What is Justice?

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Steve3007
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Re: What is Justice?

Post by Steve3007 »

Wossname wrote:...But we have a shared cultural background (I think) ... I think you may be batting on a sticky wicket...
As a funny trivial point: I'd be interested to know if the shared cultural background extends to the use of that particular sports metaphor!

(More generally, I think your comments on morality are reasonable ones.)
Wossname
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Re: What is Justice?

Post by Wossname »

Steve3007 wrote: May 20th, 2020, 5:42 am Steve3007 » 7 minutes ago

Wossname wrote:
...But we have a shared cultural background (I think) ... I think you may be batting on a sticky wicket...
As a funny trivial point: I'd be interested to know if the shared cultural background extends to the use of that particular sports metaphor!


I plead guilty as charged.
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Terrapin Station
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Re: What is Justice?

Post by Terrapin Station »

Marvin_Edwards wrote: May 19th, 2020, 11:21 am Moral judgments can be more objective or less objective. That's what objectivity in moral judgments is about The more that moral judgments are grounded in objective evidence, the more likely they are to be correct.
Moral judgments can't be objective at all. They can't be correct, true, etc.
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Terrapin Station
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Re: What is Justice?

Post by Terrapin Station »

Marvin_Edwards wrote: May 19th, 2020, 11:28 am
The problem is that I have seen no evidence that you are contributing anything to the discussion.

A big problem is that you believe this is the sort of thing we can have evidence of. "You're contributing/not contributing to the conversation" can't be correct, true, etc. It's a value judgment, and all value judgments are subjective. They're not a determination that the world makes mind-independently. So you don't feel that I'm contributing anything to the conversation. That's fine. And the reason that I'm supposed to care that you feel that way is?
Is communication impossible then? ("since we can't literally share the meanings we assign").
Of course it's not impossible. The problem would be not understanding what communication actually is, where one instead expects it to be something that makes no sense with respect to what the world is like and how it works.
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Pattern-chaser
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Re: What is Justice?

Post by Pattern-chaser »

Wossname wrote: May 20th, 2020, 5:28 am
Marvin_Edwards wrote: May 19th, 2020, 9:15 am Marvin_Edwards » Yesterday, 2:15 pm

Have you and Pattern-chaser fallen into arguing the Kantian noumenal/phenomenal distinction or is it something else? I’m not sure how much you are really disagreeing with each other.
For myself, I have noticed that Marvin_Edwards seems to be using "objective" to carry several different meanings, even in the same paragraph, without clarifying what he means. I only want to know if he means 'distanced' (mild) or Objective (hard), or something in between, and he seems unwilling to say which.

Marvin_Edwards wrote: May 19th, 2020, 11:21 am Moral judgments can be more objective or less objective. That's what objectivity in moral judgments is about.
This assertion could do with some justification. Do you have any justification to offer?

Marvin_Edwards wrote: May 19th, 2020, 11:21 am The more that moral judgments are grounded in objective evidence, the more likely they are to be correct.
This assertion could do with some justification. Do you have any justification to offer?


A little clarification wouldn't do any harm either. For instance, how can moral judgements be "grounded in objective evidence"? Very often, in moral matters, the facts (if any) are agreed by all. It is the moral implications that are disputed.

Marvin_Edwards wrote: May 19th, 2020, 11:21 am The question of whether we can know objective reality is about the "things" that exist in the world, and how certain we might be that they exist as they appear to us.
Here, I think you refer to Apparent Reality(AR, for brevity) - the reality which our senses/perception show to us, and with which we appear to interact - as if it was Objective Reality(OR) (note the capitals) - that which actually is. There is no evidence for this. That's sort of the core point of Objectivity discussions. Science cannot pronounce on this question, because there is no scientifically-acceptable evidence at all, for or against, nor can there ever be.

The belief that AR = OR is a faith position, and, as such, it is perfectly acceptable. But from a factual, logical or scientific viewpoint, it is invalid due to the complete lack of evidence. Anyone who wishes to can adopt "AR = OR" as a faith position, but to cast their belief as something they know is factually, logically and scientifically incorrect. Wrong. Invalid. And so on.

To address the details of your words:

Many "things" seem to exist in the "world" (AR), and they, and AR itself, have some relationship with OR. But whether it's direct, as you seem to think, or whether AR is a figment of the imagination of a character in a simulation, within another simulation, which exists in OR, we can have no clue.

As for "how certain we might be that they exist as they appear to us", we cannot be certain at all. Complete uncertainty is what we have here, nothing less. There is no evidence, nothing upon which to base any sort of deduction or logical analysis.

Marvin_Edwards wrote: May 19th, 2020, 11:21 am Any use of the term objectivity subsumes a knowable objective reality.
If so, then we should confine use of the term strictly to hypothetical discussions. Unless "knowable" can reduce to "know that it exists", for that is all we know, or can know, of OR.

Marvin_Edwards wrote: May 19th, 2020, 11:21 am So, if you argue that objective reality is unknowable, you undermine any use of the term "objective".
Oh, wouldn't it be wonderful if it was so! 👍🙂🙂🙂 If we could distance ourselves from the certainty we yearn for, but cannot have, and simply accept reality as it is (to/for us).

Marvin_Edwards wrote: May 19th, 2020, 11:21 am I would humbly suggest that you cease doing that.
Why? I seek to avoid a faith position being cast as something more definite. I'm not going to stop that any time soon.
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