I’m confused!
Is my confusion to do with the different kinds of logical terminology being used in different disciplines? As far as I know a VALID argument doesn’t need to be a TRUE argument and if an argument is seen as both VALID and TRUE it is SOUND.A sound argument is one whose premises are true and whose conclusion follows logically from them. A "valid truth" is one which is confirmable empirically or logically.
Example (more for others than you Morton):
All bananas are purple
All purple things taste like strawberries
Therefore bananas taste like strawberries.
This is a VALID argument, but it isn’t a SOUND argument. I am struggling with the “valid truth” term you use.
Nature nurture: https://notpoliticallycorrect.me/2018/0 ... s-nurture/
I’ve read through the whole article but I’ve watched several hours of Sapolsky’s lectures on youtube (I think it’s in the first vid. on behavioral genetics - highly recommended!) It’s no wonder people get confused because the technical jargon of genetics doesn’t marry with common parse.High heritability estimates have been used as evidence for causation—that genes control a large part of the trait in question. This reasoning, however, is highly flawed. People confuse “heritable” with “inheritable” (Moore and Shenk, 2016). Heritability does not inform us what causes a trait, how much environment contributes to a trait, nor does it tell us the relative influence of genes on a trait. Moore and Shenk (2016) agree with Joseph et al (2015) and Burt and Simons (2014) that heritability studies need to end, but Moore and Shenk’s reasoning slightly differs: they say we should end estimates because people confuse “heritable” with “inheritable”. Likewise, Guo (2000: 299) concurs, writing “it can be argued that the term ‘heritability’, which carries a strong conviction or connotation of something ‘heritable’ in everyday sense, is no longer suitable for use in human genetics and its use should be discontinued.”
Anyway, back to the whole moral conundrum. If we act as if rape, murder and torturing animals is wrong then we act as if these are truths. Then we can jump into the defintion of “truth.” We are on Earth. That is an actual truth not a logical truth. Theologians have made a century long career of playing games with inductive reasoning to confound pragmatic claims.
Another way to look at this would be to consider the weather. Will it rain tomrrow? Now, we can make reasonable predictions and in some cases pretty much guarantee an answer. When the future is less clear we still predict an outcome based on causal relations (experiential knowledge), but what will be will be regardless. In this case the weather tomorrow is viewed as deterministic (our ability to predict assumes there will be weather tomorrow.) One way or another the prediction is varified. When it comes to moral choices it’s much, much foggier (and I believe it is here or here abouts where Sausage Dog is rabidly trying to eek out something.) We may be faced with a moral problem - to kill or not kill or may be - and decide upon the “best” course of action. Obivously some actions taken, due to moral choices, can be seen to have diffrent results for different people. This doesn’t mean there is no objectively “better” action to make only that humans are different. The fact that there is no yard stick for measuring morality doesn’t mean we are unable to determine “better” or “worse” outcomes only that the event played out by our moral choices is not discrete (everyone is well aware that some apparent good/bad deed will flip-flop overtime giving benefits and hindrances alike; the trick is tilting it in your favour.)
Does any of this mean I am saying “torturing animals for fun is objectively wrong,” and claiming that it is a true statement? No, but neither does it say that I think it is an untrue statement. I am aware I could, under extraordinary circumstances, likely be tortured myself and conditioned to enjoy torturing animals. In such a case I would be blind to any moral issue even if someone pointed it out to me, yet I know I am a creature of empathy so mayeb I’d turn it around? Either way the point here is that it would take extreme measures to have me take pleasure in torturing animals. If I enefit from torturing animals then I move away from suffering - that is the point that matters most to me and the problem is judging the pay-off of a little suffering today for an over all loss in future suffering. Given that we cannot empirically measure this we’re left making predictions, trying things out and seeing what happens.
Embedded within all this, if you can see or not?, is the problem of claiming there is an objective moral good and then also denying free-will (meaning siding with strong determinism, or rather fatalism - many theologians fall down at that point because they want to have their cake and eat it!)