "meaningful" statements are worth considering and that idea is taken from what Wittgenstein wrote in Tractatus: viz:[i] "Whereof one cannot speak, ...[text shortened]... and disproof, evidence, authority. Such arguments are what Wittgenstein dismisses as "gassing."

What Wittgenstein was saying is in reality very different to what Positivists wanted to imagine he was saying

Yes, I agree. The term, as I recall, that W. used to correspond to what seems to what Murdoch is calling “transcendental”, is “mystical”—without any religious/spiritual connotation. The Pyrrhonians (e.g., Sextus Empiricus) used the term “non-evident” matters. Most interpreters (W. has many) seem to read the later W. (especially the Philosophical Investigations) as mounting a wholesale attack on metaphysical speculation--which he described as a "bewitchment" of our minds based on language.

Your last post to me gave me a lot of food for thought, in terms of challenging the Stoic view that I was trying to articulate. Their view does not, as I read them, require any special talent to act morally—but it is based on an assumption of human nature and rationality that now seems to me to be questionable, in terms of falling under what the Pyrrhonians term the “non-evident”. That would go to your point about moral education as well (at least as I read it). So, I might have to change my view! 🙂

As always, Be well.

Originally posted by vistesd
[b]What Wittgenstein was saying is in reality very different to what Positivists wanted to imagine he was saying

Yes, I agree. The term, as I recall, that W. used to correspond to what seems to what Murdoch is calling “transcendental”, is “mystical”—without any religious/spiritual connotation. The Pyrrhonians (e.g., Sextus Empiricus) used the term “ ...[text shortened]... as well (at least as I read it). So, I might have to change my view! 🙂

As always, Be well.[/b]

This may or may not contribute to our exchange. I think it does.

"...Oswald Harding (1989) concludes, rightly I think, that the idea that I cannot describe a specific experience to someone else (or myself) exhaustively, makes more sense in the later Wittgenstein than in the early one:

Indeed, once the correlation theory of meaning is rejected … there is more sense in speaking of indescribable aspects of experience than would otherwise be the case. For according to the correlation theory, my experience (like everything else in the world) would be describable, fully and definitively, by the corresponding names and sentences; but according to the later Wittgenstein’s account, there are no such correspondences.

By abolishing the inner world constructed in modern philosophy, Wittgenstein saves a richer ‘inner’ life than is possible with the idea of a consciousness that contains certain private, non-material, mental things and processes. A human being is not a substance or an autonomous subject, but is interwoven in language and practices of cultures and traditions. According to the song one can ‘spoil it all by saying something stupid like “I love you.”’ However, “I love you” is not a ‘stupid,’ because public, expression of a feeling that is purely private. The feeling does not exist outside language. And language is not impersonal. People speak and that can be very personal by intonation, choice of words, facial expression and behaviour. In the words of Glock, ‘the mental is neither a fiction, nor hidden behind the outer. It infuses our behaviour and is expressed in it.’ ‘I love you’ may be stupid because not nearly enough has been said (and therefore maybe too much). "

P161 Language, Image and Silence

Generally Wittgenstein is a bit of a roadblock. I agree that he has many commentators and interpretors but alas, not all of them - or even perhaps a majority - necessarily get the right end of the stick. It has been useful to me to try and use his words in a debate - that brings out more clearly the things that are helpful and the things that are dubious, while sending me scrurrying back to my attic library for more.

I appreciate your comments, since you are evidently far ahead of me in this, and I am still exploring.

Originally posted by DeepThought
What do you mean by "true for all people"? Are you claiming that a sentence is true if it is universally believed? Or are you claiming the existence of a moral statements that apply universally? You see part of your argument is that the sentence: " It is wrong to torture babies for amusing entertainment." is universally agreed with. You then use that ...[text shortened]... on't think you can justify the claim of "absolute morality" based on finding an extreme example.

Is there such a thing as absolute truth?

There are only two possible answers to this question—yes or no. There either is absolute truth, something that is true at all times and places, or there is not. To argue with certainty that there is no such thing as absolute truth is to make an absolute truth claim, and is thus self-refuting. Therefore, the only option remaining is that absolute truth does exist.

The question is truly not whether there are any absolutes but rather which claims of truth are absolute. People will generally accept absolutes in areas of science or mathematics, but tend to question truth when it comes to matters of morality. For example, most people would agree premeditated murder is morally wrong, yet what about in a society in which cannibalism is practiced? Is morality therefore simply socially conditioned, based on "what works" or what a given community agrees upon, or is there a standard of absolute truth or morality?

Philosophically, people may disagree on what is moral or ethical, yet virtually all people agree on some system of right and wrong. Therefore, the natural question arises, "Upon what do we base our moral standards?"

Originally posted by Fetchmyjunk
Is there such a thing as absolute truth?

There are only two possible answers to this question—yes or no. There either is absolute truth, something that is true at all times and places, or there is not. To argue with certainty that there is no such thing as absolute truth is to make an absolute truth claim, and is thus self-refuting. Therefore, the onl ...[text shortened]... t and wrong. Therefore, the natural question arises, "Upon what do we base our moral standards?"

You are mistaken, there is a third answer. "No, I don't think so."

As mortal beings we can only answer 'yes' or 'no' based on a knowledge that isn't absolute. Therefore we can be 'almost certain' about many things, without talking in absolutes.

Originally posted by Ghost of a Duke
You are mistaken, there is a third answer. "No, I don't think so."

As mortal beings we can only answer 'yes' or 'no' based on a knowledge that isn't absolute. Therefore we can be 'almost certain' about many things, without talking in absolutes.

You are mistaken, there is a third answer. "No, I don't think so."

Obviously you are answering based on what you think. So the two options are "Yes, I think so" or "No, I don't think so" , which is the same as "yes" and "no".

As mortal beings we can only answer 'yes' or 'no' based on a knowledge that isn't absolute.

So if I asked you whether you were born a male or female you wouldn't be able to answer me? And you wouldn't be absolutely sure of your answer? Or if I asked you what would happen if you jumped down a cliff? What if I asked you what you name was? Or what you have been smoking? 😀

Originally posted by Fetchmyjunk
[b]You are mistaken, there is a third answer. "No, I don't think so."

Obviously you are answering based on what you think. So the two options are "Yes, I think so" or "No, I don't think so" , which is the same as "yes" and "no".

As mortal beings we can only answer 'yes' or 'no' based on a knowledge that isn't absolute.

So if I asked ...[text shortened]... absolutely sure of your answer? Or if I asked you what would happen if you jumped down a cliff?[/b]

So if I asked you whether you were born a male or female you wouldn't be able to answer me? And you wouldn't be absolutely sure of your answer?

If you imagine that this question allows for an absolute answer then you are just not paying attention to the world around you. You absoutely fail to understand that what is "absolute" in your mind is not at all clear to other minds, and indeed, may not remain quite so clear in your own mind depending on your experiences in the future.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jun/16/after-orlando-gay-love-a-poem-by-carol-ann-duffy

Originally posted by vistesd
[b]What Wittgenstein was saying is in reality very different to what Positivists wanted to imagine he was saying

Yes, I agree. The term, as I recall, that W. used to correspond to what seems to what Murdoch is calling “transcendental”, is “mystical”—without any religious/spiritual connotation. The Pyrrhonians (e.g., Sextus Empiricus) used the term “ ...[text shortened]... as well (at least as I read it). So, I might have to change my view! 🙂

As always, Be well.[/b]

'Magical' is another word to describe W's thinking. Iris Murdoch spells out very well the benefits and the costs of his determination to separate fact from value.

One motive for keeping "fact" and "value" separate is "to protect the purity of value and the accuracy of fact." The two aspects are interdependent. Science benefits : "Surely, it may be felt, a clear-cut division of fact and value excludes personal prejudice and amputates whole areas of messy sentimental or muddled pseudo-factual thinking." But also, "There is an instinctive movement of relief involved in the putting into safety of something pure. (Metaphysics as magic.)...Border lines must be formed which keep out what is irrelevant and messily confusing. We desire to simplify and clarify our thinking and one way to do this is to gather all the value together in one place... Plato gathers value together in its purest form in the Idea (Form) of the Good, and also sees it as distributed into human variety through the working of truthfulness, knowledge and purified spiritual desire (love, eros). Kant brings value back to the world through conceptions of truth and justice incarnate in particular situations through the operation of practical reason (the recognition of duties). Plato and Kant are religious philosophers, imbued with a characteristically religious certainty about the fundamental and ubiquitous reality of goodness; their real world is the moral world. In our post-Kantian world, where religious faith wanes and truth gains so much of its prestige from scientific method, this is harder to do. Here it may seem a felicitious move to separate fact and value so as to guarantee the purity of value and the accuracy of fact. This compelling picture, taken as a moral guide or background, is in danger of making truth and value part company."
(Iris Murdoch p50)

This line of thinking, you may agree, is not single handedly favourable to Wittgenstein himself, nor to Dawkins style radical atheism (to which I am securely attached). In particular, it presages a potential attack on the supposed objectivity and value-free nature of science. I think science can easily survive that challenge, but partly by rejecting the Positivist approach (it is already long out of vogue, let's face it) and restoring metaphysics to its proper place. As you probably know too well, this also allows me to point out the political and ideological forces at work in the practice of both religion and science.

Originally posted by finnegan

So if I asked you whether you were born a male or female you wouldn't be able to answer me? And you wouldn't be absolutely sure of your answer?

If you imagine that this question allows for an absolute answer then you are just not paying attention to the world around you. You absoutely fail to understand that what is "absolute" in your mi ...[text shortened]...
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jun/16/after-orlando-gay-love-a-poem-by-carol-ann-duffy

So nothing you have ever experienced is absolutely true? Go jump off a cliff, and maybe just before you hit the rocks absolute reality will hit you in the face.

Originally posted by Fetchmyjunk
So nothing you have ever experienced is absolutely true? Go jump off a cliff, and maybe just before you hit the rocks absolute reality will hit you in the face.

Sorry to break it to you but nothing in your head is absolute. Indeed, most of it is a bit squiffy.

I'm not absolute about that, just pretty certain. (And 'no' and 'no, I don't think so' are not the same thing at all. The latter acknowledges that currently held knowledge is not absolute).

I suspect you feel absolute about a great number of things, which just goes to show what a watered down version of 'absolute' you use.

Originally posted by Ghost of a Duke
Sorry to break it to you but nothing in your head is absolute. Indeed, most of it is a bit squiffy.

I'm not absolute about that, just pretty certain. (And 'no' and 'no, I don't think so' are not the same thing at all. The latter acknowledges that currently held knowledge is not absolute).

So if I asked you whether you were absolutely sure that the ornament on your neck was in fact your real head you would reply, no I don't know? Because who knows, one day new knowledge might come to light that your neck had in fact just blown a squiffy bubble which you had perceived to be your head?

Originally posted by Fetchmyjunk
So if I asked you whether you were absolutely sure that the ornament on your neck was in fact your real head you would reply, no I don't know? Because who knows, one day new knowledge might come to light that your neck had in fact just blown a squiffy bubble which you had perceived to be your head?

You seem distracted by 'absolutes' that you believe you have absolute certainty of. (You have two feet, your nose is on your face etc). The real discussion is about bigger issues that you can't possibly speak of in absolute terms.

In regards to God for example, the best you can say is that for you he absolutely exists, but that is meaningless in whether God actually exists or not, as is merely confined within your own personal and unavoidably limited understanding.

Originally posted by Fetchmyjunk
So nothing you have ever experienced is absolutely true? Go jump off a cliff, and maybe just before you hit the rocks absolute reality will hit you in the face.

Spitting out your dummy?

You put forward as an example of absolute truth the claim that everyone knows for certain if they are male or female. It was your example and it is demonstrably not absolutely true. You appear unhappy to have this pointed out to you and unable to refute my challenge.

Your various examples do not make your case any more reasonable. They are depressingly futile.

There may be absolute truths - I know of none - but I see no good reason to imagine that you are the go-to person if we want to find them.

Originally posted by finnegan
'Magical' is another word to describe W's thinking. Iris Murdoch spells out very well the benefits and the costs of his determination to separate fact from value.

One motive for keeping "fact" and "value" separate is "to protect the purity of value and the accuracy of fact." The two aspects are interdependent. Science benefits : "Surely, it may be fel ...[text shortened]... t out the political and ideological forces at work in the practice of both religion and science.

“Plato and Kant are religious philosophers, imbued with a characteristically religious certainty about the fundamental and ubiquitous reality of goodness; their real world is the moral world. In our post-Kantian world, where religious faith wanes and truth gains so much of its prestige from scientific method, this is harder to do. Here it may seem a felicitious move to separate fact and value so as to guarantee the purity of value and the accuracy of fact. This compelling picture, taken as a moral guide or background, is in danger of making truth and value part company.”

I don’t know Murdoch, but I’m not sure that here isn’t some confusion here. I don’t think that Wittgenstein thought of his (earlier or later) views* as “felicitous moves”; I think he was aiming at dispelling confusion (“shewing the fly out of the fly-bottle” as he said in the PI), and saw that the Western philosophical tradition was fraught with it (for W, I think that “philosophy” often just stood for “metaphysics” ).

I don’t know what “the purity of value” is supposed to mean. “Accuracy of fact” is redundant. Truth (a true statement—or concept or idea or representation) points to (corresponds to) fact, or it isn’t true. Otherwise we can make truth claims based on whatever fictive grounds we might happen to be attached to (value?). I would say that value simply does not and cannot determine truth. In fact, I don’t know what “value as truth” could possibly mean. I would see it as a confusion to take what I value as thereby true.** So what is their relationship?

I would have to say that truth (as correspondence to facticity) is valuable—even if recognition of the facts undermines other values that me might hold. I value beauty—but to say that beauty is truth (perhaps in the sense of some essential harmony in/of the cosmos?) would a metaphysical leap that I cannot see warranted. Does that make my value less, or more, “pure”? Beautiful art can be a function of the imagination—and I value imagination highly; I don’t take what I imagine to be true. (This is not to deny that what people imagine might be true, does sometimes become true—e.g., space travel.)

I don’t know if any of this gets us anywhere, but I don’t know what (moral) “danger” Murdoch is talking about that results from “making truth and value part company”—unless she is simply speaking of the value of truth (as facticity). [I suspect that is not what she means, but I might well be wrong.] I don’t see a morality based on (personal) values as necessarily dangerous in itself (and maybe that’s the only morality we can really have in the end). And, as I said, I am rethinking the whole notion of a morality solidly based on either reason (e.g., the Stoics) or empiricism (e.g., Sam Harris—though Harris’ book on the subject is another project I left in limbo).

Rejecting the notion of special skill or talent or insightfulness (as you do), how does one say both, “I view X as moral/immoral based on my values”—and “My values are the right (true) ones”? What kind of argument can be made from a strictly value-based morality? Getting from Value to Ought (especially from my values to prescriptions for others' behavior) seems to me even more difficult than getting from Is to Ought. How do I say, “You ought to do this because to do otherwise offends my values” without simple moral dogmatism?

I raise these questions only as questions. There may be no “out”, if there is no rational/empirical foundation for ethics [but I really do need to revisit Harris at some point, as well as a neo-Stoic author who does a pretty formal analysis of ethics from a Stoic point of view—I just haven’t “knuckled down my mind” (see below) sufficiently to go more deeply into it]. I might be misconstruing a “value-ethics”, but it seems to me that a “value-ethicist” either (1) needs some metaphysical ground beyond simply making truth claims about some “transcendental category” (and I don’t know what that would be), or (2) simply biting the bullet and seek to impose her/his moral values because they’re his/hers. [And by “impose”, I don’t mean just physically, but also b argument—but I think any such arguments would be strictly instrumental.] If the latter is what we’re left with, then I would counsel at least some humility.

At bottom, I would see the separation of facticity and value, in moral issues, to be dangerous just to the extent that one leaves behind facticity (empiricism) and rational analysis of facticity in favor of value. There may be no rational/empirical ground for morality, but I don’t see one for a “value-ethics” either—and I don’t see how metaphysics can come to the rescue (in my humble opinion, Kant did not pull it off).

NOTE: I do think that, once we recognize that Wittgenstein was not a Positivist, we can also avoid confusing analytical philosophy per se with positivism. The choice does not seem to me to be positivism or metaphysical philosophy.

__________________________________________________

* The conventional view is that the later Wittgenstein represented a sharp break and even a wholesale repudiation of his arguments in the Tractatus, but I tend to think that the break is not that sharp, though W. certainly said that some of what he had written was wrong. I have a book I have been reading (off and on, unfortunately) on the Tractatus that I will one of these days have to review—I allow my relatively mild ADD freer range at this time of my life, and do not force myself to “knuckle down” my mind much anymore. That likely shows both in my erratic posting here, and perhaps erratic posts as well. Everything I am writing here is just recall and reflection.

** And I reject what I once called the (fallacious) “argument from terribleness”—i.e., along the lines of “But, but …. P must be true, because otherwise it would be just—terrible!”