Re: Why Objective Values Exist

From: Brent Meeker <meekerdb.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Sun, 26 Aug 2007 23:45:20 -0700

marc.geddes.domain.name.hidden wrote:
>
>
> On Aug 22, 11:55 pm, "Stathis Papaioannou" <stath....domain.name.hidden> wrote:
>
>
>> I accept that there is more than one way to describe reality, and I
>> accept the concept of supervenience, but where I differ with you
>> (stubbornly, perhaps) is over use of the word "fundamental". The base
>> property seems to me more deserving of being called "fundamental" than
>> the supervenient property. If you were to give concise instructions to
>> a god who wanted to build a copy of our world you could skip all the
>> information about values etc. confident in the knowledge that all this
>> extra stuff would emerge as long as the correct physical information
>> was conveyed; whereas the converse is not the case.
>>
>> [If the mental does not supervene on the physical this changes the
>> particular example, but not the general point.]
>
> Refer the brief definition of property dualism referenced by the link
> Bruno gave:
> http://www.jimpryor.net/teaching/courses/mind/notes/supervenience.html
>
>
> Be careful to draw a distinction between 'substances' and
> 'properties'. I accept that the underlying *substance* is likely
> physical, but *properties* are what are super-imposed on the top of
> the underlying substance. The physical *substance* may be the base
> level, but the physical *properties* aren't. From the mere fact that
> aesthetic properties are *composed of* physical substances, it does
> not follow that aesthetic properties themselves are physical. Nor
> does it follow from the fact that physical substances are *neccessery*
> for aesthetic properties, that they are *sufficient* to fully specify
> aesthetic properties.
>
> Here's why: Complete knowledge of the physical properties of your
> brain cannot in fact enable you to deduce your aesthetic preferences
> without additional *non-physical* assumptions.

I don't know whether you're hair splitting or speaking loosely, but the above is off the point in a couple of ways. In the first place empirical science is inductive not deductive; so there is a trivial sense in which you can't deduce any empirical fact, such as someone's aesthetic preferences. More broadly you can deduce aesthetic preferences, though of course that takes a theory. A theory is non-physical, but it isn't necessarily an assumption - it may be very well supported inductively. In fact I can give and easy example of such deduction and I don't even need to directly observe your brain. I predict that you prefer the appearance of nude young women to that of nude young men.

Brent Meeker


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Received on Mon Aug 27 2007 - 02:45:30 PDT

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