Wednesday, July 23, 2008

An argument against Universally Preferable Behavior

Over at Vox Popoli, "Bearded Spock" keeps answering questions about the logical provability of his morals with "Read Universally Preferable Behavior by Stephan Molyneux". Being a glutton for punishment, I did, at least to page 34. When the author got to his axioms, I had to quit.

Most of his 8 axioms ("Premises") are fallacies, or at very least are parasitic off of the very religious moral systems the author claims to reject. Let's go through them.

  • Axiom 1: WE BOTH EXIST.
  • Axiom 2: THE SENSES HAVE THE CAPACITY FOR ACCURACY.
  • All he forgot was "I think, therefore I am". A Platonic philosopher would reject 2 out-of-hand, as would a Hindu. The concept of a rational universe fought over in pre-Christian philosophy, and became axiomatic only because of Christianity. Post-Christian philosophy is still lacking a good examination of this axiom.

  • Axiom 3: LANGUAGE HAS THE CAPACITY FOR MEANING.
  • If the author could quit using "better" in his axioms, I might be tempted to agree here. Seriously, this is an open problem in philosophy, but one I'll concede for expediency as well.

  • Axiom 4: CORRECTION REQUIRES UNIVERSAL PREFERENCES
  • "If you correct me on an error that I have made, you are implicitly accepting the fact that it would be better for me to correct my error. Your preference for me to correct my error is not subjective, but objective, and universal." Essentially, the author is appealing to the reader for agreement. This is dangerous, since all an opponent has to do to reject your entire argument is say "In my belief system, I don't care if you're in error." Also, what is "better"? (I'll raise that again in a second.)

  • Axion 5: AN OBJECTIVE METHODOLOGY EXISTS FOR SEPARATING TRUTH FROM FALSEHOOD
  • In the end, th is is just a restatement of axiom 2, with an addition of the concept of "Truth". To quote Pilate, "Quid est veritas?" Again, I have to accept axiom 5, but much philosophical debate of the last 5 millennia has been about trying to prove 5, and it's still up for debate.

  • Axion 6: TRUTH IS BETTER THAN FALSEHOOD.
  • Axiom 7: PEACEFUL DEBATING IS THE BEST WAY TO RESOLVE DISPUTES
  • There is a subtle fallacy of definition here. Better and best are just degrees of "good". What does the author mean by good/better/best? If it's moral, then you've begged the question again. If it's useful, then UPB is just another utilitarian system. If good just means preferable, then you're open to "you may prefer truth, but I prefer not to tell the truth sometimes".

  • Axiom 8: INDIVIDUALS ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THEIR ACTIONS.
  • This is a fallacy of definition, with two different meanings of "responsible" mashed together. First, it assumes free will. It is entirely possible for me to posit this argument without free will. My biological computer program, faced with an input set that drives it through a super-complex steady state tree, drives my hands to type out this post. I am no more "responsible" than the first Intel Pentium was "responsible" for rounding errors in the floating point unit.

    The second meaning is "morally liable". Again, why? I thought that this was what was to be proven...

The author is unconsciously talking to Christian moralists. Christians or atheists who have consciously or unconsciously accepted Judeo-Christian morals will accept all 8 axioms because they believe them already. People who reject Judeo-Christian morals will reject many, if not most, of these axioms. Fundamentally, axiom 0 is "there are morals", and that's what he's trying to prove.

And no, I'm not being a hypocrite at stopping at the axioms. Without the axioms, the rest of the argument can't hold, and I can s top now.

I am NOT impressed.

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