| — | Kyo, in Agitated Screams of Maggots. |
Philonous:..I am content to put the whole upon this issue. If you can conceive it possible for any mixture or combinations of qualities, or any sensible object whatever, to exist without the mind, then I will grant it actually to be so.
Hylas: If it comes to that, the point will soon be decided. What more easy than to conceive a tree or a house existing by itself, independent of, and unperceived by any mind whatsoever? I do at this present time conceive them existing after that manner.
Phil: How say you, Hylas, can you see a thing which is at the same time unseen?
Hyl: No, that were a contradiction.
Phil: Is it not as great a contradiction to talk of conceiving a thing which is unconceived?
Hyl: It is.
Phil: The tree or house therefore which you think of, is conceived by you.
Hyl: How should it be otherwise?
Phil: And what is conceived is surely in the mind.
Hyl: Without question, that which js conceived is in the mind.
Phil: How then came you to say, you conceived a house or tree existing independent and out of all minds whatsoever?
Hyl: That was, I own, an oversight; but stay, let me consider what led me into it. It is a pleasant mistake enough. As I was thinking of a tree in a solitary place, where no one was present to see it, methought that was to conceive a tree as existing unperceived or unthought of, not considering that I myself conceived it all the while. But now I plainly see, that all I can do is to frame ideas in my own mind. I may indeed conceive in my own thoughts the idea of a tree, or a house, or a mountain, but that is all. And this is far from proving, that I can conceive them existing out of the minds of all spirits.
Phil: You acknowledge then that you cannot possibly conceive how any one corporeal sensible thing should exist otherwise than in a mind.
Hyl: I do.
Phil: And yet you will earnestly contend for the truth of that which you cannot so much as conceive.
— From ‘Three Dialogues’.
“esse” is “percipi”. When an observer disappears and no one else exists to perceive the world, the world ceases to be. Sounds absurd? Even people who are not versed in philosophy with a realist outlook would consider this view absurd. Will deeper understanding and further argumentation change their minds regarding this matter? I don’t think so, since the usual way Berkelian idealists go about eliminating the “mind-independent-world”(MIW) with contradictions to ground “mind-dependent-world”(MDW) is fallacious and they inadvertently put themselves in an impasse with their own reasoning. The idealist argument in a nutshell: P1. Either the world is dependent or independent on the mind. P2. Whatever that is contradictory cannot be the case. P3. MIW is contradictory C. Therefore, the world is mind-dependent. Elaborating the P2, the idealist enumerates a myriad of contradictions to reinforce this proposition, using examples like a married bachelor, four-sided triangles, a mute singer, etc. Since these concepts are incoherent and contradictory and hence cannot logically exist, the same argument applies to the MIW. You cannot conceive what is defined as something unconceived, even imagining it will fail to capture the concept, since imagination is a part of perception. — This is illustrated in the conversation between Philonous(representing Berkely himself) and Hylas. Most people will scratch their heads at this point. Perhaps they are correct, maybe intellectual honesty demands our world to be merely “in” our minds. But this is wrong, the nature of the contradiction is different, strictly speaking, it’s a false analogy. Married Bachelor, four-sided triangles and a mute singer are all ontologically contradictory. Appealing to the definition, they are a priori self-refuting concepts. On the other hand, the sort of contradiction regarding the MIW demonstrated by Berkelian idealists is that simply the mind and the MIW cannot logically “coexist” — No case was made that MIW is ontologically contradictory. in other words, these contradictions are not equivalent. Discerning whether a concept is valid or contradictory always necessarily requires the operation of the mind. It seems like this fact has confused Berkelian idealists and they ended up treating “different types” of contradictions as equivalent; one is analyzable and the other(MIW) is not analyzable by definition, thus a contradiction, these are clearly not equivalent. Amending the analogy and showing that the MIW is contradictory by definition would render the analogy with other self-refuting concepts valid, however, is this even an option for them? Idealists have “exalted” the MIW to the point criticisms are not “allowed”, let alone mere scrutinization. In other words, with their own reasoning, they have made the solution to eliminate the MIW not even theoretically possible…Otherwise, it would be a contradiction.
MIW only seems like a contradiction equivalent to a priori self-refuting concepts mentioned above when you are operating under idealistic metaphysics, which is the very philosophy Berkelian Idealists are trying to prove that it is the correct metaphysical position. The whole argument is therefore, circular.
Concerning morality, it seems like most “internet atheists”(who are usually on YT bashing religion like it’s the most intellectually challenging thing to do, including the “big names”) with their “unrefined” moral naturalism vehemently invoke evolution whenever questions regarding ethics arise. They seem to be only focused on how moral sentiments emerged and for what reason through evolution. But such an explanation about the origin of moral sentiments is irrelevant. Many have argued that people have “intuitive awareness” of morality throughout history, it’s nothing new and it doesn’t go further than a genetic fallacy since most metaethical questions remain untouched.
The consequence of believing evolutionary processes as the only avenue to understanding morality with a reductionistic perspective would probably force one to embrace moral naturalism. It’s a cognitivist metaethical theory which asserts that moral facts are reducible to non-moral facts. The reductive approach will run into problems, namely the “is-ought gap”, which I believe is still relevant even though some naturalists believe that no such impenetrable barriers exist between the “is” and the “ought” when analyzing goal-directed behavior. In order for A to acheive goal B, A ought to do C(But is there a “moral ought” for A to achieve B in the first place? This is in no way justified). A moral philosopher like MacIntyre suggests that language developed in the belief of the human telos, and asserts that words like “good” and “wrong” merely serve to evaluate behaviors that faciliate the achievement of that telos, thus no category error was committed. But this medieval Aristotelianism was abandoned by enlightenment, post-enlightenment philosophers and I don’t find it convincing. Prescribing means would mean that you are implicitly prescribing ends, means and ends are not seperate. How can it be otherwise? Imagine an athlete who “ought” to finish the race who is already half way before the finish line. In order for A to achieve B, he ought to achieve B? The crux of the is-ought problem is that the “moral ought” is not validated by purely fact-based propositions. This “solution” to the is-ought problem does not as mentioned above justifies the derivation of the ought, and it sounds simply redundant, hence it’s immoral. Also, the word “good” seems to entail different meanings, one pertains to functionality and the other, defines the opposition of wrongness. If an assassin successfully kills his target, he is “good” since he has fullfilled his purpose, but is he thus “good”? A moral human being? A naturalist could argue that killing is not the purpose of man, however this argument can only be formulated once the is-ought gap is resolved since naturalists are appealing to the non-moral natural feature to derive such moral conclusions that is subject to the very is-ought problem we are dealing with. If deriving a prescription(ought) from a description(is) will only amount to a non-sequitur, simply adding an evaluative premise could render the conclusion valid and rescue moral naturalism. But identifying moral properties with non-moral properties is fallacious, it’s a naturalistic fallacy as pointed out by G.E Moore in the twentieth century in “Principia Ethica”. These matters seem to make moral non-naturalism relatively more appealing metaethical theory.
The Supervenience argument against moral non-naturalism?
“A set of properties A supervenes upon another set B just in case no two things can differ with respect to A-properties without also differing with respect to their B-properties. In slogan form, “there cannot be an A-difference without a B-difference”.
“Non-naturalism has trouble explaining the necessary dependence of the moral facts on the natural facts. So long as our characterization of natural properties is broad enough to include both all of the mental properties and all of the properties that would figure in the best physical theory, it is very plausible to suppose that the moral supervenes on the natural in the following sense: there can be no moral difference between two situations or entire possible worlds without some natural difference but not vice-versa (there can be non-moral differences without moral differences).” — From Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
As I understand moral non-naturalism, the tenet simply posits that moral facts are not reducible to non-moral facts, not that they are totally unrelated. Double-aspect theorists believe that the mind and the body are correlated, but not reducible. Moral facts are non-natural like the mind is non-physical but there could exist a correlation between the two like there is a correlation between the mind and the body. This will overcome the apparent difficulty of explaining supervenience with non-naturalism. I don’t believe non-naturalists rule out this possibility. If such an idea goes contrary to the traditional case of non-naturalism as we currently understand due to a proposition I am missing, I don’t see how a little tweak would do much harm.
