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Abd comments on Empirical claims, preference claims, and attitude claims - Less Wrong
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Comments (125)
Anyone who would propose "objectively crappy" isn't expressing rationality. There is no "objectively crappy," unless you have objective standards for "crappy," and apply them objectively.
I think Justin Bieber sucks.
I'm not going to tell my daughter that, because it's just my own reaction, and my daughter would kill me.
Okay, okay, she wouldn't kill me. She'd just tell me I'm an idiot. She'd be right.
I'm training her to distinguish between judgment and fact. It's a task, she's eleven. She does understand, when she's sane. But the programming is strong that opinion is Real, man. And you actually are an Idiot, Dad.
Except when I just did something she likes (which is most of the time) and she is saying You are Awesome, Dad. Hey, I think she's Awesome, too. That's an objective fact.
Heh!
"Justin Bieber sucks" is a subjective comment. It would be so even if every human being agreed, and, rather obviously, that's not the case.
So it's not objective, unless it is. How do you know there aren't objective standards?
"How do you know there aren't objective standards."
Because "Sucks" and "Crappy" are words which relate to subjective valuation concepts. You can redefine the words to have some objective criteria, then measure his music. However, redefining words doesn't change the original definition, it just clouds language. And p(0.98) that 98% of all people claiming he "sucks" have NOT come up with a clear objective standard using a new definition (excluding that new definition being along the lines of "me and/or my social circle do not like his music".)
You can have a set of Objective Criteria For Evaluating Music, but that's not what most people mean when they say his music sucks.
Says you. But if I say Trabants are crappy compared to Ferraris, aren't I experessing something reasonably objective?
Most everyone will get what you MEAN, but that doesn't mean that it's ACTUALLY become objective. It's just a colloquial usage that most people recognize, and it's probably hazardous to your memetic health to let yourself believe that just because people understand it, that it's literally true :)
Going a bit more extreme than a mere Trabant: If you had a car which exploded after any impact of more than 5 MPH, wiping out half a city, it would be crappy to everyone EXCEPT terrorist bombers who are going "Wow, I'll take three!"
I am pretty sure that you two use different definitions of the term "objective". Tabooing (a LW jargon for "defining") "objective" might be helpful.
Stealing from RobbBB: subjective shall be those things without a clear truth condition. You can taboo the word in question ("sucks") and replace it with a clear truth condition ("I want a fuel efficient car"), at which point it becomes object-- has a clear truth condition :)
Subjective things have clear truth conditions: "I like vanilla" is true because I like vanilla. The thing is that they have truth conditions that are indexed to individuals.
You might consider that a clear truth condition, but it would be fairly complex for me to determine whether or not you're lying, or just mistaken. Thus, while it has a truth condition, it's not really a clear one. "Peterdjones professed to like vanilla on 17/11/2012" is much clearer, and I'd say about the limit of what we can objectively say.
You might consider it a clear truth condition, since, we strongly tend not to question such reports by default.
This is quite an onerous requirement, given that people disagree on that "clear truth" thing a lot.
In your example, people may disagree on what "a fuel efficient car" is. Does it include the energy required to manufacture and later dispose of the batteries? If so, what total mileage does one use to properly amortize it?
Something along the lines of "measurable with an agreed upon procedure" might be better for the group of people who can agree on the measurement procedure. Under this dentition, if no such group includes both Abd and his teen daughter, then "Justin Bieber sucks" is "objectively" a subjective comment. Specifically, everyone who agrees with the above definition of objectiveness and will apply it: "look for a group of people who agree on ways to measure musical suckiness and include both Abd and his daughter, and come up empty" will then conclude that there is no measurement procedure which can resolve their dispute, and therefore the statement under consideration is objectively subjective. Not to be confused with subjectively objective.
Well, not sure how much of the above made sense.
I like the idea that if there is no method-of-measure such that both parties can agree to that definition, then it is subjective. It nicely encapsulates my intuitive feelings on subjective vs objective, while being much more technically precise :)
EDIT: I'd go on to say that "a clear truth condition" and "an agreed upon method of measuring", to me, work out as having the same meaning. People disagree on "truth" quite a lot, but such people are also unlikely to agree to a specific method of measuring. If they have agreed, then there is a clear truth condition. But having it spelled out was still Very Useful to me, and probably is a better way of communicating it :)
There's a clear something condition. Elsewhere, you object to the idea tha presence of agreement, or lack of disagreement, ("not questioned by most people") is sufficient for truth:-
http://lesswrong.com/lw/fgz/empirical_claims_preference_claims_and_attitude/7vcg
I'm glad that you found my comment helpful. It was certainly worthwhile for me trying to articulate my qualifications of the term "clear truth".
I dislike using the word "truth" outside of its precise meaning in mathematical logic, because it is not very useful instrumentally -- there is often no way to check whose interpretation is closer to "what really happened" or what would happen in every single one of many counterfactual scenarios.
For example, one of the standard things a therapist says during a couple's counseling in response to the contradictory versions of what happened at some point in the rocky relationship is that "you have to accept that there is one partner's truth and there is the other partner's truth". Both are completely sure in their version of what had transpired, and that the other partner has it wrong. Unfortunately, there is almost never a way to tell what "actually" happened, and even if there were, it would not be nearly as helpful going forward as working out real issues instead of dwelling on who said/did what and when and how this grudge can never be resolved without some major restitution.
Thank you! I shall also steal this, though in my case for more nefarious purposes. It is a useful tactic.
I don't see why. Aren't things like 0-60 timings objective?
That makes it a good bomb, not a good car.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/fgz/empirical_claims_preference_claims_and_attitude/7udr seems to cover it at this point :)
Not very well, though. I think Mainstream Philosophy is way ahead on this.
What do you mean by 'subjective valuation concept'? Rationality is a 'subjective valuation concept,' in several senses; its metric is relativized to, established by, and finds much or all of its content in individual mental states, and it is an evaluative term whose applicability standards are likewise stipulated by a mixture of common language usage and personal preferences. What makes 'X is rational' more objective than 'X sucks'?
Well, the answer is either: a) Rationality is better defined, similar to how 2+2=4 is more objective b) Rationality is not more objective than suckiness.
My gut says A, but I suspect that a random population survey would be evidence more towards B.
Now, if you've redefined Rationality in to a technical term, like it's generally used here on LessWrong, AND you're speaking in a context where your audience understands that you mean the technical term, no issue. Same as how "Bieber is crappy" communicates plenty to people who already know YOUR definition of crappy.
I would agree that the main problem is a lack of clear truth conditions for "x sucks;" the fact that it's a claim about subjective states, and that it relies on implicature, is immaterial. But this is a problem to some extent for nearly all natural-language terms, including "x is rational" in the colloquial sense. And the problem can be resolved by stipulating truth-conditions for "x sucks" just as easily as for "x is rational." So I think we'd agree that we should focus on getting people to taboo and clarify all their words, not just on feigning 'objectivity' by avoiding making any appeals to preferences or other mental states. Preferences are real.
"a lack of clear truth conditions"
That is a very useful definition, thank you :)
Or even just undefine the words and inherit their literal meanings regarding lower relative air pressure and faeces.
If there were actual Objective Standards for things, and we could know them, it would be very surprising to me that the world functions the way it does. It is far less surprising that they do not exist or that they exist outside our ability to know them.
With widesrpead disageement over muder being wrong?
I'm sorry, I don't understand what you mean. Are you agreeing with me? Because there is disagreement over whether murder is wrong, and even if there wasn't, I'm not sure that would be a very powerful factor in my judgement of whether or not Objective Standards exist and are knowable.
There is literally no disagreement over whether 'unjustified killing' is 'justified'.
There is widespread disagreement over which acts constitute murder.
In so far as that statement is true it is a tautology akin to saying "Everyone agrees that the not A is not A". If one tries to make it non-tautologous by say referring to specific subclasses of killing, then one is going to run into problems like sociopaths.
Yet that's the entire crux of the issue.
"Everyone agrees that ~A is ~A" is not a tautology, any more than "Everyone agrees that second-order logic is sound." is a tautology.
"Unjustified killing" (Murder) is already the intersection of acts which are killing and acts which are not justified. The problem is that different people have different sets of "Acts which are justified" and "Acts which are morally wrong".
I don't think you and JoshuaZ are having a substantive disagreement.
If you want to be pedantic, note that murder generally means unlawful or extralegal killing, not unjustified killing.
In the legal sense, murder is killing which is not legally justified. In the moral sense, murder is killing which is not morally justified.
There are certainly disagreements as to whether violations of any law are inherently immoral.
Can you provide a citation? I was under the impression that legal killing is not considered murder, even if it is not legally justified. For example, a judge might sentence a criminal to death for unjust reasons, but that would not be considered murder, even though it could be a sort of wrongful death. Or is there a more technical sense of "legally justified" at play?
The criminal code defines things very explicitly, even though sometimes circularly. For example, the USC defines murder: "Murder is the unlawful killing of a human being with malice aforethought.
The major distinction is from manslaughter: "Manslaughter is the unlawful killing of a human being without malice."
Manslaughter is defined in such a way as that it is not an act, but rather either the unintended result of negligence or a reaction which does not constitute a decision.
The moral sense of murder includes many things not included in the legal sense, such as the execution of an innocent person.
There is disagreement over whether it even makes sense to call things 'justified' or 'unjustified', in addition to disagreement over whether actions in general can ever be 'justified' or 'unjustified'.
I agree that if one where to concede that something is P, it would be very difficult for him to also assert that ~P, but I don't really see how that's relevant, since, as I said, there is in fact disagreement over whether killing can ever be unjustified, is ever unjustified, or whether that word even means what most people think it means.
'Murder' is defined as 'unjustified killing'.
Killing is not always murder.
If one believes that acts cannot be 'unjustified', one does not believe in murder. (In the same sense as 'I don't believe in telepathy.')
Full Disclosure: I'm still not sure I really understand how definitions and differing opinions on definitions are treated and handled here at LW, so if you could enlighten me in this area in general, I'd really appreciate it.
That being said, I'm positive I've seen people use the word murder even when they believed the act was justified. Obviously, had they used the words 'unjustified killing', there would be very little room for argument, but be that as it may, I'm still not positive that 'murder' has to be / is usually defined as 'unjustified killing'.
Further, I think it is a fairly consistent position to not believe that things can be 'unjustified', define 'murder' as something like 'killing without explicit consent of victim' and believe in murder at the same time; I'm not seeing anything wrong with holding that kind of position.
Ideally, the sides of a debate figure out whether there is a substantive or definitional dispute. Personally, I think there is value in figuring out the most useful definition for a particular conversation, but I'm not sure if that is the local consensus.
There is pretty widespread consensus that arguing by definition is not productive in figuring out what is true.
The standard approach is to:
That's a pretty clear case of using the word wrong, unless you're getting into really fine distinctions. If you spot someone doing that, it's probably worth pointing out that most people would be confused by using the word that way.
In a particular context, you might want to make use of the distinction between unjustified killing and unlawful killing, in which case murder would be the latter.
Give examples
Mackie's Error-Theory is the first that springs to mind. One could make the case that no Non-Cognitivist theory allows us to say that 'murder is wrong'. Various versions of Divine Command Theory would not necessarily believe that murder is wrong. I would link to the corresponding pages on SEP, but I'm terrible at the code on this site, so I'll trust that you can find them...
That's disagreement about whether anything is wrong, and it isn't widespread.
You asked for examples of theories where 'murder' is not necessarily considered 'wrong'. I provided you with three, of which two have been at one time or another, or are currently, very widely held. I've already understood, thanks to my conversation with thomblake which I linked to earlier, that we aren't having a substantive disagreement here, so I don't know what more you want from me.
Your comment:
..seemed to me to be a standard objection to moral objectivism on the basis of disagreement about first order ethics. I responded that there are aspects of first order ethics that are in fact agreed on by most peopleie murder is wrong, and charity is not-wrong. You then replied in terms of meta ethics. Was that a change of subject, or were you talking about metaethics all along? If the latter, why would metaethics, an academic specaism understood only by a few, affect "the way the world functions"?
How do you think the world would look differently if there were actual objective standards for things?
Assuming they were knowable, I think arguments over JB being bad or good could be solved in a much simpler way. Namely, by appealing to this Universal Objective Standard. Arguments about personal taste (like the JB example) would look much more like arguments over whether or not chromosomes are located in cells than what they do now, which is something of an "I'm right!" "No, I'm right!" deal...
So in a question for which there is an objective standard, we should expect to see widespread consensus among those familiar with it (so not among children, or the ignorant, but among those educated enough to understand the standard).
If it turned out that, among those we could expect to be familiar with an objective standard (if there is one), there is widespread agreement over whether or not JB was good or bad, would you concede that in this case it appears there is an objective standard?
I upvoted you, partially because I agree with you, but also because I liked that you gave an actual real-world scenario and it helped me understand the issue more clearly.