Metaethics 4 - Subjectivism 1

[@theplebeian2706]

Boo KZbinrs!!!!! In all seriousness, thanks for making these. Now I just have 8 years of philosophy lectures to listen to!

[@MatthewMcVeagh]

Good exposition. I used to call myself a subjectivist, of the individual kind. Also a moral relativist. I now think I was confusing different issues and ending up with an incoherence. I now identify as a moral non-realist. :) I think emotivism and individual subjectivism are onto something with their ideas that in moral statements people are either *expressing* or *describing* their attitudes. Subjectively, as it were, we do feel like we're doing that when we're making them. But as we see moral statements also need to be treatable as propositions (Frege-Geach) and also need to be the subject of disagreement when they're different, which would imply they have objective import. Neither of these theories accounts for the fact that when we make moral statements we don't just think we're expressing or describing our beliefs, we tend to think we're talking about what is objectively the case. We think we're talking about a moral reality. I also don't feel that we're actually expressing or describing *emotions* or *attitudes* when we make moral statements. I think we're expressing (not describing) *moral positions*. Moral positions are something more than, or different from, mere emotions or attitudes. They may be based on such things, or be accompanied by them, but moral positions occupy their own mental category. As for cultural relativism (/subjectivism)... I long ago tagged it a hopeless delusion, and dangerous at that. The main arguments I made against it in undergraduate philosophy years ago were the latter ones explored here: how do you define cultures? What are the boundaries of cultures? What about subcultures within cultures or people moving between cultures? Other key ones include: how do we know what the ethics of a particular culture are? And: what makes them that way? It is such a stupid and confused notion, and of course it's a foundational idea in the botched form of multiculturalism we have now in the UK. It makes even less sense that individual subjectivism.

[@guojing10]

One more objection to cultural subjectivism we might consider: the problem of infinite regress, which is closely related to the problem of overlapping cultures. We might say that a particular culture has its own set of moral judgments, which is subjective to other cultures, but different sub-cultures within that particular culture itself may also each have their own sets of moral judgments, which is again subjective to other sub-cultures. This problem persists on until we find a culture group that holds unequivocally to a set of moral judgments, but if we were to assume that no two individuals can agree on every conceivable moral judgment, cultural subjectivism inevitably collapses into individualist subjectivism. In a nutsehll, cultural subjectivism faces the risk of presenting itself as a self-defeating theory, if the basis for defining a culture (upholding subjective claims to morality) becomes the very catalyst for the erosion of a stable cultural system.

[@abadjpyo]

damn that's was refreshing to learn, thanks.

[@MikeBohlmusic]

Thoughts on antinatalism and negative utilitarianism?

[@italogiardina8183]

The subjectivist and emotivist seem to converge in meaning by token that the subjectivist has meaning within a shell that only a subject could denote as wrong whereas the emotivist has meaning spread out as if in an open stadium where all see their grimaces and expletives like boo. Both seem to have a meaning that other minds could come to know but never with exact prediction apart from a sense of their propositional state as a binary of right or wrong, but as coordinated action the action is valid as a translation of prediction. We would know what the emotivist means if a cohort would act in coordination (through a mode of family resemblances of boo and each member in the group self evaluates and mimics closely for survival) where all say boo and then proceed to behave in a strategical way to overt a certain state of affairs that they don't like. This is coordinated booism and has explicit indicators. The subjectivist's employ a similar strategy but does not act as a cohort but as solitary agents (their mind cannot be known even if speech acts are familiar) of eliminating or avoiding a state of affairs, but lacking authentic incorrigible sense if that state of affairs actually reflects their internal state, and so eliminating group think because its a necessary condition to have incorrigibility of belief in order to have a identity within a group. What afflicts the subjectivist does not the emotivist because emotivist know the intonations and nuances of 'boo' to find alliance within a group. A subjectivist action is valid through time as habit can be observed by other agents to also translate and predict the next move, because any assertion the subjectivist makes cannot be taken on good faith to be true, given they claim to be a subjectivist and so could have a translation of the speech act that does not align with meanings of others of the in-group. Note: this assumes the subjectivist is part of an in-group, because out-group persons are aliens but the subjective acts as if an alien by muddling up the meaning over time. The convergence is that agents operations within a political community to align internal states of how the environment and other minds ought to be, where 'ought to be' is morality. Its at this juncture that in-group relativism which is more fine grained that cultural subjectivism because in-group relativism relies on members ability to form identity based on comparative evolution of their emotions relative to other members. Morality in this sense is a shifting signifier of comparative evaluation on states of affairs. This alignment of emotions as family resemblances then contrast to an out group that still exists in the same culture which would advocate another view on a moral topic. So within the umbrella of a nation state this allows for constrained maximisers of ideologies that is limited by the state who governs through force.

[@philosophicalmixedmedia]

Ok they seem to converge in meaning within a shell. Is this a clam shell or a tortoise shell. Maybe an armadillo. I prefer the snail shell subjectivism cause they are fragile sort of creatures and vulnerable to being crushed easily. It has a sense of human subjectivity that is a fragile state where the person gets easily crushed by various cohorts of emotivist collectivist who sing the same pitch of boo.

[@guersomfalcon7544]

0:11 Are you talking about all the moral statements or only the statements of the speaker?

[@MatthewMcVeagh]

What statements do not come from a speaker?

[@riverhale6469]

Old video, but doesn’t the argument that disagreements between values from the IS perspective also often hinge on disagreements on empirical claims?

[@ianhruday9584]

Thanks for the video! Could you do a video on Humean and Kantian constructivism?

[@cliffburton8829]

Hi. Can you do "Panpsychism" and "Objections to Panpsychism"? with The Combination Problem spearheading the censure...

[@spacemonkey2431]

Do you cover "Absolutism" in any of your 4 Meta-ethics video series?

[@dogsdomain8458]

Isnt naive subjectivism just cognitive expresivism?

[@ThatGuyWithHippyHair]

In the Singer example, couldn't this also be a case of an argument from consistency or empirical evidence? It's not far-fetched to suggest that many people who disagree with the claim "infanticide is sometimes acceptable" might be disagreeing in spite of a deeper moral attitude that supports that claim, namely "it's wrong to subject people to brief lives of extreme pain from an unusual illness" - which as I understand it is the circumstance in which Singer defends infanticide. So Singer could be addressing an implicit agreement with his claim that many of us are uncomfortable explicitly acknowledging.

[@veaglethefirst]

12:07

[@transcendentphilosophy]

The way it is phrased here, it seems like the Frege-Geach problem is less a problem of inherent equivocation in the example, but more a problem of the reader interpreting the syllogism through the lens of an equivocation. The syllogism is perfectly consistent when framed this way: Original - P1) If murder is wrong, then paying somebody to murder is wrong. P2) Murder is wrong. C) Paying somebody to murder is wrong. Translation - P1) If boo to murder, then boo to paying somebody to murder. P2) Boo to murder. C) Boo to paying somebody to murder.

[@germanndskartenfreak]

well but that would treat "boo to murder" as a phrase that is truth apt, since logical structures like modus ponens presuppose truth aptness. if p then q presupposes that p and q are logical variables and therefore are truth apt.

[@transcendentphilosophy]

@@germanndskartenfreak If you phrase it like this, it maintains truth aptness while expressing exactly what emotivism is attempting to express. P1) If you have a subjective feeling of "boo to murder", then you ought to also have a subjective feeling of "boo to paying somebody to murder." P2) You have a subjective feeling of "boo to murder". C) You ought to also have a subjective feeling of "boo to paying somebody to murder".

[@donanderson3653]

​@@transcendentphilosophy P2 isn't emotivism anymore, it's individual subjectivism. "You feel "boo" about murder" is a truth apt statement about your mental state.

[@transcendentphilosophy]

@@donanderson3653 thanks for that, I think I see both of your points more clearly now

[@MatthewMcVeagh]

@@transcendentphilosophy It's funny you wrote out that original syllogism, I was going to do exactly the same thing as a joke.

[@dominikkrasula5672]

Hi, I have a question about Emotivism X Individual Subjectivism... I really enjoyed how you talked about them compared to each other, but it bringed question on my mind: Why can't be both true? I mean why can't be it sometimes case that me saying "it's wrong" is just expressing my emotion and sometimes it would be case that it expressed my disaproval. Take for example infanticide.... If I would be a witness of such act, I would of course say "it's wrong", and I think I would be just merely expressing emotion But if I would lately be discussing it with someone I'm inclined to thing that then I would use "it's wrong" rather as expressing of my disaproval This reminds me also a point about claime that IS leads to inconsitency, since we as persons are inconsistent... I thought isn't this just matter of fact, that truth of moral statment isn't depended only about who is saying that but when he's saying that? I believe (or I think? ) that we just simple change are moral attitudes. For example someone could think that infanticide is always wrong but if he sees some concrete case and reads P. Singer's argument, he may now consider this case moral. And so his sentence "infanticide is always wrong" leads to no inconsistency, becouse either it could be that it WAS true but now it ISN'T, or it could be treated as False statement (since he's not expressing himself in fact correctly)

[@maximilyen]

Very good thanks

[@pointless6781]

24:50 😄

[@alien2u929]

❤

[@cameronwhitford3384]

Thank you very much for this

[@JMcomments]

Thank you for this!

[@SerifSansSerif]

Individual relativism is, unfortunately a solipsistic error. I find relativism in general is similarly false, and laughably, you get a paradox here, in the style of "this statement is false". However, relativism is a useful tool much like solipsism or radical skepticism in that it helps to illustrate how much of our philosophies are based on faith, and that to some degree, that has to be taken as a given. Mind you, you can never give those things as a rationale or argument. They're the equivalent of instantly quitting because you can't do philosophy or debate. A flipping over the table of sorts, but nevertheless it is an underlying truth.

[@shaqzy4069]

kane W

[@Swpeloquin]

I am proposing "cultural dissonance" much like cognitive dissonance. A person's cultural beliefs are not individually gone through and compared, the thing about culter is we internalize it. When our multiply cultural identity are in conflict and cause disonance people change there behaviors or there moral standard.

[@ethanlewis1453]

The popular use of the term "homophobia" is poor language usage because a phobia is a fear, not a disgust or a moral disagreement. It is furthermore name-calling... like calling someone a "scaredy cat", as making fun of someone for being afraid. The PROOF of this is go around asking people if they are homophobic, then ask them if homosexuality should be illegal. People who think it should be illegal don't describe them self as homophobic because they are not afraid of homosexuality... they are disgusted by it.