Secular Ethics: Failed Answers to Is/Ought gap and Teleological Functionalism

[nightvidcole]

@WILLTHEWGMAN And as to your other comment, you are simply mistaken. Compatibilism is the view that free will and determinism are not contradictory, NOT "being overcome by another's biological determinism". Read up on these things before you try to knock them down.

[nightvidcole]

Naturalism doesn't have a problem with teleology-like order and rules, only with a literal interpretation of this "teleology". And to argue that morality is not a biological property is begging the question. Prove that morality is not a biological property.

[WILLTHEWGMAN]

Science can discover what we are but never inform us of who we are. Who we are and it's great value of understanding within humanity is evidence the soul and God.

Love, hate, good, evil, self-awareness and consciousness as an individual with freewill of choices in actions over even one's own survival in this life is all evidence of the soul! The reality of humanity is in "who" we are as such and not where we are as a place or body. ~ Are we made in God's image or evolution's freak of Nature?

[nightvidcole]

@WILLTHEWGMAN You are pre-supposing that "who we are" is not a part of "what we are", and, thus you are begging the question.

[WILLTHEWGMAN]

@nightvidcole

I don't pre-suppose that "who we are" is not a part of "what we are". It is self-evident that "who" I am is not merely just a part of "what" I am. My self-awareness as an individual with real free-will of choice can't be derived from a mere mind/brain/body/external world relationship. I could not have true free-will of choice if the "me" was just merely a biochemical part of the body. If just a body, the "me" would just be an illusion

with no true free-will of choice making...

[nightvidcole]

@WILLTHEWGMAN If you don't presuppose that, how do you conclude that science cannot explain "who we are"? And as to the free will argument, you are pre-supposing an incompatibilist view of free will, which most educated naturalists of today do not accept. And again, you are not making a good argument that science cannot explain "X". You are merely asserting it. Asserting it in a different way is still not an argument! You still have not demonstrated that morality cannot be a natural property.

[WILLTHEWGMAN]

@nightvidcole

Compatibilism only refers to one being overcome by another's biological determinism. "To illustrate their standpoint, compatibilists point to cases of someone's free will being denied, such as rape, murder, or theft."

I 'm thinking to state that "the biochemical illusion is so real it's almost like we have free-will" is not really a sound argument for real human free-will in choice. Free-will is the ability of agents to make choices free from constraints like mere biochemistry.

[nightvidcole]

@WILLTHEWGMAN You said you didn't presuppose it and then you pre-supposed it. That is transparent self-contradiction.

[NoctambulantJoycean]

cont Just b/c non-moral term X and moral term Y do not mean the same thing (i.e. you can't analyically go from one to the other), says nothing about whether the terms refer to the same property or thing. This second, ontological point is what naturalism is committed to, not the issue of semantics. To determine if the terms do refer to the same thing, empirical investigation may be required (basically Kripke's H2O/water case); OQA fails to cast any doubt on the possible success of this endeavor

[NoctambulantJoycean]

This is my first time commenting on a video, so...

This comment will be based on Charles Pigden's "Naturalism" in A Companion to Ethics. In respect to analytic reductionism and the point you make at 2m14sec: "our concepts are not transparent to us. It may be possible to give an analysis of a word, which won't be obvious to competent speakers." Second, analy rdctsm is certainly not the most plausible version of moral naturalism, especially once Kripke's views on lang are taken into acct (cont)

[havock89]

Quite simply, "good" means that some-thing is "fit for the purpose it was created for."

[havock89]

Excellent video. Happy New Year.

[AdversusHaereses]

Great to see you back Theo!!!