Hi Walter, Horse, Platt, Ken and all,
Walter, I am becoming a fan of yours. Your post is most refreshing.
> Jonathan and Horse in their recent posts give two important features
> of Morality:
> 1 THE IMPORTANCE OF CONTEXT / PERSPECTIVE (Jonathan/Horse)
> 2 THE IMPORTANCE OF THE BOTTOM UP-VIEW (Jonathan)
>
I would add to that a reminder that a common "objective" discussion about
truth is always a discussion WITHIN AN AGREED CONTEXT. The "validity" of
context itself is outside the discussion - making it rather subjective.
Thus, "objectivity" is actually objectivity within a non-objective
framework.
However, the context isn't all subjective either. Context has to be
implicitly agreed, and has to provide a comfortable working environment.
This a quality judgement - coming *before* subjectivity vs. objectivity.
> 2 BOTTOM-UP MORALITY
This touches on something rasied by KEN about the Universe being
deterministic.
> The universe is deterministic.The molecule that Platt mentions does
>contain enough possibilities to build the city of New York.
> Yes, we have free will because the complexity generated by the
>organization of the universe becomes so great that by the time the
>development of the universe reaches humanity we have been effectively
>disconnected from the deterministic origins of the universe.
The determinism vs. non-determinism vs. superdetermism issue may all be a
question of contexts.
A science based on determism is only useful where you KNOW the determinants.
KEN >For all practical purposes we have free will.
... and I add that for practical purposes, the Universe is
incompletely-deterministic (the view adopted in Quantum Theory).
Here, Walter's bottom-up approach reveals a problem. If the bottom layer is
completely solid and known, we can extrapolate the more complex upper
layers, but Chaos theory shows us that a SMALL variation in the tiniest
detail can have an enormous (often catastrophic) effect on the behaviour of
the whole.
HORSE:
>This seems to go back to my question (17/12/99) "Can we deduce the correct
action (what
>we SHOULD do) from the facts that confront us." This is the Fact/Value
Dichotomy.
If you know where you are starting, and where you want to get to, you *may*
find the path.
The water falling on the mountaintop has the potential to run to the bottom,
but may or not find the path to do so.
If not, an engineer who really KNOWS the mountain can help.
Similarly, the correct moral action depends on providing a means to reach
the moral objective. The objective is seldom contentious (health, happiness,
love etc.) but we usually argue about the means (capitalism vs. socialism
etc.). Choosing the means can be a great problem because the picture is
seldom complete. If we take the deterministic view, a small piece of
misinformation at the start can have catastrophic consequences, and we miss
the objective by miles. To take the non-deterministic view, events might
just take an unsual course and we may miss the objective by sheer bad luck.
On the other hand, we might suddenly hit a new unexpected "objective" much
better than what we were aiming at. This provides the dynamism by which
things constantly evolve for the better.
Jonathan
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