Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Philosophy Club

[Good_Egg]

...link to an article I came across today, about the language of justice as it applies to climate-change. But it has more general value too, I think?

Thanks for the link. I find I agree with the core point being made therein - that there is a difference between the three notions of justice (distributive, procedural, corrective). However much I might agree or disagree with any of the three notions as presented.

In a thread on justice, exploring these notions seems worthwhile.

But I also want to continue on the topic of objectivity, to see if we can head off future misunderstanding.

I'm asserting that there are truths, practical real-world truths...

I assert that the Universe, whatever it is, and however I might've misunderstood (or misperceived) it, is the reference, and all "academic ideas" must be compared with that reference to judge their usefulness and value.

These words suggest to me that you believe, as I do, that there are what I would call objective truths - facts, about which individuals and cultures can be right or wrong. I think we agree that the propositions of empirical science fall into this category. But mathematics and logic do too.

For me, the test of objectivity is whether we can be wrong about something.

This is distinguished from subjective feelings, which we experience, and are what they are, but are not "truth-apt". A proposition that merely expresses a feeling cannot be true or false.

And there is an intermediate category the inter-subjective, propositions which can be judged relative to the norms of this or that culture. About which individuals can be wrong but cultures cannot.

And the Big Question is which category justice (or notions of justice) belongs to. Can anything be objectively just ? Or only just according to some cultural norm ? Or is justice only a subjective notion about which nobody can be right or wrong at all ?

[Pattern-chaser]

But I also want to continue on the topic of objectivity, to see if we can head off future misunderstanding.

[...]

Good idea.

I feel that the word "objective" does more harm than good. The problem is the *many* shades of meaning it can carry, from roughly impartial to the steel-hard Objectivist view of that which actually, and mind-independently, is. When the word is used, we don't know the degree of 'objectivity' is intended.

In my view, we should use other words, like "impartial", if that's what we mean. Clarity is what's important, I think, and using the word "objective" almost always reduces and obscures clarity.

[Pattern-chaser]

But I also want to continue on the topic of objectivity, to see if we can head off future misunderstanding.

[...]

Good idea.

I feel that the word "objective" does more harm than good. The problem is the *many* shades of meaning it can carry, from roughly impartial to the steel-hard Objectivist view of that which actually, and mind-independently, is. When the word is used, we don't know the degree of 'objectivity' is intended.

In my view, we should use other words, like "impartial", if that's what we mean. Clarity is what's important, I think, and using the word "objective" almost always reduces and obscures clarity.

I.e. I'd be happy to answer your questions, once you've clarified the meaning *you* intend when you write "objective", so that I don't have to make assumptions.

[Good_Egg]

Prompted by your good self to think more about what I mean by "objective", what I'm getting at is neither impartiality nor any proposition about existence, but rather whether any particular concept admits of potential right answers. Something about which you or I can be mistaken.

What would be a clearer term (than "objective") for that ?

Seems to me that everyone has a sense of justice - a sense that some outcomes are just and some are unjust.

You'll have heard the old joke:

Pupil: should someone be punished for something they didn't do ?
Teacher: of course not
Pupil: that's good. 'Cos I didn't do my homework.

At the risk of killing any humour in a joke by explaining it, that joke only works because we have a shared notion that punishing Alfie for the crimes of Bruno is unjust. But also that there are wrongs of omission (as well as the wrong acts that we first think of when the notion of punishment comes up).

So I'm asking whether such shared notions involve some truth about the universe or human nature about which we could conceivably be wrong.

Or whether that notion is shared only within a culture, and it is meaningless to judge one culture's notion as truer than another's.

[Sculptor1]

Prompted by your good self to think more about what I mean by "objective", what I'm getting at is neither impartiality nor any proposition about existence, but rather whether any particular concept admits of potential right answers. Something about which you or I can be mistaken.

What would be a clearer term (than "objective") for that ?

Seems to me that everyone has a sense of justice - a sense that some outcomes are just and some are unjust.

This is risible. Somethink that all instances of abortion are morally wrong, whilst a range of people favour and allow a range of reasons for abortion to be moral and just. You can apply this to just about any condition, any law, and act which has a moral element to it.
Any claim that what is and what is not "just" is not objective.

You'll have heard the old joke:

Pupil: should someone be punished for something they didn't do ?
Teacher: of course not
Pupil: that's good. 'Cos I didn't do my homework.

At the risk of killing any humour in a joke by explaining it, that joke only works because we have a shared notion that punishing Alfie for the crimes of Bruno is unjust. But also that there are wrongs of omission (as well as the wrong acts that we first think of when the notion of punishment comes up).

So I'm asking whether such shared notions involve some truth about the universe or human nature about which we could conceivably be wrong.

Or whether that notion is shared only within a culture, and it is meaningless to judge one culture's notion as truer than another's.

And what do you think you mean by "truth" here?
What is "human Nature"? How can such a concept have any meaning, since we are all born into culture?

[Good_Egg]

What is "human Nature"? How can such a concept have any meaning, since we are all born into culture?

We are indeed all born into culture. And we know that cultures and subcultures vary.

Which is why, when someone puts forward a proposition about how people are, it makes sense to ask whether that proposition is true
- for all people across all cultures ?
- within our culture, but not in others ?
- only for some individuals ?

So if we say that "man is a rational animal" that's a statement about humans in every culture. If we say "sick people are treated in hospital" then that's true in western culture but not on some tribal cultures. And if we say that "Boris Johnson is popular" then those who move in circles where that is so will tend to agree and those whose acquaintanceship despise him will disagree.

In classical logic we have "all" statements and "some" statements, and it is a failure of logic to treat a "some" statement as an "all" statement. This is a similar point.

One of my pet hates is the use of "real world" to justify propositions whose truth is limited to one's own particular corner of our culture. And prefer to talk of "shared experience" which invites the question "shared by whom?"

Of the three types of justice in the article which PC linked to, it seems to me that there are aspects of "corrective justice" - notions of crime and punishment - that are true cross-culturally.

But "procedural justice" as discussed there is only meaningful for those who've grown up in a democratic society and therefore have some expectation that people will be consulted on matters that concern them.

And "distributive justice" is a construct of leftist political thought. Which looks at the non-uniform distribution of talents among the population and deems life to be unfair. And concludes that differential wealth gained by the employment of one's talents is unjust

[Sculptor1]

What is "human Nature"? How can such a concept have any meaning, since we are all born into culture?

We are indeed all born into culture. And we know that cultures and subcultures vary.

Which is why, when someone puts forward a proposition about how people are, it makes sense to ask whether that proposition is true
- for all people across all cultures ?
- within our culture, but not in others ?
- only for some individuals ?

So if we say that "man is a rational animal" that's a statement about humans in every culture. If we say "sick people are treated in hospital" then that's true in western culture but not on some tribal cultures. And if we say that "Boris Johnson is popular" then those who move in circles where that is so will tend to agree and those whose acquaintanceship despise him will disagree.

In classical logic we have "all" statements and "some" statements, and it is a failure of logic to treat a "some" statement as an "all" statement. This is a similar point.

One of my pet hates is the use of "real world" to justify propositions whose truth is limited to one's own particular corner of our culture. And prefer to talk of "shared experience" which invites the question "shared by whom?"

Of the three types of justice in the article which PC linked to, it seems to me that there are aspects of "corrective justice" - notions of crime and punishment - that are true cross-culturally.

But "procedural justice" as discussed there is only meaningful for those who've grown up in a democratic society and therefore have some expectation that people will be consulted on matters that concern them.

And "distributive justice" is a construct of leftist political thought. Which looks at the non-uniform distribution of talents among the population and deems life to be unfair. And concludes that differential wealth gained by the employment of one's talents is unjust

You are dancing round the topic without ever saying anything more than the most banal reflections on human nature.
"man is a rational animal" - is hardly universal, since many persons can be characterised as irrational and for good reason. And can you say that rationality is absent from other animals? I think not.

"But "procedural justice" as discussed there is only meaningful for those who've grown up in a democratic society and therefore have some expectation that people will be consulted on matters that concern them."
If you really have that expectation then good luck waiting. LOL. I live in the UK, have lived in the US, and do not remember ever being consulted for anything. I do remember being handed TWO menus with a diverse list of items most of which I disagreed with and being asked to vote on one or the other. Only to find that the vote did not really count for anything due to the First past the Post system.
Your biased comments on redistributive justice are not relevant to the topic.

[Belinda]

What is "human Nature"? How can such a concept have any meaning, since we are all born into culture?

We are indeed all born into culture. And we know that cultures and subcultures vary.

Which is why, when someone puts forward a proposition about how people are, it makes sense to ask whether that proposition is true
- for all people across all cultures ?
- within our culture, but not in others ?
- only for some individuals ?

So if we say that "man is a rational animal" that's a statement about humans in every culture. If we say "sick people are treated in hospital" then that's true in western culture but not on some tribal cultures. And if we say that "Boris Johnson is popular" then those who move in circles where that is so will tend to agree and those whose acquaintanceship despise him will disagree.

In classical logic we have "all" statements and "some" statements, and it is a failure of logic to treat a "some" statement as an "all" statement. This is a similar point.

One of my pet hates is the use of "real world" to justify propositions whose truth is limited to one's own particular corner of our culture. And prefer to talk of "shared experience" which invites the question "shared by whom?"

Of the three types of justice in the article which PC linked to, it seems to me that there are aspects of "corrective justice" - notions of crime and punishment - that are true cross-culturally.

But "procedural justice" as discussed there is only meaningful for those who've grown up in a democratic society and therefore have some expectation that people will be consulted on matters that concern them.

And "distributive justice" is a construct of leftist political thought. Which looks at the non-uniform distribution of talents among the population and deems life to be unfair. And concludes that differential wealth gained by the employment of one's talents is unjust

Can there be any doubt that human life is unfair.
When law and justice collide we can do what Jesus recommended and render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's . This pragmatic advice was a practical life saver for individuals in Roman-occupied Palestine, and in Nazi-occupied Europe, and in Russia under Stalin.

The film ' Schindler's List' ,which is based on real history , illustrates how render unto Caesar played out under Nazism.

[Pattern-chaser]

Prompted by your good self to think more about what I mean by "objective", what I'm getting at is neither impartiality nor any proposition about existence, but rather whether any particular concept admits of potential right answers. Something about which you or I can be mistaken.

I had hoped that, by splitting your comments, I could reply sensibly () to them. But even here your final sentence seems to veer off in another direction.

"Whether any particular concept admits of potential right answers"?
Here, we still have a number of issues, bundled together. Can any concept have "potentially right answers"? Some can, others can't, I suppose. Of those that can, are any of those concepts "right"? And what does "right" mean in this context? Does it mean correct, or does it mean (morally) right, as opposed to wrong? And this latter question leads us into your final sentence, concerning whether we can be right at all, and how we might confirm that we are right.

Already, we have much to think about here, and not a lot in the way of information or ideas that might help us reach conclusions. Perhaps our problem here is that we're trying to answer the wrong question(s)? Are there, for example, mind-independent truths out there? I'm sure there are. In theory.

In practice, does it even matter if these answers exist (in theory), if we (humans) are unable to confirm these answers? What point in saying "there is a true answer to this question", if that answer cannot be discovered by humans, or that it can be discovered, but not confirmed to be 'right'?

Are there, in practice, mind-independent truths that we can discover and use?
Yes: there are things of whose truth we are *sufficiently* convinced that we accept them, and define them, as 'true'.
No: strictly speaking, if we cannot verify a 'truth', we can't say it's true.

Are there things "about which you or I can be mistaken"? Yes, empirical observation confirms there are. Are there things about which we cannot be mistaken? I would guess not.

What would be a clearer term (than "objective") for that ?

Any label will do, as long as we agree the meaning of that label. But "objective" is used for so many associated but different things, that it has now become almost unusable. All the different things it can refer to are useful to us, but we still need to know which of them we are referring to when we use the word.

Like "bad" coming to mean "good", words change. Sometimes we add new meanings to existing words. This is natural evolution in language. But sometimes it results in confusion. We're humans; isn't confusion what we do?

Seems to me that everyone has a sense of justice - a sense that some outcomes are just and some are unjust.

Yes, I agree. It seems so. We all know what justice is, and fairness too. But can we write down a clear definition of justice? Besides synonymising it with "fairness", I don't think so. We can pronounce more easily on specific questions: "is *this* just?", but our answers will not always agree. We all know what it is, but it seems we also all have a different idea of what it is...

So I'm asking whether such shared notions involve some truth about the universe or human nature about which we could conceivably be wrong.

Or whether that notion is shared only within a culture, and it is meaningless to judge one culture's notion as truer than another's.

I'm not quite sure what you're asking here. We can and "could" conceivably be wrong about almost any notion we take into our heads. But I don't think that's what you're getting at? I think we can sharpen the focus of your words, and say that if something is not steel-hard, mind-independent, absolute, Objective, Truth, then we have to agree that it could be wrong, or just different from what others think. Don't we?

[Pattern-chaser]

Can there be any doubt that human life is unfair.

Yes, definitely. When we say "life is unfair", we mean "life has not offered me the opportunities that I believe I *should* have". This is silly. The world, in this sense, has no agency. It is what it is. Since we cannot change that, we would surely do best to accept it, instead of bitching about how "unfair" or "unjust" it is?

As a pathogenic virus, I find the very mention of "vaccination" to be unfair...

Philosophy is unfair, I maintain...

[LuckyR]

Describing a process as "unfair" presupposes that the process should be fair. Life, unfortunately for this point of view, fails this test.

[Good_Egg]

Perhaps our problem here is that we're trying to answer the wrong question(s)? Are there, for example, mind-independent truths out there? I'm sure there are. In theory.

The distinction I'm making can perhaps be expressed in terms of mind-independence , if that helps.

If you speak of your thoughts and feelings, then your sentence remains true only as long as you don't change your mind; there is no mind-independent truth there.

If you say that the French for "yes" is "oui" then that's true whatever you or I think/feel about it. But only because millions of French minds affirm it. Such cultural truths are not independent of all minds.

But - as far as we know - E=m x c-squared was true before humans had minds, and that sort of physical truth is independent of all minds (except the Creator's, if there be one).

If a tree falls in the forest with no mind present to observe it, is the statement "a tree has fallen in the forest" mind-independently true ? Where does such a proposition reside when no mind is entertaining it ?

In practice, does it even matter if these answers exist (in theory), if we (humans) are unable to confirm these answers? What point in saying "there is a true answer to this question", if that answer cannot be discovered by humans, or that it can be discovered, but not confirmed to be 'right'?

Whether you or I see a particular proposition as mattering, or having a point, or having use-value is mind-dependent. And a distraction from the question of truth.

strictly speaking, if we cannot verify a 'truth', we can't say it's true.

There are degrees of cerainty with which a mind holds something as true.

But a proposition does not become true at the point where we verify it. (For whatever level of certainty you think counts as verification).

If a proposition is mind-independently true, then it is true regardless of which minds have verified it to their own satisfaction and which haven't .

Are there things "about which you or I can be mistaken"? Yes, empirical observation confirms there are. Are there things about which we cannot be mistaken? I would guess not.

If there is no right answer, how can anyone be mistaken ?

If you mean that some humans will be mistaken about anything about which it is possible to be mistaken, then yes. But this shared experience of human fallibility does not establish the existence of right answers; only that where they exist some people will fail to apprehend them.

[Pattern-chaser]

Describing a process as "unfair" presupposes that the process should be fair. Life, unfortunately for this point of view, fails this test.

Yes, absolutely! And yet, it is the case that those parts of life and living that we *can* control, can be as "fair", or fairer, than might otherwise be the case. We can employ, and deploy, fairness in these circumstances, if we choose to.

[Pattern-chaser]

But - as far as we know - E=m x c-squared was true before humans had minds, and that sort of physical truth is independent of all minds (except the Creator's, if there be one).

Yes, but it's the "as far as we know" that illustrates the problem. We don't actually *know* that this is so. There could be parts of the Universe where this equation does not apply. We don't know. We don't actually *know* what the universe was like "before humans had minds". There could be other universes (?) where it doesn't apply. Again, we don't know.

So to speculate — for that is all it is — that this truth is mind-independent is ... to go beyond the evidence. And given that we all have minds, it is difficult to see how any such 'truth' could be verified. We *suppose* that this truth is mind-independent. But mind-independence is not something you can just "suppose". It's a property that a proposition might have, but so what? If we can't verify this property, then does it even exist? It would seem that we don't, and can't, know.

Whether you or I see a particular proposition as mattering, or having a point, or having use-value is mind-dependent. And a distraction from the question of truth.

Yes, this is very close to what I'm saying here. Our search for truth is valid and useful. But surely one of the first things we should do is to set aside pointless speculation:

Is *this* mind-independent?
Is *that* Objectively True?

We cannot answer these questions, and we cannot confirm that any speculative answer we come up with conforms to our criterion ("mind-independent" or "Objectively True"). So these questions are wishful thinking that distracts from such truths as we can learn.

There are degrees of certainty with which a mind holds something as true.

Yes, indeed. There are many things we 'know', that we believe because we have seen them demonstrated over and over, like the Sun rising every morning. We have confidence that it will happen again tomorrow morning. This is sensible and rational, IMO.

But if we start to kid ourselves that there are unchallengeable truths that we can know, the whole thing falls apart. Yes, God may know these things, but we can not, so we should ignore them as a distraction. God will take care of them.

If a proposition is mind-independently true, then it is true regardless of which minds have verified it to their own satisfaction and which haven't .

This is a perfect example of something that appears to be Objectively and mind-independently true, but that we cannot verify. So these much-vaunted attributes become meaningless. We say "this is unchallengeably true", but we can't back up what we say. A pointless distraction.

If there is no right answer, how can anyone be mistaken ?

As I've said, we speculate these absolutes, and then present them without justification. In theory (only), there are right answers, that could, again in theory, be verified. But this is all pie in the sky. We can't show that any of it has merit or verity.

[Good_Egg]

This reads as a counsel of despair. Should we not study physics on the grounds that we can never know whether there's some region of space where the usual laws don't apply ? Not learn French because there may be some corner of France where they speak differently ? Not do philosophy because there may be some exception to what is apparently true ?

Better to remain aware of one's assumptions and go ahead and make them anyway.

For example, physics is uniformitarian. One of its methodological assumptions is an unchanging universe - "laws of nature" that continue to hold - so that any experiment we do now is validly comparable with observations made previously. We cannot know that that assumption is true.

So we acknowledge our doubt and fallibility and do it anyway. Neither dismissing physics as unverifiable speculation. Nor insisting that events outside the realm of physical science cannot possibly have happened (because "science proves it").

The question we're addressing is something like "how much of what we mean by 'justice' is universal, how much is cultural, and how much is idiosyncratic ?"

Asking any question involves (?only?) the assumption that the words are meaningful. Do you seriously contend that they are not ? Or is it only the answers to the question that you think are undermined by doubt ?