Re: A More Reasonable Version of Pascal's Wager

On 18 Mei, 16:36, jillery <69jpi...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On May 17, 8:19 pm, Bill <brogers31...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:





On May 17, 10:17 pm, jillery <69jpi...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On May 16, 10:25 pm, Bill <brogers31...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On May 17, 8:50 am, jillery <69jpi...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On May 16, 8:13 pm, Paul J Gans <gan...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Burkhard <b.scha...@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
On May 16, 7:12 pm, Ymir <inva...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
In article
<e29707cf-5f72-4e78-b620-36bc54839...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Randy C <randyec...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

"Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will
not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the
virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you
should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will
be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the
memories of your loved ones."

-- Marcus Aurelius

While I don't take issue with the content here, I don't see how this can
can possibly be viewed as a version of Pascal's Wager.

Andr
I thought it was quite close. You bet on whether or not you should
live a (morally) good life, and you have something akin to a dominant
strategy to go for it

Almost. There is at least one case left out, and that is where there
are evil gods who damn you for being moral, in which case they are
not worth worshipping, because doing so makes you basically a slave.
.

Morality is subjective and arbitrary, not an absolute.

What exactly do you mean by arbitrary? Moral sentiments are, I think,
the products of our evolution as social primates. That's why we
largely agree, independent of religion and culture, about what is
moral and what is not. So I think "subjective and arbitrary" goes too
far.

Of course it's trivial to come up with specific moral disagreements
about individual issues. I think that when people point those out as
signs that morality is arbitrary they are failing to consider the full
universe of possible moralities. Human moralities in different
cultures are far more similar to one another than they are to a
randomly chosen, truly "arbitrary" morality. It's very hard to imagine
a truly "arbitrary" morality because we have such biologically wired
attitudes, but one can try. No human morality that I know of is close
to claiming that (1) it is more acceptable to murder your friends than
to kill your friends' enemies (2) you have a greater responsibility to
care for your nephew than your son (3) marital infidelity on the
woman's part is a positive good (4) betraying your close friends is
good (5) torturing children is a good thing to do. And that's not
stretching. The set of human moralities is much smaller than the total
set of all possible random moralities and it clusters among all
randomly chosen moralities. So I think it is not quite right to say
that "morality is subjective and arbitrary."

Interesting that you start out with “goes too far” and end up with
“not quite right”.  Your intent may be the same, but the two phrases
imply opposing ends of a spectrum.

I think that it is simply incorrect to claim that morality is
"arbitrary". It is biologically constrained by our evolutionary past.

Repeat of assertion noted.

More to the point, IIUC your argument is there are some elements of
morality about which we mostly agree, or more precisely don’t
disagree, and so morality is not entirely subjective and arbitrary.
You present several cases that you seem confident about which everyone
under all circumstances would go along.  OTOH I can think of
mitigating circumstances.  I’m sure you could too, if you set your
mind to it.  Just one small example, in (1) what if your friends are
going to kill their enemies?  Which moral certitude prevails?  Do you
allow no possibility you might need to choose a better class of
friends?

Perhaps you missed the point.

No, I got it.  OTOH you missed the point;  you're arguing figs against
apples.

The point is that out of an infinite set
of possible moralities, existing human moralities form a very small
subset. The difficulty in seeing this is that we take many moral
sentiments entirely for granted, so it's difficult to imagine a
morality in which they do not exist. Consider a set of a thousand
moral questions demanding true or false answers. A truly arbitrary
morality would simply flip a coin for each question. One could
generate 2^1000 random, arbitrary moralities that way. Out of that
set, actual human moralities would be a small subset and would have
more in common with each other than would any two randomly chosen
arbitrary moralities.

..

"arbitrary" doesn't imply an unlimited set of choices.  Indeed, the
number of choices are almost always limited by consequences.  What
makes a decision arbitrary is not the number of choices, but the
likelihood of any particular outcome within an arbitrary subset.

I cannot parse this bit at all.



In the same way, even disputed phylogenies of the primates have more
in common with each other than do two randomly selected arbitrary
trees.

My assertion, to which you appear to disagree, is against an absolute
morality.  “Not absolute” is not at all the same as “totally
arbitrary”.  There is much room in between for people to disagree in
good faith yet still be moral.  In contrast to the tone of your reply,
I believe that is the case here.

Well, you are the one who said "arbitrary". If you didn't mean
arbitrary then perhaps we do not disagree.
..

So your point is a semantic nit.  Pick some other word that suits you
if it helps you feel better.

I cannot tell whether this is just a semantic nit, because I cannot
tell what you mean by arbitrary.


My assertion, to which you appear to disagree, is against an
understanding that we can know, much less understand, the wishes of a
presumptive omnipotent deity.  
..

Not at all. I do not think that there is a deity, omnipotent or
otherwise.

Non sequitur.  I never said or implied that you did.  Neither is my
point dependent on your particular beliefs.

Well, perhaps not, but I notice you snipped the bit where you had said
"My assertion, to which you appear to disagree, is against an
understanding that we can know, much less understand, the wishes of a
presumptive omnipotent deity."

That's the bit that made me think that you thought I was arguing from
a theistic perspective.


What I disagreed with was the claim that morality is
arbitrary.

As I said, choose whatever word that makes you comfortable.

If as you say our morality is a
“product of our evolution”, then we have no basis to know the morality
of a being outside it, as an omnipotent deity must necessarily be.  >

..

I don't give a fig for deities.

Yet another non sequitur.

It certainly does look like a non sequitur after you snipped out your
own prior references to an omnipotent deity.


We
can guess.  We can read a book which claims to say what are His
wishes.  We can listen to people who claim to hear His word.  But we
can’t know with certainty anything beyond that.

My assertion, to which you appear to disagree, is based on an axiom
that all moralities are ultimately based on one or more axioms,
including this one.

I disagree that morality is based on axioms at all. It is based on
emotions, approval or revulsion, which we feel spontaneously, as a
result of our evolution and our evolved culture. We may, in
retrospect, come up with axioms to justify our moral judgments and
even use those axioms to try to reason about cases in which our moral
sentiments are ambiguous, but at bottom our moral judgments are
feelings.
..

Sounds subjective and arbitrary to me, and so we are back to the
beginning.  Yet another invented controversy.


Perhaps, though I think you had a hand in inventing it. If we
disagree, we disagree that morality is based on axioms. I think it is
based on moral sentiments. Our experience of moral sentiments, like
out experience of any sentiments, is subjective, sure. But the fact
that we will, on average, as human beings have generally similar
sentiments in similar circumstances is
perfectly objective and empirical. A rather large fraction of humans
will experience fear if confronted by a large snarling dog. A
similarly large fraction of humans will experience revulsion at the
site of a child being tortured, and a similarly large fraction
admiration at the sight of a person risking his life to save a child.
The individual experience of those moral sentiments is subjective. The
fact that they exist and are pretty reproducibly elicited by similar
circumastances is perfectly objective.





By axiom, I mean a concept which is inherently
unprovable but assumed to be true.  So I can disagree with your
interpretations of morality yet adhere to the same axiom; ex. the
existence of One God as interpreted by Judaism, Christianity and
Islam.  Or I can disagree with your axiom, that it’s true; ex. the
inferiority of other races.  Or I can disagree with your axiom, that
it’s a legitimate basis for morality; ex. the quality of your tan.- Sembunyikan teks kutipan -

- Perlihatkan teks kutipan -- Sembunyikan teks kutipan -

- Perlihatkan teks kutipan -- Sembunyikan teks kutipan -

- Perlihatkan teks kutipan -


.

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